Monday, July 28, 2008

Biking

Some random videos of biking today:
Biking 1,Biking 2, Biking 3, Biking 4, Biking 5
Also, some pics in my Bikes Album on Picasa

EDIT: Rode 33.7 miles today with a moving average of 9.2 mph (that's a little over 3.5 hours of riding). :) FUN! (Seriously)

RE-EDIT: I got an iPhone 3G black today! WOOOOO!

Monday, July 21, 2008

McCain's Adultery

Why doesn't the mainstream media cover THIS side? "Liberal media"? I think not.
McCain adultery story rocks political world — oh wait, no it doesn’t
McCain's broken marriage and fractured Reagan friendship
The wife U.S. Republican John McCain callously left behind
You'd think a conservative base would be up in arms about this, but I suppose they are willing to be complacent in the face of having someone other than another old rich white man.

Wednesday, July 16, 2008

Synecdochically

Today's word is synecdochically:

Main Entry:
syn·ec·do·che Listen to the pronunciation of synecdoche
Pronunciation:
\sə-ˈnek-də-(ˌ)kē\
: a figure of speech by which a part is put for the whole (as fifty sail for fifty ships), the whole for a part (as society for high society), the species for the genus (as cutthroat for assassin), the genus for the species (as a creature for a man), or the name of the material for the thing made (as boards for stage)

Thanks to a great TED talk by Erin McKean, who is now in my list of the top 5 hottest nerds.

Pentacostals

A humorous viewpoint on some of what I grew up with.

Mindhack

Rebelling Within Nature: A great essay about why we do what we do and how to do it right.

Tuesday, July 15, 2008

Fannie and Freddie need to die

Jim Rogers says it like it is: the US has doubled its national debt in one weekend to bail out two companies run by fraudsters. Here's what the Motley Fool has to say.

Monday, July 14, 2008

Teh Economy

Here is a great (if long) overview of what has happened to our economy and what we can expect in the coming years.

Obama

After reading an interview with Obama about his ideas on foreign policy and reading his response on why he voted for the FISA changes, I think I will feel good voting for him in November.

Sunday, July 13, 2008

ID is not science

Any proponent of Intelligent Design, explain these 20 Anatomical Features Humans Don't Need.

Saturday, July 12, 2008

FISA

Did you know that Congress has signed away any possible right to privacy we had?
By making the new FISA law, the President and Congress have made it legal for US agencies to spy on our text messages, email, and phone calls to people outside the US, without any cause, reason or warrant. This is so completely Orwellian and dystopian I can't even wrap my mind around how anyone thought this was a good idea.

Help the ACLU overturn FISA by sharing your message of support now.
http://www.aclu.org/fisaaction

HCwDB

I can't help but laugh: Douche Mating Ritual

On Bush

I hope that no one I know is still behind W. This came out in 2004. It just annoys me to no end. Carol Coleman is a relentless interviewer here. I agree with the writer of the article.
Carol Coleman of Radio Television Ireland interviews George W. Bush
This is why people of other countries think of us in a bad light. This man is our most visible ambassador and he is incompetent.
An inspiring talk by Bill Stone about cave and space exploration.

Friday, July 11, 2008

The Presidency

Was Clinton bad? No. Someone else did it wrong with our National Debt.

Portable Autonomous Sentry demonstration

Portable Autonomous Sentry uses paintballs. Awesome.

Karl Rove

It's time to come home and face the music Karl. Stop running.

Androids

I'm not sure what is so funny about Jules, but I find him so.
And an oldie but goodie: the breast masseuse.

Wednesday, July 09, 2008

Tonight I made Quinoa with Mushrooms and Spinach. It was quite good. It had a wonderful earthy taste from the quinoa and mushrooms. It felt very cleansing. It was perhaps a little bland, but a sprinkle of salt was all it needed. The spinach came out nicely with a dash of salt.

Atheism

I've been reading Atheist Universe by David Mills. It is confirming in that the arguments laid out are those that I came up with during my break from religion after high school. It's gotten me all evangelical and feisty about it again. I think I have too often been an apologist. Organized religion is not ok. It's holding the human race back. We need to realize we are alone and that we need to move forward as a human race. Organized religion is divisive and continues to prevent unity.

None of these are new thoughts to me or to the world. How to implement them is the question. Reasonable arguments do not seem to work.

Also, I ran across this hilarious quote:
"I am an atheist and I have a 'Honk if you love Jesus' bumper sticker. When someone honks, I give them the finger."

Tuesday, July 08, 2008

Inspiration

I just ran across a speech given by Richard Feynman that I find most inspiring. I've come across this before in his books, but it's been long enough that I had forgotten.
Too often I forget that childhood wonder that every page of the encyclopedia held. Now, with information so readily available, almost anything I want to know that is known by a human can be found in a few minutes. But why is the wonder gone? I think it might be partially because I have grown into a place in the human race. I can't do everything, be anything. I know my limitations. I don't intend to stay static. It's just that enough dreams have died and enough new ones have grown to take their place, that it takes some brilliant writing to snap me out of everything that I am doing and remember.
I remember the days when I could hardly sleep from the wonder of it all. The complexities involved, the scales of time and space so beyond comprehension, from the bizarre world of quantum fluctuations to the intergalactic spaces. Even now I feel it returning, the wonder and joy of the realization of how insignificant and simultaneously how precious we are as humans.
We have such immense possibilities, and I intend to reach for the stars and the sub-Plank distances whenever I can.

Sunday, July 06, 2008

Don't Click It

An interesting site about interface design and clicking.

Saturday, July 05, 2008

Moroccan Chicken with Lentils

I made Moroccan Chicken with Lentils tonight. Good stuff! More cinnamon next time I think.

Gas Prices

Here's an interesting perspective on the current price of gas. It's interesting to look at it in a way that actually normalizes it logically.

Friday, July 04, 2008

Just for fun

The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid!
Can yuo raed tihs? Olny 55 out of 100 plepoe can. Aoccdrnig to
rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it dseno't mtaetr in waht oerdr the
ltteres in a wrod are, the olny iproamtnt tihng is taht the frsit and lsat ltteer
be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it
whotuit a pboerlm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey
lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Azanmig huh? And we awlyas
tghuhot slpeling was ipmorantt.

Thursday, July 03, 2008

Dresden Codak

Man, I LOVE the Hob storyline by Dresden Codak!

Lentil and Quinoa salad

I just finished making some Lentil and Quinoa salad using this recipe with some minor variations. I am very happy with the results. My replacements were olive oil, key lime juice (awesome!) and a curry paste that I know is delicious all over the place. The key lime sets off the ginger very well, a nice bite, but not overpowering. I pat myself on the back for this one!

Hilarious and disturbing

Some awesome cartoons about warrant-less wiretapping and other wonderful things brought to you by your current government.

Wednesday, July 02, 2008

Books I have read

From a friend's blog: Bold those you have read and italicize the books you LOVE.

1 Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings – JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter Series – JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four – George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials Trilogy – Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations – Charles Dickens
11 Little Women – Louisa May Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 – Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye – JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With the Wind – Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House – Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited – Evelyne Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Graeme
31 Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield – Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia – CS Lewis
34 Emma – Jane Austen
35 Persuasion – Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe – C.S. Lewis
37 The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini
38 Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh – A.A. Milne
41 Animal Farm – George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney – John Irving
45 The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables – L M Montgomery
47 Far From the Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies – William Golding
50 Atonement – Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi – Yann Martel
52 Dune – Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale of Two Cities – Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World – Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time – Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time of Cholera – Garbiel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck
62 Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History – Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones – Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas
66 On the Road – Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’ Diary – Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick – Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens
72 Dracula – Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes from a Small Island – Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses – James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons – Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal – Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - A S Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple – Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web – EB White
88 The Five People You Meet in Heaven – Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection – Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince – Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks
94 Watership Down – Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet – William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables – Victor Hugo

Tuesday, July 01, 2008