Self defense sprays have come a long way in 30 years, and they can stop a bear. In fact a person using bear spray to stop a bear attack is less likely to be injured than a person using a gun. http://www.bearsmart.com/docs/BearSprayVsBullets.pdf
Well, there are no bears or dangerous wildlife in my country (except maybe for some bulls), but there are a lot of "planchas" which is the local brand of ghetto people, and drunk aggressive homeless people, and I've come close to getting hurt twice already this year.
I should look into a self-defense spray though :), with the added benefit of them being much cheaper.
In 1890, 43% of the US population were farmers. Because of technology (fossil fuels, internal combustion engines), most of those jobs are gone for good. We're going through a massive change and some people's livelihoods will go away permanently. They're not entitled to make a living at an obsolete job, but I think we owe it to them to provide a comprehensive safety net so they can survive and retrain.
I watched the Al Jazeera "Counting the Cost" episode discussing alternative currencies. Very interesting. People with ideas discussing said ideas instead of taking potshots at each other.
The U.S. media can take a lesson from Al Jazeera: really high quality productions with interesting graphics. It makes American news shows look like video games.
I spend two minutes a day collecting junk mail from my mail box and throwing it into the recycle bin. That's 624 minutes a year. One government employee puts trash into my mail box and another government employee takes it away. Any useful mail I receive can be either delivered by electronic methods or UPS/FedEx.
I went online shopping this weekend for a laptop for Mrs. expralitemonk. With an open heart we considered Windows or Mac. On the Macbook web page I found: specs for each model, estimated battery life, and the price. On one page! For all models! http://store.apple.com/us/browse/home/shop_mac/family/macboo... Every Windows site I went to required multiple clicks just to get rudimentary information. If you want my money, please make buying your product easy.
If Nate Silver is right, then there is no reason to pay any further attention to the election (other than showing up and voting of course). That means fewer people watching or reading the news and their advertisements.
A famous writer was asked to give a speech at a conference for people who were trying to get published. He agreed. On the appointed day he walked to the front of the auditorium, stood at the podium, and asked "Why aren't all of you home writing?" and sat down.
I started learning Django as my first web framework. If I had to do it over I would have spent a month with Flask, and then moved to Django. Django is a big app, and I found it difficult to build a mental model of its workings. Maybe starting with a smaller framework would have made it easier.
