Perhaps you have heard of Pascal’s Wager, a thought-experiment which explores gambling on the existence of God, as proposed by Blaise Pascal. If not, in short, the Wager asks what is the most rational bet regarding whether God exists and how to best apply that information. The result of the thought-experiment done by Pascal goes something like “It is ultimately better to live as if God exists and this is true regardless of the truth about God’s existence.”

Pascal says this result is so, because in part, if God exists, there is potential for infinite gain in having lived accordingly — ie: Heaven/Nirvana/whatever.  Pascal however discounts hell, suggesting that the lost potential for infinite gain is ultimately realized as infinite loss. In other words, using Pascal’s rationale, living as if God does not exist is just lose-lose, even without a hell!

Pascal’s results are flawed though because his version of the Wager analysis ignored the consequence of at least this other decision path — action causing infinite loss. Had he analyzed that decision path as it ought to have existed in his model, he would have seen what I will suggest, that living itself is not a series of methods employed or actions taken but the exaction of diversity. He’d have understood what Einstein gave us: Living if not mortality is relative. Pascal’s postulations while seemingly accurate, are only so when fixed in a foundation terribly reliant on a number of poor assumptions; things like life, morality, perspective, observation and awareness are not relative — whats good to me is good to you.

We must address the so-called rationality Pascal assigned these results as it is as credible as these poor assumptions he’s made at the outset. Poor because Einstein disproved them; assumed perspectives such as “living as if God exists” is merely a statement that describes a set of methods employable in an individual’s life — Pascal suggests putting on a religious life like it was a coat.

Living as if God exists requires as many exclusions as it does inclusions. Sinners must change. Non-sinners must not. Meantime, the definition of sinner itself is variable with religion and God.  A few general things are quite certain, homosexuals for instance would probably need exclude and suppress their entire lifestyle while religious officials would seemingly need change nothing.

The reality is, even such a notion is an indication that there is relativity. Living as if God exists is not merely showing up on Sunday. Its undoing just as many things as it means doing. Its fearing God, its being devoid of interests in his accountability. Living as if God exists is limiting the questions science, philosophy, and mankind can ask as well as those it can ever hope to answer.  It would mean we never knew about Relativity. Its not shocking this went unconsidered to the authors of the bible or Pascal. You must consider how much less sophisticated they were, and how during that time the dynamics and variation of the social structure were extremely limited by exactly the forces discussed: imposed religious rationale as an absolute. Exploring one’s doubt in such notions was considered heresy and punishable by death. Fortunately since the birth of the United States, and over the last couple centuries all over the world, mankind has been able to invent the kind of social complexities that which expose life as an exaction of diversity.

The bottom line is, unfortunately for proponents of his work, Pascal was wrong. There is no metaphysical absolute, nor observational absolute, not about the God bet or anything else. Since the very definition of living to a Muslim Jihadist and to a Homosexual Catholic priest are sure to be relative, so must be living as if God exists. Only if we define living and morality as a static thing devoid of change or variation can “living as if God exists” even be possible in the absolute fashion Pascal suggested and such a definition of living is simply fallacious (equally fallacious is the way I’ve sort of gone along as if there is a single, accepted definition of God).

The minute we agree to impose a rationale as absolute (whether its correct or not) upon ourselves or another, we’ve constructed an obstacle to free will. Then we’ve made our absolutes our God — which suggests an even more interesting question than Pascal thought he had answered: How can one even possess faith while maintaining free will?

To honor Goldman Sachs, who will be announcing its first losses ever this morning, as well the work of Ponzi scheme master Bernie Madoff, corrupt or cretinous Treasury Secretaries Paul O’Neil, John Snow, including the top chuckle head ex-Goldman CEO Hank Paulson, Commerce Secretaries Donald Evans and Carlos Gutierrez, the ever-crooked SEC Chairman Cox, also the host of incompetitants at Bear Stearns (Alan Schwatz), Citigroup (Vikram Pandit), Merill Lynch (John Thain), Bank of America (Ken Lewis), AIG (Ed Liddy), Goldman Sachs (Lloyd Blankenfein), Morgan Stanely (John Mack), American Express (Ken Chenault), GMAC (Al de Molina), GM (Rick Wagoner), Ford (Alan Mulally), Chrysler (Robert Nardelli), Freddie (David Moffet), Fannie (Herbert Allison), oh, and every bubble’s favorite Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan, Housing and Urban Development Secretaries Mel Martinez  and Alphonso Jackson, and at long last — the icing on any “cake o’ criminale” – Dick Cheney and George W. Bush — yes in honor of it all — this site will no longer use the term “US stock market.”  It was getting old anyway, wasn’t it? And its not exactly catchy.

Besides my friend, using such terminology would not accurately capture the metamorphosis of our country beginning now with our financial markets. Done directly or indirectly, intentionally or by accident, these people have transformed our economy, not excluding our stock market. The stock market is gone, my friend. And so, let me welcome you… to Financial Thunderdome.

40A Inc. is a company full of people who exploit the African-American people using the Internet. At least, that is what their latest software product suggests: Blackbird.  “Blackbird is operated by 40A, Inc., a company founded by three African American entrepreneurs, Arnold Brown II, Frank Washington, and H. Edward Young, Jr.,” or so the 40A site suggests — but of all the things the Internet and the African-Americans need, THIS is not one. Go find somewhere to die, Blackbird.

The Internet is not about segregation, 40A, quite the opposite: collaboration.

African-Americans don’t need a special web browser (like Blackbird) and special Internet sites (like this company suggests) much like this same community did not need separate bathrooms nor water fountains. No, I’m not even going to pretend this does SOME good– Its a sad state of affairs…

The African-American community ought to be insulted that you, 40A, think you can pass off some substandard recompile of the same browser they already have: Firefox. And at the meer mention that they won’t prosper using exactly what everyone else uses.

You want to deliver something useful to African-Americans? Develop software that helps get rid of companies that produce the kind of products you release; release software to help stop bad people from trying to make money on social disparity still at work in America.

Every IT organization can benefit from knowledge-sharing. An example of this, and a particularly resource efficient way to grow the skills of almost any organizational unit, is to allow for cross-training.  An exceptional vehicle with which to present cross-training is as a component of an “20% Plan.”

A 20% Plan might include time for members of an organization to expressly work on their own ideas (Google has such an installment within its workflow). There are other ways to make use of such an allotment of time for an organization — though, with this design Google leans toward fostering creativity.

A sound structure to develop and implement cross-training, starting with the most credible and knowledgeable members in each sub-unit, is a well-rounded, mature accent to any IT organization — and might make a smart form for early adopters of 20% Plans — especially at Universities, where the resources to teach in mass are at the ready.

Installing such a facility to members of organizations helps to build important relationships, promote trust,  and can increase the overall value of each and every member. In this way, peer review allows even the cross-training methods to become better over time, and over-time impose internal efficiency standards on each developed organization unit.

I suggest something along the lines of: members develop training topics as a function of their skill-set, while audience size and reaction determine acceptance and effectiveness. In this way, the raw data help to demonstrate direction and help organizational development respond in something closer to real-time.

No matter how many seasons you spend on the Internet, you can still be skull-smacked with surprise by the things you’ll come across.  Another summer is all but over, Rover.

Before the summer is gone entirely though kids, maybe you ought to get out your Winter coat, hoodie, hat and gloves — don’t forget your Painter’s breathing mask or random alien face too — and go see a concert!

The summer season is the best time to go places with friends, family, and especially to spend time outside with your pets. So, why not do it all in one go of it– soothe your savage beast with Caninus!

Caninus hails from a groundbreaking new genre of speed metal: PitBull Grindcore.  Thats right, whatever in the holy shit Grindcore is– this is specifically Pitbull Grindcore.  And as much as I’d like to be, no, I’m not joking– I couldn’t make this up, I’m not nearly that creative– the lead singer is one of those Pitbull — the other is his backup. The three human asshats play the music.

DMX must love these guys. Bahahahaa–

Where muh dawgs at, son!?!? – Where muh dawgs rap, son!!

One day, all our computational abilities will flow, as electricity does, into every home, carrying with it the full force of the entire orchestra of functionality on the Internet — it will cease to be the Internet and become the Grid.

A prediction inspired by this...

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God.  Religion.  And all those poor, witless dupes taken in — these are a few of my favorite things! I’m kidding. While I do despise organized religion, that does not automatically mean I have a problem faith. I make this clarification because people will likely assume I believe faith — along with religion — is useless. When the fact is, such a characterization could not be further from the truth.

Its important to make clear that, I’m not saying anything about faith when I talk about religion. That those are two entirely different things.  And though its somewhere in the really boring middle, that the Bible covers this particular topic.

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Heres my first attempt at taking some footage and posting it. It’s Tommy playing around on his smallest ATV.

[flashvideo filename="wp-content/uploads/2008/05/the90ccv1.flv" /]

Something happened when I turned 28 — I changed fundamentally. As the unrecorded lyrics to a song my old friend Mario once wrote explains, “time… changes.” I think this was Mario’s uniquely interesting way of explaining how as people change, that change propagates in the world around them. I’m not quite sure I understand why or even how things came to be so in my case, but maybe trying to describe these two parts of my day (my secret times) will help.

Secret #1: The Beginning

Everyday now, by the time my rather expensive coffee maker has quit its gurgling, I find myself feeling a lightning-like excitement. Before this, the newness of a day did not excite me in the least and instead stared back at me questioningly as if from the gaze of a wondering child.

I would ask while trying to convince myself to get up, “Why do you keep doing this?” In other words, why do you keep on living, as if it were that torturous. I think we can all agree that that is a ridiculously pessimistic outlook and was probably a big part of my problem. When I realized I had stopped asking myself this (which I realized suddenly one morning), my first thought was I had just quit caring altogether and that I had become so cynical that such questions required no answer for someone like me. Fortunately howsoever, for me (and the rest of the good people in my life), this is not, nor was not, the case. No, in fact, because I had been so far from the feeling for so long, it took all this to realize, I’m happy!

I love my family. I love my friends. Above all else, I love information. A close second might be, that I love our troubled world. I love problems, as such I love my job. Certainly I have no love of creating problems, but knowing they’ll be there because not everyone is so interested in solving them as I, is a kind of comfort. This may be partly because I have come to believe in, whole heartedly, the Zen aphorism the obstacle is the path — which really just means among other things, a direction toward solution is only ever clearly defined by the problem invoking its need. But, I’ve come to understand my love of ability more, and my love of freedom to contribute. Though I find odd to reveal, I even love that I get to use tools like Wordpress everyday to continue to practice and hone the art of writing. All this, so that one day, I may take this show on the road, so to speak — and write a book.

Secret #2: The Ending

Everyday, around six or seven o’clock in the evening, I settle myself outside. If its cold or raining, I’ll secure myself away on the porch or even in my parked car with the windows down (as much as nature allows me). I’ll sit out there for hours sometimes. I sit there, outside, and I try and empty my mind of everything swirling inside it. I try to give myself over to nature by listening to the world.

Whether it be birds chirping, clicking crickets, the wind’s whispering voice (as Hendrix thought of her) in my ear, the gentle tapping of raindrops, or the more silent and wispy, stinging snowflakes at my face, I watch and listen to the world. I think of this quiet and relaxing time by myself as a tutor in ethics, but much more. It is nature as this teacher that tempers me, helping me as a man and a technologist, to understand, that in world rarely interested in acclimating itself with the old and left behind, we must seek to understand the oldest technology, nature itself, as time… changes.