Nixon's The One !!!

For those who remember the “All in the family” sitcom:

Mister, we could use a man like Richard Nixon again

Figure 1: “Richard Nixon” by History In An Hour is licensed under CC BY 2.0

Figure 1: “Richard Nixon” by History In An Hour is licensed under CC BY 2.0

Richard Nixon lost the 1960 election to John F. Kennedy in the closest (popular) election of the 20th century. There was a credible case to be made that voting irregularities in Chicago (read, the Richard Daley political machine) and Texas put Kennedy over the top (in the electoral college). And yet…

History: escape to the past or lessons for the present?

I’ve always liked history. And because the un-examined predilection is not worth having (γνῶθι σεαυτόν), I turn to Livy to understand it:

This I hold to be the chief value and reward of history, to have examples of all kinds set forth as an illustrious record, from which you may choose what is worthy of imitation in public and private life, and what is to be shunned as wrong in inception and ruinous in outcome

Livy, Preface to History of Rome.

Quoted from “Classics In Translation: Volume II, Latin Literature”, MacKendrick and Howe, 1982

So, history provides examples for present living. It provides a moral and practical purpose, helping to guide our interactions with others in the present, but also…

Joy in the sorrows of others?

“Why is it that man desires to be made sad, beholding miserable and tragic things which he himself would by no means wish to suffer? Yet he desires as a spectator to feel sorrow, and this sorrow is his pleasure…”

Was this guy watching too much news, political mudslinging or maybe just hanging out on Facebook?

Goodbye Twitter

1 1 of 2 Goodbye twitter. In 2016 Facebook got too political so I dropped it. Now, Twitter. You can reach me as gmj AT pobox DOT com. Please drop an email if you to stay in touch. I blog semi-regularly at https://eludom.github.io/. 2 2 of 2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mastodon_(software) is a free, open source, ad-free, distributed twitter-like thing. No corporation algorithmically manipulates your timeline and AUPs are set by the community. I’m on the https://fosstodon.

Source Code Distribution From Printouts to Github

Source code distribution has changed over the years. Today we all love (hate?) git, github and friends, but, believe it or not there were ways to distribute source code even before the Internet. In fact, this was the world in which the GNU Public License was created. Below are a few of the ways I’ve gotten/transferred source code through the years, in something like chronological order

Figure 1: Code on the Europython 2009 bag" by Thomas Guest is licensed with CC BY 2.0. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

Figure 1: Code on the Europython 2009 bag" by Thomas Guest is licensed with CC BY 2.0. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

Post 31 of #100DaysToOffload https://100daystooffload.com/

Privacy: The view from 1987 and Antiquity - or why I'm deleting Google,Facebook and Twitter

1 “A History of Private Life”

There is, I think, an urgent need to protect the essence of individuality from headlong technological progress. For unless we are careful, individual men and women may soon be reduced to little more than numbers in immense and terrifying data bank.

Georges Duby, Forward to A History of Private Life, 1987

I’m in the process of deleting Facebook, Twitter and Google from my life. I think Duby et al. were on to something a little ahead of their time.

Figure 1: A History of Private Life

Figure 1: A History of Private Life

Post 30 of #100DaysToOffload https://100daystooffload.com/

Privacy: Motion activated cameras in the woods?

I recently went backpacking on the Appalachian Trail in Massachusetts. One of the reasons I go out is to “get away”, to go “off the grid”, to enjoy nature and get away from adds, trackers, social media, etc.

But a funny thing happened at my last campsite. There was a camera strapped to a tree taking my picture every time I put my food in or out of the “bear box”. The sign on the camera, in addition to asking us not disturb the camera (duct tape, anyone ?) assured us that they were only using the images to track bear activity at the campsite and the images would be destroyed after being used for their intended purpose. Right. They would not be fed to facial recognition software, and the results would not be passed to law enforcement. Right.

Figure 1: “Caméra de vidéo-surveillance” by zigazou76 is licensed under CC BY 2.0

Figure 1: “Caméra de vidéo-surveillance” by zigazou76 is licensed under CC BY 2.0

Privacy: what is it and why do we care? …

In this world where Big Internet firms track you to sell you stuff (and to sell YOU), big Government tracks you because, well, they can, and where I found myself on a motion activated camera when backpacking alone in the “backcountry” in an attempt to “get away from it all”, I’ve spend some time thinking about privacy. Life is short. I could spend a lot of time registering domain names, managing certificates, running my own mail server, de-googling, convincing my friends and family to use nifty new security and privacy apps, and generally fighting the privacy fight as an individual against entire well-funded industries and governments.

AT Hiking 2020: 1500 miles down, 700 to go

1500 miles down, 700 to go to finish section hiking the Appalachian Trail with 215 miles completed this year in 3 trips.

Of course, I have some of the hardest miles left: the Smokies, Mt. Washington, the Whites, the Presidentials, the Bigelows, but with persistence, luck, health, constant gear tweaks (and some HARD hiking) I should finish in a few years.

Figure 1: Miles to go before I sleep

Figure 1: Miles to go before I sleep

#100daystooffload #hiking