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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

19 years Ago

U.S. Policies − At Home and Abroad

Published on in Public Policy & Politics

What follows are some tales from recent U.S. domestic and foreign policy — tales of a government increasingly concerned neither with the will of its people nor the welfare of humans in general. A government that prefers to shortsightedly amass power unto itself, ignoring long-term realities that make such power fleeting at best.

Taking action in Darfur

 Ring Them Bells by Chris Floyd (CounterPunch) sounds the alarm that the sweet-faced young up-and-comer, the United States, is poised to pop its self-interest cherry by... [More]

The Poisonwood Bible − History Repeats Itself

Published on in Miscellaneous

 The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver (Amazon) is a work of fiction about a baptist family from the American South who embark on a mission to the Congo in 1959. It tells the tale from the viewpoint of the minister’s four daughters with intermezzos told by the mother. The clash of cultures on social, political and military levels is exquisitely woven from these individual strands of experience. The political context is remarkably similar to that in which an amnesiac America has placed itself today, lending ever more... [More]

Google Maps: Web Applications done right

Published on in Programming

 Mapping Google is an in-depth examination of Google Maps, a new web application that searches the US graphically. There are follow-up articles in Making the Back Button dance and Still more Fun with Maps. The series of articles covers the techniques Google used to bring a full-fledged, usable application to a web browser.

What’s so special about it? It feels like a desktop application:

  • Drag the image and it scrolls
  • Click a pushpin and get more information
  • Objects throw shadows for a “real”... [More]

How to buy an LCD

Published on in Technology

 Apple LCD (not reviewed)Budget LCD Roundup April 2005 (Firing Squad) is a perfect guide for people looking to buy an LCD. Let me rephrase that to anyone looking for a computer, because CRTs barely even exist anymore. In fact,

“For those of you who still have a CRT monitor on your desk right now, know that it will likely be the last CRT you will ever own. … Your vintage high-end CRT is better than many CRTs being produced today.*”

*That’s me. I’ve got two vintage 19" Viewsonics, both 5 years old.

Pixel Speed

So, LCD it is, then.... [More]

Galloway 1 − U.S. Senate 0

Published on in Public Policy & Politics

 A little while ago, the United States Senate invited British Parliamentarian George Galloway over the pond for a bit of a chat. They wanted to hear what he had to say about the accusations they’d made that he profited from the Oil for Food program in Iraq during sanctions. The U.S. media had naturally already weighed in and found him guilty supported by marginal circumstantial evidence. (He knew a guy who knew a guy … what more do you need?) Galloway is by no means an angel, but after... [More]

Empires

Published on in Quotes

“You don’t run an empire; it runs you.”

Double Whammy for US Citizens

Published on in Public Policy & Politics

Two bills signed into law this year will have major effects on the average American citizen’s life in the coming years. First, the Congress and the President gleefully passed the written-by-credit-card-companies bankruptcy bill. Soon after, RealID slipped through on the coattails of the appropriations bill for the next whack of change for Iraq.

Bankruptcy is Obsolete

Debt Slavery by David Swanson (Common Dreams) provides some background on the recently passed bankruptcy bill.

The bankruptcy bill was sold to us by our media... [More]

Teaching Science in America

Published on in Miscellaneous

 Having Fun With Intelligent Design by David Morris (AlterNet) offers some good advice to teachers charged with spending time on alternative theories to evolution. The crux of the matter is that in two states so far, Pennsylvania and Kansas (big surprise there), teachers must address a theory of the world known as intelligent design. This is not religion; it is a pseudo-scientific justification for a God-like being.

“Intelligent design is not creationism per se. It holds that higher forms of life are so complex they must... [More]”

Deep Throat comes out of the closet

Published on in Public Policy & Politics

 As Winston Smith noted long ago, keeping history up to date is a full-time job. It’s good that we in America are blessed with a vigilant media that takes care of the job. When W. Mark Felt recently came forward to name himself as the erstwhile informant in the Watergate scandal, the right-wing loonies seized the opportunity to rewrite the history of the Vietnam War in today’s context.

Deep Throat and Genocide by Ben Stein provides a truly stunning summary of Nixon and the Vietnam War, claiming that Nixon... [More]

Laughter

Published on in Quotes

“God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh.”
Voltaire

Fighting Corporations on their own Turf

Published on in Public Policy & Politics

One of the most important points to remember about democracy in America is how strongly controlled it is by large corporations. What exactly is a corporation, anyway? How did we get to the point where there is no way of fighting a bad corporation or even realistically boycotting one? (you usually end up putting money in their coffers through subsidiaries) State and Corp. by Noam Chomsky (ZNet) offers a description of corporations that is grounded in U.S. law and is both accurate and chilling:

“And [they] were granted... [More]”

Bob Novak’s Ground Rules

Published on in Public Policy & Politics

It’s been a while since a blatantly government-beholden article has graced earthli News, so here’s Cooperation falls apart in Senate by Robert Novak (Chicago Sun Times). I did

“The lavishly acclaimed new era of good feelings in the Senate lasted less than four days. Senators, anxious to begin another long recess, reverted to mean and brutish behavior a little after 7 p.m. Thursday when Democrats blocked an up-or-down vote on John Bolton as ambassador to the United Nations. So much for supposed congeniality wrought by the... [More]

Censor yourself

Published on in Miscellaneous

According to Your Handy Home Censorship Kit (AlterNet), there is now in America a purification device for the wicked emissions coming from Hollywood in the form of “[a] new device [that] allows consumers to cleanse their DVDs of sex, profanity and violence.”

Whoop-dee-doo. It’s called network television or basic cable; we’ve had it for decades. This brilliant technology is now also available for the home in the form of a ClearPlay DVD player:

“ that are designed to mute or skip over foul language, nudity,... [More]”

Being anti-war

Published on in Quotes

“Just because you’re against a war, doesn’t necessarily mean you’re for the other side.”
- Lewis Black

Mac OS X Tiger − a Promising Future

Published on in Technology

 Now that Mac OS X Tiger has been out for about a month, the next wave of more in-depth reviews are coming out. These provide a more hands-on critique than the initial wave of sycophantic “reviews” that were mostly created by copy/pasting Apple’s press releases. Some of the latest reviews sing Tiger’s praises, offering workarounds for weaknesses and others are harsher critiques that take Apple to task for breaking their own UI guidelines.

Mac OS X 10.4 − more bling than bang? by Andrew Orlowski (The Register) mentions right off... [More]

Newsweek and other tales of a cowed media

Published on in Public Policy & Politics

Judging from the humming on the old Internet(s) lately, Newsweek is in a fair amount of trouble. It seems that this young upstart of a magazine, instead of being happy with its lot sitting in Time’s shadow, seems instead intent on bringing life as we know it to an end! (emphasis added by the White House). With their publication of an article documenting specific prisoner abuses in U.S. detainment facilities (known as dungeons in any other context), they incensed an administration known to be... [More]

Honesty

Published on in Quotes

“If you always tell the truth, you never have to remember anything.”
- Mark Twain

The Yellow Peril

Published on in Public Policy & Politics

 An idea that’s been recently bouncing around, apparently, is the imminence not only of hordes of slavering Arabiacs biting the heads off of our babies and raping our womenfolk, but also that of clone-like masses of yellow bodies swelling forth from Asia like a tide of army ants, conquering with their socialist sameness all that was ever good and right in this world.

It was mentioned that China is a mighty danger because they greedily take money from sadly hoodwinked western businesses, then... [More]

TV Shoes

Published on in Miscellaneous

 Smart shoes decide on television time (New Scientist) covers yet another brilliant idea from Britain, in which a home’s television usage can be keyed to a counter in a pair of sneakers. As with many other things British, it has a totally lame, weird name that doesn’t make any sense to anyone outside of Britain: “Square Eyes”. I honestly have no idea what that’s supposed to mean.

As with all kooky ideas that will never work, it starts from the best intentions: getting kids to both eat less and watch less TV.... [More]

Those Crazy Muslims

Published on in Public Policy & Politics

Everyone Check Your Sources (Plastic) shows that you just can’t believe anything these days, even when it justifies your worldview perfectly — perhaps especially then. Newsweek exposed US Army practices at Guantanamo, claiming that they were using psychological means of breaking the Muslim suspects by “flush[ing] a holy book [the Quran] down the toilet.” The article supposedly sparked protests “throughout much of the Muslim world” (wherever that is) which killed 16 people and included threats of “a jihad... [More]”

Zeroing in on Newspeak

Published on in Public Policy & Politics

Black and White and Full of Crap by Ted Rall (Common Dreams) revisits the Pat Tillman story, one year later, to see which parts of it hold up under closer scrutiny (spoiler: not much).

Tillman was the “the former NFL player who turned down a multi-million dollar football contract to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan” and was subsequently killed in action. First off, let’s not lose sight of the fact that Pat himself probably had his priorities straight. He had his facts all wrong and his brain was squeaky clean from a lifetime... [More]

Mother Nature

Published on in Quotes

“Nature doesn’t care how smart you are. You can still be wrong.”
− Richard Feynman

Latest Bush appointment: Canadian ambassador

Published on in Public Policy & Politics

Continuing in the by-now-classic vein of other Bush appointments, Bush’s envoy can actually find Canada (Globe and Mail) tells of the man slated to make nice with Canada for the next several years. The article, published in Canada’s biggest paper, sardonically points out the one good thing about him before going on to describe just how little he’s actually been to Canada.

“Mr. Wilkins’ only trip to Canada was to Niagara Falls, Ont., over a long weekend in the early 1970s while he was posted in Indiana with the... [More]”

The Apple Product Cycle

Published on in Fun

The Apple Product Cycle takes you through the life of an Apple product, from inception:

“An obscure component manufacturer somewhere in the Pacific Rim announces a major order for some bleeding-edge piece of technology that could conceivably become part of an expensive, digital-lifestyle-enhancing nerd toy.”

…to the actual appearance of the product…

“The product has sleek, clean lines, a diminutive form factor, and less than half of the useful features that everyone was expecting. Jobs... [More]”

UT2007 − Just around the corner

Published on in Video Games

 The Next Unreal Tournament gives a preview of the engine and development process that will create UT2007, coming to a graphics workhorse near you in 2007. Epic is overhauling the gameplay in this version in order to address some of the issues affecting the previous two incarnations of UT. Namely, that they didn’t seem to be as much fun to play as Quake because of all the bouncing around, unbalanced weapons and medium- to long-range weapons play.

They’re taking a new approach, tweaking level... [More]

Giant Steps (Flash)

Published on in Miscellaneous

 Giant Steps by Michael Levy is a wonderful, fun 3d visual interpretation of John Coltrane’s musical classic. It’s a sign that Flash can used for something other than annoying ads that flicker, flash, make noise, hover around over the web page and find ways around our popup blockers.

Really cool, soothing stuff. Check it out.

Three Daily Show Clips

Published on in Public Policy & Politics

Earth day

Battlefield Earth (Daily Show) shows Bush at a fund-raiser in the Smoky Mountains, “the nation’s most polluted national park”. His flight was grounded by a thunderstorm, so he was forced to wing his speech, to some degree. He didn’t vary too much from his standard program, offering his usual batch of lies and uncomfortably long pauses intended to allow the audience to erupt into gales of laughter. Every time he does this, it becomes more and more painfully obvious what a deleterious effect speaking... [More]

Popes, Hitlers, Nazis and combinations thereof

Published on in Public Policy & Politics

As most of you have probably heard, the new Pope joined the Hitler Youth. As you may not have heard, this is not a reason to panic and run around gossiping that the Catholics have not only elected a conservative Pope, but, in fact, elected a Pope who wants to kill all the Jews in the world.

Take a look at the details in New pope defied Nazis as teen during WWII (Seattle Post Intelligencer). After scanning through some charming paragraphs about wartime Bavaria, you’ll get to this part: “he … was compelled to join the... [More]”

Following Orwell’s Playbook

Published on in Public Policy & Politics

Step One (1)

Those parts of reality which make the government look bad are to be eliminated.

Using Bush administration eliminating 19-year-old international terrorism report (Knight Ridder) as a reference, we read that:

“The State Department decided to stop publishing an annual report on international terrorism after the government’s top terrorism center concluded that there were more terrorist attacks in 2004 than in any year since 1985, the first year the publication covered.”

Further reading shows that... [More]

Poison! Al-qaeda! Save yourselves!

Published on in Public Policy & Politics

Scotland Yard has recently been credited with foiling yet another sinister plan hatched by the nefarious Al Qaeda (the Arabic Emmanual Goldstein, for those living in a box for the last few years). Al Qaeda Poisons Seen Sowing More Panic than Death (Reuters). A literal read of the title indicates that the threat wasn’t so bad, but it includes the words “poison”, “panic” and “death”, so they still get an A for effort. The first sentence of the article cranks it up a notch further, getting everyone’s... [More]