Rising Above Mediocrity
by Benjamin Geiger

It all began with a story about a study, published in The Times (in Britain). The headline: “Societies worse off ‘when they have God on their side’”.

Blogotional’s John Schroeder immediately jumped on the story, attacking the study for implying that correlation implies causation. In doing so, he misses the point: correlation doesn’t imply causation… but causation does imply correlation.

There’s more! (click here to read)

In addition to this blog, and my blog@USF blog, I now have a WordPress.com blog.

As I said, I don’t really need another blog… but I’m wanting to introduce a few people to blogging and WordPress.com seems like an ideal place for them to start. It’s not as trivial and stereotyped as LiveJournals—of which I have two, interestingly—and not as stupid as Xanga or MySpace. It does have a few bugs (it’s running on alpha software) but it’s getting better.

Right now, I don’t have any invitations available; I started out with one but I know who I want to give it to. If you want your own WordPress.com blog, go to their site and enter your email address for a chance for one.

One of the local TV stations (WOFL, Fox 35) ran a story on the 10:00 news about the Pledge of Allegiance. Apparently, a judge in California has ruled that the Pledge in its current form is unconstitutional under the first amendment.

There’s more! (click here to read)

WEEDA WEEDA WOO! Hee hee hee hee hee….

No vodka here, just slap-happy sleep deprivation…

My watch is, for all intents and purposes, dead. The watch motion is mostly intact except for some corrosion damage, but the flashlight is corroded beyond repair.

In case you’re wondering how my watch could have ended up in the washing machine… the watch in question is the kind that comes attached to a carabiner, not a standard wristwatch (I have big wrists, so most watches don’t fit). It was hooked onto the belt loop of my shorts; I normally remove it when I remove the camera bag from my belt. This time, I pulled the belt loose and let the camera case fall onto my bed, thinking I had already removed the watch.

Needless to say, I hadn’t.

The watch only cost $10 initially, so it’s not a major loss. It’s an annoyance having to buy another, though.

It’s about time someone said it.

Image stolenborrowed from The Day Shift.

While FEMA has been sitting with its thumb up its collective ass, the Red Cross has been providing for the refugees from New Orleans and the other devastated areas. They need our support to continue doing their good work. So, if you’ve got blood in your veins or money in your wallet, please give what you can.

You may have noticed the donation link in the upper right corner of the page. It goes to the Red Cross’s home page. If you have an older browser or have Javascript disabled, you won’t see it; instead, you can click to visit their site directly. If you’d like to put a similar link on your site, here’s how. (I don’t get any kind of kickback from the donation link; every cent goes directly to the people who need it.)

I have a few jars of pennies that I’ve been saving for a rainy day… but the people of the Gulf coast need that money far more than I do. So, as soon as I can, I’ll be visiting a CoinStar machine and donating them.

I was watching the Concert for Hurricane Relief tonight, at least somewhat. I wasn’t paying much attention until I heard someone mention the discrepancy between Yahoo! News descriptions of looters based on their race (white people were described as “finding bread and soda”, black people were “looting a grocery store”).

That’s when I saw something that I’m sure will get NBC in trouble: At the end of a long and stammering speech, Kanye West (who, at the time, I didn’t recognize) said, loudly and clearly to the camera,

George Bush doesn’t care about black people.

While I wouldn’t put it that strongly (or rather, I would put it much more strongly: George W. Bush doesn’t care about anybody other than his cronies) I admire Mr. West’s courage in standing up and saying so in a live telecast. I also sneer at NBC’s censors for cutting him off.

Postscript: I should make it known that I’m white. That doesn’t mean I’m any less outraged by President Bush’s lack of concern for the citizens of New Orleans.

Borrowed from Trinity_Quasar, who took it from McNutcase.

“Go to your iTunes/iPod/media player and put it on shuffle. Say the following questions aloud, and press play. Use the song title as the answer to the question. No cheating now!”

There’s more! (click here to read)

Yesterday was a good day. Of course, I knew that it couldn’t last long.

Today, on the other hand, was a Bad Tech Day.

• The power went out, so my alarm didn’t go off. I didn’t have anything I needed to do, so that wasn’t a problem in itself. I ended up waking up at about noon.
• At DisneyQuest, the Pump It Up Exceed machine is still far too loud—though a bit quieter than before—and the monitor is still broken.
• When I came home, I woke up my Powerbook and plugged in the AC adapter… which promptly caught fire. Somewhat. There were no visible flames, but there was a great deal of smoke coming from the plug connected to the Powerbook, with the unmistakable smell of burnt electronics. (The insulation had been separating from the plug, so I had wrapped the cord around the plug and duct-taped it together as rudimentary strain relief. Apparently it wasn’t enough.)

Good luck certainly couldn’t continue, so I guess this is a sort of karmic bitchslap.