preservingelitism

I rattled off this comment to something on the Trib webpage a couple days back. After some thought I've decided I rather like the wording, so I'm putting it here rather than let it simply languish in the forgotten Trib archives.

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"Elitist," apparently means anyone who thinks the people should put more thought into politics than just cheering whoever buys the most ad time during NASCAR to tell them how great they are just for being born in the USA. "Elitist" is anyone who thinks the people should think more about philosophy than merely internalizing whatever daddy and the preacher told them in childhood. "Elitist" is anyone who thinks people should care more about art and culture than merely deciding which summer blockbuster has the coolest explosions and which country/pop/hiphop star has the catchiest unchallenging tunes.

You're an "elitist" if you think the people ought to be anything more than easily manipulated pawns of the already wealthy and powerful.
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gettin'elected

It occurs to me that if one is interested in the U.S. presidential elections, their major issues, and likely results, then the least relevant information is what the candidates themselves say. Look to the wisdom of the crowd, such as it is. Hear what people say about what people say about what people say about what the candidates say. Examine the textures of information and try to take the derivative of it all.

I don't think it's yet time to run for the hills, move to Sweden, sign up for Re-Ned-ucation, or wage bloody revolution.

justnicely.youknow

Oy, you know that hyperalert state where you're somewhat drunk and you focus and rebalance your sensory systems 'cause you know you can't quite trust your automatics, and then when you get home you can relax and so then the alcohol effects really come to your conscious attention? Yeah, me too.

Reggae still annoys me on radio, but it makes pretty decent bar live music.

Note to all musicians travelling to Utah: bring a fair sound artist along, 'cause you can't trust the club's sound guy to know shit around here.

thepowersolar

At last humans have found a use for photosynthesis.

expletivewindowsdeleted

So, back from my excursion with my family (had a great time, maybe I'll write about it later), I find that -not for the first time- my desktop computer has taken the opportunity of being left off for several days as a chance to fuck itself over. So now, after several unsuccessful attempts at repair and reinstallation, including -definitely not for the first time- a perfectly functional new XP install suddenly becoming unbootable and unrestorable after exposure to one of Microsoft's "critical security updates, I'm now writing this from my shiny new Ubuntu 8.04 installation.

Is that a run-on sentence? Or something else? Parenthetical statements and nested subordinate clauses just look to me like side branches to a no-longer-merely-linear sentence.

This isn't my first foray into linux territory, having previously played with Xubuntu's Fawn and Gibbon varieties, and briefly with Debian and Stormix years ago, and of course my laptop is an Eee. And I'll be running linux and nothing but until some future time when I delude myself into thinking a dual boot would be cool and maybe I can coax this ancient computer into running games again. (Games, and certain proprietary programs in certain professional industries, are the only thing you might require Windows for.)

I find any of the desktop-oriented linux distros is much easier to install and use than Windows. I have to delicately tweak and coax XP for hours to get a desktop environment I like, with a high risk of failure, whereas a linux liveCD can give me a comfortable working install in half an hour or so. This in spite of my slipstreamed updated XP install disc. (If you are inclined to play with windows, I highly recommend getting the latest service pack and your own pick of relevent updates in download form -the one where Microsoft says "only for IT professionals installing on many computers"- and using either nLite or vLite to burn a fully-updated Windows install disc. This will cut your Windows setup time in half --to a mere two or three hours.)

readin'ritin'ncombinatorics

I am constrained by conventional language in trying to write.
Any idea, inspired by what I've seen or done or read or a conversation I've had, becomes a cascade of parallel inter-referencing verbal and nonverbal thoughts. Often several of these lead to linear things I'd like to say or write out, but the feedback continues and I often find I've gone through an inner turn of phrase that may never recur. Sometimes I can bring them back. And sometimes I sit to write them down and find the perfect words aren't there anymore.

Thinking is like an abstracted drug.

Yeah, it's just another blogosphere-clogging post from a would-be writer on the topic of writer's block. Mostly. Sort of.

thoughtovthemoment

No task is beneath anyone. Subordination is beneath everyone.

noexitphoning

The Salt Lake City Weekly this week is carrying a repeat of the No Exit comic "Conflicting Constituent Groups of the Republican Party." It may be a testament to my poor googling skills that I can't find a link to the comic online (though the artist's website has a temporary sampler of the Democratic Party version.) Still, if you happen to be somewhere that carries CW, it's worth a glance. At least I find it pretty on-the-spot. "When I get rich, I'll want a tax cut."

At least a small measure of the difference between my playing with Libertarian economics and playing with Liberal economics (irrespective of the fact that in a pure ubercapitalist health care system, I probably died some time last year) comes of considering "just whose side am I on?" And the comic in part addresses that.

burstinginair

Aerial fireworks are very pretty. But there's a part of their beauty I found myself dwelling on in particular at Friday's show. After the carefully correographed explosion, the fading sparks drift on the air currents, curling around one another. The neat pattern loses its sphere or ring or whatever shape it was designed to have, and a new ephemeral pattern falls out and fades. It's the part of the burst that's not controlled, and I found it oddly fascinating.