Ramen: Cheap and tasty, but not filling or healthy

Well, I had my first EM exam today. It was pretty difficult. The first two questions were okay (I'd anticipated those, so I was able to do them), but the last one was a bear. Grr! So we'll see how I did.

Haven't seen Nathan again, though I waited for him today where I saw him last week. Ah, well, if I don't see him tomorrow, I'll email him.

You may have noticed the two new bloglinks over on the sidebar. Plotts, aka EJ aka Eric, was my best friend during 7th and 8th grades and part of high school. Still a friend, though I haven't seen him in about 6 years. Pizzuti is a member of the newly-neophyted beta class for DelPhi, so he's now a full colonist. Yay!

Inversely Proportional

Why is it that whenever things seem to be looking up for me, whether it's socially or romantically, or whatever, things get worse for others? It gets annoying pretty quickly, as if I'm some sort of karmic "not-gate".

In other news, I had a very nice lunch at Chili's with Kyle today. Then, we went back to Kyle's place, where we were hanging out (he'd bought a mini-tape recorder for his midnight inspirations) when I checked my messages. Two of them, from Scott, wondering where I was. I'd forgotten about the PhiSig Museum/Imax trip! So, after inviting Kyle (who declined, unfortunately), I drove as fast as I could to the museum. Unfortunately, the Imax show is only about forty minutes long, and I got there about thirty minutes in. :-/ But, I did get to go to a couple exhibits before we headed out. Scott had to go home 'cause he wasn't feeling well, though. But Sarah and I had some good time to talk, and I found out that she's kinda feeling like I am about PhiSig. So, not sure what to do about that. Don't know that I care all that much anymore.

And I can't decide whether it's "inversly" or "inversely", so I'm going to leave it as the latter for now.

Even the Street Bums are Beautiful!

I was down in Denver recently for a PhiSig fundraiser. The original plan was to hand out stuff at the Rockies game in exchange for money (for the group). But... The game was postponed due to weather. So we, already being in Denver, decided to take the opportunity to have some dinner with our Brothers and went to the Lodo Bar and Grill. This is all well and good. Coming back to the car from the restaurant, we passed a guy sitting on the street (who I will not say was a street bum, necessarily) who was eating a bucket of fried chicken.

We weren't quite sure what was going to happen, but I had the strong feeling that he was going to speak to us. Sure enough, he does, though he doesn't say anything that I was expecting: "D'you want some chicken?"

I declined politely.

In other news, we will have four in our DelPhi Gamma class, which should be fun. I saw Farenheit 9/11 last night, which I thought was very well done. You do have to be able to filter Michael Moore's commentary, such as "What was he thinking? Was he thinking, 'I should've spent more time at work'?" from the actual events that happened, but he has a very good point. It should shock you, especially the footage of the war. (I was disgusted, but not shocked. I think the world is in far worse shape than even Moore paints it, but eh).

Oh! And there was this guy in the class before my morphosyntax class that not only LOOKED like Harry Potter, was WEARING a yellow and red jersey-like shirt that said "Potter" on the back. I wanted to take him home and have wild monkey sex, but I went to class instead.

That's about it for now. Still not King.

Firefox

I last checked the site (http://spreadfirefox.com/) a couple of days ago. They were around 500,000 downloads at the time, and I was wondering whether the demand would die out soon. One million seemed like an impossible number. I thought, for sure, at the end of the ten days they'd've had around 800,000 at most.

I was wrong. It's been four (well, okay, five now) days, and they reached their goal. One million downloads and six days to go. So, I urge you, my fellow internet-folk, to go to the website and check it out. I use it almost exclusively (and have since I switched from Netscape/Mozilla a year or so ago), and I haven't had any problems (takes a little while to remember that you have to unblock popups sometimes, but otherwise...) Download a copy, or, if I know you in RL, I can burn you a CD with the latest release. I also have Thunderbird 0.8 (I'm just now trying it out), to replace that buggy, insecure Eudora or Outlook you have.

I should mention that there are versions available for Linux, MacOS, OS/2 and others as well.

Monsters in the Night, Part I

Another original poem for you to enjoy!

The periphery is flecked

With colors bright

Ahead lies only darkness

And monsters in the night



Behind me I hear laughter

And weeping, sometimes, too

Ahead is nothing

A thick blanket

Covering all thought

All vision



All my screams

Are eaten by the Void

And nothing

No one

Recognizes the path down which I tread

The path down which we all tread



As time goes on (for I think it must)

The sounds behind me fade

I'm left with just my memories

"Shadows of a shade"



I lie there, float there

My mind makes demons true

For with no way to anchor my id

I've lost hold of the other two



Fangs!

        And tongues

    And teeth

                     And snaps

Tease my curled back



But these I take with ease

I know that soon my wicked past

will turn this night to hell

Just one more thing...

There are, according to the university stalker-net (http://dirwww.colorado.edu/whitepages/ldapnew.xml) only 13 male students with the name "Morrison" in any position (first, middle and last). Not that that was necessarily his name, but given what we've seen about him...

I'm thinking about trying to call his mother.

Defacing (defacation?)

Yes, I know that defecation is the word you were expecting.

Over the weekend, the university maintainance crew filled a hole in the sidewalk near some steps below the engineering center. I know this because I walked by it this morning on the way to class and saw the wet cement. There were also some saw horses there, presumably to ensure that folks didn't step in it.

Coming back from class, I was walking down these stairs just as this guy, who was standing right above the patch, threw a stick over to the ground and walked away. In this newly-poured patch of concrete, he (I can only assume) had written "Morrison". I didn't say anything (I should have, I think), and I didn't make any attempt to correct it (probably something else I should have done). But as I was walking I started thinking: the concrete had lasted all day (from before ten in the morning until after three in the afternoon), only to be spoiled by one idiot. But I was also facing a dilemma. I find such acts childish, without purpose and disrespectful, not only to my own sensibilities but to the community in general. However, I cannot morally prevent anyone from doing such a thing, as it would be against my beliefs. I could have attempted to lecture him about it, or erased it, but I cannot, for example, tell the police and have him fined (even if I could identify him again).

But it saddens me to see people care so little about the community they live in that they would deface it so easily. He doubtless thinks that what he did was "awesome" and his only remose would be at being caught. Perhaps, on the other hand, his act was an experiment, to see whether anyone would attempt to stop him or fix the cement (in which case I failed), or some sort of protest. I doubt these alternatives though.

Which leads me into a question: how does one create a community wherein this doesn't happen? Where people take more pride in their community and would never even consider such an action? I doubt that it would be possible to acheive 100% non-defacation, and would expect someone to occasionally do something like that again. And maybe that's what this is: the statistical error. The anamoly. I certainly hope that this is the case, but in my heart I know it is not.

On the plus side, it seems to be the minority here. By the time I walked by again at ~7pm, someone had erased the "Morrison", so that now only a lumpy smudge bears memory to it.

In other news, I'm tired and slightly depessed. I want so much to be Scott's equal, but I am not and doubt that I will be. I want a boyfriend. I also want to go away and live all alone on a little previously-uninhabited tropical island so I don't have to deal with people at all. I could live on bananas, though I think I'd get sick of fish pretty quickly.

The DLP Rush Bowling went well. We had three folks show up, so that's pretty good, since this is the first event we've held.

I naired myself last friday because I thought we were going swimming. But, then we didn't. So I'm smooth but no one can tell.

I've also been reading Anarchism by Daniel Guerin (there's an accent in there but I'm too lazy for it right now). It's a brief historical overview of anarchy, anarchism, and anarchists. It's not a biography of any of them, though it does spend some time talking about the social theories as they developed. If the text is accurate, then I've gained an insight into the Bolshevik revolutions that I hadn't ever had before.

My little quickidrive stopped being writable for some reason a week or two ago, and the other night I finally fixed it using a tool that essentially low-level formatted it. I'm not pleased that that happened, and am wondering why (I'm guessing it's because I bought a cheap stick). But it's working again, so that's good.

Anyway, that's probably more than I should write. I have physics I should do but I'm going to bed instead.

Be well, all.

IP

From Links to Tens of Thousands of Legal Music Downloads (http://www.goingware.com/tips/legal-downloads.html):

...consider Slashdot user Quizo69's comment Illegal becomes legal if YOU change it, in which he points out that that although it was once illegal to be homosexual throughout the United States, the gay community worked together to fight sodomy laws. Through their efforts, state after state repealed their laws until the Supreme Court of the United States recently ruled the last sodomy laws unconstitutional.

If the gay community can fight millenia of hatred until they can live without fear of criminal prosecution, you can overturn the copyright laws. If you don't think you have the political power, consider that there aren't as many homosexual people in the U.S. as there are file traders.

Dunno that it's exactly "millenia of hatred", considering that the concept of a homosexual has only been around for a couple hundred years... and that I would judge the right to "be" (however you choose to interpret that) with someone regardless of gender far more basic than any IP right, whether protection from sharing or freedom to share... but point well taken.

The questions become: are filesharers dedicated enough to do so? Is the payoff worth the effort? What would the consequences be, besides allowing filesharing, and are they desirable?

I think that the current situation of IP is not only ridiculous but deplorable. (Of course, I find even the concept of IP ridiculous, but that's another topic.) Consequently, I support the EFF, and I back it up with the green (another thorny issue; we'll deal with it later). Current IP laws are used to crush or cripple innovation, rather than promote it, as was originally intended when such power was granted to the U.S. Congress in the Constitution.

Hmm, and it's now past midnight. 'Night!

Linkage!

An essay on essays (a meta-essay?): http://www.paulgraham.com/essay.html

A book on American public schools (I have not yet read this book, but the topic sounds interesting and the review of it was good): http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/underground/index.htm

And a couple things to make you think:

Political Propaganda As a Moral Duty: http://www.freedomunderground.org/view.php?v=3&t=3&aid=9036
and the original (please, please, if you don't read the first all the way through, at least read the first couple paragraphs and compare to this one): http://www.calvin.edu/academic/cas/gpa/moralpro.htm

And, as Gavin showed us, something to keep you questioning the government: http://www.freedomunderground.org/memoryhole/pentagon121.swf

No Title

From the Colorado Indymedia (9/11: THE DAY THE WORLD ENDED, THREE YEARS ON):

In the United States since 9/11, about 4,000 children died from child abuse and neglect; in more than 80 percent of cases, parents were the perpetrators. About 36,000 Americans died from unnecessary surgery. Another 21,000 died from medication errors in hospitals, along with another 60,000 from other errors in hospitals. Adverse reactions to prescription drugs killed about 100,000. Roughly 10,000 Americans died from accidental drowning. About 2,100 died from bicycle accidents. Homicidal Americans killing other Americans took another roughly 60,000 lives. Suicide took more than 90,000. Traffic deaths amounted to well over 120,000.

Despite all of America's mayhem and death (more than 7,000,000 Americans died in the last three years, including the clearly avoidable ones listed above plus hundreds of thousands not listed that were at least in part avoidable), the subject of 9/11 is never allowed to rest. About 3,000 Americans died on 9/11 in a spectacular act of hatred and vengeance, carried out, so far as we know, by 19 men, all of whom were themselves consumed.

Not that 9/11 wasn't tragic... but maybe there are deeper issues that we should be focusing on...