Ok I’ve just converted a second machine to use the NAS for networked Time Machine backups, and this time things went straight through without any mistakes. Here’s the run-down:

How to use any shared drive on your machine as a time capsule.

NETGEAR ReadyNAS Community » Blog Archive » Making Time Machine work with the ReadyNAS

For those of you keeping track, the Unix Epoch will be 1234567890 on Feb 13th. (Exact time depending on your Time Zone... unless you want to be UTC about it.)

Epoch 1234567890 = 2009-02-13 18:31:30

Iceland has announced a new government that will be headed by the modern world's first openly gay leader.

BBC NEWS | World | Europe | First gay PM for Iceland cabinet

Over the last eight years, as Vladimir Putin has amassed ever more power, Russians have often responded with a collective shrug, as if to say: Go ahead, control everything — as long as we can have our new cars and amply stocked supermarkets, our sturdy ruble and cheap vacations in the Turkish sun.

But now the worldwide financial crisis is abruptly ending an oil-driven economic boom here, and the unspoken contract between Putin and his people is being thrown into doubt. In newspaper articles, among political analysts, even in corners of the Kremlin, questions can be heard. Will Russians admire Putin as much when oil is at $40 a barrel as they did when it was at $140 a barrel? And if Russia's economy seriously falters, will his system of hard, personal power prove to be a trap for him? Can it relieve public anger, and can he escape the blame?

Economic downturn may threaten Putin's power - International Herald Tribune

“I was in awe every time I walked onto the field. That’s respect. I was taught you never, ever disrespect your opponents or your teammates or your organization or your manager and never, ever your uniform. You make a great play, act like you’ve done it before; get a big hit, look for the third base coach and get ready to run the bases.”

Sandberg motioned to those inducted before him, “These guys sitting up here did not pave the way for the rest of us so that players could swing for the fences every time up and forget how to move a runner over to third. It’s disrespectful to them, to you and to the game of baseball that we all played growing up.

“Respect. A lot of people say this honor validates my career, but I didn’t work hard for validation. I didn’t play the game right because I saw a reward at the end of the tunnel. I played it right because that’s what you’re supposed to do, play it right and with respect ... . If this validates anything, it’s that guys who taught me the game ... did what they were supposed to do, and I did what I was supposed to do.”

nice
Brooks uses this as an example of "institutional thinking" I like it and the article as valuing community and community values as a counterweight to individualism. He comes to this from a center-right perspective and I from a center-left perspective. Whilst I profoundly believe in individualism as a well-spring of liberty I also believe individualism can lead to egotistical behaviour and that individualism is not an unalloyed virtue. I believe in community and society and I like aspects of Eastern philosophy which emphasize surrendering the ego and social harmony (the latter an aspect of more traditional conservative thinkers who emphasized tradition and social cohesion).
I like what Brooks quotes as a sort of Tao of Baseball. 8-)

What Life Asks of Us - Op-Ed - NYTimes.com

Carl Zimmer, in Discover Magazine:

The mind appears to be adapted for reaching out and making the world, including our machines, an extension of itself.

The mind is a store of knowledge you can dip into, an external repository of information.

The US Navy has developed a flight suit for helicopter pilots that delivers little puffs of air on the side of the pilot’s body as his helicopter tilts in that direction. The pilot responds to the puffs by tilting away from them, and the suit passes those signals on to the helicopter’s steering controls. Pilots who train with this system can learn to fly blindfolded or to carry out complex maneuvers, such as holding the helicopter in a stationary hover. The helicopter becomes, in effect, part of the pilot’s body, linked back to his or her mind.

The extended mind theory doesn’t just change the way we think about the mind. It also changes how we judge what’s good and bad about today’s mind-altering technologies.

There’s no point in trying to hack apart the connections between the inside and the outside of the mind. Instead we ought to focus on managing and improving those connections.

From the archive, Marshall McLuhan:

“Once we have surrendered our senses and nervous systems to the private manipulation of those who would try to benefit by taking a lease on our eyes and ears and nerves, we don’t really have any rights left.”

McLuhan again:

In operating on society with a new technology, it is not the incised area that is most affected. The area of impact and incision is numb. It is the entire system that is changed.

Jeff Leeds, in conversation with Sasha Frere-Jones:

I think the message and the medium are much more intertwined than they were ten years ago.

WSJ, in 2007:

If indeed the Web and microprocessors have brought us to the doorstep of a Marshall McLuhan-meets-Milton Friedman world of individual choice as a personal ideology, then record companies, newspapers and old TV networks aren't the only empires at risk.

Howard Rheingold:

I discovered when I talked to teachers in my local schools that "critical thinking" is regarded by some as a plot to incite children to question authority.

Eric McLuhan:

The new media won't fit into the classroom. It already surrounds it. Perhaps that is the challenge of counterculture. The problem is to know what questions to ask.

How Google Is Making Us Smarter

GOVERNMENT and markets both have their place in a decent society, President Obama suggested in his Inaugural Address, but can become a force for ill if they are without restraint. Missing from Mr. Obama’s address was only the proper name of the political philosophy, coded into the constitutional DNA of the United States, that proposes this and other balances: liberalism.

the semantics of liberalism - "this worldwide conceptual cacophony,...[maybe] we should abandon the term, or at least dismantle it into component parts with plainer meanings."

Op-Ed Contributor - A Liberal Translation - NYTimes.com

So don't tell me this great, rich country of ours can't afford to be in space — I am sick of hearing that refrain.

In fact, the next time someone tries to tell you we can't afford NASA, that we need to spend the money "here" (as if we loft the Benjamins into orbit!), I have some advice for you: If you don't want to mention the cost of the wars, if you would rather not get into Wall Street or Detroit bailouts, or if you don't want to tell them the money we spend on the space program is about the same as our annual expenditure on coffee — why not mention India? Say something like this: "Calcutta can afford it — and Cleveland can't?" Or perhaps more accurately: Calcutta thinks it cannot afford not to be in space — and we can? This would be a good time to remind them that when they need some tech support, they are likely talking to a smart, ambitious, young person in Bangalore — not Baltimore.

OpEd: We Aimed for The Stars...Until We Stopped

President Barack Obama has lifted a US funding ban for groups providing abortion services abroad, reversing a policy of his predecessor, George Bush.

The policy known as the "global gag rule" had stopped US government money going to groups which perform or provide information about abortion.

good

BBC NEWS | World | Americas | Obama lifts ban on abortion funds

The cottage that provided the location for Withnail and I's disastrous holiday to the Lake District is up for sale. It's one of a number of sites that draw pilgrimages by fans of the cult film.

Sleddale Hall is, in the veiled parlance of a slick estate agent, in need of a bit of modernisation.

BBC NEWS | Magazine | Withnail tourism