Knee-jerk Republicans

A nice op-ed on the ridiculous of the Republicans, and to some degree their critics, on the bank transaction surveillance.

Yet another personality meme

My personal DNA. From Lisa.

Unnatural

Okay, I just woke up. Please note the time.

Be afraid. Be very afraid.

Also, happy half birthday to me. Woo! Woo.

More Craigslist shenanigans

My most recent Craigslist posting:

-----

Hey...I'm moving to Seattle (back to Seattle, as it turns out) from California to start grad school at UW at the beginning of September, and I'm hoping there are some other souls wandering around the great Craigslist housing limbo who might be in a similar situation and either searching for housing themselves or have an imminently vacated or otherwise unoccupied room they're looking to fill.

I've browsed through most of the other entries on here, and I gotta be honest, people: weak. Very weak. You have managed to differentiate yourselves from the occupants of Riker's Island, Arcum Asylum, and the defendants of the war crimes tribunal at The Hague. Otherwise, I'd be hard-pressed to choose the 5-foot-two albino nursing student with a Smurf fetish from the six-foot-three Ukrainian baritone who secretly longs to pursue a career as a jockey amongst you. You can do better! You are unique! You are special! In both the good and the bad way...

As for me, my ideal roommate is:

- absolutely filthy
After all, haven't many important scientific discoveries been serendipitious? For all you know, that decomposing pizza box may well contain the cure for cancer. Others may call it a slovenly, slothful, and a negligent failure to maintain even basic third-world health standards, but you, my forward-thinking friend, call it iconoclast scientific inquiry!

- likes doing hard-drugs
If God hadn't wanted you to do intravenous drugs, he wouldn't have put the veins in your arm so close to the surface. Alcohol is for pussies, and when you pursue alternative perceptions of reality, you don't fuck around. If an enema full of methamphetamines and paint thinner is wrong, well then goddamnit you just don't want to be right.

- totally unreliable
You wake up every day striving to bring some excitement to my life. You understand that were you not to go missing for weeks at a time, I might take you for granted. And rent? Don't get you started. If I want to be The Man's bitch and pay my rent "on time" and in "US dollars," well, that's my decision, but you won't be tied down like that. You pay your rent when _you_ feel like it, and if I won't accept your frequently updated list of celebrities who are "fucking queer" as your contribution to supporting the apartment, that's just my problem.

- likes drama
You are an emotional time-bomb waiting to go off. Willing to fly off the handle at the most miniscule provocation, you ensure a healthy dialogue with your roommates by surrounding them in a warm, nurturing ambiance of passive-aggression. Was the beanie-baby with a fork stuck through its eye left in front of my bedroom door as revenge for forgetting to wash your favorite plate, or for failing to compliment you on the new Prada bag you got that's currently covering the final notice from your credit card company? I'll probably never know, and that's why living with you is such a unique and educational experience.


Anyway, drop me a line if you're interested in teaming up for housing (seriously...I do actually need to find a roommate; I'm not just being a wise-ass :). I'm more interested in finding good roommates than beholden to any particular area.

And if I'm not your cup of tea, good hunting. I'm sure you'll find the "cool, laid-back" roommate that's right for you. ;)

"Oxygen bars"

There's an oxygen bar in the hotel we're staying in in Frankfurt (airport Sheraton). I knew such things existed, but to actually see one just reminded me how fucking stupid people are. If you're not familiar with the phenomenon, these are bars where people can "purify" their bodies by sitting in a ridiculous-looking seats and breathing pure oxygen. Now, it would be one thing if we were in La Paz or some other god-forsaken remote mountain location that exists despite nature's best effort to make it inhospitable to human life. But we're not. We're at fucking sea level. I assure you, there's more than enough oxygen hanging around. And yet, there are some idiots out there who will pay. FOR AIR. Water I could almost understand given how much shit is in the drinking water these days, except for the minor detail that things like Desani are just tap water from some other polluted tap besides yours. Random useful fact: the water in Desani is exactly the same water used to make Coke and Sprite, bottled at exactly the same plant. Next time you're at the store, look at the relative prices of the two. Then feel retarded for ever even considering buying bottled water.

Anyway. Air. People are paying for air. Fucking AIR. Have I mentioned that people, supposedly in full control of their faculties, walk in, pull out their wallets, and say to the clerk, "Hi! Here's some money. Do you happen to have some extra air? I'd like to purchase some." And being the clever businessmen they are, the oxygen bar owners don't say, "Are you fucking retarded? You want _air_? Have you looked around, you fuckwit? You're surrounded by it!" Instead, they say, "Why yes! We happen to have just gotten a fresh shipment in! You're in luck!" And then the customers walk in, self-satisfied and...breathe.

Not only is there a bar in the hotel, but there's a little oxygen breather in the minibar. Now, normally, I wouldn't care as I don't touch the minibar anyway, and if they can get some idiot business traveller to actually pay six goddamn euros for air...I still can't believe it's fucking AAAAAIIIIIIRRRRRR!!!!!...more power to them, but in this case they idiocy and gullability of other people has caused an otherwise upscale hotel to put a fucking bomb in my minibar. Pure oxygen is flammable, boys and girls. One errant spark and yours truly would find himself splattered all over the roof of the Frankfurt flughafen train station.

And I would have been blown up by stupidity. And that's just not how I want to go. I want a dignified death, like having a heart attack during orgasm.

The Europeans like their nuclear power

My DNA felt all tingly as we went by.

A sea of orange

This is what it's like to go to a world cup match involving the Netherlands:

*slap*

Oh, grow the hell up. It's not MySpace's fault you're retarded.

Stephen Colbert is a genius

"Social...social..."

Earth sandwich!

If you were to take two pieces of bread and place them on exactly opposite ends of the earth, where would they have to go?

Man vs. Toad

The US is fighting insurgents in Iraq, and Australia...well, Australia has a slightly different battle on their hands...

Week of the ironic headline

As my mother commented, "Capitalism's dream of perfection!"

Civil liberties for everyone...but us

This has to be one of the more surreal controversies to have surfaced in a while...

The lesson

This op-ed just makes me all the more terrified of marriage and child-rearing.

Shockingly, arbitration isn't fair

I fucking hate those mandatory arbitration clauses. I hate more that the Supreme Court has ruled them enforcable. It's a goddamn blank check to put into every contract, "Oh, and no matter how badly we screw you, you're not allowed to sue us, ok?"

World cup schedule

...now that it's somewhat useless if you don't already have it. Nonetheless, the World Cup TV schedule in iCal format (right-click->Save Link As).

Brain...dying...

I tried to watch a few minutes of Access Hollywood today. Not really on purpose...I just kinda left the tv on, and it appeared.

They started talking about the supposed tiffs between Avril Lavigne and Hillary Duff, Martha Stewart and Donald Trump (who is, incidentally, a fucking useless, petty dick), etc. I was on my computer at the time, not even fully listening to it. And I could feel myself getting dumber. I mean _viscerally_...like, I could almost hear the brain cells screaming and then imploding.


"Today, Marth Stewart responded to Donald..." *BAM!!!*
"But yesterday, Avril fired back at..." AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!!!!....*thwap!*

I quickly found Apocalypse Now Redux on Bravo, and I'm pretty sure my entire body relaxed. Don't ask me why watching about a homicidal maniac in the middle of a horrific war is more soothing, but it is.

Bad sports day

So, the US was fucking gyped in their game against Italy. I didn't see the second red card against the US, but the first was fucking bullshit. _At best_ it was a yellow. Certainly not a red. Contrast that against Italy's red card, which was one of the more deserved red cards I've ever seen. McBride's face was _drenched in blood_, for fuck's sake. I'm told that that same ref made a bunch of similarly questionable calls in the '98 world cup, and didn't participate in '02 for that reason. So now he's back. Hey, great.

Now Carolina is down 0-2 against Edmonton, but that has been their own goddamn fault. At the moment, they're being decimated by the Edmonton defense. They get literally slammed every time they step foot in the Edmonton half.

I think I shouldn't root for teams any more. It seems to be bad luck.

(incidentally, I'm now watching something like the 3rd Edmonton power play in about 10 minutes...oooh! Brawl!...bah...didn't last very long)

I am neglected

The results are in: men have it harder.

Democracy of knowledge

...is a bad idea, and I've said so before.

Republican legislators are fucking dicks

They really are assholes, you know that?

"Hi! My name is Nicholas Murphy!"

"I'm a hemophiliac!"

Gates vs. Jobs

Veeeerrry interesting article/commentary on Bill Gates versus Steve Jobs. Guess which one wins?

Live World Cup webcast

Take a look at TVUPlayer for a decent way to watch the world cup feed. It's peer-to-peer, so it should scale in the number of users connected quite nicely.

So far it's decent...it stutters occasionally, but watchable.

Idiots on MySpace

Really, how fucking retarded can you be?

Goddamn tectonic plates

A fucking earthquake woke me up. Motherfucker.

Something new to worry about

This one's an economic indicator I hadn't even heard of.

Google = Borg | Valdemort

I really like the evil superpower analogies.

Hey, wasn't a certain other company often compared to the Borg at some point?...

Chaperone

Great for girlfriends, too!

Seeking to prove you're an asshole

Okay, if there was any doubt before, Chavez is officially an asshole.

North Korea? Really? You're going to ally yourself with an insane dictator with nuclear ambitions just because he, too, doesn't like the US? I'm pretty sure David Koresh didn't like the US either...is he a good strategic ally? What about Hitler? Would he have been a good chum too?

Oh, and re: Facebook

Something else to consider when updating your profile.

Basically, remember the shit you put on the internet is public, and the people you don't want to find it can and will.

*cough*

Fucking China.

Something to consider next time you update your friendster/facebook/myspace profile

Big Brother is watching.

Outsourced CEOs

I love it. It's the ultimate in poetic justice. And not a bad idea, neither.

Top 5 Myths about America

Interesting set of statistics, at least.

Oh Coulter

You're so adorably crazy.

From the "God that's fucking creepy!" files

Ewww...

In other news

1. I'm an idiot and forgot to vote. Fortunately, I don't actually care that much about other people, so it's ok.
2. I also forgot to put my Netflix in the mail.
3. MSFT is at a new low! Hooray! (sigh...)

Cone Juggling

How exactly does one train for juggling in a cone?

Google Spreadsheets

...and this would be why Google scares Microsoft.

Redneck weather report

California Voter Update

If you care, I will be voting:

Prop 81 - Library construction and maintenance bond: Yes
Prop 82 - Universal pre-school paid for by 1.7% tax on $400k+ incomes: Oh hell yes.
(I'll miss you, California...your proposition system is retarded, but every so often you come out with a beautiful prop nonetheless...)

As for the offices...frankly, I'm pissed. I actually give a shit about elections, and I even have the time to do research on all these fucking candidates, and even _I_ can't be bothered to go research them. This is ridiculous. I have no fucking idea what differentiates all these different goddamn people, especially when like 7 of them are Democrats, nevermind the parties I've never heard of (Peace and Freedom?).

Look, folks. There's a reason the framers didn't create a direct democracy. Among other things, it's just basic logistical simplicity. I want to vote for one guy, or one party, and that's fucking it. Let me tell you what I believe in, and then _you_ go figure out how to get it done. In the time it would take to research the voting records and positions of 95-odd goddamn candidates, I might as well go do their fucking jobs for them.

For fuck's sake...

Booster for Dean

Ditto.

Dean is absolutely right to try to make inroads in solidly red territory. It's the only way to get the Democratic party out of the goddamn electoral quagmire they're in. Scraping together an ad hoc majority out of the 2006 elections without building any kind of base underneath it is just providing ammunition to Republicans in '08 and beyond.

Now if only they had any kind of compelling message besides, "We're not Republicans!...Usually..."

Basset bling

Basset Hound Rep-a-zent!!!!

Babies always tell the truth

Yeah...I know how she feels...

Is it mid-term elections already?

I hadn't noticed.

If only a) politicians weren't so goddamned transparent, and b) most of the population weren't retarded enough to take these pandering political pushes seriously.

Your daily dose of Carlinism

"Every Child Is Special: an empty and meaningless sentiment. What about every adult? Isn't every adult special? And if not, then at what age does a person go from being special to being not-so-special? And if every adult is also special, then that means all people are special and the idea has no meaning. This embarrassing sentiment is usually advanced to further some position that is either political or fund-raising in nature. It's similar to 'children are our future.' It's completely meaningless and is probably being used in some self-serving way." -- George Carlin

Hypocrisy, anyone?

Katie Couric on news:

"Addressing the annual convention of CBS affiliates, Couric predicted that the 'pretentious era' of the evening-news anchor is going to be a thing of the past."
...
"'Anyone who watches 'Today' knows that I've done more hard-hitting interviews than any evening news anchor,' she said."


So, when does that not pretentious stuff start, exactly?

(as an aside, I do at least give her credit for this even if it is just rhetoric: "Asked by Stahl why many viewers may have lost their trust in the media, Couric said she thinks that the media are 'held captive by spin,' choosing to repeat 'two separate spins' rather than search for the facts in a story." Of course, has she done anything about it? No. But at least her heart seems to be in the right place)

Disasters are funny

Lesson #1: Never trust a "self-taught" engineer.

City slogans

I was listening to a Talk of the Nation broadcast on city slogans, and I had to share a few of the best (proposed):

"Missouri Loves Company."
"Chicago: Where Voters Never Die."
"Oakland: It's Nicer Than You Think."
"New Jersey: You Got a Problem With That?"
"Oregon: You Know It's Summertime When the Rain Gets Warmer."
"Flagstaff: Come On Vacation, Leave On Probation."
"Naples (NY): A Drinking Town With a Fishing Problem."

When nerds get pissed off

How fucking sad is this?

Disturbing precedent

The first in a string of disappointing decisions by a newly-conservative Supreme Court, I fear...

Stupid ubiquitous name

I deeply resent the fact that this is the first link that comes up when you search for "Nicholas Murphy" on Google...

Perhaps the worst idea in history

You know, some things you really should be ashamed of.

Sigh

Why is it I know the guy is a hopeless nerd purely from his pronunciation of the word, "BUT-ton"?

If only they put as much effort into getting dates...

You know what?

Cancer cells are fuckers.

Wondering why I think the PS3 will be a disaster?

Here ya go!

Cane Toad video

A cute little computer-animated comedy about cane toads (big video download). I think my favorite part is mouthing the word, "Fuck!..."

The mindless privatization mantra

I didn't need the New York Times to tell me that Mitch Daniels was a Republican. The idiocy of the content of the op-ed on privatizing Indiana roads was enough to tell me that.

I find this kind of thing infuriating. Roads are a quintessentially public good that make no sense to privatize. None. Get that through your government-phobic heads, you idiots. If Daniels had taken even the most basic economics class, he would know that.

The fact that this is a stupid idea is so obvious that I find it difficult figuring out where to start explaining why. It's like trying to explain to someone why they shouldn't jab a serrated knife into someone's kidney.

First of all, it's a goddamn toll road. It's not that complicated to operate. The fact that Indiana can't make it work speaks more about the idiots in the Indiana legislature and red-state politics than it does about the fucking toll road. The biggest impediment to fiscal solvency is less government inefficiency and more an electorate that has been insulated against feeling the costs of public services, and a Republican party that fosters that ignorance in the name of "smaller government."

I guarantee you that if anyone had even bothered suggesting an initial investment in electronic toll passes or increasing toll charges to keep pace with inflation, the goddamn red state Republicans would have jumped on them as "tax increasers" and demanded they move aside for the "belt-tightening that the beaurocrats are too afraid to do."

So what happens instead? The state pays a foreign firm to do the rate increases for them, and they have to pay the profit margins of the company on _top_ of that. Moreover, toll regulation is no longer responsive to the electorate given the binding legal contract, so the private firm can do whatever the hell they want. And all they have to do to get out of the inflation cap on toll increases is convince a politician to remove the cap in the name of "reducing regulation and red tape." And Indiana no longer has the option of converting the road from a toll road back to a normal road when they figure out that tolling is a bad idea, and they come up with a better funding model.

And don't even get me started on the idea that selling public property to foreign firms is a solution to the trade deficit. That's like selling your house to your bookie and claiming that it solves your gambling problem.

Welcome to the modus operandi of the modern conservative.

The 25 Worst Tech Products of All Time

PCWorld's list of "The 25 Worst Tech Products of All Time" had to be shared.

1. America Online (1989-2006)
2. RealNetworks RealPlayer (1999)
3. Syncronys SoftRAM (1995)
4. Microsoft Windows Millennium (2000)
5. Sony BMG Music CDs (2005)
6. Disney The Lion King CD-ROM (1994)
7. Microsoft Bob (1995)
8. Microsoft Internet Explorer 6 (2001)
9. Pressplay and Musicnet (2002)
10. dBASE IV (1988)
11. Priceline Groceries and Gas (2000)
12. PointCast (1996)
13. IBM PCjr. (1984)
14. Gateway 2000 10th Anniversary PC (1995)
15. Iomega Zip Drive (1998)
16. Comet Cursor (1997)
17. Apple Macintosh Portable (1989)
18. IBM Deskstar 75GXP (2000)
19. OQO Model 1 (2004)
20. CueCat (2000)
21. Eyetop Wearable DVD Player (2004)
22. Apple Pippin @World (1996)
23. Free PCs (1999)
24. DigiScents iSmell (2001)
25. Sharp RD3D Notebook (2004)

Blog links

Added blog links at the bottom right.

A mammary-based theory of gender relations

Boobs: ingeniously designed glandular dispenser of nutritious and immune-bolstering infant formula, or insidious device of male enslavement and genital inflation?! Tonight, we investigate!

All of human history and endeavor, it seems, revolves centrally around the boob. As far back as the Renaissance, the entire art world, it seemed, was boob-obsessed. Sure...art historians will tell you that the Renaissance marked a departure from an obsession with the imagery of the divine and other-worldly to a more human-centric iconography, quintessentially represented by the study of the human form in art and sculpture. But we all know, I think, that the great Renaissance masters just wanted themselves some titties.

Oh yes, my friends...they were men, and as such, they were titty fiends. They may have explained it away as a high-minded artistic exploration, but after the long Dark Ages, we finally slipped out from under the thumb of the Church (who, incidentally, controlled the populace primarily by controlling social mores that dictated the rules of marrige and tata-access), and the artists wanted them some sweater-meat. After all, what better way to get nubile young women to pose for you than to tell them you need them for an enduring work of art? Not only that, you have a perfect excuse to turn away the fuglies!

Yes, my friends, our story starts in the Renaissance, but there it does not end. Why do you think Chris Columbus set out on a perilous voyage on rickety ships into the unknown (ships, I might add, that ostensibly had few if any chicks)? That "economic incentive to find alternate routes to the spice islands" argument is horse shit. I think we all know Mr. Columbus had gotten his hands on a National Geographic, and he wanted himself some Indian bazooms. Forehead-dot Indians or teepee Indians, it didn't so much matter...just so long as he found himself some unshirted knockers. And it was his discovery (possibly with the help of Norse explorers, who liked to carve women with big-ass wooden chesticles on the front of their boats, let's remember) that ultimately led to the creation of our great, sex-obsessed modern culture. And we have simple, eternal hoo-has to thank for it. I hope you're properly grateful.

Industrial Revolution? Guys wanted machines to do their work for them so they could spend more time at the titty bar. World War I? Archduke Ferdinand told a friend he was thinking of mandating breast reductions. World War II? A poorly crafted World War I armistice left Germans malnourished and German love melons dangerously small. (The Jewish thing? Jewish jubblies are notoriously resilient, even in the face of minimal caloric intake. Like the jews themselves, jewish butter bags hoard their fat. (ed. Yes, I'm going to hell)) It all comes back to those delicious prisoners of the playtex penitentiary.

So what is it, then, that makes us so obsessed with what are simply modified sweat glands? Why is it about decolletage that leaves us drooling...well, boobs? I don't know. It's wired very deep, whatever it is. All I know is I like me some gazongas, and judging by the existence of Vegas and the internet, I ain't alone.

Deluge!

Wow...I've gotten a fuckload of hits over the past two days. Where did y'all come from?

Update: Apparently this blog comes up high in the list of results for a Google search of "Franzibald," resulting from my quoting of a Penny Arcade news post. Alas, you will find no answers here on the origins of his douchebaggery. Have a look around while you're here, though. :)

...that said...

...there is such a thing as overstepping bounds.

It's one thing to talk about company business in your blog. It's another to talk about your own personal life and to have an institution you belong to hold you accountable for it. That's bullshit.

On blogging

I take severe issue with the tone of this piece by the NYT on blogging at work.

Look, boys and girls. You don't have an a priori right to blog, and it's painfully naive and infuriatingly arrogant of you to believe you do. Companies and organizations have PR people for a reason, and that reason is that public perception has a huge, huge effect on business, not to mention any legal liabilities you might incur. Airing a company's dirty laundry, while perhaps entertaining and cathartic for you and even good for potential consumers, is ostensibly _not_ in the company's interest. So why the fuck do you expect them to go along with it happily? No one is so valuable to a company so as to overshadow its legal and public relations efforts. _No one_. And while you might try to argue that, well, transparency in a company's operations is beneficial to society so, therefore, we should protect "dish" bloggers socially, legally, etc., all that will happen is that companies will much more carefully screen who they hire so as to make sure they get positive bloggers.

And guess what? That means suddenly everyone is evaluated in terms of their PR ability, because suddenly every employee is potentially a press contact. Trust me...you don't want that. You will suddenly find yourself _very_ carefully scrutinized. That would be a corporate world that curtailed privacy and personal freedom in a way you can't even imagine.

Point being, you would be doing more damage than good. So shut up, you arrogant, self-centered pricks. The next person who says something like, "It's like, 'This is who I am. Consequences are what they are. I'll go work for someone who doesn't have a problem with it.' " gets tarred, feathered, and set on fire. And then submerged in lemon juice. Then set on fire again, just because.

Which brings me to another thing, one that I don't remember whether I have mentioned before: it peeves me how bloody narcissistic and back-stabbing most blogging is. For me, it's quintessentially assholic to say something about somebody else in a blog that you wouldn't say to their face. In fact, it's even worse than talking about them behind their back because, instead of your comments being limited to a select few people, they are being broadcast across the entire internet for anyone and everyone to see. It's shitty. Moreover, a lot of blogging really is just journalling. And if you want to journal, keep a journal. There's no reason for it to be public. What kind of self-centered asshole thinks that the world wants to read about your feelings about your wardrobe? Or your breakfast?

What about this blog? Well, I hold out the hope that it is, in fact, amusing and entertaining and not at the expense of others or by means simply of gossip. Y'all seem to keep reading it. But probably that's more due to boredom than the quality of the posts here. :)

Oh, and as for the people who were surprised when their employers got upset with their blogging about internal company matters, well, frankly, how retarded are you? What kind of oblivious fucktard doesn't consider that? After all, it's no different than telling all of your friends a secret somebody shared with you in confidence.

"Oh, you didn't want me to tell everyone at work that it burns when you pee?? Well, shit, why didn't you tell me that?"

DVR in your living room: fine. DVR just outside your living room: gross violation of copyright?

The entertainment industry's suit against Cablevision is ridiculous. I can only hope that it gets properly thrown out.

The particular method of implementing a DVR shouldn't be relevent to copyright law. So long as the effect of the service is no different from having a DVR in your living room, there should be no legal difference.

The real issue, as the article points out, is that entertainment companies hate DVRs because they steal advertising revenue, and they want to be able to intercede in its further adoption.

Fuckers. Although, at the moment, people who don't have DVRs are essentially subsidizing those who do (because they actually have to watch the advertising that funds the content, whereas I don't). So maybe I should be cheering on the entertainment industry. Except not...they're just stalling for a way to milk new revenue out of DVR technology.

Confused yet? :)

How to choose a career in medicine

Cascading failures

Nice. How many House Majority Leaders are we going to go through before we find one that can't be implicated for something?

Sigh.

A shame

The fact that TicketMaster seems to now be engaged in institutional scalping is a damn shame. Going to very few concerts or sporting events myself, I don't care that much, but such events are quintessentially "for the plebs," and to give up on trying to make even the best seats affordable to the average joe is a damn shame.

You never know though...maybe this will teach people that sometimes an economically efficient outcome isn't a "morally" efficient outcome. :)

I suspect TicketMaster will face a bit of a backlash on this. Then again, the fanatics who try to get such tickets may just be crazy enough to happily spend their entire savings outbidding each other.

Homer in space

For the record, the Homer in space Simpsons episodes is one of the finest ones ever made. (It just reran.) How come I can't get no tang up in here?!

Quiet, you!...

A riddle

What do you get when you cross a pig, a taser gun, and a whole bunch of cocaine? Give up? A press release!

TopSpots

Marie always gets me to do these weird internet survey thingies (they'll make you give them your name and stuff...just put in a bullshit name and click next wherever possible):

My Top Spots:

1. Providence, RI
2. Eugene, OR
3. Baltimore, MD
4. Corvallis, OR
5. New Haven, CT
6. Boston, MA
7. Portland, OR
8. Danbury, CT
9. Charleston, WV
10. Salem, OR
11. Cape Cod, MA
12. Frederick, MD
13. Medford, OR
14. Hartford, CT
15. Cambridge, MA
16. Worcester, MA
17. Stamford-Norwalk, CT
18. Gaithersburg, MA
19. Bend, OR
20. Washington, DC
21. Fayetteville, AK
22. Champaign-Urbana, IL
23. Albuquerque, NM
24. Madison, WI

I have a feeling I'd get different results if I did the survey again.

The finest metaphor ever penned

I had to sit in awe for a few moments:

"L. H. Franzibald - the retarded doppleganger responsible for these perversions - could no more compete with me than could my pale shadow mount and subsequently impregnate a galloping giraffe. It is analogies like this for which I am well known." -- Tycho Brahe, Penny Arcade

That's...that's beautiful.

Musical self-loathing

I am ashamed of and angry at myself for liking the following:

Nickelback - Last One Standing
The _multiple_ songs I like by Kelly Clarkson

I will add to the list as I think of things.

Ironically, still not ashamed of liking Enya. Go figure.

LohanLicious

This is disturbingly hypnotic.

(props to Ms. Lisa for the link)

NASCAR PC

Are you fucking shitting me?

Wrong kind of interview

This is immensely entertaining...does it count as a good or bad interview, do you think?

Seriously, are you surprised?

Wait, the Bush Administration is conducting illicit domestic surveillance to monitor...journalists? But I thought they said they were only interested in al-Qaeda! They _promised_!

Microkernels vs. monolithic kernels

Warning: computer nerdy post. I keep thinking I should start a technical blog so that I don't have to subject you people to computer science rants that not only do you not care about, but that don't even make any sense. Sigh. Meantime...

It blows me away that the discussion of monolithic versus microkernels is still going on. I learned about these heated arguments in college, and in today's world, microkernel is the hands-down winner.

Look. It boils down to isolation. Isolation is a good thing. No piece of software is written correctly. It _will_ do something stupid, so you want to isolate it as much as possible. To put it perhaps more accurately, you should be relying on something stronger than the cleverness and carefulness of the programmer to prevent different pieces of code from stepping on each other, because if modern software history has taught us anything, it's that even the most veteran programmers will screw this up.

Now, I don't care how you achieve that isolation. Address spaces are the standard way to achieve this. But they aren't the only way. Software checking and verifiers that will look at a piece of code and say, "Yes, ok, I _promise_ this code won't do anything unreasonably stupid. It will play nice with its friends." Personally, I think this is the way to go. There's no reason you can't have something that acts like a microkernel but lives all in the same address space, thereby avoiding the performance penalties.

Regardless, if Linus is really arguing that shared data structures are important, he's an idiot. Okay, okay, not an idiot...just mired in outdated ways of thinking about software. I think, as Tanenbaum suggests, Linus is still thinking about performance as the ultimate goal of software when reliability is most often far more important in today's world. But anyway, regarding shared data structures, it should be a fundamental design principle to avoid doing that wherever possible, because that's exactly the means by which one errant player can take down a whole system.

As an aside, to make sure I cover the major computer science religious wars all in one post, this is why I believe message-passing is superior to shared memory models. Yes, they are functionally equivalent since you can model one with the other, but message-passing encourages a more isolated design.

So there. Hmmph.

The secret life of icons

No, I don't know why. But it's funny. (NSFW)

And while we're at it, some fun with chemistry.

The ultimate eBay auction

You know, I'm used to hearing stupid ideas come out of the American Enterprise Institute (and the crazy fuckers who reside therein), but mostly those stupid ideas are in the realm of traditional conservative whining (welfare, etc.). This little op-ed, however, _truly_ came out of left (right?) field.

Look, I understand that being the nutball conservative with a giant, inexplicable chip on your shoulder that you are, the thought of being able to legally regard the poor as a giant organ reserve that can be tapped in an emergency for a nominal fee (because, really, why do poor people need to be able to feed their children _and_ have a redundant kidney? It's just wasteful...) is damn near orgasmic. But there's a much simpler solution to this problem.

Organ donation should be opt-out, not opt-in. Currently, because religious leaders would have a fit otherwise, you specifically have to designate yourself as an organ donor. This is stupid. You should have to designate yourself as _not_ an organ donor. Otherwise, we assume that you, being dead, won't have any further use for your organs. I argue that this is a reasonable assumptiong because, let me remind you, you're DEAD. All things being equal, any unease you may have about the use of your organs is basically irrelevent at that point, because (say it with me now) YOU'RE FUCKING DEAD.

Basically, unless you come in and sign a form that says, "Yes, I am a selfish, superstitious fuck who wants his perfectly usable organs that could save someone's life to be buried under six feet of dirt because I believe that a magic, invisible man in the sky wants it that way," all your bits are up for grabs when you kick the bucket.

Really. That's all you need to do. You don't have to force poor people to sell their organs. You just have to change the default on a form in the DMV, and it would have a much, _much_ higher yield.

So, in conclusion, Ms. Satel, you're an idiot. BTW, are you aware that every single person listed on the AEI people page looks like a pasty, arrogant, white person just from their pictures?! I don't even have to read any of their shit. I can just _see_ it...

(Aside: what kind of douchebag has a link under her list of "articles" to what amounts to a Hillary-bashing session? Oh, right...the same kind of douchbag who would voluntarily marry Dick Cheney. *shudder*

At least maintain some semblance of decorum, for fuck's sake. It sounds like the blog post of a jilted middle-school girl more than it does something that actually deserves attention at a think tank, albeit a biased one. I swear...there are a lot of conservative women I don't like, but very few are quite the uniquely stupid bitch that Lynne Cheney is.)

WikiThePresident

Dagnavit. They stole my idea. I had even registered civicmemory.org.

I think it should be a more general site for all political figures.

Bizarre foreign phrases

One wonders why these phrases in particular were selected as being important.

I have the best t-shirt ever

Side (tastefully): Microsoft
Front:

First rule of computer club:
You DO NOT talk about computer club!

Pragmatic evolution

Who cares if it's "true." It works. And we're fucked without it.

(_More_ evidence I come from the good Carolina...Chapel Hill rep-uh-zent!!! :-D)

The mythical efficient worker

I can't help but point out and comment on Randy Pausch's Time Management slide deck.

I've met Randy. I met him when I went to CMU, and he's a really great, affable guy. Moreover, he gets that computers are useless if they don't actually help people, and as such, computer science is fundamentally a human endeavor. He's also actively involved in making computer science a better place for women and trying to understand why it seems to be such a deterrent for half of the human race. These are all laudable qualities.

At the same time, as evidenced by his time management deck, Randy is guilty of "type-A syndrome." All of his suggestions for leading a hyper-regimented, ultra-efficient life seem reasonable on the surface, and all of us at some point or another have kicked ourselves for not having our shit together more, but nonetheless, he's missing something.

The something he's missing is that different people have different personalities and different skills. Maybe having a meticulously clean desk and a journal of his time efficiency works for him, but for many people (myself included, to some degree), nothing could be more torturous. Part of the joy in life is living in unplanned spontaneity, and to so rigorously regiment it like that is, for lack of a better term, soul-destroying.

I have no doubt that Randy is incredibly efficient. But at what cost? For him, apparently very little. He's happy, and perhaps more importantly, he wouldn't be happy if he weren't like that. But for many people, that would be to live a life that isn't them. Sure, they might be able to carry on the charade, and even to achieve great material or reputational success, but they'd find themselves empty and unhappy. They'll wake up in their mid-forties, discover they've dedicated their entire life to achievement, and suddenly decide they need a red porsche. This is the mid-life crisis.

Sure, Randy says that you have to schedule vacation and down time, and you have to be damn sure not to work on your down time. This is at least better than executive culture where you work until you either die or have enough money to retire at 35. But still...you can't really schedule enjoyment like that, at least not effectively. Think about it...does it really work to say, "I'm going to have fun from August 12th through August 28th. Then I will have achieved 2 weeks worth of refreshment, which will lead to a 20-40% increase of efficiency over the following three months, exponentially decaying." It sounds stupid, and it is.

The part of it I particularly don't like is the indulgence in the uniquely American mindset that you should "do what you love." It's a nice idea, and if you can pull it off, great. But we're the only nation on earth, really, that equates work with life to that degree. The reason you should do what you love is because we expect ourselves to spend our lives working. But think about it...isn't that concept terrifying?

Look at history. In the dawn of time, people spent most of their lives struggling to survive. They had to work in order just to live. But advancements in agricultural technology allowed people to settle, and moreover it allowed division of labor such that each family did not have to spend all of its time foraging for its own food. Suddenly, farming could be left to the farmers, which left other people to spend their time on *gasp* other things. Now, granted, other people would somehow have to support themselves, and maybe now they spent their time on metal smelting, but still...

Eventually, improvements in efficiency allowed by technological advancements allowed for free time, and it was only once people had this free time that art, literature, philosophy, government, etc. took off. Free time built civilization!

Your forefathers worked hard to save and provide for their descendents precisely so that their children would have an easier life than they did. Isn't is sadly ironic, then, that we choose to use that freedom to work just as hard in pursuit of, well, basically nothing? I find it downright discouraging that we're not even working for any particular reason anymore than a blind faith in work as a self-fulfilling ethic.

But, I digress. The point I was aiming for was that not everyone can do what they love. In fact, most people _can't_ do what they love. It's only a priviledged few that can, and therefore as a general piece of advice, "Do what you love" is absolutely terrible.

I would rephrase it. I would say, "Do what will allow you to do as much of what you love as possible." Okay, granted, not as pithy, and probably doesn't fit on a t-shirt, but I think it's more accurate. For most people, work is _work_. It's not the thing they want to optimize. It's the thing they use to allow them to do the other things they want to do: play with their children, lie on a beach, paint, write, travel, whatever. Hell, even watch tv.

Which brings me to another point. I _hate_ the "kill your tv" mantra. _Hate it_. I'm itching to get into an argument with those people. I like tv. TV is a joy of my life. Moreover, it's not even that much of an empty indulgence. Some shows are compelling pieces of art. Battlestar: Galactica is a _damn_ good show. I'll put it up against many of the better movies and a whole bunch of the shit books they made me read in school. Similarly, I love watching Nova and National Geographic and such, and I learn from them. And sure, Daily Show is fucking hillarious, but it's actually getting people to engage in politics and current events in a way that they never have before. So the people who say, "Kill your television!" because it is a stupefying anesthetic are arrogant, ignorant bastards who need a strong shot of "shut the hell up."

Anyway...another digressive rant. I should wrap up the original thrust of this post, which was the cult of hyper-efficiency. I don't buy it. I'm not saying you should just do whatever the hell you want and not have any goals or plan on how to achieve them. But life is a balance between planning and working towards an end, and living in the moment and being spontaneous. It's a balance that's different for different people, because everybody's different. For those that seem to enjoy their lives hyper-regimented, it is supremely arrogant and detrimental to try to get everyone else to live the same way, just as it is arrogant and detrimental for evangelicals to try to make everyone else find religion just because they think it works for them.

Granted, I'm not a tenured professor at CMU. So why should you listen to me over him? Because, even though I haven't (yet) achieved fame and fortune, I'm happy. I like the pace of my life. I'm not going to be the next Bill Gates. I probably won't change the world or become fabulously wealthy. But I'm okay with that, because the process of trying to be or achieve those things would make me miserable, and I'd have to waste a good chunk of my life on them. It's not worth it. And I think too many people beat themselves up for not being those kinds of people. So what I'm saying is: don't worry about it. Find your balance. Let Bill Gates be Bill Gates. He's like that because that's his nature. He wasn't a lazy stoner who woke up one day, read "The 7 Habits of Highly Successful People," and suddenly became a zillionaire. He was an aggressive, competitive, driven bastard, and he was born like that. You aren't him, and you don't want to be him anyway.

BTW, to that end: fuck Bloomberg for firing that guy who was playing Solitaire. Fuck you, you arrogant, rich prick. The guy's life is probably shitty enough given that he's a city employee. He's allowed the occasional game of solitaire. You fired him without knowing whether or not he was otherwise doing good work, making his deadlines, etc. You don't own his life. The contract didn't say he had to be working every minute of every day on his office drone responsibilities. Would it have been better if he had sat with a Word document open for two hours, not making any progress on it whatsoever because he was burned out, instead of taking a short break to play Solitaire? Would you have even known? No, you wouldn't have, you arrogant fuck, because you judged the guy and fucked up his life based on seeing what he was doing for one minute out of one day. If you were in his job, your sense of entitlement would have probably kept you from performing _any_ of your responsibilities. So: _Fuck_. _You_.

Ah hem. Okay, that's out of my system. So yeah...don't follow Randy's advice. At least not to the letter. Sure, being more organized is a good thing. Make lists. Lists are good. Identify what you want to get done, then get it done. These are reasonable things. But don't let it get out of hand. Every so often, throw your plans out the window. Waste an afternoon watching tv. You only have one life, and your parents and ancestors went to a lot of trouble so you could enjoy it. So don't fuck it up.

A total lack of perspective

This shit made the Times?!?!?! You have _got_ to be kidding me.

Chacarron!

Nananazanabazanahnahnah...

TrailerTrashTastic...Two!

Oh, Jenna Jameson...you've had more people inside you than the Smithsonian, but you're still sexy!

Dissolving paper

What would you do with dissolving paper?

It's so wrong

...and yet, so right.

Oozinator

Why would they do this? Why?!

Ball Toucher

That's right. You heard me. Ball Toucher.

Juxtaposition

Did Jerry Falwell just write an op-ed for the New York Times? Really? Isn't this a sign of the apocalypse?

Your life and your "university" (...which it isn't...you can't have a biology department that doesn't buy the basic tenets of evolution, and an unquestioning and blind faith in the "literal" truth of the Bible is antithetical to the all-questioning nature of academia) have a political agenda, and it's entirely reasonable to view McCain's speech there as a political act. It's a trip into, as Jon Stewart said, "Crazy base-world."

Wrong on so many levels

Dude. Not cool.

Pimpstar

Oh, if I had an extra $20k lying around, I would _so_ do it. I so would.

Speech meme

Your Linguistic Profile:

55% General American English

30% Yankee

15% Dixie

0% Midwestern

0% Upper Midwestern

What Kind of American English Do You Speak?

Thanks Jerry!

"The sites use a variety of emotionally charged content, from images of real U.S. soldiers being hit by snipers in Iraq to video-recordings of American televangelists including Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell making disparaging remarks about Islam."

Hey, thanks guys! You're helping to recruit the next generation of al-Qaeda. Well done! Way to help the country!

Fucking religious nutjobs...

Yup yup yup!

Book. Book. Earth book. Book.

Your daily racist complaint

I swear to god, if I see another clueless Asian woman in a luxury convertible who did nothing to deserve it other than performing the unenviable task of sleeping with a tech nerd and WHO CAN'T DRIVE FOR SHIT, I swear I'm going to...going to...do something bad. And get angry. Possibly throttle a slow-moving and unattractive animal. I'll do it. I fucking swear.

In other news, I had to share the following Penny Arcade blog post. The following may be my two favorite paragraphs _ever_:

As a mental exercise: I really like caramel, but if I had to bathe in fucking caramel and eat it for every meal and fucking wear caramel for clothes, and then go to a building made out of caramel and work with sentient hunks of caramel I may find my taste for caramel diminished.

I don't doubt that Master Chief will carry himself in a valiant manner. I heard that he fights a polar bear in this one, and though slow to anger ursus maritimus - the White Devil - can prove a canny opponent. But Halo is no longer a game, or even a franchise - Halo is Microsoft's beachhead in an increasingly savage conflict. Bungie is ordnance. And what is ordnance if you do not expend it?