Information is power, we all know that. Sometimes the information you want and need is not accessible. Such as the future. It would be nice to know what the future holds.
I have been offered a job at a startup doing some robot-related work. And they are offering me a lot of money, and a lot of stock. And a lot of risk.
NI will be offering me... something, tomorrow I suppose.
I think I'll be going with the lesser known, the stability of NI. Like Marla says, risk is for people with savings. The startup could be worth millions, or it could get its ass kicked in the market and lose big time. If I knew which, I could make a better decision.
Politics is another arena where good information is hard to find.
The mainstream news channels are, as best I can tell, pure crap. Faux News with their "Fair and Balanced" makes me itch; the talking heads there have as much credibility as a soap opera.
And the others? Who knows! I don't trust TV news, it's all about the entertainment. The newspapers aren't any better. And they all seem to be following a specific agenda.
Of course, alternative news sources have as much agenda as the mainstream ones, if not more.
People who have news written about them say that the interviewers come to them with a particular story in mind, and are mostly looking for details to back them up.
Is this finding news, or __making__ news?
What happened to investigations? To covering both sides of a story? Of including the details and not just the bits that make for a dramatic report?
So, back to politics. How would I find out the truth about the candidates? I poked my nose into the national committee websites for both parties... http://www.rnc.org and http://www.dnc.org... but they just scared me.
The Republicans, while many of their anti-people positions make my skin crawl, provide a good resource for embarassing details about their enemies, the Democrats.
The Democrat site doesn't seem to be as detail-oriented as the Republican site. I mean, the Republicans have Democrat-bashing down to a science, and they seem to be very organised about it.
But either way, there won't be much truth to be found in either site. My hope would be that, reading both, it might be possible to actually find both sides of something. But I don't know if I want to suffer that much.
Maybe it all comes down to finding the transcripts of speeches and voting records of politicians, and extrapolating from there.
Right now, I think I'm in the Anyone But Bush camp. But for future elections, I really want to find a source of good information.
On a more enjoyable note, these pictures of 3D sidewalk art are absolutely amazing, at least while it is still up:
[[http://www.mooie-meiden.com/wtfpeople/temp/chalk.htm]]
Posted by Edwin at February 2, 2004 03:54 PMHey, Edwin. This is Jef (from Eugene). Thanks for the links to the chalk sidewalk, very kewl. I have always wondered at the minds of the people who could put so much work and detail into something so transient, but I guess that's what we all do in a Nihilistic sort of way. At least what they are doing is beautiful. I saw something like it in Florence once. The chalk artists (I'm sure they have a formal nomenclature, but I have no idea what it is) were drawing on the sidewalk in front of the museum what was on the paintings inside, it was absolutely beautiful.
The job "problem" (is it a problem when you are offered too many jobs?) is a toughie. No risk, no reward (or possibly cripling financial pain :) ). I hate decisions (which possibly explains my poverty :) ).
Keep up the good work,
Jef