I Think, Therefore I Blog » 2007 » August

Addictions

fsherman — Fri, 31 Aug 2007 18:00:15 +0000

•My iBook
Two years ago, I used my bonus from the Log (coupled with a gift from my father) to replace my outdated desktop Mac with a new iBook. I loved it. And when my schedule became busier, I started using my laptop to write during lunch hours, or breaks before meetings, to squeeze in extra time.
And since I had it at work, it only made sense to use it to cover meetings once in a while, since it’s much faster for me to type than to take shorthand (I haven’t tested my speed in a while but it must be well over 100 words a minute by now).
Then I started bringing the ibook whenever I had an in-person interview, so that I could make sure all the quotes are accurate. Don’t get me wrong, my shorthand interviews are accurate, but sometimes I have to paraphrase because I don’t have the exact quote, and that’s a shame.
By now, the thought of tackling meetings without my laptop is positively unsettling, to say nothing of how hard it would be to find time for my own writing.
•Books.
An even stronger addiction. I love to read, and to some extent I have to read: if my schedule doesn’t permit me to crack a book, after a few days I become very fidgety. Both from lack of reading and the sense that the books I want to read are piling up while I’m wasting my time on other things (so to speak).
I have a huge library at home and an acute inability to keep from adding to it. Or to resist new books on the library shelves, even if I have a bunch of my own to read waiting at home. And I have a couple of hundred listed on my computer to get to “someday” in addition to the authors and subjects that I read regularly.
I’m a literature addict. And I like it.

Two depressing reports this week

fsherman — Thu, 30 Aug 2007 14:03:28 +0000

From the McClatchy newspaper chain, an article in which Iraqi contractors say that the “security” budget in their contract with the CPA is actually the money they pay the insurgents not to kill or rip them off.
In other words, American funding is going right into the insurgents’ pockets.
From the Institute of Southern Studies, a report that less than 42 percent of the federal funding for Katrina reconstruction has been spent. One example: Washington allocated 16.7 billion in block grants for rebuilding, and only $1 billion had been spent as of March (after news of this leaked out, another $3.8 billion was released).

Creepy hypocrites

fsherman — Tue, 28 Aug 2007 19:19:16 +0000

Ted Nugent in July: “There’s a lunatic fringe on the left that literally are trying to force us to comply to their outline of life. And I find it just reprehensible that they would recommend violence, not to mention murder and shooting people and assassinating people. This is bizarre.”

Ted Nugent in August, while displaying two machine guns at a concert: “I told (Obama) to suck on my machine gun … Hilary, you might want to ride one of these into the sunset.”

Apparently Nugent doesn’t object to recommending violence and shooting people as long as he’s the “lunatic fringe” doing it.

Unsurprisingly, neither do many of the conservatives who like to whine about how liberals are overflowing with “hate speech.” Sean Hannity, for example, condemned the Dixie Chicks when one of them said she was “ashamed” Bush came from Texas, but he actively defended Nugent on a recent show.
If I were really cynical, I’d think Hannity’s concept of “hate speech” doesn’t go any deeper than “someone criticized a conservative.” And come to think of it, I am really cynical.

I’m not questioning Nugent’s right to free speech, however loathsome (and given his first quote, how completely hypocritical) his speech may be. But given how some conservatives routinely dismiss any critics of Bush as “unhinged” “Bush hating” liberals, it doesn’t hurt to remember what a double-standard they have in these matters.

Life in the slow lane

fsherman — Mon, 27 Aug 2007 19:48:53 +0000

When the subject of speeding and traffic works its way into the Daily News letter pages, I can count on someone complaining that all those slow drivers should stay over in the right lane and let the people who want to go fast do so (I know, the left lane is technically the “passing” lane but in practice it’s the “fast” lane).
Surprisingly, no-one ever points out the opposite: People who want to drive fast should stay over in the left lane and leave the right side of the road to the rest of us.
If I’m on the right side of the road, driving the speed limit or a little under it, I’m under no obligation to go faster just because the guy behind me is impatient. Driving so close behind me they can see right up my tailpipe doesn’t mean I am legally, morally or ethically obligated to drive any faster. And as a practical consideration, I WON’T drive any faster; it’s all I can do not to slow myself down another 10 mph.
I’m sympathetic to the left-laners who go crazy when someone’s crawling along the road ahead of them (I’ve had the same reaction often enough). But I don’t see any reason why the fastest drivers should be the ones who determine what’s an acceptable speed, either.

Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar

fsherman — Fri, 24 Aug 2007 17:41:46 +0000

If there’s one thing that annoys me about my cohorts in the national press, it’s their fondness for reading significance into irrelevant details.
I’m talking about the kind of article that points to what people eat, or wear, or the songs on their iPod as revealing the hidden truth about their character. That can be the case–if they like to listen to “white power” songs when they drive, or an audiobook of The Iliad in the original Greek–but in most cases, it’s just silly.
Case in point: Anne Kornblut’s Aug. 17 Washington Post article on Giuliani and Senator Clinton making campaign stops in the Midwest and trying to “convince voters that they are normal people, rather than visiting members of the coastal elite.” Kornblut’s example of how they fake normality? Clinton ordered ice cream from a food stand.
Unless Clinton has a documented hatred for ice cream, it’s hard to imagine that her eating some while outdoors in the middle of summer actually requires an ulterior motive.
As former AP editor Jules Loh once said, what people eat for lunch doesn’t tell you anything about their character unless it’s on the order of filet of rattlesnake.

A brilliant solution!

fsherman — Thu, 23 Aug 2007 16:56:03 +0000

In a recent interview, National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell said one of the reasons the Bush administration’s eavesdropping programs just can’t afford to secure warrants is that it takes 200 hours to do the paperwork for one FISA warrant.
Well, if that’s true, there’s a really simple solution: Hire more people. Hire enough people the government can process the warrants without undue delay or rework the process so they can get through it faster.
Wouldn’t that make more sense than getting rid of warrants altogether? Unless, of course, you’re in an administration that thinks it can spy on anyone it chooses and shouldn’t have to answer to anybody about it.

A wikipedia problem

fsherman — Tue, 21 Aug 2007 18:33:56 +0000

Wikipedia, for those who don’t know, is the online encyclopedia that solicits entries, updates and corrections of entries from its users. I find it a useful resource, but there have been too many reports of unreliable entries, people slipping in material as a joke or politicized rewrites of controversial material for me to trust it as an article source.

And then I read in Wired magazine that some corporations and organizations are actively engaged in editing their Wikipedia entries to delete anything objectionable:Diebold, the electronic-voting machine maker, apparently deleted 15 paragraphs reflecting negatively on their machines and other edits have been made from computers owned by the CIA, Wal-Mart and Fox News.

This wasn’t a problem with World Book!

My first anthology (Hooray!).

fsherman — Tue, 21 Aug 2007 16:44:14 +0000

Last week, Drollerie Press told me my short story “Red Moon Rising” has been accepted for an anthology of Red Riding Hood stories they’re publishing next year.
It’s the first time I’ve ever made it into an anthology, and my third short story accepted this year (the others being “Everybody’s Doing It,” to come out in Allegory, and “You Are What You Eat,” due from Tales of the Talisman). And the nice thing is, the kick of getting published doesn’t fade from repetition, it still feels great.

Poisoned food keeps costs low, the good that results from terrorism, and other stupid ideas

fsherman — Wed, 15 Aug 2007 15:07:14 +0000

Some quotes that have annoyed me lately:

Erin Burnett of CNBC: “If China were to revalue its currency, or China is to start making, say, toys that don’t have lead in them, or food that isn’t poisonous, their costs of production are going to go up. And that means prices at Walmart, here in the United States, are going to go up too.”

And what are deaths or children chewing on lead toys compared to low prices?

Rudy Giulani: “Freedom is about the willingness of every single human being to cede to lawful authority a great deal of discretion about what you do.”

Ah … no.

Philadelphia columnist Stu Bykofsky: “I’m thinking another 9/11 would help America … If it is to be, then let it be. It will take another attack on the homeland to quell the chattering of chipmunks and to restore America’s righteous rage.”

Notably, Bykofsky’s column doesn’t say he himself wants to die to restore America’s purpose, that’s apparently something for the little people to do.

Flossie

fsherman — Mon, 13 Aug 2007 20:46:23 +0000

Am I the only one who thinks this is a really bad name for a hurricane?