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New Deck Entrance

Originally uploaded by BigTravMan

I decided to spend St. Patty’s day building a new entrance way to the hot tub deck. It’s been a pretty interesting process trying to blend wood framing with the existing aluminum patio. I still have to put the finishing touches on it but I got a lot further than I expected when I started this process on Saturday morning. More pictures available here on flickr.

Minus The Bear just released a new video for the song Throwin’ Shapes. 80’s joggers find true love.

This is a really good short understandable video about the slow decline of the US Dollar and what it means for our currency.

Do you understand what this means for the money in your pocket/savings,/401k?

This shouldn’t be celebrated.

I really liked this video. I learned a lot about stem cells and it was easy to understand.

ScreenFlow is a screen recording application for the Mac that works great on Leopard. It produces excellent video quality, full DVD playback capture and has some pretty slick post editing tools. TechSmith is working on a Camtasia Studio for the Mac and I suppose Jing counts as a first step.

TechSmith should buy Vara Software. Vara Software has two things that TechSmith needs right now. A strong Mac Leopard development team and London, England location. TechSmith could use some international help. Just my .02

I just scored two tickets to the Jacks Mannequin show. Video for mix tape below.

Edit: I had to add “Dark Blue” too

Harpers Food w/ Bugs = 10% discount

Originally uploaded by BigTravMan

Went to harpers for half off. Got a hot little bug in our food and got a slick 10% off one meal. Harper’s is the way to go.

Sometimes I overstate things. In an argument I might say “You never” or “I always have to”. It’s a really childish habit because it doesn’t leave any room for discussion and what’s probably worse, it’s never accurate. The words “never” and “always” don’t convey meaning - they are absolutes. Black and White.

I’ve been working hard over the past several years to correct this, I seldom catch myself doing it anymore, but when I slip and make some over reaching statement like “you never” or “I always”; I cringe. Luckily, I don’t stay sad long because someone I thought was really brilliant will invariably make an even more ridiculous overstatement that makes me feel human again.

For example, take the following recent statements from Nobel Prize winner’s Doris Lessing and James Watson.

Doris Lessing used her acceptance speech to tell the world that computers make us dumber

“We are in a fragmenting culture, where our certainties of even a few decades ago are questioned and where it is common for young men and women, who have had years of education, to know nothing of the world, to have read nothing, knowing only some speciality or other, for instance, computers”
- Doris Lessing

At a speech Dr. Watson, one of the most brilliant genetics researchers, was mildly racist in his assertion that blacks are inherently less intelligent than whites.

I am “inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa” … “all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours — whereas all the testing says not really.”
- James Watson

These are two brilliant people, in my view, making horribly wrong and over reaching statements similar to what I am guilty of.

Malcolm Gladwell’s new article “None of the Above - What IQ doesn’t tell us about race” in the December 17th issue of New Yorker, discusses how researcher James R. Flynn’s radically changed the way we see IQ scores. His research, now coined the Flynn Effect, showed that the average IQ of a population has a tendency to increase over time. “The average rate of rise seems to be around three IQ points per decade.”

After more research, it is now known that environment and use of cognition in daily life plays a much greater role in the rise of IQ scores than genetics alone. This flies in the face of Dr. Watson and much conventional thinking about IQ scores. Many people believed there to be a causation between some other inherited trait such as race, parents, nationality or another arbitrary factor. Mr. Watson error was taking a small sample of data showing a correlation between low IQ and race and making a terrible over reaching statement about the prospects for an entire race of people.

I find it is important to remember that we bring to every opinion, limited information and inescapable prejudices. We must always try to be accurate and dispassionately state the facts. Emotion can lead to terrible overstatements.

Even brilliant people like Mr. Watson are capable of making really horrible overstatements.

H.R. 1955: Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007 has passed the house and is headed to the senate.

I have included the summary description below for more understanding, but generally it amends the Homeland Security Act to include “homegrown terrorism”.

If enacted, the department of homeland security would establish permanent institutions on University campuses to study homegrown terrorism. They would also investigate anyone whom has an “extreme view” or “ideologically opposes the government”.

Ron Paul on HR1955: “This legislation focuses the weight of the US government inward toward its own citizens under the guise of protecting us against “violent radicalization…….There are many causes for concern in HR 1955. The legislation specifically singles out the Internet for “facilitating violent radicalization, ideologically based violence, and the homegrown terrorism process” in the United States. Such language may well be the first step toward US government regulation of what we are allowed to access on the Internet. Are we, for our own good, to be subjected to the kind of governmental control of the Internet that we see in unfree societies? This bill certainly sets us on that course.”

Dennis Kucinich on HR1955:

“If you understand what his bill does, it really sets the stage for further criminalization of protest. This is the way our democracy little, by little, by little, is being stripped away from us. This bill, I believe, is a clear violation of the first amendment.”

This bill leaves a lot of open questions: In certain cases could Iraq war protesters be considered ideologically opposed to the government? Are protesters, muckrakers, minorities grouped in with homegrown terrorism?

SUMMARY: Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007

Amends the Homeland Security Act of 2002 to add provisions concerning the prevention of homegrown terrorism (terrorism by individuals born, raised, or based and operating primarily in the United States).
Directs the Secretary of Homeland Security to: (1) establish a grant program to prevent radicalization (use of an extremist belief system for facilitating ideologically-based violence) and homegrown terrorism in the United States; (2) establish or designate a university-based Center of Excellence for the Study of Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism in the United States; and (3) conduct a survey of methodologies implemented by foreign nations to prevent radicalization and homegrown terrorism.
Prohibits the Department of Homeland Security’s efforts to prevent ideologically-based violence and homegrown terrorism from violating the constitutional and civil rights, and civil liberties, of U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents.”

Here is Amy Goodman on DemocracyNow discussing the bill

While our State suffers from the worst unemployment in the country, our legislators are doing their darnedest to make it even worse! I’ll try to explain this mess as I see it. In 2007 they replaced the “Small Business Tax” with the “Michigan Business Tax.” This tax will take effect in 2008 and will take $220,000,000 more than the old SBT.

They didn’t stop there. Then they raised the State Income Tax from 3.9% to 4.35%, about 3 or 4 weeks ago you should have seen a drop in your take home pay check. This has affected almost all employed Michiganders.

Now for the confusing part for most people, the “Sales Tax on Services”. This proposition has been completely repealed, even though it was technically in effect for about 15 hours companies will be given amnesty if they didn’t collect sales tax during that period. The proposed “Sales Tax on Services” has now been replaced with “a surcharge tax.” The surcharge tax is 22% on top of your existing businesses tax liability capped at $6million to protect GM and Ford. So lets use some simple numbers to make this a little more tangible.

Allocated Gross Receipts: $1,000,000
Michigan Business Tax: (4.95%) = $49,500
NEW Surcharge (22%) = $10,890
Total Tax Liability Before Credits = $60,390

I think our government needs to learn to live within its means. What do you think?

Researches have discovered the mummified body of a 65 million year old dinosaur in North Dakota. For all of you Christian’s out there, this pretty much puts that whole theory that “the world is four thousand years old” to bed, right?

http://www.abcnews.go.com/WN/story?id=3952832&page=1

Jay-z is amazing and Charlie Rose is my favorite interviewer. The hour w/ Jay-z, Ceo of Def Jam Records.

I thought I’d do something a little different today and share a drum practice. I’m no Gene Krupa but I love to play. I hope you enjoy.

 

 Stoliker Drums [5:03m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

“THE CORPORATION explores the nature and spectacular rise of the dominant institution of our time. Footage from pop culture, advertising, TV … all » news, and corporate propaganda, illuminates the corporation’s grip on our lives. Taking its legal status as a “person” to its logical conclusion, the film puts the corporation on the psychiatrist’s couch to ask “What kind of person is it?” Provoking, witty, sweepingly informative, The Corporation includes forty interviews with corporate insiders and critics - including Milton Friedman, Noam Chomsky, Naomi Klein “- plus true confessions, case studies and strategies for change. ”

Tags: video, The Corporation, Politics, Movie

High winds resulting from yesterdays tornado broke a large tree limb off one of my backyard trees. The limb fell on to my fence and destroyed a 4 foot section. Luckily for me the limb fell away from my bedroom and onto my neighbors house.
 

Tags: house, East Lansing, Tornado, “Tree fall, “my house

So today I turn 27 and my cousin gave birth to her first daughter Pretty exciting day so far. I have a second cousin “first cousin once removed” (Thanks Paul) with the same bday, neat..

I’ve got a lot of love from a lot of friends today. Thank you to everyone! Troy Stein, my old mentor and boss, from TechSmith released CamtasiaStudio5 today and still had time to make and send me a card. Check it out

Troy rocks

Have signs of global warming begun to hit home? My birthday is next week so I remember this time of year clearly as a child. I never remember swimming on my birthday.

(Photo by Robert Killips/Lansing State Journal)
October 4, 2007 [From LSJ.com] Beaches at two Ingham County parks will be open this weekend, making this the longest swimming season ever, parks officials said.

Capital Gains, 10/3/2007 “Lansing-based web hosting company Liquid Web is expecting to grow by 60 to 100 percent this year and next, according to Liquid Web spokesman Travis Stoliker. Liquid Web added 35 employees last year and currently has 70 to 74 employees. Stoliker says this number will jump next year. “We’re always hoping for 100 percent, but we’d be happy with 60 percent,” he says. Liquid Web is a web hosting company that has customers all over the world. It’s also one of only five Lansing-area companies to make Inc. magazine’s list of the 5,000 fastest growing private companies in the country.”