Today's Numbers Revised

Stats as of 10:00 AM EDT or roughly midday worldwide.

 7,457,225,765 Current World Population  

    112,692,552 Births this year    

          168,774 Births today

47,192,694 Deaths this year     

       70,768 Deaths today

65,500,282 Net population growth this year

       98,354 Net population growth today

98,236,763,533 Emails sent today (half day)

        1,972,457 Blog posts written today

 2,119,928,993 Google searches so far today

169,981,107 Energy used today (MWh), of which:

137,839,640 - from non-renewable sources (MWh)

32,352,232 - from renewable sources (MWh)

for more minute-to-second stats worldometers.info

Some Thoughts on Addiction

What do you think of when you hear the term - Addiction?

Heroin? Drugs? Perhaps, alcohol? How about nicotine, sex, shopping or gambling?

"Addiction is a condition that results when a person ingests a substance or engages in an activity that can be pleasurable but the continued use/act of which becomes compulsive and interferes with ordinary life responsibilities, such as work, relationships, or health."

One often hears: "We're all addicts" or "we all have addictions."

Songs are written about it.

"You might as well admit it, you're addicted to love." - Robert Palmer

"There's a hole in daddy's arm where all the money goes." - John Prine

Addictions come in all shapes, forms and sizes. Some we cope with, others destroy us. Many of them simply chew up the fabric of our lives.

Take the Internet and it's death eater - Facebook.

I'm on a sabbatical from FB right now. Even went so far as to delete my last several months of posts, comments and likes. Addictions not only steal brain cells,  kill relationships and undermine well-being; we often overlook the ones that are just time sucks.

Minutes, hours and days can be consumed by the internet. Television, well admittedly in somewhat of a Golden Age right now, has spawned so many orphans (Netflix, Hulu, Roku, Sling, Amazon Prime) we can binge watch shows that haven't even aired yet.

Regrets, I've had a few but into the future the only Time Bandits I'm allowing in my world are those from Monty Python and Kim Stanley Robinson.

Oh, and Game of Thrones when it comes back

and the Coen Brothers

maybe PokerStars

but that's all

except for Ben & Jerry, which is a whole other addiction . . .


composite photo by Stephen McMennan

Auto Idiocy

I saw an ad the other day for a new car. Brand new car, totally redesigned or so they said. You know what they promoted for the entire commercial? The pre-programmed dashboard that will take calls on your cell phone, your twitter feed and your Facebook.

Now I give them credit, there is a button that you can push which sends the message: "I'm driving, will get back to you later." A button mind you that you still have to push while you're going 75 mph, looking at the dashboard instead of the highway where you are about to end my life.

I believe the expression I'm looking for is: WTF!

Why aren't we banning all cell phone and internet use while driving? Sorry, am I making too much sense? I've been in cars with drivers who are on the phone. I told one of them to pull over and let me out, when they laughed, I took the phone and threatened to throw it out the window.

This is not wave of the future, it's the way of death.

Sure, sure, I know. You always pull over to answer a call or take a message. You're a responsible adult and/or a lying asshat. But you know teens are not going to do that, you know because you've either attended a funeral for one of them or know someone who has. Dead kids splattered on the tarmac because they had to OMG! about Jason dumping Brittany.

Drivers need to drive, not talk on the phone, not text, not write pithy twitter comments or read their friend's Facebook updates.

Start-up steps for driving a car:
1) unlock the car door
2) sit in car
2a) [alternate - strap young child into car seat]
3) turn off your damn phone
4) start engine
5) do not buy any automobile that has on-the-road internet or phone access, when the car starts up, the internet should automatically shut down [exceptions allowed for pre-driving GPS programming and auto-porn].

High Diving Giraffes

One of my friends, who spends very little time on the internet, asked me to send her "that giraffe thing you posted a couple of years ago." Fortunately, I knew exactly what she was talking about, if you have not seen the astounding High Diving Giraffes, trust me, click through. You won't regret it.

For the ADHD among you, I think it's all brilliant but the action starts just before the two minute mark. Though the lead-in is a wonderfully artistic tease that really shouldn't be missed. I mean have I ever steered you wrong, other than that one time at that bar in Chicago and honestly, anyone who didn't have a medical degree could have made that mistake.

I've Been Thinking

I saw my first case of internet addiction recently and I don't just mean someone glued to their computer screen. The person I refer to was experiencing withdrawal symptoms after less than 24 hours off the computer. Symptoms strong enough to warrant medication, if you believe in the science behind tranks. I know, I know, it snowed a lot in Boston, global warming must be a liberal hoax.

But I digress . . .

I am reviewing my own online activities to determine the cost/benefit of my time there. I think, like most addicts, I have control of the urges that call me. Being a psychologist, researcher and pseudo-scientist I am undertaking a methodical review.

At this point, I have a couple of observations.

A. My overall web-surfing commitment has only slightly increased; however, social media, in particular Facebook, has replaced a good portion of the time I had previously devoted to national and international online newspapers. There certainly is a correlation to one's overall understanding of world affairs based on where you get your news. I wouldn't want my views to be Facebook formatted. On the other hand, the Daily Show remains a stolid source of commentarial sense and nonsense.

B. I do not have social media connections other than on my home computer. No cell phone surfing, no tablet, I can't even spell PDA. I generally don't carry my cell with me, only on long trips. Outside of the apartment, I am not connected, not sending, not receiving. When I walk out of a theatre I am discussing the performance with whomever attended with me, as opposed to the younger half of the audience who are texting their experience before Arlo has left the building.

C. Unfortunately, I have seen one too many "15 Most Exciting Ways To Something or Another" and I know way too much about what happened to the cast of M*A*S*H and Welcome Back Kotter. And the cats, don't even mention the cats. Did you see the one with the jaguar and the crocodile?

D. On the other hand, I am now in contact with friends from 50+ years ago. Some of those rekindled friendships have become very gratifying and I'm not even going to mention the shared recipes for all things chocolate.

Digressing again.

I'm going to continue to mince around with these ideas for a week or so, but I can say I am considering at least a month long break from sharing any more pictures of my lunch, my million coin win on MyVegas or my deeply held feelings about bigotry disguised as religion.

So, on social media use -- How about you? The comments are open.

Spreadsheet Sex

While I'm tempted to say -- "Now I've seen it all." I know better, we ain't seen nothin' yet. But this is one hell of a giant leap into the strange and prurient arena.

The Spreadsheet App measures several aspects of sexual performance. You load the app to your smart phone and then toss it on the bed next to where you plan to do the dirty deed.

The app measures duration of event, total number of thrusts and decibel peak. Screamer, you know you are a screamer. For any ladies in my immediate future -- no, I do not have the app. For everyone else out there in the wide world of sexual experience. Be very careful when your lover tosses his or her phone on the pillow, your performance might well be posted on the internet.

I mean we all have off nights . . .

But what if you're sleeping alone you ask. Well, there's an app for that too! I mean doesn't everyone need their personal sleep score . . .

Addendum: are there even stranger sex apps out there? You bet, take a look, if you dare.

Cyberspace

Cyberspace. The Internet. The Information Superhighway. The World Wide Web. Not the same but close enough, which observations resonant with you?

When I took office, only high energy physicists had ever heard of what is called the World Wide Web.... Now even my cat has its own page.  ~Bill Clinton, 1996

The World Wide Web where there's so much juxtaposition of the good stuff and the not-so-good stuff and flat-out-wrong stuff or deliberate misinformation or plain ignorance. ~Vinton Cerf

Give a person a fish and you feed them for a day; teach that person to use the Internet and they won't bother you for weeks.  ~Author Unknown

In cyberspace, the First Amendment is a local ordinance.  ~John Perry Barlow

National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway.  ~Tim May

The Internet isn't free.  It just has an economy that makes no sense to capitalism.  ~Brad Shapcott

We've heard that a million monkeys at a million keyboards could produce the complete works of Shakespeare; now, thanks to the Internet, we know that is not true.  ~Robert Wilensky, 1996

You can't take something off the Internet - it's like taking pee out of a pool.  ~Author Unknown

My favorite thing about the Internet is that you get to go into the private world of real creeps without having to smell them.  ~Penn Jillett

The Internet is the first thing that humanity has built that humanity doesn't understand.  ~Eric Schmidt

The Net treats censorship as a defect and routes around it.  ~John Gilmore, 1993

The Internet interprets the US Congress as system damage and routes around it.  ~Jeanne DeVoto

No matter how well you know the rules of netiquette, you will eventually offend someone who doesn't.  ~Don Rittner

The greatest thing about the internet is that you can quote something and just totally make up the source.  ~Benjamin Franklin

What I Know About Child Rearing

Top Ten Websites

Before you read the next paragraph - ask yourself. What is the top website on the internet? Got more than a few guesses. Read on for the most recent results.

I thought Google was #1 but I was wrong, the giant search engine is #2 with the social media drain on your life Facebook at #1. YouTube came in a surprising #3 with the longest running top ten site Yahoo at #4.

Wait you say is this the whole world wide web or just the english speaking world? No, this is all of it but there are two non-english based websites in the top ten. At #5 is Baidu and occupying the #9 spot is qq.com

Wikipedia holds down the disinformation hotspot at #6 and the Microsoft site live.com is #7. Twitter comes in at #8 and the top ten is finished with the only outright self-identified commercial/retail site Amazon.

Of Interest

"The entire internet is stored and delivered using 540 billion trillion electrons. Which all together weigh around 50 grams. Or about the weight of one strawberry."

Reconnected

Twenty Four long days and lonely nights without an internet connection. What did we learn?

1. the inability to immediately Google the facts means we only think the politician or news reader is lying, we can't be wikisure.

2. you don't really need to know who wrote that song.

3. nor is it imperative to real-time link the actor's face to his or her name; but it is difficult not to be able to answer the question: "What else were they in?" (Internet Move Database)

4. if you read and respond (and delete) email every day or twice a day, (OK, OK many times each day) then you really have no idea how much useless crap you have not already directed to your spam filter. Yes! I really do wish to unsubscribe.


5. People actually read my blog and apparently some feel deprived when I take a sabbatical. Apologies, I was taking notes and will be posting regularly in the present and near future.

6. I am very fond of my Kindle, those feelings have grown exponentially in the absence of net access.

7. Comcast mobile wi-fi customer service isn't.

I Know I've Been Away

My apologies to any and all readers. I have been offline for two weeks now trying to resolve my mobile Wi-Fi issues with Comcast. I will not trouble you about my interactions with their customer service other than to say that they must be taking their corporate philosophy from the same help manual being used by the U.S. Congress.

Since I have been up in Weed, California I have had zero internet service. I will be here for another week or thereabouts, right now I am at the semi-local internet café and will attempt to make the trek here more often for blog updates that are more than my queue of internet pictures and memorable art. For now it’s been an interesting respite from my blog mania, only minor withdrawal pains on this end. How about you?

A Friend & Author

Given enough time the bits and pieces will converge.

First there was the cat. I've had that picture for well over three years but I was determined not to use it until it was integral to a story. Second, there are my friends. In this blog I use phrases like: "a friend told me" or "a good friend asked the other day" I do not identify anyone by name unless they have approved there public outing. This blog is about me and what emerges from my head, heart and other parts; I never seek to draft friends into meanderings that are uniquely my own. I figure everyone has the right to privacy and the absolute right to define their own limits of personal space, particularly in the unfettered world of cyberspace, social media and utterances like this blog.

Then today, while trolling one of those social media thingies I saw that one of my friends had publicly acknowledged a blog post about himself. At that moment all the pieces fell into place. The cat clearly was Birrell, though most folks will tell you he carries a dog persona. I have been wanting to write something about his most recent three books - I had the privilege of being the final editor on each. This means I got to read them just before they went to press - all commas corrected - it's like looking at the nearly birthed story but still able to suggest: "you know her eyes really should be green" or "I think you should change to dog to a ferret."

Here is the link to the original post about my friend, Dr. Birrell Walsh. You can find the links to Lulu, Amazon and Smashwords for all of his books in all sorts of formats. I really liked them all but I am prejudice towards my friend's writing. I do, however, want to highly recommend Sister Clare's Lover one of the strongest, tightly crafted stories I have read in a very long time. You can pick up a PDF copy for $5 or a Kindle version for $8. Even the $20 paperback is a steal for such fine writing and engrossing story telling.

To the rest of my friends - read Birrell and I promise not to mention you here by name.

The Best Game Apps (website)

This little blog gets about 1,000 hits a day, not bad for the hodge podge of interests and topics that float around in my psyche. One small but virulently dedicated group are the gamers. Though I don't play often myself anymore, I have been involved with gaming and virtual reality since my days at Fujitsu (WorldsAway) in the 90s. Now one of my dear friends, Leigh, has started a new website that rates, raves and rants about the Best Game Apps.

The site features "reviews and walkthroughs of the best free games and paid apps for iPhone, iPad, Android and Kindle Fire. From puzzle games to zombie apps, we’re playing them all so you don’t have to waste your time and money looking for your next addictive app."

Remember what Karen Blixen said: "I had a farm in cyberspace..."

Good Luck Leigh.

Information Overload

Yes information overload is real.

Yes we contribute to it by surfing mindlessly from website to website.

I delete dozens of URLs from my history every month, you know all those sites you were going to get to tomorrow. I even found what should have been a great article about info-overload called Gluttony Gone Viral. But it was so completely over the top, my only thought after reading it was - no one has ever written about the overflowing of the internet while delivering such an absurd example of those exact excesses. It still is worth a quick read as a perfect exemplar of what we need to avoid.

Then I ran across another meme for this internet disease - data fog.

Too much of anything, too much of everything; eventually we hear (read) nothing doesn't get lost in the fog. I feel those creeping tendrils everyday. I devise tricks to avoid the seduction of the web. But of most concern for me is my own contribution to the fog - this blog.

I took some time at the end of last year to ponder and rethink what I am doing here - I admit to finding no real solutions and locating no conclusions. I could excise all political content, I know that would make several of my readers very happy. And it's not like there aren't plenty of pundits out there doing exactly what I do. Possible answers:

Hiatus?

Apolitical Only??

Complete Abandonment???

Still reflecting, more of something to follow.

Pretty good, not bad, can't complain. Thanks for asking.

A Glitch in the Internet

You probably have noticed that the ads you see on the right hand side of many browser pages will change based on where you've been surfin'. Particularly if you are hitting a lot of retail sites doing some comparison shopping. Well last month some nano-byte got jumbled on the interwebs and for about a week I was flooded with advertising for:

Engagement rings
Honeymoon vacations
Martha Stewart wedding guides

and yes, these pictures come from a couple of those ads.

No I have no idea how, what, when, where or why not. I even checked my browser cache but I did not black out and visit Brides R Us or anything like that. What I found most curious was that over about ten days to two weeks, the ads transitioned to home furnishings and real estate directed at 'first time buyers.' I am anticipating a flood of solicitations from divorce lawyers about this time next year. I know, I know, way too cynical.

So let me offer a teaser for next week. A woman I know through a one-time coffee date, which actually was a walk along the Bay - anyway, this woman is a wonderful writer. She has written several blog pieces on her adventures in online dating and recently her success at the same. I have several times consider writing a response from the other side of the aisle and now with her relational vindication, I have decided the time is now. My response to her Annals of Online Dating begins next week, along with a few other offerings on the general theme of: Online Dating, Relationships, Sex, Life the World and Everything.

$15 for the New York Times

The New York Times began offering a paid subscription last month. Basically anyone can read up to 20 articles a month for free. After that you have to pay up or wait for the new month to kick in. I never really kept track but I was fairly sure I hit my limit well before the end of a calendar month. What surprised me was when I signed up (99 cents for the first month, $15 thereafter), when I signed up I did not feel like I had just made a NPR donation or a relief for Japan, Haiti, Kathrina or tornado alley contribution. Fifteen dollars a month is a deal.

I read the NYT often. I hunt around in the archives for research, I get three of their teaser email newsletters and click links often for the full stories or editorials. I nearly religiously read the Sunday Review of Books usually on Thursday when it comes out online. I also read the online version of Atlantic (Monthly) still free, it would be a more difficult decision to pay for it; I really prefer magazines in hard copy, particularly the longer pieces. The Economist also gets a cyber-passthru each week but again a subscription might have to be for the hands-on edition. I read both the Atlantic and the Economist at the Berkeley Public Library, along with several other research oriented periodicals; usually on a very hot or rainy mid-week afternoon.

I also am not sure about magazines on eReaders. Books yes, but there is more to a good magazine than the words. The illustrations and the New Yorker cartoons don't translate so well to the digital screen. 

Ah what literary times of choice and bounty we dwell within.

Google Art

If you haven't tried Google daily art as your cyber pencil-sharpening distraction, may I strongly recommend it. You probably use Google directly from your web browser and never actually go to google.com. If you did you would know that they change the art in and around the Google logo almost daily with different designs in different parts of the world. They honor birthdays, independence days, holidays great or small and just about anything else the logo staff down on the Google campus can come up with. Here are a few I've enjoyed in the last six months.

That one up at the top was on Cezanne's 172nd birthday (Yes, it is hard to fine the G-O-O-G-L-E sometimes).

New Year's Day 2011.

Katsushika Houkusai's birthday, I have an old fondness for this art piece.

One of several variations for Thanksgiving last year. I like the ones where you have to stretch to see the g o o g l e.

Bruce Lee's 70th birthday.

The 55th anniversary of Rosa Park's famous refusal to be moved. If you want to see more such art go to Google Doodles.

Godwin's Law

I wrote about Godwin's Law way back in January of '07, soon after I had started this here blog. Well it clearly has been too long because I have run into several discussions recently where a good dose of Mr. Godwin's logic would have served all parties well.

Here goes:

Godwin's Law (also known as Godwin's Rule of Nazi Analogies) is an early principle of Internet dialog or it damn well should be. This sanguine postulation was formulated by Mike Godwin in 1990. The law makes the trenchant observation that "as an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis, Fascists or Hitler approaches one." 


Or to state it less mathematically: some lame ass who can't really think for himself is going to call the other guy a Nazi or a Fascist or even Adolf himself. Sooner or later as the discussion heats up and the flaming begins, someone will pull out this universally overused analogy. Generally the user cannot spell analogy nor pronounce fascist.


Godwin's Law does not dispute whether, in a particular instance, a reference or comparison to Hitler or the Nazis might be apt. It is precisely because such a reference or comparison may sometimes be appropriate, Godwin has argued, that overuse of the Hitler/Nazi comparison should be avoided, as it robs the valid comparisons of their impact.

Although in one of its early forms Godwin's Law referred specifically to Usenet newsgroup discussions, the law is now applied to any threaded online discussion, electronic mailing lists, message boards, chat rooms and more recently blog comment talk pages. To this I would add any and all group discussions particularly one that involves the potential consumption of large amounts of wine. [Oops, did I give too much away there. Will they know I am writing about them?]

Humor

Do you train your friends to not send you internet humor? I do, or at least I discourage most of it but leave a couple of avenues open because several of my friends and relatives have very strange and entertaining funny bones. The other day someone not on my 'humor allowed' list sent me a list of 50 one-liners and a note that said "I'll bet that you wouldn't be ashamed to put at least a dozen of these on your blog." Let's see, remember he said a dozen. [added comments are mine]

3. I think part of a best friend's job should be to immediately clear your computer history if you die [along with emptying the contents of 'that' drawer or in the case of certain friends 'that' closet]

9. Nothing sucks more than that moment during an argument when you realize you're wrong [the measure of wisdom is what you say next]

16. There is great need for a sarcasm font [if only so people we are trying to insult would get it and visa versa]

21. Google maps really needs to start directions on # 5. I'm pretty sure by now I know how to get out of my neighborhood.

29. Bad decisions make good stories [and great blogs]

31. I keep some people's phone numbers in my phone just so I know not to answer when they call [Yep, I have two]

38. How many times is it appropriate to say "What?" before you just nod and smile because you still don't understand a word they are saying? [I did this once on a date, I was shocked when I later discovered what I had agreed to]

42. The first testicular guard, the "Cup," was used in Hockey in 1874 and the first helmet was used in 1974.That means it only took 100 years for men to realize that their brain is also important [I like juxtapositional humor. Two contortionists walk into a bar . . .]

So, 8 out of 50 not bad but not a dozen either.

Let me leave you with a blond joke from one of my unblocked sources.

A short, thin heavily spectacled middle-aged guy shuffles into a bar, sits down in front of the bartender and orders a shot. The bartenders smirks, assumes he didn't notice he had walked into a bar called the Dyke's Den, she serves him his drink. The man downs the shot and says:

"You wanna hear a blond joke?"

The bartender says: "Maybe you want to look up here first."

The guy looks up at the six foot two blond bartender as she says:

"Wendy here is our waitress." 

Wendy has more tattoos than the guy has ever seen and she too is blond.

"Joyce at the door is our bouncer."

The guy swivels in his chair to see golden haired Joyce in full motorcycle leathers and a nasty look on her face.

"and Mary over there is the owner."

Mary seems to fill the door of the office near the back of the bar, she has to go 250 and, of course, platinum hair. 

"You sure you want to tell a blond joke?" asked the bartender.

"Well hell no," said the guy "not if I am going to have to repeat it four times."