Sleep and gym and yard

I feel so much better on 8 hours of sleep...and amazingly better when I make it to the gym in the morning. Both can be said of today. I got a lot done this morning too. It's obvious, I know, but I just feel better and get more done when I'm well rested and exercised. Thi9s weekend I was up at the house on my own, enjoyed the clean air and, at last, clean water. I spent a lot of time in the yard repairing the enormous crater left behind by the crew that dug my new well. I moved a lot of rocks, raked, planted seeds and fertilized. I'm hoping it will rain a lot this week up there so the grass grows in...it's a pretty big scar on the lawn. Other than that I got a jump start on the paper I have due in a couple weeks. I really shoulda done more, but I got the 1st three pages done. On Sunday I just wanted to be outside in the yard and then relax in the afternoon. I even played some video games. On an annoying note, I got nailed with a speeding ticket....first in well over a decade. Forty-eight miles per hour in a 30 mph zone. Dang. Well, I'll see if I can at least get the points reduced....blargh!

Generals in your pocket

Really, a frighteningly good piece of multimedia reporting here by the NY Times showing just how deeply the Pentagon's tentacles run into the media.

World-systems analysis

I meant to post this paper a while ago -- basically a book report I did on Immanuel Wallerstein's introduction to world-systems analysis. It's only five pages, so not a long read...but he's got some interesting points in his critique of capitalism.

Remember forever

Just read an interesting article by one of my favorite tech writers, Farhad Manjoo about software that allows you to digitally capture your whole life. Well, a lot of it anyway. It's a sort of "extreme blogging" in a way and, I think, the beginning of something that is inevitable and likely to change society in profound ways. It's already apparent that we're headed towards the end of forgetting and probably the end of privacy...and we are not culturally, legally, politically or spiritually ready for this 'panopticon.'

water, water everywhere

I'm up here in my country pad alone right now -- it's wonderfully quiet. Just the sound of the cast iron pellet stove burning away and keeping me cozy.

I had a new well drilled, which is great because now I'll have clean water and good pressure...but the yard looks like a missile hit it, so I'll probably do a little work out there this wknd. Don't laugh, I bought a rake.

In other news, I listen to meditations occasionally from this Buddhist guru who sometimes really fucks with my head. Funny how, for the most part, intellectual and spiritual explorations often make me feel pretty bad. The same thing goes for the world-systems analysis stuff I've undertaken with my masters degree. It doesn't take much introspection to discover your own complicity in a bunch of shit that you find pretty toxic. Oh well.

That's why God invented beer!