As you may have heard, an oil rig has exploded off the Southern Coast of the US, causing a spill almost certain to be the worst in human history, with a potentially devastating impact on the local environment and everything that lives in it (which would be everyone that is alive).

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100502/ap_on_bi_ge/us_gulf_oil_spill

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deepwater_Horizon_drilling_rig_explosion

In the news, and in political emails, and among people's conversations, there is talk about what BP did wrong, how they might have prevented it, whether the government response was quick enough, how consumers should react....

But the truth; which almost no one wants to admit is:

This is OUR fault.
If you drive a car, ever, for any reason, you are personally responsible for the spill.

If you don't own a car, but sometimes you borrow one, or get a ride with a friend, or take the bus, or take a long-distance train, if you fly or travel by ship, that oil was being drilled for you.
If you are a hard-core oil abstainer, never travel long distances, do all short trips by bicycle, nearly everything you buy, food, clothes, books, paper, your bicycle, the computer you are reading this on right now, was both produced and transported with the help of oil.

We don't get to blame oil corporations, or government, or BP executives, and the capitalist economy.  It is US.  All of us. 
Instead of writing angry letters or boycotting a particular company, how about taking this opportunity to use a little less oil yourself.  However much that is, make at least a little change, and use a little less.

Buy something used which you would normally have bought new.
Ride public transit, a bicycle, or walk, when you don't have that far to go.
When you do drive, drive a little slower.
And stop accelerating toward red lights - it won't get you where you are going any faster anyway.

A couple friends of mine are taking a class on being a "white ally" - race awareness and relations, power and privileged, and counteracting racism.

One of them mentioned to me some critical feedback she had offered and it got me to thinking in more detail what has always bothered me about those sort of discussions, but up until now never quite pinned down.

The following is not a commentary on that class in particular, as I know essentially nothing about it, but rather a critique of a few general ideas I have heard and read on the topic in the past:

"Turning-Hustlers-into-Entrepreneurs" discusses the possibility of increasing micro-credit in order to support independent "black market" business people.  As someone who has been running a successful off-the-books business for several years, I believe the major obstacle is not a lack of credit, but rather a government which is geared toward big business.

The following was a "letter to the editor" I submitted to a progressive magazine in response to articles on global warming:


In "American Psychosis" you point to the many people who acknowledge global warming, but do not change much, if anything about their destructive lifestyles, and in "Hot Air" talk about the point of view of skeptics and deniers.

I run a certified green hauling business. I modified my delivery truck to get 30mpg (from 15mpg) and run it on 100% biodiesel made from recycled veggie oil. I also work part time supporting people who bicycle to work (at a business which runs at a loss because our main service is free). I live in a 250square foot home and use less than $5 worth of electricity most months.
I also have some background in science, including degrees in earth science and biology, and generally track down sources for claims I read.

Having read arguments on both sides, I am not convinced that humans are significantly contributing to climate change. While I admit I haven't kept up with the latest research, I have yet to see several points addressed:

1 The climate naturally goes through cycles of extremes. The current climate reflects roughly where it is expected to be. Our methods of determining past temperatures are not precise enough to tell us the rate of change over small periods of time in the past, and so it is difficult to determine if what we see today is abnormal.
2 Geologic data suggests that in past periods of climate change, temperature has always changed first, with CO2 levels changing as a result of temperature change, not the other way around. This does not necessarily indicate it is what is happening this time, but it could account for what we are seeing.
3 Climate predictions are only as good as the models they are built on, which in turn are only as good as the computers that run them. We simply do not have computers powerful enough to accurately model something as complex as the earth's climate. Last I heard, in order to reduce complexity to a manageable level, most models omit details such as water vapor (arguably the single most important variable) all together.
4 Human caused climate change is frequently referred to (particularly in liberal media sources) as having "scientific consensus". According to Pew Research center 86% of scientists concur. While 86% is clearly an overwhelming majority in a democracy, in science 14% is too large a minority to simply ignore.

But here's the thing:
It doesn't make one bit of difference if humans are contributing to global warming or not.
Whether we are causing it or not, its happening (that doesn't take predictions, just measurements - its happening)
Therefor we should prepare for it.
Even more important: independent of global warming, our lifestyles are harming the ecology of our planet. Even if an individual feels no moral reason to care about life other than humanity, it is undeniable that we are totally dependent on the environment for our own survival.

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This blog server has a character limit.  The rest can be found here: http://neapolitanblog.blogspot.com/2010/04/global-warming-revisited.html

OMG
I am going to be the person in charge of my local polling place.
Democracy will literally be in my hands.

It will be my responcibility to ensure every vote in my neighborhood gets counted.

I am proud, and slightly terrified.

How it is I skipped over getting experince as a clerk first, I am not entierly sure, but I just got a very official looking notice in the mail, informing me that I'm gonna be the guy in charge this primary election, June 8th.

I start at 6am, work until 9pm, and I will have a crew of 5 people.

My designated polling place happens to be the same as where I normally go to vote, and its easy walking distance from my house.

The science essay I told everyone I was working on has been written, and is in the final editing stages.  It will still be a while before it is ready for prime time though.

In the meantime, here is a short thing I wrote a while ago to someone (don't even remember who anymore) about the consept of a flat tax:

----------------------------------------------------------

The standard arguments for a flat tax make a couple of giant - and totally false - assumptions:

1)That the money which the rich spend and invest creates economic activity, growth, and jobs

2)That the rich have earned and therefor are entitled to their money.

3)That taxing the working class would generate more total tax money because there are so many more of them to tax

1)The investments of the rich do not generate economic activity. If they were not hoarding it, that same money would still be around. Business could get capital from government and bank loans, and from the stock market. That is, in fact, the whole point of the stock market, that capital is obtained from many small sources instead of one giant one.
Its as if one person hoards all the hammers in town, and rents them out to people, then wants credit for the houses other people built with them. If they weren't hoarding the hammers, the hammers would still exist. If they were distributed equitably, no one would need to rent them, therefor building would be cheaper, therefor more would get built. In this way the fact that someone is hoarding and charging interest actually depresses economic activity, because those hoarding the cash skim a little off the top of every financial transaction thereby increasing its cost.

2)The super rich do not earn, and therefor are in no way "entitled" to or "deserve" the money they have. Extremely few of the top 1% of wealth holders got there from some brilliant invention, and even fewer of the top .1%, .01%, and so on. Those at the very top get their wealth primarily from inheritance, and then build on it by collecting dividends and capital gains. They do not actually go to a job and do useful productive work.
Those who do make a salary are not necessarily earning their money either. CEOs make multimillion dollar salaries plus bonuses even when they run their companies into the ground, as we saw just recently, with even companies that needed to be bailed out with tax dollars giving their CEOs multimillion dollar bonuses.

3)The bottom 40% averages about 20k a year. Total annual income is 2.4 trillion.
The top 0.1% averages 7 million a year. Total annual income is 2.1 trillion.
300k rich people have nearly the same total income between them as 120million working class people.

The top 1% averages over 1million a year. Total annual income is 3.3 trillion, far more than the sum of every working class person in the country.

You could tax the working class at a rate of 69% of income and still not bring in as much tax money as you would by taxing the rich at a rate of 50%.
You can't squeeze blood from a turnip.

Furthermore, if you did that, the rich are left with, on average, half a million a year.
Half a million which, remember, they didn't really earn.
The poor are left with $6200.

In order to make a flat tax even approach "fair", you would have to make several other large changes to level the playing field.

First off, you have to eliminate ALL inheritance.  That means 100% inheritance tax on everyone, from ultra wealthy to middle class.  You earn your money in your lifetime, and then it gets recycled back into society.  There is no justification to say that a person is entitled to money they did nothing to earn. 

Second, you have to make education both free and mandatory from pre-school to at least bachelor's degree, if not more.

Third, you have to distinguish between income that comes from doing productive work (wages) from un-earned income such as dividends, interest, and capital gains.  Someone who merely skims off the top of other peoples work should be taxed at a higher rate then someone who actually earns their pay by working for a living and positively contributing to society.

When libertarians and the wealthy begin to fight to level the playing field, then and only then can they claim that a flat tax is about "fairness"

A flat tax is both impractical and immoral.

Now people who couldn't make it can vicariously experience 4 separate components of the party.

Full Contact Spoons - the only existing recording of the greatest full contact sport in the world.  There is only 1 min and 17 sec worth because we are all old and fat and lazy.


Super Smash Bros - I am playing 3 on one (everyone against me) on one TV while simultaneously coaching the people playing Mario Kart on a different TV.
There is also a handicap against me.
And I won.
Repeatedly.
:)



Dancing - 4 hours worth.  I only wore the shoes for a couple songs



Cake at midnight - my comment at the end refers to the fact that 3 different people made/brought cakes, and they all independently put my signature smiley face on them

On the popular TV show "The Office", the branch manager is a bit of a doofus.  He's not all that bright, he is totally obsessed with having his employees like him on a personal level, and he has very little knowledge of actual business or management theory.
He makes his superiors wring their hands and shake their heads - but the thing is, his office's sales record is the best in the company, so despite his many, many faux pax, he always keeps his job.

Nobody can quite figure out how he manages to good such a good job in spite of himself.

Even though he tells them quite clearly, time and again.

He considers his employees family.
He wants his customers to feel cared for.
He is more interested in making people happy than in making money.

You can't learn to be community based and to value clients as actual people in business school.  You can't use the idea of caring about people and being friendly to increase the bottom line, because if your interest is in the bottom line, you are genuinely interested in people.  You can't fake authenticity. 

Its either about the love, or its about money. Once you start thinking about rate of return ratios, receivables balance fractions, risk-adjusted profitability, or marginal value-added pricing structures, and all the other things one learns in business school, you are far beyond the point of seeing every person you work for and every person you work with as numbers.

From there it is a very slippery slope to the scenario described by "Jack" in Fight Club: If the cost of the average rate of settlement times the expected rate of failure is less than the cost of a recall for a known deadly manufacturing error, we don't do the recall.
In the end it comes down to morality.  Its either being moral, or maximizing profit.  They are mutually exclusive.

No business is going to have as their slogan "All we care about is your money", and a lot of them try in ads to sound like it isn't true; for any public corporation it is actually illegal for them to consider anything else above the bottom line - if they tried the shareholders could sue. 
For the vast majority of companies jumping on the band wagon, being environmentally responsible is a marketing gimmick as much as a catchy jingle.

Thinking in terms of doing productive work for society while earning fair compensation, as opposed to thinking of how to maximize revenue while minimizing costs will not (always) lead to the highest possible profits.

It will, I think, mean that business actually increases while the rest of the country is in an economic downturn.  It means getting so many referrals its necessary to turn jobs down after going a year and a half without any form of advertising.  It means when, inevitably, mistakes are made, no customer ever makes a claim, because they realize they are not just numbers, that every attempt to be careful was made, all actions in good faith. 
It means that quite a few of my customers make me meals while I'm working.

If a job is a paycheck, it will show through to the customer, no matter how you try to hide it.
If I am ever in a position to hire anyone, my first question will not be about education or experience or abilities or references.  My first and most important question is just this: Why do you want the job?  If its about pay and benefits, no matter how qualified, its "next please".

It has to be about the love.

One of the things that happens when you get too old, you spend more time re-telling old stories than generating new ones.
I have a couple new ones now.

Everything went exactly as I had envisioned it, which I find remarkable considering how little planning and prep went into it.  Every portion was filled with participants, and all of you get the credit for that. All in all, not counting guests of guests, and the people who had to attend because it was in their house, about 35 people showed up, which is more people than I would have guessed I even know.

I want to extend a most enthusiastic thanks to everyone who came - however briefly - to my party, helping to make it an unmitigated success.
Most especially I wish to thank Greg for offering his house for the party, and Andy, Peter, Robin, Bret, Vern, and Vern's wife (who's name I don't remember since I met her then for the first time) for tolerating it.
Extra thanks to Peter and Jesse who helped me set up at the mansion and clean up again after, and Laura who helped me clear the field of poop, and to whoever found the 2nd N64.
Much thanks to Beth and Jessica who made 2 desserts each and my mom and Lois who brought one with candles - and all of them with my signature smiley face, "Banana Nose", my trademark since Jr. High.
A special thanks too, to Larry who came early and stayed 'till the end, and Sasha and Irina and Lois and Dajenya and Jesse who participated in each separate stage.
Thanks to Larry for the extensive documentation:

(I broke out the stilettos for the first time since prom for a few songs) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fmbhs76CnAo

(The very end)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1kW34_om36g

I try not to be too narcissistic, but honestly, I'd have to say last Saturday was the most fun party I've ever been to.  Maybe I shouldn't wait 30 years to have the next one afterall...
(In the meantime, I will have other amtgard/spoons games.  Let me know if you'd like to be on the notification list for future games.)

And now on to other things, being mature and responsible and productive and all that sort of thing.

Occasionally I end up driving other people's cars.

Invariably, I have to adjust the mirrors.
I often question why they were set the way they were, and the answer is usually some variant of "I like it that way".
I realized that probably a whole lot of people probably see it that way.

Setting mirrors is not a matter of personal preference.
There is an absolute right and wrong way to do it.

Before you accuse me of being a mirror nazi, consider that car accidents kill more Americans under 50 than disease and murder combined; 100 every single day.

As someone who rides a bike, skates, rides a motorcycle,  has driven large commercial trucks with large commercial size blindspots, and nearly been run over inside other peoples blindspots, I say again, with emphasis, setting the mirrors on your car is not a subjective exercise.
Doing it wrong can literally mean the difference between life and death.

I have heard on more than one occasion "I don't want to look at the ground."

Actually, the ground is EXACTLY what you want to be able to see.
Cars are on the ground. Bikes, and small children whose heads are no higher than the bottom of the window, and the balls they roll out into the street, all on the ground. When you parallel park, the curb is on the ground.
Even the largest truck has its tires on the ground, so if you can see the ground, you can see the truck.
The chances that you need to be aware of a very low flying airplane, or perhaps a hovercraft coming up behind you as you drive are very close to zero.

Many people set their mirrors so that the horizon is in the exact center of the mirror. This means an entire half of the mirrors area is wasted with sky.
That half of the mirror being wasted means an unnecessary blind spot.
If the horizon were instead at the very top of the mirror, you could still see all the way down the road behind you, and in addition you could see anything right beside you down lower than the window level as well.

The second mistake is setting the side mirrors so that a substantial amount of what you see is your own car. But just like you don't need to worry about the sky when you merge, the chances your rear fender is going to hit you is pretty darn low.

One reason people do this is because at that angle you can use the side mirror to see directly behind. That's what the rear-view mirror attached to the windshield is for.

The other reason is to have a reference point to help determine where what you see in the mirror is in relation to your car.
Of course, with a little time and practice anyone will get used to the new position. And everyone should really know exactly where the edges of their car are anyway (I sure wish the DMV mandated cone tests for everyone). And you can always just move your head a little bit and see the car in the mirror.
But if you really feel you need to see the car you are driving as a reference point, just leave the tiniest sliver of the back of the trunk visible, so you get maximum mirror area for seeing whats out there moving about and potentially colliding with you.

While its still important to double-check by actually turning one's head, with the mirrors set properly it is in fact a double-check, and not a first check of blind spots. Because there are no blind-spots.
Set up properly, you can make it so there is virtually no blind spot at all. So that if a little person were hiding right alongside the door, you'd know it without even having to turn your head. So that a passing car is visible at all times, first in the rear view, then in the sideview, and finally through the window, without any gap along the way.

It will feel a little odd at first. Give it a chance. And when you don't die in a fiery and gory wreck, come back and thank me.

So many people, when the subject of christmas lights come up, they acknowledge they are nice, but go on to add "but they are a waste of energy".

As someone who feels strongly that American's use of energy and resources is morally unacceptable, I would like to be very clear about this:
Christmas lights are NOT a waste of energy.

That 80% of car trips have only the driver or a driver and one passenger, yet seat from 5-7 people is a waste of energy.  That we live, on average, 20 miles from our jobs is a waste of energy.  Uninsulated attics and unweather stripped doors and windows in houses and power steering and air conditioning in cars, all electric kitchens, and cars that weigh 50% more than they did 20 years ago and have 200% more power are all enormous wastes of energy.
Buying enormous amounts of crap that no one really needs and that get shoved into a closet or thrown out after a few weeks wastes energy in manufacture and transport.

Not one of those things provides any significant increase in quality of life.  None of them make people happy to be alive.  At most they provide a tiny increase in convince.  At worst they do nothing but cost money.  None of them create joy.

In a land where profit is considered the only motivating factor for nearly everything in life, filled with people who don't know their neighbors, where 50% of people can't be bothered to take the effort to use their turn signals, for a few weeks a year people do something with no financial benefit, no increase in comfort or convenience, no direct personal benefit.
You don't even see them from inside the house.  Everyone else passing by sees them.
They turn an ordinary neighborhood into a magical place.
They create joy.
Which makes them one of the few valid uses of energy in this country.
Because ultimately, making it enjoyable is really the only point there is to life. 

So go ahead and enjoy those giant flashy displays and don't for a second feel guilty about it.
Put up your own even.

You can get a strip of LED lights for less than $10 that use less than 5 watts of power, (far less than a single florescent light bulb).
I even found a set for under $5 that runs for days on just (rechargeable) AA batteries.

But LED or no, the lights are worthwhile and good.

A world without christmas lights is not a world worth saving.

In less than a month, I will no longer be one of those people who are "in their 20s".
I'm driving slower, I own my home, I'm self-employed, and I have a credit rating above 800.
Defying all that makes sense in the world, I've been gradually becoming a responsible adult.
As of midnight Jan 9th of next year, it will become official.

Living to 90 is a fair goal.
If you chop life into 3 big blocks, 90 / 3, then 0-30 would be youth.  60-90 would be old age.  Which leaves 30-60 to be middle aged.
Wow.
Man.
Crazy.
I am a month away from middle aged.
I'm a divorcee who lives with 2 cats and is currently researching the tax affects of different types of individual retirement accounts.
I don't entirely understand how this happened.


I'm not one to throw parties.
In fact, the last time I hosted a party entirely on my own was - never.

On Saturday, January 9th, 2009, I will have my "Last Day of Youth" party.

Full Contact Spoons and Amtgard in the park (Lake Merrit in Oakland, between fairyland and the bowling green)

Video games: Perfect Dark and Super Smash Brothers and Mario Kart.
Like we used to play in high-school.  I've been playing against my 8 year old neighbor, so I don't suck as much as I did back then.

At the Mansion (292 Lee St)

Hours of non-stop dancing starting at sun down

I went through thousands of tracks, one by one, and selected across multiple genres for maximum danceability, ordered them by beats per minutes, and have them beat-matched and cross faded by robot DJ (aka my laptop - nothing like the real thing, but about $600 cheaper). 7 hours worth of rock-a-billy followed by funk followed by hip-hop followed by "gypsy punk" followed by pop.

There are to be no presents or gifts of any kind.  Seriously.  I have enough stuff and enough money.  And not enough space.  This includes home-made stuff and things that would actually be useful to me.  Nothing.
(Edibles and sorbiles -cake, alcohol, whatever- would be appreciated, but that would be to share with everyone.)
Your presence is my present.
Playing spoons and dancing non-stop until my neighbors complain or we pass out from exhaustion is my present.  Might be a good idea to start an exercise program now to prepare...

Because I would like even my feeble friends to attend, I am suspending my usual rule that anyone who shows up to spoons has to play.

I can not think of a good way to end this

The Earth has been around about 5 billion years, life about 4 billion.
Half a billion years for animals, 200 billion for mammals.
200,000 years of humans.
For the first 192,000 years or so, the human population was under 10 million people world wide.
Increasing 10 fold took 6000 more years.
We rocketed from 100 million to a billion in just over 2000 years.
The next billion only took 120 years.
And then 30.
And since the 1950s, we have added a billion people every 13 years or so.

We are at around 6.75 billion people now.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b7/Population_curve.svg

Its estimated that it will hit 9 billion in about another 30 years.
That new 2 and a quarter billion people will be our children.

We like to point to the 3rd world, to Asia and Africa, but in the measure that matters, the US is by far the most overpopulated country in the world, as well as one of the fastest growing.

Population is only an issue because of the finite resources the Earth can provide. If we had unlimited resources there wouldn't be any reason not to keep increasing indefinitely.

If everyone used the same amount of water, land, and energy, and caused the same amount of pollution as the average person in the third world, we would all be ok for a long time to come. Due to lack of ability, what we call poverty, people in the third world tend to use less than their share of world resources.
The average person in the first world uses 5 times more than the overall world average.
The average American uses 20 times more. Each of us uses about 20 times more water, 20 times more fuel and electricity, 20 times as much land to produce our food, produces 20 times more waste and pollution.
Which means that in the big picture, each of us counts for 20 people.

So our 305 million population may as well be 6.1 billion, far more than China's 1.3 billion. They would have to increase some combination of actual population and consumption per person by far before we could legitimately point the finger at them.

It also means that each child we have counts as 20 people, turning our fertility rate of 2.1 (already above the replacement rate of 2) into the equivalent of 42 per woman, 6 times higher than the highest rate of any third world country - and almost 17 times higher than the world average.

In the US alone there are 200,000 children waiting to be adopted.


It is one of the most basic and universal desires is to reproduce. How could it be any other way? Because if that drive weren't passed along genetic lines, our ancestors wouldn't have bothered, and we wouldn't be here to think about it.

There has been a widespread assumption that because it is natural and universal that therefor it should be considered a human right.

Our modern world does not resemble the savanna we evolved on. We also have biological instincts to eat whenever food is available in case it isn't tomorrow - and the result is rampant obesity - and a good number of us making the conscious choice to go against instinct and manipulate ourselves in ways that take into consideration the reality of our world. Violence is natural and universal, but we agree as a society that the costs are not acceptable and make the conscious decision to repress it, both as individuals and as communities.
Because, we can do that, we can think, and make choices.

To make wine or beer, you start with grape juice or grains and add microorganisms.
For them it is an incredible feast!

Character limited blog server; read the rest here: http://neapolitanblog.blogspot.com/2009/12/wine-barrel-population-and-parenthood.html

My last collection of status messages was way too long.
I wouldn't want to go through and click all those links.
But they were all very interesting!
For reals tho!

So I'm going to post the collections here a little more often.
Plus, then I don't have to write anything new.  Writing is hard.  And time consuming.
And it consumes a lot of calories, having to think so much.

Without further ado, the gmail status messages I have had between my last post and today (most recent at the top):

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

parkour class = most fun thing ever
http://www.sfparkour.com/forum/showthread.php?t=2639

THERE IS SO MUCH TO LEARN

my legend builds... http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kirsten-dirksen/when-hackers-took-my-vide_b_356801.html

The brain uses about 20 percent of the calories that we eat.

finally scientific confirmation that men are jerks http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/80beats/2009/11/12/men-are-far-more-likely-to-abandon-a-seriously-ill-spouse/

large SUVs may be illegal on your street. http://slate.msn.com/id/2104755/

I am not off the grid. More like I sip and nibble at the edges, while typical Americans gobble giant gluttonous globs of grid.

Incompetent people more self-confident than competent people.  This explains SO much http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2000/01/18/MN73840.DTL

The best predictor of whether someone voted for or against Prop 8 was how frequently a voter attended a place of worship.

culture=conformity

2 hours by car, or 12 min by BART - the choice is clear; you might accidentally touch a stranger on BART.
BART ridership up 50%.  San Mateo bridge traffic up 300%.  Americans make me sick.

"the only difference between the good guys and bad guys is who's paying the bills" - Jacob Aziza, problem solver.

http://trackersbay.com/outdoor-adventure.php

I am down to 35 inbox messages and 2 marked unread

removing a quarter million single occupant commuters sure makes for a smooth rush hour

I get a perversely intense joy from the bridge closure

http://progressiveboink.com/jon/images/calvinhobbes/jon2.GIF

I have normal cholesterol, glucose, and blood pressure levels

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2009/01/fiscal-therapy

week 2 of gym membership.  intensity level mixture of almost crying and almost throwing up.  I will be in the best shape of my life, assuming I survive it long enough.

I've been thinking about mortality lately. I've decided to spend the brief time I have here being awesome.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Chu

I am short, Black, and poor.  The three least attractive traits for single women, statistically.  I must be one hell of an amazing individual to have had the experiences I had dating this past year.

just because I agree with you once does not make you an idiot

The more charming a guy is, the less he respects her

not learning from your mistakes is the ultimate sign of living in the present

cats don't worry

Last time it was almost a years worth of status messages.

This time was only a month or two.  Even so, it wouldn't all fit in a single entry of my extremely character limited blog server that comes free with my cheapo website host server.

Here are a few more:

"You don't make me feel guilty at all.  You inspire me."

white women are racist http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/2009/10/05/your-race-affects-whether-people-write-you-back/

word hard, makes lots of money, die young: http://tiny.cc/moneyVlife
perhaps government should be looking for ways to extend the recession

My home; clean. In 3D. http://photosynth.net/view.aspx?cid=BFE455B7-3CC4-478C-9AD6-D51C2CF8393F

Vigilante coast guard turned pirates: robin hood or thug? http://www.playboy.com/articles/playboy-forum-pirates-of-somalia/index.html

http://www.parkingday.org/

It is a luxury of the economically comfortable to cater to irrational fears

Research has shown that cognitive behavioral therapy is just as effective as anti-depressants.  Without any medical side-effects.
http://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/content/abstract/156/7/1007
http://www.womensmentalhealth.org/posts/cognitive-therapy-versus-medication-in-the-treatment-of-depression/

"Green" too often today means "moderately less destructive version of something we don't need in the first place

Schools taking fingerprints of poor children before giving them lunch http://www.woio.com/Global/story.asp?S=2885663

So much for "large heavy vehicles are safe" http://wheels.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/17/a-2009-chevy-malibu-destroys-a-1959-bel-air-literally/

New anti-capitalist rate structure http://biodieselhauling.org/rates

1500

"Good taste is the first refuge of the uncreative."

Health insurance companies make over $1 million per employee http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/global500/2009/performers/industries/bangbuck/employees.html

lest there was any doubt the real reason medicines cost so much:  the money is going to profits.  Also note that air travel is highly subsidized, and neither environmentally nor even financially sustainable: http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/global500/2009/performers/industries/profits/

Math, Geography, and Reading Tutor

teacher = hero

Now accepting information, contacts, and donations regarding non-profits, grant writing, education, and libraries.

I am now officially a treasurer. 
Now I need to figure out what that actually means...

Free wood http://sfbay.craigslist.org/eby/zip/1359697320.html

http://laughingsquid.com/never-go-to-work-by-they-might-be-giants/

http://community.feministing.com/2009/08/the-irony-of-anti-sex-positive.html

Commuter dog http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/article2372125.ece

http://gubbinsexperiment.blogspot.com/2009/08/questioning-industrialization.html