Africa's World War: Congo, the Rwandan Genocide, and the

Making of a Continental Catastrophe
By
Gérard Prunier

Speeding The Net: Netscape v Microsoft

By joshua Quittner

Library book

At last the book that tells the whole story of the ruthless crushing of Netscape but the satanic Microsoft.

Pg. 177 Netscape 's success with Navigator 1.0 awakens the sleeping dragon. Smaug, in Redmond, wakes up and sniffs the air and exclaims, "We will crush Netscape!"

http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/doc/files/2012/09/netscape-navigator-icon-199x300.png


Pg 237 1995 was a good year for the internet and computers. As windows 95 was getting ready to release, Netscape was going public. I remember this as a giddy time and believing that this new internet thing would really, once and for all, level the playing field. Boy was i naive.


Pg 248 In 1986 Microsoft's IPO, considered wild at the time, left the  company  valued at 519 million. Fast forward to 1995 and Netscape after it's IPO would be worth 4.4 billion. "Netscape bad ushered in a new era."

Netscape's success had awoken the sleeping giant of Redmond. By winter of '95 Bill Gates had set out to crush the fledgling startup. And try though they might, the rebels were no match for Darth Gator and his money and minions. Even though Netscapes gave away the browser and source code to the world, and justice deparment lawyers aside, Gates and the bloodthirsty Microsoft horde conquered.

I remeber at the time being outraged at the behavior of Gates and I continued to go.out of my way to use Netscape Navigator. I continued to root for the underdog, but eventually even I gave in to tbe inevitable. "Resistance is futile...You too will become one with the Borg." And i did. Not proud of that, but I did.

Portions of tbe old Netscape browser live on in Firefox which i don't  use (forgive me Mark). 

And then tbere was one. But the success of Cbrome has consistently eaten into Gates' marketshare. And the internet is fluid. Maybe Gates' commeuppance is yet to be.

Books:

Overdrive by James Wallace

Essays:

This in Oct 95 shortly after release of 1.0

http://m.fastcompany.com/26443/can-you-work-netscape-time

Video:
The Browser Wars
Discovery The True Story of the Internet 1 of 4.B…: http://youtu.be/qQwCx-Ey6x8

Social Media Is Bullshit

By B J Mendelson

So we hit the ground running here with good stuff right at the start. We have a description of what it was like to build web pages in the 90's. The author, much like myself, coded in Word and saved as .html. Also he went Monroe-Woodbury for high school which isn't far from here. Oh and the advice carry a notebook and write it down otherwise "it's gone forever."

I think i'm going to like this book.

The Epigenetics Revolution: How Modern Biology Is Rewriting Our Undersstanding genetics, disease, and imheretence

By Nessa Carey

We start out with Audrey Hepurn. She was a survivor.of the "Dutch Hunger Winter" which was at the close of WWII. Starvation was rampant that year and the result was low birth weight babies that stayed low, hence her dimimutive stature.

What is.epigenetics I hear you ask " Whenever two genetically identical individuals are non-identical in some way we can measure, this is called epigenetics."

Althought two actors are handed indentical scripts for a movie, no two actors will be the same in execution. This is epigenetics. This is at.the heart of nature v nurture.

Waddington’s epigenetic landscape. This is the.physical representation of the normal course of cell differentation. Cells theoretically travel downhill to the bottom and stay there (the bottom representing a differentiated cell). What science seeks to do is theoretically make it roll back up hill.

That process ie " how to take a somatic cell and use the four factors – Oct4, Sox2, Klf4 and c-Myc – to turn it into a pluripotent cell," is patented by the way. Yes the very creation of life is to be.owned by the highest bidder. Welcome to the brave new financial world.

So Dr Bird has proved, in mice anyway (see his mouse on YouTube) that certain genes can be.switched back on. The real story is that when the gene is switched back on the disease.process is reversed. All that developmental time is not wasted the patient, in this case the mouse, reverts right back to what a normal.healthy mouse does at this age. The gene MeCp2 is what causes Retts syndrome in children. The hope.is.that Dr Birds' treatment will be able.to reverse Retts syndrome in children.

I needed some work done in the frontyard so naturally I called Waddington's Epigenetic Landscapers. They did a good job but now the bushes all seemed to have migrated down to the bottom of the driveway and I dont know how to get them to come back up the hill to the

Epigenetics is helping to solve the age old question of inheritance vs evolution. Lamarck theorized that we develop traits useful to our life and pass those on to the next generation. This is his "Theory of Inheritance of Acquired Characteristics" published in 1801. Darwin proposed that variations are continuous and random. And when a variation is advantageous the lucky recepient is more likley tp do better in his environment and have more offspring with the new trait.
This is the argument that epigenetics is able to explore. Lamarck! Darwin! Stop! Your both right. Old.research has proven the Darwinian theory to death. But new research is showing that yes Lamarck was right too and sttetchy necked giraffes can alter their DNA in one lifetime and.not only pass it on to their children but in some cases to their grandchildren.

Evolution can be boiled down to one question, "Do the chicks dig it?" Cause if they do, it stays. If a.variation causes me to grow a six foot red flag out pf my rectum and the girls find that sexy? It stays. It's the same reason why yesterday in B&N I sat next to a whole.table.full of young boys with Justin Beiber hair. We tend to do what the chicks.dig.

War Lovers: Roosevelt, Lodge, Hearst, and the Rush to Empire

By Evan Thomas

This book is about the roaring 90's. In this part it mentions T.R. got.his sensitivity to tje poor while acting police commissioner on NYC. His night time jaunts with Jacob Riis showed him the light. The book is

Island of Vice: Theodore Roosevelt's Doomed Quest to Clean Up Sin-Loving New York. Good book.

This really is a great and patriotic time to be an American; You had the Pledge of Allegiance 1892, America The Beautiful 1895 and in 1893 the White City.

Read Devil in the White City to find out all about it.

Rez Life An Indians Journey Through Reservation Life

By David Treuer

Pg 2 Some tribes are poor but not all "In 2007 the seminole bought the Hard Rock Cafe' franchise"

The author, an Ojibwe, is quick to comment and dispose.of the stereotypes of the "noble savage" that delude and distort. Apparently the Ojibwe are the "Rodney Dangerfields" of the indian world. Not glamorous and as well known as the more.flamboyant Sioux or Apaches, yet they figure large in the histories and the carry a glorious lineage.

On visiting a family member in ICU he see the words "Rez Life" tattooed to his friends chest and hence we have our title.

Not for nothing, but to me Red Lake looks big enough to share. Putting up barriers to fishing on a big lake like that one seems a little ridiculous. And to have "so-called" conservations officers armed and dangerous chasing simple fisherman on the lake goes beyond the ridiculous to the.sublime.

The author spends the next fifty pages explaining why this is ok, but franlkly, Im not convinced.

Pg 32 Here's something you don't read in the histpry books about Valley Forge. In the winter of 1777-78 to help relieve the famine conditions happening at Valley Forge, ot was Oneida indians who "carried 600 bushels of corn on their backs" to the starving soldiers. They were rewarded by having their lands confiscated after the was was over and forced west.

I have read many histories of the revolution but have never heard this story ever. You could fill volumes of history with what is left out.

The author reminds us that indians as a rule serve in the military in large numbers. They have been represented in every American conflict from the start in the 1600's till the present day in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Pg 62 The author is preparing to go fishing on the lake and he see comservation officials standing by. He tells that they are there to protect the indians from the locals who sometimes abuse them. At one demonstration indians were spit on by locals bearing signs that read "save a walleye spear an indian" and this one, the authors favorite and mine, "indians go home."

Days of Destruction Days of Revolt

By Chris Hedges and Joe Sacco

This book attempts a peak into the lives of the less fortunate. These are those poor souls who are not riding the.prosperity wave advertised on TV that they tell you is so easy to get. These people are the victims of our winner take all system of wealth creation at all cost paradigm that we embrace.

First stop, the Indian Reservation in White Clay Nebraska. Here the remnants of the Indian Wars sit in filth and destitution and sip the firewater that soothes their tortutred souls. Ask any Indian about equality in America, they will tell you the truth.

Then off to "The Rez" for a peek. Sacco's drawings are right on.

Pg 17 Great quote here. When the chronically underfunded Indian Health Service claims yet another victim this Charlie DeSersa, a lawyer who defends indians, states,"The callousness of the wealthy and their [paid] servants in Congress sickens me." Let them eat cake indeed.

Pg 24 Wow its like half comic book and half real book with Sacco's cartoons.

Pg 40 In 1973 the American Indian Movement attempted to take over the Wounded Knee Reservation. While the seige was happening, Marlon Brando who was winning an Oscar for Cuckoos Nest let an Indian speak instead of him. This was heady stuff for the early 1970's. In 1974 the movie "The Trial of Billy Jack" came out  and brought the.plight of the Indians to a mass audience. I loved the movie and especially that haunting song One Tin Soldier. It still takes me back to that drive-in (which is now closed of course) and my 13 yr old self watching from the back seat.of my father's car rooting for Billy Jack while he kicked ass and stood up for the Indian underdogs.

Pg 54 So it was with the Indian is how it will be for us. The author reminds us that now we are every bit as dependent on the government as we forced the indians to be. What will be our future?

Pg 59 chapter two: Next stop Camden NJ.

Pg 77 "Camden is the poster child for postindustrial America. It is a window into the dead end that will come to more and more Americans as corporarions 'harvest' what is left of the nation fpr short-term profit and leave behind the wreckage and environmental disaster." Well that about says it all. It will be welcome to the new America, the coporatacracy where you will be used in the way we need you, until we no longer have a need for you. For the.only thing worse than being exploited is having so little there is nothing left to exploit.

Camden is bleak indeed.

Pg 115 next stop West Va and what King Coal hath wrought.