Monochromatic Outlook

Edmund S. Mor­gan explores what inde­pen­dence meant to three of Amer­i­ca’s most promi­nent Found­ing Fathers: John Adams, George Wash­ing­ton, and Thomas Jef­fer­son. In doing so in such a short vol­ume, he refrains from much biog­ra­phy or his­to­ry les­son, includ­ing only what is nec­es­sary to dis­cuss the impor­tance of inde­pen­dence as it meant to each.

Rather than dates and places, Mor­gan explores the moti­va­tions and val­ues of each man. Adams the ambi­tious politi­cian, Wash­ing­ton the aloof mil­i­tary man, and Jef­fer­son the human­ist … Read the rest

Car­ni­val was hap­pen­ing here in San Fran­cis­co this week­end. The streets in the Mis­sion were closed off from 24^th Street all the way up to 16^th and each block had bar­ri­cades with secu­ri­ty guards to push the bar­ri­cades aside in case a vehi­cle had to get out or something.

Jolie and I got to Jolie’s place this morn­ing after she cheered me on to my fin­ish at the Mis­sion Rock 5k (I fin­ished in 27:39… Read the rest

I don’t think I’ll find answers to eth­i­cal dilem­mas in a book, but this was a thought­ful if some­times less than thor­ough explo­ration of the deci­sion­mak­ing process­es involved when faced with right-ver­sus-right situations.

The author clar­i­fied the ques­tion of eth­i­cal rel­a­tivism ver­sus eth­i­cal abso­lutism that has haunt­ed me for some time. On the one hand, sit­u­a­tion­al ethics seems like a dan­ger­ous slide into a total lack of val­ues, where there is no right or wrong except as deter­mined by the … Read the rest

Hav­ing a dis­cus­sion (more like hear­ing a lec­ture) about gun con­trol with a cowork­er recent­ly. He was going on about the restric­tion on the Bar­rett .50-cal­iber sniper rifle, and how it is unwieldy and expen­sive and not the sort of weapon that can be used to hold up a store or a bank. He made a very com­pelling case that the rifle was of no inter­est to criminals.

I said to him, “well what do you expect? These … Read the rest

I bought some parts to replace some dam­aged items on my Vira­go in antic­i­pa­tion of sell­ing it. One of the eas­i­est to replace was the tail­light lens, which had been bro­ken when the bike was acci­den­tal­ly backed into some­thing. I also bought six rub­ber grom­mets of the type that eas­i­ly come out and are lost, and which are inex­pen­sive to replace if one does­n’t mind wait­ing a cou­ple weeks for the fifty-cent part to arrive from Yamaha.

The item that … Read the rest

All too fre­quent­ly, I use words whose mean­ing I’ve gleaned only vague­ly from con­text. Occa­sion­al­ly this leads to some minor embarass­ment as I mis­use a word, although most fre­quent­ly this has been fol­lowed by a sense of grat­i­tude and relief for hav­ing come to a bet­ter under­stand­ing of the word.

Some­times, how­ev­er, I’ll get so much con­tex­tu­al infor­ma­tion about a word that I devel­op a sub­con­scious knack for putting that word in the right place with­out real­ly under­stand­ing what it means … Read the rest

Ste­fan­grad has­n’t recovered.

The fires caused by the plane crash­es forced mas­sive infra­struc­ture expen­di­tures, and the econ­o­my spi­ralled out of con­trol. Soon, the city’s pop­u­la­tion aban­doned Ste­fan­grad, tak­ing it from a city of 45,000 down to 20,000, slash­ing the tax income need­ed to sup­port basic ser­vices like road repair and police/fire depart­ment bud­gets. Crime became ram­pant and even more of the good cit­i­zens migrat­ed out. Ste­fan­grad now stands a ghost town, a shell of its … Read the rest

I have a Sim­C­i­ty game that’s been run­ning for the last sev­er­al days.

Ste­fan­grad just had two plane crash­es, one right after the oth­er. Both went into my sports stadium.

And here I thought that traf­fic con­ges­tion was my biggest problem.

… Read the rest

I’m sin­gle again. 

I’m pret­ty sad and hurt and dis­ap­point­ed. But I’m not going to drink over it, unless you count Diet Coke.

She says that I’m per­fect in every way except that she’s not attract­ed to me. Or not always attract­ed to me. Well, that’s sort of a non-nego­tiable item. I real­ly pre­fer my gir­friends to be into me. I can put up with a lot, but that’s cross­ing the line.

I feel like I just missed the dead­line to claim the … Read the rest