Wednesday 30 January 2008 at 1:49 pm
This morning, an employee of Quick International, a left-handed Pocket PC or Smartphone user, executed a very specific text search in Google and wound up landing at my "PDA Discrimination" commentary from November:
"moving windows ce scrollbar to the left"
Apparently Google thought highly enough of my rant to rank it third for that search. If you wander a bit further down, though, you find a link to an MSDN Blog page which contains many complaints (including mine now) about this exact same issue (though none quite so impassioned or articulate as mine, I dare say).
If you're left-handed and a Pocket PC or Smartphone user and are reading this now, I hope you'll take the time to contact me directly (you'll find an e-mail link on this blog's home page). I'd like to network with fellow left-handers and discuss whether we might form an organized grassroots movement to force some attention to our accessibility requirements. Apparently the only reason Microsoft bothers to add "accessibility" features to its products is because deaf and blind people are much more organized and litigious than left-handers? Perhaps it's time that changed. Left-handers outnumber deaf and blind people combined by a hundred to one, so our accessibility needs ought to be worthy of a lawsuit, or at least the credible threat of one.
Wednesday 30 January 2008 at 02:43 am
I'm pretty sure that tonight I invented a new atheist/humanist slogan for a t-shirt or bumper sticker:
Religion is an emotional exercise which needs to be exorcised.
Saturday 26 January 2008 at 12:39 am
A thought question for you to consider: Would you say that emotion is intrinsic and
essential to the proper and effective functioning of any civilization?
Further, is that merely
descriptive of past and present known
civilizations, or does it apply also to theoretical ones in the future,
perhaps even alien ones? Is it perhaps even
proscriptive?
(more)
Wednesday 23 January 2008 at 1:43 pm
In response to Michael Shermer's
Why
ET Hasn't Called (a column from Scientific American), I have an
alternative theory why ET hasn't come calling: ET had his own "Peak
Oil" catastrophe and then fell into a permanent Dark Age.
ET, upon discovering his own planet's vast stores of organic chemical
potential energy, did the same thing we've done and gorged upon them in
an orgiastic refutation of the existence of tomorrows; ET was paying no
attention to the Big Picture... until it was too late. ET made no
successful effort to establish a sustainable presence in space or upon
other planets, rather choosing to squander those reserves upon
expensive energy baubles like street lights, neon signs, personal
mechanized transportation for everyone, and constant streams of
"entertainment".
When the inevitable Peak Oil event occurred, ET found himself then
lacking the enormous energy resources required to lift himself off of
his rock, unable to belatedly establish that sustainable presence in
space.
ET got stuck on his little rock, sullen and depressed in his
shortsighted stupidity, unable to dig himself back out of the deep
planetary grave he had dug for himself, and eventually withered away.
Wednesday 16 January 2008 at 11:24 pm
I'm not really decrepit enough yet to have been motivated to actually commit a bucket list to paper, but it seems that David Letterman and I share at least one unfulfilled wish. The only difference is that his Item Twelve would probably be my Item One. I just endured another birthday and boy, that would have made a damned nice birthday present.
