Not so Wretched Excess
Turns out my absurd amount of monitor real estate is actually a good thing.
Fighting Back
US opens the next chapter in the war on terror, against a new, bold enemy, willing to die for their cause.
NPH
Doogie Howser plays the Doogie Howser theme. Holy stinking awesome.
Percentages
As a rule I don’t post things about work up here. I also try and post things relevant to my life (it’s my server space after all). But sadly, most of my life has been consumed by work-related drama lately, so it’s quite difficult to sit down and crank something out for the site that has nothing to do with my professional life. Hence the low traffic this week.
So without violating those rules I must say, it’s a curious thing, this capitalistic system we’ve forced our selves into. Pay to go to school, to get the money to get the car so you can drive to work to pay to get the things you want that break or wear out so you get to work harder to replace them. And repeat.
Alarmingly, according to my social Security statement, which came in the mail today if i earn at the same pace I’m going for another 37 years, the government will pay-out about half of what I’m making now (this provided that the avian flu or the republicans don’t get us first). What will half my salary now be worth in 2046, I wonder. A loaf of bread?
So where’s the reward? What am i working for? The system seems like an infinite logic loop that only leads to a system failure at the end (think Windows 95). Except the crashes are at the expenses of thousands of hours of real people’s time. Is the work we do enriching peoples lives, changing the planet, elevating our society? Mine’s not, how about yours – and more frighteningly, do we even care? Consider that time is the most precious thing someone can have, and people are our most precious resource – by the transitive properties the cumulative waste of our lives in this system is monumentally mind blowing.
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want to go back to being a hunter/gatherer, but at the same time i think we’re smart enough to see when a system is broken. The question is what will the answer look like.
Rally
Big Picture on the Dakar/Africa Rally Race.
On the Sooners and the impending nuptials of Tim Tebow and the Fox Sports Crew…
Maybe part of its growing up in Texas, in the heady days of the Southwest Conference, but I feel like you should show a little solidarity with your region of the country. Especially with really important issues like a national championship game. In hindsight (taking into account said hindsight includes the after-effects of more than a few too many pints), after the screwing that Texas got from the BCS, It’s probably too much to ask, for folks in Austin to Pull for Oklahoma. But just the same, I was a little shocked by the one-sidedness of the crowds last night – I guess when your teams fight song is variation of I’ve been working on the railroad, it’s a bit much to expect them to remember there not in the SEC.
Of course it could be worse. The third quarter finds me siting at the bar in the Tavern, watching yet another one of my teams self-destruct at the last minute. However, the guy next to me, the only other person in the bar wearing red, has $500 on the Sooners in a getting-less-friendly-by-the-yard wager with the bartender. The guy is at least kind enough to pour my fellow comrade-in-crimson a shot every time Florida scores.
Somewhere along the line, probably after the Sooners blow two chances to score in the red-zone (bob, you know you can kick field goals in American football right?), I realize not only am I witnessing a crap game, but if the fox sports anchors are to be believed, something very magical and special. Did you know Tim Tebow is actually the second coming of Christ, The Dali Llama and Luke Skywalker rolled into one weird-looking, home-schooled package? Fair and Balanced my ass. Of course this is all occurring in Florida, the place that gave the White House to George W Bush nine years ago – at this point, I’m wiling to except that the entire state is actually some kind freakish reality TV show, where the unexpected can and inevitably will happen, with hilarious nation-destroying results. But I digress…
So, as expected, the team I was pulling for choked like and 80-year old emphysema patient. The only solace really is I can stop caring about sports for 8 months (with the exception of the Tour of course).
What the hell happened to all the hope?
“We could lose a generation of potential and promise, as more young Americans are forced to forego dreams of college or the chance to train for the jobs of the future,” Mr. Obama said. “And our nation could lose the competitive edge that has served as a foundation for our strength and standing in the world. In short, a bad situation could become dramatically worse.”
Combine that with the double-digit-unemployment remark, and this article makes for a real upper.
Death of a Paper
As financial ruin looms for the New York Times, we ponder a world without print.
The collapse of daily print journalism will mean many things. For those of us old enough to still care about going out on a Sunday morning for our doorstop edition of The Times, it will mean the end of a certain kind of civilized ritual that has defined most of our adult lives. It will also mean the end of a certain kind of quasi-bohemian urban existence for the thousands of smart middle-class writers, journalists, and public intellectuals who have, until now, lived semi-charmed kinds of lives of the mind. And it will seriously damage the press’s ability to serve as a bulwark of democracy. Internet purists may maintain that the Web will throw up a new pro-am class of citizen journalists to fill the void, but for now, at least, there’s no online substitute for institutions that can marshal years of well-developed sourcing and reporting experience—not to mention the resources to, say, send journalists leapfrogging between Mumbai and Islamabad to decode the complexities of the India-Pakistan conflict.
The Crazy/Hot Scale
There’s something strangely comforting about having Neal Patrick Harris sum up all of my college-era romantic relationships with a Madden-style line graph.
I Peed in Ron Paul's Pool
Best Facebook Group Ever. And, yes, I did.