Author: peteware

Fun

The Art of Happiness

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I’m reading a book “The Art of Happiness” by Howard Cutler. He’s a psychiatrist who spent time talking with the Dalai Lama. Here’s an interesting quote about what a psycologically happy person is:

Well, I would regard a compassionate, warm, kindhearted person as healthy. If you maintain a feeling of compassion, loving kindness, then something automatically opens your inner door. Through that, you can communicate much more easily with other people. And that feeling of warmth creates a kind of openness. You’ll find that all human beings are just like you, so you’ll be able to relate to them more easily.

Politics

Child labor

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More joy on the work front. Here’s an excerpt from a new book on the state of labor in the use: The Big Squeeze: Tough Times for the American Worker,” by Steven Greenhouse (Knopf, 2008).

The squeeze on the American worker has been further exacerbated by corporate America’s growing sway over politics and policy, making it harder for beleaguered workers to turn to government for help. When investigators unearthed serious child labor violations at a dozen Wal-Marts, officials in the Bush Labor Department signed a highly unusual secret agreement promising to give Wal-Mart fifteen days’ advance notice whenever inspectors planned to visit a Wal-Mart store to look for more such violations. Wal-Mart officials had been major donors to the Republican Party.

or try this article with lots more small examples.

Politics

Sold a bill of goods

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This article about Iragi

military analysts selling a bill of goods is disturbing if not enraging. I
occasionally verify and usually apply skeptical thinking to news that I hear on
TV or read in the newspaper but I basically trust that news. That’s
particularly true of those military analysts. I respect these military people
for what they’ve done and expect an honest assessment of military matters that’s
better informed then the typical news reporter and also independent of the
government.

Hidden behind that appearance of objectivity, though, is a Pentagon information
apparatus that has used those analysts in a campaign to generate favorable news
coverage of the administration s wartime performance, an examination by The New
York Times has found.
The effort, which began with the buildup to the Iraq war and continues to this
day, has sought to exploit ideological and military allegiances, and also a
powerful financial dynamic: Most of the analysts have ties to military
contractors vested in the very war policies they are asked to assess on air.

It seems they are just a bunch of venal, lying, war profiteers far more
interested in be perceived as important rather then relying on honesty and
expertise to do something important. The way our government treated this to is
utterly disgraceful. How can politicians be so ignorant of how people think and
feel? How is lying and distorting reality going to generate support for the
war?

Technology

Google App Engine

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I’ve always been a fan of the djangoproject.org and it’s what I use for my web server at home: www.peteware.com
But the coolest news is that Google App Engine is based on it. Here’s some info:

For me, Django provides a great object to relational mapping interface combined with a wonderfully clean seperation between business logic (a view in the django world) and presentation (a very nice templating language). Each piece is wonderfully independent from the others.

Fun

New art

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My brother, Bob Ware, keeps me well stocked with art work. Here’s one of his latest photographs that is hanging on my wall.
Wyoming-Lake.jpg
Naturally, this low-res image doesn’t do the subtlety of the original justice.

Technology

Bling for the Blog

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I’ve been adding some bling to my blog. I started with the easy slideshow widget:
slideshow.png
which you get to directly from “Settings — Layout”
Then I found out about using clocklink.com
timelink.png
which you can add with the
and use the html that clocklink.com provides.
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My final bit of bling was going to amazon.com and going to your account. You can add various widgets. I decided to add my favorites. It also inspired me to get an associate account so I can link directly to products.

Fun

Guggenheim: Cai Exhibit

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We went to the Guggenheim yesterday (10 min walk and Credit Suisse has a corporate membership so it’s free). Usually I think the building ends up being more interesting then the exhibit but this exhibit of work by Cai
was really interesting.
CIMG7285.jpg
He uses Chinese themes to contrast the failures of both Western and Chinese cultures.
For example, this represents both the Cultural Revolution’s ruinous attempt with the great leap forward but also Western’s society’s preference for the obvious.
wolf.png
Cai is into explosions as art. There were lots of videos of things being ignited and exploded. This installation is a great use of the Guggenheim. It’s a static view of a car being blown up.
PosterTest_0056_ph.jpg

Technology

Recent additions to the Mac

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In the constant quest to have the latest and coolest toys, here are some things I’ve recently added to my Mac.
– Chax adds some nice features to iChat:
Picture 1.jpg