Goodbye 2012

Jean Val Jean is a Friend of Mine - interesting review of the Les Mis movie and how it fits into the author's worldview. History repeats itself, to the detriment of us all.

Enough Gun Violence!? - I've been very disturbed at the recent tragedies and this article was interesting to read. I really am disparaged to hear the NRA and folks advocating more guns in the aftermath of this. horror.

The other hot item at the moment here in USA is the fiscal cliff debacle. When I traveled to poor countries over the holiday I had one stunning realization. We are so prosperous and sit atop the entire globe in wealth and opportunity. Despite all these opportunities all you hear about is how hard it is to get a job and to make an impact. That's highly due to the bombardment of media blasting you with consumerism ideals that leave you empty and penniless. The working people I saw in those poor countries seem pretty happy regardless of the fact they'll never eat Kentucky Fried Chicken or get a daily dose of Dunkin Donuts, never mind texting their friends and tweeting their every action to nobody. They'll never know what they're missing on American Idols, The Biggest Loser, or America's Extreme Wipeout.

I can't believe we have to be goaded into wanting to work. We have to be incentivized to want to build and create. We have to be praised and lauded as geniuses in order to "get through the week" and make life worth living!?!? If only we knew what paradise we live in and what paradise exists outside of our routine lives. But we do know, we should know. The knowledge is right there. I can't reconcile it in my head just yet. How we can live in the "best of times, and the worst of times" when really it is the best of times!? And why we can't control ourselves from maiming ourselves, and grounding our best programs, retarding our best projects and ideas, and fighting each other to keep the status quo. My whole life I've felt an enormous struggle just to be able to "do the right thing" and IMPROVE SOCIETY. Why are there such huge barriers to innovation and creativity? Why is it so hard to just "get through the week"? I think we all need a dose of perspective and hopefully amidst the tragedy and the miracles of everyday life it will resonate through to our civilization that "A BETTER WORLD IS POSSIBLE".

AND WE ARE MAKING IT

Labels: blog, France, pagan

Woofertime

A debate raged in my household the other night. It was over the automatic IP blocking of all twitter-related gadgets, feeders, APPs, and aggregators at our workplace. What do you think? Does Twitter hold a business purpose to you? Send me a comment or email on your thoughts.

What's farcical to me is that Twitter itself is not blocked... but any tools I can find that enhance Twitter and make it "usable", from my standpoint, are blocked. So I have this decrepit image of some idiots at my corporate headquarters manually pouring over Twitter.com each day, burning through our overhead dollars.

WebSense Enterprise filters and restricts access to Internet sites in accordance with SAIC Communications Policy SG-10, Section 5.

URL: "http://woofertime.com/"

Your IP: 10.40.90.21

REASON: Your request was denied because of its content categorization: "Social Networking;Society and Lifestyles"

If you believe that you have received this message in error while accessing a business-related website, please request access via the Websense URL Unblock request form.

However, I can understand why Woofertime is blocked. ;) haha.
I'm not sure why they want to block so much. Maybe they are afraid we are participating in secret wikileaks subversions through our gadgets and portals. The question for corporations is whether any benefit of things like twitter is worth the perceived security risk. Now I understand why innovation in the past has been done primarily through very young people under the age of 25 at most. As people get older they keep confidence in a small circle of incestuous contacts. Only at early age are people really free to experiment and discover novel ideas. I feel myself drifting far away from these youthful exploits. It's not just geographical borders that limit us. Even after these centuries old borders are down ("The World is Flat"), we face great ethical questions on the limits of technology. What potential benefit is lost through the tightening of security, if any?