http://www.pleonast.com/user/kennon recent pleonast.com entries by user kennon en-us http://www.pleonast.com/user/kennon?l=5&entryID=595797 So, it's finally over. Something like 75% of the tv channels here in GERMANY had live coverage all night (I didn't stay up, though :) ... I can only imagine what it must have been like in the US the past few weeks. I for one am GLAD it's finally over. I strongly felt that neither the R or the D candidate represented me in any meaningful way, and thus conscientiously and happily voted for the libertarian party; while Bob Barr is not perhaps my favorite person, I agree with 90%+ of the party's stated principles, and Ron Paul wasn't on the Texas ballot :( (by the way ... absentee voting is SO MUCH BETTER than going somewhere and standing in line. Even if I lived inside the US I'd still absentee vote). Anyway, Barack Obama won a resounding victory (are people calling it 'landslide'? what percentage do you have to win by for that?) last night, and the Democratic party picked up gains in both the Senate and the House, although it doesn't appear that they crossed the important "filibus... 2008-11-05 http://www.pleonast.com/user/kennon?l=5&entryID=583838 ...like I'm living in the future. where's my flying car already?? 2008-10-05 http://www.pleonast.com/user/kennon?l=5&entryID=578107 ...that the Republican party is in any way shape or form for "small government". If you vote for the GOP this November, do so with full realization that they have expanded and are continuing to expand the federal government far more than the other party has done in recent memory. Also don't be distracted by disastrously inexperienced and corrupt women from Alaska who conveniently forget whether or not they wanted a bridge. I'm certainly no fan of the Democratic party, but giving any vote to the GOP is a vote for more government in your life and more government in the world. There are third parties available, despite the fact that both the GOP and the Dems would rather you forget that. The absolute vice-grip that the two major parties have will never be broken until you start voting your conscience and not the "lesser of two evils". You don't have to vote for Kang OR Kodos. 2008-09-21 http://www.pleonast.com/user/kennon?l=5&entryID=571184 As Kiva.org recently added support for teams, I just created a team for pleonast users who are also Kiva lenders. I have already invited several of you that I know of, but if you are interested please visit our team page at http://www.kiva.org/team/pleonast. If you don't already know about it, Kiva is a website that facilitates lenders who want to support microloan transactions in developing countries. It's super easy to invest money in development in countries that really need it, and it's a /far/ superior method to actually help people than just blindly giving money to foreign governments or to people, creating a dependency which is not healthy for growth. Since they are actual loans, the beneficiaries are required to pay the money back, and thus must have a valid business plan. Kiva itself is very transparently run, with 100% of money loaned going directly to the beneficiaries, and operating costs being paid for by separate donations directly to Kiva. I've been a lender for about... 2008-09-04 http://www.pleonast.com/user/kennon?l=5&entryID=563137 I've been using Google adsense for the advertising on non-gold member blogs for awhile now, but their payout has been steadily decreasing over the past year and so I decided to try something different. Today I turned on ads from "Project Wonderful", which is a transparent marketplace for ads which is based on an auction. Basically I set up the ad spots and then on anyone can bid to show their ad in that space. Bids are based on a cost per day (regardless of click through) and is always given to the highest bidder. Right now the high bid is $0.02 a day, but I'm hoping that competition will drive it up a bit. The bidders only pay for each second that the ad is the highest bidder, so if you're outbid you only pay for the time that you were actually being shown. One thing I like about this is that I can approve all ads that are shown; on Adsense you can only ban ads that have already loaded but you can't approve them beforehand. If you, for instance, are interested in adver... 2008-08-15 http://www.pleonast.com/user/kennon?l=5&entryID=560384 2008-08-08 http://www.pleonast.com/user/kennon?l=5&entryID=559085 An interestingly soviet take from 1984 on one of my favorite short stories, There will come soft rains by Ray Bradbury This brought back alot of memories - during my stint in Florida College Forensics ('99) I competed with a POI (Programmed Oral Interpretation) on the theme of mankind and apocalyptic nuclear war that included excerpts from this short story, On The Beach by Nevil Shute, the poem by Sara Teasdale that inspired Bradbury, and quotes from J. Robert Oppenheimer (head scientist on the Manhattan project). It was clearly over the judges heads, which is why I never even broke into a finals round with it, but it was and still is very meaningful to me. In general, the cold war has always been one of the most intriguing historical eras to me - perhaps it's in my blood, as my grandfather was a B-52 pilot in the Strategic Air Command (ever seen Dr. Strangelove? My grandpa was like the guy riding the bomb, just without the cowboy hat :) [editor's note: actually he did wear cowboy ha... 2008-08-05 http://www.pleonast.com/user/kennon?l=5&entryID=555042 YESYESYESYESYESYESYESYESYESYESYESYESYESYES 2008-07-26 http://www.pleonast.com/user/kennon?l=5&entryID=546655 Kevin Kelly (one of my favorite thinkers) has written a blog post that has some of the clearest thinking about global climate change that I've read and more specifically the trade-offs that must be considered when thinking in the long-term. I seriously wish that our national/international dialog would try to stay rational, but alas it has indeed become religious warfare. The entry was posted on the Long Now Foundation website, which is a fascinating organization dedicated to long-term thinking. One of their projects, which you might have heard of, is the Long Bets website, which is an "arena for accountable predictions", in other words a place to create accountability for long-term predictions. In general though, Long Now foundation blog posts are fascinating because they are a relief from the onesecondMTVcameracut world, where anything older than about 30 seconds is ancient history. They even put an extra digit in front of their years to avoid the Y10K bug. It's really ref... 2008-07-04 http://www.pleonast.com/user/kennon?l=5&entryID=539967 photo credit: alex Well, the wedding went off without a hitch - a solid year's worth of planning paid off in spades. Thanks to those of you who were able to be there or at the reception in Houston - the well-wishing and gifts that we've received has really humbled us. Being married is truly a blessing and I'm even more convinced this side of the wedding that I made the right choice :) I'll definitely be putting up more pictures once we sort through the literally thousands that people have given us or we took ourselves. We're back home in Germany for now, and I'm back to work on p3 - I'll be keeping you up to speed as developments continue. p.s., go say hi to my wife :) 2008-06-16