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Journal Mar 2006

30 Mar 2006

I updated the style of the menubar at the top and cleaned up some more code in general in the main section's table code. You'll notice streamlining of my "selected notes" from my AAR shows in the journal too, as I listen casually at work and only take notes when I hear a good quote or link to documents or other media. Other stuff from the show can be handled by the shows' message boards. Also I'm trying not to keep a backlog of stuff for me to hear anymore. Same goes for our TiVo, where I tape PBS' NewsHouse with Jim Lehrer, in my opinion, the last source of real and really balanced news on publicly available television.

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Selected notes from The Randi Rhodes Show and related stories (indicated times are Pacific) (why this is here):

Other news and opinion from the day:

Other news and opinion from the past:

28 Mar 2006

Our family drove up to Hayward on Thursday (23 Mar 2006), and we went to Lake Tahoe on Friday, joining Eric from our dinner group along the way. Eric taught Timmy some basics of skiing, and Maureen and I went snowboarding. We got back yesterday, but I'm still sore from the trip. We took some pictures, and they'll go up on this site soon. Maybe once I fix the gallery.

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Selected notes from The Al Franken Show and related stories (indicated times are Pacific) (why this is here):

Selected notes from The Randi Rhodes Show and related stories (indicated times are Pacific) (why this is here):

Other news and opinion from the day:

22 Mar 2006

Last Sunday, Father Roberto of the Western Dominican Province (superior of the UCSD Catholic Community's Fr. JP and Fr. Dominic) gave a good sermon on Jesus' intolerance of the vendors and money changers in the temple. His insight was similar to that of my teacher in high school in my Gospel of Luke class: Jesus was not just mad at the selling of goods in the place of worship but the fact that they were ripping people off. This scene in the Gospel seems rather uncharacteristic of Jesus, of a loss of temper, but it shows how emotional He can be about both places of worship and fellow human beings.

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Selected notes from The Al Franken Show and related stories (indicated times are Pacific) (why this is here):

Selected notes from The Randi Rhodes Show and related stories (indicated times are Pacific) (why this is here):

Other news and opinion from the day:

21 Mar 2006

The beginning of Fit the Twenty-Sixth of the HHGG radio series (Quintessential Phase) has a pretty good insight into human nature, an insight that is unfortunately not featured in any of the books:

"According to The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, there are rules that determine the reaction of most life forms to emerging technologies: (1) anything that is in your world when you're born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way things work; (2) anything that's invented in the first third of your life span is new and exciting and revolutionary, and you can probably get a career in it; (3) anything invented once you are middle-aged is against the natural order of things."

I'm not sure of if Douglas Adams wrote this material or not since the script was finalized after his passing, but it definitely fits into his worldview, in my opinion.

(corrected 10 May 2006)

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Selected notes from The Al Franken Show and related stories (indicated times are Pacific) (why this is here):

Selected notes from The Randi Rhodes Show and related stories (indicated times are Pacific) (why this is here):

Other news and opinion from the day:

Other news and opinion from the past:

20 Mar 2006

Evelyn was sick on Thursday morning, so I picked her up after a half-day of work and didn't take any notes on AAR. So while I took care of her Thursday and Friday, I caught up on In Justice and Will & Grace on the TiVo.

In Justice is a great new show on ABC that I started watching since the third episode, the first one featuring the character Sonya, who joins the National Justice Project after her brother's case ends. The National Justice Project is a group addressing the "secondary victims" of some trials, the wrongly imprisoned. It's a good balance of crime show and evaluation of the American justice system, which is not perfect (hence the Project) but we hope works most of the time. The important thing about the group is that if they find their client is actually guilty (which hasn't happened yet to my knowledge), they still did their job of getting the real truth. Still, while they emphasize the secondary victims of a case, they don't neglect the primary victims and their suffering.

I missed a few software releases in the recent past. There's a new Mozilla Firefox (1.5.0.1), and Fedora Core 5 just came out, which I have yet to test (or indeed download). Also, OpenOffice.org 2.0.1 was released some time ago, but now 2.0.2 just came out.

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Selected notes from The Al Franken Show and related stories (indicated times are Pacific) (why this is here):

Selected notes from The Randi Rhodes Show and related stories (indicated times are Pacific) (why this is here):

Other news and opinion from the day:

Other news and opinion from the past:

15 Mar 2006

Yay! I finally went through my journal material from the last two months (i.e., since 23 Jan 2006) done, and they're posted. I've included many links to stories I may or may not have had the chance to read, but I thought are probably importnat just from the title (mostly WaPo articles). Here are some of the highlights of events and my writings: the confirmation of Alito, the State of the Union Address (SOTU) and sarcastic applause to W's failed Social Security privatization, the spelling of letters in the English alphabet, "Cheney's Got a Gun", the Electoral College, video of the White House's early warning on Katrina, reading The Da Vinci Code (actually listening to the audiobook), and verifying information taken from from talk shows (yesterday).

Also, Timmy turned 5, and Evelyn turned 1 this past Valentine's Day. I'll put pictures up soon.

I've also finally restructed the wedding website (each page is its own directory, just like the main site) and similarly the Co-op website (though the actual co-op is currently defunct). Also the wedding website wasn't verified XHTML until now. Lastly, I redid the code for the journal section so that my source files for each day are written in pseudo-Wiki markup instead of straight XHTML tags. The reader, of course, will never see this, but it should speed up development quite a bit. I've also gone through my past entries and cleaned up code-wise as well as few spelling corrections.

Over the last couple of months, I finally organized and scanned in pictures from my undergrad days up till our last days without a digital camera in 2002. So now I can reorganize and complete the photo gallery. Sooner or later.

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Selected notes from The Al Franken Show and related stories (indicated times are Pacific) (why this is here):

Selected notes from The Randi Rhodes Show and related stories (indicated times are Pacific) (why this is here):

Other news and opinion from the day:

14 Mar 2006

Unlike other (mostly conservative, but some liberal ones too) talk show hosts, Randi Rhodes encourages her audience to check out the stories she discusses. I try to do just that, but sometimes it's hard to research when spellings aren't known. For example, it took me forever to figure out the name of one of the terrorist plots she mentioned along with the bombing of the USS Cole and the Millenium Bomb Plots: Project Bojinka. At least she posts many of the stories she mentions (and their links) on her website.

Anyway, she had a pretty long rant about how we as citizens need to be proactive in finding the real news, which is mostly in print or online versions of print sources, since the radio and television media is corporate and tends to offer the same stories among the different networks. This is why the best places to go in that medium are C-SPAN, PBS, and NPR. The best print is probably The Washington Post for its reporting (not so much for its editorial content, versus The New York Times for its editorial content, not so much for its reporting (e.g. Judith Miller's drumbeat to war in Iraq)). Here's my transcript on Randi's rant on being the media:

"You have stories being killed in newsrooms all across America every single day because the media is so corporate, and they just don't care about informing you anymore. So this means you have to be proactive about getting information. You have to read, either what I tell you to read, which should make you curious about--if you find a story about Iraqi death squads, and you see the name 'Negroponte', and you say, 'I remember something about him, but I don't know...', then you should research him! It's never been easier with the Internet. I always tell you, 'don't believe me; don't believe a word I say.' It's the exact opposite of what conservatives tell you. They tell you that what they're tellin' you is the Gospel; there's no need to read a newspaper; there's no need to research anything; there's no--if they tell it to you, then that's--you have just had an education in advanced conservative studies; this is all you need. And they're doin' it with half their brain tied behind their back just to make it fair 'cause you're a moron [to them]. Even their approach to you is moronic. 'You're moronic; all you need is a sound bite; all you need is their word, and that's the Gospel. You should never be curious; you should never research; you should never read a newspaper; you should never go and be proactive about getting information.' That is just--on its face, it's insulting. I've always--whenever I hear that being said, I just, like, cringe and go 'how insulting is that?' How insulting is that? I tell you the exact opposite, 'believe nothing I say'.

"I'm not a journalist. I don't hold myself--I mean I may hold myself to very high standards, but you don't know that that's true. You don't know that that's accurate. You don't know if I really get up at 7:00 in the morning to watch Washington Journal. You don't know if I really spend hours and hours and hours researching before the show, during the show. You don't know if that's true. You might like to know me; you may think you know me; you might want to know me but you don't. I'm just a voice coming out of your radio or your satellite box. You know, you should never believe anything that's said in talk radio, because it's innundated with liars. And for all you know, I could be one of them. I tell ya that I'm not, but you shouldn't believe me. 'Cause you can't believe what you hear; you can't believe this radio business; you can't believe this cable news crap; you can't believe news models; you can't believe guys with more makeup on than your wife, or me. I'm sorry, you have to be proactive.

"If you want a good jumping off point, I say go to therandirhodesshow.com, make a little donation to the Hurricane--to Habitat for Humanity and the Change for Change program, build a house, help build a house, do some good, then go in there and read the articles that I post, and if you think something piques your interest, go for it, research it, go find out why John Negroponte, wherever he goes, death squads appear. Don't take my word for it; go research it! Find something that catches your interest. The Dubai ports deal seemed to capture everybody's interest. Everyone got into it. Everybody made their two cents known. They made their opinion plain. People wrote their Congr--their Senator. People phoned their Senator. And guess what, that believed that they had killed this deal. This deal is NOT dead! It's just masquerading now as an American company, but it's not an American company; it's the same company. It's Dubai Ports World that bought P&O North America, so if P&O North America sounds American, they'll tell you P&O North American is gonna run the ports. But who owns P&O North America? Dubai Ports World! It's just a shell game. Don't believe me! Find out for yourself."

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Selected notes from The Al Franken Show and related stories (indicated times are Pacific) (why this is here):

Selected notes from The Randi Rhodes Show and related stories (indicated times are Pacific) (why this is here):

13 Mar 2006

Today is Bob and Natalie's anniversary. Happy Anniversary!

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Selected notes from The Al Franken Show and related stories (indicated times are Pacific) (why this is here):

Selected notes from The Randi Rhodes Show and related stories (indicated times are Pacific) (why this is here):

Other news and opinion from the day:

10 Mar 2006

I finished The Da Vinci Code today, and it was well worth the time. I read up on the Wikipedia article on it that I linked earlier, and I picked up some info I didn't get on my first listening to the audiobook. The novel (as I heard it) was very well written and had a very well developed story line. The audiobook's voice actor, Paul Michael, kept the story going and did (as far as I know; no others were credited) all of the character voices and accents.

The big controversy behind it (other than the current legal one with one of the author's sources) has to do with one of the central tenets of Christianity (which I won't spoil), at least, if you're a conservative. But at the least (i.e. least controversial), the novel emphasizes something largely taken for granted many of the major Christian churches -- the role and importance of women. The phrase you'll hear (or read, actually, in print) often is "the sacred feminine." At the very least, setting aside the conspiracy premise, the novel attempts to correct the inherent bias against women in the writing of the books of the Bible by men (whether or not you believe they were divinely inspired). Consideration of the disposition, society, and culture of the four writers of the Gospel, for example, explains the differences among the four Gospels, though they tell the same basic story.

This is why I believe the important thing about Christianity is the teaching of a standard of morality and some important life lessons, not necessarily the retelling of history. To paraphrase Dr. Indiana Jones, religion is about truth, not fact (which is proven using the scientific method). So I believe as Christians we serve God not only by praying and worshipping Him but by serving our fellow man and woman (as Jesus did), or at least supporting groups that do that work.

Where was I? Oh yeah, The Da Vinci Code, very entertaining read. You can read into it as much as you want, but I think the important thing is that the reader is entertained and understands how important women are in society and in Christianity.

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Selected notes from The Al Franken Show and related stories (indicated times are Pacific) (why this is here):

Other news and opinion from the day:

09 Mar 2006

I'm getting close to the end of The Da Vinci Code! I can see already why conservative Christians, especially conservative Catholics would be highly critical of this work of fiction (forgetting that it is indeed fiction). If you don't mind spoilers, see the Wikipedia article on it. I'll look at it tomorrow after finishing the story.

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Selected notes from The Al Franken Show and related stories (indicated times are Pacific) (why this is here):

Other news and opinion from the day:

08 Mar 2006

It took a little bit of exposition, but I'm really excited about finishing The Da Vinci Code (audiobook). I hope to write about it when I'm done.

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Selected notes from The Al Franken Show and related stories (indicated times are Pacific) (why this is here):

07 Mar 2006

Selected notes from The Al Franken Show and related stories (indicated times are Pacific) (why this is here):

Other news and opinion from the day:

06 Mar 2006

Randi's on vacation this week, so I'm taking the opportunity to borrow my coworker's audiobook of The Da Vinci Code and listen to it after Al.

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Selected notes from The Al Franken Show and related stories (indicated times are Pacific) (why this is here):

Other news and opinion from the day:

02 Mar 2006

Selected notes from The Al Franken Show and related stories (indicated times are Pacific) (why this is here):

01 Mar 2006

Selected notes from The Al Franken Show and related stories (indicated times are Pacific) (why this is here):

Selected notes from The Randi Rhodes Show and related stories (indicated times are Pacific) (why this is here):

Past Journal Entries: 2006 2005 2004 2003 2002 2001

2006 Journal Entries: Aug Jul Jun May Apr Mar Feb Jan

Common and favorite references and their acronyms:

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