Guesswork Theory

Guesswork Theory Turns Five

2009-11-06T09:27:00.017-05:00

Five years ago today I saddled up to my beloved R31 Thinkpad and fired up Guesswork Theory for the first time. I won't get nostalgic about it, blogs are silly things after all, but it has been incredibly fun and I have to admit I feel a small sense of accomplishment about coming this far. I have learned quite a lot about life, love, and why here.

One lesson I have learned over the years is that for me, writing for someone else is much more fun than writing for myself. I'm not a journal or diary fellow. In Fall of 2007 several of my closest friends took the plunge and started blogging, and you can see having them around sent my post counts through the roof -- I wrote more entries in 2008 than in the previous four years combined. Community is a powerful thing.

So I mean this deeply and sincerely when I say: thank you for reading. And thank you for commenting. I will go ahead and admit that for me, the most fun thing about writing here is getting comments in my inbox. If you enjoy reading one of my posts, I would like to encourage you to comment on it, even if it's just to say you liked it. It means a lot to me. It makes my day, every time, no kidding.

In light of all this, I've decided to take this occasion to perform a reader survey. I originally envisioned this space as a "journal of ideas," but in the last two years I've wandered quite a bit, and I keep wondering what the folks who read what I write here actually enjoy. So if you read this blog, I would really appreciate it if you could let me know what interests you in the following questionnaire. I would love to write more of what you like to read.

Thank you, thank you, thank you again for reading, commenting, and for taking the time to fill out this survey if you can. You make this place fun.

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Top 5 Gmail Tips

2009-11-05T07:00:00.009-05:00

Gmail, Google's online email service, is my favorite online app bar none. Before Gmail, email took up a huge chunk of my hard drive, I had to delete old messages to save space, I could only access my old email from one computer, I was deluged with spam, and finding old emails was incredibly difficult. Not anymore. If you're still using Yahoo, Hotmail, or some locally-stored email program like Outlook, I promise you are making life harder than it has to be. If you need convincing, email me. I'd be happy to serve as a Gmail evangelist.

Over the years I've collected quite a few tricks to help make Gmail work even better for me. I thought I'd share them here.

1. Stop using labels and start using search.

For the first year or so after switching to Gmail I meticulously labeled my email just like I had organized it in folders in Outlook Express. Then one day I realized the only reason I label/file email is to help me find it later, and Gmail's search function is a much more powerful way of finding email than searching through labels. Using the "to:" and "from:" search operators I can find anything. If I need to know the details about the Halloween party my friend Adam sent me, I just search "to:me from:adam halloween" and it pops right up. Here is a full list of Gmail search operators for even more advanced searching.

Since my realization I have trashed all my labels except for a few I use for very specific purposes. For instance, it's pretty common these days for folks to email out their new mailing address when they move. I've made a label called "address-book" just for these emails. Now when I need someone's mailing address, I just go to Gmail and search for their name plus "label:address-book." I also have a label called "to-consider" for emails I want to read in-depth later. Whenever I have some free time and I feel like doing some reading, I do a quick "label:to-consider" search and I'm ready to go.

2. Create some creative filters.

Here's some instructions on creating filters. Filters can help you organize email automatically as well as keep unwanted email out of your inbox. It seems everyone has at least one distant family member (we'll call her "Aunt Glenda") who loves to forward annoying chain emails. A great way to avoid these without confrontation is to create a filter that automatically archives email from Aunt Glenda with the subject "FWD:", skipping the inbox. This way you still get Glenda's personal emails to you, but you miss the chains.

A lot of people use Gmail for quick-and-easy online storage by attaching something they want online to an email and sending it to themselves. I do this too, so I have a filter which automatically archives and "marks as read" all email that is from me, to me. When I need it again, I just do a "from:me to:me" search.

3. Create some new email addresses for yourself using the + sign!

Little-known Gmail fact: you can insert "+anything" before the @ symbol in your Gmail address and email sent to this address will go to you. In other words, if your Gmail address is john@gmail.com, then email sent to john+doe@gmail.com, john+table@gmail.com, and john+monkey@gmail.com will all come to you.

What's more, you can create filters that redirect email coming to these addresses. So let's say you're signing up for a newsletter for people who like cars. You give them the email address yourname+cars@gmail.com, then set up a filter in Gmail so that all email sent to yourname+cars@gmail.com is labeled "Cars Newsletter." If one day you decide you don't want this newsletter anymore, or they sell your email address to a spammer, you can just change your filter to delete all email coming to this address.

Oh and by the way, Gmail completely ignores periods in your email address. Email sent to yourname@gmail.com and y.o.u.r.n.a.m.e@gmail.com all goes to you.

4. Use Gmail labs!

Gmail Labs is set of experimental features for Gmail, most of which are just awesome. Go to Settings>Labs in Gmail to enable them. Here are a few of my favorites:

Forgotten Attachment Detector -- This feature automatically detects when you might have forgotten to attach something to an email and lets you know when you click "Send." It's saved me a significant amount of embarrassment.

Send & Archive -- Most of the time, when I reply to an email, the next thing I do is archive the conversation to clean out my inbox. This feature adds a button to do this all in one click!

Undo Send -- This feature gives you 5 seconds to click "Undo" after you click "Send." Another real face-saver.

5. Stop using the delete button.

Remember that with Gmail's huge, ever-increasing storage space (I started with 1 GB and I currently have 7.4) there's really no need to ever use the delete button. Just archive everything! You never know when you might need a message later, and Gmail's powerful search is always there to help you find it. Email messages take up very little space and digital storage is only going to get cheaper in the future.

Here are a couple extra tips you may enjoy:

How to add a custom 'From' address
How to import old email into Gmail
(This is a tough one but oh so cool - my Gmail messages go back to 2001!)

Y O U - "How to Say Goodbye"

2009-11-04T07:00:00.005-05:00

I'm sad to announce today that one of my favorite unsigned bands (and Strongbad's backup band), Y O U, has broken up. Here is a post I wrote about them last year with some samples of their tunes. It's a sad day for Erin and I; a lot of our dates in college involved catching their shows in Atlanta, and once in Clemson. It's heartbreaking that we couldn't even make it to their last show at our old haunt Smith's Olde Bar a couple weeks ago.

If you would like to support these guys and grab some great melodic pop rock, here are some links to their albums on iTunes:

Y O U
Everything is Shifting
Flashlights
The Long-Playing EP

My Shared Items: Week of October 27th, 2009

2009-11-03T08:57:00.000-05:00

These are links from my Google Reader Shared Items to interesting webpages I discovered during the week of October 27th, 2009:

White House, senators agree on media shield law – washingtonpost.com – Yay for freedom of the press! Wish they'd go further.
The $10,000 suit – interesting perspective on buying local.
Illegal downloaders 'spend the most on music', says poll – The Independent
Marginal Revolution: Florida's Public Option – The story of public option home insurance in Fl.
Friday Funnies – on the GOP
State's high court dismisses juvenile convictions – HOLY CRAP!
I'm a PC and Windows 7 was my idea – Ars Technica – That's better.
A History of Family Hoaxes | Newsweek
Flickr Photo Download: Swine Flu Mortality – Everybody just CALM DOWN.
Web Boosts Grandpa's Brain : Scientific American Podcast – Justification.
Pearl and the Beard – Will Smith Medley on Vimeo
The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs: The Borg's freaky new ad for Bing – WHAT IS WRONG WITH THESE PEOPLE?!
The Vitamin C Myth : NPR – I'm beginning to think everything I know about my health is wrong.
Grammar Girl :: May Versus Might – I love style tips.
Obama's Declaration Of Swine Flu Emergency Prompts Pro-Swine-Flu Republican Response | The Onion – Bwahahaha.
BBC NEWS | Size zero girls 'less attractive'
Goat rentals for clearing brush – Boing Boing – I love solutions that use animals doing what they do best.
Arnold Schwarzenegger's coded F-bomb in veto – Boing Boing – This was no accident, and it's awesome.
Official Google Blog: Making search more musical – Cooool
Creepy Cap-and-Trade Claims are Illusions | FactCheck.org
tumblr_kolo40SQZq1qzy3cwo1_r1_500.jpg – "Hey Jude" flowchart.
091102_warer18964.gif – This is what the subway looks like everyday.
FORTUNE: Trapped in cubicles
The White House’s war with Fox News : The New Yorker
Couple alive after car pins them to bed for almost an hour – CNN.com
Want 50Mbps Internet in your town? Threaten to roll out your own – Ars Technica – Now that's an econ story.
Op-Ed Columnist – The Fatal Conceit – NYTimes.com – DAMN STRAIGHT. I like David Brooks more every day.
Acoustic Kitty – Wikipedia – The CIA is insane. Don't tell them I said that.
The Associated Press: New movie takes aim at celebrity journalism
Cap-and-trade: “Green Jobs” or Job Killer? | FactCheck.org
The Raw Feed: Microsoft pulls out of Family Guy special – Hahaha
Google Voice now (kinda) works with your number | CNET News – This looks promising.
CNN Drops to Last Place Among Cable News Networks – NYTimes.com – Ugh, not looking good for news.
Scozzafava Is G.O.P. Candidate, but the Right Likes Hoffman – NYTimes.com – Grrrrrr
YouTube – Year one Leeroy jenkins skit
Man Dies After Secret 4-Year Battle With Gorilla | The Onion

For more of my shared items, grab the feed or join Google Reader.

How to Post Your Facebook Status on Your Blogger Blog

2009-10-31T10:53:00.011-04:00

You might have noticed that I have my Facebook status posted in the top left-hand corner of this blog. It's updated automatically. I thought I would post instructions on how to do this for the benefit of any Blogger users who might like this on their blog as well.

1. Log on to Facebook and go to your Notifications page.

2. On the right-hand side you’ll see "Subscribe to Notifications." Click the "Your Notifications" link.

3. Go up to the URL in your browser and replace the word "notifications" with "status".

4. Highlight the entire URL and copy it (ctrl+c). This is an RSS feed of your FB status.

5. Login to Blogger.com and go to the Layout page for your blog.

6. Click on the "Add a Gadget" link in your sidebar.

7. A popup will appear. In the popup window, scroll down and click on "Feed."

8. Paste (ctrl+v) your URL from step 4 into the Feed URL box. Click "Continue."

9. Change the Title to "My Facebook Status" or whatever you prefer. Set the Show drop-down menu to the number of recent statuses you want to display (I selected "1" so I only display my most recent status). Check the Item dates checkbox if you want to display the date along with your status. Check the Item sources/authors checkbox if you want to display your name along with your status.

10. Click "Save" and you're done! Your status will now appear in your blog's sidebar. If you want to change where in the sidebar your status appears, click and drag the "My Facebook Status" box to wherever you prefer on your Layout page.

An alternate method of posting your FB status in your sidebar is to use a FB profile badge.

Special thanks to TechLifeWeb.

Harrison Hudson - "On My Heart"

2009-10-30T13:49:00.012-04:00

Harrison Hudson is a friend of mine from childhood; I grew up with his older brother John. Harrison and I played in worship bands together in high school. He was always one of those kids who really knew how to play, while the rest of us were just "good enough for youth group worship."

After drifting through a number of bands, Harrison settled into his own as a singer/songwriter and released a killer album titled Angels on One Side...And the Other on the Other. His music is a gritty blend of Roy Orbison, Elvis, The Beatles, Buddy Holly, and Johnny Cash: or in other words, 100-proof Americana (well ok, minus The Beatles). This is my favorite track from the record, featuring splendid background vocals by The Bridges.

Buy "On My Heart" by Harrison Hudson on MySpace

You can find Harrison in Nashville, on Facebook, and at HarrisonHudson.net. I encourage you to show him and his band some love if you dig their tunes.

Living the Simple Christian Life is HARD

2009-10-29T07:00:00.005-04:00

"Everyone thinks of changing the world, but where, oh where, are those who think of changing themselves?" Richard Foster

Several years ago my faith was revolutionized when I came to know and understand a handful of truths which I outlined in a blog post with the tongue-in-cheek title "Essential Truths of the Christian Faith" -- namely, that I am and will probably always be uncomfortable with some of the Bible's teachings, no one (including me) has a monopoly on precisely what the Bible says and means, being right is not a virtue, and love is the most fundamental characteristic and pursuit of the Christian faith.

This led me come to grips with the fact that the faith I had been living was not a faith that springs from the truth of these ideas. These ideas led me to a simple faith, one that pursues loving God by spending time in relationship with him and one that pursues loving man by serving him/her. They led me away from a faith that concentrates itself primarily on theology, apologetics, and biblical reasoning. They led me away from a faith that focuses on typical Christian church activities rather than actions that serve my fellow man.

But in the years since I have found it incredibly difficult to live out these truths. In fact, I would say I've completely failed. Prayer and time spent with God is still largely vacant from my life. Church activities still take the place of intentional efforts to love my neighbors. Reading (Orthodoxy, The Problem of Pain), writing (Community Church and the Dunbar Number, End All Youth Groups Now), thinking, and conversing about theological ideas still comes so, so easy to me. I run to it. Of course there's nothing wrong with these things, indeed they are considerably positive, but when I am reckless about pursuing them in the absence of what Jesus made possible -- a personal relationship with him -- they are not so good after all.

The disconnect between what I know to be true and the actions I carry out is jarring. My favorite quote of all time (and this is not without some consideration) is G.K. Chesterton's "What is wrong with the world? I am." Or to paraphrase, the trouble with the world is me. It is my relationship with God that needs my action, it is the question of my own faith that needs my consideration, it is my lack of obedience that needs my attention. The salvation of the world can wait. Religious and theological ideas can wait.

The years since my epiphany have made me realize: living the simple Christian life is hard -- at least for me, but probably for most people. Spending time alone with God is awkward, it is difficult, it is messy. Prayer does not come easy. How much easier is it to read C.S. Lewis than Moses or the Apostle Paul? How much easier is it to give my money to the church every week than to cook a meal for a homeless man or pursue a friend who is hurting? Waxing philosophic is easy. Theological pontification is easy. It is simplicity that is hard. Discipline, obedience, devotion: these are the challenges. I must resolve to meet them.

I will leave you with a few passages from Let God: The Transforming Wisdom of François Fénelon by Winn Collier. If you read this blog much, that's a name you've probably heard before.

Be content with leading a simple life, however that fits for you. Be obedient. Bear your daily cross -- you need it. It is a gift given by the pure mercy of God. The essential idea is to despise self from the heart, and to be willing to be despised, if God allows it. Feed upon God alone. Saint Augustine says that his mother lived on Prayer. You do the same, and die to everything else. We can live toward God only as we allow our self to continually die. [...]

You don't need to know more truth. What you do need, however, is to start obeying the truth you already have. We are deeply deceived whenever we think our spirituality is progressing simply because our useless curiosity is being stimulated. [...]

And I have to ask--why are you chasing after all this knowledge anyway? What we need is to recognize how much we don't know, to see how poor and desperate and helpless we truly are. Books and big-time teaching won't help with that. You don't need what they're pushing. You just need to know a few simple things: you need to know Jesus. And you need to know Jesus died on a cross. Pretty simple, huh? Saint Paul knew what he was talking about: "Knowledge puffs up while love builds up."

If this is true, then running after all this knowledge, thinking it will finally make you happy with how you are, is a waste. What you need instead is to learn to be contented with love. Just love.

Quotes: Quiet Desperation, Intelligent Life, and Smoking Crack

2009-10-28T07:00:00.003-04:00

"The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation. From the desperate city you go into the desperate country, and have to console yourself with the bravery of minks and muskrats. A stereotyped but unconscious despair is concealed even under what are called the games and amusements of mankind. There is no play in them for this comes after work. But it is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things." Henry David Thoreau

"Sometimes I think the surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that none of it has tried to contact us." Bill Watterson

"Anyone who thinks we move in a post-racial society is someone who's been smoking crack." Spike Lee

My Shared Items: Week of October 20th, 2009

2009-10-27T09:09:00.000-04:00

These are links from my Google Reader Shared Items to interesting webpages I discovered during the week of October 20th, 2009:

In the US, Hope for Victims of Genital Mutilation | Newsweek.com – Be forewarned, this is extremely graphic and sickening. But it is also hopeful. We must face these demons if we are to fight them.
Senate Passes Blame By Vote Of 91-8 | The Onion
Big in Japan: Burger King Sells Windows 7 Whopper – FOXNews.com – They just don't stop the terrible marketing, do they?
Rory Sutherland: Life lessons from an ad man | Video on TED.com – Fantastic and funny.
Art of UnNaming: UnNaming Wisdom – Now those are rules for an unborn son!
One shot of gene therapy and children with congenital blindness can now see
The Associated Press: 1st polygamist sect criminal trial set to begin
YouTube – BRAZILIAN MUSIC INSTITUTE 2009 – TICO TICO – I'm pretty sure at one point the man's left hand is playing with the woman's right hand. Amazing.
YouTube – Obama Gets Tough Question From Fourth Grader – Good answer.
The Middle Way Forward: The Entitlement Narrative – Oh election season, how I miss you.
BBC NEWS | Rich Germans demand higher taxes
Wallstats | MintLife Blog – I heart wallstats!
Net neutrality: John McCain says no, Glenn Beck sees a Marxist plot — DailyFinance – Let's remember that McCain has admitted to not knowing how to use a computer. And let's remember Beck - actually, please, let's forget about Beck.
Maryland Reins In Hospital Costs by Setting Rates – WSJ.com
Swiss Model for Health Care Is Gaining Admirers – NYTimes.com
D3d2K.jpg – Calvin on Wall Street.
Breakdancing Cat Flip Accident
Amazing Pictures, Pollution in China – This is hell.
Life Imitates 'Arrested Development' | The New Republic
Getting It Wrong: Surprising Tips on How to Learn: Scientific American
After 5 Years In U.S., Terrorist Cell Too Complacent To Carry Out Attack | The Onion
This American Life – Hands down the most entertaining, interesting thing I've read/heard on the Healthcare issue.
For Some Seeking Rebirth, Sweat Lodge Was End – NYTimes.com
1001 rules for my unborn son – 396. Never get your haircut on the day of the big dance. – This took me 25 years to learn.
Selling Sickness: How Drug Ads Changed Health Care : NPR
How The Modern Patient Drives Up Health Costs : NPR
Ezra Klein – Health Reform for Beginners: The Suprisingly Important, Occasionally Controversial, Dartmouth Atlas Studies
The Telltale Wombs Of Lewiston, Maine : NPR
The Raw Feed: Best Halloween costume yet: It's Balloon Boy!
Left vs Right (World) | Information Is Beautiful
BBC NEWS | Apology for singing shop worker
Naked Man Arrested – wtvr – Hard times for the Dude.
Disapproving Michelle Obama To Be Printed On All Fast Food Containers | The Onion
iRobot's oozy ChemBot amazes and terrifies | CNET – Be afraid. Be very afraid.
Rift between Obama and Chamber of Commerce widening – washingtonpost.com
YouTube – The Awesome Levitating Train – Science rules!
NASA names cosmic treadmill after Colbert – CNN.com – Don't know how I missed this one.
Clive Thompson on the New Literacy
An Interview with Scott Buckwald, Prop Master for the Hit TV Show Mad Men | Collectors Weekly – I WANT THIS JOB!

For more of my shared items, grab the feed or join Google Reader.

"The Eternal Appetite of Infancy"

2009-10-26T10:10:00.005-04:00

Recently I posted an exhaustive list of quotes from G.K. Chesterton's Orthodoxy. I also wanted to include this passage, but the post was far too long as it was. I found this section of the book inspiring; Erin can vouch for how excited I was reading it. Don't you love those moments when you read something so truthful it's electrifying, yet somehow you feel you always knew it? Well I do.

All the towering materialism which dominates the modern mind rests ultimately upon one assumption; a false assumption. It is supposed that if a thing goes on repeating itself it is probably dead; a piece of clockwork. People feel that if the universe was personal it would vary; if the sun were alive it would dance. This is a fallacy even in relation to known fact. For the variation in human affairs is generally brought into them, not by life, but by death; by the dying down or breaking off of their strength or desire. A man varies his movements because of some slight element of failure or fatigue. He gets into an omnibus because he is tired of walking; or he walks because he is tired of sitting still. But if his life and joy were so gigantic that he never tired of going to Islington, he might go to Islington as regularly as the Thames goes to Sheerness. The very speed and ecstasy of his life would have the stillness of death. The sun rises every morning. I do not rise every morning; but the variation is due not to my activity, but to my inaction.

Now, to put the matter in a popular phrase, it might be true that the sun rises regularly because he never gets tired of rising. His routine might be due, not to a lifelessness, but to a rush of life. The thing I mean can be seen, for instance, in children, when they find some game or joke that they specially enjoy. A child kicks his legs rhythmically through excess, not absence, of life. Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, "Do it again"; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, "Do it again" to the sun; and every evening, "Do it again" to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we. The repetition in Nature may not be a mere recurrence; it may be a theatrical encore. Heaven may encore the bird who laid an egg. If the human being conceives and brings forth a human child instead of bringing forth a fish, or a bat, or a griffin, the reason may not be that we are fixed in an animal fate without life or purpose. It may be that our little tragedy has touched the gods, that they admire it from their starry galleries, and that at the end of every human drama man is called again and again before the curtain. Repetition may go on for millions of years, by mere choice, and at any instant it may stop. Man may stand on the earth generation after generation, and yet each birth be his positively last appearance.

G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy

War by Wire

2009-10-25T07:00:00.002-04:00

There are men and women in this country who every day get up, drive to work, kill enemy combatants in Afghanistan, get off at five, go home and eat with their families.

PBS Frontline: War by remote: What do you think?

Five Reasons to Hate Twitter

2009-10-24T07:00:00.007-04:00

1. People think it's cool to propose via Twitter. (It isn't.)

2. People think it's cool to publish a book of their tweets. (Nope.)

3. People think it's cool to tweet about their miscarriage -- and then rejoice about not having to wait in line for an abortion. (Yikes.)

4. George Clooney would rather have a rectal exam than join Twitter, and he's way cool. Jon Stewart hates Twitter too. (So does Maureen Dowd, but she's not that cool.)

5. Culture-crazy Christians have already made their own version of Twitter, just like they did with YouTube, because "Twitter-land needs a little more Jesus!" It's "microblogging-as-ministry!" (Gag.)

Disclaimer: This is not intended to be fair to Twitter.

My Summer of Anger

2009-10-23T07:00:00.008-04:00

During the summer of 2005, I commuted between metro-Atlanta and the suburbs three days a week. The Atlantan rush hour is a cultural experience second only to LA in hellishness. Disgruntled businessmen and women sit in their sedans, moving stop-and-go at 2 mph for hours in 100 degree heat, listening to Rush Limbaugh, Neil Bortz, and Sean Hannity. The anger hovers over the four-door armada with unrelenting oppression. You can feel the hate -- at the DOT, at "the liberals," at the car in front of you -- burn through you like a cancer.

I ate it up -- not the talk radio pundit's views, but their anger, which most of the time I fueled right back at them. I wrote about my frustration with the GOP (twice). My hatred for the Kelo v. New London decision. The bias I perceived in NPR's reporting. Senator Byrd's involvement with the KKK. The "liberal media." My burning anger at the pundits. By August of 2005, I am quite convinced that if I had met Neil Bortz, Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly, Al Franken, Bill Maher, Ann Coulter, or Randi Rhodes on the street, I would have punched them in the face.

Once I left Atlanta I calmed down, but keeping myself from blowing up about one of these miscreants, or their deviant hosts like Air America or Fox News, is a constant struggle. That's why I breathed a huge sigh of relief when I read this column by center-right New York Times columnist David Brooks this week. He makes the so very important point that last year a man who the pundits hated with a passion won the Republican presidential nomination. John McCain's centrist views have always kept him out-of-favor with the far-right and their idealogues. Ann Coulter said she would campaign for Hillary Clinton if McCain won the nomination (I don't recall her keeping her word). Candidates like Romney and Thompson were the darlings of Fox News (Huckabee even has his own show on the channel now) -- never McCain.

Which adds great weight and support to the notion that thank heavens, the pundits don't matter. They are not the voice of the majority of the Republican Party, much less middle America. They may be able to get 75,000 people to march on Washington in the name of something-or-other but that doesn't put a dent in the 9 million votes McCain received in the '08 primary. The people who do matter, the people who make up middle America, the average voters in this country, are the centrists. The "purple state" voters.

Fox News and their minions are loud, but they are not powerful. If our Republican leaders would realize this and not be scared of voting against their supposed "base," and if our Democrat leaders would realize this and stop blaming all Republicans for the crimes of the few, we could make great progress in this country. I think Obama gets this, but we need more voices than just his. I know it's hard to unite people under the cause of centrism -- moderation never makes a good slogan. But it's what we need, and it's what the American people believe in.

The Pentagon's New Map for War and Peace

2009-10-21T22:11:00.003-04:00

This lecture blew me away a few weeks ago. In it military strategist Thomas Barnett describes a revolutionary new strategy for U.S. foreign policy which calls upon the U.S. to export security to encourage the globalization of countries which are currently unstable and disconnected from international trade. These also happen to be countries in which the U.S. often finds itself involved in military conflict.

The "America as world police" aspect of it all frightened me a bit, but the idea of transforming the U.S. military to promote peace and trade intrigued me. These ideas are closely related to the work I currently do, they have tremendous implications for our country's current military situation, they provide an interesting and informative look at U.S. military history, and the lecture itself is surprisingly humorous and entertaining.

TED: Thomas Barnett draws a new map for peace

Here is a quick outline of Barnett's "New Map," from its Wikipedia article:

Systems of rules called Rule-sets reduce violent conflict. Violence decreases as rules are established (e.g., the WTO Dispute Settlement Understanding) for dealing with international conflicts.
The world can be roughly divided into two groups: the Functioning Core, characterized by economic interdependence, and the Non-Integrated Gap, characterized by unstable leadership and absence from international trade. The Core can be sub-divided into Old Core (North America, Western Europe, Japan, Australia) and New Core (China, India). The Disconnected Gap includes the Middle East, South Asia (except India), most of Africa, Southeast Asia, and northwest South America.
Integration of the Gap countries into the global economy will provide opportunities for individuals living in the Gap to improve their lives, thereby presenting a desirable alternative to violence and terrorism. The US military is the only force capable of providing the military support to facilitate this integration by serving as the last ditch rule-enforcer. Barnett argues that it has been doing so for over 20 years by "exporting" security (US spends about half of the world's total in military spending).
To be successful the US military must stop thinking of war in the context of war but war in the context of "everything else", i.e. demographics, energy, investment, security, politics, trade, immigration, etc.
In recognition of its dual role, the US military should organize itself according to two functions, the "Leviathan" and the "System Administrator."

-Leviathan's purpose is the use of overwhelming force in order to end violence quickly. It will take out governments, defend Core countries, and generally do the deterrence work that the US military has been doing since the end of WWII. The Leviathan force is primarily staffed by young aggressive personnel and is overwhelmingly American.

-The SysAdmin's purpose is to wage peace: peacekeeping, nation building, strengthening weak governments, etc. The SysAdmin force is primarily staffed by older, more experienced personnel, though not entirely (he would put the Marines in SysAdmin as the " Mini-me Leviathan"). The sys Admin force would work best as a Core-wide phenomenon.
By exporting security, the US and the rest of the Core benefit from increased trade, increased international investment, and other benefits.

Soon You Will Forget What It Was Like to Forget

2009-10-20T12:30:00.004-04:00

Four years ago I wrote that in my lifetime we would see the advent of a small electronic device which would allow users to record every second of their lives in audio and video and import this data into a computer, where it would be archiveable and searchable.

Turns out it's already begun. A Microsoft researcher has started what he calls "lifelogging," by wearing two cameras every waking moment and recording his entire life. Thanks to advancements in camera technology and the fact that data storage has grown at an even faster rate than Moore's Law, this has become possible very quickly.

I have the same questions now I had in 2005. What will the world be like with these devices? The implications are enormous, and they go far beyond internet pop-culture phenomena such as lifecasting. Soon you and I will be able to instantly recall a video of every experience we've ever had. We'll be able to pull data such as how many times we've said the words "I love you" in our lifetimes, how much time we spent watching TV, how many calories we ate, how many books we read and what was in them. We will be able to recall exactly what we said in every conversation we've ever had, and precisely what was said to us. Nothing that happens to us will be forgotten, and maintaining personal control of this information will become the privacy war to end all wars. There will be those who are completely disgusted by the narcissism of it all and others who are so addicted they become dependent on the technology to remember things for them.

It may sound like I'm describing something out of a sci-fi film, but all this is possible with technology we have right now, today. Strap in, folks. We're on our way.

My Shared Items: Week of October 13th, 2009

2009-10-20T09:01:00.001-04:00

These are links from my Google Reader Shared Items to interesting webpages I discovered during the week of October 13th, 2009:

The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs: Why is the Borg so messed up? Three guesses, and the first two don't count – A great summary of Microsoft's failures
Microsoft’s Future, Beyond Windows 7 and the PC – NYTimes.com
The Associated Press: Risky business: States tax the rich at their peril
Off the Charts – By Some Reliable Measures, the Global Recession Is Over – NYTimes.com – All I can think is how terrible our media is, and how right the conservative economists were.
Why Fox News Is Un-American | Newsweek.com – yes yes yes
This American Life – Stories about the sanctity of marriage
YouTube – CNN's Rick Sanchez Exposes FOX News Coaching Tea Party Crowd
Video: Queer and Loathing in D.C. | The Daily Show
YouTube – David Cameron Vs. Gordon Brown – If they have something like CSPAN, I'd watch it 24/7
8Swi9.png – Appropriate summary of the balloon debacle.
Rape Case Highlights Arbitration Debate : NPR
What the Jamie Leigh Jones Case Teaches Us—By Scott Horton (Harper's Magazine)
YouTube – Did You Know?
sorenson.jpg (image) – Palin/Obama/Terminator cartoon
Seeing Red In Pink Products: One Woman's Fight Against Breast Cancer Consumerism – Newsweek.com
30 Dumb Inventions – Photo Gallery, 30 Pictures – LIFE
Book of Odds – The Odds of Everyday Life – The odds a female will be diagnosed with breast cancer are 1 in 8.14. Yikes.
The Raw Feed: The Internet. Who says you can't take it with you? – I can't believe I want one, but I do.
YouTube – Economist "Did you know?" – Viva la revolucion!
Lawrence Kadish: Taking the National Debt Seriously – WSJ.com – I could do without the threats to the "fabric of our society," whatever that is, but we need action on this issue NOW.

For more of my shared items, grab the feed or join Google Reader.

How to Rediscover the Joy of Facebook

2009-10-17T13:37:00.003-04:00

I've decided to start a new post category called "Tips" for sharing helpful bits of info I've collected, mostly about using the web. Enjoy!

Last year I nearly deleted my Facebook account, primarily because it had grown so cluttered with updates and requests from people I barely knew. As I recently mentioned in regards to Twitter, the signal-to-noise ratio had become unbearable.

As a last ditch effort, I decided to use Facebook's friends list feature to create a private list of my closest friends. It took forever to wade through all my Facebook friends and pick the 25 or so people I know the best, but the payoff was huge. Now when I load up my Facebook homepage, I only see updates from people who are close to me. As a result, Facebook has once again become a source of entertainment, community, and fun in my life, instead of a chore.

Of course I could have unfriended everyone but my closest friends, but this surely would resulted in hurt feelings. Because Facebook friends lists are private, I can avoid that. I also could have used Facebook's "hide" button in my news feed, but you are limited to hiding 200 people with this feature and it would have taken forever to hide everyone.

I highly recommend you try out a "close friends" list. Here are some good instructions on how to do it. Some extra tips I would add:

1. You can set the "friends" box on your profile page to only include people from one of your friends lists. Just click on the little pencil in the top-right corner of the box. This serves as a neat way to make a "top friends" box, like MySpace's old "Top 8."

2. On your Facebook homepage, after you click "more" on the left menu, you can drag your friends list to the top of the menu. If you do this, your friends list will come up by default on your homepage, saving you a click!

3. You can set privacy settings based on your friends lists. So if you'd like, you can give your closest friends access to info that the rest of your Facebook friends can't view.

The Daily Show on CNN: "Nobody Leaves More Things There"

2009-10-16T20:28:00.002-04:00

Exhibit A for why Jon Stewart is the best damn newsman of my generation:

The Daily Show: CNN Leaves It There

Quotes: Orthodoxy by G.K. Chesterton

2009-10-16T09:11:00.006-04:00

I read Chesterton's Orthodoxy last year as I've been wanting to do for a long time. I was a bit ambivalent about the book; I would definitely recommend that every Christian it, but on the other hand I had some real struggles with some of Chesterton's arguments for mysticism over reason. My notes in the margins range from excited praise to steadfast disagreement. Nevertheless, Chesterton cannot be denied as a stalwart fountain of wisdom with a style and humor all his own. As is my custom, I've selected a few of my favorite quotes to post here. Quite a few, actually. So many that you would probably be better off just reading the book. But let's be honest, that's my custom too.

The fairy tale discusses what a sane man will do in a mad world. The sober realistic novel of today discusses what an essential lunatic will do in a dull world.

Imagination does not breed insanity. Exactly what does breed insanity is reason. Poets do not go mad; but chess-players do. Mathematicians go mad, and cashiers; but creative artists very seldom.

Cowper [...] was definitely driven mad by logic, by the ugly and alien logic of predestination.

The poet only asks to get his head into the heavens. It is the logician who seeks to get the heavens into his head. And it is his head that splits.

The madman is not the man who has lost his reason. The madman is the man who has lost everything except his reason.

When materialism leads me to complete fatalism (as it generally does), it is quite idle to pretend that it is in any sense a liberating force.

The man who cannot believe his sense, and the man who cannot believe anything else, are both insane, but their insanity is proved not by an error in their argument, but by the manifest mistake of their whole lives. They have both locked themselves up in two boxes, painted inside with the sun and stars; they are both unable to get out, the one into the health and happiness of Heaven, the other even into the health and happiness of earth.

The modern world is full of the old Christian virtues gone mad. The virtues have gone mad because they have been isolated from each other and ar walking alone. Thus some scientists care for truth; and their truth is pitiless. Thus some humanitarians only care for pity; and their pity (I am sorry to say) is often untruthful.

But what we suffer from today is humility in the wrong place. Modesty has moved from the organ of ambition. Modesty has settled upon the organ of conviction; where it was never meant to be. A man was meant to be doubtful about himself, but undoubting about the truth; this has been exactly reversed. Nowadays the part of a man that a man does assert is exactly the part he ought not to assert himself. The part he doubts is exactly the part he ought not to doubt--the Divine reason. [..] For the old humility made a man doubtful about his efforts, which might make him work harder. But the new humility makes a man doubtful about his aims, which will make him stop working altogether.

At any street corner we may meet a man who utters the frantic and blasphemous statement that he may be wrong. Every day one comes across somebody who says that of course his view may not be the right one. Of course his view must be the right one, or it is not his view. We are on the road to producing a race of men too mentally modest to believe in the multiplication table. We are in danger of seeing philosophers who doubt the law of gravity as being a mere fancy of their own. Scoffers of old time were too proud to be convinced; but these are too humble to be convinced. The meek do inherit the earth; but the modern skeptics are too meek even to claim their inheritance.

There is a thought that stops thought. That is the only thought that ought to be stopped.

Pragmatism is a matter of human needs; and one of the first human needs is to be something more than a pragmatist.

[The skeptic] will cry out that war is a waste of life, and then, as a philosopher, that all life is a waste of time.

They have torn the soul of Christ into silly strips, labeled egoism and altruism, and they are equally puzzled by his insane magnificence and his insane meekness. They have parted his garments among them, and for his vesture they have cast lots; though the coat was without seam woven from the top throughout.

It is quite easy to see why a legend is treated, and ought to be treated, more respectfully than a book of history. The legend is generally made by the majority of people in the village, who are sane. The book is generally written by the one man in the village who is mad.

It seemed to me that existence was itself so very eccentric a legacy that I could not complain of not understanding the limitations of the vision when I did not understand the vision they limited.

Keeping to one woman is a small price for so much as seeing one woman.

So one elephant having a trunk was odd; but all elephants having trunks looked like a plot.

Men did not love Rome because she was great. She was great because they had loved her.

Morality did not begin by one man staying to another, "I will not hit you if you do not hit me"; there is no trace of such a transaction. There is a trace of both men having said, "We must not hit each other in the holy place." They gained their morality by guarding their religion.

Rational optimism leads to stagnation: it is irrational optimism that leads to reform. [...] The man who is most likely to ruin the place he loves, is exactly the man who loves it with a reason. The man who will improve the place is the man who loves it without a reason.

The man who kills a man, kills a man. The man who kills himself, kills all men; as far as he is concerned he wipes out the world.

That Jones shall worship the god within him turns out ultimately to mean that Jones shall worship Jones.

All roads lead to Rome; which is one reason why many people never get there.

Courage is almost a contradiction in terms. It means a strong desire to live, taking the form of a readiness to die.

In so far as I am a Man I am the chief of creatures. In so far as I am a Man I am the chief of sinners.

One can hardly think too little of one's self. One can hardly think too much of one's soul.

The main point of Christianity was this: That Nature is not our mother: Nature is our sister.

All conservatism is based upon the idea that if you leave things alone, you leave them as they are. But you do not. If you leave a thing alone, you leave it to a torrent of change.

Angels can fly because they can take themselves lightly.

Seriousness is not a virtue.

It is much easier to write a good Times leading article than a good joke in Punch. For solemnity flows out of men naturally; but laugher is a leap. It is easy to be heavy: hard to be light. Satan fell by force of gravity.

The great and very obvious merit of the English aristocracy is that nobody could possibly take it seriously.

There is much more metaphysical subtlety in the word "damn" than in the word "degeneration."

In actual modern Europe a freethinker does not mean a man who thinks for himself. It means a man who, having thought for himself, has come to one particular class of conclusions, the material origin of phenomena, the impossibility of miracles, the improbability of personal immortality and so on.

So the truth is that the difficulty of all creeds of the earth is not as alleged in this cheap maxim: that they agree in meaning, but differ in machinery. It is exactly the opposite. They agree in machinery; almost every great religion on earth works with the same external methods, with priests, scriptures, altars, sworn brotherhoods, special feasts. They agree in the mode of teaching; what they differ about is the thing to be taught.

God himself is a society.

Men who begin to fight the Church for the sake of freedom and humanity end by flinging away freedom and humanity if only they might fight the Church.

We talk of wild animals; but man is the only wild animal.

Catholic doctrine and discipline may be walls; but they are walls of a playground.

Somehow or other an extraordinary idea has arisen that the disbelievers in miracles consider them coldly and fairly, while the believers in miracles accept them only in connection with some other dogma. The fact is quite the other way. The believers in miracles accept them (rightly or wrongly) because they have evidence for them. The disbelievers in miracles deny them (rightly or wrongly) because they have a doctrine against them.

If I say, "Mediaeval documents attest certain miracles as much as they attest certain battles," they answer, "But mediaevals were superstitious"; if I want to know in what they were superstitious, the only ultimate answer is that they believed in miracles.

For I hope we may dismiss the argument against wonders attempted in the mere recapitulation of frauds, of swindling mediums or trick miracles. That is not an argument at all, good or bad. A false ghost disproves the reality of ghost exactly as much as a forged banknote disproves the existence of the Bank of England--if anything, it proves its existence.

Man is more himself, man is more manlike, when joy is the fundamental thing in him, and grief the superficial.

There was some one thing that was too great for God to show us when he walked upon our earth; and I have sometimes fancied that it was his mirth.

G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy

*I put my absolute favorites in bold.

His Heart Was Stronger Than a Heavy Metal Bullet

2009-10-14T07:00:00.002-04:00

My grandfather, John Paul Scott, died ten years ago this coming June. He was a World War II veteran who marched under Patton, though he rarely spoke about it. He was an life insurance salesman who dropped out of college when his father died to help provide for his family. He was a man of faith and conviction.

He had a lot of joy. He laughed loudly. He enjoyed being alone fishing or in his garden or feeding his chickens, but get him riled up about politics and he could talk your ear off. He was passionate. Sometimes, when I'm so excited or so mad I could spit about some political issue, I wonder if I'm channeling Paul Scott. I guess there's no question I am.

He loved music. He sang and played the trumpet during the war. When my dad was going through my grandfather's belongings after the funeral, he found a 78 rpm record with two songs my grandfather had recorded. I thought I'd share them here.

Paul Scott - "Stardust"

Paul Scott - "There Will Never Be Another You"

(By the way, if anyone out there has the ability to clean these recordings up, that would be just awesome.)

There is a song I've been listening to for years now which always reminds me of my grandfather. It's about a good man who has died. It may be that the song isn't written about any man in particular, but is just a bunch of cliches strung together; the rock 'n roll style isn't exactly what you'd expect from a requiem. But I can't help it that every line reminds me of him. Here is the song, with the lyrics to follow.

M. Ward - "Requiem"

Well he stormed with his feet
And he clapped with his hands
He summoned all of his joy when he laughed
It suffered all of his joy when he cried
And sometimes when he got into talking
Man he could rattle all day long
He was a good man and now he's gone

Well in war he was a tiger
When it was over like a dove
He summoned all of his strength in the climb
It suffered all of his strength in the fall
And sometimes when he got into fighting
Man he could fight with you all day long
He was a good man and now he's gone

He put his trust in a higher power
He held his power like a holy grail
He summoned all of his faith in the lifting
It suffered all of his faith in the fail
His heart was stronger than a heavy metal bullet
And that's why I dedicate this song
He was a good man and now he's gone

My Shared Items: Week of October 6th, 2009

2009-10-13T09:07:00.000-04:00

These are links from my Google Reader Shared Items to interesting webpages I discovered during the week of October 6th, 2009:

Op-Ed Contributor – A Library to Last Forever – NYTimes.com – Half of me is so excited about preserving the world's library in searchable form, and the other half is scared of having it owned by one giant know-all company.
Majority Of Parents Abuse Children, Children Report | The Onion – One of the funniest Onion pieces I've ever read.
gladwell dot com – none of the above – One of my favorite authors on one of my favorite topics.
xkcd – Scary
Why Apple doesn’t do “Concept Products” « counternotions – REAL ARTISTS SHIP!
Community Gives Up Following Tragedy | The Onion
The fun theory
News Release: Global Free Trade Could Lift 500 Million People Out of Poverty – Thanks, Mr. Brookie!
Illegal Downloads 150x More Profitable Than Legal Sales
Hash House Harriers – Wikipedia – Men in red dresses ran past my window on Saturday. This is who they were.
Former Halliburton Employee Jamie Leigh Jones Testifies Before Senate on Rape Case – ABC News
The Myth-Scarcity: The Reality — There IS Enough Food | Food First/Institute for Food and Development Policy – Why have I never thought about this? Our problem is distribution, not production.
Green Revolution – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia – I heart science.
YouTube – Good Hair ft. Chris Rock- HD Official Trailer
YouTube – Speaking Piano
Tax credit for home purchase could rise – USATODAY.com – From Harrison's blog. Isn't this how we got here in the first place?
The Secret Process For Picking Nobel Peace Laureates : NPR
My Unromantic Health Care Proposal | Newsweek
One year after Hurricane Ike – The Big Picture – Boston.com – Click on the images! So cool.
Police suspect 'Barefoot Burglar' is stealing, crashing planes – CNN.com – Looks like we got another Frank Abagnale.
Obesity, politics, STDs flow in social networks – CNN.com
Google adds in-browser PDF viewing to search results – Yay!
Hummer Drivers Get Most Tickets | The Onion – America's Finest News Source
xkcd – A Webcomic – Free
xkcd – A Webcomic – Creepy
Bob Dole outs naysayer Mitch McConnell | Midwest Voices – I freaking love Bob Dole.
Letters of Note – Fantastic blog. Plus they have great taste in templates.
Suddenly Darling teen fashion web site debuts with “modest” clothes | VentureBeat – From Rob, a man who knows ventures.
wide open spaces – Liu Bolin – Awesome camouflage.
From sketch to photo instantly (this is insanely awesome) – WOW!
Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation – Wikipedia – There are people outside the metro station every other week calling for this facility to be closed.
8 U.S. Troops Killed in Siege of Afghan Outpost – washingtonpost.com – I admit I'm skeptical of Obama's decisions in Afghanistan. It's no fun to have to clean up after your predecessor but that's the hand a president is dealt.
Online disinhibition effect – Wikipedia
Mind Hacks: Side-effects from placebos can be drug specific – Like whoa.
MilkProtest.jpg
McNaughton Fine Art – Just a little sacrilege for your Tuesday.
State Of The Arts: Our Museums & Theaters | The Onion
Arrest of Queens Man Puts Focus on Texting to Rally Protesters – NYTimes.com

For more of my shared items, grab the feed or join Google Reader.

Community Church and the Dunbar Number

2009-10-12T07:00:00.004-04:00

I have had an idea rolling around in my head for probably five years now. It has roots in my experience with church, in my journey from an Atlantan mega-church (5,000 members) to a college-town community church (200 "regular attenders").

God changed me through both of these churches, but after several years in the community church I was struck by how deeply I believed that small community is the best expression of the Gospel. The most authentic and effective way to change hearts and provide a context for us to know, understand, and love one another. The most accurate reflection of our triune God, the methods by which Jesus led his ministry, and the way Paul and Peter constructed the early church.

I slowly reached the conclusion that maybe it is good for communities to be small. Maybe the best way for a church to serve its members, its community, and its God is to split when it gets too big.

I was very surprised last year when I found this idea staring me in the face in an unexpected place -- Malcolm Gladwell's famous, perspective-bending book, The Tipping Point. In chapter five, Gladwell explains how our minds and bodies are wired for small amounts of information. On average we can remember six or seven different categories before we start making mistakes (if telephone numbers were one digit longer, the number of mis-dialed numbers would go up exponentially). We each know about twelve people whose death would devastate us. And we each have the ability to maintain a genuine social relationship with a maximum of about 150 people.

That last one is called the Dunbar number, after British anthropologist Robin Dunbar. From the book:

"The figure of 150 seems to represent the maximum number of individuals whith whom we can have a genuinely social relationship, the kind of relationship that goes with knowing who they are and how they related to us." [Robin Dunbar]

Wouldn't you know it, the Dunbar number is everywhere. Of the 21 different hunter-gatherer societies we have historical evidence of, the average number of villagers was 150. A religious group called the Hutterites (from the same tradition as the Amish and Mennonites) had a policy of splitting when their colony approached 150 members. The basic unit of military organization, the company, has roughly 150 soldiers. The company Gortex has built a very successful organizational structure which splits into new divisions to keep workers in groups of 150 people -- and do away with traditional management. John Wesley built one of the largest Christian denominations in history, Methodism, by creating small, independent communities. The average Facebook user has 150 friends (well ok, that one's not from the book, it's from the Economist).

After reading all this, my mind was completely blown when I reached the following money-quote:

If we want groups to serve as incubators for contagious messages, then, [...] we have to keep groups below the 150 Tipping Point. Above that point, there begin to be structural impediments to the ability of the people to agree and act with one voice. If we want to, say, develop schools in disadvantaged communities that can successfully counteract the poisonous atmosphere of their surrounding neighborhoods, this tells us that we're probably better off building lots of little schools than one or two big ones. The Rule of 150 says that congregants of a rapidly expanding church, or the members of a social club, or anyone in a group activity banking on the epidemic spread of shared ideals needs to be particularly cognizant of the perils of bigness. Crossing the 150 line is a small change that can make a big difference.

There you have it. There seems to be great support in social science for keeping communities small. I don't want to go overboard applying pop-psychology to ideas of faith, but what is the Gospel if not a "contagious message," and what is the church if not an "incubator" for it?

Combining Gladwell's ideas with my own experience I've become pretty convinced; big churches need to split.

I'm not going to close without admitting that there are a lot of questions that come with this notion. What about the benefits of large churches, like missional evangelism or large-scale involvement in a city or other large community? What implications do small vs. big have for membership, authority, and accountability? If 150 is the maximum amount of total relationships we can handle, shouldn't churches be even smaller? That's just the beginning. I may tackle these questions in later posts. My goal here was just to start the conversation.

Quotes: Judgement, Doubts, and the District

2009-10-10T00:44:00.003-04:00

"Good judgment comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgment." Barry LePatner

"If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with doubts he shall end in certainties." Sir Francis Bacon

"After two years in Washington, I often long for the realism and sincerity of Hollywood." Fred Thompson

The Future Has No Moving Parts

2009-10-09T12:30:00.008-04:00

That's the title of this article by one of my favorite tech writers, Mike Elgan. I think he's right. Here is a quick summary of the article:

In the near future...

Solid-state drives (storage on chips) will replace hard drives (storage spinning disks).

Flash drives and online data transmission/storage will replace CD-ROMS and all other types of removable disks.

Touch screens and sensors will replace buttons and keyboards (I think this is the boldest prediction -- but it's completely possible).

Here is a Rocket Ship Designed by Denis Cox

2009-10-08T12:30:00.008-04:00

Every once in a while I happen upon something which reminds of how I got to be an electrical engineer. Something that reminds me of the excitement, mystery, creativity, adventure, and discovery which I saw in engineering as a kid. Sometimes it's really hard to explain how something like electrical engineering could contain any of these things.

It all came flooding back to me for a brief moment yesterday when I saw this:

From Letters of Note

"You put in other details." That's my favorite.