Meh. Still alive. Not writing right now, it's summer. I start work on Tuesday. I've been spending a lot of time rebuilding my computer from the ground up, starting with a repartition. Windows gets just 6 gb now, Gentoo Linux the other 54. Gentoo is 100% compiled from source, from the stage1 tarball. Woot.

I shouldn't be posting. I have too much work to do. So I'll make this quick:

article here.

I think it speaks for itself. Oh, what a brave new world, with such people in it.

Mr. Kerry, don't try to tell me I'm miserable. I'm sure you feel pity for us helpless peons from your Boston townhouse and Heinz fortune.

As someone pointed out to me, "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" is a reference to a poem by Alexander Pope, "Eloisa to Abelard." It's worth giving more time to read than I granted it.

In other news, I've had the idea of writing an apologetic to Shadee's editorial for about half a week now; I'm writing that down here in the hope it will coerce me into actually doing it sometime soon.

WOW.

People who have the fortitude to do things like this really amaze me. Something for me to keep in mind as I enter the third mile on my runs.

Christian Raves?

And I found out about this through a guy whose legal name is Tronster, after the movie Tron. Hey, whatever works, I guess...

Well, this is just great. Apparently the world is going to end this year in a catastrophic asteroid impact, and on my twentieth birthday, no less.

I signed up for a site which seems to have the sole purpose of allowing for bragging rights on what DVDs people own. You can view my collection here:

http://www.dvdaficionado.com/dvds.html?cat=1&id=drinian

Doing my schedule for next semester, I'm struck by all the courses I want to take but can't because I've straitjacketed myself into my majors (and minor). It almost makes me reconsider, but... oh well. It's strange to think that I only have two more years, really, to play the student. Some courses I can't take this semester:

History of Ancient / Early Modern Japan
Introduction to Old English
The Existentialist Imagination
The Postmodern Bible

Hopefully things like MIT's OpenCourseWare will extend more into the humanities, and I'll get a chance (and find the motivation) to take them up after college. That's my only consolation. Ah well, vita brevis, et utique numquam totas res habebis.

Why did I just start wrting in Latin?

I think I may need to start believing in signs, if I get a few more.

Or else happy coincidence.

...in another Derrick-fueled journal entry. The entire conversation is recorded herein:

(22:38:56) PointDriver: AND YOU KNOW I'D WALK A THOUSAND MILES IF I COULD JUST SEEEEEEE YOUUUUU?
(22:38:59) PointDriver: sorry
(22:39:01) PointDriver: just had to do that
(22:39:36) PointDriver logged out.

The Iranians are edging pretty close to a possible rebellion and overthrow of their theocracy in favor of a real democracy after last month's sham elections, and no major Western outlet is reporting it. This is possibly the first major news story, as pointed out at Fark, only to be covered by blogs. Links:

National Review
Fark.com thread where I found out about it
Iranian activist site
An activist message board
Tehran24 -- excellent pictures of a remarkably modern country, next to our perception of it

The basic conflict here as I understand it is that the powers-that-be have declared a traditional religious festival illegal because it conflicts with their view of Islamic law, and people have decided that they've had enough of that sort of restrictions. This has been a long time coming; anyone with a clue about mideast politics realizes that Iran is one of the most pro-America countries in the area if you discount its government. Time to stand back and watch democracy in action.

The fact that I'm not hearing about this all the time on CNN, though, is very bad. It's selective reporting like this that led to most Americans thinking there was an Iraqi connection to 9/11 and spending the last month getting angry at that Super Bowl business. Here's a perfect example of the best way for revolutions to take place... I hope. Meanwhile, most Americans think Iran is a bunch of mud huts.

It's exciting, isn't it?

Instead of doing some actual writing, I just wanted to briefly mention that Annan is right about poverty, although he's wrong about the US' actions not being in self-defense.

If there is one thing that can be done now by our nation to save a lot of lives, it's ending the supports and subsidies we give our farmers. The EU is no better -- they spend more per cow than per capita. Only ending the abject poverty of most of the world is going to end this war.

And, like I said, this isn't a real entry, so I'm not going to try and substantiate any of these claims.

Considering I will probably be in Baltimore this summer, I'm more than slightly interested in witnessing this. My dad has mentioned it before, it's quite a sight. Of course, by the second week of constant buzzing...

This site is somewhat interesting. It told me that the candidate most matching my views was Al Sharpton, followed by Kerry, Kucinich, and THEN Bush.

To be fair, I didn't really match any of them that well, unsurprisingly. Al was a 56% match, Bush a 42.