Barnson.org

Matt’s top reasons to wear an undershirt:

* If I’m wearing a polyester/acrylic shirt, I’m actually much cooler wearing a cotton undershirt than not. * I’m cooler wearing a T-shirt than going without a shirt at all. The cotton Tee wicks away perspiration without letting it drip down my butt-crack. * I have kind of large, long nipples for a guy, and I really, really hate “poppers”! (That is, poppers on ME, I think they are fantastic on women) * I can throw away cheap T-shirts with yellow pit stains rather than my favorite shirts which end up with yellow pit stains if I don’t wear an undershirt. * I can do double-duty on a favorite shirt before washing it ‘cuz the undershirt stinks instead of the nice shirt. Laundering a shirt less also prolongs shirt longevity. * Collared shirts without undershirts look tacky… particularly if you are prone to Poppers, as mentioned above. * My nipples chafe if I sweat much and don’t wear an undershirt. * I sweat… a LOT, even just sitting in this chair right now. If you don’t sweat much, dude, you don’t know what it’s like. A sweat-soaked shirt is unattractive.

There you have it: reasons to wear an undershirt. I stay away from the wife-beaters (also called tank-tops) because they don’t solve the pit-stains problem.

What about you? Undershirt-wearer or undershirt-hater?

Pete Ashdown, owner of Xmission Internet Services in Salt Lake City, former senatorial candidate, and all-around good guy, penned a piece in response to recent efforts to expand oil extraction in the US. Here’s an excerpt:

Carter proposed that U.S. automakers attain a whopping 48-mile-per-gallon fuel efficiency by 1995. He demanded that we curtail imported oil by imposing fees. Finally, Carter proposed windfall taxes on oil companies to fund alternative energy and a goal of generating 20 percent of our power from solar by 2000. What happened? It would be nice to see an explanation from Hatch, since he was a three-year senator in 1979. His explanation not forthcoming, my presumption is Carter’s visionary energy goals were tossed on the trash heap, along with the solar panels he’d installed on the White House, when Ronald Reagan moved in. America then increased dependency on foreign oil and forfeited automobile innovation to Japan. Middle East oil-rich dictatorships went on to become even wealthier and more entrenched… A small patch of Alaskan wilderness, coastal drilling, oil-shale magic, nuclear power subsidies, less regulation on fabulously wealthy companies – these will make us energy independent and gasoline inexpensive again? … This country retooled its entire industrial sector nearly overnight in order to fight World War II. America fulfilled President Kennedy’s challenge to land on the moon in under a decade. Yet become energy independent with renewable technology in the same amount of time? Sorry, we’ll leave that kind of innovation to advanced countries like Brazil, Denmark, Iceland and Sweden. Solving our energy problems by loosing the reins on the oil, gas and coal companies is a deal that requires us to forget 30 years of history. This bargain ignores the hidden health costs of polluted air and water and insists that consumption of energy is not correlated to the price. In spite of their feel-good commercials, these companies are not here to solve our energy and pollution problems. They’re here to make a profit.

Unlike Ashdown, I believe nuclear power to be a viable, effective, clean method of power production with minimal environmental side-effects. I think we need to be spending more money developing nuclear power.

But like Ashdown, I believe allowing oil companies free reign on protected reserves is not a long-term solution. Demand for oil is outstripping supply. We live in the age of Peak Oil, and we must create new technologies based upon renewable — or at least extremely-abundant — resources to power our needs for the twenty-second century and beyond.

Additional US oil exploration is a Band-Aid on the severed artery of oil independence.

So this morning, I commented to a co-worker that managers should be less interested in obeisance and kowtowing from their charges, and more interested in listening and coordinating.

“That’s right,” says Dave, “they should just stop, collaborate, and listen“.

My account has gotten 20 or so “Status Undeliverable” emails in the last 3 hours.. saying “Sorry, your email did not get through.” – from all sorts of places.

Is my account sending out emails to others? And how do I stop this?

Eek!!

OH.. and while it lasts.. (completely unrelated) It will be yanked down soon, but click below for 4 minutes of the unaired pilot for BUFFY – The Animated Series.

You know, I remember as a kid that I used to be bored on Saturdays. As an adult, my entire Saturday is booked a week in advance, and virtually nothing for me personally.

Not whinin’, just remarking.

I’ve been involved in a few discussions online lately, wherein I found myself in the odd position of attempting to explain actual Latter-day Saint doctrine to a member of the LDS church who refused to believe me, the scriptures, historical leaders, or affirmations by present leaders.

The topic in question this time was Creationism. The LDS position is that there was no death in the world before the Fall of mankind, the Fall brought about physical (and spiritual death), and the Atonement can return mankind to the exalted state in which he existed prior to the Fall. You would find very few Sunday School, Priesthood, or Relief Society classes in which that doctrine would be disputed.

However, such a doctrine, at the very least, precludes abiogenetic evolution of humankind, and possibly animals. Periodically, LDS leaders have reaffirmed the Divine creation of mankind in a way that precludes the “theory” of evolution. Right around every ten years since 1909 they’ve released another statement that they have no opposition to “true” science, but where a scientific theory appears to contradict revelation from God, one should trust the revelation over the flawed scientific theory.

Online LDS apologists cannot be convinced of this fact of LDS doctrine that would be readily affirmed in any classroom in LDS meetinghouses on a Sunday, and which has the repeated endorsement of the highest leaders of their church. The apologists would have one believe these statements don’t actually mean what they clearly state. While doing some hunting for some way to reason with the unreasonable, I came across a wonderful clarification from a fellow named “Cinepro” that helpfully nailed down the definition of “doctrine” according to online LDS apologists.

(From http://blog.mediumcouncil.org/?p=22 )

• You are bound to believe the things required by the temple recommend questions (if you want to go to the temple).
• You cannot public disagree with any doctrine held by a current apostle.

• New “doctrines” do not have to be reconcilable to old “doctrines”.
• Old doctrines taught by apostles that have not be renounced or contradicted by later apostles may well have expired without further action.
• There is an “unwritten order of things” both doctrinal and procedural that you may be held to.
• The current brethren may be “speaking as men” but you can take no action on this fact. This only applies to dead apostles.
• The scriptures are not necessarily a doctrinal bind since non scriptural commentary on the scriptures by later brethren my change or obsolete the scripture.

Nailed it!

No way!

http://www.evildeadthemusical.com/

Wow. I totally need to get to Toronto before September rolls around!

Matthew,

I have a process on Fedora 8, let’s call it sslexplorer (namely because that’s what it is.) I want to run a cron job every five minutes to make sure it’s running.

I type in crontab -e */5 * * * * “/etc/init.d/sslexplorer start” >/dev/null 2>&1

Is this correct? Are my quotes needed? Should I write a script that queries sslexplorer status and only starts it if it’s stopped?

If so, how much would it cost to have you write such a script for me? I’ll swap names with you on Sam’s baby, so he can name it Matthew Stephen Graber…

Thanks Weed

Got free tickets to see Mötley Crüe tonight at the Usana Amphitheater. Never was a fan of the band in high school, though, which was the last time I remember hearing about them (circa 1991 or so). Ahh, well, I’ll be the guy standing and singing “watermelon” to all the lyrics ‘cuz I don’t know them.

I’m sure you all have heard that Google unleashed the Beta version of Knol. Knol is Google’s response to Wikipedia. Google is going to try and compete with Wikipedia by paying subject matter experts to post encyclopedia-like reports. Payment will come from % share of ad clicks. Google is attempting to validate the credibility through payment and having others both rate, review and comment on the submissions.

I think I know why this is happening.

Tell me if you think I’m wrong, but it’s almost as though entering a Google search has gotten to the point at which a searcher is expecting one of the top 5 return hits to include a wikipedia link. Meaning, when you enter a search term, such as “labia”, you are inherently expecting a number of returns to pop, with a wikipedia link to be a grounding return. This way, amongst the 12B+ searchable web pages, the wikipedia return link operates as the normal, routine, trusted response amongst those other awkward links…(libiaplasty?). I have become conditioned to expect this, to see Wikipedia in the top searches.

Google pulling or diminishing the ranking of return would be obvious. And what’s happened is that Google has become almost a linked gateway to the true information beyond. It’s getting that way for YouTube as well. Put in any search term on Google and I’m waiting for wikipedia and YouTube within the top 5.

Thus, Google, as well as the other 2 search providers become weakened as the gateway to information. They become the gateway to Wikipedia and YouTube.