Like Dangling Crack In Front of an Idiot

I think I will avoid constipation. How about this - how common are drug interactions? There is this widespread fear, I think, that they are just running rampant. Is that creating a hysteria to make a profit, or is that a mostly legit not very hysterical angle?

Mike

(Who is sleepy without any help from modern medicine).

That one is perfect for me. Heather loves those and sends some to me and they are very cute, but I hate the strange language.

Sadly, that is a little too obvious for work. I may play a bit with it at lunch. Which is soon.

Congratulations to nancyblue. If it ever ends up on youtube (and given your video production stuff, it should), link me.

I'm really curious...how does a guy like you, who thinks and writes and reads and studies so much...find time to follow sports so closely? I'd love to know because I never seem to find time to catch more than a period of hockey here and there.

It's kind of an illusion. I read a lot online, but not as much as one might expect off-line. I tend to read mostly trashy mysteries. One of my college professors said that a liberal arts eduction was designed to produce 'well educated dilletantes' - though he said it with both appreciation and scorn.

A lot of the things I do, I suspect, are a form of self-medicating for mental health issues. As a kid, I got really into baseball statistics because I found that thinking about statistics was interesting and calming. I spent hours and hours pouring over Pete Palmer and John Thorn's Total Baseball (which is why sabermetrics never seemed alien to me).

Given that most of what I want after work is something to quiet and calm my mind (and maybe even reduce that tendency to think so much), sports can often fit the bill. The thing is, I like to think about sports, but it's that they matter so profoundly in such superficial ways ("they really matter a lot given they don't really matter") that it side-steps the depression that comes out of, say, thinking too much about politics.

re: feminism.

I keep going over this in my head, and I think that what I am most comfortable with is feminism as a political movement with focus on legal rights and structures. I am sympathetic to cultural arguments (and will make them) but tend to want the theory to acknowledge the uncertainty (this isn't just about feminism but about almost anything that touches on culture). Culture - people - are so damn complex and contradictory that you can find people who have little or nothing in common with each other beyond being carbon based life forms.

That's not quite on topic either. But when I do read feminist works, I tend to focus on books that answer questions like "what are the problems?" in concrete ways and offer implementable policy solutions. Anything, on any subject, that veers too much into theory tends to lose me.

Hahahahahahahahahaha. (Mostly to your choice of how to phrase it & Steven Colbert).

Oh, nevermind to the LOLcat translation if you hate the strange language. (Although, how's this for odd, I do too! I find the purposely incorrect grammar and syntax more obnoxious than cute, and yet I can't stop reading their damn translated Bible.)

I went to undergrad school at Pomona College, a small liberal arts college in Southern California. Right next door was Harvey Mudd College, one of the more exclusive and competitive engineering/math/science schools you can find. My ex (thaisa tended to spend a lot of time there, and I would occasionally join.

Now I think of myself as semi-social, but interacting with genuine supergeeks was an interesting experience, because these were brilliant brilliant people, some of whom had these scary gaping holes in their understanding.

I bring this up because I was a politics major, and talking to these people about politics was a jarring experience. They tended to go for the most wild, conspiracy theoryish and militant pronouncements while at the same time giving the impression they didn't have any idea what they were talking about; just very very bright people outside of their element but no less firm and opinionated (I sort of imagine it like John Madden announcing a ballet or a less mean Rush Limbaugh talking about anything).

That's what I think of when I think of Ron Paul and extreme libertarianism. I suspect you are much closer to that type of group then I am (you may even have a sort of dual citizenship), but I tend to think of libertarianism as mostly thriving in a isolated group of computer programers and engineers that is less high school civics teacher and more brainy but alienated high school physics student.

Please send an e-mail to alchemi1976@yahoo.com with a few entries you think would be appropriate and a short paragraph on what you would look for in entries.

I decide based on whether I think the entries you would select would fit. I will sometimes also open it up to other members if I'm uncertain.

:).

Mike