This is so very true, even if you’re not an engineer. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve spent a frustrating day at work, hacking through a particularly tedious problem, only to leave work and discover the solution to that problem while pulling weeds in the garden. Sometimes, the best thing you can do in that state is to take a break and do something fun and relaxing. That’s usually when those “Ah-ha!” moments happen.

[via Wil Wheaton]

Something I’ve heard often lately occurs after I’ve spent a few minutes expounding on the virtues of the latest development in child safety technology. Usually, it’s something that I think is really cool and that I’m excited about because it makes my job as an admittedly over-protective parent a little bit easier. It could be the newest innovation in car seat technology, or those color-changing, rubber-coated spoons that let you know when the baby food is too hot, or the five-point harnesses that keep your active and energetic infant from flinging herself out of her seat. Whatever the innovation, it’s typically not long before I hear, “We never had that when I was growing up, and I turned out alright.”

And that’s where my brain trips a circuit somewhere.

It’s not the statement itself that brings me up short. It’s true. A lot of the child safety technologies we have today either didn’t exist when I was my daughter’s age or have been vastly improved upon since then, making them much safer than they were 30 years. And it’s also true that, for the most part, my generation did turn out alright, otherwise we wouldn’t be here to talk about this.

No, what puzzles me a bit is the psychology behind statements like this. The implication is that, because technology worked more or less well enough to keep my generation safe, there’s no need to innovate and make it even better—or to invent new technologies that help provide protection where none existed 30 years ago. I mean, why the heck wouldn’t you want to do everything possible to keep your child safe and protect them as much as you can? Why wouldn’t you want new tools and better technology designed with your child’s well-being in mind? It is possible that the driving philosophy here is some sort of “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” mentality, that being concerned and cautious about your child’s safety is tantamount to paranoia, but it could also just be that some people simply haven’t thought much about the need for this kind of innovation.

Of course, I could just be over-thinking this. It’s what I do. And ultimately, statements like this don’t really bother me that much, other than to serve as passing curiosities and blog fodder. It’s just that the social psychologist in me often wonders about the way people think and why they think the way they do. Being a relatively new parent, I find myself analyzing the social behavior of people around me as it relates to my child. That’s normal, right?

Chris Chinn presents a thoughtful and informative essay explaining why both barns and gestation stalls are actually good things, both for agriculture and for consumers. The video embedded below provides a great thumbnail sketch in support of the types of facilities used to raise hogs, and Chris includes another video at the bottom of her essay that shows a real, live hog operation. I highly recommend you read (and watch) the whole thing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=vbdB9WOICyo

Diana Prichard provides another fresh perspective exposing the fallacy that commercial agriculture is bad and that farmers care about nothing but making money. (And believe me, nothing could be further from the truth. If you want to make buckets full of cash, agriculture is probably not the career path you should choose.)

The HSUS is bad news, and it’s unfortunate that so many people and organizations are willing to accept what they say at face value—which is why those of us in agriculture are speaking up and providing actual truth. And the truth is, far and away the vast majority of livestock farmers actually do care about the quality of life of the animals in their care.

[via HumaneWatch]

PROTECT IP / SOPA Breaks The Internet from Fight for the Future on Vimeo.

Tell Congress not to censor the internet NOW! – http://www.fightforthefuture.org/pipa

PROTECT-IP is a bill that has been introduced in the Senate and the House and is moving quickly through Congress. It gives the government and corporations the ability to censor the net, in the name of protecting “creativity”. The law would let the government or corporations censor entire sites—they just have to convince a judge that the site is “dedicated to copyright infringement.”

The government has already wrongly shut down sites without any recourse to the site owner. Under this bill, sharing a video with anything copyrighted in it, or what sites like Youtube and Twitter do, would be considered illegal behavior according to this bill.

According to the Congressional Budget Office, this bill would cost us $47 million tax dollars a year — that’s for a fix that won’t work, disrupts the internet, stifles innovation, shuts out diverse voices, and censors the internet. This bill is bad for creativity and does not protect your rights.

The coat I bought doubles as a farm coat and an office coat. When funds are spare, you quickly learn to make your clothes multi-task. Thanks to a lovely Christmas donation from my sister-in-law (and a 15% manager’s sale), what I ended up with is a nice, heavy-weight coat from Tractor Supply.

For those not familiar, TSC typically deals in two brands of winter work gear—Carhartt and Schmidt. Now, I’m a fan of Carhartt. My in-laws gave me a nice set of heavy bib coveralls a couple of years back, and after wearing them for an hour or two of barn work in January, I’m typically drenched in sweat. Saying they keep me warm is a bit of an understatement.

The trouble with Carhartt is that all their stuff is expensive. They are to farm winter wear what Levi or Abercrombie are to blue jeans. This time around, I decided to go with TSC’s other brand, Schmidt. I picked the heaviest weight coat I could find and brought it home.

I’ve been exceptionally happy with it already.

Which begs the question in the title of this post—what’s in a name brand? If this sample is representative, then both Carhartt and Schmidt are effectively equivalent in terms of quality. The only difference I see between the two is the name of the brand—and the price tag. I don’t really think, given my experience so far, that Carhartt merits paying twice as much as for Schmidt products, but then again I also won’t pay twice as much for my blue jeans when a product half the cost will do just as well, especially since all my clothes end ultimately end up in the barnyard anyway.

There are some products in which I am name-brand loyal, but Carhartt is not one of them. I’d much rather make every dollar in my wallet as far as I can. Hopefully, this coat will last for several years—and I suspect my next cost will also be a Schmidt.

Regardless of what the OWS movement is actually about and regardless of what your personal opinion of the movement is, it’s become rather clear that the OWS movement is making a definitive point, and that point is a wee bit unsettling. What has become evident is that the various government entities in the US, whether it be at the city, state, or federal levels, don’t actually value and protect a citizen’s right to free speech nearly as much as they claim to. It’s interesting to me that what the OWS movement has succeeded in doing, more than anything at this point, is drawing out corruption in certain authoritative bodies and driving the rest to silence.

As a spectator it’s frustrating to watch because I’d like to believe that we live in a country where people have the right to gather peacefully and protest, whether or not you agree with the cause. It’s disheartening to see those rights being trampled almost every day and to realize that the only people standing up for civil rights seem to be bloggers and protest groups in other countries. It feels a little bit like the US has taken a step backwards these last few weeks—or maybe it’s really just that I’m discovering we aren’t really as progressive and enlightened as I thought.

I don’t know if the Occupy movement will ever accomplish its original purpose of weeding out corruption and greed in corporate America, but I do hope that, if nothing else, it wakes people up to the fact that many of our government officials are just as corrupt and tyrannical. Hopefully, people are paying attention, and with any luck, the Occupy movement will accomplish some good on more than one front.

PDF | MOBI | EPUB | HTML | RTF | TXT | DOCX | DOC | PS

Our little ship coasted on the rough turbulence around Yvonne’s Delight. We were five days out from the Hydras, running a shipload of tetrahydride to Phis Minor. The pilots up front yelled incomprehensible vectors at each other, every now and then passing me a new set of data. I was too busy to notice, fingers tapping away in a frenzy at the holographic keyboard.

“We’re going to need the routing code quick, Carto!”

“Carto, estimate time is four-half seconds!”

“No way, four-half secs? The fastest record is four-two!”

“No choice, four-five is the best we can do. Leave it.”

“Coming up! Lock and load!”

I looked up calmly, fingers still flying over the surface in front of me.

“Code ready. Move into position Five-Five-Nine-Delta-Five.”

“Roger that, Carto. T-minus five seconds!”

“Routing code ready. Extend vector array.”

“Array’s up, hurry!”

“Code base logic written.”

“Come on!”

The instability changed to smooth running.

“My god. That…”

“Was three-nine. Our carto’s broken the record!”