if i wanted to do knowledge management, i'd have gone into tech writing.

Alas, a Blog

I need a name for this fallacy, because I sure see it come up a lot. For now, I'll call it the White Guy's Fallacy (I'm a white guy, so I'm allowed to make fun). The way it goes is that a person (not always a white guy) thinks, thinks, "well, would I be offended if someone say the same thing about me?" The answer is often "no," and the initial complaint is thus judged (and dismissed) as "hypersensitivity."

The problem is, the comparison is usually irrelevant.

this is the best explanation of this that i've seen.


(one more:

Respect and courtesy are legitimate political ends to seek, in their own right.

)

i am having a better day today. nathan didn't go into work today, and i have spent the whole day not more than a floor away from him. it's difficult to tell that i miss him, sometimes, but i expect that it's quite obviously true, since the quick fix for hating everything is more time with him.

also today, i went over to denae and laura's house, got slobbered on by the beagles, and denae and i worked out a bunch of artshow stuff for convergence. it was very productive and good.

and now i have just finished up the work that i brought home to do over the weekend, and i'm off to go wake up mr. sleepy who is in front of the tv, and then it will be off to bed for us.

yay!

anyone have any thoughts on whether hating everyone is a sign of depression? if you have thoughts on this, i would be pleased to hear them, although due to circumstances that if you're smart, i bet you can figure out, i can't guarantee a cheerful friendly reply.

QUEEN WEASEL is a Garlic-Eating Ninja Monkey ...with a Battle Rating of 9.6 To see if your Food-Eating Battle Monkey can defeat QUEEN WEASEL, enter your name:

i have a new job that i start tuesday, nathan is working about eighty hours a week, and we're trying to fix up the closets.

i have no time nor any brain. perhaps on tuesday (i am hoping the new job will be less stressful; i have my fingers crossed) i will have time and a brain again.

%.....|
...d).|
..../[|

If I were a NetHack monster, I would be a little dog. I'm a loyal and trusting companion, always ready to protect my friends. Even if they do feed me tripe, sometimes.

Which NetHack Monster Are You?

(no, no; not for me; for pirate.)

papersky: Another war poem.

Athene Polias, defender of cities,
the patron of civilization,
sits appalled in the UN,
hand pressed to her cheek.

papersky writes fine fine poems and good books, as well.

it seems very likely that that cookie now has kevin austin's name on it. but since i'm getting an ftp error, i don't know yet.

arrrrrgh. if you can find the unpaired italics tag in my source code, i will give you a cookie.

wow, but some people are irritating.

The Sideshow

We do large and small things, well-intentioned or merely petty indulgences, that help to create evil. Among them is the way middle-class people talk about "rednecks" - people we perceive as stupid, illiterate, slobs whose idea of a cultural event is to go out shooting things, swill beer, eat burgers, smoke cigarettes, and read Hustler. It infests our language in a thousands ways - a thousand ways that we make perfectly ordinary heterosexual attractions sound like perversion, natural impulses to make yourself feel good seem like some kind of attack on society or even the whole planet.

everyday evil, and how rush limbaugh got so popular. go read.

pink hair! and my parents' dog!

look!

Which glamour goddess are you? By kjfishie


more pointless quiz results!

You're an anime corset. Colorful.


What corset are you?
brought to you by Quizilla


this is so, so wrong.

Statement of Senator Mark Dayton

The Constitution says simply, clearly, emphatically: Congress shall declare war. Only Congress. No one else. Not the President. Not the judiciary. Not the military. Only Congress. 100 Senators and 435 Representatives elected by, and acting for, the people of the U.S.
Last October, a majority of Members of the 107th Congress, a majority in the House and Senate – voted to transfer that authority to the President. Five months before he has made his final decision regarding war or peace, Congress was asked to give him that authority – that the Constitution assigns only to us – and Congress did. The resolution gave the President the authority to use whatever means necessary, including the use of force, against Iraq.

bless you, senator dayton.

(i voted for this one, i did.)

never let it be said that the nytimes has no sense of humor.

U.S. Reports Talks Urging Surrender of Elite Troops

Late today, the administration released a list of 43 nations it said were willing to be identified publicly as coalition members. Many of them had little to offer the war effort but moral support. While the list included Afghanistan, Eritrea, the Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Rwanda and Uganda, only Britain and Australia have contributed sizable forces.

A FORCE MORE POWERFUL | Nonviolent Strategies and Methods | 198 Methods of Nonviolence

198 Methods of Nonviolent Action.Practitioners of nonviolent struggle have an entire arsenal of "nonviolent weapons" at their disposal. Listed below are 198 of them, classified into three broad categories: nonviolent protest and persuasion, noncooperation (social, economic, and political), and nonviolent intervention. A description and historical examples of each can be found in volume two of The Politics of Nonviolent Action by Gene Sharp.

Salon.com News | Odd man out

a salon interview with john brady kiesling, the first diplomat to resign publically in the US.

When you turn on CNN today, what's your reaction to unfolding events?
I'm very depressed. I just feel we're entering a new sort of ugly phase where America attempts to be a unilateral power. But we do not realize that the United States was the chief beneficiary of an international system that found alternatives to violence -- the idea that the United Nations provided hope for peaceful resolution. We have just told [the world] that that's not longer operative, and that violence is the last, best resort. And I'm afraid we'll be victims of that violence far more than we are the beneficiaries of that violence.

Media Whores Online

Quote of the Day
"I am saddened that this president failed so miserably at diplomacy that we're now forced to war. Saddened that we have to give up one life, because this president couldn't create the kind of diplomatic effort that was so critical for our country."

- Senator Tom Daschle

mwo also has good stuff.

my job is making me homicidal. i think i need a new one.

Mark Twain's The War Prayer

"O Lord our Father, our young patriots, idols of our hearts, go forth to battle-be Thou near them! With them, in spirit, we also go forth from the sweet peace of our beloved firesides to smite the foe. O Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn them out roofless with their little children to wander unfriended the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, sports of the sun flames of summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit, worn with travail, imploring Thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it-for our sakes who adore Thee, Lord, blast their hopes, blight their lives, protract their bitter pilgrimage, make heavy their steps, water their way with their tears, stain the white snow with the blood of their wounded feet! We ask it, in the spirit of love, of Him Who is the Source of Love, and Who is ever-faithful refuge and friend of all that are sore beset and seek His aid with humble and contrite hearts. Amen.

have i told you read The Sideshow yet? you should.

today it's making my stomach hurt, but really, being awake is making my stomach hurt. (conspiracy theories that i haven't seen yet: shrub is just doing this because he holds stock in rolaids.)

weather.com - Local Home and Garden Page

58°F
Partly Cloudy
Feels Like 58°F

the world is going to hell in a handbasket, but at least the weather's nice.

Editorial: The 'common good' / Report calls for its rediscovery

These are troubling days in Minnesota for many reasons, but the Citizens League has produced a report that crystalizes the most important deficit now facing the state. It's not a financial shortage, but a shortage of belief in the common good.

yes indeedy.

(hey! pawlenty! raise my taxes!)

but on a different subject, i am thinking that i am going to get another tattoo. it will be a small blackwork frog. however, i don't know where it's going to go. if you have an opinion, please email me. (the link is on the left.)

this is not the grand unified tattoo design that i've been thinking about and talking about for a few years now; i'm still working on that one. (by the way, if you wanted to draw me a circle of flowering vines, with a design strong enough not to be overpowered by the fact that it will be encircling about two square inches of nearly solid blackwork, please do let me know. i like morning glories.)

but this little frog has stuck in my head for a while, so i think it wants to come home with me.

i am, sadly, against getting a tattoo somewhere where it will be imperative that i discuss it with my manager. but backs and shoulders and legs are all fine.

ripped a lot of wallpaper out of the hall closet today. wheeeeee. or something. tomorrow, we plaster it with goop and take the rest of the wallpaper down.

i have been too busy this weekend so far, and it looks like i'll be too busy again tomorrow. i skipped a birthday party that i wanted to go to (i'm sorry, figment!) and i'm still feeling overloaded. productive, but overloaded.

BBC NEWS | World | Americas | 'Freedom fries' lambasted in US

Ms Hall Broun recalled that, were it not for the French, the Americans would have lost the battle for independence against their now close ally Britain, during the American Revolution.

The Head Heeb : Knocking Down 4000 Years of Icons

There is a difference between principled unilateralism and contempt for the rest of the world. There is a difference between vigilance at home and gratuitous erosion of civil liberties. There is a difference between measured use of military force and wanton disregard for the political and social elements of the conflict. There is a difference between genuinely humanitarian intervention and a Noriega-style takedown of a former client, based on manufactured excuses, that will result in continued Ba'athist rule with the serial numbers filed off. All these things will happen if this war continues on its present course - and all these things will exact a terrible price in broken alliances and lost freedoms without bringing victory.

To paraphrase Jim Henley, I will support this war again when we return to fighting it like the United States of fucking America.

it's about torture, the war on (some) drugs, and the war on terrorism/iraq.

as my sister says, bacteriomophages!

BBC NEWS | UK | Scotland | Scientists employ MRSA 'enemies'

Scientists in Glasgow believe they have found a way to beat the hospital superbug MRSA.
Researchers at Strathclyde University have developed wound dressings and stitches containing waterborne viruses which kill the bacteria.

i think bacteriophages are enormously cool. they are little viruses that go eat the bacteria; thus the fancy latin name for bacteria-eater.

mrsa is really scary-- no, strike that, it's really fucking scary. it stands for methicillin resistant staph aureus. to make things even better, there's now a version that is vancomycin resistant as well.

when my dad was sick, he was colonized with mrsa, and we don't know if it was one of the things that was making him sick (due to also being infected with it) when he was septic.

i'm probably colonized with it, too. but not infected with it. hopefully, if i ever get infected with it due to this colonization, it'll be after five years from now, after these scots have the bacteriophage dressings on the market.

there are things that i love about my job.

long, poorly implemented teleconferences are not one of them.

rfc748 - Telnet randomly-lose option

if you're not a big time internet junkie, you may not have realized that rfc's were hysterically funny.

well, they are.

and i'm not even talking about the obvious ones like ip over carrier pigeon.

Since this is implemented as a TELNET option, it is expected that servers which do not implement this option will not randomly lose; ie, they will provide 100% reliable uptime.

storypeople

Anyone can slay a dragon, he told me, but try waking up every morning & loving the world all over again. That's what takes a real hero.

they write books, too. and make furniture.

t r u t h o u t - Arrest Me By William Rivers Pitt

George W. Bush is out of control.
I'll say it again.
George W. Bush is out of control.
I'm waiting for the black government cars to come squealing up in front of my house, for the thump of leather on my stairs, for the sound of knuckles on my door, for the feel of steel braceleting my wrists, for the smell of urine in some dank Federal holding cell as I listen to questions from men who no longer feel the constricting boundaries of constitutional law abutting their duties.
Sounds paranoid, doesn't it? Straight out of the Turner Diaries, maybe. Sounds like I'm waiting for the ominous whop-whop-whop of the blades on a black helicopter churning the air over my home. Sounds like I'm waiting to find a laser dot on my chest above my heart before the glass breaks and the bullet pushes my guts out past my spine.
Crazy, right?

sadly, not crazy.

(george w. bush is out of control.)

Syl Jones: Affirmative action? No, what I want is my money

Every single African-American who survived the terrorist onslaught perpetrated by the majority of white society deserves compensation for his or her losses, direct and indirect. And I'll make a deal with you: Give me just one-tenth of the hundreds of millions of dollars stolen from us in free labor, confiscated homes and land, in human flesh and blood, and in psychological agony, and I'll gladly donate a large part of my share to your education. Because most of you desperately need it.

i find syl jones to be useful reading. you may or may not.

my manager is out sick. she's got bronchitis. but before she left, she left me with her secret jellybean stash. mmmmm!

from a conversation with my sweetie james:

j: Well, it'll be interesting to see the reaction to my review of Harrison Bergeron in SFBC1962...

b: heh. i'll have to go look. rasfw?

j: Yes. My feeling is that some of the people who complain most bitterly about being prevented from blooming in their own special way in school aren't actual victims (like left handers or, god help them, teens who come out of the closet in high school) but rather people who wouldn't finish their homework when they found it boring.

this also reminded me of an essay that's being blogged around right now, paul graham's _why i'm better than everyone who used to treat me mean_... er, i mean, _why nerds are unpopular_.

he has several good points. junior high is institutionalized torture, run by the inmates. senior high can be better (and was, for me), but isn't always. the school system needs some serious work.

but i'd like to hear a few more (well, all right, any) suggestions for improving it, and a few less grandiose unsupported statements about either the school system or the real world.

my favorite, in the "what color is the sky on this man's planet" sort of way, is:

In almost any group of people you'll find hierarchy. Whatever the group's purpose, the top dogs will be those who are best at it. On a professional football team, the most skillful players are the most respected. In university math departments, the leaders will be those who prove the most significant results. This is, on the whole, healthy. Hierarchy is not the problem. The problem is what hierarchies in schools are based on.

When groups of adults form in the real world, it's generally for some common purpose. The leaders end up being those who are best at it.

sheeesh.

it might make you feel better

have i mentioned exploding dog recently? or ever? sometimes it's weird, sometimes it's tedious, sometimes you wonder what sort of drugs this guy is on.

and sometimes it's beautiful and sweet and heartwarming.

awwww.

US prepares to use toxic gases in Iraq
By Geoffrey Lean and Severin Carrell

The US is preparing to use the toxic riot-control agents CS gas and pepper spray in Iraq in contravention of the Chemical Weapons Convention, provoking the first split in the Anglo-US alliance. "Calmative" gases, similar to the one that killed 120 hostages in the Moscow theatre siege last year, could also be employed.
The convention bans the use of these toxic agents in battle, not least because they risk causing an escalation to full chemical warfare. This applies even though they can be used in civil disturbances at home: both CS gas and pepper spray are available for use by UK police forces. The US Marine Corps confirmed last week that both had already been shipped to the Gulf.

The Sacramento Bee -- sacbee.com -- Molly Ivins: Many sides to Middle East conflict

It seems to me each side in the debate over this war has an unacknowledged elephant in the living room. And, oddly enough, it's the same elephant: oil. The hawks -- rightly, I think -- dismiss the slogan, "No Blood for Oil," as, at least, an overdramatic overstatement of what's at stake here. On the other hand, as somebody else observed, if the Middle East's primary export were kumquats, this wouldn't be happening. It seems to me oil is not the primary cause for this war, but it's equally stupid to pretend it has nothing to do with what gives.

oh, it's a crappy week so far. there's bad work stuff going on, and i just found out that i misremembered a date that something was happening, and as a result gave bad information to a friend of mine about how to plan things.

aarrrrrrrrrrgh.

crappy crappy crappy.

if you have any pictures of me, by the way, i would greatly appreciate it if you would scan them so that i could grab a copy of them.

there's a lot of my life that i don't have pictures of.

it just occurred to me that once someone is part of my life, i don't ever expect them to not be part of my life. which part they are can change, drastically, but i don't expect them to go away.

weird. must ponder.

just so that my opinion is known for the ages, because i know you're all waiting with bated breath:

livejournal is not alt.fan.me. it's not alt.fan.me.moderated, either.

it's alt.me.

that's a crucial difference.

i wish today were friday. sad me.

just so that you can all be as appalled as m. socks was about the purple and yellow paint for the bathroom, i should mention that the tile in the bathroom is blue and green.

(m. socks wants to know why we don't use the closet paint for the bathroom and use the bathroom paint for the closets. i believe that "because we don't wanna" is the canonical answer on that one.)

okay, so most people end up thinking that i just like songs about depressing relationships, or bad breakups, or preferably, both!

this is only partially true.

i also, despite all the odds, end up liking songs about figuring out how to make things work out all right, and about encouraging other people to do the same.

as evidence, i present this jimmy eat world song.


Hey, don't write yourself off yet
It's only in your head
You feel left out or looked down on
Just try your best, try everything you can
And don't you worry what they tell themselves
When you're away

It just takes some time, little girl
You're in the middle of the ride
Everything, everything will be just fine
Everything, everything will be all right, all right

Hey, you know they're all the same
You know you're doing better on your own
So don't buy in, live right now
Yeah, just be yourself
It doesn't matter if that's good enough for someone else

It just takes some time, little girl
You're in the middle of the ride
Everything, everything will be just fine
Everything, everything will be all right, all right

It just takes some time, little girl
You're in the middle of the ride
Everything, everything will be just fine
Everything, everything will be all right, all right

Hey, don't write yourself off yet
It's only in your head
You feel left out or looked down on
Just do your best, do everything you can
And don't you worry what the bitter hearts are gonna say

It just takes some time, little girl
You're in the middle of the ride
Everything, everything will be just fine
Everything, everything will be all right, all right

It just takes some time, little girl
You're in the middle of the ride
Everything, everything will be just fine
Everything, everything will be all right, all right


i've been singing loudly along with this on the radio for months, without knowing who it was. but now i know.

now i am working (fsvo "working") on financial stuff to hand over to the financial advisor, so she can tell what's going on with us.

oh, the excitement.

today, we bought paint and things for painting, and also went to a financial advisor.

so far, i like this advisor much more than i'd ever liked our last one. if she continues along her path of not being dumb, i think we'll keep her.

we bought yellow paint and also purple paint for the bathroom. it's not going to be both purple and yellow; it's going to be either purple or yellow. but we're not sure which. so we bought a quart of each to try them out. we also bought a nice light green color for the insides of the closets.

whoever buys this house after we do will have strong feelings about our color choices. i don't know if they're going to be positive or negative, but they will certainly be strong.

on the weekends, i have oodles of time to respond to email.

but no one writes me any on the weekends.

during the week, i'm busy at work, and people write me email and i write them quick little responses back.

sad sad me. ah, well.