January 12, 2006
21 photos
21 photos
Pics from ski lodge in Killington, Vermont.
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October 4, 2005
Last week:
Regular 9-5, software documentation: 40 hours
Graduate Coursework in-class: 4 hours
Graduate coursework, outside of class: 10 hours
Graduate Research Scholarship: 16 hours
Social Football Team Coaching: 4 hours
Part-time job for the weekend: 20 hours
Blogging: 10 hours
The 114 hour work week.
My best performance so far.
September 23, 2005
| Michael Crichton, the great author, delivered a speech to the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco on September 15th (that would be one week ago today for those of you in Rio Linda), and I'm not going to read the whole thing to you, but I do want to read elements: "I have been asked to talk about what I consider the most important challenge facing mankind, and I have a fundamental answer. The greatest challenge facing mankind is the challenge of distinguishing reality from fantasy, truth from propaganda. Perceiving the truth has always been a challenge to mankind, but in the information age (or as I think of it, the disinformation age) it takes on a special urgency and importance. In short, our struggle to determine what is true is the struggle to decide which of our perceptions are genuine, and which are false because they are handed down, or sold to us, or generated by our own hopes and fears. As an example of this challenge, I want to talk today about environmentalism. And in order not to be misunderstood, I want it perfectly clear that I believe it is incumbent on us to conduct our lives in a way that takes into account all the consequences of our actions, including the consequences to other people, and the consequences to the environment.  "I believe it is important to act in ways that are sympathetic to the environment, and I believe this will always be a need, carrying into the future. I believe the world has genuine problems and I believe it can and should be improved. But I also think that deciding what constitutes responsible action is immensely difficult, and the consequences of our actions are often difficult to know in advance. I think our past record of environmental action is discouraging, to put it mildly, because even our best intended efforts often go awry. But I think we do not recognize our past failures, and face them squarely. And I think I know why. I studied anthropology in college, and one of the things I learned was that certain human social structures always reappear. They can't be eliminated from society. One of those structures is religion. Today it is said we live in a secular society in which many people -- the best people, the most enlightened people -- do not believe in any religion. But I think that you cannot eliminate religion from the psyche of mankind. If you suppress it in one form, it merely re-emerges in another form. You can not believe in God, but you still have to believe in something that gives meaning to your life, and shapes your sense of the world. Such a belief is religious. Today, one of the most powerful religions in the Western World is environmentalism. |
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| "Environmentalism seems to be the religion of choice for urban atheists. Why do I say it's a religion? Well, just look at the beliefs. If you look carefully, you see that environmentalism is in fact a perfect 21st century remapping of traditional Judeo-Christian beliefs and myths. There's an initial Eden, a paradise, a state of grace and unity with nature, there's a fall from grace into a state of pollution as a result of eating from the tree of knowledge, and as a result of our actions there is a judgment day coming for us all. We are all energy sinners, doomed to die, unless we seek salvation, which is now called sustainability. Sustainability is salvation in the church of the environment. Just as organic food is its communion, that pesticide-free wafer that the right people with the right beliefs, imbibe. Eden, the fall of man, the loss of grace, the coming doomsday -- these are deeply held mythic structures. They are profoundly conservative beliefs. They may even be hard-wired in the brain, for all I know. I certainly don't want to talk anybody out of them, as I don't want to talk anybody out of a belief that Jesus Christ is the son of God who rose from the dead. But the reason I don't want to talk anybody out of these beliefs is that I know that I can't talk anybody out of them. These are not facts that can be argued. These are issues of faith." Something I have always said, by the way: You can't argue faith, by definition. Anyway... "And so it is, sadly, with environmentalism. Increasingly it seems facts aren't necessary, because the tenets of environmentalism are all about belief. It's about whether you are going to be a sinner, or saved. Whether you are going to be one of the people on the side of salvation, or on the side of doom. Whether you are going to be one of us, or one of them. Am I exaggerating to make a point? I am afraid not. Because we know a lot more about the world than we did forty or fifty years ago. And what we know now is not so supportive of certain core environmental myths, yet the myths do not die. Let's examine some of those beliefs. There is no Eden. There never was. What was that Eden of the wonderful mythic past? Is it the time when infant mortality was 80%, when four children in five died of disease before the age of five? When one woman in six died in childbirth? When the average lifespan was 40, as it was in America a century ago. When plagues swept across the planet, killing millions in a stroke. Was it when millions starved to death? Is that when it was Eden [to the environmentalists]? And what about indigenous peoples, living in a state of harmony with the Eden-like environment? Well, they never did. On this continent, the newly arrived people who crossed the land bridge almost immediately set about wiping out hundreds of species of large animals, and they did this several thousand years before the white man showed up, to accelerate the process." |
September 19, 2005
After stopping the other team on their opening drive, Stage Five Clinger
jumped out to the lead with a touchdown pass to PJ Magpantay, 6-0.
The black team tied the score, and we converted a touchdown as time
expired in the first half, Patrick Elliott passing to Dan Selsky. The
half ended 12-6.
Our our opening drive, Patrick Elliott found PJ Magpantay again for a long
touchdown, putting us ahead 18-6.
BUT, two straight second half scores and a point after touchdown
conversion put the black team up 19-18 with 3:00 minutes left.
We were stopped on our drive, and the black team had 2:18 seconds left to
burn out the clock. We managed to stop them with 11 seconds left.
Two Hail Mary attempts were futile.
The final score was 18-19.
September 15, 2005
San Francisco - AP - Breaking news from the 9th Circus District Court out of San Francisco, in a narrow 5-4 decision by the court, the US Constitution has been declared unconstitutional.
The court decided that references to religion in the constitution, as in Article VII where the constitution refers to the "year of our Lord", is unconstitutional.
Furthermore, the 9th Circus Court has decided that it would be unconstitutional to teach the constitution in public schools.
The court has said that when the constitution mentions Year of our Lord, it is in violation of the First Amendment which states unequivically "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion." The court may also look into the use of the word 'faith' in the constitution to see if this is a covert attempt to impart religion into our government.
In other news, the 9th Circus District Court found no problem imposing Sharia Law in the United States, quoted Judge Lawrence Karlton: "I'll be damned if I have to hear from one more bible-thumper from Jesusland, but any offended Muslim Jihadi shall be coddled like a young child."
September 12, 2005
What do you do?
A boss is someone you are supposed to respect and obey.
But occasionally a boss may stray into the realm of politics during work. Or during a meeting with a VP, some Directors (accounting, IT, etc), some Network Admins, a couple of Managers and a bunch of lower level technicians, service personnel, analysts, etc, myself included. A total of 20-25 people, including my boss and my boss' boss. With a talking Bush doll. And some obscene body gestures.
Blatant to everyone. All of the senior people were raucously amused. Some of the lower level employees were appalled, some neutral, some laughing. I was positively steaming. For several minutes jokes referring to Texas, Halliburton, Oil and Bush - combined with the placement of the doll in obscene positions and the frequent slapping of the doll ensued in front of the people assembled at the meeting. I would say, that although people were turned off, only one person at the meeting was a conservative. Me. My facial expressions did not hide my disgust, but no one noticed.
Such is life in the IT industry, in Maryland.
Sigh.
Someone call me intolerant now.
August 15, 2005
The deserts of the Middle East have become a focal point for the past five years. Overlooked during that time are the native species of the arid lands. Luckily, former UN Peacekeepers and Hollywood celebrities have found the remains of an undiscovered species. Dubbed the Sand Clam by scientists, the formerly unknown species is now extinct and may have been the miracle to cure cancer.
Many experts believe the cancer-curing Sand Clam has gone extinct due to Global Warming, but only from the Global Warming caused by free, democratic nations, such as the United States and not the Global Warming caused by communist nations like China. In other words, red state Americans driving their American-made SUV's ( SUV's made by Japanese auto makers are exempt) are directly responsible for making extinct the only cure for cancer. It is not proven that the Sand Clam cures cancer, but experts in liberal think tanks who dropped out of high school feel very strongly so, and some scientists empathize. These experts agree it is in the realm of possibility. While much is not known about the Sand Clam, many, including Sean Penn who starred in some popular movies once and likes to roam the Middle East with a videocamera, agree it was definitely Global Warming that made the Sand Clam extinct, even though it seems the Sand Clam thrives in hot tempatures and the fossils of which are only found the deserts of Africa and the Middle East.
In response, dying cancer patients wearing yellow bracelets the world over are calling for early adoption of the Kyoto Treaty, except for huge polluters India and China - 2.5 billion people in total - who are exempt. Don't worry that the Kyoto Treaty is essentially ineffective, and that fuel-efficient auto makers claim that if every driver in the world converted to fuel efficient vehicles, we would once again be at current usage levels in a mere six years. We must still adopt the Treaty, even though it is an expensive program that offers no solution and is used by remnants of the communist movement to punish democracies and prevent third world nations from advancing beyond hellhole theocracies (example: Cambodia, whose environmental movement - funded by Angelina Jolie - stifles any hope of reform or progress for their poverty-stricken inhabitants.)
Thousands have died due to our negligence. In addition to the Sand Clams, some humans have died due to cancer too, although American cancer deaths are only fair, since so many have to die unnecessarily due to thugocrat regimes, such as Zimbabwe or Cambodia. Instead of reforming places that need to be reformed, such as the Middle Eastern nations where the Sand Clam used to run rampant, well, we don't know, since we just discovered it, but probably, since they were killed off by American SUV's; we should make America and Great Britain more like these radical militant islamic despotic nations by adopting sharia, which ensures Sand Clam revival. Its the Koran, somewhere in the back. After three days the Sand Clams will rise up and cure cancer. Some experts agree, such as Sean Penn and Angelina Jolie.
And Dan Rather.
August 13, 2005
15 photos
15 photos
Some photos from golfing and a housewarming party.
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