Mr T’s rants and ravings

Since I was a little kid I have been interested in outer space and in the world under the seas. I attended a conference on undersea exploration when I was a high school student. I heard talks about research stations under the seas. I remember thinking we were at the beginning of a great time. But like space exploration we were actually at the peak and going down hill. We’d been to the moon but haven’t been back since. And we haven’t had a lot more undersea exploration since either.
Today I ran across this great talk by Robert Ballard. It’s about 18/19 minutes and well worth your time.

This is just wierd. Click on the models to see a close up of the hair.
I think what bugs me are the looks on the model’s faces. They do not look happy. I’m pretty convinced that smiles make people look a lot more attractive. I suspect that one of the reasons models do not smile is because it might distract people from the hair (in this case) or the clothing. After all a pretty face is a lot more interesting than clothing.

I’m reading a book called Presentation Zen. It is highly regarded, well-reviewed, and recommended by lots of people. So far it’s boring. Now to be fair I am only about 30 pages in to it. But I’m having trouble continuing. Now last night I read a novel of about 360 pages in just over 4 hours so it’s not like I have a reading attention span problem. It’s just that I want more from a book.
I have no doubt that the author gives a great presentation. I really don’t doubt that I can learn a lot from the book. But I wonder if I could learn more faster from listening to the author give a talk on the subject. Just because someone is good at doing something doesn’t mean they are good at writing about it. Different skills are involved. A book is not just a talk written down. There is a different art to telling a story in written form from spoken.
Oh well. I’m going to read the book - its really for work - but I’ll do it is small chunks.
Speaking of books. A good book that is closely related to presentations that gives ideas that work for written work as well as spoken is Made To Stick. That one held my interest and I really learned a lot from it.

A couple of years ago I started taking my shirts to be professionally laundered. Mainly I was trying to avoid having to iron them myself. It gets more expensive every couple of months which is annoying. Still I hate to iron so I pay it.

The other thing is that I started having them use starch. It makes the shirts feel so crisp and clean that I really like it. They are not so stiff as to be uncomfortable but more they feel like shirts right out of the store. They also feel clean longer. At the end of the day they are usually still sharp and crisp looking. It makes me feel more professional. It’s one less thing I need to think about.

I started taking my pants in recently. Not my jeans of course but my khakis and other pants that I wear to work events. Not quite as crisp as starched shirts but still a better job than I can do myself. It’s a bit of luxury.

I’ve never been a real clothing person. I wear what the circumstances call for and I don’t get too hung up on who is wearing what. But I have decided that if a dress shirt is called for having it look as sharp as possible makes me feel good.

BTW if you are interviewing you may want to splurge on having a couple of dress shirts professionally cleaned and pressed. For me it is a confidence boost as much as anything else.

I don’t get this “caffeine keeps you awake” stuff I keep hearing. I just finished a nice warm cup of hot tea (Dunkin Donuts LARGE) which should be enough caffeine to keep one awake right? And yet all I want to do is take a nap. The same thing happened to me the other day.

I don’t drink coffee (yuck!!) but I drink cold beverages with caffeine and they never keep me awake either. Is this a myth or is my system just different?

There are some things you just can’t say. Not because they are not true but because they are just too politically incorrect. I’m worried that we are missing out on solving some problems just because it is unacceptable to speak about them.

Take for example saying the Obama is getting so much attention because he is black or that Clinton is getting so much attention because she is a woman. No no you can’t say those things because saying them implies racism or sexism that we wish know does not exist. But honestly do you really think that the reason Edwards got short changed in the media is because he was not a serious candidate? Of course not. The media decided that a race between a black man and a white woman was more interesting, would sell more, and so they left Edwards out. Is that because the media is racist/sexist or just because they think the public is or is it just because people are more interested in seeing something different? Does it even matter? Probably not but I think that saying race and gender had nothing to do with it is intellectually dishonest.

We are closing discussion that might help make things better in the future.

Or take some people saying that 9-11 was a reaction to things America did in the past. What sort of idiot thinks that Moslem extremists are not pissed off at the US for things we have done? Things like supporting Israel or taking advantage of middle eastern oil or being Christians? Who really deep down when they honestly look at history doesn’t understand that Arab Moslems have reasons that in their mind create justifiable anger at the US? But you can’t say that.

That is not to say that the anger or our actions justify (certainly not to us) the actions of 9-11. That day is clearly not a rational response to most sane people. But to deny that there are other people who see the world differently is, again, intellectually dishonest.

We are closing discussion that might help make things better in the future.

And just so I can get a third strike against me, there is the debates about treatment of boys and girls in schools. There are some who get violently upset if you say that some school environments are much more comfortable for girls than for boys. Heaven forbid that you suggest that boys and girls behave differently, learn differently, or respond to teachers differently. Gasp that is sexist. And yet does anyone really believe that boys and girls are the same? Note that no one is saying better or worse, or right and wrong - just different. Demanding that people close their eyes to gender differences in schools is intellectually dishonest.

We are closing discussion that might help make things better in the future.

Without honest open, no holds bared, no topic exclude, no viewpoint unheard discussion how can real problems be fixed? We can’t just ignore facts just because they make the world look differently than we want it to be. And yet, more and more often, that is just what we are doing.

I have long been dissatisfied with reading/hearing second hand or third hand reports of events. Reading a book review or a movie review is not the same as seeing the movie or reading the book. The same is true of newsworthy events. One of the great wonders and joys of the Internet is the ability to get to the source itself. Of sure not everything but at least a lot of things.

It seems like everyone is talking about Barak Obama’s speech on race in America. Most of the reviews I came across where by fawning fans of the man so it was hard to take them too seriously. But this is the Internet age and so I was easily able to find and watch the speech for myself. And a wonderful speech it was. It almost makes me want to vote for the man.

And then there is reporting on other issues. The one review of yesterday’s testimony on the Washington DC handgun ban I was able to find was by someone who is clearly biased in favor of the ban. It was pretty disrespectful of almost all involved. Fortunately the transcript is available and I was able to spend some time reading it. I learned a good deal in that reading. And frankly the transcript reads a lot more reasonably than the review I read would have suggested. If one needed a reason to distrust the main stream media that would do it.

There is this theory that the Internet will result in a more informed populous. That people will be able to seek out and learn from unbiased reporting or at least be able to get unfiltered reading from both (or more than two) sides of the issues. Or maybe they will go to the source and avoid filters completely. It’s a wonderful theory and I believe it is possible. But I wonder if most people just look to the same old biased sources and get their information pre-digested and pre-filtered. It takes some work to find the sources. It takes a lot more time to read 80-100 pages of testimony than to read a one page summary. People have to really care to put in the time. Just because they can doesn’t mean people will.

We run our world (I’m thinking especially of voting) as though we have an informed population. But do we really? I wonder.

Like a lot of people I am a touch typist. OK not a great one and I have trouble with special characters but still I get  but most of the time. This means a couple of things. One is that I can take notes while watching the people or person who is talking. That seems more polite than looking at the keyboard. And it means that I can type in the dark when I can’t see the keyboard if I want to. (Which I am doing now BTW)  It’s a pretty useful skill to have. And of course it means that I type faster (though not real fast) then I would if I had to look for the keys all the time.

I went to secretarial school to learn to type when I was in middle school. Yes a special school for mostly women to learn office skills that was mostly typing and shorthand. I never learned the shorthand but the typing I learned and that has served me well for years and years. It was weird being a middle school boy in a place like that. I pretty muck just worked because I was not about to talk to all those older women some of whom much have been at least 20!

Now a days people learn to text by touch. That’s just not going to happen for me and I don’t think anyone teachers that. People just learn it. I’m not sure how many people who IM can touch type though. I tend to think that some of the reason for text and IM shorthand is that people just don’t type fast enough. I know that a lot of the conversations I have are with people who use code and still do not type as much real information as I do. That can cause misunderstandings at time.

Does anyone know if middle schools teach typing these days? Or younger? High schools seem to pretty much have dropped it. Somewhere along the line I think that typing should be something people learn though. Maybe not to me a super fast touch typist but at least good enough to write a good essay and keep up with a text based conversation. What do you think?

Once upon a time the only way to get custom licence plates was to know someone with pull in the department that gave out the plates. Today of course most states pick up extra money by selling special plates. In some countries special plates are auctioned off. For example this recent auction in Abu Dhabi where someone spent $14million for a plate with only the number 1 on it. In some countries the number 8 which is thought of as very lucky brings high prices.

I once had a special plate (ACT-2 which are my initials) and it was fun, brought a few comments, but really after a while I didn’t care so much when I got a new car and didn’t transfer the plate. It just didn’t seem worth the money. Perhaps that is because I am not a car person. My car is not a part of my identity to me.

In more recent years I have also developed a philosophical disagreement with the very idea of licence plates (and to some extent driver’s licenses) on cars. It seems like a violation of my privacy to be forced to where identification on my car. Now I wear a badge at work but that is a private agreement with a private company. Having the government force me to have, let alone wear (in a sense) identification just for government use seems invasive. Of course I understand the rationalization for the rules. They are pretty much the same as those for searching a house without a warrant though aren’t they? And we don’t allow that!

Now I am not ready to make a Federal case over it and I suspect I would lose if I tried but more and more it just bugs me.

I have been looking at this card shuffler online. It’s a little pricey at around $500 but compared to the casino grade ones which go for around $17,000 it looks like a good deal. Yes, you can get cheap card shufflers for around $10-15 but they’re really not worth it. Trust me is is pretty much easier to shuffle by hand than use one of them. I’ve got one of those an it’s too much trouble to use.

So anyway, the $500 shuffler comes with added value! That’s right! You guessed it - it comes with two decks of cards. Now who in their right mind would spend $500 for a card shuffler and not already have a good collection of playing cards? I guess there is an off chance that someone might get one of these and not have a deck of cards to try it with but really that is a stretch.

I’ve gotten things (a carrying case with chips in it for example) that came with *bonus* two decks of playing cards before and those cards get put right to the side. Bah, big bonus.

I think it is about the appearance of giving something extra combined with perhaps some advertising for the company that makes the cards. Anyone have any other examples?