The Open University is a world renowned British institution of higher education offering people all over the world the chance to earn a first-class degree without ever stepping foot in a lecture theater. Thanks to the Internet, the Open University is now able to offer more courses to more people than ever before, and their YouTube channel helps market their wares.
With the Prism-Verizon scandal, what allegedly has been happening is that the United States of America's National Security Agency (NSA) has been data mining. That is, they have been going through the call records of Verizon's approximately 99 million users looking for, well, anything! If the thought of the occasionally overzealous government official isn't enough reason to encrypt your smartphone, then all the identity thieves and scammers out there ought to be. Today, I'm going to show you a few things you can do to make that information a bit more secure.
There are millions of people all around the world who want to be professional writers, yet only a tiny fraction of them ever make enough money to write full-time. It’s a market that is saturated in terms of supply, so you need to be excellent or revolutionary to even be noticed. Fortunately, there are many resources out there that will get your feet wet. Here are five of my favorites.
In spite of die-hard users screaming and crying foul, Google quite unapologetically remains on track to shut down its popular news aggregation service dubbed Reader come July 1. But don’t worry, there are plenty of alternatives to Google Reader such as the popular Mac/iOS app Reeder, the unavoidable Flipboard and many other apps.
The social news aggregator Digg is among the companies looking to exploit the opportunity. In March, Digg announced that work had begun on its own Reader replacement. Today, the firm said the app will be rolling to everyone by June 26, giving Google Reader refugees almost a full week of head start before the July 1 cut-off deadline…(...) Read the rest of Digg’s Google Reader replacement launching June 26 on iPhone first
All CD, DVD and Blu-Ray drives include firmware stored in memory that control various features of the drive. Since it is software, it may be updated just like programs running on your computer, for instance to add new functionality, fix bugs or improve performance.
Firmware updates of recording devices can add support for additional disc types or burning speeds, improve the reliability of procedures or update the internal database of supported discs.
The usual way to find out about updates is to either use a search engine and search for your device's model plus firmware, or visit the manufacturer's website directly to search on it instead.
The disc burning program ImgBurn comes with firmware searching options as well. Let me show you how that is done:
Open ImgBurn on your system. The program starts a wizard on start up usually.
Select Mode > Build from the top menu.
Open Tools and select Drive > Check for Firmware Updates from the menu that opens up.
ImgBurn displays a prompt when you do that displays the device's current firmware version and information how the search is conducted. The program redirects you to the website Firmware HQ where all firmware versions of the selected device are displayed to you.
Note: This is not an official website and even though it appears legit, it may be better to download firmware only from the official website of the manufacturer.
Even if you do not download the firmware from here, you can still find out if a firmware update is available for your recorder so that you can search for the new version on the manufacter's website instead.
The download is a single executable file that you need to run on your system. The following screen is displayed when your run it on your system.
The firmware upgrade is handled automatically and a restart is necessary afterwards to complete the operation. You can run ImgBurn's firmware checker to see if the new firmware version has been applied successfully to the drive.
There is unfortunately no option to backup the current firmware before the new one is applied to the device. You can however download the old version as well from the firmware website so that you can restore the old firmware if the need arises.
Should you upgrade your recorder's firmware? It really makes only sense if it is not working correctly or not supporting a particular feature that you require. It may however be necessary to find out more about the new firmware before you install it blindly.
This weekend, the blockbuster new Superman film, Man of Steel, opened around the world. But unfortunately, it’s destined to be a flop because billions of Israel-haters across the globe are obligated to boycott it.
After all, the actress playing Superman’s birth mother is Ayelet Zurer. She is an Israeli movie star, born in Tel Aviv. That’s got to be enough for BDSers.
What’s that? You’re not familiar with BDSers? Allow me to explain.
B-D-S is the acronym for the "boycott, divest and sanction" movement that encourages everyone, everywhere, to have nothing to do with Israel, until all the Jews leave and give the country to the Palestinians.
Seriously.
It’s a global movement that’s been going on for years. It’s made up of fanatical activists in nearly every country who picket outside of Israeli-owned companies or just companies that do any business with Israel.
They storm into concerts by Israeli musicians wherever they happen to be performing around the world. They lobby lawmakers to label any goods produced in Israel so people will know not to purchase them. They urge artists not to do shows in Israel. They petition universities not to partner with Israeli institutions, and on and on and on. You get the point.
They hate Israel. Period.
But the good news for us, those who love Israel, is that:
a) These people are too ignorant to really run an effective and impacting campaign.
b) They’re too hypocritical to really follow through on the goals of their campaign.
c) They haven’t read the Bible, so they don’t know about God’s unbreakable promises to Israel.
It’s the letter “b” that really entertains me the most—because for all of their bluster and hate-ranting, these guys can’t or won’t stick to their beliefs.
They’re all going to see Superman this weekend; you just know they are. (By the way, I checked the website, and the film opens in Egypt, Lebanon and the United Arab Emirates on Friday, so get your tickets now … I mean, “don’t” get your tickets now.)
You know that the BDSers also saw the Star Wars prequel trilogy, even though Queen Amidala was played by another Israeli-born actress, Natalie Portman.
How cool is that? Israeli women are both the queen of Star Wars and Superman’s mom!
But I’m being hard on the BDSers. I mean, it would be seriously difficult to actually boycott everything Israeli. Where would you begin?
This week Google paid $1 billion to acquire the Israeli company Waze. So, no more using Google, right?
In May, Warren Buffett paid $2 billion to buy the Israeli company Iscar. (He already spent another $4 billion a few years ago to buy part of the company.) So now the BDSers have to boycott everything connected to Warren Buffett. That is a long list!
Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway company owns huge stakes in such companies as Coca Cola, Kraft, Johnson and Johnson, General Electric, Procter & Gamble, Wal-Mart, General Motors, Wells Fargo, American Express, Visa and on and on and on.
Yikes! Looks like BDSers are going to have to use MasterCard if they need a credit card. Oops, wait. Buffett owns part of them too. Oh well.
It was particularly embarrassing when, in May, the world’s so-called smartest man, Stephen Hawking, announced he would be boycotting a conference in Israel in solidarity with the Palestinians. Hawking is a renowned physicist who sadly is confined to a wheelchair due to a disease similar to ALS that keeps him from walking or even speaking. Hawking uses a computer device to speak for him. But embarrassingly enough, it was recently revealed that Hawking’s computer runs on the Intel Core i7 chip that was designed by Intel’s lab in … you guessed it, Israel!
No word on whether Hawking is pulling the plug on this life-saving (Israeli) device.
Don’t worry about the conference. We’ve got plenty of big names still coming, from Bill Clinton and Tony Blair to Barbra Streisand and Robert DeNiro.
Each time a high-profile celebrity announces a concert tour in Israel, a movie shoot in Israel or anything related to Israel, they get bombarded with threats and online campaigns to get them to change their mind and boycott Israel.
Say what you will about the pro-Palestinian crowd, but they sure know how to tweet and post on Facebook. (Nobody tell them Facebook was invented by a Jew.) They will fire off profanity-laced tirades until the artists finally give in. Some, like Hawking, do. Most do not.
From icons like Madonna (who intentionally chose to launch her latest tour in Tel Aviv), Paul McCartney and Bob Dylan to the hip stars of today like Justin Bieber, Rihanna and Alicia Keys, nearly everyone ignores the BDSers and comes to Israel anyway.
In the last few weeks, there’s been tremendous pressure on Alicia Keys, specifically, to cancel her upcoming concert in Israel. The pressure has come primarily from best-selling author, Alice Walker, who penned the classic The Color Purple. Walker is a staunch ally of the BDS crowd and has publicly called on Keys to boycott Israel, but to no avail.
This was particularly sad to me, because I love The Color Purple. The movie version of the novel was directed by Steven Spielberg (who’s not only Jewish but finances a Jewish film archive at Jerusalem’s Hebrew University) and stars Whoopi Goldberg and Oprah Winfrey. The film is a powerful tale of women overcoming great odds to persevere in life. My favorite scene in the movie is near the climax of the film, as a montage of events takes place set to the song "Maybe God Is Trying to Tell You Something." Every time I see it, I’m moved to tears, and I purchased the soundtrack just for that song.
The lyrics say:
Can’t sleep at night and you wonder why
Maybe God is trying to tell you something
Crying all night long, something’s gone wrong
Maybe God is trying to tell you something
Well, Ms. Walker, I believe God is trying to tell you something. He’s trying to tell you that you’re pouring your energies into something contrary to His will. Spending your time trying to convince pop stars not to do a concert in Israel makes about as much sense as spitting in the wind.
And while we’re on the subject of God, may I remind you He wrote a book too. It’s called the Bible. It’s set primarily in Israel.
And topping that, God decided to come to earth in the form of a man. And guess where He chose to be born and spend His entire earthly life? You guessed it again: Israel.
Gonna start boycotting God and His handiwork now? I don’t envy you.
Chaim Goldbergis the director of media at Maoz Israel and writes a weekly column for Charisma Media’s Standing With Israel website.
Did you enjoy this blog? Click here to receive it by email.
Forget abandoning carbohydrates or detoxing. The new dieting craze sweeping Britain and taking off in the United States lets people eat whatever they like—but only five days a week.
“The Fast Diet,” also known as the 5:2 diet, is the brainchild of TV medical journalist Michael Mosley and journalist Mimi Spencer and allows people to eat what they want for five days but only eat 600 calories a day on the other two.
Their book, The Fast Diet, has topped best-selling book lists in Britain and the United States this year and has been reprinted more than a dozen times.
Mosley says the diet is based on work by British and U.S. scientists who found intermittent fasting helped people lose more fat, increase insulin sensitivity and cut cholesterol, which should mean reduced risk of heart disease and diabetes.
Mosley tried this eating regime for a BBC television science programme called Eat, Fast, Live Longer last August after finding out his cholesterol level was too high and his blood sugar in the diabetic range. He was stunned by the results.
“I started doing intermittent fasting a year ago, lost 8 kgs [18 pounds] of fat over 3 months and my blood results went back to normal,” Mosley told Reuters.
Mosley said he had been amazed at the way the diet had taken off with a list of websites set up by followers of the 5:2 diet or variations of the eating regime to share their experiences.
Following the success of The Fast Diet, Spencer joined forces with dietitian Sarah Schenker to bring out The Fast Diet Recipe Book in April, which has topped amazon.co.uk’s food and drink list with 150 recipes containing under 300 calories.
Eating a 600-calorie daily diet—about a quarter of a normal, healthy adult’s intake—could consist of two eggs for breakfast, grilled chicken and lettuce for lunch, and fish with rice noodles for dinner with nothing to drink but water, black coffee or tea.
One Day at a Time
Mosley put the diet’s success down to the fact it is psychologically attractive and leads to a steady drop in weight, with an average weekly loss of 1 pound (0.46kg) for women and slightly more for men.
“The problem with standard diets is that you feel like you are constantly having to exercise restraint, and that means you are thinking about food all the time, which becomes self-defeating,” Mosley says.
“On this regime, you are only really on a diet two days a week. It is also extremely flexible and simple.”
Britain’s National Health Service (NHS) initially expressed doubts about the diet and its long-term effects, saying side effects could include sleeping difficulties, bad breath, irritability, anxiety and daytime sleepiness.
But as the popularity of the 5:2 diet has grown and become one of the most-searched diets on the Internet, the NHS has started to look again at the diet and its effects.
On its website last month, the NHS said the British Dietetic Association (BDA) reviewed a 2011 study by researchers at the U.K.’s University Hospital of South Manchester that suggested intermittent fasting could help lower the risk of certain obesity-related cancers such as breast cancer.
“The increasing popularity of the 5:2 diet should lead to further research of this kind,” the BDA said in a statement.
Schenker, a sports and media dietitian who works with football clubs and food companies, said it was a shame that the NHS had criticized the eating regime that had proved such a success with so many people.
“We are in the midst of an obesity crisis, and you need to balance up which is worse—intermittent fasting or staying obese?” Schenker told Reuters.
Despite concerns raised by the NHS, the 5:2 diet has been widely praised by those who follow it.
Deb Thomas, 50, a management coach from London, says she has followed the diet for six months and dropped a couple of dress sizes. This has also inspired her husband to join her in fasting two days a week.
“It is such an easy diet to follow that fits into my way of life,” Thomas says. “You have a tough day of not eating, but you know the next day you can eat normally again, and that keeps you going.”
Did you enjoy this health article? Click here to receive new health articles by email.
Software developer Anthony Goubard may be one of the most ambitious DIYers on the planet. How else can you explain it? One man looks across the landscape of productivity suites—from Microsoft Office to LibreOffice to Google Docs—and says: "I'll just make my own." Goubard is behind "Joeffice," an open source office suite written in Java and released under the Apache license. The Netherlands-based developer completed the first release—which can be downloaded and used for free on Windows, Mac, and Linux, or subscribed to as an online version—in only 30 days, chronicling the experience with one video per day during April and May. Joeffice isn't usable as anyone's primary office tool yet, but Goubard (who runs a small software company called Japplis) has big ambitions. He explained his motivations in an e-mail interview with Ars:
Ars: Why is it called "Joeffice"? Goubard: Well, it's an office written in Java, so Java Office was first shortened to JOffice but I found Joeffice more fun as a software name.
Why did you decide to create Joeffice and was it difficult coding the platform in only 30 days? I noticed how easy it is to have more than 30 files opened in a software development tool and how difficult it is to have more than 10 documents opened in an office suite. Having written several Java softwares, I knew Java could bring some new advantages in the office suite landscape. It was easier than I thought it would be. Most days I spent less than eight hours on it. Of course the open source Java libraries help you a lot and then you need to spend your time coding efficiently.
What are the advantages of Joeffice compared to existing open source office suites such as OpenOffice and LibreOffice? Even though it's possible to write a macro in Java for these offices, I think Java developers would be more comfortable developing for Joeffice with standard APIs such as Apache POI or the NetBeans platform. The advantages to Joeffice compared to other office suites is portability thanks to Java and docking windows and tabs for documents thanks to the NetBeans platform. It's also possible to run Joeffice online in the browser as an Applet.
Does Joeffice offer any compatibility with Microsoft Word documents? Yes, Joeffice can open the new Microsoft format documents (.docx, .xslx and .pptx). It can also open old Excel documents (.xls).
Obviously, this is an early version of the product. Which parts and features are most polished? Which parts need work? What changes and additions will you make, and how long do you plan to continue improving the software? I think opening documents is the most polished. For [future development], Joeffice is dependent on improvements on the libraries it is using such as adding support for graphs and pictures in spreadsheets in Apache POI or being able to use the text editor of the NetBeans platform for the word processor. Progress will depend on volunteers willing to improve the software of the used libraries and also on how companies are interested in financing projects related to Joeffice. At the moment to develop a business application, companies have the choice between writing an office macro or a specific application. I think Joeffice offers something in between. With enough support Joeffice has the potential to become a mainstream office suite.
Actually using Joeffice at the moment isn't the most pleasant experience (as I found out after installing it in Windows). Creating the equivalent of a Word document is easy, but I was stymied when I attempted to create a spreadsheet or presentation. There seemed to be no option to create anything but a basic text document. When I asked Goubard how to create documents of different types, he said, 'to create a new document, you need to choose the 'File of type' in the dropdown of the Save dialog (.xslx for spreadsheet, .pptx for presentation), but there is still some progress to do here. I would advise opening an existing document." Saving a file as .xlsx doesn't actually make it look like a spreadsheet. No matter what type you save a file as, it starts out looking like a word processor document:
However, I was able to open a blank spreadsheet document created in Microsoft Word and get all the rows and tables to show up in Joeffice:
Almost everyone has a love-hate relationship with autocorrect. There are times when you simply can’t live without it, but it also has the potential to go completely out of hand and start messing up everything you type on your iPhone. Having an autocorrect bar above the keyboard can be a nice tradeoff, but the way iOS autocorrect works in the background certainly has its merits as well. Whenever you are typing something that’s more formal, it is probably a good idea to keep the feature enabled, while during casual texting, it can be a pain in the neck. However, continuously toggling autocorrect is no mean feat, since the option is buried quite deep in the Settings app. Auto-Correction Switch can prove to be the perfect solution to this problem, as it makes it possible for users to turn autocorrect on and off using an Activator gesture of their choice.
This amazingly useful tweak is based on the previously covered FlipSwitch by Ryan Petrich. When FlipSwitch first came out, it was clear that it has a lot of potential, and Auto-Correction Switch realizes some of that potential. You might be a bit confused while trying to find the new options Auto-Correct Switch adds to the Settings app. It is true that finding the newly added action entry is not easy but fortunately, you have to access it only once, which would be during configuration.
In Activator, choose any gesture that can be performed whenever the keyboard shows up. It is advisable to refrain from using gesture that are based on the status bar, as this will render Auto-Correction Switch useless in full screen apps. Inside your chosen gesture’s Activator menu, the Auto-Correction options are available inside the ‘Switches’ list that belong to FlipSwitch. Like all FlipSwitch controls, Auto-Correction can be used as an enable-only action, a disable-only action or a complete (though invisible) switch.
If you choose the switch, which is the recommended course of action, the state of the autocorrect feature is toggled whenever you use the gesture. We tried it while typing in the stock Notes app, and everything worked perfectly. Auto-Correction Switch is a godsend for all users who have to type more than one languages on their iPhone, or whose conversations are a mix of formal and informal typing. The tweak is available for free, just like FlipSwitch itself. While FlipSwitch has to be downloaded from Ryan Petrich’s personal repo, Auto-Correction Switch is publicly available in the ModMyi repo of the Cydia store.
This week in GPS is a weekly link roundup of (mostly) GPS related odds and ends, from GPS Tracklog and other places around the Web. To get a few of the biggest stories as they break, follow me on Twitter. Today’s lead image is from an article on trucks jamming up Vineyard Haven traffic. From GPS Tracklog Ourread more
Those following @OED’s Twitter feed will be pleased to know that our entries for follow(verb), follower(noun),and tweet(noun and verb) have been expanded to include the social media senses, usage of which has exploded in the past six years. There has been, for example, a threefold increase in instances of the word tweet between 2006 and 2007 (when Twitter began), and by 2012, this had increased to 50 times.
The noun and verb tweet (in the social-networking sense) has just been added to the OED. This breaks at least one OED rule, namely that a new word needs to be current for ten years before consideration for inclusion. But it seems to be catching on.
5 things fathers are Divinely designed to provide for their families:
1- they demonstrate and articulate the felt love of God and set the standard of holy affection in their homes.
2- they meet their families in the field of forgiveness and restore their brokenness with the robe, the ring, and the sandals, when they fail.
3- they create a safe place for their families to leave the boat of mundane living and step out on the high seas of the great adventure of faith in God.
4- they protect their families from predators, complainers, dream robbers, nay-sayers and doubters, while living holy and humble lives.
5- they provide substance, inspire extreme generosity, and demonstrate compassion for the poor.
Happy Father's Day and happy fathers day! May our Heavenly Father teach our earthly fathers how to love well!
Some doctors will offer a lot of fancy explanations for what causes metabolic syndrome. But there’s no need for all that. I’m going to give you the straightest answer possible: Metabolic syndrome occurs in people who are overweight.
In more than 25 years as a practicing cardiologist, I have rarely seen metabolic syndrome in a thin person. And typically the people who develop this condition carry most of their excess weight in their bellies. Although you may think of body fat as an inert blob, it’s actually not.
Rather, body fat is made up of living cells. Those fat cells have two purposes: storing energy for later use and secreting hormones that help regulate appetite and blood sugar levels. All people have fat cells. Slender people just have smaller fat cells. These secrete a beneficial hormone known as adiponectin, which helps your body use insulin efficiently.
However, if you’re overweight, your fat cells are large and they tend to shut down the production of this hormone. This makes it more difficult for insulin to do its job—and the result is a condition called insulin resistance.
But there’s another problem. When you have a round, heavy abdomen, there’s more there than just the fat that’s under the skin (called subcutaneous fat).
There is also fat inside the belly, underneath the stomach muscles. These hidden deposits of fat around your kidneys, liver and intestines are known as visceral fat. This type of fat is much more harmful than subcutaneous fat, because in addition to hampering the effectiveness of the insulin, these fat cells also produce other hormones and proteins that are dangerous—especially because they are located so close to vital organs.
For instance, visceral fat cells secrete a protein that contributes to inflammation, which fuels atherosclerosis, the disease process that clogs arteries and sets the stage for heart attack. These fat cells also secrete a protein that constricts the blood vessels, causing high blood pressure.
In addition, because this fat is located so close to the liver, the large fat cells drain right into that organ through a portal vein, raising LDL cholesterol. This type of fat is also linked with breast cancer and colon cancer and may contribute to dementia as well. It is crucial that you begin to lose weight, and especially the weight in/around your abdominal region. It is dangerous to your overall health and especially your heart.
There have been many books—especially diet books—that have been written to offer you the “secret formula” to losing weight. Through my years of training and experience, I have come to realize that wheat and gluten are the main culprits of belly fat.
Recently I can came across a book titled Wheat Belly, authored by William Davis, M.D.,and it gives a clear explanation of why wheat and its many relatives cause belly fat. If you are serious about losing weight, especially around your midsection, I highly recommend you read Wheat Belly—it just might save your life.
Chauncey W. Crandall, M.D., F.A.C.C., chief of the cardiac transplant program at the world-renowned Palm Beach Cardiovascular Clinic in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla., practices interventional, vascular and transplant cardiology. Dr. Crandall received his postgraduate training at Yale University School of Medicine, where he also completed three years of research in the cardiovascular surgery division. Known as the “Christian physician,” Dr. Crandall has been heralded for his values and message of hope to all his heart patients.
To get Dr. Chauncey Crandall’s monthly newsletter, click here.
Did you enjoy this health article? Click here to receive new health articles by email.
Now the bugs...
Sega's/Sports Interactive's Football Manager 2009
- look around you'll find further details. Apparently, a known but unfixed bug. Seems as though there may be some hard limits built into the program. Even if you have more than sufficient physical RAM you'll still get into trouble. A few dialog boxes with the following text,"Football Manager 2009 is running dangerously low on memory. Please quit and free up some memory." and "Football Manager 2009 has run out of memory and will now quit." - need a better way to change contract offer during negotiations especially if another club makes a bid
Wget
- not really a bug but it clearly requires a more informative error message. If file system doesn't support greater than 4GB (FAT32) you end up with the following...
wget user@system:/media/location/Downloads/CentOS$ wget -c "http://mirror.aarnet.edu.au/pub/centos/6.4/isos/x86_64/CentOS-6.4-x86_64-bin-DVD1.iso" ...
Cannot write to `CentOS-6.4-x86_64-bin-DVD1.iso' (No such file or directory).
Commonwealth Bank ATM - this was bizarre one. I actually came across an ATM with an IE scripting error problem a while back. I didn't quite believe my eyes so I took a picture of it. Perhaps I'll show it someday?
Google News - sometimes branching is slow to replicate across their network. Means you end up with orphan/non-existent links from time to time. First time I've encountered this with Google News...
Google Maps
- after Apple's recent problems with their maps service someone in the
media said that we shouldn't become overly reliant on such services. I
concur. I recently went on a trip to a distant area and had some minor
problems. Luckily, i carried a map with me...
Curious why they don't just run it via a proxy such as the following? http://www.proxyssl.org/
Don't think it would be too hard to replicate given the right modifications?
One off-the-wall consequence of the sudden disclosures regarding the U.S. National Security Agency’s PRISM digital surveillance program earlier this week was the much-reported spike in sales of George Orwell’s “Nineteen Eighty-Four”—with Penguin Plume’s recent Centennial Edition up almost 7,000 percent on the Amazon Movers & Shakers list for Books, according to some sources. This level of [...]
It is an accepted fact that liberal democracy is the worst possible political system—except for all others (thank you, Sir Winston). This list doesn’t aim to advocate tyranny, but to review the flaws and failures of the democratic process.
We are not perfect—and neither are our governments, since they are made by humans too. It is most advisable to be skeptical, even of democracy itself. After all, even Thomas Jefferson was wary of the “tyranny of the masses”.
10
Aprioristic Equality
One of the foundations of democracy is the assumption that all votes are equal. Well, that’s the theory—but in fact it is rarely so (more on that later). It assumes that all opinions are worth the same, which is quite a big leap of faith, since we are putting the same value on the opinions of the educated and the ignorant, and the law-abiding citizens and crooks.
Even if you think that all people are created equal, it is obvious that their environments are very different—and as a result, so is their character. By assuming that all opinions are equal you are also assuming that most people are able to reach a rational, informed decision after seriously exploring all pros and cons.
9
Populism
A common criticism of democracy is that in the end it devolves into a popularity contest. Polls don’t decide who is right—that’s simply decided by whoever is most willing to say what people like to hear. As a result, many candidates to political office resort to populism, pursuing policies that focus on the immediate satisfaction of whims instead of long-term improvements.
Populist leaders focus on emotion before reason and “common sense” over more academic wisdom, which often produces bad ideas that will be defended with the stubbornness of a mule, regardless of whether they are good or bad.
8
Tribal Mentality
Let’s be honest here: mankind has not evolved much since the Stone Age. Yes, we have tamed the forces of nature and discovered a lot of things—and this Internet business is amazing. But human nature remains the same, more or less. We still think in tribal terms, “my people vs. your people”. Call it class struggle, xenophobia, nationalism, or whatever you like—the thing is that most of us identify with one group or another, and almost every meaningful group has alliances or enmities with other groups. This is part of human nature, and can work peacefully . . . or not.
In a democracy, tribal mentality is very dangerous, because it will make you vote “for your team” instead of voting according to issues. That means that whoever leads “your team” can rest assured that they have your vote, and instead of focusing on your interests, they can proceed to deal with their own. Unfair legislation can be passed if there are vocal groups in the majority (by oppressing the minority) or in the minorities (by entitling them to privileges that the majority can’t enjoy).
7
Corruption
This is not a specific flaw of democracy, and in fact it can be argued that democracy tends to be less prone to corruption than other systems, since it leaves open the possibility of ejecting someone from office. But that possibility also favors a very specific kind of corruption: machine politics, a political organization in which the bosses dole out rewards in exchange for the vote.
It can be as simple as paying money to someone in exchange for their vote, or giving someone a job in the office of the politician who commands the machine. A softer form of machine politics (or “clientelism”) involves the earmarking of federal funds for certain districts or states, so that Representatives and Senators vote for the programs those funds are allocated to.
6
Entitlements
Another side-effect of democracy is that if the State starts providing a service or a pay to someone, they begin to feel entitled to it. So if someone tries to stop providing it—well, they just made a large number of deadly foes. When Margaret Thatcher cut coal subsidies, for example, coal miners felt that their jobs had been threatened and became bitter enemies of Thatcher and her ilk. Most people will never vote for the party of someone who “took their jobs”, no matter how long ago this might have happened.
5
Mob Rule
An unrestricted democracy means that the majority decides over the minority. This leaves the minority relatively powerless—and the smaller it is, the less power it wields. Which means that the smallest minority of all—the individual—is effectively depending on his agreement with the majority.
To account for this problem, mature democracies have developed a set of checks and balances in an attempt to make sure that it doesn’t happen; chief among these is the separation of the powers of the State. But this actually makes a system less democratic, since it interferes with the principle of “people’s power.”
4
Complex Accountability
When a dictatorship falls, it is fairly easy to hold someone accountable for any crimes committed by the State. It is certainly easier than in a democracy, since in that case, officials have been elected by the people. If those officials have committed a crime in opposition to their official platform and without the knowledge of the public, it is simply their own fault and the people who voted for them are innocent. But if a candidate advocates curtailing human rights for a minority, and upon finding himself elected to office, carries out his plan . . . are not the voters also responsible in some degree?
3
State Secrets
All states have dirty skeletons in the cupboard. In a dictatorship they are just discreetly hidden, sometimes in plain sight. In a democracy, which tends to rely on moral superiority, this is difficult to carry out.
People have a right to know—at least in theory. Spying and covert operations are part of the daily workings of the state, admittedly sometimes for the greater good (such as when the police infiltrate a criminal organization to put their members on trial). But their efficiency runs against their transparency. A perfectly democratic system would be transparent, and as such, no covert operations could be effectively carried out.
2
Democracy Is Unsustainable
As seen in points three, four, and five, a perfect democracy is unsustainable—but a mostly democratic system can (and does) work. In many democratic countries, your vote only measures up against other votes in your district. So if your district runs a majority system and you vote for a losing runner, then your vote was useless. You can use a proportional system, but that doesn’t solve the problem: the issue still remains that large numbers of people can effectively “waste their vote.”
1
It Can’t Really Work
That pure democracy cannot work is not a personal opinion—it is a mathematical result of Arrow’s impossibility theorem. According to this theorem, so long as there are more than two candidates, there is no possible voting system that can ensure the satisfaction of three crucial criteria for fairness:
- If every voter prefers alternative X over alternative Y, then the group prefers X over Y.
- If every voter’s preference between X and Y remains unchanged, then the group’s preference between X and Y will also remain unchanged.
- There is no “dictator”; no single voter possesses the power to always determine the group’s preference.
If these criteria are left unsatisfied, it effectively means that democracy—at least in its purest form—cannot work.
ICC Note: In a very welcome public statement Senator Rand Paul has spoken out strongly against the funding of governments in nations were severe persecution of Christians take place. Senator Paul made the remarks Thursday while speaking at the Faith and Freedom Coalition's Road to Majority conference. The Senator had previously sponsored legislation that would restrict foreign aid to countries such as Egypt, Pakistan, and Libya, but the measure was voted down.
6/13/2013 United States (Washington Examiner) - Speaking at the Faith and Freedom Coalition's Road to Majority conference in Washington, D.C. today, Sen. Rand Paul, R-K.y., condemned persecution of Christians in Muslim countries and called for an end to U.S. aid to such nations.
"It angers me to see my tax dollars supporting regimes that put Christians to death for blasphemy against Islam, countries that put to death Muslims who convert to Christianity, and countries who imprison anyone who marries outside their religion," Paul said.
He cited Asia Bibi, a Christian in Pakistan, who is on death row for drinking from a Muslim co-worker's glass as an example, as well as the plight of Iraq's substantial Christian population in Iraq.
"These countries are not our allies, and no amount of money is going to make them so," Paul said. "It makes no sense. Should we be sending F-16s and tanks to Egypt when (President Mohammed) Morsi says Jews are descendants of apes and pigs?"
Earlier this year, Paul sponsored a measured to restrict foreign aid to Egypt, Libya and Pakistan until they turned over those responsible for the murder of U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens during the Benghazi terrorist attack.
Paul's measure also required those countries to protect U.S. embassies on their soil and in Pakistan's case to release Dr. Shafil Afridi, who helped lead the U.S. to Osama bin Laden.
"How do your leaders respond? 90 % of them voted against my bill that would have put restrictions on this aid," Paul said.
In addition to being great pea replacements in recipes, fava beans make for great snacks on the go. But if you're peeling the beans before eating them, you're just making the snack too difficult.
Google’s ‘X’ division has gained a reputation for making the seemingly impossible, possible. The not-so-secret lab is responsible for churning out a number of innovative projects, including self-driving cars and more recently, Google Glass.
Yesterday, the search giant unveiled X’s next ‘moonshot’ venture called Project Loon. The idea behind Loon is to let loose a ring of balloons, outfitted with cellphone tower-like tech, in the sky in an effort to provide internet to the masses…(...) Read the rest of Google reveals plans to bring internet to the masses using balloons
Looking for a different way to say “different”? Here are forty more or less distinct synonyms, along with their sometimes similar, sometimes disparate meanings.
1. Alternate: arranged or occurring in turns, or see alternative; also, every other (also a verb)
2. Alternative: referring to a choice; also, apart from the conventional or usual
3. Assorted: consisting of different kinds
4. Differing: see distinct, or changing from one case or situation to another; also, disagreeing
5. Discernable: able to be recognized as different; also detectable or recognizable
6. Discrete: see distinct
7. Disparate: see distinct, or incompatibly different
8. Dissimilar: not alike
9. Distant: different in kind; also, separated or far away from, going a long way, or far behind, or reserved in behavior, or distracted
10. Distinct: separate, or readily distinguishable; also, notable or unmistakable
11. Divergent: differing from each other or from a standard
12. Divers: see various (also an unrelated and differently pronounced plural form of diver)
13. Diverse: see distinct, or unlike
14. Eclectic: Drawn from various sources, or see heterogeneous
15. Heterogeneous: consisting of dissimilar ingredients or parts
16. Idiosyncratic: having a distinguishable quality; also, eccentric, or hypersensitive
17. Indiscriminate: see heterogeneous or motley; also, random, unrestrained, or careless about distinction
18. Individual: see separate; also, pertaining to an individual or individuality (also a noun)
19. Kitchen-sink: consisting of noticeably different parts; also, referring to the degrading aspects of poverty
20. Magpie: collected indiscriminately; also, acquisitive (also, a person who collects indiscriminately or chatters, or the bird whose behavior inspires these usages)
21. Manifold: see diverse or various; also, many, or consisting of various qualities (also an unrelated noun)
22. Miscellaneous: see diverse
23. Mixed: consisting of more than one kind (also a verb)
24. Motley: incongruously diverse; also, having different-colored markings
25. Multifarious: see diverse or various
26. Particular: see distinct; also, detailed, specific, or exacting or meticulous (also, in plural form, a noun)
27. Peculiar: distinctive; also, unusual or abnormal (this negative connotation predominates, so use with caution)
28. Piebald: consisting of incongruous parts; also, consisting of different colors (especially black and white)
29. Promiscuous: consisting of all types, or not restricted to one type; also, casual, irregular, or tending to have multiple sexual partners (because of this provocative connotation, promiscuous is rarely used in other senses)
30. Raggle-taggle: see motley
31. Ragtag: see motley; also, ragged or slovenly
32. Respective: see separate
33. Separate: not similar; also, autonomous, detached, or individual (also a verb)
34. Several: see distinct and separate; also, exclusive or relating separately, or a few
35. Single: unlike any other; also, lone, unmarried, or celibate, or honest or exclusive, or designed for one, or having only one item or part, or undivided
36. Singular: distinctive; also, exceptional or unusual, or pertaining to a single thing
37. Sundry: miscellaneous or various
38. Variant: varying slightly; also, demonstrating disagreement or variety (also a noun)
39. Varied: see diverse and various; also, having different-colored markings (also a verb)
40. Various: unlike, or of differing kinds, or see separate; also, individual, or having a number of qualities, or an indefinite number more than one
Note, however, that different is often redundant, as in “They came up with many different ideas” (do you need to specify that the ideas they came up with were not identical?), so consider whether it is necessary to replace the deleted word at all.
A new Firefox add-on, called Dark side of the Prism, has been designed to warn Internet users who have installed it automatically when they visit websites of companies linked to the government surveillance system Prism.
All users have to do is install the add-on in Firefox, it will work passively from that moment on. Once you visit a website of a company associated with Prism, it starts to play the song Dark Side of the Moon by Pink Floyd. It also displays a logo at the top right for a second or two before it vanishes.
The add-on covers not only the main websites of companies involved, e.g. microsoft.com or google.com, but also company owned domains such as YouTube, Blogger or Bing.
The music begins to play right away and while it has been mainly designed to raise awareness, it may also render some websites unusable which may be intentional as well. If you visit YouTube for instance, you cannot really play any video on the site while the add-on is running in the background as you'd have to listen to two audio sources at the same time.
The conclusion here is that the add-on is mainly designed to provide Internet users with options to find out which of their favorite websites and new websites they visit are linked to Prism. There is no list of sites it supports though which makes it difficult to judge if it is covering all web properties of linked companies or only major ones.
An option to disable the sound would be really helpful in this regard, as it may be getting on your nerves pretty soon even if it plays for only a couple of seconds before you leave the website again.
If you need to work with the site however, it is definitely problematic since there is no stop button either.
Tip: NoScript users can block the server request so that only the Prism logo is displayed by the extension.
Anyway, if you are interested in the add-on check it out. It is available over at the Mozilla Add-ons repository.
There’s a new start-up in San Francisco that’s aiming to empower consumers with a voice – and it’s usually an angry one. At Blacklist, everyone’s sharing their bad brand experiences, and from the looks of it, a lot of companies just don’t know how to keep customers happy. This is a great site for a PR team to get to work! I’m talking to you At&t, American Apparel, Sears…
Before Yelp there was Consumer Reports, but none of these testimonial driven sites offer consumers the opportunity to basically give brands the middle finger. Consumers are angry and dissatisfied and now that there are plenty of socially accessible outlets, consumers and their friends and their friend’s friends are teaming up to do what they like best – express that outrage. continued…
That “zero trans fat” claim on your bag of chips may be a big, fat, wicked lie.
Trans-Fat Free? I Think Not.
I’m at a family reunion this week, surrounded by Fritos and Cheetos — two of my favorite snack foods. So I took the time to “fooducate” them. I learned that if you plan to eat chips, Fritos aren’t the worst choice you can make. (Good news.) I also learned that products claiming to be trans fat free may in fact not be. Here’s why…
If there is less than 1/2 gram of trans fat in a product, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) allows the manufacturer to label it trans fat free. What? I understand the concept of rounding — but the last time I checked 0.49 grams ≠ 0 grams.
This is a big deal. Consuming this unnatural “ingredient” has been shown to increase your risk of heart disease, obesity, diabetes, and depression. A recent article by Michael F. Jacobsen, Executive Director of the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) calls trans fat a “metabolic poison” and the “most dangerous fat in the food supply.” It raises your levels of artery-clogging bad cholesterol (LDL) while lowering the good stuff (HDL). In fact, research indicates that trans fat consumption causes between 72,000 and 228,000 heart attacks a year in the US, about 50,000 of which are fatal.
“According to the Institute of Medicine, there is no safe level for trans fat intake, and the American Heart Association recommends limiting it to less than 2 percent of calories per day. That’s about two grams. Unless you’re a vegan, that’s about as much as you can expect to get from the smaller amounts of naturally-occurring trans fat in milk and meat. In other words? There’s no room in your diet for anything partially hydrogenated.“
“For every extra 2 percent of calories from trans fat daily, the risk of coronary heart disease increases by 23 percent. Eliminating industrial-produced trans fats from the U.S. food supply could prevent between 6 and 19 percent of heart attacks and related deaths, or more than 200,000 each year.”
How to Spy Trans Fat and Make Sound Choices
To avoid trans fats in the packaged foods you buy and take nutritional matters into your own hands:
Ignore any “zero trans fat” labeling on the front of the product and a nutrition label claiming 0 grams of trans fat per serving.
Look for partially hydrogenated vegetable oil or vegetable shortening in the ingredient list. If you find it, you’ve found trans fat.
Don’t buy products with trans fat and/or misleading labels. Zero should mean zero — regardless of the FDA loophole.
I become more cynical about food labels as I learn about situations like this. Do you feel cheated too? Join me in my rant by commenting below.
Google has added a new Recent Activity dashboard to its Accounts page, so you can see lots of detail about when and where your account was used, so you can ensure no one has your password. Check it out here.
Online retail giant Amazon is announcing a deal to create thousands of new jobs here in Florida. As the announcement of jobs will also mean Florida consumers will pay more money to use the site.
At the end of your finger tips is an online retailer where you can buy nearly anything you’ll ever need. Now the online giant Amazon will open a 1-million-square-foot warehouse here near Tampa.
“This is good news for retail in the state of Florida,” said Florida Retail Federation John Fleming. “It means another major retailer is chosen to locate in our state, its growth in retail industry and a sign Florida’s a good place to do business.”
Amazon expects to hire 3,000 Floridians by 2016. The deal comes less than a month after Governor Rick Scott turned down the internet giant’s first offer. ”My job is to make sure I do the right thing for taxpayers in our state and based on the opportunity I had at the time, it didn’t make sense,” said Gov. Rick Scott.
After further talks with the company, the Governor and Amazon came to a deal. The Governor’s office refused an on-camera interview, but released a statement saying: “Amazon’s commitment to create more than 3-thousand new jobs in Florida is further proof that we’ve turned our economy around.”
The move to Florida will come at a price. When Amazon opens a warehouse in Florida, they will be required to charge Florida consumers a 6-percent sales tax.
“It’s not a tax increase; it’s the same sales tax that you pay everyday at every store you go to in your community,” said Fleming.
The collection will begin when the company opens its doors in Florida, which is expected next year.
Amazon hasn’t made any announcements about the expansion, but they expect to create more than 300-million dollars in investments in Florida.
When the Space Shuttle program ended in 2011, it created a void in space travel. This year forty million of your tax dollars will be spent trying to fill that void. Today, state lawmakers toured Space Florida facilities at Cape Canaveral and say your money is being well spent.
At the height of the shuttle program’s, 15 thousand people were working at Kennedy Space Center, but with the end of the shuttle, thousands of jobs went overseas or were lost all together.
Now with the help of state incentives, private companies are picking up the slack. Boeing has taken over this giant shuttle facility. It’s incentive, your tax dollars paid for the buildings renovation. In exchange and for the first time ever, Boeing will build space vehicles like this one in Florida. “The program is multi-billion dollars over several years, but from the job perspective at full operational capability, possibly 550 jobs.”, Chuck Hardison, Boeing.
Commercial space flight is still in its infancy. Lawmakers toured existing launch sites and private rocket makers like Space X and a Lockheed facility where cameras were banned. Space Florida’s job is to find deals that work, close them, and put people back to work. “I think it’s going to start small, just as it always does. The railroads or air travel initially began as a government driven and government funded effort. “, Mark Bontrager, Space Florida VP.
Representative Matt Hudson, R-Naples says, “You look at Space X, you look at dynamic program that is and they’re going to have 12 launches a year here. ”
High School science teacher turned lawmaker Mark Danish, says the incentives are a chance for Florida and space to once again be synonymous. “We’ve put a lot of things have gone overseas, time to bring it back here.”, Rep. Mark Danish, D-Tampa.
Lighter, smaller, cheaper were the watchwords of those pitching the private space deals. But in this case, even the sky isn’t the limit.
This is Sony’s smart watch, which has been around for a while now. It’s designed for use with your Android phone, and has always included an SDK that allows app developers to interact with it. But now Sony is taking it one big step further. They’ve published everything you need to know to hack your own firmware for the SmartWatch.
The navigation scheme for that articles includes five menu items at the bottom which you’ll want to dig through. The most interesting to us was the one labeled “SmartWatch hacker guide”. It lays bare the hardware used in the watch and how it’s peripheral component connect to each other. This starts with the STM32 (ARM) microcontroller that drives the watch. It goes on to document how the screen is addressed (SPI1) including the pin to turn it on and off. The same goes for the Bluetooth, accelerometer, buzzer, and touch sensors.
Firmware is updated via USB using Device Firmware Upgrade (DFU) mode. We don’t don’t see any way to connect an on-chip debugger. We searched to see if there is a JTAG port on the circuit board and it sounds like getting the watch apart without breaking it is pretty tough.
Now that you don’t need to stick to what Sony had planned for the device, what do you want to do with your strapless wristwatch?
No matter if you have a small 11" MacBook Air or a 27" iMac, you typically are going to wrestle with managing windows on your desktop screen. Even though I use two monitors, I used to find myself constantly moving windows around and readjusting their size. I've written before about applications that help Mac users manage wide screen Apple display, but in this article I want to highlight two applications, BetterSnapTool and Houdini, that help me better manage windows and screen real estate on both of my desktop and laptop Macs.
U.S. carrier AT&T announced Friday that its subscribers will soon start receiving Wireless Emergency Alerts to their iPhone 4S or iPhone 5 devices. Text notifications will include AMBER, Imminent Threat and Presidential Alerts and will be enabled following an upcoming carrier update pushed out to iPhone devices running iOS 6.1 or later.
Of the three types of alerts, users will be able to disable AMBER and Imminent Threat alerts. Presidential alerts, which are sent straight from the President, can’t be turned off…(...) Read the rest of iPhone 4S/5 users to get Wireless Emergency Alerts via AT&T
Now in its fourth revision, this remains the best guide for learning how to draw. I used it with my son, and his progress was remarkable. It has also helped my own drawing skills. I actually looked forward to the exercises which are brilliant and fun. In order to draw you must learn to see, and that’s what this book teaches: how to perceive. Because this perception training relies on strengthening right brain activity, it can be transferred to any kind of creative work. In each edition over the past 30 years, the author has widened the skills she is teaching, so that this current version will improve your perception skills — essential for any kind of innovation — whether or not you ever sketch. And still, it remains the best teacher for anyone — yes, anyone! — learning to how to draw.
-- KK
[Count me as another fan of this book. Like Kevin says, it teaches you to see things as they are. Instead of looking at a tree and thinking "this is a tree," you look at its shapes (and how they relate to each other) and its shading. -- Mark]
Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain
Betty Edwards
2012, 320 pages
$13
A caution: as all of our students discover, sooner or later, the left hemisphere is the Great Saboteur of endeavors in art. When you draw, it will be set aside–left out of the game. Therefore, it will find endless reasons for you not to draw: you need to go to the market, balance your checkbook, phone your mother, plan your vacation, or do that work you brought home from the office.
What is the strategy to combat that? The same strategy. Present your brain with a job that your left hemisphere will turn down. Copy an upside-down photograph, regard a negative space and draw it, or simply start drawing. Jogging, meditation, games, music, cooking, gardening–countless activities also produce a cognitive shift. The left hemisphere will drop out, again tricked out of its dominance. And oddly, given the great power and force of the left hemisphere, it can be tricked over and over with the same tricks.
*
Drawing is a curious process, so intertwined with seeing the that the two can hardly be separated. The ability to draw depends on one’s ability to see the way an artist sees. This kind of seeing, for most people, requires teaching, because the artist’s way of seeing is very specific and very different from the ways we ordinarily use vision to navigate our lives.
Because of this unusual requirement, teaching someone to draw has some special problems. It is very much like teaching someone to ride a bicycle: both skills are difficult to explain in words.
*
Drawing as a learning, teachable skill
I firmly believe that given good instruction, drawing is a skill that can be learned by every normal person with average eyesight and average hand-eye coordination. Someone with sufficient ability, for example, to sign a receipt or to type out an e-mail or text message can learn to draw.
*
These pre-existing skills have nothing to do with potential to draw well. What the pre-instructions drawings represent is the age at which the person last drew, often coinciding with the age at which the person gave up trying to draw.
*
*
To draw the Picasso upside down, move from line to adjacent line, space to adjacent shape and work your way through the drawing.
*
*
*
*
Ideally (in my view), learning in art should proceed as follows: the perception of edges (line) leads to the perception of shapes (negative spaces and positive shapes), drawn in correct proportion and perspective (sighting). These skills lead to the perception of values (light logic), which leads to the perception of colors as values, which leads to painting.
With the Prism-Verizon scandal, what allegedly has been happening is that the United States of America's National Security Agency (NSA) has been data mining. That is, they have been going through the call records of Verizon's approximately 99 million users looking for, well, anything! If the thought of the occasionally overzealous government official isn't enough reason to encrypt your smartphone, then all the identity thieves and scammers out there ought to be. Today, I'm going to show you a few things you can do to make that information a bit more secure.
There are millions of people all around the world who want to be professional writers, yet only a tiny fraction of them ever make enough money to write full-time. It’s a market that is saturated in terms of supply, so you need to be excellent or revolutionary to even be noticed. Fortunately, there are many resources out there that will get your feet wet. Here are five of my favorites.
There’s a new start-up in San Francisco that’s aiming to empower consumers with a voice – and it’s usually an angry one. At Blacklist, everyone’s sharing their bad brand experiences, and from the looks of it, a lot of companies just don’t know how to keep customers happy. This is a great site for a PR team to get to work! I’m talking to you At&t, American Apparel, Sears…
No matter if you have a small 11" MacBook Air or a 27" iMac, you typically are going to wrestle with managing windows on your desktop screen. Even though I use two monitors, I used to find myself constantly moving windows around and readjusting their size. I've written before about applications that help Mac users manage wide screen Apple display, but in this article I want to highlight two applications, BetterSnapTool and Houdini, that help me better manage windows and screen real estate on both of my desktop and laptop Macs.
