Jeber’s

Don’t give up on love

It’s a greater force than we often realize.

The website is down

I’ve mentioned my stints on the help desk for Gateway computers and D-Link products before.  While I tried to be conscientious, I did get a complaint that I was taking too much time on some of my calls.  It didn’t help to mention that I was trying to help the customer accomplish their goal so they wouldn’t have to call back.

On supervisor told me I was much more suited to an in-house IT environment.  After watching this video, I’m inclined to agree.

The Website is Down

George Carlin 1937-2008

Non-believers are just being selfish

Selfishness is not a sin, not a defect, it’s the obvious and unavoidable conclusion of our individuality. We are self-aware beings, aware that we cannot know anyone else better than we know ourselves thus are forever trapped behind the wall of ourselves. Selfishness is a part of our character. It’s our survival instinct. It’s why we admire those who put their own safety and life at risk to aid another. We know how hard that is. Our self-fascination is a factor in our mental health. Like a good sense of humor.

“Depends where you draw the line for your self, doesn’t it?”

It does, I agree. The line I suggested was the division between instinct and character. Selfishness is a base concept, part of our instincts. It’s our survival instinct. Layered on top of that are the adopted traits and mannerisms that further define us as individuals. In those upper layers are parental love, honor, selflessness, all our more noble and prized attributes. For those we may express pride or shame, each life is different. But our selfishness is part of our core beliefs. In itself it’s neither a good attribute or a poor one. It’s how we build our lives around it that speaks to our character.

“…when I act in my total interests, it would be misleading to call it selfish.”

Misleading, yes, but not inaccurate. The problem is that we’ve allowed the word selfish to be given a negative connotation it doesn’t deserve. There are biological and evolutionary reasons we’re selfish. If you act totally out of self-interest, you’re behaving selfishly. And there’s no good reason in the world why you shouldn’t. Like I said, selfishness is instinctual. It’s how we dress it up that expresses our values and defines our character.

Tap your foot if you’re human

It’s ironic to hear about the death of Cyd Charisse on the same day I came across the following article.

Is there anything that differentiates humans from the rest of the animal kingdom? Tool use? Nope. The ability to communicate? No. Possessing a social order? Not even close.

We can dance.

So You Think You Can Dance?: PET Scans Reveal Your Brain’s Inner Choreography

So natural is our capacity for rhythm that most of us take it for granted: when we hear music, we tap our feet to the beat or rock and sway, often unaware that we are even moving. But this instinct is, for all intents and purposes, an evolutionary novelty among humans. Nothing comparable occurs in other mammals nor probably elsewhere in the animal kingdom. Our talent for unconscious entrainment lies at the core of dance, a confluence of movement, rhythm and gestural representation. By far the most synchronized group practice, dance demands a type of interpersonal coordination in space and time that is almost nonexistent in other social contexts.

Even though dance is a fundamental form of human expression, neuroscientists have given it relatively little consideration. Recently, however, researchers have conducted the first brain-imaging studies of both amateur and professional dancers. These investigations address such questions as, How do dancers navigate though space? How do they pace their steps? How do people learn complex series of patterned movements? The results offer an intriguing glimpse into the complicated mental coordination required to execute even the most basic dance steps.

Neuroscientists have long studied isolated movements such as ankle rotations or finger tapping. From this work we know the basics of how the brain orchestrates simple actions. To hop on one foot—never mind patting your head at the same time—requires calculations relating to spatial awareness, balance, intention and timing, among other things, in the brain’s sensorimotor system. In a simplified version of the story, a region called the posterior parietal cortex (toward the back of the brain) translates visual information into motor commands, sending signals forward to motion-planning areas in the premotor cortex and supplementary motor area. These instructions then project to the primary motor cortex, which generates neural impulses that travel to the spinal cord and on to the muscles to make them contract.

At the same time, sensory organs in the muscles provide feedback to the brain, giving the body’s exact orientation in space via nerves that pass through the spinal cord to the cerebral cortex. Subcortical circuits in the cerebellum at the back of the brain and in the basal ganglia at the brain’s core also help to update motor commands based on sensory feedback and to refine our actual motions. What has remained unclear is whether these same neural mechanisms scale up to enable maneuvers as graceful as, say, a pirouette.

Making music with Windows sounds

Tim Russert 1950-2008

I find it especially sad that he died just two days before Father’s Day.  From all appearances he deeply loved his son, and enjoyed being a son to his father.  They both survived him and will have a tough time I’m sure of reconciling themselves to the fact of his death.  But they’re Catholic, so there’ll be plenty of support available.

He was an excellent interviewer.  He knew how to listen and was intelligent, articulate, informed and reasonably unbiased in his questioning.  Still, he was an “everyman” in his exuberant love of baseball and his mid-western values.

No doubt he’ll join the pantheon of great journalists, each of whom in their own way attempted to inform the public with no regard for being entertaining.

Why some early adopters adopt early

It appears that one of the cults within the church of technology is known as the early adopters. They’re like the scouts in the Wild West. “OK, pull the wagons around. We’re making camp here tonight.”  And another portion of untouched wilderness gets slashdotted.  But those in the lead are also those who find game first, get to eat first, survive.  They also get status and respect.  They probably got laid a lot.  OK, there are some differences between early adopters and scouts.

There’s another, practical reason to be an early adopter.  If you’ve put any effort into establishing your identity online, one sure way to “reserve” it is to register for any site that sounds even halfway interesting with your preferred username.  By joining a number of alpha sites and those new to the web, you sort of become an early adopter by default.  Of course, if you want to become an influential early adopter,  you’ll have to stick around the site after you’ve joined and provide feedback, commentary, invite others.  Those people seem to form an A-List; often it’s the same people at several sites.

I confess, I’m an early name reserver on a few sites.  In a textual environment, my name and pen name are a commodity, one that I want to be constant across the sites I enjoy visiting.

You know what it is?  It’s a flashback of my days with AOL.  One name, many sites.

Oh dear, now I feel so unclean.

A word from our publisher

video-3

HTC’s Touch Diamond

Call it Raphael no longer! HTC has officially thrown the cover off its Touch Pro today — the QWERTY slider sibling of the recently-unveiled Touch Diamond — which should cover the bases for those who loved the Diamond’s keen looks but decided they’d go our of their gourds without a full set of physical keys at their disposal. Under that glossy black shell lies WiFi, HSPA with a solid 7.2Mbps on the downstream, Bluetooth, 2.8-inch VGA display, Windows Mobile 6.1 featuring HTC’s TouchFLO 3D interface, a 3.2 megapixel camera, a half gig of ROM, and 288MB of RAM. It’s not going to win any “world’s thinnest” records with an 18.05mm waistline, but those five rows of textual healing don’t come without a price. The first batch of devices will be Europe-bound in “late summer” with 900 / 2100MHz 3G alongside the quadband GSM and EDGE; North and Latin American versions are promised for later in the year. http://www.engadget.com/2008/06/04/the-htc-touch-pro/

Gonzo

“Gonzo, The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson” is a new documentary by Alex Gibney about Hunter S. Thompson that premiered at Sundance and opens in theaters on July 4th. Here’s the trailer.

From Oscar-wining director Alex Gibney and producer Graydon Carter comes a probing look into the uncanny life of national treasure and gonzo journalism inventor Dr. Hunter S. Thompson. A fast moving, wildly entertaining documentary with an iconic soundtrack, the film addresses the major touchstones in Thompson’s life-his intense and ill fated relationship with the Hell’s Angels, his near-successful bid for the office of sheriff in Aspen in 1970, the notorious story behind the landmark Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, his deep involvement in Senator George McGovern’s 1972 presidential campaign, and much more. Narrated by Johnny Depp.

Thanks to Laughing Squid for the above and reminding me.  I hope it’s a fitting tribute, not another embarrassment like a few other attempts to portray Gonzo on the screen.   Thompson’s life can only receive cinematic justice in a documentary.  Like Crum and Watts, Leary, too.

One chore, no more

When I moved into the bungalow that I currently call home last year, I had hundreds of boxes of stuff – my stuff, my late mom’s stuff, my former roommate’s stuff – that had to be relocated in a short period of time. There was no storage here, so I piled everything up in two huge stacks near the bungalow. I covered it all with tarps and crossed my fingers during the recent rains.

I had a $300 storage shed that had to be built and required two people to construct it. It sat in pieces all Winter and last week I gave up hope of ever seeing it built and sold it.

Last week I started using the base I’d already built for the shed as a base for the boxes. Today I finally completed getting all the boxes stacked on the base well covered with several tarps. Many of the boxes are falling apart, and I lost count of the number of Black Widow spiders I displaced.

I saw a lot of things that will need to be thrown out someday, a lot of books and pictures that were ruined by the rain. It’s kind of sad that for 12 years I was able to keep everything high and dry in a rented storage shed at the old house only to lose a lot of things in less than a year moving them here. But most of my CDs are OK, many pictures did survive and everything that was irreplaceable appears to be dry.

It’s a huge chore to have finished, even if it is temporary. I don’t need to cringe every time I hear about rain on the evening news now.

I really need a shower, coffee and some dinner. It’s been a long, but good, day. I hope your weekend was enjoyable and productive as well.