Week in Review: January 24-30, 2010
01/February/2010 10:16 Filed in: Week in
Review
Three
items we find significant enough to merit inclusion
on this look back toward the week that was.
The biggest change in our world came on Wednesday the 27th with Apple’s announcement of their new iPad. Sure this doesn’t have the earthshaking ramifications of President Obama’s State of the Union Address later that evening – well maybe it does, for the President’s remarks seemed to be more of the same coming out a Washington, but we will get back to that later.
I bought a Mac Plus in 1985, it had 1mb of ram, internal and external 800k floppy drives, an Apple dot matrix printer, and cost about $3300 out the door. Following that Apple developmental line, lest we forget the iPad is really the evolutionary descendent of the Newton which debuted in 1993 and died a silent death in 1998. In that intervening decade we have seen the emergence of our current vast array of PDA’s that have greatly changed the way the world does its business and its pleasure. It seems today that the world has become touch-screen; the new iPad now means we might be able to do something revolutionary with touch-screen technology.
I stopped into the local Apple reseller in Spokane on Saturday and they knew just about what you could gather from reading the press, and they said it would probably be a couple of weeks before they would know if they would be able to handle both the Wi-Fi and the 3G versions.
The significance of the technology will probably have a dramatic effect on both your web interface and how you do your reading of what is generally called print media. The ability to embed video in what used to be solely printed words will open a new frontier in the way we get and manage our information. The most apparent is being an acceleration of the dismantling of traditional books, magazines, and newspapers. Just as important is how publishers and authors are going to get paid for their endeavors. The real need for a laptop or desk computer will be that some of us still need a real keyboard to get information at speed into our pages, pretty much everything else we do, can be done on an iPad with a price point varying between $500 – $900.
Over 500 years ago Johannes Gutenberg gave us the moveable type printing press. Many believe that this technology was needed so that the Protestant Reformation could take root. While not of that magnitude of a technology leap for the word dispersal of information, over time the iPad, and successors, will have a dramatic impact on the paper industry as well.
On Tuesday the Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction, Proliferation and Terrorism issued a report card giving the Obama Administration an F for its programs to protect the United States from the effects of an attack of bioterrorism. This grade pretty much speaks for itself, but the report really focuses on the disease ramifications themselves and has little to say about the effects such an attack would have on national and international economics. To be most effective these agents would be released in urban areas where normal day-to-day activities would greatly enhance their dispersion throughout the populace.
Our 21st century world is increasingly urbanized. This centralization of everything simply means that whatever happens is going to have a greater impact than with a more diverse population density, and with this concentration comes an infrastructure which really can’t help itself out of the mess, whether that be truly natural (as the Haiti earthquake), bioterrorism, or nuclear.
The dispersion of nuclear materials after an attack is pretty much a function of natural physical forces such as wind, and other climate variables. With a biological attack however, the reason these agents are not more prevalent in the natural world is that the world’s biological communities are very diverse genetically. That means that these specialized agents don’t compete as well in truly natural environments. As an example, the mutated diseases that kill people in hospitals cannot compete with the more diverse complex genetic code in their wild brethren.
This brings us to President Obama’s State of the Union Address. In the last Week in Review, we brought up the fact the President is truly the consummate human specialist. This in the broader context makes him sort of a closet capitalist; in that his ability to create a very specific election program and make it work. Obama basically used his community organizing techniques he chose to learn in Chicago and applied them to the national stage, and won handily over the Clinton political machine in the primaries and the McCain unfocused efforts in the general election.
As pointed out by pretty much all the political pundits, during the State of the Union Address he doubled down, to use the truly sick gambling phrase. Those pundits from the conservative side indicating that they believe this will bring his demise. Those from the progressive side wondering how the stupid TEA party people could be so out of touch, but yet perplexed, at their success. Do both of these elitist thoughts really understand the true diversity of reality, or are they just the failure of educational propaganda machines, out of touch with a very diverse national community?
Our point of view is not so much related to future developments such as the coming mid-elections, but whether by his very specific specialization does the President actually have the skill set to govern, especially in a moderately conservative country? Furthermore is he willing to undergo any OJT (on the job training)? This furthermore brings the questions of the immediate future more importantly into focus. The first is in an election year is the American electorate willing to give him the benefit of the doubt if he should decide to moderate his Chicago style? The second even more important will unexpected outside events relating to pretty much anything give him the opportunity to adapt in the required time frame?
So far the Obama team is made up of his Progressive Chicago political base and even less pragmatic and more radical people from around the country. Unless some dramatic changes take place soon, the 2010 elections will change the current liberal agenda, whether Obama likes it or not, and after that a course correction on his part with become pretty much meaningless.
The biggest change in our world came on Wednesday the 27th with Apple’s announcement of their new iPad. Sure this doesn’t have the earthshaking ramifications of President Obama’s State of the Union Address later that evening – well maybe it does, for the President’s remarks seemed to be more of the same coming out a Washington, but we will get back to that later.
I bought a Mac Plus in 1985, it had 1mb of ram, internal and external 800k floppy drives, an Apple dot matrix printer, and cost about $3300 out the door. Following that Apple developmental line, lest we forget the iPad is really the evolutionary descendent of the Newton which debuted in 1993 and died a silent death in 1998. In that intervening decade we have seen the emergence of our current vast array of PDA’s that have greatly changed the way the world does its business and its pleasure. It seems today that the world has become touch-screen; the new iPad now means we might be able to do something revolutionary with touch-screen technology.
I stopped into the local Apple reseller in Spokane on Saturday and they knew just about what you could gather from reading the press, and they said it would probably be a couple of weeks before they would know if they would be able to handle both the Wi-Fi and the 3G versions.
The significance of the technology will probably have a dramatic effect on both your web interface and how you do your reading of what is generally called print media. The ability to embed video in what used to be solely printed words will open a new frontier in the way we get and manage our information. The most apparent is being an acceleration of the dismantling of traditional books, magazines, and newspapers. Just as important is how publishers and authors are going to get paid for their endeavors. The real need for a laptop or desk computer will be that some of us still need a real keyboard to get information at speed into our pages, pretty much everything else we do, can be done on an iPad with a price point varying between $500 – $900.
Over 500 years ago Johannes Gutenberg gave us the moveable type printing press. Many believe that this technology was needed so that the Protestant Reformation could take root. While not of that magnitude of a technology leap for the word dispersal of information, over time the iPad, and successors, will have a dramatic impact on the paper industry as well.
On Tuesday the Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction, Proliferation and Terrorism issued a report card giving the Obama Administration an F for its programs to protect the United States from the effects of an attack of bioterrorism. This grade pretty much speaks for itself, but the report really focuses on the disease ramifications themselves and has little to say about the effects such an attack would have on national and international economics. To be most effective these agents would be released in urban areas where normal day-to-day activities would greatly enhance their dispersion throughout the populace.
Our 21st century world is increasingly urbanized. This centralization of everything simply means that whatever happens is going to have a greater impact than with a more diverse population density, and with this concentration comes an infrastructure which really can’t help itself out of the mess, whether that be truly natural (as the Haiti earthquake), bioterrorism, or nuclear.
The dispersion of nuclear materials after an attack is pretty much a function of natural physical forces such as wind, and other climate variables. With a biological attack however, the reason these agents are not more prevalent in the natural world is that the world’s biological communities are very diverse genetically. That means that these specialized agents don’t compete as well in truly natural environments. As an example, the mutated diseases that kill people in hospitals cannot compete with the more diverse complex genetic code in their wild brethren.
This brings us to President Obama’s State of the Union Address. In the last Week in Review, we brought up the fact the President is truly the consummate human specialist. This in the broader context makes him sort of a closet capitalist; in that his ability to create a very specific election program and make it work. Obama basically used his community organizing techniques he chose to learn in Chicago and applied them to the national stage, and won handily over the Clinton political machine in the primaries and the McCain unfocused efforts in the general election.
As pointed out by pretty much all the political pundits, during the State of the Union Address he doubled down, to use the truly sick gambling phrase. Those pundits from the conservative side indicating that they believe this will bring his demise. Those from the progressive side wondering how the stupid TEA party people could be so out of touch, but yet perplexed, at their success. Do both of these elitist thoughts really understand the true diversity of reality, or are they just the failure of educational propaganda machines, out of touch with a very diverse national community?
Our point of view is not so much related to future developments such as the coming mid-elections, but whether by his very specific specialization does the President actually have the skill set to govern, especially in a moderately conservative country? Furthermore is he willing to undergo any OJT (on the job training)? This furthermore brings the questions of the immediate future more importantly into focus. The first is in an election year is the American electorate willing to give him the benefit of the doubt if he should decide to moderate his Chicago style? The second even more important will unexpected outside events relating to pretty much anything give him the opportunity to adapt in the required time frame?
So far the Obama team is made up of his Progressive Chicago political base and even less pragmatic and more radical people from around the country. Unless some dramatic changes take place soon, the 2010 elections will change the current liberal agenda, whether Obama likes it or not, and after that a course correction on his part with become pretty much meaningless.