Max: Old Jews Telling Jokes

More here.

Max: Pedestrian Hits Bus

01/30/2009 - Pedestrian who hit bus suffered minor injuries - STLtoday.com

As strange as it sounds, a man walking in south St. Louis today was injured after he hit a school bus -- not the other way around.

For his next trick, he bit a dog.

Max: Immortal Jellyfish Of Doome

Immortal jellyfish swarming across the world:

The Turritopsis Nutricula is able to revert back to a juvenile form once it mates after becoming sexually mature.

Marine biologists say the jellyfish numbers are rocketing because they need not die.

Max: Challenger, 23 Years On

23 years ago today -- almost to this hour -- I was in the basement of Chaminade, in the school's primitive CS lab. The principal announced the explosion over the PA. I don't remember exactly what he said, but it must have been vague enough to leave me with the impression that the shuttle had exploded on the ground before launch. Or maybe that is just what I wanted to believe. If the shuttle was still on the ground, the crew might not yet have been aboard.

Right after CS was lunch. Challenger was, understandably, the sole topic of conversation. Sometime over the course of lunch I realized that the shuttle had exploded after take-off. My first class after lunch was French. But on that day it was "stare at a TV slacked-jawed" class. 23 years later and we are just getting around to mothballing the shuttle and are just starting to try to come up with something better, something that will get us more than a few hundred kilometers off the surface.

Max: Cirrus Basses

I'd like to have my head in these clouds:

Max: Iceland Sees America's Bet and Raises

Iceland may soon have world's first openly gay PM

Foreign Minister and chairwoman of the Social Democrats Ingibjörg Sólrún Gísladóttir proposed that Sigurdardóttir replace Geir H. Haarde, chairman of the Independence Party, as prime minister yesterday, Fréttabladid reports.

...

If Sigurdardóttir does become prime minister, she will be the first woman to serve as prime minister in the country’s history and also the first openly gay prime minister in the world.

1986 called ...

... and left a message:



Max, do you think we can bring back the "Butt Part"???

I wanna new drum!

These are the new bongos. So far I'm pretty happy with this purchase. So much smaller than that conga! And, they have a pretty good sound. The best part is that I got a killer deal. I got a $25 dollar gift cert from work to Best Buy. These sold at BB for $60. When the sales guy couldn't find any other units, I asked for a discount on the floor model and got it! All told, after tax, these cost me right at $40. Not bad. The books should be arriving in the next few days, so I think I'm off and running ... for once.

The drum that got away

She's kinda cool. With all of her natural attributes, I'm sure this is how the gods intended for drums to be made. But, she's just too big for my needs right now. She takes up a lot of room in a somewhat cramped apartment. She's one chunk of wood with a solid bottom, she's really heavy. I just don't have room for her and in a way I'm losing money on her ... but I'm taking her back to the pawn shop today. I'm sure someday she will make some other drummer very happy. He'll wonder who was stupid enough to let her go?

I've seen some inexpensive bongos at Best Buy. I think those will speed me along my route faster than this poor girl. I will miss her. She was kinda cool.

Max: Roger Ebert's Ode To Steak 'n Shake

Car, Table, Counter, or TakHomaSak® - Roger Ebert's Journal

In my third or fourth year of life I ate my first restaurant meal, at the Steak 'n Shake on Green Street near the University of Illinois campus. I dined on a Steakburger, french fries, and a Coke. I felt extremely important. The eyes of the world were on this capable little man, sitting on a stool at the counter, grasping a Steakburger in his hands and opening up to take the first bite. My dad passed me the ketchup bottle and I felt authority flow into my hands as I smacked it on the bottom. "Aim it on your plate next to the fries," he advised. I did. "Good job, boy."

If I were on Death Row, my last meal would be from Steak 'n Shake. If I were to take President Obama and his family to dinner and the choice were up to me, it would be Steak 'n Shake--and they would be delighted. If the Pope were to ask where he could get a good plate of spaghetti in America, I would reply, "Your Holiness, have you tried the Chili Mac or the Chili 3-Ways?"

Chrome Cow » US Democracy Server: Patch Day

US Democracy Server: Patch Version 44.0

Max: Safety and Ideals

From Barack Obama's Inauguration speech;

As for our common defense, we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals. Our Founding Fathers, faced with perils we can scarcely imagine, drafted a charter to assure the rule of law and the rights of man, a charter expanded by the blood of generations. Those ideals still light the world, and we will not give them up for expedience's sake. And so to all other peoples and governments who are watching today, from the grandest capitals to the small village where my father was born: know that America is a friend of each nation and every man, woman, and child who seeks a future of peace and dignity, and that we are ready to lead once more.

Recall that earlier generations faced down fascism and communism not just with missiles and tanks, but with sturdy alliances and enduring convictions. They understood that our power alone cannot protect us, nor does it entitle us to do as we please. Instead, they knew that our power grows through its prudent use; our security emanates from the justness of our cause, the force of our example, the tempering

Max: Hit The Road, Chimpy

Don't think it hasn't been a little slice of heaven. Because it hasn't.

Max: T-12 Hours

In 12 hours, I can stop being scared by Shrub and start being disappointed by Obama.

Max: Our World May Be A Hologram

This make brain hurt.

The holograms you find on credit cards and banknotes are etched on two-dimensional plastic films. When light bounces off them, it recreates the appearance of a 3D image. In the 1990s physicists Leonard Susskind and Nobel prizewinner Gerard 't Hooft suggested that the same principle might apply to the universe as a whole. Our everyday experience might itself be a holographic projection of physical processes that take place on a distant, 2D surface.

Jericho: Other Plans

"Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans."

John Lennon

For those of you that don't know, I'm participating in that most American of yearly rituals: I am dieting.

I'm keeping a little blog about it. That blog is very different from this one. Early on as a bloggist, I built a hatred of those blogs that A) people magically found time to write in everyday and B) were about the inane stuff that we do everyday. Really, do people actually want to know what you had for lunch and when you went to bed? It turns out that in many cases, yes, yes people do want to know. Regardless, I didn't want to write that way.

I've always tried to write in this blog about larger subjects: Politics, Science, Entertainment and my gripes and opinions. I've wanted to tell the story about larger things that happen in my life. Turns out I lead a very small life, so I don't write out here as often as I would like. But, when I do write, I usually write some big post about the big thing that happened.

The new blog is very different. As of this writing, it has fifteen entries, written the last fifteen days. I have cataloged my food intake and if I got in any exercise or not - doesn't get much more inane than that. Do people care if I have powdered eggs for breakfast or not? Maybe they do - but I don't care if they do. I write in IWDC for public consumption. I want everyone to read it. I write in the new blog to help keep me on my diet. If a few people read it and get something out of it - great.

It's just a very different outlook on blogging for me. I've spent the last five+ years trying to figure out a way to make a blog pay for itself and maybe a little more. I've completely failed at this. This new blog is just for me and anyone else that can stand reading it.

The diet itself has had a rocky start. I'm still on it, two weeks in. I've had several diets not make it even this far.

A friend of mine, nearly twenty years ago said, and I'm paraphrasing, that time passes no matter what you do. It's what you do with that time that counts. Sounds a lot like the quote above from Mr. Lennon. These two wise people were trying to teach me a lesson, a lesson that I have struggled to learn. I still struggle with it. I am a child of Mtv. I want everything to happen in the length of a sitcom. I want life to start, climax and resolve problems in a half hour minus commercials. Real life doesn't work that way.

So, if I'm on a diet and can stay on the diet as time passes, I am likely to see results. If I start a diet, it doesn't mean anything. I have to follow through. Buying a drum doesn't mean I know how to play drums. There are hours of practice, trial and error to come. Same with my writing and other studies I want to pursue. Yet, my brain is programmed that if I start something, I've accomplished that thing.

I need to start fewer things and finish more things. I need to learn that once some things are started, for them to work, they will NEVER finish. I need to learn patience and discipline.

I still have a lot of growing up to do.

Max: Logic > Depression?

It's no secret that I have depression. It runs in my family and I can't think of one of us who has managed to really beat it. There have been victories, but they have been small and/or short lived. For years, emotions that have no relationship with what is going on in my life have controlled me. For instance, I have a job that would generally be considered cushy. Logically, I know I am lucky to be here and have it pretty good. But part of me keeps telling me that my job is a little slice of hell.

I am being treated. Every day I take a handful of pills in the hope that they will shut the crazy side of me down enough for the reasonable side to function. They help a little, but not enough. Fo a long time I have feared I would never really get it under control, that every day for the rest of my life I will have to fight the demons just to function like something resembling a sane person.

Then a thought occurred to me. The purpose of the antidepressants is to control the irrational emotions that lead to the irrational thoughts. I wondered if it could work the other way around. What if I test my thoughts against simple logic, try to see if they really make any sense given my circumstance at that time? I could start catching and rejecting the irrational thoughts. Maybe by controlling the irrational thoughts I can start to control the irrational emotions.

It turns out that I am far from the first person to have this thought. Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) and rational emotive behavior therapy are largely based on this idea. Further, there have been quite a few recent studies that show CBT to be as effective as, in some cases more effective than, antidepressants.

So far I have had one success, dealing with the aforementioned job. Since I started trying to filter the irrational thoughts, my job related stress has been significantly reduced. It used to be that I would be overwhelmed with dread every time a call came in. Now I hardly stress about the calls at all. I still have a long way to go. I have a whole life I need to re-examine, 37 years worth of cognitive habits to reshape.

I don't know for sure where this is going to lead. This certainly wouldn't be the first time I've conquered depression just to end up relapsing. But for the first time in a long time, I feel like I have a shot at taking my life back.

Max: High Kick Girl

After viewing this preview, I am certain that this will be the greatest movie ever.

Max: STL Unemployment 7.3% in Nov.

St. Louis unemployment hit 7.3 percent in November

The region most recently recorded a 7.3 percent unemployment rate in August and was at 6.9 percent in October, but the figures are not adjusted for seasonal variations, so economists don’t recommend comparison among different months. The rate soared from last November, however, when unemployment was 5.2 percent.

Nationally, unemployment was at 6.5 percent, with December numbers due out Friday.

We're #1! We're #1!