04.22.07
Posted in LINKSPAM, Politics at 12:45 pm by qkslvrwolf
!!!!!!one!!!on!!!!!!1111!!
Freakin’ AWESOME!
My parents are both amazing people. Really. And they’re at they’re most amazing when they’re engaged and their pride and dander gets up about people being stupid. They’ve had a long, hard slog because they’ve had to attempt to maintain their idealism in the face of the Long Neo-Conservative Slide, aka the 80s, 90s, and early 21st century.
But check this out. My mom takes on a local blogger who is bashing Inconvient Truth not based on science (because that’s actually waaay to hard to do), but based on bashing both Al Gore and the watchers of the film.
The result is both awe-inpiring and a renewed call to take this bullshit on whenever you see it.
Make sure when you read it you also read the post she’s challenging. Well worth the time.
And the thing about the guy she’ challenging is, he’s not completely insane. In fact, he’s probably usually pretty rational. But he really wants to bury his head in the sand on this one because it means that he’s going to have to make some (actually not that big-a-deal) lifestyle changes if he wants to do his part. Its hard to avoid personal responsibility on this one.
I have a number of very rational friends who are taking this exact same approach, a little worse even. They haven ‘t watched the movie, but prefer to bash Al Gore really hard. They follow the the “millions of years” meme, and the “humans can’t have an effect on something this big” bs.
BTW, my mom is Gaia Gardener, linked at the right. Good blog, too. You should check it out. Leave her some comments, she doesn’t have any sort of hit tracker, so she thinks no one actually reads her stuff.
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Posted in Personal at 12:23 pm by qkslvrwolf
So, just as an example of the roller coaster ride you can end up on diet…
I started last week at 194 pounds. Or maybe I started last weekend out at 194 pounds. Whichever. Someplace in there.
Last week, during the week, was not a good diet week. I kept thinking “I need to really cut back on my maintain days, and really have a few diet days. And it wasn’t happening, for about 5 days in a row.
Let me back up. I’m doing a simple, homemade diet where I have “diet days”, where I’m basically a vegetarian and probably only intake around 1000-1200 calories (ish, I’m not counting), and after I lose a pound or two I reward myself with a couple of “maintain days”, where I eat more normally and probably intake 1800-2400 calories (again, ish). Its been working very well for me, and I’m down 22 pounds since I started in mid-february. I’m aiming to get down to 180.
Anyway, so I wasn’t being very true to my diet for most of last week. I topped out at 202 pounds. I was devastated. I was irritated with myself. So I got back on the wagon and have been very good since around Thursday. Friday I was back to 200. Saturday I woke up at 198. And this morning, even after what should’ve been a maintain day, I was 196. Then I went to the bathroom, and I’m 194 again. :-D.
Whew {wipes sweat from forehead}. Dodged that bullet. :-)
I think it was pretty much “retaining water” or some such. I mean, yesterday I ate a banana for breakfast, a 6 inch subway sandwich and a donut for lunch, and a beer, some bruchetta, bread, and spaghetti with meat sauce for dinner. I was *not* eating light.
Of course, today I am. Hopefully by tuesday or wednesday I’ll be down to 192. (I always move weight in 2 pound increments. I won’t at any point show as 191. I’ll just stay at 194 until one morning I’m 192. I can’t tell you why.)
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04.16.07
Posted in Friends, Personal at 9:27 pm by qkslvrwolf
I’m testing out the built-in upload capacity of wordpress. Not sure how much of a fan I am.
Anyway. My mom and I were talking, and they’re about to get their furniture moved into their house (finally), and i was threatening her happiness and life (very metaphorically, of course) if she didn’t get some pictures up within a couple of weeks or less.
And then I noted that I was a big fat raging hypocrite. So we talked, and it was the sheer amount of posting that I would have to do that has really been stopping me, so we decided that breaking it down into small, manageable pieces would be the way to go with these posts.
So, I’m basically going through the photos in nearly the order than I have them, and here is the first one.
Korean subways were the best that I’ve been on. Now, granted, my list o’ subways that I’ve been on isn’t that long. Chicago, Baltimore, DC, St. Louis, and a few in England. And now, of course, Seoul.
Seoul’s is the best. No question. I mean, the Tube in England is awesome, don’t get me wrong, and it’s more than good enough. But the Korean subway’s…good lord!
One time, Anne and I came down into the subway just as the train was rolling out of the station.
Less than 3 minutes later, the next train had arrived. That was about the longest we had to wait. Period. Freakin’ awesome.
My one complaint with their subways was simliar to my complaint with the St Louis metrolink; namely, that they don’t run late enough to really accomodate getting drunk and then taking the subway home after closing the bar. What’s the point of public transportation if it doesn’t save you from having to designate a driver?
Still, it was fast, clean, efficient, rarely overcrowded*, and reasonably priced. I would kill to get public transportation like this in the states. And i’d probably have to, specifically republicans and libertarians, who don’t believe in the public good. No, this isn’t a threat, merely an observation.
Anyway, so on the grand scheme of Korean pros and cons, we can add a major pro: great public transporation.
________________________
*The one time we got on a train that was overcrowded, we just hopped off and got on the next, which was damn near empty. Now, this isn’t exactly a scientificly accurate survey, but I was impressed.
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04.15.07
Posted in Friends, Personal, Philosophy at 12:41 pm by qkslvrwolf
So, today I received a voice mail from my buddy Nathan saying “What’s up dude? Where you at? I know you’re not at church…”
This is, of course, ironic, because I actually was at church. :-)
I know it doesn’t come across in a blogarific setting, but I find this confluence of events hi-lar-ious. Really.
I was at church because a friend had wanted a mutual friend to go see him play his drums at the jesus-freak-love fest that precedes his church’s services, and that friend (an atheist like me) needed moral support to enter into a church and deal with the music and the people.
We actually came away pretty clean…I got my hand shaken once by someone who I presume* was the pastor, because he was wearing a wireless mike, and Christa got roped into accepting a little pamphlet full of ways to give the church proprieters money (Christian Money Management Seminar! Only $20!), but other than that we got away with minimal scarring. Of course, we left before the talking started, after the music was done.
On the plus side, the drummer friend is really, really good at drums. I’m very much looking forward to watching him play in a less nausea inducing setting. :-)
*I actually thought originally that this usage might be incorrect, but the princeton dictionary that google prefers shows this is a reasonable usage.
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04.05.07
Posted in programming at 10:26 pm by qkslvrwolf
Or at least I’m getting better at figuring stuff out. Enough better that I wrote this handy guide to post-upgrade video woes for my laptop series.
Its not much, but I’m kinda happy with what I learned today.
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