Everything that comes out of Dossy, from the strange to the banal.
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I’ve always known that I’m not like most other people, but it’s funny when even my iTunes party shuffle knows how strange I am, even in my musical tastes. Here’s the last 5 songs, the currently playing song, and the next 5 songs right now:
Perhaps this isn’t as bizarre a variety as I might think, but I haven’t met anyone else yet who’d see this shuffle and think, “Wow, great listening!”
Tags: music
About a week ago, I mentioned on Twitter that I was working on a Twitter client for BlackBerry smartphones called Blackbird.
After an initial limited release to a few people, I think it’s ready for general use. I’ve already stopped using TwitterBerry and TinyTwitter, now exclusively using Blackbird and I don’t miss a thing.
If you have a BlackBerry and are a Twitter user, I’d love it if you’d go and install Blackbird and let me know what you think! It’s still fairly new and it’s my first BlackBerry application, so I’m sure there’s lots of ways I can improve it.
Tags: BlackBerry, Twitter, Blackbird
One of my fetishes is to read commencement speeches. They’re usually full of the lulz and J.K. Rowling’s commencement address at Harvard 2008 is no exception.
Early on she breaks the ice with some humor about gay wizards. You might think if you were giving a speech at Harvard you’d stick to the straight and narrow, but some people play to win, not just to avoid losing. This sets the tone for her speech right away: as long as it may be, it’s going to be worth it.
The faux apologetic tone for the content of the speech in the beginning is cute. Who would possibly believe that someone who can turn out seven Harry Potter books would have any difficulty choosing how to address an audience of Harvard graduates?
To be totally honest, I’m probably one of the few hold-outs who still hasn’t read the Harry Potter series. The notion of a Messianic child wizard engaged in battles of good and evil are a yawner: if I wanted to read that story, I’d go read the Bible–it’s got more whores, violence and all that begetting and it’s been on the best-seller list for a lot longer. However, after Rowling drops the “epic fail” in her speech–“I had failed on an epic scale”–I might just have to skim the books to see if they’re as good as her speech was. It’s clear she’s made of win today.
The second half of her speech talks of the value and power of imagination. Just reading her message brought actual tears to my eyes that kept running down my cheeks for minutes after I’d finished reading. I’m going to quote the money shot paragraph, because to elide any of it would be criminal:
“If you choose to use your status and influence to raise your voice on behalf of those who have no voice; if you choose to identify not only with the powerful, but with the powerless; if you retain the ability to imagine yourself into the lives of those who do not have your advantages, then it will not only be your proud families who celebrate your existence, but thousands and millions of people whose reality you have helped transform for the better. We do not need magic to change the world, we carry all the power we need inside ourselves already: we have the power to imagine better.”
Amen.
Tags: J.K. Rowling, Harvard, commencement speech, 2008
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seankreynolds discusses the shift in attitudes regarding corporal punishment of children in his LJ today. I left this comment in response:
Often I think people mistake abusive violence and discipline. Given that we’re all just meat puppets and operant conditioning is well understood, punishment as a form of discipline is necessary; neutering a parent’s ability to physically punish is a grave mistake of our society. However, as you describe, anecdotes of unprovoked violence is abuse. Violence with the intent to cause pain rather than serve as punishment is abuse.
There’s no room in this world for abuse. However, a society that does not apply physical punishment when appropriate is equally doomed.
The fact that we no longer condone appropriate physical punishment, I feel, comes from us collectively “erring on the side of caution” as it is too easy for people to cross the line from punishment to abuse. Unfortunately, it’s the risk aversion to letting parents make such a mistake that has ultimately created worse problems.
I know this is a subject that many feel strongly about, and people’s opinions cover the whole spectrum. Is there something about my comment you disagree with? Am I missing something? Tell me what you think in the comments below.
Tags: parenting, corporal punishment, abuse
Kill it with fire. I don’t know why, but I’ve been saying this a lot lately. Epic lulz.
Kung Fu Panda. I might actually cave in and see this in IMAX. This movie is so obviously made of win.
Not only do I dislike Java, this past weekend I spent time decompiling it with Jad in order to make changes to an application whose source code has been lost. Strangely, decompiled Java is usually less obfuscated than human-authored Java. That says a lot about how bad most Java programmers are. Think about it.
After years of pondering, I’ve finally decided what I want as my first tattoo: a Penrose triangle. I love the idea of impossible objects as tattoo art.
I think I want to put it on my left forearm, just above the wrist. I still haven’t decided if I want it on the inner or outer arm, yet. I also have no idea where to go or who to ask to do it, either.
I received my BlackBerry code signing key today, so I can start using the “controlled APIs” in the application I’m developing. I’ll talk more about it when I have something that’s actually usable, but if you’ve been following my Twitter stream, you already have an idea of what it is.
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