And 2,000 years from now when they look back at the destruction of America into a politically correct soccer mom haven, they will say, it all began with one small word.

Teacher reprimanded for not being niggardly enough with the dictionary and the comments on it, which are great.

…but I’m not really sure how to categorize it exactly. A couple lived in a tree for 12 years, and now they’re being evicted.

And so I return to the blog. What’ve I done lately? What insightful things do I have to tell? Well, German looks like it’ll be great, Jerry Cohen’s class is right up my alley and looks to be very interesting (its the science fiction one), Socolow’s news class will be interesting. I hear Mary Davis is a great professor and people were clamoring to get into her AMST class, but its a lecture class and I had the unfortunate problem of…um…falling asleep in it. As in, literally falling asleep and waking up to find an empty room. So needless to say I was very embarrassed and did not go by her office as planned to finish filling out my major declaration form.

In the classes where there is a lot of interaction I’m fine, but when I’m not exercising my mind I find myself getting more tired…I knew this over the summer but there were always interesting things for me to occupy myself with so I would stay awake. At Maintex when I was doing interesting work I was okay, at home when I was doing something stimulating I was fine. Even TV was usually enough. But lecture classes, apparently, are not. That combined with the warm weather and crowded classrooms and surprisingly I’m finding it very easy to fall asleep…even in Jerry Cohen’s incredibly interesting class. I really don’t know what to do about this, what vitamin or nutrient or whatever I’m not getting that is causing this. Because I KNOW I’m getting enough sleep….

Strangely I’ve been waking up early, around 7AM, regardless of when I go to sleep, and then getting tired later on. Today I tried sleeping in till my first class at 11 and, while I barely made it, I was awake all day, or at least up until this point. But I hate wasting so much of the day sleeping.

Our suite is looking very nice and pretty and we keep getting more plants and decorations. I’ll post pictures shortly. Sally has been hanging out a lot and doing puzzles. I finally got around to hooking up my TiVo but have watched only one TV program so far in my time here, and only 1/2 of a DVD (Lord of the Rings). I guess I need to cancel my NetFlix membership…

Still haven’t gotten my packages from home. Strangeness.

Oops, better go get my laundry. That’s all for now.

Is it bad to sleep through the first class on the first day of school? When the class started at 11AM?

Marc Andresson states that “All of the technology underneath the Internet is hitting critical mass, at the exact point when people expect nothing. That’s a prescription for the next boom. But I don’t know when.”

Scott Rosenberg agrees. And you know, it makes a lot of sense. Why didn’t I think of that? 😛 Anyway,this makes me very happy.

Here is my class schedule for the new semester:

	Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday
9:00 AM		amst-149a Olin-Sang room 101			amst-149a Olin-Sang room 101
9:30 AM
10:00 AM
10:30 AM
11:00 AM	ger-10a-1 Shiffman room 123	ger-10a-1 Shiffman room 123	ger-10a-1 Shiffman room 123	ger-10a-1 Shiffman room 123
11:30 AM
12:00 PM
12:30 PM
1:00 PM	jour-120a Brown room 316		jour-120a Brown room 316	jour-120a Brown room 316
1:30 PM		amst-100a-2 Brown room 316			amst-100a-2 Brown room 316
2:00 PM
2:30 PM

UPN’s “Buffy the Vampire Slayerâ€? was rated the worst show in prime-time, with the PTC condemning it for graphic violence and sex, and an element of the occult.

Ooh, the occult! How inappropriate! Wouldn’t want children to see the occult…do these people even watch the show?

In all fairness, the strong sexual content, and, to a much lesser extent, the violence in this last season make the show not very appropriate for young viewers. But…the occult? WTF?

My flamebait title aside, the article is very illuminating. Basically, a lot of prominent warmongers in Congress and the current administration never had to fight in one…and the people who did have to serve are often a bit more…restrained:

Jack Kemp, Dole’s running mate in 1996, was unfit because of a knee injury, though he heroically continued as a National Football League quarterback for another eight years; Pat Buchanan had arthritis in his knees, though he soon became an avid jogger.

How the warhawks evaded military service

anyway, Maintex’s server (mop.maintex.com) should be back for good now…so hopefully the same holds for AgBlog. While there are lots of things to report, I can’t think of any of them off hand, so I’ll just put up a very nice quote I found: Do I contradict myself? Very well, then, I contradict myself. I am large, I contain multitudes. — Walt Whitman, Song of Myself

Well, maybe a bit dramatic and over-personified, but still. Very very interesting story.

I’ve started checking over the new Salon blogs, particularily Scott Rosenberg’s site, and I’m incredibly impressed at the level of discourse there. I have seen many kinds of blogs, but I’ve never really found a site I’ve liked as a starting point for blog discussions until now.

The most important problem is the age-old problem of “information overload.” I’ve generally been able to avoid this problem as I shy away from traditional media and television news and focus primarily on web and magazine journalism, the web for its tendancy to break new ground and new ideas months before the old media picks up on it, and the mags for their interesting in-depth reports on issues I wouldn’t otherwise see.

Salon is the best blend of these two things, and with Salon’s blogs as a starting point I’m finding myself increasingly without time to do all of the reading I’d like to. It used to be that information overload was about trying to process what you took in and paring it down to the important bits — now there is so much useful and important and well-thought out information and opinion that its very hard to manage. I feel like I’m missing out every day I don’t check in with all of my cyber friends.

When blogging was in the hundreds it was fringe, it the thousands it was a curiosity, in the hundreds of thousands it is becoming an overload, and in the millions I don’t know what we will do. There are only so many stories you can read, and only so many you will want to spend time on. And with so much churn there will inevitably be more and more and more rehashing of previously discussed ideas.

Scott Rosenberg snaps at the New York Times to picking up on a story his magazine covered months ago. I feel like we are increasingly backtracking and covering the same ground over and over and over. I’m sure Google Blog Search is coming, and that’ll probably help, but I dunno…there is so much great new informaton, and there is so much crap that is being recirculated and rebreathed and redigested. A Wiki web is perhaps what we need. A Wiki web combined with Everything and a rating system of Kuro5hin and a trust-metric. What a web that would be…

I always watch a movie all the way through. I stay until the last credit, until the final copyright, until the harsh theater lights snap back on. And I generallly use the time between the end of the movie and the end of the credits both reflecting on the grandeur of the cinema experience and solidifying my thoughts on a particular film.

So right now I’m stumped.

I watch movies, I get meanings, I think about connotiatons and symbols and plot-shaped things. I think about analysis, and over-analysis, and surface meanings and permutations. And I can generally pin down why in my gut I like or dislike a movie.

With Signs it is different. I love this movie, and I have no idea why. I sit here, in the parking lot of The Block contemplating, and I’m drawing a blank. Why do I like it so? Certainly having Macauly Caulkin 2 as a main character was a turn-off. Certainly the resolution, once we got to where we got, could never live up to the rest of the movie. Certainly the style is neat…but why do I love this movie?

The story is simplistic, yet powerful. It truly is all about the journey. What does it mean?

Those going to see the movie should watch for the M. Night Shyamalan cameo as a guy who sleeps too much…

A final thought: this movie succeeds brilliantly at describing things to the viewer without showing them. What we can imagine is much more real and scary than anything that could be put on screen, and Shyamalan understands this. The wonderful blend of showing and telling really makes this movie work. And it probably had the added benefit of saving on the effects budget.

There we go. I’m starting to analyze. Now I’m getting somewhere…

But do I really want to understand this movie?

Perhaps it is a measure of confidence in this day and age. The Orange County delegation to the United States Macabbeah games, this kinda Jewish olympics thing for kids, has decided to not wear the t-shirts that they’ve already purchased and printed. Why? Because they are going on a plane, and there are 40 of them, and the shirts say “JCC” (Jewish Community Center) and, although I’m not certain, probably have a Star of David or some such symbol on them.


We have federalized airport screeners, massive lines, triple ID checks, armed military personnell, bomb-sniffing dogs, the works, and people are still not comfortable traveling on planes. So I guess our security measures, for all their hassle, are not working.


I try to take a more logical view of the thing. The Arab terrorists tend to follow certain patterns, scouting locations, having patience, taking a long time to make sure they get it right. They aren’t prone to random killings, they like doing things that are big. I would not worry about traveling on an airplane over the next year or so. The terrorists are smart enough to know that there are plenty more much less protected targets for them to blow up.


Ya know, we talk about government excess and mismanagement, and I talk about outdated systems and stupid old procedures. My dad tells me about an article he read that examined the FBI mentality, part of which is the idea that “real” cops don’t use computers. With all of this wonderful tracking technology, super-duper spyware, powerful censorware, great snooping and sniffing tools, our government is no good at targeting the people who matter. Is it that they are incompetent? Should I stop worrying about infringements of liberty, and instead worry about how crappy our spy agencies are?


Or perhaps I should look to the failed war on drugs and other initiatives with no clear goals or aims but to use huge amounts of money to make the public feel warm and fuzzy. For how much I hate the idea of running the government like a for-profit enterprise, I seem to keep finding myself agreeing with those people who think that we need real accountability, and perhaps the best way of getting it is through a true free-market approach. As in, no sweet deals, no politics, just results.

Apollo 13 on IMAX comes out that day…this I have to see. Awesome!!!

A study by the University of New Hampshire of college students says women are as violent as men toward their partners.

The Family Research Laboratory study suggests that when only one partner is violent, it is twice as likely to be the woman.

http://www.nbc5.com

Red-light cameras actually cause an increase in rear-end accidents. The pro-camera forces know this and are trying to keep you from seeing the data. Part 4 in a series.

Weekly Standard

Aunt Linda gave me as a birthday present a trip to the play Always, Patsy Cline. First let me say I’m not a fan of country music (I had to go look up Patsy’s name just now to make sure I was getting the spelling right). I could tell from the title that this was going to be some kind of a Patsy Cline retrospective, with lots of extraneous singing. When we got there my suspicions were confirmed and I became even more worried: the play had two actors, a five-piece band, and about two dozen country songs.

I’m not in to country, I know nothing about Patsy Cline, yet the play was perfectly tolerable. First off, Sally Struthers, as Louise, was completely charming and witty. The woman who played Patsy sang all her songs quite well and in a style I can only assume is her way of singing. The story centered on Louise and her boring life, hilighted by one day spent with her personal queen of country.

A few times during the play Sally looked at me, one time I was sure she winked. She did a dance number with an older gentleman named Rudy during the first half, and then at the end she came to the edge of the stage (I was in the front row) and shook my hand. 🙂

She was charming, and I had never seen any of her acting before. And for some reason she took an interest in me. Which was kinda funny, seeing as, while I was into much of the show, I wasn’t into the ever-present song and dance.

Oh, we also ate at a nice italian place that was so verrrry slow. I had some of their “world famous” cookies, and they were pretty sad. But the Creme Brulie was quite good. 🙂 And I know I spelled it wrong.

Its a funny thing about airports. It’s probably because I bought my ticket the day before on Priceline. I got my bags extra screened, my person extra screened, but, for some reason, the guy checking the bags (after they got through the x-ray machines) neglected the big central compartment housing my computer. I mean, why would I put a bomb in the magazine and paper pockets? Oh, well.

I’m sure I’m being singled out because of the method and timing of my ticket purchase, but I still like to think its because I’m the only passenger who is happy and nice to the staff.

So what am I going, you ask, and why? Well, the thing is, all summer I’ve wanted to take a jaunt back to Brandeis and meet up with people and places. And then Adam suggested I jet back, and offered me a free room, and offered to pick me up and drive me around. Cool! So although Robin is gone to Switzerland and there aren’t a terrible amount of people I know who are handing around campus, I jumped onto the web and looked for some tickets for the next day. Well, Travelocity promised the best rates, and on every one of them when I clicked through the tickets were sold out or restricted to a week from now. Southwest offered tickets for, I think, about $550. Which would not be worth it for a fun five day jaunt. So I tried Priceline, typed in $329, and ten minutes later got an email telling me to pack my bags.

So I did, and here I am in Pittsburgh, on my way to good old Waltham. What’ll I do when I get there? Meet up with Jon, prolly, and say hi to some folks and bug Rich Graves and hang out with Adam and Dave and Aaron. And we’ll talk about computers and web stuff. And they’ll probably make me sit down and get all the bugs out of my new site template so it can be switched over. And all will be merry.

Oh, and of course, I will see Sally! Yay!

I watched Gosford Park on the ride here, and it was great, and I had on closed captioning so I could understand some of it and so that the lady in the next seat could watch, and they guy in front of me kept banging back into his seat and putting it further back, and I swear he was trying to kill my computer, and I got here, and I ran around trying to find the terminal, and now I’m about to board the flight, which is leaving late, even though US Air won’t acknowledge it. Oh, I mean US Airways. Musn’t forget they changed their name a little while back to improve their image. But for some reason they insist on spelling it U(dot)S AIRWAYS, which is stupid. The dot is in the middle, where a dash would be. And I don’t know why they can’t put a dot after the “S” as well, but I guess “United” stands for something and “States” doesn’t and then we can spell out Airways. Right.

Before I left I went to Shaina’s last video class at Tarbut V’Torah and got to see much of their little movie, which was pretty well done considering the roudiness of the class. Then Mom and Shaina accompanied me to lunch and then the Orange County Airport. So that is what I’ve done to get into this strange journey.

Nothing more to say now. Gotta board!

It took a few reloads, but I think all is well is OSXServerland right now. If AgBlog stays up, that will confirm it. 🙂 I will say this: FileMaker + big important company database = loads of hurt. Trust me, I’ve been there.

No new points, but a very good introduction for the layperson of the evils of copy-protection.