Occupation of Independence

Recently I've had trouble in the New Post editing window when user blogger (blogspot). It didn't show the editing icons (font, bold, italics, etc.), which made it harder to post of course. An associated blog (Wandrin.blogspot.com) got me started with the Help capability of blogger. Normally I give up on such things before giving them a fair chance. The solution didn't come from tech thinking; it came from "cui bono" paranoia: I've always been afraid that if internet users get hooked on freebies from Google, they would sabotage adblocking capabilities, since ads are how Google rakes in obscene profits. (I use the Firefox browser with AdBlock Plus.) Paranoia is useful sometimes: I guessed that I should turn off AdBlock Plus on the page in question, which is one of the options on the pull-down menu of AdBlock Plus. Sure enough, the editing icons showed up again: problem solved. Shame on me for expecting a free blogging service, free Picasa photo-editing, a

As long as I'm telling the book publishers how to run their business, the DVD movie industry might as well get some advice too. I know of no industry that illustrates Thoreau's classic words, better: "...so with a hundred "modern improvements"; there is an illusion about them; there is not always a positive advance... Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys, which distract our attention from serious things. They are but improved means to an unimproved end, an end which it was already but too easy to arrive at; as railroads lead to Boston or New York. We are in great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas; but Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate." First off, the "step up" from regular DVDs to Blue-Ray discs is non-value-added if all it gets the consumer is more pixels and higher resolution. A regular DVD and LCD screen are flat-out gorgeous; nothing more needs to be done; the poi

What was it, the next day after the earthquake and tsunami that Keynesian market commentators began licking their chops over how these disasters would actually help the Japanese economy, because of all the stimulus spending and quantitative easing? That was their knee-jerk reaction, despite Japan's stimulus spending since 1990, which produced two lost decades. It's funny that they didn't use the same argument about the international invasion of Libya and all the ensuing destruction and civil war. After all, if you subscribe to the broken-window-fallacy, what difference does it make whether you throw a rock through somebody's window, or use a ball instead?

The other day a friend got me thinking how far out of the mainstream we both were for never owning a dishwashing machine in our lives. But see what we'd be missing? This was deja vu for me: three fellow cyclists and I were having lunch one day, in the middle of a Saturday ride. It was humorous the way we all realized at the same time that we were sitting with a whole table-full of kooks who didn't even own a television.