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Friday, June 30
Quirky Cool
A brief interview on NPR yesterday tipped me off to the fact that one of my favorite singers, Regina Spektor, has a new album out. I know, you've never heard of her. She's good, trust me.
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Thursday, June 29
Separation of Powers
The U.S. Supreme Court today ruled against the administration regarding the rights of "enemy combatants" (the administration's obfuscated term for "people we want to detain but not have to treat the way the Geneva Accords say we do"). The decision surprised me, but does not leave me unhappy. More importantly to me, though, was the (at the moment largely) overlooked fact that the Supreme Court, as part of this case, considered one of those silly little additions Congress has started adding to laws (attempts to limit judicial oversight by declaring laws off limits to the courts), something I wrote about almost two years ago. In this case, Congress wrote a law that, in part, dictates that the courts can't hear cases involving Guantanamo detainees. And despite the fact that at least two of the justices had no problem with that (how can Scalia call himself an originalist if he disregards the Constitutional concepts of separation of powers and checks and balances in favor of a statute passed specifically to avoid criticism of a potentially unconstitutional law?), the majority rejected that idea. To me, that's the larger victory in this case, and I'm looking forward to seeing analysis of it after the attention on the larger issue dies down.
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Wednesday, June 28
Cosmic Scale
I make no apologies for my geekiness, and to further cement said status I present the coolest* image I've come across this week. (Yes, it's work safe.) ------------------------ * Not including nudity and/or lightsabers.
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Tuesday, June 27
Transitioning
I'm sure this will be a horribly fabulous piece of small-screen indulgence, a worthy contender against other large-to-small-screen adaptations (such as Highlander and The Crow). Couldn't they at least get Michael Jai White instead of a rapper I've never heard of?
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Monday, June 26
Touch Sensitive
I slammed one of my fingers in the door from my basement to my garage on Sunday. It split the skin at the base of the nail and pulled up a patch of skin in the standard laceration pattern, and it hurt considerably for about 10 minutes. Then the pain went away and I forgot about it other than to keep blood from dripping on the projects that consumed my attention. Until the next time I put my hand in my pocket and re-opened it. Since then, I've been "reminded" of its existence each time I reach into something or brush against something. I stopped today to ponder how amusing it is that we don't give a second thought to how often the various parts of our bodies are in contact with other things, until that contact causes pain. It leads one to wonder at the number of other things we fail to recognize until they become troublesome.
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Saturday, June 24
All the Zoo That's Fit To Print
Linde is visiting me for a few days and we hit the zoo today. I took 121 pictures (ouch), of which a handful turned out with some degree of clarity.
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Friday, June 23
Juxtaposition
As I have failed miserably to keep secret, I have no interest at all in sports, especially the genre characterized as "televised" or "spectator" sports. I know nothing about the Cornhuskers' schedules or records. I can't name more than a handful of NFL or NBA teams. I am bereft of any sort of lapel pin or bumper sticker proclaiming my devotion to an arbitrarily chosen branding. And thus I'm largely ambivalent about Tiger Wood's failure to make the cut for whatever the big golf tournament that just happened was. I was, however, amused that the news page automatically loaded advertisements featuring Mr. Woods, ads that assume the prodigy is playing well. Such is the uncaring nature of algorithms.
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Wednesday, June 21
Mr. Wizard
Cris was kind enough to lead the vanguard for this Internet phenom, and a few days later I heard an interview on NPR with the gentlemen responsible for its creation. Although not on the same scale, Lane and I wasted $8 of soda (Diet Coke with Lime, since that's the only kind of Diet Coke I like, not that it mattered here) and candy on our own scientific investigation (video here, pictures here). :)
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Monday, June 19
Ubiquitous Updates
Things I've learned in the last few days: You have to grease a Bundt pan with shortening to get the cake to come out in one piece. So Jamie and Matt got cake #2, while the assorted pieces of cake #1 went to Lane and her family (according to them, "cake is cake"). The twins love the kiddy pool. Alltel still sucks. The word " callipygian." Labels: twins
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Friday, June 16
Why Televised Sports Are Overrated
[Not work safe warning]This purports to be a European advertisement (I don't know if it's from print or electronic media) for a television channel that's *not* carrying the World Cup at the moment. I thought it was hilarious, and a fairly good indication of the difference in standards between the U.S. and Europe. No way is this ad running here (and in fact would be illegal in four states). [End not work safe warning]
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Happy Birthday!
To my dear down-under friend and personal codemonkey, Mull. He insists he lives in a coastal city and doesn't actually have to wrestle kangaroos and crocodiles to get to work every day, but I think he's just modest. Labels: birthdays
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Thursday, June 15
Living in the Now
No past, no future The world shrinks to a moment Held in a heart beat.
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Wednesday, June 14
Exquisite Existence
Although loath to apply the word "drama" to the fodder of my unwritten memoir, I have existed, perhaps even endured, amidst the peaks and valleys of a wondrous, jagged mountain range as of late, somewhere between the lush glens below and the icy, death-shrouded summit above. It is a colorful place of serene beauty, its loneliness and solitude both advantage and curse. Now and then a grizzly bear tries to eat me. My inability to find a compatible relationship is staying over this week, but we're old friends, he and I, and even though I know he cheats at chess I tolerate his presence in hopes that someday he'll get bored and go away. I hate Alltel. More to come later. My sleeping patterns have not adjusted well to my new hours. I'm rarely wakened by my neighbors' dogs now, which in and of itself is a thing to be admired, but instead I simply fail to properly appreciate the oblivion that comes with unconsciousness. I really do think I'm supposed to be on a 30-hour cycle. Given the slowing of the Earth's rotation due to tidal forces from the moon, I should only have to wait a few billion years for that to actually happen (of course, the length of the year will still be the same; we'll just have fewer days of longer length). To peek at the light side for a moment, though, I got a couple of good pictures today.
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Monday, June 12
About Damn Time
This is a great advance. I'm sure it won't be as cheap as a soda, but I still want to encourage all of my female friends to go get this. I see they're preparing a study to see if it works on men, too, which would be fabulous as well (not for men, for whom HPV has largely no symptoms, but for the women who could potentially catch it from men).
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Saturday, June 10
Aging Gracefully
An actual conversation I had with a very nice high school student who volunteers with me at the library: Him: So where do you go to school? Me: Heh, well, I graduated awhile ago. I'm old. Him: Oh. *pause* Have you picked a major yet? Me: *pausing because I realize the first question was what *high school* I go to* Um, well, my degree is in English. Him: Oh. When did you graduate? Me: Let's see . . . about seven years ago. At that point he realized I was an "adult" and the conversation kind of broke down (he talked about how annoyed he was that his parents forgot to turn the air conditioner on that day or something, but it was the kind of thing I could just say "uh huh" to occasionally; he stopped asking questions about me). I was kind of amused at the barriers that went up when he realized I was an adult (for whatever reason; it's not "cool" to associate with adults, there's too much of an experience gap or it's intimidating, take your pick or add your own). I always got on fairly well with adults when I was in high school, but I understand it's a rare thing. My primary amusement, though, was that he mistook me for a high school student in the first place. I mean, sure, on a good day I might be able to pass for 23 or 24 (and I've been carded each of the rare few times I've been in a situation involving buying alcohol in the last few years), but 16? It would be flattering if it weren't so absurd. On the other hand, at least he didn't think I was 15 years *older* than I am . . .
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Friday, June 9
Gremlins
The twins have started to learn what they should and shouldn't be doing, as evidenced by Lisa's newfound concern whenever the house becomes *too* quiet. One such interlude of silence culminated in this photo. It was bound to happen eventually. Labels: twins
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Wednesday, June 7
This and That
I've been rather busy as of late, which is an unusual, perhaps even unstable, state for me. The new job is going ("going" shall suffice, as any further descriptor would conflict with my policy re not writing about work). I started volunteering at the library for the Summer Reading Program today (which means I actually entered some state vaguely resembling consciousness at 8 a.m. for the first time in, well, how long have I been out of college?). The first day was rather disappointing, to be honest; sacrificing two hours of sleep hardly seems worth reading books left on the return rack in the children's section for an hour and a half and then cutting out zebras for 15 minutes. I've also been reading some Zen poetry, which I don't understand in the least but I find fascinating anyway ("Without thinking of good or evil, show me your original face before your mother and father were born"). I'm considering creating a poetry blog just for fun, although whether it would be public or not is debatable. I did some light landscaping (if you can even call this landscaping) a few nights ago. The primary motivation was to test certain concepts and materials, but the fact that I can in the future avoid the awkward "circle dance" around that pole with the lawnmower certainly entered my mind. Hopefully future improvements will follow, enthusiasm and pocketbook willing. Lane and I need to buy Mentos and Diet Coke (hopefully the cheaper generic brand will suffice). I heard an interview with the two guys from the video on NPR today, who are apparently planning a bigger display even than this one, but Lane and I will probably limit it to a couple of bottles. Maybe one inside Cris's shiny new Jeep. Pacifist though he is, that *might* just be enough to entice him to try to kill me. If I catch it on video, it might be worth it. Hope everyone is well.
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Tuesday, June 6
Happy 666
Or 6/6/06, actually, but that's not as impressive. I have a 666 in my Social Security number, so I should probably watch out today. Or not.
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Saturday, June 3
A Long Way From Home
I saw a license plate a few days ago from, of all places, *Hawaii*. Which, last I checked, has half an ocean of water between it and the continental U.S. How bizarre, how bizarre.
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Thursday, June 1
Behavior Modification
U.S. troops in Iraq are starting " ethics training" after some recent events in that region. You know, basics like "don't cheat," "don't steal" and " don't go door to door killing unarmed women and children."
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Extroversion Training
I spent a couple of hours at a booth at Elmwood Park for the kickoff of the Summer Reading Program this evening, signing kids up and explaining to parents how the program works. Basically I showed up, one of the librarians said "Here, take over," and I kind of learned by being thrown off the deep end. I can't say I'm going to rush out to take up public speaking, but it was tolerable, and it was good to see a really great turnout. They also had some questionable characters out and about, but all in all it was a good time.
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Making a Statement
Nebraska is one of 13 states this week that began seeing a campaign from Focus on the Family designed to persuade the senators from said states to support an upcoming vote on a marriage amendment to the Constitution. I saw the first of the ads (provided there's more than one; perhaps I should say "I saw the ad" and amend it if there are more) in the World-Herald today. It's a very impressive ad. A half-page all in black, with a picture of a sad child and flowing prose that starts with "All children deserve a mom and a dad" and ends with "Sen. Hagel needs to be reminded of this fact." I rolled my eyes. The argument presented was a classic straw man argument (one of the various forms of logical fallacy). Rather than saying "Sen. Hagel disagrees with this amendment for reasons x, y and z and this is why we believe those reasons are wrong," the writers use a progression of opinion-based and loosely connected statements to link "we need to do our best for our children" to "Sen. Hagel doesn't care about children," which I doubt very much is factually accurate. In order: 1) "All children need a mom and a dad." In a perfect world, within the social constraints of Western civilization, this is the preferred setup. But it's by no means a requirement. If it is, the divorce rate of straight couples presents a much greater problem to Focus on the Family than gay marriages does, since it's an active source of single-parent households (and saying "Those children still technically have two parents; they just aren't living together" ignores the fact that the children of a gay couple, for the time being, also have a biological mother and father who just aren't living together). I'd also opine that in many cases children are far better off with a single parent than with two parents one of whom is abusive. 2) "Gay marriage will harm children by creating families without a mother and a father." I'm not sure if they're up on the legal requirements for conception, but gay couples don't have to be married to have children any more than live-in straight couples do. It's not like getting married "unlocks the secret code to having children." Given that, I don't see how this entire argument has any weight at all (unless the follow-up amendment will define who is allowed to have children). 3) "Sen. Hagel has not voted for this amendment and therefore is not interested in protecting children." I don't know Hagel's reasons for not voting for it, but I highly doubt it's because he doesn't care for the welfare of children. I think it's far more likely he doesn't feel it's an issue worth enshrining in the Constitution, or he feels that since it has almost no chance of being ratified it's largely a symbolic rallying tool and not a serious method of effecting change (or perhaps even that its effects on children aren't what the ads say they are).
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