Ham radio operator operated flea markets

I like Paul's story about being a ham radio operator and going to a flea market put on by his peers.

32% of farmers don't have health insurance

I saw this figure in USA Today a week ago (couldn't find it there, but found the original (Delaware) NewsJournal article via Google).

$10,000: Annual cost of health insurance for a couple age 40-44 in Blue Cross Blue Shield's plan for Delaware Farm Bureau members.

$21,696: Annual cost of health insurance for a couple age 60-64 in the Delaware Farm Bureau plan.

All of these figures make me sad.

I'm opposed to the current farm susidies because it props up people who make over 100,000$/year. But I wish we could do something to support family farmers like this and make sure they at least have health insurance, especially the ones who are 60 and over.

Just the kind of geeky thing I'm interested in...

A discussion on language hat about the history of the letter 'Q' that morphs into a discussion of various orthographies.

Reminds me of telling one of my students that I was playing basketball with this kid who was a computer geek and I thought I'd be able to push him around, but couldn't, and she laughed and said 'What do you think you are?'

Matthew

Did you see his post about robots? Makes me laugh...

Linkin Par(k/t 2)

Macon writes more about his interactions with Linkin Park. Keep it coming, Big M.

More movies

kottke links Movies that deserve more love. I agree with a lot of these. Some that standout:

A Simple Plan
Gattaca
Contact (though I hate the politics of it)
The Iron Giant
Young Sherlock Holmes
Nothing to Lose (this movie has some funny moments)
Atlantis (major props to Mike Mignola)
Long Kiss Goodnight (my friend Bryan T loves this one)
The Peacemaker
Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey
The Money Pit
The Mosquito Coast
Big Night
The Winslow Boy
The Hudsucker Proxy

to see:
Equilibrium
James and the Giant Peach
In the Line of Fire
The Tailor of Panama
The Thomas Crown Affair
Zero Effect
Batman: Mask of the Phantasm
A Life Less Ordinary

What do you thinK? Want to call me off on any of these?

Linkin Park Greensboro review

Macon went to see them a couple of weeks ago and posted his review. I hope he writes the second half eventually.

Radiohead

My friend Kurt loves Radiohead. He has said that he feels like Radiohead is 'the sound on Nineveh repenting'.

My friend Robbi loves music. He has said the he feels like 'Hail to the Thief' is the sound of Nineveh getting self-righteous.

*begin technical religious discussion*

I think Radiohead is not the sound of Nineveh repenting, but the sound of Nineveh lamenting. Repentance, in my mind, in a technical sense, in Christian context, requires faith and some knowledge of God. It requires some 'changing of mind'. I don't see these things in Radiohead. From my viewpoint they talk about the brokenness of the world, and they're sad about it, but there's no sense of a move to change, or even of any direction to change in.

However, I think Robbi's charge that 'Hail to the Thief' is the sound of Nineveh getting self-righteous is too critical. Instead, I would say that 'Hail to the Thief' is the sound of Nineveh criticizing Jerusalem. Jerusalem is the people who claim to have it right, but they lack compassion. Their religious observances are often shallow. They view their status as 'chosen people' as license for arrogance. The nice thing about Radiohead is that they don't have it all figured out, and they know that, and they don't claim to. And I think they're properly critical of those who do.

What do you think?

Alright, one more

Matthew has an update on the Squirrelly:

The Squirrelly, a boy, was born at 2:42 AM on February 22nd in the Seattle Group Health Central campus. His birth weight was 7 lbs and 6 oz., he was 19.5 inches long, and, right from the get-go, it was clear that he'd inherited his father's boundless reverence for breasts.

I've said it before: that dude is funny.

And you should click through just to see how cute the kid is.

My comment:

preview (poop talk from 4.5 year olds):

*yells from the bathroom*
'Daddy, can you come make sure i got all the poop-fots?!'

[editor's note: kids cannot say 's' plus any other consonant: sm, sw, sp, etc. In this case 'fots' represents 'spots'.]

i agree: that boy is handsome.

I'm out

Not like I'd posted in the last three days, anyway. I'm off on a short business trip, so look for an update this weekend.

Spam from the dearly departed

I was about to delete that spam when I saw that it was from Fanny Crosby.

I don't see the Fanny I know pitching Cialis, though, so in the trash it goes.

Ursula K Le Guin

Nice interview with her in the Guardian. (via MeFi)

In searching for that FPP, I found another, older one with a lot of links.

All things Morrissey

(Heads up, Christopher.)

Morrissey gets a job sampler. Guaranteed to make you smile (if you like the Smiths).

William Dembski is my (new) hero

I just finished reading his 'Intelligent Design' and it was really impressive.

His website has a ton of material on it, if you're interested. Of course, his work is more interesting if you are open to non-materialist or non-naturalist explanations of creation.

Maybe you'd be interested in his testimony before the Texas State Board of Education or the ID FAQ he handed out there.

I think Dembski's Vita is pretty impressive, too:

B.A. psychology University of Illinois at Chicago 1981
M.S. statistics University of Illinois at Chicago 1983
S.M. mathematics University of Chicago 1985
Ph.D. mathematics University of Chicago 1988
M.A. philosophy University of Illinois at Chicago 1993
Ph.D. philosophy University of Illinois at Chicago 1996
M.Div. theology Princeton Theological Seminary 1996

I should be explicit that Dembski attempts to explain creation from a purely scientific standpoint. This does not include science that categorically rejects everything nonmaterialist or nonnaturalist (if you don't like this definition of science, let's discuss it).

If this topic were to expand, what specific issues would you be interested in? What (civil) questions would you have? I have no intention of just puking ID on to you. That doesn't usually create dialogue.

Buffalo Blog

The blogger of the Buffalo Blog needs to move back up the list, so I present you with The Libertarian Purity test (via the Buffalo Blog)

(Funny quiz. I got 16, a little higher than Jaq-the-tax-and-spend-bleeding-heart-liberal :-)

Defense spending

Hmm. Can't find a great link for it. This one's a start. USA Today had a debate about defense spending on thursday. They supported cutting the Comanche, F/A 22, and V-22. The counterpoint said we needed all of them to be modern.

But I'm thinking nobody can afford to be as modern as us anymore. We need deployability and stuff that's good against insurgents, not a top-of-the-line fighter like the F/A 22 (plus the Joint Strike Fighter is still in the works).

With the budget the way it is, I think we better cut weapons systems where we can, which, to me, means just about wherever someone can make a good argument for it. We need to be spending our money on the things servicepeople need.

David exonerated

The woman was misquoted in the Beeb.

(I feel like this is the People for David Salo.)

The Champions

Bet you didn't see that Wartburg won the D-3 Wrestling championship this year. Jim Miller has produced unbelieveable results since he's been there.

The Squirelly

Congratulations to Matthew Baldwin and the Queen on the birth of their child.

More on the hundred albums

Aaron's really running with this bad-boy. And he links Mark's own long screed.

More on David

Language Hat links another article on David Salo, Tolkien linguist extraordinaire, which links another article. I'm still amazed at what he knows.

The Language Hat article was about Elvish in school, which I didn't read. Turns out the woman teaching it was quoted saying David disrespected Tolkien. Read David's reply.

Lessig lost

Lawrence Lessig is the dean of liberal digital distirbution thinkers. And he lost what we hoped would be a landmark case, Eldred v. Ashcroft. He just came out with an article about how the case could have been won: How I lost the big one.

There's a post about it at MetaFilter that I want to comment on. It follows a typical MeFi pattern of people beginning by overstating, insulting one another, then having some useful commentary about the middle ground.

- copyright should not be extended forever. 20 years is plenty. The Constitution can certainly be argued that way, not to mention 'fair use'.
- if this should be Congress' baby then they need to change the law. And there's hope that they will.
- artists should have rights to their material for a limited period of time (eg, 20 years).
- Lessig's idea to require affirmative re-registration of copyright for a nominal fee is a wonderful idea.

(And I still need to respond to Jaq's long post on this stuff, but I just haven't gotten around to it yet.)

100 albums again

Aaron lists 24 you should keep.

The Onion Diet

New Nietzschean Diet Lets You Eat Whatever You Fear Most

This will be more funny to you if you were a philosophy major (or equivalent experience).

TypePad

I got 20 20%lifetime discount codes from TypePad for being a beta tester. If you'd like one, just drop me a line.

Wicked cool

A map of subways of the world, to scale. (via kottke)

Does 'Bolero' stink?

Jaq commented in an off-handed way that it did, and I asked him why, and he explained it.

Two from language hat

Decrying the common missue of 'literally', and the use of another word.

Amazing weblog name: Anggarrgoon (Bardi for 'on the web').

Remaindered links

There are from a while ago:

One Hundred Albums You Should Remove from Your Collection Immediately. I think this article is funny. Of course, I own and like some of this music. This guy is the consummate music snob. Some of the commenters are really angry.

For balance, here's the same dude's iPod list.

And, popular 80s video games (in Flash).

LotR: RotK sweep

I am, of course, happy about the sweep. I'm also a little surprised. I really worried as they won every little thing that Director and Picture would go elsewhere, but I'm really happy for them.

Blogging study

You've probably already read about the Pew study on weblogging. At the most, .7% of adult internet users have a log and update it daily.

Bwa ha ha! We are quietly taking over the world and no one knows!