StopOnlinePetitions.com Launches

For years, online petitions have plagued the Internet. They spam our mailboxes and message boards, but they never accomplish anything. Finally, a dedicated site to fighting online petitions has been created. Go sign the petition to stop online petitions, and beat them at their own game!

HEY EVERYONE GO HERE AND SIGN!!!!!!!!!! IT IS FUN!!!!!!!!!

I know I haven't done any real posts lately but I have cleaned the side panel up a bit. Also all these posts from http://digg.com are beause I read this site everyday instead of writing insightful entries on my blog. Thanx to Kevin Rose for the great site and mindless distraction :)

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A Giant Leap for Artificial Intelligence?

In the next few months, after being patiently nurtured for 22 years, an artificial brain called Cyc will be put online for the world to interact with. Opening Cyc up to the masses is expected to accelerate the rate at which it learns, giving it access to web pages, webcams and data entered manually by anyone who wants to contribute.

read more | digg story

Sports events leave a giant 'ecological footprint'

LARGE sporting events have an "ecological footprint" thousands of times the size of the pitches they are played on. That's according to researchers who have calculated a sporting event's environmental impact for the first time.


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Correction

It appears that there has been a miscommunication between me and Bruce it appears that the blog linked to wasn't his and instead it was this one. Now that we have that sorted out. Lets move on :-)

Friends

Last night at work one of my friends said to me "Ben you're so good for my ego". In return I told her that saying that was good for my ego too. I think its important for friends to boost one another's ego and sometimes tell them the things they want to hear. But when is too much? Sometimes we may also need to tell our friends that something shouldn't be done or that they should have done something different. I think that friendship is about knowing when they need an ego boost and when they need to be told something that may hurt them.

My goal for today is to give everyone's ego a good boost because in return they will boost my ego which at the moment could do with a good boost.

The good the bad and the downright hopeless

Went on a trip to Sydney the other day for Kirstin's birthday. Didn't really want to go but was made to go. I had a good time except for the bloody walking around for hours trying to find somewhere that was decent for a drink. It was quite funny cause once we had enough we got in a cab and found several places that we knew about that were good places to go. Also ended up back in Coogee which turned out to have a big nightclub that was just what we looking for. Oh well.....

Got my Uni results the other day and i was a little disappointed. Even though I didn't get any marks below 70% I must have done really badly in some of my exams cause my marks before them were really good. Oh well maybe next semester (the catch cry of university students).

Big shout out to Bruce for giving me 1250 shares in his blog on blogshares it is muchly appreciated and I love your blog too. Would love to have a chat and see what else we have in common.

No major philosophical discussion today. Have been too busy with work and when not working all I've wanted to do is veg out in front of the box (this is the new opiate for the masses). Maybe the box is the reason why I have not had any philosophical thoughts. Maybe we should all join the campaigns to turn off TV at http://www.tvturnoff.org/index.htm and http://www.turnoffyourtv.com/ and then we all might be more philosophical.

If anyone would like to discuss philosophy and uni (or college for the Americans) or sociology (my major at uni) then please leave me a message and we can start up some dialogue to get things happening.

Happy Blogging

Things to be thankful for

My recent discussion of capitalism bought a few responses from readers. So it got me thinking..... Is there any real alternative to capitalism. We all know that the main threat used to be communism, but all those countries that still are communist are starting to become more and more capitalist. This in my mind shows that it really isn't a viable alternative to capitalism.

I think the best starting point to thinking through capitalism comes from all the good things about it.

In society today we have so much available to us. We have a wonderful thing called a computer that allows us the opportunity to talk to people from all over the world and through various forms, such as blogs, to share our thoughts and interests with other people. We also have education systems that teach us to think about things in all sorts of ways so that we may form our own opinions on things that really matter to us. We are also able to educate ourselves as much or as little as we want depending on desires to do so.

Now some of the bad things

Sometimes capitalism puts monetary needs above human needs. By this I mean that the goals of capitalism is to make money through more development. Sometimes this means that companies will do things that have a negative impact on some sections of the community. Usually this is done for the greater benefit of the whole of society. Also capitalism is never ending. By this I mean that the capitalists are always looking for more development of capital and thus see no end to development at all. This can go against some of the other thinking that we live in a finite world that is not growing and that cannot handle unending development.

In my thoughts all things have good and bad points. Nothing we create as humans will ever be perfect and I firmly believe that a utopian society is unachievable. I think we should as a society be searching for greater fulfillment rather then a better life. I feel fulfilled when I educate myself and think through all the good thins and the bad things in our society. BY adding to the current knowledge of things I feel fulfilled.

I'm sure other people feel fulfilled in other ways and I think it is important to stop and think everyday about what makes you feel fulfilled and pursue that until you find something else that replaces that feeling. But you must also recognise that you will never ever be completely fulfilled because that is what life is all about.

Thats just some of my thoughts anyway ;)

If anyone else has any thoughts please let me know

Dogboy Lover

Went to see my friends brothers bands 'the looks' at the Cambridge the other night and this band after called Dogboy lover were really cool and inspired me to blog this.

"Down with capitalism, down with Christmas" he shouted from the mic
Somehow it got me thinking, is it possible to be anti-capitalism?
The boy shouting this works at HMV a big music shop, he was using an apple Mac computer to mix some funky beats, he wore a brand name shirt. The only things I could see that even indicated he may have hippy tendencies is that he wore ripped pants that looked very well worn and his hair was rather unkempt by anyone's standards. So does this mean he is really not anti-capitalism as he so proclaimed before he started? Is it impossible to be anti-capitalism.

that's it for now. More thoughts on capitalism, life, the universe later. I really should blog more and I will try. But I have a hard enough time to remember that I should check my emails :-)

Hope everyone is good out there
BYEBYE