If you recall last year in mid-September, I took a week off work and put in a new patio and walkway in my backyard, with a great deal of help from my friend Kathy and a lot of hard work myself. I dug out the pit for the walkway and laid the pavers for it
Read on »Archives: August 2005
Devastating Flickr Photos of Katrina
See recent photos tagged with keywords related to the hurricane: Katrina, Hurricane, New Orleans, Louisiana, Biloxi I’m not only donating money to the Red Cross, I’m also sorting out clothes and other items that we had left over from the garage sale to donate to charity, especially if I can find a group that is
Read on »That didn’t take long
Of course, as Bush was pulling a “My Pet Goat II” by vacationing, eating cake and playing his “official presidential seal” guitar while Katrina devastated the south, the religious right was pinning the blame for Hurricane Katrina on gay people. Ethan puts it best in his post: Nice Guitar, Asshole.
Read on »Tragic
Louisiana’s disaster planning funds were relocated by the president to fund Iraq and for your tax cuts. New Orleans district of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers federal funding was cut by $71.2 million in June. Mississippi and Louisiana National Guard troops are not available to help flood relief because they are serving in Iraq.
Read on »FCC is seeking to expand it’s reach into cable
According to Salon Magazine, Commissioner Kevin J. Martin of the FCC has been meeting quietly with religious leaders and industry leaders to try to organize a push for new stricter standards on what is broadcast over cable stations. Pardon me, please, because I’m going to lose it right here. USE YOUR FUCKING ‘V’ CHIP, PEOPLE.
Read on »Washington Post article and logical fallacies
Regarding this Sally Jenkins article on Washington Post, I’ve never read a printed article so full of logical fallacies before. I’m speechless.
Read on »Find a Grave
Not sure whether I find this to be morbid or fascinating: Find a Grave: a website that lists gravesites and burial information for millions of people. Of course I immediately searched for my families names. My grandfather on my mom’s side isn’t listed, but there are some others that are probably relatives from her site
Read on »The Long Tail
[Navigated to by way of Steven Johnson’s Blog. Johnson is the author of Everything Bad Is Good for You: How Today’s Popular Culture Is Actually Making Us Smarter which I read recently.] Quoting from Wikipedia: The phrase The Long Tail, as a proper noun, was first coined by Chris Anderson. Beginning in a series of
Read on »Dance Dance Revolution
Oh, I forgot to mention that Stephanie and I got out the Xbox game Dance Dance Revolution for the first time this Sunday and played it. I am an uncoordinated dork, but it’s incredibly fun. Hopefully the more I play the less of an uncoordinated dork I will become.
Read on »What Makes People Gay?
Interesting article in the Boston Globe.
Read on »The Game
Another fascinating public-space game.
Read on »Catholic Church moves to ban gay priests
The Pope is considering banning gay men from becoming priests and removing priests who are gay from service. Interesting on so many levels, really. My thoughts: I wonder when they’re going to remove all the lesbian nuns. The pedophile scandals will continue, because the priests molesting kids aren’t gay, and the gay priests aren’t molesting
Read on »Weekend Update 2005-08-29
We had out garage sale over the weekend, and it was a lot of work for very little result, unfortunately. I made $63, Stephanie made something like $20, and both of us practically killed ourselves preparing and tearing everything down. Most of it was that we didn’t have enough traffic; there were lots of people
Read on »Drowning in Debt
Scary, the new statistics on both personal and national debt. I read another statistic in this month’s Utne Magazine, that if the entire world consumed the way that Americans consume, we would need five earths to provide resources for all that we needed to produce.
Read on »Robertson and Venezuela
I try not to cut and paste other people’s writing wholesale into my blog, because I think my blog should be my writing, not other peoples. But I have done it recently, and I’m doing it again today, because there’s a lot of information in a recent post from Americablog that’s worth thinking about: A
Read on »How many Bush administration officials does it take to change a light bulb?
One to deny that a light bulb needs to be changed; One to attack the patriotism of anyone who says the light bulb needs to be changed; One to blame Clinton for burning out the light bulb; One to arrange the invasion of a country rumored to have a secret stockpile of light bulbs; One
Read on »Gallery of roadside mural advertisements
Very cool gallery of photos of large mural advertisements painted on walls.
Read on »The Flying Spaghetti Monster and “Pastafarianism”
I put a new emblem on my car last night. It’s the image of the “Flying Spaghetti Monster.” Wikipedia explains it best: Flying Spaghetti Monsterism is a parody religion created to protest the decision by the Kansas State Board of Education to allow intelligent design to be taught in science classes alongside evolution. The “religion”
Read on »Herron High School
Coming soon to a neighborhood near me… a Charter high school focusing on the classic Liberal Arts education. Awesome.
Read on »Instant labeling tape
Hannes Koch created this cool labeling tape, where you simply black out some lines with a black marker to create the words you want. Fun. I love labels. They are fun. This makes me want to go home and play with my label maker.
Read on »Bullshit Protector – I NEED some of these!
From the National Post: Bill Moyer, 73, wears a “Bullshit Protector” flap over his ear while President George W. Bush addresses the Veterans of Foreign Wars. ** EDS NOTE OBSCENITY – CORRECTS MOYER’S SERVICE IN WWII AS POST-WAR OCCUPATION OF GERMANY, NOT IN THE WAR ITSELF ** Bill Moyer, 73, wears a “Bullshit Protector” flap
Read on »Difference between civil rights and civil liberties
Author: Sheila Suess Kennedy Quick — what’s the difference between civil liberties and civil rights? If you aren’t quite certain, you have a lot of company. The distinction is lost on most of my students, and — far more troubling — on a good number of city and state legislators. Civil liberties are rights that
Read on »Google Map showing where my site visitors are from
Check this out, a Google Map showing where people are viewing my site from. I have visitors from Oxford, England; Napoli, Italy; and Athens, Greece. That’s scary.
Read on »We’re not critical to the evolution of democracy?
In a discussion of the Iraqi attempts to write a constitution that occurred on Meet the Press, guest Reuel Marc Gerecht, former Middle Eastern specialist with the CIA and author of “The Islamic Paradox” had this to say: MR. GERECHT: Actually, I’m not terribly worried about this. I mean, one hopes that the Iraqis protect
Read on »Our State Fair is a Great State Fair
Stephanie and I went to the State Fair on Saturday: see the pictures on IndyScribe. Also, I just recently found Godwin’s Law explained on Wikipedia, which is very cool. I thought it came into being long before 1991, though. I remember it being referred to when I was on USENET back in college, which would
Read on »Public Space Games: Ministry of Reshelving
I’m a bit behind on reading Boing Boing, so I’m just now perusing Wednesday’s post about a new city-wide game: the Ministry of Reshelving, by Avant Game, a woman’s personal blog where she discusses some of the public games she’s created and participated in. Basically, following certain rules, you go to a bookstore and take
Read on »Underage Marriage in Afghanistan
According the United Nations, more than 45% of all marriage in Afghanistan involve girls under the age of 16. Some girls as young as six are being married off as “property” arrangements to resolve disputes between families. Everytime I hear a story like this, I think of living in a country like that, and being
Read on »Beautiful Photos of candlelight vigils
Hoffmania posts some really gorgeous photos of last night’s nation-wide candlelight vigils for troops killed in Iraq.
Read on »Spike goes to the doggie hospital
I had to drop Spike off at the emergency vet today. He’s apparently having some sort of gastronomic distress and was having bloody diarrhea this morning. We knew he was having some problem; I took him to the regular vet on Saturday because he didn’t seem to want to eat or poop, and he refused
Read on »Herron Morton Place Neighborhood Garage Sale
My neighborhood will be having its annual garage sale next Saturday, August 27, from 8:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m., and I and many other people will be participating. There will be maps of the neighborhood at each participating house. Herron-Morton Place is downtown east of Meridian; the boundaries are East 16th Street on the south,
Read on »Freakonomics Blog
Steven Leavitt, the guy who wrote the awesome book Freakonomics, has a blog. Excellent!
Read on »Dating via weird high-tech tattoos and cell phones
1. Use this site to create a UPC bar code that contains your personal data. 2. Tattoo your new bar code on your body. 3. Find people who own one of these camera cell phones, and have them scan your tattoo to read your data. I’m not kidding; this is a real dating phenomenon.
Read on »Juliet and Juliet
Apparently, Boston’s famous swan couple are a same-sex couple. Testing recently revealed that the swans who have been promoted by the city as a Shakespearean romantic dream are actually both female. How very appropriate. This, however, is not: ”Each year when the swans go in, the kids immediately come to us and say, ‘Which one’s
Read on »Happy Birthday, Stephanie!!!
Stephanie’s birthday is today. If you’re reading this, comment and tell her happy birthday! I love you, honey.
Read on »Gender Roles
There are lots of things that I like that are traditionally considered feminine. For example: big poofy white wedding dresses. There are lots of things of things that I like that are traditionally considered masculine. Like pipe tobacco smoke (which is because I have memories of my dad smoking a pipe when I was a
Read on »My Library
I’m started cataloging my library using Booxter software, by Deep Prose. Since 1997, I’ve kept lists of all the books I’ve read, but I’ve never been good at keeping track of the books I actually own and haven’t yet read, or books that I want to purchase. And for insurance reasons, I should have an
Read on »21 Bush Admin Officials who should see criminal charges
An excellent article on the 21 white house officials who were involved in the illegal leaking of a CIA agent’s identity to the public, and the details of how they were involved. If you want to sort out the details and see who this generations version of “The Watergate 5” are, here’s your article.
Read on »Kinetic Sculptures from Old Junk
I’ve posted several of these links before, but I wanted to aggregate them all in the same spot because they’re interesting. They’re all sculptures made of found objects. We were talking about this in Louisville this past weekend, because I was brainstorming some things I’d like to make, and there were a couple artists in
Read on »Republicans have small penises
According to a Cornell University study, when men feel their masculinity is threatened, they over compensate by adopting attitudes in support of the Iraq war, expressing interest in buying SUVs, and making homophobic threats. We needed a study to tell us this?
Read on »Interesting Advertising
This should interest my friend Doug: newspaper readers in the UK are currently being treated to a truly great series of print ads. The Stella Artois adverts place objects that may be familiar to you from various movies into a single landscape, and the challenge is to figure out what movies all the images are
Read on »Chicago Pictures
We wound up our long weekend on Monday by going to Chicago with Stephanie and Lisa to visit the Art Institute, do a little site-seeing, and shop at the Fluevog store for some super cool new shoes.
Read on »The Importance of Sleep
Harvard study on the importance of sleep: Van Cauter also showed that sleep-deprived subjects had reduced levels of leptin, a molecule secreted by fat cells that acts in the brain to inhibit appetite. “During nights of sleep deprivation, you feel that your eating goes wacky,” says Stickgold. “Up at 2 a.m., working on a paper,
Read on »the nine reasons we don’t do what we should
Via Lifehack: a great article on why we don’t get stuff done that we should. Fear Lack of Self-Confidence Lack of Knowledge Trying to Do Too Much Alone Trying to Do Too Much Loss of Self Lack of Energy Lack of Reward It Can’t Be Done UPDATE: the more closely I read the article, the
Read on »What the fish?
Oh, c’mon. I figured out the fish puzzle years ago, along with everyone else in my workplace. It’s not that hard, for pete’s sake, and I’d challenge that “98% of people can’t figure it out” claim. Everyone I work with figured it out. It’s a simple logic puzzle.
Read on »Six Feet Under
Given everything that’s happened in my life in the last couple years, why would this weeks episode of Six Feet Under be the thing that keeps me awake half the night terrified of death?
Read on »“Outing” Revisited
Way back in March of 1998, I wrote a long article/essay/diatribe on the subject of “outing” people. Reading it today, I realize it wasn’t as much about “outing” people as it was about complaining about prevalence of opportunistic gay people who stay in the closet to prey on people who are out while avoiding the
Read on »Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab
It’s probably high time for me to write a BPAL review. I got into this through Stephanie, who heard about it from her friends Lisa and Sarah who always know all the cool stuff first. Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab is a perfume/essential oils small business, run primarily on the web, with some small boutique availability.
Read on »Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
We went to see Tim Burton’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory yesterday. I know this is complete sacrilege, but I liked the storyline better in this version than in the Gene Wilder Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory version. There were more satisfying explanations for everything than the original, especially for the ending, which wrapped
Read on »Art Car Day
Kentucky Art Cart Weekend 2005
Read on »Errors
Ever have one of those days where you make mistakes and EVERYONE points them out to you? Family members, co-workers, complete strangers on the street stop you to tell you your wrong? You do a ton of work and get 7000 things perfectly correct, perform miracles and move mountains, but you overlook one thing and
Read on »Quote of the week: “I got saved at an Amway Meeting”
Found in middle of Salon Magazine’s article “Verily, I sell unto you” — on the new trend of Christian business owners advertising their faith as a part of their business. I knew there was a great reason not to go to Amway meetings.
Read on »Condoleeza Hairdo Alert System
Located at Princess Sparkle Pony’s Photo Blog – she keeps track of Condoleeza’s hairdo so we don’t have to.
Read on »A list of Post-Modern novels
A MetaFilter list of suggested “sprawling post-modern novels”. Off the top of my head, I have these that are on their list. delillo’s underworld infinite jest house of leaves Umberto Eco’s Foucault’s Pendulum Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children and Ground Beneath Her Feet Death on the Installment Plan by Celine Neal Stephenson – Cryptonomicon The Tin Drum
Read on »Kentucky Art Car Weekend/Chicago Trip
Stephanie and I are going down to Louisville, Kentucky, again this weekend, this time to meet her friend Lisa from North Carolina, who is road-tripping up for the Kentucky Art Car Weekend. Lisa is coming up in a caravan with her friend Sarah, who has an art car in the art car show. Lisa will
Read on »“Fair” Tax is only fair to the Rich
Read this great threat at TMPCafe for information about why — including the most enlightening comments. Also, for all Democrats who desperately need to brush up on this issue before the GOP blitz, here’s a great site: TaxWisdom.org Paper towels: One roll for 99 cents, 3 for $2.50. If you can buy three rolls right
Read on »Money better spent
A great New York Times op/ed piece on how bottled water is not really better for you, and how it’s an enormous waste of money and natural resources. Here’s the real kicker, though: Clean water could be provided to everyone on earth for an outlay of $1.7 billion a year beyond current spending on water
Read on »Secret Societies
I’m in the middle of reading: Secret Societies Handbook by Michael Bradley A History of Secret Societies by Arkon Daraul And I’m fascinated, especially by the Handbook, because it lists the Bilderberg Group, the Club of Rome and the Council on Foreign Relations; all are real groups that seem to have major influence on world
Read on »Stopping Nightmares
Psychology Today Lucid Dreaming 2019 Update: Not sure why I was having nightmares or why I thought these articles would help. I guess I got over it.
Read on »Open-Heart Surgery on TV
Battlestar Galactica: on a recent episode, Captain Adama was shot, and was starting to code blue. Not having a defibulator handy, the medic opted to crack open his chest and massage his heart to restart it. Immediately after the procedure they show him lying on the table, with very few monitors around, with a simple
Read on »Shorthand
No time, just recording these: Renegade Art Batman’s bust Something to read further Pre-1960s Bollywood posters
Read on »Weekend Update: King Kong at IMA
Stephanie and I saw King Kong with Dan and Doug, Josh, and David and Garrett on the Terrace at the IMA. It was great fun; the sound was much better than in the past, and I love seeing movies with Dan and Doug; I haven’t done that much recently, and I miss it. I spent
Read on »