I'm rather proud of making it past the first 42 levels of angry birds without realizing you can click again to make the blue, yellow and white ones do stuff.
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09:47:39 PM,
Thursday 23 June 2011
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That they caught Whitey Bulger makes me feel somewhat better about the integrity of the current FBI.
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(1)
01:27:34 PM,
Thursday 23 June 2011
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The Alan Khazei campaign just called, and I told them I was waiting to see who else gets into the race. I feel like I kicked a puppy. I think he'd be a great senator, but I'm feeling poor, and if there's going to be a mainstream consensus candidate who isn't awful, I'm not going to spend money opposing them. If no one else jumps in, though, Khazei fundraisers, I may just donate.
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(1)
05:10:36 PM,
Tuesday 21 June 2011
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My industry has been moving away from the world 'information', replacing it with 'knowledge'. Information suggests stacks of undigested data, we want people to actually know things. This is the marketing claptrap underlying the jargon shift. But I thought, why stop there? And this lead me to some of the most impressive claptrap on the internet: Wisdom Technology. Relatedly: can we please stop with the gray-on-white and gray-on-gray? This is one of the more unfortunate typographic fashions.
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01:09:24 PM,
Tuesday 21 June 2011
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Annals of the Former World is amazing. Geology really is an incredibly important part of the story of the enlightenment, one that St. Johns passed over, partly, it seems, because James Hutton was a terrible writer. This is the trouble with the prohibition on secondary sources. Well, that and geology labs would have involved a travel budget. And they don't have time for everything, I guess you'd have to walk through it the way we walked through astronomy to do it properly.
I wonder how many accidents this book has caused at road cuts.
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(1)
07:59:05 PM,
Saturday 18 June 2011
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There's a video for Ghost Town! I doesn't hold a candle to the one in my head.
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06:23:07 PM,
Friday 17 June 2011
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American version of House of Cards coming, with Kevin Spacey as Ian Richardson. I'm deeply skeptical, though I suppose it's timely, as we ponder why exactly there are so many creeps in politics. At least it will encourage more people to watch the original. Keyser Soze goes to Washington, I suppose.
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(1)
01:29:33 PM,
Thursday 16 June 2011
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New entirely empty bit of speculation: UnitedHealthcare. This is my least favorite possible outcome, being acquired by one of the big insurers. I have enough apparent conflict of interest headaches as it is. The best, from my point of view, would be either a experienced federal contractor or a private equity firm.
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(2)
12:12:25 PM,
Thursday 16 June 2011
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Is it safe to assume the Asian pedestians who always walk on the left side of the bikepath, despite signs and regular droitwiches, are Japanese? I assume that walking side conventions mirror driving conventions.
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(4)
09:41:24 AM,
Thursday 16 June 2011
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Edwards displaying his key competency. I'm terrible at it. My elementary school photos, before I learned not to try to smile, radiate malignant hostility, which is a very accurate reflection of how I felt about the photographers. He looks sincerely happy to be having his mugshot taken.
Reading the quote from Bunny Mellon, I have switched opinions on this. You just can't have wealthy people explicitly providing politicians off-the-books slush funds. The whole campaign finance / political freedom thing is complicated, but that isn't, that's just basic transparency. It wouldn't matter if the money was just used for haircuts. We aren't an honest enough society to give our politicians the ability to hide their finances. If this means politicians are in a catch-22 when the blackmail bill comes due, that's just the price we have to pay.
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03:37:33 PM,
Wednesday 15 June 2011
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I shouldn't feel guilty for getting in at 11 on Wednesday after leaving at 10 on Monday, but nevertheless, I do.
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03:33:18 PM,
Wednesday 15 June 2011
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My Zappos binge continues: I now have my first pair of slip-on shoes. which will live in my bike bag. Since I can't really run anyway, I suppose it's okay to have shoes I couldn't run in. Still feels odd.
I had my first clipped pedal topple yesterday, coming up the hill, the chain got upset when I downshifted, and my left foot, unbeknowst to me, was clipped, so I fell over slowly sideways, and scraped my hand a little. I am now wearing my cycling gloves until I master these things.
That said, and I never believed people when they said this, being clipped is totally worth the occasional low-speed topple. it's very much like the difference between sneakers and flip-flops. You just don't have to think about the pedals at all, you can just make circles with your feet, and the bike goes. It's much more comfortable, and you don't have the constant tension of keeping your feet pressed against the pedals (remember, my feet are more or less at chest height) The biggest difference is acceleration, and just how fast you can wear yourself out. The limiting factor before was my leg muscles. Now that I can use so many more of them, the limiting factor is definitely my oxygen capacity.
I am going to have to get the shifters adjusted, though. Random transmission failures are irritatingly frequent right now. I really didn't need to fall over at 10pm last night, it was a long enough day already. I really miss my internal hub shifter.
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10:09:18 AM,
Tuesday 14 June 2011
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