Stupidity

Are Publishers Insane?

March 29, 2012
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I love reading books. My house is littered with thousands of them. And to me the Kindle is a godsend in that I can have, in my hand, thousands of books and read whatever I feel like whenever and wherever I want. I can travel with the Kindle and ensure that if I’m not in the mood for a given book in a second or two I can start in on another. It’s made packing for a trip that much easier: just pack the Kindle and have all my books. Yet publishers, well some publishers, seem to hate the Kindle. I’ve seen books I’ve been interested in buying priced at or above! the price of the Kindle version by publishers. What the hell is going through their brains? If the hardcover is $18.70 why is the Kindle version $18.67? What this has done to me is that I simply will not buy books from any publisher that does that. I will buy from those that price the Kindle version fairly from $3 – 13, depending on a variety of factors that I can live with. But I won’t buy an electronic copy of a book for the price I can

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Why I Have Serious Problems With Some Atheists

March 27, 2012
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Why I Have Serious Problems With Some Atheists

This is not a rant against some of my atheist friends who are thoughtful and willing to think deeply beyond the limitations of science. This is directed at certain “new atheists” who, to me, espouse infantile arguments and show utter contempt and intolerance to any views but their own. I have simply grown weary of dealing with the inanities of folks of Dawkins’ ilk and his myriad half-witted followers. Individuals who believe that you should look solely to nature and the physical laws and that nothing beyond said laws require any rumination. One must simply draw a line at some imaginary point in the past and say that everything forward from there is understandable and that’s all that needs to be understood. But what of before that point? No one, not Dawkins, not Hawking, not anyone that I know of in science can explain why there is something instead of nothing. Not even books that use “nothing” and “something” in their titles and proclaim to be “science” books explain it. They always fall back upon materialism, upon physical “things” to explain why there is something. But they fail miserably when trying to explain why those physical things even exist or

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The insanity of “shareholder value”

December 29, 2011
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I’ve been saying this for years. Many times those with “MBAs” have told me I’m wrong. Yet, deep down, I knew something was remiss. Something was just absolutely, 100% wrong. Why? Because it made no sense to have a company focus on guessing what their balance sheet was going to look like a year from now when every person I know would not be able to hit a personal target within 1% if they tried. Life just has too many variables. And the total focus on guessing is detrimental, as I’ve personally experienced in certain large firms where senior executives run around “managing expectations” as opposed to pleasing the customer. The irony is that there’s this insane hire/fire mentality that goes with it, removing talent and thus impacting long-term viability. It’s simply maddening. One of the things I liked about Steve Jobs was his total disregard for Wall Street. He focused on pleasing his customers and proved that an insane focus on the consumer was all that really mattered. The pity is that so few have comprehended this fact even while they try to “replicate” Jobs’ success. I’m hoping well abandon the “dumbest idea in the world”, as Welch puts

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Stupid found between chair and keyboard

December 21, 2011
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It seems there’s a lot of “stupid” going about nowadays. No idea if it’s the internet that’s just giving people more voice or if stupid is just becoming more common. Like many people I get a lot of my news online. Thus, I get to read it at my computer and, if something is interesting, save it. I read from various sources, conservative, liberal and neutral alike. It’s best to stay as best informed as possible so as to minimize the likelihood of exacerbating any given bias. But it seems some people are just incapable of doing that. They cling to sites that expound their personal biases. Some of the beliefs are mistaken but harmless, but others are harmful. And the problem is that people with a similar attitude then read the associated articles, sometimes purported to be “news”, thus reinforcing their prejudices or non-scientific beliefs. And because of some of these misguided beliefs people have died — such as those unwilling to take common vaccines, for example. Again, I don’t know the cause — poor education, the long-standing glorification of the idiot, the hate for anyone intelligent, … who knows. But what I do see is that these idiots

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Stupidity Truly Knows No Bounds

December 5, 2011
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I’ve been reading about the Chevrolet Volt fire risk the last few days. It seems to me to be the perfect arbiter of intelligence. If you figure the Volt’s risk is high and you’re utterly panicked by the potential of the battery catching fire, you’re an utter moron. The rest of you can continue on with your day. Why do I claim those worrying about the battery are morons? Simple, really. Each test done wherein a fire, sparking or smoke emerged from the battery pack happened many hours, days or even weeks after the crash. The most recent tests performed by the NHTSA and GM have been done on the battery packs by themselves, wherein they have done some very serious damage to them and then waited to see if something amiss happens. It took months of testing before they could replicate a scenario wherein hours, days or weeks later the pack would ignite. To appreciate the type of damage that is being applied to the packs you must read the original NHTSA report wherein they say the car must suffer a serious side impact followed by an impact into a low diameter object, like a rigid pole, followed by

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Praying Instead of Doing

August 7, 2011
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I’ve no problem with prayer. I have no problem with those of faith — so long as they leave those who don’t believe as they do alone. What I do have a problem with is when people fall back on prayer as the means to an end instead of getting off their sorry asses and doing something about the predicament they’re in. With the financial/economic fiasco in the US I had hoped to hear concrete solutions to solving their problems, along the lines of what Chretien and Martin did in the mid-90s here in Canada. Namely, raise taxes and cut spending while also shoring up various social programs that are necessary. That pain we went through in the 90s has done us well. Sadly, we should have sucked up the pain a bit more and dropped the entire set of surpluses onto the debt. From 199x to 2009 we were in surplus. Had we dumped those surpluses onto the debt we’d be so much better off. I just wish people would realize that paying off the debt is equivalent to a huge future tax cut. The sooner we get rid of the debt the sooner we get all that money

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High beams, dim bulbs

November 22, 2010
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What is it with some people who drive around in the city with their high beams on? Even when you try to tell them politely that they have their high beams they look at you like you’re either daft or trying to kill them. Well, maybe at least one dim bulb out there will read this and ensure their high beams aren’t on when they drive around at night. And, if someone flashes their highs at you, that means YOU HAVE YOUR HIGH BEAMS ON!!! The only ones worse than these idiots are the ones who replace their own headlights when the bulb burns out and then aim them up at the sky or, worse, right into the next car. And since so many cars have little levels on their lights I can only assume these geniuses are doing this on an inclined drive way, with the nose facing downhill. Why are these clowns worse? Well, there’s no way they can adjust their lights until they stop and flashing at them does no good. Plus, because they’re “handy” they doubt they’ve done anything wrong. Honestly, the calibre of driver is going down and down. No wonder there are so many

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Factorial … Fibonacci … ugh

November 8, 2010
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Some may have noticed I coded factorial and called it Fibonacci. That’s courtesy of being sick when I wrote that article. I guess being sick and lucid don’t tend to go together. I’m doing better today and I immediately noticed the mistake. Duh. That’ll teach me for coding while sick…

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Creationists drive me nuts

November 1, 2010
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As I sit here in excruciating pain courtesy of yet another kidney stone I can’t help but think how genetics and evolution provided me with this “joyful” condition. Which makes me think of idiotic creationists who think God went about the planet a few thousand years ago going “Horse. Pig. Donkey. …” Insanity. Why creationists believe in such an animist god is beyond me. A god who is stupider than I am is irreconcilable with either my faith or intelligence. And that’s one of those things I simply cannot figure out. Why do so many people believe in a god who is dumber than many people are? Is it the comfort that comes from believing someone created everything as it is as opposed to someone who was intelligent enough to create the fundamental algorithms of the universe that would result in the beauty we see everywhere, from the smallest of the small to the immensity of the universe itself. Is it so hard to comprehend that it is much more wonderful to believe that God created a universe based on mathematics, that behaves in comprehensible ways that we, as humans, could comprehend given time? Is it not more wonderful to

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What is it with some drivers?

October 24, 2010
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Maybe it’s just me getting older, but I’ve been finding that drivers are getting worse and worse. A few simple examples will easily suffice. Today, driving around town, I was trying to get into the right hand lane. The asshole beside me would repeatedly slow down and speed up, thereby ensuring I couldn’t move over. I finally got past him but it was a frustration I don’t need. Then, driving home I was blinded at a stop light by some idiot with their high beams on. I flashed them to see if they’d take the hint. Nothing. Too oblivious to notice. This goes along with what happened the other day. While I was driving I noticed the car ahead of me had a flat tire. At the next light I pulled up beside the driver and honked to get his attention. He looked around in all directions but mine. I could tell he was trying NOT to make eye contact with me. Maybe he thought I was pissed off with something he’d done — he was driving fine except for the flat — when all I wanted to do was tell him his car had a flat. Argh. And then

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Musings

A blog of my musings. Some folks find it interesting and so I continue. Hopefully it will remain fairly interesting. At worst, it'll keep me writing orthogonally to my day job.

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