Wednesday, April 30, 2008
Midnight special
Why am I still up?Wanted to be more productive today. Did stuff, but not enough stuff.
Had lunch with my friends, though. That was good.
Goodnight, interwebz.
Oh, dear, me
What? Rev. Jeremiah Wright has up and said some crazy talk? Oh, dear. Oh, dear, me. That's horrible. Imagine, a religious leader saying something crazy.That never happens.
Right, Pat Robertson?
"We have the ability to take him (Hugo Chavez, democratically-elected president of Venezuela) out, and I think the time has come that we exercise that ability."
Oh, um, it seems Pat's got something else on his plate.
But, surely, man of peace Pope Benedict XVI will denounce these abominous statements by Rev. Wright.
"Christ established here on earth only one church. The other communities cannot be called 'churches' in the proper sense."
Hmmm... I guess that means "no comment".
Well, how about some words of wisdom on this grave breach of religious etiquette from, oh, say, Pastor John Hagee?
"I believe that New Orleans had a level of sin that was offensive to God, and they are -- were recipients of the judgment of God for that."
...uh, OK, Pastor Hagee can't come to the microphone right now. He's, uh, busy.
Rev. Fred Phelps?
"God hates fags."
That, too, looks like a "no comment".
Frankly, I'm having a hard time finding non-outrageous, non-hateful speech by any religious leader. And I haven't even gone searching outside of Christianity yet. I won't defend Rev. Wright's comments, but I do have to wonder; is the crime that he's making them from the religious left rather than the right? Is that why he deserves so much air time and print space in the elite media? 'Cause, I mean, seriously, people. They're all crazy to me. This is about as shocking as the idea that teenagers are having sex.
Oh, sorry. I shouldn't have sprung that on ya. Yeah. They are.
Deep Thought
The problem with a question like "Is love real?" is that two of the three words in there are not well defined and vastly open to interpretation.All I need
While I'm feeling un-wordy and meh, here's a new video from Radiohead to enjoy.Almost two hours later
And... I still got nothin'.It's gonna be that kind of day.
Deep thought
Aw, I got nothin' today. Sorry.Tuesday, April 29, 2008
The bottom line
I'm borrowing this from my new favorite atheist site Evangelical Realism, because it really is the bottom line for me and many others (my emphasis added):Notice, the reason given for why people believe in God is because of the more or less complicated arguments of men—many of which even believers no longer find credible. The claim of the Gospel, however, is not that men decided God must exist because of centuries of abstruse philosophizing. Biblical stories are about the existence of a type of concrete, objective evidence that you don’t need a Thomas Aquinas to elucidate for you.
That evidence, however, consistently and universally fails to exist outside of the stories, superstitions, and subjective feelings of men. It is absent even from the experience of believers like Vox, which is why he must appeal to complicated (and fallible) human arguments as being the justification for Christian faith. And if even Vox must dismiss as irrelevant "the reasons some people used to believe in God 700 years ago," imagine how irrelevant the 2,000 year old arguments must be!
Truth is consistent with itself. The evidence Vox appeals to, and which he castigates Dawkins for not considering, and which he lacks the courage to offer as a defense of God’s existence, is evidence which is not even the same type of phenomenon as the purported evidence the Bible claims as the basis for belief in God. There is one type of evidence in the stories, and an entirely different sort of "evidence" in actual experience, even among believers. The Bible stories simply are not consistent with what we see in real life, which is why Vox has to grasp at bizarre straws like the “over 30″ ageism he opened with. Thus, he “refutes” atheism by demonstrating its fundamental correctness.
I would love to hear the harrumphs and fumfuhs of theists defending that little statement of fact. Anyone?
Most sincere moment last night
This video goes to Charles Lewis for what I thought was the most sincere and honest moment from last night's Candidates Gone Wild.Everything's gonna be all right.
Monday, April 28, 2008
Deep Thought
If the Discovery Institute is so intent on showing that "intelligent design" is science, why are they targeting elementary school curricula instead of, y'know, doing some actual research and experiment?Saturday, April 26, 2008
Getting involved
I walked past my neighbor's house carrying a couple of bags of groceries. Had walked up to the store and back. I was on my way home.Election coming, I had decided to do my share, so I'd stopped at the Post Office and picked up voter registration forms. This coming Tuesday is the last day to register in Oregon.
Sitting on Peggy's front stoop was Old Barfy and a buddy, 40 ouncers of cheap beer in their hands. The dark-haired one, who always wears sunglasses, used to live in the building but hasn't for a year or so. I think he got evicted. I don't pay a lot of attention to the drama in my building.
Remembering the forms in my bag, I turned to the older men and shouted, "Hey, are you guys registered to vote?"
Old Barfy nodded, and the other guy said "Yeah," so I kept walking.
But Sunglasses continued "...but we're registered Republicans!" He said it in a challenging way.
I turned back, stopped. "Huh?" The answer confused me. Or maybe his attitude about it. Or the underlying assumption he'd made. I wanted him to repeat it.
There was an awkward pause.
"Are you askin' from the left, or the right?" he said, again making assumptions that I didn't really get.
I shouted back, laughing. "I don't give a fuck! I just wanted to know if you were registered." I turned away, my question answered, and wanting to make a larger point. "There's an election coming up. Just wanted everyone to have their say."
And besides, joke's on them. The country is largely progressive.
Generally speaking, Democrats win when more voters participate. Heh, heh.
Friday, April 25, 2008
Geekiest of the geek
I'm volunteering this weekend at the Stumptown Comics Fest. I'll be there on Sunday. I'll probably swing by on Saturday, too, and poke around.I'm the A/V guy.
I think that qualifies me for the title of "geekiest of the geeks".
I got street cred. Geeky street cred.
Word.
Thursday, April 24, 2008
Holy crab
I've been averaging around 2400 hits per day, so when I my web stats program showed that I was ~2400 hits from 500,000 last night at midnight, I figured sometime today I should pass that magical and entirely arbitrary point.I'm home and waiting for "The Office" to come on, so I manually ran my webalizer script early to see how close I was.
And as of 8:40 PM tonight, my site had recorded 502,527 hits since 25 August 2007.
Today's not over and I've already received over 4,622 hits just today. That rocks in an entirely unimportant and yet deeply geek-y way.
There's probably no way for me to tell when, exactly, the 500,000th hit came in so I can't give away a prize or anything. But thanks to all y'all.
The statistic that means the most to me, personally, is the number of visits, which is more closely related to the number of actual people viewing my site, and, presumably, reading my words and looking at my pictures. My average visits per day is 483. Almost 500 people a day are paying attention to what I've written.
I love you all.
Labels: meta
Clarification
In response to Kevin's comment on my previous post, I have three points.I must have miscommunicated my analogy if anyone got the idea that I was saying that "intelligent design" has the same goals as science. ID is a car, science is a house. Any similarities between ID and science are deliberately inserted and magnified (dishonestly) in order to advance a political goal, not advance our understanding of the world. See the "wedge document" from the Discovery Institute for details on that particular subterfuge.
Any "flaws" in our current understanding of the world will be corrected by application of... the scientific process, logic and rationality. That's the single best method of advancing our understanding; indeed, it's the only thing that works to date. Unlike, say, fundamentalist religious beliefs, which remain exactly the same, stubbornly resisting centuries of being proven wrong, non-predictive, and even detrimental in the face of new evidence.
Science is the filter that separates out what actually works and best describes all the data available, from the infinity of things a human mind is capable of believing but which are wrong, non-predictive and even detrimental. Science is not strictly a "majority rules" situation.
Thanks for helping me clarify my message.
Wednesday, April 23, 2008
Not the same
Forcing a comparison between evolution, a well-documented and supported story of how species have differentiated over the millennia, and intelligent design, a cart-before-the-horse religious doctrine with no logical standing and no predictive ability, as an example of "freedom of thought" is......well, it's like someone shopping for a house, and having a friend shoving car want ads in front of them, and arguing about how they haven't really shopped for a house without considering all the options, like houses, say, and who are they to suppress the right of people to buy houses! That's repression, man!
Sure, people spend lots of time in both houses and cars, and you have to provide fuel for a car just like you have to heat a house, and yes, they both have storage space and entertainment value, but, in the end, they're just, well, completely different things.
George Clooney carries a ball and the movie
Got out of work at 4:30 tonight. By 4:38 I was standing in the lobby of the Pioneer Place Theaters, ticket in hand to see Leatherheads.Cute movie, but the timing seemed a bit off to be the screwball comedy it clearly wanted to be. Also caught John Krasinski looking directly into the camera on at least one occasion, which works for "The Office" but not so much for a major motion picture. Hope that guy finds another role that suits him. I like him but he needs to bust out.
Also, I think I have a little crush on Renée Zellweger. I don't get it, either. But she's cute.
Labels: movies
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
A little bit better now
On a whim, because I don't normally care, I checked my work email right before going to bed. I discovered an email that announced a change in personnel, a big change for me and my friends, even, I might add, a change that I had been working towards of late, but without much hope of success.Surprise! There it is. A political victory, wrapped up with a ribbon. Not really my victory; I was a recent participant, a new recruit to the campaign. I have some investment, though, in the result.
It's a small thing, though, and though my co-workers and I will be discussing and dissecting the meaning, timing, and eventual outcomes from this decision for weeks to come, it is of trivial importance to the vast majority of the world.
So I shall not bother you with the details.
But my bus ride to the office this morning is graced with my pleasant smile.
Monday, April 21, 2008
Survey delayed
I came up with a cockamamie scheme to spam-proof my reader survey, but the implementation is taking me a bit to figure out. Don't worry, I'll have it up in no time.Also, I'll be launching my next site in the Lunar Obverse media empire soon. Seriously. Just remember that "soon" is a vague time frame.
Labels: meta
Good news, everyone!
I'm just 3 or 4 days from receiving my 500,000th hit since moving my server, calculated from my web stats page.I'll do a big shot of vodka when I cross that threshold. Or gin. Or dance a jig. One of those.
I'm probably posting my survey tonight. Unless I think of more questions to ask. Y'all are OK with answering a 50-page survey, right? Right?
Labels: meta
Sunday, April 20, 2008
"Expelled" is a deeply dishonest movie
"Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed" is a deeply dishonest documentary.I'm mad enough about it to give the movie and its claims a full-on, point-by-point rebuttal, but here's two small tastes.
Did you know that Darwin was responsible for The Holocaust? That's practically the film's central thesis. They start laying the groundwork for that little bit of propaganda right from the top, as the credits roll over stock footage of the building of the Berlin Wall. Communists, Nazis... and Charles Darwin. The 15 minutes (I'm guessing) of Ben Stein being given a tour through a Nazi sanitarium and concentration camp are surreal - is this really appropriate for a movie purportedly about science? The film descends into self-parody long before Ben Stein tries to pin the evils of the world on noted hate-monger John Lennon.
No. I am not kidding. That's the level of evidence that Mr. Stein and the producers are aiming for. Judge them by their conclusions.
Another argument the film tries to make is that scientists who attempt to research "Intelligent Design" are somehow shunned and blacklisted from the scientific community, denied any grant money and silenced for daring to challenge the orthodoxy of Darwinism (the over-use of that word makes Darwinism seem like some dangerous cult, doesn't it?). But in order to evaluate that claim, the film's producers leave out a huge piece of evidence for evaluating said claim, and leave out some background material to boot.
Like... the evidence. There's virtually no discussion of what research Dr. Gonzalez (who is a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute, noted creator and proponent of the wedge strategy to get religion back into public schools), Dr. Meyer (Director of the Center for Science and Culture, a branch of... hmm... the Discovery Institute), or Dr. Crocker (Executive Director of the Intelligent Design and Evolution Awareness Center, whose board consists almost entirely of Senior Fellows of... hmmm... the Discovery Institute, again), were all pursuing. The most information we get is that their research included the phrase "intelligent design" and that they had their contracts not renewed, their tenure denied, and their research money taken away.
Gee, those poor scientists, just scraping by on the meager earnings they get from the Discovery Institute and the IDEA Center, which has funding from Christian conservatives in the millions. Yeah, that's sad. And obviously they've been simply crushed by the scientific community. Oh, wait, no - they're all collecting incomes and getting grant money from those pseudo-scientific and secretly-religious "think" tanks.
But, besides the money issue - where's the research and evidence that is supposedly being denied? If their research is, in fact, credible and not just strings of half-truths and bad logic, why didn't the producers spend some of their time on, y'know, showing the evidence? Oh, wait, they were too busy dwelling on the horrors of Dachau. I forgot.
Even on the "Expelled" website (which I am not linking to - Google it yourself) there's absolutely no mention of their research. Maybe because said "research" couldn't even stand up to a layperson's review.
So much more to say... but suffice to say that "Expelled" is simply dishonest. Much like the Creationism movement itself.
Labels: movies
Halfway
Saw "WITW is Osama bin Laden?" and now I'm waiting for "Expelled" to start. Plan is working.A lot more people in here. So sad. But still only about 17, not including me, so it ain't no summer blockbuster.
Labels: movies
Plans
I think this morning I'm going to get a late breakfast at my favorite neighborhood diner, then go downtown and see Morgan Spurlock's new documentary, "Where in the World is Osama bin Laden?"Then I'll sneak in to see the pro-Creationism documentary "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed". Can't give them a ticket sale but I still want to hear what they have to say. It's the movie that the producers "expelled" P. Z. Myers from, apparently from ideological reasons... In a really really stupid way. Go read the link; it's worth a huge laugh.
Then I'll probably come home and do laundry. Yay. Laundry.
Old neighbor
I wanna see the Tualatin Mastodon!Saturday, April 19, 2008
Neo is the one
Hangover. I haz one.
Happy Saturday, y'all.
All I can think about right now
What a suck-y week this has been. Week, month, year.But at least tonight I got a win. I got her email address.
And even if it turns out to not be hers, even if we never hang out like I'd like to, at least I had the balls to ask her.
Yay, me.
Thursday, April 17, 2008
Ode to iPhone '08
This song is catchy and I find myself singing it over and over again.You may find yourself doing the same.
UPDATE: This one, by the same guy, named Pete Miser, is equally super.
He's originally from Portland but now he's in the Big Apple. And I'll bet he reads PKD, too.
Rock on, Mr. Miser.
Work done by one person or group that benefits another
One of the most demoralizing tasks I have to perform at work is the MAC.MAC stands for Moves, Adds, and Changes, which sounds semi-important but the only part of that that is done anymore is the Move. And even though I'm a highly-trained technician, moving a computer from one desk to another just seems like a huge waste of time and money. Seriously, it's all color-coded these days. Any monkey could do it. Really? There's all sorts of technical things I could be working on, but a significant portion of my job is just unplugging a computer and monitor here, and plugging it back in over there?
Sometimes the here and there are a couple of miles apart, so I have to put it all into a van and drive it from one place to another. Wheee. I'm a delivery guy. But no tips.
So today, I'm doing a MAC. Moving a PC from one cube to another. And some random guy walks over.
"Did Mary tell you to replace the keyboard?" He asks.
"Nope." I keep unplugging stuff.
"Well, we don't like working with that one," he says, contempt dripping from his voice. I take a look.
By the model, I can tell that this keyboard is a) less than a year old, probably even newer, and b) about 80% cleaner than most keyboards I see throughout the day. Oh, really, Random Guy? You have no idea.
He continues, "Yes, the person that was here ate at her desk. She should not have been doing that. Can we get a new keyboard?"
I must have allowed my skepticism to show, because he adds, as if it were the final straw, "It sticks."
Fine. "Yes," I tell him, "I probably have one downstairs." And I think at him, as he oozes back to his giant cubicle (obviously a manager), Oh, I'll bet you're absolutely delightful to work with.
I get the PC and two monitors and cables ready to move, then head downstairs to the basement to dig up a replacement. I find one that's the same model, but new in the box. I unwrap it from the plastic, and then proceed to lick the home row of keys. I don't particularly care what's on there. After all, I have an immune system for a reason.
I carry it back upstairs, move the computer and plug everything in nice and neat, and make sure it comes back up and is on the network. Then I lean in Random Guy's cube (sure enough, he's a manager) and give him a thumb's up.
Of course, I always wear my gloves when I move stuff around. Did I mention that? I ain't touchin' that shit.
Master of my domain
I bought another domain. They're like potato chips; can't have just one. I think this is my 10th one now.I'm not ready to reveal it just yet. Right now it just points to bamoon.com (here). I'll bet it attracts a lot of attention, though, when I finally announce it.
In slightly-related news, I'm almost ready to launch my site survey. Prepare yourselves for my survey!
Prepare!
What do you think?
Regularly sleeping for 12 hours a night - healthy? Or not?Just curious.
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
Apophis update
NASA is refuting the story I posted, below. The one about the asteroid possibly hitting the earth? Y'know, that one?And one small correction to my earlier post: Mr. Marquardt's calculations show the asteroid's course being altered in 2029, and then returning to hit the earth in 2036, instead. I got that part wrong.
I would link to NASA's press release but their server seems overwhelmed at the moment. Maybe later.
Deep Armageddon
In keeping with my mood today, I'd just like to point out this story about a German teenager who corrected actual rocket scientists at NASA about the odds of Asteroid Apophis impacting the earth during its close approach in April 2029.Specifically, on Friday the 13th, April 2029.
NASA gave 1 in 45,000 odds. Nico Marquardt said, no, 1 in 450.
Will Bruce Willis or Will Smith be available then? Because we might need 'em.
Unmusical
My entire body, from my brain, to my sinuses, through my back and belly, down to my least little toe, feels out of tune.Tuesday, April 15, 2008
He eats the icky stuff
My favorite diner, tucked away on a semi-busy street in my neighborhood. I came in for soup but the soup special was beef noodle. Not savory enough. I was hoping for creamy red pepper, or the amazing black bean soup, or even cream of asparagus or something. Not a staple like beef noodle. So I allowed Ayesha to talk me into trying the taco special. She's persuasive. Seems straight-forward and goofy sometimes, like when she sings a little song as she delivers the bill to my table.After I ordered, I decided I needed to wash my hands. Up, past the kitchen, and to the doorway between the dining room and the lounge. In the archway separating the two rooms, Ayesha and the bartender, another woman, fairer skinned and multi-colored long straight hair, were both leaning against the wall, eyes focused upward and their hands tucked into their chests and under their chins, almost, but not quite, as if praying. They unconsciously leaned into each other, sharing the experience of watching... something.
I muttered and smiled an "excuse me" so I could slip through the doorway and on the other side I could see that they were watching a TV hung near the door. "What's on?" I asked. The lounge was much darker, except for the pools of light created by the several TVs and a couple of lights near the pool table.
Ayesha focused back on me. "Food Network." The scene was some Asian city, ornate and antique looking, with glimpses of plates piled high with some exotic meal. "It's the dude that travels around and eats..." she looked at her co-worker as she searched for a word... "everything."
The other girl nodded, and with that curious arms-tucked-in pose, took a sip from her glass of water, through a straw. She did not take her eyes off the screen.
"Anthony Bourdain?" I asked.
"No... the other guy." Ayesha laughed and kept staring at the glowing box hung above her.
I didn't know any other guy that travelled around and ate food, so I started to step towards the restroom, but keeping an eye on the screen to catch a glimpse of this other guy.
Ayesha ran a hand over her long, black curls. "The... bald guy."
I smiled but had no suggestion. I turned away, but as I did I was caught, again, by their rapt attention and tense posture, leaning against the wall and, nearly, each other, for support. Something didn't jive. It was almost as if they were watching an accident.
"Food porn!" I blurted out. "You're watching food porn!"
Ayesha nodded and kept watching.
observation
Two seats ahead of me on the bus, sits a large man wearing scrubs. His top is covered in pictures of Snoopy, also wearing scrubs, and the repeated words "smooth operator". The man is unshaven. He is eating a muffin very nearly the size of his own head.Blueberry, it seems.
Monday, April 14, 2008
Soon
I swear I'll get back to the stories, and stop posting silly tech-y geek-y stuff.Fun with statistics
OK, so I've finally got my web stats page working* and I noticed that I'm coming up on 500,000 hits since I moved my site to my own server back in August.Since my daily average of hits for April is ~1800/day, I should cross the threshold of a half-million hits in about 17 days, or around the end of the month.
Yay, me!
Assuming my traffic remains the same, I'll pick up my 1,000,000th hit in mid-January next year. Will I finally be popular then?
* Mostly - if you click and it redirects to http://Eggers.local/webalizer, try replacing "Eggers.local" with "bamoon.com" in the address line. Yeah, it's a weird DNS thing I don't know how to fix.
Labels: meta
Calling *NIX or bash gurus
If this post doesn't make any sense to you, feel free to ignore it. I apologize in advance.I'm having a problem using
crontab to run shell scripts. As in, they don't run and I get an error message (via email) as follows:-bash: 0: command not foundI'm running Mac OS X 10.4.11 and it's happening on two different computers with nearly-identical installations. One of the computers (the most important one, naturally) is across town so all I have is shell access via ssh.
I can provide more details as requested. Please help, won't you? I'll accept your free-as-in-speech solutions and offer you a free-as-in-beer reward!
NONE of them
Last night I dreamed about drowning, and spiders, and Texas.Saturday, April 12, 2008
Hide
I know, I know. It's sunny and almost warm outside. Here comes the sun doot do do-do, here comes the sun.But I really really want to write this weekend. I want to finish my first draft. I want to hide in a movie theater, pay for one flick and then sneak from theater to theater for the rest of the day. I want to hide in bed, pull the covers over me and sleep, and dream, and dream. I want to curl up in the corner of a quiet coffee shop and surf, and drink coffee and eat cake and donuts. I want to read from my reading pile, lose myself in books and words and ideas.
I don't know why. I just do. Dammit, Vitamin D comes in a pill these days. I don't need to be outside.
Wednesday, April 09, 2008
Interesting takes on religion and atheism
In the past couple of days, I've come across a pair of books that I want to add to my reading pile, both of which offer an interesting and seldom-seen blending of the topics of science and religion.First up was Vox Day's "The Irrational Atheist", a book so new (or perhaps so unpopular) that there isn't a page for it on Wikipedia as of this post. I found out about the book from a guest posting by Mr. Day on John Scalzi's Whatever. "Vox Day" is a pseudonym of Christian apologist Theodore Beale.
Mr. Day's thesis in the book is that atheists pride themselves on logic, rationality, and the scientific method, and then proceed to throw all that out the window in declaring that God does not exist. He's making the exact opposite argument from folk like Richard Dawkins or Sam Harris or many others, and I look forward to reading this counter-argument.
For myself, I've long taken the position that when I say "God does not exist", I'm speaking about the existence of the specific God of the popular world religions. The existence of the God of the Old Testament, for example, using the bare text as the evidence, just doesn't stand up to any kind of scrutiny at all. If someone can present any kind of evidence that points to the existence of God (after first explaining what they mean by the term "God"), I will be happy to reconsider.
The second book that has come to my attention is Michael Dowd's "Thank God for Evolution", which I discovered from the Willamette Week's interview with the author. This book, too, is unrepresented in Wikipedia as of this post. Rev. Dowd's book takes as its premise the thought that evolution, far from being a threat to faith, enriches faith. Again, an argument I have rarely seen put forth, and I, for one, am eager to read what he has to say.
Tactics
Sometimes, when I'm on the bus, I scratch my nose or snort loudly to deter others from sitting next to me.Tuesday, April 08, 2008
I swear
I swear I'll get back to the stories soon. I promise. But one last post about my home network and my smaller domains.I fixed my home network tonight.
My Mac mini was... ahem... asleep. Yes, when I transfered over my settings from the laptop (my main computer) to the Mac mini, it also transfered over my Energy Saver preferences, like going to sleep to save power after about 15 minutes. Ugh. Simple problem, simple fix.
Labels: meta
Snap
Oh, snap. I didn't try to reach my domains from a different network - just tried it from my laptop, already on my home network. This morning I can't get to them at all. Can't tell if my cable provider is blocking me (finally, after months and months of not blocking me), or if I messed something up.I hate spending so much time fixing something, and then finding out it's broken again. That sucks. But there's a chance it's not my fault.
Not that that makes me feel any better. But, y'know.
Labels: meta
Monday, April 07, 2008
Seven hours
OK, my smaller domains are back up and running:- lunarobverse.com, just a place-marker for now,
- The Lie Factory, my cynically-named political blog,
- Run, Moon!, my personal diet and exercise blog.
Labels: meta
How long?
How long should it take to rebuild a webserver from scratch?I'm on 6 hours and counting.
I've backed up the data, reinstalled the base OS, moved the data back, installed updates, installed more updates, installed additional software from three different sources... updated the additional software... shit.
Almost done!
I forgot to mention
I shaved my head.Rainy days and Mondays
Good morning. I am on the bus as I type this. I'm on the driver's side, three seats back. That doesn't include the sideways-facing bench. If you count that as one "seat" I'm four back. But if you count each actual seat on the bench, I'm seven back. And that doesn't even count the driver's seat, which seems to me to be in a different world.I ride this bus every workday. I recognize so many faces. Same group every day, nearly. In fact the driver changes more often than any of the passengers do. The driver changes every three months. Union rules. There isn't a passengers union. Man, I'd join that, if it gave me a say in how things are run. I'd find out why different drivers have such wildly varying ideas about their job.
Bus stop approaching. Argh! Why does someone sit next to me, blocking me in, one stop before I get out? Sorry, dude, you've got to move, just when you sat down.
Out into the rain I go...
Sunday, April 06, 2008
Nevermind
Oops, my smaller domains, lunarobverse.com, liefactory.com, and runmoonrun.com are all offline at the moment. Working on it. Sorry.Labels: meta
Lie Factory back online
My political-oriented blog, Lie Factory, is back online. Enjoy!Labels: meta
Lie Factory Update
I'm doin' stuff on the back end to get my old political blog, the Lie Factory, back up and running.It's political season and I've got stuff to say, both about the local races and the national races.
Be patient. It's coming.
He lived a long life
Setting aside his politics, Charlton Heston was the star of three movies that were very influential on me as a geeky kid.- "The Omega Man"
- "Soylent Green"
- ...and of course, "Planet of the Apes" and its various sequels.
"Soylent Green is people!"
and "Get yer stinking paws off me, you damned dirty ape!"
Charton Heston also starred in many a Western, which always reminds me of my mom. She loved Westerns.
Rest in peace, Charlton Heston. 83 years is a long time.
Saturday, April 05, 2008
Passenger
Thinking about the breakfast I would soon be enjoying (bacon, scrambled eggs, hashbrowns, coffee), I parked the car on the quiet side street in my neighborhood. I didn't want to take my laptop bag to the restaurant, prefering to relax with the Saturday paper. Into the trunk with the laptop, then. Out of sight, out of mind.Grabbed the bag, got out, left the driver door open. Popped open the hatch, placed the bag, pulled the privacy screen, closed the hatch.
Went back to close the door and lock the car.
And found a fat tortoiseshell cat in the driver's seat.
I felt more surprised than he looked. In fact, he looked annoyed at my interruption. He enjoyed the cabin and the seat, warmed by my sitting-place.
"Whatcha doin' in there? That's not your car, kitty." I laughed.
He grudgingly climbed down only when I reached for him, obviously avoiding the indignity of being held by a human.
He sat in the middle of the street while I locked the car, facing away but scowling and squinting back at me over his kitty shoulder. As I walked away I bid him a good day. He sulked over losing his warm napping place, his plans ruined.
I wish
I wish......but wishing doesn't work.
Friday, April 04, 2008
More interwebz
This weekend I plan to re-launch my political blog at the old domainimpoverty.com (no linking because it's currently parked and not in use).I'm also going to be sprucing up "Run, Moon!" and tagging all my old posts and fixing any broken links and suchlike. I'd also like to compile a list of all my running records in an easy-to-update form and a list of all the races I've completed.
And I have a special project in mind to begin promotion of my first-ever novel. Details on that to come.
Wednesday, April 02, 2008
I agree
I wanted to preserve and make personal note of an article by Paul Graham on how to disagree. He's taken some basic rhetorical errors and compiled them into an escalating scale, from least effective to most effective ways to dispute others' arguments.Click through to read his seven-point scale, from name-calling and ad hominem attacks, up through contradiction and to full refutation of the other's central point. Well thought out and easy to use.
So easy, I've decided to refrain from responding to anyone who disagrees with me with what I see as levels 0 (name-calling) through at least level 2 (Responding to tone). I may or may not respond to level 3 (contradiction), and will seriously consider the content of disagreement that uses levels 4 (counter-argument), 5 (refutation) and 6 (refuting the central argument).
Teaching moment
I learned at least two things from the cute new clerk at my neighborhood coffee shop this morning when I stopped to chat and flirt with her.First, that the nutmeg nut is potent and hallucinogenic in it's native form.
Second, that she dates women, not men.
Tuesday, April 01, 2008
