Alarming News: I like Morgan Freeberg. A lot.
American Digest: And I like this from "The Blog That Nobody Reads", because it is -- mostly -- about me. What can I say? I'm on an ego trip today. It won't last.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: We were following a trackback and thinking "hmmm... this is a bloody excellent post!", and then we realized that it was just part III of, well, three...Damn. I wish I'd written those.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: ...I just remembered that I found a new blog a short while ago, House of Eratosthenes, that I really like. I like his common sense approach and his curiosity when it comes to why people believe what they believe rather than just what they believe.
Brutally Honest: Morgan Freeberg is brilliant.
Dr. Melissa Clouthier: Morgan Freeberg at House of Eratosthenes (pftthats a mouthful) honors big boned women in skimpy clothing. The picture there is priceless--keep scrolling down.
Exile in Portales: Via Gerard: Morgan Freeberg, a guy with a lot to say. And he speaks The Truth...and it's fascinating stuff. Worth a read, or three. Or six.
Just Muttering: Two nice pieces at House of Eratosthenes, one about a perhaps unintended effect of the Enron mess, and one on the Gore-y environ-movie.
Mein Blogovault: Make "the Blog that No One Reads" one of your daily reads.
The Virginian: I know this post will offend some people, but the author makes some good points.
Poetic Justice: Cletus! Ah gots a laiv one fer yew...
One of my social networking friends uploaded a re-transcribed “fail in Google Voice transcription” and oh, boy. Our technological journey seems to have taken a turn down the wrong cul de sac.
This really gets under my skin. Machines should be used to augment and enhance the return on investment when humans put time into things; it should never, ever be used to soak that time up or burn it away. If ever that is to happen, then we have to get into nets & grosses & all that stuff…and it seems we are now well past that point…but, even more worryingly, it seems lately the net is a negative. Meaning, we’re getting less done everyday than we’d get done if we just lived like the Amish.
Every time I pick up a ringing phone and hear some machine getting ready to connect me to some human who couldn’t quite spare the time to try to contact me personally, I’m more and more convinced of this. I don’t just hang up, I throw the damn handset across the room. Well, if the woman is home at the time, I only think about doing that. But it really, really pisses me off, the very thought of it: Machines being used to stop people from going about doing what they were doing. Machines being used to harass people. To do the harassing that the human harassers couldn’t quite find the time to do, without automated harassing-assistance. What, are we nuts?
You realize what else we have to consider? Perhaps the professional harassing humans can’t find the time to do the harassing they need to do, because they, in turn, are being harassed…by machines…which, in turn, well you can fill in that stupid little cycle all by yourself. Yes, it is endless.
Quoting myself:
I swear, if we could leverage technology to actually do productive things, as efficiently as we can leverage technology to go bothering each other, by this time we would have journeyed off to the brightest star in the Sirius constellation, dragged it back here in a great big net, and ground it up in a giant food processor to make a delightful sweetening powder for our corn flakes.
I’m seeing a lot of job postings for programmers in C#, .NET, Java. So…web development. And when I consume the web, what new technology do I see being developed, you know, on the web? Advertisements. Popup windows. Videos that auto-play, with sound and music. Little applets and widgets that wait until you’ve managed to call up the article you wanted to read…and then explode in your face with useless bits of nonsense. Refinance your house, pull in those chicks with some testosterone, make your dick bigger. Obama wants to send you back to school, find out if you qualify.
Reminds me of that favorite quote of mine about airport security, from an Israeli security expert:
The United States does not have a security system; it has a system for bothering people.
We have gotten awfully talented at bothering each other, interfering with what other people want to get done, haven’t we? Technology has made us unusually “productive” here, as of late.
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