http://www.newsweek.com/id/234674

A report being released on behavior showed a tendancy of “green” buyers to lie, cheat and steal more frequently than other buyers.

So what is the yard-stick measurement of affordable? Is it affordable to the smug, urban hipster? Or is it affordable to the every-day joe?

One of the ideas I’ve been working with in my head is the idea of building out a shipping container home. They are often mentioned as a low-cost building tool that can be used in a variety of ways. And I agree to a certain point. Shipping containers can be a low cost way to recycle some old steel into a modern home. But by the time most of the plans I see on the Internet are finished being built, there is nothing but a small living space with the price tag of a large home.

I don’t argue that man has no impact on the nature surrounding him. Man is a very key part of the natural world. I might concede that man is a key contributor of CO2 gasses in the atmosphere. It would be, to this mind, a specific, unseen cost associated with our activities here on the earth.

I might concede that CO2 is a significant greenhouse gas in the atmosphere. But where I diverge from the pack comes when we start seeing scientists whip out their crystal balls, begin having alternative science sessions and dictating the very real events that will take place tomorrow.

Somewhere between hurling insults at audiences, the green movement turned into little more than a cargo cult religion. You can’t be agnostic, or even have a smidgen of atheism when global warming and ecology are your gods du jour. All it takes are some whiz-bang statistical models.

And I have a problem with statistical models.

Look at the stock market. Here is a system that represents a very real, complex system that has been around for more than a hundred years. Some of the best and brightest minds in the world have thrown the most complex mathematics at untangling the web of human action only to walk away empty handed. Even the best statistical models designed for statistical mimicry are only good for a limited amount of time. Why?

The short answer is that the system itself is extremely complex. Just like weather and climate change, we can only produce close approximations of what we think might happen under a finite number of possible scenarios we can muster up. The variables, as of this writing, are seemingly infinite (infinite minus one or so). While we have boundless technologies to assist in the prediction of future events in the stock market, the capacity to represent every possible variable is far too small.

Part of the idea I’m trying to convey here can be found in the foundations of chaos theory in mathematics. A weatherman, running a computer and printing out pages of data and graphs, runs into a computer problem. In order to save time, he pushes the data through the computer again, trimming off a decimal place or two to save time. When he goes back to look at the results, the image produced varies wildly from the image produced on the first run. Why? In a case where you might think lopping off a couple decimal places would make no difference, those little decimal places have a significant impact elsewhere.

I’ll venture out on a limb to get a good place at the guillotine when I say this: If finite mathematics are beholden to precision, statistical mathematics are beholden to imprecision. Coupling imprecision as a means to predict a finite future is no more than trying to lop off a few decimal places and attempting to convince the world the results are the same (within one standard deviation).

The best statistical models will tell us nothing about what is, but rather what could be given a fixed set of weighted variables assumed to represent the bulk of possibilities. Do you see the problem with that?

This is why I believe there is ample room for discussion on global warming as an issue to be dealt with in the public policy realm. The science, let alone statistics, of this field are very far from settled. We can only assume models are correct if the inputs are correct. However, just as with the stock market, modeling anything complex will continue to be a significant challenge.

Maybe I’m the one with a warped view of statistics. But it is dangerous ground to shape public policy based on statistical representations and forecasting of highly complex and evolving systems. We are now painfully aware (again) of what Nassim Taleb calls “black swans” – the improbable, statistically impractical, occurring. Our economy hit a so-called black swan event that only serves to remind us that the improbable still happens.

I like to illustrate this problem by using a simple analogy. The odds of hitting the lottery are extremely small. The odds of being struck by lightning are far better. But somehow people still manage to win the lottery. And I’m sure that given time, someone struck by lightning will also win the lottery.

We do recognize that these moments in time, place, and history are built on the improbable. Our planet rests in a narrow habitable zone around a star at a given point in its life. We appear to have a perfect mixture of elements bound together in a way that permits life to spring up. All of these things are tiny specks in the ways of time and space – highly improbable, but happening nonetheless. We are only now (relative to the evolution of man) beginning to realize that the probability of life outside of our solar system is likely much greater, the odds much better, than we have ever thought before.

Even within the context of evolution, we must admit that had there been very slight alterations in the mutation of DNA hundreds of thousands of years ago, we would likely not be sitting here discussing this very topic in our current form. If there were a God with statistics, his models may have predicted with a certain degree of precision that intelligent life would spring up somewhere, at some time, with blue eyes and blotches of hair on its body. He may have been convinced that we would all have six fingers and toes. While we may have fingers and toes, we do not have six of them.

We must recognize that statistical models are only mathematical guesses based on historical data. In making these guesses, we have to take a few shortcuts in order to arrive at some prediction. The more complex the model, the greater degree of uncertainty we have in the results of our calculation. Yet it seems with climate science we have somehow managed to step over the complexity question, accepted the model’s prediction and buried our heads in the sands of catastrophe.

Let us assume for a moment that temperatures will rise one or two degrees over the next century. Let us assume the catastrophic visions put forth by these scientists and followers are true – how can we truly know the full impact on the entire ecology of the planet? Temperatures in Africa might change to some degree as to suddenly kill off the plague of crop-destroying locusts. The land becomes fertile again, and suddenly a tiny change in the cycle of life in Africa becomes an exponential variable in the future of life here on earth. The longitudinal problem occurs because the actual weight of the entire system of input variables is entirely variable.

So it might seem reasonable for scientists to admit that one little thing they seemingly have a hard time admitting: they really don’t know what the future will hold. They can only look to the past and make an educated guess based on the relevant historical data they hold. The key is that it is a “guess”.

To test a CGWA (catastrophic global warming adherent), we only need to take their uncanny knowledge of the ecological future and re-apply their skills where it might be entirely possible to create a vast fortune. If climate scientists are capable of determining the future of the earth’s temperatures with such precision, ask yourself why they are not currently trading in the stock market. The complexity of knowledge and modeling are very similar. Ask yourself why they have not put their entire life savings into a proprietary model developed with their own modeling abilities with a single, long-term investment that can not be changed. Most of them would be quite successful – or should be given their dogmatic insistence on the viability of their modeling abilities. So, therein lies the challenge to the scientists: put your money where your mouth is. I’d lay wager that most of the CGWAs will, invariably cringe at the notion. They’ll stake their entire scientific careers on their work, but not their money.

If the iPad is rugged enough, the applications can be nearly endless. A lot of people can see ways of putting the device to work. I’ve personally been looking for a solution very similar to develop applications on for business use. Laptops work, but are not very durable (unless you tack on a couple grand to the price tag). Laptops are also large, clunky, and difficult to work with in the scenario I have in mind. So the iPad would definitely fit the niche I want to work with. Not having touched one, the images I’ve viewed show that might well be near the annoyingly-sized piece of hardware that has trouble fitting in places it needs to go. But that has yet to be seen.

Yet I’m not without my doubts as you can already tell. My concerns are that Apple limits the software to Apple Store purchases – effectively rendering my ability to hack at it useless, the device would be incapable of multitasking – a huge part of what I need such a platform for (although I doubt the veracity of this issue), and the extended service plans are ultimately as much as the device itself.

Let me put it into context: I am looking at developing tools for the trucking industry that fit on a tablet and can manage a wide variety of needs. If any of you out there have laid hands on a Qualcomm box, you know there is always room for improvement in terms of interface design, speed and functionality. Hence, my idea that a tablet with cellular capabilities would fit a niche (with a few exceptions) and meet the needs of most drivers on the road. Most consumer laptops have issues beyond what most consumers are familiar with when put into a semi. You have to deal with increased dirt and grime, an environment that is punishing on anything with moving parts, laptop hinges that last weeks rather than years. Panasonic, Fujitsu and Dell all have ruggedized laptops with price tags that can easily make you faint. So a tablet, with fewer moving parts and no room for grime and dirt, makes for a plausible solution to my hardware problem.

But Apple’s focus on the business market is, well, lackluster – with the exception of the digital arts and production realm. Stray much farther than digital arts and you find a sharply dropping arc of use in terms of general vendors using the platform. Sure, Apple has been making headway in overall market share, but the crux of those gains are largely due to the consumer market.

Then there is the perception problem. Apple’s core marketing focus on consumers can make it difficult to breach the b2b/b2c wall. The iPhone is a consumer device, not a business device. The iMac is something you buy your daughter when she’s going to college, not where you sit down to draft that ungodly Powerpoint presentation you’re going to thrust on unsuspecting subordinates in the morning meeting. (note: the prior sentences are sarcasm in full force) Now, most developers I know love the Mac as their platform du jour. I like it. But getting the solution across the table without the wince from the buyer along with 1000 questions on compatibility, can be a problem.

The third curiosity is the level of control Apple provides developers. For better or worse, Apple appears to be of the opinion: “Here’s our device, here’s what you can do with it, don’t ask for anything else because it won’t happen.” For the device to be utilitarian in purpose, Apple needs to recognize that locking down parts of it is what will hinder its overall adoption for business purposes. For my vision of the software that would go on the device, I need granular control over the underlying system to give administrators the ability to lock certain aspects down, remove options and generally kill some features of the device. Is that nice? No. But that is the reality of the situation for the solution I want to deploy. And in my experience with Apple products, I’m not thinking I’m going to get the level of control I want out of the system.

Please know that my complaints are from a business perspective. I think the iPad will be a moderate consumer success, far above Apple TV but not as popular as the iPhone or iPod. Apple might just revolutionize a part of the PC business that has floundered (tablets). And just maybe fairly sophisticated business solutions will evolve specifically for the device. I hope they prove me wrong.

There are quite a few LAWMs out there. Most of them tend to be leftovers from the dot-coms of the turn of the century that ejaculated an idea into the world and then bailed. Now to be fair, if I had a grandiose dream of a company that skyrockets in value – I’d be the first to sell out. There’s nothing wrong with that. You built your dream, made a mint in the market and now you’re out.

But what I hate most about the LAWM is that most tend to create foundations and promote those foundations for the express purpose of disavowing the same system that made them their fortunes. You see, the LAWM wishes to force you to live by their idealized fantasies because they will generally not be subject to the burdens of their public policy initiatives they love to promote. Like what?

Like healthcare. When any of the LAWMs step up to advocate for public healthcare, they tend to do so from the position of least effect. Yeah – they’ll might pay heftier taxes in the long run. But for the most part, they don’t really have to give a shit about healthcare in the first place because they can already afford to go above and beyond what the public would be subjected to.

At the same time, these douchebags play the “we’re so nice” card while not recognizing the basic problems of the positions they advocate. By creating more bureaucracy and sucking more money out of the private market, it ensures that at least one person out there with a great idea won’t find money to pursue his idea – the same kind of ideas that made the LAWM a ass load of money in the long run.

So if these condescending twits really want to help save the world, maybe they should put their money where their mouths are and just give up all of their money instead of hiding behind a pussified, political foundation hell bent of fucking the rest of us out of our liberties.

Yes, I’m looking at you Pierre Omidyar.

Emma and Bit discuss a fix for global warming

(and damnit, I know about the typos and the box problem. not sure why its an issue here but not at stripcreator)

Coming out of corporate america, email is, above all, the most misunderstood, poorly executed communications medium available. In fact, I’d rank email below Twitter. Or maybe Twitter is getting bumped up higher because of its restrictive nature.

So, let me be clear:

Email has a use. I use it when I need to convey information in writing that might generally be too long or complex to write out in a chat client or when I need to formulate a response that can’t be given immediately that will take more than a sentence or two.

Whenever I see an email that consists of one or two lines, I cringe. When I have someone ask me if I read the ‘email’, I cringe. I cringe because it adds weight to Jeff’s point. It also reinforces my long standing habit of *not* reading email *unless* someone asks me about it. Why? I find it much faster to actually use email. I can sift through my email when needed rather than as a trained monkey pulling a lever.

Now, in corporate American, if you really want to anger a boss make him or her constantly ask whether you got the email. They hate it. But that one second of asking saves me countless hours non-productivity. Instead of wasting precious time organizing, managing, and cleaning up, I just wait until it is asked. I call it Just-In-Time-Annoyance-Email.

Let’s just say this approach is *not* an efficient approach *at all*. But I’ve been witness, and party to, using email as a chat client – something it is clearly not designed for. I think anyone who has worked in a production capacity in an IT shop knows what it is like when something blows up. Emails start flying everywhere. You have someone who changes the subject or fails to follow a protocol in the subject line and then you have a gigantic mess on your hands. Then you have streams of conversations that become circular – or even worse, conversations that break off into their own little world where nothing is communicated at all. Add on to all of this the massive FAIL committed by someone abusing mailing lists and you have one fine mess.

I’ve even thought about setting up a mail filter that works much like a challenge-response system for spam. Basically, you have to pay me to read your email unless I manually override it (i.e. you tell me I need to read the email). This would get me around people sending me useless emails devoid of any substance because an actual, tangible cost is incurred in the form of money. Now that would be cool.