davision

Christian Broadcast Terrorist Network

2005-08-25T08:21:43Z

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News
Hawaii renames itself "People's Republic of Hawaii"
Two white men would like to win. In America.
Pat Robertson: "Kill the Pres. of Venezuela" Bush: "Oh Pat, you so silly!"
Gov. Bush wins the War At Home
Annan: "Yup, they're really hungry"

For those who don't know, Pat Roberston, founder of the Christian Broadcast Network called for the assasination of the President of Venezuela. The United States is hosting the next UN meeting in New York. It is the responsibility of the hosting nation to ensure the safety of the heads of state of visiting nations, including even the President of Iran (in other news, there is some controversy over whether or not the Iranian President will be granted a Visa).
The Bush Administration has downplayed Robertson's comments, simply calling them "inappropriate." Clearly, Robertson's comments are not inappropriate, inappropriate is making armpit-farts at the dinner table. What Robertson said is insane, immoral, and potentially dangerous. Think about it. We've seen in recent years what fanatical misunderstanding of religion can do (of course we also saw this centuries ago in the crusades). The Bush Administration has called Robertson's statement the view of an individual citizen. But clearly they are a lot more than that. The reality is that he is a religious leader of the predominant religion of this country.
Therefore, let me translate this into something Bush can get angry about. Pat Robertson called for Jihad against Venezuela. Pat Robertson, using the medium of television to contact his sleeper cells, spread the message to assassinate a head of state. Also, keep in mind that this is the Pat Robertson who told his viewer in the 2004 presidential election that God himself told Pat Robertson that Bush was going to be re-elected. For those who believe that God speaks directly to him, it is reasonable to assume Pat Robertson's edict to assassinate the President of Venezuela is also a command from God.
If the Bush administration is truly against violent religious fanaticism, it should set an example for the world and cut all ties with Pat Robertson and the Christian Broadcast Terrorist Network.

No News Monday

2005-08-23T05:51:04Z

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News

No news today (sorry) but I did get a nice little L-Shaped table in my room so now I can actually do work at home! I'm pretty excited about it. As I said in an earlier post I have a lot of writing I would like to do, so this table will be helpful in that pursuit.
Also, I've added some things to the Idealistics website at <a href ="http://www.idealistics.org>idealistics.org</a>.

Writing

2005-08-22T03:56:30Z

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END OF CAPITALISM! Unions target Wal-Mart worldwide
Hunter Thompson goes out with a bang
Clinton challenger's website has no photos/mention of felon husband
Democrats use blogs to fight back
Japan gives up bid for permanent UN Security Council seat
Army top general, "Four More Years! Four More Years!"
Bush hits road to try to save Republican midterm elections from US quagmire
Cyber Thug roughs up online gamer, steals Shield of Nightmare

I went out looking for a table today from my apartment. Originally I wasn't going to get a table here because the place is small and I figure I'd do most of my work at the office, but now I'm thinking I want to do some writing in the evenings. All the programming is really getting to me, I complained in college about just writing papers but now I'm missing it and I have a list of articles I'd like to write. In the coming posts I'll start incorporating those ideas and some preliminary writings into the blogs.

New Photos!

2005-08-21T01:59:01Z

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Now this is some real news!
High School Trades Textbook for Laptops

I put up the photos from when Sameer and Chuk came down to Pomona to visit. You can check them out by clicking here. Otherewise, it's been a pretty low-key day of trying to get over this breathing thing. Should I go to see March of the Penguins or Stealth? One seems so good, the other so bad, what to do?

Bronchiosaraus

2005-08-20T06:57:18Z

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Rockets narrowly miss U.S. warships in Jordan
Bad Ohio Republican
Community-Based Homes Seem to Help Addicts
Settler Kills 3 Palestinians, rattling Gaza Pullout

I have bronchitis. This sucks, I can't breath. The worst part is that everyone looks at me and says I'm fine, except that I feel like I'm drowning to death in my own lungs. I went to the emergency room yesterday and they gave me this broncial-breathing thing and an IV. Now I've got plenty of meds and a breathing inhalent thing which makes me feel a bit tingly, but lets me breath.
This whole thing has made me so much more consciencious of breathing. This ordeal has given me a temporary (hopefully temporary) obsession with breathing. Thinking back on my college education for example, I was breathing for four years through all those classes, but I dont even once remember breathing. Now - I can't look at anyone without thinking about the fact that they are breathing.
Anyway - hopefully this will be over soon enough, and I'll be writing more interesting blogs. But for now, I am a Bronchiosaraus.

Something Better

2005-08-16T06:18:31Z

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News
No Surprise: Can't rush constitution in Iraq
African Food Aid: Bush says "Enough is Enough"
Farrakhan and Fox see eye-to-eye
7.2 Quake hits Japan

Mike and I were talking tonight - and it is clear to both of us that we are not even coming close to meeting our potential with Idealistics and our ultimate goal. Right now the expectations on us our quite low, perhaps even lower than the expectations clients had for us.

Right now, All that is expected of us is to build case management software that for the agencies we contract with that is better and cheaper than what is on the market. This really is not a difficult thing to do considering how desperate the market is for some case mangagement software that is somethig more than Outlook for social service providers. When with PVLIS, our clients had embaressingly low expectations of us, all we had to do was a simple google search in order to give them something better than what several other techno-illiterate case managers were getting for them in terms of employment and referrals. But we need to be better than just above the SQ.

So - Idealistics is going to be more than just a software company. We're going to get to the heart of what we are actually trained in, social science. We're not programmers, we're not service providers. We are students of the social sciences, that is what we have a four year degree in. We built PVLIS as social scientests. We saw a problem in the service system, we saw students having a comparative advantage in access to information technology, we saw informational assymetries as clients did not know about what services were available, and we understood that students were being underutilized by social services agencies.

In the same way, we must approach our new venture as social scientists. Part of that is recognizing the underutilization of technology in the social science sector. But we recognize so much more - we even made a list tonight.

1. We need to cut out "middle-man" agencies like the United Way, who take donor money, take their cut, and then reallocate that funding. Just as E-Bay cuts out resellers, so too will Idealistics upcoming http://www.fundermatch.org.
2. Social services don't collect meaningful data, and when they do they dont know how to interpret it. Our software can come in here in streamlining the collection and analaysis of data.
3. Money is sucked up by large agencies when smaller agencies are more connected to the communities they serve and better know the needs of their constituients. We see this principal played out in American politics and the idea of local government, clearly I believe the same to be true in the social service sector. But first, we need to prove this to be the case.

There of course is a lot more that needs to be looked at and thought through. But for now - Idealistics is going to branch out by bringing together a group of low-income people who do not work in order to care for their children (such a group was already organized by the school district but they did stupid things like making a Mexican cook book) and instead we are going to offer to those who are interested a way to get invovled with Idealistics, build referral databases, develop tech skills, and becoming advocates in their own communties.

We also plan to create research articles produced not only by Mike and myself, but by other volunteer members of our agency, just as soon as we create such a membership.

More thoughts to come on this.

Graduation Photos

2005-08-15T05:26:39Z

News
Ugliest Dog Makes LA Times
Isreal begins Gaza pullout
Google library database delayed
Make War, Hybrid Cars

I put my graduation photos online. You can view them by clicking here. Also, please bookmark this LiveJournal page as I will be trying to update it frequently (about daily) as per Chuk's encouragement.

Assassins

2005-08-13T02:39:42Z

News
Sri Lankan Foreign Prime Minster Assassinated
LA Mayor Bans Road Workers from Working During Rush Hour

The Sri Lankan Foreign Minister was assassinated today in his house while getting out of his pool. Police suspect two Tigers were hiding in the bushes and shot him in the heart and head. That is really intense. I hope we can move past this. We can civilians into space for $100 million a ticket - but we can't spend $100 million on creating clean water wells in Ghana (this was discussed in Secretary of the Treasury Paul ONeil's book The Price of Loyalty in which he suggested such a project to Bush as a cheap way to improve the U.S.'s image. Obviously never happened).

Poverty is a strong explanatory variable for many problems we have created for ourselves and each other. More to come on this.

Idealistics, Inc.

NetWorking

2005-08-12T08:38:33Z

News
Suicide Dog's being used in Iraq
Video games bad for your health - kills one in Korea

Today we got our program to load a client file from a server in Madison Wisconsin. This was a particular success because it invovled elements of what all three of us working on the program are doing - and it all played together nicely. I'm feeling right now like we are farther along than I thought we would be.
I'm trying to locate the Democrats Club in Pomona. Had some success when the Claremont Democrats group got back to me and told me there was a Pomona group and forwarded my inquiry to that person, but I have yet to hear back from them. It's probably bad news for the local party that its such a hassle for me to get invovled with them. Of course, I'm skeptical that all they are going to want me to do is pay annual dues, but I'll try to be optomistic.
I feel like I need to get invovled in something beyond Idealisitcs, and now that I'm out of college I'm feeling like I'm more interested in joining social groups (such as Democrats groups, not Speed Dating or 4 Friends 4 Fun). In college pretty much anything you joined was labled - or rather I labeled it - a "college group." Calling something a college group is like adding a handicap to anything I might actually want to be a part of. Something about college implies both intellegence and ineptitude at the same time.
It's interesting how lots of people feel a need to end a journal entry as if it were the end of a letter or conversation. Examples being
"Well - I gotta go now"
or
"It sure is late - so I better be getting to bed"

Who are they talking to?!?! I mean - sure - you have an audience, but they can check the post whenever it convenes them. It's not necessary to apologize for ending a post, its not like you were talking to someone but then had to run of to go to sleep. Anyway, I think this rant is invovled in my own awkwardness of ending my first real post on livejournal, or pretty much any journal for that matter. So I guess I will just unapologetic