"The government maintains that the canal would provide an economic boost to a country sorely in need of one, where many earn $1 a day."

What does this argument really mean? Earning less that $1/day in a country where basic needs are very cheap is not a bad life. But to us this sounds like poverty. Is life in Nicaragua really bad? I have been there - the people are simple, they live subsistence lives for the most part, but they seem happy and they have much more leisure time than I do here in the US.

There are so many good things to cherish in Nicaragua, so why is there a constant movement towards  "economic development"? And why do those "for" economic development usually win the arguments?

Honesty

For some people, honesty comes easy. For others of us, it takes a conscious effort. When one climbs through each day clinging to the tangled rungs of convention It does not come easy to put your weight on a new, green branch springing from your own soul.

I found a cool blog post

Molly Knight Forde speaks about losing control. It's a pretty cool post. She mentions a guy named Paul Kingsnorth, who has gone from environmentalist to "the sooner things collapse the better." It is an interesting read. There are some other cool blog posts on the site - mollyknightforde.com.

Erste post in funf jahr

Breaking out the pidgin deutche. Remarkable day today... * horrible times getting our Oslo deployment out (the "O" build) * friend called in the morning; a nephew had been killed in a car accident * my oldest friend at work told me he was leaving * ran in to my old girlfriend S.W. at Kens market (1st time in 10 years?), and was rejected when I asked if she would like to have a cup of tea some time ("no not really")

idealist.org

Cool site with volunteer opps world wide. Appears to be a leader in this field. Active.

cleaing up my windows computer

Here's a command under cygwin that will show the size of all subdirectories
$ du -h | sort -rn | du -hsc * -m | sort -n

personalized search scraps

from http://searchengineland.com/google-now-personalizes-everyones-search-results-31195

How Search Personalization Works

For those unfamiliar with how personalized search works, see my Google Search History Expands, Becomes Web History. It goes into great detail about how Google personalizes results.

The short story is this. By watching what you click on in search results, Google can learn that you favor particular sites. For example, if you often search and click on links from Amazon that appear in Google’s results, over time, Google learns that you really like Amazon. In reaction, it gives Amazon a ranking boost. That means you start seeing more Amazon listings, perhaps for searches where Amazon wasn’t showing up before.

The results are custom tailored for each individual. For example, let’s say someone else prefers Barnes & Nobles. Over time, Google learns that person likes Barnes & Noble. They begin to see even more Barnes & Nobles listings, rather than Amazon ones.

Of course, people will be clicking on a variety of sites, in search results. So it’s not a case of having one favorite that that simply shows up for everything. Indeed, Google’s other ranking factors are also still considered. So that person who likes Amazon? If they’re looking for a plumber, Amazon probably isn’t close to being relevant, so the personalization boost doesn’t help. But in cases where Amazon might have been on the edge? Personalization may help tip into the first page of results. And personalization may tip a wide variety of sites into the top results, for a wide variety of queries.

also http://searchengineland.com/the-promise-reality-of-mixing-the-social-graph-with-search-engines-12032