Thothblog

I don’t know why (ok, I have some idea) but I have been very political lately.  I have been doing a lot of listening and observing as I watch friends and family alike react in various ways to the political shenanigans, the impending economic doom, and other local malcontent.  It would be silly to think that even with the information I am absorbing that I could explain the tension that exists between conservatives, republicans, democrats and liberals.  I know that normally certain terms act as synonyms, liberal/democrat and conservative/republican, but I think I am really beginning to disassociate the each and can begin to recognize the differences.  However, those differences are not my point for tonights entry.  In fact, I am slightly in a lull right now as my head swims through too much information.  I go through these waxes and wanes in the political arena I think in part because I can get very passionate given the right topic and mood but at other times I get very…I guess depressed about the situation our government and country are in.  Luckily I can always turn back to one of my favorite childhood…and adult strips, Calvin and Hobbes.  My favorite strip is Calvin looking into the night sky and yelling “I’M SIGNIFICANT!!!”  and then following it up with a well placed, “screamed the dust speck”.

I am sure everyone feels that way sometimes but it can be very taxing on the soul to constantly be bombarded with idiocracy that seems to multiply at alarming rates.  But what is a nerd to do in these crazy times.

Anywho, I am just not feeling the political exploration this evening, I am however feeling the talking about talking about politics.  Well, so much as, can’t we all just get along.  To Answer, apparently not.

In other news, who is excited about the iPhone 3G 3.0 firmware?!  I can tell you one person at least, this guy!  I admit that pre iPhone I was a cell phone hater.  Honestly, I still am in many ways, as I hate most phones that are not the iPhone and I don’t even have any real love for the phone part of the iPhone.  However, all the other wonderous and glorious parts of the iPhone make me smile; I have embraced my iPhone.  Very excited about the list of features announced and if you have not read about the new features, I suggest you do, because it is going to be AWESOME!  Copy and Paste, about damn time.  MMS messaging, come to poppa.  I am also very excited as well about the developer opening for the attachments so that apps can be written to use the iPhone’s cradle connector thing directly.  Very good, trust me.

Besides the very good iPhone news check some other good stuff going on.

Geek Music

Mutants?

And lastly, what the hell is up with wikipedia?!  They got editors circling the Obama page removing any comments which aren’t positive, even ones backed by references!!!

I write this post, having just read one of the most ridiculous articles that I have read this week and let’s be honest, there have been some doosies.  We have the city of Houston wanting to pay of credit card bills for people who can’t get a mortgage because they have too much debt; Bernake is getting up in front of Americans and claiming…”meh, recession should only be another couple of months.”; and Congress is going to decide if chimps can be pets…. otay then.  As my mother always says, Ya can’t fix stupid.

However, the ridiculousness that I want to discuss is this cartoon situation with the New York Post.  Now, my own feeling regarding this story is utter terror.  I think it was only about 6 months ago that Europe was torn asunder by a little Dutch cartoon picturing Muhammad and the violent outrage that poured out of a sub group the Islamic religion.  I remember thinking to myself, “at least that could never happen here in America.”  How holy was I wrong.  However, I am not here to debate the pros and cons of this cartoon, nor am I here to argue the merits of “being outraged” over the chimp cartoon and comparisons to Obama.  If you don’t get the cartoon, you are one of 3 kinds of people; either someone who doesn’t know about the chimp story, ergo, doesn’t have the requesite knowledge to understand the cartoon; or you are someone who knows about the chimp story, but is frankly dumb and doesn’t get the cartoon; or someone who is racist and has gone past the humor of the cartoon to exploit this as another race related hate crime.  And we all know which Reverend I am refering to there.

The point of this little musing has more to do with the article that I read regarding the cartoon.  If you can, please read Kathleen Parker’s column, linked here: Article

Hello and welcome back.  Thoughts about that article?  Here are a few of mine.  I realize that Kathleen is most likely a woman, and therefore does not have balls persee.  However, and editorial journalist should have at least some sort of virtualized balls, even if they are running as a service in a backroom on a little used virtual machine.  Why even write this column?  She starts out in what seems to be the road to some nice “shut the hell up” for the outraged racial group and then 180’s to how this cartoon is in poor taste and not funny, and then another 438 degrees to the cartoonist himself is a crappy cartoonist because some dead cartoonist taught this lady who doesn’t draw cartoons all he knew about cartooning.  WTF?!  I don’t have a clue who to root for, I have no villain in my story and frankly, I don’t like ti when someone invokes dead people to validate their point with the, well he’s dead, but he taught me….

I started out thinking, good someone to stand up for the newspaper’s and say hey, if you don’t like the cartoon, do the American thing, and don’t support the product.  Then I am thinking she has not gutso cause she is caving to these groups and going to crap on the cartoon…and then on the cartoonist (via invoking great dead other cartoonist) and then she finishes with the cartoonist is in the right….I am assuming she is banking on the idea that 99% of readers(and hopefully those pesky racially charged ones) have stopped reading.  I don’t think I have read many editorials that have attempted to take very position on a story.  Waste of time, thats what MS NBC is for…balanced news, we decide.  (That’s sarcasm)

Wow, ok, anyway it got me thinking that we have a tiered intelligence problem not only in this country, but maybe in the world.  This is a problem that occurs when someone of a higher intelligence tier makes a comment that is read/heard/ingested by someone of a lower intelligence tier.  What happens is the nugget of whatever is viewed as this strange obelisk thing and those of the lower tier dance around it like idiots because they can’t figure it out and then boom we have some sort of cultural tension explosion.  Sadly, as I write this I am comfortable enough to say that this is an observation of mine, and it would be great if people could take that as it is, but I don’t have an answer as to how to fix the intelligence tier issue.  I think we will always have those who are opportunistic looking for the next idea they don’t understand.  It lets them scream to the heavens and anyone else who will listen…”I’M SIGNIFICANT!!!”

Something about blogging is very freeing, but there can also be a sense of …hmm, overwhelmyness…?  You know what I mean, one can be overwhelmed.  Sometimes I have so many topics I want to write about I don’t even know where to begin.  Topics have a habit of piling up and then fizzling as the time to write about the dwindle.  However, I guess that is a little bit like every day life, so I guess there’s that.

Right now, there is so much to talk about, from all the happenings in the political world, the daily musings of nerd life, or the …well more daily musings of nerd life.  Did a little political scouting today, checked out my districts town hall meeting to hear about the upcoming plans for Colorado’s economic recovery.  Its interesting to hear politicians and their ilk discuss political matters.  Very dodgey those people are, much dodging this way and that.  Very careful not to point the finger at government for any wrong doing in this whole mess.  This evening, the bankers and political machinery discussed how banks were to blame and then how the general populace was to blame.  “FEAR NOT THOUGH!  GOVERNMENT WILL SAVE YOU!”  Ya know…its just so ridiculous.  Look, people are to blame because we are spending beyond our means.  Lenders enjoy part of the blame for the financial hijinks they played with the loans.  The federal government is partly to blame because it can’t seem to stop butting its nose into everyone’s damn business.  Sadly, a ton of the federal governments current projects are completely outside their scope.  Apparently taking responsibility or the lack there of is systemic.

In other news, this weekend should prove super hectic as we prepare a new run of software for the world of…software.  Its grand version .1 debut will be Monday, surely not to miss.

Also, sleep is good :-P.  Short post, but I wanted to get something up.  I will have something much more substantial this weekend!