Oh, the other thing I meant to post (almost entirely to annoy secretspice ) is this video from the recently-ended NYU student protest and cafeteria occupation. Several of my friends have recommended it to me lately because I'm taking a course on consensus decision making right now. I finally got around to watching it last night with Hal, who has been reading up on the situation, and his brother...

Melanie says my lack of updates recently has worried her, so I'm obliged to make an update. Two weeks ago was spent crashing at the Hacienda de Columbia in DC, where I hovered in the periphery of inaugural happenings and got some face time with good friends there. This past week was dominated by what was effectively a coding sprint towards the first major release of our new project. This coming...

"It's been a long time coming, but tonight, because of what we did on this day, in this election, at this defining moment, change has come to America." secretspice posted this and I'm totally stealing it because it sums up what my opinion has been since 2004 about radicals who are anti-voting. This is maybe a little disturbing, given the fact so many people died, but I always wanted...

This needs some explanation. A long time ago, secretspice bound me by meme-law to write a post about capitalism. It's more or less part of an ongoing dialog with her about politics, which is why in it I'm assuming the reader has an intense radical agenda that falls just short of Haymarket-style bomb throwing. It's also why I didn't have a problem saying some things with the intent of adding...

A trip to Ikea almost inspired me to respond to secretspice 's 'Capitalism' prompt. But I was too busy assembling furniture. My new neighborhood grows on me daily. I think I made a good decision coming here. Yesterday I bumped into somebody I knew from high school who I haven't seen in years and years. She is living just a couple blocks away from me. Tomorrow a couple friends from work...

Notes from DL0002, the flight home, on 7/14/08 He said to himself: "This. This inching minute. This climactic idleness. This heart thanklessly beating in an unloved chasis. This soaring prison, hostile to pleasure, hostile to work, hostile to sleep, intimate with stupor. This, this, this." secretspice asked me what it is we are escaping from. My admittedly abstruse guess is:...

I just finished The Magic Mountain minutes ago. The narrative takes seven years. In the second to last section, there is the final confrontation between the rational humanist Settembrini and Naphta, the who advocates terroristic religiosity through contradiction and casuistry. The the last section dramatically unveils the horrors of World War I: "Then came the rumble of thunder-- But modesty and...

This weekend I was hanging out with a cherished friend--an English major and music lover--in Central Park. At some point, he turns to me and asks: "Dude, do you read xkcd ?!" Right now, as you all know by now I'm sure, I'm employed as a software engineer. I work on a Linux machine in a room full of programmers each day. Whenever a new xkcd comes out, somebody says, "Hey, have you seen the new xkcd...

I've changed a lot this year. Not all in good ways. There've been moments of regression. And there've been moments where I found out that maybe I wasn't who I thought I was or who I thought I'd be (thanks, Ani, once again, for putting my life into lyrical form). Particularly in relationship to sexism, my own ability to deal with it, my own ability to stand up to it, my own ability to recognize when...

This is the article I've been waiting like, my whole life, to read. Well, this , too. I commented on this trend once before . It was also raised (not by me) in last Saturday night's worship with the local young adult group. One of the more active members expressed that she'd been going through a rough time, and that whereas she once found comfort and faith, she didn't feel like unitarian universalism...