I stayed at an older hotel in Manhattan this past week.

The room at the Roosevelt was much smaller that what I am used to staying in when I travel for business. Although the size threw me a little initially, I found that I really liked it. The scale of the room was very human and it had everything I needed close at hand. By the third day I found myself wishing my house were smaller.

The hotel was pretty nice. I love being within walking distance of my destination and it fit that requirement neatly. The only complaint I had about the hotel was the speed of the elevator. It might take 15 minutes to get to the lobby if you picked the wrong time of day. The first day I would pass on elevators that seemed crowded. By the last day I would cram myself in, no matter how many people were already in the elevator, since I didn’t know when the next one might make an appearance.

How To Blog, by Tony Pierce. [Link courtesy of Julie Leung]

This probably won’t amuse you unless you are or know some Lutherans.

Q. How do you know you are in Minnesota when you are watching Star Wars on the big screen?

A. When Obiwan says “May the Force be with you” the audience responds “and also with you.”

We celebrate Easter today. I’ll link to the archives for my thoughts about the movie The Passion from a year ago. So it’s been a year since I last posted my thoughts on that movie. A year later I actually dislike the movie far more than I did when I wrote that review. In fact I would go so far as to say I wish I hadn’t seen it. It freaks me out that they screen this thing at churches at Easter time now. I think when I wrote that review I was trying to like the movie since so many of my peers thought it was so important or good for people to see. Maybe I’ll post a longer screed about the movie later.

It’s funny how time changes memories and perceptions of experiences. Some happy fun things, like seeing The Gates in February, get bigger and more fun over time. Some tragic occurrences soften and lose their edge, some never lose their edge.

I went to Origami last night. I know, I already had sushi this week, why would I need to go again. I just wanted more fish, that’s all.

The service was only so-so. For instance my deluxe sushi platter came without wasabi and the server dissapeared for a long time after serving my food.

Everything had a nice fresh taste. It was the first time I had octopus sushi. It was pretty good. I was a little afraid it would be rubbery, but it was suprisingly pleasant. I liked the tuna well enough, although the toro I had for desert wasn’t worth the market price of 10.75 for two smallish pieces. The other standout fish was the salmon.

Jeannie, not big on sushi, ate the shrimp tempura, origami wontons, and the crab croquett appetizers. She seemed to like them all well enough.

For the price I expected more. Perhaps I would have enjoyed it more sitting at the sushi bar. In the end I’m not raving about Origami. I’m going to try the other sushi restaurants before I go back to Origami, even though I know it’s supposed to be the best in the Twin Cities.

I’ve suspected for a long time that word processors are eroding my ability to communicate in writing. Here is an article explaining “How Computers Cause Bad Writing.”

I wish sailing was considered more newsworthy. Somehow I completely missed Ellen Macarthur’s record setting solo sail around the world. 71 days, 14 hours, 18 minutes and 33 seconds is the new time to beat.

While I practically salivate when imagining myself rounding Cape Horn or crossing the Atlantic, I can’t fathom the intestinal fortitude of solo sailors going around the globe without touching land at these kinds of speeds. These folks are real rock stars to me.

Reminds me of a recent conversation I had with a friend. I asked him if he had any sailing planned. He said, “No, I put in a surround sound system.” I am still shaking my head over that. How could a surround sound system be considered in the same breath as sailing in the real world on the real ocean?

Usually I’m the guy who sends the cool links. This week I got a really cool one from my co-worker who prefers to be known as “my favorite co-worker”. Anyway check out this data visualization of baby name popularity, The Baby Name Wizard.

Here is the graph for my name.

Real Live Preacher writes in his piece “We Can Talk at Starbucks” about his daughter confiding in him about not believing in God. I was very impressed by his handling of the situation. I’ve seen similar scenario’s played out in very ugly ways. For a guy is in the God business, he handled it very gracefully.

I’m sympathetic to his daughter. I think all people who love, hit a wall eventually where you don’t feel it anymore. This can be in the context of faith in an unseen God or in the context of real flesh and blood relatioships, like marriage. What do you do when you hit the wall where you simply don’t feel it? I heard an interview with a religious author who felt like this period of crisis was a gift. It represented the brink of maturity where you choose to do something even though you aren’t overwhelmed by the romance and the feelings and the rush that you once had when it was all fresh and new.

I want to believe.

A lot of pixels have been spilled on the topic of gender in blogging. Lot’s of people have weighed in. Here is a very small sampling.

• Rebecca Blood weighs in
• Shelley Powers, You are Hurting Us
• Jeff Jarvis, Blogging white male
• Stephen Levy, Blogging Beyond the Men’s Club
• Dave P., “The problem with Blogrolls”

People have suggested many things to “remedy” the situation; some are interesting like removing blogrolls, others are designed to provoke and offend like labeling every link with gender and race.

Julie wrote one of my favorite posts on this topic, cutting right to the heart of the issue.

This speaks to the heart of the matter. We are all outsiders, stuck in our own local minima, unwilling or unable to see past our part of the curve and discover how much we resemble the rest of the sample.

While sympathetic to any person or group who is or has been historically downtrodden, I hate to listen to whining about how one group is more downtrodden than another. This is especially true when the discussion is dominated by digerati who are better off than 98% of the world’s population. Please folks, it’s not a contest. (Of course, I’ve read enough about gender politics to know that my attitude is easily written off as “that’s what the powerful always say.” That is an argument that is as useful as proclaiming that history is always written by the winners, so all history is basically wrong.)

I would like to mention that I would love to see tech conferences where gender is more equally represented. I don’t know how to fix that as I don’t send people to conferences, nor do I arrange for the speakers. Everyone should have an equal length line when they are waiting for the bathroom.

My blogroll is staying, mainly because it’s a convenient way for me to be able to find out what my online friends are saying. I’ll also continue my practice of linking to any authentic voice that speak to me irrespective of gender, race, ethnicity, orientation, political persuasion or any other self-imposed or other-imposed group identification.

So Young Joel wrote about Justice Scalia and the recent Supreme Court decision on the topic of the death penalty for juveniles.

Unlike Joel, I pretty much agree with Scalia.

I know this shocks my loyal readers.

Here is what I believe.

I’m not opposed to the death penalty in theory if it were carried out fairly. Since there are studies that seem to show the death penalty is always applied unfairly I would prefer it not be legal. I also see no justice in seeing the death penalty applied to people under some minimal age, probably 16. I also don’t see the mercy in sentencing a 16 year old to die of old age in prison. BTW, I’ve always lived in states without the death penalty and I’m happy about that.

But my opinion about the death penalty is outside the scope of the argument that Scalia makes.

Scalia’s criticism of the Supreme Court decision was because the court is making law, based on it’s perception of “evolving standards.” I, like Scalia, want the legislatures in each respective state to make laws not courts, especially not the federal courts. Then if the laws are lousy we can throw them out of office and get new people to make better laws. Scalia pointed out in a recent speech that it seems strange that anyone wants a world where laws are essentially made by nine unaccountable lawyers.

Now, if your issue is the death penalty, the court’s decision was a win, but only because the current set of juctices favor your position. The next set probably won’t favor your position. Then how happy are you going to be when they re-write your favorite laws. People on the current bench, like Justice Thomas, will be all to happy to have a conservative and activist court and will likely be achieving that goal in their lifetime.

Being a libertarian, I would like to see the maximum power aggregated in the smallest arena. So I prefer states to take up the important issues like when is it fair to apply the death penalty. If you can’t convince your fellow citizens move to a different state. The further away the decision is made, the less power you have to influence it.

I recognize this anti-federalist sentiment places me squarely in a quaint, nostalgic minority.

The problem is that if one starts talking this kind of “states rights” talk the next thing you know you accidentally sound like some wild eyed Dixiecrat trying to keep the people of color out of public universities.

This issue, as well as the Terry Schiavo case, are really making me think lately. Here is the most incendiary thing I’ve ever said on my blog. I’ll probably live to regret it.

How strange is the world when you have people who are desperate to keep Terry Schiavo alive and at the same time happy to bomb the hell out any muslim country and put juveniles to death? How strange is a world where people are upset that a cow, chicken, fish or sheep feels pain when slaughtered but are happy to legalize the purposeful ending of life of either an adult or an unborn fetus, a.k.a. a baby?