December 2010
1 post
Denise Pope: Change the Pace of the School Day -... →
Schools need to take seriously the issue of student stress, particularly high-powered schools where students are likely to sacrifice their own health for a college admissions letter.
Ultimately, schools need to foster a love of learning in students. If a school manages that, not much else really matters.
November 2010
3 posts
Today in Father-Son Bonding →
North Korean leader and son visited artillery site: reports | Reuters
Just What You Want to Hear from High-Stakes...
“It’s not him,” said a Western diplomat in Kabul intimately involved in the discussions. “And we gave him a lot of money.”
Bizarre Sentence from Daily Mail Article →
“There were today reports that Hughes’s death was due to complications from a failed attempt to kill himself.”
I think this speaks for itself.
October 2010
5 posts
CNN: Explosives found on US-bound flights →
It never ends. I fear the day when incidents like this become the norm rather than the exception, but it seems inevitable. These types of attempts have increased in frequency, and it suddenly seems so easy to do something like this. I can’t help but think that one day one of these attempts will be successful.
Regarding Juan Williams
The entire nation seems to be focused on Juan Williams. Never mind the two wars we’re fighting. Never mind the dire economic straits we find ourselves in. Never mind an election in less than two weeks. No, let’s spend an endless news cycle discussing de-funding NPR.
Williams expressed a personal opinion on Fox. As an NPR news analyst, that is unacceptable. NPR was wrong to let him...
“The court has not reached this conclusion lightly. It is acutely aware of the...”
– Judge Lewis A. Kaplan, reading his order to bar federal prosecutors from using information obtained while Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani was being interrogated in an overseas jail by the CIA. Quoted in today’s New York Times.
AP: CNN's Sanchez fired after calling Stewart a... →
Quite frankly, Rick Sanchez was bad at his job. He was a bad reporter, an awful anchor, had no idea what he was talking about, and entirely deserved Jon Stewart’s criticism. His recent comments are proof of that. Sanchez was not fired because of a massive Jewish conspiracy inside CNN, he was fired because he was an idiot and bad at his job. Unfortunately, the idiocy part can’t be...
Deadline.com: The Social Network Leads This Week's... →
Go see it. Now. It’s ostensibly a movie about Facebook, but it’s really about the challenge of friendship versus fame and fortune in the digital age. Aaron Sorkin’s witty dialog makes it even better. There’s a message in the movie about success and another message about signing contracts: always get your lawyers, not the lawyers of the company you think is loyal to you,...
September 2010
24 posts
Mark Zuckerberg Worth More Than Steve Jobs →
Yay for Mark Zuckerberg, but headlines like this are a bit misleading. Most of Zuckerberg’s wealth is tied up in Facebook stock which he can’t sell easily. Facebook’s current valuation is also inflated because of a few recent investments by venture firms that are willing to pay a premium just to have Facebook stock. If Zuckerberg sold his stock at IPO, it probably wouldn’t...
Michael Arrington Discovers Super Angels Colluding →
Assuming what Arrington says is true, super angels are colluding on a massive scale. It’s a conspiracy not to compete, and it’s targeting Y Combinator specifically. It’ll be interesting to see what comes out of this.
NY Daily News: Can I 'call him an a--hole?' Andrew... →
Oh, New York. Such a civil political landscape.
Rasmussen Reports: 52% of Voters Say Their Views... →
Scary. The President is pretty mainstream; Sarah Palin is not. I think this shows the increasing polarization of the political climate.
NYT: Finding the Positive in Cellphones for... →
Phones can be distracting in school, but so is the pick-up game of football that’s happening outside the window. There are so many positives to pushing better technology into the classroom—better organization and being able to conduct labs and other exercises that weren’t possible before among them. They’re not right for every purpose or setting, but the demonization of...
NYT: Tea Party Victory Opens Rift Between Moderate... →
Wait. There are still moderates in the Republican Party?
NYT: Cloud computing hits snag in Europe →
Privacy vs. convenience—it’s the big battle of the cloud computing world. I’m still not convinced we can’t have both, it’s just that no manufacturer has a real incentive to care about privacy when most of their users are ambivalent at best.
Richmond Times Dispatch: Give States a Tool to... →
This proposal would allow acts of Congress to be repealed with the votes of 2/3 of the state legislatures.
Proposals like these fail to grasp that most of the time, we’re one country, not 50 states. There may have been a time when having 50 sovereign, largely independent states made sense to govern such a large area. Not anymore. We fight as one country, trade as one country, and conduct...
Dowd on Christine O'Donnell: Myth and Madness →
To me, Christine O’Donnell is just another in a long line of politicians with the same happy disconnect with the issues. She doesn’t know what she’s talking about. She doesn’t know what the words she’s saying mean. And when she compares herself to mythical elf creatures (“I’m a fighter, like Eowyn”), no one else knows what she means either.
Her...
“Apple Inc. is developing a digital newsstand for publishers that would let them...”
– Apple Said to Negotiate With Publishers Over Digital Newsstand - Bloomberg
It’s all about control. If Apple can give them access to enough user data, then the publishers might think it’s worth it to surrender control of the sales apparatus to Apple.
DRUDGE REPORT: OBAMA GOES TO CHURCH! →
Oh no! The President went to church! Did the rabid hordes of Islamic extremists he keeps below the Rose Garden dismantle the altar? Did Osama bin Laden hitch a ride in the motorcade?
The pool report says that the gospel is Luke 16:1-13, including a passage that reads “You cannot serve God and wealth.” Is this the beginning of a socialist revolution? I don’t know, but I think...
What I'm Trying to Do Here
View from a Farley originally launched in 2008. At that time, it was a blog and podcast. A few months later, I canned the podcast. Since then, View from a Farley has been a blog, but I’ve had trouble updating it. Someone once told me that blogs that don’t have fresh content every single day have a lot of trouble attracting an audience. I not only want an audience, but I want to...
New York Times: Toyota Plans 6 New Hybrids by End... →
Toyota and Tesla’s partnership will be fun to watch. The big American auto companies are just beginning to realize that people like small hybrids, but Toyota’s already miles ahead. Tesla will be able to give them a badly needed design lesson.
Bloomberg: Rich Americans Save Tax Cuts Instead of... →
I’d be interested in an educated response to this. I’m sure someone with more knowledge of economics than I believes that either Moody’s is wrong or the tax cuts for top wage-earners are still worth it. I know we won’t get anything close to an intellectual response from the Republicans, but I’d still like to know what the intellectual response is.
"The Social Network" Movie is Hard on Facebook CEO... →
Can’t wait to to see this. It’s fiction and fluff, but it is written by Aaron Sorkin (writer of The West Wing), so it’ll at least be entertaining fiction and fluff.
Daring Fireball: Gartner Predicts Mobile OS Market... →
John Gruber dispels the notion that because Apple’s mobile OS market share is losing ground to Android, Apple must be failing. Apple is not after market share; it’s after profit.
If Apple really wanted to gain market share, they could put together $400 notebooks and $5 phones will plastic wrap and duct tape. Most consumer electronics manufacturers have thin margins and hope to sell...
Ted Koppel: Nine years after 9/11, let's stop... →
I’ve felt for a long time that the success of terrorism isn’t measured by body counts, but by how much the target modifies its own values out of fear. Nine years on, our beliefs in privacy and right to a speedy trial are being challenged by warrantless wiretaps and renditions. The 9/11 terrorists hated the freedom that America had, so don’t we play into their hands every time we...
Mark Hurd Joins Oracle as Co-President →
Unexpected.
HP’s board has some explaining to do. The whole story about Hurd’s departure is still somewhat mysterious, so I won’t rush to judgment. However, it’s clear that either HP’s board overreacted or Oracle is making a serious error in judgment.
Sharron Angle tells CNN: "I’ll be a mainstream... →
Either she’s lying in this interview or lying in her campaign materials, but Sharron Angle is not mainstream. She is trying to define a new mainstream, but even in this climate she is not mainstream.
Petraeus Condemns U.S. Church's Plan to Burn... →
Petraeus is widely respected, but largely ignored by the media. He plays his role as “that military guy at congressional hearings” well, but his public statements show he’s both intelligent and politically-minded. He’s one to watch, particularly if he ever runs for office.
Oval Office rug gets history wrong →
Oops.
Kristof: America’s History of Fear →
Kristof makes an excellent point in this op-ed piece. The vast majority of Americans don’t hate Muslims. At worst, most of them are ambivalent. But the Glenn Becks of the world have a remarkable ability to make decent people afraid that “those people” will come to destroy their values and their ways of life. It’s suddenly not about freedom of religion, but about...
August 2010
11 posts
Glenn Beck's Restoring Honor Rally →
This guy is an ego-maniac. But he’s also dangerous.
There’s a reasoned argument to be made against the President’s policies. It exists, but not on FOX News. Beck is a master of using emotion, fear, and fabrication to impact people in a way that reason can’t. He’s not making a reasoned argument; he’s spouting drivel about how America has lost it’s way...
GOP plans wave of White House probes →
Disgusting. They don’t even care about justice or whether anything illegal actually occurred. They probably won’t find anything, but then they don’t need to. All the GOP needs to do is get themselves on TV in imposing committee rooms saying “subpoena” and “the White House is coming to get your children” as many times as possible for them to score points...
Court allows agents to secretly put GPS trackers... →
Privacy is going to be one of the big Supreme Court issues of the modern time. We’ve moved past privacy as it relates to abortion issues (well, sort of). Now it’s going to be about things like this. Technology gives police offers dozens of ways of tracking people without their knowledge. What will be permissible? What won’t fly?
Everyone has a right to keep secrets. At...
Anti-Muslim Incidents Continue →
Sarah Palin and the other vehemently anti-mosque people contribute to these sorts of incidents whether they know it or not. The result of their anti-mosque rhetoric is the impression that Muslims are not like the rest of America but that they’re separate and apart from “real Americans.” Suddenly people have a target on which to vent frustration, and we have incidents like these.
Blockbuster to Enter Bankruptcy →
This has been predictable for some time. DVDs are not where it’s at anymore.
John Gruber's Apple Event Predictions →
Trustworthy. Very trustworthy.
Apple Announces Special Event on September 1st →
Apple’s September events have traditionally focused on music and iPods. It’s always been about bringing the holiday product lineup up-to-speed and maybe throwing in something new with iTunes, but this time the media hype points to a new Apple TV. I wouldn’t be surprised, but don’t expect it to be the main event. It’s going to be about music, iPods, and iTunes. Apple...
Boehner Wants to Fire the President's Economic... →
Oh, that’ll do the trick.
Motorola's Android 2.2 Rollout: What a Mess -... →
Android’s biggest problem may be platform fragmentation. Android can never be as good as iOS if half of its users are stuck with old versions. Google constantly complains that iOS is closed. Maybe it is, but Android is just open enough to allow carriers to install bloatware that makes updating devices a nightmare.
Facebook & Privacy →
They’re not malicious; they’re just stupid. It’s not that they deliberately try to get people to share their deepest, darkest secrets; it’s just that they have no clue why anyone would want to prevent people from seeing personal information.
"Apple exec stashed $150K in shoe boxes" →
Perfect example of tech press hype. The guy was caught getting kickbacks from a few Apple suppliers. He was a mid-level manager, not anywhere near the executive level, but suddenly he’s an “Apple exec.”