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Read Kieran Setiya's "Midlife: A Philosophical Guide" as my first book of the year. I do appreciate applied philosophy but it took the book a bit to get to places I responded to... (and is one of those books where I do more quoting who they quote than the work itself.)

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To wish for a life without loss is to wish for a profound impoverishment in the world or in your capacity to engage with it, a drastic limiting of horizons.

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What has a price can be replaced with something else, as its equivalent; whereas, what is elevated above any price, and hence allows of no equivalent, has a dignity.

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I think with sadness of all the books I've read, all the places I've seen, all the knowledge I've amassed and that will be no more. All the music, all the paintings, all the culture, so many places: and suddenly nothing.

I was really struck by this as a strong contrast to the more commonly expressed frustration with mortality - so often the emphasis is on books, places, knowledge, music, paintings, culture we WON'T encounter within our lifepan, but I think this points out we can also mourn the loss of what were externalities that we have made out of ourselves.

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[Every] profound political protest is an appeal to a justice that is absent, and is accompanied by a hope that in the future this justice will be established; this hope, however, is not the *first* reason the protest is being made. One protests because not to protest would be too humiliating, too diminishing, too deadly. One protests (by building a barricade, taking up arms, going on a hunger strike, linking arms, shouting, writing) in order to *save the present moment*, whatever the future holds. . . . A protest is not principally a sacrifice made for some alternative, more just future; it is an inconsequential redemption of the present. The problem is how to live time and again with the adjective *inconsequential*.

I appreciate this point - with all the activism I support through music, there are some positive results but a lot of futility.

I was tempted to snip out the "inconsequential" bit. Because I think redemption of the present is a consequence, but that word might sour any note of reassurance for a non-careful reader. Media I consumed last year... 4 star in red, 5 star red and bolded, count and change from last year in parentheses. Pretty steady compared to 2020, honestly.

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Enkidu: Accept your flaws, you'll feel better. It worked for me.

Gilgamesh: You've accepted your flaws?

Enkidu: No, I accepted yours.

I've been cleaning up my blog's tag system, so now the 1sed tag just has the annual versions, going back to 2013...

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A marine explains why liberals hate Trump

Former marine Chris O'Leary answered "Why are people so hostile towards President Donald Trump?" (even before Trump started cranking up shit in the Middle East way beyond what was needed- lets see what the blowback is next week!)

O'Leary answered so many issues so well and hopefully has the bona fides my conservative friends will respect that I'm posting this here. (And afterwards I'm gonna play the opposite, and even though I'm a lefty Imma list some reasons I think people who like Trump like him, so conservative (and liberal!) buddies feel free to read and add to that part as well.)

Before you pass my answer off as "Another Liberal Snowflake" consider that
1.) I'm an independent centrist who has voted Republican way more often in my life than Democrat, and
2.) If you want to call someone who spent the entire decade of his 20's serving in the Marine Corps a snowflake, I'd be ready to answer the question what did you do with your 20's?

Why Liberals (And not-so liberals) are against President Trump.

A.) He lies. A LOT. Politifact rates 69% of the words he speaks as "Mostly False or worse" Only 17% of the things he says get a "Mostly True" or better rating. That is an absolutely unbelievable number. How he doesn't speak more truth by mistake is beyond me. To put it in context, Obama's rating was 26% mostly false or worse, and I had a problem with that. Many of Trump's former business associates report that he has always been a compulsive liar, but now he's the President of the United States, and that's a problem. And this is a man who expects you to believe him when he points at other people and says "They're lying"

B.) He's an authoritarian populist, not a conservative. He advances regressive social policy while proposing to expand federal spending and federalist authority over states, both of which conservatives are supposed to hate.

C.) He pretends at Christianity to court the Religious Right but fails to live anything resembling a Christ-Like Life.

D.) His nationalist "America First" message effectively alienates us and removes us from our place as leaders in the international community.

E.) His ideas on "Keeping us safe" are all thinly veiled ideas to remove our freedoms, he is, after all, an authoritarian first. They also are simply bad ideas.

F.) He couldn't pass a 3rd-grade civics exam. He doesn't' know what he's doing. He doesn't understand how international relations work, he doesn't understand how federal state or local governments work, and every time someone tries to "Run it like a business" it's a spectacular failure. See Colorado Springs' recent history as an example. The Short, Unhappy Life of a Libertarian Paradise And that was a businessman with a MUCH better business track record than Trump. We are talking about a man who lost money owning a freaking gambling casino.

G.) He behaves unethicaly and always has. As a businessman, he constantly left in his wake unpaid contractors and invoices, litigation, broken promises, whatever he could get away with.

H.) He is damaging our relationships with our best international friends while kissing up to nations that do not have our best interests in mind. To his question "Wouldn't' it be great to have better relations with Russia?" The answer is Yes. But it is RUSSIA who needs to earn that, who must stop doing the things that are damaging to that relationship, or we are simply weaker for it.

I.) He has never seen a shortcut he didn't like, and you can't take shortcuts in government. "Nuclear Option, Remove the Filibuster, I'll change the Constitution by Executive Order...Don...what happens when you remove the filibuster and the other side retakes the majority in the Senate? Suddenly want that filibuster back? What happens if you manage to change the Constitution by Executive Order and an Anti-2A President wins the next election?

J.) He behaves and has always behaved as an unabashed racist. Yes, I've seen your favorite meme that claims he was never accused of racism before the Democrats...Absolutely false. Donald Trump's long history of racism, from the 1970s to 2019 See the Central Park 5, the lawsuits and fines resulting from his refusal to lease to black tenants, the 1992 lost appeal trying to overturn penalties for removing black dealers from tables, his remarks to the house native American affairs subcommittee in 1993. The man sees and treats racial groups of people as monoliths.

K.) He is systematically steamrolling regulations specifically designed to keep a disaster like the 2007 subprime mortgage crisis from happening again.

L.) He speaks and acts like a demagogue. He sees the Legislative and Judicial branches of government as inconveniences, blows up at criticism no matter how deserved and actively tries to countermand constitutional processes, not to mention attempts to blackmail and coerce people who are saying negative things about him

M.) His choices for top positions, with the exception of Gen. Mattis, who is a gem, have been horrendous. A secretary of Education without a resume that would get her hired as a small town grammar school principal, A secretary of Energy who didn't know the Department of Energy was responsible for nuclear reserves, an EPA head whose biggest accomplishments to date had been suing the EPA on multiple occasions, an FCC head who while working for Verizon actively lobbied to kill net neutrality, and an Attorney General who thinks pot is "nearly as bad as heroin" and asked Congress for permission to go after legal pot businesses in states where it is legal. (There goes that great Republican States rights rally cry again, right? *Crickets*) An Interim AG after Firing his First AG who's appointment is probably unconstitutional.

N.) He denies scientific fact. Ever notice that the only people you hear denying climate change are politicians and lobbyists? 99% of actual scientists studying the issue agree that it's real, man-made and caused by greenhouse gasses. Ever notice that every big disaster movie starts with a bunch of politicians in a room ignoring a scientist's warning?

0.) He does not have the temperament to lead this nation. He is Thin Skinned, childish, and a bully, never mind misogynistic, boorish, rude, and incapable of civil discourse.

P.) He still does not understand that the words he speaks, or tweets, are the official position of 1/3 of the US government, and so does not govern his words. He still thinks when he speaks it's good ol' Donald Trump. It's not. It's the PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES. You have probably spread a meme or two around talking about how no president's every word has ever been dissected before...YES, THEY ALWAYS HAVE. It's just that every other president in our lifetime has understood the importance of his words and took great care to govern his speech. Trump blurts out whatever comes to his mind then complains when people talk about what a dumb thing that was to say.

Q.) He's unqualified. If you owned a small business and were looking for someone to manage it, and an unnamed resume came across your desk and you saw 6 bankruptcies, showing a man who had failed to make money running CASINOS, would you hire him? He is a very poor businessman. This is a man it has been estimated would have been worth $10 BILLION more if he'd just taken what his father had given him, invested it in Index Funds and left it alone.

R.) He is President. But he refuses to take a leadership position and understand that he is everyone's President. Conservatives complain about liberals chanting "Not my President" while Trump himself behaves as if no one but his supporters matter.

S.) He's a blatant hypocrite. He spent 8 years bitching Obama out for his family trips, or golfing, or any time he took for himself, and what does he do? He was already on his 20th golf outing in APRIL of his 1st year in office. He constantly rants about respect for the military, yet can't be bothered to attend the 100th anniversary of Armistice Day because of a little rain. (And that excuse about Marine One not being able to fly in the rain is HILARIOUS.)

T.) He's a misogynist. It's not really ok in this day and age to be a misogynist, but it's not a huge deal if you're a private citizen. It's a pretty big deal if you hate half the people you're elected to lead. The disdain for women seeps out of his ...whatever.... and he just can't hide it.

U.) Face it. In any other election "Grab Em' By the Pussy" would have been the end of that candidate's chances. Back in the 90's I used to marvel about how Teflon Bill Clinton was. I no longer do. The fact that he managed to slip by on that is as much a statement about how much people hate Hillary Clinton as it is about what is wrong with politics in this country right now.

V.) He has one response to a differing opinion. Attack. A good leader listens to criticism, to different points of view, is capable of self-reflection, tries to guide people to his point of view, and when necessary stands his ground and defends his convictions. Any of that sound like Trump? His default is not to Lead, its' to attack. Scorched Earth. The Jim Acosta reaction is a good example. There was no defense of his convictions when Acosta was asking him repeated questions about his rhetoric on the caravan. His response was to attack Acosta.

W.) He takes credit for everything positive while deflecting blame for everything negative. Look at him with the Stock Market. He's been bragging about it since day one, and to give credit where credit is due, speculation on coming deregulation early in his presidency did fuel some rapid growth, but to pretend that it's all him, that we're not in the 9th year of the longest bull market in history and THEN, when the standard market volatility that deregulation inevitably brings about starts to show up? Yeah. Look at yesterday. Hey! Stock Markets losing because the Democrats won! Do I need to bring out the Stock market chart for the last 10 Years again?

X.) He emboldens the worst among us. Counter-protesters are slammed into by a car while countering actual Nazi rally, and the response is there's fault on "Both Sides" The media is at fault for a nut job sending them and Donald's favorite targets pipe bombs. The truth is not all Republicans, not all Trump Supporters are racist, fascist lunatics. Many are just taken in by the bombastic personality and are living in an information bubble made worse by the fact that they unfollow anyone and ignore any source of information that makes them feel uncomfortable. People on the left do that too. The Biggest problem the right has right now is that the worst of the Right is the loudest and the most in your face, and the actual right, especially the Freaking PRESIDENT needs to be standing up and saying No. Those are not our values.

Y.) He seems to think the Constitution of The United States, the document that IS who we are, the document he took an oath to support and defend is some sort of inconvenience. He demonstrates a complete lack of understanding of Constitution, from believing he can alter the 14th through executive order, to thinking The free exercise clause in the first amendment somehow supersedes the establishment clause (not that he really understands either) or that the free exercise clause only applies to Christians. Or his attacks on freedom of expression and the press. He repeatedly makes it clear that if he's read them, he does not understand Articles 1–3, and that's something he really should have before he took the job, because they're not going away.

Z.) I'll use Z for something I do blame him for, but the rest of us have to carry the blame too. Polarization. This country is more politically polarized than I can remember in my lifetime. Some of you who are a few years older than I may remember how it was in the late 60's when construction workers in New York were being applauded for beating up hippies, I think it's pretty close to that right now, but that was before my time. And he is the cause of much of the current level polarization, but also the result. It didn't' start with Trump. We've been going down this road I think since the eruption of the Tea Party in the early years of the Obama Administration. I do hope the tide turns before it gets much worse because the thing that scares me more than anything is what if that keeps going the way it has been? "

So, as a liberal, but one with weird philosophical ideas about how very few people are evil in their own eyes at that moment (even if objectively I'd say their priorities for "good" are so out of wack that they might be objectively bad) I will put forth some of the things people who like Trump like about him:

1.) He kicks over the board. People frustrated with a lot of things in the status quo - and who are sick of liberals being all preach-y and know-it-all, and suspicious of the whole deep state shtick, love the idea of a smart guy who ignores the "so-called experts" and just gets shit done.

2.) He infuriates liberals, fills them with hilarious shit-tons of righteous anger and in this polarized age that's shit tons of fun.

3.) He's fun! The dude was in wrestling matches in the WWE for chrissakes! He got that whole "You're Fired!" Meme started. His third wife is a hot model! And he came from behind and won an election that no one thought he could.

4.) Economic trends have continued their pretty good trajectory for 3 straight years of his presidency.

5.) He's appointed lots of judges w/ hardcore conservative values, not even giving a flying fuck if they're rated qualified by the ABA. (See point 1)

6.) He's a rich guy but he sounds kinda down to earth. Or at least fun in that Joan Rivers energy he has.

7.) He "saved" us from Hillary, and 4 more years of Obama-ish stuff. (Or 4 more years of Clinton... and for liberals, Bill "DoMA" "Launched air strikes when impeached" "Treated women badly/Epstein party plane sketchiness" "invented the presidential talk show circuit w/ his sax on Arsenio" Clinton is not looking good, so even with out any misogyny the idea of not continuing the Clinton path (and PS, Bush, Bush Jr, Bill Clinton, and almost his wife? Oh and Jeb. When the hell did politics return to John Adams / John Quincy Adams family dynasty bullshit?)


(Again, with those 7 points, most of them I could argue the counterpoints, but this is an exercise in empathy even when I find those opinions wrongheaded or gross.)
A year late but making good time...

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[I] am rarely happier than when spending an entire day programming my computer to perform automatically a task that would otherwise take me a good ten seconds to do by hand.

Reminded of that quote after posting this devblog entry

Helpless rage is a major cause of falls in the home.

I've been thinking of this quote a lot lately, as I play with the idea of if it's ok (meaning, compatible with the kind of moral life I want to live) to keep my dismay at events cerebral, rather than deeply emotionally processed.

It's balancing a desire for a healthy sense of equanimity against the idea that without emotion, there is no motion; that every action we undertake happens when our emotional elephant gets the impetus to move, our rational rider just trying to guide the elephant as best it can (and then take credit for it with post-facto rationalization, its true talent.)

In general curating my own emotional landscape might be more of an option for me than some because I have an almost-OCDish history of justifying and rationalizing myself, and some practice letting my rational side preempt emotions it thinks are invalid.

Also, the option to do so might be coming from a place of privilege - but maybe not as much as it first appears. An existentially bleak universe and set-point theory of happiness, if valid, would be available to almost everyone regardless of privilege.

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"Textese" and code-switching or why a period at the end of a text message sounds harsh. Often, good messages in a dialog trail off, inviting further reply. This makes me feel a bit better about all the smilies I use. (And slowly I'll be less aghast at "u" and "r" showing up so often.)

Once, when I told her I was leaving a solid job, she asked me: "Are you scared? If not, you should be." She was advocating fear as a powerful -- useful -- survival tool. "The great boxer Archie Moore once told me," she said, " 'I ride my fear like a fast horse.' "

The December 25 New York Times Magazine section was "The Lives They Lived" with some good articles about the lives of people who died in 2016. Semi-decent month for new music last month, the first one listed is the only 4-star.

• Charlie On the MTA (Live) (The Heebee-jeebees) My one 4-star this month... I literally started laughing with delight the first time I heard it. This is a slightly different cover, but the way they take it lower and lower is so much fun...
• Popcorn (Hot Butter) For being such a "hey electronic music!" song, this song's percussion is beautifully acoustic. Also: this video.
• Bill Murray’s “Star Wars" (Oscar Isaac) The new Star Wars' awesome and enthusiastic supporting hero covering my favorite Star Wars lyrics? Yes please!
• Drop It Like It's Hot (Pharrell Williams & Snoop Dogg) I only had a Best of Booty Mashup of this... I love the tongue cluck sound.
• Mind Heist (Zack Hemsey) I was watching a video of how like every trailer now uses the "Inception Honk"...
• Christmas At Ground Zero ("Weird Al" Yankovic) Eventually I'm going to get like every Weird Al song I loved on tape as a new MP3 purchase. I think the dark humor of this was a big influence on my Nuclear War Fun Club doodles.
• Love the One You're With (The Isley Brothers) Tony at "Million Year Picnic" loves the Isley Bros. I'm still intrigued by the message of this song.
• Nothing but a Heartache (The Flirtations) Some great R+B
• Metroid II Return of Carmen Sandiego (Spindley Q Frog) Lovely mashup (Rockapella and Gameboy Chiptune) for a glorious little trainwreck.
• Please Don't Talk About Me When I'm Gone (The Mills Brothers & Tommy Dorsey) Folks at the Dunster Road Holiday Party had a great songbook including this one.
• Brimful of Asha (Cornershop) Somehow I missed this one in the 90s. It's been pointed out as such a terrifically South-Asian-in-England song without needing to make a big frame around it.
• Sesame Street (Maynard Ferguson) I played this in my high school senior talent night band, and I love the bassline - bringing it to my current bands now.
• DADDY (feat. CL) (PSY) Not quite a Gangham Style, but still.. ."got it from daddy" resonates with me. Creepy video tho.
• Look On Down from the Bridge (Mazzy Star) Remembering the scene from "Rick and Morty" where SPOILER (?) Morty is absorbing the fact he's now going to be in an alternate universe where everyone he knows is an identical copy of the people he really knew... I dunno, it's kind of great.

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To discard the stuff we've acquired is to murder the version of ourselves we envision using it.

She also cites June Thomas labeling it as encouraging an "anorexia of things." (I guess the counter-argument is: that's true, about the "murder", but so often that vision of what "could be, maybe" interferes with our pleasure in "what is")

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All FNORD Hail FNORD Discordia...

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Amused that Google Maps for IOS clearly wasn't tested in a walking city such as Boston; even when on a walking route it gives you real time turn directions blocks ahead of time, as if you were zipping along in a car.

"Don't look at me, I just gave birth to him..."
"Hey, nature OR nurture, either way it's your fault..."

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Having a projector as my main TV, and a combination office / media room, is kind of weird. I watch football looking up at an 85" high def picture, 2-3 feet away.

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It's like a vision of the future, but I'm not sure if it's more "Star Trek main screen" or "Fahrenheit 451 Parlor Walls"

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loveblender! My usual media roundup. Far fewer movies on video is the main change. I guess I watch more of those when I'm going steady for longer. Usually.

Better than expected stuff in red, All time favorite in bold, not so good stuff in grey.

So, "all time favorites": Gravity 3D, but in IMAX. It's a bit hokey, but the majestic expanse of Earth are half the key to placating my inner child astronaut.

Bookwise, "Cloud Atlas" was a stylistic tour de force, I love how it built and then deconstructed itself. "Spell of the Sensuous" talks about what we lost with the rise of phonetic alphabets and more. "Dirk Gently" is just amazing in how well it holds up, how fresh it still seems.

In Comics, Harvey Pekar's Cleveland is a beautiful tale of a city I love, James Sturm's America: God, Gold, and Golems includes "The Golem", maybe the best baseball story every told, The Infinite Wait is a great and very personal set of autobiographical tales by Jula Wertz

In video games, Saints Row IV was an astounding melange of super heroism and goofy action, and GTA: San Andreas on iPad was what I wanted GTAV to be more like.

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"'NO NO NO NO' - the guy who invented folding chairs watching a wrestling match"
--http://twitter.com/famouscrab

People say nothing is impossible, but I do nothing every day.

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(New York: Because We Want You to Know Where You Are and How to Get Where You're Going / Boston: Because Fuck You)

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Best definition of burnout ever: 'your mind refusing to permit you to work, because it has seen what happens when it lets you work'

As gamers, we bring to the world some very special gifts. We move forward at lightning speed and embrace technology and invention in a way that surpasses every group of people that has ever come before in all of history. To play it safe in this business is to deny our inner nature. It is to deny our responsibility to the world and to the players. To not take risks is to go against the very principles of fun and risk that define the art of game development.

In short, This Is Gaming. If you're not exposing your players to anything new, then you are just asking them to connect dots. Connect-the-dots is not a game.

God put you on this planet along with the other game makers that you might complete your mission, a crucial part of which is scaring the crap out of your investors.

You are to do this by exposing those investors to your brilliant but untried ideas. And if the thought of that investor walking out the door with his money is too frightening for you, and because of that, you can only bring yourself to propose ideas "that work" and "that people like," then you are not a game maker, you have no idea what makes games fun, and it is morally imperative that you go into another business. You might try selling soap. People always need soap. And if you don't want to do sell soap, then take risks. Start with the Big Risk, where John and John started: Dedicate your life to your work. And then, you gotta go past them, you gotta innovate, you gotta keep on going.

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The book "The Fat Man on Game Audio" talks about Nudie, the guy who made rhinestone cowboy suits and dressed Elvis http://www.nudiesrodeotailor.com/

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[Oh my foes and oh my friends, when the Devil counts, he starts at zero.]

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@fivethirtyeight State with highest voter turnout in general elections should have first presidential contest. Reward Democracy.

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--love the spacing and comic timing of the action in this. via

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computer programming is moments of triumph surrounded by hours of the computer telling you you're an idiot

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Harboring new doubts about MBTA bag bomb residue search-they missed that my bag was packed with ATOMIC fireballs! (Christmas gift from mom)

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http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/02/weekinreview/02parkerpope.html - NY Times on sustaining romantic love.

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Trying the rotated 90 degrees "tallscreen, not widescreen" thing. A bit vertiginous but you can see a lot of code at once.

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In theory I should care about HTML tricks that work in practice but not in theory (like putting a div inside an a href link tag.) In practice I probably won't. via

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The great Renaissance essayist Montaigne loved sleep; his only frustration was that when you are asleep, you are not conscious of its pleasures. He therefore instructed his servant to wake him in the middle of the night so that he could come into semi-consciousness in order to savor the feeling of sleepiness, and then enjoy the pleasure of going back to sleep.

A decent little read, if a bit elitist.

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In coding in a new environment, a really tight change/see change loop (ala Perl or JSP/ASP w/o really compiling) makes up for a lot.

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Right side pocket: keys, wallet, camera. Left side pockets: iPhone, sunglasses, earbuds. Easier to count 3 items twice than 6 items once.

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"You're crazy! You're actually crazy!"
"They called Einstein crazy."
"That's not true; no one ever called Einstein crazy!"
"Well, they would have if he'd carried on like this..."

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Man, aluminum foil is so cool. Like, whole rolls of thinly pressed metal you can just buy in the local market- crazy! Oofdah, busy weekend!

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Link of the Moment
Or a link of a link, rather, Siskoid has blogged every single Trek episodes, from all the various series. Quite a project! That's a lot of Trek for one guy to take.

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Quote of the Moment

One Day You Will Be Nostalgic For Now.

I actually find it deeply motivational to make the best of the current time.

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JZ just sold a character in the MUD Gemstone 4 for $400, he says a firesale price. That much real money for a text only game charcter? Wow. So the Patriots' Belichick was voted Coach of the Year, despite the whole Spygate thing. Is this:

A. Sheer recognition of a unique achievement in the NFL, the 16-0 season.
B. A show of solidarity for a guy who was probably a scapegoat for a not uncommon practice in the NFL
C. A gift to the AFC, in the sense of "we better not make this guy any madder!"

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Article of the MOment
"Don't know why I thought of you" wrote Beau as he sent me this NY times piece on having clutter, being overweight, and the cognitive science behind hoarding. Yeah, sure, Beau. Just play innocent.

I kid, I kid; Beau is one of the most straight forward and unsnarky people I know. And to be fair, all three of those are issues I'll write about here-- in fact there was that previous time I heard about viewing excess weight as "body clutter".

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First Kiss of the Moment

Suddenly I know so much. I understand about waves and cross tides and how jellyfish float and why rivers empty themselves in the Gulf. I understand the undulating movement of the stingray on Sea Hunt and the hard forward muscle of the shark. Now I know why they call it petting, for even though I'm more still in the plush warmth of his mouth than I can ever get in church, my whole body is purring. I let my self breathe into him a breath that tastes like ashes from a long fire.

Quotes of the Moment

The only rational patriotism is loyalty to the nation ALL the time, loyalty to the government when it deserved it.

And do you think that unto such as you;
A maggot-minded, starved, fanatic crew:
God gave the secret--and denied it me?
Well, well, what matters it? Believe that, too.

Yet man is born unto trouble as surely as sparks fly upward.

One lecturer at DeVry was fond of saying "There's no such thing as 'the good old days.' They were just old."

So Boston sports guys love to praise things and love to complain things, so Doug Flutie's first NFL dropkick "point after" in 60 years has generated a lot of heat and noise... I think the people who say that it made a "mockery" of the game miss the core idea that it was just a really, really cool thing to do, and was a great cap to a meaningless game, a hard fought season, and maybe even a football career, if it comes to that. (UPDATE: huh, I only now realized that a dropkick has the player dropping the ball so it hits the ground, not like a punter who kicks it away directly...for years and years my picture of what it was (like that "Drop Kick Me Jesus Though The Goalposts Of Life" song) was wrong, but I think that's true for a lot of people.

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Quote of the Moment

You live and learn. At any rate, you live.

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Year End Wrap Ups of the Moment
From the BBC, 100 things we didn't know this time last year... though I knew a few of 'em. From New Scientist 13 Things That Scientists Still Don't Know. And finally, Candi's Second Annual Best Covno Pieces... damn it, I used to be funnier on AIM, I swear. But her friends are funny, and I admire that, and her diligence in recording the funny.

Yeesh...I really gotta get more people in on the sidebar! I know its been the holiday season, but still...doesn't anyone have anything to kvetch about? Some enlightening nugget of wisdom or randomness?

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Quote of the Moment

Everything you've learned in school as 'obvious' becomes less and less obvious as you begin to study the universe. For example, there are no solids in the universe. There's not even a suggestion of a solid. There are no absolute continuums. There are no surfaces. There are no straight lines.

No straight lines? But that's the very basis of good comedy!

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News of the Moment
Apocalyptic Christians are scary: "$350 for One Jew, $700 for a Couple". Rule of thumb: never trust ANYONE working to make prophecies come true.
And as much as I wanted Gore to win, I guess I'm just as happy Lieberman never became the VP, that frickin' puritan fundamentalist.
(link via Bill)

• That's a painting from Jim Davies: Pac-Man Art page. You should click and read to find out the philisophical depth of it. (Reminds me a bit of the passage I quoted in this review of the book "Lucky Wander Boy".)
• MJD's Universe of Discourse has some odd stuff on it, including the chess microvariant "hexapawn", the Dick Feynman Cabal of the Discordian Society, and other conceptually off-the-wall stuff.

• You're out of my mind.
  Guess that makes two of us...

  In May, I recorded that quote along with the inscription "out of mind, out of sight, out of milk", which I think occured to me in a dream or something.
• DB-DB has a lot of very odd stuff and a whimsical sense of design. And tiny naked pixelated men.
• Learn to hack old-school via the hacker's handbook -- circa 1985. Interesting for the history aspect.

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Spoonerism of the Moment

Her Bouldering Smeauty

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Link of the Moment
This NY Times article about some compulsive hoarders might be a motivation for people who are trying to declutter. (Or maybe the opposite, maybe someone will think "I'm not as bad as THESE guys, so maybe I'm ok after all".)

I just went through all these old tapes I never listen to. Listened briefly to all the unlabeled ones. I discarded most, keeping mostly a few homemade tapes. I even got rid of "irreplacable" mixes that I'm never ever going to listen to. (Including, alas, one I think was from Veronika, but she didn't label it.) Other mixes I try to keep a text copy of the track list even if I get rid of the original again. I don't think I'll ever reconstruct them but its nice to know the information isn't truly lost, and a textfile in a folder especially for the purpose (with a index.html providing metadata for it, in fact) isn't a clutter burden.)

Man, that's a lot of snow. I saw a guy snowboarding down our hill this morning, no joke. (And someone else crosscountry skiing down the sideroad yesterday.)

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Review of the Moment
This Slate.com review of a book of breakup letters takes on a wonderful life of its own. I'm half tempted to use it as this month's blender feature. (Random side note...the number of poems to look at from last month? 666. I kid you not. A bit menacing, that.)

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Geek Funny of the Moment
Bjarne Stroustrup, creator of the super influential computer language C++, explains why he did it--to keep programmers rolling in dough. (Here's an actual slashdot interview with him, just so you don't think it's all fun and games.) Link of the Moment
Via Bill the Splut, it's Kiru's Analysis of Lord of the Rings. Funny Stuff, with advice to various races and characters. Here's a dwarf.

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Guestbook Quote of the Moment

When going downhill skiing, make sure you know how to get up when you fall. Ouch.

You know, that's the same problem I had the season I was in the school skiing group in Middle School, and I haven't been on the slopes since. Feeding Time for Cat:
Cat: Meow. Merrow. Meow. Rowwr. Meow
Me: Yeah, yeah, I'm getting your food already!
Cat: Rowwr. Meow. Merrrrow.
Me: Ok, ok, I get it! You're hungry! Look, I'm getting your food!
Cat: Meow. Rowwwr. Mew. Meow. Merrow.
Me: Cat, shut up!
Cat: Merrow. Meow. Meow. Rowwr.
Me: Cat, look. There is no correlation between you meowing incessantly and me feeding you. Ok, yes, sorry, there is. But correlation is not causation! Don't you know correlation is not causation? Nimrod, I'd feed you even if you weren't meowing like a mofo! Can you get it through your little almond sized brain that there is not causation here?? Your meowing is not getting you more food or making me move any more quickly!
Cat: Meow. Mew. Merrow. Meow.
Me: Gah!

There are a lot of websites that try to be funny, but a much smaller number that make me laugh out loud. Yesterday's Cruel Site of the Day was Cliff Yablonski Hates You. This is a very mean site that takes on the persona of two-fisted Cliff as he makes fun of people in all of these pictures, in the spirit of the infamous Fat Chicks in Party Hats and Fugly. These sites are not for everyone, (it might be a 'guy' thing, and not a sensitive new age guy thing either,) they are mean and sometimes you feel sorry for the people in the pictures, but usually it's very funny, with pictures that just shouldn't have been taken getting their karmic reward.

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Quote of the Moment:

The world's full of offensive knickknacks, Yahoo, have fun banning it all.

Yahoo caving into the French and banning all Nazi memorabilia, theoretically not because the French government was suing their butts, really rubs me the wrong way. It sets a bad precedent that the World Wide Web will be under the jurisdiction of the most conservative judiciary that has jurisdiction over any non-trivial population of Web users. And it's just plain censorship.