The Daily Radar
Thursday, 29 June 2006 | 156 readers so far
The Top 40 companies in technology today. You might be surprised who is at the top and who is at the bottom this year. I’m watching the biotech companies.
Warnings about poor computer posture
Instapundit points us to warnings about the long term effects of sitting hunched over a keyboard all day.
My advice is to take this stuff seriously, starting now. If you want to be able to keep saving the world through code, design, and online communtiy building, you’d better start making it sustainable.
- If you can afford it, invest in better equipment for your workstation.
- Don’t sit slouched over the laptop for hours.
- Drop and relax your shoulders.
- Take regular breaks to stretch your neck, shoulders, and wrists.
- Don’t ignore persistent pain.
I’ve had poor computer posture for years. Coupled with an ancient wrestling injury from junior high school days my back often acts up. What’s worked for me - stretching and abdominal exercise. Generally speaking, a daily stretch works wonders and reduces my pain levels to almost zero. The standard advice to stand up and move around at least once an hour seems to help as well, but for me, that isn’t enough. In the last few months, I’ve taken up what I call ball stretching. Daily ball stretching for ten minutes or less has really improved my quality of life. I feel almost zealot-like about it. If you aren’t stretching your body on a regluar basis you should be!
Stability balls are great because they target more than one muscle group at a time by forcing you to balance while doing whatever workout you’ve chosen.
Wholehearted support for Israel
Neal Boortz expresses his wholehearted support for Israel’s latest activity against Palestinians. I must admit that I’m more sympathetic to Isreal, although Elizabeth has been persistent in trying to change my viewpoint recently. The Palestinians have long supported intentional targeting of civilians who have zero involvement in making government policy. It’s hard to erase images in my mind of various street level celebrations held when terrorists have murdered innocents.
Flag Desecration Amendment Fails in Senate by One Vote
I’m glad it failed. Banning flag burning is banning free speech. People who seek to control unpalatable actions by others using the force of government are dangerous anti-freedom forces, and I will work to counter their influence. I may not like what you do but unless you are hurting me I have no right to use the force of government to keep you from doing it.
That vote was way too close for comfort.
Net Neutrality Amendment Fails
I have mixed feelings on Net Neutrality. Frankly, I think anyone who tries to block content providers or slow them down will fail in the free market. Sadly, we have been messing around with the free market as long as I’ve been alive - it’s not really free. I would tend to think we should let this play out without legislation. I believe anyone who tries to control the Net will be sniffed out. They’ll have to watch as their stock prices plummet. People don’t want media conglomerates deciding what content they can have access too and they certainly don’t want the speed of the connection artificially limited. I would lobby against any bandwidth provider that tried to mess with my net connection.
1 June 29th, 2006 at 3:41 pm
Elizabeth says:
I don’t want to sound like I’m supporting terrorism here, but I would like to point out that in a representative democracy (such as Israel’s) you really cannot say that people have no say in what their government does. This is only true for children. The adults have the power to make their government do what it should and stop it from doing what it shouldn’t.
2 June 29th, 2006 at 4:07 pm
Trevor says:
Elizabeth,
That’s a fairly silly argument. I am a citizen of a “representative democracy.” If I stop paying taxes I go to jail. If I stop obeying the law I go to jail. What power do I have to make government follow what I personally believe in? Certainly, if I devote my life to changing government, I might be able to facilitate some changes to local government policies. Maybe I could do something to affect state policies. I might even get lucky and make waves at the national level in my old age if I was good enough at the state and local levels.
But what you are suggesting displays some sort of incomprehensible pseudologic and indicates your pro-Palestinian bias. You are suggesting that every Israeli is responsible for Israel’s official government policies towards the Palestinians and because all of them are responsible for not changing their government it somehow almost or nearly justifies blowing up any Israeli except children. That’s just morally wrong and I’m disappointed to hear you saying it. You started by saying you don’t want to sound like you support terrorism but ended up sounding (to me at least) like you support terrorism.
If I followed the same chain of thinking you use in your comment above, then everyone who didn’t vote for Bush is responsible for Bush administration policies. That makes no sense whatsoever.
3 June 29th, 2006 at 5:59 pm
Kitanis says:
“Flag Desecration Amendment Fails in Senate by One Vote”
“I’m glad it failed. Banning flag burning is banning free speech”.
Well there is one point I guess you and me are going to have to disagree. It comes from my being raised by my father to respect the flag during his veteran activities.
The Amendment that failed woud not have banned flag burning. It would have made it possible for it to be banned in the future. But after reading the decision by the Supreme Court that made it possible for burning the flag under free speech”, I disagreed wholeheartly with the premise. Burning a flag is a expression in my eyes, not speech.
The Origional case brought up the because a protester in Austin, Texas was arrested for burning a flag. The code that he violated was a Texas Code that was put in place five years before the arrest. The case eventually was put up into the US Supreme Court who made the rulling in favor of burning of the flag under the 1st Amendment. But What about the 10th Amendment? “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people. ” The way I saw it.. Texas had a law in place to protect the flag within its borders.. Because there was no Federal law in place.
But in the end.. you can still burn the flag… but I myself disagree with the whole premise to burn the national banner.. to protest anything.
4 June 29th, 2006 at 7:21 pm
Elizabeth says:
Trevor, I was just pointing out an error in your argument.
About what you see in the media–something I’ve been wondering about is why it is that the U.S. soldiers in Iraq constantly complain about the media coverage of Iraq–with justification–and yet it doesn’t occur to them that media coverage of other issues is similarly shoddy or even biased. Why is it that you and others have so often assumed that you know all about the Israeli-Palestinian situation from the media? How could it possibly be that the media does a crappy job of covering the Iraq War, but does a good job of covering the Israeli-Palestinian conflict? What you see on tv is what some people want you to see…and you don’t see what some people don’t want you to see…that’s why I’ve been sending you all that info.
By the way–if anyone wants some quick info on stuff going on in that neighborhood, I have a couple of recent posts on my blog about it.
5 June 29th, 2006 at 7:23 pm
Elizabeth says:
Trevor, I’m still confused about your “zero effect” on public policy statement. Have you heard about voting? How about working on campaigns? Contributing money to causes? Running for office?
6 June 29th, 2006 at 7:24 pm
Trevor says:
I personally wouldn’t burn a flag. I also disagree with abortion. I wouldn’t encourage anyone to use cocaine.
However, I don’t want to ban any of those things. Banning things doesn’t work. People who want to behave a certain way badly enough will do so, no matter what the consequences end up being. Some of them have to learn through painful trial and error.
Just so we are clear I have no desire to burn the flag on a personal level. I wouldn’t encourage others to burn the flag either. I just don’t have any desire to punish people who make the choice to burn the flag. Burning a flag may be offensive but the act itself doesn’t do any physical damage to other human beings.
We have way too many laws and rules already and they aren’t making our society any better. That’s what it boils down to for me.
7 June 29th, 2006 at 7:33 pm
Elizabeth says:
Postscript: There are people who do go to jail rather than follow “laws” they believe to be unjust. Maybe you aren’t willing to do that, Trevor, but some people are. There are Israelis who are in jail right now because they refuse to “serve” in the Occupied Territories.
8 June 29th, 2006 at 8:22 pm
Trevor says:
Elizabeth,
The only time the phrase zero effect appears in this page is where you used it in quotes. I don’t believe I have a zero effect on public policy. I didn’t say I did.
Keyphrase: “adults have the power to make their government do what it should.” In this country, we have about half the politically active adults supporting the Republicans in most matters and about half supporting the Democrats. Then there is a percentage of politically active people supporting third parties.
What you seem to be arguing is that if the government enacts policies that result in violent conflict any citizen is fair game, since they obviously didn’t do enough to make the government behave in the first place.
I wouldn’t doubt the media is biased on Israel/Palestine. The Arabic media certainly shows a pro-Palestinian bias. So does the European media. American media maybe more pro-Israel. Since I have been a reporter, I realize that very little you read in public venues is unfiltered or unbiased.
That’s why I love blogging so much. Less filtering takes place.
9 June 29th, 2006 at 8:29 pm
Trevor says:
Elizabeth,
You said:
I resent the insinuation. There are plenty of immoral acts I would refuse to commit at the risk of jail time. What made you think otherwise?
Let me give you several examples of things I would rather face jail time than doing:
10 June 29th, 2006 at 9:14 pm
Elizabeth says:
Trevor, I’m relieved to hear that you would go to jail rather than do things against your values.
As for misquoting you, here is a cut-and-paste quote from your post:
“…intentional targeting of civilians who have zero involvement in making government policy.”
11 June 29th, 2006 at 10:00 pm
Trevor says:
Elizabeth,
Zero involvement and zero effect are two different things. I said zero involvement and you said zero effect.
I\’ll amend my phrase from zero involvement to marginal involvement in the hope that you will address your original attempt to justify terrorism without admitting you were trying to justify terrorism. Are Israeli citizens who are only marginally involved in affecting Israeli government policy fair targets for death by Palestinian murder bombers? Because that is the reality. The people blown up riding buses are not politicians or warriors (most of them). They are just people trying to live.
The Israeli government isn\’t pure. But they at least pay lip service the value of human life. Hamas has in its founding document a call for the destruction of Isreal. Where is the Israeli equivalent? You\’ve asserted and alleged to me that I\’m only hearing the Isreali side of the story and that when I see Palestinians rioting and calling for death to all Jews; you\’ve said or insinuate it\’s just a media setup showing selective Palestinians and that most of them aren\’t like that. I suppose that is possible and I\’m willing to consider that I don\’t have the entire picture. Now that that is out of the way once and for all let\’s move on.
When is terrorism justified? I\’m looking for a direct answer from you. When are the methods and tactics used by Palestinians and al-Qaeda acceptable? Specifically, when are the following acceptable - a) bombing civilian and non-governmental targets as a matter of policy b) calling for the complete destruction of an ethnic group c) kidnapping and torturing people to death d) hostage taking e) rioting and looting f) calling for holy war against anyone who practices a different religion than you?
I realize the Isrealis practice assassination. I don\’t necessarily agree but I want to focus at least this once on the sins of the Palestinians, which you always attempt to gloss over. Why is that? Hamas is considered a terrrorist organization by most of the world\’s governments. Are they all idiots?
In the U.S. military, we have Tactics, Techniques and Protocols. None of them include intentional targeting of non-combatants.
12 June 30th, 2006 at 1:44 am
Elizabeth says:
Trevor: I do not justify targeting civilians (terrorism). I don’t believe I ever said that terrorism was justified. Rather, the statement you’re referring to was when I pointed out that citizens in a democracy have a responsibility for the actions of their government. That doesn’t mean that I think the irresponsibility of those people means they should be killed or maimed as punishment.
As for the Hamas document–I read a translation of the charter and it does not call for mass killing of Israeli jews. I had someone read it in Arabic and they said the same thing. Again, Trevor: Don’t believe everything you hear. Anytime you hear/read something about the Middle East, you might want to check different types of sources to see if you can corroborate the information.
Please try not to mix up Hamas and Al Qaeda. Al Qaeda’s goal–as far as I can tell, it seems to be a very loose organization–is to form some type of wide-ranging Islamic caliphate. There may be some Hamas members who subscribe to this, but Hamas as a movement exists to liberate the Palestinian Territories. That’s not such a bizarre goal, is it? Yes, I disagree with their tactics. I don’t think Israeli civilians within the 67 borders should be attacked. That is a violation of international law. Obviously I also don’t approve of torture. By the way–are you aware that torture has been used in Israeli jails and prisons? I bet you weren’t! One of those little details that keeps getting left out of news reports…
As for classification as a “terrorist group”: I’m not totally sure what this is supposed to mean. I don’t think it’s very useful to lump totally different organizations together because they have used some of the same tactics. To me that is meaningless…it’s like saying that the U.S. is a bombing group, because we rely so heavily on bombing to achieve our “objectives.” Yes, it’s true that currently we don’t directly target civilians (although we did during WWII and the Vietnam War, and even today, a large number of civilians seem to get killed in our military operations, I guess by accident). Israel, however, sunk to that level a long time ago. Just recently they blew up Gaza’s only power plant. That targets civilians, because the electricity doesn’t power the Qassam rockets; it powers water pumps that people use for drinking water. Without water people die…I could go on and on…if you want to classify any group that has used the targeting of civilians as a “terrorist group,” then you’re going to have to include the Israeli government. There have been numerous, numerous examples of Israeli soldiers shooting unarmed civilians. I’m not saying it’s policy–of course it isn’t policy. I am not a big fan of lip service, Trevor. I think it matters what people and governments do–not what they say.
13 June 30th, 2006 at 7:59 am
Trevor says:
You’re right in saying that actions speak louder than words Elizabeth.
We can agree on that.
14 July 9th, 2006 at 2:32 am
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