Category: Thoughts

Sometimes I worry that, by maintaining celebrity-gossip websites, I’ve lost all the geek cred I had when I wrote instruction manuals for Linux software. But recently I’ve had a couple reminders that I’m still an irredeemable nerd.

This weekend I was annoyed by 93.7 Mike FM’s assertion that they are “random radio.” They play a wide variety of songs, but it’s far from being mathematically random– it’s carefully selected to appeal to a specific demographic. I know, I know, it’s a figure of speech. Still, it sometimes annoys me that “random” is used to mean “unexpected” or “improbable.”

Second, I got life and disability insurance through work today and the paperwork referred to AD&D. I immediately thought “what does Advanced Dungeons and Dragons have to do with this?” I actually had to ask: it stands for accidental death and dismemberment.

Maybe I only like the one titled “Expert Ties Ex-Player’s Suicide to Brain Damage” because I’ve always thought football was a brain-damaged sport. But still, it’s a decent look at what repeated minor head trauma does to athletes.

“What 1.2 Trillion Can Buy” explains the cost of the Iraq war in terms of things we can understand: what we could ahve bought with that money if we hadn’t dumped it into a hole in the desert. It turns out we could have pretty much the entire Democratic agenda, plus tax cuts. If we had 1.2 Trillion. Which we don’t– the US is quite literally writing checks its ass can’t cash. (The ass is in the White House).

Money Doesn’t Talk— about women spending money in cash to avoid having to discuss it with their husbands. Yes, some people do that. No, it’s not OK. It’s lying. The only way this is OK is if you have more than enough money for everything, AND you both agree that certain expenditures are not discussed. But only one couple who does it that way is mentioned– “she buys a lot of shoes, I go to Atlantic City, but that’s OK, we can afford it.”

There’s a worthwhile bit of psychology in there– the idea that women are more likely to hide purchases from men than men are from women, the idea that this stems from inequalities in gender relationships and prejudiced ideas about the difference between “women’s frivolous indulgences” and “men’s cool toys.” But the article has no way to back any of that up. They have some stats in there, but they don’t support anything: “[although] about 56.2 percent of women 16 and older work and though marriage has become much more of a partnership of equals, a surprising number of women still find it necessary to hide how much they spend on personal items, especially stereotypical female indulgences like clothing.” What’s the “surprising number?” How surprising is it? How did it differ from estimates? Has the number changed over the past ten or twenty years?

It boils down to a baseless trend story combined with a giddy voyeurism toward people willing to buy a $2000 purse with a wad of twenties.

I’m beginning to echo Brad Delong in his assertions that newspapers won’t be around in a generation.

It’s an old joke that the New York Times “Living” section is really the “Having” Section, and that’s fine, in its own way. Of course, Times readers have also become accustomed to the Sunday Styles section as an absurdity. Especially at Wall Street bonus time, it’s like National Geographic went on an expedition to Neiman Marcus. But I did not know until today that the bias toward wealth and mad consumerism had infiltrated the Science section. Witness an article about consumer behavior by John Tierney:

What is the difference between a tightwad’s brain and a spendthrift’s brain? What neurological circuits stop you from buying a George Foreman grill but not a Discovery Channel color-changing mood clock? Why is there a $2,178.23 balance on my January Visa bill?

What struck me most about the article was that it was published on the same day as this article about a shantytown in Miami. Yes, a shantytown. Just like they have in the other parts of the world that suffer from huge wealth disparities and kleptocratic governments.

Has the Times jumped the shark? Has the American dream?

The fighting in Cochabamba has stopped, at least for now. The what, you ask?

Evo Morales was elected president following several years of instability caused primarily by… well, Evo Morales and the MAS party. Now that he’s in charge, he’s got to walk the fine line of balancing the needs of his rowdy constituents, the needs of the rest of the country, and the desires of the international community (i.e. the US and the World Bank, which want to see less coca and a more stable economy). Mostly he seemed to be doing a pretty good job of it: there was leftist rhetoric, an increase in allowable coca harvest, increased spending on social programs, some threats to renegotiate oil and gas contracts, but no major nationalization of industries.

However, regional prefects (governors), especially in the province of Cochabamba, have been frustratingly independent-minded. In the past few weeks, that’s heated up to include “independent” and “spontaneous” protests (organized and paid for by MAS). After a few hundred injuries, a couple deaths, and some buildings torched, we’ve gotten a truce.

Evo has created a monster. Will it eat him, or Bolivia, or both? I don’t know.

Page of the day intro for American Idol: With just seven days before the premiere, the idolatry is in full swing. Some of you might be looking forward to hearing some great new singing voices, but there’s a special place in our hearts for the worst performers. Not the ones who can’t sing but want to be on TV anyway– they’re just greedy for attention. We’re talking about the kids who think they can sing and only discover the awful truth when Simon says it. Their televised humiliation makes our mediocrity feel like success, reassures us that striving for greatness is a sucker’s game, and delivers the guilty rush of watching someone else get hurt while we’re safe at home.

Vomitola has inspired me: my resolution is “no being a shit.”

Of course, I have already broken it once, but that’s only one out of 8 days so far this year: that’s a resolution 87.5% kept, which is a passing grade.

We just started a Beauty and the Geek page on TTS and I’m wishing I was running it now. It’s brilliant. A girl was just asked if she was more red-state or blue-state and said “I’m from California, so I’m from the Golden State!”

Here’s a clip of one of the geeks:

Do I come to your job and smack the dick out of your mouth?

Today there was a long, long line at the train station as people lined up to buy new subway passes. They had not figured out that January was a new month and that they needed a new pass. Nor had they read any of the notices or editorials over the past six months predicting, announcing, and arguing about the fare increase. Nor had they checked the new fare structure, so they were surprised that there is no subway-only or bus-only pass any more. There was a lot of confused morning line-standing going on.

Feeling smug and superior is a great way to start a week.