If you read parts of the King James Bible as poetry, parts of it are quite beautiful.

Unlike most religious people, I have read all of the Christian bible.

I’m really not a fitness snob as I am no longer very fit myself, but when I hear people crowing about running an 11-minute mile or something like that, my brain goes, “What? Surely that’s wrong.”

Back in my day (kids), I routinely ran 6 minute miles and I was considered one of the slower runners in my army unit. I used to run/fast walk a 9-minute mile in 65 pounds of gear. Routinely.

I am glad even very slow runners are doing something to get fit, but my views are certainly skewed by having been in an army unit that is considered elite. (I say “considered elite” as this “elite” thing means you get to do way more crazy, unnecessary bullshit.) An 11-minute mile? What? Did you crawl most of the way? An 11-minute mile was what they expected of us if a leg had just been amputated, pukes!

Yep.

The simple fact is that an Australian entry-level fast food worker makes more than the average American worker. An absolute majority of Americans would increase their income if they moved to Australia and got fast food jobs.

And yet America is supposed to be this paradisiac land of pure awesomeness. As the article also points out, everyone in Australia is covered by health insurance as well.

I grew up in North Florida, near the Georgia border.

When I was a kid – 25 years ago – winters weren’t brutally cold or anything like that, but it always got cold enough to cause all of the plants to go brown and dormant (except evergreens, of course). In other words, I never saw a flower between and including November and February.

I live in Florida once again as an adult, and we sometimes return to the north of the state to visit the beautiful natural sights in the area.

Now, it’s different. I am able to easily find blooming flowers, sometimes in great quantity, throughout the winter. In addition and because of the availability of flowers, we also see butterflies all year long now in North Florida.

When I was a kid the last butterflies were usually gone by October, and didn’t return in number until April. I never, ever saw a butterfly in December there; now I see them commonly.

I realize it’s anecdotal, but I was a keen observer of nature when I was a kid. I spent most of nearly every day  outside, and was never that big into computer games or the like. (I played them when it was too hot or rainy or cold to be outside, but otherwise I was usually outdoors.)

Riding on the school bus, I’d literally count every flower or animal I saw on the way to school – so yep, pretty fucking sure I know what I am talking about here, climate change deniers.

So I don’t think it’s just my misperception.

North Florida is an ecotone, anyway – it’s the last stand of the northern forests as they shade into the more subtropical climate region that is most of Florida. It’s not surprising that such an area has been more noticeably altered by climate change.

But when I can notice such a large change in my lifetime, that’s a sign. A sign that it’s probably going to be worse than even our models predict.

I mostly agree with this list of movies that were damned by unfair ideas about them.

I particularly concur with the thoughts about Jennifer’s Body. That was a clever movie, a fun movie, and one that upended without being too obvious about it various idiotic ideas about gender.

Plus, it’s a rare movie where the women get to do all the fun stuff. Highly recommended.

Hadn’t done an update on this in a while. After three years of changing my diet (I won’t say I’m on a diet, because I’m not and have never been), I am still within five pounds of my goal weight – below, actually. I continue to maintain approximately 27% below my peak body weight.

At one point I had lost too much weight and was too gaunt, but now I am stable and feel incredibly healthy. My knees no longer give me any real issues and my diabetes risk is much lowered.

I realize most people cannot lose and keep off weight, but I can and I have.

The strangest part is that if I increase my physical activity even a little, I start losing weight again really quickly – for instance, when I went to the UK and to a lesser extent Vancouver, I found I had to eat an additional 400-800 calories each day to avoid losing weight and feeling tired.

But it’s gone incredibly well and is probably the best health-related thing I’ve ever done.

Dammit, I am so tired of hearing about Lance Armstrong.

I guarantee you 99% of anyone who won a major cycling race in the past two decades has been doping. More likely 100%.

Armstrong was just targeted as he was so dominant.

I just realized that by the standards that have been promulgated lately by most US feminists, almost every relationship I’ve ever been in has been age-inappropriate – that is, there has been a 5+ year age gap between me and the woman in question.

When I was 19, however, I was brutally and horribly “taken advantage of” by a 25-year-old woman. Huh, funny, how it doesn’t seem to apply when the man is younger. Odd. I really hate hypocrisy, did you notice?

And a 36-year-old teacher told me when I was 18 and still in high school that if she weren’t my teacher, we’d be happenin’, probably all over her desk.

Note: I have never dated a minor as an adult. Note 2: I consider myself a feminist.

Mainly, I hate dogma of all stripes.

There are people my age who I’d never get in a relationship with under any circumstances. And just as likely I am sure there are more than few 18-year-old women out there that I’d be compatible with.

It’s not that age doesn’t matter – it does, to some extent. It’s just that humans are more variable and more interesting than that.

Remember that case that the conservidiots always prattle on about to justify tort reform (that is, eliminating the right of people to sue large corporations), where a woman was burned by coffee served too hot at McDonald’s?

Well, this is what her burns looked like.

I don’t know if she chose to release the photo or not. In this case, I think the public right to know the truth trumps the right to privacy – especially since this case has been used as an attempt to eliminate any right to redress against the abuses of large corporations.

I now even more severely despise everyone who made fun of Stella Liebeck for her burns.

I truly hate conservatives. I do not want to understand their point of view. I do not care about their concerns. I do not want to work with them. I do not care why they see the world the way they do.

If there is a revolution, I will be in the militant wing of it until I am killed or injured enough that I can’t continue to fight. That’s all I am good at it, so that’s what I will do.

Back years ago, when cable modems were new and computers still very insecure, I’d use port scanning tools to find other cable modem users with computers on the same LAN segment as my cable modem.

It was easy, and I didn’t mean any harm. I would just print funny things to people’s printers like, “Your computer is alive and is watching you. Put on some pants, dammit,” and other prankish shenanigans.

I just mention this to point out that what I did then was about a million times more illegal than what Aaron Swartz did. The difference being that I didn’t piss off or embarrass anyone with real power. I just did whatever I thought was funny at the time.

I wouldn’t do this now, but then I thought it to be pretty hilarious.

I could’ve done much worse – it turns out that many people store (or used to) all their credit card numbers on their computers, in plain text. Along with baking information, etc. If I had been truly malicious, I could have also installed keyloggers and all other manner of dirty tricks as well.

But even now as I no longer perpetuate such foolishness, I still use techniques like these (and will use more in the future), to preserve some privacy and security.

Whoever thought it was a good idea to automatically close the browser when you close the last tab should be fed to a damn leopard.

Why is there so much user-hostile design out there?

Oh, fucking fuck yes!

Interestingly, Acer reportedly plans to sell ultra-high-resolution desktop monitors, as well.

Since it’s Acer, it means it’ll be a consumer product and not cost $15,000.

I will be first in line for this. I’ve been waiting years and years for this to come about. My eyes, they will be saved, saved I tell you!

One of the careers I considered after the army was being a CIA field officer, of the NOC variety.

Now kind of wishing I did that so I’d have a lot of legit fake IDs to avoid the new social networking hell the world is becoming.

Looks like it will soon be inevitable that I will have to join Facebook for career reasons.

I will resist as long and as hard as I can, just as I have LinkedIn (which is nearly a requirement for IT people these days)

I am still not a member of either site.

I really hate social everything. Really, really hate it.

This is about programmers (which I am not), but speak for yourself, neurotypicals.

But even programmers should be sleeping at night. We are not some race of super humans. Even programmers feel more alert during the day.

I am not super human – or at least I haven’t found the right color of sunlight yet – but I have never felt more alert during the day. Not when I was four and not now.

It’s likely true that there aren’t very many like me, but I feel most alert between midnight to 3AM. That’s where 60% of my work gets done, and where probably 95%+ of my best work gets done.