many things, some of which have a plan

[jazzfish]

Phantoms in the Snow:


Everything I Know I Learned At A Very Expensive University: of more than passing relevance to the current budget "debate".

Unicomp now has a keyboard designed specifically for Mac. Bother. Anyone interested in buying a barely-used Space Saver 104?

With our powers combined, we are...

Zarf is inevitably... drawn into the games-and-art thing.

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We're all aware that the government is about to be shut down over stuff that has no business being in a budget fight, right? Bastards.

(I generally don't listen to the radio unless I'm waiting for the traffic report to come on WTOP. Is that godawful "97% of what Planned Parenthood does is abortions!" ad typical for them? Because I am perfectly capable of raising my blood pressure in traffic all on my own, and don't need any help from the radio.)

ETA: And of course, per vvalkyri it turns out that the ad is not only false but entirely backwards. Tripe like this reduces me to incoherent frothing rage in short order. WHY IS THIS EVEN AN ISSUE I JUST DON'T ARRRRGH.

(Misleading source for misleading 97% number in ad.)

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I dunno. I seem to have hit a depressive slump for most of March. I'm kind of dragging myself out of it now but it's slow going.

Off to Blacksburg this afternoon to say my goodbyes to the place. Yeah, last weekend would have been better, but scheduling intervened.

Comments

With regards to the WTOP ad

[desfido]

Yes, I'd say it is typical.

Luckily, my Droid Knows Things. One of those things is traffic, and the info is presented in a much more useful way for me.

So I mostly listen to 88.5 or flip between music stations, generally the former, during my commute, and rely on Andra (my Droid's name) to find out about traffic and the like, eschewing WTOP.

Re: With regards to the WTOP ad

[jazzfish]

I keep meaning to find a decent traffic app, and not getting around to it. Luckily, soon it'll stop mattering.

[pictsy.livejournal.com]

I can't listen to WTOP anymore. The ads are infuriating, and the anchors talk like car salesmen.

[jazzfish]

I can't stand their weatherfolk, and from what I've heard of their anchors they're pretty annoying as well. I can generally tune out the ads; this one seemed exceptionally bad.

But I like Bob Marbourg's delivery of the traffic report, and I like the consistency of being able to switch over "on the eights" to hear how bad it is. Bleh. Choices all bad.

(and i had no idea that image was so bloody huge. yeesh. fixed.)

[vvalkyri.livejournal.com]

re the godawful 97% ad, might be worth including in toplevel post that that's in fact a reversal of the %ages..

[jazzfish]

... oh christ. Good point. Updated with linkage.

[jsciv.livejournal.com]

Sorry I missed you in Bburg, but Vancouver is a) closer and b) a city I've been meaning to visit for some time now, so hopefully I'll be able to see you when you're settled in.

[jazzfish]

Yeah, me too! I was kind of annoyed that various scheduled events interfered with going down last weekend; it would have been good to get some gaming in.

[rbandrews]

I am so unbelievably happy that I did not know that there was an impending furlough. It's stuff like this that makes me glad I left government contracting. :-)

The thing is, while I disagree with every tiny little part of Rep. Boehner's platform, I can't really work up any outrage about forcing a shutdown. Let's switch things around for a bit and say the Democratic party had a majority and they were objecting to funding for building new cells in Guantanamo. We're against torture, as all civilized people are. It's hard for me to see how someone can be against torture but not be willing to stop it through the budget, because it's not fair to do it outside legislation.

That's how they feel about abortion. They don't understand it well enough, so they believe it is murder. They think, however incorrectly, that Planned Parenthood is essentially the same as Nazi death camps. So of course they'll go to any lengths to stop it, legislation if they think they can win, budget fights and state laws if they can't. It's that important to them.

I completely disagree with what they believe, but I can't really fault them for the tactics with which they fight for those beliefs. If our side had been willing to fight as hard against Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib in 2000-2008 as the GOP is against Roe v. Wade now, then there probably wouldn't be a Guantanamo any more.

[meghatronn.livejournal.com]

It is so very refreshing to see empathy from someone who disagrees. Thank you.

I'd like to add, though, that to be pro-life (or anti-abortion, however you want to phrase it) is not an issue of not understanding the issue "well enough." That is with the caveat, however, that there are LOTS AND LOTS of people who truly don't understand all of the facets of complicated pregnancies and are extremely rude about it to boot. But there are just as many people who are informed, rational, and educated who do choose the anti-abortion platform. They are, sadly, the quieter ones.

I'll throw in my agreement as well that the 97% stat is completely misleading and I am very annoyed by it. Specifically because it does not include the women who went ahead and had their babies and kept them. I don't like data manipulation. Period.

Nice Graph

[geoffrey hussein krawczyk (from livejournal.com)]

And thanks for the link!