Three weeks ago, ago I paid $200 to send off my spit to 23andMe for DNA analysis. I had no idea what to expect, but the results are pretty much as expected! No surprises. No dangers. I now have third-party confirmation that I am officially the Whitest White Man in All the World!
Continue reading → 23andMe: Whitest White Man in All the World!
I have never been a fan of standardized testing in schools. There’s too big a variable at play — missing the wild mind — and these tests praise and condone only the middle. If you don’t do well on these tests, you are not moved forward or thought of as a significant thinker. The system doesn’t mind if your wild view of the world matters. The only thing the test givers care about is finding, and approving, the mainstream, middling, mind to guarantee, and impress, conformity.
Continue reading → Petting the Mainstream Middling Mind: An Indictment Against Standardized Testing
I don’t know about you, but when I read most of the news today, I get a bit bummed at the direction that humanity seems to be taking. Whether it is schol budgets being slashed for reasons of insufficient monies or defense budgets getting increased by massive amounts because unnecessary wars need to be fought to kill not the people who decide to go into the wars or the children of those people but the people whose jobs get exported, many of whom ultimately somehow end up voting for the people that sent them to war and that would send them to war. Then I get to see a nice bit of good news and it gives me a bit of hope — no giggles — as was the case when I read about the Walgreens store as well as others that made plans to offer free HIV testing on HIV awareness day.
In a strange, and somewhat unsettling, want to welcome Freshman and transfer students — while also, it seems, starting their own private human genome database of admitted genius thinkers — UC Berkeley is requiring the collection of DNA samples.
Continue reading → UC Berkeley Requires Freshman DNA Samples
If you have an iPhone, you have a Panopticonic and wanton need for speed whether you admit it or not! The best way to express that need is by typing “Speedtest.net” into your iPhone Safari browser and then immediately installing the iPhone App that presents itself to you.
I was shocked — SHOCKED! — to see my connected speed from Jersey City to the Secaucus test server. 1538 kbps down and 114 kbps up is astonishingly good — but would those speeds last — nay, COULD they at last last?
The United States Air Force is watching you blog as they blog. If you blink, they’ll read it. If you sigh, they’ll note it. If you disagree with them, they have a plan of attack:
Eat a Big Mac. Lose your mind. Is there a link between eating fast food and Alzheimer’s? Susanne Akterin, a researcher at the Karolinska Institutet’s Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center, believes she has found the cause-and-effect for that behavioral disease.
Continue reading → Fast Food Forgetfulness and the Poverty of Memory Loss
Walgreens — the largest drugstore chain in America — announced this week that they are selling over-the-counter DNA home paternity tests.
If you do an internet search on — “parents test hair follicle” — you will be given a bunch of returns that help parents test the hairs of their children for long-term drug use.
The popular way today to release software without accountability is to toss it into the wild as a “Beta Test” — and then invite the public to break their machines to give you feedback in testing you should’ve done yourself.
Google made their bones on this unaccountability by continuously “beta testing” what are really fully released products.
Google does not have to provide support or explanation when things go awry or blow up because, after all, “It’s only beta!”
The question then becomes how long must something remain in beta in order to be tested and not viewed as taking-advantage-of those doing the testing? Is a year enough of a beta test? Two years?
Gmail has been in beta since April 1, 2004. Will Gmail forever be beta? Or will Gmail one day get the Google stamp of approval that it is ready to stand on its own without the beta backdoor bailout?
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