here’s life

I’m starting to get the feeling that water has no nutritional value. Sure, you need it, but it doesn’t make you less hungry. You drink water, and initially it can make you not feel like you need to eat, but it quickly wears off. Now, I can hear you protesting that all food only fills you for a while, and then you are hungry again, so how is water different? I too was under that impression for a while, but after some experimentation, I have concluded that water is much more transient, and doesn’t change the slope of the curve of hunger vs. time, but just masks it for short time. Eventually you have to either go to sleep, or go cook something.

Oh, and how does 4pm on this Saturday (the 4th) sound for our protest of the Library? Meet at the Central Branch of the Wichita Library, and you can bring your own signage, or, use some poster board I’ll bring. Think up more pro-Casino, anti-Learning slogans!

I saw this video (15 mins0) about world health wealth statistics—or, making these statistics availible to people. He has some cool graphical representations that show what the world is like, without having to pore over lists of numbers.
http://www.gapminder.org/video/talks/ted-2007—the-seemingly-impossible-is-possible.html

So, that is what our world is like. Good to know, what is going on, if we are to make it better…

You can play around with the charts yourself, if you don’t want to sit through the whole presentation. It is a pretty nifty program. http://tools.google.com/gapminder
But the presentation has more information, including exerpts from this:
human-development-trends
Which gives information about world incomes.

Just some interesting information. I think it will help me spot half-truths in the propaganda I constantly hear.

It seems that no matter where I go in my career, having to do repeatative tasks never is far behind. Maybe I kid myself to think that I have gotten beyond the laborer class.

At work, I was annoyed that what I was doing was mostly useless because I could be replaced by a very simple shell script. I was going down two lists of parts, making sure that they matched. I did feel slightly smug because I had pushed two computers together, and was running both mice, scrolling through the lists, comparing the excel sheet to the main system. Unlike excel, the system that we use to keep track of our parts has one weakness: the mouse scroll wheel has no effect.

I wanted to make sure that the problem wasn’t with me, so I sent an email to our support people:

The scroll wheel on my mouse has no effect in [this program]. Is this a problem with my system and settings or is simply a feature of [the program]?

Either way, how can I make the scroll wheel move the displayed data so I don’t have to click the arrows on the scroll bar?

Thank in advance,
—Tobias

Well, ok, maybe I knew the answer already; so the reply didn’t surprise me too much:

[the program] doesn’t work with a scroll wheel.

Maybe you don’t use a scroll wheel all the time, or at all, but I do. That way, rather than going over and finding the little buttons, you just move your finger–without taking your eyes off your work–and you can make the display change. This became a standard feature in the late 90’s. This program is a main pillar in many huge companies. They pay people large amounts of money to interact with it. And it is lacking basic modern functionality. Good thing I’m paid by the hour! I get paid to stop what I am doing, move my mouse over to a tiny button or slider, interact with it precisely, and then go back to work. Sure it only take a moment. But hundreds of time a day, hundreds of users…I’d expect better from the system. Not like the rest is polished, but a scroll wheel seems obvious these days.

So, I am annoyed by the tedious tasks. The little things that I do, over and over that I really don’t have to. And as I scanned down a list of parts…”this assembly, and it’s components…yep, matches this list…” it reminded me of some other lists. See, I’ve been reading Ezekiel lately, the end of it, and it goes into great detail about the temple, the dimensions, the chambers, each level, the walkways and gates…kind of like Exodus, with the tabernacle “…forty sockets of silver under the twenty boards, two sockets under one board for its two tenons and two sockets under another board for its two tenons;” It struck me: if God thought it worthwhile to put all these detail in, and have scribes copy it over and over for millennia, maybe I should be ok with a little repetition. Sure, I’m not building a temple, a house for the glory of God to dwell, but my life and my work should show His glory. Even while making extra clicks, if that is what I have to do to get the job done.

Ok, Sedgwick County is looking to put in a Casino, and/or a racetrack casino. As I mentioned before, the Central Public Library is one of the potential sites for this. It would take out the library, the expo center, and a hotel. The expo center has a huge auditorium where I went and heard a symphony last Christmas. It is pretty much a bad idea to bring in a casino, or so I am told.
So, I don’t want this cancer to eat into my city. What can I do?

I could protest it: go out in the street with signs and slogans and vent my spleen on the passing public about how horrible casinos are, and how this casino will create an estimated 5200 to 7800 pathological gamblers, and how the 80-20 rule applies: most of the revenue comes from a few (unhealty) customers.
But, if I got a group canvasing the city, decrying the vileness casinos will bring, most people will either: already agree, or pass us off as “activists”. But, what if we did a little reverse psycology? We could shout about how cool casinos are, make slightly rediculous arguments about how we should have these casinos, and hand out forms to get people to sign up to vote. It may get the attention of more people, and it would be alot more fun. Especially if we were picketting in front of the Library, telling about how much better a casino is than a library. It would be hard to have good taglines that look like they are downing reading and education, but by the time the advance ballots get to our audience’s mailboxes, they realize that we are ideots and they vote it down. So, what should our signs say? Here are some things I’ve thought of so far:

LIBRARIES
are for
LOSERS

SLOT MACHINES
not BOOKS

With a Million Dollars you can PAY someone to read to you!

KIDS NEED KASH
not
EDUKATION

Give Jonny penny-slots
not ….??

I’m sure you can think of better ones…
By the way, none of the proceeds would go to improve public education.

So, I thought I’d go ahead and be politically active, and so I contacted my senator and asked that he support “Net Neutrality”. And, today I found a letter in my mailbox from Senator Brownback. Evidentally, senators don’t need stamps, they just have to sign in the corner where a stamp would be, and their content gets whisked to me. Cool.
So, the letter thanks me for my input, of course, and explains why government regulation of the free market would stifle creativity and innovation among the broadband access providers. The arguments I had heard for why these providers shouldn’t be allowed to charge content providers for quality service evidently do not appeal to all people. So, what do I believe? Are the proponents so-called “Net Neutrality” just anti-bussiness activists? Is S. Brownback being paid off? How do you find the truth when everything you hear is at least kinda true, and people you assume to be reasonable and intelligent are on both sides of the issue?

And Net Neutrality doesn’t really matter. Sure, if the pro-regulation people are right, before long the telecoms will decide what you see on the internet, by charging the people who have websites extra if they want their reader to be able to see their website in a timely manner. So it will be like having a couple dozen channels on TV, rather than millions of sites. And if the other side—that says just let the market, not the government, decide—if they are right, and don’t get their way, the internet will become stagnate, with telecoms not able to afford new fiber, and you will soon have slow service across the board. Those are the worse-case senarios.
But, there is an issue with not being able to tell which side of an issue is the correct one. And it is more important than freedom on the internet. This is matters of faith: what do you believe.

I am constanly exposed to different views on God, the universe and everything—the stuff that really matters. From people at work, to things I read, to people I talk to. And maybe this is a problem, but I try not to be the kind of person that is stereotyped as sticking with what they believe, even if it appears illogical, because that is how we’ve always believed, and we aren’t going to change now! Instead, I figure that if it is correct, it will be evident upon careful analysis. The problem is, rather than having a filter that just rejects everything that doesn’t line up exactly with my historic views, I have to logically evaluate everything I hear, to figure out if it is correct or not. And since I hear alot, this is hard.

And usually I am lazy. Too lazy to go check all the facts, so I absorb a view as “one way of looking at things that has some validity”. That’s a lot easier than picking it apart, and trying to decide if everything they claim as premises are actually true, to the extent that they are claiming, and if the interpretation they propose is actually logical. Instead, I grant the idea some credibility, which starts to cast reasonable doubt on my own beliefs. I have been led to believe that the burden of proof for my own beliefs lies with me—-that in order to be intelectually honest, I have to have logical, provable, testable evidence for what I believe before I can call for the same from someone who disagrees. But, with some of the most important things in life—”is there a God?”, “did life form by accident?”, “who says morality isn’t just a helpful ideal?”, “is this true, or do you just want it to be?”—on many issues, it is hard to get out your test tubes and multimeters and prove which view is correct.
Or maybe that’s another almost-truth that I’ve kinda given credance to.

So, maybe I just draw a line in the sand, and say, “This is what I believe, if I’m going to change, you’d better have some incontrovertible proof that this new view is correct!” But, wouldn’t that make me stick with things even if they aren’t true? I’ve been wrong before.

Maybe I need to do more in-depth analysis myself. I did a little research on Net Neutrality, and found out that it is more complex than it looks, and laws might not protect the consumer. We can’t make a law telling telecoms to “be nice”. This page seems to be a good view. But I’ve got no proof that what he says is true