I Am the 99 Percent

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I am the 99 percent

But I’m not clear on what constitutes a win with regard to the Top 1 Percent?

What if we take away everything they have and leave them with nothing? Then the Top 2 Percent roll up to become the Top 1 Percent and we’d have to stage another round of protests against them, right?

Why can’t we just count our blessings and enjoy what we have?

You think you’d be happier with a lot of money? You wouldn’t. Where’s the evidence?

The guy making a million a year wants to make 2 million a year. The guy making 2 million wants to make 10 million. The guy making 10 million is in jail for trying to steal an extra 10 million.

As Epictetus used to say, “None of these objects that men admire and set their hearts on is of any use to those who get them, though those who have never chanced to have them get the impression, that if only these things were theirs their cup of blessings would be full, and then, when they get them, the sun scorches them and the sea tosses them no less, and they feel the same boredom and the same desire for what they have not got.”

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Rick Neuheisel is the Right Man for UCLA

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We have to say it was a game that obviously got away from us in the first half. We take from it what we can learn. We put the tough loss behind us and go forward.

— Rick Neuheisel, after last night’s 48-12 loss to Arizona

USC icon

Amazing . . . Neuheisel’s in his fourth year at UCLA. He’s playing Arizona, a program in disarray, in a critical game for Bruin bowl aspirations. The Wildcats haven’t won a game against an FBS opponent in a year, since last season’s victory over UCLA. They fired their coach last week.

Doesn’t Neuheisel expect to win games like this?

And after losing 48-12, in a game that wasn’t even as close as the score indicates (it was 42-7 at halftime), all he can say is “Good learning experience. Let’s move on.”

I can only echo what I said four years ago: Rick Neuheisel is a great hire for UCLA! “Five more years” should be the rallying cry!

FIGHT ON!

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Bye-Bye, Bevatron

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Bevatron top shielding blocks

If you drive up the hill to the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, one thing you can’t help noticing is the large (approx. 125,000 sq.ft.) circular pit where the Bevatron is in its final stages of demolition.

The Bevatron, as its name suggests, was used to make beverages. For example, the Bevatron could take enormous quantities of tequila, triple sec and lime juice, smash them together at the speed of light, and produce an excellent batch of margaritas.

Wait, what?

I’m now being informed that the Bevatron was in fact a particle accelerator put into operation in 1954 and used in the work of multiple Nobel Prize-winning physicists.

Bye-bye, Bevatron.

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Dennis Ritchie, 1941-2011

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Dennis Ritchie was the inventor of the C programming language and a major contributor to the UNIX operating system. He died last week at the age of 70.

His brilliantly clear tutorial on C, written with Brian Kernighan, was affectionately known as “K & R” by those of us for whom it was an integral part of learning to be programmers.

R.I.P. Dennis Ritchie.

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Get What You Want

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Occupy Wall Street

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) — Occupy Wall Street is on the move … uptown.

Why uptown? Because that’s where the rich folks live!

— CNNMoney

I’d have more respect for these rubes if they marched to the homes and looted them. That’s what they want, right? Forced redistribution of assets?

Break into the homes, beat people over the head and take their stuff. Fuck their wives, drink their scotch, smoke their cigars, put your feet on their desks.

Liberté, égalité, fraternité!

Don’t just stand there waving signs like a bunch of losers. What problem is that intended to solve?

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The Most Interesting Man in the World?

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UPLAND, Pa. (AP) — Two pregnant women were allegedly involved in a fight in which one slashed two other people inside a Philadelphia-area hospital room.

Upland police say the pregnant women, ages 21 and 22, were fighting with a woman and a teenage girl inside a room at Crozer-Chester Medical Center on Tuesday afternoon.

Upland police Chief John Easton says the women were all visiting a male patient who is recovering from a gunshot wound.

— Police: Pregnant Woman Slashes 2 Inside Crozer-Chester Medical Center « CBS Philly

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3 Laws of Usability

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  1. Don’t make me think!
  2. It doesn’t matter how many times I have to click, as long as each click is a mindless, unambiguous choice.
  3. Get rid of half the words on each page, then get rid of half of what’s left.
— Steve Krug, Don’t Make Me Think

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5 Questions for Improvement

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  1. What is your target condition here?
  2. What is the actual condition now?
  3. What obstacles are now preventing you from reaching the target condition? Which one are you addressing now?
  4. What is your next step? (start of the next PDCA cycle)
  5. When can we go and see what we have learned from taking that step?
— Mike Rother, Toyota Kata: Managing People for Improvement, Adaptiveness and Superior Results

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Aside

Tiny Buddha: Today I commit to doing what I can—being there for those who need me, standing up for what I believe in, and choosing not to ignore my instincts when I feel that something isn’t right.

Brown Vetoes SB 185

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Jerry Brown 2
Jerry Brown

Gov. Jerry Brown vetoed a controversial, affirmative action-like bill Saturday that would have allowed public colleges and universities in California to consider demographic factors in admissions processes.

— Brown vetoes affirmative action-like SB 185 – The Daily Californian

Like!

I hate to sound selfish but whatever “demographic factors” they were planning to consider, I’m 110 percent sure they’d serve to penalize my kid, nieces, nephews, grandkids — everyone in my family now and forever — and for what? Racial inequities of the past that they had nothing to do with?

Not interested in taking the hit for that, sorry.

We’re good people. We stopped inviting the slaveholders to the family reunions because they’ve all been dead for about 100 years . . .

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Why In-Page Navigation Links Matter More Than Menus

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Before you spend hours debating with your colleagues and clients on how your menus should look, there’s something you should know. Users spend more time with in-page navigation links than they do with menus. In fact, some users don’t even look at menus. What users look at is page content. And that’s where they often go to navigate.

— UX Movement

One firm has experienced this many times with users in their eyetracking research.

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An Old Man

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Morning cigarette

At the noisy end of the café, head bent
over the table, an old man sits alone,
a newspaper in front of him.

And in the miserable banality of old age
he thinks how little he enjoyed the years
when he had strength, eloquence, and looks.

He knows he’s aged a lot: he sees it, feels it.
Yet it seems he was young just yesterday.
So brief an interval, so very brief.

And he thinks of Prudence, how it fooled him,
how he always believed—what madness—
that cheat who said: “Tomorrow. You have plenty of time.”

He remembers impulses bridled, the joy
he sacrificed. Every chance he lost
now mocks his senseless caution.

But so much thinking, so much remembering
makes the old man dizzy. He falls asleep,
his head resting on the café table.

— C.P. Cavafy, “An Old Man”

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Aimilianos Monai, Alexandrian, A.D. 628-655

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Out of talk, appearance, and manners
I will make an excellent suit of armor;
and in this way I will face malicious people
without feeling the slightest fear or weakness.

They will try to injure me. But of those
who come near me none will know
where to find my wounds, my vulnerable places,
under the deceptions that will cover me.

So boasted Aimilianos Monai.
One wonders if he ever made that suit of armor.
In any case, he did not wear it long.
At the age of twenty-seven, he died in Sicily.

— C.P. Cavafy, “Aimilianos Monai, Alexandrian, A.D. 628-655”

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