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I don't agree with every angle, but this Cracked interview with Penn Jillette is good. I've liked Penn for a long time and am glad he's distancing himself from libertarianism.

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[we used to talk about] the most pretentious shit possible. [For example?] We talk an awful lot about whether you have to stop at libertarianism or go on to anarchocapitalism

(I wasn't sure if it was in that or this 1994 piece in Wired)

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• When in doubt review your statement of intent
• You want to be daring and new but never be ashamed if you find a place within a Tradition or the Tradition
• Any instrument can be a folk music instrument if it's played by the folks, and we all are just folks
• If you deal honestly with complex subjects, no one will be able to tell that your work is minimalist
• Dress like you want to sound.
• The foundation of American music is Jazz, and the foundation of Jazz is collaboration. Play with others when you can to enrich yourself and to enrich others.
• The soul sounds of Curtis Mayfield and Isaac Hayes, the psychadelia of Charalambides and Lau Nau, the American Pop of Paul Simon and Violent Femmes. It's all folk music
• Reject the worldly idea of becoming a great musician... JUST LIVE MUSIC! (this one is borrowed directly from Mononeon. Take it. Live it. Make it a part of you and never forget or deny where that part of you came from. That's what being in the tradition is)
• Face what it is you do before you ask others to face it.
• Make your voice heard. Make other voices heard. Sing it like you mean it.

I think in a decade we're all be going to do QA for work done by AIs. (I posed this on reddit)

Hanson refers to an idea that originated with Jung: the concept of the self as a committee of various parts. "If the brain is a committee, the chair of the committee, roughly, tends to live right behind the forehead. So when you increase activation of the chair of the committee, who in effect is then able to say to the self-critical member of the committee, "Oh, we hear you already. We got it. Enough already. Hand the microphone to somebody else."

This quote got me looking into Jung a bit, though what little I gleamed didn't bring me to as much new stuff as I had hoped.

The article has a lot of stuff very close to "Internal Family Systems" stuff. One new to me metaphor was "The Loyal Soldier", likening one internal system to Hiroo Onoda, the Japanese solider who spent almost 30 years after WW2 on a jungle island keeping up the fight of a war he didn't know had ended. Sometimes we have internal parts that can be like that.

The article ends suggesting recruiting an "inner cheerleader", something I seem to have developed on my own way back when - being a precocious child, I guess, set me with this idea that I'm pretty darn ok (and the things I'm not ok at don't matter - which is flipside of it, the "fixed mindset" that keeps me angled away from challenges.)

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Timely find on tumblr...

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If someone proclaimed: "I am the greatest, strongest, noblest, cleverest, and most peace-loving person in the world," he would be considered obnoxious, if not insane. But if he says precisely the same things about his country he is looked upon as an admirably patriotic citizen. Patriotism is extremely seductive because it enables even the most miserable individual to indulge in a vicarious collective narcissism. The natural nostalgic fondness for one's home and surroundings is transformed into a mindless cult of the state. People's fears and resentments are projected onto foreigners while their frustrated aspirations for authentic community are mystically projected onto their own nation, which is seen as somehow essentially wonderful despite all its defects. ("Yes, America has its problems; but what we are fighting for is the real America, what America really stands for.") This mystical herd-consciousness becomes almost irresistible during war, smothering virtually all radical tendencies.

Generally enjoying "Pretend It's a City", Martin Scorsese's take on Fran Lebowitz... I admit though I'm alarmed at how many mannerisms she and Trump share, some of the hand gestures, and the staged reactions, and the certainty. Also Ginia Bellafante in the is a little more critical in the NY Times, saying "That she advances her dubious self-certainty over curiosity every time is not an issue for the director", and she has a point. In the second episode (the latest we've watched so far) she mounts a defense of criticism and evaluation in general, which of course is not how I naturally roll - but it's a lot of fun to watch others judge!

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The name is a little much but wow. Trombone Section Suicide Routine
also I wish I knew were to find audio recordings of funky drum cadences... so many drum squads seem focused on technical finesse, it seems hard to find ones as funky as Euclid High School circa 1991...

Yesterday on the Lost in Mobile WhatsApp group we got to thinking about alternate time visualizations - the conversation started with me linking to Slow-Watches. I really like how their watches have a single hand that takes 24 hours to make a complete revolution - and how they put midnight at the bottom, where to my intuitive mind it "belongs" - letting the tip of the hand follow the sun, roughly.

BobD pointed out Tokyoflash that also have some watches with super fun alternative ways of displaying the time.

It got me to revive an old artsy 60 second timer I wrote when I was first learning Processing - I really like it! Plus it's practical for games that need such a timekeeper - unlike Pictionary's ordinary sand timer, you don't have to wait for it to finish before resetting it, just click.

Making virtual timepieces is pretty cool. I wish I liked wearing watches more... and also wish that Apple Watch would let people design their own watch faces, I would so love to have a physical version of TIMISH, a purposefully inexact expression of the current time in words. I really think we get so hung up on thinking of time as a series of numbers... it's so harsh and mechanical...

Not sure if this should be my band outfit tonight (theme being 70s/80s) but I have been looking for an excuse to wear my varsity jacket (I lettered in "Band") so maybe I'll try it today. The way its little cape turns into a hood is amazing.

Not shown: my name in block letters on the bottom right border 　

Also "222 Street Jazz" was the name the stage band gave itself, and that's what i decided to put on the back.

Some memories of Papa Sam (grandfather) who bought it for me. Those things weren't cheap! (Warm tho!)

My definition of a free society is where you can spend a week without thinking about the person who's running the country.

I rescued someone else's program from the defunct section of openprocessing.org and put it online again - it's an amazing pattern making, like a lavalamp generating patterns ala Rorscharch's mask in "Watchmen"

I like how Hufstedler invites you to hit the 'f' key to disable the filter and see how it works... Big season of "if only"s for the Patriots: if only there hadn't been such an endless series of injuries, if only the refs hadn't been so biased in the Broncos regular season game, if only they hadn't rolled over for Miami, if only Gostkowski hadn't flubbed a PAT.

Ah well. The faint sliver lining for any loss of a team I dig is I can stop paying attention and move on to more interesting things.

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@georgeb3dr points out this applies to indie games as well

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If a man has no doubts, it's because his hypothesis is unfalsifiable.

The fruit of my weekend at GGJ, an original Atari 2600 game: See the Game Home Page

My teammates were cool, the music was GREAT, and the cover art was kind of brilliant:
Global Game Jam @ MIT kick off last night. Too many dudes w/ beards and glasses. I think I need more interesting glasses. That was a cold run. (Come to think of it I guess the bike ride to Alewife won't be much warmer...)
--via the Criterion Collection (thanks Diane)

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Huh. I think the Kindle Fire is a better commute reader than the iPad. And I tote a MacBook Air on general principles. Guess iPad is still better as a home machine, for twitter and browsing and misc. fun apps.
I got a new touchscreen USB-powered monitor for work. This was my first doodles with it, to test it out.

For personal reasons I'm a little annoyed that it's name is the "iMo Mini-Monster".

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Odd Fundies don't seem to talk more about the Ascension of Jesus- maybe it's the weirdness of 'Heaven is Up Above' and you can fly there...

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http://www.avclub.com/articles/15-things-kurt-vonnegut-said-better-than-anyone-el,1858/ - great Vonnegut Quotes
--Body Parts as mentioned in Jazz songs, via Fleshmap: Listen: Music project. (Warning, mildly NSFW) Other genres have different featured parts. (Hiphop has by far the most diversity. Also the most Ass.)

Some of the other Fleshmap projects like Touch and Look are truly great and beautiful - and, duh, there is nudity, but just enough to make things make sense.

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Driving with the window down- man I've missed that!

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I have a friend who's an artist and he's sometimes taken a view which I don't agree with very well. He'll hold up a flower and say, "Look how beautiful it is," and I'll agree, I think. And he says - "you see, I as an artist can see how beautiful this is, but you as a scientist, oh, take this all apart and it becomes a dull thing." And I think that he's kind of nutty. First of all, the beauty that he sees is available to other people and to me, too, I believe, although I might not be quite as refined aesthetically as he is; but I can appreciate the beauty of a flower. At the same time I see much more about the flower than he sees. I can imagine the cells in there, the complicated actions inside which also have a beauty. I mean it's not just of beauty at this dimension of one centimetre, there is also beauty at a smaller dimension, the inner structure. Also the processes, the fact that the colours in the flower evolved in order to attract insects to pllinate it is interesting - it means that insects can see the colour. It adds a question: Does this aesthetic sense also exist in the lower forms? Why is it aesthetic? All kinds of interesting questions which shows that science knowledge only adds to the excitement and mystery and the awe of a flower. It only adds; I don't understand how it subtracts.

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http://www.cracked.com/article_18386_7-mind-blowing-easter-eggs-hidden-in-famous-works-art.html - Cracked on Easter Eggs in famous art (NSFW)

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Googled some of the folks in my UU "Science and Spirituality" group - there are some hard core MIT comp sci veterans (Jack Dennis, Edward Lowry) in that, kinda humbling!

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Can't wait to find out if the Apple-Tablet-as-big-iPhone mockups are roughly on target or as silly as the 'iPhone-with-iPod-dial" ones were. A while back I posted this.



Now to make up for it, or make it worse, I'll post the decepticon teen dance party...



Man, was the animation always that bad?

I am kind of stunned at the depth of the Transformers Wiki. I like the foreign names section (The Italian name for Shockwave is "Brutal"? WHO KNEW?) as well as the trivia.

Also: Obscure Transformers Website with loving devotion to nameless Transformers who might only appear in a single comic, like this ill-fated robopiano.

Keeping up with theme of the cross of Soundwave and 80s hiphop, this picture and its caption from the tfwiki Soundwave page made me laugh:

"Big butts: preferable. Lying: impossible."

And finally a picture of Megatron.


'Cause he is the enemy, you see.

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Peach AND Mango, in one delicious drink? O brave new world that has beverages in it!

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Only when asking the name of something EBB switches to the formulation "what this be called?" Wonder about the neurologic grammar of that..

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https://www.youtube.com/user/DRSMOOV - well-voice, funny but respectful Transformer re-dubs I decided to test my justification for sticking with iced coffee even in cold winter, namely, I really dislike burning my tongue.

It's a cold day. So I had Dunkin Donuts' Hot Chocolate, this new promotional thing with Milky Way or something.

And now have a burnt tongue.

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Factoid of the Moment

It has been calculated that a baseball thrown at a hundred miles per hour will pick up 0.000000000002 grams of mass on its way to home plate.

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Logos of the Moment

--This web article on logo trends of 2007 reminded me of this stuff, left, that I've seen at Nokia. But it doesn't seem to be a single logo, more of a theme, usable on sweatshirts and in animated form.

I don't have a great bit of ramble for here today. So I'll just mention that with the latest scam spam I got, the author writes

I am obliged to inform you that I have succeeded in receiving the funds with the help of a new partner from Paraguay. Everythng was perfectly done because we strike a deal with one of the ladyaccountant who works with the federal Ministry of Finance (FMF) and she rendered a tremendous help to us.

I just want to say that "ladyaccountant" makes it sound kind of hot, kind of that whole "sexy librarian" vibe.

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Sexy Librarian Rant of the Moment

So, instead of hanging out by the circulation desk waiting for the book mistress of your dreams to materialize, perhaps your time would be better spent focusing on the oft-ignored library staff: the shelvers. We are young, we are literate, some of us actually work here because we like books. We are the ones that know the titles that the library carries, that deal intimately with the volumes themselves, sorting them, loading them, flipping through their pages and shelving them in their sacred locations. We wear the writer's glasses and discuss John Locke and Douglas Adams. We are the sexy shelvers.

... the other good word I'd put in for the shelvers is that they are people who don't mind risking carpal tunnel for a good cause. Article of the Moment
Here's some food for thought...the ever-wise Paul Graham on How To Do What You Love.

I'm having a hard time with that kind of stuff now. Right now, job-stress is really twisting up my life; cranky and extraordininarily demanding clients, a technology base that's always a moving target, never having time to sit and learn... there are parts of it I do love, but the other parts seem really dangerous. Combined with this other, independent project I've been contacted with to work on during my freetime....something with huge memesphere potential, but would probably require me mastering a few new technologies...ugh.

I so should have taken a few months of hiatus.

I kind of feel like I'm biding my time before I finally get around to moving to some place where I don't feel so swamped by the seasons, but then again, I think I need some kind of stronger kick in the seat of the pants than that to do anything about.

Feh. I'm feeling kind of down lately. Life is feeling chaotic, too many things I'm not getting a very good grip on...

• I'm almost afraid to admit this to my folks here but...the Hermit Crabs I got for Christmas were victims of the latest blizzard. I know they like warm, humid environments, but most of my apartment has been cold, so I put them in the bathroom. They seemed to be doing ok but then when I was away this blizzard weekend they ran out of water...the bathroom got too warm with its door closed and the heating system going all the time to heat the rest of the house. So, I'm sorry "George" and "Gracie", you deserved better than you got.
  
  Maybe I should have followed my first instinct of bringing them to the office. My Sea Monkeys have been doing fine since September.
• I'm doing ok productivity wise but I'm feeling less and less crucial at work.
• My apartment is a mess. The laundry is piling up so much and I worry that the entire backroom will remain the dumping ground 'til I finally move.
• Finances, I'm making very good money, don't have any debt, but my checking account never looks like it's increasing much on a month to month basis...and I think I've due for a big Tax wallop (forgot to redo a W4 post-divorce) and I've been slacking 401K-wise. The good news is I have a big chunk of change, a mix of savings over the past 8 years and the sale of the house. Still I'm trying to figure out how to be smart with that. I have dreams of moving someplace cheap, buying a place I can half live-in, half-rent, and getting a job I really enjoy rather than just put up with, but then again I can't tear myself away from my attachments here, and can't even think of a good "someplace cheap" that has the stuff I expect from my cultural environment.
• Relationship-wise, I'm very lucky to be going out with such a sweet gal as Ksenia but I just think our expectations might be too far apart. Also (and this is another "almost afraid to admit this to my folks here") I'm getting pretty neurotic about birth control. What this nation needs is not a good 5-cent cigar or another Erectile Disfunction cure-pill (to fill up our Inboxes with spam)...it's a reliable reversible vasectomy.
• I feel like I just have NO time during any given week. And this is a giant issue with my romance and my friendships and everything else. I don't know where it's all bleeding off to...I've even cut way back on doing the rounds of the websites I try and keep up with, which has been one of my more reliable pleasures in life. I've got so many projects piling up...and then wondering why I didn't feel this way when still living in "married bliss" with Mo makes me worry that that was part of the problem, that I didn't spend the time that that would have required to work well.
• My weight is still like around 20 lbs higher than it was the fall before last...and of course, where could I find time to exercise? And is there any hope of making exercise something pleasurable? There have been times when I was really faithful for a long time about it...but it never felt that good, like something I was looking forward to. If alcoholism is a disease, where they're trying out pills that might reduce the craving, is there some way of fiddling with our own brain chemistry to make us crave a moderate amount of exercise?

So that's that. Maybe it's partially something seasonal?

I shoveled a lot of snow, and that made be feel very productive. Also I got those curtains up...the trouble is my apartment still feels drafty, and so far the temperature is still 4 degrees below what the thermostat is trying to get it to, so I'm running the heat all the damn time.

Ah well.

How is it with all of you?

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Quote of the Moment

The two most anticipated games of the post-season -- against arguably the second- and third- best teams in the NFL -- turned out to be as competitive as a PETA slaughterhouse video.

The amount of hubris in that article alarms me, I'm convinced that as soon as the Pats realize how great they are, that's when they start to lose... Poem of the Moment

I dreamed I saw a basilisk
That basked upon a rocky shore
I looked upon the basilisk...
With eyes of stone I looked no more.

I dreamed I saw a cockatrice
A-chewing on a piece of bone
I gazed upon the cockatrice...
One cannot gaze with eyes of stone.

To look upon a basilisk
Is really never worth the risk
To gaze upon a cockatrice
Is permanent and never nice.

For it can never be denied
Life isn't pleasant, petrified.

Not the most brilliant work (as Destruction's own dog says, "Ah. Well, at least it wasn't long") but it reminded me a bit of Don Marquis' "Archy and Mehitabel" stuff.

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Quote of the Moment

"Love is the self-delusion we manufacture to justify the trouble we take to have sex."

Game of the Moment
A one-trick pony, I still thought Super Mario Rampage, with the Italian plumber walking merrily along using a shotgun to clear his path, was worth a quick giggle.

• The Pillar House was a restaurant in Newton that you could see from 128. Classy place, now closed, but the history is interesting. I remember going with my Uncle Bill once, meeting a friend of his. They had a wager that the first person to find a job (they were both laid-off, this may have been the recession of the early 1990s) treated the other to lunch, I think it was the other guy treating. I think the other guy talking to his son was the only time I've actually heard soda called "tonic" in the wild.

• The only good thing about moving is that you'll never again wonder who your real friends are. They're the ones carrying your sofabed."

• If you can't be a good example, then you'll just have to be a horrible warning.

• True life observation: You know you're a programmer when you see a chapter of a book labeled "03" and you think 'well I guess they wanted it to sort correctly.' (See, if you always do two digit numbers from 00 to 99, they'll sort alphabetically, which is how a lot of systems (like Windows' files) does things--without two digits, "10" would come before "2".)

• You don't choose the things you believe in, they choose you

• Also, for mysterious internal hardware considerations, the motion registers should not be modified for at least 24 machine cycles after an HMOVE command.

  I just love a technical reference that says "for mysterious internal hardware considerations".
  
  
• Ryze seems to be an interesting idea for online community networking.
• Weblogs and the Mass Amateurization of Publishing "A lot of people in the weblog world are asking 'How can we make money doing this?' The answer is that most of us can't"
• I wanted to try to find some of the articles from that Yale U faux-Sex-in-the-City columnist but didn't get very far. I already kisrael'd that one awful Tufts attempt to do the same, which was a Cruel Site of the Day.

• If you look really hard you'll forget you're going to die.

I was pretty happy with yesterday's entry (left out this commentary because it kind of threw of the balance.) I wish I was a hardware hacker who could integrate yesterday's toy with some kind of LCD display...I used to have a little plastic 'digital fortune cookie' that would scroll a little aphorism/clichés each time you opened it, "truisms" would have been much cooler.

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Link of the Moment
Especially for the frisky single gal, it's The Online, Pre-Date Confidence Builder, the supportive campy gay latino friend you wish you had. (thanks ranjit)

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Funny of the Moment

[Explaining yet another Mike Tyson biting incident]"Why does this kind of thing happen? Well, it's one of the dark secrets of the sport...
Boxers are Delicious."

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Joke of the Moment
This one was one of my favorites from childhood. I had it memorized, and people would be impressed when I'd recite it quickly:

Why are fire engines red?

Books are read. Magazines are read, too. Two plus two is four. Four times three is twelve. Twelve inches on a ruler. Queen Elizabeth is a ruler. Queen Elizabeth is a ship at sea. Little fishes swim in sea. Little fishes have fins. Finns fought the Russians. Russians are called "Reds". Fire Engines are always rushin'. That's why fire engines are red.

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Nostalgia of the Moment
That joke reminds me... I wanted to be a Fire Fighter when I was a kid, at least for a short while. (And I was curious about the difference between the term "fire man" and "fire fighter".)

At some point I wanted to be President as well. During that time, I got a letter from an Uncle who I had never talked to, and he said "So, do you want to President yet?" I was amazed! How did he know that??

I suspect W. has gone through something similar, only it lasted even longer.

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Quote of the Moment

Write a wise saying and your name will live forever.