Oct
18th
Sun
18th
Oct
14th
Wed
14th
Best version hands down that I've heard
if you give me weed, whites and wine
and you show me a sign, I’ll be willin’
Oct
10th
Sat
10th
JK Wedding Entrance Dance
via youtube.com
Ok. Everyone has seen this. And the Office, a show which I’ve never watched, has parodied it.
Easy enough to do. Bunch of white people dancing to black music — how funny.
But what strikes me about this is the authenticity of the act, the celebration of joy. I just love that shit.
My favorite parts are when the groom comes out, and straightens his tie, and then when the bride comes out dancing.
People, we all need to dance our way through our lives! Don’t let the parodies put you down. Dance! Love! Live! Life!
T-Mobile: All Your Sidekick Data Has Been Lost Forever
There’s bad news for Sidekick users today: T-Mobile has announced that it was unable to recover Sidekick data after a server failure at Microsoft subsidiary Danger. This means any data not stored on your Sidekick but residing in the “cloud” has been lost.
Sidekick users are advised to keep their devices powered up and not conduct a reset or remove the battery: a power-down would mean any data still on the phone is lost. T-Mobile will provide an update on the situation on Monday, but things are looking very bleak indeed.
In T-Mobile’s words: “based on Microsoft/Danger’s latest recovery assessment of their systems, we must now inform you that personal information stored on your device – such as contacts, calendar entries, to-do lists or photos – that is no longer on your Sidekick almost certainly has been lost as a result of a server failure at Microsoft/Danger.”
The story is a jarring one for those storing increasing amounts of data in the “cloud”: as we become more reliant on servers to house our data, such losses can be catastrophic.
The full press release is below (via Engadget).
T-Mobile Press Release on Sidekick Data Loss
T-MOBILE AND MICROSOFT/DANGER STATUS UPDATE ON SIDEKICK DATA DISRUPTION
Dear valued T-Mobile Sidekick customers:
T-Mobile and the Sidekick data services provider, Danger, a subsidiary of Microsoft, are reaching out to express our apologies regarding the recent Sidekick data service disruption.
We appreciate your patience as Microsoft/Danger continues to work on maintaining platform stability, and restoring all services for our Sidekick customers.
Regrettably, based on Microsoft/Danger’s latest recovery assessment of their systems, we must now inform you that personal information stored on your device – such as contacts, calendar entries, to-do lists or photos – that is no longer on your Sidekick almost certainly has been lost as a result of a server failure at Microsoft/Danger. That said, our teams continue to work around-the-clock in hopes of discovering some way to recover this information. However, the likelihood of a successful outcome is extremely low. As such, we wanted to share this news with you and offer some tips and suggestions to help you rebuild your personal content. You can find these tips in our Sidekick Contacts FAQ. We encourage you to visit the Forums on a regular basis to access the latest updates as well as FAQs regarding this service disruption.
In addition, we plan to communicate with you on Monday (Oct. 12) the status of the remaining issues caused by the service disruption, including the data recovery efforts and the Download Catalog restoration which we are continuing to resolve. We also will communicate any additional tips or suggestions that may help in restoring your content.
We recognize the magnitude of this inconvenience. Our primary efforts have been focused on restoring our customers’ personal content. We also are considering additional measures for those of you who have lost your content to help reinforce how valuable you are as a T-Mobile customer.
We continue to advise customers to NOT reset their device by removing the battery or letting their battery drain completely, as any personal content that currently resides on your device will be lost.
Once again, T-Mobile and Microsoft/Danger regret any and all inconvenience this matter has caused.
via mashable.com
The danger of the cloud…
Every Friday...
This is probably my favorite song in the whole world.Toda sexta-feira toda roupa é brancaToda pele é preta
Todo mundo canta
Todo céu magenta
Toda sexta-feira todo canto é santo
E toda conta
Toda gota
Toda onda
Toda moça
Toda renda
Toda sexta-feira
Todo o mundo é baiano juntoHere is a rough translation:
Every friday all our clothes are white
all our skin is black
everyone sings
all the sky is magenta
Every friday every place is holy
and every accoun
every drop
every wave
every girl
all income (also means lacing on a hem)
every friday
All the world is near BahiaThe song refers to the once forbidden practice of african religious symbolism in Bahia, Brazil.
The word God is the product of human weakness
Recent Letters
Wednesday, 7 October 2009
The word God is the product of human weakness
In January of 1954, just a year before his death, Albert Einstein wrote the following letter to philosopher Erik Gutkind after reading his book, ‘Choose Life: The Biblical Call to Revolt’. Apparently Einstein had only read the book due to repeated recommendation by their mutual friend Luitzen Egbertus Jan Brouwer. The letter was bought at auction in May 2008, for £170,000. Unsurprisingly, one of the unsuccessful bidders was Richard Dawkins.
Translated TranscriptPrinceton, 3. 1. 1954Dear Mr Gutkind,
Inspired by Brouwer’s repeated suggestion, I read a great deal in your book, and thank you very much for lending it to me … With regard to the factual attitude to life and to the human community we have a great deal in common. Your personal ideal with its striving for freedom from ego-oriented desires, for making life beautiful and noble, with an emphasis on the purely human element … unites us as having an “American Attitude.”
Still, without Brouwer’s suggestion I would never have gotten myself to engage intensively with your book because it is written in a language inaccessible to me. The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weakness, the Bible a collection of honorable, but still purely primitive, legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change this. … For me the Jewish religion like all other religions is an incarnation of the most childish superstition. And the Jewish people to whom I gladly belong … have no different quality for me than all other people. As far as my experience goes, they are also no better than other human groups, although they are protected from the worst cancers by a lack of power. Otherwise I cannot see anything “chosen” about them.
In general I find it painful that you claim a privileged position and try to defend it by two walls of pride, an external one as a man and an internal one as a Jew. As a man you claim, so to speak, a dispensation from causality otherwise accepted, as a Jew of monotheism. But a limited causality is no longer a causality at all, as our wonderful Spinoza recognized with all incision…
Now that I have quite openly stated our differences in intellectual convictions it is still clear to me that we are quite close to each other in essential things, i.e. in our evaluation of human behavior … I think that we would understand each other quite well if we talked about concrete things.
With friendly thanks and best wishes,
Yours,
A. Einstein
A fascinating letter from Albert Einstein. Many have tried to use his phrase, “God does not play dice with the universe” (in his argument against quantum mechanics) as evidence that he believed in God, when it is more obvious from this note that it was more a turn of phrase or an expression.
Oct
6th
Tue
6th
The Magic of Dance
Dance caught me by surprise. My daughters all took “dance lessons”, and I went through the perfunctory motions of the father taking his kids, picking up his kids from the lessons and then attending the “recitals”, which, let’s be honest, were just showcases of cuteness: look how adorable my little girl is hopping like a frog as the fifth wave of animals in the Nutcracker. Yes, aptly named.But something happened there along the way. My daughers went from pre-teens to 16-18 year olds and their skill level, and the aspiration of their choreographers catapulted into something so meaningful and beautiful that I found myself weeping during the “recitals”… a far cry from my bringing a book to read and looking up when whatever animals my kids were playing waltzed onstage. I remember my daughter Melissa, maybe 15 — so gorgeously involved with her movements. I wept.I remember my daughter Amy — in some rendition of a classical ballet and she only was on the sidelines, holding her arms just so… I wept.Something, I guess, about the beauty, combined with parental feelings. What can I say, it worked for me. And on and on, I had two more daughters who dance and “got it”… through their bodies they spoke of what it was like to be alive.to
I work at a University now. My daughters are all grown and only dance during yoga —-. But in my role I am privilege to certain artistry of dance where the dance intersects “Ethics”, which is what I work with. I leave this post now with several images that devastate me. Angie Banchero-Kellerher and Amy Markgraf performing a dance of subtle interaction. This dance moves me… I can’t explain.
I don’t know. It’s hard to explain. This dance plays with the notions of gender relationships. Two men, two women, a man and a women — what does it mean? All I know is that this dance, which I’ve seen twice holds me mezmerized with the beauty these two women portray and makes me thing about something about it for a very long time afterward. Such beautiful art.
Oct
5th
Mon
5th
Google Voice and T-Mobile's "My Faves"
One of the things I planned to do with my new cell phone number is use the Google Voice app to re-direct all my calls through it. That way all callers would see calls coming from that number and I would receive calls through Google voice. There are several advantages to doing so:
- Google Voice allows me to have multiple phones it rings, depending on where I am and when. I can set this up by schedule or manual.
- I get a great voice mail app by using it. Google Voice actually tries to transcribe the call so I can see what the jist was by looking in the app or online.
- I can route people specifically to voice mail and flag callers as spam callers
- I get a number that I picked
