An article in the New York Times can be found here; I hope it will be illustrative and useful in your daily existence. I particularly enjoyed the correction to this punctuation-themed piece, which follows:
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: February 19, 2008 An article in some editions on Monday about a New York City Transit employee’s deft use of the semicolon in a public service placard was less deft in its punctuation of the title of a book by Lynne Truss, who called the placard a “lovely example” of proper punctuation. The title of the book is “Eats, Shoots & Leaves” — not “Eats Shoots & Leaves.” (The subtitle of Ms. Truss’s book is “The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation.”)
In other news, I hope you'll get a chance to see the lunar eclipse tonight! 8:43 pm ET is when it starts; check your local listings for updates.
There are a few stories on slashdot today that seemed thematic to me. One is about a group of people who are given special privileges. So is another. In fact, they all are. But in these stories, one is clearly wrong, while two others are less objectionable. Now, I'm going to talk about why I think that is. You have been warned.
By the by, I have a little complaint about my Mac here. I'm writing this post while installing some updates, and it's a major lag. I'm about midway through this paragraph, and every so often, I glance up and check how it's coming. The cursor is now writing the word 'post'. It's eerie- like having a ghost editor. It's actually fun, in a way, but more fun is having a computer which does what I tell it when I tell it.
(Put another way, I finished the last paragraph, set my laptop down, threw my laundry in the dryer, fed the cat, walked back to my computer, and watched the end of said paragraph appear on the screen. True story.)
Back to business. My first instinct was to say that any power given to the group in the first story is wrong, because they're freaks. Then I decided I didn't want to get sued. Which is, incidentally, why I'm not using their real name. So I need a more rational delimiter on the subject. They are a category of people. The same could be said, though, of students, or citizens of the US who have internet access. Clearly, not enough. So let's change that to "The group in question is a religion." So are the Jews. No big deal. How about, "In this instance, a religion has been given the right to interfere with commercial transactions between people who may not even subscribe to that religion"? Sounds good, doesn't it? But it's missing something. I want certain commercial transactions interfered with (e.g., slave trading and illegal weapons sales). I don't care if the person interfering has a religious affiliation or not.
So where's the line? Here: "In this instance, a religious group is interfering with lawful commercial transactions." The fact that I'll let a devout person stop a slave trade doesn't mean I'll accept their piety as a source of authority; I would still want a secular law or set of laws on the books that allows that sort of thing. It doesn't look, on the face of it, like any law is being broken by these deals, so why should anyone kowtow to their pressure?
Also, in the other two stories, the product is being freely distributed to users, while the first story is an instance of prevention of distribution. And I'm all for the distribution of goods. Especially to me. Give me your stuff!
(Little update update: My computer finished updating about three paragraphs back. The rest of the post flowed smoothly, like molasses. Well, molasses in comparison to wrought iron at 12 degrees Celsius. Anyway, it went smoothly.)
As some of you may know, yesterday was a significant day. In celebration, one of my coworkers handed to me a baggie with various sugared treats inside. Sadly, my old standbys (turkish delights and baklava) were not present in the baggie, but it was a kind effort on her part nonetheless.
I was less impressed, however, with the Tootsie Roll company. In an effort to "cash in" on the more familiar chalk-based candies, Tootsie Roll packages came to me with such romantic sentiments as (and these are direct quotes here):
"C U L8R"
"WYSIWYG"
Now, it seems to me that, when people can go out and simply buy these heartfelt comments, it cheapens it for the rest of us who bother to spell out "What you see is what you get." And common farewells between passing aquaintances, like "See you later", are simply too precious to be commercialized on a candy wrapper.
It is time for those of us who are truly romantic to wrest our apathy from the major corporations and tell the ones we care about, in a heartfelt manner, "I could pick your face out of a very small crowd".
There's a story here which kind of puts a damper on my day. This is quite a feat, since I got almost no sleep last night and it's too friggin' cold for my taste out there, but I suppose things could be worse; I could, for instance, have my house set on fire. (Sorry about the links that don't go to the actual story; I don't feel like signing up for the LA Times subscription service this morning, and it wouldn't help you much anyway if I did.)
On the plus side of this whole crazy "existence" thing, I like the idea of electric clothing. I bet it's made from the wool of electric sheep, about which androids dream...
Oh, crap. To everyone else, the writer's strike ending means new episodes of their favorite sitcoms; to me, it simply means that people will have something to do other than read my sporadically updated blog. Well, something additional to do, anyway.
Although, it does seem kind of convenient that it rounded out to a nice 100 days. I figure, someone in the WGA said something like, "We could concede today, but who would go see a movie about a strike that lasted exactly 96 days?" You magnificent bastards!
This is the entirety of the note I found on my blog this morning.I was honestly shocked to find it; I wasn't aware anyone read my humble musings.
The actual part of the post that this person is responding to was an attempt at humor; a parenthetical aside designed to explain that, although I wished to comment on the discussion, I did not want to really become part of it. That's really my fault. I should have known, before I said anything, that you can't fairly do that sort of thing. So allow me to clarify my thoughts:
I don't think atheism is bad. I just happen to think that people who make a big deal of their atheism can be jerks, even though I've done this myself on occasion.
I don't think vegetarianism is bad. I just think that PETA needs to tone it down and get some damn perspective.
I don't think prayer is bad. I just think that anyone who tells me I have to pray a certain way, before I've had a chance to ask them, should mind their own damn business.
I don't think animal sacrifice is bad. My dinner last night (chicken burrito) can attest to that fact.
I don't think anyone has got it Right so far. I'm still struggling with the paradox that, to give one line of thinking (e.g., a religion) a fair opportunity to present itself, you have to deny another line of thinking (e.g., "no one should ever listen to any religious person ever") that same opportunity.
On a related note, here is an update on the University Club that started this whole huge rant of mine. It seems that the offensive phrase was "without religion". I'm a little conflicted here. On the one hand, if a Buddhist or Jewish club were interested in exploring life "without Jesus", I think that would be validly offensive. On the other hand, you can't really define atheists in terms of their positive beliefs (i.e. science), since those beliefs are widely held by people of various religious backgrounds, as well. The core of atheism is not a belief, but a denial; you can't really describe an atheist club without "without".
Ultimately, though, I've only heard the one side of the debate. I'm pretty sure that if I personally went to this university and asked them, in a calm and reasonable way, why they made this decision, I'd find that their point of view was pretty reasonable, as well, and that their justifications for their actions made good sense. I'm not discounting the possibility that this is exactly what it is made out to be (an obnoxious attempt to silence atheist voices on campus), but I'm not going to bet on it. (Incidentally, as I am writing this post, my coworkers are trying to decide which of them is the luckiest, as that person will have the responsibility of purchasing the groups lottery tickets. I'm not betting on that, either.)
Today at work, I wrote a program that writes webpages. I'm feeling very proud of myself. So, I have geek, geek and geek, to celebrate.
And if you were wondering, my nerdiness on that second one works out thus: Check, check, no check, no check, check, no check, check, check, no check, check, check, check, check, semi-check, no check, check, no check, no check, semi-check, no check. That's a geek score of 11/20 (counting each semi-check as 1/2 point). Pitiful. I must try harder to be nerdy. Except the only thing I'm not already into on the list that appeals to me is Battlestar Galactica. I wonder if other people have problems like "insufficient geekiness". Also, they left "dead languages" off the list, as well as the biggy: "Computers"! Onion's AV Club, you have failed me.
So, I've been reading this webcomic for a while. When I started, I think it only took me a half an hour to get through the archives. It's pretty cool. Check it out. It even has an ancillary comic. Like a little comic strip moon. Orbits are fun!
Anyway, it turns out, the artist likes to show off his technique. He's using some crazy technology called, I guess, the cintiq. It's pretty cool-looking, though not for me; I like my keyboard, galdurnit! I'm not in love with it; I'd still like to see an uprising of the Dvorak layout, since this machine is just a wee bit faster than the typewriters the standard qwerty keyboard was made to optimize, but I'd be happy to switch.
Anyway, I can easily see how someone in the graphic arts would be inclined to use the "draw on the screen" system. It seems to work out pretty well, especially when replayed at high-speed. I'm still thinking about what sorts of revolutions in input media would be really awesome; possibilities that are kind of dumb and me-specific include:
Knitting: you move your needles in certain ways to make things happen onscreen.
Juggling: you throw things in the air, and a couple of cameras built in to the computer track the things and things happen onscreen.
Funny faces: This one is almost in use; they've already got the technology (I think) to track your eye movements and react to that, but I'd like to see things happen if you stick out your tongue at the machine.
Anyway, that's just my list. And as long as the computer continues to be used primarily as a document creation/storage device, the keyboard will remain king.
Here, we have links to a couple of blogs that I've just discovered as part of "Blogroll Amnesty Day", which (apparently) has dark and disturbing origins. Spooky!
While I'm doublespeaking on this subject, I have a link here to a note, written by a university official to a student attempting to start up a campus unreligious group. It speaks of tolerance and acceptance toward others' religious views and practices. I have to wonder with this sort of thing: If someone starts up a Christian group, do they have to pray toward Mecca five times a day and keep kosher and keep vegetarian and sacrifice goats? Because it seems just a little religiously intolerant if they don't.
(As an ass-covering side note, I don't personally endorse animal sacrifice, vegetarianism, prayer, or atheism. All those things are bad, bad, bad. I guess.)
I haven't actually heard this video yet, but from the look of it alone, it's kinda cool looking. I'm going to mess with the size a little bit, but hopefully, it will still be viewable.
Microsoft has decided to get themselves into yet another market. To ruin the surprise a bit, it is a comic strip. About IT guys. Who are, y'know, IT guys. Yeah.
Also, as part of an ongoing attempt to better myself... through learning, I am manipulating this post, not in my usual way of cheating and using the Blogger "compose" tool, but by typing in the raw HTML, for your computer's interpretation delight. (At least; I'm mostly doing it that way.) Maybe if I get a little cocky, I'll start trying to break my blog with some crazy HTML, but not this morning.
