All is not yet lost

Immigration

2006-06-18T19:51:00.000-05:00

Mike has a post about immigration and what our policy should be.

"I do think we need to have a liberal immigration policy (the free marketer in me) but a secure border (to protect against terrorist sneaking in)."

I agree that a liberal immigration policy is a good thing. There's a lot of truth to the fact that being a nation of immigrants is one of the things that makes this country great. I'm not sure, though, that our current policy isn't liberal enough. No one who really wants to come here for the right reasons can't make it - assuming you have no liabilities in your background, and you are willing to wait what can be a very long time for the INS (or whatever they are called now) to get around to you. (Case in point: my family applied to emigrate here in 1982; we were told in 1995 that our quota number had come up and the INS was considering our case; we came here for the first time in 1997. So it took a long time, but we made it eventually.) And people with important skills, like scientists and engineers, can get here a lot quicker.

The problem with the current debate though, is that the people being defended are illegal immigrants. These are people who broke the law to come here, and are now in the country illegally. And because of their illegal status, they have certain characteristics that make them attractive to certain segments of our population. For example, they are willing to work for a pittance - because it's all they're going to get, but also because they keep everything they make. A worker making minimum wage pays taxes on his meager income. An illegal immigrant does not, and therefore can live on less. The other factor is that an illegal immigrant has no one to turn to if he's being mistreated - a fact that unscrupulous employers exploit.

If we legalize these millions of people, they lose both these qualities. Which means they are no longer a source of cheap, exploitable labor and they lose their value to employers. If they're going to have to pay them minimum wage, and contribute to their social security fund, they might as well hire American high school drop outs who can at least speak English. What we're most likely to end up with is millions more people who can't get jobs, and live on welfare at our expense.

What's more, the demand for cheap illegal labor isn't going to go away - which means they will simply be replaced with millions more who will come across the border to take their place. An amnesty for our current crop of illegal immigrants will leave us worse off than we were before.

The first step in any debate on immigration has got to be a commitment to securing our borders. We need to know who's coming in, and we need to make sure that it's limited to people who are supposed to be here. After that we can talk about dealing with the people here illegally as well as discuss options for letting more people in through the door.

The other thing that needs to be addressed is the rights of all those people that are waiting to be admitted to the country legally. It would be completely unfair to them for these people to be pushed in line ahead of them as a reward for breaking our laws. Yes, the INS has a tremendous backlog, and the wait times are atrocious. Yes, people are having to live worse lives while they wait to get here. But, we don't speed up that process any when we punish the people in line, and reward the people who break the rules. That undermines the process and makes people lose faith in the system. And that will create more illegal immigrants, not less.

Reversal

2006-05-24T21:16:00.000-05:00

So, after yesterday's post when I was all set on a big wedding with all the extras, I got into a conversation with FMIL today. I think after the pricing discussion we had yesterday, she was thinking more about how to make
this more affordable. Discussing it we decided that what would really make us all happy is a little tiny intimate wedding. Immediate family, close friends, a few select extended family members on both sides.

We were offered use of the dining room at the Holiday Inn Meadowlands for 3 hours, which is doable but might be rushed. We might also try and put together something more formal, but still intimate.

I am so much more excited about this than I was about the big wedding. I will know most of the people there; it'll be small and fun and lovely. We'll have a great time.

Productive day

2006-05-23T23:44:00.000-05:00

Today was a productive day - or at least it felt like it.

I started off with walking 2 miles on the treadmill, and praying the Rosary. I really like that combination of activities - something about it just starts my day off extremely well.

Other things I did today were: filled out the application for our new apartment in lynchburg, packed one suitcase full of warm clothes, called a couple of hotels about weddign packages, emailed a caterer about pricing and options, talked to a wedding planner about possibly engaging her services, and got emails from 2 DJs about their services.

I also spent a good deal of time talking to FMIL about wedding planning in general, what I want, and why I'd like it to be as worry free as possible. She's all about the saving money, and I'm all about the lowering stress - so there's some conflict there. There will be more phone calls tomorrow to caterers, florists, etc. to figure out pricing and timelines for putting the wedding together myself vs. getting the all-inclusive package from the hotel.

Conclusions reached today:

I want a wedding - not just a fancy dinner for the friends and family who show up. However, if the guest list were limited to the very select few, i.e. less than 30 people, then I would prefer the 'go out to a nice restaurant' option. If there are 50 or more guests, though, I want the special dances, the cake, the whole package.

I definitely want a day-of-wedding coordinator. If I decide to go the DIY route rather than opt for the all-inclusive, I will probably also hire a full-service planner to keep track of the details for me. I figure paying someone $1000 is worth it if she can save me over $1000 worth in money and avoided stress.

I definitely want red and gold as our colors as opposed to a more general fall theme. And I definitely don't want a country fall theme.

... I'll probably think of more stuff later, but that's what I know for sure right now.

That 'run off to Vegas' option still looks pretty tempting...

Moving

2006-05-22T23:56:00.000-05:00

Moving is supposed to be one of the most stressful things people go through. Our move is not stressful as much as it is complicated, since Dan is in State College, I'm in Pittsburgh, and a lot of our stuff never got unpacked from when we moved here last summer. My FMIL and I packed a good dozen boxes this morning with dishes, pots, pans, etc. as well as several boxes of non-perishable food.

I spent the rest of the day pacing my room trying to decide what to do next. Something like a GTD nextaction list would come in very handy here...

I think my first step will be doing a couple of loads of laundry tomorrow, so i have all my clothes clean and can decide what i want to move immediately vs. what can wait until the real move. (Dan starts work the day after Memorial day, so we're thinking we'll just take the bare minimum down right now, and then organize a big move sometime in the summer.) I will probably start packing winter clothes up first, since I won't need them between now and moving day. Depending on what vehicles we use to move, the clothes I will need to wear now and soon after the move might even be able to be moved on hangers rather than in luggage, which will be much faster and easier.

After that I will probably start filling small boxes with books. Between the 2 of us, Dan and I probably have close to a thousand books, most of which we will want to move at some point. What I will probably do is pull out all the books that I've flagged to be on the top of my reading list, and put them in one box. That way, if we do have room for a box of books in the first move, they'll be the right ones. The rest can be moved a couple of boxes at a time if need be.

Besides clothes and books, there's not a whole lot else that will need to be packed - art supplies, toys, stuffed lovies, computer stuff, odds and ends. Again, nothing that absolutely must be moved immediately or that couldn't be broken down into multiple carloads if need arose.

Sigh... all those books....

Update: Life's purpose

2006-05-21T23:06:00.000-05:00

I resumed the exercise I mentioned below about finding your life's purpose. This time I broke through whatever unconscious resistance I had in just about 10 minutes. I was building on what I had done before, and I'm sure I did need that initial time, even though it seemed unproductive then. Thankfully, and not particularly surprisingly, it is a reaffirmation of the insights I have gained these past few weeks.

The purpose of my life is to surrender entirely to God, to
accept his unconditional love for me, to let his spirit set my soul on fire,
breaking the shackles on my heart, letting his love flow into my body, mind, heart and spirit and through me into the
lives of everyone I encounter, bringing them healing, joy, peace and love.

Apparently, the key insight here that I didn't have in my earlier iterations was the unconditional love of God, and the implied acceptance of my imperfect self as being worthy of that love. That's been a big issue for me for years and years, the feeling that I was not good enough to be loved by God. Even though, in my head, I knew that I would never be good enough and that God loved me anyway, in my heart there were still things that 'good girls don't do.' And if someone (especially me) did any of them, even God would not love them anymore.

But God does!! And every once in a while, he will beat me over the head with this message, since I don't quite seem to be able to get it and make it stick.

So to anyone who was wondering as to the efficacy of the exercise - it does work. It might just take a lot longer than you expect it to. It's very worth it though.

Quote to ponder

2006-05-21T20:40:00.000-05:00

Here's something Fr. Jack quoted to us in today's homily - from the homily a friend of his gave at the first Mass he celebrated.

"Sometimes God breaks our hearts so we can love even more."

I'm still thinking this one over, and I'm not sure how to take it. It makes sense in the same way that 'what doesn't kill you only makes you stronger' makes sense. What I am not sure of is how much I believe that God tests/tries/toughens us up this way.

I will probably have more to say about this, but for now I'm just thinking it over.

God and our life purpose

2006-05-21T20:35:00.000-05:00

An exercise from Steve Pavlina's blog archives is titled 'Find your life's purpose in about 20 minutes.' It was an interesting idea and I wanted to try it. I closed the door to my room, maximized a Word window and started writing down possible purposes as he suggested. There were a couple of things that resonated, but nothing hit the jackpot. After over an hour, it was time for me to leave for Mass, and I hadn't yet gotten anywhere. I was a little discouraged but hopeful that Mass, prayer and reflection could only help in my getting an answer. I haven't yet continued the exercise, but intend to later tonight, and will post an update when I'm done.

Here's what I have thus far that is sparking emotions:
healing, sharing God's love, healing people's pain, trusting God's plan, learning the depths of God's love

I didn't expect to have this much trouble with the exercise. Steve does mention that if you are resistant to the idea it might take longer, but I didn't think I was resistant at all. I see two possibilities for why this might be happening. One is that I am on the right track but just missing some piece of the puzzle that is important. The other (and more disturbing) possibility is that I am still only just regurgitating conditioned responses - that my true life's purpose is something so completely alien to my upbringing/education/belief system that I am unable to imagine it, or unconsciously refusing to see it. Something that didn't involve God at all, or that involved a faith/belief system that was contrary to what I believe would fall into this category. I've tried throwing some weird outlandish stuff in there to get my mind off the entrenched patterns, but I keep coming back to the stuff I listed above.

Am I ready to consider a life in which God is not central to the purpose of my existence? I don't know, and considering I just got back into an active faith that strengthens me as opposed to a neglected faith that kept me bound, I don't know if it's even a good thing to attempt. Nonetheless I do want to finish this exercise, to see what I end up with.

I will update when I am done.

Thoughts On Goals, Discipline and Momentum

2006-05-20T14:09:00.000-05:00

I'm still reading the archives on Steve Pavlina's blog, and the article I read this morning was about goals and values. Steve talks about how he sets goals first and then determines which values to focus on to get him there. This seems like a useful strategy, so I started the day with writing down a list of big goals - everything I want to do in my life. I also sorted them into the broad categories I like to think of things in - body, mind, heart, spirit. And I think my most important goal for the near future is still focused on health - to develop a habit of exercising every day, eating healthy (which for me means lowcarb), drinking 8 glasses of water daily. Other things I really want to do are journal daily and pray and read the Bible every day.

See a common thread in these goals? These are all habits I want to form and things I want to do everyday. So the values I need to focus on are discipline, persistence, and focus. And my main area of focus is health - both physical and mental health. There's other stuff I want to do, and a lot of it is short to medium term stuff. I want to develop a health-related website, and develop it into a source of income. I want to be married in November - even though I really do not want to think about the planning that will be involved in getting there. I do want to move to Lynchburg and find a job there. Nonetheless, the health related goals are the ones I want to be focusing on primarily.

These are all also habits I've unsuccessfully tried to develop in the past. And here's why I think this time it'll stick when in the past it hasn't. In the past, I'd go all out for a few days, and then, I would miss a day or two, and never go back. But the reason I never went back is because my attitude after I missed a day was that I had failed; that I might as well give up. This time, though, I'm focused on developing the habit, not on achieving some ideal weight, or fitting into some skinny clothes, although those would be good milestones. This time around, the important thing has been to develop the mindset that a healthy lifestyle is important to me. So, even if my exercising has been limited to sucking in my gut while sitting on the couch, that's a step in the right direction, and a way to get back into my habit of walking 3 miles on the treadmill everyday.

Building habits is all about momentum, and this time, even though I've lost the physical momentum, I've kept up the mental momentum. That makes it easier to get back into the physical routine when I get back to something resembling a normal schedule. At least, that's how I'm hoping it will work out. I'll keep you posted as to how it turns out.

Thoughts On Goals, Discipline and Momentum

2006-05-20T14:08:00.000-05:00

Happy Birthday to...

2006-05-18T12:18:00.000-05:00

...me!!!

Yay!! It's my birthday! I'm uhh.... 24! (again)

In case you have not yet heard, my evil plan for immortality requires me to stay 24 forever, or as long as I am capable of pullig it off. (Thus far it's working pretty well...)

So have a happy my birthday, and go eat some cheesecake, drink some wine, shoot some guns, or do something else fun and exciting to celebrate the special day =]

The Power of Thought

2006-05-13T00:38:00.000-05:00

I found my missing post! Turns out I had the 'publish as draft by default' option selected, so everything was being saved as a draft rather than being posted here. I'm glad I didn't have to rewrite this post, though.
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It is amazing just how much your reality is shaped by your thinking. In Joel Osteen's book that I mentioned below, he talks about an example of a man who froze to death in a room temperature environment because he believed it was actually below freezing.

Here's an example that happened to me a couple of days ago. I've been following this free course from Motivation123 (they also have one on attitude and one on goals). Well, Day 2 of this particular course requires you to identify at least 7 negative thoughts and beliefs you hold about yourself. As I was thinking of these and writing them down, I could already feel the negative energy they were bringing with them. I was tempted to skip ahead and get to the next day, so I could deal with getting rid of them. However, part of what I'm working on is self-discipline, and I told myself to do these courses over 7 days as they are meant to be done.

So, having finished my motivational reading and exercises, I went off to do my physical exercise of walking on the treadmill. My initial goal is to develop the habit of walking 3 miles every day, and I had been easily walking at least 2 and making progress every day. Well, this day I got on the treadmill, and I just felt really sluggish, really tired. I was feeling the effort even before I'd walked a mile. Suddenly I realized it was probably from the negative energy of thinking those limiting thoughts about myself earlier. I decided to try telling myself positive affirmations like 'you can do anything you set your mind to.'

I also had with me the 'Your Best Life Today' book since I hadn't yet finished reading it. So I went back to the page that had most inspired me the previous day and started reading from that point. The combination of the affirmation and the inspiring words in the book renewed my energy and I easily walked the rest of my time. In fact, I made my goal of 3 miles (which was more than my goal for that workout) and could have gone further but decided to stop as part of that discipline building goal.

Had I gotten on the treadmill first thing that morning, without either the negative or the positive affirmation I would probably have walked just over 2 miles, maybe 2.5 if I had pushed myself. With the negative affirmation, I doubt I would have made it past 1.5 - it was just so tough to make myself keep going. With the positive affirmation, I blew past my goal, and didn't even feel the strain. And I went from the one to the other in a matter of minutes, just by changing what I was telling myself.

This is why my 'positive' playlist has been on a continuous loop for the last few days.

Travel tip

2006-05-13T00:34:00.000-05:00

I'm flying back to Pittsburgh in the morning after a 3 week vacation to Texas, and then we're driving down to Lynchburg, VA to look for apartments, so I might not be posting much in the next couple of days.

Here's a packing tip for when you're returnign from vacation and are trying to cram a lot of stuff into your suitcase. Rolling up your clothes makes them take up less space than folding them. This also works well in dresser drawers.

I fold the garment enough that I have a roughly even rctangular shape and then starting at one short edge roll it up tightly into a cylinder that I can then sort and stack in the suitcase in order to best use the available space. This is especially useful for bulkier items like jeans or jackets, which don't really lie flat when folded. They can still be rolled up pretty tightly, and are much more compact this way.

The other tip, of course, is not too overpack, which I always tell myself, but never seem to be able to follow, expecially when visiting my parents.

Daily Bible Readings

2006-05-12T09:36:00.000-05:00

Something I have meant to do for a while now is to read the Bible daily. I have tried several times to begin, either just picking a book and reading a chapter a day or finding a list or workbook of daily readings. Somehow though it never stuck, because even when I kept my study Bible under my pillow, I just never quite developed the habit of taking it out and reading it every day.

Yesterday, while I was exercising and praying - which combination I really like and think I will continue - the thought occurred to me that there are probably websites that have put online daily Bible readings. I thought I might even be able to find one with an RSS feed that I could subscribe to. Something that puts the daily reading in front of me without my having to go search for it. Yes, this is the lazy way to read the Bible, but it is more likely to work in the long run than the other methods.

Well, I didn't find an RSS feed, although I am toying with the idea of trying one of those services that develops a feed out of any web page. I did find this site however: http://www.usccb.org/nab/today.shtml.

These are the daily Mass readings from the US Conference of Catholic Bishops' website. So it's also a step towards going to daily Mass, which is a goal for when I am in a stable living situation. There were a couple of other sites with daily Bible readings, a couple of which would also send them to you over email. But since I am leaning towards filtering all but the most important stuff out of my email inbox, those didn't appeal to me. This site had the nicest (simplest) interface. Plus I like that it's a Catholic website and that the readings are from the lectionary rather than arbitrarily picked.

So I added this website to my opening Firefox session (using Tab Mix Plus, a free extension that I am finding extremely useful). Hopefully, I will be successful in maintaining my habit of daily Bible reading.

Lost post and Savage Garden

2006-05-11T13:12:00.000-05:00

So I wrote this great post about the power of thought, and it seems to have disappeared into the ether.

I'm going to chalk this up to God wanting me to develop patience and rewrite it - just not right now, since blogging time is over.

But here's a thought I just had. Actually I've had this thought several times, but it is relevant to that discussion of motivation, attitude and positive thinking.

In the Savage Garden song 'Affirmation' there's a line that says "I believe the struggle for financial freedom isn't fair. I believe the only ones who disagree are billionaires"

I have long thought that this line is true but not in the way the writers meant it. Refusing to believe that the system is rigged, and believing you can make it despite naysayers and obstacles in your path is a necessary condition for achieving great success. If you believe the system is unfair, you will never be a billionaire. But if you believe in yourself and refuse to give in when things get tough, you might very well become one.

So, if you want to be a billionaire, don't sing that line of that song ;)

Truly, we have an awesome God!

2006-05-09T23:29:00.000-05:00

Sometimes we just need to let go and realize that God really is in control of our lives. He knows exactly what we need and how to take care of us. It's when we get impatient and try to do things on our own that we mess things up. And then we wonder why God doesn't seem to be around in our times of trouble.

So, what brought this on?

Well, I've had some spiritual issues I've been struggling with for a while now. While I still believed in everything the Catholic Church teaches, I was having trouble practicing it. And I was discouraged and had slowly drifted away from the more fervent faith I had previously. Honestly, I was barely acknowledging God's existence, and bemoaning his lack of presence in my life. I knew it was my own fault, but I couldn't seem to be able to take the steps to get myself back on track.

In all the extra free time I've had recently, I've been reading a lot of new sites I hadn't heard of before. One of them I've been finding useful has been Steve Pavlina's personal development site. Steve talks a lot about specific techniques that are useful for improving your life in several areas including self-discipline, productivity, etc. I've been reading a lot, implementing a little and generally being quite inspired by this site.

One post of his that caught my attention in particular was his Million Dollar Experiment, an attempt to manifest $1000000 in the life of each of dozens of participants. Reading about this, I was inspired to try it, and found all sorts of resistances in my mind - not because I didn't think it would work but because part of me felt that asking for money, especially a lot of money, was just wrong somehow. Regardless, I decided to give it a shot, and spent a couple of minutes meditating on this intention for a day or two. Now I was also working on implementing a daily workout as part of a general self-improvement strategy. So I started repeating this intention to myself as I walked on the treadmill. And very quickly I realized I could also add a similar intention for a fit healthy body, and a couple of days later for a fit and healthy body and mind. So, even though I haven't manifested any money yet, the experiment is leading to positive changes in my life.

A couple of days ago, Steve's new post on how to make money from your blog was posted to a lot of major sites. Reading that got me inspired that I too could parlay my interest in all things health related into a money generating website. This is something I would have never considered prior to starting the $1M experiment. I also read a few posts from Steve's archives that were updates on his experiment's progress, and some that talked about manifestation of intentions in general. Coincidentally, I saw an ad in an organizing newsletter I receive for the Motivation123 site, which was offering me 2 books on motivation for less than $20. I bought these and started skimming one, called 'Motivated in Minutes' to see if it was worth my investment. (I think it is.)

The next morning, I woke up feeling really hungry and thinking I needed to eat something right away, rather than workout, shower and then eat like I had been doing. While I was eating, I decided to go through the 3 freebies I had received as part of the signup to Motivation123. These are 3 little e-courses on attitude, goals, and confidence that are meant to run over 7 days. The first lesson of all 3 courses was basically that attitude is more important than anything else in determining whether or not you achieve what you want to. This empowering belief was a great way to start the day. Once I was ready to start exercising, I decided to try a book my Mom had been nagging me to read, called "Your Best Life Now" by Joel Osteen. So I took it onto the treadmill with me and started reading as I walked. The book talks about how we block God from showering His fullest blessings on us because we are mired in negative attitudes about ourselves, our lives and the people around us. If only we let these things go, we will be amazed at the good things God wants to bless us with.

And somewhere in the middle of the first chapter of that book, I made a breakthrough. I realized that all the negative energy in my life was coming not from sins (either bad things I had done or good things I had failed to do) but rather from my discouragement and despair over those sins. Far bigger than my failure to live a perfect life was my sin of believing that I had to pass some arbitrary standard of goodness for God to love me and bless me. God wants me to have an abundance of joy, peace, hope, happiness, and yes, riches. To paraphrase the book, I was living in a self-imposed prison, thinking I had no hope, when I didn't need to at all. God is not limited by my present circumstances. Why should asking God for a million dollars for the good of all be any worse than asking for my daily bread? Suddenly, all the doubt and fear and shame of the past few years had gone away - I know God loves me, regardless of my imperfection, and the measure of blessings He showers on me is limited only by my faith or lack of it. I even realized that I could pray while exercising, including a prayer for a healthy body and mind, a million dollars, or anything else I could imagine wanting in my life.

So, what is my point with all this? I could not have gotten to where I am right now if all these things hadn't happened. I just wasn't ready to read Joel Osteen's book until I had already read the motivation materials. And I would never have bought the motivation materials had I not been thinking about starting a business. And I wouldn't be thinking about the business if not for the $1M experiment and other inspirational materials I found on Steve Pavlina's site. Steve proudly describes himself as a 'vegan ex-Catholic' so there's a lot of differences there, but that didn't stop God from using him to get me in exactly the right frame of mind to hear His word in my heart. So, truly all things happen for the good of those who love God and are called according to his purpose. And our God is an awesome God indeed!

Interesting IM conversation

2006-03-16T11:13:00.000-05:00

CNLkarishm: how's it going?
QuantmRed: good, work busy but good
QuantmRed: u?
CNLkarishm: ok
QuantmRed: unemployed bum
QuantmRed: living off the system
CNLkarishm: yeah
CNLkarishm: the system being my savings...
QuantmRed: hehe
QuantmRed: live off welfare
QuantmRed: thats why the liberals put it there
CNLkarishm: true, i'm a young minority single woman
QuantmRed: indeed
QuantmRed: and dont forget lazy
QuantmRed: so u fit the bill perfectly
CNLkarishm: except i don't have any out-of-wedlock kids
QuantmRed: haha true
CNLkarishm: i think that's important
QuantmRed: borrow some
CNLkarishm: lol
CNLkarishm: maybe i will

*disclaimer in case some civil servant gets their panties in a bunch over this: this is a joke; I have no intention of fraudulently obtaining welfare assistance (or legitimately obtaining welfare assistance). Any borrowing of children will take place only because I really want some and my fiance insists we need to be married first.

Good quote

2006-03-16T10:44:00.000-05:00

“Americans seem to kind of want this McDonald’s war, where you drive up, you order it, you pay for it, you go to the next window and get a democracy. That’s not the way it works,” cautioned Army reservist Scott Southworth recently. “It takes a lot of effort; it takes a lot of time.”

From an article by an American returning from Iraq - I am not quite sure if he's a journalist or a soldier or contractor. Lots of good answers to common questions about the war like:

Has the Iraq war been too costly?
How is the morale of our soldiers holding up?
But in the wider Muslim world, hasn’t the Iraq war done irreparable damage to America’s image?

Another good answer:

Morass or not, this war seems to be especially unpopular on the homefront.

Actually, a substantial minority has opposed almost every war prosecuted by our nation. This was true right from the American Revolution—which a large proportion of Tory elites (including most New York City residents) insisted was an ill-considered and quixotic mistake.

Only in 20/20 hindsight have our wars been reinterpreted as righteous and widely supported by a unified nation. Even World War II, the ultimate “good” war fought by the “greatest” generation, was deeply controversial at the time. Fully 6,000 Americans went to prison as war resisters during the years our troops were conquering fascism in Europe and Japan.

There’s no reason to think of the Iraq war as more unpopular than any other U.S. war. If it is prosecuted to success, there’s little doubt that the war against terror in Iraq will in retrospect look just as wise and worthy as previous sacrifices. But there is a wild card: Would the nation have retained the nerve to finish previous successful wars if there had been contemporary-style news coverage of battles like Camden, the Wilderness, or Tarawa?

Lots of good stuff, too much to excerpt. RTWT, as they say.

Why I don't Like Podcasts

2006-02-23T16:18:00.000-05:00

I found a link to a podcast on "how to make money without a job" via I will teach you to be rich, a new site I just found that has interesting material on personal finance catering to young people (like me!). Obviously, this is a subject I found tremendously interesting. Not because I'm lazy... Ok, not just because I'm lazy, but because I've been interested in the idea of passive income streams, financial independence and working on my own for a while now.

I'm listening to this podcast as I write this, and it seems interesting as far as it goes. There's a lot of good information there. And that's definitely an advantage - I can listen to it while doing other things, something I couldn't do with the same information if it were just a blog post or other written form. Plus, I'm a little more of an auditory learner than visual, so the concepts get through to me better than stuff I've read.

Still, on the whole I tend to avoid podcasts unless the topic is extremely interesting to me (like this one was). There are 2 main reasons for this. The first one is that speech is a slow medium. There is only so fast the podcaster can speak, and this is definitely slower than I could read the same information if it were presented in written form. Hence, listening to a podcast is much more of a time commitment than reading a blog post. In my junior year, we tested a virtual lecture for one of our classes, and the software we used had the option of listening at double speed. This made the speaker sound like a chipmunk but we got the information in half the time, and it didn't really detract from the quality of the experience. That might be a method to resolve this problem.

The second and, in my opinion, the more important reason is that a podcast is a broadcast information product. Granted, you can choose whether to listen to it, and when to do so, but once you've given that initial consent, the content and pacing is entirely up to the broadcaster. In this podcast, for example, Steve spends a good deal of time talking about why working on your own and developing passive income streams is less risky than a traditional job. This is something I already agree with, and would have been happy with hearing a lot less about. But there was no easy way for me to skip the stuff I didn't need to get to the good stuff that was later in the show. Yes, I could skip ahead, but there was no way of knowing when he would stop talking background and start talking detail. I might miss something important, and I'd have to fiddle to get to the right spot, and it'd be clunky.

On the other hand, in a written medium, I could skim the stuff I didn't need and be able to tell when I got to the spot where I needed to pay more attention. One way to deal with this, especially in longer podcasts, might be to break it up into smaller chunks, like chapters. Right now, this means breaking it up into multiple files. If we could find an audio format that lets you flag chapter breaks within the same file, so you can listen to the whole thing without the overhead of loading, listening, stopping, switching, loading, etc. that is involved with multiple files, that would be a significant improvement.

However, the problem isn't only with longer podcasts. I listened to one yesterday (when I had absolutely nothing better to do) that was less than 5 minutes long. Yet, I didn't get much more value from it than I did from reading the 1 sentence summary of what it was about - and reading the summary only took me 10 seconds. Perhaps that's because part of what I was supposed to get was additional humor, and humor is something I place less value on than useful information. Or maybe I just don't think Merlin Mann is that funny... Either way, I felt at the end that I had wasted my time listening to it. Granted, in my temporarily unemployed state, I wasn't going to put that time to particularly good use anyway, but I would have liked to have been able to waste it my way.

Basically, it's about control of your experience. Listening to this particular podcast was vaguely ironic, because he talked so much about passive income streams helping you take control of your time. At the same time, the very act of listening to the podcast was an act in which I was surrendering control of a decent block of my time to someone else. In this case, I did get enough value from it that I felt it was worth the time I invested. However, there is no easy way to know up front whether this will be the case. And, more often than not, I refuse to make the time investment that listening to a podcast will take. Am I missing good information this way? Probably. Am I certain it is information that I cannot find elsewhere? No, and in fact, I can usually find good written sources for most things I want to learn about.

I guess the reason I don't like podcasts is that when I'm looking for information, I usually have specific questions in mind, and don't want to spend time being talked to about other things before I have my questions answered. This is the major appeal of the internet - I no longer have to wait for the news anchor to get around to the story I'm interested in, I can just look it up, and with blogs, usually find better sources than the MSM. And, I can configure those news sites so the information I am most interested in is easiest to find rather than being cluttered up with stories I don't care about. Better yet, I can set up systems that send me just the news I am interested in, and I don't even have to take the time to go to the news website, and look at their advertising banners. I can plug questions into a search engine until I find specifically the information I was looking for without having to spend a lot of time going through extraneous material.

It seems to me like podcasts are, in effect, going backwards. Once again, they have the broadcaster controlling the experience and doling out the information in the sequence and at the pace that he or she wants, rather than the one I want. And, just like there are people who still watch the news on TV, there will be people who take the time to listen to them. More often than not, though, I won't be one of them.

Household cleaning tip

2006-02-22T13:35:00.000-05:00

I've read a lot of tips about cleaning with bleach, ammonia, vinegar, baking soda rather than expensive name-brand cleaners. Today I found an article that suggests that bleach diluted with vinegar can actually kill bacterial spores (something just bleach cannot do). A good tip in these times when we're all well aware of the possibility of bioterrorism and anthrax.

"Diluted bleach at an alkaline pH is a relatively poor disinfectant, but acidified diluted bleach will virtually kill anything in 10 to 20 minutes," says Miner. "In the event of an emergency involving Bacillus anthracis spores contaminating such environmental surfaces as counter tops, desk and table tops, and floors, for example, virtually every household has a sporicidal sterilant available in the form of diluted, acidified bleach."

Miner recommends first diluting one cup of household bleach in one gallon of water and then adding one cup of white vinegar.

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/medicalnews.php?newsid=38067&nfid=rssfeeds

I learnt Latin! (Or "why I want to home-school")

2006-02-15T18:10:00.000-05:00

Learning Latin has been something I've wanted to do for a long time. I didn't have the option in high school, and didn't have the time in college to take a class in it. A couple of different times, I looked for online resources to help me learn on my own. I looked at Wheelock's Latin, and beginning Latin textbooks. And I always ended up giving up within a couple of chapters/lessons, etc. because it seemed like what they were talking about was already over my head - declensions, conjugations, etc. It was obvious this stuff was important, but no one ever explained why. I didn't know enough to gain a foothold into the mountain of grammar that everyone started with.

Then today I found this site: Latin 1: The Easy Way (via Del.icio.us). She has 9 lessons that serve as an introduction to Latin. But she didn't start with explaining the various declensions to me - she showed me a sentence and what it meant, and then showed me other sentences. I could see the variations, and they made sense. Suddenly I had a hook into the language - it clicked!

Obviously, I don't know Latin just by reading through her 9 lessons. There will be lots more practice and reading and I will probably go back to the standard textbooks and work through them. But, I will be able to make headway with them only because I now know what it's all about, and it's because I found a resource that worked with my way of learning.

And that's exactly why I want to home-school my children when I have them. People learn in different ways, and everyone probably has multiple ways they use to learn different things. If someone wants to learn something but isn't able to, it's probably because (s)he hasn't yet found someone who is able to teach it in the way her brain is geared to understand. That's the fault of the teacher, not the student. If the teacher continues to insist that his/her way of teaching is the right and only way, the student will get frustrated and give up. Children especially, do not have the patience or awareness to try and find other ways to learn what they need to know. If a teacher can't explain something well enough, the child will accept the explanation that it's the student's fault for not being smart enough to understand him or her.

A good teacher will try and explain things in multiple ways to reach students with different methods of learning. However, in a classroom setting, there's only so much time available to cover a given piece of material, and hence there isn't time to ensure that everyone has had it explained to his or her satisfaction. It's inevitable that someone will be left behind, and, if the material is sufficiently fundamental to later studies, those people will have a very hard time keeping up. Even the best teacher doesn't have time to individually instruct every one of his or her students.

A home-schooling parent, on the other hand, has all the time he or she needs to ensure that his/her child masters every topic (s)he needs to. While finances might be a restriction, it is far less of one than the teacher with a class of 20 to 30 students. And certainly, the parent has far fewer (ideally no) bureaucratic hoops to jump through if (s)he wants to try unorthodox teaching methods. If a textbook isn't working, throw it out and find a new one. Build houses of cards to explain geometry. Do chemistry experiments with edible results... Keep trying new things until, one day, you see your child's face light up, and you know they've finally got what you've been trying to teach them.

Sure, school teachers have those moments too, and they find them just as rewarding. Possibly, they find them rewarding enough to make up for the otherwise largely thankless teacher's life. But, like I said, even the best teacher does not have time to do everything (s)he would like to. Imagine the plight of the child who is stuck with a bad teacher! I don't want to play dice with my children's education that way. And, more and more, I wonder why anyone would.

A new meaning to "food pr0n"

2006-02-14T14:48:00.000-05:00

A little bit disturbing, but very tasty looking:

http://www.icecreamwedding.com/

We set our wedding date!!!

2006-02-13T23:01:00.000-05:00

I've been reading a lot recently about productivity and Getting Things Done. Today I decided to bite the bullet, and work on things rather than continuing to put them off until things settle down.

So, we have a wedding date.

Saturday, November 4th, 2006 @ 12:30 PM
St. Patrick's Church
317 West Pike St
Canonsburg, PA 15317

Lots more to plan, obviously, but it's a start...

The things you hear on Iron Chef America!

2006-02-12T21:22:00.000-05:00

"You say 'chocolate', and everyone says 'yum.' Then somebody gets out a fish!"

I still love that show, though. :)

Food Network Tidbits

2006-02-01T19:59:00.000-05:00

I watch a lot of the Food Network, mostly because there's rarely anything else good on. It's hard to go wrong with a food show; unless I've seen the particular episode before, I know I'mg oing to learn something. Sometimes it's just that I don't like the particular celebrity chef I've just watched, but mostly I will pick up something new culinary-wise that I didn't know before.

Unfortunately, because I watch these shows so often, I hear a lot of the same things over and over again. This is because the producers feel the need to include educational content into these shows, and they pitch it to the level of the first time viewer. So, here are the things you can expect to hear on a typical Food Network viewing experience.

1) How to make a roux: Heat and mix together some butter and flour in a pan until it gets to a sticky consistency.
2) What's in Worcestershire sauce: everything but the kitchen sink, including soy sauce, anchovies, ginger, garlic, etc....
3) Don't wash your mushrooms - they will get waterlogged and rubbery.
4) It's ok to wash your mushrooms - they don't absorb that much water.
(yes I did hear both those on different shows on the same day)
5) Let your meat rest after it comes out of the oven before you cut into it - this lets the juices spread back through the meat and lets it cook a little bit longer.
6) Only use wines in your cooking that you would drink out of a glass - the flavor concentrates during cooking, so if you don't like it on its own, you won't when you cook with it.
7) Fish shouldn't smell fishy - it should smell fresh, or like the ocean, not"fishy"
8) Crimini mushrooms - they're just baby Portabellos
9) Deep fry in a lot of oil - this way it reatins heat when you add the cold food into it and the food will cook faster, thus absorbing less oil.
10) Salt pasta water - it's your only chance to actually flavor the pasta.

Of course, now that I've decided to write this post, I'm blanking on the tidbits. Go figure...

There'll probably be a Part 2 to this post at some point in the future :)

On vocations

2006-01-30T22:50:00.000-05:00

Why in the world would anyone ever choose to become a Catholic priest or a nun? Why would you give up most, if not all, worldly pleasures, and place yourself in the service of people who, at the best of times, do not appreciate you enough to make up for the sacrifices you are making? Francis Porretto in this post talks about one possible advantage. A life surrendered to God and to the discipline of the religious life relieves one from having to worry about the sundry decisions we are faced with everyday.

I think this was one of the facets of religious life that most attracted me back when I was discerning my own vocation. I think it was also the reason I eventually didn't attempt to become a nun. Well, I am not a nun because I ultimately concluded that God did not want me to be one. But part of the reasoning that led me to that conclusion was that I felt I was looking to the religious life to provide me with an escape from the daily life I was living. I wanted that imposed discipline so I wouldn't have to make the effort to discipline myself. More than anything, I wanted all the decisions made for me, so I wouldn't have to go through the torture of making them myself. Or worse - be responsible for a decision that turned out to be wrong. I wanted the freedom to be a child forever - a child of God, perhaps, but nonetheless a child.

And, ultimately, I decided that this wasn't what God wanted for me. He wanted me to grow up - to live a life where I made my own decisions, and took responsibility for my own mistakes. I perhaps run the risk of indulging too much in those worldly pleasures that I would have given up in the religious life. But I am far less at risk of being that servant who buried his talent in the ground and got no use out of it.

Not, of course, to imply that people who do have religious vocations are wasting their talents. Far from it - they will certainly find occasion to use their gifts for the greater glory of God. However, I do believe that as a general rule, we are called to the vocation that would need us to have the most dependency on God. For me, the discipline of the religious life could easily become a crutch by itself, a routine that I could follow without fear of mistakes. That routine could easily become my downfall, taking away from the loving relationship that is the goal and prize of faith. The temptation in lay life is that the very many pleasures in the world will (and do) tempt you away from that relationship as well, but the lay world is more full of the painful situations that bring you back to God too. At least, this is the way the world works for me.

I am sure there are people whose biggest cross would be to submit to the discipline of religious life, and who could not get through that without a continual resubmission to God. It is those people, I believe who are most often called to that vocation.

Way to go, Chuck!

2006-01-28T01:18:00.000-05:00

Dear Charles Schwab,

I've seen several of your "Talk to Chuck" commercials recently. They made an impression on me; I've been thinking "Maybe I should talk to Chuck. I do have some money I could invest, and advice and help would be nice." You were totally winning me over.

Then tonight I saw a new commercial. It said "When I'm a hundred-thousandaire, why am I paying commissions like a multi-millionaire?... Talk to Chuck." Wow, did that make me feel inadequate!

I'm not a hundred-thousandaire. My net worth is currently in the negative tens of thousands, thanks to 2 very expensive degrees that I'm still paying for. However, I'm a 25 year old professional woman who will no doubt have more than $100000 to invest at some point in the not so very distant future. And I want to start investing now so I get that 100k sooner rather than later. If Chuck doesn't want to help me get that money, I'm going to have to find someone else who will. And if I get good help from someone else when I'm young, (relatively) poor and inexperienced, chances are I will stick with that person when I'm older, have more money and know a little more about how I want my money to be managed.

So, Chuck, explain to me why I would ever give you a second look tomorrow when you so nonchalantly dissed me today? Thanks for nothing Chuck; I thought you were different...

Sincerely,

karishma

Insomnia and nightmares

2006-01-14T05:42:00.000-05:00

Stupid nocturnal sleep schedule. That's why I'm wide awake at 0530.

Or it might be the awful dream I had. It was one of those where it isn't too bad while you're actually dreaming. It's just kinda sad or tense or 'not quite right' feeling. But then you wake up and remember what you dreamed and you just feel sick to your stomach because of how very horrible it was...

Man, I wish I could sleep... Oh well, bring on the Benadryl...

Good night/morning. See you later.

Thoughts on love (and Shrek 2)

2006-01-12T20:05:00.000-05:00

Ok, it's a kiddie movie, but I love Shrek 2. It's lighthearted, funny and tells a good, gripping story, albeit one that's fairly predictable. It's basically your everyday true love conquers all story as it relates to an ogre and a princess.

The reason for this post, though, is a line that's certainly not unique to this love story. "If you really love her, you'll let her go," says Fairy Godmother to Shrek at one point in the story. We've all heard that line so many times in so many different love stories. Sometimes the person follows this advice, and sometimes they don't, with varying consequences depending on the story.

Like any other cliche, there is some truth in this saying. True love requires that you want what is best for the person you love, and sometimes that means acknowledging that you are not the best match for that person. Sometimes, you do have to let them go. It is also truue in the more general sense that you need to let the other person be free to become the person they are meant to be, and not force them to conform to your vision of who they ought to be.

Nonetheless, I think this line is used too often, and makes people nervous and less confident than they ought to be is their relationships. When you truly do love someone more than yourself, you always worry that you might not be helping them live up to their fullest potential. There's always times when you wonder if they truly would be better off without you. And, like in the movie, there's usually someone around to whisper the poisonous line at the opportune moment. Sometimes the person has an agenda, but sometimes they just honestly believe that the two of you would be happier apart.

I'm not denying that some relationships just aren't meant to be. For many reasons, two people can love each other, but still not be able to make the relationship work. And, in those cases, the best decision you can come to is to walk away and live with the regret, rather than try and stick it out till you end up hating each other. Still, in most cases, you can make it work, and it's important to know that. You need to be confident that you are the one your lover is meant to be with; that there's no one else who would be better for them than you are. We all have doubts sometimes, but if we stick it out and try our best to make it work, we might just be rewarded with something beyond our wildest expectations.

Trusting the Source

2006-01-10T20:44:00.000-05:00

Sarah talks about something similar to what I was getting at here. The Over There show admits it is fiction, but it claims to be realistic fiction. The events and people are not real, but we are clearly meant to think they could be. It's not like Gettysburg, which is clearly a "what might have been" story, but more like The Killer Angels. Of course, neither Over There nor The Killer Angels (and especially not Gettysburg) are meant to provide the reader/viewer with a historical education about the wars they protray. What these works do is give us an impression of what these wars are like. What did it feel like to be a soldier in the Civil War? What is it like to be on the ground in Iraq?

There may be errors in the historical accuracy of the Civil War novels. They might even be of the "that would never, ever happen" variety that Sarah's husband pointed out in the TV show. There are two important differences though, that make the TV one more worrying than any faults in the books.

The first, of course, is that the Civil War is over; it's outcome is decided. No one, after reading Gettysburg, is going to say "I think we ought to have let the South secede." Or certainly not "'I think we ought to reinstate slavery as a legal option." Factual errors, or even deliberate misleading statements can color our view of the past, but cannot change what happened. In that sense, the power anyone might gain by distorting the truth in these novels is very limited. On the other hand, if a misleading, negative impression is continually thrust upon the public about the war we are currently in, that could lead to significant societal and political pressures to change our policy. Potentially devastating actions are possible if someone with a deliberate anti-US agenda and enough talent were to undertake the job of systematically feeding the public lies about the war. (I'm not saying the makers of Over There are trying to mislead, merely explaining why they come under more scrutiny than the writers of historical fiction).

The other reason we should be more concerned about errors in the TV programs is that the events are still taking place. We obviously don't know everything that is happening, or how things will turn out. Quite possibly, historians in the future looking at the events of these years, will discover that many things that appeared good at the time turned out to be bad and vice versa. On the other hand, there is quite a bit of study already done about the Civil War. There is so much material out there already that it would be extremely difficult to convincingly pass off something about that time period unless it was grossly true. You might be able to conceal small changes, or skew things in a certain direction, but certainly, no one would be able to suggest that Gettysburg was a more accurate portrayal than Killer Angels.

It is far easier for the Iraq war to be mischaracterized as a "war for oil" or "American imperialism", or "imposing American ideas of democracy on people who don't want it". It is also easier for people to malign our troops as bloodthirsty, amoral, war criminals because the theater of war is so far away that most people only do get to see the troops as the media portrays them. Hence, it is doubly important that we keep a close watch on what those portrayals are, and correct the errors when we find them.

Which brings me back to a point I made in my earlier post - how do we know we are being misled? If you aren't intimately involved in the war in Iraq, either being there or knowing well someone who is, how do you even begin to theorize that the media portrayal of our troops is a distorted image? How do we know when the source of our information can be trusted?

I talked about blogs having accountability because of the ability to directly link to the source material. Still, I think blogs will suffer the same fate the traditional news media did, and become institutionalized, even mainstream, if you will. I admit to not always bothering to read the linked article on a blog, if I trust the author to generally be honest with what he reports. As blog readership increases, and bloggers get their information from more widespread sources, the job of editorial fact-checking becomes ever harder, and will need to be either delegated or subordinated to other tasks. At that point, it becomes a lot easier for an untrue story to slip under the radar and be given publicity it doesn't deserve.

Imagine if every subscriber of the New York Times read your blog. Imagine the quantity of content you would need to put out before this becomes a possibility. Imagine the nightmare of scrupulously fact-checking every piece of interesting news/information you come across before you mention it on your blog when putting out this enormous quantity of information every day. How do ensure that you as a news source remain trustworthy and only publish accurate information?

I don't really have an answer to that question. Maybe blogs will never grow into giant media entities like the newspapers and networks. Maybe everyone will have his or her own little piece of internet expertise where (s)he writes only about things (s)he has verified. I don't have a crystal ball. All I have is a fortune cookie that says "all is not yet lost..."

Sleep Schedule

2006-01-09T17:12:00.000-05:00

I tried an experiment today to see if I could live a semi-normal life while working nights. Usually, if I'm working one night, I just stay up really late the night before and then sleep in till noon or so the day I'm working. I still get about 5 hours of usable time, and I know I've gotten enough sleep.

This morning, however, I had a dentist appointment at 0830 that I had to wake up for. The prudent thing to do would have been to reschedule it for a more convenient time. But I wanted to see if the afternoon nap method of getting enough sleep works for me. I've tried it in the past, and I know I have trouble falling asleep during the day. But recently I've found that taking Benadryl knocks me out fairly well, and I'm reasonably good at staying asleep once I get over that initial wakefulness.

Well, I got home from my appointment (and a couple of other errands) at around 1000, and, unsurprisingly enough, found I was not sleepy. I had something to eat, talked to Dan online, and then decided that if I didn't try to take that nap fairly soon, the Benadryl would leave me sleepy at work and, obviously, I don't want that. So around 1100, I went to bed, took my Benadryl, and tried to sleep. I did fall asleep, and did stay in bed through 1600, but I'm not sure about the quality of the sleep I got. It felt like I was awake every half hour, although there were all memories of waking up, so I must have gotten some sleep in between.

The most difficult part about this is that I didn't fall asleep last night till around 0330, so I only got about 4 hours then, and those were not really good either. I guess I'm just going to have to keep pouring on the caffeine tonight, and go back to my usual sleep pattern starting tomorrow.

Result: If I'm going to work nights, I'm going to have to keep that nocturnal schedule, or get better knock me out drugs.

Football

2006-01-08T16:18:00.000-05:00

I'm preparing to watch the Steelers play the Bengals. Living here, I have to root for the home team. I have no idea, though, if they are likely to win or not. They won once and lost once against Cincinatti in the regular season. But they've been on a winning streak, and Cinci's been on a losing streak.... There's more that I would know if I were a sports fan like some of the people I know, who could handicap this game with the confidence of a bookie.

I'm, of course, not much of a sports fan at all. I do like watching football, a fact brought home to me mostly because I've been watching it over the past couple of days even though I don't particularly care for any of the teams in the playoffs besides the Steelers. Granted, my method of watching football is to sit here with it on and a good book, and look up when the announcers get excited. That way I get to see all the cool plays in slow motion during the replay.

The best part of football games, in my opinion, is cuddling up on the couch with Dan while he watches the game, and eating all the fun football snacks that everyone has to have - wings, veggies and dip, crackers, etc. Mmm... football season...

Alternate History

2006-01-07T20:19:00.000-05:00

I'm trying to read Gettysburg: A Novel of the Civil War by Newt Gingrich and William Forstchen. I'm about 100 pages into it, and I'm realizing that I don't know enough to truly appreciate it as an alternate history.

Unlike Daniel, who's been a Civil War buff for most of his life, and was fairly close to being a history major in college, I have not ever had much interest in history. Most of my knowledge of the Civil War comes from The Killer Angels, and having Dan give me the tour of Gettysburg, explaining what happened where. So, while I have a general idea of the main events of the battle, I don't have nearly close to the ready familiarity with the events of those days required for me to understand how this novel changes things. I'm getting a vague idea that the first day of battle isn't going quite the way it did in real life, but I wouldn't be able to tell you in any detail what's different.

What all this means is that, while I will still undoubtedly enjoy the book, I will not be able to judge how well it works as an alternate history. I don't have enough appreciation of how things truly happened to decide whether the alternate presented to me is plausible or not. Fortunately, the authors make it clear that this is a work of fiction and not how things really happened. If it were presented to me as authentic history, I know I wouldn't be able to identify which parts were real and which ones weren't, or which parts were emphasised to reflect the biases of the authors. What I don't know is whether the typical American high school student who, theoretically at least, knows more about the Civil War than I do, would be able to identify fact from fiction in this book.

If we don't have access to all the facts about a situation, how do we tell fact from fiction? Would we even know that there is an alternate story out there? What would you have done had you been one of those listeners to Orson Welles' broadcast that night? What if you only had access to one news source, or didn't have the time to read more than one and compare their versions of what happened in any given event? What if we didn't have bloggers to give us the man-on-the-scene point of view? Is it possible for people to create 'alternate realities' of how things happen, based simply on the fact that they control the media people get their news through?

I get most of my news through blogs, rather than official news sites, and this is one major reason why. If the blogger is making things up, I won't be able to find confirmatory reports, and I will most likely find several refutations of his points. However, newspapers, or news web sites, and especially news on TV, make a point of being "objective, unbiased, professional, etc." and I have to trust to their reputation for being honest with me. There's no transparent fact checking like there is with blogs. I suppose a blogger determined to fool the world could set up a number of blogs whose sole purpose was to provide false information to the world, but the effort required would be huge.

I don't think this is because of the nature of blogs as a medium as much as it's a function of the fact that blogs are new, untamed and uninstitutionalized. Newspapers once were revolutionary and incendiary too, but as they got big and respectable, they got populated by people to whom power was more important than truth. Blogs could get the same way, given time, I'm sure, and then the people making the news will have to find some new means of getting the true information out to the public. But that will take a while, and in the meantime, blogs are the best source of unbiased news (or openly biased, which is still better than having an agenda but claiming to be objective) we have available.

The main reason we can identify alternate histories to be "alternate" is that we know what really happened. And that's because the event is in the past. In the present, we have to keep in mind that the story we hear may not be the complete one. We might not be deliberately being deceived (on the other hand, we just might be); the person reporting might just have only a partial picture, and we have to wait for other points of view before we know the whole story. But, to quote the book that gave rise to this post, "the rear of a battle always looks like a battle lost," and even today, we sometimes need to wait for the smoke to clear before we can make any statements about what really happened.

Nervous Wreck

2006-01-04T15:09:00.000-05:00

I'm turning into one.

I've been working on my own -off orientation - for two days now, and I can't stop thinking about my patients when I get home. And I keep thinking that I've missed something significant and very bad things are going to happen to them because of it. I know this isn't true. Even if I did miss something, there are other people taking care of them after I leave that will catch it. I might get written up, but the patient will be ok. I hope this gets better as I get more used to the work. When I'm not forever trying to catch up and make sure I've done all the paperwork I need to; when I know I've told the next nurse everything significant in report, maybe I will be able to actually sleep when I get home.

The worst part, though, is that when I do remember stuff that was important that I forgot to pass on, it's never on my drive home, or even within the first few hours after I get home, when I can call in and pass it on as a late report. It's usually a day later, when it becomes something I should have done that I can no longer correct. Like this morning, I remembered not having done 24 hour chart reviews Monday night. Something I missed that I can no longer fix.

I'm not a bad nurse; I take care of my patients. I am fairly good at advocating for what they need. I just wish I could do it without this gnawing at the pit of my stomach every day before I leave for work.

Christmas Presents

2005-12-26T12:22:00.000-05:00

An update to my earlier posts on Christmas presents, and the value of jewelry as a gift.

FDIL (Future-Dad-in-law) bought FMIL (figure it out!) a necklace with a lovely green sapphire and diamond pendant as a Christmas present. Her reaction was of the kind I predicted - she was speechless and teary-eyed, and couldn't get enough of it. And FDIL was obviously thrilled with her excitement; his smile was at least as broad as hers as he helped her put it on.

Perhaps it is a little silly for us to get this much pleasure out of trinkets that cost so much money, but it is a fact that we do. Ignoring that fact, and hence depriving yourself and someone you love of a source of much joy, seems like a shame to me.

Merry Christmas!

2005-12-25T07:27:00.000-05:00

I pray that every one of my readers has a peaceful, joyous Christmas, and that the New Year brings you all the happiness and success you desire. May God bless you all!

Did he just say what I think he just said??!!

2005-12-24T11:32:00.000-05:00

Y108, the country music station I l isten to a lot while driving to and from work, has been giving this snippet a lot of air time recently:

And when Kenny Chesney came to town, he made this startling confession:
Y108: Briefs or Boxers?
Kenny: Depends...
Y108: Depends? Really? I wasn't expecting that answer!

You can hear Kenny's face turn red as he realizes what he just said on-air.

Heh.

Bored

2005-12-16T19:55:00.000-05:00

There's stuff going on - Iraqi elections, yet another White House scandal that will probably turn out to be nothing more than Democrats looking for an excuse to bash the President, the expiration of the Patriot Act... But nothing seems to be engaging my interest enough to write a post about it.

Maybe I'm not paying enough attention, or maybe I'm tired of politics. Or maybe it's just that it's almost Christmas, and all I want to do is be with people I love and enjoy their company.

Perhaps this will turn into a completely non-political blog. Or maybe I will summon up the energy sometime soon to tackle the bigger/broader issues that we all argue about. Things like abortion, gun rights, the death penalty, the role of government, social security, tax reform, foreign policy, etc. I'm a lot more interested in the basic arguments. In fact, the only time I really care about any given issue du jour is when the pro and con arguments come from viewpoints that illustrate differences on one of the big issues.

E.g. people's reactions to the Iraqi elections would depend entirely on how they view the issue of militant Islam, and how we ought to deal with it. And, since I have to work tomorrow morning, I will leave it at that for now, and save the elaboration for another day.

Thoughts on "The Apprentice" finale

2005-12-16T19:09:00.000-05:00

The outcome of "The Apprentice" was fairly unsurprising to me, at least after watching the first few minutes of the final episode. They focused fairly heavily on Randal, and didn't pay nearly as much attention to Rebecca. Plus they had Donal Trump saying several times "I have to pick between two stars"

My mom-in-law made a good point about the end, though. It did look very much like The Donald wanted to hire both candidates, and asked Randal just to give him the chance to be magnanimous on national TV. If he had expected Randal to say "no," he might not have asked and just announced his decision. Having said it was up to him, though, he couldn't really say "Well, I don't care what you think, I'm going to do it anyway." Well, he could have, being Donald Trump, but it would have injured his relationship with someone he had just hired into a high-profile, high responsibility position. I'm fairly certain he will make the offer to Rebecca anyway; she just doesn't get the chance to accept on national TV with millions of people watching her.

I'm not sure what I think about Randal's decision, though. Sure, he missed the chance to be magnanimous on TV, and reinforce his image as the only genuinely nice person on the show. And that break with his nice guy image might be a drawback down the road, if people remember it. I don't know if people's attention spans are that long, though. A future boss might remember and wonder, but I'm guessing the next step after being Donald Trump's apprentice is being his own boss. And, as long as he's good at what he does, whether he's a genuine nice guy, or just playing the part as long as it helps him does not really make that much difference to potential business partners.

I don't think he was really thinking about long-term consequences, though. I think what he was thinking was "I won, and I don't want to share the glory with anyone else." Also, from a practical point of view, having two apprentices (not "apprenti") would probably not be the best experience for either of them, although it would still be to the benefit of Mr. Trump to not let either of these two very impressive candidates be picked up by someone else. Besides the national publicity, the biggest advantage of this position is the opportunity to work very closely with Donald Trump and learn from him. The apprentice would be stupid to not seek out every opportunity and spend as much time with the man as possible. Obviously, having two people in that position would make it a lot harder for either one of them to gain nearly as much from the experience as they would if only one of them were there. It is understandable that Randal wouldn't want to share this opportunity.

Ultimately, I think Randal made the right business decision, assuming he does outstanding work on the project assigned to him, and doesn't give anyone the opportunity to answer the "what if?" question in Rebecca's favor. And, honestly, apart from losing the chance to be hired live on NBC, Rebecca did not come far behind. It was obvious that the Donald did want to hire her, and if he doesn't, someone else will. I will be very surprised if she doesn't go far in the business world, even without the Trump name behind her.

More ideas on christmas presents

2005-12-14T21:26:00.000-05:00

Daniel has a post up today about the worst Christmas presents you can get for people.

I agree with all his 5 worst picks. The only person I would buy either a pet or a cell phone as a present for would be one of my kids, and only if they had begged and pleaded for it for quite a while. Cash and gift certificates are just tacky and impersonal, and definitely inappropriate for close friends and family. (Getting a $100 bill from old Aunt Jane does do a lot to improve relations between little kids and elderly relatives, though).

And the only thing worse than lottery tickets as a gift is the fake winning lottery ticket as a gag gift. Take the emotional rollercoaster of imagining what you would do if you might win, and the disappointment when you don't. Then multiply it a million times to conceive the agony the person will be in who thought for a moment they really had won before they found out it was a joke. The person who gives that gift completely deserves the severe bodily harm that will be visited on them by the recipient.

The only one of his honorable mention picks I disagree on is jewelry. In particular, a man buying jewelry as a present for his wife. I think women do appreciate jewelry more than men think. It might not serve a practical function, but it's something beautiful that makes us feel beautiful. And a woman who feels she is beautiful is happy and confident. And she will love you for making her feel that way. And that can have many benefits for you as the giver, don't you think?

Plus, it's an extravagant, generous present. Most women, or at least, most women whose highest priority is their family, do not tend to splurge on things for themselves. And they tend to feel guilty about it if they do. So, she is certainly not going to buy something like that for herself. But that doesn't mean that she doesn't want it. It just means that she feels she ought to buy things that are more practical and useful for the family. When you, as her husband, buy her something like that, you validate that she does deserve these things. It also shows her that you value her enough to spend that much money on her. For all these, reasons, I think jewelry makes an excellent gift, if you can afford it.

That really is the only caveat here. If you buy her jewelry when the kids need new shoes, she will probably still appreciate the gift, but will not be able to enjoy it because she will be thinking about what better use the money could have been put to. (So will you, most likely.) And the gift will become a source of frustration more than a source of pleasure. So, please don't spend the rent money on jewelry for your wife. But, please do consider buying her something pretty and extravagant, and you may just be surprised at what happens.

Project Runway

2005-12-14T20:22:00.000-05:00

Channel flipping the other day, I accidentally landed on Project Runway, and decided to see what it was about.

Well, it's one of the more annoyingly edited reality shows on TV. It's on Bravo, so I guess it's not surprising that it's the gayest reality show on, as well. But the clothes are wonderful! I'm not a huge fashion person; my personal style is based on comfort rather than style. Lots of jeans and sweater sets. (And scrubs for work, of course). So I'm surprising myself with how fascinated I am with the clothes these designers come up with in very little time, with lots of constraints as to materials and other resources.

I just wish watching the show wasn't so grating on my nerves. Part of it is the editing. All reality shows are edited for drama, obviously. It's just that this being a fashion designer contest means that the people involved are all the high-strung, easily driven to hysterics kind of people. There's so much crying on this show I'm not sure how they fit anything else in. But, worse than that is the way the show is edited to repeat their commentary so many more times than necessary. In that first episode we heard the line "One of you will be the winner, and 2 of you will be out" 4 times - twice before the commercial and twice again after. Ok, Mr. Producer, we get it!! Get on with the show already!

And Heidi Klum! That "out" is going to be the death of the show, seriously. I realize that at least since Donald Trump, they feel they need a punchy "You're fired!" line. But "out" is not a punch line; it's just a bad accent added to what sounds like someone losing a children's playground game. "Ha!Ha! you're out!" Doesn't really encourage me to take what happens in the show seriously. Although the most annoying line of the show was when Heidi Klum said "If I didn't have this bump, I would wear it right now," referring to her pregnant belly. I really feel sorry for that kid, although I guess (s)he should feel lucky that his or her mom didn't decide to have an abortion rather than let getting pregnant and having a kid interfere with her modeling career.

Still, the clothes are lovely, and perhaps I will suffer through another episode before I give up on the show. Or perhaps I will catch the last 20 minutes every week, and just hit "mute" on the remote, just to enjoy the clothes without needing to bear the commentary.

Christmas Presents and such...

2005-12-14T17:37:00.000-05:00

I went shopping with my future Mom-in-law today, mostly looking for Christmas presents. We ended up buying a couple things each for ourselves and some groceries.... go figure.

But part of our discussion was that it gets harder every year to buy Christmas presents for people because everyone has everything they need already, and it feels like we're buying them something they will never use just to say we got them something.

I have a very short list of people I buy presents for, or at least people I buy significant presents for. I already have little gifts for people at work - Christmas scented incense stick packs, and something similar but a little bigger for my preceptors. That and personalized cards should get me squared away with people at work. But my list for people who get "real" Christmas presents is very short indeed.

There's my parents and my brother, who've gotten presents about every other year depending on whether I found something they would like, and that was easy to stash in my luggage when I went home. I would really like to get my parents something this year because it will be the first year I'm not spending Christmas with them. Plus, I am now working at my first real job, so I can afford to spend more on them. But, since I am not going home, I need to find something that will ship, and since I don't have it yet, it will probably not make it to them by Christmas. sigh...

Then there's the in-laws. I have no idea what I could get that would be appropriate. I would really like to get them something, because I am really grateful and happy that they accepted me so readily into their family. I just don't know what I can get that would be useful and significant enough to express this.

Besides those two, there's Daniel. He's not very hard to shop for, in general. But this year is hard because we're in between moves, and so anything practical might as well wait until after the move. At the same time, something fun seems trivial; it seems like I'm always getting him something silly and fun that he likes but doesn't love. (And I have one of those already; I'd just like to get him something more)

Then there's just a couple of my friends. 2 of the 3 of them are mutual friends of mine and Dan's and we can get them a present from the both of us. The 3rd is a very very good friend of mine that I would absolutely love to make a present for because he would appreciate the item, as well as the thought behind it. Of course, there's no way I can create anything worthwhile between now and Christmas, so that's frustrating too.

I guess the point of this post is to get your Christmas shopping done earlier, so you don't face the dilemma I'm in right now! I will definitely take ideas on presents if anyone has them, though.

More thoughts on the death penalty and redemption

2005-12-13T17:36:00.000-05:00

A clarification of my basic point in my previous post.

When a person is convicted of a crime, (s)he is assigned a penalty to pay based on that crime. The jury or judge does not weigh everything good the person has done in his or her lifetime against everything bad (s)he has done and come to a definitive conclusion about the net moral worth of that person's life. That judgement will be made, for all of us, after we die by a Judge who both knows all the facts, and is Himself sinless and perfectly just. It is not the job of our courts here on earth. The only job of a judge or jury in our system is to determine if the person did in fact commit the crime (s)he is accused of, and if (s)he did, what the penalty is (s)he ought to pay for it.

Hence, any discussion of other good things the person has done in his or her lifetime, while emotionally moving, is ultimately irrelevant to whether or not the person ought to suffer the penalty that has been prescribed for him or her. We can always find good things people have done, even the ones convicted of the most horrific crimes.

We, as a society, have decided that certain crimes deserve the ultimate penalty. This decision is based on the severity of the crime, not the overall badness of the person who committed it. There may be irredeemable people, although I hope that everyone, at least when death is imminent, will in fact regret the bad things they have done. But, the fact that someone may reform in prison or even that (s)he has reformed, does not negate the fact that (s)he committed a crime for which the assigned penalty is death. And justice demands that (s)he pay that penalty.

This is not to say that the judge or jury deciding a case ought not to consider things such as potentially extenuating circumstances, motivation, provokation, etc. Certainly, these things ought to be considered, both in determining whether the person ought to be convicted, and what the sentence (s)he is to be punished with. However, once the verdict has been handed down, and the sentence decided on, anything relevant has already been considered. This is especially true when the case has gone through all channels of appeal. If anything relevant has been overlooked in the initial trial, it will certainly have been addressed by the time the appeals process ahs been concluded. Certainly, anything the person does after the conclusion of the trial is entirely irrelevant to whether or not (s)he ought to be punished for the crime (s)he has committed.

Of course, you may argue that no one ever ought to be executed. This is a completely different argument, and like I mentioned earlier, one that, on the whole, I agree with. However, as long as we as a society continue to use the death penalty; I believe the only thing that should be considered in regard to its application is the severity of the crime and the guilt or innocence of the person accused of it.

A little late, but...

2005-12-13T14:07:00.000-05:00

Almost everyone I know was talking about the impending execution of Stanley Tookie Williams, that took place last night.

My feelings on the matter are a little mixed. In general, in theory, I am opposed to the death penalty. I agree with what the Catechism says on the death penalty:

2267 Assuming that the guilty party's identity and responsibility have been fully determined, the traditional teaching of the Church does not exclude recourse to the death penalty, if this is the only possible way of effectively defending human lives against the unjust aggressor.

If, however, non-lethal means are sufficient to defend and protect people's safety from the aggressor, authority will limit itself to such means, as these are more in keeping with the concrete conditions of the common good and are more in conformity to the dignity of the human person.

Today, in fact, as a consequence of the possibilities which the state has for effectively preventing crime, by rendering one who has committed an offense incapable of doing harm - without definitely taking away from him the possibility of redeeming himself - the cases in which the execution of the offender is an absolute necessity "are very rare, if not practically non-existent."

Catechism of the Catholic Church, para. 2267

Hence, I don't really think most people, even murderers ought to be executed. However, the law, and the majority public opinion in this country we live in, states that certain crimes are to be punished by death, and Williams committed such a crime. He was found guilty and sentenced, and exhausted all avenues of appeal. No judge or jury authorized to make the decision has felt that he ought not to be executed.

In addition, the reasons proposed for why he ought to be granted clemency did not at all pertain to his guilt or innocence, or even reference the nature of his crime. Rather they centered around his supposed redemption of himself by good actions done while he's been in prison. And certainly, people can change and redeem themselves in prison. Especially in the case of people sentenced to death, I would hope and pray that they all redeem themselves before they die.

However, I am not sure that this redemption ought to be ever considered as grounds to overturn a judge/jury decision as to the sentence a convicted criminal deserves. The judge/jury were the people given the authority to decide the penalty for the crime; their decision should not be overturned unless there is exceptional reason to do so. Any post-conviction / pre-execution conversion should be welcomed for the spiritual benefits it brings to the criminal - hopefully, none of us is uncharitable enough to hope that even the worst convicted criminal is sentenced not just to death but to Hell for his actions. Rather, we hope that even the worst criminal repents, and seeks forgiveness for his crimes, if not from his victims, at least from God, who does forgive any truly repentant sinner.

However, the basis of redemption is remorse for your crimes. And Williams never admitted his guilt, and hence never expressed remorse or apologized to the families of his victims. And this makes me wonder about how real his so-called redemption was. It seems more and more likely that the 'redemption' argument was just another tactic in order to avoid being executed, since at the same time he was also arguing that he was wrongfully convicted, that his conviction was racially motivated, that the death penalty system in California is fundamentally flawed, etc.

All in all, I still feel that no one ought to be executed in this country, because we can effectively protect society from criminals without resorting to the death penalty. However, as long as people continue to be executed, I think the punishment ought to be applied uniformly. People ought not to be granted clemency merely because they have managed to get the attention of one or more celebrities. I don't think Willims deserved clemency any more than any of the other people on death row, and I think his execution was as just as any other.

Songs for difficult emotions

2005-12-13T13:25:00.000-05:00

This song's been playing on the radio for about a month now. I didn't like it that much when I first heard it, but have since found it exactly expresses a feeling that would otherwise just have me feeling frustrated and angry, without being able to put the feeling into words.

I don't feel like loving you today,
So don't you even try to change my mind,
The best thing you can do right now,
Is just go away,
Cause I don't feel like loving you today,

I don't wanna talk about last night,
I'm angry and I haven't had much sleep,
And I'm so tired and bloodshot,
There's no tellin' what I'd say,
I don't feel like loving you today,

But you know I will anyway,
Even though we make it hard sometimes,
I'll wind up forgiving and probably loving you,
For the rest of my life,
But I don't feel like loving you today,
And I've got 16 hours left to go,
I might tell you that I'm leaving,
Even though you know I'll stay,
Cause I don't feel like loving you today.

-- 'I Don't Feel Like Loving You Today' by Gretchen Wilson

Here's another one that expresses pretty much the same feeling.

I'll never leave, I'll never stray.
My love for you will never change.
But I ain't ready to make up.
We'll get around to that.
I think I'm right, I think you're wrong.
I'll prob'ly give in before long.
Please don't make me smile.
I just wanna be mad for a while.

-- 'I Just Wanna Be Mad' by Terri Clark

I think all couples should have these songs on their playlists for the times when nothing else will work quite as well to express what they are feeling.

Any ideas for other songs that convey complex emotions perfectly?

A question about TV ads

2005-12-12T21:23:00.000-05:00

How long does an ad have to run before the makers decide it's hit its saturation point? The point at which we all have seen it so many times that they can switch to showing us a shortened, cheaper, punchline-only version of the same ad, and trust our memory to fill in the rest.

Who makes that decision, and what do they base it on? Are there different timeframes for different products, or different ads? Is it the mark of a well designed ad that it can be made into long and short versions? As opposed to the ones that only work at one length?

Of course, this is all secondary to the question of whether any of these ads are effective. As in, do any of them convince people to buy the product they are advertising. A lot of ads seem to get people talking about them, or chuckling over them, without doing a whole lot to motivate sales and actual revenue for the company paying for them. Is this really the case, or am I just not the target demographic for any ad out there today? I'm a 25 year old single working woman - surely some of these are aimed at me? Or are these companies really continuing to pay out for ads that do nothing more than keep their name in front of people all the time, even without an actual call to action.

Any advertising / marketing type people out there who can answer these questions?

A few of my favorite things

2005-12-11T15:01:00.000-05:00

Things that inspire me, things that changed my life, and things that made me think. (And several of these fit more than one of those descriptions)

1) Daniel, the love of my life (TLOML) - always the top of any such list.

2) bloggers - Dean Esmay, Alice in Texas, Sarah of Trying to Grok, Bill Whittle, Stephen Den Beste, and the no longer active Kim and Connie Du Toit.

3) authors / books - C. S. Lewis, everything he's written, but in particular, The Screwtape Letters, Mere Christianity and Perelandra. G. K. Chesterton, and, particularly, The Everlasting Man. Atlas Shrugged, by Ayn Rand. Ender's Game, by Orson Scott Card. Heinlein's Starship Troopers. A Brief History of Time, by Stephen Hawking.
(Ok, not a particularly original or earth-shattering list, but it gives you a decent insight into my worldview. And I'll stop with those for now, although my inspirational book list might go on forever if I listed them all.)

to be continued...

second post

2005-12-11T14:46:00.000-05:00

(if it ain't broke...why try for creative post titles?)

Obviously, school kept me busier than I thought I was going to be. It's been more than 16 months between my first and second posts. I did make it throught nursing school, and am now working at Mercy hospital of Pittsburgh, in a Neuro/Trauma progressive care unit. (And I will shortly be moving again to Lynchburg, the middle of nowhere, VA, but that's a whole other blog post!)

I'm still conservative, although I'm no longer in an environment where everyone else is an avowed and outspoken liberal. Most people at work are, but they don't tend to talk about it. Every once in a while we do get a patient who answers the 'Who is the President?' orientation question with 'ugh.. Bush' or some such, but I can laugh at that with them.

What inspired me to come back to this blog, though, was the death of Stephen Malcolm Anderson. This man I never met was a frequent commenter on a couple of blogs I regularly read, and his comments were always thought-provoking and interesting. While he and I were very different, I always learned something from his thoughts, and felt on some level he was a kindred spirit. I hope he is at peace now, even though my idea of Heaven is not the same as his. And I still hope one day to meet him in person. In the meantime, though, I will see what I can do on this little blog of mine to live my life with as much enthusiasm, joy, good humor and style as he did.

First Post :)

2004-07-29T18:24:00.000-05:00

Reading other people's weblogs has taken up far too much of my time for more than a year now, and I finally gave in and decided to start my own.

My main reason for doing this is because I need a place to vent, since everyone around me has the opposite viewpoint on every issue than I do. I've met a large circle of people on weblogs who make a good deal of sense, and I'd like to get to know them better. I don't think lurking on their blogs and only occasionally posting a comment is going to make that happen, though. Commenting on someone else's blog is like visiting them in their house; and I tend to be very shy with people I don't know. Over here, it's more like them visiting me, so they have to be at least a little interested in what I have to say, right?

So, you're probably thinking, who is this girl? Well, I'm a beginning student in the Accelerated BSN Program at the Johns Hopkins School of Nursing. I'm 2 months into it, and I love it so far. It's just hard to deal with the fact that everyone I meet is very very liberal as far as political outlook goes, and I get more and more conservative the more I think about various issues. An example: we had a lecture on how important it is for us as nurses to be involved in politics, and her favorite example of successful influence was the passage of a law banning cigarette smoking in restaurants. I looked around and no one in the room seemed to think that having the government regulate how private businesses are run might be a bad thing.

Now, to be fair, I didn't say anything either, so there could be other closet conservatives in the group. I just don't like conflict, and unless the other person seriously offends me, I am probably not going to make an issue out of it. In fact, there are only a couple of issues which I care to engage anyone on, although I am hoping that on a blog, in writing, I will be able to articulate my positions on more of them. But, in particular, I will not back down from an argument about abortion, the role of government, or the importance of the 2nd amendment. This, of course, makes me liable to be a very unpopular person in the company I keep.

So, if you're interested in the travails of a lone conservative in a sea of liberals, stay tuned. I will try and keep this blog interesting, but its primary purpose is to keep me from exploding with suppressed outrage, so be prepared for the occasional invective filled rant.