Prioritization | TIL Technology

Vote!

VOTE! Everyone who is eligible should vote. Always. And I have a message for anyone who says there’s no point in voting, and say that it won’t make a difference... <OBSCENITY-LADEN RANT REDACTED> Or, to be a bit more civil, the idea that voting doesn’t matter is a strategic piece of disinformation being pushed by various groups in order to discourage those who might vote against them. Keep a sense of pragmatic optimism, and vote! When I talk about politics, I usually give US-

5 days ago5 min read

The Map is not the Territory

Cover of The World of Null-A, by A. E. van Vogt. 1st edition cover, via Wikipedia.org A truism does not a scientific discipline make. I last mentioned A. E. van Vogt’s Null-A novels a long time ago, noting the phrase “the map is not the territory”, which is a key concept of the Null-A universe. The phrase is actually a quote from Alfred Korzybski, in his book Science and Sanity, which formed the foundation for the school of thought known as General Semantics. Described by its

Oct 74 min read

Soul Contagion

Cartesian Flowchart The influence of René Descartes is hard to describe, and harder to demonstrate, but there are a few clues out there. Even if you discount most of his contributions to mathematics, physics, and philosophy, the phrase ‘Cogito, ergo sum’ (‘I think, therefore I am’) and the fact that we use the term ‘Cartesian geometry’ are a bit of a giveaway. With the ‘cogito’, Descartes was attempting to establish a ‘first principle’, upon which other ideas could be based.

Sep 304 min read

Eric Shaw

SpongeBob, via Wikimedia Commons I was not familiar with Eric Shaw, nor have I ever really watched SpongeBob SquarePants, though I am familiar with the characters through their impact on popular culture. According to Wikipedia, Mr Shaw is a television writer, credited with a number of episodes of SpongeBob, along with a number of other works. With that in mind, I was a bit confused when I heard the reference to Eric Shaw on Smashing Security Episode 476, in a conversation bet

Sep 234 min read

Stop Hacklore?

Hacker Silhouette, via Wikimedia Commons They want to help keep people safe. That’s a motivation I certainly support, but it’s important to be sure that your actions actually support your goal. On the 1-Dec-2025 episode of Cybersecurity Today, host David Shipley (whom I have mentioned before) talked about a new (at that time) website called Stop Hacklore! They describe themselves as “a group of current and former CISOs and security experts” who “want to offer guidance that ma

Sep 95 min read

Thanks Again Dr Fauci!

Dr Anthony Fauci, beside Trump (the best of us, beside the worst), via Wikimedia Commons Donald Trump’s first presidency was a global embarrassment, starting with the so-called ‘Muslim ban’, and ending with the January 6th insurrection. And then, in 2020, came COVID-19. This was a major global event, and there was no perfect course of action. There were a lot of bad ones, though, and Trump selected many of them. Selecting Alex Azar for Health and Human Services was not necess

Aug 194 min read

Where’s Bobby?

Cyclospora cayetanensis, via Wikimedia Commons I was surprised to learn that Waldo is actually Wally, and that he’s only been around since 1987. I first heard of him as an adult, but always assumed that he had been around for years before that period where he appeared to be everywhere. Just like Robert F Kennedy, about whom I have written several times. Most recently, I described the changes he made to the Food Pyramid, but I have also discussed his anti-vax views and his app

Jul 294 min read

Is Philanthropy Bad?

Charity meme, via www.rallycorp.com I sometimes find it useful to dig into assumptions, particularly when they are hiding in the “everyone knows...” category. While charity and philanthropy are related, most comparisons of the two words seem to focus on charity as a short-term provision of aid or support, and philanthropy as more strategic and focused on longer-term, systemic change. But when I started looking into how philanthropy is promoted, I found some interesting assump

Jul 226 min read

Is it Time to Panic?

“Beware of the Leopard”, from Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, via Wikimedia Commons In the classic scene from the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (I refer, of course, to the 1981 TV version), Arthur Dent confronts the person trying to bulldoze his house, who explains that the plans for the demolition had been placed on display. “On display? I eventually had to go down to the cellar.” “That’s the display department.” “With a torch.” “The lights had probably gone.” “So had t

Jun 36 min read

What is Neurotypical?

Da Vinci sketch of the human brain and skull (c. 1510), via Wikimedia.org NOTE: An edited version of this article appeared on The Skeptic (UK). “No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.” Winston Churchill, 11-Nov-1947 The term “neurodiversity” has been used in recent years to describe the natural variations in human neurolo

May 275 min read

Learning to be Agile!

Principles behind the Agile Manifesto Experience is learning the hard way that something won’t work, is harder than it looks, or will come back to haunt you. Learning from history is where you find that something didn’t work, was harder than it looked, or came back to haunt someone... and then you go ahead and do it again. The well-known quote that “history does not repeat itself, but it rhymes” is, of course, attributed to Mark Twain. Quotes like this can be very hard to tra

Mar 255 min read

By His Bootstraps!

Cover Art, Astounding Science Fiction, October 1941, via Wikipedia.org One of my favourite stories by Robert A Heinlein , was actually written by Anson MacDonald. Early in his career, Heinlein wrote under several pseudonyms , but only one of them was “obvious”. I’m not aware of any way to link the names Lyle Monroe, John Riverside, Caleb Saunders, or Simon York to Heinlein. In contrast, knowing that Robert Anson Heinlein was, at that time, married to Leslyn MacDonald made “An

Oct 29, 20254 min read