Gusalmighty.com: A Leaded Perspective

A gaming magazine that I think I like

There is a new magazine out, The Escapist, that seeks to be a counter balance to the current trend in gaming magazines. I'm reading the first issue now and this article about simulation and gaming is, like, really fucking good. Anyone who is interested in the larger picture of gaming might want to check it. RSS and emailed PDF are available.

People waste time on the internet? At work even?

I'm really surprised that this article about patterns of habit wasting at work didn't link to this. Warning, don't click that link unless you have time to spare because it will suck you in. In case you need a hint about what to do, just move the dots around so that the lines are not crossed any where.

First Post from an external Editor

Purely a test post. MarsEdit rules.

Down but not out

Moving, ordering the house, getting sick, all various elements of my life the last few weeks that utterly obliterated my plan for a post a day in March. It's much harder to write consistently when there is no structure in one's life. Perhaps once school starts I'll be back at it. This is just a note to the occasional viewer of the site to let them know that the site is not defunct, just sleeping. Not even hibernating, just resting for a few more days.

Cheers, and have a happy spring.

31 Flavors of the Nutriblog

A lot of changes have developed in my life lately and I'm issuing a challenge to myself as a result, hoping to capitalize on the combined senses of accomplishment and opportunity they provide. I'm also failing miserably at my one New Year's resolution and this is an attempt to wrest control of personal discipline back. My house is built and we've moved in, my daughter is starting to speak, and I'm about to get my driver's license.

So my personal challenge is this: 31 posts in the 31 days of March. I want to stop doing this half-assed blog and start making it a bit more reliable. I've been afraid to commit to it because that implies that I want to build readership which in turn implies that I think I've got readerworthy content. But I've been pussy-footing around, afraid to make that assertion. But enough of that. I'm no Andrew Sullivan, but I'm working hard on this and I think that I have nuggets of goodness worth more attention. So I'm going to be aiming for a daily update this month. A couple friends are launching a blog of their own (which I think they are taking a bit too seriously at first, but whatever) and I was secretly hoping to get invited to work with them, but then they chickened out. It would be easier to maintain a blog if someone else wrote on it, but every single attempt I've made to get someone else to post here has fallen on deaf ears. No one has even acknowledged the notion, much less said no. There is a standing invitation to anyone who reads this, so get in touch with me. I have no standards for content or quality, so you're guaranteed an editorial position.

Hopefully this effort is going to translate into a few more regular readers (I have one, I think, so any improvement is going to be in full factors. SCHWING!!). If any bloggers reading here are willing to help me out with a few comments on any posts I make on their own blogs (I have a forum for comments until I develop an anti-comment spam solution for this blog), I'd be grateful.

I might be introducing a couple new categories, namely photos and Equinox. I've been taking a lot of pictures since I got my digital SLR a few months back and will be posting some of my better or favorite pictures. I also am writing in a fiction role-playing game of sorts that I'll be cross-posting my entries in. In this game, players create a character and then write their character into the storylines provided every mission. As you write, you introduce plot elements and contribute to a serial short story in response to the posts by other people. It's quite a lot of fun and is open to the public, so any interested should check it out.

Lastly, if anyone was interested in my thus-so-far failed NYResolution, it was to eat less pizza. I love pizza and eat way too much of it. It is an expensive treat here in Japan, usually costing between $22 and $30. So there is the monetary incentive. I'm more active now than I used to be, but I still don't have what I would consider to be an active lifestyle, so fueling it with pizza isn't good for the heart attack on my horizon. And I'm trying to work on a less self-indulgent lifestyle and wanted to introduce a bit of self-denial of menial desires into my life, a sort of masochistic self-development (sheesh I feel self-absorbed in this post. I think I'll end before I start referring to the author in the third person.).

Who do minorities see behind faceless friends?

I found out the other day that a guy I've know for three years isn't who I had always assumed he was. I've known him only through our online interactions, primarily IRC chat with some forum interaction. He is a computer programmer by profession and I even use one of his applications. I had always assumed, without really analyzing it, that he was younger than me, of medium build, and white. Turns out he is younger than me, but he's a big black guy. This has really surprised me, as over the years my conception of him had matured to the point of being fairly reliable, in my own mind.

When I first meet people online, I don't really form many hard conclusions about what they look like. I might fill in a few general outlines, say breasts and hips for females, perhaps with longish hair, maybe some age relevant details, but I'm not surprised to find out that someone didn't look like the image I had in my mind if and when I see a picture. They might be fatter or skinnier, have glasses, even be black, red, brown, or yellow, and it doesn't surprise me. I keep my expectations loose and fluid.

But with this recent event, my conception of this guy was pretty well established in my head. It is bothering me because I can't figure out if I've committed some liberal politically-correct crime or if we stumbled into a positive space founded on a distinct lack of importance placed on racial and ethnic identity. I figure I've either made a mistake in uncritically assuming that an online entity that programs computers and hangs out online all day and doesn't talk about their race is white or that detail of his personhood is such a trivial one (which is kind of the goal of a multi-ethnic society, no?) that it never entered our discussions. The only time I've seen a discussion that indicated any racial or ethnic differences was when he was recently talking about his hair-twists coming undone, which clued me in to the notion that he had a different hair style than I was expecting.

Of course, when I saw his picture, my first responses were denial ("that can't be him!") and guilt ("Shit, I've been assuming him to be white the whole time"). I can't escape dealing with at least one of these responses. Either I conclude that the channel is fucking with me and I shouldn't be gullible, or I recognize that I made an erroneous assumption about his identity.
It seems to me that making such a mistake about someone's identity in a blind environment isn't really something that I should feel bad about. Or is it? Is there something unjust or discriminatory in assuming that a programmer is white or that a black person wouldn't be doing what this guy is doing? Yet, i never assumed that, and had I been privy to such a detail early on in the relationship, it wouldn't have fazed me at all. It is only because my assumptions, which typically begin loose and flexible, had morphed over time into rather hard conclusions that I unconsciously had found confirming evidence for. If the initial assumptions are not challenged over a long enough period, their accuracy becomes more reliable. This is just common psychological functioning, I think.

I think it would be a greater error to exercise extreme skepticism and disbelieve that the picture I saw is real. The comments about his hair seemed wholly casual and legitimate and I see no evidence of deceit by the cohort of friends who hang out together online. The only reason to conclude that he is white but trying to fool me into thinking he is black is that it is the only way to protect my assumptions. It would be more disrespectful and discriminatory to refuse to believe this than to have made the error of assumption in the first place. He had never made mention of his race, and I filled in the blank eventually based on stereotypes and statistical probabilities. But was that wrong? If someone never mentions or gives clues as to their ethnic identity, is it morally, philosophically, or intellectually askew to assume that they are thus white (or part of the dominant ethnic group)? Are minorities expected to have to make it clear to avoid people conceiving of them as something other than they are? Is it important for us to constantly keep our conceptions of people open to adjustment until we get some evidence, be it political or religious ideas, ethnic background, country of origin, sexual preferences, or tastes in music? Or if racial identity isn't a matter of importance to a person, is there no harm in making unintentional assumptions? If something is important to someone's identity, can we expect them to make it salient in interactions?

So with all of this whinging as a background, I'm lead to wonder what kind of assumptions minorities make in similar circumstances. I suspect that most everyone with any experience in online interactions probably refrains from making a lot of assumptions about the identity of others they meet until they get some confirming details. Obvious exceptions are if you are involved with a crowd or community that inherently has identifying characteristics, be it an AARP (assume everyone is old), Rainbow Coaltion (Everyone is gay, or wants to be), or goth (everyone is immature and suffering from the unraveling of the fabric of human society). But if you are in a community with non-identifying characteristics of membership, if someone fails to mention that they possess a particular characteristic over a 3 year period, do minorities assume they are straight, white, men or do they project a mirror image of themselves and assume the other is like them?

Comments go here

How much busier can life get?

As one ages, time slips by faster and faster. This is partly due to the aggregation of lifespan; one year is over 10% of your life when you are 9 years old but only 2% by the time you are 50. It's not surprising that a year doesn't seem to last as long.

But another huge effect on the perception of time accelerating is the demands on our attention. As a kid, life was governed by very few demands on our time. We had to spend a lot of it in school, but this didn't feel like a demand on time and we had enough of it outside of school anyway. Life was governed by about 15 minutes of chores, 1 minute of homework, and a few major holidays. Over the course of a year, this wasn't very much.

In college, my time was occupied with classes, studying, work, and leisure. I was much busier but still had ample time for leisure. Even when I began working a real job teaching at university, leisure time was plentiful and spent reading, out with my wife, playing music, and so on.

Then I graduated from uni and started working full time at the university, which includes an equal or greater non-classroom time commitment for committee work, curriculum development, and research and publication. A few months before I was promoted to this job, my daughter was born.

Free time?

I'm not complaining in the least. This post is more about observing the changing guard as one passes into a new phase in life. I got slammed hard core at work this year. Teaching 2 new classes with strict curricula was a difficult adjustment for me as I became familiar with the material and had to keep the pace. Finding ways to meet my obligations in committees and other expectations was challenging as well. I didn't succeed with tripping here and there but overall I weathered it pretty well. I've learned a lot about organization and am developing a system for dealing with the demands on my attention better.

As for the lack of free time at home, I wouldn't have it any other way. I love playing with my daughter. She is only 16 months old now and in a few years she'll be more independent, playing on her own or with friends and studying or being busy with school. I'll have more free time then and will miss what I have now. I don't get to read as many books, play as many video games, watch as many movies or write as many blog entries as I would like to, but I'd rather spend an evening playing with Little People and Mega Bloks for now.

I'm almost despondent about the future heartbreak in store when I'm no longer the most important person in her life (I expect it we're halfway there already). It's kind of cliche, perhaps, but Chapin's Cat's Cradle is my worst nightmare. Perhaps that is why I'm fanatical about taking pictures of her. I enjoy photography a lot, of course, but having a visual record gives me something to hang onto once this era has passed.

But the point here isn't to whine about the joys and perils of parenthood. Youth is wasted on the youth, and I hope that everyone who happens to read this (and even those who don't, by jove!) takes advantage of wherever they are right here, right now. Don't ever be bored; this is the easiest affliction in the world to cure! Don't wish to be some place else because soon you will be and you'll realize how nice it was before (not that it isn't nice where you are. It's just that in hindsight you'll see that it wasn't as bad as you thought it was and that you squandered it by wanting to be somewhere else).

Comments go here

Back from Vacation

Back in the saddle, back to the grind, back in black. However you sing it, vacation is over. I like living in Japan and intend to be here for a substantial time, but it would be insincere to say that summer weather here is anything but intolerable. The humidity necessitates changing my clothes three or four times a day, perferably with showers each time. Electricity is expensive but it is simply not possible to work without air conditioning. In summers past, I passed the time in the cool back room of my apartment, parked in from of an electric fan. Now that I have a job and a second floor apartment with comparatively poor airflow, that isn't an option. Japan is expensive and uncomfortable at times.

Idaho, on the other hand, was perfect. Wide open skies (Japan's skies are clogged with power lines to a degree that must be experienced to truly comprehend how deplorable it is) surrounded by green amidst low human populations. Houses are built with more space, permitting more relaxed motion and the ability to flop down on the floor easily. Most of all, there is no humidity to speak of.

To be fair, living permanently in Idaho has its disadvantages. Houses may be 3 times larger for half the price I'll pay in Japan, but there are no jobs for me and my wife. It may take an hour to drive 20 miles in Japan, but the density of Japan means that the environment can be radically different in such a short space. And there is always a train for getting somewhere quickly. In Idaho, you may be able to travel distances quickly, but the distances you have to travel to get to anywhere are so much greater that you are effectively isolated. Professional sports, specialty local cuisine, IMAX, China- and Korea-towns, aquariums, all within two hours by train in Japan. There are alternatives available in Idaho (fishing, camping, hunting) but neither locale offers what the other specializes in, which means that no matter where I'd live, I'd miss the other side.

I would love to live in Idaho and take advantage of its natural bounty. I'm envious of my dad who spends his two week R&R (after working 28 days straight inside the Arctic Circle) running all over the mountains in their Jeep. But he wouldn't be able to do that if he wasn't working thousands miles of away. Perhaps I'll be able to retire in Idaho; I know that I'll be spending at least a couple weeks every summer there.

As for this blog, I've neurotically wondered if its worth it, since it doesn't seem that anyone reads it. But I've realized I'm not writing for anyone, I write it for me. I would love to have people read it and comment on it and I'd like to think that the topics I write about offer something to readers. But that isn't a necessity and I'll keep writing it regardless. I may be moving to a new domain in a few weeks or months, if for no other reason than to further isolate myself from the normal traffic I may otherwise garner. I'm hoping to move more into discussion about ideas that transcend there here and now of immediate politics, but its unavoidable that current events get attention. If anyone has read this far, thank you. I do appreciate your time spent here.

Comments are anticipated and welcome.

Whodaho

So who are we and what is this site, anyway?

This blog was intended to be a group effort to provide a public thoughtspace to complement our forum. It is impossible to explain who I am or what this site is without going back to the origins of the forum. I've lost track of how long ago we started the forum, but it must have been between two and three years ago. Most of us grew up together in the Silver Valley of North Idaho, a narrow space in the mineral rich ranges of the Idaho panhandle. As the leaded themes indicate, we are products of commercial pollution that makes us retarded and delinquent.

I was one of the first to move away, leaving Idaho in high school. I kept in touch with my closest friends during high school but hadn't known some of the others well or at all before leaving and didn't have any contact with most people from childhood school. Then came New Year's Eve in 1994. I ushered in the illustrious year of 1995 virtually passed out in the hottub at the cabin condo Gusalmighty had rented for the occasion. It was a grand party and I reconnected with Gusalmighty as well as many others I hadn't seen in about 6 years at that point.

It just so happened that my youngest sister was born 4 days later, an event that came to play a big role in the development of Gusalmighty.com as we know it today. Up until her birth, I had spent my summers working in Minnesota, only coming home to visit for short periods. After she was born though, I came back as much and for as long as possible, living in Idaho from June '96 to January '97. Over that period, Gus and I (and others) forged some strong bongs bonds and had some good times. Poor Keith kept getting locked in the car all by himself though. Loser.

I eventually moved back to Minnesota to finish my B.A. in Anthropology. The Internet™ had become a big thing by now (I had only used it for email and some telnet chat sessions thus far, and remember WastedPotential holding my hand and introducing me to a "browser"), but we didn't take advantage of it right away. I kept in touch with phone calls and some email as well as visits during the school year and summers back in Idaho. Eventually I was emailing enough to try to start a mailing list, back when before egroups.com had been absorbed by Yahoo. That list didn't generate much interest at all, but it was the seed for something bigger.

By now I had graduated from the University of Minnesota and GusAlmighty had a domain. I think it was at a New Years' party (or maybe an infamous Halloween) that we decided that Gus was going to try his hand at coding a forum for us. WastedPotential had introduced me and a few others to the AsylumWhores (now a more palatable Nation rather than Whores) and I was keen on the power of forums. Yeah, yeah, I know that everyone else has been using newsgroups and BBSes since they got their 2400 baud modems. I guess you are just cooler than me.

So Gus did it, our own gusboard coded from scratch direct from the hand of the creator himself. By and by we had our own little breeding ground of inside jokes and drunken reminiscences. It wasn't extremely complex or feature rich, but it worked pretty fucking good and it was homegrown to boot. We admired Gus so much we didn't give him much shit when we lost access for a few weeks when he forgot to renew the domain name.

The board grew in popularity with a core membership of 10 or so of us and even started to attract visitors outside the inner circle. Once family members started showing up, Gus unveiled Gusboard 2.0, a secret password protected forum for all the shenanigans and tales of chaos that were still within the statute of limitations. We were evolving. Eventually we decided to take advantage of the efforts of others and switched to phpBB, briefly running the 1.0 before installing the current phpBB you see today.

We ran just as the forum for about a year or so until I started blogging here, originally hoping that it would be a collective effort but it kind of fell flat in that regard. The forum is a great place for us to keep in touch as we moved apart and the blog was a place for me to express myself. Turned out blogging was a lot harder than I expected, but I'm keeping at it. Eventually I'll build a readership, probably as soon as WastedPotential and GusAlmighty (among others) begin posting their views and experiences alongside me and keep it fresh (and worth reading).

So that's our history, but where are we today? This introduction is actually one of the first things I intended to write for the front page blog but I was holding out until we had more contributors. No one else seemed interested in posting here so it's kind of ended up being my own little soapbox by default. I moved to Japan after getting my M.A. in Anthropology and just finished my PhD. Call me Dr. Nute. The blog came out of my desire for a place to vent my notions about the world today. I was making lots of notes in book margins and scratch paper rants about modern technology and society and politics. The real impetus came after reading a thread about blogging at ArsTechnica and then seeing what psh had done to his site. Blogging can be a lot harder than it looks. I didn't get a whole lot done while I was finishing my dissertation, and since my daughter was born at about the same time, I haven't been able to get much done since then. I thought I was in a good place to be more consistent a few months ago when I announced that we had gone gold, but that too proved premature.

Now I have a tenure-track teaching job at a women's college here in Japan. It's a good job with great students. I get to teach classes all in English, most of which are topic based content focused classes where I can teach about world history, cross-cultural communication, political science, and whatnot. It's not all paradise, as I do have to teach writing and discussion classes and some classes have pretty low English skills. But it pays enough to cover my bills for now.

I'm interested in humans and have conversation knowledge in our evolutionary history as well as our psychological and cultural tendencies. I like beer and pizza and watching Mixed Martial Arts. I'm an armchair philosopher (as we all are, surely) and becoming more politically interested if not involved. I'm a parent and loving it. I play the bass and dig music. Charlie Hunter is my current favorite groovemeister. Check his site for free and paid downloads. Bad ass mutherscratcher, he. There is plenty more about me, I suppose, but thats sufficient for an intro.

As for everyone else, the only one that I can really talk with any relevance about is the man, Our Namesake, Gusalmighty. He runs a hosting company in Seattle and graciously hosts this space for me us. He knows his Unix, Linux, BSD, and all that jazz and runs dedicated and virtual server services for businesses and individual consumers alike. Gus knows his stuff, be it Latin or Linux, and I wish he'd get off his lazy ass and contribute to this site. It isn't like raising a son and running a hosting company takes all that much energy and time.

We're a pretty good group of people here. Among us, we range from high school dropouts to PhDs, tall fat fuckers with long hair to scrawny midgets, crank junkies to teetotalers (well, not quite teetotalers, but pretty close by Idaho standards), jazz funk to speed metal, Jeopardy qualifiers to geologists, hippies to Marines (some of which served in Afghanistan following 9/11), computer geeks to electrical journeymen to volunteer firefighters. We've had our necks broken, flipped trucks at highway speeds (with members riding in the back who get thrown out on the tarmac but still ship off to Marine boot camp a few days later), been nearly electrocuted by TVs, arrested, stabbed, strung out, beat up, broke down, tripped out, and pissed on. We've got skills ranging from utility pole inspection certification to culture analysis, from Marine certified marksmanship with weapons and cameras to forum coding. We'll sell you vitamins, rewire your home, install your cabinets, clean up the cocaine you spilled in the bedroom, put out the pallet fires you got in the backyard, host your website, and build you a geodesic dome on the fifth floor of your mobile home. We play guitars, basses, drums, and weiner whistles. We've lived through burning airplanes and bottles of Permafrost. And all in spite of (or because of?) every single one of us having a lead count 4 or 5 times the EPA standards for "healthy."

So who are we? We be disciples of Gusalmighty, yo. Come on in and introduce yourself. We have a lot of history together, but you are welcome to make yourself comfortable.

Gusalmighty.com Blog Beta goes Gold

Through fits and starts of genius and ignorance, this page draws near its one year anniversary. Originally I had hoped for more of a community effort at this, as I believed (and still do) that it would be more interesting and enjoyable with thoughts, insights, arguments, and commentary from across the spectrum of Idahoan friends who's desire to keep in touch lead to the creation of this site. Alas, my drivel drove them away and the occasional visitor is stuck with me. Such is the vagary of life, I suppose.

Throughout the last year, I have tried hard to update the site, but I have to say that blogging can be hard. Maybe I'm just not good at it, maybe I'm taking it too seriously, maybe I try to hard, or maybe I'm not trying hard enough. I'm always thinking about stuff in life, be it politics, philosophy, current affairs, science, society, whatever, and since I don't have much opportunity to talk about such things with people in person, I thought it would be fun. And it is fun, for the most part. But I do take it seriously, and I wanted to create a blog that was interesting and worth bookmarking for other people. I think I've generally achieved that for a majority of my posts (slight majority, but majority nonetheless), but I've failed to keep it current with regular updates.

Initially I assumed I'd post once a day. Content isn't hard to come up with, but taking the time to formulate the topic and write it down does. I'd probably benefit from learning to be more concise. I've tried to not care so much about how refined it is and just get something up, but I think that the weaker posts came from there too. But what am I whining about?

I don't really know where I'm going with this, as if I ever do. It's been a good time, and even if I'm not posting as much as I'd like, blogging has led me to write a lot more notes and think about things more. And I've met Jody, a great reader who truly honors me with his continued return to the site and his comments. I hope that I can continue to build this up and post more regularly over the next year. I think this page is RSS-ready as well, so if you syndicate me, your reader will tell you when new posts hit the page.

So thanks for riding along. I've got a whole backlog of notes and ideas that will be hitting this space soon, once I get a better handle on fatherhood. Oh yeah, my dissertation was successfully defended last week, so assuming that the departmental vote on my degree goes my way (which it should, but there is always a chance some rogue dissenter will be an ass), my student life is over.

Go on and tell me how much you loved and hated this space over the last year.

A Patent on Ideas

It's so obvious I'm sure its been done, but why not file a patent on the "process of using human rational and irrational thought, including but not limited to spontaneous notions and developed theories, to create, improve, devise, or otherwise develop goods and services"? If Amazon can patent "one-click" shopping, why can't I patent the use of thought in the process of creation? Prior art isn't a valid defense since people don't actually plan on implementing thought, they just do it.

Having this patent wouldn't grant me ownership of all the works derived from the process of using thought, but it would tender a pretty penny in licensing fees, even at minimal (and mandatory!) levels. w00t!

Got comments?

PDSS (Post-Dissertation Stress Syndrome)

I finished my doctoral dissertation last weekend, coming in just under 50,000 words. I am not going to indulge in self-stroking here by talking about what an accomplishment it was or how I finally put the capstone on 25 years of formal education (for the low, low price of $56,000). I do however want to mention that I was really surprised at what happened to me afterwards. I was motivating myself to write by reminding myself about how much fun I could have on the computer once I was done. Guilt free gaming and internet browsing, writing about all the thoughts and topics I want, do some NationStates roleplaying, maybe run through some Photoshop and other program tutorials, I could transfer all the video of the baby and start some post-production, all sorts of stuff.

Oddly, I haven't touched my computer much at all since the final printout. Part of it is that I've spent more time with the baby and I've had to catch up on a lot of uncorrected homework, but even if I had all the free time in the world, I wouldn't want to spend it sitting in front of my computer. I think I got sick of using my computer. I just wasn't interested in sitting in that damned computer chair any longer than I had to. I also have a substantial backlog of paper books I want to read, and they are really appealing right now. So I'm getting back into reading books, a habit I've follen out of in the last few years since I got broadband access.

The internet is a great place, no doubt about it. But it's overwhelming sometimes and I've found that I have a hard time concentrating on one thing. The dissertation didn't help, overloading me with all different threads of theory and ideas that I had to hold in my head. I'm interested in so much stuff that sitting down to read the news easily turns into an all day affair. Tech news, social issues, check the political science publications, then cruise over and hit some message boards for a bit of interactive intelligensia (or not, as the case often is).

It's a lack of discipline, undoubtedly. To really achieve professional status as an internet user, a person has to learn to cut themselves off. There is so much information online that it is pointless to try to take it all in. Failure to focus ends up cutting your knees off at the hip, and I've spent hours reading sites and following links only to come to the conclusioin that there isn't time to read everything I want to so I bookmark it all. I end up spending a long time perusing a bunch of pages but don't invest any quality time to actually read and digest something.

Bookmarking and programs like StickyBrain make it easy to store something for later retrieval. But a consequence of this is that I don't make the effort to actually store it in my brain. One perspective portrays me as a cutting edge adopter of technology who is augmenting his memory with the silicon partner; another says that I'm letting my brain atrophy by not remembering anything and that I'm doing a disservice to myself by not storing it in my own brain. Both of these are right, but I tend to spend more time in the latter train of thought.

I need to get back to basics when it comes to learning. I'm well read and well informed, but my interests have become so wide that my knowledge is superficially retained at best. I have lots of knowledge in my bookmarks and databases, but what good is that when I'm in an online discussion (or GASP! an actual real-life discussion!!!!??!)? I'm always thinking about where to go next and what to read next that I fail to live in the now and take advantage of the effort that got me to where I was.

Okay, this has gone off entirely in the wrong direction (but a good one, in the end) and is getting longer. Expect a revitalization of this space in the coming weeks (I think its the third wave of activity so far). If you like what you read, spread the word too. It's nice having people read and comment on what goes up here.

Go on and drop a comment in the forum.

$400,000,000,000 couldn't buy any common sense

According to this site, the United States spends more than the top 10 countries (excluding the US, of course) on its military. I'm not sure if this includes expenditures to private military organizations or not. Among those top 10 spenders, precisely zero are enemies of the United States (assuming that Saudi Arabia is an ally, which is debatable). Iran is #12, North Korea #21, and Iraq is #45. These numbers are based on expenditures from 1999-2001, so its a little bit out of date.

In fact, its even more lopsided now that the US defense budget has jumped from 276,000,000,000.00 dollars on that chart to the $400,000,000,000.00 that it is today. Using the numbers from that chart compared to the current US military spending, and the US spends as much as the next 40 nations combined on it military! The international average is $7,000,000,000; the U.S. spends nearly 6 times that.

Current and past military spending consumes roughly 47% of our national budget. We don't help citizens stay on their feet and build better lives, but we spend nearly half our income on guns. The need for defense is laughable, as we outspend the next 40 countries combined, most of which are not enemies to begin with.

Yet all of that money invested in arms and training still couldn't save us from hubris. Our leaders made the mistake of thinking that because we are so powerful we can do no wrong and that we are so powerful we can do anything at will. They were proven wrong, but they haven't reevaluated their premises and are likely to insist that their failures were due to a lack of military strength. It isn't the military that is weak, it is our national character. When we agree that it is better to build unnecessary weapons than to invest in the lives and futures of our citizenry, we have no one to blame but ourselves.

Where do you get your science info?

I received the following questions from a UCSB student researcher and fired off the following quick answers. The questions were interesting though, and I've posted them in our forum if anyone wants to answer their own.

1.What is your primary source of information regarding current
advancements in science and technology? How well informed do you
consider your self in relation to the average person?

Newscientist magazine
Slashdot.org
Edge.org

I feel that I have a pretty good sense of current and developing science and technology. No specialty knowledge, but a solid awareness of a lot of stuff. More than my family, about the same as my friends.

2.What do you think of the future of fields in biotechnology
such as genetic engineering, AI, artificial life, transgenic species,
and technologies of reproduction?

I think they have a very secure future, with the possible exception of artificial life, which is unlikely to capture the public imagination and will thus remain a tool for biologists and their ilk.

3.What do you think of a future where man and intelligent
machines coexist?

We aren't there now?

4.What do you think of the cyborg? The posthuman?

Humans are totally cyborg. We may not be wired directly, but our dependence on electronic machines is enough to qualify it in my book. We still have a safety net of print history, but once everything is recorded digitally, we are entirely cyborg, in that our current and future knowledge are inextricably tied and dependent on the machines. If the machines go away, we likely would too.

5.What does it mean to be human?

No offense intended, but I think the term "post-human" is a ridiculous one. To be human means just that, be human. It's defined by anything that humans do as humans, bottom up, not top-down. If by post-human you are referring to Kurzweilian downloaded consciousness (a total impossibility, regardless of computing power), I would say that a downloaded consciousness is exactly that. Any "consciousness" inside a computer would have to be a product of an application that crunched the numbers for the specific personality and thus whatever it was that was inside the computer, no matter how self-aware it may seem, is simply the product of an application.

Of course, I'm not totally rigid in this thinking and reserve the right to adjust this opinion as we get closer to empirical understandings. :-)

6.What are the implications for the posthuman blurring the
distinctions of gender, race, and sexuality?

Don't we have that online already?

7.What role does consciousness play in world of biotechnology
and machines?

Personally I wish we were a bit more conscious (as in reflexive) of what we are doing and what implications it may have, but I suspect that isn't the type of consciousness you were referring to.

8.What role does evolution play, and what effect will these
technologies have on Darwinian evolution? Might biotechnology and the
merging of man and machine be the next wave in evolution?

It seems that agricultural, medical, and materials technology have almost entirely succeeded in protecting us from nature red in tooth and claw evolutionary pressures. But our increasing dependence on machines is altering how we live, perhaps to the point of survival dependence. If the machiens fail us, the species may die. I don't think its there yet, but it may become a symbiosis (not in the true sense, of course, unless you grant sentience to the machine part) even greater than we can imagine.

In closing, I'd like to recommend the book Darwin Among the Machines by George Dyson. You likely are familiar with it, but I found its thesis quite intriguing and rather relevant in its own way to the theme of these questions.

Short sighted on shortness treatment?

Last July, the USFDA approved pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly's application to administer recombinant Human Growth Hormone (rHGH) to healthy children who happen to be in the bottom 1% of their age group for height. (Okay, this is a bad pun, but unavoidable. Can't really describe them to be in the top 1%, can I?) I find this to be a horribly disturbing action that speaks volumes to the deficiencies in our society.

Maybe I'm not being fair and I just don't realize how hard it is being short. This isn't entirely true, as I was kind of short in middle school due to my unfortunate combination of being younger than everyone else in class as well as hitting puberty at a later age than average. But even my shortness at that time wasn't anything compared to the 1% of kids who want this stuff. According to the Washington Post, some of the kids are smaller than kindergarteners when they are in second grade and suffer during gym class because they are so small. These are people who are predicted to grow up to be less than 5' tall.

rHGH has been given to people suffering from natural deficiencies in their ability to produce the hormone, but the new ruling clears the path for kids who have no abnormalities or disfunction to receive treatments. These treatments can cost up to $40,000 a year and can require 6 injections a week, just to gain up to 4 inches in final height. Improvements are not guaranteed and some people don't respond at all.

This whole issue is disappointing. I know its kind of naive to expect children not to pick on short kids, but just because kids seem naturally inclined to be jerks doesn't mean we should abandon efforts to educate them. The hypocrisy of it reeks: can't have genetic manipulation of our DNA but we can subject children to these kinds of chemical interventions without running afoul of God? C'mon!

The health risks aren't clear either. In the 1950s, women who received hormone therapy to stunt their growth got messed up reproductive systems as a bonus. Of course there is no reason to assume that rHGH is going to cause problems, but there is no reason to assume that it won't either. It's safety has been established in problematic patients so far, but we don't what effect it could have on an otherwise perfectly functioning system. Overloading a body with more HGH than it makes could drive the natural mechanisms to shut down, for instance, forcing the kids to continue the treatments much longer than otherwise would have been necessary. HGH is needed all through life, just in lower doses. It really isn't a growth hormone as much as a metabolizing hormone, and thus is needed all through life.

Our nation's fixation with physical attributes and our willingness to invest massive sums of resources in the pursuit of some media-inspired ideal form is disheartening. Of course people are welcome to do whatever they want in life, to pursue a life of crass consumerism and superficial materialism till the cows come home. But shouldn't we ask for more? Shouldn't we strive to become a society more at ease with who and what we are inherent of our own rather than one that seeks to destroy (a process that consumption relies upon)?

Ghetto Tours

I met a Japanese woman the other day who told me she had only been to the US once, to Los Angeles for a few days. My first response "Why would anyone want to go to Los Angeles?!?" but I bit my tongue and made polite statements about her trip. She apparently went as a tourist, but all I know is that she went to Universal Studios one day. She may have been visiting a friend too, I dunno.

This made me realize how little esteem I have for L.A. Seriously, is there anything about that city that is attractive? I'm sure I'm just uninformed and ignorant about how great life can be in a smog blanketed, crime infested, urban wasteland dominated by, uh, the type of people who live in L.A. No overgeneralizations or stereotypes in my world, no way!

I assume that tourist to LA don't see the bits of LA that make me cringe at the thought of visiting. They see family and friends, check out the beach maybe, go shopping, hit some big theme parks, whee-la! But maybe some of them would be interested in seeing the darker side of life, the reality of what life in LA can be like.

So I thought about ghetto tours. Get a couple people, load them in a car, and cruise through the degenerate neighborhoods. Expose them to the utter decay that typifies American urban cores and see what it does to their worldview.

Then reality kicked in and it became clear that the liability on such a venture would be insurmountable. Once the ghetto clued in to what was going on, the tours would become targets faster than a street clears during a drive-by, either driving by sport or profit-motive. You'd have to outfit your tour rigs with bullet-proof glass and hire serious drivers and security goons armed and ready to return fire. But that would only make the vehicles even easier to identify. Might as well paint them white with concentric red circles on them.

But what if...

What if you could buy up a huge a tract of land in the ghetto and fence it off, with serious security that keeps the riff-raff out. It would have to be big, like a square mile or two. You could make it cheap, get government subsidy or something. Security controls would keep guns, drugs, and evildoers out, the people inside get to live a normal life. Their only responsibility would be to live like actors, the pimps, thugs, and whores that add color to the streets (damn, that is a bad pun, but it wasn't intentional and I'm not taking it out). The tours could be conducted from a big building on the fringe that was built in a way to keep the ruse hidden. It would basically be like Jurassic Park on crack, only no electric fences, no dinosaurs, and no real crack. You could probably orchestrate some street fights, burning cars, and potshots at the tour vehicle for spice though if needed.

Whaddaya think? How much could we charge for a tour of depravity?

(Editor's note: What this entire idea really illustrates is the depths to which a person can plumb to avoid working on their dissertation.)

Tapeworm Diet

Today, the Japanese gastric cancer surgeon I have English conversation classes with told me about his colleague that keeps a tapeworm in a jar in his office. This colleague had been infected with the tapeworm by unbeknownst means and only discovered it after losing too much weight for unexplained reasons. The tapeworm was identified and he was able to get rid of it by abstaining from solid food (receiving nutrition via IV) and flushing his system with diarrhea inducing chemicals. The tapeworm came out dead and intact. This guy seems rather proud of it and shows it off to people. In the words of my student/doctor as he summed up the story: "No! Why?"

It made me wonder if there was a market for tapeworm dieting though. It is a bit of a repulsive thought, but its a simple process. The hardest parts are getting the worm to grow and then to ensure that it dislodges completely instead of just shedding off its tail end. But think about it: it's totally natural and you wouldn't have do anything but eat normally. The extra organism in your gut would be absorbing calories instead of you. Then at the end you just need to take a weekend to flush it out and you are free and clear. The flushing bit would necessitate medical oversight, but its a good opportunity to set up a spa/ weight control facility and collect some extra charges.

This is such a stupid idea it would only work if one charged absolutely exorbitant fees to make it look justifiable. But with Americans slowly eating themselves to death and our infamous laziness about doing anything to improve our lives, this kind of hands off treatment might hit big.

Then again, maybe not.

More pessimism...

What kind of world do we want to live? Are we even having a dialogue dealing with this issue? I find so frustrating that we, as a species, are so incredible complex and capable in so many absolutely stunning ways, yet we still act like imbecilic trolls most of the time. In spite of all of our advances, have we progressed? Technologically, progress is undeniable. Politically, we've transformed the nature of human society many times over. But do these circumstances warrant the designation of progress?

Technological progress is mostly a matter of accident. We are a curious animal and started poking around and asking some good questions at a certain point and slowly developed a body of knowledge allowing us to manipulate the world in incredible ways. But so what? What have we done with it? Longer survival rates for citizens in developed nations? Stood on the moon? Figured out faster way to communicate over longer distances? What else? Technological advances primarily come in two forms: military or economic. Neither of these are really good candidates for gauging progress. One is designed to kill and destroy and the other is based on selfish material cultivation. Not really species advancement. Just doing the same old shit with fancier methods and bigger explosions.

Politically its not really any better. As our technology developed, more people were living longer so we were forced into developing better methods of dealing with them. But its always been about lowest common denominators. What is the minimum that those in power have to do to stay in power? Look at a group and answer that question and you'll be able to predict what their society and government looks like pretty accurately. It may appear to have gotten better over the last 100 years, but it hasn't. A few societies have better educated masses so the minimum needed to keep them satiated has risen a few notches, so the advancements don't really reflect an actual change in thought and behavior, just a tweak on the old system.

I don't think this is due to an inescapable aspect of human nature though. Human nature isn't really all that behavior specific in the strictest sense. We have a lot of default modes of perceiving, organizing behavior, and acting on the world, but this can usually be updated and overridden by symbolic thought. We see it all the time in particular cultural expressions, education, and philosophy.

Where am I going with this? I dunno, to be honest, but it was on my mind and I want to keep some activity on here. Sorry for the incomplete thought. Hopefully more on this sooner than later.

John Walker's essay "The Last Days of Autodesk"

Cringely misquoted the title of an essay in an article a couple weeks ago and I'm using that title as search engine bait. Of course its a little late now, but his column is still recent enough that I might get picked up by the search engines and someone might read the Cringely article late and try to find the essay (like I did) and then end up here, increasing my increasingly diminishing readership.

This worked for brand new blogger Art Kleiner, might as well work for us too. Welcome to the blogging world, Art!

If you are such a person and found your way here via this route, welcome! Poke around and read a couple more articles. There is some good stuff here, prescient and relevant and thought provoking. Even better, if you come back in a few days, there will be more! Cheers!

Google Rules

Given that both of my parents know about Google, it's ubiquity as the finest search engine is incontestable. It's fairly to obvious anyone that has used Google that it has a spell check for your search terms, offers translation for many languages, caches its search pages (so you can see stuff as it was when Google trawled it, kind of like The Wayback Machine at times), and it will search for similar sites to the results it kicks back (Google ranks results according to how often other people link to them, so being able to search for similar pages can be neat-o when the page rank doesn't quite give you what you want.).

But did you know that Google does other neat stuff too? If you click the underlined search term in the blue bar at the top of the results page, you'll be taken to a definition of the terms you search. If you type in a mathematical equation in the search field (even if its a browser toolbar and not www.google.com) using parentheses and +-*/ for addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division respectively, it will calculate for you?

Typing in an address (city and street typically suffice) will get you a map, whereas a name or phone number will kick back phone book info. You can limit the google search to particular sites by suffixing your search with site:www.the-domain-you-want-to-limit-the-search-to.com. Try link:www.domain.com to see what sites are linking to you. (FYI, our beloved gusalmighty is only linked to by 3 sites, whereas that hack over at suckful has 6 pages of linkage. Let's fix that by spamming gusalmighty to Wallace and back!) Google will also give you stock quotes if you run a search on the ticker tag.

There is other neat stuff behind the scenes in the Google Labs and of course, their neat history of special logos.

Google, so much more than just a search engine.

Batman vs Aliens vs Predator

Wow! It's an 8 minute movie short but is incredibly good. There is a "making of" available for download as well that runs almost twice as long and is almost as good as well. Whether you be a comic fan or not, pop over and get this movie. It is a 160 MB big version (48 Megs for small, but don't bother) and 81MB behind the scenes. I was blown away. It cost about $4,000 a minute to make, so don't think that it is a low-budget home movie.

This may be well know around the net these days, I dunno. Usually when I find something really cool, its because I'm on the trailing edge of the loop.

Hiatus Interminable

As you can tell, no updates as of late. I found myself thinking more about things to write about here than on my dissertation, so I tried to step away from this. Turns out that I got even *less* work done on my dissertation. That doesn't mean I'm going to start blogging "regularly" again (I usually updated only 2 or 3 times a week anyway), but did want to at least post a mention of why the activity on the site has been the way it has.

I'd like to think that what I write is worth reading and i would love to build readership. OF course you have to keep updating to keep readers and I would hate to have the few people who visit this site lose interest entirely. Once my dissertation is signed, stamped, and sealed and life with baby is running smoothly, I'll be more regular.

Lots to talk about...

Now he knows for sure

The Gods Must Be Crazy guy died a couple days ago, apparently of natural causes. I haven't watched this flick in a while, but I remember just wailing with laughter at it as a kid. Funny, funny, funny!

Happy Hunting Grounds, little fella.

Reality Check

It's almost fractal, the way that complaining about my life ends up being the thing about my life that I want to complain about today. Recursive networks are pretty bad-ass, I have to admit.

So I was complaining about my compulsive book buying last entry. What that boils down to is that I have money to spend on books, I'm educated enough to have an interest in books with more words than pictures, and I'm too lazy to make time to read them. The first two issues here aren't even bitch-worthy; I ought to be thankful for it. The last is a personality flaw, but not one worth really focusing on, especially since all I have to do is step away from the computer and sit down with a book. It's entirely up to me how I spend my time, so why am I complaining about how I spend it?

But I didn't realize how petty it was (I knew it was petty, just not to the extreme degree that it actually is) until last week. I got an email from a student on Thursday explaining that she has mental problems (it's a translation artifact, she actually means psychological troubles, a nuanced but important difference) that make it difficult for her to see people. I had a friend in high school that developed extreme sociophobia, or whatever you call it when people get panic attacks when they interact socially with other people. She was a fun light-hearted person up until this problem, at which point she became housebound for at least 3 years, after which I've lost track of her.

Back to my student. She hadn't turned in her last two assignments (a paper proposal and outline) and was worried about her status in class. I'm a pretty tough teacher when it comes to deadlines (pure vicarous existence, I know, but I work best with a looming deadline), but I figured that I'd find out if she was getting help with the problem and cut her a little slack.

We talked after class and I found out that she had gone to the school counselor but wasn't able to talk to her about the problems. Turns out that medical records in Japan are essentially public, in that many jobs require a physical which includes all sorts of vitals and would also have information about psychological issues. This would preclude her getting a job, or at least she was worried about it. We talked a bit out the class and she seemed serious about wanting to get the assignments in and we worked out a plan where she wouldn't suffer the full late penalty. This concluded our discussion and we then walked down the stairs.

She mentioned that she had just got back from an 8 month study abroad in the US in Los Angeles and that many of her friends had graduated, hence leaving her alone in life in many respects. I commented that since she got back at the end of May she is most likely suffering from reverse culture shock, which is commonly more stressful and disorienting than the initial shock experienced when traveling abroad.

She agreed that perhaps this was part of it, but that she has had problems in the past as well. Turns out she is bulimic as well. This was a much more serious issue than I was expecting, and it came out kind of suddenly. I urged her to talk to someone, but she told me she can't talk to her mom because her older sister is mentally and physically handicapped, and she can't burden her mom with the additional stress of another daughter with problems. After hearing this news, I asked for some more clarification of the social phobia to which she explained that she is afraid to see people because she fears they'll criticize her looks or think she is ugly. Sheesh! She is a pretty good looking girl too, probably in the top 5 of the 23 students in my class.

I was a bit overwhelmed, both by the magnitude of the issue and the ease with which she was talking about it with me. I've often found that people talk to me about things; I don't know if she talks about this with other teachers or if there was something about me that made it easier for her here. Regardless, it was shocking to see a beautiful person trapped in a fucked up mental state. I gave her the best encouragement I could but I know that I'm not going to solve her problems with a 10 minute talk in the hallway at school.

Made me realize that my life is pretty good after all. Sure, we all have some sort of mental issue that could be called a problem, be it being too smart, too dumb, overly confident, lacking confidence, quirky, boring, whatever. But most of those "problems" are just natural human variation and aren't anything to worry about, unless you are neurotic. But some people allow these naturall issues to manifest in full psychological disfunction and end up with depression and eating disorders and all other sorts of stupid shit. I'm not blaming the victims here. It's more of a function of our innate pyschology not being suited for the world that we live in. By that I mean a world with radical extremes in social structure wherein we are constantly bombarded and manipulated with advertising quackery and PR spin. Something has to give, and its often the mind.

Book Addiction

I am addicted to collecting books. I went to Hawaii last weekend and bought 14 books, then came home and ordered 8 more from Amazon. Easily 2000 pages of text. With my current schedule of non-essential reading of abotu 5 pages a day, that is over a year of books purchased in abotu 2 hours of effort. All this on top of a reading list that is close to 50 other titles of personal interest. Not to mention the 300 or so books and articles that I have to read and organize into a dissertation by the end of next month. Who am I kidding?

Add in my inability to reel my internet reading in and a new computer that is capable of playing the games from the last year that I've wanted to play but haven't been able to (namely Black and White, CivIII, Tropico, and WarcraftIII) as well as can now play with digital video.... Why do I keep buying books?

My Amazon wishlist is 15 pages long with 300 items on it, but there is a fair amount of DVD and CD material there as well.

I suppose I just need to unplug for a bit. A friend of mine is riding his bicycle from Utah to Idaho...goddamn but I am jealous of that. I still believe that taking solo road trips in a car are good for the soul, but what he is doing is just awesome. But I need to stay out of IRC and quit foruming (although in my defense I've stayed away from everything but contact with friends and a computing forum.

I want to build a kayak and paddle around Japan.

Man, this entry sucks. I meant it to be a lighthearted look at my book fetish, but its devolved into a pathetic autiobiography. I hope someone out there has bigger problems than me and can post here to make me realize that my life isn't so bad after all.

Propah!!

PSH over at suckful.net has given this site a tasty recommendation. If you like what I write at all, go check him out. He is at exactly 3.782 times smarter than me and at least 1923.82310^3219328832923 funnier than I could even dream about.

If you don't like what I write, you should still check him out. The menthol flavor might be gone, but you can still rinse the stink of my drool out with his drivel. Even if he did think Buffalo 66 sucked, he is right on more than beat off.

Animal lives

As I sit here at school indulging in a well-deserved rest period following a relatively successful presentation at school (I raided the lab fridge for beers, and pulled a buzz from my first beer. My tolerance is gone!), I contemplate animal cognition. Yeah, I'm tired and strung-out from lack of sleep, and there is a whole beer of alcohol coursing through my brain, so this post is likely to be idiotic and pointless. Finally, an improvement, eh?!?

My neighbors have a couple dogs that bark all the fucking time. After the first month or so, we quit noticing it, except when we leave town for a couple days. I've noticed that one dog in particular doesn't just randomly bark though. He (she?) has particular patterns that repeat, over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and then change only to repeat the new pattern over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over.

I don't know what he is saying, but it seems clear that there is something specific that is being communicated. Why else would the same "word" be sounded out?

Another thing about dogs: It's obvious that they recognize and remember people they haven't seen in a long time. I wonder if they are capable of thinking about people in their absence? My mom's dog (and oldest cat) most definitely remember me, even though I only see them once or twice a year. I wonder if they ever think of me when I'm not there, or if they can recognize me in pictures, perhaps wonder where I am if they catch a glimpse of a picture of me on the wall?

Damn, its a good thing I wrote this before my second beer...

Rugby, the day after

We won our game yesterday, around 36 to 5. We had been on a long losing streak but have really turned things around this tournament and are in the championship game now. A big factor is Nagaoka, a long-time rugby player with great skills, who both makes great plays and inspires the team, but rugby is most definitely a team sport and we've been winning. It's more fun that way, for sure.

For the second game in a row though, I got hit in the eye and lost a contact early on. I can play the game with one contact, not much of a problem, but yesterday I was forced to wear just the one contact for about 3 hours after the game. By the time I finally got home and could put on my glasses (usually I take my glasses to the game and take out my contacts immediately, but didn't yesterday), I knew I was in for pain. I showered and crashed on the couch for a bit and then BAM! the migraine kicked in. Whoa momma, it was nasty.

So I didn't get anything done yesterday, beyond the game. Instead of my usual edge-of-your-seat excitement with politics and spectrum, I offer you this, a great photo essay about the Panawave Research Group cult that wraps everything in white sheets to protect them from communist radiation attack.. Wacky folks indeed.

A big thanks to the anonymous reader who posted the URL. Enjoy.

Sorry to get personal...

I want to avoid using this space to discuss details of my personal movements in space-time, but it's not going to be possible. I just have enough time right now to comment that field work is hellafun but analyzing data and transcribing interviews and recorded conversations sucks hairy root. 1 hour of recorded converstation takes about 3 hours to translate and transcribe. Ugh....

I'll try to keep posting here though. And I'll also try to refrain from turning this space into a political soapbox. Another intention of mine for here that got ignored like a crank addict's new years resolution to kick it.

Humidity: Further proof there is no God.

Well, at least proof that he didn't create us in his own image. There is no fucking way a supreme being would create us without setting us up with either a love for humidity or an environment that didn't have it.

Think about it. Do you know anyone who actually enjoys humidity? Who looks forward the hot sticky mugginess of humid summers? It's a common climatic phenomenon, and I'm sure it was in the Garden of Eden, lush place that it was.

I'm tempted to think that evolution failed us as well. Surely there would have been a competitive advantage to enjoying humid environments, so why don't we love it? I actually am not opposed to humidity per se but rather my emotion response to it. Nothing ruins a good spring like the dawn of humidity.

Bah, just grouchy today.

Blogging sure is tough

Whew! Who knew how hard it could be to come up with stuff to write about on a daily basis? Before launching the blog it seemed like I had 14 ideas a minute, half of which I felt would be interesting, informative, educational, or humorous to the general public. But hot damn, as soon as it came time to walk-the-walk, guess who's balls shrivelled up to wood pellets?

But the last few days haven't been my fault, actually. I was out of town, visiting the in-laws, feasting on fine Japanese beef. I have the password for this site saved locally but forgot which of my passes I was using for it and couldn't get in. I have a small number of passwords that I tend to use (and variations thereof) but couldn't figure out what it was. Typical case of picking something special so I'd remember it but end up forgetting it, like when you hide your last hits of acid some place exotic so nobody will find it, and then discover that you too are a nobody.

But I'm back, fatter than ever, and ready to throw caution to the wind. I realized that I'm not very funny, at least not when I try to be, so I'm not going to try that. It doesn't look like any of my Idawhore friends are willing or able to post here, so it's up to me to make something of this.

I figure that I'll make do with nuggets of insight gleaned from my stimulating life of procrastinating my PhD dissertation by reading the same internet web sites over and over and over. Since I read the same stuff that you do, probably, you'll be well informed on the news I'm spinning for you and should be able to easily find something to comment on.

I won't try to second guess myself about if what I'm writing is worth your time to read. Since it takes me at least 11 times as long to come up with stuff and probably 6 times as long to actually type it as it does for you to read it, I figure that the few minutes a day I put in only end up asking a few seconds of your time, so maybe someone will read it.

So prepare yourself. We'll be talking about Discordianism, the secret to the universe, and my life (that's a single topic you know, not a list) from here on out, as well as stuff the probably doesn't matter much to you, but such is the way it is at GusAlmighty.com!

Breakthrough!

After fumbling the ball on the return and getting sacked 7 of 8 snaps on the first drive, Gusalmighty hit me for a huge touchdown and we've got this fucker up and running. Now that we have a blog, we're legit and now have earned the right to have a website that requires no effort whatsoever to look good (other than posting to it).

Of course, everyone will post one or two stupid entries flapping their arms and squawking that they made it through the login screen and could find the 'new entry' button and then this page will die a slow death. At least it didn't take much effort and only about 2 months.