Took parents to Cranes Beach. Chased many schools of small fish. At one point got one seperated from it's school, and nearly caught it. Got it in my cupped hands. Schooling makes more sense to me now. If they school, you can't keep track of your fish, so you can't tire it out. Now the bottoms of my feet are terribly sore whenever I stand on them. Sunburn? I was on my feet the whole time, so I can't imagine that it's sunburn. Some sort of strange cell dehydration from standing in salt water for 4 hours? Some sort of strange bruising from walking barefoot on hard sand? No one else has this problem, but then, no one else spent the entire time chasing schools of fish. Most people turn into lizards as soon as you put them on sand.
_
respond?
01:12:52 PM,
Monday 5 September 2005
-
Maybe I'm contrary, but it's worth remembering that everyone in government always wants more money, that no project is ever fully funded, and that there has never been a disaster that couldn't have been mitigated by if someone out there hadn't had more money/resources/rights. I'm not saying that there weren't epic foul-ups, just that some skepticism is in order before we accuse the government of complicity with the hurricane.
_
respond?
(2)
12:38:50 PM,
Friday 2 September 2005
-
How on earth did the price controls work in the 1970s? What happened? There must be a book about this somewhere.
Meanwhile, You know all those stories we've had for the past few years about all-time high gas prices? They're actually right this time. Should I be upset or happy? Personally, I'm barely effected. Inflation is a wash as long as I keep my job. Being urbanish, gas prices are a tiny part of the budget. A healthy economy is good, but ecologically, this seems like good news. (Unless the government does something daft, like gas subsidies).
_
respond?
(4)
12:45:00 PM,
Thursday 1 September 2005
-
picturetaking has been suspended until I have a new monitor.
_
respond?
07:07:58 PM,
Wednesday 31 August 2005
-
My childhood hurricane. I was 7. We sat around my brother's D battery powered boombox with flashlights. When I went back to school, I was convinced that a large boulder in a front yard my bus passed had rolled over.
This time I have an excuse. Tech support thinks my screensaver is somehow locking my account, so I'm not allowed to touch the laptop for 15 minutes.
_
respond?
03:33:18 PM,
Wednesday 31 August 2005
-
The brain keeps telling me it's friday. I suspect it didn't get reset last weekend, being addled from the flinging back and forth to minnesota and missing car talk. Minnesota: warmer during the summer than the winter. The St. Croix river: indistinguishable from a long narrow lake. Made sense of annoying motorboats. Had only ever seen them on more conventional lakes, where they went around and around and around and around, much like the joggers of song. Was shown alleged chigger bites. This answered a question I've had since I was a small child playing Adventure on the Apple IIe. (Chiggers, what are) Weddings were invented so that daughters can torment their mothers. Horses are large and not entirely trustworthy. There are a wide variety of mental pathologies that afflict cats.
_
respond?
02:49:41 PM,
Wednesday 31 August 2005
-
Went through everything I had on tape, made a list of things I needed digitally. Long list. Just started on it by buying Ferment by Catherine Wheel, which never fails to remind me of the white-painted wrought-iron radiators in Randall Hall. A more rational approach would have put my oldest tapes first, (Billy Joel, George Harrison and Peter Gabriel), but I woke up singing Indigo is Blue th'smorning.
_
respond?
12:59:47 PM,
Wednesday 31 August 2005
-
I was wrong: Canadian gas prices were significantly higher.
_
respond?
09:02:41 AM,
Wednesday 31 August 2005
-
Dahlia Lithwick quoted me!
The email in whole:
Subject: A Scalia Casualty
Ms. Lithwick,
It's all your fault. If it weren't for you, I could have been a happy liberal. But no, you had to make it all sound interesting. Then I had to go read "A Matter of Interpretation" and now all my friends think I'm evil, a traitor to my class. In the long marches of the night I wonder if I should go to law school and shudder.
The constitution must die. A common law constitution is deeply and profoundly undemocratic. If we're going to have a living constitution, I want to bloody well vote for the judges. It's a choice between what you prefer, the Warren Court or the constitution. On the issues, I'd take the Warren court any day. But I don't trust it, and I like the idea of a written constitution. And I'm uncomfortable supporting tyranny, even if it shares my values. The constitution is in dire need of amending. There should be a right to privacy. But it should be debated, hashed out, and written in black and white where I can see it, not hidden away in substantial due process, or wherever it is. The Warren court bailed out the legislature with Brown. This was sensible, and maybe even necessary. Maybe we needed a tyrant at that moment. But maybe the legislature would have got there. Now the legislature is spoiled. It no longer had to be sensible, because the court continues to tidy up after it. My dream scenario is that the court would force the modernization of the constitution by making impractical, textual decisions. Shutting off the commerce clause would be a place to start. If we're going to have a federal government, it's boundries should be written down somewhere.
The argument that convinced me it should be dead, and that we need to think about what the text meant, is the example Scalia gives of cruel and unusual punishment. What if society becomes crueler? Can the standard evolve the other way? If so, it means nothing. It's asking the judges to guess how people would vote, and at that point, you let people vote instead.
_
respond?
(1)
04:40:37 PM,
Monday 29 August 2005
-
Yes, he made Brazil. The trouble is, he also made Jabberwocky. Also, Matt Damon, who, rather than acting, does one thing after another simply to bother me. It's going to be 12 monkeys all over again, at best. You know, digital film technology should, in theory, let us watch a film with actors we don't like replaced by large cartoon blobs and humourously masked voices, and then there would be all sorts of movies I might quite enjoy.
_
respond?
(3)
03:59:48 PM,
Friday 26 August 2005
-
Googling about, it seems that the mass of shipping going through US ports is on the same order of magnitude as the amount of soil erosion. Yes, these are the sorts of things I wonder about. In particular, is the United States getting heavier? It seems unlikely, but not impossible if we try hard enough.
_
respond?
(1)
03:29:42 PM,
Friday 26 August 2005
-
The saving grace of computer programs: They never wear out.
_
respond?
01:22:11 PM,
Friday 26 August 2005
-
site & script courtesy of Moss
