details to come…
right now I’m packing for this:
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tags: nineinchnails, coachella
I got two new books today: The Bush Betrayal by James Bovard and Go Directly to Jail: The Criminalization of Almost Everything edited by Gene Healy. I buy books like crazy. It’s a good thing I got my Amazon.com Visa card. This is all on top of the order last week that included Faust by Goethe and Confessions by Augustine of Hippo. I’m constantly adding to my Wish List also. I don’t think it will ever end, but that’s fine with me.
I think there are too many things I’m interested in. When I was reading Reason Magazine the other day I had a pencil and a notepad in hand writing down different websites and books to look into. There ended up being 19 items on the list. That’s a whole lot of stuff if you think of looking at 19 different websites hoping to absorb all their information.
tags: books
I’m sitting here thinking of something to write. Nothing comes to mind.
Well one thing. Monday I got to read the newspaper and read an article about Apple’s new OS called Tiger. Since then I’ve noticed little tiny blips of news, but nothing eye catching.
The strange thing was that while Tiger is out tomorrow, Microsoft has been getting all the headlines this week because they teased a glimpse of Longhorn at a conference. Longhorn won’t be out until late 2006.
Very strategic.
Oh yeah, I got a hit from 
South Korea on a search for “where am I”. Exciting.
I read a lot today. I was afforded the opportunity. My job consisted of turning on the overhead projector twice and playing a DVD three times.
The Mercury News and the old February issue of Reason because I didn’t get mine in the mail and they had to send it to me late.
From an editorial in the newspaper I was reminded that I went to the number two ranked university in the world. I felt kind of good after that. But all the other reading left me longing for that atmosphere where people would engage in intellectual discussion. I read all the time but don’t have anyone to talk about things with. I’m not even sure where to go stick my nose in the blogosphere. Eh, maybe I’ll get there.
Does anyone understand these Technorati tags? They aren’t picking up my posts.
Two new countries! A hit from the 
UK and a hit from 
Singapore! I’m so popular!
Not much new to report. I’ve had a lazy weekend. I like those every now and then.
The new nine inch nails album [with teeth] has been leaked on the internet. I downloaded it so I can become familiar with the songs before the show on Thursday and before Coachella. It’s definitely going to take some getting used to. Most new albums by groups that I like generally need time to grow though.
tags:music, nineinchnails, withteeth
More than one person has IMed me with the statement/question: “the new pope was in the nazi youth?!” My first instinct is to wonder why these people don’t investigate for themselves if it seems so odd to them. That’s the first thing I do. The phenomenon is similar to what John Dvorak notes in his recent column, “The Dumbing Down of America“.
[People ask] really dumb questions that they could easily get the answers for themselves. But they ask a person rather than do simple research. I’m not talking about someone asking me what, in my opinion, is the best digital camera. I’m talking about someone asking me who makes digital cameras. Or where you can buy CompactFlash cards. Or where you get a program that unzips files. Or “Are there any word processors on the market besides Microsoft Word?”
Now the question that my friends asked me is not as remedial as the computer questions used in the example; a little more research would be required. The idea is the same though. Just now I did a Google search for “Benedict Nazi youth” and found all kinds of articles. Now when my friends had asked me before, I had already read something that explained it all so it had become part of my knowledge and could tell them without looking anything up. The point is they could have easily done the smallest amount of investigating themselves and become just as learned as I on the subject. They would have found things like this from The Jewish Week:
The new pope’s background as a member of the Nazi Youth organization and the German army during World War II drew attention in media profiles in recent weeks, but the Jewish spokesmen said Benedict XVI has shown no sympathy to Nazi teachings.“It was the standard in the Hitler era that every teen was a member” of the Nazi Youth, often pressured into joining the organization, said Rabbi Schneier. “If anything, he will go out of his way to show that he is different from the [German] past.
“I would certainly give him the benefit of the doubt,” Rabbi Schneier said. “I’m not at all nervous.”
As well as this:
Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, said in a prepared statement, “Though as a teenager he was a member of the Hitler Youth, all his life Cardinal Ratzinger has atoned for the fact. In our years of working on improving Catholic-Jewish ties, ADL has had opportunities to work with Cardinal Ratzinger.“Having lived through World War II, Cardinal Ratzinger has great sensitivity to Jewish history and the Holocaust. He has shown this sensitivity countless times, in meetings with Jewish leadership and in important statements condemning anti-Semitism and expressing profound sorrow for the Holocaust.”
I think finding quotes like this makes the whole thing a non-issue. It took me less than 30 seconds on the internet to find this. Maybe it would take someone else a minute and a half, but still… Then again, they could just be asking for my opinion, which I am always happy to give. One of my friends did openly admit that I was her reference source for investigating deeper. It’s good to know I’m a reputable news source.
[Note:] Just so you know the extent of my penchant for looking things up that I want to know: when deciding whether to put the period inside or outside the quotation marks around the title of Dvorak’s article I looked up websites about English grammar. I probably spent more time on that than anything else relating to this post. I found that in British English “punctuation around quotation marks is more apt to follow logic.” If it’s good enough for the British, it’s good enough for me, I say. Actually I just like that it’s logical. This is what the most helpful website I found had to say in a footnote:
There are peculiar typographical reasons why the period and comma go inside the quotation mark in the United States. The following explanation comes from the “Frequently Asked Questions” file of alt.english.usage: “In the days when printing used raised bits of metal, “.” and “,” were the most delicate, and were in danger of damage (the face of the piece of type might break off from the body, or be bent or dented from above) if they had a ‘”‘ on one side and a blank space on the other. Hence the convention arose of always using ‘.”‘ and ‘,”‘ rather than ‘”.’ and ‘”,’, regardless of logic.” This seems to be an argument to return to something more logical, but there is little impetus to do so within the United States.
My 25 most recently aquired CDs.
I’ve decided to document here people’s strange searches that lead them to my site as reported by StatCounter.com. There have been some good ones in the past and today will not disappoint.
It is also no wonder that I’ve read some articles critical of the new Google tool “My Search History” which lets users log in to have their searches collected and saved for future reference.
Today I got a hit from a user (yes, you 216.104.107.94 in 
Canada) who searched on Yahoo! for “BASEBALL PLAYERS CROTCH SHOTS.COM” including the all caps.
That one is definitely up there with the “descartes fetish” and “hairlip photos” searches I’ve had.
The only other interesting one today was the fairly common “Sathington Willoby” search that turns up my site because I make my explaination of my screenname here.
Since nothing else too exciting happens around here, I think I’ll start taking notes about my international hits. Someone from 
Spain visited today via Flickr.
