Tuesday, August 31, 2010

Money and Happiness

I realized today that money does buy you happiness, but only if your unhappiness is caused by a lack of money.

Sunday, August 29, 2010

On Lego and Turds

Yesterday I was playing LEGOs with my 3 year old daughter. We are trying to convince her that going on the toilet is much better in the long-run than going in a diaper. She started to make a lego changing table to changer her lego baby's diaper. So I decided to make a lego toilet for her lego baby. Once I was done with the TURBO PLOP 2000(tm), she starts to take the tiny one-piece legos and put them in the lego toilet and says..."I'm putting lego turds in the lego toilet"

Monday, August 23, 2010

On a Mosque at Ground Zero

I have been thinking about this whole Mosque at ground Zero thing. I wouldn't say I stand on any particular side of the debate, such that it is one, but the way I see it is as follows:
On the one side, yes, America values freedom of religion as a principle of the founding fathers, and allowing this Mosque to be built is really about standing up for this principle.
In addition to this, "At" Ground Zero really means two blocks away and is there really a spacial statute of limitations (i.e. what is the exact the radius around the site that should be considered "sacred ground"). Are there other businesses that should be "forbidden" from being constructed within this "sacred radius"?

On the flip side, are they putting this mosque up as a way of saying sorry? I have yet to see an official apology from the "higher ups" of the Muslim Religion (do they have a Pope or a Head Imam?) for the acts of their extremists, and an avowal that their actions were not condoned, and should not be considered to be approved by the majority of Muslims. The fact that there is such an uproar to this construction, should not be taken lightly by the Muslim community, and while I support their right to exist, I would think that they would opt for the ..."Oh, its gonna make people upset? well, then I will just move it somewhere else", rather than the "Hey deal with it, this is America and I can do what I want within the law, and this is legal...yeah, its a jerk thing to do, but its legal, so there" attitude that they are displaying. While the actual people involved in this probably do not intend this as a "slap in the face", there are those few fundamentalists that will see this as one step closer to their domination, almost a little victory.

Tuesday, August 17, 2010

Geek Poems and other Random Stuff

I saw this poem on the internets today.
Roses are #FF0000
Violets are #0000FF
All my bases are belong to you.
</POEM>

I was thinking the other day about how much excess and wastage there is in the world, and then got onto thinking what the alternative is...hoarding, hoarding for re-use. So these are my options. Either hoard for re-use, take up all my time sorting junk for re-cycling, and keeping things for re-use....or throwing stuff and wasting, excessive consumption....there's no winning. The only strategy is just not to think about it.

Wednesday, August 11, 2010

Neat Tools and weird observations

First, a couple of shout-outs:
  1. BricNinja for sending me the black base plate for my lego wrestler.
  2. Matrix, a cool travel planning site
Second, a weird observation for those of you who watch Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, well, I watch it with my kids. Have you ever noticed that the 3D rendered Mickey Mouse's ears, never rotate with his head. Whether you are viewing him from the front or from the side, his ears are always facing forward.

This, my friends, is branding. "The Ears" is (intentional mis-grammar) the Disney logo, they must always face forward. So as this little mousculine control freak is strutting around telling people what to say, he is wearing the disney brand on his head....funny eh?