In "Curious George: Job interview presentation. "

0) You should have a theory of; why are they asking you to do this? One possibility is that they are a very progressive employer and want to see your inner nature. But another likely possibility is that they have no idea how to evaluate candidates for this project. Advantage! Supply the criteria on how to evaluate a project FOR them, in your presentation. And then show that your plan fulfills all of them, bullet point by bullet point. You win. 1) Be flexible, but in general realize that people like to hear about themselves. Even, oddly enough, when interviewing you. Normally my advice for job interviews is not to talk about yourself, but act as if you *have* the job and talk about what you would do. This blows people out of their chair and distinguishes you from every other candidate. You're already being asked to do that, so you should distinguish yourself on your research. If possible, find out more about their objectives. If you can't do this beforehand, ask in the meeting, and modify your presentation accordingly. 2) After you've gotten their attention by talking about them, your second objective is to drive the meeting to expose your eminent qualifications. Driving the meeting is again something that job applicants never consider. They assume that they are a sort of test subject to be probed. But most employers *hate* doing job interviews, and like spiders, are as afraid of you as vice versa. They'll be so happy you're driving the meeting that they'll give you extra points for "initiative". Remember, "initiative" is a word for "s/he does the work I was dreading." 3) Try to use lots of uniting themes. Find something (anything) you have in common with these people and build on it. Use "we" sentences a lot. This gets their attention, and also makes it seem like you're already part of the team.

In "The Oil We Eat"

Why are there no citations for the phrase "wheat-beef people", other than this article? My spider-bogosity-sense is tingling.

In "Beach Billboards"

What sick fuck went to a nice, pristine beach and thought it was missing ads as far as the eye could see? Most beaches are civically owned, for the enjoyment of the citizens. They put this on the beach, and then tell us not to litter? Ads are pollution.

In ""Two All-Beef Patties Special Sauce Lettuce Cheese Pickles Onion on a Sesame Seed LIE!""

This thread is great. Four words: "sippin' the hater-ade".

In "Curious George: Martial Arts Monkeys"

Link fixed: Vancouver West Aikikai.

squidranch: unbendable arm is a pretty lame trick, IMO. Nevertheless it does show the beginner how relaxing can make you stronger than getting tense. At my dojo, we never did unbendable arm. Ishiyama-sensei had way more bizarre things to show us.

I'm looking for grace, beauty, suppleness, subtleness and a zen-like state that will lift me to the next level of consciousness. You can't get this from a martial art. You can train in a martial art where it is required that you find this within yourself. I have done aikido and that might be one path to get where you want to go.

In "Russian scientists determine that "whipping therapy" can cure depression and suicide crises"

This doesn't surprise me. In aikido there's a lot of controlling people through mild pain. After a few hundred cycles of muscle-twist/release, you're absolutely flying on endorphins. I can see why, biologically, people do S&M. I wonder if people who do cutting are unconsciously after the same thing. (Well, assuming they aren't attention whores blogging about it).

In "Air India - 331 Dead; everybody walks."

One of the professors in my high school died on the flight. I don't know what to think about this. I never followed the case over the years, but it seems that those two individuals were probably guilty. I have never grokked the closure concept. Our justice system isn't supposed to bring about the climax of a narrative, it's supposed to produce justice. You want closure, see a movie. I really feel for the families but that's the way it is. I'm dismayed at the incompetence of CSIS et al., more than anything. Between this and the Arar case I have to ask what good our security services is actually doing against terrorism. Sorry, but fuck lynching, 'kay? I wouldn't shed a tear if these gentlemen met a premature ending, but we're supposed to be on the side of civilization here.

In "Buddy Rich jams with Animal"

I remember that clip from when it aired. I thought it ended with Animal throwing his drum kit at Rich.

In "Compressing your CSS with PHP"

Thank you, fuyugare. This hack is total rice.

In "Tentacles of Desire."

The Japanese engravings are real. But I call shenanigans on the Victorian writer and the rest of the site. It's a clever satire. With rather sketchy footnotes it purports to document a 19th-century "50 Miles Per Hour Club". And Victorian fursuits. Please. Consider the alternative: if fursuit sex has some long and venerable history, one day it's going to have a liberation movement. Even if true, this history must be surpressed at all costs.

In ""To those who value the Charter yet oppose the protection of rights for same-sex couples, I ask you:"

An American friend of mine once said: "Wow. Canada is like the Google of countries."

In "Discover the network."

It would be one thing if these paranoid diagrams were being drawn up during the Clinton years. But the Dems have lost everywhere. Shouldn't they be giving it a rest? And still the rhetoric is ratched up -- as if it wasn't enough that the Left was out of power, they have to be eliminated.

In "Thomas Friedman & the Chocolate Factory"

I agree with everything, but what's with the Willy Wonka reference? Is Friedman one of the nasty children? Does that mean he will undergo some horrible deformity after falling into a confectionery contraption?

In "On the morality of pr0n."

How else does one get those people to listen? Oh, and you've had success with this strategy? I am reminded by the saying, purported to be Native American wisdom: One cannot awaken someone who is pretending to be asleep. Everyone's piling on me because they enjoy confounding fundamentalists with contradictions in the Bible. I'm an atheist and went to Catholic school and have done my share of that too. But I've come to see how useless that is. The beliefs of everyday Christians are not based on the Bible. Repeat. Not based on the Bible. They are based in the values they received from their community, which they are told emanates from the Bible. Certitude in faith does not come from logical coherence, it is achieved through the emotional experiences they have with the Church, or through their own private intuitions. So, knocking down Bible passages like they were faulty syllogisms is just pointless. The believer has already elevated faith, and trust in authority, over reason. Even if -- particularly if -- you rend their arguments to tatters, you ensure they will retreat to the safety of tradition, and say "I know what I believe, and you're wrong." If someone's had success at convincing a believer based *solely* on Bible passage Crossfire, I'd like to hear it. I do think that one can sway believers, but not in the head-on, smartypants manner suggested. You'd have to make counterappeals to them in the same way their Church made its appeal. That's a whole other post though.

I'm not sure you could call this a debate about the morality of porn in general. The letter-writer is not discussing morals, as much as porn's compatibility with Christianity. And Domai's genre is not quite pornography either. Aside: point-counterpoint on verses of the Bible is such a phony way to debate. Invariably, you'll have one person who likes to think their lifestyle is justified by a book s/he doesn't read, trading interpretations with a person who doesn't believe in the book at all. What a waste of space.

In ""A guy named Arkhipov saved the world.""

I probably should have posted a link to this story instead. That's where the tagline came from. Robert McNamara was National Security advisor at the time, and he came away from the event profoundly disillusioned about his own management of the crisis, proclaiming the human race had surived by "luck". You can see it in the amazing documentary, The Fog of War. Thomas S. Blanton of the National Security Archive organized the event. He agrees that Kennedy and Khruschev were determined not to start a war, but believes that events could have forced their hand anyway. See this archived discussion -- search the page for "Was it blind luck".

In "Furious George Tries To Get Rid Of Adrenalin"

I don't think there's a direct solution to adrenaline. But you can limit the duration. I think what prolongs it is that one keeps re-living it in one's head, trying to get a better outcome. But you can't, and you just re-inject the bloodstream with the fight-or-flight chemicals. So try to turn that off, at least until tomorrow. You did the absolute best thing with the 911 call and by giving the police what they need to do their jobs. Bananas ))) to you for a citizen's job well done. side notes: Where do you live roughly? West End? Targeting Turks? I'm baffled. Unless these white guys are such losers they are still carrying one of those Balkan-style grudges from 1342 or something.

In "Curious, Sellout?"

I'm lucky enough to work in something I supposedly love, programming. I really feel it's a calling of sorts. I've always been on the fringes of open source, power-to-the-people projects. But I can't really do that stuff. I'm smart enough, and I care enough, but it turns out I'm not the kind of guy who can work on a mad science project in his bedroom, all alone. Or, rather, I can, but I never really complete my projects. So... day jobs. After giving up a lot of my youth to a keyboard and a monitor, there's very little evidence I was even alive. Websites vanish, software revs. And most of what you wrote was doomed to failure, and was probably a bad idea in the first place, usually assisting the director of IT in keeping up with the buzzword du jour. In theory I'm smart enough to go indie, and work on projects that I really care about. I tried that, and now my bank account is going into double digits. I just don't have the drive to work on something in my bedroom all alone, like when I was a teenager. Today I cashed in some mutual funds, so now I've got half a year before I'm on the street or whatever. I was just contacted by a company I swore I would never, ever work for again. The owner specializes in ULTIMATE sellouts -- taking a radical, revolutionary stance, but secretly he's a sociopath, who would sell his customers' souls for a dollar and fifty cents. But beggars can't be choosers, and I sent them my résumé. The only thing I've found really fulfilling is a volunteer tutoring gig I started at a local high school. I do like turning their minds on, but you'd have to be insane to want to be a high school teacher in today's system. Even the teachers there tell me so.

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