Generalities: January 2004 Archives

I found a really nice essay on donavanhall.net entitled,"Realism and Subjectivity".

It's an interesting essay about the notion of modern art, although I suspect the author may mean abstract modern art. It leads the author to the breakthrough moment of understanding of why exactly modern art annoys him.

For the same reasons the author of the essay is annoyed with modern art, I find myself enjoying modern art . I enjoy standing back and just being enraptured by the sheer confusion and utter nonsense of a Jackson Pollock piece.

Finally last night we managed to put away all the Christmas decorations and the tree. Next stop, finish the Christmas Cards!

I can't wait to get down to the St. Paul Winter Carnival Ice Palace. I plan to scope it out this weekend and then take the kids down there. I think the kids will be blown away by a castle made of ice.

I was talking about coinage/numismatics with a friend the other day. We spent a little time discussing the new dollar coin, aka "The Golden Dollar".

Here is my personal complaints about the new dollar, in no special order. Now, these complaints don't reflect incompentence on the mint's part, as some important design specs were codified by Congress.

• It's not quite golden enough. This is especially irksome if you get a new one that hasn't gotten much circulation. In the right light it reflects about the same way a quarter does. A bi-color approach would have been preferable in my way of thinking.
• It's too close to the same size as a quarter.
• I associate the lack of reeding on the edges with lower denomination coins, like pennies and nickels. It seems odd that this doesn't have reeding.
• I prefer presidents on my money. I know this might preclude women in the short run, but is it that cool to be on a one dollar coin which will probably only be slightly more successful than the Susan B. Anthony dollar coin? A Theodore Roosevelt coin would suit me just fine.
• It weighs close to the same amount as a quarter, so it's hard to tell without looking whether you grabbed a quarter or a dollar out of your pocket. (I know one has reeding and the other doesn't, but I'm talking about heft right now.)

What do I like?

• Although I know this in tension with my previous comment, I like Sacagawea on the coin. I have always been fascinated by the Lewis and Clark expedition, and she get's high marks for carrying a baby the whole way and making other contributions to the trip.
• I like dollar coins in general. It works in Canada just fine. I think the U.S. just needs to stop making dollar bills.

In the next month I am going to experiment paying for most small purchases with dollar coins. So far I have to say it brought an unexpected smile to the face of the cafeteria workers at my company and the barista at my local espresso shop.

I am the only health person in my family at the moment. The kids are shedding germs like white long hair cats at a black angora sweater factory. So far I have managed to stay healthy by washing my hands every three minutes. I have managed not to get the last few illnesses so I am crossing my fingers this time as well.

I found this quote on the web and nearly fell out of my chair laughing.

Unfortunately, it's a little wordy to go on a t-shirt, but it's still very funny.

Here's an odd bit in last night's State of the Union speech.

I was fascinated that this topic got an entire paragraph. It just seems strange to me. I'm not for steroids in sports, but it seems an odd thing to draw attention to in a nationally televised speech. Personally, I would have added talk show hosts to my list of people who shouldn't be using drugs as well.

Ever have a day where there is no motivation to do anything? I am having a string of these days. Once I get started I am fine, but starting is the problem. Uggh. I am off to have sushi for lunch. Nothing picks me up like a little raw fish.

O.K., I admit it I don't follow celbrity gossip news very well. I don't read People magazine, even in a doctor's office when there is nothing else to read. However, even I usually hear about the marriage before their divorce/annullment. So it appears that sometime in the last month, I'm not sure when, Britney Spears got married and the divorced or annulled in something like 55 hours. The strangest part about this event, is why so many people care. Oddly enough, I became aware of it by reading a op-ed piece somewhere that suggested Britney's sham marriage meant that gays and lesbians should be legally allowed to marry. I guess the thinking was something along the lines of, if hetero's can marry on a whim, why can't non-hetero's marry after thoughtfully considering it. Not sure I follow that line of logic. In any case, on some days I am just libertarian enough to think maybe the state ought not to be involved in who can marry.

Critical Section has a bit of a write-up bemoaning the two party system and suggest proportional representation. He later points out there may be some problems with this approach. I am not a fan of proportional representation, which I believe swings government away from a democratic republic to a more democratic-mob rule. I see this as problematic because it gives too much power to the fringes of political view and is to easily swayed by the issue of the day rather than a longer term strategy. I don't think a direct democracy would be a better system.

However, there is another way to be able to get third party views more air time, it's called Condercet voting. This would allow people rank their candidates as Nader, Gore, Bush, without them worrying that ranking Nader as their number one choice they would give the election to Bush. Another example of a ranking would be Perot, Bush Sr. (the first), Clinton. In this case the election in 1992 would have likely gone to Bush Sr. This kind of system would allow for a third party candidate to be successful enough to really install a third party into American politics. The system today encourages people to not "throw away their votes" almost enforces a two-party system.

One of the more interesting ideas I came across was in the trilogy, "Red Mars", "Green Mars", "Blue Mars". There lower house was composed of people drafted from fairly small districts. You were drafted by random lottery and it was civic duty much like jury duty. Being just like jury duty it was an honor people tried to avoid. Now you might say this is lunacy to let people chosen at random govern. Well, in many states people chosen at random sit in judgement in capital criminal cases. If they can choose who lives and dies they certainly could passs a few laws. Perhaps our laws would be more readable.

I was playing a game of chess today. At the end of the game, looking for some way to force a draw or a stalemate, I started to wonder about winning the cold war.

The way I look at it he cold war was a war fought by four techniques.

• Proxy
• Secret Mini Wars
• "MAD"
• Diplomacy

In the end the U.S. is said to have won. The values of the west has achieved an almost universal currency versus a now discredited soviet style communism. The U.S.S.R. no longer exists and there is no global power who has the same military capability, yet.

But what did we win. Well we won the right to clean up a number of failed and failing nations like Iraq, Afghanistan, the states of former Yogoslavia, etc..

Metaphorically, it is almost like instead of having to blow up one massive asteroid headed towards the U.S. we are now left with having 25 different fragments of an asteroid headed in our direction. Not only do the fragments ahve great ability to do damage, but they influence each other.

The peace divident that peole dreamed about will take years to appear until the rule of law, local and international is firmly established in the left over proxies that both the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. left scattered around the globe.

So when the cold war was on, it mostly seemed like a draw due to M.A.D., but the U.S. slowly kept winning economically until the U.S.S.R. collapsed. Once it collapsed we were left cleaning up the mess, they had created. Seems like a sort of booby prize to me.