The Domesticated Primate

Life, Inc. is an excellent book dealing with the problems of money and corporatism. Not that I would have expected anything less from Douglas Rushkoff.

People, especially those that lack nuance, might think from reading the summary that this is going to be some "communist" screed or the like. Not the case at all.

Highly suggested reading for those interested in a peek behind the curtain.

Eating Animals - what a great book. If you're vegetarian, vegan, or having second thoughts about being an omnivore, or even just thinking about reducing your meat intake...an interesting reflection on our weird relationship with animals.

My favorite takeaway was the question he poses of two hypothetical people ordering lunch, and asking which is really the more sentimental: the person who orders based on what he/she LIKES to eat, or the person that makes a choice of conscience?

Really lays bare the notion that veg*ns are the ones that are the (only) ones that appeal to emotions, or at least it did for me...I've never really bought into that notion anyway, but this sums it up nicely.

I've never read anything by the author before - I only saw the movie Everything is Illuminated - but I may have to look into reading more...

Saw this on BoingBoing. This was something my dorm room overlooked in frosh year...R.I.P, Drexel Shaft.

I'm really liking what I've heard so far on the H.P. Lovecraft Literary Podcast.

If only I had found it before Halloween...but ah well, there's always next year. Maybe I'll find some others, too - apparently there are some podcasts that read the stories, too. Could be interesting, especially with music/sound FX.

I don't like importing CDs with iTunes - it is really not all that flexible in that regard.

Max is much better - however, it seems a lot of CDs are not in the MusicBrainz database.

Unless...you submit the Disc ID first (requires signing up), search and find match for your album - which is probably entered - and THEN re-query.

Ta-da! No more having to resort to falling back on iTunes lame import, or typing in titles into Max. Sweet.

Loved this piece in Salon.com.


Old People to America: Drop Dead

Meanwhile, according to the Urban Institute, up to 22,000 Americans are literally dropping dead each year due to lack of health insurance, and thousands more suffer through a lowered quality of life from failing to receive treatment for debilitating and chronic diseases.

I’m 62 -- old enough to cash in my 401K, yet still too young for Medicare -- and, despite my advancing age, some might view this as just another infantile boomer rant. But I want to put in a word for the idea that the elderly among us are just plain selfish -- as is any group with health insurance that believes what’s good for them is threatened if made available to others.

Some of the comments are great.

Of course, the astroturfing planners use this selfishness to maximum effect. While the "greatest generation" is being bussed into townhalls by FreedumbWorks to yell cogent aphorisms (such as: "NO!" and "BOO!" and "NO PUBLIC OPTION!" and "NO DEATH PANELS!!!") at people, what happens is that we have a battle between generations, while the class warfare - that no one is ever supposed mention, lest they be accused of conducting it themselves (classical projection crafted by the right-wing meme-masters) - rages on, and the elites are winning that class war, believe me.

I've recently printed up some personal business cards (yeah, that sounds a bit like "military intelligence") and thought I'd put an address on there. So I thought I'd start up a new blog as a placeholder of sorts and put that on the card.

This new blog focuses on Java and really, any programming-related nerdery, and you can find it at http://java-and-etc.blogspot.com/.

That way, I can also separate any job/programming-related rambling from this blog of more general rambling, and I can point people that use my open-source projects at that new site, too.