Fountain

I passed this on the street this morning and snapped a shot with my cellphone...precious ad hoc re-interpretation of Duchamp's 'Fountain."

Trying out Scribefire

I'm trying a new tool to update my blog...let's see if it works. It's called Scribefire.

Short sighted idea: cut the gas tax

Here's an idea, cut the gas tax to help out consumers. Just what we need to do...stimulate demand for a commodity in short supply (that happens to e incredibly poisonous to the Earth.) Oh, and simultaneously deprive the agencies that build our roads and upkeep our infrastructure of much-needed funding (anyone remember a few recent bridge-collapses? Hmmm.) How about we time it when the fattest, meanest, dirtiest companies in that industry are also among the most profitable in the world?

Great idea!

Sleep and gym and yard

I feel so much better on 8 hours of sleep...and amazingly better when I make it to the gym in the morning. Both can be said of today. I got a lot done this morning too. It's obvious, I know, but I just feel better and get more done when I'm well rested and exercised. Thi9s weekend I was up at the house on my own, enjoyed the clean air and, at last, clean water. I spent a lot of time in the yard repairing the enormous crater left behind by the crew that dug my new well. I moved a lot of rocks, raked, planted seeds and fertilized. I'm hoping it will rain a lot this week up there so the grass grows in...it's a pretty big scar on the lawn. Other than that I got a jump start on the paper I have due in a couple weeks. I really shoulda done more, but I got the 1st three pages done. On Sunday I just wanted to be outside in the yard and then relax in the afternoon. I even played some video games. On an annoying note, I got nailed with a speeding ticket....first in well over a decade. Forty-eight miles per hour in a 30 mph zone. Dang. Well, I'll see if I can at least get the points reduced....blargh!

Generals in your pocket

Really, a frighteningly good piece of multimedia reporting here by the NY Times showing just how deeply the Pentagon's tentacles run into the media.

World-systems analysis

I meant to post this paper a while ago -- basically a book report I did on Immanuel Wallerstein's introduction to world-systems analysis. It's only five pages, so not a long read...but he's got some interesting points in his critique of capitalism.

Remember forever

Just read an interesting article by one of my favorite tech writers, Farhad Manjoo about software that allows you to digitally capture your whole life. Well, a lot of it anyway. It's a sort of "extreme blogging" in a way and, I think, the beginning of something that is inevitable and likely to change society in profound ways. It's already apparent that we're headed towards the end of forgetting and probably the end of privacy...and we are not culturally, legally, politically or spiritually ready for this 'panopticon.'