Thoughts

OK seriously, this Sunday night Superbowl stuff needs to stop.  I want to go get drunk and watch the game (esp when the Giants are in it!).  But I’m like, a working professional or something now.  I have to go to work in the morning.  Even if I can handle being drunk the night before, it means I can’t go far to watch the game (this year I’m going up to Boston… no idea how I’m going to get to work on time in the morning).

Since the NFL is obsessed with Superbowl Sunday, I propose a different solution.  Move it to Presidents Day weekend.  Sure we (as professionals) don’t generally get the day off, but a lot of people do, and we can at least plausibly take it off.  Perhaps combine this with the talk about going to an 18 game season (and eliminating pre-season) that has been going around.

So I hear on the radio on the way to work this morning that tonight is Bushie Boys last State of the Union address.  What is he expected to talk about?  Iraq.  Iraq and how we’ve improved their lives, their country, in the long run.  Maybe it’s true, maybe it’s not.  I don’t really feel like arguing about it.  But last I checked, he wasn’t the president of Iraq.  He was the President of the United States of America.

Tell me one thing he’s done for the United States.

The problem with blogging is that whenever enough is going on that you have something to blog about, you’re too busy to blog.

What has happened in the last couple weeks?

The Giants are NFC Champions.

Bush is a giant turd (nothing new there).

Fred Thompson dropped out of the race.

Stewart & Colbert are back on the air.

Eli Manning is my hero.

I need a permanent job.

Eli is the real Manning.

I beat the interwebz.

Solitaire is awesome.

But I don’t have time to blog about any of those.

There’s nothing worse than being at work, except for being at work with nothing to do.  I swear, I must have defeated the interwebz.  I don’t even remember the end guy being particuarly difficult.

It has just been that kind of day, where there’s no one at work and nothing to do - even when I purposely go looking for work!  I drafted one complaint today (I work for a law firm) and that was it.  Hell, I didn’t even finish the complaint, because I need feedback from a senior partner before I’m sure I’m doing it right, and he either hasn’t been around or has been busy all day.

If I have to be at work, I want to be busy at work, it makes the day go much faster, no?

So, where I work is a downtown location with plenty of young professionals about.  Every day, I go to one of three places for lunch (really, one of two) and I sit and I read a book for a while, have a sandwich, perhaps some soup, whatever.  I’ve noticed lately that no matter where I go, I see principally guys.  That doesn’t make sense!  There’s certainly plenty of women in the workforce, and even if there wasn’t, the town/city has plenty of women living there.  So why is it that I see every table as all guys, mostly guys, etc?  What are women doing for lunch?  Are they just that more dedicated that while us guys go jerk around during lunch, they sit at their desks hunched over a computer screen?  I don’t think so.

Alright, when the fuck did we go off the deep end?

I dealt with Ron Paul. I dealt with anti-Hillary, anti-Guilliani (both of which I agree with, but don’t need to see constantly). I deal with the constant Alternet postings. But now - what the fuck?

So yesterday, some Iranian boats charge a U.S. destroyer, cruiser and frigate (I believe it was) in international waters. Annoying, provocative, yes. But what’s Reddit’s response? “Oh, it must have been the fault of the U.S.” Bad enough. Then, I log on today, and WHAT THE HELL? “If you believe Iran “harassed” U.S. ships, you have forgotten the USS Vincennes.” WHAT THE FUCK? What on EARTH does a 1988 shoot down of an airliner have to do with whether or not the Iranian boats charged U.S. ships in 2008?

Here’s my real point, Reddit: IF YOU DON’T HAVE ANY EVIDENCE TO BACK UP YOUR CONSPIRACY/WHINING/BULLSHIT POLITICAL CRAP, SHUT THE FUCK UP.

If you have evidence that the U.S. started this confrontation or something like that, please, bring it forward. Otherwise, shut the fuck up.

That is all. Thank you. And yes, I’m going to submit this myself. Get over it.

Burn karma, burn.

Posted at: http://politics.reddit.com/info/64vi8/comments/

Late edit:

I’d like to make it clear that I am no neocon or anything of that nature. I’m an anti-war, registered democrat, etc. But claims by EITHER side, without evidence, are just ridiculous. Also, just because I don’t support the war, doesn’t mean I think everything that happens is automatically our own fault.

Later edit:

Although I expected my (non-existent)  karma to burn over this story, what surprises me is that even though all I’m saying is “when you post something, make sure what is said is actually backed up,” even in the comments people are making assumptions about my political opinions, my opinions on Reddit as a whole, etc.  Disagree with me if you like, I have no problem with that.  Just don’t think you know my politics or opinions based on this post.

So, over the past couple weeks I’ve gotten into the whole Wikipedia editing experience.  It’s… interesting, I’ll give it that much.  It’s a pretty slick system, although a bit too complex for the average user.  It has taken me this long just to learn the very basics.  Regardless, I’ve pretty much exclusively (it has gone from 6k in size to 30k in size since I started editing) developed the Southbury article.  No one has really interfered with me, or edited it since I started.

Until today.  I go in today, and people have added things, made statements, changed things around - all without any discussion and often without any source.  While I’m not saying any of it is wrong, I’m saying it’s annoying.  I feel like I’ve done all this work, for free and really even without an acknowledgment - my name isn’t even on the page - and now people can just screw around with it.  That annoys me.  It makes me not really want to continue.  I’d rather write the history & status of Southbury on this blog.

Wikipedia has discussion pages for a reason - people should use them, if they’re going to make edits.  Even when I alone was working on it, I put a significant amount of stuff onto the discussion page, which not one other person has bothered to respond to.   Annoying.

Even worse, one of the users claims in his user page to be primarily responsible for the contributions to the article.  This pisses me off to no end.  But what can I do about it?  Nothing, really.  Sure I could delete it from his user page, but he could just re-add it.  It needs to stop.  Wikipedia is TOO open.  There should be one person or group actually responsible for approving edits to each article, rather than everything being completely open.

But hey, what do I know, I’m only someone adding information to it.

Sperm Donor Wins Child Support Battle: Mother can’t renege on payment deal, Pa. Supreme Court rules.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22488113/

In an age where the reproductive rights of a mother are hotbed political issues, and the rights of a father are ignored, it’s refreshing to see something like this.  In short, if you make a deal with somebody you know (at least, in Pennsylvania) for them to donate sperm to you in order to have kids, and you agree that they’ll effectively not be the father (they don’t pay child support, and they have no right to visitation), then that’s it.  They’re not the father.  You can’t then go and renege and demand money.

Unfortunately, even this was decided in terms of the rights of a woman.  The decision hinges on the fact that to decide any other way would be to destroy sperm donation system, which in turn would limit a woman’s “reproductive prerogatives.”

The state of the system today is simply unacceptable.  Why is it that all we care about are the rights of the woman?  To be clear, the result in this case was right and proper.  But why was even this decided based on the rights of the woman, with the man ignored?  This is ridiculous.

Just some food for thought.

Wow, so the Iowa caucuses are over, and we’re looking at Huckabee for the Republicans and Obama for the Democrats. Surely nothing we’d've predicted very long ago (especially Huckabee). More surprising to me, however, was Edwards placement - he beat Clinton, 30% to 29%. Granted, he’s spent the last long while campaigning in Iowa, so I doubt he’ll do as well in New Hampshire/etc, but that’s still pretty impressive.

I really can’t stand most of the [front runner] candidates on either side this time, which is surprising. Usually there’s one I could at least stand (John Kerry, while not being great, was fine by me in 2004). This time, there’s just no one. I like Chris Dodd. I like Joe Biden.  But neither has a shot in hell. I really like Al Gore (why on EARTH didn’t he run?).  Too bad Stephen Colbert didn’t run nationwide (and therefore, didn’t run at all).

So Obama with 38%, Huckabee with 34%. Hardly blinding endorsements, but they’ll do for a first state caucus. But Huckabee DOES have Chuck Norris. You can’t really argue with that.

Here’s what I’m waiting for now: Michael Bloomberg. That’ll be an interesting candidate. He has a chance to effect elections more this time than any 3rd party candidate in history. Ross Perot couldn’t come close to what Bloomberg can do. Our nation is so split right now, with such polarizing candidates - we’ll see. It’d be tough or impossible for Bloomberg, but I bet he could get more of the vote than Perot did.

When the high for the day here in Connecticut is zero degrees Fahrenheit (including windchill), you know somethings wrong. Good job Al Gore (by which I mean, I love you Al Gore, please run for President). But it’s a good time to reflect on the fact that I love where I live, and I’d like to stay here (which would require obtaining a permanent job - I’m currently doing temp work at a law firm, anybody want to fix that?). I’ve been doing a lot of work lately on Wikipedia, updating my towns website. Since I took it over, it has gone from about 6.5kb to 27kb - a large size, a large increase, even if you can’t think about how to translate that into a usable figure.

I’ve added so much, in fact, that I’ve run out of things to add. So I’m asking you: Do you have any current or historic information on Southbury, Connecticut? If so, shoot it on over to me.