This was posted on my Facebook wall by a guy I know from high school. For some reason, I doubt he authored this particular missive.

Yeah, he's gonna post a message on my Facebook wall out of the blue and leave that kind of garbage.

However, this bit of Facebook wall-spam came right after receiving a couple friend requests that were awful suspicious. Take a look at the first profile:

It's interesting that she has almost no friends that are all in one place, and certainly no one that I know. Why would they want to be my Facebook friend? The profile also has no real content in it - just a picture.

Then I got another friend request a week or so later from an awfully similar profile:

This one at least is attached to a university I might actually know someone at, but still, the profile is in the same pattern.

• highly geographically scattered 'friends' with no high concentration locales

• absence of any unique personal information
• no wall
• female

Why does female matter? I assume the bot creators have a higher response rate if they use female pictures in the profiles that they use to 'friend' males with.

the wall spam

I think that seeing this Facebook wall-spam indicates we have achieved an interesting new level of potential network compromise. I can only see two possible situations whereby someone could manipulate a Facebook account in this way. The first is simply that the account login and password have been compromised, and possibly the Facebook spams are carried out by a program running on my friend's computer (accidentally downloaded virus perhaps). This is somewhat likely, but I believe that this spam is the result of a malicious third-party Facebook application.

I can easily see the situation where a malicious program is able to run on Facebook's own servers in the guise of a third-party application that someone has added to their profile. Although I doubt the Facebook development kit is full-featured enough to have exploits hidden inside it that could be particularly damaging, it would seem that this sort of bot creation is certainly not impossible. Imagine it - a bot that's largely not detectable by administrators, because it's not really doing anything it's not supposed to be allowed to do. It operates within its own layer inside the Facebook cloud, never having infected the thin-client used to access the cloud, or the cloud itself, per se.

However, if we are to assume it's a malicious program, or 'computer virus', it would have to have a vector of infection, correct? Well, based on my buddy's page, it seems he's ripe for the plucking. Here's a random screenshot:


Even if I'm totally wrong about this whole thing, something of the sort seems inevitable:

the computer virus's second cousin, twice removed

Welcome to the dawn of a new era in Cloud Computing.

One common method for promoting blog posts and websites is to look for other blog posts and websites that discuss similar items and then leave a comment with a link back to relevant content.

What is interesting about this approach is that people regulate their comments very tightly. Let us examine two approaches that I have encountered when attempting to promote my website through this sort of largely harmless and possibly helpful, comment 'spam'.

I promote my Zecco review on The Sun's Financial Diary

So naturally, I want my articles to have high search engine ranking. So what do I do? I search for the keywords that I want other people to get to my site by using, and look for the blogs, because those will allow the posting of comments.

Here is a search for 'Zecco Review' on Google. When I wanted to open up a brokerage account, I used this review to help determine I first open a Zecco account, so when it came full circle and I commented on it and left a link to my review, it seemed quite appropriate. Sun (the website operator) was kind enough to reply to my comment and agree with my general opinion that Zecco was a so-so broker at best.

I attempt to promote my Zecco review on Debtkid's website

The very first result of that Google search leads right to a review of Zecco on Debtkid's site. Naturally, I wanted to promote my website on the Number 1 result for 'Zecco Review'! I believe I posted almost the exact same comment that you can see on the Sun's website, and shortly thereafter, I noticed that I received a few referrals from his site.

However within a day the referrals dried up. What happened? I went back to Debtkid's site, and surprise, my comment might as well have never existed! Why would this happen?

My comment was deleted because Debtkid, as an affiliate of Zecco, is trying to receive commissions for selling Zecco account signups, and people reading my so-so to possibly negative review is not going to help him do that.

In short, Debtkid has a conflict of interest and did not act with integrity by deleting my comment

The Sun also receives compensation for people signing up with Zecco, but because he is an ethical person that acts with integrity, he is not going to attempt to omit and hide the truth in order to line his pockets like Debtkid.

I left the following comment on Debtkid's site, I doubt it will ever show up:

Debtkid is vested in having you guys sign up for Zecco; of course he's not going to write a bad review.

I attempted to drop a link here to my more nuanced and not-so conflicted-of-interest review (I am not an affiliate of any brokerage unlike Debtkid) , but Debtkid apparently did not think my comment worthy of posting.

My review of Zecco in 2008
Some difficulties I have had with Zecco, and also, SogoTrade.

And of course, the only comment on this review is blandly positive nearly content-less praise:

I love Zecco so far, and I’ve been with them for over a year. Not only do you get the 10 free trades but the rates are pretty low for options and trades after ten, lower than most all the other sites I’ve looked at. Their customer service has also been great for me so far. I recently had a technical question, emailed them and not only got back an email back within a half-hour, but also got a call from one of their engineers who helped me solve the problem.

Where were those awesome engineers when Zecco decided to take the day off and read the paper while taking a huge dump on Monday, April 14th, 2008?

Doesn't just seeing Anthony Hopkins make you feel warm and fuzzy?

After George Ingram himself appeared to comment on my article about him I started following up privately with some of the people that left comments.

One individual wanted to get into contact with another commenter, and so I helped him do so, and he also supplied me with some more information about Ingram.

Apparently, the guy that left a comment about having lunch with George in Chicago sparked the interest of the gentleman I was in contact with. According to him, George is violating the terms of his probation and he should still be under house arrest in San Antonio, TX.

He also led me to this write-up on George Ingram III in an oil industry newspaper. It's very revealing to say the least, but you'll have to pay five bucks if you want to read it. It discusses his attempt to take control of Petroecuador, Ecuador's state-run oil company, through some sort of ridiculous scheme where he would put 'no money down.' He also made very ambitious claims regarding potential future increases in oil production. Of course, if the deal went through, Ingram's Denver-based company Global Intelligence Corporation would receive a $155-mil contract to provide "data systems [based on] secretive decision software software supposedly in use by the US Department of Defense."

Central to all of his schemes are his ready promises of vast amounts of cash. However, this is cash that he doesn't have access to at the moment - because according to him it is tied up in illiquid foreign investments.

At least two Ingram relatives say his claims of great wealth and secretive government links are pure fantasy... "There was no big inheritance," says one cousin: "It's a fairy tale. The whole family is mystified."

"He's one of the biggest liars ever created, or he's a man of incredible means," says Texas lawyer Edward Watt. Watt won a $50,0000 judgement against Ingram in 2003 for unpaid legal bills, despite elaborate counter-claims Ingram raised, and lost. Watt says he does not expect to be paid, convinced Ingram is un-collectable.

MF Smith blasted [Ingram's claims of great wealth in his chapter 11 bankruptcy filing] as "incomplete, inconsistent, and unverifiable" and noted Ingram did not own a car, could not pay the $850 bankruptcy filing fee and his house had been foreclosed in 2000. "What is an individual with a net worth of $1.7-bil doing in bankruptcy?"

Edward C. Bahl

One commenter named 'Denis Robinson' with an e-mail address tied to globalintelcorp.com is most likely Ingram himself. Global Intelligence Corporation (GIC) is the fraud shell company that Ingram set up in order to facilitate the 'investments' he attempts to con out of people. The most amusing part as far as I am concerned is that the company purports to be an expert in 'Business Intelligence' - something I know more about than I would like.

This 'Denis Robinson' attempts to slag the name of a one Edward C. Bahl, who apparently was just another one of George's victims, along with such information-age stalwarts as Verizon and IBM.

Verizon was never paid [for funding a Global Intelligence Corporation operation] and the hardware disappeared. Ingram blamed his employees for stealing, says Edward Bahl, whose firm was stuck wtih $100,000 in unpaid consultant billings. . . "I should have known then that Ingram was a fraud," says Bahl, who went on to help Ingram found GIC in Denver, funding much of that development by maxing out his own credit cards. Ingram blames Bahl for GIC's downfall.

Ingram is often lucky in that his victims would rather not admit to their being conned out of lock, stock, and barrel and thus sometimes do not file formal complaints.

Oh yea, what about good old American PureTex Water Corporation that had such big plans to open the 'World's Largest Bottled Water Plant' in Texas?

PureTex's only "asset," says Bahl, may be the gold-plated board Ingram persuaded to lend their names to the venture. They have included former Space Shuttle pilot and Marine Gen. Charles Bolden, ex-NASA Johnson Space Center head George Abbey, president Michael Frazier of Houston Investment bank Simmons & Co, and Fulbright & Jaworski law partner Howard Wolf.

White Collar Psychopath? (a clinical definition)

some consider the President of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to be a dyed-in-the-wool psychopath


I found an excellent article by Jerry Russell and Richard Stanley titled Psychopaths, Secret Societies, and the New World Order that discusses some salient features of our neighborhood sociopaths.

traits that help define psychopaths
• a smooth, glib capability to lie, manipulate and dissemble
• completely callous lack of empathy or concern for others
• shallow emotional affect and lack of remorse
• egocentric grandiosity
• living off others or predatory attitude
• lack of realistic long term goals
• blaming others for their actions
• breaking parole or probation, varied criminal activity

Does this remind you of anyone? If it's someone in your personal life, run!

A paper by Harris, Rice & Quinsey (1994) argues that psychopathy is a "taxon" -- that is, a discrete subclass, more or less as distinctive as male vs. female, or cat vs. dog. This is based on a statistical analysis of a population of subjects with their scores for psychopathy. The distribution of scores is strongly bimodal, indicating a lack of "shades of gray" for the psychopathic personality syndrome. This is a strikingly unusual result in personality research, which usually finds a continuous range of variability in personality traits. While a five-factor personality model (introversion/extroversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, emotional stability and openness) is often considered sufficient to describe the normal range of personality, the psychopathic personality is very difficult to represent within this space (see Miller et al., 2001), exhibiting highly differentiated sub-traits within the major personality dimensions (where we would normally expect to find correlated sub-traits.) The unusual pattern of sub-traits is, in our view, another basis for believing that psychopathy represents a distinct genetic syndrome.

Essentially, if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it's a psychopath.

The psychopaths have developed an extraordinarily powerful camouflage mechanism. When it fits their purposes, they are glib, friendly and easy-going, devoid of the petty anxieties that trouble most of us and cast a pall over day-to-day interactions. They are the very embodiment of charisma and chutzpah. In this way, they stay hidden and undetected by their victims until a trap is sprung. Precisely because most human beings have an instinctive internalized sense of fair play and altruism, they are incapable of seeing when another human being does not share these attributes.

Here is a link to a Google search on the word 'psychopath', and I also leave you this tidbit on the prevalance of anti-social personality disorder in the general population.

Crazy and frightening - and real, in about 4 percent of the population....

The prevalence rate for anorexic eating disorders is estimated a 3.43 percent, deemed to be nearly epidemic, and yet this figure is a fraction lower than the rate for antisocial personality. The high-profile disorders classed as schizophrenia occur in only about 1 percent of [the population] - a mere quarter of the rate of antisocial personality - and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention say that the rate of colon cancer in the United States, considered "alarmingly high," is about 40 per 100,000 - one hundred times lower than the rate of antisocial personality.

My article on George Ingram III has been one of my favorite bits of this website to date. It was just a random and idle afternoon that led me to post the story, but little did I know about the effect that this slimy individual has had on people.

Commenter after commenter has come out of the woodwork to tell us about the lies and shady deals that George Ingram has perpetrated. Interestingly, it would appear that George Ingram himself has now commented on my story about him.

It appears George left a huge pile of pure hogwash under the name of 'mhjacks2' - an obvious attempt at appearing to be the author of the website. Note the title of the comment 'I was wrong about George'. Who is this guy trying to fool?

so why do I think it's George himself?

When I looked to see the e-mail attached to this comment that attempts to do damage control, it was gx.ingram@georgeingram.net!!

Here is a link to the WHOIS query for georgeingram.net - it's not very informative. Private registration under 1&1 Internet, Inc. located in Chesterbrook, PA.

The lengths this guy will go to are amazing. Nice try Georgie-boy. Spamming my comments will get you nowhere, except perhaps an IP ban if you get really annoying.

I have received my first bit of comment spam. I feel vindicated. You don't know you're a real website until you get some comment spam!

wtf is comment spam?

Comments on stories for websites are an excellent source of information. Sometimes there is garbage in there though, and you have to filter through it, but sometimes the best information from a given source is not in the actual article that the author wrote, but in the responses from the general public. My favorite is when a person tells a life story that illustrates the point of the article, or perhaps brings new illumination to unexplored areas.

Comments are also an excellent way for unscrupulous internet advertisers to promote whatever website they're trying to make money off of, as most comment sections of websites allow for hyper links and so forth.

One way to efficiently do this is to spam websites' comment forms. A shady programmer somewhere will create a computer bot that will interface with the comment form and automatically post links back to the various shady websites that the computer bot is programmed to promote. The reason 'captchas' (scrambled messages you have to type to verify your humanity) were invented was to differentiate human users from these kinds of 'bots'.

so why are you happy bots are posting pr0n spam on your site?

I originally made the comments form totally open so that anyone that wanted to comment would have low barriers of entry. I often think about commenting on other sites, but they usually make it a hassle, so I often don't bother.

However, that decision left me open to bots. The reason I'm excited that I got them is because it indicates that my site has enough exposure for one of those stupid programs to be able to find my site and start spamming it. Interestingly, it was only my favorite article on the site so far that attracted comment spam - good 'ol Georgey Ingram. It makes sense that his stench would attract other carrion feeders.

Yay for milestones!

I currently work in an extremely specialized industry. When people ask what I do, I usually just say I'm in the IT field. But I don't deal with information technology as a whole - I simply deal with one small part of it. I deal with data-warehousing and business intelligence. But further more, I am even further specialized in my areas of expertise regarding data-warehousing practice: I work mainly with a single, proprietary tool used for these purposes called 'Informatica'.

So, when my computer breaks do I fix it myself? No, I end up calling tech support just like any other asshole (this is partially due to the BS 'common operating environment' and loads of annoyance-ware that HP puts on my computer, but that is neither here nor there).

Supposedly the reason I'm not supposed to fix my computer is because of the efficiency produced by 'division of labor' (from Wikipedia):

Division of labour is the specialisation of cooperative labour in specific, circumscribed tasks and roles, intended to increase efficiency of output. Historically the growth of a more and more complex division of labour is closely associated with the growth of trade, the rise of capitalism, and of the complexity of industrialisation processes.

Division of labor is what results for the 'cog in the machine' experience that I'm sure we've all had at some point or another. If you read the aforementioned Wikipedia article, we find that several economists and sociologists feel the same way about the division of labor, even Adam Smith who is easily seen as viewing the division of labor as an economic engine, wrote that division of labor could lead to 'mental mutilation' of workers. As I'm sure you can imagine, folks like Karl Marx have an even dimmer view of the whole matter.

Ludvig Von Mises, an influential Austrian economist, absolutely loves the division of labor. According to Mises:

The greater productivity of work under the division of labor is a unifying influence. It leads men to regard each other as comrades in a joint struggle for welfare, rather than as competitors in a struggle for existence. It makes friends out of enemies, peace out of war, society out of individuals.

Civilization is a product of leisure and the peace of mind that only the division of labour can make possible.

Every expansion of the personal division of labor brings advantages to all who take part in it.

It is an illusion to believe that one can maintain productivity and reduce the division of labor.

Division of labor has a lot of things going for it. At a certain point, it almost seems like an increasing division of labor is requisite for an ever-expanding economy. You're simply imagining things if you think about it any other way, at least according to Mises.

However, it seems fairly obvious that the further one increases the division of labor, the further the isolation of workers becomes, despite Mises being apparently of the opinion that the 'alienation' of workes is a purely romantic concept.

A vast array of employment possibilities, that increasingly represent large investments of time and effort towards education, further increase the anxiety that workers experience when attempting to determine which cog is theirs to turn. This is alienation of a type far beyond what Marx was ever speaking about. His workers at least could see the machines they happened to be manipulating. Today's information worker simply describes a particular 'state' that may get applied to a particular decision-ish apparatus depending upon the 'states' that others have provided. The worker may not even work on a whole piece of a 'state'. In this super-attenuated condition, why would we not expect a degree of dissolution on the part of our laborers?

Furthermore, their plight is confounded by the fact that their superiors are rewarded with the control over the division of labor. This leaves the day-to-day existence of a modern managed worker to forces largely beyond their control; either quit and figure something else out, or weasel and work your way up until you have more control over your own destiny. In my experience this can turn in on itself and stifle innovation, enthusiasm, and workforce integration.

There also seems to me that there is another argument against promoting the utmost degree of specialization; narrow boundaries of inquiry result in narrow solutions. One could analyze this with a Marxist slant. Keep the proles subjugated by limiting their worldview. Typically, the further you go up the chain of management, the more control is present over the division of labor, and therefore it is more likely that these persons possess skills of a much more generic nature. Based on the fact the most of the world's movers and shakers spend most of their time simply reading to generate new ideas, and analyzing the 'state' of the world, rather than the 'state' of a cash register or its software, limiting yourself to a particular specialty is even more limiting than it initially appears.

Personally, I believe that division of labor is inevitable. Some times, in some instances, it will be simply more efficient for one person to do something than another. While I am not concerned about the existence of specialization, I am concerned about how it is managed. Furthermore, I believe that the rank-and-file worker needs to have more control over the division of labor in their immediate surroundings, else they are left feeling alienated and 'mentally mutilated'.

I would like it recognized that specialization to the degree that we see in certain industries such as manufacturing or technology, is a vulnerability that is thrust onto the worker. The businesses that employ specialized workers do not bear the worker's cost of specialization - namely the possibility of skill and knowledge obsolescence.

It is a fool's game for the modern knowledge worker to assume that specialization is a key to success, despite it being a key to success for the global economy. The greatest rewards will always go to those that are able to 'connect the dots' and transcend the boundaries that the division of labor produces.

Our educational institutions recognize this issue - that is why there is an abundance of interdisciplinary programs like the 'Animate Arts' degree that I received. I believe we should promote as minimal a division of labor is as possible and efficient - true innovation frequently happens when the boundaries that create such efficiency are compromised.

Update #5: Here is my latest write-up on the continuing saga of George Warren Ingram III.

Update #4: George Ingram himself appears to have spammed the comment board for this article.

Update #3: A new comment has been left that attempts to pretend to be written by the author of this website. I have flagged this comment as untrustworthy and have not deleted it so that people can see the lengths that frauds and hucksters will go to in order to further their criminal ambitions.

Interestingly, it's likely that the person who left this comment was likely GEORGE INGRAM HIMSELF - the e-mail attached to this fraud of a comment is gx.ingram@georgeingram.net

Apparently he IS Googling himself, and attempting to do damage control.

Update #2: You have to read the comments section! This guy is over-the-top, and all sorts are coming out of the woodwork to leave their two cents.

Update: when read in the context of the rest of the story, this article at the Sealy News is very interesting, amusing, and illuminating.

it starts innocently enough

Today while eating my lunch, I was idly reading a New York Times article regarding our love of air travel and against my lack of better judgment I began digging into the comments section. One in particular caught my eye. I think I noticed it simply because of the enumerated name that comprised its signature. It was by one George Ingram the Third. He happened to sign his message like so:

Happy New Year 2008 George Ingram III

Googling someone for no good reason

For no good reason, I decided to perform a google search on his name.

The first result was some site about an operatic tenor. Obviously this was not our George Ingram. Our George Ingram has a distinct businessman tone; he's been flying on airplanes for thirty-plus years and knows just how much it sucks.

From his comment (in regards to air travel):

After you do that for 30 years (shorter time if your smart unlike me), you realize what a waste of your time, and resources belonging to others.

The second result for George Ingram III was total pay dirt! This has got to be the guy.

Mr. Ingram is a native of Houston, Texas. Mr. Ingram is a graduate of Texas A & M University with a B.S. in Petroleum Engineering in 1970, and has completed advanced studies at George Washington University in Integrated Defense Systems. He has received awards and been recognized for his contributions to science and engineering by the National Science Foundation, the National Society on Aging, the National Society of Professional Engineers, the American Society of Actuary Scientists, and was named Young Engineer of the Year, by the Texas Society of Professional Engineers, San Jacinto Chapter in Houston. In addition, he has been the recipient of numerous awards for his work in developing technologies in the area of numerical simulation, magneto-hydrodynamics, global economic forecasting, electronic warfare, and counter electronic warfare.

Mr. Ingram has over 30 years of business experience in the exploration, exploitation, and production of natural resources world wide. He currently does business in 35 countries in the Middle East, Europe, Asia, and South America. His principle operating interests in those countries are in Strategic Metals, and Oil & Gas. Mr. Ingram is the Chairman of Ingram Holding Company (China), Investore Companies, and Minera Zenon S.A. de C.V., and their many subsidiaries & affiliates.

That's gotta be him. He is a distinguished international businessman and also a respected contributor to the military-industrial complex. Looks like we really found a stand-up guy here. Check out the picture and his poo-eating grin! I wanted to draw an arrow towards his mouth with the message 'POO GOES HERE' on the picture, but I restrained myself.

What next for George Ingram III?

Then we get to the third search result. I was totally floored by this one. Wanted by U.S. marshals - George Warren INGRAM III (Apprehended). WHAT?! What's the chances that I pick someone with such an interesting Google?¹

Included in that PDF link is a mugshot of Mr. Ingram. Exact same guy that is a distinguished engineer and businessman apparently was apprehended by the US Marshals. At first I thought this PDF mugshot was a joke. The poses and smiles in the two pictures are exactly the same, and it's not hard to imagine that the mugshot was just an altered version of the first photograph.

I think that this release from the US Marshal service settles my doubts. According to the release (emphasis added):

San Antonio – George Warren Ingram III made his living out of conning other people out of their hard earned money. On December 22, 2006, the Lone Star Fugitive Task Force put Ingram out of business.

The Lone Star Fugitive Task Force, led by the United States Marshals Service in the Western District of Texas, was asked by member agency the Bexar County District Attorney’s Office to apprehend Ingram. Ingram was wanted for a state probation violation stemming from an original charge of theft of service, $1,500.00 to $20,000.00.

Utilizing over 215 years of investigative techniques, the Lone Star Fugitive Task Force tracked Ingram to a suburb of Springfield, Illinois. The Lone Star Fugitive Task Force then contacted the United States Marshals Service’s Great Lakes Regional Fugitive Task Force in Illinois.

On Friday afternoon officers from the Great Lakes Regional Fugitive Task Force surrounded the residence Ingram had rented in Illinois. For three hours officers tried to make contact with Ingram who was inside the residence. Finally the Task Force officers made a forced entry. Ingram refused to comply with officers’ demands and resisted arrest.

Ingram was charged with resisting arrest and faces potential charges for fraud in Illinois.

Pure internet gold! I'm pretty sure this is all the same guy, and I just happened to Google someone with a distinctive name that happened to leave their real name in a comment on a New York Times op-ed article.

So what's George Ingram III's deal anyways?

The best I've been able to find regarding the whole thing is an excerpt of an article from Plastics News, titled Ex-PureTex chief fighting extradition. (PureTex Water Corp.)(George Warren Ingram III) that you can buy from a few different places, but I'm not about to buy the article. I don't have enough invested in this guy. Here's the excerpt, which fills in the basics when combined with the 'WANTED' poster from the U.S. Marshals.

An ambitious plan to establish a large Texas water-bottling business needs new financial backing after the major backer resigned as chairman amid multiple legal problems.

American PureTex Water Corp. was aiming to begin construction this month on its first vertically integrated bottling and distribution facility, near Eagle Lake, Texas, but that will not happen. George Warren Ingram III, a 59-year-old who was founding chairman of Lincoln, Ill.-based PureTex, is battling efforts to have him extradited to Texas.

Ingram, a secretive figure in the oil...

So basically we can assume this guy ran out of money to back his water bottling plant in Texas, which according to the PureTex website was to be the "WORLD's LARGEST BOTTLED WATER PLANT".

Well apparently he fled to Lincoln, IL after stealing up to $20k worth of services. I assume he just stopped paying the guys who were building his plant. Shame.

can you trust a Republican?

Amusingly, he was awarded the Congressional Medal of Distinction on September 24, 2006. He was apprehended by U.S. Marshals on December 22, 2006 - just three months later. They had to bust his door down because he wouldn't come out! It's probably kind of stupid to add resisting arrest to your charges if all you got is $20k worth of service theft. This guy is supposed to be an intelligent and respectful member of the military-industrial community complex, but he can't even not resist arrest when he's not really facing that big a charge? This is after he makes a federal crime out of the whole thing because he had to be a jerk-off and cross state lines. Of course, I'm sure he has good lawyers.

Seems like the Congressional Medal of Distinction from the Republican Party is pretty hollow.

Mr. Ingram was selected based on unyielding support of the Republican Party, outstanding leadership in business and contributions to the local economies in the United States. Only an elite group of business and professional people were nominated to receive the award before the awards selection committee reached a final decision. Commenting on Mr. Ingram’s selection, Congressman Reynolds said, “Mr. Ingram has served as Honorary Chairman of the Business Advisory Council and has provided much needed support. This award could not have gone to a more deserving candidate.”

Just three months before he's apprehended by U.S. Marshals! It doesn't get any better than that.

It's too bad, because the bottled water plant would have created 380 sustainable jobs apparently. Amusingly, from the same article:

American PureTex Water Corporation is a privately held concern owned by natural resource conservationists that understand the long term importance of safe clean high quality drinking water.

Wow that's even better. If this guy was really a community leader and he really wants to help people, he would realize that bottled water is ultimately a wasteful pursuit. If the money spent on bottled water went into managing our water supplies, it'd start being the bottled water that's bad for you. As it is, only the minimum amount of water treatment is performed in this country. Maybe he should use his politico-industrial clout to tighten up water treatment standards. Nah, that's too sensible, and he's gotta make a living for chrissake!

You gotta wonder, does he Google himself?

an achievement-oriented mindset

Ever since I was a little kid, I've liked to learn new things. I tend to have a lot of interests, and like most people, my interests mutate over time. Very frequently, they loop back around, but some times it can take a while.

Because of my proclivities, I end up forcing myself to learn new things. Recently, I learned quite a bit more than I ever expected to about physics simulations, C++, and using OpenGL. Learning new things sometimes just for the sake of learning is something I've always been very passionate about.

I've learned that the attitude I've always had when learning new things seems to be part and parcel of an important psychological construct: the achievement-oriented mindset. You can read an excellent synopsis of the phenomenon in this Scientific American article.

It boils down to the fact that people who believe that they can improve on their skills and abilities through sustained, concentrated effort do better in various measures of achievement. On the other hand, people that believe intelligence and abilities are innate, fixed qualities, simply give up before they even have a chance to learn something.

Granted, it's kind of silly they had to perform empirical research in order to quantify this situation, but it's nice to know that something I've understood intuitively for years has some research backing it up.

personal development literature- useful for fostering an achievement-oriented mindset?

It seems to me that most of the literature about personal development/self-help are simply a bunch of different strategies to get around to developing an achievement-oriented mindset. They then wrap this very basic piece of information around heuristics that make most peoples' lives easier; waking up early or surrounding yourself with a 'peer group that will hold you accountable' - part of one of Tony Robbins' 'pillars' apparently. Is that like one of the Pillars of Islam? Probably not.

If you have any self-help or personal development books, I would say that's a sad waste of money. One great, classic coming-of-age novel or an autobiography of a successful person (by your own definition) has scads more 'personal development' material that's way more applicable and actionable than what you'd find in the best ten percent of the most prolific personal development writer's canon.

academic research and the rhizome at work

Write down your goals. Track your progress towards them. Figure out what stands between you and your goal. Whoop-dee-fricking-doo. Really this sort of behavior just makes me think that these 'self-help gurus' are simply just living out a particular type of life story. My former professor Dan McAdams outlines a personality type in his book The Person: A New Introduction to Personality Psychology that seems awfully similar to the personality types these goo-roos seem to possess. They're these very outwardly-focused individuals that tend to have a lot of intensity and energy. The ones that McAdams profiled also frequently spent a lot of their time working to better their communities. I hear the same thing come from self-help gurus: pay it forward, help others because by helping others you help yourself, use willpower to break through barriers blah blah.

McAdams researched these people in a relatively simple fashion; he would have them recount their life stories. McAdams believes that a person's own narrative of their life is the key to understanding them. McAdams had an assistant of some kind that was working with him on the study that had no idea what the study was about, and she had to interact with these people each day. For a while, McAdams only sent her people with these outwardly-focused and very intense personalities. When he started sending her just random people, she remarked to him about how she really liked the new people much better because they were much more normal, cordial, and laid-back!

closing the book on personal development

I would posit that self-help and personal development gurus can only assist you if you fit a relatively narrow set of criteria. I would also say that it's almost one hundred percent certain that if their thoughts can assist you then you don't really need their ideas. You are perfectly capable of coming up with your own ways to write down your goals and achieve them. It's astounding, I know. You can thank me later.

More or less, it seems to me that the gurus of personal development are simply following the path of their biological personality imperative. The chicken and egg relationship is very apparent.

Of course, if you're just a dullard and not particularly creative, they deserve to make money off of you. Get your ass to the bookstore, but I'd always recommend something with a little more substance.

So the idea of open source software has been around for a while now. If you don't know what 'open-source' means right now, I can guarantee that within a hundred years everyone will know exactly what it means. This is because open-source software is the future.

If you'd like a more comprehensive background on OSS and some of its implications for the programming community, you should check out Eric Raymond's excellent write-up The Cathedral and the Bazaar.

Aside from all the wonderful things that OSS brings to the table, from its frequently unconventional development environments to the ability of anyone to take a look at the nittiest-grittiest details of a program, OSS greatest strength is not its own.

I would say that the relatively inflexible nature of important requirements is OSS's greatest strength. Once you define a particular methodology for doing something, whether that methodology happens to find the square root of a particular input, or that methodology presents a spreadsheet program to the user, the internal logic of these methodologies is entirely static. To be sure, the spreadsheet program has to have updated interfaces in order to actually display a spreadsheet on your screen or to allow you to manipulate that spreadsheet using a graphical interface, but its internal logic, the 'spreadsheet-ness' of the program, is entirely static. Of course, you can represent spreadsheet-ness in more than one way, but how many different representations do you need when you already have one that works well, or well enough?

In a nutshell, although you may have to define new interfaces for how you're going to pass inputs to your square root program, and for how you're going to interpret the output, the internal logic of the square root program is not going to change at all.

Also, due to the open and collaborative efforts that go in to producing OSS, requirements are frequently satisfied in the most generic or the most efficient manner possible, greatly expanding their use beyond the programs that originally necessitated those requirements.

The avoidance of re-inventing the wheel is a prime motivator for programmers, and OSS eventually gets around to making some damn fine wheels. The conceptual leap from considering a 'wheel' as a basic tool to considering 'spreadsheet-ness' as a basic tool is relatively small.

Plant Basics

I really like having house plants. Sometimes it seems like a chore, but ultimately they bring joy.

I also like to know how things work, so I've tried to learn how plants work. Although I have spent a good part on my life on a farm, my knowledge of plants was relatively minimal when I started having plants in my apartment in college.

There were really just a few fundamental things I had to learn about plants to make sure they would thrive. Here are some blooms from an amaryllis that I originally got from my mom. Unfortunately, because I have not created the right environment for them in the past couple years, they have not bloomed since. That's actually kind of nice, because the blooms are messy. At least they are pretty!

I was able to produce these blooms by relying on a few basic concepts.

• light

• nutrients + pH
• root medium
• temperature

  
  

The particular medium I used that successfully resulted in these huge blooms was a bit of coco coir mixed with perlite. Coco coir is a very interesting medium. I believe it is made from the ground up husks of mature coconuts. It can absorb a great deal of water, but when it reaches capacity extra water will run right through it. As you can see in the photo, it is quite fibrous. Coco coir is awesome, it has great moisture retention capabilities while allowing maximum oxygen to reach the roots. The only downside is that if you are using almost straight coco coir (mixed with a little perlite), you're going to have to use some sort of totally-encompassing nutrient solution as the coco coir offers little sustenance to the plant. I went with a chemical approach.



General hydroponics is probably best known as the workhorse of the indoor marijuana growing community. I don't grow weed, but this nutrient solution is awesome. It is no more expensive than most normal nutrient solutions (i.e. miracle grow), you just have to buy a bit more of it all at once. Shown here are two bottles that you have to mix in order to achieve the correct proportions of nutrients (according to your plant and period in the growing cycle). The 'FloraMicro' solution shown here is nitrogen-heavy (5-0-1 NPK), and the 'FloraBloom' solution is phosphorous and potassium heavy (0-5-4 NPK). Because I live in a very urban area with very basic tap water that comes out at about 8.2 pH, I have a bottle of phosphoric acid in order to drop the pH of the nutrient solution further than simply adding the NPK mix. Being able to precisely control the pH is absolutely required in a hydroponics growing system. If you let the pH get too high or too low, you prevent the plant from optimally absorbing nutrients. The same problem can occur in normal soil, but it usually takes a very long time for problems to surface while some external factor is causing your pH to rise or fall. If you're container gardening with coco coir like I do with my amaryllis, it's quite a bit more responsive than soil, but much more forgiving than in a water culture system. With not much more effort than maintaining a soil plant, a simple hydroponics solution can yield some very impressive houseplants.

Conceivably, an organic hydroponics system might be even easier to maintain, but I think learning how to play god with a plant using chemical nutrients is a useful learning tool. Your control over the plant's well-being is very apparent. When you burn a plant or starve it of nutrients when you're using chemicals, you can only blame yourself. If you use the chemicals right, the plant loves you!

the challenging part for most apartment dwellers

I have never been able to get a decent amount of light to my plants from natural sources. Some apartments have good light-producing windows, but they are few and far between. Also, living in a temperate zone, there is just not enough light to make houseplants bloom year-round. After you solve the limiting factor of nutrient and moisture uptake, the only thing that limits your plants is the amount of light they can effectively use. Some plants can't use as much light as others. The amaryllis does not seem to be particularly sensitive to light levels. I have been able to get them to thrive vegetatively on relatively low light, but exposing it to large amounts of sunlight is required for blooming.

Alternatively, you can provide your own indoor sunlight. The cheapest and most effective way to do this would be to buy four foot fluorescent shoplights from your local hardware store. The issue with these lights is that you want to get them as close to the plants as possible due to the inverse-square law. Essentially, this means that as your plants get farther from the light source, they get exponentially less light per unit of distance.

The important thing to realize about artificial light is that amount of electricity the bulb consumes in watts is not a measure of the light output of the bulb. This is why when you go to buy compact fluorescent lights in a store, you see the 'equivalent watts' of incandescent light that would be required to match the 10 or 20 watt CFL.

GE 26 Watt (100Watt equivalent) Energy Smart Spiral® T3 Light Bulb 3 Count #15517
This is because the most important measure of light for your plants is the number of lumens a bulb produces. Although spectra (color) of the light produced is also a very important concern, the overall production of light is where your focus should lie.

Although CFLs are a decent high-efficiency light solution for growing house plants, the cheapest way to go fluorescent is with the 4 foot tubes. Interestingly, the most common form of 4 foot fluorescent tubes, the 'T-12' size, is not the most efficient in terms of lumens/watts ratio, which is what you want to focus on. The T-10 size of bulbs has a higher lumens/watts ratio.

One important thing to realize about the 4 foot shop-light types of fixtures is that they require a 'ballast' in order to function properly. Essentially, CFLs are no different from the big tubes we've had around for years and years, but they have been designed so they do not require a ballast to regulate the current they receive from their power source. However, ballasts introduce a power inefficiency, and different ballasts are more or less efficient than others. This inherent inefficiency of the shop-light solution has to be factored into your lumens/watts ratio.

Because they produce little heat, fluorescent lamps have the advantage of being able to be placed very closely to the plants - preferably at a distance of less than 30 cm. Take advantage of this as much as possible. The inverse-square law is not your friend. In order to get maximum efficiency from your lights you have to sometimes go to great lengths.

Although fluorescents offer the best value for the money, and are very energy efficient, the premier solution for growing plants indoors is HID (high intensity discharge) lighting. These lights come in two main flavors that offer slightly different spectras and energy-efficiencies; high-pressure sodium (red spectra, most efficient) and metal-halide (blue spectra, slightly less efficient than HPS).

However, HID lights have several disadvantages.

• their ballasts can be quite loud

• bulbs can be expensive and fragile
• initial cost can be quite high
• they produce a large amount of heat, both from the bulb and from the ballast
• few stores carry them - sometimes you can get smaller wattage ones (50-150 watts) from Home Depot/Lowes that are marketed as 'security lights'

For many of these reasons, HID lighting is only intended for the most serious of indoor growers that demand an experience for their plants as close as possible to actual sunlight. However, one small 70 watt HID lamp can provide a huge amount of light for a vast number of house plants. Furthermore, the massive heat (and light) generated by the HID lamps require that you move the bulbs a good distance from your plants so as to not burn them. This can result in a far easier setup than trying to get your four-foot fluorescent fixtures no more than a foot away from each part of a given plant.

This 250 watt HID light could provide light for an impressive indoor garden, so for some people they are a perfect solution: Econogro Mini 250 Watt HPS Grow Light

However, if you can deal with the space-configuration/inverse-square law fight, go with the four-foot shoplights using T-10 bulbs. If you want cheap and easy space-configuration, go with CFLs. If you don't give a rats ass and just want the most awesome lights possible, get some HID, either metal-halide or high-pressure-sodium. Right now I'm using CFLs for space issues, and I don't want to get an HID lamp because of heat and noise. I only have one 40 watt CFL here, and I hope to add at least 2 more. Two more should be enough light to make my amaryllis to bloom again.

Notice the totally shady aluminum foil reflector. If you go to a bunch of trouble to get some good lights for your plants, you don't want half (or more) of that light just hitting the ceiling. You don't need anything fancy. White posterboard, white-painted walls, and aluminum foil are all very efficient reflectors.