Just a quick observation today, brought on by being back in the United States (after three years travelling the world) for almost a month:

Everyone here speeds. I mean really, constantly, without even thinking about it. It’s just a normal thing. Seth Godin mentioned speeding today, noting that “rushing,” as he calls it, rarely has any advantages and often ends in tragedy. But we all still do it in our cars, every day, all the time.

You know what really grinds my gears? I bought a new laptop four years ago, and now I’m in the market again, and the market hasn’t improved. Yeah, so Mac introduced a backlit keyboard four years ago - I’m sure someone else did it first, but it was the first one I saw - and now, four years later, backlit keyboards are still not mainstream. My first laptop, a 17" Dell monstrosity, had a 1920x1200 (WUXGA) display. Guess what? Today, you can get a 1920x1080 display in a five-inch cellphone, but there aren’t many options in a reasonably-sized laptop. If you add those three requirements together - high resolution, 13-14" screen size, and backlit keyboard - you’ve got a product that no one makes. That really grinds my gears. And don’t even get me started on PC touchpads….

The following post is an open letter which I submitted to Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison after she submitted a bill barring the FCC from protecting net neutrality.

Ma’am,

I’m concerned about a bill you submitted on December 16th, a “rider” that would ‘prohibit the FCC from using any appropriated funds to adopt, implement or otherwise litigate any network neutrality based rules, protocols or standards’.

I’m concerned about this bill firstly because I am in the military, and I find it unbelievable that military spending is so often used as a vehicle for other political aims. If military spending bills are to be nothing more than a way of passing less popular legislation, that says a lot about both our legislative system’s flaws and about our nation’s feelings towards the military - namely, that we are just a budget item.

With $5,725,813,591.00.

That’s the total amount (thus far) spent on 100 interesting projects funded by the recent government stimulus bill. It includes such gems as $2.2 million spent to build water pipelines to a golf course in San Francisco and $350 million to build a map of America showing where broadband internet is and isn’t available. Or $219,000 for a “Study on ‘Hookup’ Behavior of Female College Coeds.”

No really, that last one didn’t come from some college humor website or even Facebook - it’s real (number 33). The Stimulus Checkup is Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK) and Senator John McCain’s (R-AZ) look at what’s costing America so much money. I vote we fire some people.

Back on 10 December, I urged you to quit Facebook after they changed their privacy policy (and I quit myself). During the holidays, I ended my brief Tumblr career, deciding that having an in-between step filling the space between Twitter and my blog* just didn’t make sense. Why post things on a website that doesn’t even allow comments? Anyway, after canceling Facebook and Tumblr, I started to wonder about some other social-media-Web-2.0 type sites where I had accounts.

BLUF: Delete your Facebook account.

I would like to make everyone aware of some interesting changes in Facebook’s privacy policy:

You also have a set of publicly available information, which helps your friends find and connect with you. This includes your Name, Profile Picture, Current City, Gender, Networks, Friend List and Pages.

This is an unacceptable change to account privacy. If Facebook wants to publish that information, they need my consent and they do not have it. I have deactivated my account and I would urge you to do the same.

I have just become aware, via Slashdot, that President Obama has been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. The BBC has this to say:

In awarding President Obama the Nobel Peace Prize, the Norwegian committee is honouring his intentions more than his achievements.

For comparison, here’s a list of my intentions:

• I intend to cure cancer (all forms), HIV/AIDS, and every other disease. Looks like they better give me the Nobel Prize for Physiology and Medicine.
• I intend to end world hunger and poverty. I smell a Nobel Peace Prize!
• It is among my long-term goals to discover, in a flash of brilliance, the Theory of Everything. Definitely an intention worthy of a Nobel Prize for Physics, no?
• Also, I’m going to write a book which every person in the world will read and it will instantly become their favorite. Sounds like a Nobel Prize for Literature is coming my way!

I guess they can keep the prize for Chemistry, but I definitely deserve the other four for my achievements intentions, don’t you think?

Look, I don’t care who you are, there is no reason you should be texting while driving. Your life will not end if you put the message on hold long enough to pull over, but you might end someone else’s life (or your own) if you take your eyes off the road! Texting is worse for you than alcohol, where driving is concerned, and I’m all for the legislative efforts to kill the combination. I’m tired of idiots on the road who are alternately speeding and dropping well below the speed limit, weaving erratically, and generally making life a (dangerous) pain because they think that the world revolves around their cellphone. DROP THE PHONE AND DRIVE!!!

I am for standards in general, but tonight I’ve realized a list that I’m against. I am against them because they fail in their purpose, either having no positive effect or actually making things worse.

1. Daylight Savings Time. Who thought this up anyway? (No, it wasn’t Benjamin Franklin - go read the linked Wiki). The whole point is that we’re wasting free light from the sun - because we don’t get up early enough. There’s little to no effect (and often times that little effect is negative) on energy usage, and the demands of keeping up with daylight savings time and the various ways and points at which it is implemented are the cause of all kinds of headaches for computer programmers and people who commute, physically or via telepresence, across time zones. I’m with Benjamin Franklin - tell people to just get up earlier!
2. Time zones. I’m not going to argue this one a lot, but it seems to me that we’re at the point where this whole idea is pretty moot. Yes, it makes a lot of sense for standardizing commerce in discrete geographical areas, but those lines are pretty blurred in places like Phenix City, GA. The military, the internet, and the airlines (indeed, all aviation) make use of standard time because it is standard. Not a random jumbly mess - if it’s 3:00 pm here, what time is it in Bermuda again? Oh, that’s in AST, so it’s UTC-4 - oh wait, do they use daylight savings time? - I can’t remember, so maybe it’s UTC-4+1? - and we’re CDT, so that’s UTC-6+1, so…. I think you get my point.
3. The U.S. Customary System. SI (metric) is BASE 10. Whoever thought that base 2, 4, 16, 12, 2000, 5218, et cetera, was a good idea? Yes, I realize that it wasn’t all done at once and that things just sort of happened. I also realize that there’s no way to change it and have everything work out or even get everyone on board. That’s not the point. It’s a stupid standard and a better one exists.

Any other standards you like to bash? Think I’m an idiot for using GMT/Z/UT/UTC/WET or the metric system? Post a comment.

This post was spawned by this article from Time Magazine, wherein a 15-year-old is allowed to use a computer on standardized test, since his handwriting is so bad. I say fail him. If he can’t read and write, then he doesn’t meet the standard. Especially considering that the reason he can’t write is that he likes the attention of being “that kid with really bad handwriting.”

An open letter to that kid’s mom: Child-whacking sticks are on sale wherever wooden spoons are sold.

I abhor lolspeak.

Seth Godin wrote a while back that he finds bad punctuation “distracting.” I’d say that’s entirely too kind a characterization. Maybe we blame the terrible American public schools, or maybe we blame mobile phones and the internet, or maybe the ubiquity of spell check. I don’t really care. My hammer of judgment falls (figuratively) whenever I accidentally view comments on YouTube.

Anyone want to venture a guess as to why language developed? I’m going to claim that communication was up there on the list. Perhaps too much staring at computer code has wired me to be easily annoyed by deviation from the standard. But the communication that exists between a human programmer and a computer is the most demandingly (spell check says I made up that word) standardized interaction that comes to mind. Strongly typed programming languages - and I mean strongly typed like ADA

My wife sent me this article last night, after the two of us and a couple of our friends had a pretty long discussion of personal responsibility.

The article is about a woman who’s suing her college because she can’t find a job. A woman who graduated with a 2.7. A woman whose job search has lasted only three months. A woman whose excuse is, “It doesn’t make any sense: They went to school for four years, and then they come out working at McDonald’s and Payless. That’s not what they planned.”