This information would have been a little more useful to me YESTERDAY!!

Appropos Adam Sandler's character from "The Wedding Singer." I just spent all weekend working on a fellowship application to the NSF... now the NYtimes is reporting: "WASHINGTON, Nov. 29 - Congress has cut the budget for the National Science Foundation, an engine for research in science and technology, just two years after endorsing a plan to double the amount given to the agency."

Time sink...

I would have so enjoyed i-am-bored.com before I started graduate school and was working at a souless non-profit.

Darshan...

What is darshan [aka darsan]? Diana L. Eck writes in Darsan: Seeing the Divine Image in India: The central act of Hindu worship...is to stand in the presence of the deity and to behold the image with ones own eyes, to see and by seen by the deity....Since, in the Hindu understanding, the deity is present in the image, the visual apprehension of the image is charged with religious meaning. Beholding the image is an act of worship, and through the eyes one gains the blessing of the divine.

I was reminded of this practice at an Ani Difranco concert this past weekend. So here's an image for Gail Ann Dorsey.

If you run Mac OS X...

You need to go and check out Quicksilver, it rocks.

Craigslist...

Where people rant and rave - and apparently post missed connection with their lost six-packs. I find it funny that the photo is in black and white.

Xander to Giles: ready to get down, funky party weasel?

Wheee! A Random Buffy Quote Generator!

Fun (not) with dictation software...

This is what the dictation software thought I said - "The stupid stupid have been stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid petition software patients are not petitions software, the to get it, but in the petitions software is not new food. The other listens to the fence and so what the end and for the sufficient software. No not sufficient software school mission! That school mission the exclamation! Not sufficient missions software, but we a other, been sufficient the patient software been sufficient patients suffer the insufficient. Been sufficient not been sufficient in sufficient in two insufficient insufficient software. This software is moving No not been laid."

Suffice it to say... it's not what I said.

This New York Times paragraph: "If walking upright first set early human ancestors apart from their ape cousins, it may have been their eventual ability to run long distances with a springing step over the African savanna that influenced the transition to today's human body form, two researchers are reporting today."

Becomes: "is looking up with its first that early human ancestors apart from that the cousins, it may have been their eventual of balloons you can lead the long distances with this brings that over you offered him so fond of the influence the transition to abuse human body forum, through reason for that the"

Hmmmmm. you offered him so fond of the influence the transition to abuse human body forum?

My Sundays....

I want to turn this into a bookmark... it's so coursework.... Maybe someday I'll get to this stage. (via SeeKyleDraw)

Fun at the Mead festival...

I'm excited that I get to go to the screenings of the Margaret Mead Film Festivals that I find interesting because I am volunteering for them this year. It's a cool experience to be behind the scenes of a film festival to see what happens from the other end so that you can get a sense of what to expect in the future. Tonight I got to hang out with the widow of Jerry Garcia, the maker of The Future of Food a didactic film about Geneticall Modified Organisms. I also got to see Being Dorothy a film about girls in Liberal, Kansas who play Dorothy and lead tours for the Land of Oz Museum/Theme Park.

Delicious Library

For someone with slight OCD tendencies, Delicious Library, is a dangerous piece of software. I can hook it up to my iSight and scan all my books in via barcode - and it'll automatically get the cover graphic and book information via the internet. Now, if only it exported to Endnote, or if someone would write a plugin for Endnote book entry....

Why did Kerry concede so quickly?

An article by Tom Paine in entitled: Kerry Won. I wish. Paine writes, [Greg] Palast’s investigation suggests that if Ohio’s discarded ballots were counted, Kerry would have won the state. Today,  the Cleveland Plain Dealer reports  there are a total of 247,672 votes not counted in Ohio, if you add the 92,672 discarded votes plus the 155,000 provisional ballots....Kerry won. Here's the facts. I know you don't want to hear it. You can't face one more hung chad.  But I don't have a choice. As a journalist examining that messy sausage called American democracy, it's my job to tell you who got the most votes in the deciding states. Tuesday, in Ohio and New Mexico, it was John Kerry. Most voters in Ohio thought they were voting for Kerry. CNN's exit poll showed Kerry beating Bush among Ohio women by 53 percent to 47 percent.  Kerry also defeated Bush among Ohio's male voters 51 percent to 49 percent. Unless a third gender voted in Ohio, Kerry took the state. He then goes on to list the three factors that resulted in the undercounting of Kerry's votes. This reference to the strange percentages that get bandied about during the vote counting process is of course not including the issues that have allegedly come up with electronic voting. One article documents a number of strange e-ballot behavior... Blue lemer has a story about how the e-voting machines consistently gave Bush a 5% point boost... while I am convinced that an investigation was warranted, I wish that they had included in their graphic, an example of voter polling matching up with returns in a Bush leading state that used paper voting... regardless the graphs themselves are striking...

Photolog...

I just got a new blog system set up where I can email my photos to Buzznet a photo log system, and then the pictures will show up here in my sidebar! How cool.

Problems with Computer Systems...

According to Common Dreams: Voters calling in to an election-day hotline reported more than 1,100 problems with the ATM-like machines, from improperly tallied choices to frozen screens that left their votes in limbo... Voters in Maryland said congressional candidates were left off ballots, while some in Florida told hotline volunteers that their ballots had already been filled out when they stepped up to vote, watchdogs said....The nonpartisan group said it had received 1,166 complaints as of late evening involving a wide array of machines. "It gives us the uneasy feeling that we're only seeing the tip of the iceberg," said Cindy Cohn, legal director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a technology-policy group involved in the coalition. Now that Kerry has conceded to Bush - I am fully prepared for a November report that indicates both massive fraud in Florida and the fact that Kerry did win Ohio... these reports of course will be shuffled aside and barely reported upon by the entertainment news media.

F*ck the supposed "will of the american people"

So the kkkonservatives* are howling themselves silly over Kerry's refusal to concede. Why should Kerry concede? Surely the kkkonservatives* can't be inferring "will" from the popular vote (c.f. Election 2000). And I'd be willing to bet my life savings that if the situation in Ohio was reversed, with Kerry ahead by less than 5% that the New York Times headline would be "Kerry is 'convinced' of win; White House Reluctant to Concede Tight Race" with some White House talking head talking about how Bush has the popular vote (no doubt the same talking head that claimed we should follow the political process of the electoral college). In 2000, Bush was ahead by less than 1,000 votes in Florida when his brother's and lackeys headed off a recount (which Gore would have won). I'm going to head off and make a blue t-shirt that reads: Recount 2000, didn't happen. Recount 2004, had better. (Bush is running out of brothers). But one wonders where in the world Bush managed to carry Florida by 400,000 votes, I'm waiting for an analysis of that situation. Just a reminder, according to the Guardian apparently only 3% of the 93,000 names that were removed from the Florida registered voter rolls were illegal voters.

*the reason why I am using kkkonservative as a term is because I'm pissed and I'm currently in the process of trying to come up with a term to describe the kkkonservatives that they themselves don't use. I don't want to use a term to describe them that only results in their belief that they are accurately reflected in the term. i.e. I don't want to always be using their terms to engage in political discussion anymore because the debate as always stacked in their favor when you do). The key, [Lakoff] says, is not to shift rightward politically, but to lift a few moves from the right’s linguistic playbook. Lakoff is trying to teach liberals what conservatives have known for years: the skill of defining, or “framing,” issues in a way that makes it next to impossible for the other side to contradict you. By consciously and cleverly framing the terms used in the debate, you define the debate itself. “Clear Skies” and “partial-birth abortion” aren’t just catchphrases; they’re brilliantly self-contained arguments. And if you need any further proof that liberals are losing the frame game, consider that many won’t even call themselves “liberal,” preferring the (as-yet) unsullied tag “progressive.” I don't think it's accurate or fair, but I don't think contemporary American politics is about either (which is a problem that needs to be addressed in another post).

Puppy, puppy, puppy, puppy, puppy....

I've been thinking about getting a puppy. If you go to this site belonging to a russian breeder then you'll know what I mean. However - I will not be getting my puppy from a scary international puppy mill - I have an appointment to go and see these two later this week.