I’ve put up a first pass at visualizing the data from the survey I put up last month about computer language use and religion.  This was an attempt to see if there are any correlations between languages people *prefer* to use and religious identity.  The results are available to be viewed at http://www.kimsal.com/reldevsurvey/results.php.
There’s a few [...]

Posted in General, Ideas, Religion, Society, Software, Web 14 Comments »

I was reading up on carbon offsets - buying, selling, etc. - and got to thinking that I could let people pay me to not pollute.  I’m not sure I pollute all that much, but certainly between my wife and I we create *something*.  So I’ll stop, or reduce my footprint as it were, for [...]

Posted in Energy, Finance, Ideas, Society 3 Comments »

I’ve had two frustrating phone calls with directv today which brought to the fore all the things I hate about dealing with phone services.  Every time I call up places that I regularly call, I’m forced to
1.  Press “dos” if I “desea espanol”.
2.  Tell the friendly attendant robot what my needs are, like “tell me [...]

Posted in Business, Ideas, Personal, Society 4 Comments »

UK’s Daily Telegraph had an article about Dr. James Watson’s comments about the genetic implications of intelligence. Some of the conclusions he draws imply that blacks are genetically not as intelligent as whites. Dr. Watson was one of the co-discoverers of the double-helix foundations of DNA.
Another article from the BBC includes the following [...]

Posted in General, Media, Personal, Politics, Society 2 Comments »

I was talking to a recruiter the other day (I’ve been contacted a whole lot lately for some reason) and she asked about the reference to “mensa” in my extracurricular/other section.  I’m not even 100% sure why I put that there - I haven’t updated that section in a while.  I asked her if it [...]

Posted in General, Job, Personal, Society 6 Comments »

This article from Wired indicates that some airport screeners are keeping notes on passengers, down to what you’re reading.  I don’t get the impression that it’s being done for every single passenger all the time, but it’s still frightening nonetheless.  I flew a lot in August, and anticipate flying a lot more in the coming [...]

Posted in General, Law, Personal, Society, Travel No Comments »

for the social web to evolve to the next level.  Is that at all controversial?  I hope at least the title is, as I’d like to provoke a bit of thought in you, the reader, about the topic of DRM.
I’ve been mulling this and related topics for some time, but not quite in these words.  [...]

Posted in Blogging, Development, Ideas, Society, Software, Tools, Web, XML, opensource 2 Comments »

There was a lot of hoo-ha last week about Circuit City laying off 3400 employees.  I found a local paper from EMU had a story about it as well, which gives a SE Michigan perspective ($10 is a ‘living wage’ in Ann Arbor, apparently).  And this morning driving back from Chicago there was a radio [...]

Posted in Business, General, Job, Society No Comments »

I’m sure this isn’t a terribly *new* idea, but I’m not seeing any big names getting in to this. Given all the social networks that have exploded which simply focus on interests (flixter) or geography (facebook), giving people ’social networking’ tools to help communicate about their health and medical issues seems like a much [...]

Posted in Business, Ideas, Media, Society, Web 1 Comment »

Slashdot has an article about this article, which was related to a documentary  I saw last night (it was British, I think from the BBC).  I’ve never been comfortable with the current dogma that humans are causing climate change.  At the very least, our ability to make such huge impact in such a short time [...]

Posted in General, Ideas, Politics, Society No Comments »