skamunism

Greetings internet denizens. I feel the time has come for an update. I have passed the threshold of people-not-in-immediate-contact-that-I-wish-to-update necessary to update a personal blog. This sort of venue fits into a strange place on the internet these days. I have all of this superficial contact through Facebook, where status updates and wall posts fill some of that need to connect with the personal lives of other internet folk, but there isn’t much substance there. My Facebook is also too interconnected to have niche interactions; everything has to be generalizable to friends, family, old classmates, coworkers, and to all of their different sensibilities and opinions. Or maybe it doesn’t, but I treat it like it does. I’m working on a solution for that. ANYWAY!

So, new apartment is new. Ish. We’ve been there since June, but have only really lived in it like regular people for a month and a half. It is great. Having a separate bedroom and computer room is great. Garbage disposal and dishwasher are also excellent. I’ve got the place all nerded up with wired networking throughout the place, media sharing between rooms, remote stereo control, etc. I don’t yet have a satisfactory Netflix streaming solution for the living room, but I’m working on that. Stan and I watched a movie over the network the other day that had a bad audio track, so we watched the video on the PS3 while we listened to audio from Netflix. This required occasional resyncing, which was an exciting and hilarious situation.

Living with Katie has been a mostly positive situation. I’m having some difficulty adjusting to the lack of alone time, but we’re getting better and accommodating each other’s needs. We’ve gotten in a few arguments about the way household tasks are to be accomplished, where she explains how she thinks things should be done, and I act all high-minded by talking about personal styles and understanding the way I like to do things, before I acknowledge that her methods are actually just more efficient and responsible, and that I’m just being lazy :P So I now do the dishes before I play PS3. Why do I suddenly feel like I’m eight years old? Ahem. Like I said, mostly positive, but still adjusting :) We’ve been making a lot of delicious dinners, which is one of the best parts of the whole situation.

I’m finishing up my major requirements this term, and the classes are mostly enjoyable so far. Historical Anthro is a typical survey course: read tons of tedious crap every week and write a couple of papers. The professor is super old, and she is as interested in Anthropologists, and their history, politics, and personal lives as she is in the theory, which is frustrating at times. I’ve had her before, and decided to go with her anyway because I prefer her class structure: we read, she lectures, we turn in a midterm and final. East Asian Archaeology will hopefully become interesting, but now at the end of week two, we’re still hearing, “we will be studying X during week Y,” and I really wish she’d just get to it. She also has a really strong Korean accent, which makes it difficult to pay half-attention, because if I don’t focus, I just miss everything. She has a good sense of humor about it though, which is fun. She joked during week one about how nobody can tell if she’s saying “Geology” or “Zoology,” and about archaeological “mateliars.”

Primate Conservation – here’s where the grievances start. This class has prerequisites: Anth 270 - Intro to Biological Anthropology, and a strong background in evolution, ecology, and primate anatomy and taxonomy. This was listed in the course description, on the syllabus, and it was stated on the first day. Half of this class apparently has the class requirement, but utterly lacks the knowledge requirement. We have had numerous distractions from people with incredibly basic questions about natural selection and primate taxonomy, including one guy who had so little understanding of genetic drift that he tried to relate it to Darwin’s finches in his question, an anecdote which he also clearly has no understanding of. The situation is so bad that today we will be spending half of our class time watching a documentary about primate evolution and taxonomy made for a popular audience and narrated by David Attenborough. Now don’t get me wrong – I love David Attenborough, and I love a good nature documentary, but I don’t want to watch one in a 400/500 level university course. Ugh x 18. Oh, and now that we’re watching it, these same morons are making fun of the video for how simplistic it is. FUCK YOU.

Ahem.

I’ll add more later.

hey

These are two things that made me smile

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EBM854BTGL0&NR=1

http://www.transitional-fossil.com/

Edit:

Holy shit, I spent like half an hour watching videos of little kids being cute after that first one. Yikes.

I thought that my response to Rob's question deserved it's own post rather than being buried in the comment thread.

Basically, I think that meat production for mass consumption is a huge, unnecessary cost, in monetary terms as well in environmental, biodiversity, and world food supply terms. It takes 10 units of food energy from vegetables to produce 1 unit food energy in meat. If we cut out the middle man, we end up with many times the food production. We can also preserve wild lands that we currently bulldoze to provide farmland for feed corn, which are habitats for many threatened species, as well as oxygen producers and carbon removers.

I was arguing that we should reengineer our economic systems to reflect the true cost of meat production. Meat is cheap because of both direct government subsidies, as well as externalization of costs onto other countries as well as onto future generations.

Making this argument as an eater of cheap, mass produced meat is pretty hypocritical. I was also arguing that personal, incremental steps are futile. On this point I was simply wrong. I wasn't being honest because I felt cornered and was being stubborn.

I think that I have to stop eating meat. I can only acknowledge and then dismiss my hypocrisy for so long. I love meat, but I have to accept my own arguments. This blows.

I also need to check on my ego when I'm having an argument.

I've been at work since nine, and I've had two paying customers. A few people have checked their mail, and there've been a few drop-offs. It's quite lovely. I've watched three episodes of Six Feet Under, chatted with some folks, and browsed a lot of web. It's pretty much been like a lazy Saturday at home, except with a less comfortable chair and smaller screens. The mail just came in, so I'm about to do my first real work of the day. Hooray!

Also, I'm going to move my blogging to here next time I post:

http://www.skamunism.com/

I'll link to them from here.

I was looking at some old websites that I used to frequent, and realized that I used to be an active member of a number of computer hardware and modding forums. It was an odd thing, because while I remember using the sites, I really don't remember the community at all. I went back and read some of my old posts and nothing seemed familiar. It's like I have internet amnesia. Very bizarre.

I now realize that the main reason I no longer an active forumgoer seems to be that I have developed a much stronger internal editorial process. So many of the posts just didn't need to be made. Many of the questions I asked could easily be answered with simple research, or were only asked to "contribute" to the discussion.

I guess I just need to come up with some more important things to post.

I have to keep reminding myself that I will eventually have a job that actually involves LESS work during Christmas. It makes me feel just a little bit better.

I don't like MacOS anymore. I find myself using Windows more and more on my Macbook. I think I'm gonna sell it and get an MSI Wind.

I started a new Nationstate. How silly.

But now that you all were reminded, you're all gonna go make one yourself. Lols.

http://www.nationstates.net/91151/page=display_nation/nation=skams

Huge numbers of Clinton supporters say that they will vote for McCain in the general election rather than Obama. The percentage who say this has increased steadily over the course of the primary. At the beginning of the year, nearly all supporters of either candidate were overjoyed at the possibility of voting for either of them, whoever was to win the nomination. The number of Clinton supporters who say they will vote for McCain now sits at approximately 27%. This is RIDICULOUS, and I blame it on Clinton.

For the last several months, she has been waging an active war against the legitimacy of the Democratic primary process. She has been telling her supporters for months that she is ahead in the popular vote when she is not. She has said that caucuses aren't very democratic and don't really count. She is asking superdelegates to overturn the vote of the people.

She has said that small states don't really matter when she is losing them, but that they show the will of the core of the Democratic party when she is winning them. She has claimed that the media is biased against her, when a recent study showed that they have both been treated equally.

She has convinced more than a quarter of her supporters that Obama, the media, and the DNC have sabotaged her. She has destroyed their confidence in the Democratic party, the primary process, and most importantly, in Barack Obama, the candidate in this general election who will run the country in the way that they support. But because of the scorched earth campaign that she has run, they will instead vote for John McCain.

She has brought out the worst in people. She has fought not for the people, for the party, for the country, or for any other admirable cause; she has fought only for herself. She deserves to be exiled from Democratic politics. But not until after November. We need her and her wackos to get back on board for the next few months. Then to hell with her.

And for the record, I would still vote for her if she were the nominee.

I've finally gotten around to watching Arrested Development, and the whole Maeby bit is fantastic.

Well hello there LiveJournal! It's been a while, hasn't it? The internet is just such a big place; sometimes I forget that you exist.

It turns out that you can get paid quite a bit of money to be an asshole. I got a job as an alcohol compliance auditor (sounds important, doesn't it? I just made it up) which pays $15/hour. That was nice, but I only get to be an asshole at that job once a month. I just now got a job sticking flyers on doors for someone who buys houses for rock bottom prices from people who can't pay their mortgages! Wahoo! This pays per flyer posted, and I figure I can make about $50 in 3 hours. And I can do this 2-3 times a week! So much asshole opportunity! :)

I made skamunism.net into this: http://www.skamunism.net/

I'm going to post news articles that I think are important, and that relate to the topics at the top. Still working on it, but there we go. Link to the comic is on the side. I may still make more of those.

I take WAY too long to make these things.

Hey I made a new one

I'm no longer on academic probation! Hooray! This term I am taking History of Philosophy: 19th Century, Probability and Statistics, US Foreign Policy, Seminar on Evolutionary Theory, Karate, and Lap Swimming.

I just watched No Country for Old Men and quite enjoyed it. It managed to surprise me on a couple of occasions. I can understand how someone wouldn't like it though.

When you're a kid you believe that you will live forever, but also that you will die tomorrow.

These last few days spent in the library have made me think a lot about how a people define themselves and their role in the world, and how that can influence their desires and what gives them pleasure and makes them happy. More interesting is that this can change often, and rapidly. More when I'm actually done writing all this buuuuuuuuulls shit.

Obama is gonna be at Mac Court on Friday. You should go.

http://my.barackobama.com/page/s/eugene