technology | Honjii's Harangues

If the government is going to secretly scan us, why not make this our national health care plan?

July 13, 2012 at 12:24 pm | Posted in civil liberties, government, health care, technology | Leave a comment
Tags: civil liberties, Department of Homeland Security, Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, health care, In-Q-Tel, privacy, United States Department of Homeland Security

Scary stuff and rife with possibilities for extreme abuses and violations! From Gizmodo:

Hidden Government Scanners Will Instantly Know Everything About You From 164 Feet Away
NAC

Within the next year or two, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security will instantly know everything about your body, clothes, and luggage with a new laser-based molecular scanner fired from 164 feet (50 meters) away. From traces of drugs or gun powder on your clothes to what you had for breakfast to the adrenaline level in your body—agents will be able to get any information they want without even touching you.

And without you knowing it. read more

It seems this technology could be better used in the medical field, but if the government is so hell bent on spying on us then let’s call it national health care and get some benefits from it as well.

Becoming one with your cell phone

May 7, 2012 at 12:43 pm | Posted in modern trends, science, social comment, technology | Leave a comment
Tags: cell phone implants, Mobile device, Mobile phone, Science and Technology, Tattoo, vibrating tattoo ink, Wireless

I’ve thought for a long time now, that eventually technology will find a way for people to have cell phones permanently implanted into their bodies. It would be so much more convenient to have your phone as part of your anatomy, and possibly less annoying for the observer, than to have the phone constantly in your hand/s and/or in front of your face.

I think cell phone use can, for some, be classified as an addiction. The other day I was driving on a very narrow, winding road when I came up behind a bicyclist who instead of moving close to the shoulder, to allow me to pass, swerved aimlessly in front of my car and toward the middle of the road forcing me to slow down until I could safely pass. When this finally happened I saw that the guy on the bike was riding no hands and no eyes as he was completely engrossed in texting. A mac truck could have been heading right toward him; he was oblivious. I thought he would deserve it if I circled back and ran him over.

Image courtesy of http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/cell-phone-implant.htm

So I guess there is good news on the horizon for cell phone junkies. There are designs in the works for implanting phones into teeth and under the skin. In addition Nokia has a patent for tattoo ink that vibrates in various patterns when you receive a call, text, or other notification from your phone. Thank goodness for this last one, it allows you to be more than three feet from your precious mobile device.

These options raise all kinds of questions and scenarios in my mind, aside from the obvious unknown negative health implications.

For starters let’s look at the dental and skin phone implants. Will there be small clinics located in phone stores or will you need to take the device to a medical facility? Will the doctors and dentists need special training and certifications? Or, and this one is scary, will they simply train some of the top phone sales people as phone-med techs (an entirely new job category)?

image courtesy of http://phys.org/news122819670.html

Teeth can be rather sensitive. When you receive a call will it be an unpleasant sensation similar to having a tooth drilled without Novocaine? I think this gives new meaning to talking with your mouth full and if you have one implanted into your forearm you can truly say, “Talk to the hand.” What happens with the arm and dental implant when your contract is up; does it require a new medical procedure? If you don’t pay your bill, will some guy with a scalpel show up at your door? I’m thinking they should just put the phones in breast implants…we could have all kinds of fun with that topic on another day.

Moving on to the vibrating tattoo ink, which could be a great source of irritation or pleasure…I’m guessing. If you chose to put the tattoo in a spot where you have a lot of tension the tattoo could have a relaxing massage-like effect. On the other hand if you receive a lot of calls and texts it could start to get kind of annoying. And I just know that there will be the guy (or guys) who thinks it’s a good idea to have the vibrating tattoo placed on his penis and spends the day calling himself. Or maybe it vibrates for her pleasure, in which case getting a phone call during an intimate encounter, rather than being a bad thing, may enhance the experience.

I am really glad that so much thought and money is being used to develop these products that will greatly enhance our lives. Do you love your cell phone enough to have an invasive procedure that makes you one with your phone?

Attention WANKERS, there’s an app for that

April 8, 2011 at 11:12 pm | Posted in modern trends, social comment, technology | Leave a comment
Tags: App Store, Smartphone

Image by TwisterMc via Flickr

It seems we are becoming a people who cannot make a move without consulting an app. For those not familiar with the lingo, an app is short for an application for a smart phone. I think the amount of apps available number somewhere in the millions. Some are games, some are just cute or novel time-suckers, and some are actually useful.

I don’t own a smart phone so I do not have app capabilities, yet somehow I have managed to survive. In phone years my cel phone (yes it’s from the days when they were still phones and not wireless devices) is a dinosaur. I suppose I have a dumb phone, which I like to think, has a smart person. Though my phone would be an embarrassment to some, these days, I still think it’s pretty smart. It can record voice memos, keep track of appointments, function as an alarm clock, tell me the time anywhere in the world among other cool features. The best part about my phone is the talking caller ID. When I enter someone’s number in the phone book, instead of their real name I enter someone very famous and/or important so that when, for example, my boyfriend calls all those within earshot must be enormously wowed that I’m receiving a call from Barack Obama. Not only does my phone talk to me, I can talk to it, so that when making a call I simply further impress people by saying, to my phone, “call Rachel Maddow” , when I’m really just calling my mother.

Getting back on track, I wonder about the ramifications of having a smart phone app for just about anything and everything. I can already see plenty of evidence that capacity for critical thinking and creative problem solving, in humans, is diminishing. Will we get to a point where we can’t make a move without consulting an app to decide where and when to eat, what to buy, what to think?

The gym to which I belong has been touting an app to keep you connected to the gym anytime, anywhere. This would be useful because what..I might find myself at a coffee shop or stuck in traffic and feel the need to do some crunches? And even if I did, I think I could manage it without consulting a smart phone.

Everywhere I go I see people with their faces glued to their smart phones doing stuff. I don’t know what stuff they are doing, but they have the glazed eyes of the brainwashed.

Back to the apps. I know there are apps for just about anything you can think of but yesterday a friend emailed me about a phone app that made believe we have sunk to a new low. Enter the Wank-0-meter.

Technology at the service of your personal sexual life

For far too many years, masturbation has crossed an age of darkness. No metrics, no references, no performance analysis.

If this is something you feel you simply cannot do without you can get more information and download the app at the above link.

Happy wanking.

Technology Smecknology….. (bohemianknitter.blogspot.com)
Smart Phone Apps, Exchanges and Data Theft (businessinsider.com)

Spitting on your burger or groping your goodies

January 7, 2011 at 11:41 pm | Posted in Current Events, hypocrisy, stupidity, technology, terrorism | 8 Comments
Tags: airport security, enhanced airport security, full body scanners, pat downs, radiation, Transportation Security Administration, travel, TSA

click to see shirt

I’m afraid someone might break into my house and murder me so I put three very high quality locks and an expensive, state of the art, alarm system on my bedroom door. My front door is wide open so the bad guys will be lured, like a fly to a spider’s web, to my boudoir where they will be caught up in my high level security system. I know what you’re thinking; that Honjii is one smart cookie.

I love accolades as much as the next person but in all honesty I can’t take credit for my home security system, I copied the model from the TSA whose job it is to protect planeloads of people from being blown to smithereens. For those unfamiliar with how the system works; the airport is a huge building or series of buildings that anyone can enter without so much as a second look. But boy I have to tell you they have their act together when it comes to getting near one of the gates where planeloads of people wait to go through security; the area that keeps us from being turned into the aforementioned smithereens. Hypothetically speaking, say some evil terrorist came through the main entrance to the airport and wanted to blow up a bunch of people; they would be lured (like the above unsuspecting fly) to the area where the potential blow-upees are gathered like sardines. Said evil terrorist would need only to get into line behind hundreds of shoeless people waiting in lines, carrying items to be inspected while waiting to choose which form of humiliation they will suffer: being seen naked by, or groped by an unskilled low paid TSA worker who, by the luck of which job application struck pay dirt, is fondling your naughty bits instead of spitting on your burger at McDonalds. This system is keeping us safe.

Even as I’m writing this something doesn’t quite seem right, but I can’t quite put my finger on it. I’m going to go eat a muffin and give this some more thought.

click to see shirt

The muffin was delicious. I’ve figured it out, it was so obvious that I completely missed the flaw in this system even as I described it above. We shouldn’t be guarding the bedroom door, but the front door.

If some evil terrorist wanted to blow up a planeload of people do you suppose the objective would be to ruin a perfectly good plane or to kill a bunch of people? If the objective is to kill a planeload of people it doesn’t really matter whether the people are on the plane or not, so why not just blow them up before they go through the magic door to safety?

When I had this epiphany, I pondered whether I should share, lest I give anyone any new ideas for ways to commit mayhem. Then I realized something: there are no new ideas. Every original thought you or I have had, or thought we had, was being thought by millions of others – probably sometimes at the very same moment.

I’m wondering why the front door to the airport isn’t the point of security. If they paid as much attention to who enters there as they do to how long you stop your damn car to drop someone off…you literally just get to slow down and your passenger has to grab their luggage and jump out… that might actually make us safer. I don’t understand why we don’t have highly trained security experts checking every person who enters the airport. It’s no guarantee, but it would be a hell of a lot better system than the lame ass one we have in place right now.

click to see shirt

And another thing that bugs me. If you, or I, or anyone is caught looking at a naked kid on a computer, you’re going to jail. If the potential hamburger spit applicator looks at your kid naked on a computer while he or she is going through the full body scanner he’s making us all safer in the sky. If a stranger rubs their hands all over your child it’s called molestation, and that’s another crime. If the TSA screener does it, it makes us all safe and secure in the sky.

We can’t seem to get a straight answer as to how much radiation the scanners dose us with, the TSA claims it’s an insignificant amount. I was listening to a discussion with a radiologist that is concerned about the scanners because not all radiation is created equal and a low dose, depending on how and where it is administered could be worse than a high dose. This is the example that was given: The scanner radiation is aimed at your entire body’s largest organ, the skin. It’s a thin protective layer. The radiation also includes your eyes, neck, and head. According to the discussion this radiation, even at a small dose, is worse than a larger dose concentrated on one particular area of the body, such as an x-ray. We have no idea of the long term effects of these scanners, especially on those who travel often.

Just for shits and giggles, if you opt for the body scan, you should strike a very seductive pose. If you’re not sure how to do that just google seductive poses for ideas and you will see hundreds of pictures of Paris Hilton. If you opt for the pat down, during the procedure start out moaning softly, then step up your game a bit by saying YES, YES, THAT’S IT..HARDER, FASTER..NO DON’T STOP and end by faking an orgasm (if the screener is very good at their job you might not have to fake it).

click to see shirt

A note on the shirts pictured in this post: No shirts were harmed during the writing of this post. I have purchased one of each and intend to wear them when I fly to see how amused the TSA screeners will be (hopefully my next post will not be from behind bars). Clicking on each shirt will take you to where it was purchased, should you want one for your very own.

Why I don’t tweet

August 9, 2010 at 5:59 pm | Posted in humor, technology | 4 Comments
Tags: procrastination, social networking, tweets, twitter

As I was parking my car I noticed a sign on a nearby dry cleaners that said follow us on Twitter and Facebook. In fact just about every business now does this and I am trying to figure out what the hell could possibly be happening in a dry cleaning establishment that would be interesting enough to follow, or why I would want to be their Facebook friend. And where do they find the time? Is business so slow they have nothing better to do, and if it is then wouldn’t the Tweets be even less eventful? I suppose I could check it out and see, but …well I guess I just don’t want to.

Quite some time ago I did get a Twitter account but I have never tweeted, not even once. From time to time I receive notification that someone is following me on Twitter which, for the follower, would take up less time than watching paint dry. It isn’t that I don’t have random thoughts I’d like to share, I do; it happens all the time, and often when I’m not in front of my computer and as I mentioned in a previous post; I don’t own a mobile device. Even though my phone is not smart and somewhat elderly (in tech years) it does have some pretty neat features, tweeting is not one of them. So I either use my phone to record a voice memo, or call my home phone and leave myself a message, or grab any available scrap of paper on which to jot my thoughts (which later will be impossible for me to decipher) when I think of something I might want to write about or remember for any reason.

My phone has two features that I have decided I never want to be without when the time comes to replace my present phone; talking caller ID and voice commands, including voice dialing. Though I don’t use the phone often it is great when I’m driving, in the event someone does call the phone announces the caller’s name, and if it’s not in my phone’s directory it announces the number. I really have fun with this feature because the phone will announce the name of anyone I have entered, however I have entered it. For example, I changed my boyfriend’s entry to Barack Obama, so that when he calls, my cell phone announces, in its somewhat robotic voice, “Call from Barack Obama”. Sometimes I forget to put the phone on vibrate when I go to the gym, and on more than one occasion women in the locker room have been treated to that strange voice coming from my locker, announcing a call from our president. A good way to impress people is to have my boyfriend call at just the right moment. Now the women at the gym are either standing in line to be my friend, or giving me the evil eye, depending on their personal political preferences.

I seem to have gotten off course. The reason I don’t tweet is that I am way too busy procrastinating about doing all the other things I need to be doing. So when I get around to taking care of everything that is piled on or near my desk, I’ll tweet. Until then, to my tens of followers on Twitter, I apologize.

Airport Body Scanners – Key to Health Care Reform?

January 6, 2010 at 1:21 am | Posted in Current Events, government spending, health care, humor, technology, terrorism | 1 Comment
Tags: crotch bomber, enhanced airport security, full body scanners, underwear bomber

Reading a post, about airport security, on The World According to Keith Saunders an idea occurred to me. Keith compares the cost of instituting new security measures and the number of lives they will save, with the number of lives saved and the cost of health care reform.

The new full body scanners are going to cost over 40 billion to install. Yet we were told that the U.S. couldn’t have the public option because of the money it would have cost. How many more people would survive through better health care? I’m betting it’s thousands of times the amount people who will be saved by enhanced security. read more

So I got to thinking, why not combine health care reform and enhanced airport security. Surely the technology exists for the body scanners to become a twofer…an all-in-one security scanner and a medical diagnostic device (kind of like the all-in-one fax, printer, scanner, but more sophisticated). While scanning for weapons or explosives it could look for diseases, clogged arteries, damaged organs, body mass index and much, much more. Order now and you get a second scanner at half price and a George Foreman Grill. Think of the advantages. You get your yearly physical exam and a vacation for the price of a ticket to fly.

Why I Would Rather Dig a Ditch

April 7, 2007 at 4:16 am | Posted in Consumer Issues, humor, rants, technology | 2 Comments

I spend too much of my time chained to this slave-driver called a computer. There was a time people deluded themselves into thinking that computers would cut down on paper, speed things up and make life easier. I’m sure it seemed like a really great idea at the time, but what the hell were they thinking?

Going paperless would be great, but I think computers are the biggest tree killers going. Computers generate more paper than before we were paperless. When our parents got the phone bill it was one page (typed on one side), they wrote a check and paid it. It’s not just the phone company, that’s just my favorite example of a big corporation everyone loves to hate. Since they no longer have to pay a typist to type every single bill being sent out, they seem to have discovered how much fun it can be to include so much information in the bill that:

Instead of one page, it’s now at least three or four (printed on both sides). That inconvenient old fashioned one page (single sided) bill said something like, this is how much you owe us, please send the money, and we appreciate your business. The bills today, if they could be translated, probably say something like, we don’t really know how much you owe us, but this is how much of your money we want and if you don’t send it right now we will turn off your service and make sure you cannot get service anywhere else ever again, because we are so big and powerful and there are so many people overpopulating the planet that we don’t really give a damn whether we have your business or not because right now even as our computer is generating this bill, hundreds of thousands of new customers are signing up.
No one can understand it, we don’t even know if we’re getting cheated, and I suspect we are. I think it’s designed into today’s complicated billing systems. If each one of the millions of customers is overcharged an amount that is so insignificant it wouldn’t be worth the time for the majority of consumers to try to correct it, think how much extra revenue that would add up to. (even if we did figure out where they were sticking it to us, just go ahead and try getting it ironed out, see Customer Service, India Should Change Name to Customer Service).

After my parents paid their bills they had this little cardboard accordion file where they kept all their records. They didn’t have piles of paper inundating them on a daily basis, a room called an office, or a need for 20 file cabinets to store all the paper that comes in and for the back up records we print out for all the paperless transactions we do on our computers.

The computer is the main tool of my trade. A tool is, among other things, a device that provides a mechanical or mental advantage in accomplishing a task. Sometimes, when it comes to my computer, I feel like the tool. I’m more computer savvy than the average person, yet at times I find the computer so completely frustrating that I have fantasies about throwing it off of the roof, drowning it in the bathtub, or driving to the nearest gun shop, filling out the necessary forms, enduring whatever waiting period applies, and finally getting the gun and shooting the damn thing. It would be the briefest second of the most supreme ecstasy I can imagine. Possibly better than sex, and almost as good as chocolate.

I have a love hate relationship with my computer. When everything is running smoothly it is great. But it KNOWS. The number of problems I have with my computer is directly proportionate to the amount of time I don’t have to get a task accomplished.

Today my fantasies turned to a new career as a ditch digger. How wonderful it would be. I would take hold of the shovel (a tool) shove it into the dirt and that would be it, no waiting for it to boot, or wake up. The shovel, when about to be thrust into the soil, would never make me wait while displaying an hourglass icon letting me know that it is too busy doing other things to dig at the moment. My shovel will never tell me an error has occurred and needs to stop working and do I want it to send a message to its manufacturer, though whether I send the message or not my shovel is quitting right now. During my digging duties, my shovel will never decide to not respond and make me wait until I either put it away for awhile, or just twiddle my thumbs untill it is good and ready to begin again. When I want to quit digging and put my shovel in the tool shed it will never give me a message telling me it is not responding, so I should just wait until it is good and ready to be put away. When my ditch needs to be dug in a hurry, my shovel will never crash nor will I ever have to reboot my shovel. I doubt that I will ever have to update my shovel because of security issues, after which update I will be shoveling much slower than I had previously shoveled. My shovel will never get a virus, be hijacked by a spamming shovel, or be the victim of a spy. No matter how many ditches I dig it will never run out of memory. Best of all, I will never have a tech support person in India telling me that the shovel is fine but I obviously don’t know how to use it properly.