Aug 23, 2008 in Politics by Sterling | No Comments
So in 1988, a month or so after the presidential election, I attended a speech by Joe Biden at American University. About 15 people were in attendance - not a lot of folks. During the somewhat anemic question and answer session, I posed a smart-ass query. I asked - approximately - "In Arthur C. Clarke's
Fountains of Paradise, the author speculates that no person who is willing to suffer the indignities of running for President of the United States is morally competent to actually fill the position. Clarke argues, instead, that the presidency should be selected by lottery from among qualified individuals. What do you think about Clarke's idea?"
And Joe Biden sneered at me and said, "I think that's a terrible idea." He went on for a minute or two, but the gist of it was in the first sentence.
Of course, Joe Biden had just run an embarrassingly incompetent campaign for the Democrat nomination, in which he plagiarized Neil Kinnock and also made rude remarks about his critics' IQs.
It doesn't matter, though, because Obama is going to lose in November, assuming Hillary doesn't get the nod at the convention.
(Never mind.)
Tagged Arthur C. Clarke, Barack Obama, Joe Biden
Jul 18, 2008 in General by Sterling | No Comments
I'm a big fan of
James Lileks, a writer for the
Star Tribune of Minneapolis/St.Paul. I'd like to say I became familiar with Lileks during time I spent in Minneapolis in the mid-90s setting up online stock trading for American Express Financial Services, but I didn't. I actually learned about him after the Blog Explosion of the early 2K's; his famous
Olive Garden "Screed" of February, 2002 was the first of his essays I remember reading.
Anyway, I was looking on del.icio.us for
Hummels references and found that on December 14, 2004,
James Lileks set up a del.icio.us account, linked five sites and never used it again. Three of the five sites were Hummel sites.
I like Hummels as much as the next guy, and probably a lot more, but using del.icio.us almost solely for tracking Hummels is an unusual application for the service.
Tagged figurines, goebel, hummels, James Lileks
Jun 29, 2008 in Technology by Sterling | No Comments
I installed
Picasa for Linux on my parents' PC last night and I'm very pleased with the results. Previously I had them running the Windows executable via WINE, but performance and reliability were poor. Now they've got a solid way to upload and share photos.
My parents bought their current PC about five years ago. I recommended switching to a Mac at the time but my Mom still had a proprietary Windows app she needed to access for work. When they retired to Richmond early this year with a ridiculously crapped-up PC, I seized the opportunity to move them over to gOS-flavored Ubuntu, using the same aging PC. gOS has been fairly trouble-free and the machine runs well again, and I'm nearby to address any hiccups.
The reason my parents' Windows OS became so corrupted, of course, is that my parents lack the computer savvy to avoid malware. And not to get into theoretical discussions beyond my competence about whether Mac, Linux or Windows is the "most secure", but the simple reality is that there are far, far, far more dirtbags out there exploiting Windows vulnerabilities than Mac or Linux vulnerabilities. Last night when I was working on their PC, I found several Windows .exe files in the Firefox default download folder - stillborn.
Linux native versions of applications like Picasa are a tremendous asset to those of us looking to keep our loved ones safe from botnets, password thieves and other bandits. If you're in the same position, you might want to try downloading
gOS or
Ubuntu. I installed Ubuntu on an old PC of my own and screwed around with it for a month or two before I installed gOS on my parents' PC. It's easy, it's far safer than Windows, and thanks to the likes of Google, Firefox, Skype and others, it's now practical.
Tagged Google, gOS, linux, parents, Picasa, ubuntu
