Mercurial

Bloggers are under attack: death threats to Kathy Sierra, and an international response.

In these days, that people are simply throwing around death threats as if they were candy, it might be worth to revisit wikipedia:

A death threat is a threat (often made anonymously) against a person to kill him or her. Death threats are often intended to intimidate victims (such as dissuading them from pursuing a criminal investigation or an advocacy campaign). In other cases, people use death threats to manipulate behavior. Historically death threats were carried out against wealthy jews during the Spanish Inquisition. ...
Death threats are most commonly made against public figures, though they are also made against less public figures. In many states and jurisdictions, death threats are a criminal offense. If the threat is made against a governmental figure, it can also be treason.
Sometimes, death threats are made as part of a wider campaign of abuse against a person or group of people (see terrorism, mass murder).

Sadly, death threats are usually just the beginning, the opening shot of a very intimate conflict - there is nothing that the person threatened may do to avoid this, and since there is no crime yet, it is very difficult to get the police involved. Sometimes, as it happens in other countries, it is usually the police the one issuing the threats!

Times do change, and in this country, the USA, it is still a criminal offense to make a death threat. They do go on, however, as Chris Prillo points out:

It's worse when you know who that person is - or if they're not all that anonymous in the first place. I've dealt with my fair share of bullies (both before and after high school) - and in a few cases, was able to weather the situations long enough to seek some sort of resolution with the other parties.

All we read about in the news is about death threats to death threats to mayors, to the president of Virginia Tech, to editors, to bloggers. What importance does one more death threat have? Especially when there is only one witness?

Posted by manino at 4:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I am of the kind that rattles and prattles about security and safety - nobody rides with unless they are buckled up.
Having been in car accidents where the involved all wear the seatbelts, I have been spared the gruesome vistas that this thread evokes:

Do you know how we can tell the difference between people who were wearing their seatbelts and those who weren’t, at the scene of an automobile accident? The ones who were wearing their seatbelts are standing around saying “This really sucks,” and the ones who weren’t are kinda just lying there.

Here is a little ad, courtesy of some insurers.

And, stolen from Theresa's forums, these links about safe driving:

Heaven Can Wait

Backwards

No Seatbelt, No Excuse, which is the one embedded above;

Crash

No Belt, No Brains

Some in Español (I told you, I stole this list directly from there):
Abróchate el Cinturón

Safety Campaign Chile

El cinturón, by Paco Costas.

Be safe.

Posted by manino at 10:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Procrastination, or I see you later
Just the idea of getting my butt of this chair and start doing what I am supposed to do is deterrent enough so as not to get into any of that.
So, of course I went to 43folders, to see if Merlin had some magic regarding that: not so much about doing things, because that is easy: Dealing with procrastionatin’. And lo and behold, he wrote something about that:

The same malady that affects Deane when coding has also afflicted a lot of people, Feynman included: check his book, Surely you are joking, Mr. Feynman. To the point: we have to let concepts mature, and discard the facile and impracticable ideas that pop up on learning about a problem: Thus, the need for space and time. At the same time, we need to have the ability to focus on our solution landscape, if we are ever to try to effectively solve any problems that we face.
I do not like the idea of waiting, although I can see the sense in it: I jump on activities like a crazy madman, without thinking or waiting; I demand instant gratification, instantaneous response, attend to me right now! But the procrastinating behavior helps in this: if you just postpone a costly alternative, there might be an alternate solution that appears later on - So, obviously, there is an advantage to not doing right now. Besides, that imposed wait also helps prioritization: you have to deal with the most important stuff first, you know, fighting tigers and hunting oranges, before you engage in the more abstruse and complex problems - while we hope that they are being addressed in the back of our brains.
And here is the typical example: otherwise this wouldn’t be a blog, and they would kick me out of the club: when dealing with some market data, I was confronted with the need to come with some relevant numbers, any numbers! So, naturally, after dealing with multidimension graphs, covariances and the like, I came up with some Bayesian alternative to explore the landscape, and it seemed great! However, the cost of implementing that particular analysis is higher than the reward I can get from just checking averages, so there: complex alternative evaluated, problem solved, cost-benefit analysis performed, decision reached. I might implement the Bayesian, just to see what happens, but for now I am cool with what I have got.
Meanwhile, and going back to the procrastination issue, I have to write my grad school admission essay. So, see you later.
Technorati: gtd, productivity

Posted by manino at 4:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Serendipitous: 8 good reasons to work in Asia, by Michelle Kristula Green, found by accident:

• It'll make a better manager, faster.
• You will learn from people that are different and smarter than you
• You will learn to operate effectively in a culture where you don't speak the language
• You'll learn about new people, new places
• Top corporate leaders have worked in Asia
• You'll get a glimpse of the future
• You will learn a lot about America and the Americans
• You will learn a lot about yourself

Hey, I find that you will learn about the world, not only Americans.
Nevertheless, it is a strange coincidence finding this article, given the fact that somebody just mentioned a possible work in Japan.

Posted by manino at 7:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Create the storyboard to your life, create the possibilities, the dreams, the travels, the knowledge:
Avi Solomon's advice is as simple as that, to make our relationship with the future we create as compelling and easy to perceive as the very visual result that we intend to achieve.

Posted by manino at 12:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)