Republicans Also Lie

אז לא רק רבנים חרדיים משקרים. גם רפובליקנים. אני קורא לי להנאתי ב-SlashDot ונתקל בידיעה הבאה: שירות מחקר של ספריית הקונגרס כתב דו”ח עם מחקר כלכלי עמוק על הקשר הסטטיסטי בין הטלת מיסים, צמיחה כלכלית וריכוז הון החל מ-1945. אז יושב באתר של ספריית הקונגרס מסמך נחמד שמתאר איך אין שום קשר בין קיצוץ מיסים לעשירון העליון ויצירת עבודות או פיתוח כלכלי ואיך כן יש קשר מובהק בין אותו קיצוץ מיסים וריכוז ההון בחלק הגבוה של הפירמידה. ומה הרפובליקנים עושים? בעולם מושלם הייתי מצפה שהם יגידו, “אופס, סליחה. הרעיונות שלנו לא באמת עובדים. 65 שנים של מידע ממשי מהשטח באמת מספיקות כדי לשנות את דעתנו ואנחנו נמצא רעיון חדש בשביל הכלכלה של ארצות הברית.” אבל לא. מה שהם עשו זה לדאוג להוריד את הדו”ח הזה מספריית הקונגרס (כרגע נמצא אצל הניו-יורק טיימס) כי הוא לא מתאים למה שהם טוענים. ולמה אני מקשר את זה לרשומה הקודמת? כי זה בדיוק מה שדתיים שמרנים עושים. ואני ארגיש חופשי לצטט את טים מינצ’ין כי הוא אמר את זה טוב. Science adjusts it’s views based on what’s observed. Faith is the denial of observation so that belief can be preserved. וזה כל מה שיש לי להגיד על זה.


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The State of Intelligence

אמנון יצחק ועובדיה יוסף הם שניים מהמטיפים המעצבנים ביותר שפועלים כיום. מי שמכיר אותם כבר מכיר את הרטוריקה המגעילה והנבזית בה הם משתמשים כדי להסיט את מחשבתם של ההולכים בדרכם. אבל שתי כתבות שקראתי לאחרונה מראות כי הם בהחלט ירדו לשפל חדש. שניהם, דיי כצפוי, מדברים על הוריקן סנדי. בוא ניקח קצת פרספקטיבה על סנדי לפני שניכנס לכתבות עצמן: סנדי, הוריקן מסיבי עוד לפני שפגש עוד כמה מערכות מזג אוויר שירדו מקנדה, טיפס במעלה החוף המזרחי של ארצות הברית והכה באחת הערים היותר פגיעות, פחות מוכנות ויותר מאוכלסות באמריקה אם לא בעולם. שתבינו, מנהטן יושבת כל כך נמוך שמספיקה עלייה של מטר או שניים במפלס הים והיא כבר מתחילה להיות מוצפת. נחשול מספיק רציני יכול לכסות בלוקים שלמים. חצי מהאי איבד חשמל. אפילו מניו ג’רזי היו צריכים לפנות אנשים. יותר ממאה אנשים נהרגו (130, פעם אחרונה שאני שמעתי ועדיין מטפס). הרבה נפגעו מכל התופעות של ההוריקן ויותר יצטרכו לבנות חייהם כמעט מאפס. זה היה אסון טבע מחריד ביעילותו. ומה אמר עובדיה יוסף, בלשונו הכהה כל כך שגורמת לילדים בני חמש להרגיש לא נוח, על האמריקאים בכלל ובוש בפרט? “הוא עולל את הגירוש והנה יש לו גירוש. עכשיו כולם צועקים עליו… הנה זה העונש שלו על מה שעשה לגוש קטיף. וגם אלה כולם, עושי דברו, יבוא זמנם. הקדוש ברוך הוא, ישתבח שמו, ארך אפיים עם הרשעים. למה? כי איפה הרשע יכול לברוח מהקדוש ברוך הוא? יגיע זמנו ויקבל צ’פחה על הראש.” והמשיך אותו אמנון יצחק, המטיף המתלהם שיודע בעיקר להתרגז ולפנות למכנה הנמוך ביותר. “הנה אמריקה, עם כל הגודל שלה – Continue Reading →


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Role Playing Games – A Must

There have been many studies about the importance of play. Just like animals learn their important skills by playing (wolves running, chasing and biting, for example), human kids also learn social interaction through play with other kids and we build up our analytical skills by solving puzzles be it block building or predefined riddles. And if you look at gamers, almost everyone loves a good puzzle games whether they be simple matching puzzles, complex quests or serious brain busting riddles. Even if all you play is sports games, you probably would also enjoy a good puzzle. Puzzle games are today’s extensions of the brain exercise we used to get from physical puzzles and challenges. And this is why I think everyone should play Role Playing Games. Roleplaying games are full of puzzles. They are narrative based and all about some form of engagement. But pretty much all role playing games contain puzzles. They could be riddles, tactical situations, clue hunting or even political plotting. But each of them tend to really task the mind because of their very unique quality: all of them are specifically designed for the particular situation in hand. Meaning, the game setting and the players. When you’re a kid, you go outside, make up games, play with your friends, spend several hours just working your imagination. When you grow up, most of that goes away. Your entertainment turn into going out to drink, watching television, maybe some conversation over dinner. More modern adults also play party Continue Reading →


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Face Value or Sub-Text?

After finishing the Mass Effect Trilogy and filling my head with the Indoctrination Theory, I kept thinking about the idea of the face up value vs sub-text. A lot of games that are available today are simple games, what you see is what you get. Monsters are overrunning the Earth and you need to kill the Devil, ok no problem. Seems pretty simple. And you can find some games whose stories takes a few twists and some things are not as they first seem, for example… [SPOILERS AHEAD! If you see the name of a game you don’t want spoiled, skip it! But there is another section after this.] Portal 2 – One of the more obvious examples when you start out fighting your previous villain only to discover you’ve helped a worse villain. Star Control 2 – You start out thinking you’re fighting to stop this evil race only to find out that they are doing what they are doing because they were burned pretty badly in the past, burned so bad that galaxy wide domination or annihilation is the only choice. Borderlands – At the beginning, the vault is this huge treasure trove but at the end you realise it was a prison. Knights of the Old Republic – You go hunting for a malevolent Sith Lord only to discover that you were the villain that lost his memory. One Must Fall 2097 – You fight through all the tournaments to face the big boss and he’s not piloting his robot, he is his Continue Reading →


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Imagine if there were no pirates…

NetFlix will have to write their own subtitles… Ubisoft will have to disable their annoying copy protection on their own… They will also need to convert their own audio files… Artists will have to be sought out for their music… It will be a tragedy. On the other hand: Music sales will go up… People everywhere will pay to watch TV shows… Authors will be much more well known for their work… And every form of media we wish to consume will be readily and easily available… It will be a utopia. (Hint: No, it won’t).


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People Will Rise Up: Babylon 5 vs The Hunger Games

This thought coalesced around the time I saw this lecture and we were talking about The Hunger Games. One of my first problems with the story is that I think there is no way people will be willing to live under oppression and fear. One of the things I loved most about Babylon 5 is when they described the Earth-Minbari war, the Minbari were superiour to the Humans in every way. They were beaten back and the Minbari got all the way to the Sol System. They fought all the way to Mars and Humans were on the brink of annihilation. It wasn’t what stopped the war but the Minbari were in awe that a people were so stubborn and so unwilling to give up. Only on the footsteps of Earth did they acknowledge surrender and even then, people still joined in a fight, that they knew could not be survived, just so civilian rescue ships could evacuate. Because people are stubborn and will fight for what they think is right. And so, I was facing a big problem with the idea that The Hunger Games were 74 years on going. And I was shocked that a people were oppressed for so long without a fight. I can’t remember, in human history, an oppression so long without some fighting, some resistance. And it resonated for me with the Arab Spring. Here was our current real-life example that a people in the dumps, knowing and seeing that things could be better, chose Continue Reading →


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Sometimes Goodbye is a “Second Chance”

I love my parents. I love the place where I grew up. But it’s a cradle. And you have to leave your cradle. It’s not just a metaphoric observation on some option in life, this is an imperative. I’m not saying everyone should leave their home but your home doesn’t make you who you are. Even your parents. Sure, you inherited their genetic material and that and the place you grew up in define you but they shouldn’t constrain you. You should go and find your own place in life. These are the kinds of thoughts that have been running through my head since I was ten. Yes, ten, I’m not kidding. Since then I was thinking about what I want to do with my life and where that life should take me. It took me until I was about 14-15 to really nail it down but I was thinking about it even then. And these are some of the main topics of my life. Because – and again, I mean no disrespect to my parents – but my father can be a bit pressuring at times, to the point where you think that you’re not the one running your own life. And I think this is one of the main reasons why I turned up the way I am, always have to do things my way, most often in the complete opposite way as everyone else, just so I could feel that I’m in control. And since this is Continue Reading →


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Kids and Strangers

I’ve been reading the Free Range Kids blog for a little while now. This blog came out of a book, written by the blogger Lenore, about the idea that kids are not unsafe if you leave them alone and when you give them responsibility, whether they are 16 years old, 11 years old or even 6-7 years old, you’re not endangering them but empowering them. And on top of that, the fact that current society sees all of these activities as dangerous to kids is borderline psychotic. It has been interesting so far, but the first post I would really like to talk about is this one. The story actually starts in this post (linked inside the new one as well) about the Virgin-Air Airline who forced a man to move from his seat just because he was seated next to two boys, 8 and 10 years old. The 33-year-old firefighter was immediately suspected as a secret pedophile just because he was male. This is a great blow to this man’s honor and to human decency in general. After that story was posted, Lenore posted two letters she got in response. One stating how right Virgin Air is of their action because 99% of pedophiles are male (so, by obvious “logic”, 99% of males are pedophiles, right?) and another one, which I linked to first, that tells an interesting story by a reader who says that when she was 4, she, her mother and her 1-year-old sister where going cross Continue Reading →


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The Mass Effect Finale

[SPOILER WARNING!] Every thing in this post is under a heavy spoiler warning. I am discussing Mass Effect in its entirety from start to finish but mostly how the trilogy ends. If you ever want to play it with out bias and haven’t yet, close this tab right now. However, if you haven’t played it yet, or just not the third one, there is a suggestion for you at the final paragraph. You should check it out. There was some hubbub on the internet regarding the ending of Mass Effect 3. I haven’t played the game with out the Extended Cut and from this I understand that there were some problems with it. But most of them have been solved to some extent. For me, looking at the endings according to the Extended Cut, I think they were good. There were some problems with them, I didn’t expect the “Fuck You” option to be the “You Lose” option and the added slideshow at the end really seems tacked on but I still thought the ending was epic. Honestly, throughout the second half of the game I was hoping it would get a Star-Control-2-Class ending. And I’m glad to say it did. Really. Beautiful. There were some hitches I can snag on but overall, I liked it. But after you step away with a sweet and sour taste in your mouth, you go online to see discussions of the endings and the entire trilogy and you come across the Indoctrination Theory (The Full Continue Reading →


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Today’s Lucky Ten Thousand

See first post for explanation. And this is what we have on the table today: The Screen Saver Grace Period – is a setting in the Windows operating system that determines how many seconds you have, after the screen saver starts working, that you can stop it without incurring the penalty of having to log back in again (If you’ve set it to require password). This is located in the Registry at location: Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon. It’s a string value called ScreenSaverGracePeriod and it interprets the value in seconds. If it’s not there (like in later versions), just add it exactly as I said. The Heat Sink – is the little piece of metal you find on components that tend to run very hot, like your central or graphics processors in your computer or console. It’s composed of a flat slab, to connect to the heat source, and fins extruding from it, to disperse the heat in a way that will allow maximum contact with the air around it. You blow on this with a fan and you get your basic heat evacuation mechanism. Here are some pictures of it. Also, some folks today are working on a rotating heat sink that dispenses with the use of a fan. Pedestrian Stoplights – are a curious thing. They are designed, at least in Israel, in such a fashion that when they turn red, it takes 3 seconds per lane of the crosswalk before the cars’ stoplight turns green. This is to allow the person who Continue Reading →


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