Today in the office it came up, though I can’t at the moment remember how, that I happened to be in broad—though qualified—agreement with an idea that is apparently considered common sense among a certain faction of liberals in America: that sports generally serve as a distraction from things that matter in one’s life. Chomsky has outright said this (stated it, for example, in an interview included in the documentary Manufacturing Consent), but of course Chomsky is one of those people I both admire and have issues with. In any case, I knew in stating my belief that there is some …
Month: November 2004
Prayer Affects Rate of Conception?
On The Trustworthiness of Liars and Ethics Guidelines-Violators, or,
Do You Religious People Really Want Idiots Like These On Your Side?
Regardless of what reporters publish in their employers’ pages, it’s not been scientifically demonstrated that prayer by third parties has any effect on one’s ability to conceive a child (or recover from illness, succeed in a war, or anything else, for that matter). Look! An American criminal was one of the authors of the study! What am I not surprised? I do find it saddening that Columbia University was dumb enough to let it be publicized, and that the general press establishment didn’t attack it once enough time had passed for the embarassment to be minimal. It seems religious nuts …
Catch-up
With my story sitting waiting for more, more, more (it’s like a plant whispering, “Feed me, Harvey!” from the depths of my hard drive), reams of wonderful photos to post to my photoblog, clothes to fold and put away, comments on my blog waiting for responses, and my head groggy from a short but much-needed nap, I sat down with my evening’s dinner—an immense bowl of salad, and that is all—and set about catching up on all the wonderful articles I’ve missed over at Arts & Letters Daily. I feel the same urge to catch up on missed posts on …
Whew…
After a brief outburst of worry at discovering that one of the previously involved departments—the one holding most of the prepared materials we used in summer camp—was refusing to pass on the materials because they were not being allowed to participate in the next camp… it was discovered that most of the needed materials were already included in the compiled “textbooks” teachers had been given (but had rarely consulted). So it looked as if we’d be horribly busy planning a whole new camp from the ground up. But it turned out that we don’t need to do this, and probably …
Pathetic
Today I decided to do something with the quinces I bought. I seem to have forgotten Lime’s advice, so instead of just chopping them and putting them with sugar in a jar to ripen, I boiled them down in water with some sugar added. This, for some reason, was what I thought would make it ripen more quickly and become nice gooey tea base. We’ll see what happens in a month or two, I suppose. Anyway, as I was peeling and chopping the fruit, I watched an episode of the TV show Dead Like Me, which I rather enjoy when …
Warmonger Humanitarian
I came back to the office to find the web browser opened to this article, so I went on ahead and read it. Anyone who actually believes that Bush & co. are humanitarians is on more drugs than your average touring funk band, if you’ll pardon a theft from a dead comedian. (Sorry, Bill Hicks.) Pitching a little against AIDS—and it is a little, when you’re still protecting drug companies’ profits—doesn’t undo one’s explicit lying in order to start a war in a country basically unrelated to the faction that attacked you. If you’re a lying, profiteering warmonger, you’re unable …
Waaaaaaaah.
I had this idea last year. Of course, I had no money to spend on it, so I would have been blown out of the water anyway, but… damn. I wish I’d gotten something going anyway, because it would’ve been cool. And maybe they’d have given me a job. Ah well. Back to the drawing board. Oh, wait… on closer analysis, this has much less likelihood than my idea of achieving cult status. Hoo hoo heh heh. I betcha I could get a job with them sometime. Hmmm. Better get that project done up, then. Maybe in February. Okay. Project. …
Consolation of Mediocracy
Well, thank God at least that the 2004 election was free from bullshit and fraud and fuckups. You know, if you can put people on the moon, you can certainly pay people to design a voting machine that will work. If democracy were a sacred value in America, then it’d be far beyond states’ rights, it’d be beyond the petty infighting between parties. You’d have temples to democracy all over the country where people would go for elections. You’d have vote-tabulation machines running software that were free from the kinds of errors that undergrad software-design courses teach even mediocre students …
Fashion Disasters
I am so behind on this, but of course it’s not that big a deal, so I’ll answer the question that Laura asked now: Think back to the 80’s and early 90’s – which were your five absolute worst fashion disasters? Do you have any photographs from that period, and most importantly, will you share them? Well, choosing any five given moments is pretty difficult, given that my life was kind of a continual fashion disaster from the first time I wore clothes until the eighth grade—which would be, let’s see, about the eighth grade, yeah. That was when suddenly …
Coming Out of Hiding
Well, it’s been a busy weekend. My computer went freaky-poos and I spent a lot of time trying to get it back into workable shape. I think it’s okay, though I won’t know until next time I have to reboot it. I think I ought to reinstall Windows but I’d rather not do that for another week, so I can finish downloading some files in my Emule queue and back up all the files I’ve crammed onto my M3. I’ve posted a couple of times on the new 한국언어 습득 weblog, mainly diary-like things. I may discontinue the posts in …