Idiotprogrammer: Texas Literary Blog

Month: February 2009

  • Truly Disturbing Map of the US

    Wow, this animated map which shows the changes to the US obesity rate over the last 20 years is truly disturbing. (Click Play if it does not start automatically). (Read more about weight loss on my Weight Loss web page).

  • Tiny Iranian threat

    Fareed Zakaria on whether Iran actually poses a threat to the US: Iran has an economy the size of Finland’s and an annual defense budget of around $4.8 billion. It has not invaded a country since the late 18th century…. Israel and every Arab country (except Syria and Iraq) are quietly or actively allied against…

  • New SXSW Torrents!

    The new  Torrents are here! The new torrents are here! Download 5 gigs of free alternative music from South by Southwest music festival now. As an added bonus, the 20 gigs of older torrents are still kicking (links on the same page). This year’s torrent has about 1000 songs. I find about half of the…

  • Dancing with Numbers

    Random thoughts about Europe vs. US.  EU’s population is 499 million people (and that excludes totals of non-EU members who eventually will gain admission like Ukraine,  (46 million) Turkey (71 million) and the Yugloslav states (20 million?). 499 million people and a GDP of 14 trillion (or $28,000 per capita). US has a population of…

  • Bernard Chazelle on Democracy

    Chazelle explains democracy this way: A empowers B to elect C to serve A (where A=corporations, B=citizens, C=politicians and where corporate media is the empowering vehicle).  This is a pretty radical proposition and has the whiff of Marxism.  The main truth here is that the typical citizen doesn’t care about politics very much until they…

  • More houses = more unemployment

    Richard Florida gives a longish history of the relationship between economic fortune and the cities. He talks about how suburbanization came about as a result of economic trends: uburbanization was the spatial fix for the industrial age—the geographic expression of mass production and the early credit economy. Henry Ford’s automobiles had been rolling off assembly…

  • Blogging in private

    FYI, I am in the middle of 4 longish posts (not to mention 2 essays). I’ve been darting back and forth between them. In the meantime read Gretchen Rubin’s Tips to Get a Little Kid to Take No for an answer and how to coax kids to eat vegetables.

  • Wierd Dating Openers

    Pick Up Artists (PUA) have a fetish about opening lines—although the most polished usually prefer the simplest opening line –which is, “Hi.” (note: these two links are mildly NSFW mainly because of profanity and explicit sexual language). Some openers are in fact hilarious. Here are two: “Hi, my name is Thursday. I thought you were…

  • Photoset of (Another) Cute Artsy Girl

    Here’s a nice flickr photo gallery of an artistically inclined teenage girl. (View the photos as a slideshow). Of course, the fact she is cute adds to the appeal, but these are also great shots. Oops, she is 16 years old! Well, never mind that. Here’s another photogallery from a Polish photographer I admire (more…

  • Wacky Names for Daughters

    Looking over the bio list of a conference which I won’t be attending, I saw this hilarious biographical detail for Cory Doctorow: On February 3, 2008, he became a father. The little girl is called Poesy Emmeline Fibonacci Nautilus Taylor Doctorow, and is a marvel that puts all the works of technology and artifice to…

  • Lots can change in a single weekend

    I was furious that the Senate stimulus bill was weakened by Republicans who cut funding on education, science research, arts funding and all these worthy things that would be especially worthy in such times. I was furious and I emailed my Senator and emailed my friends with my rage. But a funny thing happened. I…

  • Why the Economic Stimulus (and Recession) is all About

    Here are three things you need to read. Martin Fackler on the lessons that the Japanese recession (and its own economic stimulus package)  should teach the US.  An amazing piece of journalism. Second, Robert Reich provides his daily commentary about the effectiveness of various stimulating proposals. Look at this chart: (The main flaw of this…

  • Let’s Change to High Def Signals ASAP!

    The 6 month delay of changing the TV signal to digital has been portrayed as a way to assist needy people.  But that’s not telling the whole story. I talked to a woman at my local PBS affiliate to complain about the strength of the PBS high def signal. She acknowledged the problem and pointed…

  • Why Homebuyer Tax Break is a Bad Deal

    I frankly am appalled to hear that the Senate voted a $15,000 tax break for homebuyers (according to this article by David Herszenhorn). As usual the commenters have the most insight. See this amazing comment and this one.  It’s awful legislation (it cuts funding for the Arts, climate change research, etc) and it panders to…

  • Help! No More Greased Lightning!

    I was surfing away on some random topic when I heard the song Greased Lightning play spontaneously on my speakers. It kept playing and playing and playing while I frantically tried to figure out which crappy web page was sending it to my audio speakers. Seriously I had about 100 web pages open and even…

  • Baby Movements

    I love this baby time-lapse video. It’s interesting how speed up gives insight about what people actually do with their time. I remember my utter amazement when watching Koyaanisqatsi how much time people spent at red lights. Another video highlight: Spot the Differences in the Photograph game on Youtube. (thanks, Bloggasm).