Michael Blume's Journal
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| Thursday, May 15th, 2008 | | 9:12 pm |
AHAHAHAHA I steal Mike's livejournal. Tomorrow: I take over the world!!!! BAHAHAHAHA! Current Mood:  Maniacal | | Wednesday, May 14th, 2008 | | 12:08 am |
| | Thursday, May 8th, 2008 | | 1:08 am |
OK, once again I have a book and cannot overstate how much I want you all to read it. It's called Little Brother, and it's by Cory Doctorow. Those of you who read XKCD will recognize Cory as the heroic blogger from the early 21st century who wears a red cape and goggles and blogs from a high-altitude balloon. The title is a reference to 1984 in which society was led by an entity known only as Big Brother. Think V For Vendetta, but happening right here in California just a few years from now, and with the main character played by a geeky high school boy. Marcus Yallow, the titular Little Brother, is a high school student whose city is attacked by terrorists, and then occupied by the Department of Homeland Security. He gets kind of pissed off about this. In order to "preserve his freedom," they're pretty much destroying it. And so, being a ballsy little motherfucker, he declares war on the Department. You can read it in hypertext or in pdf on Cory's website. You can download it to your Palm Pilot or your Pocket PC or just about any device you feel like reading books on. And of course, you can head down to your local Borders or any number of other fine bookstores and pick it off the Young Adult shelf. | | Monday, May 5th, 2008 | | 6:43 pm |
This journal is now linked to from my official profile page at UCSB Physics. That profile is part of my professional identity, and so there's a thing or two - not much, I don't have much truck with the idea of a totally sanitized outward persona, but a few things - that I decided to mark as friends only. This will most likely continue.
If you're reading, and I don't have you friended, please comment and I will almost certainly be happy to oblige =) | | Saturday, April 26th, 2008 | | 9:07 pm |
| | Thursday, April 24th, 2008 | | 6:43 pm |
from: http://mathoda.com/archives/203To see if a person is addicted to an activity or substance you can perform the CAGE test. The test is often used to judge whether someone is an alcoholic, but can be just as easily applied to addictions to email, instant messaging, the web, coffee, etc. 1. Have you ever felt you should Cut down on the activity? 2. Have people Annoyed you by criticizing your doing the activity? 3. Have you ever felt bad or Guilty about doing the activity? 4. Have you ever done the activity first thing in the morning as an Eye opener to get yourself started on the day? The test was developed by Dr. John Ewing, founding Director of the Bowles Center for Alcohol Studies, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. According to Dr. Ewing, two yes answers is considered a clinically significant sign of addiction. Me: Huh, that's an interesting heuristic, I wonder if...yeah...yeah...yeah...yeah...CRAP. *is net addict* | | Monday, April 21st, 2008 | | 10:28 pm |
| | Wednesday, April 16th, 2008 | | 1:33 pm |
Stranger than History taken from Overcoming BiasSuppose I told you that I knew for a fact that the following statements were true: * If you paint yourself a certain exact color between blue and green, it will reverse the force of gravity on you and cause you to fall upward. * In the future, the sky will be filled by billions of floating black spheres. Each sphere will be larger than all the zeppelins that have ever existed put together. If you offer a sphere money, it will lower a male prostitute out of the sky on a bungee cord. * Your grandchildren will think it is not just foolish, but evil, to put thieves in jail instead of spanking them. You'd think I was crazy, right? Now suppose it were the year 1901, and you had to choose between believing those statements I have just offered, and believing statements like the following: * There is an absolute speed limit on how fast two objects can seem to be traveling relative to each other, which is exactly 670616629.2 miles per hour. If you hop on board a train going almost this fast and fire a gun out the window, the fundamental units of length change around, so it looks to you like the bullet is speeding ahead of you, but other people see something different. Oh, and time changes around too. * In the future, there will be a superconnected global network of billions of adding machines, each one of which has more power than all pre-1901 adding machines put together. One of the primary uses of this network will be to transport moving pictures of lesbian sex by pretending they are made out of numbers. * Your grandchildren will think it is not just foolish, but evil, to say that someone should not be President of the United States because she is black. Link | | Thursday, April 10th, 2008 | | 9:04 pm |
Lawmaker Apologizes for Comments Against AtheistState Representative Monique Davis is apologizing a week after she blasted an atheist activist during a hearing over a million dollar grant for a South Side church.
Because of Davis' rant, she was named Tuesday night as the "worst person in the world" --a dubious award doled out daily by news commentator Keith Olbermann on MSNBC's "Countdown" program.
Rep. Davis told atheist Rob Sherman that, "What you have to spew and spread is dangerous" and that "This is the land of Lincoln where people believe in God."
But, after being on the receiving end of a week’s worth of public criticism, Davis called Sherman yesterday to apologize.
Sherman says Davis told him she "took out her frustrations and emotions on me and that she shouldn’t have done that." Sherman says Davis' explanation was "reasonable" and that he forgives her.
According to Sherman and State Rep. Jack Franks….Davis claims her outburst was triggered by learning shortly beforehand…that there’d been another Chicago Public School student killed.
State Rep. Jack Franks was chairing the hearing that day and says Davis’ outburst was uncharacteristic, adding "she was having a bad day."You know what? I say we take the heat off her. I don't know why she thinks we cause school shootings, but I see that lie in a lot of places, and it's not Monique Davis' fault. We're going to need to fight that lie slowly. Making this woman a pariah isn't going to do it. She was on edge, she snapped, same as we all do. End of story. | | Tuesday, March 25th, 2008 | | 2:04 pm |
| | Sunday, March 16th, 2008 | | 11:22 pm |
Bad scientist! No poems for you, gnomekiller! I always love when I'm reading a well thought-out, clearly reasoned, nicely articulated essay, and then run into a line that fits perfectly in the essay, and at the same time, makes me laugh my head off. Today's subject line was from one of those ^^. Read: John Keats's Lamia (1819) surely deserves some kind of award for Most Famously Annoying Poetry: ...Do not all charms fly
At the mere touch of cold philosophy?
There was an awful rainbow once in heaven:
We know her woof, her texture; she is given
In the dull catalogue of common things.
Philosophy will clip an Angel’s wings,
Conquer all mysteries by rule and line,
Empty the haunted air, and gnomed mine -
Unweave a rainbow...
My usual reply ends with the phrase: "If we cannot learn to take joy in the merely real, our lives will be empty indeed." I shall expand on that tomorrow. Today I have a different point in mind. | | Wednesday, March 12th, 2008 | | 9:42 pm |
| | 1:20 am |
Aside from the fact that I have a strong personal interest in having lots of people see this, this is awesome no matter what. http://www.dothetest.co.uk/ Current Music: The Wonders - All My Only Dreams, That Thing You Do | | Saturday, March 1st, 2008 | | 3:15 am |
When you first discover the internet, the fact that it knows the lyrics to every song you've ever half-forgotten is kind of awesome. Still, trying to search for any further information about a song and just getting page after page of mindless lyric archives can get tiresome.
Current Music: The Postal Service - Suddenly Everything Has Changed, The District Sleeps Alone Toni | | Monday, February 25th, 2008 | | 11:09 am |
| | Tuesday, February 19th, 2008 | | 2:24 pm |
| | 1:35 am |
| | Friday, February 8th, 2008 | | 11:49 pm |
| | Thursday, February 7th, 2008 | | 9:10 pm |
| | 2:09 am |
Sure, why not. Just for completeness, here's Why I am not an abortion doctorI have always found the "what if you had been aborted" argument to be foolish, and continue to think so despite the knowledge that I was a total accident. If you extend that logic far enough, you're basically committing murder right now by sitting at your computer reading this post when you could be out there having random unprotected sex and giving more would-be people a chance to live. Just saying. Current Music: They Might Be Giants - Exquisite Dead Guy, Factory Showroom |
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