Last December joke...

Who's a penguins favorite relative?

                         Aunt Arctica.

Remember, Remember this day in March and January

Hello, friends,

Just a small reminder to those who Care about things. 

Go to: GoVoteColorado.com to check your registration and, if necessary, to register as a Democrat to help Bernie win the nomination. It'd be great if someone honest actually got somewhere in politics again.

It's really quick and simple. Utterly painless, I promise. I changed from Green for the occasion and I haven't gotten any junk mail for it.

I'll see some of you at the Caucus on March 1!

Edward M. Richardson

primary email: Edward.Morrison@WesternAlum.Org

phone: 720-480-6197

You must Be the change for change to happen

Humble Suggestion for Canonical

I'm not a technologist, really, and I'm not a programmer. But I have noticed since I use Ubuntu that there's a little disharmony among the community. The thing I like about Linux is the general community atmosphere. I fail to understand why there are battles between Unity and Gnome and KDE, Debian distributions and RPM, even Vi and Emacs. We have our preferences, sure, but lets all get along, yah?

It seems from my vantage point that Ubuntu has been having difficulty playing along with others. I think there's a certain arrogance by being the more widely-used distribution, which will probably be leading to a drop in usage... I see that Canonical wants their own display stack, but as a technologist, I don't understand why Wayland can't work for their purposes. It is more community supported, so my tendency is to believe there is a good reason.

To be fair, our market-worshipers should enjoy linux and this competition. Linux is a healthy and varied ecosystem of choices and options. There is more market among this tiny sliver of the computer users. Perhaps we'll see down the road that there was a good reason for this fight...

But I think cooperation is the more effective part of any ecosystem.

On Argument

I don't believe in facts. Throughout my schooling, English teachers, even science professors, frequently got annoyed with my insistence to write "I think", or "I believe", or "Apparently" in my arguments. According to them, this is implied. Unless otherwise stated, the text is always reflecting what I think: it's my text. It makes the writing weaker. The argument less persuasive.

Somehow, I have never been able to shake the feeling that there is a big difference between writing, "People are Stupid" and "I believe people are stupid". It the eyes or the reader, at least the latter comes with the admission that I might be wrong. I might be. People aren't stupid, they are very smart... this just lends itself to surprisingly dumb decisions and actions. I can say, "people are smart", without feeling like I need the I think in the beginning. Perhaps because I don't think people are smart, I know people are smart. I know with 99.9% confidence that compared to the other species on this planet, in our known universe, and by our own style of measurement, we are technically very intelligent. That's indisputable. Essentially. This doesn't change the fact that I, personally, also believe people to be magnificently stupid.

But that's just my theory. As such, I like to clarify that and qualify it. You, dear reader, are free to disagree with me and believe whatever you'd like. You might be more or less wrong than I am. I can't be sure. By implying the potential fallacy in an argument and being humble I feel more honest, which is more important to me than being persuasive. I wish this was true for most people. The world would be a little bit better place with more honesty.

It helps keep an argument or conversation alive. If I waltz into a disagreement by asserting my own theories as factual, it tends to encourage others to walk away from the dance. This doesn't mean I've 'won' any arguments; it only means I've lost my dance partner and I can no longer learn anything. It leaves the conversation open for a listening phase, which is a rather highly-rated thought under-utilized part of every discussion.

Often, the smartest people fall victim to this problem too often. Perhaps it is their own confidence in their own reasoning which couples easily with a low confidence in everyone else's reasoning. It's hard to remember all the time that we all believe in something that isn't true.

Christmas Joke:

How does Good King Wenceslas like his pizzas?

                        Deep pan. Crisp. And even.

Natatorium (n)

Lost English lexicon. This is a swimming pool. The Nata- words have to do with swimming, which we would all still know if we still studied Latin. Natant, Supernatant, Natation, Natatorial... of these supposedly English words, the only one I recognized was "Supernatant": floating.

More interesting, this word has very old ties to "nurture" and its relatives, "nutrient", "nutrition", etc.

http://www.nanowerk.com/nanotechnology-news/newsid=42090.php

Edward M. Richardson

Colorado Youth Corps Association / Bureau of Land Management

primary email: Edward.Morrison@WesternAlum.Org

phone: 720-480-6197

Fax: 303-239-3933

BLM Colorado State Office
2850 Youngfield Street
Lakewood, Colorado 80215

LinkedIN: EdwardRMorrison

Google: +EdwardRichardsonMorrison

You must Be the change for change to happen

A December Joke

Which of Santa's reindeer do the dinosaurs really not like?

                     Comet.

Uncanny Valley (n)

Dolls and robots who look almost human are also a little scary. The whole reason that 'Chucky' is a horror movie. It is a rather interesting phenomenon.

...Almost like we are pre-programmed to fear the robot generation we're busily creating.