borg.org

borg.org, the nobody reads it blog.

  • What Makes Anyone Think Physics is Not a Religion?

    [I am sure this is not original, on so many levels, but my fingers are compelled to try to capture these thoughts. Forgive me.] At a fundamental level physicists appear to be deeply religious. Their Articles of Faith are something like this: There is order, This order can be understood by us, It is predictive,…

  • Will Donald Trump Split the Republican Party?

    Splitting the GOP: Refused A few years ago, when the GOP first lurched right and so seemed to be dismissing any reasonable chance of winning the presidency, I figured they needed to split in two, they needed to kick out the crazies. But they didn’t, instead they all adopted this crazy attitude, and I forgot…

  • Benefits of The Donald

    I missed the first Democratic debate of the 2016 election. I wanted to see it and being stuck on an airplane, with CNN, while it was on, seemed a fine coincidence. Except my Virgin America flight from LA to Boston was missing a quarter of the channels it was supposed to have, including CNN. And…

  • How Political "Red Meat" Works (and Isn't Necessarily Bad)

    What do we call left-wing “red meat”?

  • Which Gadgets Do I Need, Again

    Four-years ago I asked the question “What gadgets do I need?”, and it seemed time to revisit the question. First, what gadgets do I have? Pebble Watch This is my most-present gadget these days. I like that it is limited, it is too small a screen to offer a rich experience, and it is too…

  • Pebble Battery Life

    I decided that, cool as the shake-to-light feature is on the Pebble watch, I turned it off. Saves battery life. And, frankly, it can be annoying if one sleeps with a watch or is in a movie theater. But I don’t know how long my year-plus-old watch lasts in this setting because I have taken…

  • Net Neutrality: An Objective Definition (with Technical Gotchas)

    I saw someone on Twitter looking for a definition of net neutrality that was objective, and doubting it was possible. Here is my attempt, and I am going to maybe cheat a little by trying to give two perspectives. Disclaimer: I am for net neutrality. The Case For Everything seems to run over the internet…

  • New "Pebble Time" Watch Announced

    It looks good. They still seem to understand what a watch is, that it is not a smartphone. They added color, but a low-power version of color. The competition has set themselves up to compete with the brightness of the sun if we were ever to venture outside. Pebble is still avoiding that losing battle.…

  • Android Car Radio?

    They don’t seem to quite exist yet, but it looks like we are getting close to having nice Android car radios available. There are car radios with slide out screens, but the ones available domestically are proprietary software that I assume won’t be as good as Android and will cost a lot more for less.…

  • Battling ISIL: For the Hearts and Minds of our own Citizens

    Last night President Obama said we will attack ISIL (or ISIS or IS…). Yes, they are extremely nasty, it makes sense to attack people who massacre religious minorities and behead US reporters. Even the Pope agrees that in this case violence must be met with violence. That is the easy part. But the scariest aspect…