Or at least sex appeal. I realize this because Anousheh Ansari is going into space as the first woman space tourist and she’s hot. Hot in in that classy, powerful woman way, as opposed to Paris Hilton, who is mildy amusing on her best day and therefore not really hot.

But sending hot, sexy people suddenly makes space travel more interesting to the general public. Everyone wants to see what hot people are doing or even copy them. Because if you do what sexy people do, you’re sexy too, right? Or at least sexier than that drab thing you call life.

Luckily, others have thought of this, as Madonna has been cleared for flight around 2008.

If only NASA was aware of these things.

Microsoft (mostly) sucks. I know this because I have to use their products daily and they remind me of this. So they’re new , horribly named music player, Zune, will probably suck. Christ, it comes in turd brown:



BUT DAMN the homepage rocks.

There’s a post on 37 signals about work meetings and how they suck. Literally. They rob you of time, focus and energy that would be better spent doing what you need to do.

Dave Sim once wrote that the people who have meetings are the people who don’t have anything to do except go to meetings. He discovered this while meeting with various suits about his comic book Cerebus and whether they would adapt it, merchandise it, etc, etc. All the meetings did was suck up his time, time he could have spent drawing and at the end of the meeting there wasn’t anything to show for the time spent. So he quit having the meetings and concentrated on drawing.

…it’s Tuesday Morning — Cowboy Junkies.

Hey, hey, it’s America’s birtday! Usually I try to read the Declaration of Independence on the 4th, but I haven’t gotten there yet. I was sidetracked by Fredick Douglass’s “The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro”, where he contrasts the spirit of the Constitution with the reality of slavery. It’s a bit long (Douglass can talk/write forever before getting to his point), sometimes repetitve but it’s worth thinking about for a moment. Whatever “good things” came from the American Revolution, the willingness to except slavery is something America will have to deal with for a long time. I don’t have any answers, no one really does, but it is, to me at least, an ugly fact that lurks behind much of what is good about America.

I’m not even sure it can be fixed. Black and white problems seem firmly rooted here, to levels almost unknown by either side. Time might be the only thing that actually solves it because there doesn’t seem to be a way to talk about it without anger and hate coming into play.

Currently, I have in my possession a young, sweet coconut. It’s light tan in color, smaller than most coconuts I’ve seen or shaken and it was sitting next to a professionally done sign that described as a young, sweet coconut, leading me to believe that’s the name of this kind of coconut.

I have never had a coconut before. I have not idea how to open it, but I reminded myself and my wife whne she pointed this out that I DO have a power drill and I know how to use it.

This is why we’re never invited out for fine dining I bet.

Having gotten use to the Internet radio features of iTunes, such as tracking listing, and the vast availability of stations with distinct genres, listening to the radio in my car is boring and lackluster. Hearing a track which I like (which is rare on commercial radio), but don’t know the name of, I’m left stranded and some what disoriented. I look down at the radio, thinking, “Where’s the title of the song and the artist?”. You’d think that would want to encourage people to buy the stuff by telling you who did it, but nope.

Just another nail in that coffin.

That’s the question bouncing around my head this evening: Why write? The short answer is “Why not?”. Maybe that and “Because” are the only real answers to that question. I’ve seen lots of various answers, such as to entertain, or to tell the truth or a story or somesuch. But why do biochemists do whatever the hell it is they do? Why do runners run? There’s no real definite answer, no mystery or secret. People do what they do because that’s who they are. I’m tempted to say write for fun, but it isn’t always fun. Sometimes it’s pulling teeth, sometimes it’s work, sometimes it’s the last damn thing you want to do.

But there is a compulsion, almost a physiological need to write, at least for me. If I don’t do it, the world doesn’t seem right, I don’t feel right, an anchor takes root in my head and starts weighing me down. I do it because I can’t NOT do it, that’s all.

Sometimes the problem isn’t writing, but keeping up with all the things in my head. You see, typing, speech, all that is poor excuse for relaying the original thoughts. As I write this sentence I’m several sentences ahead, at least in my brain, while I’m pondering a few other things in the back of mind. No big deal, lots of people, probably everyone, does that to some extent.


I read somewhere that nothing is actually written, it’s only rewritten, even if it’s the first and only draft. Event he act of writing thoughts is just another draft and of course the act of writing them down changes them, like schrodinger’s cat.

I don’t fully understand it. Sometimes it seems like magic.

Googling the phrase “Why write?”, I come up with a few gems from Daniel Boorstin & Thomas Berger

Just spent the last few minutes deleting comments from this blog. What comments you say, I don’t see no stinkin’ comments button? Well exactly, comments aren’t even activated and I got spammers worming their way in like it’s an office party with an open bar.

But it’s not just the spammer fault is it? Someone has to be clicking on those links, some sad sack of humanity whose fingers start quivering every time they see a link for video poker or “Hot Girls Live!” You’d think people would learn that the only real link to video poker is vpd.com and that the best porn on the net is lonelylibrarians.net.

Hi, I’m a liberal democrat.


This means that I’m for a balanced budget, a strong military that is wisely used, thinking before going to war, government staying the hell outta people’s bedrooms and bodies, a strong education system that teaches critical thinking as opposed to push button job skills, widespread access to health care, reasonable taxes, government over-site (not legal control) of drugs and welfare, controlled immigration, straight answers even when people don’t want to hear them, that it’s the Bill of Rights, not suggestions, hard time and labor for white collar criminals, small business ownership, an understanding that our standard of living will get better, rebuilding our space program, death sentences for pedophiles, practicing democracy here and abroad, zero support for dictators, working hard and playing harder, no more wars on nebulous terms like terror or drugs, being smart enough so that 19 people with box cutters don’t bring America to a standstill, helping those who can help themselves, realizing government can’t fix a person, no more paid lobbyists, a six week election season, term limits, and some government support for the arts.


This means that most of the current Democratic leaders will have to go.

It’s a slow news day. Things have happened of course. Muslims are burning stuff because of a cartoon. A major feminist, the first noted one, died. Iran says “Screw you”. Lots of people when ferry sank.



These things have been repeating on the cable news for the past 4 or 5 hours, as the news usually does. Seems strange to hear such repetition of the news, these days, where a lot of my news comes from online sources, i.e. information I seek out or pull to me. TV and radio just push news, repeating it so that different people listening at different times can hear. Hence, the whole “Top stories of the hour” idea. But having heard it once or four times, do I need to hear it again? Shouldn’t a person be able to move on, maybe mark a story as read, so that when they view the news again they only get new stories and/or updates to stories? Just keep pulling in the new stuff once you’ve read things, moving ahead to the new news. It’s a big world, how can there be a slow news day? Isn’t there something happening somewhere?


New devices for tv, web, print (digital paper), radio and ANY OTHER METHOD of delivering information should have this ability, a way to mark stuff as already digested. Should also have the ability to set something aside to look at more closely or recieve specific updates on. Or highlight certain keyords or tags.