To Be Human

What separates humans from apes? Evolutionary speaking, people look for a line, but there was no animal that transitioned to being a human, there was no first human. For this animal to be human, there must be other humans. To be human is to be social.

On the Future of Comics and Technology Memo

Comics are a visual medium, and they are printed on paper. Here is the strange part: they no longer need to be printed on paper. Monitors are the new paper, computers, the internet, and other electronic mass communication technology is surpassing printed issues as a means of distribution. Comics are trying hard to stay away from the hellhole that newspapers have trapped themselves in, most notably, how to sell papers and compete digitally. Comics have one thing on their side that will keep people coming into stores and buying well arranged ink on paper: They are made for paper. Newspaper columns, for example, are text. Text can be transposed from one medium to another easier than any other. Comics can not traverse well.

Painting and technology is tricky. Because many paintings can't be digital, they stay away from being trapped in the ridiculously widespread (and socioeconomically speaking: interesting, but not what I am going to talk about) Internet mindset of 'open source" (free stuff is good). There is a problem when people make Digital Paintings (woo wacom!). Most artists just post these things online for free, without fear of theft of appropriation of their work. Why? Another interesting issue, but I want to stay clear of Internet societal reasoning's. I will say this: Posting something online ensures it will get stolen, kind of. Most people who steal things do not claim it as their own, this is very rare. What they do do, is steal it and punish it. The problem is not with intellectual property theft, but rather with content distribution rights. I have written a lot about this, and how to fix it elsewhere, and I think I am supposed to be talking about comics. Right then: Comics! When one thinks of comics and the Internet, usually we think of things like XKCD. Strip comics, the digital alternative to the funny papers. What I want to address is not webcomic issues, but the transition of Graphic Novels to THE COMPUTER.

In particular, the use of an infinite canvas. Comics on paper are bound to have borders, and to be read more-or-less like a book. (zag down a page, turn it, etc). When companies like Graphic.ly, Marvel, or other distributors scan their comics (not scan, as they have probably been created digitally anyway) and place them online, (behind a pay-wall, perhaps?), the transition of form is rather ugly. The comics do not read easily, and one is forced to turn digital pages as they read a paper comic that is plastered to a screen. It doesn’t work well. Now, it can work on things like tablets (Ipad) or touch screen displays, which add a level of control over viewing that is closer to that of paper. Tablet’s are still in their infancy, and most touchscreen smart phone’s just are not big enough to read comics easily on. So what does one do? How do comic creators contort their form to fit the new screen? Having the screen zoom in and follow a pre-set path (where the eye did this work before/on paper). Letterbox away and focus on one panel at a time? Tricks like these may make comics more applicable to a digital presentation, but one is ignoring the real problem: we are trying to put paper on screens. Screens have always worked better as a small view window into a larger canvas (think scroll bars and text/web site design), as opposed to a complete paginated/tabbed representation of the content. (we like scrolling over click-next-page-ing. Graphic storytelling (comic) artists have to take advantage of this property of screens. Make a comic like one could on a giant piece of paper, stretching the boundaries of what is possible in this new medium. Comics displayed on a computer are still in their infancy, which means that analysts’, reviewers, critiques, and formstudy-ers should stay the f*ck out of this medium. But we invite experimental artists to enter, and play around with creating forms and techniques, from there other artists can build on them and the medium can develop. Let  Cayetano Garza, Patrick Farley, Dresden Codak, Daniel Goodbrey, Scott McCloud, and many others experiment and create in form, and other less creative adventurous can use their work as a base. (Defiantly check out http://e-merl.com [tagline: New experiments in fiction].

I am personally playing around with different experimental things to use with an infinite canvas, And I am curious if I could do something like this for the Final project in this class.
Some Ideas I am playing around with

• Choose your own adventure comic


• Time is x axis, character moods are y


• literally parallel, crossing, circular stories


• Separate stories share same environment


• Pacing and timing can be made with physical space


• Panel layout can have more meaning: a stories L-R path changes suddenly, (start reading down or up) as plot changes


• Stories themselves can be more interesting, veritably looping, etc.

The point of this memo is not to explore the new way graphic stories could be told with a digital medium, but rather point out that this is a very necessary change, and that it’s past time for experimental artists to break some boundaries and preconceived notions of the comic environment. Thusly: It’s past time for experimental artists to break some boundaries and preconceived notions of the comic environment.

College degrees and an educated future.

How needed is a college degree? With knowledge taking a move to be open and accessable in today's society of techophiles and wizkids, the level of education one can achieve without college is ever rising.

What I predict: Not the vanishing of college's or an anti college movement, but rather, the bar of "jobs above this need a college degree" is going to rise. People won't need a degree. Having a degree will no longer be a status of education, a trophy to say "I am smart" with. You will go to college to learn your subject, and not to achieve this signed piece of paper that allows you to work. A coworker may have a degree and you may not. This is my prediction as information and the ability to learn it - really learn it - increases.

On the similar subject of available knowledge, people (yes, those people) are saying that all this newfangled wikipedia and open information is making us tech generation's less intelligent. I disagree, its only shifting the focus. No longer will the smartest students be the ones who can memorize the best, but the smartest student will be the critical thinker, one who can analyze information for its integrity, understand concepts over techniques and who can engineer his way around a concept, with deep multi-angle analyzation. An adaptable student.

"Booksmarts" will no longer prevail. Its replacement: crticial thinkers.

Technology is not bad, stop saying that. We have to use it right and take advantage of the good (information) while learning how to defeat the bad (distraction).

Web Lockers VS. Streaming VS. Sync

There are some pretty new-age ways to get our music now a days. You might hear terms like 'cloud' and 'streaming' thrown around, but what does this all really mean, anyway?

First off, I need to define 'the cloud'. There are tons of clouds, all 'the cloud' refers too is non-local storage. Instead of reading off of your disk, the data is read through an internet connection off of some server bank somewhere. Ubuntu one, Amazon CloudDrive, Google Docs, iCloud, and many more services exist that take advantage of the non-local philosophy. Music services is one of them.

Here is a breakdown of the different service types.

Sync - This is what we are all used to. Essentially, its file management. This is having one computer/drive which acts as the hub. This hub is where new music is added, say - ripped from a CD. You synchronize this hub with your external devices, such as your phone or MP3 player (IPod). This can be a hassle when DRM, or filetypes get in your way of having your music in all the places you want it. Itunes locks your music in DRM, and you can only play it on authorized Apple devices. This has caused a lot of pain all around, and I feel DRM should be gotten rid of, but this is a post for another time. Sync is no internet, just moving files around to all of your devices.

Lockers - This is the most similar to Syncing you music, because all of the music you listen still is all of the music in your library, the stuff you own. The locker is a place on the web where you upload your library of songs, and then you can, later, listen to it anywhere that it streams to (other computers, smartphones, etc). The Locker is another device you sync to, in a way, but it replaces everything else. My android phone can only store so much on it, but with an online locker I can bring my entire collection with me anywhere there is an internet connection. The two most popular services are Amazon Cloud Player and Google Music (beta). I am using both, and I plan to write up a comparison in the future. These services are free for a certain amount of space, and you pay for more. They act as good backups too.

Streaming - This is Spotify, and (kinda) Grooveshark. Essentially, you pay these services to give you access to their locker. Their online library of music which, through deals with record companies, they are allowed to serve to you. It is like an online locker, except you don't own the music. There are going to be a lot more songs available (a whole lot), but there will always be gaps. artists you enjoy that just wont let you stream them. Like the Beatles. The payments also will be recurring, which means you lose your music if you stop paying. Unlike lockers, you can't download the music wherever you want for offline listening.

Internet Radio - This is Pandora, and last.fm (although last.fm is more than just radio) Really this is more about music discovery, artists let services like pandora play their music in the hopes that it will let users discover them, and buy them down the road. If pandora is the only service you use, you are probably like a lot of artists, but have heard very little of their full albums. I personally don't like pandora, this is because I listen to music by the album, not the song. Also worth mentioning is that SiriusXM offers an streaming service, bringing XM radio to any computer and smartphone. I use SiriusXM for internet radio-ing, but for most it is probably too expensive.


What I use:
I still find a need to purchase all of my music, DRM free, and own/backup all of my copies. I have all of my music in one place on my RAID 1 drives, on my backup internal drive, on a music external backup drive. This is the file management part of my music, which I RIP Losslessly from CD's or buy from Amazon MP3. I have my entire library uploaded in both google music and amazon mp3, although i use Google Music (beta) because it supports my lossless file type (WMA, not FLAC, but i really should use FLAC) (ok, it converts them, but still). Amazon cloudplayer I like better because it works right with amazon mp3 store, music immediately saved in the cloud. If I buy music on the road on my phone, I can listen to it instantly. I also currently trying out spotify, but I doubt I will keep paying for it, It's useful for listening to music before I buy an album. SiriusXM is usually playing over my house speakers, or while I am doing some work/practicing juggling. The fact that is it a true radio (read: lack of choice over music) keeps me from getting distracted while I work (need to change the song!).
But that is just me.

Anti-aliasing

What does it mean?

Well, first off I am referring to anti-aliasing as it pertains to image rendering on computers, particularly with fonts and video games. If you want more information on aliasing in general, this link should suffice.

So what is Anti-Aliasing anyway? Its easier to explain with images than in text. Aliasing happens when converting from analog to digital signals. "What?" you say. Don't worry, I am going somewhere. An analog source is of perfect quality. The file does not have a format, it is merely the same as the source. It is analogous to the source. For example, when recording audio, the variances in electrical signal would be the same as variances in air pressure from the sound itself. Digital files can not do this. There is currently no such thing as a vector (math) audio file. (There should be!). It is easier to think of digital files with video. It is not continuous, but rather sequential frames. The same for audio, an audio file is not collections of waves, but rather point samples of the wave. Just as videos are cut up into frames, audio is cut up into frames. Well, not 'frames'. I believe we (techies) call them samples. The more of these samples one takes per second, the higher quality audio file (well, one aspect of audio files). Aliasing is what happens when not enough of these samples are being taken, and the analog wave can not be constructed. It is a type of distortion in audio files.

(image source)

Look into more: Nyquist rate, Digital Audio Files, Vector Graphics (all Wikipedia links)

When we switch from talking about audio to talking about actual pixels, or images, the problem we see is pixelation. It doesn't necessarily occur from not enough sampling, but rather from the fact that pixels are big and are square. Big? Yeah big. Scientists, computer geeks, and image professionals are making them as small as possible, because of one reason: You cant draw a circle with a square. Or rather, with a bunch of squares. Go draw a circle (or any curved line) in MSPaint. Now zoom in a lot. You see pixels!

(image source)

This is aliasing distortion in images. But as you can see above, there is a solution. The solution is called (you guessed it) anti-aliasing. It works by tricking our eyes. The human eye does not see as precisely as you think. What our mind does a lot of filtering, editing, and converting of what are two eyes send us to what it thinks it is seeing. Most optical illusions work by messing with out sense of perception of distance. (Creating a false perspective that changes the sizes of things in our mind: Closer thing is bigger thing. But I am not here to talk about optical illusions). Anti-aliasing blurs the curve (jagged edge) by coloring in the image a bit. That bit is generally who much of the curve would cut through the pixel. (if the line would go through 40% of the pixel, it will become 40% darker (40% more the color of the curve)). Generally. Different Anti-aliasing algorithms work in different ways, but that is the technique used. Shade nearby pixels (creating a blur) that our mind puts together as a sharp, clean, curve. Some Anti-Aliasing algorithms, such as Microsoft's ClearType (which is making this text look better right now! Probably!) actually adds color into the b/w mix. The reason that works is more complicated. A tad too complicated for me to get into or bother researching to a level of understanding high enough that I could present it succinctly.

Anti-aliasing is the process of making pixelated and jagged images look smooth and crisp.

Generally, digital designers like anti-aliasing because it makes images look better, and un-jagged, while print designers don't because nobody wants to print a blurry image.

If you stumbled onto this article because you are curious about your video game settings, just remember that the lower the resolution, the higher the need for anti-aliasing. And pixelation/aliasing is not the game developers fault, it's the way computers work.

Here is my research, it's worth reading into more, in my opinion.

On Link Shortening Services OR Spammers Are Winning

 

I am mostly finished with my new website shortenthatreallylongurlintosomethingsimpleandeasytoshare.info, a satirical (but working) URL shortening service. I was looking into how to design the site, and found something interesting.

The spammers are winning:

• http://pnt.me/
• http://eepurl.com/
• http://u.nu/unu-discontinued
• http://1u.ro/ (temporary, it seems)
• http://eezurl.com/welcome.php
• http://fhurl.com
• http://www.hurl.ws/
• http://kl.am/
• http://lurl.no/
• http://ncane.com/
• http://shrinkster.com/
• http://urlborg.com/a/ (Login created)
• http://ye-s.com/ (my favorite heads up message)
• http://zz.gd/
• http://hao.jp/
• http://idek.net/

Huge Note: Lots, at least 30 of the services I checked out were down/gone/something else. The ones listed are ones that had an actual announcement about spammers. Tons of services have started putting in Turing (captcha) tests. Many have started checking their links against those in http://www.surbl.org/ or http://www.spamhaus.org/dbl/ or http://code.google.com/apis/safebrowsing/ or http://www.malware.com.br/ or other similar services, presumably some cron jobs that scans entries regularly. They have started preventing search engine robots from following, which helps prevent people from gaining link reputation illicitly.

Many sites have been acquired by other sites. (http://makeashorterlink.com/)

Articles about spammers and/or URL shortening services worth a read:

• http://www.certmag.com/read.php?in=3863
• http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/05/07/bitly-eclipses-tinyurl-on-twitter/
• http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/article6947344.ece
• http://www.economist.com/node/17249654
• http://blog.washingtonpost.com/securityfix/2006/06/spam_spotted_using_tinyurl.html
• http://www.stopthehacker.com/2010/02/19/analyzing-url-shorteners/
• http://joshua.schachter.org/2009/04/on-url-shorteners.html
• http://searchengineland.com/analysis-which-url-shortening-service-should-you-use-17204
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/URL_shortening (yes, really)
• Lists of Services
  • http://code.google.com/p/shortenurl/wiki/URLShorteningServices
  • http://www.dmoz.org/Computers/Internet/Web_Design_and_Development/Hosted_Components_and_Services/Redirects/
  • http://mashable.com/2008/01/08/url-shortening-services/

My favorite Services for whatever reason

• http://tinyarrows.com/ – takes advantage of Unicode cleverly.
• http://omf.gd/ – amusing site, ambiguous countdown. Little explanation
• http://chilp.it/ – I have a thing for minimalism.
• http://rickroll.it/ – beautiful! Rick Rolled!
• http://tr.im/ - modest, insults bit.ly
• http://safe.mn/ – focused on security and transparency

So what Security Measures/Features should a good URL shortening service use?

• Be Transparent - http://ur1.ca/ Lets their database be known publicly and forfeits its own rights, and this is what the other services should do too.
• Provide API’s for both shortening and longer-ing. Let sites like http://untiny.me/ unshorten your site. I have programmed a link unshorten-er before, and trust me. API’s are easier than trying to figure out the redirect. (also: http://www.rexswain.com/httpview.html)
• Provide a preview option. http://tinyurl.com/preview.php has a cookie services, and a few other services let the subdomain (http://peek.snipurl.com/) how a preview, not just redirect.
• Rate Limiting – A Spam prevention technique.
• Turing Test. If you are serious about getting rid of spam, force users to enter captcha to shorten a link. Many, many, sites such as http://ow.ly/ do this.
• Registration. If users register once (with captcha), and are remembered thru cookies, the hassle is not too great. If users links are detected as SPAM, its easy to delete ALL of the links that they have submitted
• Spam Site Checking. Scan the database for known spam links. (four services listed above). Delete them. If you have a user, or IP, you can block and delete similar, probably spam, links to for terms-of-use abuse.
• Prevent Double Dipping – Do not let already short URL’s from shortened sites be shortened. This is a way the spammers are getting around malware link detection. They use an untrusted redirect site (the many we saw being taken down) that is then put in a popular shortening service that people, because they are idiots, trust.
• Use a 301 Redirect, not a 302.
• Allow custom (vanity) URL’s. Not security, just a nice touch.
• If you have users/registration, let the users delete their URL’s.
• Don’t use a “frame bar”. See http://searchengineland.com/the-growth-of-framebars-kevin-rose-on-the-diggbar-17416
• List of links? http://crum.pl/multi has a place where you put a list of links into a site. I cant say I would use this, and can’t recommend, but it’s a useful feature to be available to the user. For me, this would be using my http://pinboard.in/u:squirrel tag, or date, collection, and linking to that.

Communication

There are four primary types of communication. Here they are in order of importance.
The first is one-to-one (1-1). This is also known as conversation, and simplifying it would be telephone conversation.
The second is one-to-many conversation (speech). Holy shit we have a lot of this. Speech, broadcasting, television, radio, magazines, advertisements, etc.. This is the most existent type of communication, but not the most popular by choice.
The third is many-to-one. The best example of this is democracy. While this communication is not great, it’s methods are being improved on every day, and some of these methods are what i am here to talk about in this article.

The last is many-to-many. Before the dawn of the Internet, the best example of this type of communication [that I can think of] would be a food fight. Put people in a room, and they will break into small 1-1 and 1-few conversations, or perhaps a 1-many, if that 1 spoke loudly enough. What is surprising from a philosophical point of view, but not from a practical point of view, is why this large group does not break into many-to-many conversation? The reasons are simple.

To have many-many conversation, one must have order. With the food fight/disorderly classroom examples of many-many conversation, the second law of thermodynamics takes its place, and while people fight to be heard and have a voice (to become 1-many, or 1-1), the volume level increases, and disruption happens. When 1-many fails, the 1 tries nearby 1-few (who can hear him) and such continues in a way that, while complicated conversation that may weave in and out of smaller conversations, is decidedly not many-many. Simpler conversation is easier.

In some cases, a 1-many can be classified as a few-to-large, and yes, this is many-many conversation, it isn’t really the point that I am making and is just arguing semantics.
How does one get this order? Before, well, technology-- it was difficult. There were no channels to use. So it didn’t happen. Now, I can give you a prime, perfect, and wonderful example of many-many conversation that nearly all of you have taken place in: Wikipedia. (Wiki’s in general). With the Wiki, a central thread is open to be read by the masses, but instead of being written by one person (1-many, as it were) it would be written and collaborated on by many. With things such as moderators, version control, and *cough*respect*cough*, the inevitable hassling and annoyances of a few untrustworthy few can be canceled out, and as Wikipedia has demonstrated, the concept of many-many can be successful. With the right control, moderation, interference, and editing, many-many conversation is not only possible, but practical. Who doesn’t love Wikipedia? Look at the amount of information it has been able to generate, store, and give out! It is a lot -- a LOT of information. Behold the power of many-many communication. A lot of power, ideas; in a little amount of time. It has worked better (efficiency) than the many-one approach of regular encyclopedias. many submit in information, which is reviewed and published by one (turning around to become one-many upon publishing). In a way encyclopedias are almost many-many. They are many-one-many; Which is close, and encyclopedias do have a lot of information, but does not quite cut it in achieving this cooperative powerhouse or general efficiency/speediness. Even so, encyclopedias are still impressive.

While I have yet to explain the explicit benefits of this sort of conversation, I hope it is apparent. Wikipedia power can be unleashed upon the world. Through collaboration, we can succeed. Succeed is an ambiguous word, and rightly so, as I can inherently not be specific enough to elaborate.

There are several methods of many-many conversation I can present to you, in a way to catalog these, and hopefully develop a feasible model that us humans can use to our advantage.

The first is a wiki. A Google Wave. a public whiteboard/bulletin board. A shared Google doc. Or some other form of real time collaboration, with version control.


Another method is the thread. Above I brought up the example of the bulletin board. It is from this concept that, what can be considered the first electronic many-many method of communication was created. This was the BBS. The Forum. The Threaded conversation. Essentially, each person would add their comments, their two cents, to the end of an article.original post. One person would start it, yes - so it could be many-to-1 (such as blog comments) but, just as blog comments often do (see reddit), threads thread out. The branch and break, and different people have different conversations, responding to different people. It varies, and can just be groups of 1-1 conversation inside on another, but often it is true many-many conversation in its development. People replying to multiple other peoples posts, and all relating to an original subject.
One last method I do not have the expertise to comment on is Source Control, as in programming (SVN, GIT, etc.).

I hope you are starting to get my drift. People: We have the technology. Google docs, Google Wave, Wiki’s, a giant whiteboard, all of this is available, free. Let us, as a collective, take advantage of the resources at our disposal and become more efficient. I am trying to use it, but my attempts at real time collaborative writing in Google docs usually fail because not everyone is online at the same time. The tools still offer an advantage because not everyone needs to be present at the same time. I hope to start more projects that try and take advantage or many-many conversation. I hope you do too. Lets try it and see what happens, see what needs changing, development, refinement.
In the spirit of experimentation, here is the link to the Google Doc where I wrote this. It is public and anyone can access and edit, for example, if a reader out there knows something about Github and wants to offer his opinions. I will republish it here if anything interesting happens. Such as someone actually, positively, editing it.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1acZU8JmkJtegiKR8mnaGsU0Uw41UBd_Q3bslNduWnms/edit?hl=en&authkey;=CJ76vPwN

How Road’s are Named

This is some general information everyone should know. I am by no means an expert, so please correct me if I am wrong anywhere.

Many places are in a grid. Generally, numbers for roads going one way and letters for their perpendicular counterpart. for Indianapolis and beyond, numbered roads go east/west and named roads go north/south but are not alphabetical such as with DC.

In Indianapolis, you tell people where you are by first saying the numbered road, then the nearby cross named road, and then another nearby larger named road. Confused? Shouldn’t be. I live at 106th and Town, west of Meridian. (note: Township line road becomes town at 96th street. You can be at 96th and township or 96th and town, but 96th and town is preferable)

As you go north, farther away from downtown, the numbers go up. Roads are numbered by (more or less) linear distance away from the city --away from what would be 0th street but is Market street. In the city, we lose the numbered convention. Confusing streets are North, East, South,and West street. Its confusing because when we see a north in a road name it usually means that that road runs north of south. For example, “West 86th st”. it goes east/west and is farther west of the center of Indianapolis then east 86th street is, although it’s the same street. I can be on South street West and West street South. Don’t be confused. South street is SOUTH of the center (circle center). West street is WEST of the center. South Street West means I am south west of the center, driving east or west.

The other tricky part is knowing which roads are one way or not, but if all else fails just start driving in circles until you find a road going in the direction you want. Knowing one way roads is just practice. There probably is a logical system behind it, but I don’t know what that is (maybe it alternates or is optimized for traffic flow).

Now on to neighborhoods. Unless you live in one of those strange houses that are right off of a main road (always a friend or aunt, never you, right?), you live in a neighborhood. It might be gated, or have some fancy entrance. It might not be marked in any distinguishable way, but driving along all the speed limits have dropped to 30 and kids and bikers and dogs litter the sidewalks, which also just appeared. People put houses near other houses.

Prepare for some knowledge to be imparted to your face:

• A road connects to points. Maybe two towns.
• A street is within a town/city/area. It is often lined with homes or buildings and has driveways sticking out of it.
• A drive can be like a long driveway leading up to a house or cluster of houses. Often, a drive connects back to the street you turned off to get onto the drive, similar to triple digit highways.
• A way is a small, or minor road that may or may not connect anything
• A court usually ends with a cul-de-sac (type thing) and most often will make you turn around, although other roads can connect to it (so it may not be dead end)
• A boulevard (BLVD) is a wide, pretty road with nice things to look at and often has big sidewalks with trendy restaurants that have small round tables to sit at and watch the angry drivers go by. median down the center, multiple lanes. (maybe)
• An avenue has trees on the side. It is lined with something or other pretty and most likely foliage.
• An alley or alleyway is between buildings, and you probably can’t drive there.
• Bay,Gardens,Manor,Passage,Pathway,Place,Terrace,Trail,View and others are all names for small roads, most likely suburban.
• Cul-de-sac’s are probably court, but can also be cove, green, or place
• Some people like to be cool and name roads from what they look like: Crescent, Circus, Circle, Loop
• Some are geographical in nature (get it?): Canyon, Causeway, Grove, Heights, Hill, Knoll, Mount, Parkway
• Some are named for function: Way, Bypass, Loop, Plaza, Walk.

And now you know. Use this information to prevent you from getting lost in your friends neighborhood! Or, whatever.

Highways are an altogether different matter, but much simpler because there are accepted standards.

Some Thoughts on Government

I am taking my high school senior mandatory Gov class. I dislike it, as it makes me think and I would rather sleep. Anyway, wrote some stuff down during classes. Taken from notebook, expanded slightly.

• Interesting: A liquid system of Gov’t where the size/influences of parties (geographic, party, interest group, branches, wings, organizations) is recalibrated regularly as needs change over time. During a hurricane / natural disaster, war efforts decrease. (a generals opinions on war would be less effective at policy changing/lower on agenda), and homeland efforts increase. Not due to need, as how current system deals it out (IE: we see hurricane, put money into homeland). but due to opinion influences changing. (during hurricane, homeland people have more power.) The system that would control this is difficult to conceptualize so practicality is farce, but imagine liquid governing.


• One individual person cannot represent one sole idea. So take this out. A representative represents his peoples opinions, all of them, multiple issues. “this guy is pro-choice”. No, he's a human being with an opinion on all or most or many issues. we want the representative to represent out opinions as best as possible.


• Compromise wins. Congress, wake the fuck up.


• Purist theory will only work with compromise. But with compromise, it is in my mind a very well-working theory. Policymakers must be in right mindset for the government to work, government cant just work because of its institutions, the people have to be willing, wanting, and knowledgeable for it to work.


• Want: an Open, transparent government, with all data available for statisticians and regular folks to analyze. Sweden?

Single-tasking

I am writing an article on Single-Tasking vs. Multi-tasking. The article (will be my first using pinboard to research) is going to go over types of productivity, and I am going to hack myself to do nothing but single-task. As little multi-tasking as possible. If I am on a call, I am calling someone. If I am studying, means nothing but studying. This means, and I gasp at myself, no music.

Oh crap. Finals start tomorrow, my school ended last Friday. This weekend is considered by many students one of the most stressful, painful, and worrisome weekends in school. As I work out an "end of school/summer!" post for thingsthatarewin.com - a side project of mine, I am really freaking out. So what is a better way to mend some stress than a nice afternoon of mind-hacking!? I will be going single-task only.

Here is what I usually do:

1. Turn on XM 56, Sirious 17 JamOn station. The best radio station in the world.


2. Sit with my phone on my right, my Ipod on my left. TV is playing in the background, and depending on weather or not I am wearing my noise cancelling headphones, I can usually hear the sopranos going. (hooray for parents trying to watch all of them in a month)


3. Place books in front of me. Computer to left. Dog nearby. I make room on my very cluttered desk


4. Study

Here is what I am going to attempt to do

1. No music


2. Clear Desk to be empty


3. Nothing playing on Noise-Cancelling Headphones (I thought about buying 'Music for airports' but I do not have enough money. In the future


4. Study

Hell to the yes. I will see how it goes. The final article, when I finish writing it, will be part of my 'Augmented Conscience' Project; A collection of essays, rants, and other things with a humorous tone.