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  • Daniel 7:49 pm on January 12, 2010 | 0 Permalink | Reply
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    I’d love to see Conan O’Brien move to CBS and take over once David Letterman retires, since NBC is running him out.

    Read O’Brien’s full statement below:

    People of Earth:

    In the last few days, I’ve been getting a lot of sympathy calls, and I want to start by making it clear that no one should waste a second feeling sorry for me. For 17 years, I’ve been getting paid to do what I love most and, in a world with real problems, I’ve been absurdly lucky. That said, I’ve been suddenly put in a very public predicament and my bosses are demanding an immediate decision.

    Six years ago, I signed a contract with NBC to take over The Tonight Show in June of 2009. Like a lot of us, I grew up watching Johnny Carson every night and the chance to one day sit in that chair has meant everything to me. I worked long and hard to get that opportunity, passed up far more lucrative offers, and since 2004 I have spent literally hundreds of hours thinking of ways to extend the franchise long into the future. It was my mistaken belief that, like my predecessor, I would have the benefit of some time and, just as important, some degree of ratings support from the prime-time schedule. Building a lasting audience at 11:30 is impossible without both.

    But sadly, we were never given that chance. After only seven months, with my Tonight Show in its infancy, NBC has decided to react to their terrible difficulties in prime-time by making a change in their long-established late night schedule.

    Last Thursday, NBC executives told me they intended to move the Tonight Show to 12:05 to accommodate the Jay Leno Show at 11:35. For 60 years the Tonight Show has aired immediately following the late local news. I sincerely believe that delaying the Tonight Show into the next day to accommodate another comedy program will seriously damage what I consider to be the greatest franchise in the history of broadcasting. The Tonight Show at 12:05 simply isn’t the Tonight Show. Also, if I accept this move I will be knocking the Late Night show, which I inherited from David Letterman and passed on to Jimmy Fallon, out of its long-held time slot. That would hurt the other NBC franchise that I love, and it would be unfair to Jimmy.

    So it has come to this: I cannot express in words how much I enjoy hosting this program and what an enormous personal disappointment it is for me to consider losing it. My staff and I have worked unbelievably hard and we are very proud of our contribution to the legacy of The Tonight Show. But I cannot participate in what I honestly believe is its destruction. Some people will make the argument that with DVRs and the Internet a time slot doesn’t matter. But with the Tonight Show, I believe nothing could matter more.

    There has been speculation about my going to another network but, to set the record straight, I currently have no other offer and honestly have no idea what happens next. My hope is that NBC and I can resolve this quickly so that my staff, crew, and I can do a show we can be proud of, for a company that values our work.

    Have a great day and, for the record, I am truly sorry about my hair; it’s always been that way.

    Yours,

    Conan

    We shall see what happens.

     

  • Daniel 12:27 am on January 6, 2010 | 0 Permalink | Reply
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    The new Tiger Woods, the real one, is far more interesting than the automaton created by his father and the handlers who came later.

    Tiger can emerge from this meltdown as what Tom Wolf might call “a man in full,” a complete human being, flawed and filled with needs, as we all are.

    The old Tiger was a child trying to live up to others’ expectations. The real Tiger is a man choosing to live his own life.

     

  • Daniel 6:38 pm on January 2, 2010 | 0 Permalink | Reply
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    As traffic increases on websites, so does the amount of spam attacks. Most of the spam is the same stuff and get’s deleted as fast as it posts. This has to be the first spam attack that actually made me laugh.

    I own a large motorcycle forum, based in Las Vegas, Nevada, which is where this spambot attack occurred. The spambot was traced to Beijing, China – it posted up 5 posts, all spam, but one of them was absolutely hilarious and used the term “soda jerker” so before deleting it, I had to quote it:

    We had a number of close calls that day. When we rose, it was obviously late and we had to hurry so as not to miss breakfast; we knew the dining room staff was strict about closing at nine o’clock. Then, when we had been driving in the desert for nearly two hours —— it must have been close to noon —— the heat nearly hid us in; the radiator boiled over and we had to use most of our drinking water to cool it down. By the time we reached the mountain, it was our o’clock and we were exhausted. Here, judgement ran out of us and we started the tough climb to the summit, not realizing that darkness came suddenly in the desert. Sure enough, by six we were struggling and Andrew very nearly went down a steep cliff, dragging Mohammed and me along with him. By nine, when the wind howled across the flat ledge of the summit, we knew as we shivered together for warmth that it had not been our lucky day.

    From a distance, wow power leveling,it looked like a skinny tube, but as we got closer, we could see it flesh out before our eyes. It was tubular, all right, but fatter than we could see from far away. Furthermore, we were also astonished to notice that the building was really in two parts: a pagoda sitting on top of a tubular one-story structure. Standing ten feet away, we could marvel at how much of the pagoda was made up of glass windows. Almost everything under the wonderful Chinese roof was made of glass, unlike the tube that it was sitting on, which only had four. Inside, the tube was gloomy, because of the lack of light. Then a steep, narrow staircase took us up inside the pagoda and the light changed dramatically. All those windows let in a flood of sunshine and we could see out for miles across the flat land.
    world of warcraft power leveling,

    If you work as a soda jerker, you will, of course, not need much skill in expressing yourself to be effective. If you work on a machine, your ability to express yourself will be of little importance. But as soon as you move one step up from the bottom, your effectiveness depends on your ability to reach others through the spoken or the written word. And the further away your job is from manual work, the larger the organization of which you are an employee, the more important it will be that you know how to convey your thoughts in writing or speaking. In the very large business organization, whether it is the government, the large corporation, or the Army, this ability to express oneself is perhaps the mos do not understand why people confuse my Siamese cat, Prissy, with the one I had several years ago, Henry. The two cats are only alike in breed. Prissy, a quiet, feminine feline, loves me dearly but not possessively. She likes to keep her distance from people, exert her aoc power leveling independence and is never so rude as to beg, lick, or sniff unceremoniously. Her usual posture is sitting upright, eyes closed, perfectly still. Prissy is a very proper cat. Henry, on the other hand, loved me dearly but possessively. He was my shadow from morning till night. He expected me to constantly entertain him. Henry never cared who saw him do anything, whether it was decorous or not, and he usually offended my friends in some way. The cat made himself quite comfortable, on the top of the television, across stranger’s feet or laps, in beds, drawers, sacks, closets, or nooks. The difference between them is imperceptible to strangerst important of all the skills a man can possess

    We had a number of close calls that day

    Taken from the website: Sin City Sportbikes – Motorcycle rides and riders in the Las Vegas, Nevada region. You can also follow Sin City Sportbikes on Twitter and Facebook.

     

  • Daniel 5:44 pm on December 25, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
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    I saw the new Jason Reitman movie, Up In The Air, starring George Clooney, and as I mentioned on my Twitter, this was a very good movie and I recommend seeing all 109 minutes of it in the theater. I’d say it’s one of the best movies I’ve seen this 2009 year, however I don’t watch too many movies. It was smart and meaningful, while being sophisticated and enjoyable.

    To quote the George Klooney’s character, Ryan Bingham:

    How much does your life weigh? Imagine for a second that you’re carrying a backpack. I want you to pack it with all the stuff that you have in your life… you start with the little things. The shelves, the drawers, the knickknacks, then you start adding larger stuff. Clothes, tabletop appliances, lamps, your TV… the backpack should be getting pretty heavy now. You go bigger. Your couch, your car, your home… I want you to stuff it all into that backpack. Now I want you to fill it with people. Start with casual acquaintances, friends of friends, folks around the office… and then you move into the people you trust with your most intimate secrets. Your brothers, your sisters, your children, your parents and finally your husband, your wife, your boyfriend, your girlfriend. You get them into that backpack, feel the weight of that bag. Make no mistake your relationships are the heaviest components in your life. All those negotiations and arguments and secrets, the compromises. The slower we move the faster we die. Make no mistake, moving is living. Some animals were meant to carry each other to live symbiotically over a lifetime. Star crossed lovers, monogamous swans. We are not swans. We are sharks.

     

  • Daniel 5:16 pm on December 18, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
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    I’m an avid NBA fan, and I couldn’t agree more with the Boston Celtics’ Paul Pierce, who would make these three fundamental changes to the league if he ran the NBA:

    1. I’d get rid of the age minimum: I don’t know why they have it. I think if you’re a pro, you’re a pro. And if a team wants to draft you and you’re good enough, you should be able to go no matter what age you are. You see it overseas, guys are pros at 14, 15, 16 years old. You’ve got to give everybody an opportunity.
    2. Shorten the season to 60 games: Every year somebody gets hurt. That’s a combination of wear and tear in preseason games and regular season games.
    3. Raise the rim three inches: The athletes today are crazy. You see the way guys are jumping these days. I would raise the rim three inches. Then, you have to learn the art of the jump shot. You’ll have to know how to play this game a little bit better then. Raising the rim, you’ll see improved play. You’ll see increasing fundamentals. I’m telling you.

    Source: Boston Celtics Blog

     

  • Daniel 12:31 am on December 2, 2009 | 2 Permalink | Reply
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    This holiday season, all I really want is a dual-blade lightsaber. I really want one because I am very skilled in one-bladed sword battle and I want to move up to dual blades. Also, I need to practice with a dual-bladed sword for dual-bladed sword battle because I fear one day, a ninja or a pirate will challenge me to a light saber battle and I want to be one step ahead. Finally, I can use it for self-defense if someone tries to attack me with a weapon.

    What do you want this holiday season?

     

    • Jafar 12:39 am on December 2, 2009 Permalink

      6 things:

      1. peg
      2. hook
      3. scimitar
      4. parrot
      6. a dual with Daniel

    • CW 11:54 pm on December 2, 2009 Permalink

      You are very strange.

  • Daniel 2:28 pm on November 17, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
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    To quote the character, Victor Mancini, from the 2008 movie, Choke:

    Sometimes you have to lose everything before the penny finally drops. So here’s what I figured out – we’re not evil sinners or perfect knock-offs of God. We let the world tell us whether we’re saints or sex addicts, sane or insane, heroes or victims, whether we’re good mothers or loving sons, but we can decide for ourselves. As a certain wise fugitive once told me: sometimes it’s not important which way you jump, just that you jump.

     

  • Daniel 8:43 pm on September 10, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
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    The for-profit companies are designed to build wealth for their shareholders, and the non-profit sector is designed to burn up that excess wealth.

    Imagine, if you would, what our world would be like without the presence of philanthropy.

    Imagine, if you would, what our world would be like without the presence of philanthropy. Certainly, we would continue to produce and consume. We would continue to save or invest any surplus generated out of basic economic activity. Likely, investments would continue to grow and be reinvested. The “economy” could continue to grow. At the same time, organizations that depend upon gift support and volunteer time would suffer unless they became somehow profitable. Any activity or service—such as education, research, and the arts—whose purpose or end is other than producing a profit would basically be headed for extinction. The conventional economist might acknowledge the social consequences of this, but register no economic ones. This is why it should come as no surprise that philanthropy, the art and science of giving, is not to be found in classic economics text books.

    As one of the primary means of support for education or any field connected with renewing the human spirit, philanthropists know that philanthropically-funded activities actually have a very important place in the economic cycle, from a social as well as economic standpoint. Philanthropic gifts are generative in nature. That is, without charitable gifts there would be no economic activity at all. Proof: In the history of mankind, gifting processes notably preceded all other forms of economic trade transactions and monetary systems. Cultures have found ways to meet all the basic human needs without any monetary systems at all. In addition to physical needs such as food and shelter, these economies valued the non-commodity aspects that conventional economics cannot fathom, like caring and learning, imagining, inspiring. Yet these are the very things that really matter most to us day-to-day. Such intangibles fall outside the quantifiable world of modern social science. They are nice but not economic. Rather, it has been left to philanthropy, which is primarily motivated by these intangibles, to make whole the fragmented and generally inhuman picture of economics. Given this encompassing perspective, I would posit that gifting is the most important and productive component of the economic system.

    In the world of risk and return, a gift is 100% risk while the returns on the gift are immeasurable, so rich are they in the experiential and qualitative aspects of life, so laden with potential for the future. The fascinating thing is that charitable activities are actually structured to consume, even burn up, excess capital. Through this transformative process, they produce new human capacity (education), new insights and breakthroughs (research), and cultural innovation (the arts), all of which often lead to economic renewal. It should come as no surprise that these three areas (and there are others of course) are primarily supported by gifts and taxation, a form of mandatory gifts.

    Philanthropists know that accumulated capital is the most vital source of gifting. Money “ages,” becomes more disconnected from human initiative as it accumulates. As soon as that money is given away it leaves the sphere of investment and is given new economic life by being used for purchase to accomplish a charitable mission by the recipient. Thus the linkage is established between the generation of surplus capital and the renewal of that capital through philanthropy. The logic here is one of functional integration rather than cause and effect. Historically, philanthropy is something you are privileged to do because of your financial success. This may be considered something of the Nineteenth Century industrial model. But that too is shifting. More corporations and individuals are structuring their philanthropy as part of their present financial activity rather than putting it off pending the results of a career. For example, the dramatic increase in young people’s interest in philanthropic activity is a result of activism and engagement; they want to make a difference with their lives now rather than viewing the accumulation of resources as a measure of accomplishment. This sense of social responsibility and integration is but one reflection of a much larger, though just now barely visible, sea change in the emerging field of social finance.

    Social finance holds that the purpose of money and finance is to support human initiative and to foster the evolution of new community. Social finance recognizes that in the context of a global economy, we are fully interdependent. It is no longer possible to stand outside this reality, regardless of political boundaries, accumulated wealth, or dire poverty. Social finance recognizes the human and environmental consequences of economic activities. In this paradigm, for example, socially responsible businesses are capable of bringing about needed changes in our culture through fair labor practices and the charitable distribution of a portion of profits. This is just one emergent approach in which gifting is integral to the whole economic cycle. It presents a picture of a healthier sustainable future—and one which leaves behind the industrialist model of philanthropy that lives so strongly in the mythology of American history.

    Source: Economics and the Presence of Philanthropy by John Bloom

     

  • Daniel 1:57 am on August 18, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
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    Tomorrow morning, I’m heading out on my annual August vacation. This will be the shortest summer vacation I’ve ever taken. I leave first thing in the morning, and I have a four hour layover in San Francisco, which will be bearable since a buddy is picking me up at the SF airport during that time. I was concerned yesterday when I heard the BART train system was nearly going to be shut down, due to a strike, but it seems to have been averted.

    After the layover, I’ll be flying to San Antonio where I’ll have a rental car waiting. I’m staying with a friend and her family, whom I haven’t seen since I was 12 years old. My good buddy from college, Shwaa, who recently joined the Army, is in training and I’ll be signing him out every evening, so I’m looking forward to seeing him. For the weekend, the three of us will be going to Austin, and if I have time, I plan on making the drive to Houston before I leave, as I have another long time friend living there. So, I have a lot planned for this one week of vacation and adventure.

    I think this is the first time I’ve taken an airplane and I’ve elected to not take every lens with my camera. No, I’m taking only two lenses, my 50mm 1.4 prime and my 70-200mm 2.8 telephoto lens, and that’s it. I hope, and plan, on taking as many pictures as possible. My BlackBerry’s camera will continue to serve my Flickr photo feed and my Nikon will be providing any pictures for the Facebook masses.

    I’m leaving behind a motorcycle that I haven’t touched in a while. More parts have shown up for it, that are still sitting in boxes waiting to be put on. At some point, when I get back, I need to drop the oil out of the engine, replace the engine case covers with the new anodized billet aluminum Woodcraft engine covers, plus I’ll be making the final oil change switching to a full Red Line synthetic oil on an extended oil filter coupled with a unique oil magnet. The license plate, registration, and title showed up, so I’ll be installing the fender eliminator as well.

    At some point, when I come back from my trip, I need to determine the last two areas of the motorcycle. One is the dreaded suspension, which means looking at rebuilding the front forks, possible Ohlins rear shock replacement, and determining if a shim will be needed since I’m probably going to make a change in the rear tire size. It comes stock with a 190/55 and I’ll most likely switch to some Avon Storm tires running a 190/55 which means the rear suspension height will warrant a minor shim adjustment. The other area I need to look into is the best technology to take care of mounting and wiring the radar detection hardware, and coming up with a solution for the laser and photo jamming. I love technology, especially in a real world use.

    On the gear side of life, I’ve upgraded my gloves to some new Held Titan motorcycle gloves made of kangaroo leather. These gloves are rock solid, tight, and give almost too much protection – is that possible? My Vanson Leathers have heavy armor in the forearm section, and the Held gloves have some intense wrist armor action so the double coupling of armor in that area is very extreme.

    During my riding in Western Oregon, I experienced some numbing vibrations in my feet, and I’ve diagnosed the problem as my boot soles. Thanks to a good referral, I took my Sidi Vertigo motorcycle boots into Totem Lake to have them professionally resoled. I opted for a slightly harder compound to help with the wet footpeg scenarios, but I’ve yet to try them so a review will be coming up. I’ll be sure to mention the business’ name as well, in that review.

    Not sure how often I will get to this blog while I’m on vacation, but as always, follow me on Twitter for real time updates.

     

  • Daniel 4:26 pm on July 27, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
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    Blame is just displaced guilt.

     

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