Wis[s]e Words

Silicon snake oil

Published on April 27, 20121 Comment

Two prime examples, courtesy of two of the best communities on the web. First, through Unfogged, some wannabe Steve Jobs douchecopter explains how the Ipad means we all need to be excellent at our work or be unemployed forever:

And if you’re good at what you do, then I suggest making a plan to be excellent — or quitting and joining the 99% at Occupy Wall Street.

I think the polarization of wealth is as much about the “age of excellence and the end of good” as it is about the criminal Wall Street gambling d-bags who rape and pillage our economy with every trade they can. Certainly the financial crimes of Wall Street did damage, but what damage does putting out average products do to our economy?

It’s just the usual twaddle on how we all need to adopt to the increasing demands of the modern workplace yadda yadda, dressed up in New Shiney Apple snake oil, written by somebody who hasn’t done a day of honest work in his life.

Then at MeFi, another jerkfacewanting to do away with computer science departments at university because they’re not quite vocational training courses, demonstrating he has no clue about what universities actually do:

One good example is cited in an awesome book on educational reform called Crisis on Campus by Columbia professor Mark Taylor: one of the most pressing problems that humanity has today is obtaining clean drinking water. Yet no university has a Department of Water. Why is this? Because campuses are an endless successions of zero-sum games: the formation of a new department necessarily means that resources must be taken away from existing departments, so existing departments viciously defend the status quo, even when that doesn’t align with reality. Computer science education has not been in alignment with reality in a long, long time.

This is just hopelessly clueless about how universities work and like the earlier example, this guy too is obsessed by being the best, by seeking simplistic, business driven solutions to complicated problems. It’s a handicap in the geek mindset, something these silicon snake oil salesmen make good use off.

Goosebumps

Published on April 26, 20122 Comments

Aging Norwegian folkie leads 40,000 people singing the Norwegian version of Pete Seeger’s Rainbow Race, in a giant fuck you against Breivik and all he stands for

The news can seem unending grim day in day out, then something like this comes along and restores some of your faith in humanity. A reminder that despite all the Breiviks out there, there has been progress in the past seven decades since WWII, that the belief in the equality and worth of all people, no matter their race, creed, faith, orientation or gender, is utterly mainstream. The fascists and nazis have lost, they may still be dangerous but they cannot win.

Pictures from Plymouth

Published on April 25, 2012Leave a comment

Sandra's last resting place

I got some of my pictures up from our visit to Plymouth last weekend. The picture above is the most important of the lot: that’s where my parents and I scattered part of Sandra’s ashes, into the Plymouth Sound, to become part of the ecosystem again — the only sort of reincarnation or life after death she believed in.

Her sons weren’t there, as they didn’t feel up to it yet, quite understandably. We’ve left the urn behind for safekeeping so that at a later date, when they are ready, they can scattered the rest of her ashes somewhere nice. Meanwhile a final part of Sandra’s remains will be laid to rest in our own garden, helping feed the plants she herself planted.

You leave the country for one weekend…

Published on April 24, 2012Leave a comment

And the government falls again. You’d think the old rightwing parties, VVD and CDA had learned from their experiences with the LPF, but once again an extreme rightwing populist party has brought down a neoliberal government. This at the end of seven weeks of very serious negotiations about the 16 billion euros of spending cuts the three parties were engaged in, spending cuts that are now off the table.

Though unlikely to remain so for long, at least this will give the opportunity for the leftwing parties in parliament to minimise these cuts and steer them in the right direction, e.g. by ending the Dutch participation in the JSF. The collapse of the PVV support for the minority government will also mean the likely end of already agreed upon cuts, e.g. in the social workplaces, as well and just as important, the end of support from the other two parties for the PVV’s idee fixes, like the burqa ban.

Even more importantly, though Wilders and co will still be around after the next elections, this will probably be their high water mark, their moment of greatest power. As I’ve written about time and again, Wilders had to walk the tightrope between populism and power. He knew that if he had gone into a proper coalition government, he ran the risk of ending up like the LPF, splintered between the two old dirty fighters of Dutch politics, while if he had gone into opposition, his base would’ve deserted him because he couldn’t achieved anything that way, as had happened to the SP before. So he ended up with what looked like the best of both worlds, supporting a minority government while not having any governmental responsibility himself, yet he and his party still got into trouble anyway. And the voters have started to leave already, even before this happened.

The final result of this fall is the end to the myth that we need to make tough, harsh decisions right now, as no earlier date than 12 September for elections seems likely to be decided upon, while any drastic measures before that seem unlikely as well. And with that, the idea that we do need to conform to the EU demands for a budget deficit no larger than three percent of GDP seems less likely too.

A win all around than.

Fear and greed in ConDem Britain

Published on April 23, 20121 Comment

Even back in 1999, when I visited Britain for the first time, I noticed the advertising everywhere, much more persistent and omnipresent than in the Netherlands. Coming back now, more than half a decade after the last time I visited, the differences are even more noticable. It’s not just the amount of advertising, in the streets and on the telly, but what’s being advertised: pensions, quick ways to borrow money, all sorts of dodgy insurance, including schemes to get back the money you’ve lost in a previous insurance scam, and so on.

What’s more –and this may be a Plymouth thing– is the huge number of security warnings I’ve seen on the streets here, warning you not to drink alcohol in public, not to jump off some wall, not to skateboard, to be aware that this pub or shop doesn’t take kindly to shoplifters or drug use, that police in this area may be using head cams, and so on. The culmulative effect is an aura of insecurity and fear hanging over the neighbourhoods these warnings appear in.

Finally there are the shop fronts, where outside the tourist areas and big shopping malls it seems everything is being taken over by the kind of shops thaqt prey solely on the desparate working and under classes: cash converters, quick loan fixers, ambulance chasers, pound shops, with only the charity shops and occasional Polish or other ethnic supermarket still holding on.

The end result is a country where fear rules the streets, the only refuge the shopping malls.