Author: Daniel

Daniel https://turnings.phrasewise.com/ In the 4th grade Daniel was asked to step in into the hall because he was coaching fellow students on a similarity assignment he provided the class. Since then, Daniel’s passion for helping people has propelled him to be a creative developer of software and systems, and a team coach who excels at successfully delivering business value. Daniel founded QuietlyHelping in 2009 in order to have a direct hand in helping families with the struggles of debilitating disease. QuietlyHelping is an organization of compassion and empathy that brings ease, comfort, smiles, laughter, healing, and love to people battling cancer and other diseases. Spare time activities include cycling, occasional work as a musician, woodworking, photography, and reading books he never got around to in school. Unsurprisingly, Daniel is able to cook minute rice in just under thirty seconds.
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Episcopal cleric: Let’s Take Christ Out of Christmas

RAYMOND J. LAWRENCE is an Episcopal cleric for 46 years, recently retired Director of Pastoral Care, New York Presbyterian Hospital, and author of numerous opinion pieces in newspapers in the U.S. and wrote the following.

Let’s Take Christ Out of Christmas:

Christmas was adopted by Christianity late, by some three hundred years. It was incorporated into Christianity in the 4th century, the same way Friday fish-eating was incorporated and during the same time. (Imperial Romans ate fish on Fridays to honor Venus, the goddess of love, fish being the food of love and sex.) The venerial fish-eating was simply co-opted by Christianity and given a revised rationale, namely that Jesus died on Friday, so one should abstain from eating meat on Friday.

In imperial Rome, the December 25 feast in honor of the Invincible Sun, Sol Invictus, was accompanied by the exchange of gifts, cutting of greens, lighting of candles, and public festivals commemorating new life. The sun, after all, had turned in the sky and was rising earlier and setting later, after the winter solstice.

[snip ed.]

To liberate Christmas from the clutches of Christianity would demonstrate a generosity of spirit on the part of Christians that would set a good example in these times of increasing strife between the various religions of the world.

[It certainly would improve my solstice celebration.]

Louis CK’s direct-video experiment worked

Louis CK’s direct-video experiment worked:

Louis CK produced a comedy special on his own dime, put it up for sale on his website as a DRM-free video download for just $5, and made enough to cover his costs and consider it a success:

It’s been a really fun and intense few days. This video was paid for by people who bought tickets, and then bought by people who wanted to see that same show. I got to do exactly the show I wanted, and exactly the show you wanted.

Awesome.

[I’d have to agree. I wish for more courage.]
Source: Marco.org

The $7 trillion secret loan program

The $7 trillion secret loan program: The government and big banks should be punished for deceiving the public about their hush-hush bailout scheme. – Slate Magazine:

So what to do? The revelations of the secret loan program may provide the opportunity for Occupy Wall Street to suggest a few concrete steps that would be difficult to oppose.

First: Demand a hearing where the bank executives have to answer questions—under oath—about the actual negotiations, or lack thereof, that led to these loans; about the actual condition of each of the borrowing banks and whether that condition differed from the public statements made by the banks at the time.

Second: Require the recipient banks to use this previously undisclosed gift—the profit they made by investing this almost interest-free money—to write down the value of mortgages of those who are underwater. The loans to the banks were meant to solve a short-term liquidity problem, not be a source of profits to fund bonuses. Take back the profits and put them to a public use.

Third: Require the government officials responsible for authorizing these loans to explain why there was no effort made to condition these loans on changes in policy that would protect the public going forward.

Fourth: Ask congress to examine every filing and statement made to Congress by the banks about their financial condition and their indebtedness to see if any misrepresentations were made in an effort to hide these trillions of dollars of loans. Misleading Congress can be a felony, and willful deception of the Congress to hide the magnitude of the public bailouts should not go unprosecuted.
Finally: Demand that politicians return all contributions made by the institutions that got hidden loans. Pressure the politicians who continue to feed from the trough of Wall Street, even as they know all too well how the banks and others have gamed the system and the public.

[Incredible. For me, beyond belief. This is not the change I want…]

Fred Blunt’s heartening work

This time of year is rife with Pagan rituals “According to this pagan tradition the mistletoe dart was plucked out of Balder’s fatal wound and given to the goddess of love, Freya. From this, came the custom that a man may kiss a woman if he sees her under the mistletoe.” Seems like as good a reason as any.

Dig Fred Blunt’s work:

Christmas kiss

Writers discover focus. Film at 11.

iPad 2 as a serious writing machine (how-to):

This is liberating for a writer, and I find I can write more, and better, on the tablet system than on a “real” computer. There are no menu options competing for my attention, no updates needing to be run, just an app on the screen. Those of us who write for a living know how precious it is when you get “in the zone” while writing. The zone is that mental place where the words just flow as fast as you can type them. I find I get in the zone far more often on the iPad than on other computers. I attribute that to my focus being forced to the task at hand, and that is priceless.

[So everyone that writes this mentions the above “focus” thing and the battery life (it’s very long compared to even a current laptop). But here’s the thing. Running any app full screen will provide the focus of which they are all so enamored. Some writing apps (for the Mac) were built with exactly this in mind, and completely hide the screen. It’s now fairly common on the Mac as many apps support Lion’s “full screen mode” which takes the menus off the top, the dock off the bottom or side, and eliminates tool bars etc. So again, other than cool factor, and battery life (what did all we do until now? The horror!) these articles are simply “look at me, I’m cutting edge.” articles. I agree that adding a keyboard transforms the feel of an iPad (or iPhone) entirely. And the battery life is gloriously freeing if you’re used to the dance of power cords, and timing, and outlets. But the focus thing strikes me as people who had no clue about what as available to them for years. The change, if you can consider it one, is that the iPad doesn’t provide a choice about “one thing at time”. It is that design decision that they’re actually praising. They’re embracing the constraint and saying “behold the beauty”, even if there are plenty of times it feels in the way. For example, working on a web design where switching back and forth between editor and browser is a back and forth whip saw like action that repeats many times.) But I’m so glad that all these writers who apparently are so undisciplined that they cannot ignore the flashing of their tweets, or the siren call of menu choices have found nirvana. Now if they would just write about something worthwhile, instead of informing us of their modern version of a #2 pencil.]

PS Don’t misunderstand. I love the combination of keyboard and iPad or iPhone, it’s a really great way to go for writers and some types of tasks. But it doesn’t replace a big screen for everything. It’s just a tool, albeit a great one for some tasks.

FBI Says Carrier IQ May Be Used in ‘Law Enforcement Proceedings’

FBI Says Carrier IQ May Be Used in ‘Law Enforcement Proceedings’:

Andy Greenberg:

After a video surfaced that seemed to show the software logging
keystrokes and monitoring data traffic on the more than 140
million phones on it’s installed by default, Morisy had asked the
Bureau for any “manuals, documents or other written guidance
used to access or analyze data gathered by programs developed or
deployed by Carrier IQ.”

The FBI responded that the material couldn’t be provided, and
cited an exemption to the Freedom of Information law for
situations in which handing over documents “could reasonably be
expected to interfere with law enforcement proceedings.”

Ugh. Not sure how to see this as anything other than confirmation of our worst fears about this Carrier IQ stuff.

[Me either.]
Source: Daring Fireball

In Africa, the Art of Listening

In Africa, the Art of Listening:

It struck me as I listened to those two men that a truer nomination for our species than Homo sapiens might be Homo narrans, the storytelling person. What differentiates us from animals is the fact that we can listen to other people’s dreams, fears, joys, sorrows, desires and defeats — and they in turn can listen to ours.

Many people make the mistake of confusing information with knowledge. They are not the same thing. Knowledge involves the interpretation of information. Knowledge involves listening.

So if I am right that we are storytelling creatures, and as long as we permit ourselves to be quiet for a while now and then, the eternal narrative will continue.

[We also listen first and speak second in our development.]

Google’s 3 Top Executives Have 8 Private Jets

Daniel inc jet2

[Regardless of the exact number of jets they own, I can assure you it’s hard to get the branding just right on these things…]

Google’s 3 Top Executives Have 8 Private Jets | TechCrunch:

The jets are not owned or operated by Google. Instead, the 3 Google leaders operate the fleet through an LLC called H211. Google has no official relation with H211. Ken Ambrose, the Director of Operations for H211, announced the funding offer at a public meeting this week. He also complained that NASA, which owns Hangar One, has taken too long to respond to the offer.

Our Voices Revolutionize the World

Our Voices Revolutionize the World:

3 lessons we learned early:

We didn’t have the credentials. None of us were humanitarians, we just cared about our home and wanted to do something.

We had no funding. It wasn’t until 4 months later that we formed Ushahidi as an organization, and 4 months after that when we received funding. That didn’t stop us from doing something.

We had no time. If we had thought long and hard before we built our system, it probably would have been too complicated and wouldn’t have worked. We also might have thought of a more sayable name…

All of the lessons that we’ve learned through our journey are baked into our organizations culture. We question assumptions and we treasure disruption. We’re willing to take risks that leave us open to failure, in our effort to change the way information flows in the world.

[On the money.]

Redis for win32 and the Microsoft patch

Redis for win32 and the Microsoft patch:

When dependencies provide a lot of added value it is worth adding them. Instead when you need to switch to something bigger and more complex without any gain, why to do it?

Ah, and about the gain being some kind of feature only exciting for we code nerds and having zero effects on how a system works, please read my next article in a few days, we are programmers and we need a revolution.

[Stay tuned. There’s more of this scintillating tech stuff coming. (It is important if you’re a developer, but otherwise it’s totally in the weeds, and should remain there atmo.) There is a larger lesson to be gleaned from the dependencies issue. If something requires that you do something complex for little or no gain, it’s probably the wrong thing to do. It should be noted that we often completely organize our lives in this complicated fashion for little gain. Worthy of more thought.]