Tuesday, December 18, 2012

It's a small world after all



Short one today folks, but I found this funny video on Youtube. Seems less funny now that such devices are getting smaller and smaller... In fact today I read about a new do it yourself mini computer called the Raspberry Pi (must be made by Lonestar, only he would use Raspberry!). It is meant to be and educational computer to teach children and people in poor countries how to use and program computers, simular to the failed $100 dollar laptop project, but this thing is cheap (found one for like $55 on Amazon) and is the size of a credit card. Not a lot of features or power, but hey, simple and cheap is the aim here. It runs on the ARM architecture, which for non techies means it runs on a cell phone processor, so don't think you will run Windows on it (unless you port Windows 8 RT to it...) Just put in an SD card for your hard drive with the Operating system, hook it up to a TV (you know, like they did way back then in the stone age of PC's), USB mouse and keyboard and you are ready to go. I think I might get one, just because it would be cool.

http://www.raspberrypi.org/faqs

Now the Computer guru of me starts thinking of making this little system into a very cheap dumb terminal (another stone age computer technique making a comeback). But then I started another terrible thought. Lets say if we give these things to place like the Middle East and Africa, I wonder what percentage of them would become bomb detonators,  or make shift missile control systems (because lets face it, people get real creative when they want to kill each other). Could such systems in the future be called assault computers? Think I am crazy, but but little devices like these and cell phones have more computational power than the now retired space shuttles. Makes one think...


I like to think the future is bright, it's just I hope it is the good kind of bright, not the fireball of doom kind.


At any rate, with one key keyboards, hunt and peck typing will be the the only way to go! ;)

Monday, December 17, 2012

The Hat came back...

Long time, no blog. Been busy with work and life. Technically I no longer live in A-town, but moved to the big city of Fort Worth. I still travel to the space time vortex that is A-town often, so I think the blog here can keep it's name.

Lot of BS lately. I think the chem trail people have it all wrong, planes have diarrhetic  male bovines strapped to them covering everything in a thick sludge.

The one that is bothering me most at the moment is the shooting up in Connecticut. Never mind the fact that whenever some one breaks the law and kills some one, law abiding citizens get their rights threatened, but the media turns it into a circus. Let those poor people bury their dead before you bombard them with cameras. The sickos that run CNN and MSNBC and all the other news outlets could not wait to show off the madman who did this, and proclaim the weapons he used as the tools of satan, and politicize this thing. I mean it is no surprise, but it still pisses me off.

This isn't a time to politicize, to sensationalize, or report on every irrelevant fact about the gun man's life. It is a time to mourn. And if you really, really want to think about how we stop tragedies like this, I suggest we turn to the book that was used a lot to build this country. Yes, the Bible.

First, the Bible says (in Mathew chapter 5:45) that God sends rain on the righteous and unrighteous alike, which boils down to, bad things happen to good people (and bad people too). Main reason for this is when Adam ate the stupid apple, and brought sin and evil into the world and all man kind, but if you want a secular view, then it is simple to say shit happens. So, we have evil in this world, and when it is at it's worst, innocent people die. Now the Bible is full of encouraging stuff such as spiritual salvation, which I subscribe too, however, a lot of people don't, so it has some practical advice to extend one's stay here at hotel Earth.

in Nehemiah chapter 4 the people of Judah had a problem, they needed to build a wall to defend themselves from their enemies, but were also concerned that they would be attacked while working. So they armed their workers! They also setup some of the mean with heavier weapons and reserved them to guard, and had lookouts with trumpets. How does this apply today? Well we have phones and alarms instead of trumpets, and we have police to be the assigned guardians, but sad fact is, they can't always get there in time, even today. We need to be more proactive as a society. There are believe it or not school districts that allow concealed carry, although very few, for staff and teachers, combine that with a permanent  law enforcement officer at the school, and I bet these mass killings would either slow down or stop. I hate the idea that we have to have armed teachers and cops around schools, but in other countries, such as modern Israel, they saw the need to protect the innocent who can't protect themselves. But lets not stop there, how about taking off all restriction of where you can bring weapons? Let everyone effectively carry a "sword" or "spear" while they do their work, and any enemy who attempts to attack will at least think twice.

So, we acknowledge there is evil in the world, and we can take steps to protect ourselves, but how do we actually reverse this trend? I don't think it really can be practically, for two reasons. One reason is that both history and the Bible show that the world tends towards chaos and evil, the second is that if we were really were going to do it, we would have to pull together as a nation, and restore the ethics and morality we once had as a nation, and get the mentally disturbed the help they really need instead of handing them pills and setting them loose. This won't happen because there is a large part of this nation hell bent on dividing itself.

So, there is my frustration. No one really wants to fix the problem right, they just want to do band-aid legislation until the only ones free to act are the ones that go insane...

In the mean time, the six o'clock news bombards grieving people, saying that home schooling is a horrifying fact. Yeah, thats right, during lunch I was watching some news station (I ate lunch out and had no choice of the content viewed) and they had one of those screen scrawling things that scrolls through the same 10 tidbits all day long, this one with the title "horrifying facts turned up" one was that a fourth gun was in the truck, then a couple of other things, but the one that irritated me was the home schooling bit. Unless he was beaten senseless everyday being home schooled,  I don't think it really matters, but the media in some subliminal messaging bs wants you to associate horrendous acts with teaching your kids at home instead of being taught by the state... As George Carlin said, it's BS and it's bad for you.

So there, my first rant, err, blog in a long while, hopefully I will do a more light hearted one next.. My prayers go out to those hurt in the tragedy, and also to the nation, once indivisible, and seemingly, no longer under God, lets hope a miracle happens and we pull ourselves to the right way, or at least, a better path...