Entries from November 2008 ↓
November 28th, 2008 — thoughts, webthings
Something horrible: my friend Dan, a government researcher, told me several times of his despair over the fact that people simply do not comprehend large numbers of dollars, especially if they don’t come out of our personal checking accounts. Well, this bailout abomination is perhaps the best example of that, ever. Our bailout (now a multitrillion-dollar stupidicity) is the most expensive thing, EVER. Consider this shamelessly ganked pie chart:
Something interesting: the recent discovery of a blond-haired, blue-eyed shaman buried 2,700 years ago in China with nearly a kilo of weed could also be mined for humorous purposes. But it got me thinking: could psychoactive properties be naturally selected in some symbiotic way? That is, if you’re a plant species, the crazymaking would eventually become a turn-off for certain animals. However, if humans used the plant for medicinal, recreational, or religious purposes, then they would protect and cultivate the plants. This would provide both natural and directed selection pressure for the species to get more psychoactive over time. I’m sure this comes under the heading of “things someone else already thought of a long time ago.”
Something Alex: I have to admit defeat (or at least detente) in a disagreement with Alex. Apparently, “Worcestershire” — as in sauce — though usually pronounced as a 3-syllable word (e.g., “wuhstuhshr”), is also sometimes reduced to two syllables (”wuster” or something), and this was historically common.
My wife's secret sideline
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November 27th, 2008 — photos
I know it’s not a turkey. It’s a great-tailed grackle. I don’t have any pictures of turkeys, even though wild ones apparently live in theseabouts. Since it’s a holiday, today I shall do no work. Probably. I did bring home a huge stack of tests that need grading, but I may just ignore them. In honor of turkey day, I have shamelessly ripped off the following from www.shoeboxblog.com :
Where Would We Be Without The Pilgrims?
An Essay by Dan
Jammed into England like sardines with bad teeth.
The End
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November 26th, 2008 — photos
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November 25th, 2008 — photos
Does he realize how poignant he is?
Another photo from the fun little carnival a couple of weeks ago. I now have one of those moody patriotic pictures. Actually, I probably have a few more somewhere. Despite my deep cynicism and fundamental insistence that patriotism isn’t (or should not be) exactly the animal it’s made out to be by certain groups here in the US… I am deeply patriotic, and sometimes get choked up over patriotic symbolism. I don’t consider that to be a bad thing.
After the cut: The Avenue of Poignant and Symbolic Flags with a Menacing Symbol of Capitalist Amusement Lurking at its Obscure Terminus!
Continue reading →
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November 23rd, 2008 — photos
This is the only hurricane, to my knowledge, that has threatened South Texas this year. Threatened… with puking! Another photo from the little carnival last week, in case you hadn’t guessed. Under the cut: a pic (not quite as cool, IMO) where you can clearly see the terrifying title of this ride. Continue reading →
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November 21st, 2008 — webthings
The web, she is a harsh mistress. This week, she has hurt me and tickled me and hurt me again. She is not a nice girl.
1. As I have said all along (and as young Catherine Vogt has just learned), associating oneself with a candidate who talks about diversity and tolerance doesn’t mean one actually has a clue about what those words mean.
2. Vanity Fair has written a snarky little piece about Thomas Kinkaide’s involvement in what sounds like the most horrendous movie ever made. It’s a movie based on a Thomas Kinkaide painting!!! The VF article is titled “Thomas Kinkaide’s 16 Guidelines for Making Stuff Suck.” :D
3. Andy Borowitz, a humor writer with the Huffington Post (or “HuffPo,” as some people call it… the people who are still upset that they never mastered the slang of the moment back in high school) has written about President-Elect Obama’s controversial and confusing use of complete sentences.
4. Richard Renaldi is a Canadian photographer with a strangely moving series of photos in which he asks complete strangers to touch each other while posing for the shot. “Giovanni and Deborah” is my favorite.
5. Second to last: This is absolutely without doubt a classic example of that “road to hell paved with good intentions” idea. This is Orwell’s 1984 in embryo. It is a very, very horrible idea. Just read the last sentence in the Globe and Mail article. Ick. Ick. Ick.
6. Last, but oh no siree bob definitely not least, you HAVE TO SEE THIS VIDEO. Especially if you like Rock Band/Guitar Hero. :D
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November 17th, 2008 — photos
iz not best bed evar... is ok
Alex made me miss my cats today, so I’m posting a picture of Nyc (or Euphrates or whatever), who was briefly my cat, and who believed he owned my entire house, as you can see.
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November 16th, 2008 — photos
swirly swirly swirly swirly... PUKE!
It’s a cheesy pic; there are a thousand like it. But I wanted to take it anyway. Below, you see the beast at rest.
Exclusive: Centipedebot Devours McAllen
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November 10th, 2008 — thoughts, webthings
(gnarles barkley video removed… trying to find “badware” that made Google block the site)
Is that not a perfect video? Who hasn’t been through that?
In this Wall Street Journal article (somewhat rare liberal perspective for that paper), the populist, anti-intellectual movement of the GOP in the past couple of decades is dissected, and the death of the longstanding conservative intellectual tradition is announced. My thoughts, exactly:
How, 30 years later, could younger conservative intellectuals promote a candidate like Sarah Palin, whose ignorance, provinciality and populist demagoguery represent everything older conservative thinkers once stood against?
David Brooks noted correctly (if belatedly) that conservatives’ “disdain for liberal intellectuals” had slipped into “disdain for the educated class as a whole,” and worried that the Republican Party was alienating educated voters. I couldn’t care less about the future of the Republican Party, but I do care about the quality of political thinking and judgment in the country as a whole. There was a time when conservative intellectuals raised the level of American public debate and helped to keep it sober. Those days are gone. As for political judgment, the promotion of Sarah Palin as a possible world leader speaks for itself.
from http://punditkitchen.com
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November 9th, 2008 — thoughts
La Universidad Autónoma de Nuevo León is a pretty neat place. I wish I had more pictures, but I didn’t have time, this trip. I feel like I had time for nothing but attending conference sessions and social events, and trying very hard to understand all the rapid-fire Spanish being spoken everywhere around me. I was also sort of the leader of this delegation, two of whom spoke very little Spanish and two more of whom were grad students. I worried about my five companions a lot. Where are they, did they get on the bus to the hotel, are they going to make it to the restaurant, why aren’t they in the session, did they find the meeting room, are they having fun, etc.
Lesson #1: I don’t want to be a politician. This kind of thing is exhausting, but not in a healthy, feel-the-burn way.
Continue reading →
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November 4th, 2008 — updates
Crazy day. Going to Mexico Tomorrow day. At School from 7:30 a.m. to 8:00 pm day. Haven’t Even Looked at my Presentation for Thursday (in Mexico) day.
But Election Day! The site to watch (well, one of them at least) is fivethirtyeight.com. One recent comment there summed up my feelings about this day, for reasons the commenter couldn’t possibly have known:
longest… day… ever.
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November 2nd, 2008 — webthings
#1: A prof was offered ten grand (and more) by Utah Republicans if he could use his nifty text-analysis software to show that William Ayers wrote Barack Obama’s biography (what…). Apparently the deal fell through largely because he wanted the results published no matter what the outcome should be.
#2: MY HEAD ASPLODE! Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, in a recent speech, pushed an expansion of the Bush Doctrine of preemptive strikes to include nookyulur weaponz! YES. He insisted that the U.S. should LAUNCH PREEMPTIVE NUCLEAR STRIKES. He said (among other things): “Challenging the US in the nuclear arena—or with other weapons of mass destruction—could result in an overwhelming, catastrophic response.” Could this get any worse? I suppose it’s a natural progression:
- We will attack you if we think you are a threat
- We will kidnap, torture, and imprison your citizens for life, without trial and without evidence
- We will violate your national boundaries if we think you’re not doing enough to fight terrorism
- WE WILL BOMB YOU WITH NUKULAR BOMBS if you have too many weapons.
#3 (for Alex): Several local city councils in England have banned the use of Latin and sometimes French phrases (ergo, ad hoc, ex oficio, QED, in lieu, etc.). They are apparently “elitist”. Also people are worried that new English speakers might not understand them. Hm.
#4: A new salvo in the recurring debate about “embedded” reporting with enemies of the U.S. during wartime (well, our current eterno-war, anyway). Are embedded reporters traitors? Are they actually doing something highly patriotic? Neither? And how much of the enemy groups’ activities can they participate in before they’re doing something very, very bad? These are the Taliban groups, here, not some cupcake tea party association. I find this debate very interesting.
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November 1st, 2008 — thoughts
This is something I do when I have an important and/or difficult decision to make. It’s a method of examining my opinions and avoiding certain (but certainly not all) biases.
First, I give each issue a weight. The scale doesn’t matter, so I usually do a scale from 1 to 10. Then I rate each alternative (in this case, each presidential candidate) according to my judgment of their quality on this issue. The scale is, again, arbitrary, but “good” should always mean a higher number.
I probably forgot a few issues with this table, and I might go back through it again and tweak the numbers to make sure they are consistent with what I think, but I see that Obama looks like a clear winner in my head. This was my gut feeling, as well, so that’s a comforting thing.
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