DCist mentions a Metro mugging in the news, and it turns out that the mugging victim is DC weblogger lugnochro.
“Yes, I was mugged on the metro on the way home from work. No, I’m not all right.”
Cache Clearing
Sitting on my computer desktop at home I have a little text file which I use as a scratch pad for notes, journal posts, to-do lists, copy-pasting, and other such things in need of quick mental buffering. It has been filling up with incomplete weblog entries lately, so it’s time to hunker down and dump the cache, just to get these unfinished thoughts and links out of the way in a messy and disorganized yet cathartic fashion.
Garver on “personal relationship” with Jesus Christ.
Holy Office on “spiritual but not religious” cliché.
Aaron abandons presuppositionalism as an exclusive apologetic method. I’ve never been comfortable myself with a philosophy of faith which begins by begging the question.
A bit old, but important: InternetMonk’s Christian Humanism category. What I like about his specific approach to the faith is the implication that the centrality of Christ’s incarnation directly addresses the age-old dialectic between “spirit” (pneuma) and “flesh” (sarx) which for years has caused Christians to either lean to the gnostic error of equating the physical with evil and the spiritual with good, or to descend into hedonistic antinomianism excused by unconditional forgiveness. In the Incarnation, both spirit and flesh are glorified, with the promise of a Resurrection which unites both in a future kingdom without sin.
More on MARC “Soviet Russia” posters.
Review of Boogie Nights, which I watched and found gritty and intriguing, but less than satisfying for its portrayal of redemption at the end.
The Dane on democracy and manifest destiny.
Comment spammer tries to gloss over his own failure with bluster that his program was too successful. I’ve said it before: spam makes money, but it still can’t buy brains or morals. Refer also to Spammers, Stickers, Shirts.
An “intelligent” debate with Sassy Lawyer on Roman Catholicism and intelligent design in Kansas.
That is all for now. Thank you.
Lost 2.06
This week’s “Lost” Comprehension Quiz is an analogy question. Please circle the correct answer:
Dumbledore is to Shannon as Snape is to:
(a) Sayid
(b) Walt
(c) Ana Lucia
(d) Voldemort
Some quick notes from Wednesday’s Lost episode, “Abandoned,” which mostly failed to sustain my interest. Spoilers follow; highlight to read.
- We don’t see Jack, Kate, Dharma Initiative, Hanso Foundation, Marvin “One Hand Clapping” Candle, or The Hatch. Not once. Hurley and Rose only mention the hatch in passing because she prefers line-drying clothes in the sun to using the time-displaced washer and dryer.
- For someone convinced that The Hatch and The Button are the stuff of fate, faith, hope, and destiny every 108 minutes, Locke sure doesn’t seem to be spending a lot of time down there. I know they’re having alternating shifts with the other survivors and all (I guess this episode was Jack and Kate’s shift), but Locke seems to be back to business as usual, wandering the beach as Wise Old Mystic Island Shaman Who Swaddles Crying Babies.
- By the way, Locke is crummy at intervention. “So, uh, let’s play some backgammon … YOU DRUG ADDICT!”
- A very trigger-happy Ana Lucia shot Shannon. She made the Iraqi guy angry. But on the up side, Nadia now has no competition.
- Lesson learned: when HallucinoWalt says “be quiet,” do not run off into the woods.
- And speaking of HallucinoWalt, the Whispers in the Woods make a return in this episode. We know from Sawyer’s experience that the Whispers can be drawn from one’s own thoughts, and now from this episode that the Whispers are a sign that someone’s about to disappear or die. This could mean The Others have some kind of telepathic affinity towards people on the island. Or it’s possible that they just have sore throats.
More from Mostly Muppet, and check out all the mourners.
Anyway, I don’t really feel like entertaining Lost-related threads on this post, so comments are closed. You can, however, crash into DCeiver’s Pompatus of Lost 2.06, where the recaps are funny and the comments are open.
Housing Market Leveling Off?
A bit late on this, but: DCist last month on local real estate. All the signs point to a slowing in the housing market around here — not a popped bubble just yet, but at least a leveling off which gives young urbanites time to catch up with prices that shot up far too high, even for a crowded, high-demand urban center. Given this slowdown, plus the news of thousands of new condos being built in the DC metro area starting next year, I might actually be able to live the so-called American Dream sometime in the near future, without being priced clear out of the District to Nebraska or something.
To those of you who sold before now, goody for you! (Thumbs up to Terrapin.) To those of you who bought $800K houses in gentrified neighborhoods on variable rate no-mortgage loans, my condolences, and let me know if you have a pre-foreclosure open house.
Update: Joint Strike Weasel: It’s a renter’s market. Over on Volokh, David Bernstein says DC markets are starting to take a pounding.
Asterisks for Rates
Are you an internet professional on the verge of leaping into independent self-employment as a web designer and developer? Are you wondering how much you should charge clients for your services? Do you want to know how to find out other developers’ rates without going through the awkward or risky routes of meatspace networking, direct questioning, or smalltime corporate espionage?
Google Search wildcards to the rescue! By just plugging an asterisk into where the value would be, you can get a quick overview of the gamut of web pro hourly rates worldwide, thanks to forum posts from random designers and developers out there with nothing to hide! (The trick also seems to work for a variety of other professions and currencies.)
So, how much will you charge?
Assorted Weekend Snaps
Just clearing out a backlog of photos from the last three weekends. Here’s a sampling for you. (Click on the thumbs to get the larger photo on Flickr.)
Fall is definitely upon us.
The Coin Set
Hey, print and web designers, you know how once in a while you need to do a layout for an article on money or economics or investments or something, and you need a quick thematic header graphic, like, a photo of coins or something, and even though you come across photos of coins all the time, suddenly you can’t find any good public domain, royalty-free photos anywhere to use for your design? I’m solving that problem right now. Meet The Coin Set.
I was about to cash a year of accumulated pocket change in the Coinstar machine last week, and I figured I’d take some photos of the coins first, just in case I ever need photos of coins. I’m releasing all the coin photos into the public domain for anyone else who needs closeup photos of piles of American coins. Get them here.
I’ll add to that set as I get more photos: always in the public domain, which means no more flipping through Clipart.com or Image Bank while reading the fine print on each photo, and you don’t need my permission to use, reuse, edit, or redistribute them. Some of the photos are kind of dark (no flash), but nothing a quick Levels job in Photoshop can’t fix. (This is probably a trivial drop in an ocean of public domain photos out there, but oceans need drops too, and these are my drops.)
Cheap and Tiny and Popular
Just a link from Matt, and suddenly Cheap And Tiny is rubbing shoulders with the big guys on del.icio.us/popular. Traffic jumped from 600 hits a day (117 unique visits) to 15,021 hits (1,754 unique visits), and income from ad clicks went from “near nil” to “modestly pleasant.” I’m still tweaking the Google Adsense and Chitika ad positions to see what improves performance, and I’m open to recommendations for search terms to plug into the Chitika code to match the weblog audience’s expectations.
An anonymous commenter on 248am.com doesn’t like the design of Cheap And Tiny. I’ve tried to keep it light and clean, while smoothly integrating advertising elements into the layout — but without resorting to deceptive styling to make it look like the ads are part of the content. Does anyone else think the site is confusing? That WordPress theme (I call it “Yurt,” for no particular reason) will be the basis for other upcoming projects, so feedback on that will help improve future weblogs on the same network.
Droids and Brothers
From a conversation with Amy last night:
Amy: Bob got his DVD of Episode III last night.
Me: Personally, I’m a lot more comfortable pretending that the whole prequel never happened. In Episode 4, Obi-Wan says “Luke, here’s your Dad’s lightsaber. He wanted you to have it,” and I’m yelling, “No he didn’t.” And Anakin making C3-P0? So that means C3-P0 is kind of like Luke’s brother?
Amy: Only in the way that Henry Ford’s Model T was his son’s brother.
Dismal and Excellent
Speaking of Goth Girls, be sure to check out Accordion Guy’s scans of Goth-themed Archie comics: “She’s Goth to Have It” (an actual Archie comic), and “Anarchie,” which seems to be an unofficial anarchist parody.
When you’re ready to put on the black clothes and mascara, you can “Go Goth!” and then learn to Dance Goth.