May 2010
27 posts
“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; because there is not effort without error and shortcomings; but who does actually strive to do the deed; who knows the great enthusiasm, the great devotion, who spends himself in a worthy cause, who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement and who at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly. So that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.”
— T. Roosevelt
"...furious at the Obama White House" →
politico.com
The fact that White House political spin doctors would say this to Chuck Todd in time for him to go on the air with it at 5 p.m. Eastern, on a popular political show hosted by Philly native Matthews, with the polls open until 8 (!), enraged Brady. “I guess that’s the White House’s idea of loyalty,” he snapped. “They’re gonna hear from me.”
You don’t have to know the race, the players, or the details. Just read the words.
Brady (a very powerful Dem Ward leader) accused the Whitehouse of forcing him to back Spector (a party switching senator) and then during the middle of the day when it looked like Spector was going to lose (he did) they (the Whitehouse) tried to back away from their support of Spector by going on TV and saying they didn’t really want Spector but took him anyway.
Loyalty in politics is about as real as condoms in a traditional catholic marriage.
Movie depicts seamy life of Facebook boss →
timesonline.co.uk
She tells him he will “go through life thinking that girls don’t like you because you’re a tech geek”. The reality, she says, is rather more upsetting: “I want you to know, from the bottom of my heart, that that won’t be true. It’ll be because you’re an asshole.”
The real line would have been more compelling (and way less cheesy).
In the film Zuckerberg retreats to his college dormitory where, in a drunken fever, he writes the computer code turning Harvard’s annual collection of student photographs and biographies into a website where he and his male friends rank Harvard women as barnyard animals. Thirty minutes after “Thefacebook” goes live, it is so popular that it crashes Harvard’s computer network.
Yes, this how all great web applications start; a drunken rage with a twisted purpose that turns into a multi-billion dollar idea that helps define a generation. Wonder what kind of music will play during the montage?
How to become an Internet freedom warrior* →
neteffect.foreignpolicy.com
Convince everyone that you used the Internet to organize the post-election protests in Iran; if it fails, get in touch with Twitter Executives and leak your communication with them to the NY Times. Continue telling everyone it was Twitter that caused the protests.
This is an interesting Op-Ed from Evogny Morzov who writes a column for Foreign Policy Magazine (think of it as “People” for but for Foreign Policy - so a little more sizzle then steak but a good read).
Having dabbled on this subject in my Master’s Thesis I found his take interesting in that he seems to be reveling in the wildly popular contrarian view (yes, I chose those words carefully) that online tools were not neccessarily a main component of enticing change in repressive regimes around the world (namely Iran). I would largely disagree with this in the sense that; no, the protests did not exist because of new media tools (like twitter and facebook) but yes, the protests did exist at that level and length because of new media tools. You don’t organize tens of thousands of people through smoke signals, especially in an environment where the government is trying to dissuade and disrupt protesting. Organizational and information flow tools are needed, and twitter, facebook filled the void (through services like Tor).
The rest of the article (written in a sarcastic tone of things to do but in reality not to do) is pretty dead-on and direct critique of how the U.S. State Department has fumbled around using new media to its advantage as it furthers the policy goals of the US. But in reality what can we expect? I don’t think we should criticize poor attempts rather we should critisize lack of progress. So, yea if the State Department still doesn’t get it in a few years, blast away, but few organizations get it right the first time around and why should we expect more from our government?
My Biggest Regret Ever: Wasting Time Playing Computer Games →
mybiggestregretever.com
My biggest regret ever is wasting so much freakin’ time playing computer games. I used to game at least 10 hours a day. I’m an addict, really. Most of my “friends” lived in Korea or China or somewhere else thousands of miles away. I got booted out of community college and I got dumped by my…
I think I may have beat in him in SC2 last week. whiner.
Learning French
My biggest regret ever is learning French. I decided to take French in High School when I was 16, just to learn how to speak a second language in the hopes that I could attract girls (as I’ve never been in a relationship). I studied hard for a good 4 years until I was 20, learning the language inside and out yet no women ever came of it. I wasted 4 years of my young adult life learning a dead language when I could have spent it learning how to actually get with girls.
[Male, 20]
“As early as this month, the social-networking site will give users the ability to post their location within a status update.”
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I am fairly comfortable with the fact that you can pretty much piece together me as a person with a decent google search but geo-located data so closely intertwined with ones social graph is unsettling, even to me.
http://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-check-ins-coming-as-early-as-this-month-2010-5
“Apparently Facebook uses a mostly blue color scheme because blue is the color of trust. Teehee.”
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Doublethink: Facebook doesn’t care about privacy
(via generic1)
