I text. A lot. There. I’ve admitted it. Text messages are actually pretty useful – especially if used appropriately. Unfortunately, human nature being what it is, and everything, a lot of people check their brains at the car door, and insist on texting whilst driving. Pandemonium ensues. And that’s a bad thing.
Governments, insisting that Something Must Be Done, do their typically heavy-handed thang – they ban texting while driving. But technology could offer a better way to deal with texting on the road, and I’m curious as to why nobody’s figured this out.
I have an iPhone (a phone that elicits much the same passion in me that guns did from Charlton Heston…”from my, cold, dead fingers!”). I have a free program installed on it called “Dragon Dictation.” Pretty cool app. It allows you to dictate anything, then converts the audio automagically to text. Does a pretty good job, too. They’ll even let you paste it into a text message. Cool – as far as it goes. But what’s needed – by Nuance (makers of the Dragon app), Apple, or for pity’s sake SOMEBODY – is a full-blown SMS application that will allow you to speak and send – as well as convert the incoming texts to audio, so you can, well…text without um…texting.
This could be a killer app. Or given the number of accidents caused by texting, maybe the ultimate NON-killing app. And it ought to come with every smartphone. But if it can’t be free, at least it could be advertiser-supported – either with visual ads, or with audio ads (like radio, duh!) that would be limited to, say once every 60 seconds or so (and no longer than 5 seconds, please!).
I my experience, there’s no way to legislate common sense. And if you can find a way to enable people to do what they want, and do it safely without venturing too far out of their comfort zones – it’s bound to work. Wouldn’t it be better to have “voice texting” (vText? vSMS?) than just ban it completely? And besides – most people can’t type worth a warm bucket of spit. I can’t believe speech recognition would make messaging a bigger mess than it is now.
I was born and raised in Louisiana. While my hometown is Shreveport, New Orleans was, is and probably always shall be the center of the Louisiana Universe. When I was but a lad, the state got pro-football fever, when the New Orleans Saints set up shop. I remember hearing that we’d see a Super Bowl trophy Really Soon Now – surely within the first ten years, n’est pas? Nope. Throughout most of the team history, it’s been a story of loss – sometimes snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, sometimes just being bad. Heartbreakingly, astonishingly bad. What other team could generate so much angst and ennui from their own fans that they would hide their faces in shame.
Tonight, all is forgiven.
All that faith, love, and hope has been rewarded tonight with the ultimate prize. Let us celebrate. Let there be merriment in the streets, celebration in the schools, and songs in our hearts. Let the men in black and gold be our standard-bearers, and lead the state proudly.
There is no need to make excuses any longer.
There is no need to put an asterisk beside the state’s listing.
There is no need to apologize.
Tonight the entire state rejoices.
Tonight, New Orleans looks with pride and confidence to the future.
Tonight we are as one – one state with a shared pride.
“Loser”-ania no more, indeed.
Recently, the Supreme Court wisely overturned as unconstitutional the vaunted “McCain/Feingold Campaign Finance Law” that restricted the ability of corporations to make contributions to campaigns.
Why is this a good thing?
First of all, the way the law was written, it tied the hands of business, while giving unions the opportunity to spend with virtually no restrictions. Given that unions (over the last 20 years, anyway) have given over 90% of their contributions to Democrats, this has created a lop-sided playing field. Read the rest of this entry »
Recently, a friend of mine (who usually exhibits a much higher degree of common sense) proposed that we stage a Constitutional Convention for the purposes of throwing out our current form of government and replacing it with a Parliamentary system, much as they have in the UK.
Pause with me for a nanosecond, whilst we ponder just how screamingly bad an idea this would be.
For those of you that slept through 8th grade Civics or Freshman History class, let me provide you with a soupcon of background on the way things evolved over the pond, and you’ll see why I hold this idea with the same esteem that I usually reserve for things I scrape off the bottom of my shoe, Harry Reid, and Nancy Pelosi… Read the rest of this entry »
If you’d asked me three months ago if I’d still be in Shreveport, taking care of my dad, I would have said something like “hie thee to an asylum…you must be mad.” Yet, here I sit.
Taking care of an aging parent is a lot of things – a responsibility. A challenge. A privilege. But a burden it is not. I love my dad, and he needs my help. Unfortunately, It’s played havoc with my family, and for circumstances beyond my control, there’s little I can do about that, at least for now.
If you’re reading this blog, thanks for stopping by. I don’t really have time to post right now – soon, I hope. but let me encourage you to follow me on Twitter (www.twitter.com/captaindigital, natch). Since it’s just 140 characters at a time, and I can do it from my iPhone, I do seem to be able to fit that into my day.
I’ve spent the last month or so in the place where I was born and grew up. This evening, I was in a restaurant with my dad and another relative, when my college roommate turned up, dining with his family.
There’s nothing quite like seeing somebody you haven’t seen in over 10 years to bring back a flood of memories.
The weird thing is, he didn’t really look any older.
Then again, aside from a few pounds and few gray hairs, I don’t think I do, either.
The even weirder thing, though, is I’ve recently run into a bunch of people from my past, either in person or online, who fall into one of three categories: Read the rest of this entry »
I was surfing around my Dad’s satellite service last night, and stumbled on a rebroadcast of Blazing Saddles on AMC. Several years ago, I made a list of what I thought were the ten funniest movies ever made (in no particular order). As I recall, the list went something like this, give or take:
Blazing Saddles (Brooks/Little/Wilder)
Young Frankenstein (Brooks/Wilder/Feldman)
Monty Python and the Holy Grail (Monty Python)
Arsenic & Old Lace (Cary Grant)
The Producers (Brooks/Mostel/Wilder)
Animal House (Landis/Belushi)
A Night at the Opera (Marx Brothers)
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead (Stoppard/Oldman/Roth)
Airplane! (Abrams/Zucker/Abrams)
Duck Soup (Marx Brothers)
When you watch a great movie, you’re watching a collaborative effort, but one that SOMEbody (usually the director) oversees and marks with his or her creative stamp. In comedies, more so that any other art form, timing is essential. Just one frame (a 24th of a second) can make a recognizable difference in the timing of a joke.
For those of you who are curious, I’m still in Shreveport, taking care of my Dad. Not much more to report. I’ll be back – and back writing, when I can.
For those of you that are regular readers of this blog, you might wonder, “Where’s Captain Digital?” The answer is, I’ve been busy, taking care of family stuff. And unfortunately, I’m not yet done.
I’d love to tell you all about it, and someday, perhaps I will. Suffice it to say that family’s gotta come first. Of course it didn’t help that I expected to have web access here, and that didn’t happen until late last night/early this morning.
I’ll be back sometime soon, I hope. In the meantime, please forgive me if I’m not able to post as often as I’d like.
Talk to you soon.
We are all, at one level or another, creatures of habit. That’s a good thing, most of the time. I mean, if we woke up to a world everyday where we had to figure out how to feed and clothe ourselves, with no idea of what would come next, none of us would leave very productive lives. But there’s a dark side to habit – that being the phenomena whereby we attempt to pigeonhole everything that happens, so we can process it, understand it (in terms of previous experiences) and move on. This system of shorthand evaluations doesn’t work at all, however, when you run smack dab up against something new. New is…different. It doesn’t fit the mold. It doesn’t lend itself to snap analyzes, or fitting into patterns. But “new” is where innovation comes from. It’s where solutions come from. And it’s where our future lies.
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