Beautiful Photos of the land of my birth

Got this link from a friend of mine....

the photos to me are breathtaking.


rsp

After Barack Obama, please let this not be the next Black role model..

rsp

I really am too skeptical of politicians..

and it isn't just Caribbean politics and politicians...

Earlier this week, a former PNP MP switched parties..she clearly isn't the first politician to switch sides and the reverse has happened and I have been as skeptical as those as I am of this 'switch'. What I find particularly disturbing about this one, was up to a few months/years ago, the JLP was asking her to be removed as MP since she had dual citizenship with the US which is currently (thank goodness) not allowed in our constitution... (our constitution does allow dual citizenship eligibility with commonwealth countries, which I am also opposed to, but that's for another time); yet they(the JLP) welcomed her with open arms when she switched sides..

I am also for whatever reason very disappointed when public servants who I consider exceptional at what they do, join political parties.....I'd like to think that to be a really great public servant you must be party blind, but I guess you need to be party blind at work only, and I am not sure if anyone can really do so convincingly and totally.
This week one of our imho well respected, exceptional public servant is rumoured to be running for the JLP..

And just in case someone is wondering if I am only disappointed when it happens in the JLP, I was equally disappointed when a former exceptional Police Commissioner joined the PNP as a candidate.


rsp

A little late in blogging the info, but we have a new PM in Jamaica....

We have a new Prime Minister in Jamaica....our ninth and also our youngest eve. He is also the first to be born in an independent Jamaica......I have high hopes for him and wish him nothing but good luck.....met him once in 2006 when he was an opposition MP and in a brief five minute or less conversation he made a lasting impression on me..... I met lots of people all the time, but not many do I remember five years later vividly.....


I wish him well.. and I sincerely hope it is a dawn of a new politics in Jamaica..

rsp

Farewell Dennis Ritchie

Just found out Dennis Ritchie died earlier this week....

He was a co-creator in two software codes that play a part in many people daily lives.... C, the predecessor of C++ and Unix OS (which was written in C), of which Mac OS X and Linux are based on.....in OS X's case it is the backbone of that OS behind all the fancy GUI.......

Back when I was a scientist, Unix was the first operating system I became conversant in........and although I came from a Fortran background, C was a language I was getting to know very well......
rsp

Michele Bachman and her 'gaffes' aka 'she does lie like r#$$'

Was just watching on MSNBC, the Jansing and Co. show, and Chris Jansing was speaking about some of the inaccuracies said by different candidates in the October 11th 2011 Republican Candidate debate......once again Michele Bachmann was not left out in her efforts to 'bend' the truth...

Let's stop calling them gaffes....she is lying....she must know she is lying. if she isn't she needs to just resign and stop talking.

It happens so often, and yet she continues... one would think she has learned by now that Google etc exists and people can do their own research......

Just the last debate she lied about the HPV vaccination causing mental retardation....

you can also read Bachmann vs. the truth

or

US News

or


the old truth-0-meter



Fortunately she has as much chance as I do of becoming the next president in the USA.

rsp

And some never learnt anything from 9/11

As Mitch Romney, who clearly can see the future somehow and already knows that he will win the Republican nomination for the 2012 election (all sarcasm intended), said today:




I think some Americans still don't get why they are so hated in parts of the world.... unbelievable....all the goodwill that may have come with the four years of Obama could easily be wiped away with this Republican version of the Al Gore Robot Template.


As wacky as he is, at least Ron Paul gets it:




rsp

He made a huge difference in the world we live in....

Sadly, I just heard that Steve Jobs, co-founder of Apple computer died of pancreatic cancer.......I am very saddened... Of course it wasn't entirely unexpected.... But still very sad sad news for me.... Anyone who knows me, even in some of the earlier posts of this same blog, you can tell that although I do use some Microsoft OS devices in my daily life, it was never a love affair, and my love affair with computers, my feverish love affair with computers are all tied with Apple and their products......

Yes he was infamous for his tempers etc, but he also stood for excellence..... and was an extraordinary visionary....
Mac, iPod, iPhone,iTunes and iPad...and Pixar

Our world will not be the same without him.

Apple's page of tribute to Steve



I also want to share this video:


rip steve
rsp

Palin or Perry for President

I think it is no secret that I hope President Obama wins a second term. Times are tough and it is going to be a difficult task for him. Towards that end however, I would like support either Sarah Palin or Rick Perry as the Republican candidate for President.

As they say a picture is worth a thousand words, so I will leave you with these two gems, that I am sure most know about by now: WTF!!!!



My favourite part starts about 2:05 seconds....when I first saw this interview I was in shock.....


And for Perry, this was just embarrassing and I couldn't really watch it.

Btw thanks...

for the person or persons who have encouraged me to blog more often again. I am one opinionated s.o.b and will have no shortage of topics :)
rsp

And that's why most people think politicians are all a pile of bleep bleep.....

All three of my parents have been politicians.. I would go so far to say that all three have been successful politicians. However that gene never came to me. I have not only never voted in my life, I have never even registered to vote.... I will go so far to say that in my lifetime there have been only three politicians I 'supported' enough to even consider voting for them, in any country in the world. Well two of them I couldn't since I am not a US citizen.

I have long since, maybe from as long back as a young child, managed to separate my views of my parents as my parents as opposed to their operations, policies, beliefs and practices as politicians.

But like many if not most people, I am very skeptical of politicians. Not all politicians mind you, I honestly do believe that some are not corrupt and really do get into the 'game of politics' to improve the welfare of others and not for personal gain.. Clearly not all are of that ilk.

Which brings me to the point of this blog.

I will start with the most recent incident.

As some may know Bruce Golding has announced that he will resign as part leader of the JLP and Prime Minister of Jamaica within the next few months....I actually honestly have very mixed views on the subject as contrary to my surname, apart from the Dudus affair I think he did a pretty decent job and quite frankly apart from one other individual in his own party, I personally don't see any other person in either party being capable of doing a better job. But that's not the point of this blog.


The opposition PNP has demanded that the JLP call elections now...

What utter crap/bullbleep/gall.....In 2006 when the Rt Honourable PJ Patterson resigned from the PNP as Party Leader and PM it was a PNP internal election that designated who would be the next prime minister of Jamaica without it ever going to a popular vote... Was there no ""so as to resolve the crisis of governance in the island." crisis of governance at that time..... It is do as I say not as I do.......It is these self serving double standards why so many people are leery of politicians and don't trust them.


The second event that comes to mind is what happened a few years ago in my home country of Guyana. The party that is now in opposition, PNC held power for well over twenty years...certainly in the last decade of those years, they set out to rewrite the constitution of Guyana and won in 'free and fair referendum' the right to do so... Key Tenets of that new constitution, were specifically constructed so as to demean and belittle the opposition party and its leaders. Of course at that time the PNC clearly envisioned there would be in power for the rest of human existence. Alas in 1992 the PPP won the elections and the PNC became the main opposition party. Of course all of a sudden they no longer liked the constitution that they themselves were the architects and constructors of, and of course vehemently and vocally demanded that key parts be changed, which was done in 1996. If that is not another clear example of do as I say not as I do, and why people in general have a great distrust of politicians, I have no idea what would be.
rsp

Why really is prostitution illegal?

I happened to be glancing through channels on cable today and there was a TV show called The Client List..... About yes, prostitution.. It got me to thinking.

Let's be clear, I am not speaking about human trafficking or prostitution by minors or forced prostitution, but two adults consenting. One offering a service and the other paying for that service. It is like my views on so many other things like homosexuality. I really don't think a small minority should determine what two consenting adults can or cannot do in the privacy of their home, once it is not hurting innocent bystanders. I have to think that somewhere religion and only religion has played a part in making many nations if not most nations have a law making prostitution illegal. Clearly I don't agree with the law, just never really thought of it before today.
Searches in Google led me to this quote from George Carlin:
"I don't understand why prostitution is illegal. Why should prostitution be illegal? Selling is legal, f@#$%^^ is legal. Why isn't selling f@#$%^& legal? After all, giving somebody an orgasm is hardly the worst thing you can do to them!" - George Carlin

Of course it may become a slippery slope, this argument of mine that what a consenting adult does, once it isn't affecting innocent bystanders, should not be set by a minority, when one thinks of selling body parts....that will have to wait for another blog :-)

rsp

p.s.
you got to love Google and Wikipedia, I found these links informative, and I am sure there are thousands of others:

What Countries is it legal

Prostitution.org? (ok dokey)

Wikipedia

for the record I have never knowingly/explicitly/overtly paid for sex.

rsp

UN for me not for you.....

Is the memory span of the Israeli government and many of its supporters really that short? Wasn't the United Nations, the entity that granted Israel statehood?

I read with increasing anger for the last few months, of the intentions of our wonderful neighbour to the North to join Israel in vetoing any attempts by Palestine to attain statehood via the United Nations.....

Today I saw this article on CNN.

From which I would like to make reference to two quotations.

Avigdor Liberman did not elaborate in his comments on Israel Radio, but said previous Israeli concessions like the withdrawal from Gaza had not resulted in peace.

Are there really a more arrogant set of inhabitants on Earth? Concessions to come out of the people's land? Seriously, are you really that arrogant?

And

"It should not come as a shock to anyone in this room that the U.S. opposes a move in New York by the Palestinians to try to establish a state that can only be achieved through negotiations," State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said last week. "So yes, if something comes to a vote in the U.N. Security Council, the U.S. will veto."

Please remind us of the 'negotiations' used circa 1947 to grant Israel statehood....unless by negotiations you don't actually mean negotiations that include at the very minimum both parties involved...

These are the things that make my blood boil....

I am eagerly awaiting to hear what these 'dire consequences' are.....I will for now, say no more.

Israel oh Israel....

I am still 'fascinated' and 'amazed' how America and many Americans try to justify their complete double standards with regards to the Israel-Palestine 'issue'...
I am hearing the Israeli PM saying that Israelis have a historical right to the land... by that reasoning so too do the Native Americans to all of North America... I hear my dear favourite American President Barack Obama saying that the UN route will not give Palestine their state.....Does he and the many other Americans really don't remember that it was the very UN, that gave Israel their state? America I am trying hard to love you, but you are making it very very hard......

They say a picture is worth a thousand words and this picture to me is a perfect example....















Also I am not sure if many Americans do realise that they rarely get access to objectivity on the issue of Israel when they look at their own media networks... so I would like to leave you with this BBC Documentary on the Birth of Israel, I believe it is in 8 parts......

you judge for yourself who are the real terrorists and who have been wronged...



I too want peace in the region, but America isn't helping as they, being the only super power, are blatantly biased..

Btw I am not sure if I actually need to say this, but let me state in no uncertain terms that what the Jews had to endure under the vile Nazi regime is inexcusable....and was one of the worse crimes against humanity ever recorded..certainly it was the most abhorrent act against humanity of the last century....But guilt from the rest of the world idly standing by whist Hitler and his cohorts killed six million jews should not be a hall pass for Israel to do what it wants now...


rsp

Ode to the Macintosh...

I got my first macintosh in 1989 or 1990 and it was love at first sight..MIT, where I was a PhD student was at the time a macintosh and supercomputer only environment and I manage to convince my father I needed it for 'work' when truthfully I also needed it for music.....To this day, although I am pretty fluent in the various Windows OS's it is only the macintosh platform I have ever loved.....I tell people I am a mac diehard who sometimes has to use a windows computer...... I personally have believed that the OS from Cupertino is and always has been vastly superior to that from Redmond...And I wanted to give two experiences over the past few months that to me removed any possible doubt..

I recently upgrade my Studio's computer from XP to Windows 7..I had to reinstall everythign and reconfigure them to how I like them to work.. I did use the inappropriately named Easy Transfer from Microsoft... What a piece of crap.... someone from Redmond needs to see how apple's Migration Assistant works......you tell it where your old account is. connect a cable and it transfers everything..... applications, files, settings etc..... The move on the PC took me about two weeks to complete everything... if it was a mac that would have taken maybe five hours maximum.... Now if I do change my motherboard on my Windows computer I have to do the process all over again, even though I am not changing the OS on it......WTF!!!!!!!

Yesterday my main imac that I use for my internet, emailing, downloading, invoicing etc died...
I have learnt the hard way the importance of backup, so I am an avid user of Time Machine from Apple, which basically seemlessly takes snapshots of your computer every hour or so, so you can go back to any state the computer was in a few hours, days, weeks ago.....
I felt handicap today since I couldn't create invoices, print scripts etc, answer email as I usually do without my imac.
But I have a macbookpro which is my portable studio....It has only music software on it, and I like it that way....
Three features only avaiable on the macintosh allowed me in the space of one hour to get back my imac account to run on my macbook pro exactly as it did on the imac without touching the macbook pro music only hard drive.

1) Do the PC users know on the mac you can boot and work entirely off of an external hard drive? That is a huge deal. I can take my hard drive with me, to a different country, attach it to someone else's computer, boot from my hard drive and work exactly with all my applications, files etc as if I was home on my own macintosh...There is nothing like this on the PC world.....that I am aware of.. nothing......for this feature alone, I believe macintosh are superior to PC's.

2) TimeMachine...... After I booted my macbook pro from a backup I have of it on an external hard drive, I could then use Migration Assistant (which would be item 3), and tell Migration Assistant to use my timemachine backup of the imac, to create a new account on this external hard drive of my account on my Imac.... It did that in less than an hour...

So here am I, working on my macbook pro, from an external hard drive with all my settings, files, applications from my imac and working as I would have two days ago...

And when I want to work on my macbook pro as music only I just tell it to boot from its internal hard drive........and the macbook will be as it was....
Try any of that on a PC....

I swear my next studio computer, I will be back to fully macintosh.....it is just too superior an OS imho...

rsp

Yes I am still alive....although it has been over two years....

Since my last blog.....Just haven't been as motivated to blog....however something happened this a.m. that I just wanted to give my opinion on... I was watching Morning Joe on MSNBC(although Joe himself annoys the hell out of me) I otherwise like the show. The unfolding protests in Egypt was being covered and there was a sense of almost surprise that the typical normal anti-american components were not a part of this massive protest.....
I strongly believe all of that is due to one man, President Barack Obama, or as the dumb brunette from Alaska (who I use to find hot, now her stupidity has overcome all physical attraction I had for her) likes to say Obama, like if they went to school together.

I have marveled at how the Republicans have successfully launched one of the best smear campaigns in my lifetime, against him..... His ratings plummeted after the whole "Death Panels" crap....and 1/3 still believe he wasn't born in the USA... please....Yes I think maybe he should have publicly focused more on jobs as priority one, but he had political capital that he wanted to utilise for game changers like: health care, don't ask don't tell, the banking reform etc......Clearly I am on the outside looking in and I really think he did a damn great job with regards to the US domestic agendas... Lord knows it would be a different world if his administration didn't address the recession........

But for me where he has shined, where he has truly made his mark, is in the international arena.
I think I had said this in an earlier blog... what I admire most about him, is not his intellect which he has in pouring out of his ears....not his cool, calm no drama-obama disposition.....not his incredible articulation (although I really do miss GW for this, the new 'words', the perplexed knitted brows that only an idiot savant (minus the savant part in his case) could do)....but he is the first US President in my lifetime who realises 'We are the World' is just a song......he isn't set on US World domination as ALL his predecessors seem to have been hell bent on, including my previous favourite, Bill Clinton to some degree....and the neo-conservatives so hate him for it....."he goes around apologising for america, when there is nothing to apologise for'.
America is but one country, a very important country, but never the less, one in almost 200 countries of the world, and has no more rights than any other country.... He gets it... no one before him did....... and I think that's why the usual Anti-American element is missing from the Egyptian 'revolution'.

I love the man (no not in any gay manner :-)), but seriously, sometimes I think of what he means to the world and the tears well up.....I think this is one man who has in two years completely changed the world we live in.......
I just hope the American population give him a second four years.....

rsp