Comments for buckdata - news and views for an unquiet age

Comment on Resolutions: When I’m 65… by Resolutions: When I’m 65… « buckdata

Resolutions: When I’m 65… « buckdata — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 02:57:08 +0000

[...] January 26th, 2010 · No Comments [...]

Comment on Firefighting, the Public Option by S. Buck

S. Buck — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 23:38:39 +0000

I hope it will be.

Comment on Firefighting, the Public Option by Margaret Murray

Margaret Murray — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 17:46:25 +0000

In your latest blog, you have just written THE definitive argument for single payer health care (Is this the same as the public option?)

Comment on Bierce is Back by Margaret

Margaret — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 17:25:47 +0000

buckdata has taken prose to the heights with this new blog posting ruminating on technology’s transformation of language. It’s so gratifying to see erudite, complex ideas on a computer screen instead of the usual flat data stream (and ironic considering the content of the post). I learned some history too along with an insider’s look at that quirky literary figure, Ambrose Bierce.

Comment on The Legacy of Torture: What would Main Street do? by Iris

Iris — Sat, 16 May 2009 20:50:28 +0000

Interesting thoughts. BUT (and there always is a but) here is the problem, that I see, with wanting to avoid publicity and not prosecuting the culprits and just putting additional controls in place:
we had controls and they should have been enough to prevent what has happened.
Lawmakers were informed and now they claim that they weren’t told directly enough and even if they had been informed directly, “what should we have done?” so they ask, after all everything had the seal of confidentiality so we couldn’t say or do anything.
- lawyers were rewarded for coming up with ridiculous opinions to give what we did the flair of lawfulness.
if we just fire some or even all of the culprits, they will be still around for the next administration to bring them back into the game.
worse yet, what we saw over the last 8 years was that those who gave the administration what they wanted were rewarded – those who didn’t “play ball” got fired. What does this teach future government employees and those who are asked to do work for the government? I think it is really dangerous to just sweep this all under the carpet and that is exactly what we would do. I think that this paving the road to absolute corruption. Because, if you tell me what you want to do, I can tell you how to get it and if we can bring in some lawyers (and there are enough), they’ll certify for us, that whatever we do is legal. So now we’ re free from responsibility. After all, the ends do justify the means and if that is not enough, we don’t want to embarrass this wonderful and righteous country and if that is not enough, lets just stamp everything “confidential.”
Just a thought.

Comment on A Modest Banking Solution by Nancy Webb

Nancy Webb — Fri, 15 May 2009 19:29:10 +0000

It’s a sad state of affairs when you have to put such a disclaimer on satire! Bucks from Buckdata, now there’s a bank for you.

Comment on Middle Class Becomes Twittering Class? by S. Buck

S. Buck — Sun, 22 Feb 2009 19:25:00 +0000

But who says you have to send (or receive) blather? Back during the Oakland Hills fire, I took in friends who had unexpectedly become refugees. They asked me which route to get out of the burning hills in Montclair was safest to take. It would have been nice to have had cell phones and definite information. We had neither. (They made it out safely.) Might Twitter contacts have helped, if Twitter had been around then? I think so.

Comment on Middle Class Becomes Twittering Class? by Margaret Murray

Margaret Murray — Sun, 22 Feb 2009 17:22:56 +0000

Be dauntless, yes. Great thought, but talk on Twitter? More like burp. Here's more on Alternet.org: Twitter Nation Has Arrived: How Scared Should We Be? By Alexander Zaitchik, AlterNet. Posted February 21, 2009.

Comment on Middle Class Becomes Twittering Class? by Shelley

Shelley — Sat, 21 Feb 2009 17:59:21 +0000

Margaret, You raise good questions. In very ancient days, people hunted for game, taming dogs and falcons to help them. More recently, they hunted for jobs and business connections through networking, taming the wild cocktail party and learning to “work the room.”

With the coming of the World Wide Web, the hunt spread to the Internet and job search web sites.

Now it is leaping to social networking sites and to Twitter, which can reach out to cell phones as well as the web. The room to be worked has expanded enormously.

I am impressed by the ingenuity of anyone figuring out how to use this as part of a job hunt.

Does this mean jobs are out there to find? I don’t know yet. When I see something new that is within my budget–and someone who has used it creatively–I immediately want to see if there is some way to use it to give more of us a voice.

The question of whether we are becoming “songbirds in danger of extinction,” archiving only ourselves, or something perhaps a lot more positive, remains up in the air.

One used to say, “Stay tuned,” about a developing story. I admit that the words “Stay twitted” just don’t have quite the same lofty ring, so I will urge instead, “Talk to the world; be dauntless.”

Comment on Middle Class Becomes Twittering Class? by Margaret Murray

Margaret Murray — Sat, 21 Feb 2009 02:15:12 +0000

Nice and simple, your blog, about another daunting telecom piece of electronics that magically you’ve made me understand. Twitter, and my resume and Karl Rove. Obama, too! You’ve linked them all–what a network scheme. Are you saying we can all find jobs via Twitter? Or that we are all being recorded like songbirds in danger of extinction?

But I’m so resistant to another goddamn twittering piece of equipment I have to get my hands around! Not curious like you are suggesting, not adventurous. Does that mean I haven’t been out of work long enough? Or am I just too old to care?