LJ Adventures, Negatives and Positives, Slinky Linkies

[tcpip]

It has been lax of me, but I should make mention that tau_iota_mu_c stayed a couple of nights a few weeks back and was excellent company. Further, caseopaya and I recently dined with ser_pounce and wolf_in_winter; a great evening and a repeat experience has been booked. Yesterday spent a joyous discussion on basic accounting (and many other things) with splodgenoodles and tenbears. I now have an enormous bag of herbs courtesy of their garden.

Negative side. Current annoying state-owned corporatised service is earning my wrath is Australia Post. They managed to confuse my surname with my firstname and thus the paid postal redirection has been failing. Just as I have several boxes of books coming in from overseas. Annoying to say the least. Other annoyances include a work colleague who's incompetent, abrasive and ambiguous. Thank goodness I have some managerial authority. Anyone good at organising events? An (average) paying job is coming up.

On the positive side, I've put in notice at Borderlands. The loss of income is incidental, the gain of time is really, really good. Also have written an article on our "parliamentarians and councilors education" kit for Prosper Australia, put up the notes from my slides at the AUUG conference on open source economics. Finally, I've put up my presentation on Ray Kurzweil's Age of Spiritual Machines

US admits loss in Baghdad. A working (kind of) invisibility cloak. Can you tell as Sunni from a Shi'a?. What makes women bad at maths? Believing that they are bad at maths (top link of the week award to cheshire_bitten)

Comments

[tau-iota-mu-c.livejournal.com]

I have only had a single letter sent through redirection. I find that hard to believe, given the amount of personally addressed spam I used to get.

I wonder if they are smart enough to equate Tim with Timothy?

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Heh. I've done better then; three thus far - two from the tax office (surprise!) and one from the Search Foundation.

[purrdence.livejournal.com]

I do think attitude plays a large part in how well you learn something. I've too many students, who come in the first day and go "This subject is hard." That's the attitude they carry and don't try and then go "see? I did badly. I told you so."

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Likewise people who believe they can do something are often successful.

It's not a track I'd push to extremes (all the willpower in the world can't transcend natural limits), but rather will is the capacity to engage one's abilities to the fullest extent.

[purrdence.livejournal.com]

This is true. In the same class as the abovementioned self-fulling prophesiors, there are students that have come in with the attitude that they should give it a go and try their best. They may not be the best students, but I've seen a lot of improvement between the start of the year and now and their attitude has assisted a lot.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

It's always a great experience to discover what one is capable of. And a sobering one to discover limitations (and a wise one to acknowledge them).

This said, within the field of IT I love professing my limitations. It means I can ask someone else who does know.

US admits loss

[gamoonbat.livejournal.com]

I added you as a friend after reading your posts to angel80. What is lost on some American newsfolk and apparently most of the foreign press, is the understanding that George W. Bush and the American right wing have of the "lessons of Vietnam." According to their interpretation, we were winning the Vietnam War when Tet occurred and would have kept winning if the press had not been duped and convinced the American people to turn against our military. So what the interview really shows is not that the president is admitting defeat but that he is entirely out of touch both with current events and with history. While I think he is in fact fairly intelligent, he has very strong, simple ideas formed by staying within a very small circle of extreme right wing thought.

Re: US admits loss

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

I added you as a friend after reading your posts to [info]angel80.

I thought as much :-)

So what the interview really shows is not that the president is admitting defeat but that he is entirely out of touch both with current events and with history.

I rather suspect it was the press responding in kind... After all, if he's going to cast aspersions that "in reality" the media caused the US to lose the war in Viet Nam and "in reality" the media is causing the US to lose in the war in Iraq "just like Tet", the media is going to respond with a big "O RLY?".

Like Hannah Arendt's great study of the Pentagon Papers which I referred to many times in this journal at the start of the invasion, the extraordinary thing is that there seems to be a hefty section of the right wing establishment who believe they can win a foreign war by manipulating domestic public opinion.

(Mind you there's probably a section of the domestic left that thinks that can cause the invading forces to lose by the same strategy).


While I think he is in fact fairly intelligent, he has very strong, simple ideas formed by staying within a very small circle of extreme right wing thought.


I have been criticised for suggesting in the past that he's not as dumb as he makes out, just suffering from mental tunnel-vision.


Although there is evidence that George Bush really does live in a parallel reality. Where February has 30 days and half of 412 is 248.

http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2006/10/the_bush_admini.html

Re: US admits loss

[tau-iota-mu-c.livejournal.com]

He's not completely stupid. Apparently the guy's likely to have an IQ between 115 and 125.

[evil-genius.livejournal.com]

http://community.livejournal.com/libertarianism/1809474.html?thread=52565058

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Which is Kurzweil's problem. The ongoing statistical correlation between computational power over time isn't a truth in itself, but may underlie something else. One is tempted to say industry effort, but that doesn't explain the repeatability backwards.

[beingfrank.livejournal.com]

Charlie has organised events. He might be interested.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

OK, that's interesting. Email me off-journal and we'll talk some more.

[ser-pounce.livejournal.com]

Yes, it was a lovely evening. When are you free for more catching-up goodness? :)

AustraliaPost are useless. How could they mix up your names? It's not like Lafayette is very common first name. :)

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

How about this Friday at our place?

[ser-pounce.livejournal.com]

Friday is bad actually :( How about next week?

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Ummm.. next Monday?

[ser-pounce.livejournal.com]

Yep, sounds good. Time? Location?

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Same place, same time?

[ser-pounce.livejournal.com]

Was it 6pm, Hardware Lane? My memory is bad :)

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Actually there's been a couple of changes, which I'll refer to in my next journal post. Make it 6pm at the giant purse artwork that's on the corner of Elizabeth St and the Bourke St Mall...

[ser-pounce.livejournal.com]

okey dokey :)

[ser-pounce.livejournal.com]

Did you get my SMS?

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Yep; I was just about to contact you having just finished by morning el-jay read :-)

So maybe next week?

[ser-pounce.livejournal.com]

Cool. Yes, next week sounds lovely. :)

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

So, giant purse, 6.30 tonight?

[ser-pounce.livejournal.com]

Ah bugger, I don't think we'll be able to do tonight or this week. We are having a busy busy wedding week this week. So much to do!

Can we put it off to next week? I think we are fine for any day next week. Do you wanna do Monday next week?

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

OK, that's fine by me... See you then instead!

[ser-pounce.livejournal.com]

still on for tonight? Time? Location?

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

6.30pm at the giant purse at Elizabeth and Bourke..

[ser-pounce.livejournal.com]

Excellent! See you then :)