Category Archives: Technology

UPDATE II: Manhattan Le Magnifique

America, Capitalism, Ilana Mercer, Racism, Technology, The West, Trade

YES, MANHATTAN’S STILL THE GREATEST. I say so in reply to Barely a Blog reader Sunny Black.

Another reader, “Contemplationist”—he was at the libertarian-cum-Objectivist New York City Junto gathering, where I featured as speaker for the month of May, 2012—had once admonished me on the blog: “You gotta see things to believe them.”

As I crisscrossed Manhattan in high-heels (naturally) on lengthy walks, I was overcome with a surge of patriotism for very specific (and modest) reasons.

I had hoped to keep this passion and the attendant insights for a new column on a new forum. Stay tuned.

No other city I’ve visited in my longish lifetime measures up to Manhattan (New York City). Paris sucks by comparison—and I loved that city in the 1980s, before “les beurs”—the darling buds of France, aka her raging Muslim youths—took over.

Manhattan Le Magnifique.

UPDATE I: Huggs: People were okay and efficient, compared to the sullen slackers of the Pacific Northwest. On the subway, certain sorts glared angrily and refused to let you sit down, preferring to hog the entire bench. I was only too pleased “they” did not lunge at me, though. No wilding attack. And Central Park is the most beautiful place ever for a runner. I was up Sunday at 6:00AM because of jet lag, I guess. By 7:00am I was running. There were many many people doing the same. Fabulous.

UPDATE II: At the South-Street Sea Port, on the East River, near Wall Street. What a skyline.

UPDATED: Now Hardhats Are Heroes (8 Years On)

America, China, Media, Technology

They’ve erected only an “unfinished skeleton” of the “One World Trade Center,” 11 years after the twin towers were destroyed on Sept. 11, 2001.” Even FoxNews concedes that the “milestone is a preliminary one.”

And we are not told how long this thing took to build.

Still, there’s an enormous fuss already. Everyone involved is being hailed as a hero. (No doubt, interviews are being lined-up, and current-events programs are dispatching their equivalent of Diane Sawyer to solicit a tear fest.)

About the original structure, Myron Pauli, our unorthodox pal and BAB contributor, wrote:

Call me jaded or unsentimental” … “but the World Trade Towers were ugly Rockefeller buildings built by the abuse of eminent domain [my friend’s dad lost his job at a private firm there], and taxpayer theft and operated at a great loss to the taxpayers. They were known mainly for a dreadful remake of King Kong. While I mourn the loss of 3000 Americans, I am not about to elevate the Towers into the Beit Hamikdash (The Temple in Jerusalem).

Meantime, with no fuss at all, “200 workers constructed a 30-story building in China’s Hunan Province in a little more than two weeks.” The industrious man behind this project says his insta-skyscraper will “withstand a 9.0-magnitude earthquake,” and is built to the “highest environmental standards.”

Gives one a perspective …

UPDATED: It took 8 years to build the thing. Heard it from Lou Dobbs’ mouth.

UPDATE III: Experience Revered (Scientific Second Coming)

China, Etiquette, Intelligence, Outsourcing, Race, Racism, Technology

“How many grey hairs and no-hairs are in the group?” That, I am told, is a standard inquiry Taiwanese engineers make about their American counterparts in hardware engineering. Unlike their youth-worshiping American colleagues, the Chinese know that the presence of “grey hairs and no-hairs” in the collaborating high-tech group means that problems will be solved. Black hairs are unlikely to do much more than talk a good game.

The Chinese respect experience, and for good reason. It’s a fact of life that experience, so often discounted in the American workforce for fresh-faced fools, gets things done, as it has grappled with problems for longer than inexperience.

UPDATE I: Contemplationist: You might wish to refer to the post. I spoke very specifically about hardware engineers being mostly older (naturally, the field is more demanding, aka less “fun,” and thus draws fewer Millennials). However, even your exuberant, MTV-type assessment of the software field is likely also refutable, colored by a few high-profile personalities and celebrities.

UPDATE II: Contemplationist is confusing a science fair with the work place where real design is done; where the playthings that keep America’s young, twittering twits’ brainwaves from flatlining are designed. My own sources, as some of you know, work deep in the belly of the beast that makes the gadgets that Contemplationist is vaporizing about. What Contemplationist seems to be describing resembles the science fair CNN’s Soledad O’Brien once attended, where American kids, hopped-up on self-esteem, were pressing buttons, and creaming in showy enthusiasm. The “designs” they were praised to the heavens for amounted to cheap, made-in-China circuits, purchased online and stuck into cool-looking “robots.” Of course, from Soledad’s descriptions you’d think this was some kind of scientific Second Coming.

Color me skeptical.

UPDATED III (April 27): Generation Jobless.

UPDATE IV (1/1/021): Old White Guys.

This is news? The Chinese, unlike the American competition, know that the best engineers are older White Men. Nokia’s mobile division, dumped by Microsoft, was vacuumed up by … ? And who invented the cool stuff that launched America as an industrial might?

UPDATE II: Priority Mail International To South Africa (5 Weeks & Counting)

Affirmative Action, Africa, Government, Human Accomplishment, South-Africa, Technology, The West

Will I ever learn? I’ve written a book about the New South Africa, yet I still attempt to get a priority envelope to my father (at a cost of $53.50), who lives in that country. Accepted in the US on Feb. 6, with a promise of a 5 to 7 day delivery, the item is currently STILL in transit to the destination. It is being stalled in South Africa.

Although the USPS has more or less completed its part of the deal, the onus is on the USPS stateside not to offer a “Priority Mail International Parcels” service to South Africa. I use the Mail-Clinic interface, which although more pleasant than the toxic USPS, is, nevertheless, still beholden to it.

Here is the USPS tracking data, beginning from the bottom:

7. PROCESSED THROUGH SORT FACILITY ON FEBRUARY 14, 2012, 3:51 PM, SOUTH AFRICA: THE ITEM IS CURRENTLY STILL IN TRANSIT TO THE DESTINATION.

6. Processed Through Sort Facility February 10, 2012, 12:58 pm, ISC LOS ANGELES CA (USPS)

5. Arrived at Sort Facility, February 10, 2012, 12:58 pm, ISC LOS ANGELES CA (USPS)

4. Electronic Shipping Info Received, February 07, 2012

3. Processed through USPS Sort Facility, February 06, 2012, 8:20 pm, WA

2. Dispatched to Sort Facility

1. Acceptance, February 06, 2012, 6:42 pm

[SNIP]

I’ve been through this many times. As a Pope once said, hope springs eternal in the human breast.

UPDATE: Mail and parcel theft is rampant in SA. It’s not so much political, as criminal. These are the things one takes for granted in the West. However horrid and monopolistic is the USPS, it does get a thing from A to B, generally “honoring” the contract with the American forced to purchase the service.

UPDATE II (March 15): JP, I thought the ANC was too much of a disorganized criminal syndicate to compile a list of subversives and chase the listed down. Do you honestly believe they have one such list and are capable of flagging “suspect” material?