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Wisdom Given. Wisdom Received.

Practical wisdom is something that is sorely missing in our modern society. Those that are morally right are yelled down by those who don't understand what moral right means.

You do not have the right to be "not offended, ever."

Somewhere along the way wisdom and respect were set aside.

Wisdom to discern the difference of when and how to be flexible. Not the faux wisdom afforded by a facade of power.

True respect that comes from understanding. Not the faux respect, again, afforded by a facade of power.

We hate principled wisdom because we believe it hinders our choices and limits our capabilities. In all honesty wisdom and being virtuous allows a great many freedoms once one gets past the fear of being 'sans armor', to turn an odd phrase. We wrap our selves in disillusionment and lies, our armor, to insulate ourselves from one another. However, throwing all of that away means not having to worry about the perception others have of the fashion of our cloak of lies and misdirections. Lying is hard work, we just don't realize it and therefore rail against those we would consider virtuous.

Wisdom is tough, and our society needs a healthy dose. Are you willing to do what is necessary to make the society you and I live in a more wise place? I should hope so.

The Cult of Done Manifesto

From Bre Pettis.

1. There are three states of being. Not knowing, action and completion.
2. Accept that everything is a draft. It helps to get it done.
3. There is no editing stage.
4. Pretending you know what you're doing is almost the same as knowing what you are doing, so just accept that you know what you're doing even if you don't and do it.
5. Banish procrastination. If you wait more than a week to get an idea done, abandon it.
6. The point of being done is not to finish but to get other things done.
7. Once you're done you can throw it away.
8. Laugh at perfection. It's boring and keeps you from being done.
9. People without dirty hands are wrong. Doing something makes you right.
10. Failure counts as done. So do mistakes.
11. Destruction is a variant of done.
12. If you have an idea and publish it on the internet, that counts as a ghost of done.
13. Done is the engine of more.


Heather has often noted how I have a tendency to be an "instant expert" in a field that I've just seemingly picked up. I'd bet numbers 4, 8, 9, and 10 are big players in the truth of that observation about me.

It's not always about being right or having the perfect answer. The Universe is built such that if we get "close enough" we can call it done.

A vision of the future from Microsoft

Future Vision Montage

I picked this up from here. And I agree with the original blogger that this is what I'd really like to see from Microsoft. Be visionary, make a difference in the technology. Sure selling software to business and enterprise is a way to make money long term. But if you want me to believe, take me to the future.

The video is what MS thinks may be occurring a decade from now. Amazingly enough, I think this one is closer than most videos of this type... although I also believe that this, like all the others miss by a wide margin as well.

Of course, the first video of this type was Apple's Knowledge Navigator from 1987.



A lot of that has not come to pass. What is most amazing is the vision of the ever present Internet. Pretty cognizant for 1987.

Bill Gates' last vision from his book "The Road Ahead" was published in 1995.



And it seems that, at the very least, the ideas about video distribution a right on the money within acceptable variations. The TV the Mom watches may be more Tivo-like or AppleTV-like nowadays rather than truly driven by the networks... but it's close. I would point out that you're watching these through the video services on the Net.

Again, all got somethings right, somethings wrong and in hindsight there's some stuff that's downright chilling after having lived through and with these technologies.

Public Key

It occurs to me that I should probably post a GnuPG public key in case anyone ever wants to send me anything or verify a signature.

-----BEGIN PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.9 (GNU/Linux)

mQGiBDfXUj0RBADXtKCo4c6W1tlhL+C523BPjEIxM7ArlBthkqTGUDM1JSO23o8T
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1UaiezUqtZcxcxilzR2MRIkt+U+t89nV0XD1K8myBv0kQ3PRsK40uMXHTwCg8rLI
o85NgGYt2Rl45cC18/fY3gsEAJlJ89+miZfSGgXUcrUuBfGioBjGpPdi4IdfwOhi
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ruidetc17c9khudFo1O8Ox++VXX0vs/8VmtTGyHRIMH3X/dGblV+sFSkhRjOJZP+
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zBy9QjTVOYkedhHhyqu/fBVMi5fCvO8JK6NzULODIVeDpgASX3neMZFgIR1zoiHQ
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1meHS9oOHs/WASh/Ach6/ij/TX5SDYyr4xow1ZlnSWdD97gm1WgddFtbsDuMXVOv
AAMFB/99wQAo2A/GtY0TuRG/ctU7Lwd5XWeLc3hr/QOfT0jIQ58F72pHNB/bxBnx
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-----END PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----

Yawn

I am convinced there is a single yawn on this planet that travels from person to person. More to the point, I believe that a person yawning is caused by them being hit bit a subatomic particle that I will call a 'yawnion'. In all actuality, there is only one (1) 'yawnion' on the planet and it travels faster than the speed of light, this is why yawning appears to be contagious. The 'yawnion' has a higher chance of hitting someone next to you than someone on the other side of the planet. However, since it is a superluminal particle it can affect someone on the other side of the planet, and your physical neighbor all very suddenly.

An observation on society

You are unique, just like everybody else!

Invisible Acceleration

From a Technology Review article on meta-materials and invisibility.

"Metamaterials interact with light in ways that appear to violate the laws of physics. They can bend light around an object as if it weren't there, or narrow the resolution of light microscopes down to a few nanometers. But metamaterials must be painstakingly structured at the nano- and microscales in order to achieve these exotic effects. Now the Duke University researcher who built the first invisibility cloak in 2006 has created software that speeds up the design of metamaterials. He and his colleagues have used the program to build a complex light cloak that's invisible to a broad band of microwave light--and they did it in only about 10 days."

Two interesting things of note here.

1. A lot of folks believed we'd never get broad spectrum capabilities. Once again proving the idea that if a scientist says something is unlikely, they're probably wrong.

2. The most interesting thing is that from first thought to now is only 3 years... and even more amazing than that is the fabrication time. Only 10 days. Yet another amazing example of the world around us speeding up!