Its cool, because although I have never attended DEF CON, I am in the loop. It was probably 1995 or 1996 when I printed the cDc Ninja Strike Force t-shirts for Deth Veggie.
I got into printing the t-shirt printing business while at school at Tufts, and thanks to my awesome Massachusetts connections, I was able to print the shirts at my buddy Craig F.’s place in the basement of the Toxic Narcotic house basement. Yes, those were good times.
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And the panda we saw earlier in the day at the Smithsonian National Zoo:
Today I was by myself so I swam in the lap pool and swam ten laps. Swimming is perfect exercise for me - not too intense, but a full body work out.
I'm planning on going again soon!
UPDATE: I've continued to swim a whole bunch - 40 laps yesterday and another 20 today. Feels great! I also bought my daughter a little floating swim jacket and we're going at least once a week.
]]>My comment:
This is a terrific post. I enjoyed the part about banking - as in the US we initially were bound to Fort Knox for backing up our bills with gold stockpiles, but have been off that plan for some time now and no one seems to mind all that much (but some do). Also in the US, people are apparently feeling more comfortable with an unknown future - they switch jobs more readily, and even religions.
Is our six sense coming to fruition?
]]>I gained a lot of respect for the legal profession, but I also came to realize that there is very little that can be done to prevent someone from suing you. As one of my lawyers said, "All anyone needs to sue someone else is a piece of paper, an envelope, and a stamp."
Another lawyer once told me that getting sued can be a sign of success; the plaintiff might be suing you because they are afraid of the power you have, or wants something you have. In my cases, I believe that to have been the cause, but truly its of little consolation!
But what about the title of this post? What is a SLAPP lawsuit? All caps, it must stand for something, right? Yes:
Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation
The public participation referred to here is the speech, and our right to its freedom. There are circumstances where free speech is not protected, as in cases of libel or defamation. For example, if one restaurant falsely states that another restaurant serves tainted food, they can and in my humble opinion should be silenced and held liable for the potential monetary damages caused by their false claims.
On the flip side, if their claims are true, I do not feel that they should be silenced, or held liable for damages resulting from the truth being made public. However, the offending restaurant can still sue in an effort to defend themselves. What has evolved within our legal system is the use of merit-less libel and defamation lawsuits used to spend opponents into submission. Similar to frivolous lawsuits, they are usually expected to lose if they run their course.
Apparently these types of frivolous lawsuits are so commonplace that they deserve specific legislation to be handled, and are even afforded their own acronym!
While its nice to know that injustice can potentially be corrected through the due process, its disappointing to learn that such a system can be so grossly abused. Furthermore its disappointing to learn that for the most part, it is the lawyers, not the judges, play the role of policing the system.
Most states have anti-SLAPP legislation, and NPR is reporting that the federal government is considering nationwide anti-SLAPP legislation, too.
I'm not a lawmaker nor a legislator, but in my humble opinion there should be treble punitive damages for merit-less SLAPP lawsuits. The system needs some sort of systematic process for preventing this type of legal abuse.
What do you think?
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Unfortunately, GACCO (The George A. Caldwell Company) was not as successful as GEICO. Maybe they should have gone with the gecko spokesanimal.
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The weather here in Bethesda Maryland has been insane. Last Friday, February 5th, 2010, the snow started coming down in the late morning. I drove my daughter to her mother’s house at 1PM, and you could tell people were concerned about the storm - the traffic was heavy with people already leaving work!
At 10:30PM, the power in my neighborhood went out. I expected it to be back on in the morning, but no luck. The next day we had more snow. Lots and lots more snow. It was between 24 and 28 inches, and Bethesda could not handle it.
I hunkered down and did a lot of reading, hoping for power, heat, and hot water. No luck. My sisters’ and I sent SMS messages back and forth with little to update. After a second cold night, Sarah and Richard came through big time with an invite to Kate and Kevin’s house where they maintained power. I don’t like to impose, but I still jumped at the offer. After a few hundred shovels of snow to dig out the Yota and help my neighbors free their wheels, I was so thankful to find myself basking in the glow of incandescent bulbs, a warm fire, good friends, and even a cool black lab. Those folks are quality folks.
Thankfully I didn’t have to inconvenience them too much because my power came back on today. Once again, my apartment is warm, my refrigerator is cold, and I’m online. No complaints.
But what about the storm coming tomorrow? Another 10-20 inches? The crew on Cromwell put it best: “Holy Snowplow!”
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I'm pleased to report that thanks to my daughter's interest in hearing me play, I'm now able to play two songs on the banjo:
I'm able to play these songs thanks to the Uncle Bens Banjo Homepage, but they don't have any other tablatures with recording. That's what I need at my skill level, so I guess I'll have to find a new website to learn banjo playing from.
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I haven't read all of these posts yet, but they look good:
]]>I loved it in grade school, and continued to until I reached my senior year of high school when it started to require more focus and my attentions were instead attuned to my car and my girlfriend.
I find myself in a situation now where delving into something like mathematics as a pastime makes perfect sense, and thankfully I've found a couple of wonderful websites to get started:
MathWorld has been helpful for getting situated again. Its a gigantic reference of all things math - from high school algebra to linear algebra and matrices - even theories about random numbers.
However, Math Less Traveled has been a much enjoyable site to read. When my interest in mathematics started to wane in high school, my father bought me The Joy of Mathematics: Discovering Mathematics All Around You
This is what Math Less Traveled has returned to me, and I'm very grateful. When I started reading The hyperbinary sequence and the Calkin-Wilf tree, I felt a little intimidated at first. Thankfully the author, Brent Yorgey, is a good writer and is able to simplify complex concepts into smaller pieces, and even build up a little suspense in the process of revealing a solution. When I read part I of the series, I was intrigued by the counting rationals in series, 0 to infinity as the nominator and 1, 2, 3 and so on as the denominator, realizing that not all rational numbers could be counted this way because the series would never reach the second denominator.
I can't explain the next method of counting as well as the author, so I suggest checking his site out if you are interested, but let me say I was excited by the prospect of the counting method. What came next, the Calkin-Wilf Tree, was absolutely wonderful. Again, I can't explain it well, but it provided me that satisfaction of comprehension which I occasionally find in developing software. I haven't even finished the series and I feel like I "get" it.
In general, its been very interesting for me to reconnect with mathematics. During my "vacation" from mathematics, I've delved quite intensely into computer programming and software development. From time to time, I rely upon skills developed while studying mathematics. Other times, I'll learn new computer science concepts. I find it very cool that some of those concepts are now actually based upon mathematical concepts.
In this way, it feels natural to become pick up with mathematics again. This time, I believe, I'll stick with it.
]]>One of the quotes came from someone who is a "social entrepreneur".
This caught my attention. Although I'm not sure exactly what they meant by the terms, I take it to relate to a wider scope of "businesses that do good for people".
I'd recently spoken with my sister about how the impact a business has on society and the environment, ultimately its sustainability, has rightfully become a significant factor in how businesses must operate. What's specifically important, I believe, is that it might even have legal grounds, based upon goodwill and consumer choice.
To be more specific, executive management of public companies have a fiduciary responsibility to maximize shareholder return on investment. If they, for example, decide to use a more expensive supplier, Supplier G, that uses sustainable or environmentally-friendly production processes, they could theoretically be liable for the alleged loss of potential profits that could have been gained by using a less expensive, less sustainable or environmentally friendly supplier, who we'll call Supplier Z.
So let's imagine the court case, where shareholder A is suing Manager B for breach of fiduciary trust. Could Manager B's attorney argue that if they chose Supplier Z instead of Supplier G, their environmentally conscious customers would have switched to the competition because their customers base their decisions on environmental factors as well, thus losing revenue and ultimately shareholder value? I think so.
I think this is a very solid argument which would hold up in court, but then again, I'm not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice!
Nevertheless, while I'm at it, I'd venture to guess that this argument could also be used to protect managers who decide to:
Ultimately I think this type of business logic is grand. It strongly reminds me of my days studying human factors, where we designed products for humans based upon human factors first, and equipment, manufacturing processes, and material cost factors second. The take home rule of thumb of my degree: a penny saved by ignoring a human factor when designing a product for human beings will end up costing a dollar or more throughout the lifetime of the product due to increased customer support demand, threat of competition that didn't ignore the human factor, and maybe even customer injury liability (yes, some customers think its a good idea to trim hedges with lawn mowers).
I did a quick search for "business fiduciary responsibility to put profits first" and found this interesting looking article from 2005: Rethinking the Social Responsibility of Business @reason.com. I say "interesting looking" because I haven't read it yet, but I'm including this link so I can go back and read it sometime soon.
]]>I previously added my two sense, and today read a quality post by Leo Antunes about the origins of gender disparity that I commented on regarding a different topic.
]]>Leo, I skimmed over your post at first because, to be honest, I was a little exhausted and overwhelmed with all the recent discussions on Planet Debian concerning gender issues in technological pursuits. I previously spent the time to express my thoughts as a comment on Matt Zimmerman's site, which I mirrored on my own site about fatherhood, and figured I'd leave it at that. Thankfully your disclaimer caught my attention and impressed me. I went back and read your post and was refreshed by your thoughtful, rational, and well-mannered contribution to the ongoing conversations regarding gender. But back to your disclaimer - good on you! I morally support your effort to change the world one person at a time. I too focus on small-scale, real change, and decided to share with you what I believe about this pursuit. I believe that true benevolence, which I hope people are trying to achieve when they try to change the world, is incredibly difficult, but well worth the effort. I also believe that true benevolence starts from within and requires years of thoughtful, inspired, and intentional behavior to share with others.
What do you think? Is this tree kick ass, or what?
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