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My head explodes
I’ve been up for two days, it’s due in two hours, and they’re still making changes to the project!?!?!?!?!?!
UPDATE: Made it with 20 minutes to spare. Yay me.
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Things I don’t believe in
A list of things I don’t believe in, for no reason other than I find their proponents objectionable, or sensationalistic.
- Intelligent Design theory
- Global Warming
- Public education reform
- Keyboards in rock music
- Authenticity as a meaningful part of music
- McCarthyism being a defining moment of American History
- Native American culture being inherently earth friendly
- Anything to do with “carbs”
- Apple’s vaunted OS stability
- Apple’s better “interface”
- Any positive influence of Janis Joplin
- The oft-touted claim by libertarians that 20% of Americans are libertarian also
- “Natural” foods
- Homeopathy
- Divorce being a public/social problem
- Stem cell research being a big deal, for good or ill
- Biomass fuels
- Peak oil
- Addictive personalities
- Chiropractors
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Yet another new record
I went 60 miles on the Silver Comet with Mike this afternoon. Didn’t feel too bad either.
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The decaffeinated Steve
So, after more than two weeks of a low-caffeine lifestyle I conclude that the net results are positive.
The good:
- I’m not as moody or edgy
- Apparently I’ve stopped fidgeting in the evenings
- I’m not sleeping any more or less
The bad
- I’m a much heavier sleeper than I used to be (which elevates it to near coma)
- My sleep schedule is more erratic than it used to be
- I’m back to having periodic insomnia, though it’s not that bad.
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This happened without me
Rally for national sales tax draws overflow crowd
About 4,500 raucous tax protesters packed the Gwinnett Convention Center on Wednesday night to hear politicians, musicians and talk show celebrities call for the end of the federal income tax and the creation of a 23 percent national sales tax to replace it.I have yet to hear the logic of what gets taxed and what doesn’t, and why the IRS doesn’t morph into some national enforcement arm, but it’s a good trend.
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A couple of classics
News anchor slips up, in a very funny way. And surprisingly, this page of Emo Phillips quotes.
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Victory was mine (somehow)
I did the open mic last night at Limerick. I played a rather weak set of Walkin’ Cane, my Tom Waits’ song, the new one (Left Alone) and Raining this Morning. Somehow I won.
I’m going to be practicing the songs instead of the flatpicking all week now.
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Quick Monday round up
- Interesting stats on tattoos (and the people who love them)
- Weddings are costly, asymmetrical boondogles everywhere.
- An inspiring story of a woman donating a kidney to a good friend.
- Creating a 1099 Misc form for blackmail seems about right.
- An interesting chart about the progressivity of the tax code under Bush. One little known fact is that he has actually made taxation MORE progressive, not less, mostly by removing millions of people from the tax rolls. No supply-sider he.
- Dear NSA. Not as good as Postsecret, but similar.
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The power and glory of YouTube
In case anyone has wondered what I’m trying to do on the guitar, this video of Doc and Merle Watson says it all.
Also, check out these videos of the Velvet Underground (with Nico) doing acoustic versions of Heroin and Femme Fatale in 1972.
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Abortion and immigration
A long one.
I predict that soon someone will make some correlation between legal abortion and increased illegal immigration, similar to Steven Levitt’s abortion-crime idea as told in his book Freakonomics.
For those of you who haven’t read the book it spends a lot of time explaining his theory that abortions are disproportionately had by women who would otherwise bear criminal children (to put it bluntly). Those children are never born, which reduces the number of criminals, which reduces crime rates. He has a large amount of documentation and math to support this idea. Bear in mind that the 80-20 rule applies here, something like 20% of the women who get abortions have 80% of all abortions.
A similar idea (unique to me so far) is that were there no abortion, there would be many more children who would grow up to be low-skilled, low wage workers. That creates an artificial void on the bottom of the income ladder, which the Mexicans and other illegals fill.
I’ve been thinking about this quite a bit lately, and it’s all part of my emerging theory on open-source eugenics and artificial evolution, which I’ll explain more when I flesh it out.
On a related note, the pro-choice argument and the usual nativist argument are essentially the same. There is ownership in a country, as there is in one’s body. It is up to the owner; the citizens of the country collectively or the individual woman to determine who can be there (to put it crassly). Every child is a wanted child, and every immigrant, is a legal immigrant.Or that’s what I think right now anyway. Thoughts anyone?