• Wired 13.04: The Man Who Shot Sin City
  Great article on Robert Rodrquez. Can't wait for the flick.
  (tags: Movies)
• Shakespeare's Plays and Sonnets with Essays, Quotes, Criticism, and More.
  All the Shaespeare you need.
  (tags: Books)
• posterwire.com � the movie poster weblog
  Movie posters new and old to check out. Neat.
  (tags: Movies)
• Killer Japanese Seizure Robots!
  AHHHHH!!!
  (tags: Bizarre)
• SeatGuru.com - Your Enlightened Guide to Airplane Seating
  I wish I'd found this before.
  (tags: Useful)

coolcast033005.mp3

http://feeds.feedburner.com/searscast

Mare's list:
1. name: coolcast?
2. roses & road apples
3. tv
4. asthma
5. Maly's religious fanaticism

Matt's list:
1.fan mail
2. new intro music
3. Will's sick
4. Easter review
5. Supreme Court

Sara's Lent post

Thanks to Netflix I have been exposing myself to the previously unknown world of Ingmar Bergman. I really liked this one. It causes such an odd fascination in its long silences and gruesome visuals, not to mention a lot of things happening that don't seem to make any sense. We have an artist and his wife secluding themselves on an island. Some freaky people who live in a nearby castle take a special interest in the artist. He goes insane from justifiable paranoia, and his wife slowly reveals his sad story to the audience, starting with a great sequence of her talking to the screen.

There's a beautiful use of light and shadows that makes the movie all the more frightening and disturbing. The closeups and the great actors bring a lot to it as well. For some reason, this one had me feeling more involved than the other Bergman movies I've watched lately, although I've been enjoying them all.

By the way, I also watched the Seventh Seal and loved the characters in that one. The figure of death is just perfect.

FILM ROTATION : SIN CITY: From The Comics to the Screen

If for some crazy reason you're still sitting on the fence about Sin City, check out the comparisons to the comic book. The only reason why I'm not going to see this first thing tomorrow is because I have a doctor's appointment and I'm going to wait to see it with my friends in San Diego. Sorry J-OL, I'm not trying to rub this in or anything. Heh.

I swear, there's always at least one idiot who bids $1 or adds one dollar to the highest bid during the Price is Right and he's not the last person to bid. I love the look on their face when the guy who is last bids one dollar above him. Heh.

Head Space

I know the day is young, but I doubt I'll find anything else this good. It's one of those shoot things with your space ship games but with an interesting twist.

Dude Jonathan... a perfect four stars from Ebert!!!

I grew up on old movies, and Calamity Jane, starring Doris Day, was one of them. It may be corny, but I was singing this song to myself the whole time I was in SD (by the way, for lyrics to almost any musical movie you've seen, visit HERE):

THE BLACK HILLS OF DAKOTA

Take me back to the black hills,
the black hills of Dakota.
To the beautiful Indian country that I love.
Lost my heart in the black hills,
the black hills of Dakota,
where the pines are so high that they kiss the skies above.

And when I get that lonesome feeling,
and I'm miles away from home,
I hear the voice of the mystic mounains calling me back home.

So take me back to the black hills,
the black hills of Dakota.
To the beautiful indian country that I love.
Take me back to the black hills,
the black hills of Dakota.
To the beautiful Indian country that I love.
Lost my heart in the black hills
the black hills of Dakota,
where the pines are so high that they kiss the skies above.

And when I get that lonesome feeling,
and I'm miles away from home,
I hear the voice of the mystic mounains calling me back home.

So take me back to the black hills,
the black hills of Dakota.
To the beautiful indian country that I love.
To the beautiful Indian country that I love.

Netdisaster!

R Todd King: China Photos 2005 - Harbin Winter

This guy's Ice Festival pictures are way better than mine. Check them out. I'm bummed I didn't make it to the snow festival. I'll have to check that out next year.

Project Better Host is back on. Danny and I have chosen to go with VizaWeb based on their level of technical support. The package itself is pretty darn good and will suit our needs. Since many webhosts are offering similar packages, it really comes down to the level of customer service and technical support. This is something that many hosts, including are current one, are lacking in. Danny and I are putting up the cash to make the move. If you would like to help out, you can do so by using the PayPal link. No one is obligated to do so, you don't get any bonus if you donate, but it will help keep this community going far into the future and help Danny's sanity after dealing with PowWeb tech support for the last few months.

Help us out if you can please. Thanks!

Been a while since a poker update. I'm trying to disguise the subject matter because these poker posts seem to bring in the spam comments. Although I must say, MoveableType, I guess that's who's responsible, does a good job of keeping them out.

Anyway, at this point, at about a quarter through the year, I'm up $481. Unfortunately this is mostly due to bonus money. I've been playing mostly $2-4 limits lately and the games are a bit tougher. I've been making money, but not at the rate I did at 1-2. Now I just need to figure out what changes to make, make 'em, and start increasing my earnings. Piece of cake.

• The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
  Hilarious stuff here. Can't wait for the flick
  (tags: Movies Books)
• Doom9.net - The Definitive DVD Backup Resource
  For all your DVD "backup" needs.
  (tags: Movies Geek)
• CSS Tutorial
  The ultimate CSS resource
• Unreal Tournament Next: Details and Pics : Kotaku
  New UT sounds and looks great.
  (tags: Geek Gaming)

I don't know. I guess the key to seeing this movie is going in with low expectations. I thought it was going to be pretty generic, so when it had a little bit more of a stylistic flare than the commercials let on and Bruce Willis does what he always does best, I kind of enjoyed myself.

Hostage opens up with good potential, although a little bit cliche. As it goes, it actually builds tension and is somewhat suspenseful.

And then the whole movie goes off the deep end--not at all where I thought it was going. Lots of violence, weird character changes, and a somewhat anticlimactic final scene.

But overall, it was more than I thought it would be, which seemed to help me gloss over the weird similarities to The Crow and allusions to the Virgin Mary. I guess I liked that it was a little bit weird. I can see where some people thought it was cliche, but I thought it did cliche in a more creative way than usual, if that makes sense.

I suppose that's a mild recommendation...? I had a fun time.

On Monday night I headed out with Erika to the Loew's theatre at Universal CityWalk to see a screening of Who Put the M in Manchester?, a new Morrissey DVD. It's basically just a live performance, but it's in Manchester (the home town) and on Morrissey's birthday.


We were surprised to find the theatre completely packed on a Monday night, and this was a huuuuuge theatre! Indie 103 gave away skimpy prizes. I'm mad at them right now because most of the time I turn on the station these days, it's a DJ talking instead of playing music. Booooooo!


So anyway, it was a fun night, to see him play his home town. It was a great show, he was in a good mood, and played a good variety of Smiths songs as well as those from You Are the Quarry, which I like a lot. It's good to see him be making an album like this, after Maladjusted. I've always said it's best when he's not singing about legal issues or the woes of being famous. The show was a lot like the show I just saw a few months back with my sister and Yo at Universal.



Fun times.

Some days I can just talk and talk and talk about whatever strikes me. This one time I was down at the railroad tracks with these kids and we saw this dead body. This other time, this buddy of mine was delivering papers and he was the first one on the scene of an accident and he saw a severed head. I used to be a real lady killer before I went in the Navy. Do you know who invented the Internet? I did. Without me, there would be no Internet, ethernet, fishing net, or fishnet. Fish gotta swim and birds gotta fly and I gotta love one man till I die. She was the sort of person who knew that the first thing people noticed about her certainly wasn't her yellow eyes. I knew this kid who could take a fly and suck it up his nose and blow it out his mouth except this one time it got stuck. He thinks oh well, but a couple of weeks later, he starts getting this terrible pain in his nose. The doctor lances it and maggots start pouring out.

Yesterday hearings began for the Supreme Court case of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios v. Grokster, Ltd. This is a very important case. The movie studio is suing the creator of a peer to peer file sharing network, because the software makes it easy for users to exchange copyrighted material.

This case is not about whether it's legal or illegal to trade copyrighted material. That is already well established. What MGM is trying to do is hold the technology responsible. They want to make it illegal to create products that have the potential for copyright infringement. If they win this case, then it may overturn the Court's earlier decision of Sony Corp. v. Universal Studios, in which the Court ruled that Sony's Betamax recorder was legal even though it could be used for copyright infringement. This is the case that has made it possible for us to have the VCR, TiVo, iPod and really the personal computer. If technology that can infringe copyright is outlawed, then none of those things would be legal.

Let's take a quick roll call of supporters for each side. In the MGM corner we have the MPAA, RIAA, ASCAP, Bush administration, Major League baseball, Napster LLC, the Christian Coalition and a few major recording artists. In the Grokster corner: EFF, Creative Commons, Intel, Microsoft, Yahoo!, Mark Cuban, and several independent recording artists (this LA Times story explains why independent artists support file-sharing). You can look over a more complete list and read the briefs that the supporters have filed here and here.

Here is a brief summary of the first day's hearings.

I was having an e-mail exchange with Danny over b2e, PowWeb, and all our recent troubles. After Danny forwarded me some of his downright hilarious and frustrating e-mail exchanges with PW tech support, I was done. My latest reply to Danny included a not so nice phrase about our webhost of nearly three years. I don't care what we have to do, but it's going to get done. We're evaluating various webhosts now but that is quite a tricky one. So go ahead and pimp out your favorite webhost and anything else you feel might be helpful. We really need to move on from this place. When we do, we'll be making the switch over to b2e on the main blog and for whoever else wants to. We'll still keep our MT install for anyone who wants to use it, but anyone who wants a blog with brendoman.com from now on will be getting a b2e blog.

CBS News | Famed Atty Johnnie Cochran Dies | March 29, 2005 18:59:26 - If the casket does not fit..

in related news, Falwell is in critical condition. It must be God's way of punishing him for his sins.

From the man who brought you Shallow Grave, Trainspotting, and 28 Days Later comes.... Millions?

Talk about versatile. Danny Boyle takes his creative flare and applies it to a completely different genre: a story about a little boy who is interested in facts about saints, who comes across a bag of money that must be spent in 12 days before England converts to the Euro. Quite a change, yes. But it works! There are several great touches, from creative camera angles to montages to the appearances of saints. My favorite saint is the Ugandan who gets the little boy's hand bloody when he shakes it because he died by decapitation.

I'd almost recommend this to the whole family, but I think it would be more appreciated by the PG-13 and up crowd, although it does have a PG rating. With brotherly conversations about women's breasts, a bad guy on the loose, and a widower finding love with a new woman, I think the themes are a little bit more grown up. Plus there are tons of jokes that only adults are going to get.

That being said, I thought this was a heartwarming, creative, fun little movie. I wasn't disappointed in the least.

Props to Yet Another Comics Blog.

Instructions:
- Bold those you have read
- Italicize those you started, but didn't finish
- Add three books after the last one

Read more »

You would all probably never travel again, if you were as luck as me.

Here is the story. Everything starts off well. I get to my flight in KC on time, then I get my tickets and everything works alright. Of course when I get my tickets, I notice that my flight has already been delayed a half an hour. I think, oh well it happens, not really paying attention. Of course I am not flying into Portland, I am flying into Salt Lake. Then I notice that my connecting flight already is only a half hour after I was supposed to land. So for those of you math majors, I miss would be missing my connection, which of course I did. So I get put on standby for the next few flights to Portland, but I hear from the guys working for the airline that all flights to Portland are booked for the next FOUR days. I decide that it is time to try to get a flight elsewhere. So I find the customer service desk for Delta. I ask if I can get a flight elsewhere, and then into Portland. Here is how all of the conversations went to multiple airlines "Hello, I need one seat on a flight to Portland, yes just one, ok...no seat available, thank you for trying." Eventually, I just ask, can you get me to either Eugene or Seattle? First they do Eugene, nothing available, but Seattle, there is. So I fly into Seattle, and get picked up by my mom and drive two and half hours back to Portland, which gets me home at about midnight. Hooray. Well, just for some reference, I was supposed to be flying into Portland at 3, so I got home 9 hours late.

Oh well, I have been home for a few days now, and things are going well.

Square Foot Gardening by Mel Bartholomew

God made you or he didn't.

If he did, your little human life is, and has been, touched by the divine. If this is true, it would be true of all humans, not only some. And so--again, if it is true--each human life is precious, of infinite value, worthy of great respect.

Someone sent me a link to a commentary by Peggy Noonan which started with this quote. It was written in regards to Terri Schaivo. I couldn't help but be reminded that many of the people who are so adamant about saving her life and who would agree whole-heartedly with the above quote in this context also support the death penalty. Can someone please help me out here? I'm serious. Is each human life precious and of infinite value - or is that just true until we mere mortals decide it isn't?

Happy Easter to everyone. Last week was Spring Break in between the winter and spring quarters, and now I am beginning my final quarter at Fuller. Eleven weeks until graduation.

This quarter I have Post-Reformation and Modern Church Theology, Theological Issues in Worship and the Arts, and a preaching practicum. This is by far the wordiest quarter I can remember, judging from the titles of my courses.

Beth Siemer visisted a couple weeks ago, and Doug Reside stayed with us while he was presenting at a conference. As soon as I find the camera, I will post some pictures. Not quite sure where that camera went.

I didn't quite know what to expect going into this movie, except that Joan Allen's performance was supposed to be very good. Well, that's expected in pretty much ANY movie. As a result, I was surprised to find that Kevin Costner actually steps up to the plate (pun intended) with a much better performance from him than I have seen in yeeeeeeeears.

The Upside of Anger focuses on a woman whose husband disappears one night, most likely to have gone to Sweden with his secretary. Sounds a little bit cliche, but for some reason, it works. The wife must now come face to face with feeling true anger for the first time in her life, while still trying to maintain a relationship with her equally as angry four daughters. Each daughter has a vignette of her own, involving romance or their individual interests, and each deals with her mother slightly differently.

Costner's character is a local ex-baseball star with a radio show who finds out Allen has been deserted and desides to become her drinking buddy. Of course, friendship and romance ensue, but not necessarily the way we expect, which is what I liked about this movie. It moved in different directions than I expected. Yes, there were a few conventionalities that felt a little bit familiar, but I was willing to give them up because of the actors and the overall movement of the story.

In the end, I felt like I had just read a long but very good short story. I really enjoyed it.

Our post-wedding festivities are brought to you by the letter "N".

I have no idea who came up with the whole brilliant "Let's run down the entry way, jump on one bed, and fling ourselves onto the OTHER bed!" idea, but I think watching Dan was the funniest.

This is the floor of the room on Justin's bill. I almost felt sorry for the maid, but since they never came to check either of our rooms for towels, etc., I thought it was fitting that such a mess was left, along with a note in the tip envelope about cleaning the room if they want a tip. Does anyone know if there were any extra charges for that room?

Stem-cell breakthrough could allow women to grow their own breast implants

Will the republifonds finally endorse stem cell research?

Although not in its original sarchastic bent. (We'll save that for next week.) I observed Lent for the first time this year, thanks to our favorite ecumenical friends, Matt and MaryEllen. The details: I decided to give up snacks after dinner, since that is a vice that is hard to let go of, but not as hard as, say, TV or the Internet. I also did readings and prayers from the Praying Lent site (although not every day. Hey, I'm not perfect.) So, without further ado, here are my top 5 reasons for observing Lent:

1. Brings structure to prayer time
I am often at a loss for what to pray, which is probably why I don't do it very often. I liked the fact that there were opening and closing prayers, which helps my structured personality. I also liked praying through the intercessions, which focused on prayers for the lost, the poor, the church, etc.

2. Bible readings were relevant to the season
The site also had daily readings, some OT and some NT. I decided to read only the Gospels because I have a short attention span and I knew it would be about Jesus, the guy I'm trying to get closer to by doing this anyway. This became so important to me, especially during the last week, as I was reading accounts of Jesus' washing the disciple's feet; of his betrayal; of his crucifixion. By Good Friday, I think I was actually mourning the loss of Jesus from the perspective of those who knew him well. I was able to think about what they must have thought and experienced--extreme sorrow. Our church had a Stations of the Cross ceremony as well (apparently with revisions from a Christian church minister, which made it 'okay' for us to do). The night was very cold and as I stood there in various parts of the church yard listening to the readings and prayers, I felt sorrow, I understood the immensity of God compared with my own insignificance. I also felt a sense of community, which I will explore next.

3. Promotes community
While doing the readings and prayers, I knew that people everywhere, from different backgrounds (church and otherwise) were coming together for a common goal--to seek out Jesus, to understand him better, to feel in communion with him. I believe that my spiritual growth is increased when I'm in accord with other believers; these are the times I feel most filled up and closest to God's presence.

4. Teaches discipline
Abstaining from snacks after dinner might not seem like a lot, but when you eat like I do, it is. In the times we had people over during the 40 days of Lent, I served people food at my house that I couldn't eat. A few times I felt like I bent the rules (not eating dinner until late so I could have dessert right after), but all in all, I was successful. Although that wasn't the most important thing, of course. I decided that each time I felt hungry and couldn't eat, I would pray. Sometimes it was just a small prayer, akin to "God, I remember that you're there", but it was better than I usually do.

5. Makes Easter more meaningful
Instead of a random day in March (sometimes in April) where we go to church, I felt that I had been preparing for a celebration for over a month. Especially after the darkness I experienced on Good Friday, I felt that Easter Sunday was a release--of emotions, of celebration, of gratitude. I have to say that Easter 2005 was the most meaningful Easter I have ever had. For the rest of the week, I plan to continue with the Easter prayers and readings. They are meant to be reminders of the Good News. As I felt the sorrow of the early church when Jesus died, now I can read and pray about their celebration.

I know this post is totally out of character for me, but I felt that I should share this with you. Maybe you can join me in observing Lent next year. Any ideas for 'normal' top 5 lists? You can put them in the comments.

The Easter gallery is up. Emma had a great time coloring eggs on Saturday afternoon. When we got home from church the eggs and the basket were skattered across the kitchen, every one of them cracked. The cat had jumped on the counter, knocked them off and then spent the morning playing with the eggs. I found one of them under the dresser in Emma's room. It wouldn't have been so bad if we had not put all of our eggs in one basket. [pause for laughter] They weren't damaged too badly, so we picked them up and took them to my parents' for hiding. Emma thought it was fun.

Sony forced to stop selling PS2s, dual shock controllers, games - Joystiq - www.joystiq.com

I'm not sure if this will stick or not, but if it does, Sony is pretty screwed. We'll see what happens.

FT.com / World / Middle East & Africa - Iraq's insurgents ‘seek exit strategy'

Read more »

Link: http://brendoman.temp.powweb.com/images/matt/spiderman.mp3

Easter Hip Hop! - FLOWGO.com

The Hip Hoppin' Bunny wants to wish you a happy Easter. That guy is a total Chester.

Netdisaster

I guess it's not really a game, but you can destroy your favorite (or least favorite) websites by various methods. Fun stuff.

brendoman's b2E blog

Check out Danny's progress on the b2e template and prepare to be amazed. Amazing job man. We're still not quite ready to make a jump yet, but we'll keep you posted.

Great story about Jesus and a gay man, right from the bible, sort of.

Just an interesting fact, I thought: At the beginning of the 20th century 75% of the world’s Christians were in Europe and America. At the beginning of the 21st century 60% of the world’s Christians were in Asia, Africa and Latin America. I found that here.

I put this one here just so I could keep track of it.

A good article by the Internet Monk about the meaning of the gospel.

This one is also mostly for me. Some talks by Brian McLaren.

AS a writer, have you ever had the feeling you were on the edge of something really creative. It's all bottled up inside of you, and you wait and you wait and you try to sit down and write and you do, but it's just a lot of crap that's just sitting there, waiting to get better? I've been sitting here two weeks, trying to write a story about apple blossoms and red mushrooms, but I just can't seem to get the words right. It's not that I'm dismal or anything, or that I'm lazy. I just sort of feel stuck in this vacation I took several years ago to the Isle of Man.

Angel - Season Two

Mare and I put up our first podcast this week. You can find it at the below entry.

The first thing I have to say is that "the Croncast guys" have names, and they are Kris and Betsy. "The Bitterest Pill guy" also has a name, and it's Dan Klass. These are two casts that I enjoy a lot, and so I felt bad giving them such a generic mention in our cast.

MaryEllen gives her view of the cast on her blog.

I guess I don't have much to had to her comments. It was fun. Hopefully that will come through and people will enjoy listening.

Matt finally talks me into getting a blog. At first I'm thinking, "What of interest do I possibly have to say and who's going to care?" But I start reading other people's blogs and enjoy them so much that I'm eventually sold on the idea. Probably no one does care, but I found I have a lot to say and I enjoy saying it. Then Matt has this idea for a podcast and I'm definitely thinking we have nothing to offer the world at large and think it's a really ridiculous idea. Matt starts playing me some of the podcasts he enjoys listening to and I have to admit they are charming and fun. Not sure if we will be charming OR fun, but I decide to give it a go.

Our first "recording session" was a lot of fun. Very awkward at first, but after we loosened up it was a hoot. I even thought it was semi-entertaining when I went back and listened to it. Total strangers might not find it too entertaining, but those who know us should get a chuckle or two.

As I'm listening to our first cast (yes, we will be back on weekly basis) I'm thinking, "How self-absorbed can a person be?" First we have our blogs where we talk about what WE did, what WE like, what WE don't like, what WE read and found interesting. Now we've one-upped ourselves and people can hear us rattle on about all of the above.

Matt says that blogging and podcasting, while it may SEEM very egocentric, actually creates communities. I do love reading the comments on blogs as much as the blog entries themselves. I've gotten to know some of the people who also frequent the blogs I frequent by reading their comments. I like the give and take that can happen on blogs. Not so sure about podcasting yet, although Matt emailed a guy who he listens to and the guy read Matt's email on his cast. He seemed to get a kick out of hearing from people who listened to him and wanted to share their stories or just let him know that they enjoyed listening to him.

Don't know if we're creating community or just relishing the limelight. But it is hard to be humble when you're perfect in every way.

You can check out our podcast for yourself. Click here
coolcast032405.mp3
and check back for the weekly installments.

Napster To Go: Review and Features Guide - Engadget - www.engadget.com

Engadget reviews Napster's subscription service. It's really tempting, but unfortunately it doesn't work on iPods. I would definitely pay the price of one CD to have access to my music and a million other tunes anywhere. It sounds like a great way to find new music and bands and explore other genres. It does sound like they had some difficulty with the players they treid out. I could definitely see more models like this popping up.

The blog is getting a tad empty at the bottom so I feel compelled to do something. Danny and I are seriously pondering switching the main blog over to b2e. I'm already testing it out here. We're going to be working on porting the template soon. Any assistance is appreciated.

Yeah, I've got a lot of blogs. I kind of ditched this one. Then there are the ones I have so I can be a part of the various communities some of my friends are a part of. First there was the LJ, then came the Xanga, and now we have the Myspace. It's almost too much to keep up on. Almost.

My brother and my friend Jud are coming down from San Francisco tonight, so that should be a blast. Not much else planned this Easter weekend. Now that the theater to DVD buffer time is so low and ticket prices are so stinking high, movies have to be really freaking good looking for me to even consider. I am super pumped for Sin City next Friday.

I'm enjoying the regular shows but I'm starting to really get into Lost. The U.S. version of The Office was actually pretty darn good in its right. I'm looking forward to the non-remake follow-up episodes. Steve Carrell is great. I still love the original and I know it's not the same, but this show is still probably one of the funniest on TV and has some great potential. Ben Stiller is going to be on Arrested Development this Sunday, so I'm pretty excited about that. New Family Guy starts on May 1st after The Simpsons. My other favorite show right now is The Amazing Race. It's by far the best "reality show" I've ever seen. I really hope those Survivor punks don't win.

Okay, that's enough of divulging how pathetic my life is right now. Hope you all have a good weekend.

I have the day off and you don't.

I slept till 12, then went to a movie. Now the night is young. Mwahahaa!

I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning by Bright Eyes

Don't hold your breath, but I think 20/20 is actually going to do the story about international adoption tonight. The story is on their website now and it was shown in a preview too. No more buzz on the lists about it yet so I'll have to wait and see it.

The Tivo is set and all systems are go.

coolcast032405.mp3

http://feeds.feedburner.com/searscast

Mare's list:
1. google searchers found my blog
2. Will getting tubes
3. Maly's religious quote of the week
4. almost time for tv again
5. broke my losing streak of ticket to ride

Matt's list:
1. tv coming back
2. pod cast
3. Will's operation
4. Easter
5. the suprise entry

"the Croncast guys"

"the Bitterest Pill guy"

Opening and closing beats by drdrbob

The small bit of postproduction was done with two kids behind me twisting the heck out of animal balloons.

What Are People For? by Wendell Berry

The great question that hovers over this issue, one that we have dealt with mainly by indifference, is the question of what people are for. Is their greatest dignity in unemployment? Is the obsolescence of human beings now our social goal? One would conclude so from our attitude toward work, especially the manual work necessary to the long-term preservation of the land, and from our rush toward mechanization, automation, and computerization. In a country that puts an absolute premium on labor-saving measures, short workdays, and retirement, should there be any surprise at permanence of unemployment and welfare dependency? Those are only different names for our national ambitions (Berry 125).

Again, I have a hard time agreeing with this. For one, I like computers. I like work-saving devices. But I have a hard time denying that there's some truth in what he says here, too.

Clocky - Now you have to get out of bed. When you hit the snooze button on this MIT robot alarm clock, it runs and hides from you in a different place every day. These robots have some nerve.

(via /.)

Want to improve America? Let's raise gas prices higher than ever. I'm not talking about this measly $2 stuff. Let's go to $5 or $10 and see what problems it will solve.

Suburban sprawl--Don't want to commute 40 miles anymore? Now you can't afford it.

Global Warming--NO MORE HUMVEES! No more SUV's of any stripe.

Walmartification of everywhere--Can't ship goods cheaply, can't beat the local prices.

Fractured communities--Stay home! Get to know your neighbors.

Globalization--all the free trade rules in the world won't make a Guatemalan tomato cheap with $10 gas.

Unemployment--$10 gas will virtually guarantee the American factory will be saved. The old adage "eggs are cheaper in the country" will be true again.

Water Shortages out West--LA won't work without cheap gas. Anyway, people shouldn't move to places with no water.

Centralization of Power--The Last 100 years of America has been a steady extension of power in this country into fewer hands. This has been accomplished with one tool--relatively cheap fossil fuels. No more. Think of it like this: A couple in their thirties keeps their nice, big place in top shape. Everything is painted, clean and in order. As they age, they still keep things in shape, but some jobs they used to do themselves, they now hire out. As they get much older, they realize they can no longer afford to keep up with all of it or it's going to run them into the ground. They love their place and refuse to move. As the amount of available energy (their own physical energy and money) decline, order turns to chaos. The paint fades. The gutters fill up with leaves. Eventually they get a basement leak they can't afford to fix. Somebody gets sick. That's called entropy folks, and it's about to happen to us.

The good news is that entropy is a necessary remedy to the fundamental issues that ail us as a people. Bring on those $10 gas prices!

I'm getting more serious about switching the main blog to b2e since it is my favorite of the open source blogging applications. I still don't know if I'll do it though. I'm not going to force everyone else over and I don't think that would be a good idea, so that would mean seperate logins for people to post on the main blog and that is kind of lame. So I'm kind of torn. If we can get these MT dynamic publishing problems working, maybe it will blow over. Or maybe if we got some better hosting. I don't know.

I'm not posting this quote from What Are People For? by Wendell Berry because I agree with it. I don't know if I do. But it is thought-provoking and I'd like to hear what everyone thinks.

The ideal of competition always implies, and in fact requires that any community must be divided into a class of winners and a class of losers. The division is radically different from the other social divisions: that of the more able and the less able, or that of the richer and the poorer, or even that of the rulers and the ruled. These latter divisions have existed throughout history and at time, at least, have been ameliorated by social and religious ideals that instructed the strong to help the weak. As a purely economic ideal, competition does not contain or imply any such instructions. In fact, the defenders of the ideal of competition have never known what to do with or for the losers. The losers simply accumulate in human dumps, like stores of industrial waste, until they gain enough misery and strength to overpower the winners. The idea that the displaced and dispossessed "should seek retraining and get into another line of work" is, of course, utterly cynical; it is only the hand-washing practiced by officials and experts. A loser, by definition, is somebody whom nobody knows what to do with. There is no limit tot he damage and the suffering implicit in this willingness that losers, should exist as a normal economic cost (Berry 131).

Philosophy, Computers, and bad writing / Death by Lots of Prolonged Pain


What happens to Teri in either case is morally wrong.