Month: April 2010

Open Windows Explorer to the current working directory from Cygwin

You’re sweating away deep in the bowels of some framework when suddenly you realize: “Wow, I actually kind of need to use Windows Explorer here.”

Thus begins a frantic thirty seconds of double clicking through layers of folders.

Rob has an awesome little bash shell script that will open Windows Explorer to whatever directory in which you happen to be.

I’ve named it “explore”. So now if I need to pop a gui while thirty levels deep in an app, I just issue a simple $ explore command.

Posted on by nurikabe 5

Japan Going Bankrupt?

According to Hideo Kumano, chief economist at Dai-ichi Life Research Institute, Japan’s “debt to budget ratio is more than 50 percent” and without issuing more government bonds would be bankrupt by 2011.

This comes on the heals of strange reports from friends working in the Japanese IT industry. Supposedly Japanese tax collectors are showing up, unannounced, at medium and large-sized IT gaishikei, rifling through the books and insisting to peak into the accounts of executives.

Hmmm.

Posted on by nurikabe 0

Fluoride is the lead of our time

Excellent video from the Fluoride Action Network.

The fluoride thing has been on my radar for quite awhile. I’m finally getting serious about it.

In a nutshell: The limited benefits of pharmaceutical sodium fluoride are achieved via topical application. Fluoride does not work systemically. Yet adding fluoride to public water supplies amounts to the unethical and uncontrolled medical dosing of entire, non-consenting populations, each individual of which consumes and reacts to the fluoride drug differently. The effects are generally adverse.

Given recent studies showing a link between fluoride intake and loss of IQ, conspiracy theorists will argue that fluoridation is a deliberate and ongoing attempt at “population management”. Considering, however, that it is not pharmaceutical grade sodium fluoride being added to the water, but hydra fluorosilicic acid — a fertilizer phosphate industry waste — I think we’re simply seeing the result of capitalistic status quo: a sixty year plus way of turning a profit on expensive industrial waste.

It’s just that, in this case, the human kidney serves as the waste treatment plant. For a neurotoxin.

Now I need to figure out if any of my favorite beers are made from spring water. Cheers.

Posted on by nurikabe 2