Jay Walker on the world’s English mania | Video on TED.com

Jay Walker on the world’s English mania | Video on TED.com

Windows Live Writer – Initial Thoughts

Image via Wikipedia

I have installed and configured Windows Live Writer, along with a few WLW plug-in.  It seems to work pretty well.  There is an experimental Firefox add-on that allows you blog web pages directly to WLW, which seems to work as promised.  It took a little tinkering on part, mainly because of some issues specifically related to my blog setup and hosting, but I would have a hard time believing I am along on that one.  As of right now, I think I am going to like it.  I will post from WLW for the next few days or so and see if it grows on me the way that I think it will.

Testing the Twitter Feature with Windows Live Writer

This is just a test.

What Philip Zimbardo and Eckhart Tolle have in common - The Time Paradox

When making decisions, are you past, present, or future oriented?  That’s the question that Philip Zimbardo asks in his latest book, ‘The Time Paradox.’  I have read several articles by Philip Zimbardo, as well as his book ‘The Lucifer Effect,’ in which he delves in to the idea of situational evils, and the banality of evil.

I have come to know Philip Zimbardo as a bit of a capitalist.  He knows what sells and goes for it.  The phenomena of Eckhart Tolle and his books, The Power of Now and A New Earth have sold in the millions.  The basis of these books are that all there is is right now.  The past no longer exists, except in our minds, and the future has yet to happen.  Therefore, all there really is is this specific moment.

I wonder if Zimbardo’s latest book, The Time Paradox, was conceived after seeing the success of Tolle’s books.  There is a point, however, where it appears that the similarity between the two break down.  Tolle advocates living solely in the present, and takes a more spiritual look at time, while Zimbardo is being more pragmatic, materialistic approach, and seems to advocate future orientation when making decisions.  (I write this after only reading Tolle’s books on the subject, and hope to read Zimbardo’s book soon.)

Here is a brief introduction by Zimbardo on the subject.  Let’s see if you notice his capitalistic nature as I have:  (I should point out that I have a lot of respect for Zimbardo’s work, so his capitalistic nature should not take away from the quality of what he has contributed to knowledge.)

Daddy Hogwash back up after Wordpress upgrade

If the site was down for a few moments, it is because I just updated the “backend” software called WordPress from version 2.6 to 2.7. Should be good now, but if you notice an bugs, email right away!

Daddy Hogwash’s 1st Annual 10 Most Fascinating People

This post is in response to Barbara Walter’s 10 Most fascinating people, who weren’t really all that fascinating.  Click here to see Daddy Hogwash’s previous post on the matter.  So, with some major input from a fundraising consultant for non-profits and scholar, Tom Diehl, and poet, writer, and archivist, Philip Gounis, here is DaddyHogwash.com’s 10 most fascinating people for 2008.

Our criteria: Someone who either advanced or was recognized for advancing the progress of humanity, and/or our understanding of science, culture, and systems of modern civilization in 2008.

10.  Nate Silver - Mr. Silver is the founder and major author of the blog FiveThirtyEight.com with 538 standing for the amount of total electoral votes available to candidates in the Presidential race.  Silver, a baseball statistician and performance forecaster by trade, developed what turned out to be a dead-on projection of the outcome of the Presidential race, out-predicting most professional pollsters.  Throughout the process, Silver gained fame for his analysis, appearing on various political and news outlets on T.V. and print, and has likely changed the game for political election forecasting for many years to come.

9.  Amy Wagers, Phd. - Wagers, at 34 years of age, has accomplished more in the field of stem cell research than most.  At the age of 28, she wrote and published a paper disproving some of the recent theories of the pluripotency of adult stem cells.  She had this to say in Harvard Science, “The whole idea was that stem cells run around in your blood looking for damage, and then when they find it they just become whatever it is they need to become, magically,” she says. “People still have this idea of stem cells. They’re not magic. But people want them to be,” she adds.  Her research on adult muscle tissue stem cells will have long lasting, and exponential effects of the future health of our society.

8. Noam Chomsky - Chomsky was recently dubbed the man who “found the innate humanity in the human brain” by Discover Magazine, and the University of London linguist, Neil Smith, had this to say in the journal Nature, “Noam Chomsky’s position in the history of ideas is comparable to that of Darwin or Descartes…Chomsky has redefined our understanding of ourselves as humans.”  Chomsky has a long history of scientific advancement in the area of linguistics and its genetic nature, and as a controversial political writer.  Discover went on to say, “…he stands in the tradition of the great Enlightenment thinkers who combined a sweeping intellectual vision with meticulous technical analyses. He revived a rationalist conception of human nature in which the mind is richly endowed with creative powers at a time when behaviorism ruled and “innate” was a dirty word.  He showed that languages have an elegant mathematical structure, which set a research agenda for linguistics, psychology, and computer science for decades to come, namely, “What are the computations that allow a language to be learned and used?

7.  Raymond Kurzweil - According to Answers.com, Kurzweil is an inventor and futurist. He has been a pioneer in the fields of optical character recognition (OCR), text-to-speech synthesis, speech recognition technology, and electronic keyboard instruments. He is the author of several books on health, artificial intelligence (AI), transhumanism, the technological singularity, and futurism.  In 2009, Kurzweil will be unveiling his movie, The Singularity is Near where he discusses how humans and machines will eventually become single entities, “achieving inconceivable heights of intelligence, material progress, and longevity.  While the social and philosophical ramifications of these changes will be profound, and the threats they pose considerable, celebrated futurist Ray Kurzweil presents a view of the coming age that is both a dramatic culmination of centuries of technological ingenuity and a genuinely inspiring vision of our ultimate destiny.”

6.  Adam Reiss - Reiss, a 2008 MacArthur fellow, was the lead author of a recent paper that discovered that not only is the universe expanding, it is expanding at an accelerating rate, shocking the astronomical research community and reducing the likelihood of the universe as we know it ending in a big crunch.  According to cosmologists, the observable mass of the matter in our universe can not account for the universe’s expansion, leading to the theory of a massless gravitational energy called “dark energy.”  According to the MacArthur foundation, “Reiss is now actively engaged in designing expiraments and devices to detect and measure dark energy.”  Reiss’s fascinating work will continue to have profound effects on how we understand our universe, from beginning to end.

5. Paul Krugman - According to Answers.com, Krugman “is an American economist, columnist, author and intellectual.^[2] He is a professor of economics and international affairs at Princeton University, and a columnist for The New York Times. In 2008, Krugman won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences “for his analysis of trade patterns and location of economic activity”.^[3][4] Krugman is well-known in academia for his work in international economics, including trade theory, economic geography, and international finance.”  Krugman’s work in these times of economic turmoil will be essential in getting the global economy back on its feet again.

4.  John Brockman - According to Answers.com, Brockman is a “literary agent and author specializing in scientific literature. He founded the Edge Foundation, an organization aimed to bring together people working at the edge of a broad range of scientific and technical fields.”   The basis for the Edge.org project is to ask what would happen if you made an organized effort, “To arrive at the edge of the world’s knowledge, and seek out the most complex and sophisticated minds, put them in a room together, and have them ask each other the questions they are asking themselves.”  This project has resulted in several books compiled by Brockman asking some of the pressing questions of our time and seeing what these complex and sophisticated minds have to say about them.  Brockman’s accumulation of these minds on pressing questions is what fascinates me about him.

3.  William McDonough - McDonough was coined ‘The King of Green Architecture’ by Discover Magazine for his environmentally friendly ‘cradle to cradle’ architectural work.  “William McDonough aims to create buildings that produce oxygen, sequester carbon, and produce more power than they use.”  McDonough hopes to create a new industrial revolution where the homes and buildings we design are naturally sustainable and make our world a better place, as opposed to destroying our environment.  Good luck William McDonough.

2. Barack Obama - Everyone knows Obama’s story by now, but to summarize, what he did was totally change the political landscape of America with an emphasis on empowering ordinary people to make a meaningful difference in their communities. He broke through a barrier that no political analyst would have predicted two years ago. He inspired and challenged African Americans to see themselves in a different light; pushed back against the cynicism that has gripped this nation for 45 years; stimulated young people to take ownership in our political system. The world is anxious for him to take office. His election marks a transformation in American society. Rarely does one individual make such a mark on history. - Tom Diehl

1.  Norman Borlaug - The man who has saved a Billion lives and the “father of the green revolution.”  How in the world more people do not know the name Norman Borlaug is completely beyond me.  Well, I have a guess, he is the epitome of humility and shies away from the television camera.  Now at 93 years old, Borlaug received the Congressional Gold Medal in early 2008 for his food research work, which resulted in the feeding, and in some cases, providing self-sufficiency for hundreds of millions of people who would have otherwise starved to death.

Honorable Mention:  Arianna Huffington: Huffington is a major force in reinventing and perfecting the way news is reported on the Internet with the huffingtonpost.com.  Her solid balance between fresh news, editorial blogging, and news aggregating has led to 9.5 million monthly visitors according to quantcast.com.  Huffington has recently moved more in to local news for the Chicago metro area, and looks to expand after securing $25 million in investment capital.

So that is DaddyHogwash’s list of the 10 most fascinating people of 2008.  Do you agree?  Who would you remove?  Who would you add?  Who makes up your 10 most fascinating people of 2008?

Amazing 3D Human Anatomy from Visible Body

Chalk this one up to really cool things on the internet that no one knows about.  And it is free.

Visible Body beta Now Live!

The Visible Body beta is now live and available on the Web. The Visible Body application, featuring an interactive, 3D model of the human body, is the most comprehensive human anatomy visualization tool available today. Use it to explore body systems and structures, to help you visualize the anatomy affecting your health, or to help you study for your biology, physiology, or anatomy class.

Visible Body | 3D Human Anatomy.

Updated - The disgusting dark side of Black Friday - Worker dies after being trampled during shopping stampede

In a gross violation in human decency, a man was killed at Wal-Mart this morning after being run over by idiot shoppers looking for a deal.  As much as human ingenuity and spirit inspires me, this type of mass ignorance can be really depressing.  Wal-mart needs to get out the video tape and charge these shoppers with involuntary manslaughter.

A worker died after being trampled and a woman miscarried when hundreds of shoppers smashed through the doors of a Long Island Wal-Mart Friday morning, witnesses said.

The unidentified worker, employed as an overnight stock clerk, tried to hold back the unruly crowds just after the Valley Stream store opened at 5 a.m.

Witnesses said the surging throngs of shoppers knocked the man down. He fell and was stepped on. As he gasped for air, shoppers ran over and around him.

Worker dies at Long Island Wal-Mart after being trampled in Black Friday stampede.

Update: As I hoped would happen, police are investigating the shoppers who trampled that poor man at Wal-Mart.  As seen on The Huffington Post:

NEW YORK — Police were reviewing video from surveillance cameras in an attempt to identify who trampled to death a Wal-Mart worker after a crowd of post-Thanksgiving shoppers burst through the doors at a suburban store and knocked him down.

Criminal charges were possible, but identifying individual shoppers in Friday’s video may prove difficult, said Detective Lt. Michael Fleming, a Nassau County police spokesman.

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