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Saturday, August 02, 2003
I had to work today, Saturday. I went in because I am a pussy, which is also why I work at 3btech. (I build computers.) Actually it's not that bad of a job. The hours are usually good and I get to listen to the Chinese language radio I mentioned earlier. And today we put on the local Light Rock station's "Totally 80's Weekend" instead. Trust me, If you haven't slathered heat sink grease on thirty Athlon processors while rocking out to REO Speedwagon's "Keep on Lovin' You," you haven't lived. I digress. I had to come in today because we got the first of what will be many school orders. My old high school needed 29 new machines for their computer lab. They barely even had a computer lab when I was there, just a few decrepit Macs in the library where I could check out this new World Wide Web thingy instead of going to Physics class; now they have multiple computer labs. And this is a comparably poor Catholic school with a tight budget. And they're the reasonable ones. The public schools we do business with are clearly insane. (That's why they call them Educational Institutions BAH-DUM-DUM!) One of them has one less-than-three-year-old computer per every two students, and plans on ordering another two or three hundred machines from us this year, plus an assload of LCD monitors. According to a coworker, if they don't spend their yearly tech budget, it disappears-- or rather goes back to the tax payers-- so they are compelled to waste it on frivolous things. Ahhh, bureaucracy. I also substitute teach, and I gotta tell ya that kids are dumber than when I was in school. Sure they have 3 Ghz Pentium IVs with broadband connections, but all they use them for is to Instant Message their friends or search for JPEGs of Ashton Kucher. It's not exactly an educational tool. There's this thing called reading that they don't seem to really "get" yet. And if anything the Internet makes it worse since they can cut-n-paste together a report from encyclopediabritannica.com rather than learn how to find and compile information. Also, they start \\'R1T1N6 L1K3 T|-|15 Crazy kids. Mr. President, I say leave these children behind. posted by Nate on 6:39 PM link Friday, August 01, 2003Yesterday was the four month anniversary of my web log. I celebrated by not posting. The lesson, as always: I'm a lazy so-and-so. Things around here have been fairly slow the last month. Things have been slow everyewhere the last month; when I started this blog there was lots of war coverage to discuss, and a bunch of sports items to deconstruct. Nowdays, the only thing newsworthy is Kobe Bryant sexually assaulting Nigerian yellowcake, causing voters to demand a gubenatorial recall. Or something like that-- my coworker listens to the Chinese language news radio station seven hours a day and I do not speak Chinese, so I might have a few of the details wrong. Mmmm.... yellowcake. Where was I? Oh yeah, we're stuck in a news quagmire, with no exit strategy. Three weeks with nothing to write about: why it's just like Vietnam, I tell you! All the top bloggers took vacations-- the casualties are mounting. Those in power are content to stand idly by and do nothing-- NOTHING!--, callously disregarding the lives of Blogosphere citizens. Where is the accountability? Take to the streets, friends. Demand to have your voice heard! WHAT DO WE WANT? NEWS! WHEN DO WE WANT IT? NOW! For the love of Pete, President Bush had better start a unilateral war with someone, quick, so I have something to blog about. Desperate times call for desperate measures; I suggest placing a map of the Middle East in the White House Rose Garden, and having Glenn Reynold throw ceremonial lawn darts at it to determine the opponent. Dear Syria, It regrets me to inform you that, at 12:01 PM EST Sunday, you were "jarted." The bombing begins tomorrow. Cheers, --GWB posted by Nate on 1:43 AM link Wednesday, July 30, 2003Need a nicotine fix and smoking's not allowed in the bar? No problem! Start drinking martinis that taste like Camel cigarettes. "It tastes like a cross between vodka and chewing tobacco," said Fort Lauderdale resident Jonathan Cook. Ewww. I mean, seriously. Ewww. posted by Nate on 8:55 PM link Tuesday, July 29, 2003Interesting interview with Imad Ahmad of the Minaret of Freedom Institute, an organization dedicated to showing "that Islam is not only compatible with but intimately related to free speech, free religious exercise and free markets." The successful periods in Muslim civilization were based on such values, and many of the principles of Islam are really universal values seen through a religious / cultural lens. He discusses the Wahabbi movement and the need for Islamic countries to separate state authority from religious matters, instead emphasizing individual conscience: [The Wahabbis imposed] taqlid, or blind imitation. It's ironic that the Wahhabi movement was founded by a man opposed to the blind imitation that had taken over the Muslim world. But as soon as he had laid out his own ideas, his followers tried to impose them by a process of blind imitation... The opposite of taqlid is ijtihad. This is the struggle by the individual scholar for understanding. In the first few hundred years of Islamic history, it was one of the tools of jurisprudence. However, starting in about the 12th Century and, at least in the Sunni world, the 16th century, it had been replaced by taqlid, just blind imitation of whatever the previous generation of scholars had concluded. I believe this process of ijtihad needs to be revived in the Muslim world. And it is being revived. We need original, rational, critical thinking. To the degree that we have it, I would be optimistic about what you would call Islamic Protestantism. posted by Nate on 11:48 PM link The proposed design for the Arizona Cardinal's new stadium looks like an I-Mac. The "retro ballpark" look is through, and the next generation's stadiums will look like something from the 1950 World's Fair vision of The Future(TM). I'm partial to towering glass and steel monoliths myself, but it'll be weird to drink warm ballpark beer and watch football in a structure that resembles the Sydney Opera House. posted by Nate on 11:31 PM link Monday, July 28, 2003Dave Barry is not making this up: Cheese is addictive. It "is loaded with casein, a protein that breaks up during digestion to produce morphine-like opiate compounds called casomorphins." Let the sueing begin! UPDATE: Here's a Fox News story on how fast food is like heroin. Personally, I don't eat fast food because it's bad for you and costs too much. To get my daily fix, I hit the crack pipe instead. posted by Nate on 12:16 AM link Sunday, July 27, 2003Sports Illustrated's Paul "Dr. Z" Zimmerman had this to say about ESPN adding Rush Limbaugh to their football pregame show: on Thursday afternoon I did an interview on ESPN Radio, only because I wanted to present my Limbaugh views right up front. So I ranted and raved for a while about how ABC set the idiot-tone with its Dennis Miller venture. But Miller, while being a football ignoramus, at least wasn't mean, in direct contrast to this Limbaugh character, who's not only stupid and nasty, but stupid and nasty at the top of his voice. The pity of it is that I used to enjoy watching Countdown, but of course I won't tune in anymore. And what do you think the radio guy said? Right on cue he came in with, "See that, we're all talking about him." To which I retorted that we talk about murderers, too, and thugs and all manner of aberrant behavior, which doesn't mean that we want to include it as expert commentary on the football scene. I hope to God this is the last reference to Limbaugh that I'll have to make. Um, Paul, tell us how you really feel. Sure Rush is smarmy and partisan, but do you really think that will affect his performance on a football show? "To recap, the Philadelphia Eagles smoked the New York Giants 35 - 13. Or at least they would smoke them, if smoking were legal in New York. Yet another case of big government Liberal idiocy-- Back to you, Chris!" I think Dr. Z forgets that Rush is an entertainer first and foremost, and he plays to his audience's expectations. There was once a remarkably innovative sportscaster on ESPN who exhibited all the qualities of a young Rush Limbaugh-- sly, cocky, brimming with laugh-out-loud sarcasm. A wisecracking postmodern quipster who cut to the heart of how silly the sports world was. Keith Olbermann was the main reason ESPN's SportsCenter is as popular as it is today; he was the new sportscaster template. He was perfect for sports. By contrast, his MSNBC show is partisan and nasty and not all that enjoyable to a lot of right-leaning people like me. When he turns his acerbic wit on things that you care about, you get angry. But get him reading Yankees - Bluejays highlights and I don't give a flying fig about his beliefs on prescription drug benefits. He's a showman, a wag, and a damn good one. Let's give Limbaugh a chance before we, erm, "Rush" to judgment. Gee that was a bad pun. Gianluca Pagliuca. posted by Nate on 6:27 PM link I watched the Monsters, Inc. DVD last night with my godson. Pretty good flick, with a moderately funny script and good voice acting. The animation was tremendous and crisp, with all sorts of subtle things happening at once, and the screen never getting the "jaggies" or overcompensating motion blurs that characterize most 3d computer games. There were a few times when I said, "Wow, I can't believe they pulled off that shot!," but the animation was never so over the top that it distracted from the story. The humans didn't quite look right, but I was especially impressed by the detail that went into Sully's fur; hair is almost impossible to render realistically. The end of the movie also has a cute story about corporate responsibility thrown in-- it's like Hudsucker Proxy for five year olds. The protagonists come to realize that scaring kids is wrong, so they need to remake monster society. No matter how necessary a technology is for the survival of a population, we must consider the ethics behind it. If it is an unethical system, we must find alternatives, hopefully through technology. A few good people, acting with principle and ingenuity, can forge better institutions than the ones we have. It's like a morality tale about American slavery and the Industrial Revolution, or about hydrogen fuel cell cars, or about a hundred other things-- mainly, it's about the early "hard" science fiction attitude toward technology, that it is a thing of wonder, a boon to mankind, rather than the dystopian vision of evil robots enslaving us or genetically engineered sharks getting medieval on mankind's collective behind. Science is a great tool we can use to make the world a better place, but only if we place ethical restraints on its use. A scream machine and a laughter machine are fundamentally the same; using the technology for good or ill depends on the character of the people who use them. posted by Nate on 5:30 PM link
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your stolen base are belong to Rickey Henderson. Questions or comments? Email nate@swankypimp.com |
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