Goodbye Dubai | Smashing Telly - A hand picked TV channel
Topic: Current Events
11:05 pm EST, Feb 17, 2009
Short of opening a Radio Shack in an Amish town, Dubai is the world’s worst business idea, and there isn’t even any oil. Imagine proposing to build Vegas in a place where sex and drugs and rock and roll are an anathema. This is effectively the proposition that created Dubai - it was a stupid idea before the crash, and now it is dangerous.
Dubai threatens to become an instant ruin, an emblematic hybrid of the worst of both the West and the Middle-East and a dangerous totem for those who would mistakenly interpret this as the de facto product of a secular driven culture.
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But if there is one problem with the shallow and the fickle, its that they are shallow and fickle, they won’t put down deep roots and they won’t remain loyal to Dubai. The people who appear in People magazine need to be told what is cool by Wallpaper magazine who in turn will discover something after the hipsters have moved on. The problem is that Dubai was never hipster-cool and is no longer Wallpaper-cool. This realization will have the same impact as suburbanite bachelorette party in a Wallpaper-cool nightclub. It will spread like the sighting of a floating turd in a public pool, flushing people to the exits with silent panic, unacknowledged for fear of embarrassment.
As people scramble for the exits in Dubai, there is no ‘key mail’, like in America, where people can often mail back their house keys and walk away from a mortgage without the immediate threat of jail. People are literally fleeing this place, to date leaving 3000 cars stranded at the airport with keys still in the ignition. And the reason for this is that if you default on your Dubai mortgage, you can end up in a debtors prison. Perhaps Dubai will at least create a new Dickens?
RE: My Post Concussive Syndrome Speech Disorder: A Malfunctioning Word Queue
Topic: Science
10:46 am EST, Feb 12, 2009
Jello wrote: Last Monday I was in a car accident and suffered a severe concussion that didn't manifest symptoms for 24 hours (weird, I know). Since then I've periodically lost the ability to speak. I go from normal speech to slurring, to mute. Its being looked at, but the reason I made this thread is because... I realized that it is exactly like TCP packets overloading the sliding window, or a web server with limited resources getting too many requests: overload the throughput on the queue and everything after that is lost.
So I made a diagram tonight when I had a bad episode to prove I can still think.
When things are bad, and I fill the shrunken word queue, I can't speak until it self empties. Full empty seems to take between 30 seconds and one minute, and seems to happen at a linear rate. However, if I limit myself to the actual word queue/minute throughput, I can speak continuously for a longer period. Normal speed speech very quickly fills the queue though.
Strange, but accurate. If my mind is a Turing Machine, my word queue is malfunctioning and is too small to hold enough words to speak normally.
Sorry to hear about that, can't imagine what that feels like. Wishing you a full recovery.
Climate Debate Daily - A new way to understand disputes about global warming
Topic: Current Events
2:54 pm EST, Feb 5, 2009
Calls to Action:
Essays and research supporting the idea that global warming poses a clear threat to humanity, that it is largely caused by human activity, and that solutions to the problems of climate change lie within human reach.
Dissenting Voices:
Essays and research challenging the view that the world warming that began around 1880 is caused by human activity, that it poses a serious threat, or that the vagaries of earth’s climate are within human control.
This is where I've been getting my fix for the past few weeks. Pro's and Con's site, simple to navigate, and current. Can't beat that.
RE: Florida Doc wins Round in Police Brutality Case
Topic: Miscellaneous
10:39 am EST, Dec 21, 2008
skullaria wrote: "SALINAS, Calif. -- A man who was mistaken for a robber and ended up with a face broken in six places filed a lawsuit against the city and two officers on Thursday.
Ryan Favila said that on Oct. 18, 2007 he was mistaken for a car thief, thrown to the ground and then kicked in the face by Salinas police officer Michael Cupak.
Favila sustained a fractured nose and bones in his face broke in six places."
The problem, IMO, - what will cause great trouble soon, I think - is that the police almost always clear each other of brutality charges. It leaves people feeling there is no justice?
Those officers need to be held down on the ground and kicked in the face the same way, let them see how it feels. If they go through taser training and have to take a hit from a taser to know how it feels, shouldn't they be exposed to _all_ tactics they choose to use?
March 13-15, 2009 @ Butlin's Minehead Resort in the UK.
Anyone else want to go?
Some of the line up:
Aphex Twin Future Sound of London Carl Craig Jamie Lidell Afrika Bambaataa Egyptian Lover Arabian Prince Dynamix II DJ Godfather I-F Altern8 Bizzy B 2 Bad Mice Busy P Ceephax Acid Crew Rob Hall Radioactive Man Modeselektor Clark Richard Devine Tim Exile Tipper Ed Rush & Optical
Maco wrote: A message from a bicyclist to nearby drivers...
AH, gotta love the self righteous cyclist.
Show me one cyclist that actually comes to complete stops at stop signs, doesn't run red lights, and walks their bicycle through a crosswalk. Your laws may vary by municipality but the common theme I hear from the self righteous cyclist is, "WE'RE JUST LIKE VEHICLES!" Sure, usually when it suits you though.
I say this as a cyclist myself: People bitching about cars hogging the road need to get off the high horse.
