Category Archives: Thoughts

The Truth of Libertarian-ism..

The point of libertarian-ism is not forgo care, but to encourage people to volunteer care.

When 911 struck I didn’t know what to do, I was scared, and everyone was in shock, and things were closing down. The best idea I had at the time was to go to the hospital and to donate blood. It took 6 hours for them to finally get to me, but, while I was there people came in and brought food to the hospital workers working late, and to the people donating blood. As we where all there together it had a sort of healing effect to just give blood.

After that day I gave blood every 2 months for 6 years while I lived in Milwaukee. But one day, I went in and I was in a bad mood and I made a joke that the Vampires were coming to take my blood, and one of the nurses stopped me and said. Justin, we appreciate your gift, but we do want you to give cheerfully, and if you can’t do that then you should find something else you can do.

That’s the point of Libertarian-ism, we just want people to give cheerfully, rather than by the force of the Law.

The problem with forcing people is that they will fight it, and then we spend time fighting the people who fight it. In the end we end up spending all of our efforts fighting and not caring.

On the other hand, people who give with a cheerful heart, are those that will go an extra mile to care for someone.

I want to live in a world where people want to help each other out, and not say, hey here is a government that can take care of the sick and the homeless and I don’t have to. That’s what my taxes do.

The reality is that everything is in decay because we are leaving it to someone else to fix. What if you started fixing things you saw were wrong on your own?

Efficiency and Independence, Mankind’s next giant leap forwards

It’s July 4th, and it dawned on me today that so many of the things we grew up being futuristic actually depend on us getting greener. Look at any popular science, or popular mechanics issue from that last 50 years, and you’ll see articles discussing leisure, space travel, or solving large problems like world hunger. If you look at it, system efficiency are the largest hold ups. As we approach more efficient processes, things will get cheaper and easier.

Greentech is not just what’s needed to save us from a controversial end like, Climate Change, instead it’s how we can make Mankinds next giant leap forwards.

When my great grand father was growing up he witnessed something amazing, he witnessed the moment when mankind learned how to fly. He saw us go from failed experiments to creating roadways, and a deep transportation network that could transport resources over great distances cheaply. He witnessed what it took for us to land on the moon. At the core of it all was a shift in engine power density, or rather the amount of mechanical power we could generate with less weight.

Our generation will witness fantastic changes in efficiency:

  • Farming
  • Water
  • Computational
  • Lighting
  • Transportation
  • Manufacturing

For us to approach many of the challenges that we need to travel into deep space, we will need to be masters at living on less. It’s not about living with less, but that we might use less to do more. My hope is that we can look at green tech not as a way of scaling back, but as a way of reaching out.

Being green will allow us to leap farther, because we are weighed down less.

Japan: Pay it Forward

I just sent this message to a friend in Japan. My hope is that others will do the same.

I was inspired by a few articles I had read about in the past about pastors giving money to the congregations members to do good in a community. I don’t know how my friend Jon will make use of the money but I trust he will slightly know better than I how to use it.

I figure that this $100 will work in different ways than the other money that I have sent to the relief effort via the Red Cross.

If I get a note back of how the money was used, I will update this post. Please let me know if you choose to do the same. #japan #payitforward

Jon, I am sending $100.00 to you in Japan, if you need the cash please use it. If you know of a way to leverage the money please do that. If you think someone else could make better use, pay it forward. Write back to tell me how you use it.

Cheers,
Justin

Facebook as a Bank?

http://michaeldeshazer.wordpress.com/2011/02/27/the-yuri-milner-connect-how-facebook-will-become-a-bank/

This is a little bit of a leading argument but it seems to sum up external arguments.

I still have yet to rediscover where I saw that Facebook was filing to be a bank.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractional-reserve_banking
$2billion in cash can lend out $18billion in value.
@ 5% interest that’s $900 million a year in profit.
@ 10% that’s $1.8billion a year.
& that’s just on interest.

Facebook makes transactional profits too, so on $18billion in credits, I bet you could see $100 billion in transactions if they one day allowed peer to peer.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_transaction_tax

Visa has about $2-3billion a quarter in revenue via their transaction fees.

#TSA2.0 imagine you are an Evil Web Genius ( ninja, rockstar ) hacker!

If you were some evil web genius hacker type ( otherwise known as a ninja or rockstar ) how could you mashup TSA’s new scanner’s to your favorite webapis?

If you have not heard, TSA is at it again. It’s almost like they took a look at the past 20-50 years of sci-fi and said, “what don’t people want us to do?” “Oh, let’s do that.” So, they just decided to do it, even though fiction paints a bleak image of it. These days they are doing full body scans, and not the type you might see in Total Recall, where you see someones bones and maybe a weapon or two, but this time TSA seems to have contracted out to a company that seems to have their inner 12 year old boy on overdrive; and as a result TSA’s new scanners don’t just find weapons, no they snap photos of your naked body for the world to document. The technology uses a form of x-ray vision, no joke. Which has raised concerns for cancer patients and others whom care about their health.

So the question is what will TSA come up with next?

How good, bad can it get?

Maybe it’s time to have a little fun of it to raise awareness. Maybe we should create a few mashups in jest of the new procedures.

So, If you were some evil web genius hacker type ( otherwise known as a ninja or rockstar ) how could you mashup TSA’s new scanner’s to your favorite webapis? Would you cache a copy of the photo for yourself? Would you share it on Path with your 50 closest friends? ( MySpace, Facebook, Twitter? ) Would you tie it into your Gowalla or Foursquare checkins? Maybe you could use it as part of a google interview question, ” How can you determine someones BMI or weight from a ‘Naked Body Scan?”

Maybe you could track how much people eat/ gain between the holidays if you compare their departure and return flight images?

If you combine that with the data from face.com ( which has been acquired by facebook ) you could even merge the data from an anonymous photo, and tag that with an ID, and then later use rapleaf to look up that user’s web history before they board a plane.

So if you were one of those web ninja’s what mashup would you build?

Data is a paradise?

Notes from the Future

here are a few random thoughts about the future of tech.

Next up in sever farms, arm-mobile cores with system on chip gpus. I have direct word that google and facebook are both experimenting with this tech. nVidia is well positioned to take this market in 2-5 years with tegra2/3 / tegraX, and compete with intel/ amd in the low power server space.

There is a growing walled garden api problem. this results in the need for openid and oauth to support 4th party authentication, or granting someone the ability to delegate authority for you. you could think of this like if api’s could act via proxy, representative, assistant, or agent. 4th party delegated identity will be huge, and will allow you to pay for agents that filter and aggregate socially restrictive data. google doesn’t own this, and neither will facebook. there is room for a newcomer.

gov2.0 will happen, i am calling it #agilegov, and it will be less like democracy, and more like wikiocracy/ do-ocracies. others are calling it #bigsocial

3d games, will move into the web, and the web will finally move to 3d in the next decade. there are way to many gaps in platform tools for 3d worlds.

edu2.0, better connect top educators to more students. create smaller more engaging learning tools, or microlessons, that track behavior to a learning group online. think github for edu.

anyways that’s my rant.

Rate of innovation, too high? Displacing our humanity?

If technology is moving so fast that the past and present are not predictors of future trends, that is a serious problem.

Continuity starts to fade.

Have you ever wondered why people put so much effort into saving a historic building or preserving some artifact? When I was a young technologist I would have razed it all if it meant progress could move faster, but today I am a bit wiser. In the last few years, I have been moving a lot, and have been disrupting my own personal continuity. New friends, new buildings, new places to eat, new everything. Even my family seems…. more distant, not because of distances, but in May my parents started pursuing a divorce. So, for me, nothing is the same, except a few core friends; some of which moved out here. My happiness went way up when they got here, and a small savory piece of continuity was restored for me.

So, what I have realized is that Continuity is what makes us human. And as a result we have rich pasts and experiences to draw from. We have all of recorded history to define and differentiate us. ( of only about 10,000 years ) What will humans know of us 10,000 years from now? What will be preserved? What will be our Iliad? Our Bible? A dark age in Continuity is a dark age in the human spirit. We need continuity to be more than animals.

With out Continuity we may exist in a state of perfect societal flow, and may even transcend into this singularity thing, but really what breaks down? Philosophy will fail? Reason spanning seasons will fail, and a prolonged desire to plan will fail. If you disagree with this, then why is it that the north is more productive than anywhere else in the world. Why is it that winter climates seem to evoke the need to be productive? Why do the Sweeds make the coolest lights? Necessity breads innovation.

Jared Diamond who has written Guns, Germs, and Steal, and Collapse seems to evoke the notion that having to plan for winter each year played a large role in human and human cultural development.

If technology moves so fast that planing and thinking about the future are fruitless, we are in chaos. We might even be without what we call humanity. We will be confined to the present, making decisions on instinct and gut checks rather than thoughtful discourse. We will be in a stress survival mode, which will remove us from higher thought. The poor are often challenged in this way, and study after study shows that the poor spend more money on the same activities. They spend more on food ( percentage wise ), more on transportation, etc… We should strive for the sort of wealth that allows us the pleasure to think and share.

If this erks you, it should. If you disagree, then you might need to check out the Long Now Foundation, which hopes to create a sense of continuity for us into the future.

http://www.longnow.org/

I am beginning to think that John Nash’s work ( a beautiful mind ) is more meaningful economically at a society level, than at a company a,b,c level. I think as a society we should no longer seek maximums. “Maximums are the root of too much evil, as they lack the room to account for exceptions.” “A maximized system cannot leave room for the Black Swan, and are fragile by nature, asking to be toppled.” John Nash’s work suggests that in a competitive system one will find a more efficient use of resources going for 2nd best rather than the best. So, in the argument of sustainability, continuity, and stability; maximums undermine our ability’s by overvaluing now when compared to the past and future.

As a society we need to to create an economics that has room for “grace”.

Where are the good tech recruiters?

Having been a tech recruiter while I was in high school and being an engineering consultant I have a fairly unique point of view.

  • recruiters will tell you want you need to hear as a developer, a company who passes on you, has no interest in being blunt. however a recruiter has an interest in you interviewing well with their next client
  • being able to talk tech with folks goes miles. if you can talk to an engineer and actually understand what they are looking for, then you can be their advocate, and they will refer you
  • yes you have to hustle, and some hustle on the bottom via numbers, but, you might find other ways to source your phone list.
  • why don’t recruiting companies sponsor tech events, actually putting together great events. build relationships with speakers and attendees. like, duh,….
  • hold programing competitions, the best developers can win more than a cash prize, and even a $1-5k prize is worth it if you can place 2-5 engineers off of one competition.

anyways, that’s my $.02

Cancer Research, Blocking Cancer’s energy source, ATP, Lactic Acid, PEP, Pyruvate

Please take this at face value, and do your own investigation, but this looked like promising research.

If you put together these articles you might draw some
interesting conclusions.

This is what I gleamed from putting together the above sources.
It seems from these articles that cancer uses a cell division
technique that can be interrupted with a build up of lactic acid.
Lactic acid is more easily cleared up or removed which high sugar, or
carbohydrate diets. ( seems like it’s good for runners, but not good
for cancer patients. )

It seems like cancer growth is at it’s worst when Lactic acid has not
built up in a while to inhibit/ reset the rogue energy cycle that
forms.

Lactic acid builds up in muscles that are being used, but is
transported through blood flow to the rest of the body.
Blood flow during intense exercise is restricted to non-vital organs,
which would make it hard for lactic acid to reach those organs.
Prolonging Lactic acid in the body might help fight cancer.

From what I have read, this seems to indicated that intense exercise (
causing a warmness or burning in your muscles ) and not carb-loading
before a workout, or immediately afterwards is an ideal strategy. It
may be that the rise in cancer in our society might be related to the
sharp decline in intense exercise.

End of story, no pain no gain, when it comes to exercise.
It looks like they are looking for a pill to replace the simple need
for us to work physically harder in our daily lives.

Life changes you, things learned.

It’s almost been 2 years since i moved to california and its been a rough adventurous ride, and I don’t regret a moment of it. However, when I look back it’s odd to see just how different I am today.

Since sundays are for reflection, here are a few bullet points.

  • • living in milwaukee i felt very connected to the community, i knew so many people by name that everywhere i went was like an episode of cheers.
  • • i used to drink and eat a lot more, today i eat 2/3rds to 1/2 as much food. it’s so warm in california you really don’t need much.
  • • winter seems like someplace you visit, rather than live through.
  • • i used to feel tech deprived, now it’s easily accessible and to some degree less exotic
  • • i understand better how some ideas are good ones and others are a waste of time
  • • i now know i own too much stuff, too much ownership is a burden; you end up consuming more resources just keeping it and not appreciating it.
  • • women like geeks and entrepreneurs here, i feel sexy here
  • • hackathons used to be parties, now they seem like work
  • • i miss bucketworks, but….. have found noisebridge, and techshop, but don’t go enough.
  • • owning cars seem silly, but i still love my 350z, but now i don’t have a venue to enjoy it. i may just sell it and rent a sports car for a day, even at 500 dollars every few months, it’s cheaper, than paying for insurance and parking.
  • • in milwaukee, geeks were most easily found at goth industrial clubs, but out here, they are everywhere.
  • • you live in a city, not in an apartment, neighborhoods are probably more important than your home.
  • • being able to bike everywhere RULES.
  • • public transit is better than no transit, but it still sucks, its a tragedy of the commons.
  • • some graffiti is good, some is bad.
  • • political parties are not relevant.
  • • some people are so angry about somethings, that they will never listen about other things
  • • what its like to have a lot of friends that are female, what it’s like to have a female room mate; the secret is it’s really not that different, except your guy friends probably are more likely to drink your beer and watch the same tav shows.
  • • on average women think about sex way more than I would have thought 2 years ago.
  • • women may think differently, but they think about the same things. ( ok, maybe not all of the same things, or maybe just not at the same level of detail )
  • • the goal of any good conversation is to derive respect of and for someone regardless of weather you agree, find enjoyment in their fellowship, however not all people are respectable, and so don’t spend your time with them
  • • no matter how much you may want others to be independent and self capable, some people just want to follow, or lead. people may not be built for an egalitarian maximum.
  • • any good piece of art, creates a deeper connection between people. it should make good conversation easy. ( see above )