OMG. This is coming to you from MacroMate’s TextMate. This is the best blog editing software I’ve ever used.

Coming soon will be a full post on this topic. There are a few bugs, but I’ve only been messing with it for a few minutes; I’m pretty sure I can solve all my issues using TextMate.

Security and Obscurity

Scott Adams just wrote an interesting piece about how he thinks economists have a unique way of seeing the world. First, he loosely defines an economist as someone who seeks explanations for why things happen. I like that, and it fits with my favorite economist’s view as well (Malcolm Gladwell).He then goes on to explain why economists are especially immune to cognitive dissonance:

I studied economics in college. One thing I’ve noticed is that other people who have studied economics tend to think a similar way. Some of the similarity is probably because it takes a certain kind of person to be interested in economics in the first place. But I’m convinced that the study of economics changes brains in a way I can identify after about five minutes of conversation. In particular, I think the study of economics makes you relatively immune to cognitive dissonance.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonanceThe primary skill of an economist is identifying all of the explanations for various phenomena. Cognitive dissonance is, at its core, the inability to recognize and accept other explanations.

I’m oversimplifying, but you get the point. The more your brain is trained for economics, the less it is susceptible to cognitive dissonance, or so it seems.

I like the way Scott thinks.:

MFA stands for Made For AdSense. It refers to a blog whose content is farmed out to non-professional writers (or scripts). The goal of these sites is not the creation of quality content, but rather the collection of revenue from AdSense or other advertising schemes.

One attribute of these sites is often the creation and or organization of the content according to heavy Search Engine Optimization (SEO) techniques. Some of these include separating the content that the GoogleBot sees from what humans see on a particular site, loading sites with keywords, etc.

This is a difficult definition, however, because many legitimate companies are moving to “content networks” where they recruit people to make their content for them. They too, of course, employ online advertising and also try and enhance their SEO qualities. The question becomes one of integrity and judgement.

In short, how much emphasis is placed on creating quality content vs. just getting a higher Google PageRank or more AdSense traffic? If the stress is on the quality of the content and being a serious resource then I’d say the site is a legitimate content network.

If however the site is all about doing whatever it can to get more hits (and hence more money) — and the content is only a means to that end — then the site is an MFA site. That’s my definition.:

There’s an old saying in Tennessee — I know it’s in Texas, probably in Tennessee — that says, fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can’t get fooled again.” —President George W. Bush, Nashville, Tenn., Sept. 17, 2002

Nothing is more lame than trying to pull Windows hashes off a system in order to break the administrator account’s password when you are on the system because the admin password was blank.

Well, that’s actually not true. There’s one thing that’s more lame, and that’s doing it more than once.

Here’s my list of systems that I have admin access to, let me pull the hashes from this one that was wide open…la la la…pullng them….breaking them…admin password? Blank! Blank? Well what the hell does that get me? Ah, shit, I did it again…

Retardo the Destructor.

The more questions one has floating around in their mind at any given time, the more knowledge can be harvested from day to day experiences. Knowledge and understanding are being presented in every experience, but unless you have the appropriate curiosity associated with that presentation of information, nothing will be gained.

People who lose their curiosity early in life are like nerve damage victims who can no longer feel heat on their fingers. Once you lack the receptor it doesn’t matter what you’re exposed to.

So basically, you need two things to be able to expand your mind. You need to have questions and/or curiosity, and you need to have experiences that are charged with learning potential. As one or both go down, you become limited in terms of intellectual growth.

This is why fostering interest and curiosity in young people should be a primary goal of our education system. We can always expose people to more things later in life, but if they lack the ability to benefit from those experiences due to curiosity receptor damage done as a child, then we’ve already failed them.:

I’ve added a new piece to the /study site. It’s a very short explanation of the birthday paradox and attack.

[ The Birthday Attack ]

When I was in the Army I had the opportunity to go to the Middle East for six months. There’s a whole litany of things you have to do to get ready for such a deployment — shots, paperwork, etc. One of those things was getting new dog tags.

One of the most interesting things about dog tags is that they include your religion on them. I was flirting with Atheism at the time and decided to get creative with what I put for my faith of choice.

Naturally, I put “CROM”. Crom is Conan’s God from Conan The Barbarian — one of the few movies that my buddy Tim and I watched hundreds of times during our high school years. These movies are burned into our souls. They define us.

I was quite sure I was going to get written up for putting “CROM” as my religion, but it never happened. They didn’t scoff when it wrote it on the form, and they happily pounded it into the little pieces of metal for me.

I was so proud of those damn dog tags, and from then on Conan became even more a part of my permanent personal culture. Anytime someone would put out an idea that I didn’t like I’d say:

Crom laughs at your four winds!

I quote from him regularly. The lamentation of the women…two snakes facing each other…etc, — it’s all classic stuff.

The pinnacle of the whole affair came in Egypt when I had these dog tags dipped in 18 carat gold. It was quite inexpensive, but it made the whole Conan thing even cooler in some lame yet cool way (see Manowar). Most of the gold came off of the tags over time; all that remained was the gold in the recessed protection of the lettering.

Good times.:

This has been my favorite band since finding Undertow in the 90’s. This just makes me like them even more.

If any of you know any more mathematical connections/relationships, let me know. I’d like to compile a reference.