Friday, June 22, 2007

2 nytimes articles

"Women who grow up in fatherless homes menstruate at an earlier age than those who don’t, and surely perceive their love affairs differently as well." -David Brooks

You know what we used to do in debate when we wanted to get to a certain conclusion from a premise, but the logic wasn't quite there? We'd say, "but surely, y follows from x. it's so obviously true that it's not even worth explaining."

brooks

Also, I am a little bit in love with this article. I mean "freegans." really? it sounds like an april fool's joke, but in june.

Wednesday, June 20, 2007

drugs

pretty cool. I sort of think he's being too optimistic about the whole thing (maybe it's my inner depressive speaking) but this is just the kind of direction that mental health treatment should be headed. you know how looking back now it seems absolutely ridiculous that doctors used things like leeches to treat people? I think/hope that 50 years from now, today's mental health treatments will look just as ridiculous. I also think that cancer treatments (especially chemo) will look absolutely barbaric.

you know what would be cool? if you could program mentally ill robots. I bet that would somehow be useful for artificial intelligence research. Of course Douglas Adams was thinking of that many years ago.

okay, enough mind wandering. back to work.

Thursday, June 14, 2007

gogs and museums

from the going out gurus:

Washington, D.C.: Not sure you can answer this. Where do the philosophers, writers, artists and dreamers hang out? I want really good conversation. Am I in the wrong city?

Jen: My understanding is they all gather at the Rainbow Connection. At least, that's where you'll find the lovers, the dreamers and me.


perfect.

on another note, my least favorite oft-repeated line in these chats has to be, "we've already done the museum thing."

no. you haven't. I promise. let us count the free museums on the mall:
natural history
air & space
african art
native american history
hirshhorn
national gallery
freer & sackler

I am not even including american history because they are under renovation.

Let's say that the extremely unlikely is true, and you have actually been to every single one of these museums. Let's further posit that you are incapable of travelling beyond the mall or paying even a nominal admission fee and must therefore miss out on say, the national portrait gallery, the corcoran, or even the spy museum. can you now safely say you've "done the museum thing?"

no.

because here's the great thing about museums: they have exhibitions. and the great thing about exhibitions? they change. museums continually invest their (too limited) resources into putting up new and exciting shows for your viewing pleasure. it's awesome.

When someone says, "I've already done the museum thing," it means they've been to a museum or two once, and that's it. They got their dose of "culture" so now they can move onto something fun. Like eating your spinach, you hold your nose and do it because it's "good for you" and besides, once you're done, you get to have dessert.

What's so frustrating is that museums, especially the free ones on the mall, are designed to counteract exactly that attitude. why do you think they put in all the films, computer kiosks, and hi-tech audio tour equipment? why do you think they had wall texts and actual artifacts in the first place, instead of just saving time and publishing some informative books?

it's annoying.

link

Wednesday, June 13, 2007

boring

I haven't had anything interesting to say lately, but that hasn't stopped me from wanting to say stuff, so now, in the hopes that a few dull posts somehow miraculously add up to one interesting one, I present 5 posts I started and never finished because they were sort of boring:

today
This Site is why I haven't gotten any work done today.

also, I now have exactly 666 unread messages in my Gmail inbox. spooky.

6/11/07
http://www.janegalt.net/archives/009841.html

a meme that's been travelling around livejournal and xanga sites for years makes it to a serious economics blogger. :)

6/6/07
gah.

6/4/07

Meet Mac McGarry, host of the longest running TV quiz show in the world.

I watch this show somewhat religiously. In fairness, I was on it my senior year of high school, but still, you'd think I would have moved on by now. You'd be wrong. Sometimes I think I've gotten stupider since high school, as I cannot beat any but the worst schools when playing at home. I comfort myself by remembering that I was by far the weakest team member when I was in high school, so probably with my two genius teammates, we could still kick ass. (Great comfort, right? "It's not that I've gotten stupider since high school, I was just as stupid then, too!")

I think my minor obsessiveness rubbed off from my coach. He's videotaped every game since the mid '70s, and has a filing cabinet filled with questions typed on index cards. So really, the fact that I just try to catch it most Saturdays at 10am is pretty sane.

5/25/07
I am so dissatisfied with all of blogger's layouts. I kind of want to spend the rest of the afternoon tweaking, but considering that I'm at work and even if I were going to slack off, pretty much the only tools at my disposal are notepad and paint, I'll refrain. mostly.

for the time being, no more minima or minima stretch. text is black on (almost) white, the color scheme is okay, and the font is readable. rounders is okay. but it looks so out of the box and boring.

in my continuing quest to cite the NYTimes at least 5 billion times a day, here is today's funny book review:
An Assault on Hawaii. On Grammar Too.

Friday, June 8, 2007

Burke is leaving Grey's

fuck.

Okay, for a second there I was really upset, because how upset is Christina going to be when Burke just does not return at all ever? She really loves him. She'll be devastated.

But now I'm thinking it's a good thing.

Because first of all, Isaiah Washington sounds like a homophobic asshole, so I don't feel very sorry for him. But more importantly, I think Christina needed this. With the possible exception of Bailey, she is the most awesome character on the show and the one I root for the most. Her relationship with Burke has been souring for a really long time. Things were fucked up right when Burke got shot and Christina couldn't make a decision for him, maybe even before then (I don't remember). Their relationship kept coming back from the brink of collapse to be closer but unhealthier than ever.

I'm not going to go into all the ways Christina did penance, but the show has been pounding into our heads that Christina is giving up own identity. I got the message when asshole Stanford prof overheard her faking ignorance about some surgery to prop up Burke's ego. He literally said something like "You're not the Christina Yang I knew." If you didn't get the point then, in the season finale, Mama Burke made her wear a freaking choke collar (okay, it was a necklace, but the symbolism was there) to show that she belonged to (was owned by?) the Burke family. The eyebrows thing was just icing.

At this point, I think if Burke came back, the cycle of almost collapse --> increased dysfunction would just get worse. That would be terrible. Now she'll be devastated, but at least she'll have a chance of becoming strong and independent again.

Tuesday, June 5, 2007

I love Gene Weintgarten

Gene Weingarten: This reminds me of a Style Invitational entry that never got published. We had printed sounds and people had to say what the sounds meant. The sound was "Fizz Fizz, plop plop," and the entry said: What is the sound of two babies discovering Drano?

Sorry.

link.