The Mind of Men

I was reading this story today on the successful location of the 16 year old girl who was trying to be the youngest person to sail unassisted around the world or something like that. As the story goes, she was fine until sometime around Wednesday/Thursday when she activated her emergency locator beacon as she became increasingly concerned about the stormy conditions she was sailing in. On Thursday, her boat was successfully located in the middle of nowhere in the Indian Ocean. She is 2000 miles East of Madagascar, 2000 Miles West of Perth, Australia and 500 miles north of some small French Islands in the Antarctic. An Australian rescue plane overflew her boat and noted that while it had been dismasted, it was still afloat and appeared seaworthy. The French government has diverted a small fishing boat to pick her up, but she is so far from anywhere that it will take them until Saturday to reach her. The Australians have also dispatched a military vessel to the area.

Okay, so here are my questions – first of all, who the hell is going to pay for this? The rescue plane had a good distance to fly to find her and with rising fuel costs, it’s not going to be cheap for either the French fishing boat or the Australian Naval ship to get on the scene. Secondly, as the article states, she is pretty far off any shipping lane. She is supposed to be a very accomplished sailor – if that’s true, then what the heck was she thinking? If she had a medical emergency, she might very well be two days or more from help sailing where she is.

While I’m certainly glad that she has been successfully found, I hope that her and her family gets the bill for rescue effort. It just really annoys me when people go out and do something so amazingly stupid like this and then look to the rest of us to pay a lot of money to get their stupid butts out of the mess they got themselves into.

I’m also going to go out on a limb and suggest that these idiot record books that track things like “youngest person to sail around the world” or “world’s fattest person” are partly to blame for this. We should not have records that encourage stupid behavior. Left to our own devices, as a race, humans do some pretty stupid things without additional encouragement. If this girl had been successful in making it around the world, eventually, some 15 year old would try a round the world stunt, then a 14 year old, and on until someone eventually gets killed. The parents of this girl are incredibly irresponsible – really – letting a 16 year old try to sail solo around the world. What would have happened had she come across some of the pirates that sail in the area – hell – her web site was tracking her progress so it wouldn’t have been too hard to find her. She would have disappeared into a brothel or faced an even worse fate never to be seen again and then everyone would have felt sorry for her parents instead of asking them what the F- they were thinking letting her do this in the first place.

Like I said, I’m glad she was found, but I sure as heck hope we hear about the five or six figure bill her family gets to pay for the rescue effort. It may help discourage similar stupid behavior in the future. Chances are, though that you know they’ll be able to afford it with the royalties they’ll get when her story gets turned into the inevitable TV movie lauding her daring and skill or something foolish like that.

Episode 129 – The Penultimate Show

Jim — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 03:25:41 +0000

The guys get together for the final “regular” show before the final episode of the Mind of Men, which will be happening the third week of June. If you have any questions, comments, and/or well wishes, get them to us before June 17 and we’ll talk about them on our last show.

Listen now:

Interesting News

Stocks end May with worst showing in a year

Gary Coleman Passes Away at 42

Tech News

Apple’s Market Cap Exceeds Microsoft and is closing on Exxon Mobil

Chinese Hardware Maker Foxconn continues to have problems with suicides

A guide to privacy on Facebook | Facebook

How to Build a Water Rocket | Step-by-Step | Family Projects | This Old …

Air Rocket Kit from the Maker Store

Tech Stuff

IP enabled Thermostat

iPhone App for Remote Thermostat Control

Mass Effect I and II bundled for $42 by Impulse

Politics

Goodbye and Good Riddance to Arlen Specter

But Republicans are upset that White House interfered with the primary campaign

President takes some of the blame for the BP spill debacle

Episode 128 – Gettin' Near the End…

Jim — Fri, 28 May 2010 14:21:05 +0000

This week, we talk about a bunch of things, but the most important is the announcement that we are approaching the end of the Mind of Men as a regularly scheduled podcast. We invite everyone to get their questions and comments in and we’ll be talking about those (along with a bunch of other stuff) during our two week hiatus before the final episode, Episode 130, which will be our around June 23rd.

Listen now:

Interesting News

No Triple Crown again this year as Looking at Lucky steals Preakness from Derby winner Super Saver

Article on Getting the Drugs out of horse racing to fix Triple Crown

BP Oil spill continues to threaten America’s Shores and President Obama forms bipartisan commission to study ways to prevent this in the future

Arizona threatens to cut off power to L.A. in response to city’s boycott

Skydiver preparing for Supersonic Fall from 23 miles up

Tech News

Adobe targets Apple in ad campaign launched today, publishes open letter from founders

Are Digital Devices Like iPads Rotting Our Brains?

Politics

Primary Races Show further polarization between Left and Right

Our Website is Baaaaaaaaaaaaack

Mike — Fri, 28 May 2010 04:22:08 +0000

Hello everyone. Our website has finally been restored. Unfortunately, it’s a bit dated in that the latest good backup we had is from late April. We will be adding the latest episodes over the next couple of days.

In the mean time, you can still access our RSS feeds from our menu and of course, our iTunes subscriptions are still active.

Thanks for your patience during our website’s “vacation.”

– Mike & Jim

Episode 127 – Tech Update 2010 – What We Use Day to Day

Jim — Tue, 18 May 2010 14:28:54 +0000

This week on the show, we revisit one of our favorite topics – the tech that we use everyday. We’re light on front end stories, so we can make time to jump into the main segment.

Listen now:

Jim’s List

Filezilla

FeedDemon

Password Manager – Have traded Roboform in for LastPass

TweetDeck

For Firefox: Noscript and Ghostery

Microsoft Office 2010

Mozilla Thunderbird

Vipre from Sunbelt Software, but also Microsoft Security Essentials

Astaro Security Gateway

Secunia PSI

Google Chrome

Keepvault as a replacement for JungleDisk/Amazon S3

For my Blackberry - Notifysync

LogMeIn Pro

Mike

Filezilla

TweetDeck and Digsby

Viigo and Delicious

Shrewsoft VPN Client

7Zip

PDF Creator

Snag It

Microsoft Virtual Server

Avast and Microsoft Security Essentials

OpenDNS

Windows Gadgets

WeatherBug

Pandora

Ipad Apps

GoodReader

Pages

IMDB

SkyGrid

GoToMeeting

PaperDesk LT

Notes

RDP Lite

Calculator XL

Episode 126 – My Investment Portfolio Did What??!!?

Jim — Tue, 11 May 2010 14:33:04 +0000

Listen now:

Interesting News

U.K. Election Results Shows a Country Still in Serious Crisis

The Euro Zone is in Real Trouble

What the Heck is Up with the Financial Markets?

Tech News

Paul Thurrott’s retort to the story that the iPad is killing Netbook Sales

Julius Caesar of the Internet

Arizona to remove speed cameras along its highway

Technology Stuff

Apple Sells One Millionth iPad and releases 3G version

Cradlepoint PHS300 – Jim’s Solution to 3G Access for his iPad on Verizon

Politics

Illinois’s Budget Problems are a Lesson in the Politics of Fiscal Responsibility

Utah – First Incumbent Falls Victim to Voter Anger

Episode 123 – The News Show III

Mike — Thu, 22 Apr 2010 01:42:27 +0000

In this show we cover our weekly round-up of interesting news, tech news, general stuff, but this week, no politics.

Listen now:

Listener Bob points out that Engadget has solved the iPad printing problem

Interesting News

Tech News

Technology Stuff

HH76 – Alec Bradley Tempus Genesis & Woodford Reserve Bourbon

Jim — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 02:05:52 +0000

This week the guys take a look at a boutique cigar from Alec Bradley & we get to eat a little crow for some of our previous negative comments on Woodford Reserve Bourbon Whiskey

This week’s cigar and libation pairing:

Listen now: