Saturday, September 28, 02002
A new Pallotta-free DC AIDS ride has been announced for next year. I wonder what percentage of donations that leader of the fund-raising industry Kintera will end up taking. After all it's not an altruist who believes a full life requires self-sacrifice and serving the needs of others
Posted at 11:04 AM EST [Link][Comment]
A hillarious article claiming beseiged CEOs are 'hunkering down' with Atlas Shrugged for solace.
CEOs put the book down knowing in their hearts that they are not the greedy crooks they are portrayed to be in today's business headlines but are heroes like the characters in Rand's novel. They strive to be real-life achievers who do far more to lift the world's standard of living, cure disease and end starvation than Mother Teresa and altruists who believe a full life requires self-sacrifice and serving the needs of others.
...
Atlas Shrugged devotees say America's wealth builders will never go on strike the way Rand described, but they say a quasistrike is underway. "It's not organized, but it's happening," Joyce says.
For example, since the Enron scandal, CEOs are refusing to sit on boards of other companies, thereby withholding their business savvy from the market. About 60% of executives are turning down offers to serve on boards vs. 25% a year ago, Christian says.
Outplacement firms Challenger Gray & Christmas and Drake Beam Morin have released fresh studies showing that CEOs are resigning and retiring as never before.
Notice this is in the national news section and not the editorial section. Also note the leaders of industry quotes - a theme park owner, founder of a health spa, sports team owner, exercise equipment makers. There's not one leader of real industry that would need any engineering expertise. These guys would make out great in a hidden village in the Rockies. Whatever. Bring on the quasistrike.
Posted at 10:25 AM EST [Link][Comment]
Friday, September 27, 02002
I went for the Bobblehead Jesus, but I stuck around for the Bobblehead Commander-in-Chief and the limited edition NYPD/NYFD Bobbleheads. The BHJ is good clean fun, but what sort of freaks buy those other two ?
Posted at 07:20 PM EST [Link][Comment]
Russian Thistle: dangerous pest or cash crop ?
It has been reported that prairie wildfires can spread rapidly when ignited balls of burning Russian thistle blow through grasslands.
Posted at 02:23 PM EST [Link][Comment]
Seek and ye shall find... little gems on the cheesy Kmart Forever site. I copied one in the extended area, since it looks like it's going to drift off into oblivion as more and more crappy letters-o-support push it further back in the queue. That would just be a shame. Hat's off the dandude, whoever you are.....
Posted at 12:15 AM EST [Link][Comment]
Thursday, September 26, 02002
Time to get down and geekly with a new useless side project.
How cool would it be to fit all the proper nouns in the Illiad into a FOAF database ?
Well, not cool at all, but very, very geekly. I've been reading the Illiad lately, and I suspect 90% of the names included are just to keep the meter right. It would be interested to see how often the names appear, and if they are ever referenced again after being used. I don't like Butler's prose translation, but it's already available in softcopy.
Update 10/02/02002:
- Add a directory for this project at http://pwan.org/iliad.
- Wrote a quick and dirty script proper-nouns.pl to, dah, find the proper nouns.
- Found around 1145 unique proper nouns. There was some obvious problems with the script output (If and Yet being counted as names, a bunch of possible sentence-starters that could also be proper names, put I'm guessing it off by +-50 maybe. Damn, that's a lot of names.
- Found 6339 unique words besides the proper nouns
- Dumped the names into a file called iliad-names.txt, hand correcting the most obvious script errors. Ended up with 1071 names, but that still contains some plurals, adjective forms, and I suspect a bunch of misspelled names. Lots of the names look really alike - diffs by an internal 'e', stuff like that....
- Next step is to dump all the names in a database
Update 10/03/02002:
- An inital schema has been posted today, along with a little script for populating the iliad-names.txt into it.
- mysql is the database for the project, since it's on my machine. I may switch to something else that supports foriegn key relationships though.
- Netx step - searching for city names and loading them into the database
Posted at 07:34 PM EST [Link][Comment]
Apparently if you don't have a hybrid, and you need bodies to use the HOV lane, you can go slugging.
Don't miss these slugging stories. That first one is pretty funny.
And especially for the poor correspondent out of Greensboro, there are even slugging poems.
We've learned to be reasonable we
must all commute,
So that we can have patience and
not so often our horn to toot.
Slugging seems to be a local to Virginia, but there are HOV lanes all over the country. Why not start a slug line in your area ?
Update: In the East Bay, this concept is called Casual Carpooling
Posted at 01:13 AM EST [Link][Comment]
Tuesday, September 24, 02002
I am back from Arizona, and back to relatively good health. It turns out I was probably just allergic to excessive heat, dust, and wasted water. I'm celebrating my return to Arlington with various odd trip photos. Maybe I'll post some pictures of cacti and rocks if there's any interest.
Cheer up Little Camper !
Mom and Alex looking for relief from the brutal 106 degree Arizona heat
How I think Alex should dress when he's out tutoring
Some knicknacks from my brother's apartment.
More on the Fleet Eneman.
The cow used to be holding a fishing pole. It normally stays in a different room than the stange plush toy.
Alex probably might not appreciate that first picture, so I'll compensate by putting up a really horrible photo of myself. It goes without saying I do not photograph well, not well at all.
Especially after I've been in 106 degree Arizona heat all day, with a bad, bad cold, and when I finally get to rest, Dex the Cat jumps up and digs it's claws deep into my belly. I was too exhausted and doped up at that time to do much about it.
