Powerful Pictures

I'd like to fancy myself as one who holds his own opinions about things. That's why I get queasy come time for end-of-the-year top-N lists. On one end, I feel like I'm allowing myself to be quasi-brainwashed by other people, but on the other end, some of these toplists are so amazing.

Fortunately, there are the lists of the "top" photographs--beau

tiful and powerful and beyond ranking. Once you view them, whether or not something should be in the top ten seems so inane.

Here are some of my favorite collections and selections:

Boston.com: The Year 2008 in Photographs -- One of the most amazing collections of photographs I have ever seen.

TIME Pictures of the Year 2008 -- With an obvious emphasis on news events.

The Sydney Morning Herald Pictures of the Year -- Music to go with the pictures, too.

Pixcetera People's Choice Awards -- Generally much more lighthearted than the previous three, but there are some repeats.

Antarctic Weather

I am wowed. I will never consider last week's temperature of -25°F cold ever again.

A Disney Surprise

It's incredible.

Acronyms

The day I found out that the letters in SAT don't officially stand for anything was a glorious one. It was, as one of my old high school teachers would call it, my "epiphany of the day." The SAT used to be named the Scholastic Aptitude Test, but then renamed to the Scholastic Assessment test, but finally, in 1993, was renamed to "SAT I," without any meaning for the letters.

There are many other meaningless or ridiculous acronyms, many of them being the recursive acronyms used so often in technology. Any self-respecting Unix hacker knows that GNU stands for GNU's not Unix. Those PNGs you work with just mean "PNG's not GIF." In fact there seems to be almost a conspiracy of technology people bent on naming things in the pattern "[name] is not a [something else [name] wants to disavow]." Some of them are even bizarrely misleading. LAME is a widely-used mp3 encoder/decoder, but started out its humble life as an add-on of sorts to the "official" encoder. The inventors of LAME had the letters stand for "LAME ain't an MP3 Encoder," and the name stuck. Perhaps LAME should go the way of the SAT.

Enough with the recursive negativity. There's a whole world of positivism out there that's taken a little too far. Now we enter the world of the needlessly long acronyms. The Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001 was passed with overwhelming approval and to loud protests. You probably know it better as the USA PATRIOT Act. Do a little matching-each-letter-to-a-word-with-a-crayon, and you'll see that it works. The CAPTCHA you type in when you're signing up for a new web account actually stands for "Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart." Quite a mouthful for a morphed picture.

In the military, the battleground communications system is sometimes referred to as BACN & EGGS--Battlefield Airborne Communications Node and Expeditionary Ground Gateway System. The military seems to dedicate a whole battalion to acronyms. Some almost seem impossibly unlikely, like CINCUS (pronounced "sink us"), which stands for "Commander-In-Chief of the US Fleet" (don't ask me how that works), an acronym used until 1941. A training program used is named "PAST-A!", which stands for "Pedagogically Adaptive Scenarios for Training--Automated!". And of course, the current war was almost named "Operation--Iraqi Liberation."

Hi! I'm Windows Updater! I'm Annoying!

"Hi! Do you want to update your computer? No? Well, that's no problem! I'll just remind you in 5 minutes! [. . .]Now do you want to update? No? Well I'm a considerate fellow! I'll just remind you in 5 minutes! [. . .]How about now? No? Oh, I think I finally understand you clearly now! I'll just remind you in 5 minutes! [. . .]It's been 5 minutes! What about now? Hello? Anyone there? Well, I've waited patiently for a minute, and you stood me up, but I'll still be nice to you and put all your programs and windows away and restart your computer for you!"

Don't let Windows Automatic Updater ever bother you again. Here are two solutions, both assuming the fact that you still want your computer to be updated. 

1. Modifying the Automatic Updates Service

When that restart message starts nagging you, go to your Control Panel-->Administrative Tools-->Services. Then, right click on the "Automatic Updates" row and click "Stop." Now you are free to restart at your own discretion. Note that the Automatic Updates will turn on again when you restart your computer, allowing for future updates.

2. ShutdownGuard

This is my preferred method. ShutdownGuard is an open-source software that lives on your tray and will intercept Automatic Updater's pop-ups, and display a bubble from your tray. You can customize the display options and various other settings to your liking. Thank Lifehacker for bringing this to my attention.

Now if only we can do the same with Adobe Updater, Apple Updater, etc...

The Reclamation of Words

When was the last time you said, "That was the coolest thing ever," but didn't mean it? When was the last time you said something was exciting, beautiful, inspirational, or genius, when you actually meant to convey much less than superlative?

The next time you want to compliment something, think about whether or not you actually mean what you say. Save the superlative words for times that actually deserve them. 

Minority Report Comes to Life

A clip from Minority Report? No. It's real.

g-speak overview 1828121108 from john underkoffler on Vimeo.

Oblong is apparently the company that advised the production staff of Minority Report on the technology of the film, with much of their expertise derived from the founders' research at the MIT Media Lab. Oblong promises to "fundamentally chnage the way people use machines at work, in the living room, in conference rooms, in vehicles."

Keith Olbermann on Prop 8

Powerful stuff.

William Perry on his Confirmation

The following is a hilarious segment of one of former Secretary of Defense William Perry's lectures in my Stanford MS&E 293 class on national security:

"The Washington Post responded to the announcement by running an article observing that I was soft-spoken and humble, and questioning whether those were the right personality traits for the job of Secretary of Defense. They were simply reflecting the well-known fact that those in Washington that traveled the high road of humility are never bothered by heavy traffic. As a result of the Post article, my confirmation hearing was a surreal experience. Senator Byrd, instead of asking me questions about my views on defense issues, took off on the Washington Post article. He observed that George Washington was humble. Robert E. Lee was humble. And yes, that Jesus was humble. This is true. So he concluded that my humility ought to be an asset. He did concede, however, that in his 40 years in the Senate, he had never before seen humility in a Cabinet officer. After that ringing endorsement, the other Senators fell in line and confirmed me as Secretary by a vote of 98 to 0. After all, they did not want to get on the wrong sides of any of their constituents, who might be admirers of Washington, Lee, or Jesus. That experience was the highlight of my experience with Congress. It was all downhill from there."

Follow the Election with Google

Google has a great live map of the election. I've been glued to it all day.



Also, if you haven't voted yet, go find your voting place at http://maps.google.com/vote

Every vote counts!