Your browser may have trouble rendering this page. See supported browsers for more information.

Picture

Name Marco von Ballmoos
Member since
Email [hidden]
Home page https://earthli.com/users/marco
Description

The (only) developer at earthli.com.

Contents

3209 Articles
111 Comments

16 years Ago

Success

Published on in Quotes

“Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm.”
Winston Churchill

Nuanced Thinking

Published on in Quotes

“It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.”
Aristotle

Get Off Your Ass

Published on in Quotes

“Warning: If you are reading this then this warning is for you. Every word you read of this useless fine print is another second off your life. Don’t you have other things to do? Is your life so empty that you honestly can’t think of a better way to spend these moments? Or are you so impressed with authority that you give respect and credence to all that claim it? Do you read everything you’re supposed to read? Do you think every thing you’re supposed to think? Buy what you’re told to want? Get... [More]”

Arrogance

Published on in Quotes

“Arrogance must be earned.”
Dr. Gregory House

Voting

Published on in Quotes

“If voting changed anything, they would make it illegal.”
Emma Goldman

Design Tip

Published on in Quotes

“To clarify, add detail. And, clutter and overload are not an attribute of information, they are failures of design. Don’t start to throw out information—instead, fix the design.”

Zero Punctuation Crysis Review

Published on in Video Games

Of late, there’s been no better place to go for a quick review of the latest games than Yahtzee. His review of Crysis (Escapist Magazine) is a beauty.

The plot is summed as follows:

“Your task is to infiltrate some island in the South Pacific and slaughter Koreans. There’s probably more to it than that, but I found it hard to sympathize with the heroes when they’re using expensive, top-of-the-range hardware and are backed up by the entire armed forces of the entire United States while most of the enemy have to... [More]”

Economics

Published on in Quotes

“It is no crime to be ignorant of economics, which is, after all, a specialized discipline and one that most people consider to be a ‘dismal science.’ But it is totally irresponsible to have a loud and vociferous opinion on economic subjects while remaining in this state of ignorance.”
Murray Rothbard


Now replace the word “economics” with any other discipline and you have yourself a pretty good rule-of-thumb.

The Campaign Show

Published on in Public Policy & Politics

The candidates, their issues, their campaigns and the media coverage thereof is a carefully-managed show. Unless you actually show up at a campaign stop, you do not see anything that a candidate’s handlers don’t want you to see—and they make sure that the wishes of their biggest donaters are honored. In a rare moment of honesty, the video below shows this process at work; it stars Mitt Romney fending off accusations that his campaign is “run by lobbyists” from a reporter who had deluded himself... [More]

Don’t Be That Guy

Published on in Miscellaneous

A year ago, it was silly to be concerned about the elections in 2008. With the primaries finally underway and the election actually within three seasons’ reach, it’s time to get engaged again. That means shaking off the cobwebs instilled by the ubiquitous brainwashing of the mainstream media (the cloaca of ideas) and actually figuring out what you need to know for the elections, which include:

  • Figuring out what your problems are
  • Figuring out where your interests lie
  • Thinking long term, even... [More]

Kristol-Clear Typo

Published on in Miscellaneous

In Braking Kristol: ‘NYT’ Public Editor Hits Hiring of Columnist (Editor & Publisher) has a typo; they wrote that:

“Clark Hoyt, has called the controversial hiring of William Kristol as an op-ed columnist a “mistake.” … He also wrote, in his column today, that of nearly 700 messages he has received about the selection, only one praised the pick (empasis added)”

It’s a sad day when even Editor and Publisher can’t proofread well enough to detect that they mis-spelled “prick”.

MacBook Air

Published on in Technology

 Apple recently announced a new laptop that weighs only 3 pounds and is less than an inch thick at its thickest and only a quarter of an inch thick at its slender foward edge.[1] It’s a nice step forward, combining a large, excellent screen with a full-size, back-lit keyboard to provide a very comfortable mobile experience. It’s got an iSight camera, plenty of RAM and all the wireless goodies you’d expect. The drive is a bit small (only 80GB) and might also be a bit slow, there aren’t many ports... [More]

17 years Ago

Books read in 2007

Published on in Books

  1. Cell (2007) − Stephen King
  2. The Essential Ghandi (second half) (1962) − Mahatma Ghandi (edited by Louis Fischer)
  3. Zwischen Krieg und Terror (2006) − Ulrich Tilgner (de)
  4. A Man without a Country (2005) − Kurt Vonnegut
  5. Wild Fire (2006) − Nelson DeMille
  6. Das Parfum (1994) − Patrick Suskind (de)
  7. Cobweb (2005) − Neal Stephenson & J. Frederick George
  8. The New Rulers of the World (2002) − John Pilger
  9. Thud! (2005) − Terry Pratchett
  10. Count Zero (1987) − William Gibson
  11. Infinite Jest (1996) − David Foster... [More]

Improvement in Iraq

Published on in Public Policy & Politics

News about Iraq has recently dropped off, and the military has filled the void with intimations that the surge is working. The explanation is clearly due to US military efforts, which are capable of fixing everything. That we are still within the six-month ceasefire window opened by Moqtada Al Sadr in August is a minor detail. The BBC is happily burbiling away right now with interviews of people from the American Enterprise Institute (a favorite source for the BBC) telling us that weak... [More]

Don’t Tase Me, Bro

Published on in Public Policy & Politics

Subduing Protesters in New Orleans

 As reported today in New Orleans to Demolish Thousands of ‘Poor’ Homes by Leonard Doyle (Common Dreams) and New Orleans Police Taser, Pepper Spray Residents Seeking to Block Public Housing Demolition (Democracy Now!), a meeting of the City Council of New Orleans to decide whether to raze 4500 units of low-income housing and replace them with mixed-income housing was disrupted by police wading into crowds of chanting protesters with pepper spray and tasers. The clips on Democracy Now! sound like an... [More]

Writer’s Strike

Published on in Quotes

“We would like to return to work with our writers. If we cannot, we would like to express our ambivalence, but without our writers we are unable to express something as nuanced as ambivalence.”

Fake Rock Hero

Published on in Video Games

Video Gaming has come full circle.

It began with kids feeding quarters into machines at the local arcade, honing their skills with an endless stream of silver. The occasional talent would rise above the rest and gain fame in the neighborhood for his (or her) mad skills. There were masters of Pac-man and Space Invaders. Then came the home versions of these games, which allowed you to train at home, for free. People got better, but they left the arcades, taking the show out of video gaming. In... [More]

It’s Good to be d’ King

Published on in Public Policy & Politics

As feared by right-wing pundits everywhere, the power of a slightly democratic Congress and Senate is a fearsome thing to behold. As stated in the article, Senate Approves $70 Billion To Continue Wars (Common Dreams):

“In a boost to President George W. Bush, the Senate voted late Tuesday to approve the catch-all 555 billion dollar budget bill, adding extra war funds without any of the restrictions that Democrats hoped to pin on their release, such as linking them to a withdrawal date for US troops.”

... [More]

Peer Review

Published on in Science & Nature

Just as governments seek to justify everything they do—regardless of how violent or fascist—as being in the name of democracy or the greater good or for moral reasons, other dubious ideas have glommed onto the idea of portraying themselves as science in order to accumulate more than their fair share of respect. It seems that the cloak of science is just the spoonful of sugar the media needs to make any crackpot idea go down without a hiccup. Two areas in particular are swirling with boasts... [More]

Linux Audio (in 39 Easy Steps)

Published on in Technology

Audio in Linux is awesome (darkness) document’s one man’s journey to being able to edit an MP3 file under Linux. Included are the following gems:

  • Look at the Ardour interface. Decide that (1) it’s not what I want, and (2) dear god that is ugly. Is that Tk? Motif? Holy hell. Run away.
  • Read http://jackaudio.org/faq. “The simplest, and least-secure way to provide real-time privileges is running jackd as root. This has the disadvantage of also requiring all of JACK clients to run as root.” Yeah, no.

One... [More]

Hitchens on Huckabee

Published on in Quotes

“However, what Article VI[1] does not do, and was never intended to do, is deny me the right to say, as loudly as I may choose, that I will on no account vote for a smirking hick like Mike Huckabee, who is an unusually stupid primate but who does not have the elementary intelligence to recognize the fact that this is what he is. My right to say and believe that is already guaranteed to me by the First Amendment. And the right of Huckabee to win the election and fill the White House with morons like... [More]”

Geography Challenge

Published on in Fun

 The Traveler IQ Challenge (Travelpod) is a Flash-based game with 12 levels, covering famous places, world capitals and other cities with increasing difficulty.[1] There will be countries whose names you have likely never heard before. It times you and gives you points for accurate clicking and speed. You need a certain number of points to proceed to the next level.

You might want to brush up on Statetris (earthli News). There used to be a site with a “name as many of the 192 UN countries as you can in ten minutes” game,... [More]

Jokes are Subjective as Hell

Published on in Fun

Every once in a while, Reddit does a “tell your best jokes” thread. Here are my favorites from the last one; try not to hold it against me.

Brewer’s Convention

At a world brewing convention in the States, the CEOs of various Brewing organizations retired to the bar at the end of each day’s conference.

Bruce, CEO of Fosters, shouted to the Barman: “In ‘Strylya, we make the best bladdy beer in the world, so pour me a Bladdy Fosters, mate.”

Bob, CEO of Budweiser, calls out next: “In the... [More]

Joy

Published on in Quotes

“I wish I liked anything as much as my kids like bubbles…their smiling faces just point out your inability to enjoy anything.”

The Pursuit of Happiness

Published on in Quotes

“The great source of both misery and disorders of human life seems to arise from over-rating the difference between one permanent situation and another. Some of those situations may no doubt deserve to be prefered to others but none of them can deserve to be pursued with that passionate ardor which drives us to violate the rules either of prudence or of justice, or to corrupt the future tranquility of our minds either by shame from the remembrance of our own folly or by remorse from the horror... [More]”
Adam Smith

That Awful Sucking Sound

Published on in Quotes

“We are in a fragmenting culture, where our certainties of even a few decades ago are questioned and where it is common for young men and women, who have had years of education, to know nothing of the world, to have read nothing, knowing only some speciality or other, for instance, computers. … How will our lives, our way of thinking, be changed by the internet, which has seduced a whole generation with its inanities so that even quite reasonable people will confess that, once they are hooked,... [More]”
A Hunger for Books by Doris Lessing (Guardian)

Savage Relationship Advice

Published on in Quotes

“Again, the passage of time destroys us all. But you can’t sit on the couch stuffing Twinkies in your mouth and bitch about how shallow your partner is for not finding you attractive anymore because some people get cancer. Please.”


Dan Savage is an advice columnist focusing on questions about sex and relationships. When pushed, he knows how to throw down with the best of them.

Rapturous Truth

Published on in Miscellaneous

Werner Herzog has made many films and not one of them was boring, either to watch or to film (he famously “haul[ed] a boat up a mountainside in [his film] Fitzcarraldo … in the middle of the Amazonian rain forest, [because] audience will know if the shots are real”. His latest is Little Dieter Needs to Fly—a documentary about the only successful escape from a POW camp in Vietnam—with the unparalleled Christian Bale in the lead role. Roger Ebert wrote him a magnificent letter (linked below)... [More]

MNFTIU − October 2007

Published on in Fun

The strips from October 2007 (MNFTIU) have some pretty good lines:

“I used to have a friend who was skeptical about whether bombing the shit out of people was the best way to fight terrorism. I bet he feels pretty stupid now.
“If Turkey invades Northern Iraq, we should try selling them a ‘Mission Accomplished’ banner. I know where you can get one cheap. … You know, if enough countries invade Iraq, maybe we can just slip out the back…”

In response to the possibility that Blackwater employees might be... [More]

Dennis Kucinich: Just Imagine

Published on in Public Policy & Politics

It would be nice if all of the faithful in America would apply their faith constructively for once. Instead of shopping amongst the meatheads on the Republican side or the non-commital shysters on the Democratic side, they should take a look at Kucinich’s platform and believe that he could make it work. Vote him into the presidency and give him four years—if he only accomplishes half of what he would like to, America will be on its way to being the country we were all[1] taught it already was.

Debates... [More]