Flow Chart to my Heart

Last post for the day, I promise. OkC selected me as one of their users to try out their newest feature.

Here is the result: Flow Chart to my Heart

New Job!

I finally got myself a new job about a week or so back. It's with a company that I almost had a job with a few months back, before I decided to go to school for the summer, Rev1 out of Tampa, FL. This, of course, means that I'm moving... once again. As much as I'm looking forward to not living in Illinois any more, I really had hoped to not have to move once again so quickly. As I've said before, I love to travel but I'm really getting burned out by the constant moving of everything I own from one place to another. On the plus side, with this move I already have several friends in the area, so at least I don't feel like I'm starting completely from scratch.

So six days from now I'll start my tip down to Tampa. The trip in total is going to take me about 5 days. In part because I don't really want to drive any more than 8 hours a day and I also have to swing by my parent's house in Michigan to pick up Bear, who's been staying with them since early July. My apartment lease ran out a few days back and it is easier to get friends to let you live with them for a week when you aren't bringing 50 lbs of chaos along with you.

One of the great things about the trip is that it gives me an excuse to drive near where Steph lives again and spend a few hours hanging out with her. I'm not sure if I've mentioned her in my posts before now... although I'm pretty sure I haven't. Steph is an awesome, smart, dinosaur obsessed geek that I met a few months back through OkC. We went on a date a few weeks back and both had a great time. If circumstances were different and we didn't live so far away from each other (a distance which is about to triple) I would be very interested in seeing where things went with her. As it is though, I've gotten a great friend out of it. We are planning on spending a day at Kings Island, outside of Cincinnati, basically pretending to be kids again.

Then, after a quick stop in Atlanta for a night, I'll be in Tampa, FL. One of the main reasons I'm looking forward this move is that it will put me back in a city located right on the water, something I sorely miss from growing up in St. Clair, MI. The combination of high diversity of population and water front city should lead to many great times while I'm there!

Stolen a foot and a half

So I stole this idea for the author of A foot and a half, which you can get to from the link on the right of this page. I highly recommend checking it out since it is very well written and Jesse does a great job of bringing the funny.

The idea that I'm stealing from him is exploring where the "next" button at the top of this page will lead me. I'm doing it in part because I'm a bit curious to see what others are writing and because the only other thing I have to do at the moment is calc homework and I would just rather not do that right now.

So, here goes...

Empty advertisement blog - next

Art Blog - next

3 posts of poorly written poetry - next

Blog from a high school age guy in India. Actually seems like it could be interesting except it is relatively new and he just doesn't have many posts yet - next

Blog dedicated to MMA - next

Poorly translated Japanese Blog - next

Untranslated Japanese Blog - next

Untranslated Korean Blog - next (I'm starting to lose hope of finding anything interesting)

Untranslated Spanish Blog - next

Song of the day blog (might be interested if our taste was at all similar... it's not) - next

At this point I've given up on keeping track of uninteresting blogs - next, next, next... next.

Found one with Regina Spektor drinking vodka as the background for the title. I have to think there is a good chance I would be interested in this one if not for it being written in Russian - next

Went through a few more and I've now given up. I'm not sure how Jesse managed to get so luck as to find an interesting blog so quickly. Most of what I found seemed to be about the obsessions of various teeny-bopper Asian girls and poorly written advertisements.

Dogsitting

My ex-girlfriend found a stray dog at the local nature reserve and, some how, I'm now dogsitting for the night.

No tolerance for intolerance

I disagree with Andrew Sullivan:

The critique of her seeming preoccupation with her heritage nonetheless seems valid to me, but it's also a little - how does one say this? - 1995. The underlying arguments about affirmative action are still relevant, of course, but their salience seems less potent now. I'm not sure why - perhaps the war and the recession and the debt make the intensity of those fights seem like a luxury of a time of peace and prosperity and fiscal sanity. Perhaps Obama has made racial diversity less threatening to some.

I think the racist views that Sotomayor appears to hold could be very damaging for her. There seems to be something about my generation, especially those of us who have invested a lot of time and energy into our education, that drives us to have a deep dislike of racist views, regardless of the race of the person holding them.

I certainly have zero tolerance for racism and, off the top of my head, I can think of many friends of mine, of a wide spectrum of political views, who share my lack of tolerance.

I'm very interested in hearing what other people have to say about this. Does Sotomayor potentially holding racist views and allowing those to influence her judicial decisions bother you? Do you think there is something unique about our generation (the edge of Gen X and Gen Y) that causes us to feel especially disdainful towards public figures holding racist views?

Not Impressed but Not Surprised

As most must know by now, President Obama has announced he will be nominating Judge Sonia Sotomayor for the supreme court.  At this point I find myself agreeing with the assessment of this nomination over at The Volokh Conspiracy 

My general sense is that she is very liberal, and thus likely to take what I consider to be mistaken positions on many major constitutional law issues. I am also not favorably impressed with her notorious statement that "a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life." Not only is it objectionable in and of itself, it also suggests that Sotomayor is a committed believer in the identity politics school of left-wing thought. Worse, it implies that she believes that it is legitimate for judges to base decisions in part based on their ethnic or racial origins.

The more I think about it, the more this nomination bothers me. In particular, I'm having trouble getting past Judge Sotomayor's statement that, " ...I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life."

That statement strikes me as rather racist on her part and, had a white male judge said something equivalent, I have to believe the left would be throwing a fit about it this morning.

It also brings up the issue that my ideal justice would work to suppress their personal experiences when ruling on the constitutionality of a law. Justices are meant to decide cases based on the text of the law and the way in which it was meant to be applied, not in the way in which they personally think it should be applied.

Time will tell but I believe that this is going to end up being just one more thing on the growing list of moves by President Obama which disappoint me but don't surprise me.

Horror in the Congo

The brutality and tragedy of what is going on in the eastern region of the Democratic Republic of Congo is stunning and absolutely heartbreaking.  I'm still trying to wrap my head around the situation and Mishlai does a far better job of summing it up than I could right now.

What's going on over there can't really be properly called rape. The term applies, but it isn't a strong enough word, and that's really saying something. What Congolese women are enduring is the intentional, systematic destruction of their bodies, their families, and their society. Think firing a bullet into her vagina. Think bayonettes. Understand that this is rape-as-a-weapon and not rape for it's usual motives.

I highly recommend clicking the link above and reading his full blog entry.  Be warned though, the details of what is currently happening in the DRC are extremely graphic and disturbing.  He also has a number of links to news articles from people on the ground there and the official reports submitted to various subcommittees of congress.

I'm not sure what the proper response is to this madness, only that a way to stop in needs to be found, and quickly.  The one suggestion I've seen so far, that everyone can help out with, is donating to the International Medical Corps, a group that is doing everything they can to help the civilians caught in the middle of this.