I’ve posted dozens of nearly identical photos of Hattie but I never tire of seeing this pup in her favorite places.
The Cell
A little horror/sci-fi/thriller from 2000, staring Jennifer Lopez and Vince Vaughn. For my money this was one of only two J.Lo I liked. She was really good in Out of Site but that had great characters/story thanks to the late Elmore Leonard. But, as is so often the case, the star of The Cell was the serial killer played by a young Vincent D’Onofrio. D’Onofrio gave us the bonkers Pvt. Pyle from Full Metal Jacket but I’ll always remember him as Edgar, the alien bug many from Men In Black. For a simple little movie, The Cell had some spectacular visual effects.
Crime Wiki
“A Wikipedia is impossible, but here it is.” This was one of many insights from Kevin Kelly’s The Inevitable that has stuck with me. I think he’s saying that with enough people using the right technology, anything is possible. I like that idea and agree that Wikipedia is a perfect example. Against that backdrop, I’m imagining a crime Wikipedia. Anything and everything you might ever want to know about crimes and criminals. I’m tempted to limit writing and editing to the criminals but we should probably let law enforcement types participate.
Wouldn’t you like to read what professional burglars have to say about breaking and entering? There would be page after page on locks alone. Think of all that could be learned about robbing banks, from the really smart bank robbers… and the ones that got caught. Of course there are many crimes that are so horrible and unspeakable that you and I wouldn’t want to read it. But for this thought experiment, in for a penny, in for a pound.
And let’s ignore all of the reasons why a criminal might not want to share his/her best tricks. I’m just imagining a prison full of knowledge and expertise in a Wikipedia format. Who would benefit most? Young crooks-in-training? Or law enforcement?
The question that brought this on was: Would a burglar be less likely to hit a place at the end of a dead-end street? As a civilian, I’d be inclined to say “not enough information” to answer the question. But a thousand experienced burglars would know what those are and could probably come up with a useful answer.
TV
TraffickCam
Smartphone users in the United States can try to help catch sex traffickers with *a newly introduced app designed to identify hotel rooms where victims are held*. The app, TraffickCam, asks users to upload photos of hotel rooms where they may be staying and compares those to photos by law enforcement that depict suspected sex trafficking. […] TraffickCam uses an algorithm that matches hotel rooms by comparing features such as carpeting, furniture and accessories. (Reuters)
Let me see if I have the right. I’m staying at the Day’s Inn in Pissant, Kansas. I take some photos of my room with this app. Up they go to cloud where they’re compared to photos some sick fuck has posted online. If there’s a match, authorities at least now know where those were taken. I do love me some Big Data. Like any tool, can be for good or evil.
How I use Google Calendar
Barb recently started the process of transitioning from MS Office to Google apps (Gmail, Calendar, etc). I’ve been using Google Calendar for years (I’m hardly a power user) so I made this short (9 min) video. If you’re already using Google Calendar you probably won’t find much new here.
Does Frugality Matter If You’re Rich?
“A 2015 study showed that one-third of American households with an income of $75,000 or more live paycheck-to-paycheck … and 44 percent of those households claimed that lifestyle purchases were to blame for their lack of financial progress.”
“According to a 2015 poll, which surveyed 1,044 investors, one in five respondents with investible assets of $100,000 to $1 million dollars agreed they carried too much debt and said they live paycheck to paycheck. Worse, 1 in 10 respondents with assets of $1 million to $10 million were in the same boat.”
“In the same poll, 45 percent of respondents with investible assets of more than $100,000 worried they wouldn’t have enough money to last through retirement.”
Personal Capital Blog
The Big Picture
The Big Picture: On the Origins of Life, Meaning, and the Universe Itself. By Sean Carroll
Life is a process, not a substance, and it is necessarily temporary.
For a long time, there has been a shared view that there is some meaning, out there somewhere, waiting to be discovered and acknowledged. There is a point to all this; things happen for a reason. […] Gradually, our confidence in this view has begun to erode.
“Life” and “consciousness” do not denote essences distinct from matter; they are ways of talking about phenomena that emerge from the interplay of extraordinarily complex systems.
At a fundamental level, there aren’t separate “living things” and “nonliving things,” “things here on Earth” and “things up in the sky,” “matter” and “spirit.” There is just the basic stuff of reality, appearing to us in many different forms. […] We will ultimately understand the world as a single, unified reality, not caused or sustained or influenced by anything outside itself. That’s a big deal.
The only reliable way of learning about the world is by observing it. Continue reading
LibraryThing (update)
I started using LibraryThing to manage my library in 2005, about a month after the service launched. I was using a spreadsheet for this task but quickly fell in love with the tools and features LibraryThing provided. I find their smartphone app very handy.
I have 740 titles in my LibraryThing long ago gave away most of the books. Someone calling themselves eandino2012 has more than 81 thousand titles in her/his LibraryThing.
If you’ve considered using a service like LT or Goodreads but dreaded the task of uploading all your book titles, LT has a good import tool (see below) and their smartphone app can scan ISBN barcodes. Neither of those were around back in 2005 so I entered mine one at a time.
LT does some fun stuff (total cubic feet of your books; how high if stacked, etc) and some useful (to me) stuff: list of all characters in the books in your LT.
I know of no better use of my time than reading. Books are important to me. LibraryThing is a way to extend the pleasure I get from books.