Braescu.com

One of these days I was reading an article in the online edition of Haaretz (which is a leading Israeli newspaper) when one particular advertising attracted my attention. It was a banner (or maybe a flash, I don’t recall exactly) for ArabLounge (“Connecting Arabs worldwide“). Laughing like crazy I clicked and went there, to see the web site myself.

Cretinism #1: on a dating web site for Arabs, the only available languages are… English (default), French, Portuguese, German, and… Swedish! No Arab language – but dude, we have frickin’ SWEDISH. Börk, börk, börk!

Cretinism #2: how many Arabs are looking for dates on an Israeli newspaper online edition? I mean, really, what were you guys smoking?

After witnessing yesterday’s motorcycle accident in front of San Stefano I was mad as hell. So I went online and asked Slashdot for (technical) help.

I live in a city with a population in the millions (someplace in the Middle East; the country is not important), and I am mad as hell. The car traffic is going from bad to worse, and I’m sick of all the car accidents that keep happening (we have one of the biggest accident and mortality rates per km of road or per 1,000 vehicles).

I just witnessed a car accident a few hours ago, and in the last few months I’ve given first aid at two other car accidents, all happening within 500 meters of each other. Today’s victims escaped alive, but the motorcycle driver who was responsible fled and the police weren’t equipped to catch him. There are laws, but not much willingness to enforce them, and no traffic lights at all.

After speaking with some of my friends, we decided to take the issue into our own hands: build a traffic radar system able to capture a vehicle’s speed, install it at our own expense, and share the generated penalties with the city government (all subject of their approval, of course). We want to start on the main avenue (more than 15 km) and to ‘roll’ the income from the penalties into covering new streets (so that perpetrators will basically finance the system). We’re not rich and we will not ask for our money back. We just need to make the system start and we’re confident the penalty fees will cover its spread.

So, I’m asking Slashdot: what would be a workable way to build such a system? It must withstand drivers claiming the system is cheating, high temperatures, high levels of humidity, and crappy electricity. Any suggestions would be appreciated. This is about technology saving lives — literally.

Here is the post on Slashdot.

There is an interesting group of people morons whose main ideology is to hate the humankind, believing we are the cause of all evil on this blessed planet Earth, and Paradise will reign in once this nasty thing called “people” will just vanish. It doesn’t matter that usually the members of this group are from the Western countries – which means their income is much higher than that of the average human being, and therefore their own Carbon footprint and McDonald’s “bellyprint” dwarfs those of the average Homo Sapiens alive today. Their hatred against their own race is not based on nor bound by logic.

Today I was reading a Slashdot article about some bizarre politician in Denver (Colorado state, USA) claiming a bicycle-sharing program is actually the first step in a huge UN-sponsored conspiracy towards birth control, forced abortions and government control. As usual, bizarre claims only bring on even more bizarre characters, which only adds to the fun

Says someone:

Yes, from the point of the view of the planet and every other living thing, we are the disease. There’s somewhere around 6+ billion people, happily eating, consuming, polluting, and destroying to our hearts’ content. Installing higher efficiency light bulbs or buying Prius’ or switching to riding a bike aren’t going to avert a collapse in our global ecology/economy. We have to stop destroying our food and ecosystems on which we rely and undo the damage we’ve done. In short, stop charging to our children’s credit cards, start paying them off, then start saving. Switching to riding a bike is like spending just a little less on their credit cards. We have to do so much more.

Here is my own answer:

Sweetheart, if you have such harsh view of the current problems imposed by humanity on our planet and every other living thing, why don’t you just suicide?

Really, if anyone feels so frickin’ bad about us (the humans) as a whole, please feel free to remove yourself from the gene pool. The sooner, the better.

And I mean it.

It’s amazing how much random can be in a life that looks well planned (or at least under control).

I love random.

Quoting from Columbia Spectator:

ProPublica, an independent, non-profit online newsroom, was the first online organization to win a Pulitzer Prize, which was announced at Columbia’s Journalism School on Monday afternoon at a ceremony for the 94th annual Pulitzer Prizes in Journalism, Letters, Drama, and Music.

The winning report can be read here.

Craigslist.org is decimating the classifieds base of traditional newspapers, while the general move towards online suffocates their print circulation (how to spell “death spiral”?).

This is history, a web site winning the Pulitzer Prize. We’re witnessing the paradigm shift. Live.