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I've been excited to make this post for quite a while. As you know, I've written quite often about Google Homepage Modules and Squidoo at different times. Well, today Squidoo announced the availability of a new Google Homepage module that I developed for them. It provides a quick view of their top 100 lists right on your homepage. You can read about it on their SquidBlog.
Thanks to everyone at Squidoo for letting me be involved!
Though it may not seem so, I have actually been spending a bit of my time reading lately. I just finished reading Eragon, the first in a series (of three, I believe) books by a young writer named Christopher Paolini.
I had read several reviews of the book before I bought it, but I found that the reviewers were either 14 years old and in love with the book or 30-something and hated it because it was liked by 14-year-olds. So, being a 30-something and not quite so self important as to instantly dismiss all things likable by teens, I decided to read it for myself.
I found it to be a very readable and interesting book. It didn't suck me in as quickly as a Dan Brown novel (or a Harry Potter novel -- by the way, I can hear several people groaning right now as I mention Harry Potter and Dan Brown in the same sentence), but once I got into the story, I was hooked. The fantasy elements are reminiscent of The Lord of the Rings trilogy (ok, there are things that are nearly identical, but you know what they say about imitation and flattery), but there were also many new and unique elements.
If you haven't read this book, give it a chance. It's creative and fun and makes a nice diversion from some of the current bestsellers that may or may not be based on reality (or some semblance of reality which forces Oprah to apologize).
The second book in the series is already available. I'll be reading it as soon as I can.
I'm not really sure what happened yesterday or how I could have possibly forgotten the Monday movie review. Sorry about that. I'm pretty sure there were about 3 people out there that were really disappointed.
So I took my daughter to see The Pink Panther. Admittedly, I had wanted to see this film because I've always been a fan of the originals with Peter Sellers, but I was also worried because perhaps the bar set by the originals was too high for a remake. One friend told me the best way to go into the movie was to pretend like this was the first movie of its kind. Actually, I don't think it makes any difference.
This was just a poor movie. It wasn't particularly funny, the accents were painful (and yes, I know that's part of the point, but it didn't work) and I looked at my watch within the first 20 minutes. That's never a good sign. If you do happen to go see this movie, I recommend sitting near a fat guy who will laugh at anything. That was the only entertainment in the theater for me. 0.25π.
I heard somewhere recently that most of the United States is experiencing something called winter. I suppose we have that too here in Arizona, but for us it usually means a bit of rainfall amidst exceptionally beautiful sunny days. Except this year. It hasn't rained here since October 18, 2005.
The funny thing about living in the desert is that any news of rain makes people giddy. The news anchors last night were thrilled with our forty percent chance of light rain. The other funny thing is what happens if the rain doesn't actually fall here today. People will get angry with the forecasters. I'll let you know what happens.
Chapter 47
Sunday, 13 March 2022 – 6:00 a.m. IST
Daniel had chartered a direct return flight to Bangalore. He normally preferred to fly commercial first class as he hated the claustrophobic solitude of small jet aircraft. Sireesha had never understood his fear, but rarely fought against it. This trip, however, had to be made immediately. Daniel could not wait for the daytime schedule of South African air. He flew through the night and crossed three-and-a-half time zones to arrive in Bangalore just before six a.m.
Sireesha met him at his office just after he arrived. “How was the flight?” she asked. Daniel replied with a cold glare.
“This may take a little while,” he remarked as he activated several viewscreen panels around his office. He had learned never to order Sireesha to do anything, but he knew how to get what he wanted. She left.
Daniel worked quickly to connect the device he had taken from Brad’s home to his local network. In moments he had gained access. It was a simple device, just a small box with enough memory to store a basic operating system, a few standard software tools and some data. There was almost no security on the files, but it had no reason to be secure. The device had been constructed to do one thing: to send a few well-crafted data packets into the switches developed by Q-Morrow and Naidu.
Daniel studied the payload of the data packet. He found two very small sets of executable instructions and a data set. He skipped quickly past the executable code to the data and extracted it to a separate viewscreen. His jaw fell open.
“Sireesha,” he called out. He knew she wouldn’t have gone far. She heard the urgency in his voice and returned to his office immediately.
“What is it?”
“Take a look at this,” he said. He split the data onto several views so the entire message could be read at once. “It looks like Brad had a contingency plan.”
Sireesha read the message. She re-read it then pulled a chair up beside Daniel and slumped down in it. “Is there more to the message?”
“This is the text part,” he answered. “There are several attached data files. It’s everything a person would need.”
“Has this message been sent?” she asked, hoping for an answer that she did not expect.
“Not sent. Sending,” replied Daniel. “The device sent out a payload to a few switches and the payload infected them with a small set of instructions to relay this message.”
“To who?”
“Anyone. Everyone. I think. I need to look at the code, but I think Brad’s message is canvassing the network at large. It will eventually turn up in instant messages, emails, file transfers and everything else.”
“Can we stop it?”
Daniel stared at Sireesha for a moment. “Apparently not,” he answered. “The future is already corrupted.”
“I can’t accept that,” she fumed. “There has to be something we can do.”
“What do you suggest?”
Sireesha paused for a moment. She considered the options. “Can we purge our switches? Reset them?”
“Yes, but I don’t...”
“Can you do it?” she barked.
Daniel shot any icy glare. “Yes,” he answered. “If I’m right, though, we’ll be infected again immediately. Quinn’s network was infected too. We have to shut this down on both networks.”
“Then we can backtrace the timeline and clean up the mess,” Sireesha said.
Daniel understood what she meant, but doubted it could be accomplished. Brad had initiated a chain of events that was so comprehensive and extensive that Daniel could not begin to estimate the impact.
“It’s a big mess,” he whispered. He looked up at Sireesha. “And it’s getting bigger. It’s a self-propagating infection. It’s infected three percent of our systems already and growing exponentially.”
“How much time do we have?”
“Give me an hour to study the code and I’ll know,” he answered.
“One hour,” Sireesha shot back. “And look for options. It’s unlikely that we’ll have Quinn’s cooperation on this.”
Daniel rubbed his eyes. The clock read six-thirty a.m., but it felt like three and he hadn’t had much sleep. He reclined back a bit in his chair and began examining Brad’s message in detail. He activated some additional viewers to log the infection and message rates on the switches.
The hour passed quickly. Sireesha entered exactly when the deadline arrived.
“First, I have added a filter that will slow the propagation of the infection within our network. Second, I think I found a way to shut it down,” Daniel stated as she entered.
“Yes?”
“The infection is a simplistic program that was designed to do two things. The first is to propagate. It does so by exploiting an esoteric bug in Quinn’s original futurestream program.”
“What about our systems?” Sireesha interrupted.
“I think Brad had one of our engineers leave a back door in the code,” he said.
“Ravi,” Sireesha commented. Ravi had been a close friend to Brad. They had spent hours together outside the office discussing everything from politics and religion to the elusive rules of American football.
“In any case, this little program will eventually infect all of our switches and all of Quinn’s. The second function is to blindly relay messages. All of the switches are sending out the message I showed you earlier. But there is a provision for uploading a new message.” Daniel raised his eyebrows and looked to Sireesha.
“Can you do it now?”
“No. The new message must be property encrypted.” Daniel smiled in spite of the problems at hand.
Sireesha found nothing about the situation amusing. “You told me you had an option.”
“I think Brad left here with two devices. This one,” he pointed at the small network box, “and something else. A message transmitter. We need the transmitter. It would be the fastest way to disarm the program – and it doesn’t require Quinn’s cooperation.”
“And the transmitter? Is it still in Durban?” Sireesha sighed.
Daniel shrugged. “If it were me, I wouldn’t keep the two together. But Brad ... I don’t know what he would have done.”
Sireesha stared at the message screens for a moment. She sifted through the options. “This was a very clever idea,” she said just loudly enough to be heard.
She turned slightly and stared out the windows into the morning sky. Her mind raced as she tried to regain control of the situation. For the past few days, she had been decisively in control of events in her company and in the world at large. She had effectively dethroned Quinn, but this was unexpected. Brad had posthumously managed to force his personal agenda onto the table. Now he was in control. Sireesha pondered for a moment longer. She would allow neither Brad’s agenda nor Quinn’s agenda to interfere with hers.
Sireesha finally broke the silence, “Clearly we need this transmitter. And whether he knows it or not at this point, Quinn also needs it.” She turned to Daniel directly. “And I believe you’re right. The transmitter is not likely to be there, in Durban.” Sireesha stood. “I believe it is time to visit our old partner.”
As she walked out of Daniel’s office, she called back to him, “I’ll take care of the flight. You just be ready to leave in two hours.”
Daniel sighed, glancing at the time again. He would sleep on the plane.
There are some web sites that are just so obviously cool that nothing more can be said about them. Flickr is one of those sites. it's amazing that they can provide such a powerful service for free (or next to free even if you do upgrade).
Since releasing my Flickr module for the Google Personalized Homepage, I've had a few requests for integrating the module into other web sites. Recently I decided to take a look at what I would need to accomplish it. Today I'm releasing the first version of this general-purpose script (that I'm calling EZFlickr) for anyone who would like to use it.
Here is what it might look like on your page:
You don't get much of a sense of the power of the script from looking at the image above, but you can configure it to select photos with specific tags, uploaded by specific users and you can set it up to refresh every few seconds automatically.
To get going, just visit this page and copy the code to your own site. Let me know what you like and what you don't like.
Note: Please forgive me if you happen to see something offensive in the image above. The EZFlickr code above is showing random pictures from Flickr. There is no way to filter out offensive material in the programming code.
Ten years ago it would have been nearly impossible for a small group of fans to quickly band together and provide any meaningful kind of service for a new star. But today with the amazing reach of the Internet, the instant communications via email, the armchair news creators feeding the blogosphere and the ability to create and sell products online with little or no setup (think Zazzle, iPrint, etc) so much can be done.
I think it's safe to say that only a few weeks ago almost nobody had heard the name Taylor Hicks. Today you can buy a t-shirt showing your support for him. How cool is that? Now that's what I call organic growth.
Now, do I get the black t-shirt or the white one?
I don't know if he has the X Factor, but I'll keep voting for him.
Taylor's first audition and learning that he's made it to the top 24:
Taylor's first week song:
Isn't the Internet incredible?
Both Bobby Bennett and Patrick Hall were on my initial cut list. If I could have voted for two guys to go home (rather than voting for the ones I liked), I would have chosen these two guys.
But for the girls, I would have picked differently. I'm not surprised that Beck O'Donohue got voted off. She was cute enough, but the singing... Well, obviously. I think that Stevie Scott needed a couple more weeks. She's a good singer, but she didn't pick great songs. I think she could have gone further. If I could have picked, I would have cut Brenna Gethers. Maybe next week.
Right now I'm desperately trying to purge that rendition of Copacabana out of my brain. Sorry, now you're singing it too.
I thank everyone who has been commenting recently. It makes blogging so much more fun because now I know that I'm not the only one reading. It also adds a new dimension to the blog because it allows readers to interact with each other.
I've just updated my site a bit so that it's easier to find new comments. If you look in the right-hand column you will find a section that contains a list of the most recent comments and a short excerpt. You can then follow the links to read the full comment or learn more about the commenter (if the commenter provides a URL). The section is also gravatar enabled if you're a big enough geek (like myself) to have a gravatar.
Thanks for your feedback!
Last night my wife asked me to explain to our daughter why Abraham Lincoln started his famous address with the words "Four score and seven years ago..." I was stumped. I understand the numbers four score and seven to mean 87, but I don't know why he chose that wording. So that's the question for our armchair historians.
I've always assumed that the wording was chosen artistically -- to present a more formal flair to the beginning of his speech. It sounds more poetic or artistic than simply saying "Eighty-seven years ago..." But I'm not sure that this wasn't simply a choice that was more common at the time. Perhaps the word "score" was a commonly-used word at the time in the same sense that fortnight, peck or rod were common in the past but almost never used today.
So that's the real question: why did Lincoln say "Four score and seven"?
I find these kinds of things very interesting, so I'm going to throw a little trivia out. Did you know that in French the way to express the number eighty is to say quatre vingt which is literally four twenties (four score)? And the number ninety is quatre vingt dix, literally four twenties ten? Did you know that not all cultures group numbers by thousands? In China and commonly in India numbers are grouped by ten thousands. For example the number one million in English is written 1,000,000 in the US, but would be represented as 100,0000 or 百萬(100)(1,0000). In many languages constructing large numbers is much more challenging than in English. In Xhosa and Zulu, the year 1987 which we would say as nineteen eighty-seven would be spoken as one thousand nine hundreds eight tens seven. In many cases native Xhosa and Zulu speakers today would switch to English for large numbers.
After realizing how lucky I'm feeling today, I thought it would be a good time to mention for the sake of all the new readers what in the world this crazy blog is actually all about.
I created this blog for one purpose: to get people looking at my book. It can be read online. You can comment on it just like you can comment on any other post I make. It's completely free, requires no sign up, has no restrictions. It's just there.
So why would I do this you ask? There are 2 reasons: 1) To find a literary agent/publisher, and 2) to generate a community of interested readers. So read and comment, then pass it along to your coworkers, boss, vendors, sub-contractors, customers, clients, patients, family, friends, next-of-kin and in-laws. If any of those people happen to be a literary agent or publisher, pass it along twice.
If you like it, pass it on and let me know. If you hate it, pass it on and tell your friends why you hate it (and tell me if you feel like it) because maybe they'll like it just like they like Celine Dion but won't tell you.
There aren't many days when a person stumbles onto a web page that really gives them a new hope for the future of humanity, but those days do come. Today is such a day for me. It's been a long time since Numa Numa and even longer still since the Star Wars kid, but today I found a rare gem in the Blogosphere and had to share: The Bacon Show -- One Bacon Recipe Per Day, Every Day, Forever.
Not only did I find a blog dedicated to bacon, but I was equally as thrilled to finally find a recipe that blends bacon and Grape Nuts.
Now where's that 13x9 pan?
If you don't love Dilbert, you probably need a brain scan. That said, I also recommend reading everything by Scott Adams (I really mean everything) because he's got a very interesting perspective -- and most of the time it's funny.
His blog today contains an entry for which I can do no further justice. Just read it.
If you know anything about me, you'll know that I'm the obvious target of all kinds of jokes (short, overweight, clumsy, uncoordinated, not to mention all of the category jabs such as religious, political, etc.). I'm pretty sure if Scott Adams drew a picture of me hugging a box of Grape Nuts, passed out from exerting myself getting to the TV remote and then had Dogbert kick me off a log, I'd just laugh. Read my short stories if you don't think I can laugh at myself.
Chapter 46
Saturday, 12 March 2022 – 2:00 p.m. MST
Patience had never been a strong character trait for Byran. He loathed waiting. The nearly two hours of diagnostic assessment had driven him nearly into a rage. He had tried to distract himself with comics, but they were ruined. He tried his Valerie video collection, but that just reminded him of the last aggravated conversation he had with her. There was nothing but waiting.
When the results finally came, he filtered through them quickly. The test program he developed had been rudimentary. The results were unformatted numbers, lists of status information, packet counts and similar data. To the untrained, the results would be meaningless, but Bryan read it like a children’s book. He knew exactly what to expect. It took him less than a minute to find a pattern. He called Valerie.
“I’ve found something here,” he said.
“Okay?”
“When you look at the incoming and outgoing packet counts, and factor out the additional QoS stuff of Quinn’s, there is still a discrepancy. Too many packets are coming out of the switches.”
“What does that mean?”
“There’s something new inside the firmware creating data,” Bryan answered. He felt sick.
“What kind of data? And where is it going?”
“That may take a little while longer. I’ll have to write another monitor and filter out all of the normal...” Bryan trailed off as he thought about the amount of work it would be.
“How long?” Valerie heard and understood the concern in Bryan’s voice.
“Hours,” he replied.
Valerie considered the impact. “Is there anyway of shutting it down or blocking the data until we can finish the assessment?”
“No,” Bryan answered. His voice was low. All the fight that had previously driven him had been replaced by a sickening anxiety. He was ultimately responsible for this, no matter how it had occurred. “To shut it down means shutting down the switches themselves. To block it we need to know what it is. We have to isolate these new outbound packets first.”
“What do you need?”
“Time.” He looked up at Valerie’s image. “Just time.”
Valerie forced a smile. “Let me know if you need anything.”
Bryan sat back for a minute and formulated the new software in his mind. He had a knack for visualizing the details of any software project, large or small. He considered several options before settling back at his keyboard and hacking out the code required for the new isolation test.
His time estimate had been accurate. Two and a half hours passed as he built and tested the new patch. It would be another two hours at least before he had enough data to examine to make an assessment. He initiated the software and lumbered to the restroom for a break.
After a full day of serious topics, it's time for something fun. My brain can only handle a limited about of seriousness.
I forgot that I had watched Bulletproof Monk this weekend when I wrote the Monday Movie Review. I've been curious about this movie but never curious enough to commit to rent it. Primarily my fear was that it would be either like a bad Jackie Chan movie or a goofy kung-fu-meets-American action comedy (think Shanghai Noon and Shanghai Knights). Well, it was a little bit of the latter, but (and perhaps because my expectations were so low) it wasn't really all that goofy. I have to admit that I like Seann William Scott and I liked the character he played. Additionally, I really like 周潤發(Chow Yun-Fat) having seen him in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Anna and the King (amongst others). His role had a level of humor, but it was still balanced with the dignity that you just simply get from him.
The movie had a nice balance of humor, action, drama and fighting/action and the fight sequences weren't completely over the top as many are (granted, there was still plenty of wire work). I thought the story was interesting enough to tie together the action and the humor and the girl was cute (Jaime King). Overall very likable. I'd watch it again. 1.25π.
If you don't follow Seth's Blog, he's reported a number of companies that seem to be doing almost everything they can to make customers' lives miserable. Ok, maybe not that, but they're obviously not doing everything they can to help. Why is that?
First, there's this article about a customer service response that is complete nonsense. You really have to read it.
Next, I really appreciated this article about Ticketmaster. By now you've probably come across a web site where you have to type in a set of numbers or letters that are obscured in such a way to make them hard to read. If you haven't been to Ticketmaster, you haven't seen the worst of it. Theirs are so hard to read that they're nearly impossible. How many times will you try something like that before you just quit?
I have one of my own to add. This comes from a friend of mine who collects Star Wars memorabilia. He recently went to Toys R Us to buy some new figures and was told that they would "no longer cater to collectors." That meant that they wouldn't go check stock to see if they had any of the particular figure he was seeking. How does that make sense? If they help him, he buys from them. If they don't help him, he doesn't buy at that time or have interest in ever going back. Can anyone tell me how a policy of alienating a group of customers or to an individual customer is ever a good thing? Now think about it in the context of a company that already needs to close some of its doors.
I think we live in a society that feels unjustified entitlement having unrealistic expectations. As individuals, many feel entitled to live beyond their means without consequence (think instant credit, payday loans, rampant bankruptcy filings, read here). I think that sometimes filters up into businesses and government. Businesses that have been as big as Toys R Us perhaps feel that their customer base is an entitlement. It's not. I haven't purchased anything there for years. It's too expensive and I don't like their customer service.
Read Seth's Blog (and the articles he references) and keep your eyes open. Things are changing. We aren't far from a time when any individual or small company can easily take on what used to be considered the giants. When more of us are doing more business and personal communications via the Internet, size and location won't matter. Only responsiveness and responsibility will.
Well, I received an immediate response from my last message to state representative Pearce:
I appreciate what you are saying and maybe there is. We did meet with the School President and was dumb founded when told there was nothing they could do. I read through the book and I would have led the assault on the school and folks there for pushing and requireing [sic] that kind of trash be read and in fact jeopardized the scholarship of this student. Thanks
Thanks!
Yesterday I wrote about being offended and a bill making its way through the Arizona legislature. After posting that, I decided to contact my local government and sent this message:
Re: SB1331: offensive coursework alternativesPlease discontinue pushing this bill through to law. This strikes me as such a closed-minded approach to education and it scares me. It may be the case that the bill was initially created to prevent students from being compelled to read literature or watch movies that contain sexually offensive material, but this kind of legislation strikes me as short-sighted and frightening. What happens when a small group of students find the Old Testament offensive in their Humanities course (the first five books of the Old Testament were required reading when I took humanities at ASU)? Or what happens when "To Kill a Mockingbird" is found offensive? Or 1984?
There are so many opportunities for people to claim to be offended in life. These are opportunities to grow, re-evaluate one's position and to see life from a different perspective. If we allow students the opportunity to "opt out" of anything they don't like, what are we teaching them? Life doesn't work that way.
If you have read the book that was required reading that sparked this legislation, I believe you would prefer this also. The book was child pornography simple and plain. It was absolutely obscene. No one has the right to force our youth to read such filth and especially those we trust our youth to.
My issue with this bill is not concerning a single piece of literature, but about who is going to decide what material is deemed offensive? Do the students get to choose? I think there is a better way to approach the problem than through legislation.For example, if the material is so patently offensive that students are forced to take action, there is likely a way to approach the problem within the school itself. Additionally, if the book actually contains child pornography, then it is likely illegal under some other Arizona law.
You state that "no one has the right to force our youth to reach such filth." I say that no has has forced our youth to attend that school, to take that particular course under that particular professor. There are always choices and if one student is unable to complete a class for moral reasons that student can fill the requirement elsewhere. If the majority of the students object, one way or another they can and should work with the school to make the necessary changes. Let's teach students how to be critical thinkers, responsible citizens and empowered agents for change.
It is true that I would have found a book containing child pornography offensive, but I still think this is unnecessary legislation as there are alternate means for a student to manage this situation.
My good friend Jeffrey makes some great points about responsibility that go along well with what I said earlier today.
Chapter 45
Saturday, 12 March 2022 – 10:45 p.m. SAST
Ramesh drew a long breath of the damp salt air as he stepped from the plane. He glanced around, hoping to see something familiar, something reminiscent of his youth. It was dark and he had never been at the airport in Durban before. He recognized little. The drive to his hotel was equally as uninspiring. He had become disconnected from his home town, but he hoped that morning would bring a renewed perspective.
He stood on the outside patio of a fantastic suite at the Hilton Durban. Jet lag and anxiety made him restless. He wanted to sleep, but his body refused. He sent a message to Quinn.
I have arrived in Durban. I plan to visit the market tomorrow morning. Brad spoke of the market often in our correspondence. Perhaps I will find someone who knows him.
Ramesh stared out at the Indian Ocean from his patio. The lights of distant ships blinked on the curved horizon. He breathed deeply. He missed the ocean. He closed his eyes and listened. Waves crashed on a nearby beach. Gulls called.
A light breeze carried on it the scent of Durban that he remembered from his childhood. The damp saltiness of the breeze, the ocean, and somewhere deep and ultimately subtle was the scent of Durban’s historical and cultural magic. One could almost sense the spices of Victoria Street calling to the memory of Ghandi’s years of political service in Durban. There was the dusty scent of the Zulu ranches reminding of the great Shaka Zulu whose twelve-year rule remained one of the most notable in South African history. And there was the undeniable scent of western civilization that the Dutch, English, and Portuguese had left in their years of colonization.
He set his teacup aside and activated his implants. He sent a message to his mother, leaving out most of the details, but telling her about the new contract work. She would be excited. She had been urging him to get out more. His mourning had continued for much too long. He was still young and a very handsome man, she constantly reminded.
Ramesh drew in one last deep breath of the ocean air and retired. The bed felt wonderful. He lay awake for a moment, wondering how his life would have turned out if his family had stayed in Durban. He was sure that he would never have spent any time in the suite at the Hilton. He wished that Padumi could have been there with him. She would have enjoyed the luxury.
Okay, now that I've done my civic duty for the day, let's do something fun.
This was a pretty big movie weekend for me again. I watched a couple from Netflix.com and one in the theater. I'll go from worst to best.
First I watched Friday Night Lights. Ug. This movie is going to forever live among my most hated movies list. It takes a special kind of movie to hit that list and this one pulled it off. Really, what was this movie? A documentary? A drama? What it felt like to me was that a desperate football wannabe turned screenplay writer trying desperately to recapture the "glory days" in film. I never cared about one single person in the film, though there were enough "hardship" scenes to prove that someone was trying to make me care. Awful. No π for you!
I finally got to see Flightplan with Jodie Foster. I liked it but I didn't love it. I'll watch it again, but not today. This movie had all of the elements to make a really compelling action-packed story, but something was missing. And to be honest I really can't put a finger on what that element was. Watch this film for me, then tell me what was missing. 1.0π.
Lastly, I took my son to see Hoodwinked. When was the last time you laughed out loud in a movie? Well, this was it for me. I'm not a big fan of Shrek, though I like it well enough, so I've always been a little wary of the Shrek'ish films that have been coming out lately. This one is hilarious. The animation isn't quite as amazing as some, but the casting and the story make up for that in a huge way. If you saw Fletch, XXX, any of the Bond films and you like satire, you'll like this movie. 1.75π.
When did it become a right of all people in the world to never be offended by anything? I'm not talking about being insensitive to other people. I don't think we need to be deliberately offensive, but what I'm asking is this: at what point did it become the government's responsibility to ensure that nobody ever gets offended?
I just heard about this bill in the State of Arizona (where I live): SB1331, "postsecondary instruction; offensive coursework alternatives" (you can read a news article that briefly discusses it here). This bill basically provides a way for students to opt out of some coursework if they find it offensive. This is absolutely baffling to me -- and it worries me.
To take a spin on Elanor Roosevelt's quote: "No one can make you feel inferior without your consent," I say "No one can offend you without your consent." Most often, offense is not in the giving, but in the receiving. Let me give you some examples from my life. I blog. I write. I develop software. On any given day I receive dozens of comments or emails from people I don't know regarding my blogging, my writing or my software. Here are some:
About my Google Modules (which are completely free of charge):
It doesn't work.
Pathetic that you dint [sic] use PNG or GIF with transparent.
It is too slow.
About my writing:
Title needs work. The reasons you gave for reading your book barely grabbed my attention. It was like walking up to a stranger and saying,"I'm really charming and interesting." and expecting them to just trust you. Also, "the subject of a teen magazine article" does not make me want to read further. All of this did however prompt me to waste two seconds posting this rude comment.
You may think you are leaving me wondering so I'll read the book to find out, but to tell you the truth, my interest isn't peaked [sic] because I don't know what you're talking about. You can't get everybody to read it.
Am I offended? No. I have a realistic view of myself and what I do. When I am criticized, I learn from it. When something I believe is questioned or challenged, I learn from it.
To me the possibility of this law in Arizona sounds like a personal censorship initiative that makes it possible for any student or group of students to close their minds to much of the world. The bill was initiated (according to the news article) to prevent a student from reading a book containing scenes of sexuality and drug references. What if the offensive material were the Bible (offensive to non-Christians) or To Kill a Mockingbird (racially offensive)? If every individual is allowed to decide what is offensive to them, is there anything written that would be found completely inoffensive to everyone? At all times?
Life is life. There are so many ways to be offended on a daily basis. Let's grow up a little and deal with it. Let's apologize better when we do offend and let's learn from the past so we don't do it again.
I received a comment today from a reader who has noticed the same thing that I have noticed: It's awfully quiet out there. That is, there aren't many comments being posted. So, either there aren't many readers or I'm writing about things that inspire no comments.
Here's the very first comment to my book's prologue (it came today):
Okay, I read the prologue and I'll probably go on to read Chapter 1. So far so good. I'm a little disappointed though. Not so much by the writing as the fact that I don't see other comments here. That's half the fun!
I agree. Not only is it half the fun, it's really the whole point.
So, read and comment. It's easy and can be fun. It may also just be a good outlet. Now, when you comment, you may have to wait a little while for me to approve the comment. Unfortunately the spammers are quite busy posting nonsense comments that link off to their sites for Viagra, Heightmax or whatever else. But as long as your comment is not spam and not patently offensive, I'll approve it. I got this tidbit recently (and I approved it):
Title needs work. The reasons you gave for reading your book barely grabbed my attention. It was like walking up to a stranger and saying,"I'm really charming and interesting." and expecting them to just trust you. Also, "the subject of a teen magazine article" does not make me want to read further. All of this did however prompt me to waste two seconds posting this rude comment.
Every bit of feedback that I receive helps in one way or another.
So get out there and do some writing yourself.
If I haven't mentioned it before, I love living in Arizona. Sure, there are some downsides: roaches, 120 consecutive days with no rain, and the occasional burn from touching the seat belt metal after leaving your car in the summer sun, but generally I have no complaints. We have beautiful winter weather (it's 9:15p.m. in February and it's 61 degrees outside). We have no snow-related trouble -- I grew up in Idaho, I've had enough snow. And we have beautiful landscapes. If you've never been in the Phoenix area, I suggest a visit. Come in November or February.
Today was so nice that I decided to take my son to the zoo. We spent about four hours outdoors. Guess what I forgot... Yep, it's February and I have a sunburn.
Only in Arizona.
I'm not an industry analyst, and I don't play one on TV, but I do have an opinion and since you're here you have to suffer through it.
I think one of the reasons that Google has been so successful is that despite being the most powerful force on the Internet, they still have a sense of humor and it shows in their products. From a programmer's perspective it's easy to see that Google gives a lot of control to the developers because only a developer would think to include recipes for spam in the web clips area of GMail when you're perusing the spam folder. Check it out for yourself. Just go into your GMail spam folder and watch the web clips. They're always recipes involving spam. I've clicked on them. They're real.
Now that's funny. Not too many companies as big as Google would let their developers do something cute like that, but it works for Google and that may be part of why Google works.
If that ever goes away, we'll just have another IBM or Microsoft. Boring.
I've never heard of MovieBeam before, but apparently it's been around.
It's kind of a cool idea, but I still think it's not quite there. I already have the perfect workaround for video-store nightmares: Netflix.com.
But when I can get high-def first-run movies beamed directly into my home, I'll be the first one in line.
Uh oh! The UK is back at the forefront, but watch out for Germany. It is actually moving up most quickly right now.
Oh, and read my book. It's also better than getting poked in the eye!
This is my übergeek entry for the week.
If you haven't noticed, big changes are afoot on the web again. A few years ago everyone was talking about and/or building a portal. The idea of the portal was that people would use that primary web site as a launching point to the rest of the web. Think Yahoo!, MSN, etc. These large sites provided enormous home pages covered with news, weather, stocks and searches. They tried to be everything to everyone, but the problem was that for the end user it was too much for anyone. For me, a homepage like that never worked -- too much stuff.
Enter the personal homepage. Google has it. I've been talking about that for a while. Microsoft is developing Windows Live. And there is Pageflakes, right now it may be my personal favorite. Basically the idea of the personal homepage is to provide every person with a customizable start page for the web. For me, my page includes the latest news about Harry Potter, the latest movie news, traffic information for my area, my Netflix.com account information and the current value of Chipotle's stock. You may not care about any of this stuff, but the cool thing is that you can still use the same homepage and customize it for what you do want to see. It's like a funnel for the vastness of the web.
If you haven't yet created a personal homepage, give it a try. Pageflakes is entirely free and open to anyone. Try it. You'll like it!