Link: eMusic

I've been considering eMusic membership for some time. It's a music download site, but unlike all of its serious competitors, it doesn't load the music down with DRM. That means you can play the music on an iPod, on a Dell Music player, on your computer - on anything that can play MP3's. Of course, you can always burn the music to a CD, too. It's also cheap. For $10 a month (the cost of one iTunes CD (if you're lucky), or about 2/3rds of a Target CD) you can download 40 songs a month. Because it's a membership, you pay $10 dollars whether you download your songs or not, but if I can't find one CD to download every month, then I might be comatose.

Yes, there's a catch. There has to be, right, if you can download legal MP3's for 25 cents each (compared to iTunes 99 cents)? Most of the music on eMusic is from independant labels, or is out of print, or is otherwise not the darling of the RIAA. You won't find 50 Cent on eMusic (though you'll find a 50 Cent tribute CD), and you won't find Madonna or Britney Spears (though Madonna has an unauthorized audio biography). You will find the latest two Matthew Sweet albums. You will find Delerium's catalogue, the best of the Cult, the best of Dead Can Dance, one of Sigur Ros' earlier works, and a surprisingly strong collection of electronica (like BT and Crystal Method). I think the strength of the site lies not in filling in the gaps of your top 40 collection, but in finding music similar to what you already know you like, by artists you didn't know you liked yet. NB: I couldn't find a way to browse the stores without logging in, but you get a free trial period where you can browse the site and download a handful of songs to try the service out (make sure you cancel if you decide you don't like it, or your credit card will be charged.

If this sounds interesting, let me know. I can check the site to see if any artists you like are there. I can send you an invitation, which means you'll get the same free 25 song trial period, but I get a few extra downloads if you decide to stick and I can add you to my friends list (huzzah!). Or you can just go check it out.

Link: Nation States

I stumbled across this little web game whilst reading the comments on the Dilbert Blog today. It's a clever idea, both as a game and as marketing for the author's book, and it seems to require only minimal involvement (certainly less time than I spend checking the news at CNN every morning.

I signed up, and if any of you do, too, my nation is The Principate of Potentol.

I wish...

I wish there was a church for people like me. I don't mean that I wish I had a credo or someone to expound on how I should act or what I should believe (though I feel there are plenty of people with adequate authority to present compelling suggestions!). I miss the fellowship of having regular acquaintances and even friends in whose presence I could relax in the belief that we share similar viewpoints. I miss being able to debate minor, relatively unimportant philosophical, moral, and spiritual issues with people who are likely to come equipped with a similar set of "givens". (Though of course I do still have a very good friend in Todd who more than adequately fills in those roles, its the regular community of such people that I'm trying to describe here.)

I don't think it's likely to happen, though - I'm satisfied enough in my feeling that my beliefs are too whimsical and disparate to make a community feasible that it's not really even worth looking. I have also concluded from some experience that some of the "catch-all" groups like the Universalist/Unitarian church may catch a few too many to suit me (I don't mean whackos so much as the redundancy of a grouping to which everyone is a member).

But maybe I'm wrong. Maybe I would fit handily into the Bahai, or some other group of which I'm not aware.

If I were to start a religion (of one), this would be my foundation:

I am an animist, but:
I don't think every soul or spirit is sacred. Animals eat other animals and plants. Plants eat other animals and plants. People eat everything. Black holes eat people. This is natural. But I think the way we treat other things is important. I don't think a mailbox has the value of a person, and yes, it is a tool. But I think it is good for the person and the mailbox if the person considers the mailbox with an appropriate degree of respect.

I am a deist with the Clockmaker wrinkle added in for good measure, but:
I don't think the earth or people were made with any special intention by an all-powerful god. I think it more likely the earth was the result of variety of forces, ideas, and plans, and probably as part of a larger project.

I believe in reincarnation, but:
I'm not so hot on the idea of the Transmigration of the Soul.

The above is mostly a result of a combination of wishful thinking and pattern-building based on limited empirical data.

I have a passion, but no slavish devotion, to the Church of the Real. I believe you should deal with things as you find them, not as you suppose them or wish them to be. (Haha - that appears to undermine what I said before, eh?)

When in doubt, Moderation is a safe fallback.

The purposes of life are, in order:
Advancement/improvement of the species
Procreation
Happiness

The responsibilities for each of these exist as a series of soft-edged circles centered on the self (i.e. I am most responsible for my own procreation, and to a lesser degree that of my family, to a much lesser degree my social peers, and to a very minimal degree, that of the wasps in my window; I am responsible for the advancement of humanity, but also to some small degree for that of ants and angels).

Morality is not the law of god handed down to us, but a slowly unfolding pattern of how best to affect the above three purposes of life. It is not relative, but anyone who claims to have a complete understanding of morality or ethics at best knows what they should do at a given time and at worst is a bossy liar.

Death is not an evil - pain is more of an enemy. War, murder, carnivorism, and sickness are not bad because people or things die, but because they are hurt. Some of the hurt is practically unavoidable, and is there to remind us to look after our bodies or our friends and relatives, and the people who cause us pain should be severely punished as a deterrant to further pain-causers and as a reformative measure. God will not punish those who have done wrong with damnation, but if we don't take care of it, karma probably will. Some pain is unnecessary and can be assuaged or avoided by releasing attachments to ephemeral things (that is, most everything).

Sex is not a vice - it is pleasurable because it encourages us to procreate. Marriage is not a flaw or unnatural. It is a moral improvement that allows us to better accomplish successful procreation and advancement of the species. Marriage and sex, however, are not necessarily as intertwined as some might suggest.

Encouraging the extension of life beyond the point where any of the three purposes of life can be achieved is morally wrong.

Hmm... I'm sure there is much, much more, but it escapes me at 11:30 at night.

I like my new watch!

I haven't had a watch for the longest time. Who needs one, when your cell phone, computer, microwave, car, and just about everything else already keeps time for you? However, I've been keeping an eye out for something really special... something that shows the moon cycles, or has a horizon with sun and moon keeping time above it, or something like that. I can't honestly say why I would want my watch to tell me what the moon and sun are doing, but I do. I really do.

While I was at Target I found this fisherman's watch. It's something really special.

It's impossible to make out in the picture, but see that circle, above the hours' column? That shows the phases of the moon, with four different parentheses-shapes (nested pairs) marking eighth-phases. Right now, all four bars are solid (dark), showing a new moon. All four blank (white) would be a full moon. I can hit one of the shoulder buttons and it will tell me what day of the lunar cycle it is (the first). Hurrah!

But that's not all. See the wave-shaped section to the right of it? That's supposed to be a tide marker - you feed in your longitude and the delay between the azimuth of the moon and high tide, and voila! But I have no use for a tide marker, and by putting my delay to 0:00, it tells me when the moon is directly overhead or on the other side of the earth! How you like my little watch now?!

But that's not all. If I hit another shoulder button, it will tell me what angle off true North the sun is. That's supposed to be to find true North, but since I usually have a pretty good idea of where North is, it can tell me where the sun is instead (usually, that's pretty obvious, eh? But not when it's overcast). I hit the button accidentally somewhat frequently, so maybe if I look at it enough, I'll start to build a mental databank of what direction the sun is at different times of day. That would be a useful skill!

I like my new watch!

A Vistor to my room

Link: Study suggests Rhythm method worse than the Pill for Embryo Death

Reddit suggested a link similar to this one last week.

From the article:

In using the rhythm method, couples avoid pregnancy by refraining from sex during a woman’s fertile period. Perfect adherents claim it is over 90% effective – i.e. one couple in 10 will conceive in an average year. But, typically speaking, effectiveness is estimated at closer to 75%.

Now Bovens suggests that for those concerned about embryo loss, the rhythm method may be a bad idea. He argues that, because couples are having sex on the fringes of the fertile period, they are more likely to conceive embryos that are incapable of surviving.

In essence, rather than preventing fertilization, the rhythm method may be preventing implantation, thus causing more embryos than might otherwise to be rejected in preparation for menstruation. For those who believe live begins at fertilization, this could be bad news. However, since the Catholic Church does not support prophylactics, which prevent fertilzation in the first place, this news is less likely to intitiate a re-consideration of birth control than it is to simply eliminate it altogether.

And now for something completely different

Warning!
This post could be considered gross, crass, or uncouth. If you are unsettled by things of a bodily nature, skip to some movie reviews down below. Otherwise, read on.


I hate it when I get those little spots on the inside lip of your nose - zits, pimples, blemishes, arbitrary oil reservoirs - call them what you will. The skin there is so tight that any little irritation is a big irritation, and of course the only thing you can do with them is "take care of them". Even worse are when they aren't pimples at all, but impacted/ingrown hairs, since those can require some operation to extricate.

Well, I had one such this last week, and boy was it getting painful. I thought I'd freed it up a few days back, but that spot on my nose kept getting more and more tender, and the outside of my nose was getting redder and more swollen in response. I've always wondered how deep one would have to go to get to the inside from the outside (not very far, I thought, since the lip of the nostrils seems to be about twice as wide as the rest of the nose wall). In any case, I barely scratched at the swollen knot on the outside of my nose and out sprung the root end of a hair! I couldn't really believe it at first, so I investigated it closely. It was clearly the root end. Finally, after Kim had assured me she wasn't at all interested, I took some tweezers and pulled the hair out - backwards. That was a strange feeling.

Anyway, I thought this was so remarkable I had to share, even though it will probably cut my meager readership down to a trickle. [grin]

Weekend Movie Roundup

Since Kim and I have been dreadfully slack in our cinema consumption so far this year, we decided to catch up on three (3 (III (11(binary)))) of this weekend's top showings. In order, they were:

Mission: Impossible: 3
Though it stars the recently publically outrageous Tom Cruise, the bold use of multiple colons in the title offsets any prejudice. This movie was, in my opinion, the best Mission: Impossible movie so far. It was gripping (in that I was 'gripping' the edge of my seat or a fold of my jeans throughout most of the movie) and engaging. There was little, if any, of the Charlie's Angels frou-frou from M:I:2 (frou-frou is good in many contexts, including Charlie's Angels movies, but I don't care for any of it in my impossible missions), but it was faster and more action-packed than the first Mission. Phillip Seymour Hoffman made a perfectly despicable villain. It's a little off-putting to see 40+ year-old Tom Cruise with a 25+ year-old fiancee, but I guess those kinds of things happen in the real world, too, and there's not enough down time in the movie to worry about it. Of course, there were some divergences from scientific facts and plausibility, but what do you want? I'll tell you - you want to see this movie!

The DaVinci Code
Let me begin this review with a foray into the book and the reception it's seen from the literati (of which I consider myself a very peripheral member). I read the book and enjoyed it thoroughly. No, it was not dripping with jewels of prose, but I've never read James Joyce for the heady euphoria of wordsmithing. I've had friends and other people I respect call Dan Brown a hack, barely literate, and other less pleasant things. To those of you who have not yet written a book (I think that would be most of you), Shut the Hell up. I think it's usually a cop-out to say people who deconstruct others' successes are just jealous, but I honestly can't think of any other plausible explanation. I don't see Dan Brown as any worse than Michael Crichton or John Grisham, and I don't recall so much animosity directed at them. If you were to say, "I don't care for it for these reasons," that would be one thing, and I could understand and respect that opinion. But when you say things like "This is among the worst drecht I've ever read," "People who read these books are idiots," "Dan Brown is the worst author of the century," etc., you are simply confirming your self to be a blathering sourpuss. So please stop. If you could simply stop nit-picking about whether fallen logs and stumps constitute trees and realize you were in a forest, you'd understand that the genius (yes, I said and meant genius) of The DaVinci Code and Angels & Demons is in the ideas. As fictional as they are (very, and yes, Dan Brown has said they're not fiction, and he may very well be a kook as well as a good author), they do an excellent job of tying together conspiracy theory, powerful institutions that many if not most readers have some personal investment in, and suspense in a way that necessarily produces a paradigm shift (if not for the reader, at least empathically through the main characters) by the end of the novel. I believe that the ability to produce a new and compelling paradigm from existing evidence that we have already used to construct the current accepted paradigm is perhaps the most valuable skill a novelist could have. It's like those children's stories, where if you open the door at the right time, or manage to step through a mirror, you enter a whole new magical world. That's what Dan Brown does, for adults. You don't have to enjoy it. But I demand that you respect it. Don't make me shake my fist at you!

Sorry.

On to the movie. The movie wasn't quite as good as the book (how many times have you heard that before), but it wasn't as bad as I was expecting, based on some of the reviews I've read. It was reasonably faithful to the story line, though much of what I wanted from the movie was to see all of the sites, the inscriptions, the paintings, the statuary, etc. that the characters see in the book - they managed about 70% of it, which makes me wonder if the last 30% wasn't photogenic, or wasn't there. Tom Hanks' delivery seemed stilted and leaden in parts, but I wonder if that isn't actually quite faithful to the character. He is playing, after all, a University Professor. I would recommend it, but I don't think it's necessarily a theater movie. If your movie experience was anything like ours, there would be too many people around asking silly questions of their friends and spouses in voices not-hushed-enough to make the experience enjoyable.

Over the Hedge
We saw this movie for Kim, though as often happens, I ended up enjoying it more than she did. We had the brilliant plan of watching it after bed-time, and it actually worked out that our brilliant plan was brilliant! There was no talking or crying or walking around or kicking the back of the chairs or anything. Yay! As far as animated animal movies go, this one wasn't overly ambitious and it did an excellent job of what it set out to do. The characters were laugh-out-loud funny (at least in parts), and very well drawn and animated. I expect a sequel. The moralizing (every kids' movie must come with a moral) was a bit heavy in the beginning, and aimed at parents rather than kids, but it faded into the background of the story by the end. Yay! I would recommend the movie to anyone, unless they are easily offended by anti-capitalist propagandising.

New Science Experiment

I haven't really kept up with all of the science experiments a scientician like myself should be doing, especially after the success of my first confirmation experiment

But I now have begun a new experiment, and while it doesn't involve alcohol, it involves human testing and possible physical danger, which is almost as good.

Hypothesis:
Exposing myself to a sufficient number of mosquito bites will reduce the allergic effects over time.

Supporting Proof:
I couldn't find any in my exhaustive 3-minute search of Second Brain. But I recall reading before that the wheals that are mosquito bites are actually allergic reactions to the mosquito saliva and that many people lose their allergic reactions to mosquito bites in adolescence. Since I've lost most of my own allergies through over-exposure (cats, dogs, hay fever, dust, country music), I think I stand a reasonable chance of success.

Possible physical dangers:
Malaria or Encephalitis (including West Nile Virus). But all bold scientistic advances require personal sacrifice!

Nature of the experiment:
This mosquito season, while I am out doing yard work, I will not wear insect repellant. As a preliminary trial run, I went outside today with no scent other than my own natural mosquito aphrodesiac. Result: 8-12 mosquito bites. Huzzah!

Noo Tattoo (More talking, still no action)

This is my new Tattoo Template:



Ha ha! It's not its fault it's fat. It's mine! Or, not fat, but Buddha-esque. It's not the way I'd most like to be like the Buddha, but it's the easiest.


This is the tattoo I drew directly onto the template. I colored like I was a tattoo artist - heavy, long lines, and no erasing. (Okay, just a little erasing). Not like I was a good tattoo artist, mind you, but the fellow who did the cross/sword on my arm wasn't great, either, so I wanted to prepare myself for the possibilities.



Oh, no! That's much too big. And beside, I can't keep waxing my chest to keep the angel and demon clear.



Okay, that's a little better. I like some of the things about this design. (The 5 minute coloring job and wonky lines aren't those things.) Kim doesn't like the hands on the demon, though - she says they're freaky. I kinda think that makes her a little more inhuman, which is kinda the point, but oh well.

Just for fun, I put my last version of the tattoo (which I still really like, but they're too voluptuous for a future father say some) onto the template:



Not too shabby!

I think I'll draw a few more, then take them to a tattoo artist and let them come up with drawings of their own based on what I drew. I hear it usually looks best when the artist can use their own lines.

Any comments?

New Things and Critters

Sometimes when I go to the store with Kim I feel inclined to Try New Things. This last trip I was in a bit of a whimsical mood, so I put a New Thing in the cart when she wasn't looking (though she found it later and just gave me an odd look).



I didn't know what Navy Beans were, or how the tasted (thus it is really a New Thing), but I figured somebody must buy them, or they wouldn't be at the store. Right?

Today, while Kim was at work, I tried my New Thing.



And you know what? They were really pretty good. I think they'd be especially good with some saltines. (Navy Beans and saltines. Yar har! And a bottle of rum, matey!) They're somewhere in between chili and chicken noodles soup. I could even go so far as to hesitantly recommend them. I might try the Navy Beans without bacon and Jalapeno, but I'll wait at least a week first.


Yesterday at work I was out taking pictures of concrete so I could capture some good textures for planet building. Right there in the primo parking spot, catching some rays, was this fellow:



At first we weren't sure if he was dead or not, because he didn't move when an ant crawled over his head. But when I started playing Steve Irwin and caught his neck with the crook at the end of a long stick, we found out pretty quickly how not dead he was. I don't think he was a venomous snake, but since he was in that strike pose, I figured I wouldn't take a chance. We herded him out of the primo parking space (after all, he didn't have any seniority) and into a bush.



This little chipmunk is one of Kim's favorites. He runs around the porch, stuffing his cheeks full of sunflower seeds and corn that Kim leaves out for the squirrels. He's a lot more elusive than the squirrels, though - this was the best shot I've ever gotten of him.



Lastly, this fellow seems to have come in with a rose I clipped for Kim. I couldn't find him in Bugguide.net, but I think he's some kind of adolescent grasshopper or katydid. Maybe Dad would know? He was an aggressive little tyke, anyway. After I took a few pictures of him, he started moving toward me, like he was ranging me. I left him alone on the kitchen counter for awhile, then came in to cook some Navy Beans. He lept right at me. Sadly, he fell to the floor and Jenny snuffled him up.

Re Lo Hell No

About a month and a half ago we learned that my company, Netifice, was purchasing its largest competitor. This was considered to be pretty good news all around, and a very shrewd move on the part of our CEO (especially since MegaPath was about 50% larger than Netifice).

There was some concern, since Netifice already had large offices in Costa Mesa, Atlanta, and Seattle, and smaller nodes scattered elsewhere around the country, and Megapath had offices in Austin and Pleasanton. That's a lot of offices to maintain, and it would be sensible to assume some consolidation.

About a week ago, we learned that the new company will be called Megapath, and will be located in Pleasanton and Austin.

So now we have been waiting for details, to find out just what was going to happen. I was asked by almost as many people as I asked if I (they) would move to Austin? Kim and I had already decided, no. I would be happy to travel to Austin as often as necessary, but could not move. Perhaps they would let me work from home? After all, Netifice did a lot of business selling other companies on the benefits of employees who work from home. No, Netifice does not like for her employees to work from home.

The rumor was that we would be getting re-lo packages. (Re-lo, of course, is short for re-location. "Location" is such a long, clumsy word to type or say. I mean, what else would you expect from employees of Ntfc (Netifice) who work with SBC, ATT, Cvd (Covad), VZ (Verizon) all day on our tkts (tickets) and ckts (circuits)? We would abbreviate anything but our lunch hours.)

Today the VP of our functional group came to our office to convince us how much they wanted all of us in Austin, and to prove it, they handed out the relocation packages. Even people who were planning on moving to Austin (and by planning, I mean putting their house on the market and scheduling trips to visit Austin and look for a new house) began to rethink their options. After all, most of us aren't single college students who describe their ikea desk as their "Good Furniture". At least, as best as we could tell, that seems to be the type at whom the packages were aimed.

So now we begin waiting again, for the next package: Severance.

Spinoza

I've been listening to The Teaching Company's Great Minds of the Western Intellectual Tradition on the way to work again. Yeah, I know it sounds kind of dry. Sometimes it is, but usually its really interesting, and it makes 45 minutes go by faster than any DJ's can manage it.

So, I think I'm interested in Spinoza. I hear he's near-impenetrable, though. Does anyone know anything about him? Have any feelings, or recommendations on where to start?

Videos I've seen (and might even recommend!)

Kim and I bought a couple of videos recently. Then we watched them. And now I think I might discuss them. In a one-sided kind of way.

We bought Aeon Flux first, so I made sure we watched it first, too, since I thought Kim might otherwise find a way to keep it several items down in the list for awhile. I was of course interested in the film way back when it was in the theater, because it's just that type of movie. My interest was renewed when it was the in-flight movie during our recent trip to California, but since I had selfishly grabbed the window seat for picture-taking, I was only able to see the lower-left portion of the movie screen. But that part seemed interesting. Anyway, we bought the video, and I watched the upper-right hand side and listened to the sound, too! It was a pretty movie to look out, but the plot had holes just large enough to drive dna-bearing zeppelins through. It's a good kind of movie to veg to, but not the kind of movie you want to think about afterward, unless there's someone else there so you can point and snicker together.

Kim and I both wanted to watch Millions. We'd seen the preview and liked it, and Todd and Cindy had recommended it on several occassions. We would have watched in the theaters, fo'shu' fo'shu', if we had had lived near a theater that had been clever enough to screen it. But we found it on DVD, which is nearly as good. Kim, on watching it, thought it was weird, but liked it. And I, I really liked it, a lot! The boy talks to Saints, for goodness' sake! Todd was right when he said it was right up my alley. I don't know how to recommend it without going through the plot. It has a little of the Alley MacBeal fantasy-world-made-real aspect to it, and a little of the disjointed hip-British-film feel. Yup. You'd best just see it. That way you'll know what I'm talking about.

A Couple of Movies

Kim and I watched to movies in the theater this weekend.

American Dreamz - Imagine American Pie, but replace the funny, raunchy sex comedy with social-political commentary sauced with a comic sensibility somewhere between A Mighty Wind and your high school's senior play. I imagine that Kim and I had rented the DVD instead, and think that's just about right.

Friends with Money - Clearly meant to be a woman-oriented movie (all of the four female leads are A-list actresses, their male counterparts are relative unknowns or character actors, and the story line is almost always following one or more of the women), I found it interesting that the men were the most interesting, sympathetic characters, and less of charicatures than the women. This movie lies somewhere between Closer, Love Actually, and Good Girl without really measuring up to the first two or feeling as emotionally dead-weighted as the last. Still, it's relatively harmless, as far as movies go.