Posts like this one and others I’ve mentioned recently help explain why I’ve had an increase in hatred of pop music as my music tastes have expanded. (Although I don’t think there’s anything wrong with enjoying Bubblegum - as it was once known - most of it is garbage) The record industry, as with any established industry (and not too differently from fast food chains), hates risk. They take artists who put out amazing mix tapes and make them bland. As a corollary, when I do enjoy mainstream acts (as opposed to indie), I tend to enjoy the songs they don’t play on the radio. (Lana Del Rey and Fall Out Boy are perfect examples)

Don’t worry birds, I will feed you. Dad, feed the birds.

-Scarlett speaking to the birds in the woods behind our house (and then to me) a couple weeks ago

Some things people don’t know because they weren’t taught. Or it was taught in a way that didn’t make sense to the way their brains work. Or it was beyond them for some reason. All of this is fine. It’s the prideful ignorance that is really wreaking havok with this country. The following Daily Show clip is what inspire this mini-rant:

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Yesterday I read through the intro of Don’t Know Much About Mythology. It posited that one possible reason for myths was for the rich to control the poor. I thought, “Yeah. Makes sense back then with their god-kings, but we’re smarter now.” Then I thought about American politics and realized nothing has changed over the past 10000 years.

By the way, so much of the Christian discourse in America is so far away from the actual content of the Bible that regardless of whether you believe in Yahweh/God and Jesus’ divinity, you should regard most of what you think you know about Christianity as mythology.

I know I’m late to the game on this, but hurrah to JK Rowling for making the Harry Potter ebooks DRM-free! Just because of that, I’ll be sure to buy it this summer! Before I was scared about DRM-issues. I’ve been burned before - I have a bunch of Microsoft LIT books that I legally bought and can no longer read.

The Supreme Court rulings on campaign finance make me think of Animal Farm. All are equal, but some are more equal than others. (Because if money is free speech, some have way more free speech than others)

It’s once again time for my latest Photojojo post. For those of you who haven’t been following my blog for a long time, Photojojo is a digital time capsule service. Every two weeks they send me an email that has my most interesting photos posted to flickr from one year ago.

This time from the Cherry Blossom Festival. The blooms were predicted to come early that year, but lots of the trees weren’t in full bloom because of a cold front that came through.

It’s once again time for my latest Photojojo post. For those of you who haven’t been following my blog for a long time, Photojojo is a digital time capsule service. Every two weeks they send me an email that has my most interesting photos posted to flickr from one year ago.

This time from our trip to San Francisco for Daniel’s wedding

Only Civ this month as I’ve been focused on my semester work.

Civ V ( 29 hrs):

Mesa Bros:

It was my oldest game that didn’t yet have any war, but Germany broke the peace. In general, my style seems to be OK with AI warfare. Usually I can ramp up my units quickly enough to stave them off until they exhaust their units while I build up my army. However, I’ve noticed a slightly higher aggression rate in Civilization V compared to previous Civ games so I’ve started trying  to keep my unit counts high enough that most civs won’t spontaneously attack me. Didn’t work with the Germans, but after rebuffing their first advance, I may be able to steal a city. Especially since right after they attacked I was able to upgrade my catapults to trebuchets. We’ll see how this goes because at a theoretical max of 30 turns per month (usually because of our schedules I can’t do more than one turn per day and some days we miss turns), I may or may not have finished attacking the first city before April’s up.

Ok, Now you try it.

-Scarlett, handing me her new Slinky