Publishia: Rowling Works Her Magic, Again

First she reworked the publishing industry by introducing a pint-sized wizard, now J.K. Rowling is doing it again, remaking the publishing industry by offering her Potter book series through her own website in formats that make them accessible to e-book readers!

This raises a question, though: Is there anyone left who wants to read the Potter series but hasn't yet?

Updates

I haven't posted in so long that my RSS feed at work doesn't have any posts from me in it, so it must be time for an update:

- My 100 pushup challenge failed miserably. More miserably than last time. This time it took a whole week to fail. Not like last time where I followed it for like a month. This time around the fail was dedicated. It was determined.

- On the positive, I started doing 200 pushups per day, and segued into doing a push-up based workout routine from the Bible that is essentially a push up and a burpee done back to back. Envy the muscle; envy the muscle.

- I owe a shout out to my sister on two accounts: first, for copy editing the book I wrote for my kids and wife. Thank you. Also, for giving me motivation to start reediting my book. I haven't actually started yet, but I'm envisioning starting. I'm thinking really long and hard about it, so that is something. I think I'm going about it a different way this time: editing online rather than in hard copy form. Printed words are for suckers and the old, right?

- I have nearly constant money worries, even though I'm/we're OK. I've always worried more about money than was probably healthy, but now its taken on a whole new variety of torture: Instead of just worrying about money, I now worry that I'll lose my job, never find another, and my kids won't respect me. Nice.

I think that is it for now. Another new post coming soon.

Help me, please!

So, after finishing Feed and posting a little about it, I read an article about how Oprah's television spot could be filled, but the real question was who would fill her spiritual leader role.

The article noted some reality chick - Bethany - with whom I'm passingly familiar. It noted that she has a self-help book that counsels that "big changes come from small choices." It's a mantra that I love. To often the really big problems in our lives seem overwhelming, but could be changed by some small change, if we'd only see the chain linking the two. This is especially true before all the consequences of a choice have played out. Does this make sense? So, choice A, while seemingly insignificant, ends up being a very bad outcome B.

A simple thing like complaining about your spouse to a coworker about a "male" behavior, while it seems small, dominoes. Since the conduct is "male," its not changeable, so you don't try. You end up complaining to others instead of working on it with the spouse. This builds resentment both ways, as the complainer hates more and more conduct and the complainee feels henpecked. This results in more unchangeable conduct. Soon, a marriage lays irretrievably damaged and both hate each other.

Anyway, this got me thinking: there are probably more self-help books than one could count. Most, or at least a large number, seem to offer good, if not always helpful, advice (or is it the other way around?). Yet people will tell you we are more dysfunctional, trend addicted, media led, status conscious sheep then ever.

So, are the books not working? Are the books working but only to slight affect, and if so, is that really "working"? Are we actually getting better (whatever that means)? Are we getting better, but not at a rate that compensates for the negatives in the society and culture around us?

Maybe the books are simply wrong about their advice, though I'm disinclined to believe this. I think it probably goes deeper than that.

Maybe I'll try to come up with an answer in a future post.

Burning books - they have an ointment for that

I would think that people reading the book's described here, would probably be skirting perilously close to violating this Oregon law:

The statutes broadly take aim at practices of “luring” and “grooming” that expose minors to sexually explicit materials in the hopes of lowering their inhibitions against engaging in sexual conduct. The “furnishing” statute, Oregon Revised Statutes § 167.054 (“section 054”), criminalizes providing children under the age of thirteen with sexually explicit material. The “luring” statute, § 167.057 (“section 057”), criminalizes providing minors under the age of eighteen with visual, verbal, or narrative descriptions of sexual conduct for the purpose of sexually arousing the minor or the furnisher, or inducing the minor to engage in sexual conduct.

Thankfully, wiser heads have prevailed:

Appellants, a broad cross-section of booksellers; non-profit literary, legal, and health organizations; and a concerned grandmother (together, “Powell’s Books”), argue that these statutes violate the First Amendment. In particular, Powell’s Books claims, among other things, that the statutes are facially overbroad and criminalize a substantial amount of constitutionally protected speech. We agree.

Hungry for some Pansies - Part I

Its' been a hot and humid spring & summer. And then August happened. So, I haven't been much but ducking in and out of buildings avoiding the soup-like heat. Consequently, there hasn't been much to post about. I'm ordering new windows for the bedroom today, and once they arrive in two-to-three weeks, I'll be installing them. But I hardly think you much care, and that feels more like a "Hooray, it went well, I'm sorta kinda handy" or a "I have plywood for a window" kinda post down the road.

I'll be working from home by Nov. 12. Supposedly. This is, by my count, the 12 plan they've had for us, so I'm not holding onto that too dearly until it happens. In the meantime, its got me nervous and excited and worried. It's much better than not having a job, but I'll miss the social aspects of the office. Plus, I may never shave, shower, dress or socialize with anyone ever again.

The UPS guy will drop off a package - probably of tea - and will be confronted with a mountain man looking fellow, pizza crusted in his beard. Flies will buzz around the man, and, despite it being 3 p.m., I'll be in my robe and swat them away with the cuff .

It's the summer doldrums.

Kindling Kindle

I'm late to the party, but I apparently was the only one put off by unoriginality of Oppenheimer's Kindle lament. In which an author at the Atlantic makes an argument similar to my own. And there are apparently three guests to this party, as another Atlantic reader takes Oppenheimer to task for even suggesting that romance might die at the hand of the Kindle!

Still, even Eleanor Barkhorn falls into the old trap:

Of course, we've lost something as we've transitioned from old-media flirting to new. Like so much on the web, broadcasting our likes and dislikes can turn into an exercise in self-promotion, and we can be calculating about how we reveal what what's on our bedside tables and in our playlists.

Well, no; not exactly. Even back in the days of dusty paper tomes, people chose to display books as "an exercise in self-promotion." Oppenheimer himself pretty much concedes as much in his column. I'm not sure why the Barkhorn thinks people weren't "calculating" about what was on their bedside tables or playlists prior to the invention of electronic media.

I can post a tweet about how much I'm getting out of reading the Washington Post's Top Secret America series—when really I'm poring over Us Weekly's latest spread about Jessica Simpson's weight loss.

Well, yes; sure. But the same was always true. There always was, and always will be the stranger that we never let people see (or try hard to prevent them from seeing). I suppose no one has ever left an unread copy of Crime and Punishment on the coffee table for guests to see while stashing a copy of People magazine away in the bedside table?

She goes on to say how her planned posts to Gchat, or GoodReads or Twitter designed to solicite responses are ...

... far less pure than glancing at the stranger across from us on the subway and realizing he's reading our favorite novel.

Really? Far less pure? In the case of a stranger who is legitimately reading a book, yes, perhaps. In the case of someone who leaves a book out as a promo piece, or carries with him as a Red Badge of Courage, its a difference in type, not in kind. And hardly less pure. Someone who posts comments hoping to bait certain responses from certain people is likely to be the same kind who puts out unread books. Both are unpure.

And I don't even know what to say about this bit of self-important hoity toitty pretentiosness ...

When I made the man I was dating during sophomore year of college read All The King's Men before I would consider calling him my boyfriend ...

Honestly? Where do these people come from?

Getting back to the original purpose, Oppenheimer has responded. To the Atlantic columns, not my criticism. And in a not very convincing way. He sorta just rehashes his argument that the Kindle doesn't provide what books do. Never mind that someone reading a Kindle is almost certainly reading a book, and that its just as easy to ask a Kindle reader "whatch reading" as it is to ask a book reader what he/she thinks of The Cabin. Nevermind that for all the lamenting about how we will no longer see people reading Rand on the subway and be able to strike up a convo, you would rarely run up against someone who was both someone you would want to talk to and who was reading a book you would want to discuss.

The case of books v. ... well, books

In reading this Slate.come article lamenting the Kindle, I found myself wondering whether the author was being sarcastic. For example:

Remember when you could tell a lot about a guy by what cassette tapes—Journey or the Smiths?—littered the floor of his used station wagon? No more, because now the music of our lives is stored on MP3 players and iPhones.

Our important papers live on hard drives or in the computing cloud, and DVDs are becoming obsolete, as we stream movies on demand. One by one, the meaningful artifacts that we used to scatter about our apartments and cars, disclosing our habits to any visitor, are vanishing from sight.

Nowhere is this problem more apparent, and more serious, than in the imperilment of the Public Book—the book that people identify us by because they can glimpse it on our bookshelves, or on a coffee table, or in our hands. As the Kindle and Nook march on, people's reading choices will increasingly be hidden from view. We'll go into people's houses or squeeze next to them on the subway, and we'll no longer be able to know them, or judge them, or love them, or reject them, based on the books they carry.

Oh, the horrors! People will no longer be able to be faux-intellectuals by keeping books they don't read, or have only read parts of and won't finish, out in public view for all the world to admire. Never mind the fact that reading Anna Karenina, War & Peace, Atlas Shrugged or whatever tome is currently the counterculture favorite means nothing. It doesn't make you interesting, or less of a prude or a jerk. I know plenty of people who are well read; or would consider themselves well read, at any rate. A good portion of them aren't worth having discussions with; some would be, if they weren't so pretentious. Someone Reading The Cabin isn't any more - or less - of Christian than I am.

The author - Mark Oppenheimer - is at least self-aware enough to realize what he's saying:

This is a delicate matter. I can already hear some readers turning the page (perhaps a Kindle "page"), muttering that only an elitist jerk picks friends or lovers based on what they can be seen reading. Well, maybe. This essay is for the rest of you, the ones who freely admit to having been seduced by a serendipitous volume of Jamaica Kincaid's Annie John glimpsed on a potential girlfriend's living-room shelf or by a spine-broken copy of Robert Lowell sitting atop that boy's nightstand. Maybe that was your first time in the apartment, you had been reluctant to go, and now you wanted to linger a while …

Also, if you find yourself miserable because you ended up with your spouse because you saw him reading Catcher in the Rye, keep reading! Um, yeah. This isn't even a novel argument by Oppenheimer. I'm old enough to remember when people still romanticised over vinyl records. Some people still love the scratchy, flawed, poor audio quality of vinyl. Articles just like Oppenheimer's have been written about vinyl. To those people, I say - go eat raw meat and drink unpurified water and unpasturized milk if flaws are so important to you and every improvement is such a terrible thing. As for a direct response to the passage above, well, I'm pretty sure that if you and that girl or boy with a book on display are meant to be, you'll discuss books at some point. Its a difference in kind, not substance.

Oppenheimer goes on to say that he dated this brunette who - when asked - told him she agreed to date him because she liked his books. She liked his books. Surely, if this was the standard she was using she probably could have happened upon another reason to date him. These books were college reading Oppenheimer concedes "I had never gotten to [reading]." So she dated him on false pretenses. Nice. His whole point boils down not to the fact that he got anything from these books, or even that he could discuss them with her - its simply that they made a nice crutch and allowed him to meet this girl. Books as a means to an end, and not even an organic end.

To wit:

So what will you do, Kindle generation, when you cannot tell which of the quiet boys holding the e-reader on the subway is engrossed by the latest, predictable legal thriller, and which one by a cheery, long-forgotten Laurie Colwin novel?

Its sad that the Kindle means we will no longer be able to tell the good guy and girl from the bad through the simple and convenient advertisment of what book they keep, unread but noticed, out on their coffee table or carry with them on the subway. /sarcasm.

I'm guessing the actual answer is that Kindle generation will go on just fine, living life and meeting people of the opposite (or same!) sex, falling in love and reproducing. Oppenheimer concedes as much. His article is more the rant of a grumpy old man lamenting the passing of time and scolding kids to keep their shiny electric Kindles away from his pulped books.

I'm sure he probably purchased his books from the type of quaint, indepedent book stores that aren't around anymore and that he had to walk uphill both to reach it and return home. Often times only to find that, because the selection was small, the book he wanted wasn't in stock. And he probably reads only by candle light, none of the harsh, fake light for him. After all, using electric lights would deprive him of the experience and joys of going to bed at 6 p.m. during the winter.

As Oppenheimer says, the Kindle will likely only make printed books more valuable as it makes them more rare. No one laments that limited-print first editions are ... well, limited and hard to find.

This kind of "from the heart" romanticism irks me. Its the philosophy of those who hate what big, box store book sellers did to indepedent book stores, but enjoy all the benefits that built those stores. Then, when a device comes along that promises to return us to an era of cheaper production and thus more indepedent and increasingly niche publishing, lament that very device. All the while these people usually rail against the horrible destruction of consumerism (but not of consumption of books or the mass printing of them, obviously). Their romanticism threatens to prevent us from finding a way to promote smaller publication runs of the niche books they love so much all while saving the environment that is, otherwise, a top priority of theirs.

So many great short story collections that are classics would never get published in today's world. Electronic formats promise to allow cheap self publishing and quicker returns on investment that encourage publishers to take more risks. I love printed books, just as I love printed newspapers. But I'll be damned if I'm going to favor them over something better just because "they" happened to be the status quo while I was in my formative years.

Kinda I'm Doing Something (Take Two)

I'm sitting here, having a cup of Sencha tea, having exceeded what is expected of me from work today and having not yet gotten started on what is expected of me for tomorrow. And so I'm trolling the Internet to unwind a bit. And yes, its hot; and yes, blogging is probably not what is expected of me, regardless of my level of production.

But as I said, it's what I'm doing.

And I stumble upon a... its not really a review... more of promotional item by a journalist but we'll call it a review... about a self-published book called the "The Shack." The article itself is really well done.

A sample from the article: "The novel's subject is faith in God, but it is written as if to a reader who has little interest in religion. And although it is a Christian book, its author does not seem to follow any church." But wait, it gets better: "The Shack is to narrative form roughly what the Leatherman Multi-Tool is to pliers."

It makes me want to read the book. And I thought that the topic was cool and probably of interest to at least some of you.

So, I'm trying to kill the rest of my work day, and this got me to Part Two of the post: There is so much to do right now. My book is nearly finished. I've said that probably 100 times. But each time I say it I'm a bit closer. I'm on the final scene now, so I can't be far off. Plus, the next story is already writing scenes in my head. This writing stuff would be easier if I could take the scenes in my head and just transform them into written word, rather than, you know, actually writing them. And don't fear, because this actually does tie into The Shack, because the author of that book took two years writing his novel. So I'm in good company. The novel is self-published, yes, but its been on the best-seller list for 105 weeks.

There is just so much to do. House work, work work, yard work, dog work, car work, life work, health work, blog work, avoiding-the-annoying-census-girl work, book-writing work, book-editing work, reading work, hiding-messages work, XBox work. It can be, well, a little much.

Update: Oh, and in amongst all that other work, I'm surprising R. tonight with a steak dinner. I had kinda intended it to be a candle light dinner, but since it doesn't get dark enough for candle light, it will just have to be a surprise steak and potato and tomato dinner. That might not seem like much, but we don't eat beef or potatoes around here much anymore since we went on the the weight-loss/healthy eating path.

Speaking of which... I'm doing this Spartacus workout. Ten stations of 60 second workouts, with 15 seconds to change. Three full sets for a total of 41ish minutes. Its from the Bible. And its a killer workout that involves weights, but thanks to the stations also improves cardio performance and burns mucho calorieo. So me can eat Oreo. But instead I usually just eat Jello.

So much going on

Renee is back in the state & in house! Yeah.

I tried writing last night, but got nothing done. Well, I added like 8 words to a past piece. I had an ending all planned, but now I'm thinking that a similar ending earlier in the story might be more relevant. I'm going to end it that way, and maybe write an addendum that I can always add later. Now, its occuring to me that the original ending is redundant to the new ending.

Our new furniture (coach, chair) came today! Yeah.

I'm in the middle of my work outs. Week 4 of 8, I believe. Or 3. Not sure. It doesn't really matter much. This time around the workouts don't change weekly.

Finished my video game, clearing the way for more writing time.

Plan on reading more.

Work today has been crazy busy.

Whew.

A thought on books

I recently did some research on agents and what not for my soon to be finished book, so I'm in a book mind anyway. But then I read a post about audio books.

How did audio "books" get the distinction of being a book? OK, ok, they are the exact words written in the book. Fair enough.

But isn't it sorta like calling movies "visual books?"

I mean, neither are really books at all. Not in any way, shape, or form. Sure, audio "books" follow the exact narrative of the book, word for word. But in a lot of ways, so do movies. Should these visual "books" be condemned just becuase their medium allows for different presentation? And if so, how come audio "books" aren't held to the same standard?

Just some light thoughts for a Friday.

I'm shaming myself; Also, I owe my book to a worm

That's what this post amounts too. I'm hoping that this post maybe shames me into encouraging myself to write tonight.

I usually write Sunday night - that gives me a head start on the week and I only have to write once more during the week. It gives me plenty of chances at a third session. Only I didn't.

Monday/Tuesday are other good days for writing, in that they aren't Friday or Saturday night. Which are traditionally busy evenings. They also aren't Saturday, a housework day, or Wednesday, the night Lost is on. Lost is the only show I drop everything for and I don't plan on ending that scenerio.

So here I sit, facing Wednesday night wihtout having written anything. Now, lost is an hour starting at 9 p.m. I usually write from 10 to whenever anyway, so its not entirely out of the question. Still, given my late start, I'm half thinking of taking the week off.

The hold up: My workout routine ends next week, and then I'm taking a week off from that. I was kind of hoping to clear all the heavy lifting off my plate that week and use it as a general "recharge" week. Or.... I could take off this week, and really, really do some heavy lifting writing during that week.

So what have I been doing? Ninja Gaiden mostly. This brings me to the second part of my headline. For weeks I was stuck on this one sub boss - a worm - in the game. It was discouraging, frankly, and led me to play less. I would either choose not to play, or play through once, die, lose interest and write. Now I'm flying through the game and enjoying it again. Its been a bummer as far a writing goes.

A final link of interest: Kindle 2.1 has been released, with a larger screen that better supports newspaper & magazine reading. A last, great hope for newspapers? Maybe.

The mouth of the beast

Just a couple quick comments because, well, frankly, I don't have much to say.

Wrote Tuesday night and was pretty productive. I was worried I was running out of ideas, but I've found that as a write, I usually expound upon what I have, so its all good. The sheer weight of the project is lifted, but now there is the fear of the end. I mean, if its junk, at least when its unfinished junk I can fix it. Once its written and done, well, that's my best product. If its still junk, that ain't good. In other words: I'm in the mouth of the beast.

Ugh. That last just reminds me that I CAN NOT seem to beat this boss in Ninja Gaiden. I'd actually like to move on because I'm frustrated as hell with it and because I'd like to beat the game and play another.

Loving Scratch Beginings so far. Loving might be a touch strong, but I'm liking it a great deal.

Sigh. Maybe the American dream will die after all.

This graph is lifted from a Reason.com story about deficits.

Too bad Reagan ran up those huge deficits in the 1980s that Democrats are always crowing about.

Talk about heroic choices in every day life...

Democrats in 1987 and 2000-2008 were all up in arms about the deficit. Their almost universal reply to Reagan fans is the deficit. Their first anti-Bush (but certainly not the last) sentiment was that he turned Clinton's surplus into a deficit.

Now comes Obama, and well, the deficit, that's not such a concern anymore. Because, well, we need to "save" our economy. But since the economy shows signs of having started turning around in January 2009, before Obama was even sworn in, how much "saving" did it really do? And what will happen when the the turn around continues and runs head on into the stimulus that will begin to take affect in late 2009 or early 2010?

Before you think I'm on a rant... the Republicrats are no better. They talk up deficits and conservative spending, only to turn an about face when in power. Just look at the Bush years on that chart.

Think every day choices aren't heroic? Think choosing between two courses doesn't need to be in line with reality. If the pols had taken a second to consider the reality of economics, of growth and destruction, of the balancing of economics, they might not have done anything, and where would we be? Right about where we are now; except without the trillions of "stimulus" deficit that is coming our way, the possible inflation it will bring with it and the 100% guarantee of higher taxes in the future to pay that debt off. Think those choices won't matter? And those aren't even really "big" life questions.

I should probably read "Scratch Beginings" soon, before its either:

A) a comedy in that its no longer possible,

B) I have to sell it to eat or

C) all of the above.

This is truly, truly scary.

'WORDS' UPDATE: Add gaurantee, which I haven't been able to spell since, to my memory, 2000 and probably longer. Love to miss that first "u." Oh, and deficits, apparently, which I spelled wrong throughout.

Maybe "Me Run With Scissors One Day"

Finished "Me Talk Pretty One Day." I'm split in my thoughts. Good, but not nearly as good as Burroughs. Though very, very similar in style. Both are odd, gay, alcohol/drug dependent, possibly mentally-deficient individuals. Though on this last, its definitely Sedaris in a landslide.

I'm mixed on another area as well. A part of me is jealous. They tell these great personal stories. Some of that is being able to package stories well and fill in the normally fuzzy details with outrageous thoughts; and some appears to be, I think, great insight into themselves and the world around them. I think I have stories that could be funny and book worthy, if I was more introspective and embellished the fuzzy areas a bit. You know, added insights and what have you. I have a few bouncing around in my head. Maybe I'll post one someday.

But another part of me wonders this as well: Is that really insight that Burroughs and Sedaris have, or is it actually, pretty much the opposite? Do they have these stories because they never really did any introspection as they went along in life and thus have crazy, unreasonable stories stemming from issues that any other normal person would have worked out?

I guess it is insight of a kind, gained in looking back on years of absolute blindness.

I think some of my problem is that I've never been that "blind" to myself. Maybe being gay, and having to keep that secret, keeps you shut off from yourself, leading to great revelations later on. Maybe. Maybe the alcohol dependence is all tied up in that. Maybe. It is interesting that both are gay and addicts.

I just feel that, if you go around saying "candlestick" to everyone you meet in France because its the only French word you know, its a good story, but its either heavily embellished or you are kind of an annoying moron. I just wouldn't do that because, well, I have the sense not too, frankly. At least I'd like to think so.

And frankly, for all the glowing descriptions of Hugh in the book, he's either so severely damaged that he can only keep Sedaris, or he's a saint. It's funny to read, but I have a hunch I'd kill Sedaris if I lived with him. Maybe that's part of it. I tend to shy from that level of borderline "needs to institutionalized" behavior and thinking and thus don't have the crazy stories I would otherwise.

And that probably ruins lots of my stories. I think I could be a straight, married, normal, well-adjusted Burroughs, if I was willing to not be so well-adjusted. If I let my 3 on a 10 scale stories spiral out of control they could become 8 on a 10 scale stories.

Two new thoughts from Curious Minds - PLUS a bonus: Push up update!

Marc D. Hauser gets it pretty close to how I feel about myself with this quote:

"I'm intellectually promiscuous - and proud of it!"

Unlike some people who find one topic or another boring, or a whole bunch of topics boring - or conversely have one area of interest - I'm interested in just about anything factual about anything. I can get interested in just about any sport, even if I can't play it, any topic, even if I could never fully grasp it. Thus, though I love chess, I don't play nearly as much as I'd like, because I frequently find myself diverted to other activities. On the bright side, TV is never boring, because inevitably there is something on that I haven't seen.

I've always been interested in ideas, and facts, really, of any kind. Thus I couldn't settle on a single topic for this blog and it became 1000 & 1 Things. The other good thing: I can strike up a conversation with just about anyone, because the chances of what they have to say being boring to me is a scintilla.

But the main thing that got a post percolating was this sentence from Ray Kurzweil:

"To this day, I continue to be convinced of that fundamental philosophy: No matter what quandaries we face - business problems, health issues, relationship difficulties - there is an idea that can enable us to prevail. Furthermore, we can find that idea. And when we find it, we need to implement it."

I'm convinced too, Ray. This all sounds somewhat familiar. This meshes well with my belief - "borrowed" heavily from Ayn Rand - that all life on earth has certain courses of action that it must take to survive. Man's is intellectual/rational. Thus we can (indeed, to survive we must) perceive the hard evidence and facts around us and act accordingly. If we act properly in line with what is objectively best for us, good results occur. If we act contrary to our nature and the factual world, bad results occur. The very concept that there is an idea that can solve our problems, we just have to find it (but we are able to do that!) is pretty optimistic and somewhat contrary to the current worldview. Being that Kurzweil is a tech guy, he might have been talking about "ideas" as more of a concrete phenomenon than I am, but I think the point is the same.

PUSH UP UPDATE - I'm going to stop posting after every day, there's just not enough interesting stuff to post on about the challenge and trying to time the posts to not push out the other posts is a challenge unto itself.

Having said that, Day 2 went very well, and I thought I might complete the whole set. As it was, I got 25 after taking 1:30 off, resting 30 more second and then doing the final 20.

New feature: Interesting thoughts

I'm going to, periodically, post interesting thoughts I've come across in my travels, on my own (those will be infrequent), and in books I'm reading.

Here's the first, from Curious Minds about "speciesism," the assumption that humans are superior or deserve special treatment over animals:

"Doctrinaire antiabortionists who blow up clinics and murder good doctors turn out on examination to be rank speciesists. An unborn baby is by any reasonable standards less deserving of moral sympathy than an adult cow. The profiler screams 'murder!' at the abortion doctor and goes home to a steak dinner."

Yes, BUT... Richard Dawkins is an atheist, and some of his views are therefore perhaps not surprising. His use of the word "good doctor" implies a bias to the piece, because you simply can not know that. I'm not sure what "standards" he refers to, but if given the option of saving a baby, even an unborn one, or a cow, even an adult one, I'm pretty sure most would choose the baby. If this is speciesism, and I think this specific case almost certainly has some aspects, I think its culturally ingrained. And also not nearly as evil as Dawkins makes it out to be. In fact, I'm pretty sure that "reasonable" is up for debate, since Ayn Rand-following Objectivists would probably argue, reasonably, that the human is ALWAYS more deserving of moral sympathy than the cow.

I think Dawkins' big mistake comes in saying a cow is "more" deserving. I guess you can make the argument that they are equally deserving, but "more" seems a stretch. Equating an unborn human as equal and on a similar level as an adult cow (and thus both can be killed) is one thing, assuming it is LESS than a cow, that's another, in my mind.

I realize you can't necessarily consider their future "upside" when considering moral sympathy - otherwise you end up on a slippery slope to comparing the handicapped with those of us without noticeable handicaps, and that lands you in a sticky situation.

I have an internal battle with myself over the killing of animals for food for more than survival purposes. If some smarter alien race came along, could they kill us just because they could think in a different, more advanced way than us? Would they be justified? I feel, somewhat, that its that argument that we use to support our superiority over cows. But I also feel that if put in a purely "natural" situation, for lack of a better term, that we would end up being prey. I think our ability to think and reason like that, but more than that, our ability to create a system of laws and determine and assign rights, gives us a moral superiority. Also, if cows are off limits, then worms and bugs and ants probably should be as well, and then, well, the house I'm living in and typing this from is probably a mass murderer, as an I.

Its certainly not a fool-proof thought on my side, as I said, I battle with it, but there it is.

I'm still here

As I type this I'm huffing & puffing and my heart is beating as if I just ran a marathon. Though, I guess technically I just did a push up marathon.

Week 5, Day 3 (20, 20, 24, 24, 20, 20, 22) then a final set of 50 that I started after a 1:30 break, got through 25, took a 45 second break, then did 10 more, and finally a 15 second break and the last 15.

The first 150 went pretty well, though that last 20 and the next 22 are a dousy. That's 200 push ups in 10 minutes.

100 UPDATE: My mom has joined the 100 push up challenge. I think she does something like 3, so she's way behind in Group 1, Week 1, but good for her. Its not necassarily about how many you can do NOW, its about how many you'll be able to do and doing them at all. She's seeing the same kind of body transformation that I am. So for everyone and anyone reading this, join up. Its tough, but I promise you'll see results. As I said, I'm pleasently surprised by the results and the gains.

RANDOM NOTES FROM THE UNDERGROUND: I'm still reading Curious Minds & becoming more and more curious about Scratch Beginnings.

I'm playing Ninja Gaiden II almost exclusively. I still love Horde mode from Gears II, but NGII has my focus right now. The first one was a tough, tough challenge. The game is known for its difficulty, and this one is living up to the title.

Ever wonder what to do if you find yourself falling out of an airplane?

This guy apparently did, and he wrote a book about it and how to survive just about anything else that could befall you. The link is to the Slate.com article on the book and explains what the book, and experts on sky diving, recommend, both from an overall strategy (don't panic, that helps) to more situation specific stuff (don't forget to pull your cord - seriously, it apparently happens).

New book on my radar

I hesitate to do this, since I haven't read the book and only just found out about it today, but take a look at Scratch Beginnings - a book about the American Dream. Not your typical "American Dream can't happen" book, it more closely hews to my belief that it CAN indeed happen if you are willing to work at it. Success IS possible in the U.S., unlike a lot of other countries. Will you become rich, can't say for sure, but you'll have the opportunity, and while being able to live above mere subsistence, and that's all anyone can really ask for, isn't it?

The guy starts out with only a sleeping bag, $25 and the clothes he is wearing. He is dropped in a random city where he will try to make a go of it without relying on his contacts or education. How does he do? Well, in 10 months time ends up with a truck, a place to live and more than $2,500 saved in the bank. Not too shabby.

I hate the Negative Nancy BS that often comes out of my profession and the smugness and direness, the proclamations that things aren't right. All inspite of the fact that (even with the recent downturn) prosperity is all around us and people are SO much better off then they were in last generation.

You can buy the book from Amazon here.