America is Orwellian

It is unfortunate for George Orwell that his name has come to symbolize the precise conditions he despised, but such are the vagaries pop culture memes. Orwell was a protector of freedoms and liberties, yet the opposite conditions bear his name. Jingoism-clad, reality-twisting justifications for the suppression of both basic rights and normal, legal dissent are hallmarks of Orwellian thought-control.

George Bush’s administration has been running roughshod over privacy in the US ever since 9/11. They claim to be tracking terrorists, but evidence has repeatedly emerged that they are also tracking dissenters and journalists. Here’s Republican John King on the latest revelations by the New York Times about bank account snooping by Bush and his long arm agencies:

“I am asking the Attorney General to begin an investigation and prosecution of the New York Times — the reporters, the editors and the publisher,” he said. “We’re at war, and for the Times to release information about secret operations and methods is treasonous.” King claimed the Times “violated the Espionage Act, the Comint Act,” and that the paper was “pompous, arrogant, and more concerned about a left-wing elitist agenda than it is about the security of the American people.” King added, “for the editor of the New York Times to say that he decides it’s in the national interest — no one elected them to anything.”

“At war”, Treason, Pompous, Left-wing, elitist, arrogant, “national interest”, “unelected”…all of these code words point to the emergence of a dangerous trend in US politics. There is a growing chasm between Republicans and Democrats in the US. People are starting to move to neighborhoods of red and blue designations. The dumbing of America by the deterioration of mass media products and the educational system means everything is “debated” in Orwellian double-speak…on both sides! There are two isolating, absolutist narratives emerging that are leading the US into two solitudes. That’s dangerous for all of us.

We’re not running out of oil

But that doesn’t mean we should continue burning it constantly! The Alberta oil sands have a reserve of possibly 2 trillion barrels. That’s six times the reserve in Saudi Arabia, even of the Saudis are telling the truth. I take this as bad news since the average person will become more complacent about alternative technologies if there is no oil supply crisis.

Which leads me to the funniest quote I’ve heard all day. Jim Locke of Ft. McMurray (a lovely town of dust and pick-ups) drives the worlds largest dump truck at one of the big tarsands strip mines. What’s that like, Jim?

“You have 14 steps going up, and at my house you have 14 steps to the bedroom. So it’s like going upstairs in my house, sitting on my bed and driving the house downtown,” says Locke.

The Decider

Mr. Bush was not going to escape my News of the World series.

Bootcamp is Dead

Who needs Apple’s Bootcamp? Tonight I installed Parallels Desktop on my MacBook Pro. I installed a fresh copy of Windows XP Home onto a new virtual machine. It took about an hour to set things up, including running all system updates and installing Office. The entire Windows XP VM is minimized right now as I type this blog entry in my every day OS X environment.

There are a number of things that amaze me about Parallels. I recall a few months back jokingly asking how long it would be before I could switch desktops between Windows and OS X like one switches user accounts in OS X. When I put my Parallels Windows XP virtual machine into full screen mode, it swings into view exactly like a fast switch between user accounts in OS X. Option-Return escapes full screen mode and you can minimize the VM when you don’t need it, or just shut it down and turn it off.

I recently bought an Athlon-based PC with 1GB of RAM and a 3500 series procesor. The Parallels Windows XP VM running right now on my MacBook Pro is faster by quite a margin. It boots in about 15 seconds. It launches MS Office applications in about one second. From the click in the IE icon to a fully loaded MSN home page is about three seconds. I’m assuming this is because of the dual core Intel processor running inside my MacBook Pro, and the efficiency of the virtualization software.

I need a Windows box because many of the sites I build are viewed by users who are Windows-based. I need to experience what they experience. Parallels gives me the ability to do that at will, at full speed and without a flaw. I have not yet found a problem with this software. It just works.

Looking at my activity monitor I see no strain at all. I have 2GB of RAM and with several mac apps running along with the XP VM I still have 800MB of inactive RAM. I mean where’s the catch? If all you need as a fully functional, super fast XP box inside your Mac, get Parallels. It is simply great.

Oh, and why would anybody want to run Bootcamp now? Rebooting just to look at Windows or run a Windows app? How ten seconds ago. That said, I don’t know how Parallels will hold up to processor intensive applications like 3d graphics and video or image editing. I have no need for that and likley won’t be finding the time to test it any time soon.

Virtualization has come a long, long way in a hurry. Next, I think I’ll install Solaris.

Flickr is gamma!

But I’ve been iota for months now. Nice try, Flickr.

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