Is it climate change? or Global Warming?

One of the things I keep tucked away in the back of my brain from a time management conference is that "Change" is a bad word. Change is a bad word *on its own* because it indicates movement but not direction. Change is, in mathematical terms, half of the designation of a vector. In order for change itself to be of value, it must be accompanied by direction.

The conversion of wording from "Global Warming" to "Climate Change" is indicative of the "bad word" that "change" is. The Global Warming pundits have tried to convince people that it exists, and have convinced people who might otherwise deny the existence of God, with criteria that they would decry if applied to the existence of God, they would accept whole-heartedly in the case of "Global Warming." Even the points made by Al Gore have been denied by his own graphs. Some esteemed scientists have indicated that, if anything, earth is in a Global Cooling.

So, now, we are inundated by the rather bland scare-term "Climate Change." First, it uses the ambiguous term "Change" (cooler, perhaps? warmer?) and then ignores completely the fact that climates change regardless of human intervention. They just tend to do that. If indeed we're in a climate cooling period for the last ten years (or 12 months?), what are we trying to prevent? And by what means are we humans expected to prevent it?

Are we allowed to criticize a black president?

Consider the rhetoric that has been incessantly hurled with no holds barred against our current President. Assuming that a "joking" morning show host could hurl visceral epithets or "funny" innuendo at the President of the United States, would the "funny" "jokes" be allowed in the context of a black president?

Currently, the media is reportedly enamored with a can-do-no-wrong eligible alternative to the presumptive Republican candidate. If the run-up to the primaries, and then the general election, allow a relatively inexperienced candidate to pass mostly unquestioned and potentially unscathed, is that because of the "idea" of the "ideal" or is it because to look at the naked emperor and call him on it is so horrible?

Perhaps, there is nothing to be called out upon. More power to such people who yet exist in this world. However, there is the premise that any questioning of a non-white must inherently be racist. Serious? Welcome to France. I think the big question is who is crying racism, and whether racism is being called out to obscure the question. "You can't say that! He's black, and he's President of the United States! Don't disrespect the man or the office!" What is interesting is that these statements will absolutely and unequivocally be shouted from the rooftops by well-meaning people who may have had no qualms saying infinitely more scandalous remarks against a sitting white President.

Can a purely objective criticism ever be levied without the taint of racism being implied? It should really depend on the people who feel that racism is evident in every bit of speech (and those who are influenced by those people). But those are the people whom we probably can never criticize.

Colorize your log files!

I posted my awk colorizer for tail before and the general consensus seemed to be "meh".

If you are greping through monochrome logs, you're missing out on color.

Here's my latest:

grep -l search criteria * | xargs head | awk -f colorit.awk | more

great for spam logs.