One of the more interesting Blogthings I’ve seen recently. Apparently I can’t decide between gray and blue. Thanks, Rebecca.

This one placed me squarely in the North:

I never lived in the Northeast except for a short time in Syracuse as a baby. My wife is from north Jersey, and she can tell you I don’t have anything close to that flavor. But being an Air Force brat did give me an unusual lack of accent among my peers growing up in Virginia. My study of languages has also made me more aware of the evolution of word forms, and more conscious of pronunciation. That and just being nerdy.

Hopefully this precedent will be followed elsewhere, so I only have to mind my own stupid mouth.

Drinking From a Fire Hose. I unsubbed BoingBoing for the same reason. via Bloggers Blog. I hope my blog pressure isn’t knocking anyone down.

Robert Pirsig’s final interview: “‘It is not good to talk about Zen because Zen is nothingness … If you talk about it you are always lying, and if you don’t talk about it no one knows it is there.” via BoingBoing (shrug). Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance had a profound effect on me as a teenager. I’ll have to check out Pirsig’s second book, Lila.

While we’re on the subject: philosophical terms explained (via Rob Marsh)

Journey of a thousand folders: Jeff Atwood on pathologically long paths. IMHO, any path that’s too long to type is too long.

Microsoft will offer a royalty-free license of their Office 2007 UI (via GMSV). I’m tempted to ask, “why would you want to license the face of a monster?”, but I know that some of my customers will definitely want this for their vertical applications on Windows. A smart move by Microsoft, giving a little (software) to get a lot (of lock-in).

Speaking of UI:No soup for you, Joel! Actually, I rather liked Joel’s post, but apotheon serves up one better. Tom makes a good point, too.

A robot with emotions. Open source and a developer’s kit. Any bets on how long until someone develops a paranoid delusional module just for fun?

Larsony: Photoshopped Far Side (via GMSV)

Behind the scenes of Dilbert: strips edited for unacceptable asspect.

Armchair Anarchist on time travel:

I am of the opinion that unless we transcend our physical existence entirely, our species will always be fascinated by the potential possibility of traveling outside the flow of the dimension that most defines our experience of the world.

Recent transcenders(?):
- Autism researcher and advocate Dr. Bernard Rimland (thanks, Lenny)
- Director Robert Altman (thanks, Chris )

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! It’s always good to stop and reflect on the things that make us thankful. Here in America we achieve a mystical state of thankfulness once a year by overdosing on native bird flesh and assorted high-carb side dishes. Then we sleep it off, and get on with our crappy lives.

Yesterday my wife and I were waiting in a doctor’s office. The lady across from us rose in response to her name and walked past us. When she was safely out of hearing, we looked at each other and breathed a sigh of relief. My wife said, “she needs to quit smoking.”

It struck me that this once ubiquitous odor has now become unusual and offensive. When I was a boy in rural southern Virginia, tobacco was the universal scent of grown men. It might be mixed with individual choices of liquor and after shave (my Dad’s were Seagrams 7 and Old Spice), but almost every man smoked — and almost no women did. The only men who didn’t smoke were preachers or nose-in-the-air do-gooders.

After all, the local economy depended on tobacco. Almost all the farms in that area grew it. The first day of school was even occasionally postponed in order to get the last pulling done.

I worked in the fields pulling tobacco only one year: the summer I was 12 years old. It was hard work from sun-up until afternoon for five dollars, but I didn’t mind the exertion. What I did mind was the sticky, nicotine-laden substance that adhered to your hands. Whether you wore gloves or not, it seemed to find a way to soak into you. It would make me sick to my stomach by the end of the day.

One day at lunch time, we were served hamburgers. Mine had a slightly green slice of tomato on it. Someone later told me that tomatoes are related to tobacco. I got so sick that I couldn’t eat tomatoes for years afterwards.

I found by accident that eating a grapefruit in the morning beforehand would lessen the effect. Maybe it was the Vitamin C. But when that pulling season was over, I resolved never to set foot in a tobacco field again.

And I was never tempted to become a smoker. I thank my Lucky Strike stars.

RSScycler: Randy announces Rmail MetaWeblogApi support .

Right, Randy — waterfall means a lot of water over the dam.

Kathy’s right, too. Inspiration usually comes well after you get started. Sometimes you only see it after you’re finished, in retrospect.

The Definition of “Automobile” (by a Music Theorist):

Soon you’ll not only be naturally thinking of Lear jets as a kind of automobile, but you’ll be embarrassed to be standing in the same room as any person who persists in defending the belief that a Lear jet is not a kind of automobile.

Spy software could use analysis of CPU branch prediction to break encryption keys. Even a 512-bit key in “a few thousandths of a second”. Scary. (thanks, Armchair Anarchist).

NASA relaxes rules on space junk (thanks, Armchair Anarchist). “Litter and it will hurt“. Eventually.

Homosexuality is the new Galileo. Buzz Thomas says that the church needs to mind its real business and quit trying to take on science. But you know it must be hard for an institution that once claimed a monopoly on truth. Thanks, Shelley.

Martin Luther King
Martin Luther King
Martin Luther King
Martin Luther King
Martin Luther King
Martin Luther King
Martin Luther King
Martin Luther King
Martin Luther King

Here’s why. via Robert.

Zed Shaw’s essay The Master, The Expert, The Programmer (thanks, Assaf) reminds me of the Tao Te Ching: “When you arrive at non-action, nothing will be left undone.” Man, if Zed had a feed, I’d be so subscribed.

Speaking of the Tao Te Ching, here’s a public domain translation by J. H. McDonald that you can use until apotheon gets his version done.

Here’s why I’m NOT an atheist: Dawkins is making a religion out of atheism (via Armchair Anarchist). Even though I’m not religious, I can’t claim to know that there is or is not a God. It might even come down to definitions. I’m an agnostic, and proud of it. But I can still laugh.

Useful (and humorous) Latin quotes (thanks again, AA). If you enjoy this as much as I did, fac ut vivas.

Like I said, fac ut vivas.

Kathy Sierra has another great post about how companies treat the people who touch their customers. One thing though: “make Java sing”? Would that be as in Gotterdamerung, Act III?

Some random observations from Jeff Atwood. My first experience with a random number generator was on the DG Eclipse in BASIC. I proved how non-random it was by using a plotting algorithm similar to Jeff’s but with character cell coordinates — which quickly formed parallel, diagonal lines. I think I ended up using Knuth’s algorithm. Not so basic.

Scott Adams: “You haven’t achieved equality until you’re a legitimate target for humor.” The Assimilated Negro says “not yet” for the n-word. Scott says women have arrived, but I’m not so sure. For instance, I don’t think women would cotton to the c-word, but you can call a man by any name for his private body parts and generate very little shocked response.

According to the head lemur, it’s Shelley’s birthday. A very happy one, Shelley!

BTW Shelley, you were right about Megite. And Matthew Chen is a really cool guy.

It’s nice to be appreciated. Back at you, Joseph!

Randy’s a B-lister, and Tom’s an A-lister! Funny, they don’t seem at all like assholes.

Doc Searls is thinking out loud about migrating his blog to a new platform. If you’re asking me, Doc, you couldn’t do it soon enough. Your current RSS feed updates with each new piece of content you add, but then replicates everything you posted earlier in the day.

Oh, and I wouldn’t use Dave Winer’s blog as a model. No offense to Mr. RSS — if I want to access a feed that notifies me of new entries throughout the day, I have to use www.scripting.com — but if I want the feed to contain more than today’s posts or if I want to comment or trackback, I have to go to the WordPress mirror site. Simon says, click here. No, there. Can’t a little PHP work this out?

I’m mildly amused that two of the pillars of the blogosphere seem somewhat behind the times with their blogging technology. Inertia, I guess. Cobblers’ children’s feet go bare…

OK, I buckled.

But with all that’s happened lately, the family really needed some cheering up.

Last year at about this time, my wife had traveled down ahead of us to be by her mother, who had cancer. When she knew that the end would come soon, she asked me to drive down to California with the kids to see their grandmother one last time. So we had Thanksgiving dinner on the road at a Denny’s somewhere in Oregon, and arrived in time to say goodbye. After we returned home, my wife made a Thanksgiving dinner for us all, but it wasn’t the same. So we promised that this year would be different.

Then my wife broke her leg. She still can’t walk around on it, so we decided that instead of her gloriously delicious all-day-to-prepare homemade stuffed turkey, we would have to order a turkey from the local market. It won’t be the same, but it will be a damn sight better than what I could do.

So as I said, we needed cheering up.

I really despise the Christmas hype that now precedes Thanksgiving. And I don’t care for artificial Christmas trees. But for several years now my wife has had allergic reactions to real trees, so we decided that this year we would buy a large artificial tree instead. The biggest and prettiest that we could find for a decent price. And to avoid the traffic, we would get it before Thanksgiving. I’m sorry, but we really needed cheering up.

We looked online to find the perfect tree. Instead of having it delivered, we wanted to pick it up at a local retailer to save on shipping.

Have I mentioned that I despise Walmart? My general opinion of the franchise is that it represents the lowest common denominator in retail: only the products in the greatest demand (the universal, bland taste), shovel-fed to the human herd by employees who fall somewhere between slaves and cult-followers. But they had the right tree: a nine-foot Vienna Pine, pre-lit (clear lights only). At about one-third the price of less desirable trees from Costco or anywhere else.

My wife wanted to see it in person before we bought it, so we loaded her in the van with the wheelchair and the children and headed for Walmart. Imagine navigating the Walmart crowds with a wheelchair. Do you know how many Walmart shoppers don’t think anything about running into a splinted leg that is elevated in a wheelchair? But we found the tree, and it met with her approval. Mission accomplished.

As we drove home, I retched to picture myself from the perspective of a younger me. Driving a van home. With a fake Christmas tree. From Walmart. On the weekend before Thanksgiving.

Then my daughter started making up lyrics to Christmas carols:

Rudolph the brown-nosed reindeer…

(unable to finish due to laughter). When she finally caught her breath, she made another attempt:

Deck the halls with evil scientists
MWUAHAHAHAHA, HAHA-HA-HA!

Cheering up accomplished.

Red vs Blue – Real Life vs Internet, for those who need help with the distinction. Thanks, Jim.

Internet? What’s that? Larry King has jumped the information shark. Thanks, Stowe Boyd.

And when you’re ready to experience the Internet in all its gory, try Microsoft Firefox: “where am I today?”

Loincloths and laptops: Way ahead of Larry King, natives in the Amazon use Google Earth to save the rain forest. Stone age to Silicon age in one lifetime. Thanks, Armchair Anarchist.

Speaking of progress: Doug Karr’s predictions for the next 25 years. We’ll still have monitors? Not much to look forward to as I approach my 70′s. Hey, wasn’t #7 attained by Fortran? Maybe I’m being unrealistic, but I’m expecting more fundamental changes.

Stonehenge a hangout for a pre-Celtic god of healing? That explains why it makes good Windows wallpaper. Thanks again, AA.

Joshua Allen has some more insights on the hubris of some scientists when it comes to religion:

They discover one universal truth (out of perhaps an infinite store), and they spend the rest of their careers trying to prove how stupid God and everyone else are.

Of course, I don’t believe in any “universal truth”, but it only makes Joshua’s argument stronger if you strike the word “universal”.

Sergio is doing all he can to promote OPML autodiscovery, including pimping my widget. Grazie, Kromeboy!

Widgets, you say? John Koetsier feels widgeted to death by Fred Wilson’s blog. Hey Fred: what, no tag cloud?

The dejargonator strikes again! In this installment, Mr. Greten censures the arcane obfuscations of academia. Uh, I mean, Dave rips papers you can’t read.

If you hate a person, you hate something in him that is part of yourself. What isn’t part of ourselves doesn’t disturb us. –Hermann Hesse

When I act hatefully or resentfully, I see that as a weakness on my part. Like Nietzsche’s idea of resentiment, it implies that the hated party has some control over me. Even anger, though it can be well-placed, must have as its target someone or something that poses a threat. If your actions don’t threaten me, how can I be angry (unless I’m just driving up blog traffic)?

So a good exercise for me is to look at the things that make me angry (especially with “righteous” anger) and ask myself: how does that threaten me?

If I can’t come up with a response, then look a little deeper and ask Hesse’s implied question: what part of this do I see and hate in myself?

Snarkiness, sarcasm, irony, satire — that’s a completely different story. My father said to me when I turned sixteen, “You’re not going to listen to a damn thing I tell you anyway, so for all intents and purposes you’re your own man now. But I do reserve the right to laugh.” Poking fun, even when somewhat cruel, is probably the most constructive criticism you’ll ever receive. If that makes you angry, go back to step 1.