a break.
will resume in full form.
Saturday, May 3, 2008
Tuesday, June 5, 2007
More on mobile...
sorry... i'll follow up that article on some of the new players who are cracking up the scene and give a coupa reveiws on some models.
If anyone needs any specific review, lemme know...
If anyone needs any specific review, lemme know...
Michael Crichton's State Of Fear.
- An Ecology Of Thought
Within modern culture, ideas constantly rise and fall. For a while everybody believes something, and then, bit by bit, they stop believing it. Eventually, no one can remember the old idea, the way no one can remember the old slang. Ideas arethemselves a kind of fad.
“Why do ideas fall out of favor?”
The answer is simply—they do. In fashion, as in natural ecology, there are disruptions. Sharp revisions of the established order. A lightning fire burns down a forest. A different species springs up in the charred acreage. Accidental, haphazard, unexpected, abrupt change. That is what the world shows us on everyside. But just as ideas can change abruptly, so, too, can they hang on past their time.
Some ideas continue to be embraced by the public long after scientists have abandoned them. Left brain, right brain is a perfect example. In the 1970s, it gains popularity from the work of Sperry at Caltech, who studies a specific group of brain-surgery patients. His findings have no broader meaning beyond these patients. Sperry denies any broader meaning. By 1980, it is clear that the left and right brain notion is just wrong—the two sides of the brain do not work separately in a healthy person. But in the popular culture, the concept does not die for another twenty years. People talk about it, believe it, and write books about it for decades after scientists have set it aside.
Similarly, in environmental thought, it was widely accepted in 1960 that there is
something called ‘the balance of nature.’ If you just left nature alone it would come into a self-maintaining state of balance. Lovely idea with a long pedigree. The Greeks believed it three thousand years ago, on the basis of nothing. Just seemed nice. “However, by 1990, no scientist believes in the balance of nature anymore. The ecologists have all given it up as simply wrong. Untrue. A fantasy. They speak now of dynamic disequilibrium, of multiple equilibrium states. But they now understand that nature is never in balance. Never has been, never will be. On the contrary, nature is always out of balance, and that means that mankind, which was formerly defined as the great disrupter of the natural order, is nothing of the sort. The whole environment is being constantly disrupted all the time anyway.
If you study the media, seeking to find shifts in normative conceptualization, you discover something extremely interesting. Some researchers looked at transcripts of news programs of the major networks—NBC, ABC, CBS. They also looked at stories in the newspapers of New York, Washington, Miami, Los Angeles, and Seattle. They counted the frequency of certain concepts and terms used by the media. The results were very striking.
What did they find?
There was a major shift in the fall of 1989. Before that time, the media did not make excessive use of terms such as crisis, catastrophe, cataclysm, plague, or know that social control is best managed through feardisaster. For example, during the 1980s, the word crisis appeared in news reports about as often as the word budget. In addition, prior to 1989, adjectives such as dire, unprecedented, dreaded were not common in television reports or newspaper headlines. But then it all changed.
These terms started to become more and more common. The word catastrophe was used five times more often in 1995 than it was in 1985. Its use doubled again by the year 2000. And the stories changed, too. There was a heightened emphasis on fear, worry, danger, uncertainty, panic.
“Why should it have changed in 1989?”
Critical question. In most respects 1989 seemed like a normal year: a Soviet sub sank in Norway; Tiananmen Square in China; Salmon Rushdie sentenced to death; Jane Fonda, Mike Tyson, and Bruce Springsteen all got divorced; the Episcopal Church hired a female bishop; Poland allowed striking unions; Voyager went to Neptune; a San Francisco earthquake flattened highways; and Russia, the US, France, and England all conducted nuclear tests. A year like any other. But in fact the rise in the use of the term crisis can be located with some precision in the autumn of 1989. And it seemed suspicious that it should coincide so closely with the fall of the Berlin Wall. Which happened on November ninth of that year.
At first it was thought the association was spurious. But it wasn’t. The Berlin Wall marks the collapse of the Soviet empire. And the end of the Cold War that had lasted for half a century in the West.
Wondering where you are leading.?”
I am leading to the notion of social control, Ladies and Gentlemen. To the requirement of every sovereign state to exert control over the behavior of its citizens, to keep them orderly and reasonably docile. To keep them driving on the right side of the road— or the left, as the case may be. To keep them paying taxes. And of course we know that social control is best managed through fear.
“Fear”
Exactly. For fifty years, Western nations had maintained their citizens in a state of perpetual fear. Fear of the other side. Fear of nuclear war. The Communist menace. The Iron Curtain. The Evil Empire. And within the Communist countries, the same in reverse. Fear of the capitalists, fear of the westerners, fear of western and capitalistic culture. Then, suddenly, in the fall of 1989, it was all finished. Gone, vanished. Over. The fall of the Berlin Wall created a vacuum of
fear. Nature abhors a vacuum. Something had to fill it.”
What if I told u that environmental crisis took its place? The hue and cry about global warming, el nino or la nina ? I could prove that is what the evidence shows. Of course, now we have radical fundamentalism and post–9/11 terrorism to make us afraid, and those are certainly real reasons for fear, but that is not my point. My point is, there is always a cause for fear. The cause may change over time, but the fear is always with us. Before terrorism we feared the toxic environment. Before that we had the Communist menace. The point is, although the specific cause of our fear may change, we are never without the fear itself. Fear pervades society in all its aspects. Perpetually.
“Has it ever occurred to you how astonishing the culture of society really is? Industrialized nations provide their citizens with unprecedented safety, health, and comfort. Average life spans increased fifty percent in the last century. Yet modern people live in abject fear. They are afraid of strangers, of disease, of crime, of the environment. They are afraid of the homes they live in, the food they eat, the technology that surrounds them. They are in a particular panic over things they can’t even see—germs, chemicals, additives, pollutants. They are timid, nervous, fretful, and depressed. And even more amazingly, they are convinced that the environment of the entire planet is being destroyed around them.
How has this world view been instilled in everybody? Because although we imagine we live in different nations—France, Germany, Japan, the US—in fact, we inhabit exactly the same state, the State of Fear. How has that been accomplished?”
Because although we imagine we live in different nations—France, Germany, Japan, the US—in fact, we inhabit exactly the same state, the State of Fear. How has that been accomplished?Media Control. This was something Noam Chomsky spoke about, but it has bigger implications than what he mentioned. It can be likened to a politico-legal-media complex – the PLM like a popular writer phrased it. Earlier, the governments and the military formed this. Today the media takes the cake. An excellent example is Breast implants. You will recall that breast implants were claimed to cause cancer and autoimmune diseases. Despite statistical evidence that this was not true, we saw high-profile news stories, high-profile lawsuits, high-profile political hearings. The manufacturer, Dow Corning, was hounded out of the business after paying $3.2 billion, and juries awarded huge cash payments to plaintiffs and their lawyers.
Four years later, definitive epidemiological studies showed beyond a doubt that breast implants did not cause disease. But by then the crisis had already served its purpose, and the PLM had moved on, a ravenous machine seeking new fears, new terrors. I’m telling you, this is the way modern society works—by the constant creation of fear. And there is no countervailing force. There is no system of checks and balances, no restraint on the perpetual promotion of fear after fear after fear….
But think. If it is not all right to falsely shout ‘Fire!’ in a crowded theater, why is it all right to shout ‘Cancer!’ in the pages of The Times of India? When that statement is not true? We’ve spent more than twenty-five billion dollars to clear up the phony power-line cancer claim. ‘So what?’ you say. But the fact is that twenty-five billion dollars is more than the total GDP of the poorest fifty nations of the world combined. Half the world’s population lives on two dollars a
day. So that twenty-five billion would be enough to support thirty-four million people for a year. Or we could have helped all the people dying of AIDS in Africa. Instead, we piss it away on a fantasy published by a magazine whose readers take it very seriously. Trust it. It is a stupendous waste of money.
I spoke of this today to draw your attention to what we read. Our minds are shaped by what we. Our futures are molded by our mindsets. Today, whole sectors of society live the life of the mind. Our entire economy is based on intellectual work, now. Thirty-six percent of workers are knowledge workers. That’s more than are employed in manufacturing. Most of us are going to be there. What are we to become, if we inhibited by our fears?
One tiny bit if information as I sign off – close 100 million deaths are a direct action of a person being influenced. HITLER – his belief in eugenics –purifying the human race by hybrid breeding and killing the “weaker” Jews. What resulted was the Second World War. Something to think on.
Thanks.
Within modern culture, ideas constantly rise and fall. For a while everybody believes something, and then, bit by bit, they stop believing it. Eventually, no one can remember the old idea, the way no one can remember the old slang. Ideas arethemselves a kind of fad.
“Why do ideas fall out of favor?”
The answer is simply—they do. In fashion, as in natural ecology, there are disruptions. Sharp revisions of the established order. A lightning fire burns down a forest. A different species springs up in the charred acreage. Accidental, haphazard, unexpected, abrupt change. That is what the world shows us on everyside. But just as ideas can change abruptly, so, too, can they hang on past their time.
Some ideas continue to be embraced by the public long after scientists have abandoned them. Left brain, right brain is a perfect example. In the 1970s, it gains popularity from the work of Sperry at Caltech, who studies a specific group of brain-surgery patients. His findings have no broader meaning beyond these patients. Sperry denies any broader meaning. By 1980, it is clear that the left and right brain notion is just wrong—the two sides of the brain do not work separately in a healthy person. But in the popular culture, the concept does not die for another twenty years. People talk about it, believe it, and write books about it for decades after scientists have set it aside.
Similarly, in environmental thought, it was widely accepted in 1960 that there is
something called ‘the balance of nature.’ If you just left nature alone it would come into a self-maintaining state of balance. Lovely idea with a long pedigree. The Greeks believed it three thousand years ago, on the basis of nothing. Just seemed nice. “However, by 1990, no scientist believes in the balance of nature anymore. The ecologists have all given it up as simply wrong. Untrue. A fantasy. They speak now of dynamic disequilibrium, of multiple equilibrium states. But they now understand that nature is never in balance. Never has been, never will be. On the contrary, nature is always out of balance, and that means that mankind, which was formerly defined as the great disrupter of the natural order, is nothing of the sort. The whole environment is being constantly disrupted all the time anyway.
If you study the media, seeking to find shifts in normative conceptualization, you discover something extremely interesting. Some researchers looked at transcripts of news programs of the major networks—NBC, ABC, CBS. They also looked at stories in the newspapers of New York, Washington, Miami, Los Angeles, and Seattle. They counted the frequency of certain concepts and terms used by the media. The results were very striking.
What did they find?
There was a major shift in the fall of 1989. Before that time, the media did not make excessive use of terms such as crisis, catastrophe, cataclysm, plague, or know that social control is best managed through feardisaster. For example, during the 1980s, the word crisis appeared in news reports about as often as the word budget. In addition, prior to 1989, adjectives such as dire, unprecedented, dreaded were not common in television reports or newspaper headlines. But then it all changed.
These terms started to become more and more common. The word catastrophe was used five times more often in 1995 than it was in 1985. Its use doubled again by the year 2000. And the stories changed, too. There was a heightened emphasis on fear, worry, danger, uncertainty, panic.
“Why should it have changed in 1989?”
Critical question. In most respects 1989 seemed like a normal year: a Soviet sub sank in Norway; Tiananmen Square in China; Salmon Rushdie sentenced to death; Jane Fonda, Mike Tyson, and Bruce Springsteen all got divorced; the Episcopal Church hired a female bishop; Poland allowed striking unions; Voyager went to Neptune; a San Francisco earthquake flattened highways; and Russia, the US, France, and England all conducted nuclear tests. A year like any other. But in fact the rise in the use of the term crisis can be located with some precision in the autumn of 1989. And it seemed suspicious that it should coincide so closely with the fall of the Berlin Wall. Which happened on November ninth of that year.
At first it was thought the association was spurious. But it wasn’t. The Berlin Wall marks the collapse of the Soviet empire. And the end of the Cold War that had lasted for half a century in the West.
Wondering where you are leading.?”
I am leading to the notion of social control, Ladies and Gentlemen. To the requirement of every sovereign state to exert control over the behavior of its citizens, to keep them orderly and reasonably docile. To keep them driving on the right side of the road— or the left, as the case may be. To keep them paying taxes. And of course we know that social control is best managed through fear.
“Fear”
Exactly. For fifty years, Western nations had maintained their citizens in a state of perpetual fear. Fear of the other side. Fear of nuclear war. The Communist menace. The Iron Curtain. The Evil Empire. And within the Communist countries, the same in reverse. Fear of the capitalists, fear of the westerners, fear of western and capitalistic culture. Then, suddenly, in the fall of 1989, it was all finished. Gone, vanished. Over. The fall of the Berlin Wall created a vacuum of
fear. Nature abhors a vacuum. Something had to fill it.”
What if I told u that environmental crisis took its place? The hue and cry about global warming, el nino or la nina ? I could prove that is what the evidence shows. Of course, now we have radical fundamentalism and post–9/11 terrorism to make us afraid, and those are certainly real reasons for fear, but that is not my point. My point is, there is always a cause for fear. The cause may change over time, but the fear is always with us. Before terrorism we feared the toxic environment. Before that we had the Communist menace. The point is, although the specific cause of our fear may change, we are never without the fear itself. Fear pervades society in all its aspects. Perpetually.
“Has it ever occurred to you how astonishing the culture of society really is? Industrialized nations provide their citizens with unprecedented safety, health, and comfort. Average life spans increased fifty percent in the last century. Yet modern people live in abject fear. They are afraid of strangers, of disease, of crime, of the environment. They are afraid of the homes they live in, the food they eat, the technology that surrounds them. They are in a particular panic over things they can’t even see—germs, chemicals, additives, pollutants. They are timid, nervous, fretful, and depressed. And even more amazingly, they are convinced that the environment of the entire planet is being destroyed around them.
How has this world view been instilled in everybody? Because although we imagine we live in different nations—France, Germany, Japan, the US—in fact, we inhabit exactly the same state, the State of Fear. How has that been accomplished?”
Because although we imagine we live in different nations—France, Germany, Japan, the US—in fact, we inhabit exactly the same state, the State of Fear. How has that been accomplished?Media Control. This was something Noam Chomsky spoke about, but it has bigger implications than what he mentioned. It can be likened to a politico-legal-media complex – the PLM like a popular writer phrased it. Earlier, the governments and the military formed this. Today the media takes the cake. An excellent example is Breast implants. You will recall that breast implants were claimed to cause cancer and autoimmune diseases. Despite statistical evidence that this was not true, we saw high-profile news stories, high-profile lawsuits, high-profile political hearings. The manufacturer, Dow Corning, was hounded out of the business after paying $3.2 billion, and juries awarded huge cash payments to plaintiffs and their lawyers.
Four years later, definitive epidemiological studies showed beyond a doubt that breast implants did not cause disease. But by then the crisis had already served its purpose, and the PLM had moved on, a ravenous machine seeking new fears, new terrors. I’m telling you, this is the way modern society works—by the constant creation of fear. And there is no countervailing force. There is no system of checks and balances, no restraint on the perpetual promotion of fear after fear after fear….
But think. If it is not all right to falsely shout ‘Fire!’ in a crowded theater, why is it all right to shout ‘Cancer!’ in the pages of The Times of India? When that statement is not true? We’ve spent more than twenty-five billion dollars to clear up the phony power-line cancer claim. ‘So what?’ you say. But the fact is that twenty-five billion dollars is more than the total GDP of the poorest fifty nations of the world combined. Half the world’s population lives on two dollars a
day. So that twenty-five billion would be enough to support thirty-four million people for a year. Or we could have helped all the people dying of AIDS in Africa. Instead, we piss it away on a fantasy published by a magazine whose readers take it very seriously. Trust it. It is a stupendous waste of money.
I spoke of this today to draw your attention to what we read. Our minds are shaped by what we. Our futures are molded by our mindsets. Today, whole sectors of society live the life of the mind. Our entire economy is based on intellectual work, now. Thirty-six percent of workers are knowledge workers. That’s more than are employed in manufacturing. Most of us are going to be there. What are we to become, if we inhibited by our fears?
One tiny bit if information as I sign off – close 100 million deaths are a direct action of a person being influenced. HITLER – his belief in eugenics –purifying the human race by hybrid breeding and killing the “weaker” Jews. What resulted was the Second World War. Something to think on.
Thanks.
Monday, June 4, 2007
Drowning in River Nokia
Mayb they should go back to making paper pulp. or was it rubber boots... 
Before i step into a rambling about the new N series.. a little word on the new Symbian 9 series 60 edition. EPOC has done the homework... though not exactly a linux, this peice comes as close as it can and has done a fair peice of justice to the E series ( yet another disappointment ). The N series comes armed with this as the operating system. Though this has the familiar Nokia interface, it sufferes from pretty much the same problems as its predecessors - sluggish performace. open an app, go have coffee and come back, maybe your program would have opened.
i''l follow it up.. morro...
Nokia.
There was a time... not very long ago, when perhaps every mobile user sweared by Nokia. It wasn't so much the features, or the cost - it was its reliability, its ease of use and as Nokia claimed it - The Human Connection. Blame it on bad coverage... but they certainly seems to have lost that connection. The last great phone that nokia made was the 6610. This was when the color LCD models were creeping into the market - and the 6610 oozed elegance. It was rock sturdy and performed like a prize bull. And what followed from the then avant garde 6600 to the latest N series is, in plain euphamism, a shame.
Before i step into a rambling about the new N series.. a little word on the new Symbian 9 series 60 edition. EPOC has done the homework... though not exactly a linux, this peice comes as close as it can and has done a fair peice of justice to the E series ( yet another disappointment ). The N series comes armed with this as the operating system. Though this has the familiar Nokia interface, it sufferes from pretty much the same problems as its predecessors - sluggish performace. open an app, go have coffee and come back, maybe your program would have opened.
To give the entire family the same bloodline is very idealistic, but they carry their genetic problems... and Nokia just infected their entire product line.
The N95 is touted as the next generation in mobile technology. i beg to digress.
priced at an exhuberant Rs. 34000 this meanie is a GPS armed is a navigation device, a mobile, a poratable media player, a 5 mega pixal cam... a jack of all arts - but a master of? what good is all the food in the world, when its served on unseravble cutlery... ok bad analagy.
so whats next?
i''l follow it up.. morro...
Sunday, June 3, 2007
Justification!
goody good morning!
waking up before the alarms scream at seven is a blurry experience that i very rarely have. This morning was one such wakey wake. But June Mornings are surprisingly bright, especially for that time of the day - it's been three hours now, and i still haven't eaten - i might just break my own record.
DISLEXIA!
Is that how it is spelt? i've got a major case - wonder how to lid it.
save the F7 advice....
moa laitah
waking up before the alarms scream at seven is a blurry experience that i very rarely have. This morning was one such wakey wake. But June Mornings are surprisingly bright, especially for that time of the day - it's been three hours now, and i still haven't eaten - i might just break my own record.
DISLEXIA!
Is that how it is spelt? i've got a major case - wonder how to lid it.
save the F7 advice....
moa laitah
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