April 30, 2008
MUDGE’s Musings
Is anyone listening, really listening hard, to what the eccentric Rev. Jeremiah Wright has been saying?
I admit to superficially following the headlines on this one. He’s made some outrageous claims from the pulpit, regarding the origins of AIDS and 9/11, and his one-time parishioner, Barack Obama, has been attempting to distance himself from the outrage for the past several months.
But Wright outdid himself Sunday speaking to the NAACP in Detroit, referencing an entire generation of soft-headed academic studies that purport to explain away African Americans’ failures to succeed educationally.
Poisonous “Authenticity”
Jeremiah Wright draws on a long line of Afrocentric charlatans.
Heather Mac Donald | 29 April 2008
The list of Afrocentric “educators” whom Reverend Jeremiah Wright has invoked in his media escapades since this Sunday is a disturbing reminder that academia’s follies can enter the public world in harmful ways. Now the pressing question is whether they have entered presidential candidate Barack Obama’s worldview as well.
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Criminal behavior, Education, Obama, Politics, Presidential election | Tagged: Barack Obama, Jeremiah Wright | 
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Posted by mudge
April 30, 2008
MUDGE’s Musings
There’s most read, and then there’s favorite. This is a post which yr (justifiably) humble svt is, regrettably, but not regretfully, not at all humble about.
Blast from the Past!
A post we really, really loved to write, and read, and re-read…
From our early days, originally posted August 10, 2007.
mm098: Remembering Robert Heinlein
MUDGE’S Musings (begun on the road)
So, here I am back in the sultry Midwest, returned at about midnight the night before last from the sultry east coast and a professional conference.
As frequent reader can tell, the change of routine played havoc with my blogging habits, which, with few exceptions (my son’s marriage in early July, for a happy example) have been fairly regular for the past three months since we began in earnest.
So, let’s pick up where I left off, attempting to piece together an interesting series of articles linked together for me by Arts and Letters Daily 
, a wonderful site that I am guilty of visiting insufficiently regularly.
__________________________________
BOSTON — Third morning, and last one, here at a conference sponsored by one of our enterprise’s primary IT vendors, IBM Lotus.
Doubt we’ll finish this post until after we’re safely back on our home turf, but we’ll take a stab at getting some of this done before we pack up for the last few sessions.
Boston is a great town for tourists, although in a business conference there is precious little time for tourism, but it’s been fun to walk around, at least a bit, and enjoy life at street level.
This morning, of course, it’s pouring rain, so we’ll confine our observations from the 35th floor hotel room we’re about to vacate. Nice town. Great view.
And for this Midwestern unfortunate, absolutely wonderful seafood. Don’t have a picture of the cioppino I enjoyed at Legal Sea Food Monday night, but I can share the view…
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Navy, Science, Science Fiction, Writing | Tagged: Science, Robert Heinlein, Science Fiction, NASA, space exploration, futurist, Stranger in a Strange Land, U.S. Naval Academy, Boston, cioppino, Legal Sea Food | 
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Posted by mudge
April 29, 2008
MUDGE’s Musings
The ‘Sphere is full of fulminating amateurs. Take yr (justifiably) humble svt, for example. When it comes to blogging, amateur. Maybe a little talented. Maybe.
Then there are the well informed, insightful, professionals, with credentials and research chops, who could be writing anywhere, but, I’m guessing, have found in the blogosphere the editorial freedom that might be lacking in the constrained world of the mainstream media.
One such genius has been admired in this space many times.
This past weekend Ms. Szwarc took on the top of the respected television news pyramid: “60 Minutes.” Now, that’s a contradiction in terms if ever one was coined: respected television news. But, millions of people watch it, and have done so for 40 or more years.
And when “60 Minutes” recently presented a glowing report on gastric bypass surgery, Ms. Szwarc says that they left the realm of news far, far behind.
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Blogging, Health, Mainstream media, Medicine | Tagged: 60 Minutes, bariatric surgery, gastric bypass surgery, Junkfood Science, Sandy Szwarc | 
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Posted by mudge
April 28, 2008
MUDGE’s Musings
I consider myself technologically sophisticated. Made my living by writing really sophisticated code for; creating applications for; using; and lately teaching the advanced use of; electronic computational devices for nearly 40 years.
Started when the average of such computational devices filled large, refrigerated, raised-floor (to clear the boa constrictor cabling) floor to ceiling windowed but locked chambers.
Large box (think refrigerator sized) with colorful lighting containing the computer itself with its proud array of 64,000 bytes of hand-assembled magnetic core memory. Folks, that was 64KB.
Today’s home PCs are stunted if they have less than 512MB. I recently upgraded the memory in my own PC: bought 2GB (about 31,000 times larger than that 64KB magnetic core processor for which we wrote so cleverly, and compactly!) for about $100.
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No Comments » | Career, Civilization, Internet, Science, Technology | Tagged: 21st century nomads, Blackberry, IBM System/360, iPhone, Japan best selling novels, LG en-V, mobile workforce, The Economist, Wi-Fi | Permalink
Posted by mudge
April 27, 2008
MUDGE’s Musings
Ever have one of those moments? You know, the ones where you read or see something that just simply closes a loop in your mind that you didn’t know was open? Where you (one hopes, figuratively) slap yourself on the face and say (one fervently hopes, subvocally): Wow, I wish I thought of that?
Had one of those today.
I’m a history of technology guy; I even alluded very briefly to that a couple of posts ago (featuring one of yr (justifiably) humble svt’s favorite headlines, if I may be so unhumble to say so!).
So, I enjoy taking a global, macro view of technology, and how it shaped the story of civilization (technology = civilization — can’t have the latter without the former). And I also enjoy making connections.
So, my attention was captured today by the first paragraph of this post, found during typical stream-of-consciousness blogging today.
So, I read on, and the connections and insights about technology and where it’s taking us, and why it’s taking us there, were jaw-dropping.
See, I’ve often said (once, here) that one of the things I really like about this blogging mania obsession habit of mine is that after more than 15 years of consuming the Internet, now, in my infinitesimal, nanocorner of the ‘Sphere© way, I’m now contributing.
And, that’s the point:
Gin, Television, and Social Surplus
By Clay Shirky on April 26, 2008 10:48 AM
I was recently reminded of some reading I did in college, way back in the last century, by a British historian arguing that the critical technology, for the early phase of the industrial revolution, was gin.
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1 Comment | Blogging, Civilization, History of Technology, Internet, Internet Culture | Tagged: Clay Shirky, cognitive surplus, gin, Here Comes Everybody, History of Technology, nanocorner of the sphere©, sitcom, Social media, Web 2.0, Wikipedia, YouTube | Permalink
Posted by mudge
April 26, 2008
MUDGE’s Musings
Fellow WordPress.com blogger Dandelion Salad (and I call him my fellow blogger, which is a disservice to him, or gives me way too much credit) has a thoughtful essay on the increasingly dire global food price calamity.
You’re aware that food prices are skyrocketing, aren’t you? Here’s what The Economist (best magazine on the planet) had to say about it recently:
“This is a silent tsunami,” says Josette Sheeran of the World Food Programme, a United Nations agency. A wave of food-price inflation is moving through the world, leaving riots and shaken governments in its wake. For the first time in 30 years, food protests are erupting in many places at once. Bangladesh is in turmoil (see article); even China is worried (see article). Elsewhere, the food crisis of 2008 will test the assertion of Amartya Sen, an Indian economist, that famines do not happen in democracies.
That got my attention.
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3 Comments | Agribusiness, Business, Geopolitics, Global trade, Government, Politics, Presidential election | Tagged: Dandelion Salad, genocide, global food price crisis, global starvation, Richard C. Cook | Permalink
Posted by mudge
April 25, 2008
MUDGE’s Musings
The U.S. Navy has long been a favorite subject for yr (justifiably) humble svt, long before he became your svt, quite long before.
The elemental battles of men against the implacably overwhelming forces of nature, while simultaneously battling to the death a human enemy, has always captured the imagination.
Lord Nelson at Trafalgar; Monitor going where no ship had gone before (thus tweaking our simultaneous lifelong interest in the history of technology ); Morison’s epic of the U.S. Navy in the four years of its Second World War: all these read as a kid, reread as an adult, and by the by, picked up by my older son, perhaps pointing him toward his own Navy career.
Now, that’s a cautionary tale! Parents! Be careful what reading material you leave around for your kids to find! Or, maybe, turn off the TV and read a book or two — you are influential beyond your ken.
Faithful reader might recall a couple of recent posts with the Navy as the theme (here and here).
In these unfortunate times of general governmental ineptitude, cultivated by an administration that consistently over-controls what should be left alone (found any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq yet?), and leaves alone too many negligible details (such as: armor for Humvee personnel carriers!), why should the Navy be left out?
Lesson on How Not to Build a Navy Ship
By PHILIP TAUBMAN | Published: April 25, 2008
With the crack of a Champagne bottle against its bow, the newly minted Navy warship, bedecked with bunting, slid sideways into the Menominee River in Wisconsin with a titanic splash.
Moments before the launching on Sept. 23, 2006, Adm. Mike Mullen, the chief of naval operations, told the festive crowd of shipbuilders, politicians and Navy brass assembled at the Marinette Marine shipyard, “Just a little more than three years ago, she was just an idea; now Freedom stands before us.”
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2 Comments | Business, Career, History, History of Technology, Military affairs, Navy, Technology | Tagged: $600 hammer, commercial off the shelf, COTS, defense contractor cost overruns, ferry, General Dynamics, History of Technology, Lockheed Martin, U.S. Navy | Permalink
Posted by mudge
April 24, 2008
MUDGE’s Musings
Stop me if you’ve heard this one.
A funny thing happened on the way to Barack Obama’s coronation as the Democratic presidential candidate.
That’s if you consider Hillary Clinton funny.
She just keeps winning large elections in important states, the latest, Pennsylvania, the other day. It’s Hillaryus, to borrow an oft-coined a phrase.
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No Comments » | History, Obama, Politics, Presidential election | Tagged: Barack Obama, Democratics, Denver convention, Federalists, First Gentleman, Hillary Clinton, John McCain, Pennsylvania primary, Republicans, superdelegates, Whigs | Permalink
Posted by mudge
April 24, 2008
MUDGE’s Musings
So, for the first time in over a week, I find myself back in blogging mode. Before this day is done, I hope to post something more publicly relevant. But, this first one will be personal.
We had a great time in Los Angeles this past week. These are not tourist visits; rather, they are family catch-up stays. Our daughter and son-in-law, our two grandchildren and (heaven help us) our granddog moved to the San Fernando valley suburbs of L.A. four years ago, when our grandson was 3-1/2, and our granddaughter had just turned one. They had lived just a mile away.
Sigh.
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No Comments » | Health, Life, Medicine | Tagged: American Airlines, apricot poodle, Crohn's disease, Humira, San Fernando Valley | Permalink
Posted by mudge
April 23, 2008
The MUDGE family is on vacation this week. We don’t know that we’ll be able to restrain ourselves from blogging during the entire span, after all the grandMUDGElets go to bed pretty early, but without access to our files, and WindowsLiveWriter, for this week only, when we feel that irresistible urge to blog, we’ll treat blogging like we do (sigh) exercise: we’ll just lie down until the feeling goes away.
But, the Prime Directive of Blogging reads: Thou Shalt Blog Daily! So shalt we.
There’s most read, and then there’s favorite. This is a post which yr (justifiably) humble svt is, regrettably, but not regretfully, not at all humble about.
Blast from the Past!
A post we really, really loved to write, and read, and re-read…
From our early days, originally posted August 1, 2007, our first in our series called, over-ambitiously, Web Conferencing Week. The entire group can be found on its own page elsewhere on this site.
WcW004: Web Conferencing Week - Telepresence: Finally videoconferencing that works
Web Conferencing Week
I do web conferencing. But you might be surprised that videoconferencing is often what my web conference supplements — right there in the conference room.
Videoconferences predate web conferences by many years; although the state of the art is still as primitive as it is, one reluctantly admits, for web conferencing.
It’s all about the bandwidth.
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No Comments » | Business, Technology, Travel, Web Conferencing, Web Conferencing Week | Tagged: collaboration technology, telepresence, videoconferencing, Web Conferencing, Web Conferencing Week | Permalink
Posted by mudge
