found_drama

• Designs Beyond Human Abilities
  via kapowee
• Dept. of Disputation: Red Sex, Blue Sex: Reporting & Essays: The New Yorker
  via lawnczar :: In Regnerus’s survey, the teen-agers who espouse this new morality are tolerant of premarital sex (and of contraception and abortion) but are themselves cautious about pursuing it. Regnerus writes, “They are interested in remaining free from the burden of teenage pregnancy and the sorrows and embarrassments of sexually transmitted diseases. They perceive a bright future for themselves, one with college, advanced degrees, a career, and a family. Simply put, too much seems at stake.
• JavaScript and screen readers
  at northtemple
• explodingdog 2008
  via s00z :: very funny
• Why I Support Barack Obama
  Tim O'Reilly on Obama :: I believe Barack Obama is that president. He is a man of intelligence, but also a man whose character and temperament seem suited to the problems of our age: unflappable, optimistic even in the face of adversity, willing to speak the truth about subjects that have long been taboo (I'm thinking of his speech on race, and his speech on fatherhood) and with unscripted reactions that show his fundamental decency (I'm thinking of his reaction to those who wanted to make a campaign issue of Sarah Palin's daughter's unplanned pregnancy.)

• What Sarah Palin Is Saying
  By Anil Dash :: Read this; it is important. Dash does a great job of unpacking Palin's speech patterns, phrasing, and signifiers and using it to illustrate what is clearly a dangerous sub-text that now dominates large portions of the Republican establishment and its discourse.
• If Election ’08 Were a Science Fiction Epic
  at Threat Level from Wired.com
• The Balanced Money Formula
  at Get Rich Slowly :: summary: total monies divided 50/20/30 along the lines of needs/savings/wants (interesting)
• css Zen Garden: The Beauty in CSS Design
  why this was not in my linkroll already, I'll never know…
• I Just Want To Make An XMLHttpOmelette

The kitchen isn’t a wreck but one of the chairs is pulled out and there is a basket of laundry left on the floor.  I’m too exhausted to do anything about these errant items quite yet so I leave them where they are.  I make some coffee and retire to the living room to drink it and down a bowl of cereal, to unwind a little before proceeding with the chores.  But when I go back into the kitchen, all of the burners on the stove are going full-blast and fire is spewing from the oven.  I manage to get close enough to twist the knobs and turn the gas off.  Though the burners have gone out, fire is still leaping from around the edges of the oven door.  I rummage around the room for the fire extinguisher.  When I finally find it and turn around, one of the burners has come back to life.  I try to spray the stove but my aim is off and the carbon foam goes all over the floor, covering the laundry and the over-turned chairs and everything else that’s been thrown from the cabinets in my mad scramble.  I blast the stove again and manage to hit it this time.  It takes a few blasts but eventually the fire goes out.  A. comes home just then, sees the mess, sees that everything is covered in foam.  I’m at a loss for how to explain it.

• How the financial collapse killed libertarianism.
  By Jacob Weisberg at Slate Magazine :: The worst thing you can say about libertarians is that they are intellectually immature, frozen in the worldview many of them absorbed from reading Ayn Rand novels in high school.
• Cake Wrecks
  …as a follow-up to Mike’s Amazing Cakes: the other end of the spectrum.
• Mike’s Amazing Cakes
  via Steve :: some pretty cool cakes here… I think the giant T-rex is my favorite.
• Our recent updates | Thinkers
  Quote: Originally our project was inspired by the beautiful Mac OS X application Things by Cultured Code. We wanted to cooperate with them, but it’s not our fault we didn’t. 

  Uh… What? So… You launched a web-based task manager whose look-and-feel and functionality was based on someone else’s app… You named it practically the same thing… And you “wanted to cooperate with them”…? So many things appear to be wrong with these statements.

• Charles Has A Licking Problem
  at YouTube :: “Lick! Lick!”

• Charlie’s Diary: On finishing
• Free O’Reilly tech books and Safari contest
  at B^2 :: cool
• Now is the Time
  Sen. Bernie Sanders: Let me be specific about what a "Rebuild America" program should include…
• 10 Very Good Reasons Why You Should Grow a Giant Beard
  I'm a particular fan of #s 1-4 + 9.
• Shouts & Murmurs: Undecided
  David Sedaris at The New Yorker

I’m thinking that Americans (i.e., “we” and/or “us”) need to get over this bullshit obsession we have with taxes.  I’ve been thinking about this recently and I’m convinced that the mythologizing of the Boston Tea Party and that blasted James Otis quote have undermined us from the beginning.

I can’t remember an election cycle (Presidential or otherwise) where taxation wasn’t a dirty word levied on either side.  I get the feeling that some politicians have wet dreams about coming out on stage in buckskin pants, warpaint, and swinging a tomahawk, screaming about how we could storm the doors and let those pork bellies soak in the harbor for a while.

The “t-word” really ought to be excised from the public discourse for a few generations.  Every objection to taxation I’ve ever heard seems to culminate in or be summarized with a rhetorical Don’t you think it’s messed up that they just take your money right out of your paycheck?  Sure I do, but I’m willing to admit that it’s only because I feel the cash is being mismanaged.

Many of these same nay-sayers are then happy to talk about the recent diversification of their stock portfolio or how they’re maxing out their contributions to their 401(k)^[1].  To these individuals, I ask:  What’s the difference?  If you’re so eager to drop that cash to buy a few shares, there’s a clear motivation — correct?  You’re seeking a return on your investment.

Well, suppose you assert to your Congressman that your taxes are the same thing?  Consider yourself a shareholder in the United States of America.  Lose the mohawk, you wannabe Tonto impersonators, and demand your annual shareholders report!

1. And/or 403(b) and/or (Roth) IRA. [↩]

• The Things He Carried
  at The Atlantic (November 2008) (via kapowee) :: Schnei er and I walked to the security checkpoint. “Counter terrorism in the airport is a show designed to make people feel better,” he said. “Only two things have made flying safer: the reinforcement of cockpit doors, and the fact that passengers know now to resist hijackers.” This assumes, of course, that al-Qaeda will target airplanes for hijacking, or target aviation at all. “We defend against what the terrorists did last week,” Schnei er said. He believes that the country would be just as safe as it is today if airport security were rolled back to pre-9/11 levels. “Spend the rest of your money on intelligence, investigations, and emergency response.”
• Housing Price/Value Projections
  I don't necessarily agree but the math is certainly there.
• Reporter attacked at Palin rally
  via p373 :: anyone else starting to get the sense that these rallies are inciting actual physical violence?
• 10 Tips for Buying a House in Any Market Condition
  Consumerism Commentary
• JavaRanch Journal – October 2008, Volume 7, Issue 3
  via Ajaxian

(Original posted on Flickr; credit to victoriabernal.)

Well, the 2008 garden has been put to bed!  We hadn’t done much with it in about a month or so.  Tough to say how much we got out of the garden this year.  I’m tempted to say that we bit off more than we could chew this year; A. & I over-estimated how much we would be able to handle with an infant in the family — even an infant as good as H.

We were a bit underwhelmed with our crops this year.  Certain things (e.g., carrots and cucumbers) did just fine, right as expected; others (e.g., the squash and, oddly, tomatoes) less so.  We had some unexpected problems this year, too:  a couple of times we would harvest something only to find it was DOA at home (e.g., some butternut squash that were punctured) and we had some problems with theft (e.g., tomatoes and butternut squash).

All in all, not a bad year but not as good as last year, either.  Next year is…  questionable.

(Original photo on Flickr.)

At the end of a long square chamber, I’m locked into a narrow channel that runs along its back (front?) wall.  It’s just barely wide enough to crouch down in.  There is a breathy howl from the far end of the chamber.  I can see movement but not the creature itself.  It is coming for me, that much I know for sure.  There is the sound of some other fleshy entity being eviscerated.  In the distance I can see it leap high into the air — at least twenty feet — and watch a thin trail of blood and guts trail after it.  As it hangs there in the air, I see that is the slick black carapace of the alien a la Ridley Scott and/or H.R. Gieger.  It is young, it is a juvenile; it is part canine.  I crouch down into a ball and pray it will not sniff me out.