Tag Archives: people

Lists

Condensed knowledge for 2007-05-06

Here’s the good stuff:

  • Want to watch cheese mature? A company in England wanted to show the process and time involved in making good cheese, so they installed a web cam next to aging cheddar. That hunk of cheese has now become an Internet star.
  • Escape the Meatrix! Watch this movie to find out what it is and how to join the resistance. 🙂
  • Neatorama has a great post on three animals we ate into extinction. Oh, the poor dodo bird, it never stood a chance, even if its meat was gross.
  • This toothless old man from Russia has a really elastic face (and a really long tongue as well). The video is slightly disturbing, and it begs the question, why would you want to lick your own eyes? I can see him now, scaring little kids in his village. The parents, shuddering, will tell their kids, “See, this is what happens if you don’t brush your teeth!”
  • Have you been wondering why no one reads your blog? This post may have the answer.
  • This bird, called the Andean Cock-of-the-Rock, has got to be one of the funniest looking animals I’ve ever seen! 🙂
  • Oh, how I wish I were a boy once more (sans school and homework) and got “The Dangerous Book for Boys” as a birthday present!
  • A fire burned through the historic Eastern Market in DC recently. This Washington Post article has photos.
  • Ever wondered just how our sense of smell works? Well, wonder no more, because Wondermark has the answer.
  • Apparently surgeons have started to perform abdominal surgeries through the mouth (and in women, a certain other orifice)… The advantage is that there’s no external scarring, and the recovery time is much, much better. The patient can go home the same day. Still, I’m pretty grossed out by the whole thing. I would not want bits and pieces of my appendix or gall bladder or other such thing pulled through my mouth. It’s just plain weird.
  • A couple of days ago, I started my browser in the morning and saw that the logo on my Google Home page had changed to iGoogle. For a moment, I thought Google and Apple had merged, but later found out the real explanation.
  • A physician from France wrote Linux drivers for 235 web cams, particularly bargain ones made in China, with no proper drivers and no support whatsoever. And he did this all for free, unrecognized, working from his own home. That’s just plain cool!
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Thoughts

Stumping

As the 2008 presidential candidates start making their rounds and speeches (stumping), it’s important to remember that a lot of their promises are dry and empty, much like this stump.

Stumping

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Lists

Finding inspiration

I think these following videos are wonderfully inspirational. We all know about Michael J. Fox’s fight with Parkinson’s Disease. What we may not know is that he’s a very gracious person, and a real inspiration to others. Watch this segment of an interview with Katie Couric, and you’ll see what I mean. I also wrote about Michael in this post, back in October of 2006.

This second video is the historic 1938 match race between Seabiscuit and War Admiral. It shows what you can accomplish when you have faith in someone, even in an aging horse that was considered useless.

Here is Mr. Roger’s testimony before the US Senate in 1969, back when President Nixon wanted to cut the funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which aired Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood.

When Reynaldo Ojeda lost his entire left leg, he didn’t let it stop him from becoming a professional salsa dancer. Watch this video of him and his dancing partner, Claudia Lopez, and be inspired.

Future by Design is a trailer for a movie that talks about Jacque Fresco, a modern day futurist and inventor.

During severe flooding in Mozambique, a dog and a monkey bonded, and remained inseparable afterwards. The dog apparently even fought to defend his little friend from other dogs. Wait till you see the droopy-eyed expressions on the two animals’ faces. You’ll think it’s the cutest thing.

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Thoughts

How is your private data getting used?

I read the Red Tape Chronicles over at MSNBC on a regular basis, and one of their latest posts really struck a chord with me. We really have become a nation where everything gets tracked, whether we like it or not. To some extent, I don’t really care. If the government wants to tap into my phone calls, fine. Been there, done that. I grew up in communist Romania, and our phone was tapped. There’s nothing of real interest to strangers in my phone calls anyway. And besides, you’d have to be a sort of a peeping tom to want to listen in on strangers’ conversations, anyway. Not my type of job.

What really irks me is that every little footstep off the beaten path gets documented somewhere. Not that it’s happened to me, but say I get in a brawl and get locked up overnight, then sort things out in the morning. That little brush with the law may affect me for years to come, even though that’s not the type of person I am. I may regret it, I may not usually do those things, it may be that it just sort of happened, but it’s going to stay on my record. And the payback’s brutal. I may not get new jobs, and if I want to attend classes at some school, I may not be able to get in. It may even affect my credit history. It’s all because of a stupid system that tracks one’s every legal move with no discernment.

This whole mess wouldn’t be a bad thing if there were only one system, and updates to that system were handled properly. But no, there are hundreds and thousands of various government databases, and data from those databases flows into private background check databases and clearinghouses, until there are copies of that single incident all over the place. I may be able to get the government to edit out that little troublesome incident, but there’s no way to track down all of the other digital copies of that record and make sure they get changed. That’s VERY disturbing.

Just do a search on Google for background checks. There are a ton of websites where you can check details about anyone. It used to be that only law enforcement officials were able to conduct such searches, but now any Joe Blow with a credit card can find out information about anyone. That really gets my goose! What right does some freak somewhere have to know stuff about me? Exactly how have our public officials let this happen? You can find out anything: properties, debts, criminal record, demographic information and possibly income, address, phone number, marriage and birth information, anything. I find this VERY DISTURBING.

What’s worse, who knows where these businesses get their data from, and how often they update their information? Looks to me like most are fly-by-nite operations that only care about having a record about someone, not the record. If they list bad information about me, how do I go about changing it? I can’t possibly contact every single one of these shady operations. Yeah, I call them shady, because I think they have absolutely no right to my private information. Only licensed law enforcement officials (read certified and cleared government employees) ought to have the right to view my aggregated private information. Yet these people profit from MY private information by selling it to whoever wants to get it. This disgusts and angers me.

Anyway, what got me started down this warpath? Those of you who know me know that I like old movies. Remember scenes from those movies where people would get into brawls, or there’d be some misunderstanding, and they’d get booked? They’d spend the night in jail, get out in the morning, and be done with it. Everyone would laugh about it. That’s how it should be for the occasional offense. It should NOT affect one’s career, education and finances. Everyone messes up here and there. These mistakes should not be recorded for posterity, or if they are, they should not be made available to every idiot that wants to look at them. It just isn’t right. And no, I’m not talking about serious or repeat offences.

We may have modernized our data storage and retrieval, but we’ve lost our good, old common sense about how to use it.

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Reviews

Music and Lyrics (2007)

Music and Lyrics (2007)Ligia and I went to see Music and Lyrics (2007) tonight, and we loved it. It’s a love story told in a funny, endearing, modern way. The characters are believable, the movie enjoyable, and the message uplifting.

In a nutshell, 80s has-been pop star Alex Fletcher (Hugh Grant) is offered the chance to write a hit song for Cora Corman, a rising modern pop star. The problem is he’s got to do it in 36 hours. Desperate, he looks around for help and finds Sophie, his plant-watering girl (Drew Barrymore), has an unexpected talent with words and rhymes. After much coaxing, he convinces her to help him write the song, and they find out they get along great. As a matter of fact, they fall in love. But when Cora wants to change the song to suit her pathetic tastes, Alex (Hugh) and Sophie (Drew) clash and separate. They’re brought back together in a most wonderful way in the end. I don’t want to spoil it for you, so I won’t tell you how.

We found ourselves laughing out loud throughout the movie. We loved the 80s jokes. I in particular got a kick out of the name of Alex’s band, “Pop!” — that’s because my last name is Pop. I can’t really help it — every time pop music is mentioned somewhere, a subtle smirk finds its way to my face. As long as I’m talking about the music, the songs in the movie were great! Those tunes are now stuck in my head and Ligia and I determined the only way to get them out is to buy the album.

We also enjoyed the not so subtle skewering of brainless celebs and new age fads. I want to congratulate the writers and the director of this movie for their witty take on this plague. Generally speaking, instead of a meaningless parade of “religious” superficiality, I’d like to see more sincerity and less show when it comes to religion of any kind in show business. Whatever the various religions of these actors and singers are, I’d like to see changes in their lives, not outward masks and clueless mimicry. I’d like to see them stop forcing their religion on the people they work with, and instead focus on fixing themselves.

On the whole, this is a great movie, and I highly recommend seeing it. It’s enjoyable, funny, worthwhile and uplifting.

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