frontline on derivatives

Frontline has another great show on derivatives and gives a good overview of the recent economic collapse:

The Warning

You can watch the entire show online, in addition to some web-only content. In an era where all the major news organizations are either afraid to criticize a sitting administration (or even a past one) or are politically motivated rather than motivated by seeking the truth, Frontline can be a breath of fresh air.

Although the show generally has somewhat of a liberal bias, it's interesting to note they had the courage to air another great program on the war in Afghanistan and give it an accurate, yet provocative name:

Obama's War

now we're only 20 years behind

Instead of being 80 years behind the rest of the civilized world, but now we are only 20 years behind:

New medical marijuana policy issued

It's a great step in the direction of partial sanity, but it's frustrating to live in a country that is perpetually so far behind the rest of the world. I suspect decriminalization will happen in another 10 years, industrial hemp farming in 20 years, and full legalization in 30 years. Meanwhile, the rest of the world will be working on new things that we will be decades behind in adopting.

if we kill enough people

If we kill enough people, all the problems will be solved:

Pakistan sets its sights on Taliban sanctuary

Once most of them are dead, they won't be able to breed and make new Taliban members. Why didn't we think of this before?

ron paul on peace

We're fortunate to have a few members of Congress that still deeply understand what words like "peace" and "anti-war" actually mean. Here's a thoughtful response from Ron Paul on the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to Obama:

Obama wins the Nobel Peace Prize

The Senate is especially hawkish, which is why I'm happy to see Ron Paul's son throwing his hat in the ring for 2010 (and seems to actually have a decent chance):

Rand Paul 2010

steal this idea #1: iPhone flickr slideshow app

So, there are a lot of interesting iPhone apps that use Flickr, but not one that does something that I think would be pretty stunningly cool. Here's what it would do:

• Using your current location, the application would cycle through full-screen photos that were taken nearby
• Configuration would be extremely simple, perhaps only a preference for how long a photo would stay on screen before advancing to a new one
• As you walk, drive (as a passenger!), fly on a plane with WiFi, take public transit, and so on, you'd be entertained by a continuing slideshow on photos taken near your current location at any given time. This could be especially interesting when traveling.
• Tapping on the photo could give you some metadata (title of the photo and/or description) so you know what you are looking at
• There could be a way to manually advance the photo (swipe, for example)
• Perhaps there could be a way to say 'I love this photo' or 'I hate this photo' so future photos could be tailored based on keywords or other metadata
  

I can imagine being a bored kid in the back seat of a car watching a slideshow of pictures taken by people whose houses we are driving by.

I don't imagine the application would take too much work and there are already similar applications that use location data to show photos near where you are currently, but I could not find anything exactly like this.

steal this idea!

About 10 years ago or so, I thought of creating a website called Steal This Idea, inspired by the classic book by Abbie Hoffman called Steal This Book. Not being a web designer and lacking time, the idea never became reality. The basic concept was very simple: the world is full of people with great ideas, but few become reality, but rarely because the person with the idea doesn't want it to be, but because they lack the resources or know-how or even time to make it real. Ironically, this is reason my site never became a reality!

A few years ago, I stumbled up stealthisidea.org, which added to the irony by stealing my idea to start something like Steal This Idea! Now that this site appears to be down, I hope someone else can pick up the reins for what I think is a good idea. Here's how it could work:

• People could post their ideas for products (intangible or otherwise) that they would like to become reality
• Others that have resources or time, but lack ideas, could use the site to mine for good ideas
• Hopefully, in the spirit of cooperation, should the idea become reality and bring financial or other success to the implementer, it could be shared with the person that came up with the idea

Even if the ideas were 'stolen' as the site's name implies and the person that implemented it chose not to share the success, at least the idea came to reality! That's basically the crux of the idea is that it's better to have a great idea become reality and not profit from it than to have it forgotten forever.

For fun, I'll post a few random ideas that I hope someone will steal!

happy imperialism day!

I've always been a big fan of giving holidays much more accurate names. For example, Columbus Day could be:

• Imperialism Day
• Indigenous People Extermination Day
• Second (or Third) Person to "Discover" America Day
• Claiming Lands That Don't Belong To You Day
• Sticking Flags in the Ground Day
  

I'm sure you can come up with some more good ones!

war is the new peace

The Nobel Peace prize continues its many decade history of being a total joke by awarding the prize to yet another person directly responsible for continuing (Iraq), escalating (Afghanistan), and initiating (Pakistan) war.

The list of past winners includes very few people that truly understood peace, like Martin Luther King, Jr, Linus Pauling, the 14th Dalai Lama, and Mother Teresa.

As others have noted, the most honorable thing to do is for Obama to refuse to accept the award. If he truly stands for peace through his actions someday, he will no doubt be given the award then.

As usual, Glenn Greenwald has a wonderfully written article on the subject:

Obama's Nobel Peace Prize

And Daily Kos continues demonstrating their complete lack of integrity with this disgusting piece:

Conservatives stand with Taliban against the President

Hypocritical much?