"It was 20 Years Ago Today"

(or thereabouts)

20 years ago, some time this week or last, my vax login files on a STU_JWSHELBY account first had the life-changing line added to them:

$ set proc/name="freddie"

Some of you will know what I mean...I'd say I wish I still had the hat, but I know it won't fit so why bother.

meme - how can I choose? There are so many...

When you see this, post a line from Douglas Adams in your journal.

"Well, you're a beautiful woman, probably."

I love small town values...

Dispatches from the Culture Wars: Daily Show on "Small Town Values":

As I said last week, perhaps the most irritating thing about the RNC was the repetitive bullshit about "small town values" being blathered about endlessly. As if everyone in small towns had the same values? Ask a kid growing up gay in many small towns around the country how wonderful those "small town values" are. Some of the most heinous crimes of racial hatred were perpetrated in small towns, for crying out loud. Yes, Sarah Palin, we do "grow good people in our small towns." We also grow bad people in our small towns. Being from a small town doesn't have a damn thing to do with whether one is a good person or a bad person. And it is rank stupidity and demagoguery to pretend otherwise.

Link is followed by a video of that crack investigative reporting team from The Daily Show on just this topic...

well, since *I* rule the world, it's a moot point...

Page 3.14 : The Age When Birds Ruled The Earth:

I think the article and Ed's response begs an interesting question. Namely, what does domination mean? Ed says "Today, living dinosaurs - the birds - still rule our skies and back in their heyday, they were the dominant back-boned animals on land for millions of years." Were the dominant back-boned animals? Today birds are without a doubt the most diverse terrestrial vertebrates and total bird biomass exceeds mammal biomass by a long shot. So who's really dominating whom? For many birds, we clean their shit, help them breed and feed them. Sounds like they're the ones in charge. The point isn't that we need to free ourselves from our avian oppressors. Rather, the concept of dominance doesn't seem to be very scientific. Biodiversity? Sure. Biomass? Why not. But dominance? Ruling the Earth? Those are terms that don't really mean anything in a scientific sense because, in the end, as Stephen Gould put it, isn't every age the Age of Bacteria anyway?