QotD

Robert Fripp's Diary for Thursday, 16th December 2010:

Gentility is not something that can be claimed for oneself but, if lived & exemplified, it may be recognized; it is not acquired by social posturing & positioning, reinforced by income streams.

on "America is the Greatest Country" declarations by politicians

America, Fuck Yeah! (All Together Now) - The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan:

When Marco Rubio lauds the USA, we roll our eyes because we have not had our skepticism of politicians surgically removed: we understand that politicians pin on flag lapels and talk about the greatness of America because they're calculating pols, not because they think more highly of the United States than the rest of us. Our eyes tend to roll when politicians kiss babies too. That isn't because we object to the notion that babies are lovable - merely because most politicians aren't.

Lowry and Sullivan on American Chauvinism : Dispatches from the Culture Wars:

But I don't think Sullivan goes nearly far enough. The "America is the greatest nation ever" meme is not just a fatuous platitude, it's a dangerous bit of demagoguery designed to end discussion of the nation's many merits and flaws. It's a club used to beat anyone who questions the motives or actions of our leaders -- whenever the person wielding that club agrees with those motives or actions, of course; if they disagree with them, that's totally different.

on "expert commentary"

WTF, CNN? : Dispatches from the Culture Wars:

There was a massive fish kill in Arkansas recently. Then there was a bizarre event where more than a thousand blackbirds fell from the sky in that same state. So who does CNN bring on to discuss this, wildlife biologists? Scientists with an expertise in migration patterns or life cycles of fish and birds? Nope. They bring on Kirk Cameron.

To his credit, even Cameron himself says, almost immediately, that they ought to be talking to a veterinarian rather than to him.

Why the "cloud" is no different from any other client-server setup, reason #2291

I, Cringely » Blog Archive » 2011 prediction #8: Cloudburst - Cringely on technology:

There’s also the issue of what happens when some cloud service goes out of service permanently? These are startups, remember, and a good percentage of startups fail. Some cloud computing outfit is going to quickly and quietly shut down, taking with it the data (business, photos, video, memories, etc.) of tens of thousands of users. Once we’re storing everything in the cloud, what’s to keep us from losing everything in the cloud?