Category: Uncategorized

Destination	Travel Mode	Approximate Date	Purpose
Zanesville, OH	Greyhound	End of finals	Mom & Becky
London, KY	Greyhound	Christmas	Extended Family (uncle dennis)
Pittsburgh, PA	Greyhound	2 days before New Years	cmu-ers & Jane
Chicago, IL	Amtrak	Jan 2nd	soak up chicago & see
Minneapolis, MN	Amtrak	Jan 4th	Get my ass back to work
Washington, DC	Plane	Jan 9th-13th	Transportation Research Board, annual meeting
Austin, TX	Plane	Feb/Mar?	loungerat gathering (hypothetically, anyway)
??? (taking suggestions)	???	Mar 11-20th	Spring break!
Some Other Continent (Netherlands, Scandinavia, South America, let me see where the e-savers take me)	Plane	??? (before next school year, I hope)	Broaden my perspective

Must find housing for some of these. Some planning required, most notably the final three.

Christian boy got back to me. His logically fallacies and emphaticness have increased. Not quite sure what to do with that one.

I found my wireless card, it was in the waterbottle holder of my backpack, presumably unnoticed for about 24 hours.

I worked out today, hardcore. It felt good. Keeping my heartrate pegged well above the recommended is both an ego-boost and a way of shaking off lethargy. Part of this awakening is generally an increase in libido. And immediately after, I’m showering, often with a hot guy or two in the same room. nothing really happened, yet, for those who don’t want to know…

It’s not often you’ll find me recomending an article from the national review, but in this case it’s thoroughly deserved. It points out the flaws of a national id system succinctly and amusingly. I found a printout of it on a desk in the humphrey’s computer lab. =)

Today I am done with many things. My last stats quiz. My management and leadership presentation. Next to last econ homework.

This evening, in about 2.5 hours the minnesota DNC folks are having a forum where people can go to voice their views on how the DNC ought to be working. I want to to go, but it’s over an hour of public transit away (with two transfers). Way to make it accessible, folks.

And today I lost the wireless card for my laptop. No biggy, I can replace it for $40. But I’m a little strapped for dough as I wait for the recent maternal check to clear, so that one will have to wait. But between wireless woes, adapter trouble, a flicker-prone screen, and an epileptic right half of the keyboard, I think it’s time to put this puppy out to pasture. Not to mention the fact that it’s an antique P.O.S. =)

Next I will be a mac user. I am slightly saddened by the single button, but I will cope, and use a two button trackball at home. My debate is between a 14″ I-Book for $1200, or a 15″ PowerBook for $1800. My inner size (and resolution) queen urges me towards the Powerbook. But that is only a small whisper in comparison to my inner pinchpenny. The other differences are faster RAM 333 MHz, instead of 266; 32MB video foo v 64 MB; and a full size keyboard on the powerbook. All that’s nice, but I’m still thinking IBook. I also think their superdrive (DVD-R on top of the default combo DVD reader, CD-RW) would be virtually useless to me as I never seem to burn anything, let alone burn a shit-ton of data.

Reference from ljforchoice via .

Many American youngsters participating in federally funded abstinence-only programs have been taught over the past three years that abortion can lead to sterility and suicide, that half the gay male teenagers in the United States have tested positive for the AIDS virus, and that touching a person’s genitals “can result in pregnancy,” a congressional staff analysis has found.

…

Some course materials cited in Waxman’s report present as scientific fact notions about a man’s need for “admiration” and “sexual fulfillment” compared with a woman’s need for “financial support.” One book in the “Choosing Best” series tells the story of a knight who married a village maiden instead of the princess because the princess offered so many tips on slaying the local dragon. “Moral of the story,” notes the popular text: “Occasional suggestions and assistance may be alright, but too much of it will lessen a man’s confidence or even turn him away from his princess.”

I want the source text for this report. For some reason this phrase ran through my head this morning, and I now attribute it to a prescient awareness of this: Sweet baby fucking jesus.

[courtesy a comment in ‘s journal, here’s the report itself in pdf form. Found at http://democrats.reform.house.gov/]

You Have the Power : How to Take Back Our Country and Restore Democracy in America by Howard Dean. I’m amazed that I wasn’t inundated with press on this one, particularly from my multitudinous email lists. I’m thinking of starting an amazon wishlist. It’d be practice for saying what I want. =)

Even more interesting to me is Don’t Think of an Elephant: Know Your Values and Frame the Debate–The Essential Guide for Progressives by George Lakoff.

And here’s one I saw a talk on in september that I almost forgot about: Run the Other Way: Fixing the Two-Party System, One Campaign at a Time by Bill Hillsman

More bujold books, more george r r martin books, an ipod. Hmmmm. a lemon zester, a muffin pan. A nonsucky laptop, RAM for the desktop. A video card to make ffxi go zoom. I suppose a real bed wouldn’t hurt either. =)

Anyone have other recommendations? Video games, books, and other such high value per unit volume items particularly appreciated.

Here’s the ad that NBC and CBS deem “too controversial” to air.

I had to go through it three times before I spotted the initial “gay male couple” if that’s what they’re supposed to be. Two guys walk up, and are denied entrance. They don’t even seem to notice one another. They have nothing to signify homosexuality about them. Later in the ad, as it flashes through various pictures of people, it fades in and out on a potentially lesbian couple, or they could be sisters, hard to tell really. And yet, this is too controversial for the network that airs Will & Grace.

Riiiight. Crackwhores.

Inspired by some comments on an earlier entry.

So, I actually do believe that we’re talking roughly chi-squared curves here (see graphic below) with the number of sex partners on the x-axis), kind of like income distributions. And I think there is a significant bias towards gay guys having more partners. Which is not to say that there are not monogamous or celibate gay guys out there, and that they’re aren’t incredibly promiscuous heteros, but on average, median, etc, I bet that gay guys get more bootay.

Remember, the plural of anecdote is not evidence. =) I’m basing my conclusions on a few things: Most prominently, gabriel rotello’s Sexual Ecology, in which he discusses the epidemiology of HIV, and (late in the book) how it corresponds to the sorts of answers hetero’s give, and homo’s give when asked about the number of partners they’ve had. Hetero’s self-reported fewer partners per unit time than homo’s self-reported. And the transmission rates supported their claims. Additionally, gay guys can have a situation where two of one’s former partners can themselves partner up (happened to me). In strictly heterosexual interactions, that’s just plain ol’ not possible.

But, I think it’s nuts to pretend that there’s gay men, and everything else. For starters, there’s bi folk. And the sexual politics of lesbians are to my [limited] understanding, quite different from gay guy or hetero norms. And grouping all heteros together as though they had the same norms is equally ridiculous. Most heteros don’t have a strong (conscious) cultural identity based on their sexuality.

Kind of like the thing I noted in statistics last week. The white population’s attitude to the courts showed much more variability by things like income, education, and even attitude towards marijuana than the black population’s. I attributed this to a greater cultural unity among blacks. Not saying that all blacks (or all homos, or all males, etc) belong to a unified culture, but that the “white identity” and the “heterosexual identity” is no one’s primary cultural self-identification. I suspect white heteros are more likely to define themselves by profession, religion, class, or other such ideas.

The presentation is tomorrow. Most of what I’ve provided for the project is graphic design services. =)

http://www.club.cc.cmu.edu/~scu/hhh/5011/uac_and_abc.ppt is the finished product

Don’t ask about Zorro. You don’t want to know. =)

“Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”. –Albert Einstein

Meeting a great guy online is possible. People do it. But, based on my own experience, online fora are a terrible way to meet quality guys. (note: livejournal is not primarily about meeting guys for me, and yet, somehow, I’ve had a better signal to noise ratio from it. Anyway…).

After a spectacularly dishonest fellow I met last night, I’m inclined to recognize that my various online meeting mechanisms are unproductive, time wasting habits that I’m better off without. I’ll retain the friends I’ve made from them and find better ways of wasting time.

And just to raise the barrier to entry a bit on getting back in to bad habits, I’ll delete all the relevant accounts, including gay.com, and the various personals services (yahoo, salon, planetout, gaydar, etc). I guess this leaves real life, face to face fora. Maybe I can find one or two that will work for me. Hmmmm.