I cannot stand cold weather but I would love to ski jump and luge. No, I haven’t lost my mind.
Go USA!
Thanks to the WPTouch plugin, you can now carry me in your pocket all day long. Just access this website on your mobile browser and it will automagically configure itself to an easy-on-the-eyes format. Neato.
The general public perception of NASA is that it’s an inefficient, unnecessary drain on the US budget. How bad a drain? From The Space Review:
In a just-completed study, we asked respondents what percentage of the national budget is allocated to NASA … NASA’s allocation, on average, was estimated to be approximately 24% of the national budget (the NASA allocation in 2007 was approximately 0.58% of the budget.)
Recently a budget was submitted to cut funding for NASA. This is not good news. There are better ways of cutting government waste.
Image Credit: NASA
We need to rethink the way our government and the Department of Defense spend tax payer dollars. Years and billions of dollars are consumed on research and development to wait approval. If your design is selected, you win the huge contract and reap billions. If your design lost out, well, you still receive a hefty sum. See further: the F-22 and Y-23. Recently the Pentagon cut funding for the F-22s already in service and stopped further development. Apparently it is too costly and not needed.
Why not manufacture the designs and machines that have worked previously? An F-16 fighter is still the best in the world. It has been proven in the unfriendly skies. We also sell this design to our allies. It must be pretty good. When current weapons become unusable or obsolete, use them for the foundation of a replacement. Retrofit and replace the electronics, avionics and anything else with modern day ingenuity. All of a sudden, you have a new weapon that saved you billions. Brilliant.
Dear Detroit, you should be doing this for your automobiles too. How many junkyards are filled with reusable materials?
Author’s note: I am not a tree hugger.
I really enjoyed the Band of Brothers series from Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks. Now they have teamed up again for “The Pacific”. The 10-part series based on books by Robert Leckie and Eugene B. Sledge follows the exploits of three US marines during World War II, and debuts March 14.
Go to the address bar in your favorite browser, and type one letter. Start with “a”, end with “z”.
Don’t do a web search. This is just in your address bar.
Here are the first results in my address bar. Revealing, no?
Read not the Times. Read the Eternities.
From the essay Life Without Principle by Henry David Thoreau, who was complaining about gossip and the trivialities of the daily news long before any of us were born.
I don’t watch a whole lot of television but when I do, it has to be intelligent and make me think. Nothing fraks with my mind like LOST, which is airing it’s 6th and last season this week. If you haven’t been keeping up and feel a bit lost yourself, Hulu is airing all episodes for free. Time to play catch up. I’ve been watching all seasons and will still have to watch at least the past 4 episodes from last season to prepare for this one.
I was skeptical of the recent Battlestar Galactica series until a co-worker turned me on to it. That series ended last year where humans were being wiped out by the sentient beings they created, the Cylons. A robotic race that evolved into looking/acting like humans themselves. You can kill the body but the soul/mind would download into a replicated body.
Now comes Caprica, a planet where the humans lived and created the Cylons. The new Caprica series is designed as a prequal to BSG and tells how the Cylons were created and why they turned on the humans. The girl featured in the promo photo above is Zoe. Her genius, rich father created the robots for the military. Zoe is a genius as well and rejected everything for her beliefs. I won’t spoil the rest except to say she becomes the first sentient Cylon somehow. Just like BSG, this show already deals with science, religion, race, ethics and so much more.
For comedic relief, I will still watch The Office and 30 Rock. They are both well written/acted and intelligent comedy.
Images are courtesy of Wired.com
I have been a big fan of high speed rail systems as a means of commuter transportation for years. I am also in favor of making rails as a transportation for shipping products a priority over semi-trucks. I am not a tree hugger but it is obvious that trucks as transportation are annoying, dirty and unsafe. Keep in mind that my own father has been a trucker for years and logged millions of miles without incident. No worries, dad. You will be retired before the high-speed wheels are on the tracks. Every other major country in the world except the greatest, us, have had these systems in place for decades. Last week I saw this article about the super-fast bullet trains coming to the U.S. in the near future and was even pleased to see the Texas T-Bone option. A dedicated, elevated passenger system that would connect all of the major metros here and alleviate a lot of auto congestion.
All of a sudden I hear on the radio yesterday about President Obama’s 8 billion dollar initiative towards high speed rail system in the United States. I don’t agree with the underlying message of jobs creation but I do like the idea of reliable transportation. Hopefully these funds will go to private developers and run by anyone else than Amtrak.
For now, these plans are still sitting in the terminal because the proposed rail systems aren’t due for completion until around the year 2025. That is IF they start building soon.
Unless you’ve had your head up your hindquarters for the past ten years you are well aware that the internet is a great resource. Most of us use the net as a way to gather information and share it with others. This process of information distribution has increasingly become more efficient. With web services and software cooperating with each other, the information seeker’s experience has become more enhanced as well.
In the past five years, the RSS (real simple syndication) feeds and clients have become a major way I process my information. Instead of browsing hundreds of websites, I have them coming to my RSS reader as the websites are updated. I don’t miss out on what I think is important, and I can utilize that information as I need to. After digesting these, I feel it necessary to share what I think may have value to someone else.
I have used a variety of feed readers both on the web and as software clients too. I have been a huge fan of FeedDemon which allows a sync of both for me. Recently FeedDemon has switched their online service to Google Reader, a service I have tried in the past but was not impressed with. Now, since I am more mobile and can access this information from my iPod Touch and not just from my computer, my information intake has again changed. I’ll explain how this has changed for me and what tools I have discovered for my information capture and management. Info workflow if you will. I am not suggesting these are must-haves or that you are doing it wrong. People have varying information needs and different cognitive predilections.
Google Reader, Mobile RSS App
I had just mentioned how I was not impressed initially with GReader but apparently over the years they had made some improvements in their functionality. It is faster than the software I downloaded, can be viewed offline and offers great sharing functions. GR will now allow me to create a shared article site with it’s own RSS feed. Basically, if you think I can share something of value, click here: http://www.google.com/reader/shared/chrisdenbow . There is now a much improved Send To function where I can forward articles to various distributors such as email, send as a .pdf file, Delicious and more that I have listed below. Neat! Not only can I do this on my laptop, but these can be done on my Touch too using the Mobile RSS app. It will set you back $3 but I find it very valuable when I am out and about.
Delicious is one of the best known social bookmarking websites. It amazes me though, that my IT Director father-in-law had never heard of it when it was mentioned in conversation. With Delicious you can bookmark any site on the internet and get it from anywhere you have access. Share your bookmarks or favorites and get some in return. See what websites are trends and what are useful. On the Touch, I use an app called Yummy that uses the Delicious software to view/share my bookmarks through Read It Later and Instapaper apps.
Read It Later & Instapaper are web services that essentially do the same thing. From the titles you can guess as to their function. If you see an article or a link that you want to save for later reading, tuck away with these guys. Both have excellent mobile apps as well.
Simplicity has played an important role in Twitter’s success. People are eager to connect with other people and Twitter makes that simple. Twitter asks one question, "What’s happening?" Answers must be under 140 characters in length and can be sent via mobile texting, instant message, or the web. I use the mobile app, Tweetie. When someone adds a link to an article they enjoy, I use Tweetie to send it to either of these apps mentioned here. Handy!
Evernote is backup software for your brain. I am constantly sending voice notes to myself while driving down the road. This seems to be the optimal time I have a thought in my head. Of course there are multiple means of transferring your thoughts, web clips, links, tweets, .pdf’s and more.
Which of these tools are you using to filter information on a routine basis? Which ones have I failed to mention that you feel is worth our time?
@chrisdenbow but I asked a lady. Must be alot of emergency Katy DMV trips today. 
@chrisdenbow It's a running club that rewards itself with tasty, tasty beer. @chrisdenbow We don't like to use that phrase because it brings a lot of dumbasses to the events… 