Something I wrote recently to rile up the Libertarian types who frequent a private message boards I sometimes frequent
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_statutory_minimum_employment_leave_...
So of, like, all the Industrialized world, we're the one with no minimum leave.
I know the Conservative/Libertarian view is it should be left strictly as a negotiation between employer and employee, but the fact is the base line for what's "typical" is awfully low here, getting 3 weeks feels like a triumph, when with many other places it would below the minimum.
It also makes me think about "productivity". Increased productivity does correlate with higher unemployment, right? To some degree. Take it too far and it's worse for everyone. But a small company that's squeaking by with 3 employees doesn't want to higher a 4th til this all blows over...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_time - when I hear about how bad Unions are, I think about the bumper sticker that points out it's what brought us to a 5 day, 40 hour working week. I value the 2 day weekend so much i can barely imagine life w/o it.
I think about this, from the great online mini graphic novel The Guy I Almost Was
http://www.electricsheepcomix.com/almostguy/
What I would be doing for a living? I didn't care. According to OMNI magazine, the technological changes of the Eighties were going to be so vast, so profound, that the job market would be unrecognizable by the time I entered the workforce.
Nearly any job I trained for now would be obsolete by 1990. Computers and solar-powered robot factories would be doing most of the work. Consumer goods would be mostly free, and the U.N. would be paying us all not to work.
And of course that's a fantasy. But why? If it could work like that, would it be better? Or at least splitting the difference?
Heh, Lex, maybe with your studies in Utopia/Dystopia, youi can tell me which that would be...
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--I always wanted this kind of look for the Honda Civic Hatchback I had in the 90s or my current Scion xA... that, or just mad hydraulics to go jump, jump down the street.
via Archmage's Friday Pix, always a nice weekly read.
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Might have 2 job offers to consider. Better than 0, but HATE big decisions, polling friends. Consoling myself with new found Coconut M&Ms.
"I like my women the way I like my coffee: detrimental to hippocampal neurogenesis, but conducive to short term memory and attentional control."
--steven0461, http://lesswrong.com/lw/1w1/coffee_when_it_helps_when_it_hurts/
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beeracer TT -
source
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built with processing
OK, at first glance it looks like I already posted this - BUT - if you do a lap, you'll notice that you now have an opponent: you get to play against the ghostly recording of your best lap. It makes it a much more fun game, and kind of with the psychological/learning aid of my previous try, I ended up to get well under 10 seconds...
Made for
THE 371-IN-1 KLIK & PLAY PIRATE KART II: KLIK HARDER.
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http://www.slate.com/id/2246107/ - liked this piece on the big red EXIT vs. the international running man, esp. the Japanese vs. Russian variants.
http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/58280 - sigh, the dot com bubble. Heh, they mention Palm - guess I'm glad I didn't go w/ "invest in what you know + like" idea.
Finally got the hypersensitive "tap to click" disabled on work laptop by installing Dell utils... incidental thumb brushes were turning into rough equivalent of butt dialing.
Happy to see Nomar Garciaparra retiring with the Red Sox if only because "NOMAHH!" is insanely fun to say in a townie accent.
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Five years and one day ago I posted my "big project" Todo list. A year and a half ago I went back to that page, crossed out the stuff I had gotten done, italicized the stuff that didn't matter to me any more.
Time to remake that list! Now organized by site/field of interest.
kisrael.com
- ambed an online doodle/sketch and start adding more doodles to my "of the Moment" section
- harvest quotes for the quote-o-matic viewer
- make a "tags"/tagcloud system and replace the "best of" (which really was just a tag-like organization to find stuff I've done)
- clean out comments spam
- redesign front page, more focus on projects etc, less on random historical stuff
random projects
- elecronic music - I said a project for my 30s is to get all these beats and basslines from way back transcribed and in like mp3 form - halfway done with my 30s, not much to show here
- get a timeline of my life: where I've lived, where I've worked, whom I've loved, major events
- Make and publicize a version of good old pixeltime.
- remake insideu.com (long term project with some former coworkers)
games
- start using my PC USB control pads with Glorious Trainwrecks style games - especially multiplayer stuff with Amber etc
- idea: get a Klik N Play multiplayer Mario Party like joint production going
- reinvigorate my regular video game get-togethers. Tougher and tougher to do, as friends move and/or have kids!
loveblender.com improvements
- "favorites"
- duplicate comments about poem on poem itself
- avatars/bio pages
- decide if i want to grow traffic back to former levels, or am ok with smaller, cozier feel
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ATT slogans for Bos/Camb: "might as well get the iPod touch" "5 bars, no service", "works in more places like ScrewYouiPhoneExclusiveIstan" (Actually, it's weird: popular sites seem to load OK on 3G, obscure ones time-out. Wonder if AT+T just has retarded server problems.)
ATT slogan: "Cannot Open Page Safari could not open the page because the server stopped responding."
"RE @ATTNews #ATT recently released a new study into causes and solutions for the dropout crisis: http://go-att.us/e556 -oh SCHOOL not calls-"
Man- earbuds are a bit gross, even for the reasonably well Q-tipped. On the other hand, dunno if I wanna be "that guy" w/ the DJ headphones.
Just finished "Look Me in the Eye", an Aspergers memoir. Two thoughts: A. These folks are "logical" but miss enough details that they're not always 'rational' B. I think I would be good at explaining things to people with Aspergers.
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Like I made after last summer and
the fall, here is a list of the music I discovered or rediscovered and added into my collection over December through February.
(I like putting the new music in really heavy notation for a while, so it becomes more a part of my life than it would otherwise before going into the mix with the 2,000 other songs I deem iPod-worthy.)
So, most interesting is the (fairly?) new music I ran into: 3 cheers for Shazam and its ability to ID a tune, and 3 cheers for friends who keep me in mind in their own musical journeys and send me sugestions - or sometimes it's just "making the rounds" online.
So there was a bunch of music that I remembered from my past: either I used to own it in a different format, or it wsa the 1990s and I liked the song but not enough to look for it on CD, or it's just something I wanted to own.
And a few songs that I remembered from hearing them in "Boogie Nights"..
- Sunny (Rhett Miller) - couldn't find a video - I guess this wasn't the original like I thought it was, but it's nice
- Sunny (Boney M) nice disco version is what the movie had...
- Brand New Key (Melanie)
My UU covenant group did a Valentine "pick a song you find most romantic" deal... (I thought it was going to be a difficult pick for me but then Amber reminded me of First Day of My Life. Duh.) So I burnt a copy of the play list for everyone, and these were 3 songs I added to my regular rotation... for some of these it was as much the description the group member gave than the song itself.
So, probably the lion's share of songs came from Amber and I watching the 5 hours of the VH1 Top 100 Hip Hop Countdown
Then I had some CDs that I had missed ripping...
when Zune was introduced, one of the very few sample songs they included was from a group called Bitter:Sweet -- interesting future lounge feel to this.
Then, jeez, Eminem's "Curtain Call". It was like 1/6 of the songs on this list, but it felt like even more.
And then there was that DJ Santa outside of Macy's with good sounding remixes of Christmas standards --
basically an exercise in my theory that any song is better with a big old beat behind it. Couldn't find much information online on the cd I bought from
him, but it had something to do with the slightly overly corporate DJBeats4Sale...
- dance of the sugar plum fairy (santa)
- jingle bells (santa)
Finally, last but not least, semi-famous artist Harvey James and his girlfriend do a lovely haunting duet... no video, just a link to the MP3...
- Beyonce (HARVEYJAMESTM ft. Mary Burgers)
Pretty good season for music!
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"There is no safety in numbers, or in anything else."
--James Thurber
iPhone's Visual Voicemail raised the bar, but if Apple was really smart they'd stop showing a separate "missed call" if the caller left voicemail-- it's annoying to have to check two lists. Heck, even an answering machine knows better than that.
"It occurs to me that when my cat licks me, I don't know whether that means I'm delicious or filthy."
--http://twitter.com/loresjoberg
http://www.cracked.com/article_18461_5-creepy-ways-video-games-are-trying-to-get-you-addicted.html - B.F. Skinner, patron saint of video games. Scary stuff, I don't feel so bad about playing so few games these days. Plus, I know "novelty" is what I'm really looking for. Well, that, and the ability to fly a helicopter around.
I guess twitter gmail et al. are my skinner boxes of choice. At least their pellets are based on novelty!
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