Ha!

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For the Win!

Because if we are willing to work for it, and fight for it, and believe in it, then I am absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal; this was the moment when we ended a war and secured our nation and restored our image as the last, best hope on Earth. This was the moment — this was the time — when we came together to remake this great nation so that it may always reflect our very best selves, and our highest ideals.

Presidential candidate Barack Obama, St Paul, Minnesota, June 3, 2008

Social Revolution

This is a really interesting article about television, the internet, the ways we interact with media, and the next social revolution.

…the critical technology, for the early phase of the industrial revolution, was gin.

The transformation from rural to urban life was so sudden, and so wrenching, that the only thing society could do to manage was to drink itself into a stupor for a generation. The stories from that era are amazing-- there were gin pushcarts working their way through the streets of London.

And it wasn't until society woke up from that collective bender that we actually started to get the institutional structures that we associate with the industrial revolution today…

If I had to pick the critical technology for the 20th century, the bit of social lubricant without which the wheels would've come off the whole enterprise, I'd say it was the sitcom. […] And it's only now, as we're waking up from that collective bender, that we're starting to see the cognitive surplus [time spent watching TV instead of thinking or working] as an asset rather than as a crisis. We're seeing things being designed to take advantage of that surplus, to deploy it in ways more engaging than just having a TV in everybody's basement.

Red rover, red rover, let Lacy sit on the sidelines and watch.*

We just played Red Rover out in the courtyard at work.

My boss got clotheslined and broke the finger of the girl who clotheslined her.

I'm pretty sure most of you cannot say that you saw that today at work.



*I decided to watch because I think a broken wrist would hamper my ability to do my job. And it would hurt a lot.

Carpool Lane

Tomorrow starts my first week of carpool with some ladies from work. There are three of us, and we're going to rotate driving by weeks.

Even if I only end up riding in someone else's car two weeks out of the month, it will save me a considerable amount of money.

My commute is almost exactly 20 miles each way. I figured out, using the IRS' standard mileage deduction, that it's costing me more than $100 a week to commute to and from work. That's insane! Now, that's supposed to include the entire cost of operating the vehicle. If I just figure out fuel, I'm still spending nearly $25 a week just driving to and from work.

Even if I only ride two weeks out of the month, that will save us $50 in gas!

I'm quite excited about the whole thing.

Booklust

When I was a kid — I guess we'd call me a "tween" nowadays — I read voraciously, addictively. I would lock myself in a quiet place for hours and hours on end. I distinctly remember my mom chiding me one time, telling me to come out of my room and "be a person" for a while.

Probably there aren't TOO many moms who have that problem with their teenagers. ;) At least, not addicted to books.

I've been rediscovering my addiction passion lately. I've been reading the "Uglies" series by Scott Westerfield, and I CANNOT. STOP. READING.

I spent three hours yesterday finishing "Specials," the third in the series, and I went to the library today to get the fourth.

I read sixty pages when I got home, and then put it aside. I need to be a person for a while.

But it's still sitting in there.

Waiting.

Explaining to someone why I blog:

"I narrate my life. Have since I was 3. And if I don't narrate it to someone else, it starts to get a little strange..."

Love This!

more graph humor and song chart memes

Millennials

I thought this was an interesting op-ed piece in the New York Times that explains a bit about WHY people of my generation — "Millennials" as we're being called — are voting more democrat and in particular, more for Obama as a demographic group.

This is a generation that is in danger of being left out of the American dream — the first American generation to do less well economically than their parents. And that economic uncertainty appears to have played a big role in shaping their views of government and politics.

A number of studies, including new ones by the Center for American Progress in Washington and by Demos, a progressive think tank in New York, have shown that Americans in this age group are faced with a variety of challenges that are tougher than those faced by young adults over the past few decades. Among the challenges are worsening job prospects, lower rates of health insurance coverage and higher levels of debt.

[…]

The upshot of all this is ominous for conservatives. The number of young people in the millennial generation (loosely defined as those born in the 1980s and 90s) is somewhere between 80 million and 95 million. That represents a ton of potential votes — in this election and years to come. And the American Progress study shows that those young people do not feel that they have been treated kindly by conservative policies or principles.

According to the study: “Millennials mostly reject the conservative viewpoint that government is the problem, and that free markets always produce the best results for society. Indeed, Millennials’ views are more progressive than those of other age groups today, and are more progressive than previous generations when they were younger.”

This made me laugh and laugh.

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