fling93 loves fishies

Still Here

Sorry for the long hiatus. I had actually planned to blog over the holidays, but technical issues and a nagging nasty cold conspired against it. Mostly over the cold now, but I’m a bit disappointed, as it kept me from enjoying the time off and caused me to miss a couple of parties I was looking forward to. :( I hope everyone had a happier holidays.

Also, my condolences to anybody who lost a loved one in that terrible tsunami. If you haven’t yet, I urge you to donate to one of the relief agencies. I myself donated to the International Response Fund of the American Red Cross, but there are a host of other places to donate as well. Here’s a list of organizations via The Washington Post. You can also find more info at The South-East Asia Earthquake and Tsunami Blog. If you followed my Christmas suggestion (well, Robert Fulghum’s suggestion, really), any of these would, of course, make great choices for charities.

My usual semi-irregular blogging schedule will resume shortly.

CommentBlogging Ahead of My Time?

For about six months, I’ve been doing something on the bleeding edge without realizing it, and in fact, it never even occurred to me that others might find the idea useful. Now it seems to be catching on (no thanks to me), so I guess I might as well bring some more attention it now.

As I mentioned earlier, I do write quite a few comments on other blogs (although I’m nowhere near as prolific or knowledgeable or insightful as that ubiquitous uber-commenter, Praktike). Now, blog comment systems are ridiculously primitive compared to message board technology in that most blogs don’t notify you when there are replies to your comments, so you need to check back yourself. If you have quite a few comments on active threads, it’s pretty hard to remember them all.

I also find that some of my comments are great jumping off points for full-blown blog posts. For example, my lengthy On Marriage essay started off as a short comment at Winds of Change. My helluva long piece about Bush included some material that I first articulated in a comment thread about Richard Clarke at Sebastian Holsclaw’s blog (you might be surprised to know that Clarke was also the impetus behind my The Message, Not the Messenger post). And of course I even recently blatantly reposted pieces of a comment thread I participated in at Djerejian’s The Belgravia Dispatch.

Anyway, suffice to say that it’s pretty handy for me to keep track of my comments for future reference. Intially, I used a text file into which I copied and pasted the URLs of all the blogposts on which I’d commented. Well, about six months ago, it occurred to me to use del.icio.us instead.

JANE: Abortion and the Underground

My wife, Erika, produced several wildly successful shows of The Vagina Monologues for V-Day at San Jose State last year and the year before. While highly entertaining, these did not feature professional actors, but were community theatre shows where San Jose State students and other members of the community were invited to participate.

Well, now she’s getting to do the real deal. At Planned Parenthood Golden Gate (PPGG) she is co-producing the Bay Area’s premiere of JANE: Abortion and the Underground by Paula Kamen, and this will be a full-blown production with actors and a director with stage experience, plus costumes and sets and everything. The show is a week from Saturday, January 22nd, at the Brava Theater in San Francisco. To buy tickets, call 415-202-7233 or buy them online (scroll to the bottom of the page).

Open Thread on Merit-Based Pay

Over at Nicole Brown’s blog, Post-Hip Chick, I was taking part in a discussion on Governor Schwarzenegger’s proposal to make teacher pay based on merit instead of seniority. Her comments system uses Haloscan, which has a character limit and doesn’t have a “Preview” button, and a couple of comments (including one of hers) got truncated.

I know how it feels to lose a piece of writing (even a comment), so I offered to host further discussion here at my blog.

Casino Night 2005

Erika and I had a real blast at this last year, and it’s for a good cause, so I thought I’d help put out the word for Casino Night 2005 for those of you in the South Bay:

Friday, January 28, 2005 — 7:00 - 11:30 PM

At: Villa Ragusa, Campbell, California (here are directions)

Buy tickets online!

Casino Night benefits the EHC LifeBuilders’s programs for homeless adults throughout Santa Clara County.

$50 per person includes a night filled with fun casino games (Roulette, Blackjack, Slots), live entertainment from Woodeye, hors d’oeuvres, a complimentary beverage, one ticket for a prize drawing, and a complimentary keepsake photo.

Entry into the Texas Hold ’Em Poker Tournament is an additional $50. There are a limited number of seats available for the tournament — be sure to register early!

Additional prize drawing tickets are available for $10 — winner need not be present to win.

Join in the fun and help end homelessness!

Tickets are on sale online now!

For more information or for tickets contact:

Ken Goldstein — 408.294.2100 ×227

or

Alan Aerts — 408.871.7000

And these are the raffle prizes:

1st prize: JVC 32" flat screen TV
2nd prize: Sony Stereo System
3rd prize: GoVideo DVD/VCR

For those of you who’ve always wanted to try their hand at craps but were too chicken to do so in Vegas (ahem, I’m talking about you, Courtney), this is the perfect opportunity. Of course, I probably shouldn’t talk, as I’m too chicken to enter the Texas Hold ’Em Tournament.

And for those unfamiliar with these games, I’ve written primers on How to Play Craps (which also talks briefly about EHC’s “Casino Bowl” last year) as well as for Texas Hold ’Em Poker. I assume blackjack, roulette, and slot machines are simple enough for everyone to pick up pretty quickly on their own.

We already bought our tickets weeks ago. Hope to see you there!

Update 1/13/05

I should clarify that this is not gambling with real money. Your admission includes some “play” chips. They aren’t redeemable for money, but at the end of the night, they have some prizes for the people who end up with the most chips (at least, that’s how it worked last year). This is why I say it’s a perfect opportunity for you to try out some games that might ordinarily intimidate you.

Rumsfeld, Iraq, and Troop Levels

Back on my snarky comment post touching upon Rumsfeld and troop levels, Donna from Pajama Pundits posted an excellent comment several weeks ago. I apologize for the incredible lateness of this response. I started writing it up, and then got caught up in other things, and then this started growing into a project all of its own. Hopefully this was worth the wait — not that I actually think anybody was holding their breath for this post, or anything.

Recap

For a quick recap, Gregory Djerejian wrote a post (one of many) criticizing Rumsfeld, specifically on how he refuses to increase the number of troops in Iraq to the necessary level to ensure security and provide the best hope for a successful occupation. One of the commenters on that post kept asking what possible reason could Rumsfeld have for not increasing troop levels if it’s such a no-brainer.

Those of you familiar with my Case Against Bush post already know that my response was that Rumsfeld and Bush simply don’t care all that much what actually happens in Iraq. After all, it matches the pattern of other policies, and as I responded to him, the most striking example is the tax cut:

Recall [Bush] proposed [the tax cut] during an economic boom, using supply-side arguments to counter critics warning about it being inflationary. And indeed, it’s designed as a supply-side tax cut, focusing on the higher tax brackets who are more likely to invest the savings to spur production. When the recession hit, he marketed the same tax cut as a Keynesian recession-fighter — yet spurring supply is counter-productive when you have a CapEx recession due to excess inventories. A clear case where Bush obviously didn’t really care about the actual real-world consequences of the policy. He merely picked whatever theory was convenient at the time to sell the policy that he wanted (and there are huge parallels to how he used intelligence to sell the war rather than to determine if war was the right decision).

Indeed, I have yet to hear a better explanation of why Bush would pass a supply-side tax cut to fight a CapEx recession. And in addition to explaining that case, it also explains many Bush administration policies like the steel tariffs, subsidy-laden farm bill, and Medicare reform. It also would explain the low troop levels — as well as the reason why Rumsfeld still has his job despite Abu Ghraib.

One obvious reason Bush and Rumsfeld might not want to increase troop levels is cost. Outside of a draft (and Thorley Winston has an excellent comment at Winds of Change explaining why a draft is a ridiculous idea), increasing the size of a volunteer army requires increasing the incentives to volunteer, which means an increase in pay, not just to new recruits, but to everybody already enlisted. Such a cost would probably require drastic measures, such as rolling back Bush’s tax cuts or Medicare reform. But these policies were prioritized higher than success in Iraq — just like Iraq was prioritized higher than dealing (militarily or otherwise) with more immediate and graver threats, like North Korea, Iran, and Al Qaeda.

And this is where Donna came in. She made a number of points, so I’ll address them individually, not necessarily in the order she made them.

My 2004 Mix CD

Update 2/15/06: My 2005 Mix CD is here. Also, some of you are coming here looking for the title of Avril Lavigne’s second album, which is Under My Skin. A good reference site to answer questions like these is AMG (formerly known as the All Music Guide). By the way, I have mixed feelings about “Collide” and “Mr. Brightside” becoming big hits. On the one hand, I guess it’s me being ahead of the curve again. On the other hand, this means I essentially wasted two tracks on this CD, since the recipients would’ve heard those songs anyway without me. Oh well.

I decided to try my hand at Rich Thomas’s End of the Year Mix CD Challenge. However, I haven’t added a whole lot of music to my library this past year due to running low on disk space at work (where I do most of my listening — thank goodness we’re due for new machines any day now). Rather than put some fringe new stuff, like Britney Spears or Lindsay Lohan, I figured I’d throw in some of my all-time favorites.

Which meant I couldn’t think of a unifying theme for this mix, nor a snappy title, merely calling it “fling93’s 2004 mix.” However, I was able to create a nice collage for the CD cover, as you can see (click for larger image). In case you don’t know who’s who, the cover from left to right: first row is Avril Lavigne, Tori Amos, Vanessa Carlton, second row is Peter Gabriel, Jill Sobule, Dar Williams, and Death Cab for Cutie. Last row is The Flaming Lips, Keane, and Howie Day. On the CD itself (ignoring artists that were already on the cover) from the top clockwise is R.E.M. (with muppets), The Killers, Shawn Colvin, Brand New, Hedwig (aka John Cameron Mitchell), and the Dresden Dolls. Man, I just realized I completely left out a picture of Rasputina. Well, maybe I’ll redress that if I burn a second copy.

I could delve into the role that mix CDs will play in this new Long Tail distribution model, but I think I’ll save that for a later post. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, check out Chris Anderson’s Wired article and his blog. And until I get my post written, you can see some of my “Long Tail” thoughts in a lengthy discussion with Stirling Newberry (in particular, my last comment in that thread).

But for now, let me just talk a bit about the songs.