Getting back to square one

On Saturday night, I decided to improve my home computer, a PC. I was attempting to swap out an external hard drive to that contained an iTunes library with a different external hard drive. It's not as easy as you might think, because iTunes is twitchy when it comes to connecting up with its data. The details of my attempt aren't important, but I suspect that my overall experience is universal. My attempted fix didn't work out, and that was clear in 10 minutes. OK, then all I need to do is undo the fix, but that wasn't easy. In fact I ran into many snags, including trying to turn my external G Drive back into the H Drive that it used to be, but there was a ghostly obstinate H drive in the way and it wasn't clear how to change that letter (it turned out to belong to a printer and I eventually figured it out using the "manage" function under "Computer" of Windows 7. In the meantime, iTunes half-reverted to a past configuration, and after trying to stay patient for a couple hours, I decided that I was a very smart person for deciding to make a full metal-to-metal backup the night prior to trying engaging in this job. Thus, I turned to an excellent backup/restore program that I've been using for several years, ShadowProtect, by StorageCraft. I went to bed and let the restore function do its thing--when I woke up, everything was back to the way it was before I caused all of the trouble. Cool. Several things come to mind. First, there is often no way to fix things unless you're willing to break some things along the way. Second, if you don't have a metal-to-metal backup program for your PC, You should seriously consider getting one. There is nothing quite like the feeling of getting your machine back the way it was after something goes wrong (which could include something like a lightning strike or the natural death of your internal hard drive). The home edition is less than $90 and the only other thing you need is an external hard drive or two. I keep one backup drive at home, a second one at my office and a third in a safety deposit box. If this sounds obsessive, consider that my computer is probably a lot like yours. It contains almost every photo and video of my family. It contains all of our digital music, all of our tax and financial records, all of my writings, all of our emails and contact information (Outlook), all of my digital books, and much more. I can use to turn any PC into my PC (It takes only 2 minutes to set up the backup routine and hit the go button; I then go to bed while ShadowProtect simultaneously backs up my entire internal hard drive and a permanent external drive). Third, I'd like an "Undo" button for real life. I would like to make use of it at least several times per week. Fourth, my adventure getting back to the beginning reminded me of Oscar Wilde's quote regarding the craft of writing:

"This morning I took out a comma and this afternoon I put it back in again."

Continue ReadingGetting back to square one

The size of many things, large and small

I've seen similar websites allowing you to compare tiny and large things of the world, but this is a new one called "The Scale of the Universe." I spent ten minutes enjoying the comparison, then decided to share the link to the site. Here's one thing that I noticed for the first time: The distance from the Earth to the Moon is 250,000 miles. If you traveled that long distance, starting from the surface of the sun, traveling toward the center of the sun, you'd be only 1/3 of the way through the sun.

Continue ReadingThe size of many things, large and small

Life by the numbers

In years past, I used to rest assured that I was in good shape, physically, economically and socially. That was before computers gave me the ability to know exactly how I'm doing. It used to be easier to pretend that one was in good health. Nowadays, hundreds of websites let you know about all of the diseases that threaten you, complete with many symptoms that undoubtedly match some of your symptoms. Of course there have always been books and magazines with medical information, but never before could you so easily pinpoint so many symptoms with a free Google search or a quick visit to the symptom-checker at Wrongdiagnosis.com. Economically, we used to put our money into some sort of mutual fund or other investment, and we considered that we were "married" to the account. Computers now give us the ability to track our financial health second by second. Computer-programmed trading also creates crazy jumps and plunges in the market. Ignorance was bliss, and many advisers argue that you should go back to finding a reasonable place to put your money, then ignoring it for long periods of time. Then there is one's social health. It used to be that I could assume that I had an indefinite (large) number of people with whom I had a friendship. That was before Outlook came along to tell me exactly who I did (and did not) know well enough to have a phone number or an email address. In Outlook, you'll get the exact number. Ooops. My social circle is not nearly as big as I'd like to believe. Perhaps you are thinking that Outlook is not the right place to look, and that one ought to look, instead, to Facebook. Thanks to the precision statistics offered by Facebook, we can see that the typical Facebook user has 190 friends. That's it? But what if I get in a bind or I get sick, and I need the help of a "friend." It seems like you could run through 190 "friends" all too quickly. It ultimately presents the same problem as Outlook. It gives you a finite number, and many of them are not really good friends, anyway, as much as I enjoy sharing information with them. A new article in The Atlantic, "Is Facebook Making Us Lonely," by Stephen Marche, should make us even more suspicious of the Facebook phenomenon (the article is in the May 2012 edition, not yet online). We learn (p. 66) that neurotics and lonely individuals spend greater amounts of time on Facebook per day than non-lonely people. He also writes that Facebook has become a place to pretend that one's life is better than it is, and that "believing that others have strong social networks can lead to feelings of depression." He also cites to research showing that "surrogates can never make up completely for the absence of the real thing . . . actual people in the flesh." He concludes that the idea that a website "could deliver a more friendly, inter-connected world is bogus." Further research shows that "the greater the proportion of face-to-face interactions, the less lonely you are . . . [and] The greater the proportion of online interactions, the lonelier you are." He adds that Facebook is not always a bad thing. Like many things, it is a tool that can be used or misused. "It's like a car. you can drive it to pick up your friends. Or you can drive alone." Then again, Facebook puts us into the business of competing with our "friends." "Facebook imprisons us in the business of self-presenting, and this, [according to author Jaron Lanier], is the site's crucial and fatally unacceptable downside." Facebook gratifies "the narcissistic individual's need to engage in self-promoting behavior." So think about this next time you smugly react to your "friend" count. Marche's article is far more nuanced than the above summary, and he would admit that there are many ways to use Facebook. I, for instance, use it to share article, including many articles from this website. I can't help but notice, though, that many people post on Facebook 8 times per day, and they would seem to fall into his description of those having a "narcissistic personality disorder." When you add up your Facebook "friends," then, to see how rich you are with "friends," you might want to set those narcissistic friends aside before counting. So this is life by the numbers, at least if you include this final number, which I take as a challenge, rather than a depressing fact (or use this alternate method of calculating your approximate number of remaining days). In sum, it appears that you will be happier (or at least you will think you are happier) if you get away from the computer and, instead, spend time with a good friend, face-to-face, talking about something other than your health, your investments, and you cyber social circle.

Continue ReadingLife by the numbers

Shame on America for prosecuting Former CIA officer John Kiriakou

Shame on America for prosecuting Former CIA officer John Kiriakou. But America's actions are understandable because Kiriakou embarrasses America by saying true things like this:

  • On Iraq: “The answer to why we’re still in Iraq to this day has almost everything to do with the failures of leadership in 2003 and 2004 and, in some cases, the ascendance of rank deception—deliberate distortions of the facts on the ground.”
  • On FBI waste: After raiding a Taliban “embassy” in Pakistan in early 2002, Kiriakou’s colleague “found something interesting and provocative. A file of telephone bills from the Taliban embassy revealed dozens of calls to the United States . . . For ten days leading up to September 11, 2001, the Taliban made 168 calls to America. Then the calls stopped. The file, amazingly, was in English . . . The calls ended on September 10, 2001, and started up again six days later, on September 16.” Years after sending the phone records to the FBI, Kiriakou followed-up and his FBI contact “replied that it was like a scene out of that Indiana Jones movie. The files were still in those [original] boxes, in an FBI storage facility in Maryland . . . What a waste.”
  • On CIA’s deception about waterboarding: “Now we know that Abu Zubaydah was waterboarded eighty-three times in a single month, raising questions about how much useful information he actually supplied. . . it was a valuable lesson in how the CIA uses the arts of deception even among its own.” (Previously, the CIA told Kiriakou that Zubaydah was waterboarded only once and cracked, which fiction Kiriakou repeated in a television interview because his own agency lied to him.)
  • On Torture: “But even if torture works, it cannot be tolerated – not in one case or a thousand or a million. If their efficacy becomes the measure of abhorrent acts, all sorts of unspeakable crimes somehow become acceptable. . . . There are things we should not do, even in the name of national security.”
Jesselyn Radack has the story.

Continue ReadingShame on America for prosecuting Former CIA officer John Kiriakou

The ability to engage in a culture jump started human animals

What gives human animals such an advantage over so many other animals? Culture is the answer according to Susan Okie at TruthDig, commenting on a new book by Mark Pagel:

About 45,000 years ago, members of our species, Homo sapiens, reached Europe after earlier migrations out of Africa via the Middle East. The newcomers’ arrival must have come as a shock to the Neanderthals, a separate human species who had inhabited Europe for some 300,000 years. As Pagel notes, the new arrivals “would have carried a baffling and frightening array of technologies”—not only new kinds of weapons and tools, but also perhaps sewn clothes, musical instruments and carved figures. “It would have been like a scene from a science fiction story of a people confronted by a superior alien race.” The aliens likely didn’t owe their advantages to dramatically superior genes, but to a development, some 40,000 years prior to their arrival in Europe. Something happened that had immensely speeded up their ability to learn, adapt and acquire new strategies for taking over the planet: Homo sapiens had acquired culture.

Continue ReadingThe ability to engage in a culture jump started human animals