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Fell in love with a girl

Fell in love with a girl,
fell in love once and almost completely,
she’s in love with the world,
but sometimes these feelings,
can be so misleading,
she turns and says “Are you alright?”
I said “I must be fine cause my heart’s still beating,”
she says “come and kiss me by the riverside, Pompeii says it’s fine he don’t consider it cheating,”

Black hair without a curl
mellow roll for the flavor
and the eyes for peeping
can’t keep away from the girl
these two sides of my brain
need to have a meeting
can’t think of anything to do
my left brain knows that
all love is fleeting
she’s just looking for vegan fondue
and I said it once before
but it bears repeating

—-
White Stripes. There might be some transcription errors here.

Posted 20 January 2012 † matt § Romance ‡ Comments (1) °

The perfect boycott

  • The boycott is related to something trendy and in the news. For example, SOPA and PIPA. There are tons of vulnerable companies in that support SOPA and PIPA
  • The company is a consumer goods and services company. Mining companies are immune from consumer boycott pressure, unless it is a highly visible item like diamonds.
  • You are a current customer or buy at least occasionally.
  • The industry has a variety of at least similar competitor. Presumably you’ll still need to get your stuff form somewhere.
  • Bad behavior isn’t widespread or fundamental to the business. Oil companies come to mind– they all pump huge amounts of carbon into the air and they all have spotty records when it comes to pollution from extraction and refinement. If the bad behavior is fundamental to the business, then its the consumer that needs to change. Again until people stop driving everywhere, there isn’t much point in boycotting an oil company on account of it’s carbon pollution.
  • There is a way to let the company know they are being boycotted.
  • The company has an effective way to communicate that they really have stopped their bad behavior so that consumers can resume buying. The Nesles Kills Babies campaign had effects long after the company said “uncle” and tried to respond to the campaigns demands. If the company doesn’t notice and think that responding to the demands will lead to normalization of sales, they might just treat the boycott the same as bad luck and bad weather–bad, but nothing they can do anything about.
Posted 20 January 2012 † matt § Politics ‡ Comments (0) °

Eating disorders and vegetarianism

I’ve read more times than I care to remember that eating disorders and vegetarianism go together and shallowing-thinking journalists seem to like to think that people get the idea of vegetarianism into their head and then become anorexic– i.e. develop a generalized aversion to food.

I think the direction of causation is reversed. People with an aversion to food for reasons unrelated to the principles of vegetarianism label themselves as vegetarians because vegan and vegetarianism have some degree of acceptability and merit, while anorexia is rightly condemned as a mental disorder.

When it comes to making basic changes in fundamental areas of lifestyle, people are so resistant to change that they are willing to entertain all levels of logical lapses and nonsense to keep eating what they ate yesterday at all costs.

And on the topic of food aversions and food phobias, we should remember episodes like the draconian measures taken in England to deal with mad cow disease– where entire herds were slaughtered for fear of a disease that was probably less common that other food chain problems like salmonella or e coli. So if we accept that fear of food is a phenomena, then it shouldn’t be surprising that some percent of people who fear food in general end up as vegetarians. After all, I can leave out a vegetarian entrée on the counter overnight and eat it the next day and not have to worry much, but I’d worry to do the same thing with a pound of pork or fish. It’s just a lot harder to screw up vegetarian food to the point where it’s not safe to eat.

Posted 19 January 2012 † matt § Vegetarianism ‡ Comments (0) °

GTD: Apocalypse

It’s that time again, time to try to get (more) things done. First things first, I need to update my methodology, review my projects, remember what the GTD advice was in the first place. I suppose it is a pity my license for the GTD book only works on a palm pilot and the password was a credit card I don’t have anymore.

Methodology
This is the boring part. GTD at the start is a fun chore of picking things to do. On a day to day basis, it’s the tending to calendars and to-do lists on paper and computer. Currently, I get by on a 12 month calendar (2 pages per month), a pair of notebooks, some TODO items in gmail, some in remember-the-milk, some on slips of paper, instapaper, a bunch of vague policies (like don’t do things that require errands, like returning physical videos).

Projects
Projects are to-do list items that are so big that they need a separate list. They drive all the other to-do lists. According to GTD, I’m suppose to think about why this is a good project, envision what it would look like if I succeeded, some more things of questionable value and then come up with a concrete “next action”.

Change of contract. I’ve worked on the same contract three+ years. I’ve been working on transitioning to the next contract since August. I’m regretting not just quitting my job and job hunting. It’s getting increasing important that something happen on this issue because people are getting fatigued about me talking about it to the point where this could lead to violence. Why? My mood is just better on a contract with clear goals and a clear benefits. What does success look like? Easy. I report to a different desk. I feel like I’ve earned my paycheck each day.

Languages. In my life I’ve sunk effort into ASL, Latin, *Spanish, *French, Japanese, *Russian, Swedish, *Icelandic, Esperanto, Klingon, toki pona. At one point I could speak like a three year old in the ones I starred. I won’t go any further with la, es, jp, or se. ru is going into deep freeze– no particular action outside of music & movies. is is going into maintenance mode– just flash cards and reading– not clear if I can resume or continue study weekly group. I want to finish fr, but just flash cards & reading– I’vent the will to do a study group. I’m on the fence with respect to eo, tlh and tp– they’re small, but tend to be driven by obsession & that isn’t voluntary. I’d like to finish writing a language. And I want to make some progress with ASL and it’s look-a-like, Baby Sign Language. Why? It’s just a social hobby, a good defense against the typical imbalances you find yourself living when you work in IT. And ASL/Baby-SL actually could be useful. What does success look like? It’s either a local in-person community or being able to read without dictionaries or that “I-don’t-understand-anything” feeling.

Vegetarianism and Cooking. I used to be active in the vegetarian community. I should resume. Why? If not me, who else will? What is success? Gee, hard to say. This is more of a process than a goal with a single end.

Open Source Hobbyist Programming. This December I made awesome progress on an open source project. I’ll have to figure out how to move it to the next level. Why? Easy, because one needs to be able to point at something every once in a while and say, “There, I did something tangible, valuable and good.” What is success? A downloadable component that a hypothetical developer could install, and demo with sample data in less than 15 minutes unpracticed and 5 minutes with practice.

Books Another project that looks like a process, without any particular end. Why? It’s community and tends to drive new hobbies. What does success look like? It looks like three book clubs. I think that is my limit.

And I haven’t even gotten to the interesting projects that will probably shrink my spare, idle time to nothing. That’s for another post.

Posted 19 January 2012 † matt § Matthew Martin ‡ Comments (0) °

The heart is hard to translate

And the heart is hard to translate,
It has a language of it’s own,
It talks and tongues and quiet sighs and prayers and proclamations,
In the grand days of great men and the smallest of gestures,
In short shallow gasps.

But with all my education,
I can’t seem to command it, *
And the words are all escaping me,
And coming back all damaged,
And I would put them back in poetry,
If I only knew how,
I can’t seem to understand it,

And I would give all this and heaven too,
I would give it all if only for a moment,
That I could just understand the meaning of the word you see,
‘Cause I’ve been scrawling it forever,
But it never makes sense to me at all.

And it talks to me in tiptoes,
And sings to me inside,
It cries out in the darkest night,
And breaks in morning light.

No, words are a language,
It doesn’t deserve such treatment,
And all my stumbling phrases,
Never amounted to anything worth this feeling,
All this heaven,
Never could describe such a feeling as I’m having,
Words were never so useful,
So I was screaming out a language that I never knew existed before.
—-
florence + the machine
* Had to change e to a. No need for an e to barge in and make everything all so cynical.

Posted 11 January 2012 † matt § Romance ‡ Comments (0) °

The Rules for Alpha Geeks

Someone asked me for my uninformed opinion on dating and that got the amateur sociologist in me interested in what the answer was. After reading Jezebel and The Rules, along the way I realized that, like politics, dating is local. There isn’t any good general advice or analysis without knowing in detail all about the relevant parties. Instead, I shall present THE RULES for Alpha Geeks.

1. The first rule is that you never talk about the Rules. You will be teased incessantly and get wedges from your coworkers.
2. The second rule is that you never talk about the Rules. Now stop skimming my blog and pay attention, I’m trying to help you here.
3. If someone says “stop” or goes limp, taps out … that is a really bad sign. Check you spam folder for assistance, or pick a more creative safe word.
4. Always check to see if you are brother and sister.
5. Check to see if she’s an alien.
6. If she is an alien, you probably can’t really have kids, so if she is an alien or xenomorph and starts talking about kids, run!
7. Never hurt, harm or abuser her. Unless she’s Alice from Resident Evil, in which case there’s plenty of replacements. And you might want to get some T-Virus and carefully plan the strategy and tactics of any abuse or you’ll get your ass kicked.
8. Slave Leia Binikis are appropriate gifts only for Valentines and only if you know her exact bra size.
9. Don’t spend to much time looking for love. The Bene Gesserit will find you, be patient.

Posted 10 January 2012 † matt § Funny ‡ Comments (0) °

New Years Resolutions 2012

Here is the link to last years resolutions and (links to resolutions before that).

Embrace simplicity.
I’m voluntarily signing up for more complexity than I need or had ever wanted. I’ll stop doing that so much.

Live like I’m mortal.
I can’t be starting projects that I can only finish in a lifetime and a half. So all my materials for Spanish, German– off to the library for donation. Old hardware for that project I wont get to for 80 years, off for recycling & resale.

Build Communities.
I’m a complete amateur at it, but I’m getting better. Per the above resolutions though, I probably will rationalize and refocus on fewer groups though.

Posted 06 January 2012 † matt § Matthew Martin ‡ Comments (0) °

Zombie Herder’s Almanac

Zombies love brains, so any zombie with a herd of humans will want to pay attention to folate since without enough folate, the humans are born without brains. The relationship between folate intake is strong and linear, and it appears reduce the incidence of neural tube defects all the way up to 700mcg, with most articles recommending at least 400mcg. This article is written from the vegetarian standpoint, since any Zombie farmer is likely to reserve livers for themselves.

So an obvious question is– Is there enough folate in the naive diet? After all, there is some folate in lots of common foods, and most bread and grain products have extra folic acid added to them. Probably not– the average from dietary sources alone is about 470mcg, and 20% of women don’t hit the minimal level from diet alone, probably fewer hit the higher number.

Like my previous article on vegetarian protein, nutrition labels can be full of mathematical traps if you are trying to get to a certain dietary intake of something, in this case 400mcg to 700mcg of folate. The trap is that nutrional facts are listed based either on 100grams, or some other unit of weight disconnected from typical portions. For example, Romaine lettuce has a lot of folate… but no one is going to eat a bucket of Romaine.

Brewers yeast, is packed with B vitamins, including folate. But typically it is consumed in small quantities, e.g. a tablespoonful here and there. Depending on who you read (or maybe brand) it’s a great or lousy strategy for getting folate into the diet, requiring 2 to 33 tbsps to get a days worth of folate.

Here is one better chart with folate quantities matched to plausible portions.

I think the conclusion is that one would want to follow a mixed strategy–no single source can provide a days worth of folate in a typical portion. Or take a pill, but there’s no challenge in that.

Posted 03 January 2012 † matt § Uncategorized ‡ Comments (0) °

Good morning!

Well I see trees of green and
Red roses too,
I’ll watch them bloom for me and you
And I think to myself
What a wonderful world

Well I see skies of blue and I see clouds of white
And the brightness of day
I like the dark and I think to myself
What a wonderful world

The colors of the rainbow so pretty in the sky
Are also on the faces of people passing by
I see friends shaking hands
Saying, “How do you do?”
They’re really saying, I…I love you
I hear babies cry and I watch them grow,
They’ll learn much more
Than we’ll know
And I think to myself
What a wonderful world

- Israel Kamakawiwo Ole’ version

Posted 28 December 2011 † matt § Romance ‡ Comments (0) °

Why study Icelandic?

I also wrote a big advertisement for my meetup/study group which says much the same stuff.

EASY. If you speak English, it is actually on the easy range.
- It is indoeuropean. So it works like every other language you’ve studied in High School
- The grammar isn’t much like English, but word order is close enough to be intelligible
- There are lots and lots of transparent compound words (words made up of two words and you can fairly easily guess the correct meaning if you know the parts)
- There are lots of words that match up to something in English. Not nearly the overlap you get with English and French, but a lot of overlap all the same.
- It isn’t tonal, it isn’t polysynthetic. It could be much, much more difficult.
- The learning materials available today are adequate.
- There is tons of Icelandic pop culture available over the internet. Language without accessible media are hard, so by this measure Icelandic is easy.
- Reading, writing and speaking Icelandic at a college educated level is hard, but odds are that isn’t your goal.

VACATION
Iceland is a nice place to go on vacation and the language is one more thing to do there. If you fail to learn the language, that’s okay, ekki stressaður, most everyone speaks English. I’ve been there twice, but I don’t know when I’ll get to go again. It really depends when the right set of travel companions turn up.

RELIGION
About 40,000 people in the US are Asatru revivalists. Of these, a small percent (maybe 1%?) use Old Norse as their religious language– for service, prayers, devotional reading and the like.

This is the closest living language to Old Norse. While it might be counter intuitive to study Icelandic to learn Old Norse– Icelandic has schools with living, native speakers, and Old Norse doesn’t. So you are more likely to succeed in learning Icelandic and gain reading capability of Old Norse. The single biggest barrier to learning a language is that it is a huge amount of work and people are more likely to follow through if there are real living people involved somehow.

I like to read about all sorts of religions, it’s a pity that I can’t find it in me to believe in any of it. But the philosophy and ethics stuff is often quite valuable to know.

FAMILY. This doesn’t apply to everyone, but of the people who study Icelandic, a good percent do so because they failed to learn it from their parent/grandparent and still want to speak Icelandic to their relatives back home. Unless you are learning Icelandic to speak to your significant other and your significant other prefers to speak Icelandic (i.e. has poor English skills), then you might not have enough motivation to pull this off. Most people in Iceland speak English and prefer to speak English to their visiting relatives– they need the practice. I don’t have any Icelandic family– but I don’t have any particular personal relationship with anyone in my family that lives in another country anyhow, so for me, with respect to the family issue, all languages are just as good.

Posted 20 October 2011 † matt § Icelandic ‡ Comments (0) °