http://ericherboso.com/blog The Weblog of Eric Herboso Wed, 25 Mar 2009 20:01:49 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en So let's say that I was in the market for finding a significant other. The total candidate pool (C) would then be: C = Pdc * F * G * A10 * S * Dn * Ra * A Where: C = total number of candidates Pdc = total population of DC metro area F ... http://ericherboso.com/blog/2009/03/finding-a-girlfriend-drake-equation-style/ Too lazy to volunteer and too cheap to donate? Fine. Click here and sign your name and Tyson Foods will donate 35 lbs. of food on your behalf. You ingrate.A few years back, I tried an experiment where I went without food of any kind for as long as I ... http://ericherboso.com/blog/2009/03/pledge-to-end-hunger/ [HTML1] Although I have posted a few youtube videos previously for work related reasons, this is the first time I'm posting a video that I shot, spliced, and edited all on my own. Unfortunately, this means the result is actually fairly corny, but it's the best I could do for ... http://ericherboso.com/blog/2009/03/christmas-08-with-my-family/ Twitter doesn't quite rival email for me, but it's rather close.Twitter is one of my favorite web apps, right up there with IM and e-mail.  I use Twitter for everything from work to news to trivia to play and beyond.  But if you're new to Twitter, you might need a ... http://ericherboso.com/blog/2009/02/the-best-people-to-follow-on-twitter/ When something feels this good, w/o causing harm to others, why not just enjoy it? Through talking to others over the years, I've learned that what I think of as my "conscience" is very different from the ordinary person's conscience. While it is true that I do feel badly about ... http://ericherboso.com/blog/2008/12/should-i-feel-bad-about-things/ Although it's been a number of weeks since I integrated Google's Friend Connect on EricHerboso.com, I never bothered to write about it because it was by far the easiest install EVER.  Installing it literally consisted of going to Google's web site, hitting a few buttons, typing in a few characters, ... http://ericherboso.com/blog/2008/12/the-horrors-of-installing-facebook-connect/ [HTML1] Footage courtesy Democracy Now.  It should be noted that Noam Chomsky did endorse Obama before the elections, saying: "I would suggest not voting for McCain which means voting for Obama. ... There is nothing wrong with picking the lesser of two evils." However, he only advocated doing this in swing states.  The ... http://ericherboso.com/blog/2008/12/noam-chomsky-on-pres-elect-obama/ As most of you know, I work as the webmaster of Share Our Strength, a national organization dedicated to ending child hunger. When I first joined, I did not know nearly as much about the issue as I do now. What I've learned has astonished me. Poverty is complex; solving hunger ... http://ericherboso.com/blog/2008/11/end-child-hunger-in-america/ Feminism is a tough subject for me to discuss, if only because I generally hang out with a lot of feminist friends who hold distinctly different ideals than I on the topic. This is not to say that I am anti-feminist, nor is it to imply that my friends are anti-feminist. ... http://ericherboso.com/blog/2008/11/a-feminist-viewpoint/ Ah, the crisply fresh feeling of starting a new blog. It is like the coming of a new year—somehow, everything before that first entry is set firmly in a past that hardly seems to count, while everything from the first entry on becomes important. Extremely important, even. Having said ... http://ericherboso.com/blog/2008/11/the-start-of-a-new-blog/ I attended another Google Webmaster chat session today and learned a lot about the most up-to-date facts on the SEO world as it applies to google. But if you're looking for tips I learned there, I would suggest going to check out other blogs for a round-up, or even ... http://ericherboso.com/blog/2008/10/if-youre-going-to-present-to-a-public-audience-please-do-it-properly/ As a webmaster, I often have to field tech questions unrelated to my job in the office. Usually this is no big deal; I generally give the answer and then move on. But the other day, a question was posed to me that really threw me for a ... http://ericherboso.com/blog/2008/09/ppi-is-the-opposite-of-dpi-when-it-comes-to-photo-quality/ As many of you probably already know, my day job is as the webmaster of strength.org, a nonprofit dedicated to ensuring that no child should ever have to grow up hungry. Well, one of our initiatives, the Great American Dine Out, is going on right now all across the ... http://ericherboso.com/blog/2008/09/eating-out-to-end-child-hunger/ I did not take a picture. I will not take a picture. Yet I feel like I cannot go on without showing a picture. So here is a picture I found on the internet. My lawn is small. Too small to bother with, really. But the ... http://ericherboso.com/blog/2008/09/the-rabbit/ Ever since I started becoming more knowledgeable about search engine optimization, I've started trying out different things to see how it would affect my traffic. I even did a test run of doing nothing but gathering links to a static blog that wasn't updated (amazingly, the traffic generated was ... http://ericherboso.com/blog/2008/08/are-porn-links-good-for-seo/ 4:45 AM The alarm goes off. 4:54 AM The alarm goes off again. 5:00 AM My alarm goes off -- it is distinctively less pleasant than the one Rosina uses. 5:03 AM Rosina's alarm goes off yet again. ... Skip forward more than a half-hour of repeated alarms going ... http://ericherboso.com/blog/2008/08/my-morning-ritual/ I'm always terrible at self-descriptions. Every time I try to make a comment on myself, I have flashbacks of Gödelian self-reference. But I suppose I might as well try. Hi. (c: I'm Eric Herboso, a 25 year old math/philosophy major at Spring Hill College in Mobile, Alabama. This last part is important because academics really is my ... http://ericherboso.com/blog/2008/08/archived-from-wikipedia/ In my position as webmaster of Share Our Strength, I am constantly on the lookout for better and easier methods of generating content to drive visitors to our many websites. One exceedingly easy method is to grab content from outside RSS feeds, allowing a page on our site ... http://ericherboso.com/blog/2008/08/feedity-unethical-rss/   I'm always terrible at self-descriptions. Every time I try to make a comment on myself, I have flashbacks of Gödelian self-reference. But I suppose I might as well try. Hi. (c: I'm Eric Herboso, a math geek/philosophy nerd with a heavy ethical bent. I graduated from Spring Hill College in early ... http://ericherboso.com/blog/2008/05/archived-from-myspace/ A Consequentialist Argument for Weighted Consideration of Interests or: How an Infinite Universe Affects Consequentialist Ethics A common argument against consequentialist ethics is the empirical fact that most persons seem to place more weight on the consideration of interests of those they know than on those they don't. While not fatal, ... http://ericherboso.com/blog/2008/05/consequentialist-ethics-in-an-infinite-universe/ Hesitsantly, I knocked on the front door. There was a doorbell present, but somehow using it would have taken too much away from the occasion, and I really didn't want to kill the mood. After all, I'd been planning this for over a month now. When she answered the door, I ... http://ericherboso.com/blog/2008/04/the-landscaped-yard/ "A #2 with a coke, please; but, if you could, hold the meat and add extra lettuce and tomatoes." "You mean you don't want the meat?" "That's right. I'm vegetarian." "Would you like to get the vegetarian sandwich meal instead?" "No, I don't particularly like whole grain bread, nor do I enjoy the ... http://ericherboso.com/blog/2008/04/vegetarianism-issues-the-crazy-dude-and-a-published-secret/ Went to a speech by Karl Rove. Two hecklers cursed him out in the middle of his talk; apparently, this is quite common with him. Rove pointed out, quite accurately, in my opinion, that it is dishonest for Obama to pledge that he wants to run a different kind ... http://ericherboso.com/blog/2008/04/certainly-not-what-i-expected/ A shitstorm just happened today in the U.S. House of Representatives. (I'll start with a quick summary, and then go into detail for those who want more info.) A congressman died not long ago, and the service was held this morning at the House. But Republicans interrupted it midstream with political ... http://ericherboso.com/blog/2008/02/shitstorm-at-us-house-of-representatives/ Before you read this post, you have to watch this video: [HTML1] When you're done watching, read on. I'll wait for you. Okay, finished watching? Good. Now I have a few things to say. But before I start, I want to share the first thing I wrote down when ... http://ericherboso.com/blog/2008/02/moving-beyond-capitalism-but-not-through-socialism/ So I'm sitting in my top floor office with a window (I'm just special like that, apparently), working off my three hour recording session for our weekly thirty minute podcast by reading Dilbert cartoons, when all of a sudden I hear someone screaming at the top of his lungs. ... http://ericherboso.com/blog/2008/02/skateboard-accident/ You may have heard about Masaru Emoto before--he's the guy who claims that emotions, when directed at water just prior to freezing, will cause the water molecules to freeze in patterns that are associated with the emotion in question. He is, as you might imagine, completely fucking retarded. Nevertheless, because ... http://ericherboso.com/blog/2008/02/emotos-emotive-water-crystals/ Presidential Candidate Huckabee, at a rally in Alabama today, announced that if he gets elected President, he would appoint Chuck Norris as both Secretary of Defense and Head of the Department of Homeland Security. I am NOT kidding. I predict Huckabee will now win Alabama's vote. Update: Here's a ... http://ericherboso.com/blog/2008/02/huckabee-announces-chuck-norris-as-both-head-of-homeland-security-secretary-of-defense/ TASERs have been in the news a lot recently. A student was tasered at John Kerry's speech just a few months ago, and more recently an Oakland cop killed someone with a taser. Then there's the Vancouver guy who was tasered to death in the airport, and in ... http://ericherboso.com/blog/2007/11/are-tasers-safe/ The administration likes to say that they're doing a great job with homeland security, since no significant attacks have been made on US soil since 9/11. But today that story has been proved to be nothing horseshit. The GAO released a report today that detailed how teams at 19 different ... http://ericherboso.com/blog/2007/11/19-planes-virtually-destroyed-in-us-skies/ Mike Gravel is falling back. NBC's decision to kick him out of the debate reeks of corporate censorship by General Electric, one of the companies who profit so much whenever we go to war. We need to stand up and do something. Mike Gravel needs exposure, and he needs ... http://ericherboso.com/blog/2007/11/put-mike-gravel-on-democracy-now/ I've been avoiding talking about Ron Paul for a while now. But I don't think I can continue without saying a few things.   There's something about this Ron Paul guy.   And I'm not just talking about the fact that he is currently third in raising funds. I'm not just talking ... http://ericherboso.com/blog/2007/11/starting-to-think-about-ron-paul/ Kucinich: "I saw a UFO." .:sigh:. Look: I'm for Mike Gravel, and I back him 95%. But if he doesn't make it, the only choice I have left is Dennis Kucinich. So it really irks me that he's so idiotic as to say something like this during the ... http://ericherboso.com/blog/2007/10/kucinich-i-saw-a-ufo/ Mike Gravel, who was banned from the tonight's democratic presidential debate by NBC is going to answer all the debate questions from across the street, and broadcast this live on the web at Gravel2008.us. If you plan to watch tonight's debate, then you should also watch Gravel's webcast! If we ... http://ericherboso.com/blog/2007/10/watch-gravel-at-nbc-presidential-debate/ Recently, NBC decided to screw Mike Gravel by setting up arbitrary requirements specifically designed to bar Gravel from participating in the upcoming 30 October democratic presidential debate. Well, now one of Gravel's supporters (who is apparently also a Ron Paul supporter) has decided to stand up and put his money where ... http://ericherboso.com/blog/2007/10/nbc-is-offered-1000000-if-they-let-gravel-speak/ At the last second, NBC has set up new arbitrary requirements for entering the 30 October democratic presidential debate and informed Mike Gravel that because he did not meet these requirements, he would be barred from the debate. These new requirements were arbitrarily chosen specifically to bar Mike Gravel ... http://ericherboso.com/blog/2007/10/nbc-bars-mike-gravel-from-attending-debate/ Today, I saw Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad speak at Columbia University. I'd like to share a few highlights of the encounter, and I don't just mean the novelty of dealing with secret service agents staring down the visitors, nor the protesters outside, nor the fact that if you got ... http://ericherboso.com/blog/2007/09/ahmadinejad-at-columbia-university/ The start of a new blog is always a momentous occasion for me, but I think that this time it is even more special. Because along with starting this new blog, I am starting my new life. I suppose I should introduce myself, since this is my first entry. ... http://ericherboso.com/blog/2007/08/welcome-to-the-weblog-of-eric-herboso/   Disclaimer: This entry will likely be mercilessly edited in the future. Rather than keeping this entry as a record of my current thoughts, I intend to use this space specifically for more current, up-to-date information. You know, it's always really tough to describe oneself. Sure, you can list your interests, and ... http://ericherboso.com/blog/2007/03/who-is-eric-herboso/   You know, it's always really tough to describe oneself. Sure, you can list your interests, and maybe even give a few anecdotal accounts of you living your life. But to really get at the core of whom a person is requires something more. You must put forth a worldview that ... http://ericherboso.com/blog/2007/03/archived-from-livejournal-2/ Okay, so it's been a while since I posted. At least this time I have a (slightly more) valid excuse. Hurricane Katrina really screwed up a lot of my plans recently. Forcing its way hrough less than a week after school school began, I had not yet ... http://ericherboso.com/blog/2005/09/worthy-of-attention-taking-stock-of-reality-back-after-katrina/ Life. Odd how life keeps continuing, despite what may happen at any individual point. Never would I have guessed how my life would end up had one taken the time to ask me about my thoughts of the future way back when I was still in grade school. Life is such ... http://ericherboso.com/blog/2005/08/worthy-of-attention-taking-stock-of-reality-life/     I may be just enough of a masochist to try it out on the side as well. If ever there were a more morose, pitiably pedantic, and terribly trite joke of a job than writing weekly articles for no pay, then please let me know about it. I may be ... http://ericherboso.com/blog/2005/07/worthy-of-attention-taking-stock-of-reality-the-meta-article/ As a philosophical skepticist, I sometimes find it hard to make arguments that would convince anyone that I am correct in my views. But if I restrict my audience to a subset of the population, then I believe that I can, because of shared initial premises, convince a great ... http://ericherboso.com/blog/2005/07/worthy-of-attention-taking-stock-of-reality-duty-not-charity/ So the other day, I was reflecting on the fact that I'd just turned 24 years of age, and I found myself taking stock of my life up to that point. My life has really been a roller-coaster ride, rife with soap-opera like circumstances that seem unique at first ... http://ericherboso.com/blog/2005/07/worthy-of-attention-taking-stock-of-reality-a-shitty-situatio/ A couple wakes up from their shared bed in a beautifully decorated hotel-like room with windows over-looking the ocean. As they get up, they check their itenary for the day, which includes a visit to the massage parlor, the gym, a sauna, and a trip to the local museum. ... http://ericherboso.com/blog/2005/06/worthy-of-attention-taking-stock-of-reality-impugning-punishment/ Though there are many things in this world that are worthy of attention, only one issue may be discussed first in this column. And rather than using this initial pulpit to discuss politics, or the environment, or the subjugation of non-human animals, I wish to bring up the one ... http://ericherboso.com/blog/2005/06/worthy-of-attention-taking-stock-of-reality-tackling-hedonism-head-on/ The question of morality is always a sticky one. What is or is not considered to be ethical changes with each person you ask. Nevertheless, it is clear that the vast majority of human beings agree on a few so-called 'basic' moral judgments, such as the undesirability of ... http://ericherboso.com/blog/2005/06/worthy-of-attention-taking-stock-of-reality/ From my bound journal, dated Dec 31, 2004.  Often, the heart of compassion reels at new knowledge not because it is unused to learning, but because the realities of life are so distraught with misfortune. Only just previously, I was able to take my sister on an outing, eating at a vegetarian ... http://ericherboso.com/blog/2004/12/sans-sanguine-sanity/ From my bound journal dated Dec 28, 2004.  Today, I had planned on going out to the movies with my sister, Anh. But as I awoke, ever so slowly, as I so often do, I could hear her getting into trouble. At first, she was just disobeying her parents; not that that ... http://ericherboso.com/blog/2004/12/an-ordinary-day/