Month: March 2004

politics sucks

I feel betrayed by the Democrats.

Howard Dean is going to endorse John Kerry. I will still vote for Dean in the Kentucky primary, and for Kerry in the Presidential elections, but I will not lift a finger for either of them. I’m still pissed at Kerry and the media for their treatment of Dean, and now I’m pissed at Dean for actually endorsing Kerry. Even though Kerry is going to win the nomination, I still hoped that Dean would stand firm in his beliefs and continue to raise the issues that need to be addressed. As far as I’m concerned, by endorsing Kerry, he has effectively wiped out anything good that his campaign brought to American politics.

Local politics aren’t much happier for me. Democrat Dan Mongiardo, who is challenging incumbent Republican Jim Bunning for the US Senate seat this November, happens to also be a co-sponsor of the Kentucky Senate bill that will amend the Kentucky state constitution to not only exclude gay people from getting married, but also exclude us from the benefits any kind of domestic partnership. This guy is supposed to be better for me than some Republican?

Both of these things are making me think about why I should stay in the Democratic party. On the one hand, if I’m not around to force the party leadership to take me and others like me seriously, then they will continue to move closer to the Republicans. On the other hand, I don’t want to have anything to do with these homophobic, spineless…. jerks.

*deep breath*

diot coke

Bob Edwards manages to find interesting tidbits of news and trivia that somehow filter their way through my sleep-clouded mind. Yesterday morning, he reported on the first Diot Coke, born in 1379.

Bob Edwards manages to find interesting tidbits of news and trivia that somehow filter their way through my sleep-clouded mind. Yesterday morning, he reported on the first Diot Coke, born in 1379.

spam poetry

Andrei Codrescu on spam poetry.

I am always pleased to hear Andrei Codrescu‘s commentaries on NPR, and last night’s piece on “spam poetry” was no exception. I have been wondering about those bizarre messages that get filtered to my Held Mail folder. My email provider, SpamCop, uses the SpamAssasin software along with other spam filtering programs to keep my inbox clean.

interrupt mindless TV viewing

Litterate activist action plan via Powell’s Books newsletter.

I just got around to reading the recent newsletter from Powell’s Books. One of the fun features of the newsletter is the random things they throw in between features. Here’s the one from this issue:

Every Saturday afternoon in the TV showroom of a big-box electronics outlet in Davenport, Iowa, a book group gathers, not to talk about books, but to read them. “It’s about time a little mindless TV viewing was interrupted by literature, instead of the other way around,” Helen Mabry told Quad Cities radio reporter Andrew Cummerbund. (“Helen!” another book group member could be heard saying in the background. “Don’t stir the pot!”)”

That would be so much fun! I’d love to get together a bunch of book-loving folk and go read at Best Buy.

republicanism shown to be genetic in origin

This was forwarded to me by email. I have not been able to locate the source. If you know the source, please leave that information in the comments.

UPDATE 3/15/04: I have deleted comments attached to this entry, as well as turning off that option for this entry. The comments had quickly become personal attacks against me and others who had commented. It was clearly apparent from those commenting that they didn’t grasp the satirical nature of this piece. For those who are still scratching their heads, try replacing “Republican” with “homosexual” and the characteristics, etc.

This was forwarded to me by email. I have not been able to locate the source. If you know the source, please leave that information in the comments.

Scientists in the current issue of the journal NURTURE announced the discovery that affiliation with the Republican Party is genetically determined. This caused uproar among traditionalists who believe it is a chosen lifestyle. Reports of the gene coding for political conservatism, discovered after a decades-long study of quintuplets in Orange County, CA, has sent shock waves through the medical, political, and golfing communities.

Continue reading “republicanism shown to be genetic in origin”

“i was hoping it woudn’t be so fuzzy”

Search for your favorite Calvin and Hobbes strip!

Sarah Houghton, Librarian In Black, posted a link to the Calvin and Hobbes extensive strip search on Wednesday. This made me very happy because I was able to find my favorite strip, and in the process I ran across this one.

who said it first?

Popular bloggers or plagiarizers? You decide.

Wired magazine has an article about the infection rate of weblogs. They looked at the sources of information for popular blogs and found that in many cases, less popular blogs were the first sources, and often the more popular blogs did not cite their sources.

“The most-read webloggers aren’t necessarily the ones with the most original ideas, say researchers at Hewlett-Packard Labs.”

We need to get some librarians out there to teach people how to do proper citations. This story reminded me of a professor I spoke with recently who had his class re-do a one page issue paper assignment because half of them had blatantly plagiarized (i.e. cut and paste entire paragraphs from the web). Most of them had no idea that what they did was wrong.

using my PDA

I have found a use for my Toshiba e355 beyond games of Solitare and a portable digital calendar.

Despite having my Toshiba e355 for over five months, I haven’t found many uses for it beyond the portable digital calendar that syncs with my desktop calendar. I have occasionally used AvantGo to download driving directions, and I’ve played many rounds of Solitaire, but neither of these things was enhanced by the electronic experience.

Recently, I began playing with my new Magellan SporTrack GPSr (thanks Anna!). It didn’t take long for me to become a geocaching addict. Now I’m spending the precious minutes after work on sunny days hunting around the area for hidden treasures. When I first started geocaching, I printed out the cache information on the backs of scrap paper. Then I read about different ways to go paperless. I was excited! Finally, I had found a use for my Toshiba that actually enhanced my experience. I downloaded GPXSonar to my Toshiba, grabbed some gpx files of local geocaches, and off I went.

Last Saturday, I started my day of cache hunting by picking one from the list I had downloaded and going from there. Everything I needed to find the cache was right there in my Toshiba — no wasting paper printing out a stack of cache details. I found three out of the four I went looking for and returned home satisfied with my hunt. I was able to use the program to make field notes right when I found the cache, which came in handy later when I went online to log my finds.

I still haven’t found many library-related uses for my PDA, but I suspect that they will emerge with time. Probably, I will get more use out of my Toshiba when I get a Bluetooth card and/or additional memory storage.

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