Winging It

BBC NEWS | Africa | Angry SA passengers burn trains

I ask you, does this make any sense at all? I imagine a conversation going something like this:

Arsonist: “Why yes, this is our transport to and from work.”
Reporter: “Can you afford a car to get you to and from work instead?”
Arsonist: “No, I can’t afford a car.”
Reporter: “So what will you do now that you can’t get to work?”
Arsonist: “Err… uhhmmm… The government should do more for poor workers!”
Reporter: “Didn’t you just torch your own transport?”
Arsonist: “The government doesn’t want to acknolwedge our plight!”
Reporter: “The plight of those who torch their own means of feeding themselves and their families?”
Arsonist: <smiling> “Exactly, we need assistance.”

I’d go on, but the whole thing makes me want to kick humanity into space.

And so Monday passes.

What, thought I’d have something insightful to say? Obviously you’re new here then.

[Edit]
So the original title (which was …) was very unliked by the WordPress system so it has been replaced with dot dot dot.

*shrug*
Whatever.

National Museum of the American Indian… well, it’s a museum but unfortuantely I feel that it’s a fairly poor museum.

I was there this weekend with K and I’m sorry to say that it was a disappointment. Or more accurately, I was disappointed that the reports that I’d heard from various critics were true.

The museum, I feel, is scattered and lacking focus. Plus, about 1/3 of the total space is taken up by "gift shop." The second floor is a total waste unless you’re interested in purchasing something and most of the first floor is the same.

There is very little (I might go so far as to say nothing) that educates visitors about Native American culture, how it began, the clash with the invading Europeans, and how it has changed and adapted to the present.

There is very little educating going on, and not much that is overtly interesting even in its own right.

The structure itself is very promising, but the implemenation of the inside is sad. :-/

My brother came down to visit (which was an adventure in itself — thank you Dulles) American University this weekend, so this morning we metro’d up to the school.

I tell you, there are parts of college to which I definitely would not mind returning. Interestingly, the learning part is the appealing part. I guess I say "interestingly" because so frequently one will hear someone reminisce about the craziness of college; the parties, the stunts, etc. I’m kind of glad that I miss the learning, or rather, the freedom to simply pursue those areas that interest you. Not that you can’t once you’re out of school, but it is harder.

Anyway, American University looks like a pretty cool school. It’s kind of expensive, but sounds like they provide good financial aid opportunities (much like Allegheny). The campus was rather pretty, if somewhat small. The whole thing is WiFi though, which is sweet.

Decided to go to The Front Page for lunch (off Dupont Circle). It’s a cool restaurant that I haven’t been to for almost 2 years now. If it were close, I’d probably go more often but King Street in Alexandria’s got tons of good and great places to eat, so going to downtown DC is kind of out of the way.

Also hit the Apple store in Clarendon. Just kind of browsed a bit. By the way, Holy Crap is the 30" Cinema Display big. I mean, ok, yeah, 30" is big and it’s something you can sort of grasp… but it’s really big. Seeing is believing I guess. The new G5 iMac is pretty cool looking, but I wouldn’t give up my G5 tower.

Guess that’s it.

Ok, now let it be the end of the workday…

Did some more-or-less minor editing to the blog last night, including some maintenance (updated to the actual WordPress 1.2 release, rather than the RC I was running). Made sure that it still validates as XHTML 1.0 Transitional and that the CSS is valid, which actually did catch some problems.

I need to find out how to submit possible patches to the WP people. Hmm… I also have to figure out how to do diffs and patches, so that I can apply my modifications across version updates easily.

To paraphrase something I heard today "Life for the sake of life is worthless". We’re all pretty stupid (people that is) in that this is the "pinnacle" of society that we’ve created. For all our vaunted humanity (which is supposedly what makes us not animals), our greatest achievements are in building things.

Take this computer. It’s a wonderful and marvelous thing, to be sure, but its potential to tie people more closely together, to ease the exploration of humanity, to understand ourselves and each other…. these things are barely touched while we are bombarded with advertising. It’s stupid. In so many ways we’ve not used our ability to build tools, to create, to invent, etc. to improve humanity — to actually make the lives of people better. Instead we use those skills to give ourselves an illusion of happiness (in too many cases).

Perhaps I’m a tad pessimistic.

You know, I think I’d like it if most of the celebrities we’ve got would just decide just wasn’t worth it anymore and stopped being celebrities.

This thing with Martha Stewart is really annoying. Just as every celebrity "issue" that’s come up since I can remember.

I’d much prefer some heroes, even if they are vigilantes, in the news. At least they’d be doing good. Of course, I suppose the news wouldn’t report on ‘em if they were doing good.

If there isn’t already (as some extra module or plugins), there needs to be a "previous 30 days" (or maybe 31) type of "calendar".

A traditional calendar view just doesn’t make a whole lot of sense for something like a blog.