Why the Internet Is Threatened aka - Ok, stay with me on this one: in this link, Tim Berners-Lee (commonly known as the inventor of the internet), writes an article about why the Internet as we know it is threatened. The problem, in my inadequate nutshell, is this: companies in the US are tending to put preference to one type of traffic over another, which could eventually extend to, say, Comcast making your connection to Barnes and Noble Booksellers’ website much faster than Amazon in exchange for payment from Barnes and Noble. This is a serious problem as it undermines the nature of the Internet.
What struck me most, however, is the anecdote that Berners-Lee leads off with. Keep in mind, high speed internet here in the US delivers about 4Mb/s. Compare: “In France, for example, I understand that the layers are separated, and my colleague in Paris attributes getting 24Mb/s net, a phone with free international dialing and digital TV for 30euros/month to the resulting competition.” At the current conversion rate, this is $37/month. Essentially, our internet here stanks.
This gun launches pink teddy bears - Don’t worry, the attached parachute opens at the apex of the bear’s flight, preventing any injury. Apparently this is for weddings.
Awesome cell phone attachment - Ok, it looks like a rotary phone receiver, with a curly cord and everything, but then it plugs into your cell phone. So basically, you are talking into a phone receiver with the cord running into your pocket.
Every once and a while, though far too often for it to be acceptable, I walk into the fourth floor elevator in the Owens Science Building on campus and punch the Floor 4 button. Then I hit it a couple more times and impatiently wonder why the door shut and the elevator is not moving.
Then I realize that, if I want to travel downwards, perhaps I should select a floor that is below the one I am on.
Americans Are Not Healthy - This study found that Americans are quite sick, when compared to other industrialized nations. Now, I was doubtful, but check out all the variables they statistically corrected for: “when you compare like groups in the US and the UK, people in the US are considerably sicker than their counterparts in the UK. This is after factors such as age, race, income, education and gender were taken into consideration. The most startling conclusion was that although the richest Americans were better off than the poorest Americans, they did no better (health-wise) than the poorest of the English.”
If you place your chin on a windowsill and contemplate the land stretching out from you and the sky curving down to meet it, you’ll notice things you never noticed before. This slow down in your frenetic pace illustrates planes making white pencils in the sky and the clouds drifting past. It’s during times such as these that I realize my ability to occupy my time with the most simple of activities is simultaneously a blessing and a curse. I find myself running away from my perfectionism into a purgatory of still meditation. My problem is that a job half-started is a job not completed to my standards. While this means I never stop a project in the middle, it prevents me from taking breaks along the way or even starting. It’s all or nothing for my mind, a tendency I would desperately like to overcome. I’d like to study for an hour and break for 15 minutes early in the day, rather than study for three hours straight at the end.
Youth seems to preclude prioritization in the most sinister ways - inspiring quotes fool you into thinking that only being young once means only doing nothing at all once in your life. I just want balance, and I know how to achieve it - but it is as the philosophy I study states: one can know the path to walk yet be prevented by incontinence (paraphrased Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics).
This might be a battle of the appetitive. Once my appetite to succeed overcomes my appetite for short term enjoyment of things that could be put off, then I will be unstoppable. There has got to be a way to encourage that Success Appetite so that I may stand upright again.
Order of the Garter - Cut to a scene of guys in Medieval England saying “we need an emblem for our ultra-exclusive order of chivalry.” Moments pass. “I’ve got it … a garter!”
And today, they only have 25 full members? Ridiculous. However, the paintings with their emblem in it are rather cool. Thank you, Wikipedia.
