Reputation needing a Defender?

The Internet, or as some of us like to call it, the Intertron, is an interesting environment chock full of nuts. Not just macadamia and almond, but all varieties. You know what I mean.

I was browsing a lot of very highly regarded SEO sites the other day. They were sites that are respected and well-known in the search engine community. Most of these sites are featuring leaders in the field. That sort of thing. You have to know that they are good.

You see, search engine optimization and realistic performance are something that have always been of interest to me. But now, I have had recent experiences that have made me interested in the wider subject of identity protection.

I recently lost my wallet while i was down enjoying Galaga t the mall in the arcade. I guess I got a little too animated in either that game of Pac-man, and I was gyrating around wildly. It happens to me sometimes, I get out there. I was imagining I was riding a horse in the woods, by a beach. Man, it was sweet.

Anyway, I found out my wallet was gone when the police called me. They were down at Pac-Sun with it; apparently a kid had been confronted with passing it off as his own and had run out when they didn't print a receipt out right away.

Well, after I got my license back I went and looked at identity theft firms on the ol' Intertron. The first one I found was this company, ReputationDefender (I think they're the same firm as "Reputation Defender" -- there appears to be a European arm?), and they seem pretty legit. I notice a lot of good press about them, and the usual group of detractors, as well. From what I can gather, ReputationDefender (or Reputation Defender, if you prefer) is a pretty good service. For a pretty nominal fee they go on the 'net and root out all your information from the dark little corners. Seems worthwhile to me.

Of course, I could do a lot of this myself, or at least the non-technical portions, but I could also slaughter my own cows for beef steak. But that's not gonna happen!

BIkes With One Gear? No Gears?

So I was in the city this weekend and as I was crossing the street I was almost run over by this messenger guy who was traveling WAY to fast against traffic. Anyway, after cursing him under my breath and making sure I wasn't missing any appendages, I noticed something about the bike he was on: it had no gears!

What's up with this? Has the recession gotten so bad that we no longer can afford gears for our bicycles? I went home and did some research on the matter, and as it turns out these types of bikes are very popular (especially in my area). Who knew?

To break it down for you:

1. Bike
2. Cog (this is the "gear")
2. Chain

That's about it.

Thoughts on poverty

The above image is of the Irish potato famine. While I am NOT that poor, it is worth noting that I am pretty impoverished.

Which is weird, because I have a decent job. I mean, I have insurance, I get paid a reasonable sum (I suppose), and I live frugally, yet I am constantly scraping and surviving. What gives?

I noticed that I got a HUGE chunk of my check eaten up by taxes recently. Damn you, Iraq war. Damn you all to hell! Actually, damn you income taxes. Well, I'm not completely against income taxes. I like roads and infrastructure. I like public safety measures. I just wish I could eat something other than ramen for once! (My stomach hurts as I write that)

How does the internet deal wiht poverty? Not very well, I would venture to guess. For one, poor people don't generally have access to the Internet to begin with. They most likely don't have computers, so the idea of the Internet is kind of moot to them, I imagine. And as bad as it might sound, I DO have a laptop at home, and an internet connection (thank you upstairs neighbors with the unlocked WiFi signal!), so I'm not doing all that bad. It's these little comparisons that make me feel better about my situation.

You know what I wish? I wish we still had a prairie, a frontier. I wish we had free land open to any individuals that were willing and able to work their asses off to cultivate it. In that way, the Internet is kind of frontier-y. Except that you can't make a house on the Internet (yet).

Of Legos and genius

Did you play with Legos as a kid? I know I did. While much of my youth may have been unique (to the point of weirdness) I don't think I was alone in this endeavor. Furthermore, I am buoyed by the fact that there are SO many videos on the 'net in which LEGOs take a starring role. Enjoy:

Michael McDonald for President!

Michael McDonald is terminally cool. I mean, look at that beard ... look at that penetrating gaze, My gawd, jsut looking at this pciture now I am entranced. Can't ... keep ... typing ... must ... fight ... on ...

OK, the spell was broken. Yikes. Got a little intense there for a moment.

Anyway, I would like to see Michael McDonald run for president. Seriously. Why not? If the White House gets a phone call at 3am in the morning, I want the person who picks up the line to have a sultry voice that's smoother than butter on a greased door knob. I also want them to have facial hair that's the envy of men the world over, Sikhs, Amish and Orthodox Jews excluded.

I think that his extensive touring schedule has more than adequately prepared him for the busy Presidential travel schedule, and that performing in front of thousands of fans has made him great under pressure. A real clutch performer and cool head (literally, I'm sure).

Join me in supporting Michael McDonald for President in 2008!

Disappearing

I was listening to NPS today and they had a piece on a girl whose parents were "disappeared" (read: dropped out of helicopter into the Atlantic Ocean) by a South American military regime when she was just a little baby. As fate would have it, she was then adopted by a family that had close ties to the ruling military class. They held onto her and raised her as their own, never telling her who she really was.

Flash forward 22 years, and here come the girl's real life grandparents. They find her, they tell her who they are, and thus, who she is. Chaos ensues. Now the girl is suing and it's opening a whole can of worms, because the problem is now being recognized an unintended consequence of mass scale political whitewashing. Who could have foreseen?

Baseball Season

Baseball season is upon us. I can't wait. As much as I am a true geek and love the internet, I love baseball almost just as much. You see, I love math at the heart of things. Baseball, not many people know this, truly runs on math. Chaos theory and statistics, specifically.

What is chaos theory? In a nutshell, chaos theory is the art of taking disordered information (chaos) and finding the underlying order in that data. As anyone who has ever watched a baseball game with a die-hard fan will tell you, baseball is the perfect game for this discipline. Some teams, in fact, have utilized chaos theory to refine their approaches to play beyond the traditional athletic sectors. Oh, by the way, the Goldblum pic is from Jurassic Park, where he talk at length about Chaos Theory while trying not become raptor food. I hate having to explain that, but I realize that I'm a little esoteric sometimes.

For a more cogent look at this topic of statistics, I point you back to another fave program of mine, NPR. Stats are probably the most visible side of baseball. You hear them every time someone brings up the game. ERAs, IPs, Avgs., OB percents. All these things and many more are the metrics that people use to determine if a team/player is good in comparison to others in the league. It's a little cold and calculating, but it works. 

A Lobotomy Is Not For Me

I have always heard about the gruesome act known as a lobotomy. I've also seen the depictions in various films, notably the Nicholson film One Flew Over The Cuckoos Nest. Just the thought of it now makes me shiver. Something about the word "ice pick" and the brain doesn't jive with me (but, did you know that there are other methods of lobotomy? Still makes me shake ...). And then, the actual procedure wherein they shove the "ice pick" into your brain on top of your eye. Eeek.

From Wikipedia:

Freeman decided to access the frontal lobes through the eye sockets, instead of through drilled holes in the scalp. In 1945, he took an icepick from his own kitchen and began to test the new surgical technique on cadavers. The technique was called "transorbital lobotomy," and it involved lifting the upper eyelid and placing the point of a thin surgical instrument (often called a leucotome or orbitoclast) under the eyelid and against the top of the eyesocket. A hammer or mallet was then used to drive the leucotome through the thin layer of bone and into the brain. The leucotome was then moved from side to side, to sever the nerve fibers connecting the frontal lobes to the thalamus. In selected patients, the butt of the leucotome was pulled upward, sending the tip farther back into the brain and producing a "deep frontal cut," a more radical form of lobotomy. The leucotome was then withdrawn, and the procedure was repeated on the other side. Walter Freeman first performed a transorbital lobotomy on a live patient in 1946. This new form of psychosurgery was intended for use in State mental hospitals that often did not have the facilities for anesthesia, so Freeman suggested using electroconvulsive therapy to render the patient unconscious.

Well, NPR has recently put together a story they call "My lobotomy". This is the account of one man who underwent such a procedure in the 1960s. The story is fascinating, and it really makes you think about medical science and doctors in general.

Shocking Death

I know that everyone will die, me among them. I don't mean that I will die when everyone else does, but rather that we all die. That I'm not immortal, and I know this. Jeez, what do you take me for? Some sort of weirdo?

Anyway, when I die I can only hope that I don't end up like this poor guy. You see, dying is one thing. Again, we all have to do it. One way or the other. Problem is, the only pic (apparently) they saw fit to print of him post mortem was him throwin' up the shocker.

Not a very distinguished way to be remembered.

Raising Chickens Online?

I was browsing around the 'net looking for an intersection of two things I love: poultry and technology. While there are all sorts of chicken breeding items out there taking advantage of all the newest technology you can think of, there is only one IP Chicken.

Astute internet surfers will also recall the Subservient chicken. While I enjoy this site and its use of Web 2.0 principles, I don't like Burger King that much.

Don't Clown With Me!

I'm a big fan of America. I love this country and the fact that it gave birth to the Internet is just proof that we're teh best country on the planet. Although February and President's Day is long gone now, I found this interesting pic of Thomas Jefferson, the 3rd President of The United STates.

I don't know who got it in their head to photoshop a clown and our former Commander In Chief, but they did a good job. The real question is: what are they trying to say, if anything at all? Are they mocking the position he held? Are they lampooning the man himself? Is this a criticism of the American system of government in general? I'll leave you to your own decisions in this matter.

My Take On The Candidates

There are a lot of options out there for the American voter in 2008. I don't know who I'll vote for, I don't know who you'll vote for, but one candidate that is a true dark horse in this campaign is Cthulhu. You might nit recognize Cthulhu at first. He's been sleeping for quite some time. Which is a good thing, because if he had been alive he would have been eating men's (and women's) souls, and generally causing a bad time for everyone.

But now he's back, and he wants your vote. While other candidates will simply get on a stump and tell you what you want to hear, leaving you guessing as to their real intentions, Cthulhu is up front and candid. He is an elder god, from the lovely city of R'lyeh, located in the South Pacific ocean, and he wants to wreak utter evil havoc on man (and woman) kind. Can you handle the honesty?

Thomas Jefferson Was A Super Computer

Did you know that Thomas Jefferson, third president of the United States was a super computer? Don't believe me? Well, apparently you didn't know that Mr. Jefferson was known as a "polymath" , AKA super genius. A quick run down of his write up on the ever-so-knowing Wikipedia reveals:

As a political philosopher, Jefferson was a man of the Enlightenment and knew many intellectual leaders in Britain and France. He idealized the independent yeoman farmer as exemplar of republican virtues, distrusted cities and financiers, and favored states' rights and a strictly limited federal government. Jefferson supported the separation of church and state and was the author of the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom (1779, 1786). He was the eponym of Jeffersonian democracy and the co-founder and leader of the Democratic-Republican Party, which dominated American politics for a quarter-century. Jefferson served as the wartime Governor of Virginia (1779–1781), first United States Secretary of State (1789–1793) and second Vice President (1797–1801).

A polymath, Jefferson achieved distinction as, among other things, a horticulturist, statesman, architect, archaeologist, paleontologist, author, inventor and founder of the University of Virginia. When President John F. Kennedy welcomed forty-nine Nobel Prize winners to the White House in 1962 he said, "I think this is the most extraordinary collection of talent and of human knowledge that has ever been gathered together at the White House — with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone."

Did you catch that? The dude did just about everything you can imagine, a few times over ... just before breakfast. Oh, and he loved to have sex with his slave, Sally Hemings. That's what America is, bad ass contradictions left and right. I love liberty! I hate slavery (but, you know, I have a few slaves that I plan on freeing just as soon as I get out of debt ...)

Prison in the Fils

Has anyone else seen this?



Is it jsut me or does the Filipino prison system seem like a cake walk (literally)?

Long Time, No Post

So it has been ahwile since i posted on this blog. I know, I know, bad blogger! But I'm back now, and that's all taht counts. Shut up, yes it is.

Anyway, I would like to lead the charge, as it were, with this:



RESPECT TEH INTERNETZ!