Below are the most recent 25 friends' journal entries.

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Wednesday, November 11th, 2009
theferrett	7:58a	Questions, I Got Questions Six-hour meetings always leave me drained, especially if they're productive ones. So I did the "three questions" meme with three friends. (It's the one where you leave a comment asking them to ask you three questions, and then you post the answers and promise to do the same in your journal. I'd always like to play, but if I posted something where I gave three questions to everyone who wanted 'em, I'd be here all day.) Anyway, their questions: xhollydayx: 1. What is your next hair color, or are you going to eventually go back to au natural Ferrett? I'm pretty much choosing my hair colors at random for now, because I am eventually going to go back to au natural Ferrett - which, at the rate my hair is receding, will be a smooth, fleshy pink. I figured I might as well start going wild with the colors before my hair disappeared on me for good. My daughters want bright red, but I'm pretty sure it'd make me look like an evil clown. 2. What do you miss most about having a pet/ferrets? I'm all kinds of stupid exciteable and goony. Dogs and ferrets can be that way, too, so I'll just go romping with them and making silly noises and wrestling with them until we're both exhausted. Playing with them unfetters my silly side. Alas, until they invent the poopless dog, I'm about done with having allergies all the time and cleaning up poop. I'm pretty sure I could invent a sort of poopless dog by sewing portions of them shut, but that seems like it would get very expensive after a while, and they really wouldn't be that fun to play with after the first couple of days. Also, I'd get all these nasty looks from the women at the pound. So that's totally not worth it. 3. Have you always been attracted to fuller figured women? Would you be interested in a very slender woman? You know, I have. My first real attraction on record, a girl called Dana, was a little thick. I'm always a little weirded by saying that I'm attracted to fuller figured women because, well, that sounds like I have some sort of fetish or something. I have a type (actually, Katie Featherston from Paranormal Activity is pretty much my ideal woman, and I'm going to hate it when she loses twenty pounds for Hollywood), but in real life I usually like women for their personalities. So I could be attracted to a skinny girl, if she was cool and funny and all that stuff. (In fact, a friend had lost so much weight that she'd wondered if I'd still be attracted to her. The answer: Yeah, because as long as she's strong enough to talk and type on a keyboard, thus transmitting her brainmeat-candy from her to me, there's gonna be an attraction.) But I dunno. In general, I tend to get along with thick women better, and I'm not sure why. Is it because they tend to be more comfortable in their bodies? More raucous? (I'm not fond of shy women who don't speak up.) Some other hidden signal I'm responding to? I don't want to generalize overmuch, since slotting people into one aspect obscures all the exceptions to the rules - but my attraction to thick women could also be explained by me being attracted to some aspect of a personality that also tends to lead to chubbiness, and I suspect it's more about personality for me. Or I could be full of shit. I'm not sure anyone can really rationally explain their own attractions; we only justify. And from hps_sterling: 1. There can be only one! What is your favorite game? Ah, such a question! How are we defining "game"? Videogame? Traditional game? Politics and seduction? If we're going with overall game, I'd have to say at this point based on pure numbers alone, it's Rock Band. Lord knows I've spent more hours on that than anything else. But I consider videogame to be a different category of game, so if I had to choose something a little more Amish, it'd be Apples to Apples, with a good group of friends and our customized, hygrated deck of only the most interesting cards. (Magic is a close second, and might be #1 if more people played it, but getting folks in for an all-out chaos game of six people is such a hassle that it affects my enjoyment.) 2. Do you like coffee? I like one coffee: Dunkin' Donuts iced coffee, double milk, double liquid sugar. This is the only way I will drink coffee, and even then somehow the local Ohio branches screw this up two times out of five. It's like drink roulette. Very depressing. 3. What are your thoughts on trying new things that are outside of your comfort zone? One of my infamous rules is that if I've never tried it before, I have to. This is not a bold claim, but rather an ingrained aspect of my personality that gets me into trouble. I have to try everything once. Newness is my fetish. So if there's a boundary, I usually try to push it. My comfort zone is actually a little outside of my comfort zone, weirdly, because if I stay in my safe place then I start to feel like I'm in a rut and get panicky. So I try something new, and a little discomforting, and I feel better. It's odd. It's also led me to good places overall, because I tend to take large risks - which don't always pay off, but when they do I get something like the lovely experience of going to the Clarion workshop (six weeks off from work? Really?) or my lovely wife Gini. I'll take those. If you got questions, ask. (Comment on this)
bart_calendar	1:14p	Out Of Work Print Journalist? Then check out this job posting. Scientology's magazine Freedom is hiring! See - print ain't dead! It's just bogged down by thetans! (Comment on this)
bart_calendar	12:43p	Not Wilma Over the past few days Gawker and Jezebel have been tripping over themselves trying to explain and justify why they don't want Betty Draper to come back in Season Four. It's as though they feel guilty for liking Don and hating Betty. But, the thing is, there are many, many real reasons to not want her back so why feel guilty? 1. With the exception of one important scene this season January Jones has yet to show us she has any acting ability. And, even in that scene, Jon Hahm ends up with the better performance. 2. Her character has no real story arch - other than she does and thinks whatever particular daddy figure happens to be in front of her tells her to do and think at the time. Her leaving Don isn't some liberating thing - it's trading one controlling daddy complex figure for another. 3. This show is supposed to be about the advertising industry in the early 1960s. The Draper family home life is not the subject of the show. I don't really give a shit about what goes on at home - particularly since all that happened at home was that she neglected her kids and pouted. 4. Face it: Don Draper will be a more fun character as a single man than as a married man - and he's the main character. 5. At some point Don and Peggy need to bang - and after her one awful experience banging a married co-worker, Peggy won't bang Don until Betty is way out of the picture. 6. The show's creators have admitted that they are under pressure to cut the budget on this show which means getting rid of some of the actors. Is there any other main character you'd be willing to lose in order to keep Betty? 7. Her being gone will help speed up Don's eventual manic decline - which is the underlying theme of the show to begin with. Feel free to add your own reasons. (Comment on this)
bart_calendar	12:28p	Writer's Block: Play it again, Sam If you could only listen to one CD for the rest of your life, what would you choose and why? Submitted By lexxyloser View 295 Answers When in doubt always go with Shatner. (Comment on this)
bart_calendar	12:24p	Rome Girl Is Back And... while she was in the States she was cleaning out her storage locker and found an original Star Wars Texas Instruments Microelectronic Digital Watch in mint condition and still in the box and brought it home for me. It belonged to her ex-boyfriend who refused to help her out with the storage fees for the past seven years, so she figures it was hers to take. (Comment on this)
inertiacrept	12:28a	Serial Killer 2020 (A Parental Disincentive) There are a lot of upsides to working the sort of job where not everyone is exactly the same age or from the same background. It cuts down on the groupthink, for one, but it also gives you the opportunity to catch glimpses of what a rough facsimile of yourself might look like in two or three years. There are people who have been there for decades and people who have been there for months, 60 year olds and 26 year olds working shoulder to shoulder and doing essentially the same work (which is admittedly something of a commentary on the 60 year olds and their work product). This is especially useful for me and my nightsweat preoccupation with all of the questions of aging and how they can sneak up on you, and I'm especially fascinated by the stories about people's kids. I have friends with 2 year olds, 4 year olds, 20 year olds, whatever, and all of it is a hot topic for me, as all of my non-work friends seem to be emotionally stunted in all of the same ways I am and not a one of them can get it together to keep a dog alive, much less a child (the only level on which my friends show much discretion is their obsessive regard for birth control). Anyhow, I've learned that people with kids can't seem to help but tell stories about them, even if the stories are totally lacking in a punchline or a plot. Objectively speaking, most of these stories aren't interesting, and telling them is more the nod to some sort of biological compulsion than it is an effort to actually tell a story. I like them because they can be neurotically filed away and used to burn off the fog that still mostly covers up the whole idea of having a kid or a wife or a house or a dog (all things I've always assumed I'd end up with eventually but haven't shown much initiative to actually pursue), but 99% of them wouldn't be interesting to anyone outside of the office who didn't have exactly my set of pathologies. There are exceptions. And sometimes these exceptions are severe enough to make me call the entire idea of ever being a parent back into question. Kids come in ranges, after all. The last few I've met were almost walking advertisements for the whole idea of child having and were precocious enough to make even the most devout post-adolescent consider kidnapping for the first time. But there are other kinds, and I don't necessarily mean the terrifying tantrum-throwers or slackjawed mouthbreathers or the chubby television zombies. They come in stranger shapes. So I've got a buddy at work old enough to have a nine year old, and this nine year old comes up often enough that I've gotten a general picture of what he's into. He's good at sports but doesn't love them, likes books and Magic: The Gathering, isn't allowed near video games or junk food and generally lives the life of a gifted if somewhat over-protected young man who is allowed to ride his bike around the neighborhood after dark but not to watch R-Rated Movies. His parents are both professionals and he leads the sort of highly structured life common to American 8 year olds with parents who have already started worrying about the state of college admissions and the importance of establishing good study habits as early as possible, preferably within twenty minutes of leaving the womb. He's a nice kid and seems to like the activities between which he is constantly being shuttled - tennis, little league, Sanskrit, etc. The buddy is a very good lawyer and an honest nice guy, and seems like a dedicated father and family man, a non-smoking non-drinker who probably drinks skim milk. His wife is exactly what you'd expect to find attached to that profile - good-humored, smart and responsible, not flashy, not a MILF. They are the sort of family with a perpetually balanced checkbook and an everchanging short-list of home improvement projects. I'm sure they eat a lot of vegetables. His mother, who for the purpose of this story we will call "Jane", was making some sort of stovetop dinner and nodding her head to the NPR coming from the digital radio above the microwave. My coworker, Chuck, was sitting with his son Jamie at the round, off-set dining room table, doing legal research while Jamie scribbled away at his math homework. Bored and finished with his assignment 20 minutes earlier than projected, Jamie grabbed the top sheet off of a pile of yellow Post-It notes, padding across the kitchen in his socks and lightly affixing the Post-It to Jane's back before tiptoe-ing back to the table, his face lit up with pleasure at his mischief. Chuck, exasperated, pulled Jamie over and explained that if you're going to go to the trouble to stick a Post-It note on someone's back, you're absolutely obligated to write something on it first. Chuck dug out a Sharpie while Jamie sat there and thought about it, chewing on his thumb. After a short pause he lit back up, took the Sharpie and, with a careful hand, wrote "JANE IS THE BEST COOK IN THE WORLD" on the Post-It and rose to put it on her back. Chuck stopped him with a hand on the shoulder, not at all untouched by this showing of prodigal sentimentality, and explained that the purpose of putting a Post-It on someone's back is always a prank and not a compliment. They talked about this for awhile and debated a few different possibilities before finally settling in on "PINCH ME". Jamie slipped back out of his chair with his Dad's conspiratorial grin at his back and took a few exaggerated tiptoed steps to his oblivious mother' and then waited for his Dad to dash over before setting in a solid round of tickling. Jane laughed and struggled and everyone hugged everyone else and Jamie whisked the Post-It off of his mother's back and showed it to her in a big "GOTCHA" moment, and shortly thereafter dinner was served, homework completed, kid-friendly TV viewed and Jamie, in short order, prepped and placed into bed. Much later that night, Chuck finally left his computer and legal research to join Jane already in the bedroom with a book balanced on her lap. Chuck yawned and started to unbutton his shirt when Jane stopped him, and laughing indicated that he too had a Post-It note stuck to his left shoulder. Shaking his head at the mischievous nature of youth, Chuck reached back and peeled off the note, written carefully in the same meticulous 8-year old handwriting: "PLEASE CUT MY BALLS OFF" Yeah. Condoms. Love 'em. Sometimes I wear them around everywhere, you know, just in case. (I suppose in fairness to children generally, I'll note that Chuck previously told a story about the same kid where he expressed at the dinner table that he wished he could dig up all of the corpses in the graveyard to make a gigantic robot, with him operating the robot from a mechanical console that would be located at the robot's penis. Clearly, this isn't a commentary on children as a group.) (but dude, the coworker is so normal) Current Mood: Please Cut My Balls Off Current Music: Dan Mangan - Robots (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, November 10th, 2009
zellandyne	10:59p	Anxiety, Medication & Sex As we all know, I'm comfortable sharing almost anything about myself. However, I do realize this may be TMI for some. What follows are my thoughts regarding anxiety medications and sex. ( Read more... ) So, that's what's in my head. That's some of what's been going on with me, and a large part of why I wasn't writing here much. I was feeling isolated and like I couldn't really talk about this stuff. But, as Sim reminded me, I am an extrovert. I need to talk about stuff. And, as jaylake's recent post on sex also pointed out, sexual dysfunction is one of those things that affects us on a deeply personal level, and there's an unfortunate lack of transparency in our society at the intersection of sex and healthcare. Current Mood: thoughtful (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Wednesday, November 11th, 2009
xkcd_rss	5:00a	Two-Party System http://xkcd.com/661/ (48 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, November 10th, 2009
patrissimo	9:48p	Email E-mail is such a funny thing. People hand you these single little messages that are no heavier than a river pebble. But it doesn’t take long until you have acquired a pile of pebbles that’s taller than you and heavier than you could ever hope to move…But for the person who took the time to hand you their pebble, it seems outrageous that you can’t handle that one tiny thing. “What ‘pile’? It’s just a pebble! (Life After College) (1 Comment |Comment on this)
patrissimo	9:42p	genetic explanation for higher male variance? those who, unlike me, know something about genetics can tell me if this is plausible or not, but it sounds plausible to me: I think the reason for the preponderance of males amongst important creative geniuses comes in part from their chromosomal structure. Females have two X chromosomes, so a recessive mutation on one chromosome is less likely to be expressed. Males are more likely to express both recessive mutations on the X chromosomes and all additional traits coded in a Y chromosome. In this way, males are capable of greater variation in all traits because 1) they have more variation in their genetic material. Two X chromosomes are redundant in a sense, whereas X+Y is an X and an additional Y, and 2) males are more likely to express recessive mutations on their X. What is well known is that having one X chromosome in males leads to a greater likelihood of some disorders, but it could also be the case that only one X also leads to a greater incidence of positive deviations from the norm. (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, November 11th, 2009
apod	5:35a	Saturn After Equinox http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap091110.html The other side of Saturn's ring plane is now directly illuminated by the Sun. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, November 10th, 2009
patrissimo	5:35p	Bodyweight workouts When I looked a year ago or so for a site that offered regular bodyweight workouts, including instructions on how to do everything, I didn't find anything good. But now there is BodyFitBurn. Check out their intro manual, a very informative PDF, or their thrice-weekly exercise circuits. (Comment on this)
choiceful	5:22p	resiliance Emotionally, I fear resilience as fleeting. I have the perspective that if I can't maintain this level of function, then I don't have it. I think that perspective largely comes out of having spent most of my life depressed. It's all going uphill, and I feel like each new fortress I claim, I'm only holding onto by virtue of pushing back an onslaught that would wash away all my progress were I to stop and take a breath. Always pushing. Always a challenge. Not in a good way. ;) So it is with trepidation that I'm enjoying the energy I'm having today. I'm trying to outmaneuver myself and convince myself that just because I do something once doesn't mean that I'm committing to doing it forever, and I can just enjoy that moment without having to defend the castle I've made of sand. (Comment on this)
commonreader	4:40p	Understudied Developmental Milestones in Adults the point at which you stop shopping in certain places cause it's too loud in there the point at which you become interested in good jewelry the point at which you finally have enough socks and underpants to never have to wear the Christmas ones in June the point at which jazz stops being noise (8 Comments |Comment on this)
patrissimo	2:29p	quantified self / sleep Ok, I think I'm finally ready to do some quantified self-style intervention testing on my sleep. Slept really badly last night, and pretty badly the last few, feeling really tired (but not as bad as I would be w/o Adrafinil!). I think this will be really good b/c instead of acting according to numerous vague and unknown theories, I can actually test them. Then I can use the things that work and abandon the things that don't, instead of wondering every night which of 17 things I should do. I feel guilty about not having done this yet, for some reason, but it was actually a strategic decision. My sleep was so bad before that nothing seemed to work, so there seemed to be no point in testing anything, plus I had no energy to test. Now that I've had the MMA surgery, my hope is that behavioral and minor physical interventions can measurably affect my sleep. Plus I have more energy to do this. Anyway, I am open to feedback on my experimental plan. I think I have a pretty good hypothesis pool, so I am most interested in feedback on outcome metrics and the general method. (I feel somewhat guilty working on this during work time, but then I remind myself that sleep is by far the largest factor in my work productivity - improving my sleep would be like hiring another 1/4-1/2 of a Patri, which is well worth my time to work on!) Current Music: 7 Days To The Wolves - Nightwish (2 Comments |Comment on this)
patrissimo	1:32p	LJ vs. specialty blogs In general, I think my writing will be more effective if I move my advocacy to special-purpose group blogs. My level of professionalism & commitment to quality/accuracy will be higher, I can leverage other authors, attract an audience who are interested in the topic rather than "whatever Patri writes", etc. It just seems like a better way to do things. Like, given that GNXP exists, it's useless for me to post on IQ, race, nature/nurture, or any of that stuff. I mean, those guys know way more than I do, they spend more time on it, they write higher quality stuff...they can actually sway minds. My rants are fun (and that's why I write them), but I doubt they will do much to spread knowledge or change anyone's mind about anything. Whereas widely-read, high-quality specialty blogs can create cultures around their ideas. Look at what happened w/ Overcoming Bias, it's spawned an entire community of people around Eliezer & Robin's ideas. I meet smart interesting people who read OB/LW all the time (and not just at OB/LW meetups!) I suspect has strongly influenced at least thousands of people, perhaps tens of thousands. Anyway, I think/hope I've succeeded in doing less political ranting (though not none) since starting LATNB, and hopefully I can channel all my sociobiology into PUA4LTR. And every time I go into any more depth on genetics, global warming, or IF than a passing mention or link, y'all should tell me to shut up and write about things that aren't better covered by others :). Current Music: 7 Days To The Wolves - Nightwish (1 Comment |Comment on this)
patrissimo	1:31p	Ok, I couldn't help it I failed my saving throw against taking on another (small) project, and I've started a new blog: PUA4LTR. In my defense, starting a group blog has the potential to be a low-effort high-reward project. I have no interest in providing a majority of the content, I just want to get the ball rolling, find good co-authors and guest posters, and most importantly a good editor to handle the day-to-day work. This worked great with Let A Thousand Nations Bloom - we got a great editor (Mike Gibson), I write a post every couple weeks or so, but we have a slowly growing set of authors and readership. Traffic is not growing as fast as I'd like, but it is filling a niche that I think is unserved and incredibly important - advocating competitive government and structural reform. And PUA For LTR is also a niche that is unserved and incredibly important. There are not only no blogs on it, there are hardly even any posts on it on the numerous PUA blogs! Which is ridiculous. I mean, yeah, cold approach pickup of tasty babes in bars is way sexier and more fun to imagine doing, it makes better internet fantasy material. But what about in real life - especially when you grow up and move beyond just trying to get laid? To some degree, this niche is served by material that predates PUA and does not self-identify. Yet this material is based on different terminology and in many cases different theories of attraction. Both are based on the real world so they surely overlap to some degree (I dunno, I haven't read much more than Gottman & Mars/Venus), but I think applying the enormous, rapid progress in PUA to LTRs is very low-hanging fruit. Go read the About page for my...um...initial manifesto. Here's the blog, the RSS feed, and you can read it on LJ as pua4ltr. Here's our call for authors/editors. Current Music: 7 Days To The Wolves - Nightwish (16 Comments |Comment on this)
choiceful	12:51p	the new diet blues I'm lactose intolerant. I love dairy. I'm trying a week of no dairy. I already try to eat low carbs. This is going to be a hard week. I don't even want to think about how hard its going to be should I decide to continue this beyond a week :P Also annoying that I never really know what to attribute to diet or elsewhere. This is something that has always frustrated me. Its hard generally to make solid connections, now I have vast changes with bipolar medications to make everything even less clear! Seems like a good diet if I can take it. Pretty much no options aside from paleo. Although I don't do veggies or beans, so something is going to have to give. (4 Comments |Comment on this)
zellandyne	11:57a	Relationship Advice Awesome relationship advice from Dan Savage, linked by several friends of mine today: (1 Comment |Comment on this)
bart_calendar	7:48p	Underwear Shopper This Reuters story completely bury the lead. It claims to be a story saying that women should know their man is committed to them if he lets them buy their underwear. But, the most shocking thing is a marketing study they discuss that claims that men between age 23 and 33 don't buy underwear ever. I'm constantly astounded women keep dating us and don't all go lesbalicious. (9 Comments |Comment on this)
nyuanshin	10:01a	Computing So, computers suck. All the best things about them, like Lisp, involve varying degrees of willfully thumbing one's nose at standard distinctions like "function vs. data" and bypassing layers of logical bureaucracy to bridge the distance between human instruction and physical hardware state as directly as possible. There's really not a lot of excuse at this point for fidelity to the von Neumann architecture, when a giant matrix of cheap FPGAs can outperform it on energy efficiency, scaling, and speed by enabling you to optimize data flows on the fly as well as control structure. Who needs a distinction between memory and processor, or software and hardware? Certainly your brain doesn't. Also, the algorithmic paradigm looks increasingly inappropriate the more massively parallel processing you're doing: what would computers look like if they were built around the notion of analogy instead? Programming languages don't even have a natural way of talking about analogy, yet it's central to cognition. Category theory has some useful concepts for this but it's been slow to percolate out into applications. I also want to say you could probably get a lot of mileage out of leveraging the laws of physics to do as much of the computing as possible at the implicit level -- e.g. using some physical process to solve differential equations -- but I dunno. Also, mathematical symbolism sucks. Iconic representations are way, way under-exploited -- stuff like Penrose tensor notation, trace diagrams, etc. would probably make doing complicated math way more natural for people who think they don't get math. I wonder how many problems can be naturally represented in topological form. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
ozarque	10:29a	Recommended link; whistle language... Recommended: "Shepherds Whistle While They Work And Brains Process Sounds As Language," at http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/01/050106112603.htm . (4 Comments |Comment on this)
clevermynnie	10:19a	sick and powerless and furious Someone recently used that phrase--"sick and powerless and furious"--to describe to me how seeing a sexist injustice made them feel, and it was a perfect description of an experience I recently had. It was a birthday present, actually; Ben's mom got us tickets for this one-man show called "Defending the Caveman". The one-sentence blurb is that it's "a blend of stand-up comedy, lecture, and therapy session, which attempts to resolve the war between the sexes." I first heard about it and thought, oh, cool! I bet it will be interesting and funny. Which in retrospect was a very optimistic way to approach it. But there could certainly be a funny and interesting show about gender and stereotypes, that explores some of the deeper issues in an entertaining way, and that was what I was initially imagining. Earlier the day of the show, I started to worry a little... what if it is just tired cliches about gender? No, something like that couldn't possibly be as popular and long-running as this show has been. It must be some new funny way of looking at gender issues. Maybe I wouldn't like all of it, but if it were as one-note as I was imagining, I didn't think it could possibly be successful. ( Read more... ) (22 Comments |Comment on this)
nyuanshin	9:38a	Transparency I need an audience to keep me honest. So here, in plain terms, is my situation: I've taken the year off school -- maybe longer depending on how that year goes, but at this point it would be imprudent to speculate. I acknowledge that this is a stupid idea, but I'm committed to it anyway. I'm almost broke. Something in me felt it necessary to spend a little time actually worrying about primal things like eating, and as of the last two days it's doing wonders to destroy some delusions I'd been harboring. Any suggestions about how to turn my skillset into money are welcome. I'm teaching myself to program in Lisp. Again. For serious this time. It's the only language I've ever loved and it's a helpful gateway into a lot of other things I've got a hard-on for. More importantly, the formal discipline imposed on my thinking is something I've been missing greatly. I need to let my writing suck for a while, because my life is going to suck for a while. What appears here will be rough-edged while I work my way back into some sort of groove, and I can only trust that a pattern will emerge eventually. (6 Comments |Comment on this)
bart_calendar	3:06p	Deep Thoughts Part Two Ever since the recession started burglaries are way down. Is this because: 1. Everyone is unemployed and home during the day reading Craigslist want ads and delusionally sending out resumes. or 2. Now that people have sold everything they own that does not pipe porn into their home or allow them to watch Mad Men, do burglars just have less incentive to break into people's homes. or 3. We've now sent nearly all of the criminal underclass to Iraq and Afghanistan? (6 Comments |Comment on this)

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