Beyond the Melon

Joy weighs more than sorrow, pleasure louder than pain.

Fri, 28 Sep 2012 10:40:43 -0700

I’m not sure that religions started out based on a common good. When the concept of religion was being formed, the ideas of benefit and harm were very different then we have today. Harm was death by illness, starvation, injury, and benefit was…simply the absence of harm. To live to 5 was a blessing, to 30 a miracle.

It’s taken us several million years to get to a point where there is such a thing as benefit defined as something more than the absence of pain, but we’re still wired to process the world in these pain/notpain terms. Cognitively, we overweight negative stimuli (be it physical injury or social slight) vs. positive stimuli (praise, success, joy, even orgasm).

The world was already killing people through the usual methods. Additionally, people were killing each other as well, through the usual methods and for the usual reasons (either you wanted something and you killed for it, or someone else killed for something you wanted and you wanted it back). Shared resources and community living created a need to temper this behavior for the common good, but let’s not confuse the first steps toward the state monopoly on violence for virtue. Community rules started out as a way to minimize blowback from naturally occurring violence among community members, and to temper naturally occurring ingroup violence by targeting outsiders for attack/violence/taking. Religion merely augmented this by adding a service component; now you were no longer serving your community by killing outsider or not killing insiders, you were serving Baal or Loki or your ancestors or the house of Atreus.

God was the first “countrymen,” the first “stockholders.” the first “customers,” the first call to action, the first rhetorical flourish. Before God, there was “we.” But “we” was real and confirmable, and could possibly disagree with you in your quest for your neighbor’s bedpartner. God, unconfirmable, absent, silent, inviolate and uninvokable, the accidental child of a humanity that discovered pain before joy, became the excuse we shared for our inevitable crimes against our fellow man in service to our perceived injustices.

And so it continues, from father to son, mother to daughter, until we hold our joy with equal weight to our sorrow, and eventually turn away from pain and toward joy, and discount pain as accident and joy as deserved. It is through joy that we can let go of God, and embrace joy as the first principle of the next society.

joy is more important than sorrow. we must learn to see pleasure in abundance and pain as accident.

Fri, 28 Sep 2012 10:12:00 -0700

Microsoft needs to understand that every year from now could be the year it all ends.

Fri, 14 Sep 2012 12:44:33 -0700

Microsoft needs to understand that every year from now could be the year it all ends. :

A review system is of course only as good as the people who implement it. SOME change was definitely needed in the process; the amount of commitment engineering and review shenanigans inherent in the prior model (priming promotions with good reviews rather than just promoting people at midyear and then reviewing them against their new peers, as just one example) were legion.

What’s been implemented is essentially all the worst “innovations” of the prior system with none of the constraints that made the system honest and investment oriented. I think it will work well for the business minded and sales minded of the company. Where it won’t work is where MS needs to be strongest: the technologist community. They will leave in droves for companies that focus on a way to reward employees who don’t play games with their reviews, and walk into their career 1-1’s, MYCI’s and annual reviews looking for actual constructive feedback on their work and their creative product, not prepared to play their part in a two-person theatrical production. They’ll leave for the dozens of startups and innovative companies that Microsoft bore in the 90’s in Seattle, and they’ll bring with them their experiences of bad reviews and good performance, and they’ll succeed elsewhere.

And MS will slowly continue its accidental transformation into the largest competitor to IBM Global Services.

I don’t want to be right about this. I’d rather MS take the chin music from Amazon, Google, and Oracle’s threats to the Windows, Office, and S&T product lines, get up off the mat, and get back to the mission: deliver amazing experiences that bring people together, get them talking and solving problems, and get them home to their families and loved ones to talk more and enjoy themselves more. Bill’s dream was the magic of software for everyone, free from the constraints of politics, technical trickery, and access. Unfortunately, chasing revenue rather than marketshare, chasing the big deals instead of the strategic ones (they’re not always the same, although sometimes they are), and sacrificing user experience for customer experience has taken its toll, and our competitors aren’t hampered by any love of the previous versions of their products like MS is with Windows Desktop, Office Desktop, and on-prem server offerings.

Every year we say we’re going to make the hard choices, but we’ve punted every time, with limited localization of the cloud offerings, the hal-measure hybrid model of Windows/Azure, SQL/Azure, etc. wrapped in the stunning marketing move that was “We’re All In The Cloud” (which says we have no idea what we’re doing, not some clever poker metaphor). The review process was yet another hard choice punted to adjust marketing to what we were already doing, as if that’s leadership. It’s not. It’s extraordinarily well-compensated executives repainting lines and moving goalposts and collecting their winnings in a game they’ve been playing so long they don’t know it’s a game anymore.

Microsoft needs to get used to the idea that every year from now on could be the year it all ends. Microsoft is not forever.

Atheist group targets Muslims, Jews with ‘myth’ billboards in Arabic and Hebrew – CNN Belief Blog - CNN.com Blogs

Sun, 04 Mar 2012 17:55:00 -0800

Atheist group targets Muslims, Jews with ‘myth’ billboards in Arabic and Hebrew – CNN Belief Blog - CNN.com Blogs:

There’s a long long history and tradition of religious violence, which exists within a larger bin of human violence of any sort. These ads aren’t any of that. This isn’t “targeting”. If it is, then so is direct mail, and subscribed email newsletters that get your name right and actually come from businesses you do business with.

Muslims were slaughtered and tortured wholesale during the Inquisition, among other atrocities. Jews had their Holocaust, among other atrocities. Billboards, like any other speech, are just speech. I recognize just like any other reasonably intelligent person that there might be a line that’s crossed with some speech, and while I admit this line exists, these ads are nowhere even CLOSE to this.

It is not a crime to offend Jews, or to offend Muslims, or Christians, or even atheists. This ad is not intended to offend, nor does it actually offend. It states that Jews and Muslims have a choice, and they do. It makes one statement of the fact that their respective gods are a myth (the fact that these two believe in one god that is the same god but isn’t the same god (put a little birdhouse in your soul) is an ironic side effect of all mythology; if the Romans and Greeks were around they’d get a kick out of all of this), and if that’s offensive, then so is any ad that makes a metaphoric claim of any kind.

And here’s the core of it: religious beliefs are like any other beliefs. If I believe that BMW motorcycles are the best dual sport bikes in the world, that’s fine. When Yamaha produces a large-displacement dual-sport that challenges this notion and calls it a BMW beater, says it’s better than my Beemer, I don’t call my Congressman or beat my breast or rend my garments or say Yamaha doesn’t respect my beliefs. I don’t do these things because MY BELIEFS ARE NOT SPECIAL TO ANYONE BUT ME. This is the nature of belief, and it always has been. William James called belief “noetic”, meaning unable to be taught or communicated. Belief is not portable. Belief is personal. You may think that others believe as you do, but if you think this, you accept that your belief is not noetic, that it is commonplace and accessible and “just there.”

I have said many things about belief, but I’ve never thought once that someone’s religious beliefs are commonplace; it takes a religion to make belief commonplace, and I don’t have one of those.

Finally: Oliver Willis and a couple others picked this story up and threw it on Twitter earlier today and I took to the Twitterz and started speaking in response. This is important; when someone says atheists are “targeting” Jews and Muslims, one might get the impression that atheists are doing something to Jews and Muslims, something that affects Jews and Muslims in some way, perhaps even something that damages Jews and Muslims in some way. So I spoke up in defense of these ads, which were being mischaracterized by CNN (and while I haven’t looked yet, I’m sure other news outlets soon) as “targeting Jews and Muslims.” Oliver Willis called us “jerks” for putting up such ads. Blasphemy is a crime against god, i.e. when you say something and god is all pissed off. The word for calling people jerks for doing something they didn’t do is “liar” and “asshole” and “Rush Limbaugh.” Yes, Oliver, I’m talking to you.

nicowuzhere: jacqui-the-redhead: cloudsandtonfas: hannahbanana...

Sat, 07 Jan 2012 13:36:50 -0800

nicowuzhere:

jacqui-the-redhead:

cloudsandtonfas:

hannahbananafeefifofanna:

secretasianwoman:

boohoogulu:

orangelemonartt:

lilmisspeacock:

doctorscottie:

albinos-and-skinny-jeans:

hear-my-awesome-rawr:

xmapleburgerdruggedx:

wishywashie:

requiempormicordura:

my-sleeping-refuge:

Mulan is the fucking best as always

That’s why Mulan was always my favourite :)

Well technically mulan got her own guy too… but she’s still one of my faves :-)

YEHHH MULAN

PROUD OF YOU MULAN

BEST PRINCESS

YOU SAVED THE FAMILY HONOR.

Just the way that’s delivered. SAVED CHINA. Ahahahaha.

MULAN.

<3

THIS. THIIIS. SAVED CHINA. Oh yeah, Mulan.

FUCK YEAH MULAN! BRINGING HONOR TO US ALL!!

FUCK YES MULAN.

yes Mulan is the best

Mulan: Her “prince” stayed for dinner. x]

MULAN FTW!!!!!

Katy Perry - Firework vs. E.T. (Mashup) (by...

Sat, 07 Jan 2012 12:15:44 -0800

Katy Perry - Firework vs. E.T. (Mashup) (by Anthony70099)

Several years ago I had the pleasure of seeing Lawrence Lessig in person giving what is now a pretty famous presentation (both for form and for content) about remix, content, and copyright. It’s essentially a rant about how legal frameworks always fail to adapt quickly enough to creative activity, and so what business calls “innovation” (creative rulebreaking that redefines the domain) is called “criminality” in the legal space. This isn’t a blanket endorsement of all illegal activity, but rather a call to action to be more than the total of our outdated legal rulesets, and to empower the judicial system to adapt the legal framework in realtime by being more educationed and aware of the real implications of rote implementation of the existing ruleset.

Why say any of this? Because…because I absolutely love mashups. Can’t get enough of them. Seriously. When Sue Sylvester went crazy and bullied everyone and I almost stopped watching Glee, mashup week got me through. I’ve just plowed through sixteen Katy Perry mashups and I’m looking for more. The video above is a Katy Perry/Katy Perry mashup (yes someone mashed up TWO of the same artist’s songs) and it’s brilliant.

When Slate and Salon first started charging for their content online, I subscribed; my logic was simply that if you can write this well, you shouldn’t have to find another job to feed you. If being this creative can’t feed you, then we’ve reached the end. I feel the same way about this.

A final note: I’ve done little research on SOPA, and know only that GoDaddy is in on it, and that with no exceptions no one I respect is in favor of it. I’m going to research it now and likely my next post will be about that.

meloo: Unimpressed Astronaut Still want new iPhone.

Thu, 08 Dec 2011 13:18:50 -0800

meloo:

Unimpressed Astronaut

Still want new iPhone.

These kids are all around us. They’re in our schools....

Sun, 04 Dec 2011 12:04:03 -0800

These kids are all around us. They’re in our schools. They’re in our homes. They’re in our workplaces having grown up and gotten jobs and responsiblities and houses and cars and relationships and they ache to simply look at another person and say: I feel broken, but I don’t want to be broken. And to have that person say, me too, and let’s work on that together.

Sharing on this level is extraordinarily hard. This kid is going to go through some more hell as his YouTube video gets commented on and reposted and haters without remorse, humanity or scruple pile on from their safely anonymous Internet bunkers.

But you can do something else. You can tell this kid it’s ok. You can tell him he’s ok, that he will be more than this, that his life will be more than this. And you can look for his peers among you.

We all have demons, the voices and tendencies inside us that tell us we can’t, won’t, shouldn’t belong. No matter how quiet those voices are, when surrounded by the echoing multitude of insensitivity, bigotry, and yeah-whatever dismissal, they can reach a fever pitch that can take you down.

But not forever. You might even lose a weekend to these bastards. But don’t you think for a second their ability to not give a shit is greater than your ability to give a shit.

Be strong. Be well. Be safe, and be heartened in knowing that others struggle as you do, and we will have your back.

And for those that are being shitheads on the YT comments, there was a time when you were smaller and others carried you. Be not proud of your ability to beat on a kid from the Internet; you’re weak and you would matter if you chose to. This kid’s gonna make it and you’re going to watch him do it and you’ll have done nothing to help and that’s entirely your choice…and your sentence.

Whats goin on.. (by BlahBlahBlah2145)

SAT cheating ring and minor crime reporting

Wed, 23 Nov 2011 14:53:41 -0800

SAT cheating ring and minor crime reporting:

I’ve got many responses to the recent revelations of NY SAT test-takers having other students take the SAT for them for money (higher prices yield higher grades). One is that it’s sad that there’s that there’s so much pressure to do well on the SAT (high stakes testing, Bing that shit) that it’s actually CREATING INNOVATION in student behavior — which we’d reward if we weren’t so focused on the fact that they’re breaking rules no one understands other than “the SAT is the standard for all academic achievement everywhere” even though it isn’t.

Another take: the kids taking the test are being named, since they’re not minors, but the kids who hired them aren’t being named, because they are minors. Never mind that the minors are the ones actually requesting the service and driving the market. Contrast for example with the drug market, where we punish consumers and comparatively rarely find/punish dealers.

Finally, also related to the issue around minors, I wonder if NY will punish these minors as adults (i.e. does minor = juvenile in this case)? We know that for a variety of offenses juveniles have been tried and convicted and have served time as adults; the crime isn’t really the factor generally as much as race and class, which is why I’m guessing we’ll never hear about these innovative SAT proxy-seekers again, until later when they break more rules with even more money. Getting someone to take a college-entrance exam is a pretty high-class crime…doesn’t take a rocket surgeon to note that we’re hearing from their legal representation already, and that each one of them is making the case that the crime wasn’t a crime, that it should have been handled within the school, and that these are just kids.

Bullshit. Punish them, but nnovate on their innovation (that is the American way after all): I recommend two years at a local community college, along with community service spent mentoring and teaching aspiring highschoolers how to take and do well on the SAT.

As for the test-takers themselves, take a hint from the NSA and send them off to the ETS to help revise and fix the SAT. The core issue here is their exploit of a broken security system; the SAT is essentially a high-cost blind authenticator, designed to identify candidates for colleges who neither colleges nor candidates can identify themselves. If you can choose what score you want to get on the test, two things are true:

These kids clearly have a functionally infinite amount of whatever it is the SAT measures.
The SAT doesn’t measure what we as a society want it to measure.

So let’s fix it. And if at the next waypoint we find that high-stakes testing like the SAT has perverse effects (like this), then perhaps we should figure out how to actually identify the kinds of people we want to get access to higher education. Because while we caught these guys, every one of the folks at Goldman Sachs, Lehman, and the rest of the high-profile master of the universe responsible for our economic debacle probably did pretty damn well on the SAT.

P3 Lights Features & Benefits

Tue, 22 Nov 2011 14:14:50 -0800

P3 Lights Features & Benefits:

These seem like a good idea…

Latest Community ep is brilliant. Seriously. Documentary...

Mon, 21 Nov 2011 00:08:26 -0800

Latest Community ep is brilliant. Seriously. Documentary Filmmaking: Redux (Community) (by NBC)

It’s time to stop being angry at Twilight | Film | For Our Consideration | The A.V. Club

Fri, 18 Nov 2011 15:36:30 -0800

It’s time to stop being angry at Twilight | Film | For Our Consideration | The A.V. Club:

Couple weeks ago I had this observation that as Lucas’ efforts to remake his movies, one of the side-effects has been a great deal of critical thought into what was and wasn’t good about the original movies themselves, particularly in light of the fact that Lucas seems hell bent on NOT correcting any of the bad things in the movies, but only “correcting” the things that worked.

What didn’t work or wasn’t good in the movies, both the originals or pre/sequels, was dialogue, emotion, character development, and a host of other things…all of which are also vices of the Twilight series.

So here’s why I’m saying this: If you grew up watching Star Wars and you loved it, you were as stupid as the people who love Twilight now. Which is to say, you were not stupid. You were young and you liked what you liked and there was this space thing with the ships and the languages and the pew pew pew and you liked it because there was also this sorta nerdy kid who learns to fight for something other than himself and along the way has some great adventures and ends up in a place, and as a person, very different than what he is now…or at least, if you identified with that character, the pewpew and the space things distracted you from how COMPLETELY BADLY this transformation was implemented and you just got all woo about the change because he said he was different.

THAT is Twilight for these people. Leave them alone. Years from now on their way to their Twilight conventions, dusting glitter on their pale faces at 40 and 50, they will mock us Space Wars people the same way we mock people who chide us for thinking there’s been a good movie in a theater since The Jazz Singer.

And they’ll be right. And so are the Steamboat Willie fans, and the Beauty and the Beast (Cocteau) fans, and the ones who think Shakespeare sucks now that people are reading it in modern English.

Stop judging. They’re having fun. They’re aroused and amped and jazzed and there is NOTHING wrong with that. Let them to their joy.

Truth Wins Out - So Marcus Bachmann Called Yesterday…

Fri, 18 Nov 2011 14:08:04 -0800

Truth Wins Out - So Marcus Bachmann Called Yesterday…:

This is hysterical. Not just that Marcus Bachmann is calling his own patients about no-show appointments. The comments are reasonably good but about 10 comments in people mentioned posting this information about Bachmann’s no show policy and how they didn’t cancel the appointments on Angie’s List and Yelp.

Yelp?! Can someone tell me who’s going to Yelp to find a therapist to stop them from their own gayness? Is this a thing? Is the internet sufficiently everywhere that people who think gayness is that damn wrong are using Yelp (!) to find their anti-gay therapist? And what does that look like? Can you tag your own business on Yelp as “anti-gay”?

I don’t understand.

The Surprising Lameness of the India Lobby - Attackerman

Fri, 18 Nov 2011 14:01:15 -0800

The Surprising Lameness of the India Lobby - Attackerman:

Ackerman makes the case for missed opportunities by the India lobby and diplomatic corps in DC. I’m in tentative agreement, but is this the whole story? Sure, India’s diplomats aren’t getting the airplay that Pakistan’s ambassador is, but what are they actually doing, is it working, and is it related to this in any way?

I do agree regardless that this is a huge opportunity — and it’s been here for a while, as Pakistan’s treatment of the US, most recently recognized as sketchy by our own military caginess regarding the Abottabad raid that killed bin Laden (Pakistan was not informed of our raid until after we left Pakistani airspace) — and India’s standing as a rising democracy could be burnished and strengthened both in the US and in India itself if being a democracy were something we actually branded ourselves with in the US and the West, instead of just assuming we’ll always be taken seriously without continually earning it.

Right now, I don’t get the sense we’re earning it. I don’t even get the sense we’re trying to be an inclusive democracy.

Called it! Perry campaign running on fume$, as fundraising plummets. #EPA killed Perry's job!

Fri, 18 Nov 2011 12:29:04 -0800

Called it! Perry campaign running on fume$, as fundraising plummets. #EPA killed Perry's job!

Proof we are all irrational: Godfathers Pizza approval ratings move with Cain...

Fri, 18 Nov 2011 12:05:54 -0800

Proof we are all irrational: Godfathers Pizza approval ratings move with Cain...

(via PvPonline » Archive » Lovers Gotta Hate)

Fri, 18 Nov 2011 11:58:48 -0800

(via PvPonline » Archive » Lovers Gotta Hate)

Does Vander Plaats even know what a cornerstone IS?!

Fri, 18 Nov 2011 10:39:28 -0800

Does Vander Plaats even know what a cornerstone IS?! :

I’ve given up on coherence and consistency when it comes to the right-wing punditocracy’s hummer-industrial complex supporting the 2012 race’s flavor of the week/day/hour, so even this frantic fellating of Gingrich is sufficiently common-place that it doesn’t register.

But then there was this:

VANDER PLAATS: Every candidate’s past is going to matter. But I believe for those of us who are social conservatives, people of faith, we also realize that the cornerstone at the heart of our faith is a thing called forgiveness. We all fall short, but we want to know, is he truly repentful, is he learned, is he ready to move on, is he more mature? And I believe he’s addressed this in a lot of situations and I think he will again on Saturday.

Cornerstone? At the heart? Never mind that forgiveness is only for those the GOP deigns to favor at its whim, never mind that Gingrich is so pro-hetero marriage he’s done it three times, never mind the underlying message of most of his campaign that he’s an outsider, which is why he never goes by “former Speaker of the House and architect of the Whitewater/Lewinsky hearings Newt Gingrich” and never mind that if you don’t count those hearings he did fuck-all for this country in his time as the lead GOP fluffer of the Clinton administration. Never mind all that.

A cornerstone is at THE CORNER. It’s right there, in the fucking word. It’s also a stone, just to cover all the obvious things we should be aware of just from, you know, reading the word. Unless he’s saying that forgiveness is how oxygen gets around Christianity, I’m going to assume he means “the center” of his faith. That’s the CENTER, as in NOT ON THE EDGE, which is where ANY FUCKING CORNER would be.

There, I feel better. No, actually I don’t. Fuck.

Gingrich publicly calls for US covert deniable regime change ops in Iran...publicly.

Fri, 18 Nov 2011 10:28:29 -0800

Gingrich publicly calls for US covert deniable regime change ops in Iran...publicly. :

If you’re on the fence about Newt, here’s what you need to know: he’d rather be known than right. And he knows he’ll never have the job of CinC, because if he did actually think he was interviewing for a job, he’d never put himself in this position he’s now in — stating something during the campaign that he’d have to deny as President.

Candidates that don’t act like Presidents shouldn’t be Presidents. I think that’s a fair standard.

reconfirmed: FL is the south.

Thu, 17 Nov 2011 12:13:41 -0800

reconfirmed: FL is the south.:

Florida editor responds ‘honestly’ to press release about Ten Commandments | Poynter.