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<dateCreated>Tue, 15 Dec 2009 01:50:58 GMT</dateCreated>
<dateModified>Tue, 15 Dec 2009 22:01:46 GMT</dateModified>
<ownerName>Tom Morris</ownerName>
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<body><outline text="&lt;a href= &quot;http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2009/12/09/maddow/index.html&quot;&gt; Glenn Greenwald&lt;/a&gt; is exactly right about the rhetorical community known as American news. Really, what he said." created="Tue, 15 Dec 2009 22:01:46 GMT"/><outline text="Pious fraud and diploma mill owner &lt;a href= &quot;http://www.fox23.com/news/local/story/Oral-Roberts-Dead-At-91/-Vh1jSScYEKP10HTSjZrqA.cspx&quot;&gt; Oral Roberts is dead&lt;/a&gt;. How long until we get a &lt;a href= &quot;http://www.slate.com/id/2166337/fr/flyout&quot;&gt;Hitchens rant&lt;/a&gt; about Roberts? Hitchens will be exactly right: there will be huge amounts of pious bullshit about what a wonderful man Roberts is, despite the fact that quite blatantly isn't." created="Tue, 15 Dec 2009 22:00:27 GMT"/><outline text="&lt;a href= &quot;http://monty-says.blogspot.com/2009/12/help-saving-mysql.html&quot;&gt;MySQL users&lt;/a&gt; have a campaign going to try and push the European Commission to save MySQL from being sliced, diced and otherwise buggered around with by Oracle. I find there is a much simpler solution: use &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.postgresql.org/&quot;&gt;PostgreSQL&lt;/a&gt;. Seriously. Transaction-safe MVCC with decent validation and constraints support, foreign key support and so on. Really, I got into PostgreSQL recently and it just kicks arse. There's another thing though: MySQL is an open source product, while PostgreSQL is an open source &lt;em&gt;project&lt;/em&gt;. The project is run by the community, not by Oracle. The development process is driven by what the community needs and wants rather than what the corporate overlord wants. This is a good thing." created="Tue, 15 Dec 2009 21:01:19 GMT"/><outline text="Take a dose of the &lt;a href= &quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning-Kruger_effect&quot;&gt;Dunning-Kruger effect&lt;/a&gt; and wash it down with some &lt;a href= &quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depressive_realism&quot;&gt;depressive realism&lt;/a&gt;. Your happy-clappy positive thinking should be gone by the morning." created="Tue, 15 Dec 2009 05:41:10 GMT"/><outline text="&lt;a href= &quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qySx8tSs8BQ&amp;amp;feature=player_embedded&quot;&gt; Deepak Chopra&lt;/a&gt; gets caught in a Socratic trap: &quot;You stated before that all belief is a cover up for insecurity - right?&quot; (Chopra makes an affirmative noise.) &quot;You believe that?&quot; &quot;Yes.&quot; &quot;Thank you.&quot; Perfect. This is why the Symposium needs to be taught to every teenager!" created="Tue, 15 Dec 2009 04:47:36 GMT"/><outline text="&lt;a href= &quot;http://atheistexperience.blogspot.com/2009/12/okay-so-now-that-were-all-agreed-we.html&quot;&gt; This post&lt;/a&gt; about Kent Hovind's hilarious dissertation can be summarised thusly: it's not &lt;em&gt;ad hominem&lt;/em&gt; to call someone an idiot if they &lt;em&gt;actually&lt;/em&gt; are an idiot." created="Tue, 15 Dec 2009 03:53:40 GMT"/><outline text="&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.godscartoonist.com/&quot;&gt;God's Cartoonist&lt;/a&gt; is a movie about Jack T. Chick and the Chick tracts. Go watch the trailer. It even includes some Kent Hovind. (Via &lt;a href= &quot;http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2009/12/why_havent_i_seen_this_before.php&quot;&gt; PZ Myers&lt;/a&gt;)" created="Tue, 15 Dec 2009 03:39:06 GMT"/><outline text="&lt;a href= &quot;http://gawker.com/5425962/aint-no-party-like-a-skull--bones-party&quot;&gt; Gawker&lt;/a&gt; have nabbed the pictures from a Skull and Bones party from a now public Facebook profile. That's the secret society at Yale that Bush Sr., Bush Jr., John Kerry and Montogomery Burns (of &lt;cite&gt;The Simpsons&lt;/cite&gt;) are all members of. As various people have said, they look so normal. Damn it. Shady Illuminati conspiracy theories don't work if you just blab about it on &lt;em&gt;Facebook&lt;/em&gt;..." created="Tue, 15 Dec 2009 01:27:55 GMT"/><outline text="&lt;a href=&quot;http://twitter.com/Eastmad/status/6678570099&quot;&gt;David&lt;/a&gt; pointed me to &lt;a href= &quot;http://thenetworkeffect.blogspot.com/2008/09/10-laws-of-cloudonomics.html&quot;&gt; The 10 Laws of Cloudonomics&lt;/a&gt;. It's too good not to repost. You probably didn't think that Newtonian physics had much to do with cloud computing, did you? Well, you aren't thinking like a Cloud Computing &lt;a href=&quot;http://tommorris.org/wiki/Geek_Gurus&quot;&gt;Guru&lt;/a&gt;. The important thing in coming up with these things is that they are unique or - what's the word - &lt;em&gt;disruptive&lt;/em&gt;. Doesn't matter if they aren't true or grounded in reality or whatever. As &lt;a href= &quot;http://www.butterfliesandwheels.com/articleprint.php?num=13&quot;&gt;Daniel Dennett&lt;/a&gt; put it: &lt;q&gt;Every self-respecting literary theorist had to sport an epistemology that season, it seems, and without one he felt naked, so he had come to me for an epistemology to wear [...] It didn't matter to him that it be sound, or defensible, or (as one might as well say) &lt;em&gt;true&lt;/em&gt;; it just had to be new and different and stylish.&lt;/q&gt;" created="Tue, 15 Dec 2009 00:50:58 GMT"/>
<outline text="Why your American friends are going to remain sick" created="Tue, 15 Dec 2009 02:52:53 GMT"><outline text="Meet Joe Lieberman." created="Tue, 15 Dec 2009 02:52:53 GMT"/><outline text="&lt;img src=&quot;http://tommorris.org/files/lieberman.jpg&quot; alt= &quot;Photo of Joe Lieberman&quot; /&gt;" created="Tue, 15 Dec 2009 02:52:53 GMT"/><outline text="He's a &lt;a href= &quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Lieberman&quot;&gt;corporate sell-out whore&lt;/a&gt;." created="Tue, 15 Dec 2009 02:52:53 GMT"/><outline text="Joe is the reason why your American friends lack healthcare. Well, not the only reason. The Democrats have been a bunch of losers and fretted endlessly over Joe's opinions, rather than over the opinions of the people at large. In return, Joe has made over nine hundred thousand dollars from the health insurance lobby." created="Tue, 15 Dec 2009 02:52:53 GMT"/><outline text="It really is this simple: people like Joe are the reason all of our friends and colleagues in America get so worried about healthcare. Here, of course, you just register with a doctor and if you get sick, you go and get some medications. And we pay about a 1 or 2 percent extra in tax over what the Americans pay." created="Tue, 15 Dec 2009 02:52:53 GMT"/><outline text="Do spread the meme. Joe is a cheap whore used by the big health insurance companies to deny all of our friends in America a healthcare system based on the principles of justice, fairness and equality, rather than corporate racketering." created="Tue, 15 Dec 2009 02:52:53 GMT"/><outline text="If only the United States had elected the Democrats..." created="Tue, 15 Dec 2009 02:52:53 GMT"/></outline><outline text="I dream of a world without sordid tales" created="Tue, 15 Dec 2009 08:05:09 GMT"><outline text="&lt;a href= &quot;http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/11/25/AR2009112502870.html&quot;&gt; Jonathan Yardley&lt;/a&gt;: &lt;q&gt;What the memoir boom has in fact given us is too many dull or forgettable memoirs, precious few of which have enriched our literature but most of which have simply encouraged the narcissism of their authors.&lt;/q&gt;" created="Tue, 15 Dec 2009 08:05:09 GMT"/><outline text="I think I may have only read three memoirs recently. I read Richard Branson's &lt;cite&gt;Losing My Virginity&lt;/cite&gt; a while back, as well as the autobiography of the former Master of the Rolls, Lord Denning. More recently, I read Colin McGinn's autobiography &lt;cite&gt;Making of a Philosopher&lt;/cite&gt;. I particularly enjoyed McGinn's autobiography as he described the very ordinary and mundane process that often leads one into academic philosophy - but obviously, once you've made that choice, you have to grow intellectually. It's interesting, of course, but there are no sordid confessional tales of drunken debauchery. No Freudian retellings of childhood trauma. All quite refreshing, if not &lt;em&gt;personally empowering&lt;/em&gt; - but since when was that part of the requirements? Your life doesn't have to empower me." created="Tue, 15 Dec 2009 08:05:09 GMT"/><outline text="The sordid and therapeutic part of autobiographies is extremely off-putting. Quite why people feel the need to share their personal shortcomings with the world in some sort of bizarre cleansing ritual, I do not know. This is one thing that religion gave people: at least they'd keep their confessions between themselves and God, or rather with the priest. Now they get shared with everyone for profit. It's really quite dull. Why do we never get to read, oh, a Big Brother contestant's &lt;em&gt;intellectual&lt;/em&gt; autobiography? Where they go on and say that they were on the show then realised that it might be more fun to go and become a physicist or an art historian. Tell me what you &lt;em&gt;think&lt;/em&gt; and how you see the world, not about your latest run-in with the paparazzi or your latest drug relapse." created="Tue, 15 Dec 2009 08:05:09 GMT"/><outline text="Unfortunately, for that to happen, the subjects of the autobiographies may actually have to become famous for doing something rather than being famous for being famous (remember Beavis and Butthead's brilliant example of a circular argument: &quot;Hey Butt-head, how come Tom Petty is famous?&quot; &quot;Because he's on TV, dumbass.&quot; &quot;Yeah, but like... how did he get on TV?&quot; &quot;Uh... because he's famous.&quot; &quot;Yeah, but, I mean, like, how did he get famous?&quot; &quot;He got famous because he's on TV.&quot; &quot;YEAH, YEAH, BUT HOW DID HE GET ON TV?&quot; &quot;Because he's famous, Beavis! Now shut up before I smack the bejesus out of you!&quot;). The tawdry tell-all autobiography is the grease that keeps the celebrity machine working. Quite how we solve this, I do not know." created="Tue, 15 Dec 2009 08:05:09 GMT"/></outline><outline text="Tweetbites: because soundbites aren't quite short and thoughtless enough" created="Tue, 15 Dec 2009 21:17:22 GMT"><outline text="&lt;a href= &quot;http://mashable.com/2009/12/14/presentations-social-media/&quot;&gt;Olivia Mitchell&lt;/a&gt; on &lt;cite&gt;ReadWriteWeb&lt;/cite&gt;: &lt;q&gt;Make your presentation social media-friendly by expressing each of your main points as a tweetbite.&lt;/q&gt; &lt;q&gt;Ensure your tweetbites are easily retweetable by allowing space for your username.&lt;/q&gt;" created="Tue, 15 Dec 2009 21:17:22 GMT"/><outline text="So, that's 140 characters, minus 14 ('RT @tommorris '). That's the latest advice: make sure your main points can fit into about 135 characters or less (so the RT @someone RT @someoneelse RT @anotherperson chain can build up). That seems like dangerous advice. Why not encourage people to try and have more complicated thoughts, and not worry too much about whether or not it gets much attention on social media services? Excessive simplification is fine for goofy business seminars about empowering your buzzword compliance. But the rest of the world is rather more complicated than your groundbreaking productivity and business success system..." created="Tue, 15 Dec 2009 21:17:22 GMT"/><outline text="Instead of worrying about Twitter, worry about content. If your content sucks, all the Twittering won't make it better. And if your content is awesome, you don't need to engage in social media whoring to make it good, because it already is." created="Tue, 15 Dec 2009 21:17:22 GMT"/></outline></body>
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