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20030927
Posted
9/27/2003 12:59:10 PM
Happy...
Jewish new year (5764)/Day of Judgement/Day of Remembrance/Day of Blowing Shofars
Posted
9/27/2003 12:03:39 PM
i was reading this Dallas Morning News article today and learned that David Crowder bought Charles Alderton's 1886 house in Waco. Charles was the inventor of Dr. Pepper. Worship must pay well.
20030926
Posted
9/26/2003 05:57:32 PM
slew o' links:
The Puppet and the Dwarf - The MIT Press
a software person's dream (via an exiled Daniel Miller)
Andrew Jones has a new blog and a new site.
Judah has a new blog URL. Her parents use it too.
if you are in France in the coming month you may want to check out AVANT-GARDE.
if you are in SF or Austin this fall check out Green Festivals.
Posted
9/26/2003 09:36:45 AM
Vatican: No dancing, No Altar girls
"If these Vatican officials would spend as much time with the Vatican II documents as they do energy on silly proposals like this, I think they would . . . be much better servants of the church," said Corrao, whose church has girl altar servers.
Bombs at City Hall
A local church youth group is claiming responsibility for the 'bomb' that caused the evacuation of Athens City Hall Monday morning.
Posted
9/26/2003 08:58:40 AM
The last will be first and the first will be last. ~Q65
this is often hard to hear.
in the short term it sounds even patronizing:
insulting the poor, the loser, the
marginalized;
the unlucky, the careless, the
victim.
for such a saying requires a longer view;
a deeper horizon and the steely courage
to sail toward it.
many get lost in the pursuit of,
or the desire to hold onto,
being first.
no one fights to be last.
but it is often these at the end of
the line, those inhabitors of
the barrel's bottom, who
find themselves with furrowed
brow scanning a horizon
as yet undefined and, with
nothing to lose, discover the
living secret of being last.
more rightly, we inhabitors...
who find ourselves
Posted
9/26/2003 06:30:05 AM
Falling down
We were both professionals. Now I'm sweeping up popcorn, my husband is selling motorcycles, and our house is on the block. There are a lot of us these days.
...Before his current inability to be employed in his 'desired capability,' Andrew worked at a software start-up. Prior to my scraping gum off the bottoms of chairs and reheating popcorn, I was a Web writer for a multimedia dot-com corporation. It's been like this for 16 months, the two of us struggling to make ends meet, to emotionally and financially support ourselves and our two young children while battling self-pity and overwhelming panic.
For me, being 'underemployed' has been a wake-up call of enormous proportions. I have a college degree, I've been in the corporate world, I don't frighten people away with hideous personal hygiene or dubious philosophical rants, but it seems my work skills are just outdated enough to put me at the end of every interviewing queue.
...We're on either edge of 40, my husband and I. How can we concede, retreat, at what point do we label ourselves the defeated in this battle and then grimly hope to someday start anew? If 20-somethings who can't find work and return home after college are called "re-nesters," what do you call 40-something professionals who can't feed their kids on fast-food wages? Besides losers?
My neighbors in the middle-class town where I live all know our plight; several of them have confessed they are headed down the same path or are watching family members slide into bankruptcy and ruin. I wait to pick up my daughter outside her elementary school playground with the other parents; we mill on the blacktop. Folks I barely consider nodding acquaintances sidle up to tell me about food banks, lunch vouchers, clothing exchanges. It seems there is this great open secret, how broke so many of us are, and how frightened we are of where it will end.
20030925
Posted
9/25/2003 01:26:18 PM
Anil Dash:
"...Maybe it's because I grew up in an Asian household, but I think there's a lot to be said for quiet shame and repressing the day-to-day misery of one's life."
Posted
9/25/2003 11:41:51 AM
Seth has this to say about a web site:
Here's what I think about a web page:
You only have four paths:
1. get someone to buy something right now
2. get someone to give you their email address so you can build a relationship
3. get someone to tell a friend
4. get someone to go to another page on your site.
That's it. Only four things worth doing.
So, what are you trying to accomplish? (Hint: picking one works better than picking two, and picking more than two is silly.)
I would add one more:
5. get nothing
Rather like the website equivalent of a field or a fountain or a statue that gets nothing from the space they open to others.
Posted
9/25/2003 11:29:13 AM
U.S. Remains Leader in Global Arms Sales, Report Says
The United States maintained its dominance in the international arms market last year, especially in sales to developing nations, according to a new Congressional report.
The United States was the leader in total worldwide sales in 2002, with... 45.5 percent of global conventional weapons deals...
Posted
9/25/2003 09:59:43 AM
COOKIES!
White men: $1.00
White women: $0.75
Hispanics: $0.50
Blacks: $0.25
SMU halts race-based bake sale
i read about this little foray into political demonstration that took place across the street at SMU yesterday while sipping my double espresso early this morning. very interesting.
Affirmative Action is one of those issues that is so polarizing.
i think SMU was wrong to shut down the bake sale. i think that this is a freedom of speech issue. i think that the University's cover story used to shut down the sale (student safety) was a poorly contrived stance of fearful political correctness. we need more public conversation about this issue not less. actions like this bring the issue, momentarily, into the forefront of the cultural conversation.
the most pro-Affirmative Action stance generally still couches its justification for the practice in a "temporary measures, making amends for the past, leveling the playing field" argument. the simple reason is that AA is discriminatory. period. there is no other way to slice it. one can still believe in the goals of AA while being honest about its inherent prejudice (that word has taken on such a pejorative meaning in our day--it simply means that one is inclined toward something--the question of why one is inclined in such a way is the real issue). because of this inherently prejudiced stance, someday, AA will have to go away.
more important than where you fall on the continuum with regard to the AA debate is where you fall in the day-to-day reality of ethnic and gender diversity. we need more people whose social circles naturally spill across our diverse national landscape without thought for explicit ethnic or gender categorization than we do bake sale demonstrations or marching parodies of civil rights activists. we need to begin asking why our neighborhoods and school and churches and families are so segregated. the simple fact that they are is not inherently wrong, but, often points to a series of underlying fears and prejudices that need to be faced.
cultural constructions put up barriers between people in the name of gender, ethnic group and time period. for example, there is no genetic basis for ethnicity. black people are not genetically different from red people; brown people from white people. different races have historically lived segregated lives and culturally evolved in profoundly different ways; not because one group is white and one group is yellow, but due to the ever morphing circles of storytelling, changing sophistication and direction in tool making and geographically shifting natural environments.
i have more in common with a brown, tri-lingual Indian woman who grew up in Chicago and got a Stanford MBA than I do a blue-eyed, snow white Norwegian man who teaches Scandinavian Identity studies as a visiting scholar at the University of Copenhagen--despite the fact that i am a white Norwegian-American man. this is because the Chicagoan and i share countless strands of credulity due to our similar experiences as third-culture kids, our geographic coexistence, our educational interests and economic assumptions (among other things). such constructions are natural and, when they are inevitably divergent across peoples and times, must be carefully navigated with the respect and humility that the beauty of our heterogeneous world demands.
simply throwing up race or gender as blunt categories in disscussions of diversity is growing less and less plausible in our day. it is time to depoliticize and widen this debate as much as possible.
it was reported that the bake sale yesterday morning at SMU raised $1.50. any way you calculate this number, based on the AA-inspired pricing, there were more than white men buying cookies on their way to class that day.
the first thing that i asked myself when i saw the pricing on the menu--given my childhood--was, "What about the South Asian?"
"Oh, yeah," I thought to myself, "they are the one's who sold the gross of cookies to the bake sale group for $0.65/ea wholesale."
Posted
9/25/2003 06:41:59 AM
Michael Moore has written a response piece to his critics who have spoken/written out against BFC entitled:
"How to Deal with the Lies and the Lying Liars When They Lie about 'Bowling for Columbine.'"
Posted
9/25/2003 06:20:42 AM
Captain Haddock Curses
via beyond
An excellent collection of curses from the world of Tintin. I had forgotten that Captain Haddock used 'vegetarian!' as an expletive. I like 'scoffing braggart!' and 'vampires!' myself.
Posted
9/25/2003 06:07:02 AM
Charley Reese: Israel A Danger
What country in the Middle East occupies the lands of other people? What country in the Middle East is in violation of more than 60 United Nations resolutions? What country in the Middle East openly practices a policy of assassinating its political opponents? What country in the Middle East routinely violates international law? What country in the Middle East possesses nuclear weapons, refuses to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and refuses to allow international inspection of its nuclear facilities?
The answer to all of the above is Israel.
And here's one more question: What country in the world poses the greatest danger to the future of the United States?
Same answer: Israel.
Posted
9/25/2003 06:06:51 AM
Old John Quincy Adams had it right when he said of America: "Wherever the standard of freedom and independence has been or shall be unfurled, there will her heart, her benedictions and her prayers be. But she goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own."
That was the traditional American foreign policy — armed neutrality
20030924
Posted
9/24/2003 04:24:03 PM
Steve talks about going to see David Blane today:
went to see david blaine on the way home from work, moved by rumours that the stunt will be called off soon. it's an odd affair. he's not as high up as i'd imagined, nor is he over the river. he certainly wouldn't die if the cage fell. and being so close to the ground no wonder he's a target for missiles. it's easy. he looks dishevelled and weak. the weather in london has turned cold, especially at night, and i expect he's feeling it in spite of many clothes and blankets. he looks like a bag person hoisted up. he has bags. he watches the crowd, waves wanly when the children shout. i felt oddly embarrassed to meet his gaze, as if he were naked.
the crowd is a spectacle in itself. all london is there - from financiers and politicians [the stunt is next to city hall] through tourists and ordinary people to lowlifes and latent trouble. people have tied flowers to the railings, as if he were dead. traders have set up unlicensed stalls to milk the spectators - hot dogs of course, someone from HTB has tracts and bibles, others sell flashing trinkets from peace banners on the ground. there's something 18th century about the scene, a person exposed for public entertainment, a hanging or flogging, a crucifixion. hey you up there, why don't you come down?
Posted
9/24/2003 02:27:28 PM
via an anonymous friend: Shared Space 2.0
i want this. i want this for every project i am involved in. this looks stupendous. and it's shareware right now.
will update you after i check this out.
Posted
9/24/2003 08:23:51 AM
i want a black turtleneck sweater for christmas.
i have never wanted a turtleneck before.
i think that this is seth godin's fault.
ribbed.
it must be ribbed.
and black, yes, black indeed.
Posted
9/24/2003 06:25:31 AM
You are the Undying Artist. Moody, erratic, and
empassioned, you find art in the darkness. You
cultivate dark beauty and dark artists to
surround yourself and drink of the song in
their blood.
What Fictional Vampire Archtype are You?
brought to you by Quizilla
_________
...btw, they spelled erratic incorrectly on the image.
20030923
Posted
9/23/2003 04:38:10 PM
enough with the drug flames. go start a blog if you are so passionate about your pharmacological prejudices. in the meantime you may want to also read a bit more widely; or, perhaps not.
it should be clear that, in this string of posts, i am simply bringing up the idea of guided, therapeutic use of certain substances. a case could be made for a general decriminalization of drug use where laws are restructured to criminalize action rather than use/possession (for example, with alcohol, imbibing is legal, but driving when one's blood-alcohol is beyond a certain limit is not). that has not been my point, but i thought that i would throw it out anyway.
Posted
9/23/2003 11:06:32 AM
$87 Billion for Iraq? WE WANT A SPACE ELEVATOR!!
SANTA FE, N.M. — With advances toward ultrastrong fibers, the concept of building an elevator 60,000 miles high to carry cargo into space is moving from the realm of science fiction to the fringes of reality.
This month, the Los Alamos National Laboratory was a sponsor of a conference to ponder the concept. Yet, the keynote address was by a titan of science fiction, Arthur C. Clarke, speaking via satellite from his home in Sri Lanka. "I'm happy that people are taking it more and more seriously," said Mr. Clarke, whose novel "The Fountains of Paradise" (1978) revolved around such a space elevator.
...Instead of using magnetic levitation, the apparatus would lift up to 13 tons of cargo by pulling itself upward with a couple of tanklike treads that squeezed tightly onto the ribbon. Up to eight would ascend the ribbon at any one time, powered by lasers on the ground shining on the solar panels on the rising platforms.
It would take about a week for one to reach geosynchronous orbit, 22,300 miles up, where a satellite circles the Earth in exactly one day, continuously hovering over the same spot on the Earth's surface.
...Dr. Edwards estimates the cost to build the first elevator at $6.2 billion, although with the uncertainties in forecasting a decade or two of research and development, "doubling this is probably a good first cut."
"It's gotten to the point," he added, "where we can say it's closer to $6 billion than $600 billion."
Building subsequent elevators would be cheaper, $2 billion each, because the first elevator could lift materials.
By comparison, the estimated cost of building and operating the International Space Station is widely expected to exceed $100 billion.
Read the study: The Space Elevator
Posted
9/23/2003 10:17:37 AM
so, there has been some concern about this post. some people are not comfortable talking about potential benefits from the use of substances not marketed by big parma. i will reiterate that i think what i wrote describes an excellent use of these substances should there be a cultural agreement forged as to their legal procurement (obviously no counselor or pastor is going to prescribe these things under the current legal framework).
the point is communication. people in failing relationships are not communicating. these substances catalyze communication. under certain dosages and guided by a professional analyst/therapist/counselor real communication breakthroughs could be experienced. i think that it might be even more useful to use such guided drug therapy during pre-marital counseling... when 80% of people, during difficult conversations, are still engaged in dating-lie communication.
maybe not. i don't know. i'm just throwing out an idea.
so, i guess i can never run for office now.
Posted
9/23/2003 06:26:01 AM
RLP's most recent post indirectly points out the real differences in the way people blog. He seems to imply that he writes things offline and serially posts them as one would a multi-part article in any magazine.
When I blog it always begins with me in front of a white HTML text-box waiting for an online missive or imaginative muse to enchant the fingers in their methodical scurry across the polymer symbol pad. This probably explains why my crap-to-quality ratio is so much higher than other blogs.
20030921
Posted
9/21/2003 09:49:35 PM
in case you missed this below i am referencing it again:
Low-Calorie-Diet Study Takes Scientists Aback
Scientists know that very strict low-calorie diets can prolong life. But now they report that it does not matter when you start that diet — at least if you are a fruit fly. The life-prolonging effect kicks in immediately, continues as long as the diet, and is lost as soon as the dieting stops.
so, theoretically, should one wish to live longer one should slowly wean oneself from high calorie intake in the last few decades of the average lifespan for one's particular ethnic/geographic/vocational/familial mix.
Posted
9/21/2003 10:08:20 AM
~silence ~silence ~silence ~silence ~silence ~silence ~silence
i am a man of unclean lips
among a people of unclean lips
speak~
never opened myself this way
life is ours
we live it our way
all these words i don't just say
and nothing else matters
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