Ok, I have been a major major slacker on posting. Sorry!

Halloween was fun! My girlfriend, her roommate and I got all dressed up and went out.

I'm still climbing a lot, which is great.

Holiday preparations at work, combined with things mentioned above have had me exceedingly busy.

If you're bored, TED is your friend.

The original Zeitgeist movie was a brilliant series of questions and facts. It was mind opening and encouraged reflection on self, reflection on society and reflection on the universe. The addendum, on the other hand, tries to offer answers to the questions posed in the original. It drives relentlessly on a socialistic agenda, no longer sticking to the facts, but turning instead to pie-in-the-sky ideals without basis.

I would like to take a moment to point out one huge hypocrisy that came up in the last 1/2 hour of the addendum. They spend a lot of time and effort emphasizing that we are all one and that we are all connected. They say that therefor unconditional love is the only correct answer. They then proceed to attempt to use this as a reason to discard capitalism as corrupt. Their reasoning is that capitalism is selfish and therefor evil. They say that we should all be motivated by the well being of mankind, not by economic gains.

The problem with this line of reasoning is that if the 'true path' for humankind is to be motivated by the good of our fellow humans, then a free market capitalism allows for that. An economy is simply a way for people to express their needs and preferences. There is no inherent corruption here, simply that expression. The 'corrupt capitalists' will always be corrupt, regardless of the underlying system. The nice thing about free market capitalism is that it allows both for them to express their needs and preferences and for the rest of us to do so. If our preferences are massively different from theirs, things will change, because their profit motives _require_ us to demand what they are selling.

If, as the addendum suggests, we pull our funds, accounts and labor away from certain companies, the free market will drive a reduction in the power of those that we despise. In the planned, "resource driven" world proposed therein, there would be no way to express those preferences. So, by definition, it could never reflect the ever changing needs, wants and desires of all of us, as one, or as many.

Many of the action items proposed by the addendum are fine and consistent with the _questions_ and _facts_, but several are so clearly driving a socialistic agenda as to undermine open minded beauty from which it was spawned. I'm truly sorry to see that this movie did not continue the open ended, personal development based legacy of the original.

This is a bit out of character for recent postings, but given the lack of recent postings, I think it's worth a shot. Here's the story of a recent commute:

At sometime after 6 on a Tuesday evening, I leave the office, intending to stop by the UPS Store on my way home. I arrive at the bicycle cage, only to find that my bicycle has a flat front tire. This is not terribly surprising as I know that my front tire is quite worn and therefor puncture prone. "No problem," I think, "I have a spare tube, tools and CO2 inflator in my bag."

I remove the tire, inspect it for insurmountable weakness and install the new tube. I attach the inflator and twist the pressure adjustment knob. "Psst," is all that I get out of it. Shit! Must have leaked out over the months since I stuck it in my bag or something. "No problem," I think, "there are lots of other tire pumps attached to other bikes in here. I'll just borrow one."

I find a suitable pump nearby, figure out how to use it for my presta valved tube and begin inflating my tire. Due to the smallness of the pump, I know that I won't be able to get to the 115psi that I usually ride, but whatever I can get will do. I reach the limits of my strength to pump and go to remove the pump from the stem. "PSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSTTTTTTTTtttttttttttttttttttt." Shit! Must have stuck the valve somehow. Nope, broke the end of it right off in the pump. After restoring the pump to its original condition and position, I think, "No problem, I've got a handy dandy bus pass, I'll just ride the bus home with my bike." Nope, I lent my bus pass to a friend for today because she'd failed to get a September pass yet. "No problem," I thought, "I've also got two dollars."

I walk over to the bus stop, and after a 15 minute wait for a late bus, during which I called and razzed the girl with my bus pass, I'm on the bus and on my way. Not 100 feet up the street, the bus stops and starts and then stops and starts again. Then it stops and stutters and stops for good. So there I am, in my bicycle shoes, walking home from work with a bicycle on my shoulder.

As I'm walking, I once again call the girl with my bus pass just to let her off the hook (since it wouldn't have done me any good), and it turns out that she's waiting at a bus stop on my way home, where I meet up with her just because it's too amusing not to.

So there you have it. Some days, the world just wants you to walk home.

Now my bicycle has two new tires and two new tubes, and I have two CO2 cartridges in my bag along with the usual stuff.

I'm a huge American Gladiators fan. It's the only TV I watch these days.

My new goal: Be an American Gladiators contender.

I need to get my endurance up if I'm gonna have a chance.

Also, Gina 'Crush' Carano is the friggin' greatest gladiator. She's just cool and tough and undefeatedly awesome. Also turns out to be an MMA fighter which is doubly cool.

Randy Pausch died on Friday of pancreatic cancer.

I should have posted about him when I first saw his inspiring Last Lecture, actually don't know what made me not post it.

Regardless, here's to a man whose 47 short years meant more to humanity than most people even dare to dream.

11 reasons America's a new socialist economy
ARROYO GRANDE, Calif. (MarketWatch) -- Welcome to the conservative's worst nightmare: The law of unintended consequences. Why? Nobody wants to admit it, folks, but the conservatives' grand ideology is backfiring, actually turning the world's greatest capitalistic democracy into the world's newest socialist economy.

I'm a bit confused about this column to be honest. It makes some very good arguments describing how the liberal socialist policies of the US have turned us into a socialist nightmare instead of the land of the free. Unfortunately it then tries to turn around and blame these results on free-market policies. I just can't seem to figure out how the jump is made logically.

You be the judge.

Video from OSCON of Robert "r0ml" Lefkowitz wrapping some structure around the methodology of delivering open source software.

Kennesaw, Georgia "America's Safest City" Requires Gun Ownership!
There has not been a single reported crime of domestic violence in Kennesaw since the law was passed. There have been no injuries to children involving guns since the law was passed.

Absolutely brilliant video by a British (sounding) teen on the topic of atheism, agnosticism, and theism!

I've long hated the idea of agreeing to disagree. Doing that is simply intellectual laziness. Nothing more and nothing less. It means that the mental effort of following the paths of reasoning and examining the evidence are more than you are willing to exert. In typical disagreements, there is a stronger weight of evidence for one proposition over an opposing one. In that case, if agreement cannot be reached, one or both parties are acting irrationally.

Fortunately, I just discovered someone who agrees with this position and wrote a whole post on the subject.
You both should understand that "agreeing to disagree" is a sign of mutual disrespect and contempt. Rationality imposes a strong imperative to reach agreement and this must drive your interaction.