Now we shall talk of many things

hello, hello, i really must be going.

2005-02-11T20:23:00.000-08:00

Well, I think I'm done here. My site is working nicely, even if I don't post enough, so I now officially declare this blog closed. It'll stay up, of course, if only so I can laugh at my old writing if I ever get famous.

goodbye

2005-01-29T19:17:00.000-08:00

Shannon, you are to be congratulated. A couple of words and you keep me posting daily for over two weeks. Still, everything comes to an end after a while. I've finally realized what I should have a long time ago, I suck at blogging. I can barely keep up regular posting, run out of steam easily, think every entry should be written for the ages (not that I'm any good at it), and quickly get an 'I could care less attitude' after reading too much news for a few days.

With that in mind, I quit. Forget regular posts, anything like that. When I post I'll do it on something that really does catch my eye, and if I don't show up for a while I won't be dead, just enjoying one of the many other aspects of my life. No more nasty one line, Instapundit-like posts either. I hate that guy.

And this blog is also dead, but you probably knew that. The new domain seems to be working well, got the Greymatter publishing thing working nicely, if a bit plain. (And it's free too) I'm still working on it though, probably won't have it ready to go for a week or so. I'll make an announcement here when it's ready, and then start the whole blogging thing anew over there.

still friday, right?

2005-01-28T21:57:00.000-08:00

Completely forgot about posting today. I've been trying to get the new domain up and ran into a few snags.

Anyway, no guest posts? Oh well, maybe next time.

And sorry for the lack interesting posts from me, haven't had much time for a few days.

my incredible laziness

2005-01-27T20:25:00.000-08:00

I'm lazy, but you already knew that. I'm opening up the guest account now because I don't feel like getting up at midnight and going to school on 5 hours of sleep.

Anyway go to blogger.com, log in with the account name 'iamaguest' and the password 'freefriday'. Click on the nice green cross and write yourself some words. Anyone is welcome, and I hope some new people stop by so I can add you to the blogroll.

Have fun, knock yourself out. Excessively obscene entries are subject to censorship, but I doubt I'll mess around with anyone's posts otherwise. Most importantly, sign the post and give a link back to your site (if you have one) so I can track you down after I read your brilliant writing.

no idea what i'm doing

2005-01-27T18:57:00.000-08:00

Did I mention I was a computer science major. Yeah, sorta. Only, I haven't taken any actual computer courses, just poked around through the basics. And going language crazy this semester hasn't helped much.

Why does this matter? Because I just got my domain about two hours ago. The clever, inventive, subtly amusing name of jshanks.com. How original and clever, eh? Still waiting for the thing to propagate, but I'm uploading a few scripts to see how things work.

Enough of that, though. Meet a little site called postsecret. Lots of people send anonymous postcards with a confession to an address. It is then posted publicly online. The idea is that this "taps into the part of each of us that needs to share; to confess."

Or the part of us that likes to pull people's legs. Still, neat to watch.

the guest account cometh

2005-01-26T15:25:00.000-08:00

Behold, the second bimonthly Free For All Friday approaches. It's supposed to be the last friday of every month, but you know.. stuff happens, and I never got around to it in December.

Never more, however. The lazy person that I am has discovered how hard it is to actually come up with even one post a day, as low as my standards are. I welcome any and all opportunities to get out of work, and look forward to dumping some of it on you.

This isn't making sense to you? Hmm, a little background then. Free For All Friday is a..

"unique blogging meme - it isn't about what you post, but what others post for you. You participate by allowing the general blogging public the ability to post on your blog via a guest account. As the blog owner, you get to set the guidelines - but it IS called Free-For-All for reason. FFAF is a tremendous opportunity to get to know your readers while they get to know you."

OrangeHairedBoy gets a little fancy with his words, but it's pretty simple, you come by on Friday, or 11:47pm Thursday, and log into the guest account with the handy dandy password I'll give you. You post anything you want, without making every other word one of them four letter ones. And best of all, after finishing up, you get to put a little link back to your blog, so the three people who read this thing regularily can come see yours. You, uh, do have a blog, right?

baby steps

2005-01-25T17:44:00.000-08:00

I'm thinking of moving away from BlogSpot. Unfortunately, I have a couple of problems. I'm an empty pocketed cheapskate, I'm too lazy to really buckle down and figure out CGI scripts and all that, and I have so many things I ought to be doing instead of blogging.

Still, delusions of grandeur keep coming up. And, I might have found the right place to use them, or at least leave them to die. DragonFort.net is a new hosting service setup by a Michigan college student that offers reasonable service, and for only a dollar. Yes, that's what I said. You get 300mb of server space and 10Gb of bandwidth a month. And it's only a dollar.

The guy seems nice enough, talked to him this morning on AIM. Apparently he works for this ISP in the summers, but they don't pay him, just give him server space. I know I get what I pay for, but it's a good place to test things out. Besides, if it goes under I lose what, 12 dollars?

One problem though. I need a good domain. I'm not sure if I want to transfer the liberalartsstudent line up to the big leagues, since it's a bit for people to remember and they're likely to forget the double S. The domains I could think up in the last 3 hours, johnshanks.com, allo.com, mediocracy.com, stickinthemud.com, cheesy.com, whee.com, and arggh.com are all gone. MyBlogAteMyHomework.com is available, but that might be a bit too long.

Whadya think? Any suggestions? Winning submitters will receive the gratefulness of a mediocrat and three blogs on the subject of their choice, not to mention an indepth interview via their IM program of choice. Apply now, win prizes, show them off to your friends.

hail the mediocracy

2005-01-24T17:17:00.000-08:00

With the end of the Blogging Journalism & Credibility conference, I'm reading through the posts, trying to digest it all. It's very interesting and has a lot of good lessons, it'll probably become part of my blogging bible along with Evangelical Outpost's How To Start a Blog Series

I do, however, disagree on one point, the characterization of the "wingers" as a problem. In this post, filed on the 22nd, Jon Garfunkel talks about his impressions of the first day. He comes up with a breakdown of the blogosphere into three groups.

We can speak as the blogs, bloggers, and the blogosphere as it had a stable definition. Except of course when these are criticized, people drop back into “blogs aren’t just one thing!”

So here’s how I break down the types of bloggers: Ringers, Stringers, and Wingers.

THE RINGERS
These are journalists who are now bloggers– apparently, the best authorities on this subject (cf. religious or party conversion) In addition, your authority on the subject of “Blogging, Journalism, and Credibility” is questioned if you do not blog, if you are not wholly transparent.

THE STRINGERS
People with local expertise in a given area, whether simply by living there, or having a vocation. These are the community of bloggers that everyone likes to talk about. It was suggested that local stringers could substitute for foreign correspondents. Rebecca McKinnon, with all due authority on the subject as a “ringer,” and having been a foreign correspondent, explained that the added value of FC’s is that they bring in the context for the home audience.

Also, the work of the Times’s Dexter Filkins in Iraq was explicitly saluted as stellar reporting.

THE WINGERS
I offered up the picture that a sizable portion of pundit-bloggers are simply “winging it"– on very little background information, context, reporting, etc. This is the most dangerous development in the blogosphere. No one has challenged this assertion yet.

Interesting concept, but it is naturally a very accreditation centered description, as one would expect from a group that is half journalists. I am certainly a winger; mediocre, uninformed, unaware of correct punctuation, no area of expertise, so I feel the need to answer Jon.

As I see it, the mediocre bloggers provide a valuable service -- authenticating the ideas provided my the experts. We get to do a gut check, as it were. Even with our a direct connection to the things being discussed by the stringers we can compare it to our meager experience. The collective statements of one thousand ordinary people saying their grocery prices are going up is at least as important as one well connected economist who can pull out an index. Probably more so, the index is a single statement, while the thousand have the raw data. Just because the economist has taken the time to draw conclusions from that data does not automatically give his view credibility. The vital assumption of the blogosphere, from the teenage girl's journal to a gardening group's blog to Andrew Sullivan's site, is that the collective thoughts of a great many people, each of which have a small piece of the puzzle, can be a greater aid than the formulas and presumptions of an elite.

Finally, the wingers allow the blogosphere to be much larger than would be possible if it were simply a community of experts. First, they absorb readers who would otherwise overwhelm the stringers and ringers and prevent the relatively close contact between writer and audience so important in the blogosphere. Second, wingers provide a bridge between the general public and the experts, putting the information in a context that is relevant to the public.

I really don't see what Garfunkel's problem is. If a blogger is irrelevant, a bad writer, or fails to research his subjects, he will not get the same kind of attention a more careful blogger will. Even if someone like this becomes successfull, it is not going to be the kind of attention Sullivan or Kos get. Besides, the audience such a person aquires will necessarily be limited, getting it's strength from partisanship, and so limited in the umber of people it can acquire.

It just looks to me like this is an incredibly elitist misunderstanding of the value of different parts of the blogosphere. Now, back to my mediocrity.

carson dies, but I can't care

2005-01-23T14:30:00.000-08:00

Johnny Carson has died at 79. Michelle Malkin has a good wrap on him. He was a funny guy, who "brought joy to the hearts of millions". (No one has said that yet, but I'm sure someone will come up with it) I'm not being cynical, I've seen him in little clips too. I'm sure he was very funny, I just never saw him in person, as it were.

This is one of the more annoying things I know of. For years, I worked on the principle that if I just studied a little more, read a few more books, knew a bit more, I could catch up with everybody older than me. So I pushed myself. I read everything I could get my hands on, practically memorized the World Book and got started on Brittanica. I continue, always trying to learn more, break out of my daze.

Then I found the blogosphere. Thousands of people, just as good at bs as me, but who also had actual personal experience. Things like Carson dying have meaning to me. I know who he is, think he is alright, but I am missing out on something because I was crawling around on the living room floor. It sucks, like running into a brick wall. I can argue interpretations and implications till my head hurts, but I have no answer for when someone says "well, when I was there.." Not sure what to do. I always thought I could avoid that whole humility state.

But I'm starting my kid on late night talk shows and AP wire reports as soon as his eyes open.

countdown to freedom

2005-01-22T19:52:00.000-08:00

Here's the code for the countdown I have going up there. It's based on something I lazily grabbed from the Javascript Source years ago. Enjoy, tweak it, pass it on, whatever.

<SCRIPT LANGUAGE="JavaScript">










</script>

2001 uses for WD40

2005-01-22T16:42:00.000-08:00

Spent the day trying to get my homework done like a good kid. Knew there was a catch to all that responsibility stuff.

The company may believe there are 2000 uses for WD40, but bartenders in England have apparently found another -- stopping drug use. WD40, it seems, breaks down cocaine.

"It congeals into a mess, it then semi-dissolves it and prevents it being sniffed," said Avon and Somerset (search) police officer Graham Pease.

Pub workers across the region have begun to spray the oily stuff onto all flat surfaces in bathrooms countertops, paper-towel dispensers ... and toilet seats. Yes, toilet seats.

[Insert humorous statement, reasonable appearing commentary, and halfhearted excuse for going to sleep for the next six months.]

breaks

2005-01-21T21:26:00.000-08:00

The 322nd commandment of blogging. Thou shalt not take a break for ice cream and a movie when thou is in the middle of a post and on a roll, for thou shalt be required to start the post from the beginning and it will never be as good as thou thought it would be.

So there.

text of 2nd inaugural

2005-01-21T08:50:00.000-08:00

Text of President Bush's 2nd Inaugural Address. Via Mecury News. Read it, it's great. If Bush was a Democrat they'd be comparing him to Kennedy.

Prepared copy of President George W. Bush's inaugural address:

Vice President Cheney, Mr. Chief Justice, President Carter, President Bush, President Clinton, reverend clergy, distinguished guests, fellow citizens:

On this day, prescribed by law and marked by ceremony, we celebrate the durable wisdom of our Constitution, and recall the deep commitments that unite our country. I am grateful for the honor of this hour, mindful of the consequential times in which we live, and determined to fulfill the oath that I have sworn and you have witnessed.

At this second gathering, our duties are defined not by the words I use, but by the history we have seen together. For a half century, America defended our own freedom by standing watch on distant borders. After the shipwreck of communism came years of relative quiet, years of repose, years of sabbatical - and then there came a day of fire.

We have seen our vulnerability - and we have seen its deepest source. For as long as whole regions of the world simmer in resentment and tyranny - prone to ideologies that feed hatred and excuse murder - violence will gather, and multiply in destructive power, and cross the most defended borders, and raise a mortal threat. There is only one force of history that can break the reign of hatred and resentment, and expose the pretensions of tyrants, and reward the hopes of the decent and tolerant, and that is the force of human freedom.

We are led, by events and common sense, to one conclusion: The survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands. The best hope for peace in our world is the expansion of freedom in all the world.

America's vital interests and our deepest beliefs are now one. From the day of our Founding, we have proclaimed that every man and woman on this earth has rights, and dignity, and matchless value, because they bear the image of the Maker of Heaven and earth. Across the generations we have proclaimed the imperative of self-government, because no one is fit to be a master, and no one deserves to be a slave. Advancing these ideals is the mission that created our Nation. It is the honorable achievement of our fathers. Now it is the urgent requirement of our nation's security, and the calling of our time.

So it is the policy of the United States to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world.

This is not primarily the task of arms, though we will defend ourselves and our friends by force of arms when necessary. Freedom, by its nature, must be chosen, and defended by citizens, and sustained by the rule of law and the protection of minorities. And when the soul of a nation finally speaks, the institutions that arise may reflect customs and traditions very different from our own. America will not impose our own style of government on the unwilling. Our goal instead is to help others find their own voice, attain their own freedom, and make their own way.

The great objective of ending tyranny is the concentrated work of generations. The difficulty of the task is no excuse for avoiding it. America's influence is not unlimited, but fortunately for the oppressed, America's influence is considerable, and we will use it confidently in freedom's cause.

My most solemn duty is to protect this nation and its people against further attacks and emerging threats. Some have unwisely chosen to test America's resolve, and have found it firm.

We will persistently clarify the choice before every ruler and every nation: The moral choice between oppression, which is always wrong, and freedom, which is eternally right. America will not pretend that jailed dissidents prefer their chains, or that women welcome humiliation and servitude, or that any human being aspires to live at the mercy of bullies.

We will encourage reform in other governments by making clear that success in our relations will require the decent treatment of their own people. America's belief in human dignity will guide our policies, yet rights must be more than the grudging concessions of dictators; they are secured by free dissent and the participation of the governed. In the long run, there is no justice without freedom, and there can be no human rights without human liberty.

Some, I know, have questioned the global appeal of liberty - though this time in history, four decades defined by the swiftest advance of freedom ever seen, is an odd time for doubt. Americans, of all people, should never be surprised by the power of our ideals. Eventually, the call of freedom comes to every mind and every soul. We do not accept the existence of permanent tyranny because we do not accept the possibility of permanent slavery. Liberty will come to those who love it.

Today, America speaks anew to the peoples of the world:

All who live in tyranny and hopelessness can know: the United States will not ignore your oppression, or excuse your oppressors. When you stand for your liberty, we will stand with you.

Democratic reformers facing repression, prison, or exile can know: America sees you for who you are: the future leaders of your free country.

The rulers of outlaw regimes can know that we still believe as Abraham Lincoln did: "Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves; and, under the rule of a just God, cannot long retain it."

The leaders of governments with long habits of control need to know: To serve your people you must learn to trust them. Start on this journey of progress and justice, and America will walk at your side.

And all the allies of the United States can know: we honor your friendship, we rely on your counsel, and we depend on your help. Division among free nations is a primary goal of freedom's enemies. The concerted effort of free nations to promote democracy is a prelude to our enemies' defeat.

Today, I also speak anew to my fellow citizens:

From all of you, I have asked patience in the hard task of securing America, which you have granted in good measure. Our country has accepted obligations that are difficult to fulfill, and would be dishonorable to abandon. Yet because we have acted in the great liberating tradition of this nation, tens of millions have achieved their freedom. And as hope kindles hope, millions more will find it. By our efforts, we have lit a fire as well - a fire in the minds of men. It warms those who feel its power, it burns those who fight its progress, and one day this untamed fire of freedom will reach the darkest corners of our world.

A few Americans have accepted the hardest duties in this cause - in the quiet work of intelligence and diplomacy ... the idealistic work of helping raise up free governments ... the dangerous and necessary work of fighting our enemies. Some have shown their devotion to our country in deaths that honored their whole lives - and we will always honor their names and their sacrifice.

All Americans have witnessed this idealism, and some for the first time. I ask our youngest citizens to believe the evidence of your eyes. You have seen duty and allegiance in the determined faces of our soldiers. You have seen that life is fragile, and evil is real, and courage triumphs. Make the choice to serve in a cause larger than your wants, larger than yourself - and in your days you will add not just to the wealth of our country, but to its character.

America has need of idealism and courage, because we have essential work at home - the unfinished work of American freedom. In a world moving toward liberty, we are determined to show the meaning and promise of liberty.

In America's ideal of freedom, citizens find the dignity and security of economic independence, instead of laboring on the edge of subsistence. This is the broader definition of liberty that motivated the Homestead Act, the Social Security Act, and the G.I. Bill of Rights. And now we will extend this vision by reforming great institutions to serve the needs of our time. To give every American a stake in the promise and future of our country, we will bring the highest standards to our schools, and build an ownership society. We will widen the ownership of homes and businesses, retirement savings and health insurance - preparing our people for the challenges of life in a free society. By making every citizen an agent of his or her own destiny, we will give our fellow Americans greater freedom from want and fear, and make our society more prosperous and just and equal.

In America's ideal of freedom, the public interest depends on private character - on integrity, and tolerance toward others, and the rule of conscience in our own lives. Self-government relies, in the end, on the governing of the self. That edifice of character is built in families, supported by communities with standards, and sustained in our national life by the truths of Sinai, the Sermon on the Mount, the words of the Koran, and the varied faiths of our people. Americans move forward in every generation by reaffirming all that is good and true that came before - ideals of justice and conduct that are the same yesterday, today, and forever.

In America's ideal of freedom, the exercise of rights is ennobled by service, and mercy, and a heart for the weak. Liberty for all does not mean independence from one another. Our nation relies on men and women who look after a neighbor and surround the lost with love. Americans, at our best, value the life we see in one another, and must always remember that even the unwanted have worth. And our country must abandon all the habits of racism, because we cannot carry the message of freedom and the baggage of bigotry at the same time.

From the perspective of a single day, including this day of dedication, the issues and questions before our country are many. From the viewpoint of centuries, the questions that come to us are narrowed and few. Did our generation advance the cause of freedom? And did our character bring credit to that cause?

These questions that judge us also unite us, because Americans of every party and background, Americans by choice and by birth, are bound to one another in the cause of freedom. We have known divisions, which must be healed to move forward in great purposes - and I will strive in good faith to heal them. Yet those divisions do not define America. We felt the unity and fellowship of our nation when freedom came under attack, and our response came like a single hand over a single heart. And we can feel that same unity and pride whenever America acts for good, and the victims of disaster are given hope, and the unjust encounter justice, and the captives are set free.

We go forward with complete confidence in the eventual triumph of freedom. Not because history runs on the wheels of inevitability; it is human choices that move events. Not because we consider ourselves a chosen nation; God moves and chooses as He wills. We have confidence because freedom is the permanent hope of mankind, the hunger in dark places, the longing of the soul. When our Founders declared a new order of the ages; when soldiers died in wave upon wave for a union based on liberty; when citizens marched in peaceful outrage under the banner "Freedom Now" - they were acting on an ancient hope that is meant to be fulfilled. History has an ebb and flow of justice, but history also has a visible direction, set by liberty and the Author of Liberty.

When the Declaration of Independence was first read in public and the Liberty Bell was sounded in celebration, a witness said, "It rang as if it meant something." In our time it means something still. America, in this young century, proclaims liberty throughout all the world, and to all the inhabitants thereof. Renewed in our strength - tested, but not weary - we are ready for the greatest achievements in the history of freedom.

May God bless you, and may He watch over the United States of America.

the committee

2005-01-21T05:56:00.000-08:00

Meet a little three day old blog called the Committee to Protect Bloggers, reporting from around the world on attempts to silence bloggers. Right now the big story is two jailed Iranian bloggers, Mojtaba Saminejad and Arash Sigarchi, which is why you see the big banner on the top of this site.

They even have Queen of the Sky, the Delta Airlines flight attendant who was fired over her blog, on board.

those brilliant brits

2005-01-20T19:53:00.000-08:00

I never believed in symbols very much. They're too easy to manipulate. Wear the right clothes, say the right things, keep your image intact, and no one can tell the difference between you and who you claim to be. No one reading the papers, at least.

Someone in the UK likes meaningless actions like these, however, enough to think they actually change who someone is. Some ministers and secretaries, I never really understood the Brit system, want to start "citizenship ceremonies" for 18yr olds to "celebrate their transition to adulthood as part of an official drive to improve community cohesion." Setting aside the problems of trying to legislate "community cohesion" and going on, the Guardian reports that Fiona Mactaggart thinks the measure will "increase voting among young people, for example. It might increase their interest in contributing to society." Brilliant, right? They're supposed to think voting is a good idea.. because you say so? The naive Mactaggart thinks these ceremonies will be helpful because "New entrants to citizenship who come from another citizenship have been given a rite of passage and it has worked, despite the cynics."

The Brits miss the point however. Those immigrants didn't love the country because of the symbol but because of what the symbol stood for. So they cried when they took their oath, so what? It mattered to them because they had a basis of comparison. If the throngs of apathetic teenagers don't care right now, imposing a symbol will not resonate with them and will last only until people figure out that nobody else cares either.

The idiots are trying to legislate culture, like what they see on the outside is all there is.

comments

2005-01-20T17:47:00.000-08:00

Notice the new comment link. It's based on a java hack by Ebenezer Orthodoxy over at Blogger Hacks. Haloscan drops comments after a couple months so I decided to stick this little thing in. Haloscan comments are still there, but I'm going to see if there's a way I can move them over. Ebenezer made promises of a PHP program to do just that, but he doesn't seem to have been around for a few months.

picasa returns

2005-01-19T19:15:00.000-08:00

Remember Picasa? The photo organizing, enhancing, sharing, totally free, so cool program Google put out a while ago? It's back and better, and as I speak I am downloading it as fast as my mediocre connection will let me. PC Magazine has a review out, though, and picasa has a walkthrough on their site.

Breezing through it, it looks awesome. Even more ways to organize the pics, rotate pics (something I've wanted for a while), tweak the pic a bit... It even seems to have an RGB histogram, so you can bring out the red or blue in a picture to make it just a bit better. Very neat.

I remember when my brother and I got a camera. It was an old thing, not even a 35mm. The film came in this strange cartridges and the flash was a little rotating thing that was good for 4 pictures. I wasn't very impressed. We got newer cameras quickly, but I still never liked taking pictures. You took the picture, let it sit around for a month or two, got the film developed, found out half of them were too dark to come out, and tried to remember where the others were from.

Digital is so much cooler.

a nice shiny new..

2005-01-19T17:58:00.000-08:00

Blogroll. See it over there? So tiny I'm ashamed. At least it's there to build on. I tried to be all clever and everything; "The Symposium" is still a bit of a stretch for genlife blogs though.

Also jumped on the bandwagon and signed up for the TTLB Ecosystem. Now the one person that links to me (why, I don't know) is out there for everyone to see. But thanks, Shannon.

Whaa? You want, like, a real post? Just give me a minute.

bookflix

2005-01-18T17:19:00.000-08:00

No blog tonight, working on the template and watching an old Clint Eastwood movie. To mend this terrible wrong, I offer sacrifice. A site, netflix.com for books. 40 thousand titles, free shipping, and you keep the books till you're done. The cheapest plan they have is a 7.99 monthly fee and lets you have two books out at a time.

Interesting, but books should be pored over, examined slowly. You should read them through and then leave them around to poke your mind every once in a while, then come back to them in a few weeks to see what you missed. That's why I don't like libraries, you have to take them back. Bookflix doesn't change my opinion much; even if I get to keep them as long as I want, I still end up paying 8 dollars a month for it. If I'm going to keep it for a month or two, I might as well buy the thing.

With movies I don't care. For an hour or two you get a nice, self contained set of ideas with a predetermined ending. All you have to do is go along for the ride; boo the villain, cheer the hero, ogle the heroine. Simple, and then you get to walk away. Marx was wrong, movies are the opium.

Books are different though, at least the ones I read. They're meant to fit into the way the world is, serve as a holding place for information -- always offering a different perspective.

Still, the site will probably succeed, judging by the ~~crap~~ stuff people are reading for quick fun. Anyway, that was a bit more than I planned to write.

the music bot

2005-01-17T14:08:00.000-08:00

Quick note so I can get back to pretending to be responsible.

The music industry is apparently using a computer program to predict whether or not a newcomer will do well. It's called HSS, Hit Song Science, and it compares the recording to the last thirty years of Billboard hit singles and places the song in a cluster with others to show likely niches, and chances of success.

Hit songs, typically, fall into one of a number of groupings - there are around 50 in the US and 60 in the UK where, traditionally, tastes have been more diverse. Belonging to the same cluster does not mean songs sound the same, though, more that they are mathematically similar. And the analysis has thrown up some very unlikely musical bedfellows: Some U2 songs are in the same cluster as Beethoven, while spandex ultra rocker Van Halen sits right alongside MOR piano babe Vanessa Carlton. It is for this reason that Polyphonic are confident their software won't homogenise our already stratified and similar sounding charts. They are already working with one radio station to expand their playlist without losing audience share by selecting songs with the correct mathematical rhythms. In a world where drearily repetitive playlists have become the norm this could be the answer to an oft-uttered prayer.

HSS aims to become a generic term, as Hoover is to vacuum cleaners, and a standard part of the signing and creative process for labels and producers. "'What's the HSS score?" should be in the first line of questions of any band at any stage of their career, says Tracie Reed of HSS. "We promise 100% success rate for songs released rather than the usual 20%.

Interesting. And now, back to work, sort of.

unplug the MATRIX

2005-01-16T16:33:00.000-08:00

The ACLU can be, shall we say, out there sometimes. Sometimes, however, they hit the nail on the head. Carnivore is apparently dead, but there's a new program, MATRIX, which is intended to "combine state government records, such as drivers license information, with commercially available data to create a vast database capable of compiling and analyzing a profile of every American".

Think the video exaggerates what will happen a bit? Social Security numbers were once intended to be secret. Now, however, I spend every other day checking videos in and out for all the friendly college students at my school. Know what sits on the screen in front of me? Yup, the SS numbers of every student in school, and the teachers, and the faculty. All I need in order to find out their number is their name, thanks to the handy search button.

Being the Libertarian that I am, I think this is a little excessive. Not to mention completely exploitable by the powers that be, and sets a dangerous direction for what remains of the American Republic.

Fight UNI. Go to the bottom of this page, type in your zip, and send a message to your representative.

of greyhaired judges

2005-01-16T11:32:00.000-08:00

Linda Greenhouse has decided there is a problem with the Supreme Court. It is too old, too out of touch, and needs a radical makeover. Those pesky Founding Fathers didn't really mean for judges to stick around, now did they?

WASHINGTON — Lifetime tenure for judges was "the best expedient which can be devised in any government," Alexander Hamilton wrote in The Federalist No. 78, defending the Constitution's provision for judges to "hold their Offices during good Behavior." Of the wisdom of that proposition, he added, "there can be no room for doubt."

But an ideologically diverse group of legal scholars is now not so sure. Judicial tenure? Definitely. A long one? Probably. But life tenure, which increasingly translates into 25 to 30 years on the bench, extending into extreme old age? When it comes to the Supreme Court, at least, there seems to be plenty of room for doubt, and the doubts are growing.

Judges depart from the lower federal courts with regularity, assuring a steady turnover. Supreme Court vacancies, on the other hand, are rare events. It has been nearly 11 years since the last one, when Harry A. Blackmun stepped down at age 85 after 24 years on the court. The trend is clear. From 1789 to 1970, the average Supreme Court justice served for 15.2 years and retired at 68.5. But since 1970, the average tenure has risen to 25.5 years and the average age at departure to 78.8.

That is very interesting, I'm sure. However, I can look stuff up too. John Marshall, the only early justice I could think of on such short notice, stayed on the court for 34 years. When I first saw Greenhouse's article I was inclined to buy into it, since people tend to live longer now, right? Marshall comes forward on that point as well. He lived from 1755 to 1835, a period of 80 years. Looks pretty similar to that 78.8 figure, especially since if Rehnquist is as bad as they say, he'll probably leave us completely in a few more years.

Back at the ranch, Greenhouse continues.

The academic critics see a variety of negative consequences from life tenure. One is that the scarcity and randomness of vacancies promise to turn each one into a galvanizing crisis. Other drawbacks include the temptation for justices to time their retirements for political advantage; an overemphasis on youth and staying power as a qualification for nominees; the likelihood that even those justices who escape the infirmities of old age - and, predictably, not all will escape - will tend after many decades to lose touch with the surrounding culture; and the fear that if the court is seen as out of touch and unaccountable to a democratic society, its legitimacy will erode.

A galvanizing crisis, you say? I'd be more inclined to believe her if I didn't think it was code for "oh no, Bush is going to stick another conservative on the court". Supreme Court Justices live just as long as everybody else. It's not like these people have been sitting there since the Middle Ages, and the rest of the nation is just waiting for them to die off so we can get someone who understands this new, greater society.

Since life tenure is specified in the Constitution, most proposals for modifying it call for a constitutional amendment. But the Carrington-Cramton proposal is for ordinary legislation by Congress that the two professors believe would withstand constitutional challenge.

They propose giving Supreme Court justices lifetime appointments to the federal judiciary, but not specifically to the court. The president would be entitled to appoint one new Supreme Court justice during each two-year session of Congress - two nominees in each presidential term - without waiting for a vacancy.

That means, of course, that the court's total membership would grow. Under the plan, the nine most recently appointed justices at any given time would constitute the court's active membership; the rest would be "senior justices," performing temporary service as needed on other federal courts, much the way senior federal judges do today. Effectively, each new justice would be active on the Supreme Court for 18 years, before reaching "senior" status and being supplanted.

The proposal doesn't actually sound so bad. It prevents domination by a single set of minds, and might actually let us get a Libertarian justice up there. The thing is, the Supreme Court isn't supposed to be a barometer of public opinion. It is not intended to change every two years. Public opinion is fickle, and we do not want a fickle Court. If this succeeds, the court will become even more of a battleground, with every new majority trying to overturn the work of the last. That, would be even worse for the public perception of the legitimacy of the Court.

thou shalt be connected

2005-01-15T11:16:00.000-08:00

Ahaaha. This is so neat. Why, I don't know. But there seems to be a free service called TeleFlip which will forward messages sent to (your victims number)@teleflip.com to their cell phone as a text message. Completely free, no sign up required, just email the phone. Based on my extensive testing of the two closest phones it seems to be a fifty-fifty thing, but because of the cheapskate nature of one of those people, it probably has a bit more coverage than that. Still, most services have an email assigned to a cell phone already, so this, while very cool, is probably mainly useful when you can't remember more than their number.

Maybe it's actually time for me to get a cell, I've got to be the last person in the US, right?

Link via Adam Kalsey

on airport screeners.

2005-01-14T21:06:00.000-08:00

Gee, I seem to have a pattern of posting right after I swear it off for a while. I'm still working on the new setup and all, but I came upon this, via Maverick Philosopher. Interesting, right? It goes on for a bit longer that needs too though, so I'll skip down to the bottom.

[...]

8. In 1993 the World Trade Center was bombed the first time by:
a. Richard Simmons
b. Grandma Moses
c. Michael Jordan
d. Muslim male extremists mostly between the ages of 17 and 40

9.In 1998, the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania were bombed by:
a. Mr. Rogers
b. Hillary Clinton, to distract attention from Wild Bill' s women problems
c. The World Wrestling Federation
d. Muslim male extremists mostly between the ages of 17 and 40

10.On 9/11/01, four airliners were hijacked; two were used as missiles to take out the World Trade Centers and of the remaining two, one crashed into the US
Pentagon and the other was diverted and crashed by the passengers.Thousands of people were killed by:
a. Bugs Bunny, Wiley E. Coyote, Daffy Duck and Elmer Fudd
b. The Supreme Court of Florida
c. Mr. Bean
d. Muslim male extremists mostly between the ages of 17 and 40

11.In 2002 the United States fought a war in Afghanistan against:
a. Enron
b. The Lutheran Church
c. The NFL
d. Muslim male extremists mostly between the ages of 17 and 40

12. In 2002 reporter Daniel Pearl was kidnapped and murdered by:
a. Bonnie and Clyde
b. Captain Kangaroo
c. Billy Graham
d. Muslim male extremists mostly between the ages of 17 and 40

Nope, .....I really don't see a pattern here to justify profiling, do you? So, to ensure we Americans never offend anyone, particularly fanatics intent on killing us, airport security screeners will no longer be allowed to profile certain people. They must conduct random searches of 80-year-old women, little kids, airline pilots with proper identification, secret agents who are members of the President's security detail, 85-year old Congressmen with metal hips, and Medal of Honor winning and former Governor Joe Foss, but leave Muslim Males between the ages 17 and 40 alone because of profiling.

Now I'm as annoyed as you are. Three out of the last four times my brother has flown, the screeners decided a 2nd Lieutenant in the Marine Corps was deserving of a full check. The thing is, Arabic (I assume that's what you mean, since you can't really tell a person's religion by their ID) males between 17 and 40 are not the only Muslims in the world. If we started pulling out all the Arabic looking males of that age, don't you think Zarqawi or whoever the poor guy running Al Qaeda right now might send some blond guys? Maybe someone with a cane and a Santa Claus beard? The point of having a completely, illogically random selection process is that whoever is trying to break through can't rely on profiling to give someone special a blank check.

But my brother looks vaguely Middle Eastern, so it looks to me like they're running a mix, tagging old grandmas and MOH winners as well as likely Arabs. Which I think is the ideal plan.

growing pains

2005-01-12T07:43:00.000-08:00

So, I've been doing this blog -- sort of, since August. When I started I kind of jumped in, not knowing what I was going to talk about, how much people actually expected me to post, or basic blog courtesy. In addition, I've noticed that this blog has come to resemble a diary much more than I wanted it to. This isn't what I wanted to happen, and now that I have a little experience I think I should take some time to redo things -- make it into something I can keep up and actually contribute something with.

I've decided to take a break, first of all. I plan on experimenting with some different layouts, finding some niche I can slip into, and getting a row of topics in the queue so when (if?) I come back I can do this right. I'm planning on taking off till sometime in February. I think that'll give enough time to work on the template, find some people to learn from, etc.

See you then, hopefully.

back to school

2005-01-08T10:54:00.000-08:00

Two days are left until school starts once again. I'm trying desperately to change my schedule from one where I sleep till noon and go to bed at three to one where I can be up by six. I've decided that in order to properly get a computer science degree one needs French. And Spanish and Arabic. And maybe a good Logic course too. And naturally, I've decided to take them all at once.

It is interesting seeing how people react when I tell them. A couple will politely nod, some will ask why I would want to take [insert language] , and the rest just manage to spit out "THREE languages?". It should be an interesting semester though. Hopefully it's difficult enough.

I'm not being typical, I know that.

Sorry, just not in a blogging mood today.

Read this though, about a little girl kept from sketching a painting because of 'copyright issues'.

And this, on the increasing stratification of American society. Oh dear.

umm. yeah. been gone.

2005-01-06T17:29:00.000-08:00

Back, I think. Been a while, hasn't it. Lets see, the last blog was on December 16. Let's see if I can sum things up.

Baltimore is nice. I know that because I saw two terminals and my plane was on time. St John's is even better than I expected. Still feel like I'm walking off a cliff. I saw the lark. DC is neat, land of a thousand rentacops. (Did you know you have to reserve a White House tour up to six months in advance and need a note from your representative?) Spent a few nights at Quantico with my brother. Go Marines. Saw relatives who are apparently related in some way.

And finally, had two hours of sleep, got up in the wee hours to go to the airport, got through security with my brother getting tagged for a full search. Found out only then that the flight was canceled. Stood in line (not so much standing as desperately trying to stay awake while sitting on my luggage) to get new tickets. And my brother was once again tagged for a full search.

Anyway. I'm sure you aren't here to read this sort of stuff, so I'll try to get something else up soon.

till checkout do us part.

2004-12-16T18:40:00.000-08:00

Checkout time tommorrow is at the unearthly hour of noon. I think that is extremely unjust, both by making me get up before noon and depriving me of this wonderful wifi access. Until then, I'll have to use it as much as I can. Sleep is probably optional, once again.

I'm reading an article in Wired on geeks and popularity, arguing that we really don't care for it at all, at least not as much as what we do instead.

I know a lot of people who were nerds in school, and they all tell the same story: There is a strong correlation between being smart and being a nerd, and an even stronger inverse correlation between being a nerd and being popular. Being smart seems to make you unpopular.

Why? The answer, I think, is that most smart kids don't really want to be popular.

If someone had told me that at the time, I would have laughed at him. Being unpopular in school makes kids miserable, some so miserable that they commit suicide. Telling me that I didn't want to be popular would have seemed like telling someone dying of thirst in a desert that he didn't want a glass of water. Of course I wanted to be popular.

But, in fact, I didn't - not enough. There was something else I wanted more: to be smart. Not simply to do well in school, though that counted for something, but to design beautiful rockets, or to write well, or to understand how to program computers. In general, to make great things.

Sounds about right. In this theme of geekiness, another article by your friendly neighbourhood NSA on cracking Enigma.

And I'll get the links and all that up soon. I promise.

blog Dec 12 -- trip in

2004-12-16T15:18:00.000-08:00

Mmm, so I finally get to an internet connection and decide to do a blog. What do I blog? My trip, of course, only kinda... late. Here's what I wrote for December 12, when I was flying in to Maryland to visit St John's. I'll try to fill in, but not sure if I'll be able to. It's alright, though. It's not like I actually have any readers left.

Dec 12 6:20
First, piece of cake to get through security. Don't know why people are always griping about it. Only bad thing, these people had me stick my laptop through the xray. I don't care how safe you think it is, I don't feel like having doses of radiation handed to my circuitry.

And, first sign so far I am eccentric. Walked into a book store, saw a stack labeled popular authors -- didn't recognize any of them except for Grisham. Never read him, though. Finally found some names I knew, in the "classics" section, hidden way back in the shadows. This store, I know who they sell to, I just wish they'd keep a store of something else. Tried to get Special Providence, this great book on the history of American foreign policy, but the guy had never heard of it. Wasn't really interested in Paris Hilton's book, displayed prominently.

Dec 12 6:28
My battery, my battery. Ahhhh!! I want my handy home fusion device.

And this place needs wifi. Give me wifi or give me, uhh.. ethernet.

Dec 12 6:40
This girl, and this guy, they have cell phones, and they just keep talking and talking. Not annoying, just notable. The girl is talking in the kind of accent you use when you want to make fun of ditsy southern gals. She keeps going on and on, lots of "ohmagawds" and "gawd isn't that cute". Anyway, not annoying, just .. interesting.

Dec 12 7:12
I just had a bloggable moment, the first one I can remember. As I was dozing off nicely, the lady at the desk calls me up on the loudspeaker. I shuffle up, wondering I if my evil twin somehow got me on the nofly list. Instead, she asks I would like to change seats. There is a baby going on behind me, and would I like to move to 12B, do I like aisle seats, or there is one place where I could have the whole row. I'm still stunned, wondering if there is some other reason, but she just states that there is a little extra room this time, and I might be disturbed by the baby.

I don't fly that much, but this still mad me think for a minute, and after thanking her and getting a new ticket I headed back to my seat. Now, I know there are Enrons and WorldComs and all the other companies people like to pull out of a hat in connection with this evil, evil Bush administration. This is the part that doesn't get mentioned, however. The companies and people who do work hard for their customers because it is the only logical action in a competitive environment. Some people need to grow up and quit acting like every corporation is the big bad wolf.

I'd say more, but my battery is running down and I don't know when I'll be able to recharge.

I love flying though, wonderful. If I ever get obscenely rich by doing something or other I'm going to get a little two seater Piper or something.

back, finally.

2004-12-10T23:27:00.000-08:00

Ahh. It has ended. For the next 22 days I am completely free of classes and work and all those good things. Even better, starting Sunday at approximately 1 AM, I will be in Maryland-DC for the next 10 days. And I'll get to visit the college. I'm going to try to do a bunch of blogging while I'm up there, but we'll see.

Since, I've been gone, however, I seem to have lost all my readers, which is a bit sad. Hope you come back soon. If you do, you'll probably notice that it looks a bit different. Stupid me, I forgot to back up my template, and Blogger decided to lose it. It'll take me a bit before I sit down and sort everything out.

In the meantime, I'll try to hunt down a real post. And I'm now running Fedora Core 2 and SuSe 9.1 on my laptop along with WindowsXP. Linux is working great, just trying to tweak a couple things. Best of all, we've got XP outnumbered. Hopefully I'll be able to take it off soon, or just squish its partition down to about 10GB's

And a lark is a wonderful, wonderful bird.

yea, umm.

2004-12-06T09:24:00.000-08:00

Umm, hello. I have a big Spanish test tomorrow, so naturally I'm sitting in the student lounge downloading SuSe before they shut off my wifi access. I have Fedora on now, but Red Hat's style just doesn't work with me.

Anyway, what drags me out of exile to post here? An interesting essay by the Decembrist on accusations of political bias in education. He argues that since we view donations by workers at corporations to candidates as an attempt to further the corporation's interest, we should also do the same for the individual donations given by faculty members of Harvard and other institutions.

You've probably seen the stories about the fact that college professors are largely liberal, backed up in part by data showing that Harvard, the University of California system, Columbia and U. Michigan were among Kerry's top contributors.

[...]

Why not treat the evidence as showing that these major institutions of higher ed believe that their interests would have best been served by a Kerry administration? Perhaps they recognize that research funding would not be threatened by tax cuts and would not have been burdened by ideological restrictions, student aid would increase, that incoming students would be better prepared, etc. That's certainly the way contributions from Citicorp or Halliburton employees would be analyzed.

Logical, right? Mark does have a point, and that is certainly why those donations were given. However, the Decembrist misses the point by arguing about the reason for these donations. The problem here, as seen by many conservatives, is that, in a country virtually evenly divided on politics, the defining institutions that govern transition to adulthood are dominated by a single ideology. Control by a single set of ideas is not a good setup for organizations that pride themselves on introducing people to wider viewpoints. Nor is it an encouraging sign for the continued relevance of those institutions.

Ahh, but now I have my Linux, so I'll be going back to work.

about that..

2004-12-04T14:49:00.000-08:00

I know I put a big banner up on top saying I wouldn't be bothered till finals were over (Dec 10), but I found this.

A carpenter named Charlie Bratticks
Who had a taste for mathematics
One summer Tuesday, just for fun
Made a wooden cube side minus one

Though this to you may seem wrong
He made it minus one foot long
Which meant (I hope your brains aren't frothing)
Its length was one foot less than nothing

Its width the same (you're not asleep?)
And likewise minus one foot deep
Giving, when multiplied (be solemn)
Minus one cubic foot of volume

[...]

Goes on for a while, but it's funny. And best of all, it is 68% more entertaining than studying for a math test.

Then I came upon this.

Have you ever dreamed of being carried into the sky by a giant bouquet of colorful toy balloons?

That's the idea behind cluster ballooning. The pilot wears a harness, to which a cluster of large, helium-filled balloons are attached. Control is achieved by releasing ballast to ascend, or by bursting balloons to descend. The most famous cluster balloon flight took place in 1982. Larry Walters, with no prior ballooning experience, attached 42 helium weather balloons to a lawnchair, intending to go up a few hundred feet, but instead soaring to 16,000. Surprisingly, Walters survived his flight. However, both before and since Walters' adventure, experienced balloonists have experimented with helium balloon clusters, some rising to even greater heights.

Go, look at the pictures. I've got to try that sometime. Although the first guy got fined by the FAA and ended up committing suicide.

Then I ran across this girl, with a post on Christmas at Starbucks.

This isn't for installing that amazing new Hear Music bar at my local store. This isn't inviting me to the museum and giving me fancy chocolates and a gift card. This isn't even for the note I got from you today letting me know you're giving me yet another gift card for Christmas.

It's for letting me have Christmas itself.

About a week ago, I saw a new coffee in the store: a white package marked "Holiday Blend." "Hmm," I thought. As loyal as I am to Christmas Blend this time of year, I guess I could try something new. I like pretty new packages.

Going in tonight to replenish my caffeine supply, I asked where the Holiday Blend was. A semi-nice barista explained to me,

"It's the same as Christmas Blend, but in another package. It's Starbucks' way of not being all Christian-y, I guess. I don't know why all our stuff isn't 'Holiday,' though, it's kind of offensive."

I cocked my head and thought for a minute.

"Actually, I really like that it's still Christmas at Starbucks."

And it's true. It's like home, when I can walk in a store and hear a Christmas carol. When people aren't snickering at my tradition for the sake of political correctness, when I don't feel like everyone is trying to be fake and stuff their feelings about their own traditions. I really think we're horribly misguided in that respect.

Hear, hear.

Well, that's it. And as much as I want to, I probably won't be back until the 10th at 11:00 in the morning.

on anonymity.

2004-11-30T20:44:00.000-08:00

I am in a strange position with this blog. It is interesting, this ability to say something, shout it out, and know that somewhere, someone will read it. However, just as precious to me is the knowledge that thousands of other people are doing the exact same thing, and that the someone who stumbles across this place of public masturbation is just as likely to shrug his shoulders as to applaud what I say. I enjoy it, that people don't care what I have to say, and at the same time am in the strange position of placing it out there, day after day, hoping someone will read it.

There is a place I found, that lets a person trade visits for visits. You visit someone else's blog, and someone will come along visiting yours. It was interesting at first. Delightful, I watched my visitor count that day climb to 30, then 60, finally topping out at 120. Then I started looking through the pageload stats, seeing what they had done. Somehow, I had expected them to stay, to talk, to link me to this place or that. I expected to become famous, even though, just like them I had glanced at the blog I was given and waited for the counter to tick down so I could rush on the next site.

I don't go there much anymore. Even though I found some people, and a few found me, it just doesn't fit with me. I want to stumble across something, and stop and gaze for a bit, and maybe return and maybe not. When I looked through the log that day, I saw the hundreds tromping through and found myself hoping they wouldn't come back. I like it when I look through my stats and see the one or two I recognize and know, that they apparently, though they never leave a message, never say a word, like what they see. I have no idea who they are, what their lives are like, why they read me. But when I see that my visitor from the U.K. is back, or the one who comes in from San Jose is here, or the visitor from Alabama has come again, it is great.

On the other hand, there are those visitors that I recognize, that I know precisely who it is, whether it is my friend in Connecticut, my brother, my grandfather, or my uncle. Unlike with those I've never met nor talked to, these people make me wonder. They come, as far as I know, because they know me, not because they like what I say or what I think. Knowing that these people read me stays in my mind, and I find myself changing this or that, making this more palatable, turning this into something less politically charged. Don't get me wrong, I'm glad to have them here, it just makes me stop for a moment.

Especially when it spreads. I looked at the stats today and noticed a wonderful thing, I had had about eight visitors, but over fifteen pageloads. Someone, or ones, had come and looked around, and around some more. When I went to see who it was, I found something interesting, my grandfather had come, then later someone else in the same town had visited and ended up going through the entire site. I have no idea who it is. It could be my aunt, an uncle, my grandfather at work, some random person.

As much as I like having them here, having people who connect this site with me, I also regret it somewhat. It tightens things, and that annoys me. Because I don't know how something will be taken I wonder whether to say it, since the reader may not shrug and walk away if he doesn't like what he reads.

It's interesting.

i'm a sellout.

2004-11-29T19:17:00.000-08:00

For some reason, I just signed up for Google Adsense. It's cool, I like Google, and their ads are the only ones I ever find myself clicking on.

Still, you may be asking, why? I'm actually not sure. Money is always good, but seriously, with the number of visitors I get, Google will be sending me a check every 60 years.

Whatever. You might also notice some new names in the blogroll to the left. Maverick Philospher is a consistently mindbending blog on, what else, philosophy. Vox Populi is an interesting site I've found myself at several times recently. ElectaBlog is nice place I visit every once in a while.

Hmm, I'm tempted to drag this entry on as long as possible just to put off studying.

on liberal education.

2004-11-29T08:27:00.000-08:00

This is a fantastic essay on the difference between a technical and liberal education. Read it, it's good.

Link via Maverick Philosopher.

suggestions. please.

2004-11-29T08:19:00.000-08:00

Working on another round of updates to the template and blogroll. If you know any good blogs I should look at, yours included, let me know.

the free state project.

2004-11-28T23:02:00.000-08:00

The Free State Project is something I've known about ever since it started. The idea, basically, is to get a whole bunch (20,000) of Libertarian-types to move to a single, slightly Libertarian state in such a way that they can influence the state politics. To that end, they had a big election in August 2003 and chose New Hampshire.

I hadn't looked at the story much for a while though, mainly because I wasn't in much of a position to move. Found it again today, though, and I was reminded of what a fantastic idea this. I think.

First of all, its so cold. I'll probably freeze in Maryland (http://sjca.edu), I'd have to be slightly loony to move up near Maine -- me being a good ole Texas boy. Hmm, I think that's my only objection.

Although, I do feel somewhat uncomfortable with the idea of moving to a place in order to associate with people who believe as I do. It depends, I guess.

Still, wonderful idea. One thing though. At the current rate of growth, an average of 20 signers a week in the last month, it will take about 13 years to get the desired 20,000. I know it'll probably snowball, but at least that means I have plenty of time to get in on it.

UPDATE: Despite having a math test tomorrow, I just finished reading this essay on the FSP website. Worth reading. I especially like this small part.

We the descendants of the American Revolution, heirs of men who bled and died to stop a 3% tax, now find ourselves tamely governed by power-worshipping apparatchiks who can spy on our backyards, strip us of our livelihoods and bar us from transportation but cannot perform basic protective functions.

New Hampshire does not have to be a utopia to be an improvement on this. It does not even have to be livable. It just needs to be rightside up. It just needs to know that Slavery is not Freedom, that Big Brother should not be watching me and that my grandmother is not an Osama agent. That's enough.

i don't trust the msm

2004-11-28T11:53:00.000-08:00

Want to know why? After looking through a post at Diplomad's wonderful blog, I looked at the trackbacks and found a link to an news summary at The Cool Blue Blog which contained this interesting leadin.

A chemical and biological weapons lab has been found in Fallujah. Hans Blix says he would be surprised if this were true, but he wouldn't have been surprised before the war. But it's loking more and more like we will be able to paint Mr Blix surprised ...

That led me to an Ireland news site, which had this to say.

Fallujah chemical weapons lab found
25/11/2004 - 15:03:58

A chemical weapons laboratory has been found in Fallujah following the US-led offensive against insurgents, an Iraqi minister said today.

Minister of State Kassim Daoud said National Guard troops found a chemical laboratory that was used to prepare deadly explosives and poisons.

They also found in the lab booklets and instructions on how to make bombs and poisons. They even talked about the production of anthrax, he said.

[...]

Now, I consider myself reasonably well informed, but I hadn't heard anything about this story and it was about three days old. I went to Google and searched for "Fallujah chemical weapons lab found". Of the top ten links for this extraordinarily relevant, newsworthy story, the top link was the little paper in Ireland that I found. Next, a South African paper, a UK paper, then we get to CNN. All told, there were 3 UK links, 1 Irish, 1 Scottish, 1 Chinese, 1 South African, 2 links to FreeRepublic.com, and 1 link to the American Mainstream Media.

I just have to wonder, why did it take me that many steps to find this story? Going to Blogdex and searching for the same story, I find no links at all, but bloggers have an excuse-- it's thanksgiving weekend, and most people blog less with 50 people running around the house. I know I do.

That could partly explain why there has been a lack of articles on this; and google runs off how many people link to a story, so maybe the story is waiting to explode. Still, something just doesn't feel right here.

to read, perchance to sleep.

2004-11-27T21:44:00.000-08:00

After the tragic separation of me from my favorite books, I am slowly building my collection back up.

Schindlers List
The Philosophy of Edmund Burke
Plato; The Republic and other works (Get it for free at gutenberg.net)
The Closing of the American Mind
The Opening of the American Mind
The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich
The Great Documents of Western Civilization
Rights and Duties; Reflections on our Conservative Constitution
The Western Way of War; Infantry Battle in Classical Greece
Crime and Punishment (Get it for free at gutenberg.net)
The Complete Works of Shakespeare (A great old thing from 1925, falling apart)
Machiavelli's The Prince (Get it for free at gutenberg.net)
Learning the Unix Operating System
100 Games of Logic
Wheelock's Latin
Latin for People; Latina Pro Populo
The Social Life of Information

Any recommendations?

guest blog

2004-11-27T20:58:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, as part of FreeFriday, I guestblogged (supposed to be one word) over at YankeeFromMississippi.

It was a rant, but I like it a bit. Shannon has the piece here.

this was interesting.

2004-11-26T21:47:00.000-08:00

Ten minutes left, and I'm shutting down the guest account. It was nice, I plan on doing again it in December. Hope you come back for it then.

Hmm, I have to apologize for the lack of good posts lately. But hey, you can't say I didn't warn you.

..if I keep blogging a lot this week, I'll run out of steam and get bored with it around Wednesday. Then I'll tone it down, go jump into one of my other hobbies, and come back with a whole bunch of posts after Thanksgiving.

Aaanyway, glad to have you here; Lewie and Shannon, thanks for posting. And goodnight, I need to stop going to bed at two.

Free Friday Tryout

2004-11-26T16:58:00.000-08:00

Hi, I'm Lewie and I figured I would try out this Free Friday thing. I heard about this blog through a comment left behind on my own blog - Lewies Blogs (shameless plug).

Anyhoot - what to talk about. I went to my grandmothers for thanks giving and my nephew was there with his X-Box. It was odd to see technology in my grandmothers house. The T.V. that he was playing it on had really bad saturation in that it almost looked black and white.

My brother started to play it with him and was able to figure out how to hop into a ship and start flying around. "Oh, I see a flying thing up there" my nephew observed. Suddenly he took aim with his tank and blew my brother out of the sky. We all cracked up laughing. The game looks cool and makes me wish that I had an XBox. I can only hope that it comes out for other platforms.

That Time of Year

2004-11-26T08:48:00.000-08:00

Okay, this will be my first guest blog ever...The only problem is, what to blog about?

I could blog about the fact that I shouldn't be blogging at all, given that I need to finish the first of my three papers that are due before this hellish semester can finally end. I've also got to study for two finals (two law school finals, that is) in there, so, uh, yeah, the next couple of weeks are not going to be pretty for me.

I could blog about that, but I'm sure no one wants to hear it. Plus I do that on my own blog all the time, much to the chagrin of my five dutiful readers, so in the spirit of not wanting to alienate anyone else, I will not say any more on the matter.

Instead, I'll blog about that which has been on my mind this morning.

Today is the beginning of my favorite time of year. I love the days between Thanksgiving and Christmas. Before Thanksgiving, it's all anticipation. And after Christmas, I get depressed as I think, not optimistically ahead to the new year, but back on the old year, with a sense of defeatism that another year has slipped by and so many things in my life are exactly the same as they were the year before. I sometimes wish I could bottle that feeling up so that I could remember it all year, so that it might be a motivating factor. It's easy to get complacent when the rest of the year is ahead of you, and it really only hits me sometime after Christmas, when all the year's roundup specials are on television, that the year is over and I've accomplished very little. Not that I particularly set out to accomplish anything, but one likes to think that they are making progress rather than just standing still...

But I digress.

The point is, that this is the happy time of year. I just love the atmosphere of it all, even more now that I live in the north. See, I'm from Mississippi, where there are only two seasons and winter isn't really one of them. Not real winter. I mean, it gets cold sometimes, but not for very long. Once in a blue moon it even snows.

Christmas has always been my favorite holiday, only I've never really been able to say why. I suppose when I was younger it was the presents. But now it's more than that, not that at all really. And it isn't for religious reasons either. The period from Good Friday to Easter is much more significant on that front.

No, Christmas - the Christmas season really, for I do not think of it as just one day - is my favorite because of that feeling I get when it arrives. I love hearing Christmas music playing when I walk into a store. I love seeing lights and decorations as I walk home in the dark. I love to see people shopping and thinking of others. I love watching Christmas movies, no matter how dumb or hokey they may be.

But I cannot really say why, or what this feeling is. Is it nostalgia? Maybe so. It's certainly not a giddy happy feeling. It's more like a meloncholy feeling, almost sad. But happy at the same time. It makes me want to cry, not because I'm depressed, but not quite because I'm happy either. I wish I could say exactly what it was, since other people are so easily able to explain why their favorite holiday is indeed their favorite.

In the end though, it doesn't matter. Because it brings a smile to my face. And that is really the most important thing.

Sorry for the long post. Those who read my blog are used to it. I tend to be very verbose, even when I don't mean to be. I get carried away. I would suggest you go read my blog, but as I'm likely to be doing very little posting over the next couple of weeks (though I always say that and I still post anyway), it might be futile to do so. But this has been fun, so thanks to John for opening up his blog. If I can remember, I'll be sure to do it next month.

~Shannon Black

welcome to free friday.

2004-11-25T23:11:00.000-08:00

First off, for everyone in the United States or temporarily absent, I hope you had a wonderful thanksgiving. Those of you who have no idea what I'm talking about, don't feel bad. No one here knows what Guy Fawkes Day is, so it balances out. You can find out more about Thanksgiving here.

But that wasn't the point of this post, or a good reason for me to prop my eyes open to write it. Today is Friday, FreeFriday, more specifically, and if anyone at all of the two people who read this blog want to post here, you may. For the next 24 hours. Not sure if any of you will, but we'll see.

Don't know what I'm talking about? Read this post.

First, go to Blogger's main page, log in with the username "iamaguest", just like that, and the password "freefriday". You'll be taken to a nice page they call the dashboard, and just click on the little green cross under the words "New Post". You can't miss it.

Have fun, be sure and sign your name, and most importantly, put in a link to your blog if you have one. Please?

Would, but don't know what to post? Anything, anything at all. Have a funny pic? Share it. Why you think everything this blog has said is wrong, and grammatically incorrect as well? Umm, okay, sure. Your entire NaNoWriMo novel to date? Ehh, maybe not.

But I will remove anything rated R..

-john shanks

one disclaimer, humorous.

2004-11-25T01:48:00.000-08:00

Looking around at blog explosion, I found this blogger from Australia. I don't really care what he has to say (sorry, I just don't), but this struck me as funny.

At the bottom.

Disclaimer (please read first): Opinions expressed within this blog are not necessarily those of the author, as he is known to vacillate, and may deny all knowledge if asked about it in the future. However, that disclaimer doesn't apply to this Disclaimer, of course. Opinions expressed in this Disclaimer are definitely the view of the author, except when they very clearly are not. Got it? If you read anything on this blog, you are entirely responsible for any deleterious effects which may result in you or others, be they animal, vegetable, mineral or Republican. You are licensed for the non-commercial use of any material from this blog as long as proper attribution is given. The author reserves the right to withdraw such licensing at the merest whim should he not like the way you use his stuff. Commercial use may be negotiated. Pretty easily, in fact. You wanna pay me, who am I to argue, right?

and this, on the side bar.

Clive was born a normal child but that adjective has not subsequently been used about him. He saw no need to walk before his second birthday, and has since mastered ambling, strolling and staggering, though not all three at the same time...

Funny though, he doesn't appear the humorous type.

I wonder if something's wrong with the poor fellow. Whatever it is, I hope he starts posting more often, talent like that shouldn't go to waste.

free for all friday

2004-11-24T08:52:00.000-08:00

So this Friday is the first monthly Free-for-all-Friday. What is the wonderful thing?

Free-For-All Friday (FFAF) is a unique blogging meme - it isn't about what you post, but what others post for you. You particpate by allowing the general blogging public the ability to post on your blog via a guest account. As the blog owner, you get to set the guidelines - but it IS called Free-For-All for reason. FFAF is a tremendous opportunity to get to know your readers while they get to know you.

Free-For-All Friday takes place on the last Friday of every month. The next one is November 26, 2004.

You, my loyal readers will get to post anything you want (within limits) for almost 24 hours. Shameless plugs for your own blogs are encouraged. Make sure to sign your name.

So remember, stop by this friday, I'll post the name and password to the guest account, and you can say hi, post, and have a good time.

bush video.

2004-11-23T09:34:00.000-08:00

Remember this story? About Bush's secret service agent being kept out of the summit in Santiago, Chile? Well, we've now got video thanks to the Daily Recycler.

Wish I had a hi res copy though. And notice that Mrs. Lagos, the Chilean Presidents wife stays behind after the photographs. She disappears, unless that's her in the foregroud when Bush is getting the agent.

did i mention i was strange.

2004-11-22T19:50:00.000-08:00

Last night at two o'clock I couldn't sleep, so I started writing. It didn't take very long, and best of all, when I read what I had written I fell asleep.

Here's what I wrote, seems strange when I'm actually awake.

In the night they came, and they told him he was being taken. And his wife pleaded, and his child cried, and he told them he was innocent, but they took him anyway. Two weeks he sat in jail, and then they took him to the courthouse, and the judge told him to sit down in the hard chair behind the hard desk on the right side of the courtroom.

He told them he was innocent, and that he had never seen the man, and would not have hated him anyway, but the prosecutor he had voted for had stood up and walked toward the jury and spoken softly. The prosecutor whom he had voted for had told a story of a man who did terrible things, and laughed when he did them, and would do them again. And then the man, sitting in his hard chair, had looked into the jurors eyes as if to plead, but they would not meet his glance.

It took them little time, and when they returned they still would not look him in the eye, till he knew what was to come, and his heart began to beat. Guilty, they said of this, and of the other, and of the last. Then the judge said it was good, but it was not, for he had never seen the man nor wished him harm. So they sent him away for many years, and the crowds in the room would not meet his eyes as he was taken, and he felt empty.

And he sat in prison, every day the same, every day with nothing but his memories, fading fast. Many letters he wrote, till he knew the law and of this fact and this, and how this should have happened but did not. And he wrote more letters, and told many people, and they were angry. Till his child, now with its own, talked to a man who knew a woman who knew someone and got a change.

The letter came, the only one he’d ever wanted so, and told him simply that he was free, if he would but do one thing. Sign this paper, that you are this man, of such and such a place and time, convicted on this date, and leave today, it said. And he placed the paper on his desk and stared and stared, but put it in his pocket, for he could not sign it, and it was never seen again.

Hmm, if I try to psychoanalyze that my head will explode.

yay. 1001 visitors.

2004-11-22T08:31:00.000-08:00

Not at one time, but since I started this blog in August.

Here's to another 1000, keep em coming people.

to be divisive.

2004-11-21T23:50:00.000-08:00

Just wrote this for class tomorrow, decided to test Blogspot's post by email. So, if this looks horribly screwed up, I probably felt lazy a few minutes from now and decided to crash.

Question #10 Is America a racist society? Explain your position. Give examples of discrimination and prejudice that you have seen or witnessed. Explain your views on affirmative action.

==

In the vast majority of this country racism is condemned, at least on the face. Aside from a small number of people who choose to maintain historic values for whatever reason, few people in America would take actions considered racist. At the very least, it must be admitted that the United States are far more respectful of differences in culture and race than the majority of developed countries.

Consider the Netherlands, long having one of the most permissive immigration policies in the world. Recently, however, the inability of cultural groups there to accept each other has begun to come to a head. A filmmaker was murdered after making a film critical of Islam, in the next few days a Muslim school was torched in retaliation, and later a Christian school was burned in retaliation for that. Or, we have the recent experience of a UK soccer team in Madrid, where thousands of Spanish soccer fans insulted the black members of the UK team by making monkey noises.

For the rest of the question, no, I cannot think of a time when I am convinced I saw discrimination or prejudice. I have had a sheltered life compared to some. Drug dealers did not work the corner by my apartment, and my friend did not get pregnant when she was 14. Because of that I cannot say convincingly that these things do not exist, and my word on our country is less important compared to some others.

On affirmative action I am not sure what to think. On the one hand, the ability to succeed in America must be made available to all, and if institutionalized preferential treatment is the most powerful way to make that available, then fine. On the other hand, large portions of American citizenry have been denied basic respects in the past. Oriental immigrants, my own Scotch-Irish ancestors, and more recently, parts of the Hispanic immigration have all been subject to prejudice and denied the complete opportunities of this country. Notably, all of these groups were at one time called lazy, shiftless, etc. However, once there was a body of evidence to the contrary, deprived groups have rapidly grown in influence, and have made some of the most respected contributions to American society. That is my main objection to affirmative action, that to put responsibility for the success of a cultural group on the shoulders of government denies those groups the blessings given to other groups by being allowed to prove themselves.

Wonderful lot of bs, eh? I have no idea if it makes sense, I just had
to write something my teacher would buy before midnight tonight.

Now I feel ashamed, I'm supposed to "be all I can be" and all that.

jail all the reporters.

2004-11-21T16:43:00.000-08:00

This (via NYT, requires registration) is just wrong. Journalist receives a video tape relating to an FBI corruption investigation from an anonymous informant, refuses to identify tipster, goes to jail for contempt of court.

Mr. Taricani would be one of only a handful of journalists to go to prison for refusing to identify a source. He is also one of several reporters currently facing court action over their refusal to reveal confidential sources, but he is the only one among them to go on trial on criminal contempt charges.

"When I became a reporter 30 years ago, I never imagined that I would be put on trial and face the prospect of going to jail simply for doing my job," Mr. Taricani said outside the courthouse after Judge Ernest C. Torres, chief judge of the Federal District Court in Providence, pronounced him guilty.

Mr. Taricani, a gray-haired 55-year-old who has won several awards, including four Emmys, added: "I wish all my sources could be on the record, but when people are afraid, a promise of confidentiality may be the only way to get the information to the public, and in some cases, to protect the well-being of the source. I made a promise to my source, which I intend to keep."

You see the slippery slope, right? No matter how important it is to allow investigations and trials to proceed, the right to have your contracts respected (and that is what Mr. Taricani's promise was) must be preserved. Tell me, what possible wrongdoing was there on the part of Mr. Taricani in receiving the tape. There was none. To then punish him when he has done nothing wrong is unjust.

Oh, but you say, he has done something wrong. He was in contempt of court, refused to aid an investigation. Well, maybe. There was no criminal activity involved, you could easily argue that the government had no special jurisdiction over the material involved.

In my mind, to require someone to testify when there is no overriding societal interest makes a mockery of free speech. It's not like the government had a duty to take someone off the streets, to prevent them from harming someone else. To hold someone in contempt, when they have given their word, when there is no serious crime involved, presumes that words given outside of the witness stand do not have the same value or require the same respect as those given on.

I'm not a lawyer, I have no idea what I'm talking about, I know my legal arguments are probably worthless, but if some judge tries this on me he is in for a fight. Seriously, to restrict the ability of people to report on the government and to control the free flow of information cannot have a good effect.

FIGHT UNI!

addicted.

2004-11-21T12:50:00.000-08:00

Surfing around, found this.

I've been playing World of Warcraft for six straight months, almost non-stop. I think, breath, eat, and sleep the game when I'm not playing. I am addicted.

I just don't think I'm able to stop. Seriously. What in the heck do I do now?

First let me say, and I think everyone here will agree, get a real life. You know, like uh, blogging or something.

Seriously though, I don't see how people can do that. I can obsess over something, get really deep into it, but it goes away at a speed in direct proportion to how much time I spend on it. Even this, if I keep blogging a lot this week, I'll run out of steam and get bored with it around Wednesday. Then I'll tone it down, go jump ino one of my other hobbies, and come back with a whole bunch of posts after Thanksgiving.

Obsessive people are even kind of scary to me, how can someone just be so singleminded, not testing other points, trying things from a different point of view. Bow before my multiple personality disorder.

civilized my ass.

2004-11-21T02:07:00.000-08:00

I'm a bit late on this, but this Wednesday, when an English soccer team was in Madrid to play a game, they were booed. Not so bad? Read this.

From the BBC

Hundreds if not thousands of the Bernabeu chanted and
made monkey noises at England's black players.

And again.

Ashley Cole has called on Spanish coach Luis Aragones to be sacked in the wake of the racist abuse in England's 1-0 defeat in Madrid. Both Cole and team-mate Shaun Wright Phillips were subjected to monkey chants from sections of the crowd. And Cole blamed Aragones after earlier comments he made about the defender's club team-mate Thierry Henry.

"Surely the Spanish FA must get rid of him now," Cole told the News of the World newspaper. "To me it was Aragones who started everything that happened. So it's surely no surprise that the fans then behaved as they did. "And still their manager has not condemned it - it's as if he agrees with it. If you don't condemn it then then you must condone it."

Got that? The Spanish coach makes racist comments, refuses to apologize, makes excuses, saying

"I know who is racist. I remember the colonies. There are some who have run after them like wolves after prey," he said, referring to Britain's past.

..and "hundreds if not thousands" of spectators make monkey noises at Englands black players.

This is Spain, the country who was under Moorish occupation for thousands of years, whose culture is tied up with Africa. If any country in Europe could be expected to take a stand against this sort of thing it would Spain. What do they do? They make monkey noises at the players.

Not to say we don't have a boatload of problems ourselves, or to turn this into one of those blind salute blogs, but you find one single place in the US where more than five idiotic people will get together and do this, and not get themselves crushed by hundreds of furious fans.

sweet. very nice.

2004-11-21T01:10:00.000-08:00

This. "hello, can you see me?" is a "group moblog event, sharing the lives of 24 people over 48 hours in new york city." Interesting, and it just ended about 3 hours ago. Wish I'd found it sooner.

Mmm. I have three browsers open as of 2:59 am Central time; Opera, with visitor stats for this blog, blogdex, and a few news sites; Firefox, with Gmail, because Opera still doesn't work with my beloved gmail; and IE, in which I'm writing this (not because I like it, I just got to this window first). I also have AIM, of course, with Socrates835.

And the lark has gone for Thanksgiving. Have fun, happy turkey day, come back soon. Alaudam basia if you're reading this.

Mmm, again. I'd probably blog a lot more if I didn't have to get up most mornings. 2 and 3 am is a much more fun time to be on. Just call me the Midnight Blogger. Strange though, I'd expect the best time for writing to be when I'm awake, and in full command of myself, not when I'm propping my eyes open with toothpicks.

And Blogger, you better get your act together. I'm sick of your servers locking me out. Hmm, if I can acquire delusions of grandeur, read. three or four regular readers, I might go find a real hosting service.

-The Midnight Blogger

an um, test.

2004-11-20T22:37:00.000-08:00

Hmm. right after posting, and sort of agreeing with, someone else's rant about 'cloneblogs that have nothing in them but tests' I have this. A test.

You are an INTP!

As an INTP, you are Introverted, iNtuitive, Thinking, Perceiving.
This makes your primary focus on Introverted Thinking with an Extraverted Intution.

This is defined as a NT personality, which is part of Carl Jung's Rational (Knowledge Seeking) type, and more specifically the Architect or Thinker.

As a weblogger, you might not be as concerned about popularity, but more with the ideas and theories that you strive to understand. Because routines aren't your strong point, you might be more likely to work on the concept of how to do a blog, but not be as excited to keep it up.

Well, lessee. That is, um, very, very good. No offense to you or anything, but I could really care less if you come or not. Don't get me wrong, I'm glad to have you, but I don't want to dwell on it. For me, making this about how many visitors or links I get limits what I am willing to do. The whole 'because routines' thing fits too. Not to be an arrogant, idiotic newbie or anything, but I think I got the hang of this relatively quickly. I found the major blog indices, got an idea of what was respected in the blog community, and am now at the point where I know what is expected and why, but see more value in doing what I want. I also post rather erratically, in waves, as you might have noticed if you're a regular.

And the test got all that from four questions. Yes, four.

meet the cynic

2004-11-20T19:07:00.000-08:00

He (at least I assume it's a he) posts here from time to time, and rambles when he does, but I like some of the stuff he writes. Emphasis on some.

Here's some stuff from his November 10'th post.

I cant forgive the fat woman in the minivan who felt the need to entertain her children with the latest obnoxious cartoon DVD. What have we come to? Do we really find it so necessary to be distracted at all times? What exactly are we distracting ourselves from? God forbid we should be alone with our thoughts for even a mere moment. No, its better you pull out your cell phone and download a game of Tetris, otherwise you might actually experience, you know, existence.

Yup.

His 'Virtual Monotony' post is how I first found him. Long, too long to quote completely here, but very good.

I came to the vain and pouty conclusion that I wanted more attention in the way of traffic on my blog. In order to achieve this increase in traffic I had to resign myself to a horror that I’ve been avoiding up until now...the way of the blog. I had to venture to other people's blogs.

I know that some of you are reading this with some confusion and/or eye-rolling. You read blogs and you enjoy them. Well, to each his own. I, however, do not find an extensive amount of leisure time to invest in perusing the meanderings of other people. My interest is purely selfish, and now I know why.

I’ve probably come across one hundred or so blogs in my virtual travels and yet, only a few remain memorable for either their insight or humour. Most of them are one of the following cloneblogs: the soccer mom blog (I’m so weird because I’m a mom and yet I can use a computer! I also have a secret crush on Tom Cruise that I hide from my husband. We’ve been married for twelve years and we have three wonderful children!! I made cookies today and it was so interesting I thought you might like to hear about it...yay!), the right-wing christian blog (The end of the world is upon us. Follow our saviour Cheney or you will be damned to a fiery hell where you will be forced to engage in promiscuous homosexual acts and drug abuse!...unless you like that kind of thing, then you just deserve to die and are probably poor), the left-wing spoiled brat blog (I talk about saving the environment and world peace, but the truth is I was raised in a wealthy suburb by wealthy parents and I can only wish I had a gay black friend to complete my identity), the glories of technology blogs (I would make love to a robot if I could...no, really), the clippings blogs (I haven’t much to say so I will simply post random things I’ve found on the internet and hope that someone likes me for it), the random thoughts and musings blogs (today I went to the store and my friend was working and he told me that the other day my other friend got into and accident and then she went to this party and slept with one of our other friends and I was like “whoa”). I suppose I could go on forever, so I’ll just stop.

[...]

I know what you’re going to say next...well, if you don’t like blogs then you shouldn’t read them. This, and then a side of “you’re so negative” and then a misspelled insult for dessert. See, the thing is, I can’t stop. I can’t stop because there are a few people out there with potential and it really must be in the cards that we find each other. In the meantime, my disappointment with people whose political views represent who they are and every single thought and action, people who are plastic and always “happy”, people who attempt to tell me I have no values because I don’t allow an institutionalized belief system to tell me what to believe, artists, disclaimers, dog people, cat people, blondes, people in sports cars, accountants, men, women, and basically anyone who would go so far as to define themselves as any one thing and hold it against me when I don’t. Get a f*****ng personality.

My mood today is: Melancholy, Misanthropic, Misunderstood, Malcontent, Meandering, Mocking, Malevolent, Moderate...have you seen this?! People have begun listing things such as their moods, when their next birthday is, the music in their cd player (I have noted an odd predominance of A Perfect Circle), their kid’s ages, the weather in their hometown. Anything but real content.

So after going through these blogs I’ve come to a kind of complacency with my lack of comments. I don’t want more comments, I want less. I’m tired of comments that are complete misinterpretations of my posts. If my comment traffic increases, please, by all means, feel free to say something constructive.

Well. That was more than I planned to quote, but until the Cynic turns on post pages I must save his work from loss in the archives.

And now I will go and smell our rosebush, after posting this to my non-cloneblog.

the curiousness of blogs

2004-11-19T16:32:00.000-08:00

I was getting ready to do a nice, thoughtful, meaty post about the nature of blogging when I took a look at my pageload stats. First, to whoever keeps reading this from NASA's San Jose server, I am honored to have you here and I hope you enjoy yourself. Even if you're just the janitor.

More curious though, is the slow trickle of pageloads I've been getting from Canada. I've gotten a number of visitors over the past week coming from yahoo.com after searching for "mark smallbones + shrek" or some variation. See, I'm currently number nine in yahoo's listings for a man called mark smallbones. Why? Because on November 4th I found this article about an offduty police officer who, dressed as Shrek for a Halloween party, caught a thief trying to rob a liquor store. Naturally, I blogged it. On November 6th.

However, these people didn't start showing up till a few days ago. This lag is difficult for me to explain. It could be that everyone else heard about this when I did, and I am just catching the tailend of the interest. However, that would require an explanation of why no one showed up with that in mind till a few days ago. For my money, I'd argue these are just people who saw the story on their local news and decided to log on and find out more about it. It could be that the story just spread faster online, and the interest has taken the past two weeks to grow locally. Strange though. It seems wrong to assign that much power to a group of bloggers, especially for an story that ought to spread best locally.

That is what I've been noticing though. In the past few years, I've almost completely stopped reading my paper, watching the news, etc. On numerous occasions I've read something online, pointed it out to a couple people, and then read the exact same article -- word for word -- in the local paper.

It still seems strange to simply say these people took two weeks longer to hear about something than I did. Behold the power of blogs.

you take a little break....

2004-11-17T16:46:00.000-08:00

...and Fallujah goes down, Anna Nicole Smith goes nuts, and the Democrats choose a Mormon as the Senate minority leader.

It's nice that Fallujah is cleaned out, but I doubt it is the big boost to us or the new Iraqi gov that some people were saying it would be. On the other hand, I don't see that it becomes the big recruitment boom that others think it'll become. If we saw that the resistance was broadbased, with old men, little kids, and women blowing themselves up as well, then yes, Fallujah's going to be a problem. However, look at the pictures coming out of there. Gruesome and horrible, but aside from children hurt in the bombing do you see anything more than angry young men? Even Al Sadr was what, 31? Young, unattached men are not exactly the right people to start a popular revolution with.

Ok. So the Democrats stick a Mormon in the Senate as minority leader. I don't think anyone would disagree in calling this a new tack. I mean, seriously, Mormons are absolutely the most powerful fundamentalist Christian group in the US. Now, whether this is a good idea remains to be seen. First, consider that the Mormon, though they probably have the greatest ideological purity of all America's Christian groups, are not exactly mainstream. It may have been a better idea to choose a dedicated Baptist or Catholic; Baptists dominate the South, a strong Catholic would be an outreach for the Hispanics who went to Bush this year.

There's also the problem of whether the people the Democrats want to appeal to will see this as anything more than pandering. This might not last, after all. A month or two from now, when the pundits are done looking over the election, the left might regret putting someone like Reid in power.

Finally, suppose it does work. A substantial part of Bush's electorate sees that they can vote for people who both support their religion and their 'blessed are the poor' values. However, a party can only manage so many competing ideas. What if, in the process of pulling in the Middle Christians the Democrats alienate the far right of the party? If the Demo's are successful enough in this attempt, the left of the left, the people who drive the Democrats, might not like the changing values. We could see a new split, maybe Nader could finally pull in some votes.

And thanks for the tip goes to a great article by the Decembrist.

one rant. on professors.

2004-11-14T21:05:00.000-08:00

This is a rant. You've been warned, so if you get annoyed at me, don't leave any nasty comments.

First, you have to know that I was homeschooled for all of my life up till college. As I got older, more and more classes were done outside the home, at places that could handle it better, but for the most part I was taught at home. I was taught uniquely, even for homeschooling, with a variation on Montessori principles. It was very self directed, open ended, all that. I know that is not for everyone, but it was extraordinarily good for me.

When I began college though, I had some good teachers, and some bad teachers. I was careful not to generalize, knowing how few I had met and what a big change this was from what I had been doing. I have now had about 9 months of "traditional" schooling though, and I think I have a pretty good idea of how it works. It sucks.

Yes, I have had some extraordinary teachers. I had a couple I'm sure I'll remember long after I leave this dinky little college. However, they are by far the exception, and the general rule is a ridiculous mediocrity. Someone tell me why my government teacher stands in front of the class, tells us to repeat him verbatim and tells us if when we do the essay test we don't repeat him exactly we don't get the point. Tell me why my sociology teacher gives us an hour of politics, strained analogies, and the same jokes every class, then can't figure out why most of the class can't answer the very specific questions on the test.

My history classes, my government class, and my sociology class require me to do nothing more than quote the professor in my notes, memorize it, and write it down on the test. My English classes were a bit better, actually encouraging original thought and an understanding of the material, but remember, English 1302 was the class where my professor accused me of plagiarism because the term paper I wrote had ideas that a 6th grader might not have understood.

You people!! If you decide to talk politics let us in on it too, I didn't pay for your class so I could listen to you on your soapbox. How good are your ideas if you can't even defend them in front of a bunch of lazy, apathetic college students? If you want to be a teacher, teach. What kind of class is it if I don't even crack my book, and do nothing more in your class than write down your convoluted syntax? If that's all you're going to do, pass out copies of your notes and tell us when to show up for the test. And you! If someone writes a paper that actually has some thinking in it, it doesn't mean I stole it!! You not knowing a few basic facts about Lincoln doesn't mean I need to give a source, it means you are an idiot.

Ahem. Sorry. But I've given up on this kind of college.

veterans day.

2004-11-11T20:30:00.000-08:00

There are ideas in this world so great and noble that to describe them completely, knowing the enormity involved, is impossible. The men and women, living and dead, who placed their lives in trust for this country embody one of those ideas.

May there always be such people among us.

away, for an unspecified amount of time.

2004-11-09T20:20:00.000-08:00

Hmm. Getting to the end of the semester, starting to get things piled on. So, going to stop posting for a bit, at least letting up on the daily posts. If I find something good, I'll probably blog it though.

In the meantime, check out some of my old stuff. Thanks for visiting.

and lark, i might be up there december. we'll see.

problem with google news.

2004-11-09T09:58:00.000-08:00

So I had better things to do today, but I decided to stop by news.google.com and see what was going on. Well, I found something. Something so interesting, bloggable, and astounding that I just had to click.

Do you see that? An outrage, requiring allegations of corruption, congressional inquiries, etc. And yours truly spilled the story, well, sort of.

Naturally I clicked, I had to find out more about this. Behold, this travesty...of something or other.

Civilians got less cash in WTC payouts

BY ADAM LISBERG
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

Emergency workers who were seriously injured and the families of those killed in the World Trade Center attacks received an average of $4.2 million in compensation - one-third more than the $3.1 million civilian victims got, a new report says.

Hmm. not quite what I was expecting, yes? Someone else took over as top story a few minutes later, so this is probably the only place you'll get to see it. This does give an interesting possibility for how Google creates its abstracts though. Notice, looking over Google News that every abstract ends with a period. Smart, a simple way to keep from cutting off after a preposition or something strange like that, but it does create interesting, amusing things like this.

hmm.

2004-11-09T07:12:00.000-08:00

So I was looking around yesterday, and I came upon this, a quote of one of those 'inspiring' chain letters that goes around.

Which Tator Are you?

There are many many variations on understanding what kind of person or manager you are. I was looking at some sites, and came across this. I modified and added to this a little. Its a fun way to understand yourself.

-Some people do not want to participate in life, but just content to watch while others do the work. They are the Spectators.

-Some people never do anything to help, but just want to find fault, and talk about things. They are the Commentators.

-Some people are looking to cause problems. Everything is always a problem, and the soup is always too hot or too cold, too sweet or too sour. They are the Agitators.

-Some people always have plans but somehow never get around to doing it. They are the Hesitators.

- Some people spend their lives wanting to be somebody else, and pretending to be not what they are. They are the Imitators.

- Some people spend their lives trying to run other people's lives. They are the Dictators.

- Some people want to become what they want to be, and to help other people become what they want to be. They are the facilitators.

I'd like to be the last. Which one would you want to be?

Interesting, and I get the point, that you should mind your own business, control your own life, and help others, I just don't buy how they argue it.

Without spectators, we would not know the beauty found when you stop and simply sit and watch. Without commentators, we would not know the wonder of places we've never seen and cannot hope to meet. Without agitators, we would not see what we lack, and what we ought to be. Because we have hesitators, those willing to plan and study though they lack what is needed to carry out those plans, we have others able to 'stand on the shoulders of giants'. Imitators let us see, alternatively, the value or foolishness or humour or greatness of a person. Dictators, though power can be abused, also serve as the strong core of an otherwise weak and faltering group, holding up the roof so it does not crush those underneath. All these have their own gifts, their own contribution.

To disparage them is at least as bad as the problems you talk about here. Life is not so simple as to place greatness and majesty in a single place or type of person, and to assume that can cut a person off from the wonderful glory that is this world, with all its flaws.

want to volunteer? pay up.

2004-11-08T12:46:00.000-08:00

So schools are feeling a pinch these days. You need to make do with less, innovate, and raise standards at the same time. One way you could do that is by encouraging parents to get involved, getting them to help out. How does Macon County, Tennessee do this? Why, by charging them to volunteer, of course. See, Macon County has the children in mind. They want to protect them, so they require all prospective volunteers to undergo a background check. Wonderful, marvelous, but they go on to make the volunteer bear the $48 fee.

This week, the district's school board is expected to approve new guidelines that require screening any parent who would have direct contact with students five or more times a year. The school system has been requiring those background checks since the start of the school year, but the school board is expected to make it official.
''It's for the safety of the kids,'' said Mike Prock, director of the 3,800-student system 45 miles northeast of Nashville. ''It's just a really good idea.''

Prock said he hasn't received much opposition to the background check, but the fee is another story. From the beginning, a group of parents has objected to paying the $48 fee to the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation. They argue that the fee might hamper some parents from getting involved and say it should be picked up by the school system.

It is difficult enough to get parents of low income families involved. This just makes it less likely. Besides, the average parent would not fit the profile. From Child Molester Statistics at YelloDyno.

• 71% of male offenders are under the age of 35.
-Dr. Ann Burges, Dr. Nicholas Groth, et al. in a study of imprisoned offenders.

• 3/4 of sexual predators are younger than 35. About 80% are of normal intelligence or above.
-Profiles from the FBI Academy and the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children.

This is just ridiculous, let it go.

And thanks to ZeroBoss for the link.

UPDATE FOR COMMENTS: Of course, background checks are a good idea, but the cost is too much and the likelihood that it will catch something is much lower than the community at large. If someone is an addict etc, they can be excluded by the school when they show signs that they will adversely influence the children. There is no reason to exclude someone who may be trying to get their life back on track, if the problem cannot be found without a records check.

Molesters are the only situation that this would help, but most kidnappings, molestation, etc, are committed by a family member or friend. The rest are typically crimes of opportunity, not likely to be prevented by this sort of check. Even more problematic, molesters typically do not have a record, so the check would not catch them anyway.

If Macon County feels this is necessary, they'll do it, but it seems irrational and unrealistically expensive whether the school or the parents are required to pay.

mm. changes.

2004-11-07T16:52:00.000-08:00

MMk. So I've been making changes to the template, getting it closer to what I want.

I now have.

A Blogroll. Tiny, but it should get up there. I'm picky about who I link to, probably not the best attitude for the blogosphere.

Comments by Haloscan. Nice, looks shiny, but I don't get that many comments so I'm not sure how good that is.

Better XML feed. I was using the Blogspot feed maker, but I took a look at it and don't like what it does to my posts. So, I now have feed courtesy of Feedburner, location is here. If you're using blogspot.com/atom.xml I really recommend you change the feed.

That's it, hopefully I'll actually have something to say soon.

a quick roundup of things i've seen today.

2004-11-07T16:12:00.000-08:00

Too lazy to come up with a real article, found some interesting things today though.

Ran into Nicholas Kristof's Nov 3 article

Interesting to see what he thinks, but he shows his hand right at the beginning, and I don't like what he has to say.

I'm writing this on tenterhooks on Tuesday, without knowing the election results. But whether John Kerry's supporters are now celebrating or seeking asylum abroad, they should be feeling wretched about the millions of farmers, factory workers and waitresses who ended up voting - utterly against their own interests - for Republican candidates.

That is exactly why I'm not a Democrat. The idea that you, somehow, have a better idea of how someone should be running their life. Friends can talk to me about how the Democrats "stand up for the working man", "try to end inequality", and all the way down the list. Fine, I want that too. Do you want me to go down the list of truly evil wretched things in this world, how they multiply and spread and corrupt, and how once in a while, rarely, you see a beautiful burst of something truly great and beautiful which changes everything? Until the world either kills or corrupts it too.

I do what I can, til I fail myself, to work against that. So far, I agree with Democrats, but often they add on an attitude which I despise. The presumption that somehow, I don't know what is in my interest, and that if I don't see the true path they can decide for me is where I draw the line. My life is my own, and so are my thoughts. As long as you want to dismiss my beliefs with a condescending nod, you can stay out of my life, and out of office.

Shirin Ebadi's memoirs embargoed

Story via The Independent.

The Iranian Nobel Peace Prize winner Shirin Ebadi, honoured for her work on democracy and human rights, is suing the United States government for blocking the publication of her memoirs.

[...]

According to US regulations, American companies are forbidden to publish the works of authors in Iran, Cuba and Sudan unless the works have already been completed without American involvement. Publishers are also forbidden from promoting or marketing works from the three countries unless they obtain a licence from the Office of Foreign Asset Control.

The lawsuit alleges the restrictions violate the First Amendment and declarations by Congress that US trade embargoes may not be allowed to restrict the free flow of information and ideas. Molly Millerwise, a Treasury spokeswoman, declined to comment.

Well, I for one am outraged. The provision isn't even logical. We restrict those works published with the help of the US, when by definition these countries don't like us, and would at least be suspicious of a writer who went to the US to get help with their work.

A Brazilian legislator wants to ban the naming of pets with people names

Federal congressman Reinaldo Santos e Silva proposed the law after psychologists suggested that some children may get depressed when they learn they share their first name with someone's pet, said Damarias Alves, a spokeswoman for Silva.

"Names have importance," said Alves. The congressman "wants to challenge people's assumptions that it's acceptable to give animals human names," she said.

If my dog ever tells me he doesn't like his name, and wants to be called Grrindoff or whatever dogs call each other, I'll be glad to accomodate him. But it is ridiculous to say you're working on behalf of something when there is no evidence that that something has a preference. As for children, they'll have to grow up eventually.

smallbones the ogre.

2004-11-06T17:22:00.000-08:00

From our neighbours to the north, who apparently have some new ideas about law enforcement.

LETHBRIDGE, Alta. (CP) - When a booze thief found himself being chased down by a six-foot-three, 260-pound green ogre, he figured he'd be better off turning himself in to the police. Trouble is, the Shrek character who caught him stealing from a liquor store on the weekend was actually an off-duty police officer.
Const. Mark Smallbones, a six-year veteran of the Lethbridge Police Service, was on his way to a Halloween party Saturday when he stopped to pick up some beer. The chase was on after the bald and burly officer, skin painted green and accompanied by a stuffed donkey, saw two people swipe a couple of bottles and flee. The pursuit covered a few blocks with the officer gaining ground and shouting at the bandits, "Stop, police!"
One of the crooks got away, but the other was clearly unnerved when he saw who was pursuing him. "He told the uniformed officers who were on duty that responded to this call that he felt his best bet for his own safety was to return to where other people were, because he was concerned that Shrek was chasing him and trying to identify himself as a police officer," Lethbridge Staff Sgt. Jeff Cove said Thursday.
[...]

The Lethbridge Police Service will soon graduate Batman, the Pink Panther, and Elvis.

picture, picture.

2004-11-06T11:32:00.000-08:00

No post yesterday, Blogger was acting up and I couldn't get in. Anyway, lets see what's going on.

The big thing at DemocraticUnderground seems to be these pictures.

Interesting, but there is no documentation, no source I've found yet for any of the data, and several people I know mentioned that Wisconsin and Ohio used paper ballots in at least most of the state. At least there do seem to be a few moderate voices there, rather than just outraged attempts to explain away Kerry's loss.

PeteGammons (16 posts) Sat Nov-06-04 12:01 PM

I don't know whether to laugh or cry...

...when I look at this, and the people apparently taking it seriously instead of looking for the real issues. Look at that bottom right-hand graph. How fucking delusional do you have to be to think that Kerry really took 60% of the vote in Pennsylvania, a state represented in the Senate by Rick Santorum? Get a grip, people. That 60-40 number came from a sample of 59% women. Do you really thinking that 50% more PA voters were women than men? This is exactly the kind of thing that the thugs and freepers want us focused on, because if we delude ourselves into thinking that the exit polls were right, which they clearly weren't, then we'll never address the real issues.

The smirking shrub got more votes than Kerry did. Period. If we want to win next time, we need to figure out why and address it. Paranoid conspiracies about how the exit polls are more accurate than the actual votes tabulated by (largely democratic) county workers are just absolutely, totally fucking counter-productive.

jdjkkse Sat Nov-06-04 11:19 AM

easy to fix. though.

they would either be wrong or right, but it still doesn't mean these states shown aren't majorly fucked up.

I agree someone needs to do an all 50 state graph. I do think one problem with us dems is that we really don't have that many people doing what you just did, thinking like they think, whereas that's ALL the repukes have.

Thank you? I bet it all blows over. Some pollster screwing up his norms isn't proof, no one really wants to talk about the fraud that did occur since both sides played, and the majority of the public doesn't buy conspiracy theories.

so that's it?

2004-11-04T19:08:00.000-08:00

The last week has been interesting for me. I have read more, thought more, had more browser tabs open at one time (which is a lot, usually about 20) than I think I have ever had before. I've also made more posts, almost as many in the past week than all posted since I began in August. Finally got an RSS reader loaded, am now running three, and wouldn't give up any. Looking back at the first post with the tiny bit of experience I have is strange, in a nice sort of way.

What I want to do here (supposedly) is trace my education and find out if a liberal arts education is really going to help me. So, over the next few years (hopefully) I will sit here and comment on all my wonderful, intellectually stimulating classes, and then, after spending gobs of money I will need to pay back, what good it did me. Now, I know it's not going to turn out like that. No one will show up, and when they do they'll just shrug and leave for the next idiot who thinks he can write. I'll decide that passing my courses is (for some reason) more important than playing around online. Of course, the opposite could happen, but I'm not in the mood to write fiction right now.

Well I'm in, can't wait for next fall. But, I haven't been posting about that very much. Maybe I'll come back to that now that the election is over.

People have come, not many, but they seemed to like it. Haven't gotten any hate mail, or worse, patronizing comments that amount to a pat on the head. If you're reading this and actually have experience, though, I'd be glad to hear what you have to say. The UnPopulist has a funny top ten list about this; don't see myself in there, not sure if I should be glad, or I'm just to insignificant for anything to happen.

So now what? I'm tired, a person can't go from a post or two a week to eight a day and not feel anything. So, I'm going to rest. I'll still post at least once a day, but going to relax, fix up the place. Need to put in a blogroll, I found some really brilliant people in the past few days. Need to tweak the template blogger.com hands out, test it on a few different browsers. We'll see what happens.

lest we forget.

2004-11-03T17:53:00.000-08:00

This wasn't exactly a sure thing, look at Jimmy Breslin's article "Why Kerry will beat Bush".

One day last May, I assigned the election to John Kerry. I said it early, and often. As I looked more, I saw that it shouldn't even be close. I said that in this space more than once. Now I am so sure that I am not even going to bother to watch the results tonight. I am going to bed early, for I must rise in the darkness and pursue immediately an exciting, overdue project. Besides, if I was up, so many people, upon seeing every word I said of this election coming true on television in front of them, would be kissing my hands and embarrassing me with outlandish praise. So I go to bed with total confidence. I will get up and stroll to other meadows.

[...]

When I figured in the people shocked by the dead bodies of young Americans in Iraq, and brutalized here by unemployment, there was no way to make the election seem close. I said this in this newspaper several times. Each time as I was typing, the words of thelate great Harry (Champ) Segal kept shouting in my ear: "Go naked on this one!" When published reports showed a million new voter registrations in Florida and about 800,000 in Ohio, I made the election a lock. They were not rushing out for George Bush. And these poll takers were ignoring them. Any part of a million votes in Florida, most of them of color, would sweep the state. The reporters said the nation was divided. They were afraid to say anything that might upset this view. You've been had by the news industry. Not once, even after the first debate when Kerry scored a technical knockout, did they take a step and call it as it happened.

I read the article just now, actually got worried for a second.

now what.

2004-11-03T16:08:00.000-08:00

So Bush has won. It's finally over. Only, it's not. The next four years could be some of the worst yet. Bush may have won, and he can now retreat back into the White House, but the rest of us have to live out here with each other. I listened to NPR on the way back from class, Talk of the Nation was interviewing voters. I know how much some people hate Bush, but the depth of this women's anger was amazing. All she could say was how she couldn't believe so many people were so deceived, and how worried she was for the future of the country. Michele Catalano has a brilliant post about this.

I woke up to a very different world in which people I assumed were rational Democrats are spitting poison nails. I received some nasty emails and comments (since deleted) that were alarming in their venom and hatred. People I never had a harsh word with were suddenly knocking down my virtual door to leaving the equivalent of letter bombs. This did not frighten me so much as make me sad. I can say with all honesty that, had Kerry won this election, I would have done no such thing. But, that's just me.

I did read through some of the near lunatic fringe of the left today. Sad state of affairs, really. They seem to be so overcome by bitterness and anger that their emotions are getting in the way of rational thinking. How else do you explain the call to arms, the threats to join al Qaeda, the pleas for violent uprising, or the wishful thinking for a terrorist attack to happen now?

And here we go again with the "illegitimate" election fantasies. The whole basis of argument for the left in recent times has been "if I don't agree with it, it must be a lie." This has never been more evident than right now. Witness: This election is a fraud, a sham. The Republicans (sorry, Rethuglicans) cheated their way through another vote. The vote counts are all wrong. The machines were fixed. Someone was paid off. And, of course, the exit polls were rigged. Even if Bush were to win both the Electoral vote and the popular vote, his win would be decried as illegal. Perhaps that is what is driving the hate today; the fact that there is nothing to point to in order to support the cries of another fake presidency.

These people are not going to go away. They have spent the campaign season organizing, shaping their ideas, coming together. The right has not done anything on the scale the left has except for blog; powerful, but a way to create thousands of opinions to look at and weigh, not to purify a consistent ideology. The left is prepared, they are ready, and they have a new source of anger to motivate them. Markos Moulitsas of dailykos.com has an article in the Guardian that talks about this very thing.

It's a bitter pill to swallow, but one that should hopefully lead to a brighter future. Bush owns his messes, and now he'll be forced to clean them up. He won't be able to hide behind 9/11 seven years into his term. Unless the Republicans can engineer a recovery of epic proportions, they will have a great deal to answer to in the 2006 midterms and 2008. And God help Bush if this nation suffers another terrorist attack.

But best of all, we'll continue to see this great resurgence in progressive activism - the kind not seen in American politics in over a generation. None of these new activists heeded the call to arms only to abandon the fight today. We are energized, and will continue to fight for a better future for our country.

[...]

The United States is a bitterly divided nation, at war with itself. Tuesday was merely one battle in a long-term war for the heart and soul of our nation. There will be the usual blather about unity and nonesuch, but the time for that is past. Bush has won himself four additional years to further inflict damage upon the world. Half of of the US public is not happy about that tonight.

In the meantime, we will be training our forces, re-evaluating our tactics, marshalling our strength, and, ultimately, keeping our eyes on the prize.

That delights me. People are inspired, are working to change the world according to what they think is right. I'm even happy these people have such a strong opposition to what I believe, although mentions of Nazi's get annoyed. To have all these people, checking my facts, questioning whether my interpretation is correct, believing my point of view is completely wrong, is a great gift. It keeps me honest

However, there is another side that worries me. Gore lost in large part because a significant number of conservatives had eight years to plan and smolder and define an ideology that had no place for Gore. Now the tables have turned, and unless Bush finds some way to defuse this anger we are set up for a dangerous seesaw, and even more division. Unfortunately, as much as I may agree with Bush on many things, I do not see him doing that. If Bush felt he had authority to redefine the government as much as he has so far, what will he do now that he has won with a clear majority. This is a chance for Bush to work for the good of the country, to keep his "uniter, not a divider" promise, to make this administration one to be remembered for great things. He does not need to worry about reelection or setting the stage for Cheney, he can act as he sees fit. If he does so wisely, the country will come together, and people on both sides who try to play against the middle will drop off.

If he does not, however, the anger that exists on the left right now will remain and smolder, and the Republicans will be marginalized in 2008.

over for me.

2004-11-02T21:41:00.000-08:00

Ah, this is enough for me. Test tomorrow, or I'd stay up till Ohio and New Mexico were resolved.

However, in the past fifteen, thirty minutes Bush has gone from a lead of 119,000 to a lead of 130,000. Like Jim Lehrer just announced (and I noticed long before, thank you very much) that if Bush takes Ohio, Colorado, and New Mexico; he gets the 271 he needs.

Looks like Bush gets his mandate, though. Tomorrow we all get to blog about what a second term looks like, hopefully.

Pundit with Gwen is talking about significant errors in exit polls, beyond the margin of error. Yup.

tightening up.

2004-11-02T20:45:00.000-08:00

Ahh, now it gets interesting. Bush has a lock on Florida, with 52-47 at 94%, but if he doesn't take Ohio (52-48 at 58%) he only gets 260 from what he has now plus New Mexico, Colorado, Arkansas, and Wisconsin, all places where he has a lead of 5% or more. Ohio hasn't shown the ups and downs that made Florida interesting though.

If Kerry takes Ohio, he only has 260, assuming he gets Wash. Oregon, Minn., Iowa, and Michigan as well, all states he's had a consistent, comfortable lead. These states aren't reporting more than 30% though, except for Iowa which is at 43%.

So, that means if Kerry wants to win, he needs to take New Hampshire (3) and Nevada (5), and either Alaska or Hawaii. Right now Kerry has a lead of one or two percent in NH and NV, but polls aren't reporting for Alaska and Hawaii yet. (Old) Polls from Electoral-vote.com handed those two to Bush, though.

If Kerry wants to win then, he needs to both pick up Ohio, killing a nice, consistent lead from Bush, and pick up Hawaii (most likely). Bush meanwhile, has to keep on doing what he's doing. If he loses the lead in Ohio, he needs to pick up Nevada (not likely with NV annoyed about Yucca Mountain) or NH, New Hampshire is much more likely, since Kerry only leads by around 6,000 votes.

UPDATE: Kerry ahead in Wisconsin by 12,000 votes and 38% reporting. Bush ahead in Wash by 7,000 at 6%, so that could replace it, possibly.

Talking head says Kerry doing worse in key states than Gore did. Hmm, perhaps. Bush seems to have a popular vote lead right now, so we'll see.

decided already?

2004-11-02T19:54:00.000-08:00

This can't be over already, it can't. What about the weeks of litigation, the disputes about voter fraud, the virtual tie we were supposed to get.

I just got a letter from my rather unconservative uncle betting me a pizza Bush would win by morning. Not quite sure what to think about that.

Tradesports.com once again has Bush in the lead, with what seems to be a panic to get rid of Kerry shares.

Contract	B Qty	Bid	Ask	A Qty	Last	Vol	Chge
PRESIDENT.GWBUSH2004	171	70.1	71.0	20	70.0	1.3m	+17.0
PRESIDENT.KERRY2004	9	28.5	30.0	1018	29.0	159.2k	-18.0

I'm not sure what to think. I can't remember what the score in Florida was in 2000, but I'm pretty sure it was closer than 52-47 for Bush at 87% reporting. Wish I had a county by county breakdown like they did last time.

Looking at CSPAN it looks like a big red map, with more on the way. Kerry leads in Minnesota, Iowa, and Pennsylvania; and Electoral-vote.com gave California, Washington, and Oregon to Kerry; but that's only 111 electoral votes, giving Kerry a total of 223. Meaning Kerry would need to pick up Ohio and Florida to get 270. That'll be difficult, especially with Florida at 87% reporting right now.

i'm lazy

2004-11-02T18:34:00.000-08:00

Not really, she just does it better. So, once again to Yankee from Mississippi.

finally here.

2004-11-02T17:35:00.000-08:00

Alright, finally. I hereby take the bloggers pledge.

I do solemnly swear to consume large amounts of caffeine, watch electoral-vote.com, MegaPundit, and Blogdex, and not sleep until this whole thing is resolved.

Oh, and blog.

Never mind that I have a test tonight, another tomorrow, and another on Friday. And I think I have plans for the next five weeks.

let the market decide.

2004-11-02T11:50:00.000-08:00

Mmm, since the polls can't agree, I decided to look at the markets.

Iowa Electronic Markets has this page, unfortunately the graph is updated at midnight, only giving us prices up to yesterday. At that time, it looks like Bush was pulling around 52 to Kerry's 47.

Tradesports.com is more optimistic though, giving 58 to 42% in favor of Bush. Even better, it updates in real time. Kerry has dropped since I checked about an hour ago, when the trading was around 47% for Kerry. Still dropping too, by the looks of the trading.

As of 6:40:13PM GMT

? Contract	B Qty	Bid	Ask	A Qty	Last	Vol	Chge
PRESIDENT.GWBUSH2004	500	57.5	57.9	1	57.9	1.1m	+4.9
PRESIDENT.KERRY2004	83	42.0	42.5	398	42.0	128.0k	-5.0

UPDATE: Obviously, the fat lady hasn't sung yet.

As of 10:30:35PM GMT

? Contract	B Qty	Bid	Ask	A Qty	Last	Vol	Chge
PRESIDENT.GWBUSH2004	20	29.6	30.0	204	30.0	1.2m	-23.0
PRESIDENT.KERRY2004	55	70.5	71.1	155	71.1	141.4k	+24.1

the incumbent rule.

2004-11-02T08:15:00.000-08:00

From Mystery Pollster, but the good part isn't the article, it's this guy's comments.

Mark, I don't buy the "incumbent rule" when it comes to a Presidential race between a sitting President and a Senator with a 20 year track-record (so I've heard) who has been campaigning for two years. But, if it does apply, it is still likely too small to matter. Polls consistently show only about 4% of undecided voters. Of these, a considerable portion won't show up on Nov. 2. For the sake of argument, let's assume Kerry wins 2 - 1 of those who do. That would only net him 1 point overall, at best.

I don't think that will be close to enough for Kerry although in some states it could be significant. In 2000, polls a week out still showed 10%, or so, undecided. So when the DUI story came out, there were plenty of undecided voters left to influence. That's not where we are in 2004.

Posted by: Al Bucci | October 30, 2004 01:16 PM

But still, how to get around the Redskin's loss.

mmhmm.

2004-11-02T07:09:00.000-08:00

The Horserace Blog has an interesting article arguing that the incumbent rule, that undecideds usually break for the challenger, is false.

What the mystery pollster (and others) is trying to do is essentially the same as what IR people try to do. He is taking a series of observations and developing an average for how undecideds break to the challenger. This is what "the incumbent rule" is driving at. His problem is that he has a small number of observations, only 8 presidential elections since 1956 where there is a challenger v. incumbent (some have tried to broaden the field to look at all elections and derive a rule from that, but I think that is foolish -- presidential elections are fundamentally different from an election for dog catcher or US Senator). It is really, really, really hard to make a rule from eight observations. And, given that 1976 and 1984 stand out as exceptions (undecideds broke evenly at the end of both campaigns) -- when I say "hard," I actually mean impossible.

Furthermore, 1992 itself is quite incommensurable to the other the elections in the sample. Perot and Bush picked up the last minute deciders -- Clinton actually lost ground among them. A good social scientist would probably would exclude 1992 from his analysis because it is so uncharacteristic in unrelated ways. So, that would be 2 exceptions out of 7. And, if you go back to 1948, for which there is a Gallup survey, you'll see that Truman picked up the undecideds, too. So, that would be 3 exceptions out of 8.

Hadn't heard that before.

Grr, I don't want to go to class. This is much more interesting than my professor's redigested lecture. (If there is one day we should get off...)

the crystal ball.

2004-11-01T20:25:00.000-08:00

This rather conservative blogger has an optimistic take on tomorrow, pulling a few articles to argue Bush wins easily and Kerry has the difficult task. Of course, that goes against the wisdom that has been pounded in our heads for the last few weeks, saying that the challenger usually does better in the election than polls beforehand predict.

This list of blogger predictions also seems heavily Bush, though. Surprisingly so, a number of these predictions argue 300+ electoral votes for Bush. Not sure if that says bloggers, the wonderful, unedited, straight from the trenches, voice of the people is speaking, or that bloggers just tend to be conservative. NoPundit argues a Bush win by looking at the top twenty blogs from Truth Laid Bear.

There are 5 left-leaning blogs, 14 right-leaning blogs, and one apolitical blog (of the 19 "political" blogs most discuss non-political issues as well). To me this indicates a strong correction in the political marketplace of ideas because if the market was efficient, there would neither be so many political blogs nor so many more right-leaning than left-leaning blogs.

[...]

Let's wrap this up. Look above again at the top twenty blogs. Right-leaning traffic dominates left-leaning traffic by a nearly 3 to 1 margin. Viewing voting as the currency of the political marketplace of ideas, which shop do you think voters will spend their "money"?

Not sure I agree with that, if there has been a market correction, which I believe there has been, it does not follow that it has been produced by the population as a whole, rather than one portion. From what I've seen, the right is far more aggressive in accusing the major media of being one-sided and not fullfilling their needs.

meh. i want this over.

2004-11-01T17:40:00.000-08:00

I'm tired of the election. Tired of the stupid back-and-forth, tired of the polls that will get the election wrong, tired of expecting the big list of lawsuits afterwards.

Aren't some celebrities getting married or something? Somebody's got to be on cocaine or something.

EDIT: Like this.. So U2 has this new song "Vertigo"

That's what I'm talking about. Meaningless, useless, garbage outrage. Who cares about the environment, Bono sounds like a garage band.

my brother, marine

2004-11-01T11:58:00.000-08:00

While I'm mentioning people, not that anyone ever comes here, meet my brother. He worked at the Marine Corps Marathon Sunday and happened to get his name in the paper.

Washington Post: They Serve Not Just in War (registration required)

While the Marines didn't volunteer for marathon duty, Echo Company's Lt. David Shanks, working security near the finish line, said it's a rewarding experience for him and for much of the Corps.

"There's a lot of things that make us mad, that give us a bad rap, like how Marines are usually portrayed in the movies," Shanks said. "It's nice to have something like this that shows us what we're really like. Nobody wants to be stereotyped or put in a box, and the Marines are the same way."

Said my brother, the stereotypical Marine. I think. Maybe I know too many military people.

um. hello.

2004-10-30T09:49:00.000-07:00

Got an email this morning from my grandfather in Idaho. He found this blog, and was wondering why he hadn't been mentioned. He has now been mentioned.

On another note, he told me that a law partner of his had a son who had been a contestant with Jennings but, unfortunately, had lost, obviously. So, I in Texas, have a grandfather in Idaho, who has a law partner, who has a son, who was on the 34th show with Ken Jennings. What is that, 4 degrees? That's gotta make us like cousins or something.

And I just realized there's enough information in that paragraph for someone to track me down using nothing but google and anywho. Oh well, so long anonymity.

But, while I'm talking about Jennings, I found this. Old, but funny. I like this part.

JANUARY. Ken wins sixth million. Begins to show signs of boredom. Plays a game standing on his head; another blindfolded; another in which he phrases in responses in iambic pentameter; another in which he refuses to give any answers that contain the letter e. Loses $16,000 when Final Jeopardy! answer (in the category Long Words Having To Do With Money) turns out to be eleemosynary; still wins. Ratings increase.

and hola querido, alaudam basia, come back soon.

couple things.

2004-10-29T19:23:00.000-07:00

First, there's this. Girl goes on anti-Bush rant, journal troll reports her to the Secret Service, and they show up at her house the next day. At least that's what she says. I'm not sure if I believe her, seems like there are way too many people railing against Bush online for the Service to take interest in some blogger. The big, bad Bush gov is a fixture in many people's minds; this seems a little too much like a nice, creative anti Bush blog.

If it isn't, and it did happen, then I'm sorry; there are so many things wrong with the Service on your doorstep about a blog. Right now, though, without seeing the original post, all I'm going to do is applaud your creativity.

Then there is this article on yet another way the polls could get the election completely wrong.

Jennifer Malivuk says she'll probably vote next month. A Pittsburgh native, the University of Pennsylvania senior is undecided but is leaning toward President Bush.

Pollsters would surely be interested in the opinion of someone like Malivuk, an undecided voter in a swing state. But there is no chance they will ever talk to her.She's a cord-cutter.That's the telephone-industry term for as many as 6 percent of Americans who have a cellular phone but no traditional phone with a cord.

Pollsters get their voter samples by using computers to dial random telephone numbers. But it's illegal to call cell phones with these auto-dialers because it costs people money to answer a cell phone. So pollsters call "regular" phones, and the politics of cell-only folks remain unknown.

[...]

jeopardy and leftover chinese.

2004-10-29T14:52:00.000-07:00

Ahh, end of the week. Came home, turned on the tv and got some food from the fridge. Jeopardy was on, rerun I think, but it was a Ken Jennings show. Meh, I know I'm a little late to be talking about this, and you're already bored of the story, but this guy is good. I never saw the guy on before, but he is amazing. The guy is locking everybody out, they can't even get a buzz in. Two minutes after the half hour Jennings already had 5,000 to his opponents' 200 and 800. Feel sorry for anyone who has to play against him.

And two day-old rice just doesn't taste the same.

once again, slightly humorous

2004-10-28T20:41:00.000-07:00

Quick post, homework due in 10 hours. I'll have to flesh it out later, but this piece was found officially humorous by me. Found it through a Google search for St John's alumni, which led to a rather disappointing page, which led to a site by an interesting grad, which led to the already mentioned this.

And see the text in the nice picture at the top?

billionaires united for higher taxes

2004-10-27T14:20:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago, I was looking through fark.com, which I visit every day, when I found a link to the Electoral Vote Predictor 2004 website, which I also now visit every day.

Today, electoral-vote.com had a link to an article in the Los Angeles Times(registration required) which talks about how culture is defining this election. The article touches on the normal points like Bush's use of religious references, but the most interesting part for me was a poll they had done which said Bush was leading among "lower- and middle-income white voters" while Kerry led among those earning more than 100,000 a year. Now, this is the Los Angeles Times, and there are plenty of people out there who will tell you what a biased paper they are, but this is a theme I have heard before. Ashton Kutcher comes to mind, telling Iowans(?) to "vote for someone who's going to raise my taxes".

I always assume that people act in what they believe is their best interest, even unconsciously, but this is complicated to explain. Some people, I know, are so against Bush they are willing to give up all the money he handed out. This doesn't seem to explain a lot of other people who never come close to my raging professor. Now, I know that as a person's wealth gets greater, the value of each additional dollar goes down. However, what are they willling to exchange the extra dollars for? My best guess is that they are trading it for favor, with the same purpose as philanthropy. See Kutcher stumping for Kerry, and the first reaction is "gee, he's not so bad--looking out for me and all".

Accepting that gives an interesting possibility for American society. It is a fluid one, with control of the structure and money less important than conspiracy theorists would have you believe. If it was, then the billionaires Slate Magazine talks about would not need to make such an outreach. Instead, power must be based on opinion, control of the people's favor.

Whatever, what do I know.

just...you people.

2004-10-24T12:50:00.000-07:00

From www.electoral-vote.com.

Take a look at the absentee ballot for Cuyahoga County, where Cleveland is located. Suppose you wanted to vote for George Bush. Which square would you fill in? If you picked the one I colored in green, congratulations, you just threw your vote away. The one in red is the correct choice to vote for George Bush. Blue is for Kerry.

In case you don't see it, Kerry's box can be found both by following the arrow and by looking for the numbered box. To vote for Bush on the other hand, you need to look for the numbered box; following the arrow won't do it. In order to make the ballot like this, the designers put Bush at the bottom of the ballot, below even the Libertarian candidate, violating most traditions and common sense about designing an accessible ballot.

Meh, worthless. Quit screwing up my country, people.

mmm. apathy.

2004-10-22T17:48:00.000-07:00

Banner ad for a recently finished 'get out the vote' effort.

That almost says it all.

I voted. It was fun. So much fun, I went back and did it again.
They caught me the third time. Then I started asking people for their
cards. A couple people were easy enough, but I had to fight the last
few. Some people are really mean. I finally got tired
of it, but thanks to me, Texas, Oklahoma, Mississippi, Florida,
Massachusetts, Illinois, and New Mexico are going to Bush.
(Libertarian, actually. Texas goes Bush no matter what)

You. Vote! Cancel me, for a frog, twenty-two and a half times, I don't care.

it's almost two.

2004-10-17T00:04:00.000-07:00

I...am unusual. It is nearly two in the morning, and I distinctly remember planning to go sleep at 10, then 11, 12, 12:30, 1, and 1:30.

I didn't get very far, but I have high hopes for two.

Anyway, that's not the unusual part. I'm strange because I've been looking at the Council of Trent; biographies of Muhammad; Islamic, Catholic, and Protestant apologists; and a lot of other stuff I can't remember. How many people do you know who can't sleep because they just gotta find out whether the papacy is a biblically defensible concept? (I don't think it is, but if you want to argue it, tell me)

Oh well, in a couple weeks I have some tests, or a good book, or something else to stay up for.

Speaking of good books, I just finished This Perfect Day. Interesting, by the person who wrote Stepford Wives.

And it's now past two.

umm. i wanna go there.

2004-10-07T17:58:00.000-07:00

Everybody's gone surfing, surfing USA.

Not really though. How could they have thought that's worth a degree?

i believe...what?

2004-10-05T09:57:00.000-07:00

I have a friend, a good friend. I have a lot of good, interesting friends, but she is especially interesting. The other day, we were having a talk about religion, about the tenets of the Mormons (they like to be called LDS) and I started asking her about specific places that seemed interesting or just illogical. Now, when I woke up and started looking at what I believe, I decided that there were a great many religions that have made truly great people even if the religion had historical, logical, or leadership problems. Gandhi comes to mind, and Mother Teresa. Despite this, I believed that the religion I followed must be true beyond a doubt. I made it even more difficult by challenging my Christianity from ever angle I could think of. So far, it has stood, and I have become a much better person because I challenged it.

Right now, however, I have one of the biggest problems I have ever had to solve. Do the specific aspects of a religion matter? If a person can become great and good believing that bread and wine become flesh and blood, and another while believing that the bread and wine only represent a sacrifice, does much of what we believe matter? I know there are also some good, just people, who choose not to believe in a sect; but are they good simply because they decided to be good, or because they do believe in something, and believe in the same higher ideas that made the two people taking communion great and good?

there was this kid...

2004-10-02T19:09:00.000-07:00

I went for a walk today. It was nice. I went past this dad with two little sons; the dad was tying the shoe of the littlest, and the older was riding a bike around in circles. He must have been six or so. I heard him singing a ways away, didn't realize what he was saying until I got closer.

I've got a rock in my shoe, but it doesn't bother me.

He kept going around and around singing it over and over while his dad was bent over by his brother. It was the funniest thing.

I've got a rock in my shoe, but it doesn't bother me.
I've got a rock in my shoe, but it doesn't bother me.

He just kept singing it. I miss being six.

This kid, he was singing, not caring what anyone else thought. He was happy, and he was thinking about something the rest of us would just ignore. I decided a long time ago that life was a beautiful thing; no matter what happened that was bad, there was something else good, and the bad thing might not have been bad in the first place. I also try to do the whole look beyond the obvious, enjoy the obscure thing, but this kid has me beat. I'm amazed, and amused.

It was the funniest thing.

I've got a rock in my shoe, but it doesn't bother me.
I've got a rock in my shoe, but it doesn't bother me.
I've got a rock in my shoe, but it doesn't bother me.
I've got a rock in my shoe, but it doesn't bother me.

Hehe.

the debate.

2004-09-30T18:35:00.000-07:00

Watching it, but it's not that interesting. Bush stumbles over words and Kerry attacks off on tangents.

More interesting to me are the bloggers covering this in real time, especially this girl (UPDATE: debate posts here, and here), very interesting.

Still, this is really nothing but a few hours of repeating the same old ideas we've heard since the original nine (?). It's not going to change anybody's mind; if anything it will only solidify some undecideds. From what I see, Bush and Kerry are simply ignoring the other's points and appealing to the worldview of those who will vote for them anyway. The really sad thing about all of this is that neither of them actually has to meet the other side, it's more worthwhile just to "energize the base".

But I'm still conservative.

writing, and yes, i know what i'm doing. i think.

2004-09-25T18:44:00.000-07:00

Since I have so little homework to do (/sarcasm), I've been working on the essays for St John's. I'm doing alright, I think/hope, but my main problem is that just when I was getting used to SAC I need to find all the arguments against it again. Now when I show up Monday, I'll have to go through class noticing all the holes in their logic, assumptions I'm required to make, and understanding that my only real job is to remember their tables of thoughts until the semester is over.

My real problem though, has been convincing other people (and myself) that St John's is something that, however unique and incredible an experience, will still give me something I can actually pay for and then use afterwards.

Pay for it? Still wondering how. If I had 134,000 right now it'd be easier, but as it is I have to hope their financial aid department is as nice as they say. Another problem is explaining how exactly this will help me. I know its wonderful, expand your mind, make you a better person stuff, perfect for me and the way I think, but I have yet to find someone who has "BA in liberal arts" as a requirement for the job. Here again I have to hope that St John's wouldn't be around if it couldn't give its students a useful education, especially since a college like this probably works a lot through word of mouth.

At any rate, no college or path I have ever considered has made me stop and think as much as this. The only aim I have ever had (consistently) has been to make the best possible use of my humanity; a degree merely aimed at making me a qualified computer scientist or writer or musician simply does not do that for me. So, I'm going to do my best to get in, then do my best to get out, and finally do my best to pay for the thing.

And alaudam basia for encouraging me.

mmm..editors are evil.

2004-09-17T21:07:00.000-07:00

So, I turned my carefully crafted, perfectly balanced, on-par-with-Hemingway, article (see a couple posts below) over to the college paper. Now, there is no question that this paper is written by students. The articles are about, uh, you know the stuff a school paper writes about; the pieces are choppy and lack design; and the flavor is one of people trying to imitate a style that really only comes from experience.

Anyway, I gave my first born child to these guys a couple weeks ago, and the paper just came out today. I know what editors do. I expected to see a few changes; maybe some punctuation fixes, a few tweaks to a couple sentences. I opened up the paper, ruffled around a bit, and came upon my piece. Now, they were nice enough not to actually change words, but they managed to change nearly every other thing. Headline that misses the point of the article? Check. Insert irrelevant photo? Check. Break the piece I carefully balanced (however badly) into 16 separate paragraphs, most with only a single sentence? Check.

Annoyed is putting it lightly.

In memoriam

2004-09-11T07:08:00.000-07:00

May they rest in peace.

back to school, and could we, uh, have another break?

2004-09-07T07:54:00.000-07:00

I was bored so I wrote this for the college paper. Not sure if they'll publish it, but we'll see.

When Ronald Reagan died, this school closed to participate in the day of mourning. Not everyone I know agreed with what Reagan did as president, but they participated anyway. Having been elected, Reagan belonged not just to a party or ideology but to the entire nation. When he died, whether we agreed with him or not, we took the time to remember and respect a part of America.

That is what American celebrations are about, remembering and passing on the traditions of our country. The holidays unique to America are public ones dedicated to the ideas of democracy. We celebrate Presidents Day and Independence Day, Thanksgiving and Martin Luther King Day.

These days serve to remind us of what we value in our government and society. Despite how much we use these times to enjoy ourselves, they still preserve the memory of things important. We remember our greatest leaders, the foundations of our religious liberty, and the people willing to risk their lives for freedom. It is in this spirit that I believe Election day should be a national holiday. Yes, there is early voting, but the value of having a specific time to memorialize an issue is immense.

If that were all I had to say, I would end right now and send this letter to my congressman. However, I believe this college should also get involved. A college, being the means by which many of a society's values are passed on, has a responsibility to do what it can to encourage voter participation.

Let us out of class on Election day. Make a statement that participation in a democracy is encouraged. Invite speakers, raise issues, and spark debates. Give us a place to celebrate the freedom we have and exercise the full citizenship many of us have just been given. The value of that single day, spent exercising the gifts of democracy, is far greater than anything else we could do with it.

slightly humorous..

2004-09-03T18:22:00.000-07:00

A Standard for the Transmission of IP Datagrams on Avian Carriers

Gets even funnier when you start picking through the directory and imagine some poor network admin bored out of his wits by his job.

Reminded me of NASA's Procedure to Follow in the Event That Building 245 is Attacked by Vikings. This was a real file hidden on the NASA website a long time ago, but someone at the top killed it once people started noticing. Fortunately it was cloned before that happened, and there are several thousand copies floating around.

so tired.

2004-09-03T16:45:00.000-07:00

The second week is over. I'm free till Tuesday. I plan on sleeping, goofing off, getting Linux set up on my laptop, and some more sleeping.

Anyway, being a blogger now, I've got to do what bloggers do.

FREE GMAIL INVITES

Just tell me you want one (my email's in my profile) and you too can be the owner of a bright, shiny new Gmail address.

Hurry, supplies are limited. Get yours now.

Did I mention I plan on sleeping? And a skylark is an amazing bird.