Enemy of Entropy

Archive for 14 March 2008

David Mamet and Political Views

14 March 2008, 6:05 pm. 1 Comment. Filed under politics.

There’s an essay over at The Vil­lage Voice that you want to read before it goes away:
“Why I Am No Longer a ‘Brain-​​Dead Lib­eral’” by David Mamet Here’s a brief excerpt.

This is, to me, the syn­the­sis of this world­view with which I now found myself dis­en­chanted: that every­thing is always wrong.

But in my life, a brief review revealed, every­thing was not always wrong, and nei­ther was nor is always wrong in the com­mu­nity in which I live, or in my coun­try. Fur­ther, it was not always wrong in pre­vi­ous com­mu­ni­ties in which I lived, and among the var­i­ous and mobile classes of which I was at var­i­ous times a part.

And, I won­dered, how could I have spent decades think­ing that I thought every­thing was always wrong at the same time that I thought I thought that peo­ple were basi­cally good at heart? Which was it? I began to ques­tion what I actu­ally thought and found that I do not think that peo­ple are basi­cally good at heart; indeed, that view of human nature has both prompted and informed my writ­ing for the last 40 years. I think that peo­ple, in cir­cum­stances of stress, can behave like swine, and that this, indeed, is not only a fit sub­ject, but the only sub­ject, of drama.

Some thought-​​provoking stuff in there. It’s good to see some­one brave enough to change his views, and talk about it polit­i­cally. Since I con­sider the Voice a very lib­eral pub­li­ca­tion, it’s espe­cially inter­est­ing to see the piece there.

Mouse-​​Mouse and WordPress Oddity

14 March 2008, 1:57 am. 5 Comments. Filed under Geekery.

I will not pro­vide a photo, but I fig­ure this point­ing device would be all-​​too pop­u­lar with any felines or canines in your house­hold. I wouldn’t ever imag­ined such a thing if the Instructa­bles peo­ple hadn’t sent out an email plea to who­ever abducted Mouse-​​Mouse from their table at SXSW to please return him.

As slick as Word­Press is, wouldn’t it make sense for it to fig­ure out some­thing like day­light sav­ing time? I mean, if you could just click some­thing, the way you do in Win­dows, to say, “Yes, I’m in an area that observes DST” it would be much, much eas­ier than going through every bloody WP instal­la­tion for which you’re respon­si­ble and man­u­ally chang­ing the time, which is what I just real­ized that I need to do. I’m sure I would have noticed if there’s a plu­gin to pro­vide that func­tion­al­ity in the Plu­gin Repos­i­tory, and I don’t think there is one.

I tried Time Zone Cal­cu­la­tor, but it just seems to fig­ure var­i­ous time zones and will dis­play them in a wid­get or wher­ever you want to call it via php. That doesn’t help me. Auto­matic DST change func­tion­al­ity seems a no-​​brainer to me, so why isn’t it built in, and since it isn’t, why isn’t there a plug-​​in?

Have I men­tioned lately how incred­i­bly stu­pid I find DST? I’m totally unsur­prised to learn that it doesn’t save a bit of energy, any­way.

 

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