tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-88529852025-07-22T15:17:27.496-04:00Steve's ViewSteve Mount's personal and political views.<br>For science, see "<a href="http://ongenetics.blogspot.com">On Genetics</a>".Stevehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15264977010144529019noreply@blogger.comBlogger80125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8852985.post-55005446281196645992014-06-16T10:01:00.002-04:002014-06-16T10:03:14.312-04:00Quality journalism will continue to matter.
This is in reaction to an article on something called Baekdal entitled "Strategic Insights: What if Quality Journalism isn't?," written by Thomas Baekdal ("Founder of Baekdal, author, writer, strategic consultant, and new media advocate."). He discusses the leaked Innovation Report from The New York Times. He makes some very good points. His main one is that he's not buying their Stevehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15264977010144529019noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8852985.post-44358438817210618472014-01-01T12:13:00.005-05:002014-01-01T12:58:18.645-05:00On blogging
Starting in 2014 (today), I will try to post a little something each day. Most will be science. Some will be memoir. Some will be opinion, or simply cyberflânerie. I feel confident that I will be able to post daily, or nearly so, until the semester starts in late January. After that, the rate may decrease, but I will continue.
How can I justify time spent blogging when I am so busy? I Stevehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15264977010144529019noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8852985.post-53663745985836380672012-11-13T07:00:00.001-05:002012-11-13T07:16:30.745-05:00Why we re-elected President Obama
On November 6, the American people re-elected President Obama. Since then, there has been a lot of discussion about why that happened. I’d like to mention some of the factors that help to explain our choice, from my own perspective. I am speaking for all Americans, but certainly realize that others may have had different reasons to vote for Obama and the Democrats, and that although Stevehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15264977010144529019noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8852985.post-41255272835731698952012-08-11T11:29:00.002-04:002012-08-11T11:48:22.101-04:00Should we be more like Somalia and less like Sweden?
Many Republicans are casting this election as being about the size of government. Senate Minority leader Mitch McConnell (here) states that this is a critical election, and says that Obama is "out of the Western European model." What he's talking about can be measured, perhaps imperfectly, by a number known as "public consumption," and when I consulted my "2012 Pocket World in Stevehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15264977010144529019noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8852985.post-34120543331899612942012-07-22T20:32:00.001-04:002012-07-22T20:49:37.859-04:00Ozymandian melancholy
With "To Rome with Love" Woody Allen may have achieved his best integration of humor and insight. He follows four stories: an Italian-American romance (Allen plays the father of an American tourist who takes up with a Roman lawyer), a couple from the countryside, an ordinary middle class Roman who becomes suddenly famous for no reason and a famous architect who has the opportunity to look Stevehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15264977010144529019noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8852985.post-8845576782411345572012-03-24T20:35:00.002-04:002012-03-24T20:37:46.546-04:00Google Minus
Google has matured, and while they used to reliably provide crisp, functional and useful code, they are starting to get a little senile. One of my favorites is when Google Translate suggests that some standard English web page is in a foreign language.
Here, Google announces that the FaceBook login page is in Slovak.
Today, I created a form using Google Docs (this is an extremely Stevehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15264977010144529019noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8852985.post-62631199198931065262011-08-13T17:29:00.005-04:002011-08-14T10:25:10.657-04:00Alfa antenna not recommended for MacI recently purchased an Alfa 1000mW 1W 802.11b/g USB Wireless WiFi Network Adapter from (also known as ASUW036H) from Amazon. I posted a review there but it has not appeared, and I'm not sure it will, so I'm repeating the main points here. The bottom line is that while it works, it is not easy to install and it won't work on future versions of the Mac OS.
Recently, the signal from myStevehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15264977010144529019noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8852985.post-48840653496962837032011-08-13T11:00:00.001-04:002012-11-13T07:02:40.774-05:00The strange case of StartNow malware
Yesterday, after I downloaded WinRAR (from Cnet, here), I found that I had also installed something called StartNow, a toolbar for my browsers that also changed my home page on both Chrome and Firefox.
StartNow installed immediately after WinRAR
I did some searches and found that this has happened to others.
What is strange about this case? A few things. First, both CNET Stevehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15264977010144529019noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8852985.post-79285643476356908652011-08-07T22:04:00.011-04:002011-08-22T06:03:48.029-04:00Brazil: a country of the present
The July 20 cover of the Brazilian news magazine Veja.
A rough translation: "Taxes, currency exchange, the abundance of credit, oligopolies and consumer optimism combine to make Brazil one of the most expensive countries in the world."
Janet and I have been tourists in expensive places before. Paris, and Scandanavia in 2007 (especially Iceland) come to mind. Brazil was never Stevehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15264977010144529019noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8852985.post-55569645742408935702011-08-07T01:00:00.003-04:002011-08-07T01:03:38.026-04:00Dawn at the equatorI recently returned from my first-ever visit to the Amazon. One thing that I noticed right away was the abrupt rising and setting of the sun. It goes straight up or down, quickly. This felt, upon my arrival from summer in Maryland, where evenings are long and sunlight lingers, like the flipping of a light switch. I have an interest in naked-eye astronomy, and one of my Stevehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15264977010144529019noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8852985.post-89326578338471085032010-11-14T08:44:00.006-05:002010-11-14T10:10:47.072-05:00Twitter is for [deniable] ProclamationsFrom the Economist (A Russo-Japanese tiff):On November 1st President Dmitry Medvedev became the first Russian leader to visit the [Russian-occupied, but contested, Kurile] islands, less than two weeks before he flies to Japan for an Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation (APEC) summit. To rub in more salt, he posted Twitter snapshots of Kunashiri island and added: “How many beautiful places there areStevehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15264977010144529019noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8852985.post-76107073611638265982010-07-31T16:10:00.010-04:002010-08-01T10:33:15.565-04:00Is government debt the latest [anti-]bubble?Here we go again!It seems like only yesterday (but it was 1999) when it was common knowledge that investing in stocks was safe because, historically, the stock market always goes up. This was an oft-repeated piece of wisdom at the time, and my answer (although I usually kept it to myself) was to point out that it was 24 years between 1929 and when the Dow reached it’s pre-crash level. That’sStevehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15264977010144529019noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8852985.post-70970497177500565562010-07-31T13:28:00.004-04:002010-07-31T14:05:03.203-04:00The Kalven Committee Report on the University's Role in Political and Social ActionSome documents are timeless and important. The Kalven Committee's "Report on the University's Role in Political and Social Action," which was written in 1967 by a committee at the University of Chicago, may be one of them. I learned of the Kalven committee report from an interview of Jonathan R. Cole by Cat Warren in the May-June issue of "Academe," the magazine of the American Association of Stevehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15264977010144529019noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8852985.post-18078521389387602252010-06-28T07:02:00.004-04:002010-06-30T06:34:33.278-04:00Anthropologists: The contentious peopleI am married to an anthropologist (Janet Chernela). Last Tuesday, I went with her to AFI in Silver Spring to see a screening of "Secrets of the Tribe," a new documentary by Jose Padilha (whose past work includes "Bus 174" and "Elite Squad"). "Secrets of the Tribe" is a documentary about anthropologists focusing on the controversy surrounding Yanomami researchers. There are some very nice Stevehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15264977010144529019noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8852985.post-13426321100850360212010-06-06T17:32:00.003-04:002010-06-06T17:48:16.304-04:00Bradford Graves Sculpture ParkLast weekend, Janet and I dropped in on our friend, Verna Gillis, and the Bradford Graves Sculpture Park. Playfully named "In the Middle of Somewhere," it's actually in Kerhonkson, New York. Although he worked primarily in limestone, what strikes me most is his juxtaposition of different stones with varied texture.I was also impressed by the setting (it was late afternoon on a beautiful day), Stevehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15264977010144529019noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8852985.post-18352774516788171762010-05-26T07:14:00.004-04:002010-05-26T07:35:38.116-04:00Maryland Women's Heritage CenterJanet and I attended the opening of the Maryland Women's Heritage Center yesterday. The official public opening is set to take place Saturday, June 19 (We were there as guests of our friend Jill Greenberg, the center's executive director.) Yesterday's events included brief speeches by Shoshana Cardin, Francis Glendening, Connie Morella and others. It was an inspiring occasion. It was nice to Stevehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15264977010144529019noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8852985.post-53147558060236462432009-12-05T12:49:00.011-05:002010-05-04T14:49:48.400-04:00Barcelona- Barcelona, from the plane as we approached.I have a sabbatical this semester, and Janet has a research leave, so we're spending about six weeks in Barcelona. I have a visitor's affiliation with Eduardo Eyras, in the GRIB (Research Unit on Bioinformatics), in the PRBB (Parc de Recerca Biomedica de Barcelona). This has turned out to be a great place to be scientifically. Janet is working on Stevehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15264977010144529019noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8852985.post-18761656008111711442009-11-13T06:33:00.003-05:002009-11-13T06:37:26.953-05:00Ghosts of Presidents PastA new graphic by Clay Claiborne, Linux Beach Productions November 12, 2009circulate freelyThis arrived today by email. It's certainly something to consider.Stevehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15264977010144529019noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8852985.post-29208287327445256022009-03-07T14:00:00.004-05:002011-08-13T14:16:25.863-04:00Western Digital hard drives are great, but don't install Memeo!I recently had an adventure with a computer virus (Virtumonde/Vundo!). If I find the time, I'll blog about that separately (the bottom line is that Malwarebytes, run in safe mode, is what finally worked). This post is about the backup that I attempted once everything was working well again. I will discuss Lenovo's "Rescue and Recovery" which I used and Memeo Backup and AutoSync.
Lenovo's Stevehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15264977010144529019noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8852985.post-81584816735135534102009-03-07T11:30:00.000-05:002011-09-22T22:48:31.534-04:00Barack Obama in March of 2008
I found this blog entry in my drafts folder, last edited on March 22, 2008, soon after Obama's signficant speech on race (March 18). I'm not sure what kept me from posting it then, so I'm posting it now.
It was a great speech, but it contains two things with which I disagree. The first is in the sentence "But [the story of Barack Obama's ancestors] is a story that has seared into my genetic Stevehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15264977010144529019noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8852985.post-13216779443310097512008-05-05T00:59:00.010-04:002008-06-02T17:15:46.533-04:00Spoken Words on film: "Patti Smith: Dream of Life"- Life is an adventure of our own design, intersected by fate in a series of lucky and unlucky accidents.Last Friday night, Janet and I met Sheila at Dukem restaurant on U street before seeing the movie "Patti Smith: Dream of Life," which was shown at the Lincoln theater as part of Filmfest DC. Over the past few years we've seen several excellent movies about aging rock stars (Leonard Cohen's Stevehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15264977010144529019noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8852985.post-26284400388988834872007-11-30T10:15:00.000-05:002007-12-02T20:28:21.788-05:00Did you remember to log out of facebook?From the New York Times (Nov. 30):The system Facebook introduced this month, called Beacon, is viewed as an important test of online tracking, a popular advertising tactic that usually takes place behind the scenes, where consumers do not notice it. Companies like Google, AOL and Microsoft routinely track where people are going online and send them ads based on the sites they have visited and theStevehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15264977010144529019noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8852985.post-74316329456012580182007-11-15T08:25:00.000-05:002007-11-15T16:06:47.982-05:00Is the U.S. Bridge Federation pandering to Beijing censors?A story in yesterday's New York Times about the U.S. Bridge Federation's proposed sanctions against members of the U.S. women's team deserves attention. These women are being punished for holding up a small hand-written sign that says "We did not vote for Bush" at the world bridge championships in Shanghai. The USBF justifies itself by saying that a private organization can "control the speech Stevehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15264977010144529019noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8852985.post-39217145659487176792007-11-13T23:24:00.000-05:002007-11-13T23:28:04.652-05:00Musharraf and Bush; terror and democracyStevehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15264977010144529019noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8852985.post-29327818936411566932007-11-10T15:22:00.001-05:002007-11-10T16:21:16.970-05:00Google and the future of cell phonesIt was interesting to read two related technology articles in Thursday's paper. In the Times, David Pogue reviewed the new T-Mobile Shadow smartphone ("Reaching for Apple, Falling Short"). He loves the phone, but finds it completely ruined by terrible software. "Frankly, Windows Mobile 6 is a mess. Common features require an infinitude of taps and clicks, and the ones you need most are Stevehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15264977010144529019noreply@blogger.com0