Heartbeat... Heart... Beat!
Michael Feldman writes about "video aggregation" and the like.#
Who are we to say that the interactivity of the Blogosphere is the "superior experience"? There is a great unmentioned prejudice in this country, and that is High-IQism. Interactivity is not for everyone all the time. Really smart people have a tendency to think that their lifestyle and quality of life are superior to people of average or below-average intelligence. Since high-IQ types often end up in positions of authority and power, or design the systems and products that others live in and with, they often tend to unconsciously lord it over "regular" people.
In this we Bloggers and politically savvy members of the technogencia, Dowbrigade included, are also guilty, feeling superior to all those Middle Americans sitting on couches around the country and watching their "Boob Tubes".
Michael Williams on the political drama of Pakistan.#
A disturbing example of political theater this week. In response to revelations that Pakistan exported nuclear technology to North Korea and Iran, the government of President Musharraf "discovered" that the lead scientist on the project, Abdul Qadeer Khan, had, without anyone else being aware of it, sold the crown jewels of the program. Right, and pigs fly. Dutifully taking the fall, Khan pleaded for understanding on television, and was rewarded with an instant pardon, case closed. The reality, probably, is that Pakistan exchanged nuclear know-how for missile know-how, at least with North Korea. And the notion that the military and the government were unaware, as opposed to actively involved, just doesn't hold water.
Chai Tea Latte links me to a neat recipe. Thanks!#
Richard, a True Playa™ if I've ever known one, writes about how to deal with all his mad Hunnies™ he no longer listens to any of them at all.#
I got tired of "listening" about a year ago. Before going on, I must, however, make a concession: all relationships require maintenance. Also, everybody needs to air out their grievances once in a while, be it about the person with whom they are having the conversation or somebody else. (Better somebody else, and someone who can keep a secret. In the age of the Internet, that is more and more difficult.) So when female friends came to me about their difficulties with their boyfriends, yes, they just needed someone to talk to and I tried my best to nod my head and ask questions and not propose solutions. Because sometimes proposing solutions means you become part of the problem.
[...]
Maybe some kind of protocol or cookie-cutter sentence like "Look, this is really none of my business" is needed for when women bring up the subject of their vaginas or of their asshole boyfriends' capricious temper. To avoid even the mere subject being brought up, what I need to figure out—and what guys who are known for their "listening" skills also need to figure out—is how to be so busy being active members of society that they won't even have time to be a "listener", saving themselves torment while at the same time doing the things that actually get them girlfriends.
This is why I really like Richard, because he's not afraid to say crazy shit like this that I know people won't be too happy about. (I don't think it's crazy, but I can imagine many who would.)
I think Richard has a point: Women (or anyone really) who expects you to listen without comment to their problems is asking you for permission for them to use you, plain and simple. Richard doesn't seem to be saying that he won't talk to women, just that he won't be a puppy who sits around and licks cuts.
I've never really consciously tried to this, but I may pick up from my friend. At least in the cases where I am lying to myself about this girl one day wanting to be my girlfriend--it doesn't happen like that and if someone expects that they're probably not worth my time.
Ryan Overbey replied to this post:
In my experience, these sorts of people make terrible friends and lovers. When someone asks you to "just listen", or gets angry at you for offering suggestions to resolve problems, chances are that person is emotionally immature. They don't know how to grapple with their emotions, they can't work through them efficiently, their self-knowledge is usually very, very low. I've tried to "just listen" before- it usually involves sitting there and nodding while a person is locked in a narcissistic trance, tasting all the exotic emotional flavors raging through their untrained consciousness. It's a waste of everyone's time.
This happens with both men and women, though I've had to deal with it more with women. But I am convinced that this is cultural, not biological.
Richard on firefighters who think they deserve heroes funerals.#
He said in the email that forestry workers are not heroes because they don't go into buildings and save lives. True, but the point of my post, and Gantenbein's article is that the death rate due to their occupation is not necessarily the highest, and those that have higher death rates don't ask for heroes' ceremonies. Firefighters may be heroes, and there's no question that firefighting is dangerous, but anybody who says their job is the most dangerous in the United States needs to be fact-checked. (I say this just as I hear the sirens of a firetruck going past my apartment building. How about that.)
Matt May links to an accessibility testing tool and some videos on accessibility. I found both to be interesting.#
Chip Gibbons takes a slight break from his addiction.#
Chip Gibbons writes about evangelical Christians and their craziness.#
t was only after Bush met Jesus that he found a moral basis for killing more than 500 young Americans and thousands of Iraqi civilians. It was only have he met Jesus that he found a justification for stealing billions of dollars from American taxpayers--many who have not yet been born--to give to his favored corporations.
Not only have evangelicals made it into every level of our govenment, thanks to activist judges who have given special protections to religious people they are also flying our airplanes. I guess I can be thankful that I wasn't on this American Airlines flight.
Richard writes how you need to go to unfamiliar territory to stretch your brain.#
There weren't any magazines on the rack that had a subject matter of anything new to me, except for the fishing magazine. I have no interest in fishing, which is really too bad, because there are many, many people who do it not to catch fish but for the serenity of the outdoors as well as to just pass the time. There are other things that are more important that, while I have no interest in, are things that will probably come in handy somewhere down the line. Like how to fix a flat tire. It's a little funny that I'm learning a lot from weblogs on subjects I know relatively little about (like ancient history and regular expressions), so it's probably time to learn something about something I know nothing about, like car repair or girls. There are enough weblogs about the latter, but that seems to be knowledge where either you got it or you ain't. I've done fairly well for myself in things where I no formal training (e.g. computers), but yeah, that's as if knowlege about computers were marketable these days. The point is that, to strain the analogy, sometimes we need to study in a totally different department from the one we're used to in order to stretch our minds.
This is why I don't read books of technology and only occasionally read papers about computer science. It's simply not hard for me (obviously there's something arcane that I don't know anything about, but in general I'm set) and would rather push myself in my free time.
Justin Hall is a stalker, damn.#
Mom saw this entry and mentioned that Trippi had been married to a family friend. So I followed him into the bathroom and cornered him later on the issue. He somehow routed that conversation to be about the people taking charge of democracy, and asked for my card for a followup on the conference. Later, when he was leaving in a big hurry talking to four people carrying his luggage, I stood next to him with my camera. "You're driving me nuts!" he said. Then he smiled and said take care.
Joshua Allen blogged Dave Winer at Microsoft. Tim Jarrett did as well.#
Lis Riba writes about how Shakespeare is probably like Casablanca... an accident.#
And yet, everything jelled. It all came together brilliantly. We can acknowledge there are gaping flaws and logical errors, but the story just sweeps you up that you don't care.
And that's Shakespeare's secret, too. Shakespeare's plots are hardly perfect; from the beginning, critics complained about ludicrous geography or warped time sense -- but if you can get caught up in the story, none of that matters.
Like the creators of Casablanca, Shakespeare and his theater troupe were just trying to churn them out -- just another play to pay the bills. And through the collaborative process of authors and editors and directors and actors... brilliance
That's my theory, at any rate.
John Conners knows lots of lyrics.#
The end result is that I can sing my way from start to finish through almost every album I own (and I have rather a lot). This means that as soon as I hear a line from a song I know on the radio (I do listen to it sometimes, like when someone else is driving) I can instantly join in and sing the rest of it (much to the annoyance of the driver). But when I buy a new album I have to learn all the lines to all the songs and it takes a bit of time. This is the reason that I never buy more than two CDs at once or else I'll get overloaded with music and that's not good.
I do the same thing! My first are constantly saying how they think its strange I know so many songs by heart. I was worried I was the only one.
Dienekes quotes from a paper about Chinese cannibalism. So wild.#
"According to a more recent study, Chinese soldiers stationed in Taiwan before the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895 used to eat human flesh of the aborigines like pork; they could buy it at the marketplace. Human flesh was considered as a source of protein and a way to increase male sexual stamina."
Henry Farrell describes why Peter Katzenstein thinks that the American right has a problem with the European Union.#
Part of the explanation is surely power politics, and the perception of the EU as a potential rival, but surely it goes beyond this. Much American debate gives the impression that the European Union is somehow worse for American interests and world peace than Russia or China. Peter's take on it was that much of the animus derives from the hostility of the US right wing to internationalism in all its forms, and in particular to the idea that international law should take precedence over national law under certain circumstances. If, as Peter argues, the EU's fundamental identity involves the primacy of public international law within the jurisdiction of its member states, then it's easy to see why strict constructionists and others who believe in the primacy of the (US) constitution, would view the EU as abhorrent. On this account, the problem that the EU poses for the US right isn't that it's an incipient rival, or even a spoiler like France. It's that if you take a certain stance on the relationship between international law and domestic sovereignty, the EU appears to be an abomination, something that shouldn't exist.
Dean Esmay writes about the worthlessness of a college education.#
As a full-time university student with a bit better than a 3.8 GPA, I often find myself wondering if American society will ever take a step back and ask itself what the basis of its obsession with college degrees really is. Most college degrees, especially undergrad degrees, are worthless. I'm going on three years now and I could take the sum total of what I've learned and put it into about two pages of written text, none of it particularly difficult. None of it--at all--required my presence in a classroom, and none of it expanded my mind or my outlook in any significant way.
Tyler Cowen wonders if the porn industry's piracy solution would work for music.#
Furthermore many people have very particular fetishes. They don't just want images, they want images of a very specific kind. (Use your imagination to fill in the blanks here.) Mood matters as much as the specific practice. Often there is no simple way to describe your fetish and get the proper images to download. So you go to a paid site that specializes in your "thing" and you pay them to select and present it. Free pornographic images are common, but selection and context remain as valuable, albeit cheap, services.
Might this work as a business model for the music industry? Songs without titles? How about groups without names, for that matter? Hard to imagine.
Brad Edmonds writes the four reasons we the military should be abolished.#
To address the common claim by neoconservatives that we owe our freedom to the men and women of the US military, I've written recently that we don't owe the military anything of the sort. While many soldiers, airmen, etc. died in combat believing they were defending our freedom, they were misguided in this belief. The "for our freedom" claim is false because our freedoms were won by the founders and written into law by them, hence a military created afterward could have had nothing to do with that; the freedoms then created have only eroded over time, and the military did not prevent this (and could not, not being part of the legislative process); the military has never been necessary to prevent our freedoms being taken by other countries, as historians available all over the web are now making clear; and the military over the last century has only executed the adventurous whims of individual congressmen and presidents, and in so doing has been the muscle behind needlessly making the rest of the world hate us.
Julie Leung on persuasion.#
I think Love is the best proof of this persuasion. If someone really loves me, loves me selflessly, enough to give up and sacrifice for me, being patient with me beyond my mistakes and ugliness, hey, I'll be persuaded. Love can change my mind any day.
I think that argumentation implies that "I know better than you and you should do what I say." But if you allow a person to make their own decision (love them) then if you are right, then they will do it because they won't be clouded by your terrible form.
Life, a cartoon by Bruno Bozzetto that Dave Pollard linked to.#
Richard posts an awesome picture.#
Julie Leung posts pictures of outdoors.#
Erin Judge writes about growing up and growing old.#
As I flipped through my journal from my months in Greece and looked around the room of my childhood, I began to realize the many changes that had taken place within myself. Somewhere, as I moved from bopping to the Beatles in high school toward comiserating with the emocore tones of Husker Du, from devouring Doritos toward savouring stoned wheat thins slathered in brie, from reading The Communist Manifesto to understanding that all human thought was oversimplified and opportunistic, I -- somehow -- grew into adulthood. I no longer had to suffer the pain of relying on my well-off parents, who came to their wealthy ends from such disagreeable means. I could strike out on my own, rejecting privilege and pretense. I could live like (and sleep with) the common people! I could be - nay, I WAS! - a member of the human race!
Blogumentary links to amazing street perspective art.#
In the comments to a post of Chip Gibbons', Matt May explains what's up with Washington.#
The first thing you need to know about Washington State is that the state has no income tax. It may make sense from a liberal standpoint to institute one, but the political reality is that such a proposal is a non-starter. I'd vote for it -- maybe all of King County would -- but it would lose badly statewide, even if they halved the sales tax in the process. Washington is only liberal west of the Cascades.
And Chip replies:
There is an income tax in Washington but it is disguised as a sales tax. When a person works on my house he charges me a sales tax on his labor. I've never lived in a state that had such a tax before. It is a tax based on the laborer's income, only it is paid by the consumer rather than the laborer. If the sales tax is increased, this tax on labor will also be increased, which is the same as increasing the tax on the laborer's income.
The state has many other options available to balancing its books; when in trouble they like to cut things like libraries so that anybody who is fighting for liberty and personal responsibility will look like the bad guys.
Moxie writes about "occupational hazards."#
Contrary to popular belief it's not easy to be a runway model.
Sure, you are already more beautiful than god and drunk and whatever but then someone picks out your clothing for you. They apply your makeup flawlessly and fix your hair to a level of perfection never known naturally to womankind.
But you do have to be able to walk. In high heels.
And never. ever. fall. down.
When do you fall down you can't look shocked like this model. She knows her career is over and it's back to modeling for the Sears Catalog and Target inserts in the Sunday Paper.
I felt really weird today while blogging.#