Like any other human being, a woman wants to have friends and be appreciated for who she is. Every time she gets an email asking her on a date, she is reminded that she isn't viewed as part of the group, but instead as different, an object of desire, and is certainly not being judged on her technical merit alone.
That's actually a very good point, but it leads to something silly:
This may be hard to stomach, but you need to not hit on women who show up for Linux events, at least not right away. In all likelihood, you are NOT throwing away your only chance at true love by not coming on to her immediately, but you are throwing away your chance to have a fun new member of the Linux community. And even if you still think you're missing a chance at true love, keep in mind that many women brave enough to show up at a LUG or your local mailing list will frequently make the first move anyway. By hitting on them at the first opportunity, you're scaring them away, and you're also scaring away all the other women who might have become interested if the first woman had stayed.
This goes double for women you meet over email or on IRC. You may think that your "Are you single?" line is hysterically witty and suave, but she's heard it a million times. Even if you're joking, even if you already have a girlfriend or are married--don't do it.
And here's something very interesting: Eolas has a patent on plug-ins, applets, scriptlets, and the other things that convert algorithims into webpages. The small business is suing Microsoft for patent infringement, and it will come to trial in the springtime. This could amount to either a greater browser share diversity or ... nothing.
(Slashdot discussion here.)
Saturday, November 9, 2002 01:01 p.m.
Last week's The Economist had a cover story on migration. It makes a very important point that immigrants are not here to stay, neccessarily. It's not a zero-sum exchange. People seem to believe that open borders will me the world will flood into the United States and leave the rest of the land unpopulated. That's ridiculous. Neglecting any empirical evidence for moment, think about the human element: the ties one will always have to his home. No matter where you were raised, whether Kosovo or Calcutta or New Canaan; you know it intimately and it comes with a sense of belonging. This phenomena explains nationalism, and even the nationalism that prevents immigration.
Most immigrants don't want to stay in their adopted country. They want to make money and get educated, then go back home and reap the benefits.
Many are also waiting in time for a stable government in their homeland. Lots of expat Slavs who fled the Soviet Union, returned in the 90s to invest and start businesses.
Secondly, immigrants make our country nice. No, not because we can get Ethiopian, Vietnamese, and Thai food at shopping malls, but because they take the jobs we don't want and live in the places that we're afraid of. If you let Africans take over the scariest ghetto in Anacostia, in a couple years, it would proablby be a safe place. That's because, although Anacostia is scary to us, it's much nicer that the threat of getting killed with machetes. Immigrants appreciate a standard of living unimaginable to us.
Saturday, November 9, 2002 12:00 p.m. Mitchell Milligan's overwhelming sense of civic duty lead him to kindly inform me of the error of my ways:
Hello Joanne,
Yes I it was really stupid of me to believe that I wanted Tammy
Baldwin and not Ron Greer to represent me in Congress. It was stupid
to think that Jim Doyle would make a better governor than Scott
McCallum. It was stupid to want to retain a district attourney who
intervened to prevent someone charged with a minor drug offense
from being deported to Afghanistan. It was stupid to think it was
worth the expense to vote.
I had to pay... well, it didn't cost anything.
I had to go all the way ... I had to go about 30 seconds out of my way
and
the whole process took five minutes.
It certainly was futile because... because... because all the
candidates I
voted for were elected?
If you truly believe that people who vote are stupid then you are
an arrogant moron (an interesting combination of traits), and you
deserve
whatever incompetent leadership you get.
Sincerely,
Mitchell S Milligan
Saturday, November 9, 2002 07:56 a.m. Djibouti Call! By next week 1200 troops will be stationed in East Africa on the hunt for terrorist activity. There is speculation that al Quada will relocate to neighboring Somalia
Friday, November 8, 2002 03:44 p.m. A New Zealand Green MP seeks to label the CIA a terrorist organization after destroying a car full of al Qaeda members in Yemen. Prime Minister Helen Clark rejected this plea.
Thursday, November 7, 2002 12:13 p.m.
My own father, a moderate conservative, voted to keep the income tax.
"I just don't think it's a good time to be doing that right now. Maybe sometime later I'll vote for it..." Why isn't it a good time? "It's just not safe at the moment..." Dad, you won't give me thirty dollars to buy groceries! But you'll volunteer money to the state? "That's different."
Wednesday, November 6, 2002 03:47 p.m. Murray Rothbard pays resepct to H. L. Menken on Lew Rockwell today. My first exposure to his work was "The American Language," when I wrote a paper on that subject for a high school anthropology class. Unlike tranditional "wordsmiths," he seemed welcome to the natural change in words and meaning -- something I really appreciate. There are few things more irritating that those columns in the Washington Post Magazine instructing us to pronounce the "t" in sorbet or that the conotation of moot is the opposite of its definition. Somewhere I can't remeber a blogger was complaining meme has a real definition that is something besides "some cool link you found." So what? Now it means something different -- is this worth crying over? Language evolves. Methinks thou purists doth protest too much!
But back to Menken. His autobiography is juicy. Get your hands on it (bargain bookstore routinely have the papaerback at $5.) It also includes one of my favorite quotes, "the love agonies of a woman six feet in height are always extra poigniant." I wish I could have come up with something more substantial, but that's the Menken my memory has imprinted
Wednesday, November 6, 2002 03:20 p.m. Romenesko's Media News should have a deadpool. As much as i hate to say this, Reason would top my list. I give it eight months before it folds, or at least, is hit with a serious staff overhaul. What is it but a visual assualt on their readership by inauthentic hipness and irony? They're losing guest commentary from notable libertarian thinkers -- and that's what was keeping it going. Is it any surprise? Who's going to volunteer a serious essay if there is a possiblity it will be published in yellow font on an orange background?
Wednesday, November 6, 2002 06:41 a.m.
The website Financial Scandals is well-worth browsing on a slow day. They have a new article up on De Beers' ties to political corruption. It's wrong about antitrust, and suggests the "price" of diamonds is "scandalous," but is an interesting survey of the diamond wars in Africa
Wednesday, November 6, 2002 01:24 a.m.
One of a number of interesting anechdotes I picked up from Educational Freedom in Eastern Europe by Charles L. Glenn, is that in the Caucasus the Soviets encoraged the growth of their seperate languages -- even helping to create differences where there were none. In all other annexed terriories, the Soviets forced Russian down their throat and tried to abolish local culture. They did the opposite in the Caucasus in order to eliminate the threat of a Caucaus-block. It worked. But that's a feeble lead into this link, an article about a nutty president in Turkmenistan by Cullen Murphy (the under-rated Atlantic columnist.)
He has adopted the honorific Turkmenbashi, meaning "Great Leader of All Turkmen." His face appears on the currency of his desert nation, and on its bottles of vodka and packages of tea. He has introduced a line of cologne. Last summer the President proposed, and the parliament agreed, that the month of January would be named Turkmenbashi. October would be named Rukhnama, meaning "spiritual revival," after the title of Turkmenbashi's collection of philosophical musings, which enjoys a compulsory vogue. April would be known as Gurbansoltan, after the mother of the Great Leader of All Turkmen.
Humble too. And if anyone can tell me why whites are politely called "Caucasians," that's one of those things I could never figure out.
Wednesday, November 6, 2002 01:07 a.m.
Unsurprisingly, thirty-three percent of nonvoters are aged 18 to 29-- and I'm one of them. I don't buy this CSM article that the sample set result wouldn't differ much from the population's supposed votes. Universal participation would include many others besides civic prided-minded partisans or those too stupid to realize the cost of going out of your way to the nearest high school gymnasium to cast your ballot by far exceeds the benefit of the miniscule possibility your vote will matter at all. What difference might universal participation make? A greater number of senetors and congressmen with surnames that begin at the top of the alphabet
Tuesday, November 5, 2002 01:21 p.m. Jerry Brito has posted his essay on DC Statehood. It's much more positive than I expected, and it's well worth reading.
As Jerry pointed out, there are more residents here that in Wyoming -- but we all live within three miles of each other. This intimate nature makes it the perfect place for third party to get its feet wet.
What congress needs is mavericks like Ron Paul and the late Paul Wellstone. Pragmatically, DC could provide us with such. Just look at the enormously successful campaign of my friend Adam Eidinger. It began as a joke, but has grown to attract national media attention. All for a position City Paper's Loose Lips calls less powerful than "president of the film club."
Of course, a federal tax-exempt DC is my first choice. But that's never going to happen. Unlike Jerry, I think Statehood is possible in the short-run. Democrats (including the former president) have always been keen on the idea for the same reason Republicans are weary: DC is politically liberal.
Tuesday, November 5, 2002 10:42 a.m.
Anyone unconvinced of the living hell that is the African continent, should take a look at this article on a weird war waged in Uganda. For two decades, some monster has crusaded for a government based on the ten comandments under the title, "Lord's Resistance Army." His army is comprised of children that were also recruited as sex slaves. But there is more! The LRA eats its victims! They're bible thumpping cannibals! Things the LRA stands for -- killing babies (real babies,) killing people with machetes, stomping on people until they die, abducting children to use as soldiers and sex slaves, and cooking their victims in a big black pot.
Tuesday, November 5, 2002 10:32 a.m. Moscow is cracking down on its local Chechen minority. Do they play fair? No.
"The police arrested a 19-year-old relative of mine who came to Moscow after the siege was over. They took his internal passport and brought him to a police station," he said.
"Then they said they had found a packet of heroin tucked into the passport. Can you imagine a young Chechen who knows he's going to be stopped and searched at every street corner carrying heroin in his passport?" said Mr Beno, who served as foreign minister in the first government after Chechnya declared independence.
Our great ally, Ariel Sharon, recommends we target Iran after we've completed bombing/installing democracy in Iraq.
Mr Sharon insisted that Tehran — one of the “axis of evil” powers identified by President Bush — should be put under pressure “the day after” action against Baghdad ends because of its role as a “centre of world terror”. He also issued his clearest warning yet that Israel would strike back if attacked by Iraqi chemical or biological weapons, no matter how much Washington sought to keep its controversial Middle Eastern ally out of any war in Iraq.
Monday, November 4, 2002 06:24 p.m.
Consumer backlash against pop-ups is discouraging their use, says the SF Gate. Pop-ups haven't bugged me since I downloaded Opera several months ago. It is so sweet. Mozilla is just as good -- and you can't beat the dinosaur icon.
Here's a list of things Mozilla can do that IE cannot
Monday, November 4, 2002 02:09 a.m.
I am now fully convinced there is nothing Dennison is incapable of, after hearing the ambient and acid jazz tunes he's uploaded. He's also posted up a storm with too many entries for me to keep up on (I'll get back to the Marriot High School discussion in a few.)
He has a list of instructions to get liberals (and the rare bleeding edge libertarians) to get on the right track. I want to know just what is "the truth about robots?" And where might one learn it? But, avoid the drugs -- nyet! -- cocaine is what keeps DC running. The biggest buyers are in the House and Senete (interns and LAs, SAs, whatever-As were basically hired to "run" for them.) That's why I think we should demand voluntary drug tests from our senetors and congressmen, and thus expose them all as the hypocrites they are. I'm dead serious here. Our politicians are more coked-up than the Jackass kids. I've got nothing against cocaine abusers -- unless they're the ones in charge of criminalizing it.
Sunday, November 3, 2002 03:34 p.m. Several inmates at Camp Delta in Guantanamo Bay, are charity workers that were caught in the middle. "Each man spends 30 minutes a week showering and exercising; the rest of the time he is alone in a cell measuring 8ft by 6ft 8in." In addition to the charity workers, "there is a growing belief that many of the 620 inmates are not terrorists. Some were pressganged into fighting for the Taliban; others were in the wrong place at the wrong time. "
Efforts are getting some of the inmates out. American lawyer Thomas Wilner represents 12 Kuwaiti inmates who claim to be charity workers caught up in the war. 'Of the 12 men, we can vouch for nine,' said Wilner. 'We have a paper trail that stretches back miles and proves, without a doubt, they were bona fide charity workers.'
One Kuwaiti, Fawzi al-Odah, is a 25-year-old religious teacher from Kuwait City who, according to family and friends, has been making annual trips abroad since 1996 to participate in humanitarian efforts in Somalia, India and Bangladesh. 'I have gone on food strike for 27 days and I will continue my strike to indefinite period. Further, I have gone on strike for water and speech for four days till they... set me free as I am innocent or take me to the court for trial in order to obtain all my rights or to die as I cannot stand life in this place,' he wrote.
His father, Khalid Al Odah, 50, is bewildered at his son's treatment. 'I love America for liberating my country during the Gulf war. But this makes no sense to me. I cannot understand why the Americans are doing this,' he said.
Sunday, November 3, 2002 03:15 p.m.
The Nation has an article on the DOJ's released answers about the Patriot Act, the a recent amendment to the Senate's Homeland Security bill.
The amendment, offered by Orrin Hatch, was based on a bill passed in the House on July 15 just before the August recess called the Cyber Security Enhancement Act, or CSEA. Introduced by Rep. Lamar Smith, who brought us Patriot's computer surveillance language, CSEA, if passed, would make it even easier for government agents to get your electronic records, without a warrant and without telling you.
Traditionally getting electronic records, which can include your actual emails, has required a warrant, and companies that handed over such information without that warrant could face penalties. The Patriot Act created an exception to that requirement: communications providers can now voluntarily disclose customer records to law enforcement officials in situations where the provider has a reasonable belief that disclosing the records is necessary to prevent an imminent danger. The language in Hatch's amendment expands that exception in two ways. First, it removes the imminence requirement. Under the new rules, a provider would only have to believe that disclosing the records would help prevent some theoretical future danger. Second, a provider would no longer need to have a reasonable belief that the communication relates to this vaguely defined danger. He or she will only have to be acting in good faith.
These changes make it much easier for law enforcement officials to access previously difficult-to-obtain personal information without a warrant. After all, if a danger no longer has to be imminent to eliminate the need for court oversight, when will a warrant be needed?
Sunday, November 3, 2002 02:58 p.m.
Some of the songs I'm into this month:
quirky Man or Astroman? - "Domain of the Human Race" El Guapo - "Symbol-Object"
subversive
Quasi - "It's Hard to Turn Me On"
Neutral Milk Hotel - "My Dream Girl Don't Exist"
epic
Black Heart Procession - "The Waterfront"
Gene - "We Could Be Kings"
autobiographical
Spiritualized - "Don't Just Do Something"
The New Pornographers - "My Slow Descent into Alcoholism"
I also must sing praises for Ghost, "Snuffbox Immanence" has unseated "Tigermilk" as my premiere Sunday morning music. To say they are Japan's answer to Simon and Garfunkel is much too simplisitic -- but I never could resist the pings of a vibraphone, not to mention, the singer's charming incapacity to pronounce "r" sounds. Perfect with eggs benedict or whilst in the bathtub with a crossword.
Another thing, they released an extended version of Pavement's "Slanted and Enchanted." It sounds good... but I just want an extended version of "Zurich is Stained."
Saturday, November 2, 2002 05:22 p.m. Prague Pill's Alexander Zaitchik for Freezerbox gripes over NATO's choice of summit locale (his home, Prague.)
Prague doesn't need military snipers posted on its rooftops. It doesn't need 500 surveillance cameras following my sneakers. It doesn't need Interior Minister Stanislav Gross squawking about the primacy of security over rights in a "post-9/11 world." And it really doesn't need George W. Bush. His real-estate mogul in-law Craig Stapleton is U.S. Ambassador to the Czech Rep, and his daughter Jenna spent July on her knees wiping puke off her chin at Prague's Klub Lavka with her sorority sisters. The city's Bush family quota is more than filled.
Haha. Klub Lavka is the city's most notorious declasse establishment. It's backpacker grand central with a smattering of Eurotrash and gypsy hookers.
