Wednesday, December 18, 2013

Liberty and Support or Control and Hate

I hold these truths as worthy of support
  • all people have the right to life and liberty
  • we are better led by those that aspire to love than those that feed on hate and fear
  • we are better led by those that seek to support than those that seek to control
  • people that can abuse power far too often do so, creating systems that ignore this is dangerous
  • societies are built and held together by communities cooperating and being bound by social conventions
  • those with authority should have that authority limited, challenges to those in authority should be supported and encouraged
  • communities that are built on fear and hate are dangerous and should be challenged
Those granted wisdom, health and/or wealth should seek to help others wherever those people live.

National boundaries matter, we are still having a great deal of trouble building nations that are not corrupted by those abusing authority to control others and enrich themselves. But the worth of people is not defined by their passport. Those that seek to gain support through promoting the hate and fear of others should be challenged and rejected.

Those of us in rich countries are far too concerned with our own material wealth and far too unconcerned with corrupt leaders (politicians, business leaders and others with power) and those less fortunate than us.

We should expect that people everywhere have the right to food, clean water and basic health care.

Implementing solutions based on broad principle is very hard. It isn't surprising that we struggle doing so. But that we fail so utterly far before we get to such difficulties disappointing.

Related: Society is being shaped for us while we are busy making other plans - Preaching False Ideas to Men Known to be Idiots - Living Through Your Society Becoming a Police State - Security Theatre Thinking is Damaging the USA - The Anti Liberty Sentiment in Congress

Friday, December 13, 2013

Quick Thoughts on the Risks of Violence while Traveling

Just a quick response I posted on Reddit that I am also sharing here (to Defending yourself abroad):

Not getting drunk at bars likely proactively addresses a significant portion of issues.

Second, if you are coming from the USA or many other fairly high personal crime countries there are many places you are much safer while traveling. If you are coming from Japan, Singapore, Scandinavia you probably are much more likely to be the victim of crime than at home.

If you are not drunk the most likely crime is theft, while not good, it is much better than being attacked in my opinion (at least much better than being attacked by someone who is the equivalent of your still ineffective kid brother :-)

The biggest concern in a new environment is that you don't pick up on the clues of danger that you would in your home environment. This means to be safe you are wise to try and develop the ability to be more skeptical and more attuned to what is going on around you. You may also be the target as you may be more visible, may be seen as rich, may be seen as a jerk (often being drunk helps boost this impression).

There is danger everywhere. But we often exaggerate the danger of new place (new to us). Being careful makes sense, but the dangers away from home are often statistically less though are unfamiliarity may lead us to be less aware and able to avoid situations we find in unfamiliar surroundings. Also, being on your own (instead of in a city with lots of friends that help keep you in line, give you protection in numbers in some situations...) can increase the risk to you, especially again in unfamiliar surroundings.

I doubt learning fighting skills makes much sense. Outside of drunken brawls most places are not that violet and if they are many times it is guns and such things (though most often that level of violence is aimed at other criminals or family and friends).

There is other violence (between people) of course and it is sad and something to avoid. I would be amazed if car and bus deaths (of travelers) and injury don't exceed by a long way any person on person violence against travelers.

Related: Curious Cat Travel Destinations - Travel Photos blog - A Tourist in Singapore - Curious Cat Australia Travel -

Sunday, December 08, 2013

Historic PageRank and MozPageAuthority for Various Sites - Updated December 2013

Google pagerank is a measure of the number and importance of pages that are linking to the page (with the public page rank lowered by Google if they don't like some things the site/page does). One measure obviously has huge limitations for capture the nature or value of any page (for more info see previous post). Even with the limitation I still find it fun to look at the pagerank values - except when they go down for my sites :-(  Now I also track the similar Moz Page Authority and can take some solace if the MozPA goes up :-)
Google is downplaying pagerank and only updated the public rankings twice this year (they update the real page rank that they use themselves in real time). The only reason they updated it now (they say) is because they needed to make another coding change and it was easiest to update the public pagerank view rather than keep the old values during the code update.
** [5.0]
SiteDec 2013
[MozPA]
Feb 2013Oct 2011 Dec 2010Dec 2008
PageRank 5 and MozPA > 4
Curious Cat Management Blog5 [6.1] 5 [6.3] 5 [5.5] 43
Curious Cat Engineering and Science Blog5 [5.8]5 [6.1]6 [5.3]45
The W. Edwards Deming Institute Blog5 [5.5]4 [5.2]---
John Hunter5 [5.0]5 [5.3]4 [5.4]44
CSS 4 Free5 [4.7]4 [4.9]4 [5.4]45

PageRank 4 and MozPA > 5
Curious Cat Investing and Economics Blog4 [5.7]4 [5.9]4 [5.3]34
Curious Cat Management Improvement Connections*** [3.3]4 [5.4]5 [5.5]43
Curious Cat Travel Photo Blog4 [5.0]4 [5.1]3 [4.9]-

PageRank 4 and MozPA > 4
The Future is Engineering*4 [4.3]4 [4.6]4 [4.7]
The Engineer That Made Your Cat a Photographer*3 [4.1]4 [4.4]4 [4.7]43
Curious Cat Code (programming)4 [4.1]4 [4.3]4 [4.2]-
Curious Cat Gadgets4 [4.1]4 [4.3]
Living in Singapore4 [4.1]4 [4.3]3 [4.0]
Multi Site PageRank Checker4 [4.1]3 [4.1]3 [4.7]21

PageRank 4 and MozPA > 3
externs.com - internship directory4 [4.0]4 [4.4]4 [5.2]44
Life and Legacy of William Hunter (my father)4 [4.0]4 [4.1]4 [4.5]44
Living in Malaysia 4 [4.0]4 [4.2]3 [4.1]
Statistics for Experimenters4 [3.9]4 [3.9]3 [4.5]34
Hexawise Software Testing Blog4 [3.8]3 [4.0]
Management Matters (my book)*4 [3.8]4 [3.5]--
Management and Leadership Quotes4 [3.7]4 [4.0]2 [5.2]2

PageRank 3 and MozRank > 3
Good Process Improvement Practices*3 [4.0]3 [4.1]3 [4.1]
Architecture and home design inspiration3 [4.0]4 [4.2]-
Management Articles*3 [3.9]4 [4.3]
Curious Cat Management Comments3 [3.9]3 [4.3]3 [4.5]
Curious Cat Comments (this blog) 3 [3.9]3 [4.0]- [3.8]33
Curious Cat Travel Destinations3 [3.4]3 [3.2]---
Management Improvement Resources3 [3.1]3 [3.4]3 [3.8]33

PageRank 2 and MozRank > 2
Curious Cat Web Directory2 [3.3]4 [3.6]4 [4.7]34
Johor Bahru Real Estate2 [3.0]2 [3.2]-
Curious Cat Travel Destinations: Marina Bay Sands (Singapore)2 [2.9]2 [3.0]--
Hexawise.tv2 [2.8]2 [2.9]--

PageRank 1 and MozRank > 3
CuriousCat Wordpress1 [3.5]u [3.6]---

urls changed since the old data Google is using, so no pagerank
Curiouscat.com**4 [5.4]4 [5.6]33
Management Dictionary*** [2.6]5 [5.2]5 [5.4]43
Public Sector Continuous Improvement Site*4 [5.1]5 [5.0]4
Deming's Management Method*** [4.9]3 [5.0]4 [4.5]4
Six Sigma Management Resources*** [4.9]4 [5.0]4
Investment Dictionary*** [4.8]4 [5.0]4 [5.2]

No PageRank
My Kiva pageu [5.8]u [6.2]u [4.0]3
Economic Strength Through Technology Leadership***u [4.2]u [4.5]4 [4.7]44
Justin Hunter (my brother)u [3.4]u [3.4]2 [2.9]22
Curious Cat Travel Destinations: Franceu [1.3]u [1.9]---
Curious Cat Travel Destinations: Australiau [1.3]u [1.8]---


* internal pages
** new url, old url forwarded
- didn't exist yet
u unranked
[blank] I don't know what the pagerank was, sometimes the site didn't exist yet.

***I have noticed my high pagerank blog posts can be at PR of 4 for years and then have no page rank at all. Meanwhile MozPA doesn't seem to disappear the authority of those page. The PageRank can often reappear in another update (I even think they may come back in between updates but I might be mistaken).

Related: PageRank Moz PageAuthority for Various Sites (February 2013) - Google Page Rank Updates for November 2012 - Google Toolbar PageRank Update December 2008