On the day I was born...
Posted on 2007-05-28 at 20:16
...the number one song on the UK Charts was "Bad Moon Rising" by Creedence Clearwater Revival. Coincidence or fortelling? You be the judge.
Welcome Back, Cotter
Posted on 2007-05-28 at 20:13
Being as you are surely hanging on my every blog entry, you will have ntocied with a sense of dread and doom that this website was down for a portion of the holiday weekend. It suffices to say that I screwed up my DNS stuff in the IP Address switchover that I mentioned in an earlier entry. Only this domain was affected---the only domain I control for which I am not the DNS of record. But, all is better now.
Shlock
Posted on 2007-05-20 at 17:38
My global media empire is nigh complete!
I have set up a storefront, in which you may purchase various mental droppings as sewn/heat-printed onto bad fashionware. Up first: The Lonely Fornication Truckers Hat. More to come.
To answer your next question, no, I don't actually expect people to buy anything. I just find this sort of thing fun. Mostly, it's just funny to me that the phrase "Lonely Fornication" popped into my head and now the world can purchase it on a retro-cool trucker's cap. Due in no small part to my overwhelming desire to waste my own time and my gigantenormous ego, you can expect to be glossing over future schock hocking as new random phrases and tidbits spur me to make future lame graphics.
Ritual Epochs and the Zen of Growing Old
Posted on 2007-05-20 at 14:34
From the time we are born we are handed goals that help guide us down a communally acceptable path. We are told that can look forward to when we start school, when we get our driver's license, graduate high school, get the vote, graduate college, get a spouse, start our career, have children...then a long gap until the last of the goals society hands us: retirement. It's no wonder about half way between the penultimate prescribed goal of establishing family and the ultimate prescribed goal of retirement, we go a little wacky.
They call it a mid-life crisis. It's that point at which, life seems a free-floating morass of difficult actions, none of which seem to be leading toward any communally recognized goals. It's that point at which our goals become largely self-directed. Nothing in society really prepares us for this long stretch. It's no wonder at all that people often complain of feeling lonely, vulnerable, unfocused, or lost.
We get lost in the minutia of our daily goals. Gotta get the kids to soccer. Gotta get the raise. Gotta pay off the boat. We forget why we married. We forget why we had kids. We forget why are are alive. The result is often described as a marriage of convenience---a marriage, born in love, perhaps, but sustained by the million mind-numbing administrative duties of running a modern household. We end up treating our spouses more like business partners than lovers. The only place we find that original unadulterated love is from our children, who've yet to have the treadmill of life wear their sensibilities down. They still love us---with the same zeal and force that we once loved other people. And for that reason, we are frightened to discipline them. Don't say "No." Give them what the want. Keep them entertained and happy. Keep their lives interesting; with pony rides, sports, parks, balloons, and a shiny Barney-sized wardrobe of dress-up clothes. We do all this, we say, for our children, but the real pathos of the problem is that all that we do for them in this regard is selfishly driven. We are motivated to experience love and our children provide that. We do for them that they continue to love for us.
Georges Bernanos, in his work "The Diary of a Country Priest" said:
The world is eaten up by boredom.... You can’t see it all at once. It is like dust. You go about and never notice, you breathe it in, you eat and drink it. It is sifted so fine, it doesn't even grit on your teeth. But stand still for an instant and there it is, coating your face and hands. To shake off this drizzle of ashes you must be for ever on the go. And so people are always "on the go."
We should be preparing our young for a self-directed life. Our ritual epochs, like graduation, marriage, and retirement are fine---even Good---but they cannot be all that we use to demarcate the chapters of our life. We need to learn to tell our own story, so to speak. Today I am a programmer.
Tomorrow I am whatever I want to be.
Understanding the Audience
Posted on 2007-05-19 at 08:21
So, a recent online poll on my blog showed that 70% of you found yourselfs allied with Milton Friedman, both socially and economically. In an effort to better understand the audience, I did some quick research and asked a few questions. Turns out, his work "Free to Choose: A Personal Statement" was among his most respected works and well represented his views late in his life. So I bought it. To balance the order out, I also bought "The Communist Manifesto" and to make the myself appear falsely academic, I added a book on the philosophy of language called "Naming and Necessity". My proof follows:
If anyong out there wants a copy of these books, you can get them here:
Next up? Select works from Mikhail Bakunin to better understand a social/economic theorist closer to my current position. It'll be interesting to read the arguments for the claims I've been making.
A conversational snippet
Posted on 2007-05-18 at 16:10
Bryan said, "...toothpaste, deodorant, and Splenda"
I replied, "If I were Johnny Carson, I'd hold a card to my forehead and proclaim, 'Name three things you apparently don't use?'"
Some moments make me prouder than others.
Transcendence and Limit
Posted on 2007-05-17 at 08:17
Freedom only exists within limits. Whether it be Free Will, a Free Market, or free beer, freedom is always constrained by the system in which it finds itself. The concept of Limit lies at the core of any discussion of Freedom. This is among the reasons why Limit is the second most difficult concept in the Western world to tackle properly.
George Bernard Shaw (Writer, 1856-1950)
Posted on 2007-05-16 at 07:49
"Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it."
Read it and work through its implications.
Scheduled Outage
Posted on 2007-05-16 at 07:36
My IP address changes overnight tonight, so I expect that I will have a small outage period starting somewhere between midnight this evening and 6 am tomorrow and ending as soon as the DNS record updates and I can update all my internal systems. Updating my stuff will take no more than half an hour, I'd guess (if that), but I am at the mercy of the PTB for my updated DNS getting propagated.
In case I should be down longer than expected, enjoy this brief overview of Milton Friedman. Given the results of the majority of you guys fell in the lower right quandrant of the political compass test, you should read about the only other famous thinker that was mentioned as being in that quadrant. You might find yourself agreeing with him. If you are among the 30% that fell in the lower left quadrant, enjoy instead this article about the Mikhail Bakunin. Bakunin was essentially the Anarchist Collectivist's answer to Marx' brand of Authoritarian Communism. For bonus points, consider what economic theories Bakunin and Friedman might agree upon. Prepare to discuss. There may be a quiz.
Don't feel good today at all...
Posted on 2007-05-14 at 08:22
...so why am I still going into work?
Scattershot patterns
Posted on 2007-05-11 at 08:10
It appears that the majority of the people who read my blog fall into the lower right quadrant of this chart:
The rest all fall within the lower left quandrant. That, to me is interesting for a number of reasons:
- No one (as not a single person) fell on the top half (the authoritarian side) of the chart. Socially, my readers are clearly Libertarian. The closest result to authoritarian was a -0.72. The farthest result from authoritarian was my own (-6.26) with most falling between -3.00 and -5.00.
- Approximately 70% of the people reading my blog fell on the right side of the chart. Economically, my readers are mostly, but not entirely, neo-liberalists or libertarians rather than communists or collectivists. The farthest right was 4.35. The farthest left was -7.63. The greatest grouping was found between 2.00 and -1.00.
- One of my oldest atheist friends and one of my fiends with whom I attend Sunday school scored to within a couple of tenths of a point identically on both axis. Not sure that means anything, but I found it interesting anyway.
- One guy treated the chart like a bullseye and scored damn near the perfect center with a Economic 0.75/ Social-0.72 result. He must be that mythic political "center" I've heard so much about.
That is all for now. Thanks for sending me results. They were interesting.
My Political Compass
Posted on 2007-05-07 at 08:33
The Political Compass test is a fairly short, but pretty decent way seeing where you fall on a two-axis political spectrum. I thought the questions weren't leading and the results didn't seem skewed. They surprised me a bit, but not overly so.
I scored as follows:
Economic Left/Right: -1.25
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -6.26
When placed on the chart below, those results put down the Authortarian/libertarian axis with the Dalai Lama, and about halfway between Pope Benedict XVI and the middle mark on the Left/Right axis:
Here's another graph showing the estimated results of some more well known historical figures:
What are your political leanings? I'm curious about the political leanings of the people that read this blog. Even if I don't know you, I'm interested in your results. This sort of thing fascinates me.
Truth Happens
Posted on 2007-05-06 at 15:02
Truth Happens: Get used to it.
The space in between
Posted on 2007-05-03 at 07:07
I never knew a world with free and open space between buildings. The world in which I was dropped is a world of buildings that, island-like, sit between dangerous concrete veins overrun with bright yellow Hummers and psuedo-sporty minivans. My world has replaced the breathing flesh of the city with roads and the constant whine of rubber on asphalt. A hundred years ago, the space between buildings was occupied by organics---by horses, pedestrians, fruit carts, grass, and kids.
We need a return to pedestrian-centric communities. Move traffic underground where possible. In fact, where possible, why not move dwellings undergrund as well? However it's accomplished, I think we need to start finding ways to free up the planet's surface area. It'd be good for the planet and good for us.
Eat, Drink, Be Merry, Live Long, and Prosper!
Posted on 2007-05-02 at 21:27
Old news: Calorie restriction has a serious positive life-extending effect.
New news: We've isolated the gene responsible for this anomaly.
In short (for those too lazy to read the article), it appears that with some further study we may be able to invoke this longevity gene effect without the need to eat like a bird. I'm pleased and you should be too...unless you are a worshipper of a death cult, in which case you scare me and I hope I do not anger you, my creepy friend.
Only down side: Bryan, too, will benefit from this technology. Well, the bright side is that it gives me more time to plot his painful and humiliating demise.
These are a few of my favorite things
Posted on 2007-05-01 at 08:05
So, there are 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 things I like. I'll limit this point to 3:
- Linux
- Movies
- High Definition Video