Critical Section


Monday,  07/12/10  11:30 PM

As noted,yesterday was *not* a good day...  My weekend started out great, with a nice road trip to Bear Valley, a successful Death Ride, and a nice road trip home, but then ended crummy, with Lance crashing and cracking, then Holland loses, and then I spent the afternoon working on expense reports.  Blech.  I ended up maximally frustrated and cranky.  And today began another long work week as I have multiple meetings in Vista... (As noted previously, I seem get more work done at home than at work :/ )  Well, so be it; when the going gets tough, the tough get blogging!

BTW, yeah, today is a rest day in the Tour de France, no updates...  Cadel Evans is enjoying his, pretty in yellow, while Lance is not enjoying his, with his bid to win ended...  Stay tuned as tomorrow is another *real* mountain stage...

the perils of increasing financial illiteracyJames Surowiecki pounds the nail through the wood on this one: Greater Fools.  "Financial illiteracy isn’t new, but the consequences have become more severe, because people now have to take so much responsibility for their financial lives.  The difference between knowing a little about your finances and knowing nothing can amount to hundreds of thousands of dollars over a lifetime.  And, as the past ten years have shown us, the cost to society can be far greater than that."

I love this: Jeff Bezos 2010 commencement speech at Princeton: "We are what we choose".  Very thought provoking.  And more than a little scary...

Powerline: The World is Full of Bad Jokes, "But the worst joke of all is the United Nations."  Sadly it isn't even funny...

Scott "Dilbert" Adams commenting on the iPad: The Amazingness of Instant.  I'm not sure I think the iPad is so amazing, but I am sure his point is well taken: "instant" is a compelling value that makes things qualitatively different.

Google's App Inventor - coding for Android without, um, codingSo here's something interesting: Google have announced App Inventor, a tool to enable "anyone" to create Android Apps.  Interesting!  John Gruber wonders "so has Google beaten Apple in the race for a Hypercard for mobile", while Jason Kincaid takes App Inventor for a spin ("while I’m very excited about it, this is not going to be a walk in the park for 'ordinary people'. ").

Excellent: Full immersion in the Cyberworld is coming; "People will separate themselves from the physical world and adopt lives of virtualization."  I absolutely believe this.  In fact, it may have already happened :)  BTW am reading William Gibson's All Tomorrow's Parties, in which this is foretold...

This is truly horrible: Pathology "code injection".  Don't say I didn't warn you :)

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