Huge Headache
Ryan McGee should change is name to Mr. Funny. (Sorry, I'm not as good at it as him.)#
So, 500 pages of deliverables later, we head out to the restaurant. Once again, my life encounters those two epic words: "Open Tab". Ooooh. My nipples could cut glass right now. 20 beers on tap, and I order…Amstel Light. Look, I got nervous and choked. Sorry. Made it up in later rounds though with some fairly obscure Oktobefest beers. After one hour, one of our medical writers asked me what beer I was on. "Um…I think this is four," I semi-slurred.
He looks at another writer. "Well, looks like it's a race for second place for the rest of us…" Second-best line of the day.
See, most people are afraid to get drunk at office parties. They fear that might say or do something stupid in front of their boss. See, I do and say stupid stuff all the time in the office while sober, so I didn't have a terribly high-risk situation at hand. I've got it down pat with my immediate supervisor: I walk by her office, and stop. Look at her. She looks at me. We nod, she stands up, and we break out into the "Elaine Dance" from "Seinfeld". I'm in the freakin' hallway doing that weird thumb-based performance art movement on a daily basis. A few beers aren't going to damage my rep any.
Richard links to Simon Blackburn who writes about Lust and attempts to defend it as something that is misunderstood.#
In the beginning is this gem,
Love receives the world's applause. Lust is furtive, ashamed, embarrassed. Love pursues the good of the other with self-control, reason and patience. Lust pursues its own gratification, headlong, impatient of any control, immune to reason. Love thrives on candlelight and conversation. Lust is equally happy in a doorway or in a taxi, and its conversation is made of animal grunts and cries. Love is individual: there is only the unique Other. Lust takes what comes. Lovers gaze into each other's eyes. Lust looks sideways, inventing deceits, stratagems and seductions, sizing up opportunities. Love grows with knowledge and time, courtship, truth and trust. Lust is a trail of clothing in the hallway, the collision of two football packs. Love lasts, lust cloys.
And then after some defence and redefinition, he settles on his main point. You should read the article to hear the argument,
So we must not allow the critics of lust to intrude the notion of excess, just like that. We should no more criticise lust because it can get out of hand than we criticise hunger because it can lead to gluttony, or thirst because it can lead to drunkenness.
The Yeti comments on Tacitus' criticism of the "internationalists" who want a trial for Saddam outside of Iraq.#
As for me - I'm always surprised that the idjits that make snarky comments about American war crimes are strangely silent on what other countries do, and how that affects the situation.
For example - the nonsense that we built Iraq's army.
"Given that, in the period 1973 - 2003 that China, Russia, and France were responsible for providing 82% of Saddam's weaponry, and the United States responsible for 1% (half that of Brazil);
Given that, while Rumsfeld met with Saddam in the 80's, Jacques Chirac sold him a nuclear reactor;"
Forgive me for not taking such folk seriously. Actually forget that.
Fudge those people. It's why I'm so glad adults are running the country.
Tyellas writes about "What Tolkien Officially Said About Elf Sex." And goes into great detail about the sexuality of elves on Middle Earth.#
Why, certainly elves were gay. "Many Meetings" in FOTR clearly states that some were merry as children, while others…Oh. You mean homosexual elves.
To disappoint slash writers everywhere, there were no clear statements of elf homosexuality. There weren't even any unclear ones. The most suggestive elf/elf pair are Fingon* and Maedhros, rescuing each other and sending each other presents just because. (Narn i Hîn Húrin, UF) But even they have less eyebrow-raising stuff going on in 500 years than Sam and Frodo managed to pack into one day.
Although Tolkien never said that the elves DID have hot gay sex, he also never said that they DIDN'T. And I know what I make of that.
One last perplexing note from LACE is that Elves do not change sex, even if they are being reincarnated. But that's a whole other story.
Richard Tallent rails against offshoring of IT jobs.#
I understand the "free" trade argument, I just think it's BS. I believe in imports. Heck, I believe in making imports just cheap enough that U.S. companies sweat a little. Competition is good. But in the end, wages and water both seek their own level.
Efficiency (same work in less time) is a desirable trait, even if jobs are lost. Smarter workers, standardization, communication, and mechanization—these are the good and natural ways that U.S. companies have traditionally been able to compete with foreign markets. However, there comes a point where the fat has been trimmed, the process have been re-engineered, the employees have been educated, and the systems have been upgraded and automated.
Aaron Swartz proposes a very well thought-out system for improving public transportation systems.#
First, attach wireless beacons to all the cars. Then, at each stop install at least one computer kiosk. The kiosk can receive the beacon so it knows when each car comes by. It's also connected to the Internet (perhaps indirectly) so it can report this information to the transit website. When not in use, the kiosk will display a simple status message like "Next car in 3 minutes."
However, you can also use the kiosk. You enter your destination, and optionally your other constraints. It determines the best route for you, asks you to insert the appropriate amount of money, and prints out your instructions and tickets.
To simplify the instructions, clearer signage with simple termininology will be installed throughout the system. That way the instructions can be something simple and unambiguous like "follow the signs to the Q train" and "wait for the L bus". If any significant amounts of walking need to be done, it'll also print you out a clear walking map. The tickets will all be simple labeled cards ("Give to conductor on Q train.", "Insert into gate at L tram."). Color coding could also be used to make things even clearer.
Philip Greenspun notes how strange it is for an American to hear foreigners talk about the US as if it were omnipotent.#
In just a few days here I've encountered several Argentines who aren't fans of the U.S. government. For starters, these folks are angry because they blame their suffering under the military dictatorship on the U.S., which trained some of their officers. I asked if they really thought it was possible for the U.S. government to control what happened half a world away. Indeed they did. What about Castro? I asked. The U.S. has been trying to get rid of him for 40 years and hasn't managed to do it. True, an Argentine responded, but the U.S. has succeeded in making Cuba ridiculously poor. Cuba, of course, is free to trade with and accepts tourism from the entire European Union. So it doesn't seem plausible to expect a U.S. trade embargo to cripple an ambitious hard-working people. And most of the rest of the Caribbean is extremely poor as well, despite not suffering from any animosity from the U.S. government.
To an American this image of the U.S. government as omnipotent, right down to the smallest details of how other countries are administered seems odd. We live admidst evidence of our government's impotence to achieve its goals. After 40 years of the War on Poverty the streets are filled with homeless. After 20 years of Reagan's stepped-up War on Drugs it is as easy to party as ever. The FAA tried to build itself a new air traffic control computer system and the project went $billions over budget and more than a decade beyond its original deadline. How could a government this incompetent in its own country prevent a determined group of foreigners from educating themselves, working hard, building industries, and exporting their goods to Asia and the European Union?
Wendy Koslow endorses over the counter "morning after pills."#
The FDA is about to decide whether it should be available over the counter.
My hope is that they'll do it. The morning after pill is a fairly easy, not terribly traumatic way to prevent pregnancy. It isnot abortion, no matter what the extremists are telling you. It works the same way birth control pills do, just in a higher concentration, which will temporarily prevent ovulation, thicken cervical mucus (yes, graphic, I know) to attempt to prevent sperm from reaching the egg should the woman have already ovulated, and thin the lining of the uterus in order to prevent implantation of the egg should it by chance be fertilized. This is all before a woman would be considered pregnant. If the woman becomes pregnant before the morning after pill takes effect, the pill will not remove the egg from the uterine lining.
Wendy Koslow and Jessica are too nice. No really, stop it.#
Michael Feldman on the great efficiency of the US government.#
We have been a happy household at the Dowbrigade lately, the lovely Norma Yvonne has finally been granted a Green Card. Its seems that at last, after six years of marriage, five-and-a-half years after our initial Green Card interview, after six sets of fingerprints (they expire every year, who knew?), dozens of days lost to endless lines and wooden-bench waits, recalcitrant clerks and misplaced portfolios, the Department of Homeland Security, currently In Loco Parentis for the Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services, has finally come through, although only after our feisty Immigration Lawyer threatened the agency with the dreaded Writ of Mandamus.
Yes, fans, the Dowbrigade, thorough his legal counsel, a somewhat shady shyster found working the rejected riff-raff outside the Tip O'Neill Federal Building, and against good sense and sober advice, threatened to sue the Federal Government for neglectful inaction on his case. And it worked! Two weeks later the unofficial notification arrived, and the Senora Dowbrigade was able to get a stamp in her passport declaring her a legal US resident and allowing her to leave the country and visit her family for the first time in three years.
Ryan Overbey loves blog link love.#
Joey and Wendy are sooooo cute. I mean cheek-pinchably cute. They make me exclaim Oh so cute so cute so cute! in my most ridiculous cute-voice. Anyway, they rock.
I love how a link on a weblog can be so flirtatious, so full of meaning and emotion. Yet another side of the Internet that I doubt anyone could have foreseen. But it works somehow. A link can be anything- a nod of respect, an act of sadistic voyeurism, or a kiss blown across the net. Isn't it great? When technology like this starts to take on shades of ambiguity, complexity, sorrow and joy, anger and love, you know we're on to something powerful.
Matthew Dennis writes about what happens when your things start owning you and technology becomes a burden.#
I was having a conversation at work today about how I think I might be losing my mind. (I'm not entirely sure that's what the conversation was really about, which may or may not be an indicator of my mental state.) I was explaining to my compatriot Steve how I was increasingly concerned with the idiotic little details of life. I am preoccupied with the free space on my hard drive, my inability to categorize and store digital photos, and whether or not a PDA or plain old paper is the best bet for keeping my track of my lists and addresses.
This is the stuff I think of all the time. I makes my world feel chaotic. And this is stuff that other people never think about. Ever. I am increasingly caught up in the details and missing out on the content of my life. Technology, which is supposed to make me more efficient, is introducing a whole world of meta-static for me.
Halley Suitt gives some pretty fantastic advice,#
In my 20's and 30's I thought being in love and following a man to another city and putting his career ahead of mine and love ahead of learning was a good idea. I'm sure no other women out there ever did anything so dumb as that. I thought the big story was love, family, romance. So I guess if I had it to do over, I would have stayed in school as long as humanly possible. After I finished an MFA in Writing at Columbia, I thought about getting a PhD in English, but decided against it. Dumb, dumb, dumb.
I should have stayed in school, some way or another. I just didn't get it then. The more school, the more opportunities I would have had, the more authority I would have had, the more choices I would have had, the more interesting people I would have met. I thought then I wanted my freedom -- to be free of school, to be done with it. Little did I know the more school I did then, the more freedom I would have NOW when it really matters.
Richard, in a stroke of genius, declares...#
[your favourite historical figure here] would have been a blogger
I call bullshit on that.
Five simple words to thwart a whole lot of ideological hot air.