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Today is Brad's birthday. Hooray!
Unlike Helena's birthday, Brad demands attention and gifts, preferably of an imported variety for both. However, I have never had the inclination to purchase a giant gray elephant for him. That privilege has been reserved.
In Brad's case, I've found that shiny design oriented gifts work best. I was dismayed to see that Logitech offered a newer, shiner version of the item I had already given him. Then, after further review, I realized that the newer version was cheaper, used proprietary RF technology and had a smaller less cool mouse. Plus, there was no bluetooth hub! Brad always prefers more expensive items, especially if they're technologically superior. So now I am assuaged.
Anyway, Happy Birthday Brad!
Work has been extremely busy lately, with server crashes, design decisions and motherboard madness taking up large chunks of my time. Pile on the additional coding and you have a recipe for less posts from me on the blog.
Considering I still have more coding to do, I'd like to ask all the people who have access to try to post as often as possible, and in turn, I'll try to get the additional features up as quickly as possible.
In the interim, everyone who thinks a draft is a bad idea should head over here and sign this petition. Normally, as I've said in the past, I hate petitions. I think they do little good and act as only a salve for people's consciences. In this case, however, I think the six-degrees-of-separation map is cool enough by itself to warrant asking people to sign up.
I'll also point people over to the new John Kerry interview on Rolling Stone which points out that Kerry would scrap the silly color-coded system:
What do you think of the color-coded terror alerts the Department of Homeland Security issues?
I think Americans, sadly, laugh at it. They don't know what to do.
Will you continue that program?
No. I'm going to find some more thoughtful way of alerting America. If we have to alert America, I think the most important thing to do is alert law enforcement more effectively across the country. Law enforcement doesn't have even a single, unified watch list yet. They still have separate watch lists, with different names and different people. This is the single, simplest, most important thing the Department of Homeland Security was supposed to do, and they haven't done it.
Common sense. Good to see it in a President.
And finally, your daily dose of sleaze.
Has a team down 3-0 forced a game seven in baseball playoffs. Good and evil face off for nine more innings wednesday evening.
Happy Battle of Zama Day!
Scipio managed to crush Hannibal once and for all today. And he never let Cato forget it...
What if all the Nader voters lived in the same state? Kerry would have to court them and their electoral votes just like he focuses on union workers in Ohio and senior citizens in Florida. Now, in the two weeks before the election, Nader's 1% might well be a deciding factor. And Nader voters, sick of being told that a vote for Nader is a vote for Bush, have formed a loose coalition demanding to be treated for what they are--a swing state.
so, I've just decided I'd like to do some Get Out the Vote over the weekend prior to the election (PA? WV?) and some monitoring around here (VA, I guess) on election day. suggestions?
Comments have been added to all the sections, so you may now go to town in any of them.
In addition, I've thrown up a whole bunch more images in the Virginia section of the imageserver. Go check them out. Two have a whole flock of wild turkeys in them.
I can finally focus on the two remaining coding projects to bring the site to its full potential. We'll see if I have time to get to it this week. I doubt it.
Watch Jon Stewart make mincemeat of Crossfire. It's well worth it.
This article is why the Post is superior to the other paper.
A real reader's advocate bucks the paper occasionally, and uses specific stories to explain flaws. Michael Getler is doing a decent job, and between him and Dan Froomkin, there's a competent culture of criticism at the WaPo that leads to a healthier newsroom. If you rush the facts, or say something for "balance" when the story shows something else, you'll get burned. As well you should.
This article is the one that has everyone buzzing in the blogosphere. First, let's get the conclusions out of the way. Everyone allied against Bush can now call ourselves the Reality-Based Community, or RBC for short. And now, some choice excerpts:
The Delaware senator was, in fact, hearing what Bush's top deputies -- from cabinet members like Paul O'Neill, Christine Todd Whitman and Colin Powell to generals fighting in Iraq -- have been told for years when they requested explanations for many of the president's decisions, policies that often seemed to collide with accepted facts. The president would say that he relied on his ''gut'' or his ''instinct'' to guide the ship of state, and then he ''prayed over it.'' The old pro Bartlett, a deliberative, fact-based wonk, is finally hearing a tune that has been hummed quietly by evangelicals (so as not to trouble the secular) for years as they gazed upon President George W. Bush. This evangelical group -- the core of the energetic ''base'' that may well usher Bush to victory -- believes that their leader is a messenger from God. And in the first presidential debate, many Americans heard the discursive John Kerry succinctly raise, for the first time, the issue of Bush's certainty -- the issue being, as Kerry put it, that ''you can be certain and be wrong.''
What underlies Bush's certainty? And can it be assessed in the temporal realm of informed consent?
All of this -- the ''gut'' and ''instincts,'' the certainty and religiosity -connects to a single word, ''faith,'' and faith asserts its hold ever more on debates in this country and abroad. That a deep Christian faith illuminated the personal journey of George W. Bush is common knowledge. But faith has also shaped his presidency in profound, nonreligious ways. The president has demanded unquestioning faith from his followers, his staff, his senior aides and his kindred in the Republican Party. Once he makes a decision -- often swiftly, based on a creed or moral position -- he expects complete faith in its rightness.
Faith is fine. Faith, however, is not facts. As someone who uses his instinct a lot, I think "a feeling" is just a way that our brains and their wacky pattern-matching/stereotyping ability describe events we wish to relate. But to convince others who do not share the same brains as us, we need to use facts. And that's something this president has never done.
Now one can preview stories before you post. Give it a whirl!
And yes, this isn't a code change I was planning to make. But someone asked and it seemed like a good idea at the time.
James Tobin is gone.
Wow. Major props to JMM for blowing this wide open. Good for him.
take a second and enjoy our president's wishes to muslims worldwide on the first day of ramadan.
As a good first post to comment on, let me just apologize to everyone for failing to note Helena's birthday yesterday. I was feeling ill and didn't mention it, and for that I am deeply sorry.
I am unhappy that I cannot see her in person to wish her the best (my phone call, despite being ungodly early, was still the second she received!) but let me just say, virtually, that I hope she has as good a year this year as she did the last. I miss her, no more so than during the holiday months fast approaching.
Perhaps, one day, we'll get to take another holiday photo like in days of yore. Or go to Vegas. Or road trip back to college. Or just find a nice Crate & Barrel to argue in together. Salad days, indeed.
After some furious coding, I've enabled comments on the "news" section of the website. I should be enabling it on the rest of the subsections sometime tomorrow. To post a comment, you must be logged in. Regular users can see posted comments without being logged in, but are unable to post themselves.
The comments also use Markdown, so you'll be able to style your text just as you can with regular stories. In addition, each comment is color-coded to the member who posts it, so be sure to go into the author section to change your color to something easy to recognize.
I've also tweaked the page so that you won't get the annoying refresh-accidental-double-post problem. When you click "add comment", the comment is added to the database and then the page is generated later. So no matter how many times you click refresh, you won't get an annoying "you submitted a form via POST" message or the equally frustrating sight of multiple posts.
After I finish adding the comment form to the rest of the subsection pages, I'll have completed 1/3 of the coding work left on the site. The remaining 2/3 should be just as difficult, but even more rewarding for you, the user. So go test it out today!
You must read Olberman's take on the debate. Great stuff.
just reading through the thread on work, and i can't help but think that there is another category of "work-as-it-relates-to-happiness" stereotype out there. let me start off by saying that rarely anyone works because work makes them completely happy.
we all understand this, no?
regardless, what if, in the long run, one sacrifices the aforementioned "gee-i-love-my-job" for the long-term objective? long-term happiness is no less important than the "gee-i-love-my-job" variety. in fact, one might argue that being paid a lot of money and preparing for the future brings its own Maslow-ian (can i use that in print?) self-actualization by virtue of security.
i think some people throw the corporate-whore label around a little too freely. i also think it far too simplistic for someone to assert that they work simply because they are happy working. period. but there's room for all. and let's face it: i want to be a wealthy man. i don't want to be wealthy because i can by more drinks for more people, and i am not so base as to equate finance with "...traditional American surface-level happiness." Rather, i - like many others - am painfully driven and competitive. i want the most of everything. sometimes it works out for me, sometimes against. but that drive is not a function of sheer, blind slavery to the workplace. i, for one, sometimes sometimes like my job, and sometimes i do not like it. but i do like what's happening in the big picture.
Specifically, some reading about Bill O’Reilly and what he does for it (it being pleasure). It’s transcript-tastic! To echo the alert coworker who sent me the link: “Wow.”
I'm recovering from illness at the moment.
So with my free time, I'll offer a more lengthy rebuttal to Jill's excellent strawman killing ability.
First off, I never said that "my life" starts at 5pm. What I did say was that after 5, I should be able to do what I want because it is my life. So, for those a little slow on the uptake, that means that I shouldn't have to come on every evening at 7 o'clock to do even more work. Being a salaried employee means merely being able to not go on the clock to get paid. It doesn't mean that every single hour of your day belongs to your company. Even if one loves the work one does, your off hours should be yours to do with what you choose. The choice is important: if I choose to e-mail co-workers and obsess about work, it is still a choice. If I choose to simply read books, or watch movies instead, that is a choice. When the company says "hey, you need to come in over the weekend", that is not a choice. And that's what I take issue with. If one wants to work 14 hours a day, I would sincerely hope that those final six hours are a choice, not an "encouragement" by the company. How can one tell? Well, for starters, corporate cultures that value teamwork over individuality tend to encourage workers to conform and work the same hours as everyone else. Also, companies that put the onus of the future solvency of the business on the worker's shoulders also encourage too many hours. When was the last time someone went to an assembly line worker and said, "Hey, if you don't work two unpaid hours this evening, the business will go under." The unfortunate legacy of the dot-com bust era is that many small businesses have become increasingly adept at hiring too few workers to do too much work. Yes, worker productivity can increase, but only so far. Ask the investment banking firms that chew up and spit out people on a three-year cycle. They've figured out that they can get workers to work 16-18 hour days, and that they'll only burn out after 3 years. Good for the company, bad for the worker.
Second, I love my job. I work with a bunch of political junkies, who think nothing of taking weeks off to help with campaigns. Who know more about legislation than your average Senator. Who can toss off favorability ratings in their sleep, yet are never afraid to buck the party line. They are low maintenance and allow me to design at my own pace. We help states and cities fight back against the corporatization of the current administration. We do it in a bi-partisan way. (True!). My previous job, like Jill's, was "tolerable". I ran into one of my old bosses near Tysons the other day. I had forgotten how much thinks irked me there. I remember telling myself that as long as I learned something new every day, I would stay. One particular day passed, and I didn't learn anything new. I started making inquiries. A few weeks later I had left. I still learn something new every day at my current job. When that stops I'll probably leave too. Most people on this lump of dirt don't have the luxury of taking a job that is fulfilling. They just need to earn some money. I'm happy I don't fall into that trap, but I'm always keenly aware that, at any moment, I could. We are all just a hairsbreath away from disaster.As for the "happiness" associated with jobs that are not only fun, but are for a higher purpose...I have to say that I think most job fit into that description, if done well. Doctors, lawyers, teachers, policemen, you name it, any job, if done properly, can be for a greater purpose. To think any less is to be very base indeed.
Third, and most importantly, none of the arguments Jill brings up address the central thesis of the paper in question, namely, that in the future, workers will have to work harder for longer hours just to be employed. She says "balance" is anti-global, that some guy in India will do your job for far less so you better get used to it now. That's defeatist. And wrong. "Balance", as she describes it, is just another method to get people to work longer hours. I've always felt that if workers simply canned the water-cooler gossip, the lengthy lunches and the frivolous forwarded e-mails, that most people could accomplish in two days what they would normally take a week to finish. It's the increasing familial relationship with companies that lead people to spend 14 hours working in the office when they could've finished in 8 if they hadn't talked about last night's football game for so long. I say, skip the amenities, roll up your sleeves, and clock out at 5. Your company and wife will thank you.
What do you think of when The Delgados are mentioned? Right: rich male vocals backed by conscripted children’s choirs. Which is why the new single, “Everybody Come Down,” from Universal Audio—and the current Track You Should Be Listening To Right Now—is a shock: female vocals and not an Eton collar in sight. (At least it was a shock to me, but as a DJ I only know them on a track-by-track basis; I’m sure devoted fans have spit out their scones to holler at me.) Anyway, Emma’s voice is warm and welcoming; I’d place it somewhere between Stars and Dressy Bessy, though not as cool as the former or as cutesy as the latter. The jangly instrumentation is nice too, but it takes a backseat to the delightful “Everybody come down / We can drive, we can race, we can celebrate space.” A sweet track to get psyched up to go out to, or to accompany your search for a diner on the way home the next morning. (There are supposedly downloads on The Delgados’ site, but you have to be a member of the mailing list. Less committed individuals can listen to “Everybody Come Down” here or request it here. D.C. residents should note that, despite being a U.K. act, The Delgados are coming to the Black Cat on Sunday, November 14th, with Crooked Fingers—an amazing double-billing that is not to be missed!)
Meanwhile on the concert front: hit Mouse Trap at the Black Cat on Saturday with Edward and Jill and got my Brit-pop fix. Returned on Monday for the Mountain Goats show. Joan of Arc’s new emphasis on layered percussion and polyrhythms was a nice surprise. My main impression of John Vanderslice was that he went on too long for a Monday night show when I had to work the next morning. (God, I’m so…old.) My viewing of the Mountain Goats was curtailed somewhat (see previous reference to having to work) but I thoroughly enjoyed what I saw. As always, John Darnielle sounds like the product of an illicit liaison involving Bob Dylan and They Might Be Giants in Tallahassee bathroom. The poet of our generation? Maybe. The poet of waking up with vomit in your mouth, bugs under your skin, sharing a motel room for the third night in a row with five other people you didn’t like in the first place? God, yes.
I'm sure most CEO's "work" an 11-hour day. Of course, that includes a two hour lunch break (business discussed!) or a three hour negotiation over dinner. The fact is, the "work" that CEO's do often involve a great deal of gladhanding and golf gaming. If you put any CEO on an assembly line for the same time, they'd probably pass out.
Oh, yeah, Kerry kicked Bush's ass tonight. But you already knew that.
Says Edward, in his final analysis on the relationship between work and life: "But when the whistle blows, and that dinosaur's tail comes down, it's time to leave work behind and relax. It's my life, after all."
Look, if your life starts at five PM, then maybe you need to re-evaluate your life. Me, I'm not about to waste a single hour of the time I have in this world--it's short enough already. I don't hang out with boring people, I don't watch Fox News, and I sure as hell don't spend eight hours a day doing something unless it makes me happy.
That's the point. You shouldn't spend your life doing something that's "tolerable". In my last job, I worked from nine to six each day. Liked the work all right. Had lots of time for going out with friends, dinners, the works. Sometime around the two-month mark, I woke up one Thursday and thought "I don't want to go to work." I quit the next day.
In my current job, I often work fourteen-hour days. But I'm happy. It's not because I'm friends with the people I work with--although that helps--it's because I'm doing what I'm good at for a purpose I believe in. Ultimately, all the foosball tables in the world won't make up for a job you don't care about.
If for you, happiness is just drinks and friends and movies, then you won't understand my point. Yes, there are people who work like hell to earn more money so they can buy more drinks, impress more friends, and see more movies. That's not what I'm talking about. Then there are people whose jobs are easy, and they spend their days surfing the internet or chatting with co-workers. That's also not what I'm talking about. Martin Sigelman of UPenn talks about three kinds of happiness. There's the traditional American surface-level happiness of laughter and beaches--Edward, this is your post-5pm "relaxation." There's the happiness of doing something you're good at, be it writing or arguing or surgery. And finally, there's the happiness of knowing that you're contributing to something you believe in, be it teaching or parenting or politics. When you're great at what you do and you're doing it for something great, you won't need to build walls between the different parts of your life. It'll all be part of the same story.
Oh, one more thing--in your concluding paragraph, you pull a George Bush and present an argument based an anecdotes and not much else. So instead of rebutting it by telling you that my current COO is a workaholic social imbecile (true!) I will tell you that the average CEO works an 11-hour day. But hey, who knows, perhaps you're right about the "social butterfly" factor (although Bill Gates dosn't really seem like such a charmer to me)--but if you're going to make the argument, be willing to do the research to back it up.