Personality
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This is an insightful post
From an Econolog post about raising children
Laugh if you like, but I want to give me kids a better life than I had. I don’t want them to be bullied or mocked by teachers or other kids. Since adult life is far more civilized than childhood, sheltering your kids is not “delaying the inevitable”; it’s skipping pointless suffering.
That strikes a chord with me. People have been much nicer in adulthood than in school. Civilization begins with voluntary association I suppose. If I were feeling hyperbolic, I would say that the only thing forced association in the form of mandatory schooling prepares you for is prison, but that’s not accurate. It’s certainly not the only thing anyway.
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Me and MasterChief
My visit to MicroSoft was interesting.
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Sorry for the light blogging
Work has been quite hectic lately.
By means of contrition, check out The Bar Fight Primary.
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Quote of the day
From a phone call with a friend of mine
It’s just not a Steve story without additional commentary…
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What a crappy few days
First I find out that the “We buy ugly houses” people want a 30% discount over the market rate (I declined), a project extends by 24 straight hours, Delta won’t do anything about changing my flight, and now I’m getting sick. Humbug.
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Day 4 of my slightly less caffeinated life…
I reach day four of my caffeine cutback week, and I do have to say it’s helped my mood and attention span. Surprisingly I don’t get headaches when I do without it totally, as do most people.
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An interesting article in the New Yorker
Check out Parallel Play by Tim Page, about a life with Aspberger syndrome. I’ve got most of these personality traits (and other characteristics) but several orders of magnitude less severe.
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Random links from the laptop
- Christianity and China – history is going to be interesting for a long time to come.
- Confessions of a BBC Liberal – The politics of it aren’t terribly interesting, but the illustration of groupthink is. It would be interesting to see a breakdown of party affiliation by profession.
- Nerds One and Two: The Hyperwhite – It seems that someone did research on nerdiness. Some choice excerpts –
Nerdiness, she has concluded, is largely a matter of racially tinged behavior. People who are considered nerds tend to act in ways that are, as she puts it, “hyperwhite.”
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In a 2001 paper, “The Whiteness of Nerds: Superstandard English and Racial Markedness,” and other works, including a book in progress, Bucholtz notes that the “hegemonic” “cool white” kids use a limited amount of African-American vernacular English; they may say “blood” in lieu of “friend,” or drop the “g” in “playing.” But the nerds she has interviewed, mostly white kids, punctiliously adhere to Standard English.
The author seems not to realize that the appeal of hyper-proper English is that the rules are memorable and never change, which reduces the aren’t tied to a peer group to stay current. That’s my theory anyway.
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A milestone
I just found out today that someone wants to pay for some of my art photos! I’ve been a “professional” (been paid for it) photographer for awhile, now I’ll be a real artist! I think I’ll shop for a beret and a narcissistic attitude on Amazon.
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Days of rage
Not only have I worked for free for 30 hours in the past two days on a Classic ASP (obsolete in 2003 if any one is curious) project mind you (a long story I won’t share here) but now I find that my car won’t start.
Predictably, I’ve noticed that I’m fighting the urge to grind my teeth and have a sudden urge to clean the house. It’s odd those are always my responses to anger and stress.