Tech and stuff

A new X-Box is coming out. Microsoft has some patents out there that might tell us what it is going to be like. One of the patents would have the machine project throughout the whole room. The new machine will be able to identify at least six people in a room. Yahoo News - The Next Xbox.

Yahoo - Business Insider - Google Is Working On A Technology That, If Perfected, Would Save 1.2 Million Lives Per Year. Yep, self driving cars. They supposedly drive even better than you or I. I hope my readers can see where this is heading. You will not own your own personal vehicle, if you do then you will be taxed for every mile you drive. The rest of us will use cars following a zipcar philosophy where you only pay when you use the car. You will be bio-metrically identified or you will not have access to the cars or even mass transit eventually.

More stuff on the creepy list. Wired - The Web of the Future Wants to Hear What You Have to Say. The article says that the technology has been developed allowing you to control your internet experience using just your voice. I find this interesting because in England they are installing voice detection technology on their street lights that allows them to hear your conversations, this is also happening on buses in the United States. So, I guess in addition to hearing our conversations, the technology will be able to predict what you intend to do.

I have to say that most of the news isn't as interesting to me anymore. All I see is more and more confirmation of what I have already written about. Things I wrote about as coming when I began this blog are already being sold and implemented. It has already been announced that the new Galaxy S4 will watch your eyes to determine what you are thinking and what you are thinking about typing. Fox News - Everything you need to know about the Samsung Galaxy S4. The future is about bio-metrically identifying you before you can use any technology and then you have to be approved and probably pay based on usage.

More bizarre news

A few weeks back I read this article about how a new radiation belt was found around the earth to the complete surprise of scientists. Then I read another article talking about how it disappeared. Nature - Ephemeral third ring of radiation makes appearance around Earth. So, what really happened? They are saying it was probably created and killed by some solar winds. Maybe it was playing Peek a Boo, I just find it amusing that right after we found it, it disappeared. On a subatomic level we have proven that merely observing a thing changes it's behavior.

There is something coming for college graduates, I have been lightly following this story and how it is spun for the past year. Yahoo - Credit.com - Do We Need to Change Bankruptcy Rules for Student Loans?. The bottom line is that students today have more student debt than ever before and very little chance of getting a job to pay them. My guess is that they will be allowed to default on them in exchange for some community service.

I strongly recommend you read this next article. The Blaze - Maryland County Exec. Discovers Secretive Network of 500+ Surveillance Cameras Operated Out of Unmarked Room. Basically this county gets a new executive after the last executive left and was found guilty of misconduct. The new executive finds a room that monitored 500+ cameras across the county that nobody knew about except some vendor. My question is who is paying the bills, they must have noticed what they were paying for, there had to be invoices.

I found this article from Scientific American deeply disturbing. Human Brain Cells Make Mice Smart. Scientists grafted human brain cells on mice and the mice got smarter. The funny thing is that this experiment also showed that intelligence was more than just electrical impulses because these cells don't transmit or receive. I wonder if grafting mice cells onto human brains would make us dumber. Somewhere deep in China they are trying that in some lab on a prisoner.

Business Insider - The Dollar Is Undergoing A Major Change In Behavior, And Almost No One Has Noticed
. It is very trickily worded article; but, in essence it is saying that the dollar is moving away from being a reserve currency to a currency whose value is dependent on the nations Gross Domestic Product. The article talks about this as if it were a good thing, it is not, it is the end of the dollar.

KingWorldNews - China Preparing To Impose Bretton Woods II Gold Standard. This is yet another claim that the world is going to go to a gold standard by people who think it is a good idea. It is a silly idea and not how things will turn out.

Enjoy your week and remember to turn your clock forward one hour.

Everybody's sick

Last night was really tough, I had a high fever and couldn't keep water down. The fever broke sometime this morning and I had some "Airborne" and am pumping Gatorade and water through. Later today I even plan on trying to have some soup. Turns out I was the only one to get sick. One of my assistants has been so sick that they had to see the doctor toady and another has Bronchitis now (the one that got me sick). Here is the point, there are a couple of flues going around and you don't want to catch it. Heck, even the queen of England just got out of the hospital with some sort of stomach flu.

I am just resting for the day; but, if I feel better I will try and post on the news. Have a great week.

Tons of News Stories

The first article is from "Business Insider" - The Fiscal Times - We're Getting Closer Than Ever To Paying With Our Fingerprints. Here is a quote from the article, “We could have an ‘empty-pocket’ society, where you don’t have to carry your keys, cash, credit cards, nothing. You just have to use one finger.” A future where your individual biometrics uniquely identifies you.

Politicker - Mayor Bloomberg: Don’t Panic About the Sequester. My favorite quote from this article was by Bloomberg, the article said, "Furthermore, while saying the federal deficit does indeed need to be curtailed, Mr. Bloomberg argued the United States could owe “an infinite amount of money” and there is no specific amount that would cause the country to default." They do not intend to pay all the debt in my opinion.

France24 - China "fully prepared" for currency war: banker . All part of the global game being played to destroy the dollar and make a new world currency. Oh and lets not forget this article - Bloomberg - China Reserves Ample to Buy World’s Gold Twice. For those of you who may want to return to the Gold standard, China will have all the gold. If you need further proof of the coming death of the dollar, here is another article - Yahoo News - Reuters - UK nears yuan swap deal as London eyes offshore leader status. Basically, the deal will make the Yuan a world reserve currency further making the dollar unnecessary.

Yahoo News - Why you want to refinance your mortgage before April 1. I really am just posting this link as a favor to anyone who should refinance. It will be more expensive after April 1st, so if you are thinking about it, do it now.

BBC - Future - Making mobiles for the masses. The article states that there are now more mobiles in Africa than in Europe or America. Here is my favorite quote from the article, "Consider the growth of democratic participation via mobiles, and their use as forms of ID and for electronic signatures. These are practices that are likely first to become mainstream outside of Europe and America’s technology infrastructures, and then to be imported, together with new habits of action and interaction."

Finally, I seem to have the stomach flu.

I was not going to post; but, you need to read this.

GlobalPost - Agence France-Presse - Scientists link two rats' brains, a continent apart. This is going to be short and sweet, read the article. They are seeking ways to read our minds, read between the lines of the article. Do you think that a society that condones torture would prevent us from placing electrodes in a suspects mind if it meant we could know what they were thinking. We would do it and it is the ultimate violation of personhood. Even if all we wanted to do was what the article claims, it would still be evil. Using animals to create an organic computer is wrong and I am no animal rights activist, I do not believe in cruelty.

No News, Just Personal Stuff

I do not know what I am doing right or I would keep doing it; but, I have had women flirting with me for the last four days, complete strangers. I am a fairly average looking man, nothing special. I think I am fairly polite, generally considered amusing and fairly intelligent. In the area that I live, I only shop or eat at places where I like the people. Okay, I will eat at a place if the food is really good and the people are not. When I go to my places, the people working there often know me and check on me. It is one of the best parts of my life to know that my cashiers think I am wonderful. LOL. I cannot imagine standing behind in a line at one of my places and watching how I am treated. A couple of the women who flirted with me were in exactly that situation. But, something interesting happened today that has not happened in a long time, someone flirted with me that actually got me wondering.

I was at work (won't say what I do or where) and noticed a lady who was waiting to talk to someone. I was pretty sure why she was there because I know about our work. I asked her if she had been helped, even though it is not my job; but, just good customer service, and she told me she had not. I told her I would find someone and instead found that nobody that could help her was in the office. I returned to her and told her that I would come back in a couple of minutes and look again as they were probably all in some sort of a meeting (turned out that they were). I was in the middle of a couple different projects and ended up being approached by co-workers for direction from me, she would have seen all of this. I had to take care of something, walked away for a short meeting and returned to see if she had been helped. By that time, she told me she had. A short conversation ensued and it turned out that this lovely lady grew up in the same area as me, graduated the same time as me and knew people I had gone to school with even though I did not know them.

In case you are wondering, this story does not end with me asking her out, you don't do that at work. So, we were talking and she got my attention. She was quite lovely, very pleasant, well mannered and intelligent. I like intelligent women. She had aged quite well and had a lovely figure, very curvacious. As I said, I have had a lot of women flirt with me lately; but, this one did something else. She took hand in one of those two hand holds, two of her hands on either side of my hand and she thanked me for having helped her. I have not explained this well; but, I will try. It was one of those times when someone holds your hand with a certain tenderness, very soft and gentle. She said some very kind things and I had to run off.

My friend that had dinner with this week and wrote about it, he reads this blog and has been with me when women have approached me. I am usually distant to say the least. I lived with a friend for a bit in a beach town and he complained that I was rude because I would not respond to women who attempted to catch my eye. I am not looking for a new relationship, I am enjoying my peace and quiet. This woman made me pause and that doesn't happen often. After we separated as I had things to do, I kept thinking about her and that never happens in this way, I wondered what she was like.

Pretty is never going to be my downfall, it is just not enough. I like pretty; but, understand it is nothing more than skin deep. This woman was pretty for someone her age; but, what caught me was her personality, she was so very friendly and intelligent. The fact that she was my age was equally attractive. I am not lonely, I am not desperately in need of affection and I am enjoying my peace; but, this woman got me to think about her and want to know her better. That doesn't happen often to me, less than a handful of times.

Sorry for the ending, my friends won't like it. Even this woman cannot do it for me. The mistake I made in my life was giving up on love because I had it once and she is dead. If I were going to date again, it would have been this woman and I didn't and won't. I am done with the thought of dating. Done. It is sort of freeing, knowing that it doesn't matter who I meet. I know who I should have been with and she is dead. I can now decide how I want to spend my life with one less issue to deal with and I like that.

Interesting stuff you should know

On February 20th the United States Geological Survey (USGS) released a statement on their website that said, "Earthquake Catastrophes and Fatalities to rise in populous in 21st Century". I bookmarked it because I planned to post about it with some questions. I went back today to the link and the article was removed from their website. I have no idea why; but, I had read the article and found it strange. Basically they said there would be more earthquakes and more people would die because the world has more people.

They never explained why we would experience more earthquakes, we are indeed experiencing more; but, are told it is just a fluke and nothing to be concerned about by the media. The second part is also interesting, that we would see more deaths. We should see less deaths and let me explain why. Most deaths occur from building collapses and non-structural earthquake hazards (your refrigerator falling on you). I live in earthquake territory and the fact is, cities in these areas tend to make buildings to withstand such quakes. The worst building to be in are made of Un-reinforced masonry (bricks without metal rods keeping them together through their middle). I am sure someone else picked up this story; but, I didn't look.

Next, we have this from Wired - 3 Radical New Brain-Mapping Tools Obama’s Plan Could Deliver. They are coming to map your brain, we want to know what you are thinking so that we can duplicate it with a machine and we don't need you anymore. The Obama administration is proposing a multi-billion dollar program to map out the brain in the same way they mapped out the genome. I am lazy so you will have to do an internet search for that one, I forgot where I read it.

Funny, when I was a kid they still gave people lobotomies. They used to take a needle and poke it into people's brains to cure them of their mental illness. There is a song that jokes about it, the singer says, "I would rather have a bottle in front of me then a full frontal lobotomy." What if they could identify the individual neurons that allow you to be unhappy, would you want them to? It wouldn't effect anything else, you would still be you would never be unhappy. When I got divorced my therapist (yes, I actually went and saw one and he was wonderful, for all I know he still reads the blog) thought I should consider taking some pills for anxiety. I saw the doctor and he wanted to give me something for long term depression, which I did not have. I opted for something short term that I only took as needed and at the lowest dose possible. My comment was simple, it is okay to be sad when circumstances call for it. The idea of being only happy is depressing, we would miss out on so much of life and learning and life is about growing.

Then we have this from the New American - Killing the Dollar: G20 & IMF Push for Global Fed, Global Currency. Basically, the 20 largest economies wish to create an international reserve bank. I have written about this enough in the past that my regular readers will understand. It is pretty simple, we are going to have a global currency and any currencies that appear to be local will not truly be so because international regulation will set their value.

MyFoxNY - Net providers begin warning of illegal downloads. Again something I have been talking about for years, when I first said how this would happen, I was called a conspiracy theorist. I have to say something, my most read posts were both highly unusual for my blog. The most read was about the dear Pastor Daniels and the second most read was about how Stephen Hawking is a douche. The vast majority of my posts are about corruption in the pension funds and news about technology. While I have written follow up posts regarding the dear Pastor, I don't think I have written about Hawking again. It makes me wonder if the people that came here because of those two subjects, just hated the rest of what I write about.

TIME - Finally, Tattoos That Let You Control Objects with Your Mind. Have fun with this article.

Wired - Freescale’s Insanely Tiny ARM Chip Will Put the Internet of Things Inside Your Body

The articles I link to are the ones that will really change your life, not the Academy Awards, these things will change our lives and not enough people seem to care; but, enough do. Have a great week.