superluminal

new tiny ghosts book available in stores now

2009-11-04T18:53:40Z

Pleased to announce that the second tiny ghosts anthology is now available. Admittedly, every comic in the anthology is already available online for free. However, if you buy the book, then you can take it with you and enjoy tiny ghosts in all sorts of places that are not internet accessible - such as airplanes, deserted islands, and maximum security prisons. In addition, the anthology contains several behind the scenes segments that explain how the comic is created.

You can get more information and order the book direct from me at:
http://www.tinyghosts.com/books/

or, you can get it at amazon at:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1931468281/invisiblecoll-20

If you get it from me, the book will come signed. If you get it from amazon, I won't have to walk to the post office.

halloween

2009-11-01T00:05:34Z

I really hate the 'going out' holidays. The ones where people are somehow obligated to go to a bar or a party or something like that. Like New Year's Eve or the Superbowl or like today - Halloween. I really hate crowds and loud places, and the bars and parties on days like this are extra loud and extra crowded. And I never feel comfortable in places like that. I always feel out of place, or unwanted or generally awkward. I don't like getting bumped around and having to yell to be heard. I hate having to deal with drunk people and the things that drunk people want to talk about. What's that you say, "just stay in?" I know, that's what I mostly want to do, but it gets real annoying because everybody I know demands that I should go to their drunken loud crowded places because they are under the mistaken presumption that somehow I'll "loosen up and have fun." They can't understand that I hate places like that and never have fun and immediately want to leave as soon as I arrive. But they make me feel bad for not going.

And what's worse, is that somehow, I feel bad for not going. I know I am going to hate it, but part of me asks why, if everybody else apparently thinks it is so awesome, do I hate it? Shouldn't I love places like that? Everyone else seems to. Everyone else begs me to come 'enjoy myself', so what is wrong with me that I prefer places that are less sweaty and a bit quieter? I start to have self-doubts that maybe deep inside I'm what they all tell me I am, a horrible depressed loser that is incapable of enjoying himself. Admittedly I almost never enjoy myself no matter where I am so they are probably right. I start thinking that maybe there is some switch in my head that I can turn to make me feel less awkward and more gregarious and want to go do all those things that people keep telling me are 'fun' That makes me feel even worse about myself and my decision to stay in and miss out on what everyone will later tell me was the "bestest evening they ever had!"

For similar reasons, I really don't think it is a good idea to sign up for art shows like that one I have running tonight. I'm probably supposed to be there right now, standing by my work and talking it up to the people who've gone for the Halloween-themed open house. It is supposed to be 'fun' and the kind of thing that artists love to do. But I hate the idea of being seen in front of my work. I'd feel uncomfortable and awkward and embarrassed because I see all the flaws in the work that maybe they don't see, or maybe they do see but they are too polite to say anything to my face. I'd much rather just show up at the gallery under cover of darkness, hang up my work, and then run away and hide until it is over. Of course, that also makes me feel bad because here I am with this great chance to do what most people would consider the most fun part about being an artists, and I'm missing it and instead hiding in my basement reading for next week's class and writing depressing notes in my blog. Ugh.

artificial fakeness

2009-10-29T11:46:49Z

Sometimes I wish I was making stuff up. I recently saw the new condiment "Neutrasweet Pink" the other day. Now as far as I can tell, this is a product made with one kind of fake sugar (aspartame, aka "the Blue sugar") that is designed to taste just like another kind of fake sugar (saccharine aka "the Pink sugar") for those people who I just just love the taste of saccharine but don't want to the negative health effects associated with artificial sweeteners? Seriously? Is that what America's scientists are spending their time on? Creating substitutes for fake sugar?

I also saw an ad in Metro the other day touting how this bus driver had driven over 2 million miles in his career without getting into a single crash. Some very trivial math implies that this dude has been averaging 2,000,000 / (30x40x50) = 33 mph down congested DC streets for the last 30 years! It's kind of nice to imagine this crazy person careening through DC in a runaway bus for 30 years, but I bet the more likely possibility is that Metro is totally making this number up because they figure no one in Washington is capable of doing division anymore.

homemade

2009-10-28T21:45:27Z

Why is it that lots of people out there grow their own marijuana, but as far as I know, no one grows their own heroin? I did some checking on line, and getting opium out of poppies is trivial, and turning it into heroin isn't all that much harder. Plus, the cops know what marijuana looks like, but I'd bet dollars to donuts that they have no idea what an opium poppy looks like. You could grow a whole field of them and no one would catch you. Plus, the heroin you make yourself is probably cleaner and purer than what you get on the street. If I was a smack addict, I'd definitely grow my own.

I think it is humorous that the tv set in the cafeteria at law school is always turned to the People's Court. Maybe I should watch one of those courtroom shows sometime to see how close to real law it is.

btw, I haven't formally announced it yet or anything, but the second tiny ghosts anthology is now officially for sale on the tiny ghosts website. Let's see if I can't beat the sales of the first book!

torpedos

2009-10-21T21:58:55Z

A lot of times when a group of people want to sue someone, they have to come up with an organization so they can establish standing. So they just make something up. I was reading a case today brought by a group of people called "The Association of Irritated Residents." It doesn't really matter what you call the organization, it is just a legal construct. I think it would be fun to make up organizations for the sole purpose of having their names appear in court documents. "The Association of People Who Think Scalia is Kind of a Dick Sometimes." Imagine getting to argue in front of the supreme court with a name like that! Ginsberg might vote to grant cert on that basis alone.

I'm participating in another art show in a few weeks. This one is at the Torpedo Factory in Alexandria VA, from Oct. 31, to Nov. 3. If you are in town, maybe you could go? Don't fret, there are no real torpedos there anymore. I am told it is reasonably safe. More info at Art Outlet (http://artoutlet.org/news/events/ofrenda-art-for-the-dead).

pigeon hunter

2009-10-20T23:49:22Z

I was walking in the city today and I passed by this guy sitting on the sidewalk feeding pigeons. He spread out some seeds or something and a whole flock of them came over. Then the guy reached out and grabbed one of the pigeons, stood up, and walked off with it. That seemed sort of strange to me.

All of the places to get coffee near my office are chain places. I was thinking today that someone should make a chain where every store is different. I don't know much about retail, but I believe that the two reasons why chains are a successful business model are that 1) they give the consumer confidence that every meal will be the same, and 2) economies of scale allow them to operate more cheaply than independent places. But why doesn't someone make like a chain of independent coffee places? They could benefit from the economies of scale, and I don't want every cup of coffee I get to be identical, so it would be an advantage. I am a consumer who drinks a lot of coffee and I would prefer a nice, homey place that doesn't look like a McDonalds. Maybe this new chain could afford the high downtown rents and I could get coffee at a place I liked. If I knew something about business maybe I'd start a chain like that. Although I guess that since no one seems to be doing it, it is probably a dumb idea.

just us

2009-10-18T15:13:17Z

I was getting coffee early this morning and there was this girl standing in front of me who had this crazy wild hair and I thought that it looked great and it was pretty cool that she would style her hair like that. Then I thought about the time of day and the fact that she appeared to be wearing pajamas under her winter coat and I decided that she probably just hadn't bothered to brush it yet. I also saw a girl waiting in line today wearing earmuffs. I guess winter is almost here.

As I walked back with my coffee I was thinking that if I ever got to write the Justice League comic I would have them fight a group of Ayn Rand objectivist supervillains who would call themselves the "Just Us League." As in, "Superman, you may fight for truth, justice, and the American way, but you'll never win because here's the truth: we fight for just us, and that's the American way!" I probably wouldn't literally call them objectivists in the comic because it's a comic book and not political commentary, but it still would be a pretty good pun I think. I'm surprised no one has thought of it before.

I probably shouldn't be wasting time thinking about these things as I have perfectly good things to think about these days, like the fact that I signed up for the California bar and it turns out they don't offer California bar classes in DC during the winter. That's a real problem that needs my attention. But no, here I am wasting what little brain power I have blogging about objectivist supervillains with bad puns for names.

presents

2009-10-15T12:03:33Z

When I started law school, I decided that when I was done I was going to buy myself something expensive and unnecessary. Right now the two leading contenders are an actual animation cel from The Lorax, and a first edition copy of Silent Spring. Both of those would be great additions to the office of an environmental lawyer, don't you think? Also making a strong last minute showing is a vintage Vox Phantom Special VI guitar, which doesn't have the environmental connection as the other two, but is equally unnecessary.

Of course, my enthusiasm for wasting thousands of dollars on that sort of stuff has been significantly dampened by the whole lack of job prospects thing. What's the point of having a Lorax animation cel to hang on the wall of your office when you don't have an office? Seems almost like it would be mocking me in a way. This last semester at school has been pretty hard, energy-wise. I think one of the things that makes school exciting is the promise of it, you know? Like trying to imagine all the great things you are going to get do (or large amounts of $$$ you will make) when you are finished? But now, when the profs say things like, "when you are out practicing in the real world you'll need to remember that..." it just kinda stings a bit. It almost seems pointless to even bother finishing. I've got enough momentum to get me through the next few months, but I'm glad I don't have to keep up my energy level any longer than that. I also signed up to take the bar exam in Feb. That too seems expensive and completely pointless. Hopefully I'll have the energy and/or inertia to make it through. At least I'll get a trip to San Francisco out of it.

good fit

2009-10-10T17:28:24Z

So I applied last month for a job with a tiny law firm that specialized in law related to airports. I got rejected because, according to the managing partner, I wasn't specialized enough in airport law. Now, 90% of what airports have to deal with is environmental regulations (e.g. NEPA), so I would've though that I'd be about as close as they could get. How would one specialize in airport law? They don't even have an airport law class at Georgetown!

I would be more willing to accept the guy's reasoning, except that this morning I got a call from a headhunter that was looking for someone to work in the public affairs office of a Dept. of Defense agency. Now, if you've seen my resume you'll notice that I have nothing that even remotely resembles public affairs experience, but all the headhunter cared about was the fact that I used to have a security clearance. She wasn't that picky.

So, what I find annoying is why are the places I want to work so focused on every minute detail of my resume and willing to reject me even if they think I'm 99% qualified, but places that I don't want to work are willing to give me jobs even though I doubt I'm even 1% qualified? It is like the job market is mocking me. I once long ago got rejected for a job as an environmental engineer because, according to the hiring manager, even though I was the most qualified person, he noticed that I had some nuclear engineering background and he decided that I'd never be happy doing just pure environmental engineering with no nuclear work so he'd hire a less qualified, more focused person instead. And yet the headhunter this morning seemed to completely skip over three MS degrees and a JD that all scream, "I do not want to work in public relations!" and say that she thinks I'd "be a great fit!" Why can't I find someone in a field that I want to work in willing to hire pretty much anybody? It is quite frustrating.

alaska photos

2009-10-05T11:19:12Z

I've been way to depressed about the whole failure to find a job thing to come up with anything witty to say here. so instead, I'm just going to link to a whole bunch of photos I took in Alaska this summer. I took almost exactly one billion photographs, and these are the ones I think came out best:

http://picasaweb.google.com/superluminal23

tour guides

2009-09-28T04:04:46Z

So I had this idea for a new kind of tour guide. Basically it would be a dude like me who knows his way around DC. Out-of-towners would tell the guide the sort of things that they are interested in, and what kind of food they like, and then, the guide would take them around town to the museums and restaurants and whatever else the guide figures they'd want to do. The guide would help them navigate the subway, and steer them away from the tourist traps, and make sure they didn't get lost, and take them to the really cool places that only the locals know about. But there'd be flexibility involved and no set itinerary. It'd be like having a friend who lives in town to show you around. I think this would be a big hit with affluent out-of-towners, especially if the tourists were foreigners and the guide spoke their language. There'd be almost no overhead for this kind of business, and I bet you could just advertise it on Craigslist. I'm not serious about starting this sort of business myself, but I think someone else should do it... and then maybe pay me royalties for the idea.

Also, why isn't there a MMORPG sports game? If people play World of Warcraft non-stop, and love sports video games, why not make a game where you get 28 people to each play one football player in a giant multi-player game. People could form teams with their fantasy-football friends and play in leagues over the internet. This seems like such an obvious idea to me. It'd be a huge hit. Yet I'm not aware of such a thing existing. Get on this video game companies, you are missing out on many sales... and then maybe pay me royalties for the idea.

scripting

2009-09-27T00:32:19Z

I saw that new apocalyptic CGI movie "9" this week, and I have to say that I'm getting more and more disappointed by the really bad scripts that getting produced these days. A number of movies I've seen this summer, like the new Star Trek and District 9 (no relation) and this 9 all looked absolutely great, with exciting action sequences, special effects, sets, costumes, etc, but absolutely horrendous plots. I mean the ending of 9 made absolutely no thematic sense. Most of the movies I've seen this year have plot holes so big you can drive a truck (or giant alien spaceship) through. I know I know my Mom always says, "It's just a movie, watch it and don't think about it so much." But I'm not thinking about it much at all and yet the script problems are so glaring I can't believe that no one else in the theater notices. Are people paying attention to the movie at all? The same thing happened to video games a number of years ago. They started to have better and better graphics will worse and worse game play. It's like no one cares about substance anymore, they just want pretty flashing things and laser beams. And its not like these script problems are hard to fix, it's just that the writers and directors don't even seem to care. It's just not important to them.

It's like that doofus Joe Wilson "You Lie!" guy. Now I'm all for public dissent, and I don't really care so much about the breech of decorum when a Congressman heckles the President (I wish that happened more during the Bush years), but what gets me is that Wilson was fundamentally wrong in his criticism. No credible news source found anything untrue about the President's statement. But that doesn't seem to matter to any of Wilson's supporters. No one cares that he was wrong, no one cares about the substance of his statement. They only cared about the style. I think this substance over style problem is getting worse, and I don't think that's a good direction to be headed. People need to start paying more attention to things.

200 of 200

2009-09-14T20:49:34Z

I'm rapidly coming up on sending out my 200th job application, and I've found myself in a bit of a philosophical quandary. If I were to rank all the places I've applied to in order of how much I want that particular job, the scoring might be a bit fuzzy, but logically there would have to be one application that I would rank #200 out of 200. What if the only job I get is the #200 job? Sure the first 10 or 20 places would probably all make me equally happy, but you would have to think that if there are 199 jobs I'd rate better than job X, job X would most likely make me pretty miserable right? I made the mistake once before of taking a job I knew I was going to hate, and it was a horrible thing that spiraled into a nightmare I still haven't clawed my way out of yet. So why would I take a job that was so bad I would rank it #200 out of 200? That doesn't seem like a good career move.

But on the other hand, beggars can't be choosers right? I mean if I send out 200 applications and only receive one single offer, I'd be a fool to turn that offer down, wouldn't I? How arrogant would that be!?! And if I did turn down the one job I was likely to ever get, then am I damning myself to a lifetime of unemployment? And would I lose sympathy from everyone because hey, I got an offer, I turned it down, now it's my fault I'm unemployed.

But then what would the answer be? I've applied to everyplace that I think I'd be a decent fit for. I can't imagine magically finding a job I haven't already applied for that would rank high in my 200. So does that mean I'm done? Should I just stop sending out resumes? That doesn't seem like a very satisfying answer either. What if I get no offer from any of the 200? Then what do I do? Or do I keep applying for jobs I am pretty sure I don't want, just so I can have the illusion of progress? Send out resumes to the top 50 places over and over again in the hopes they've changed their mind?

None of these pathways seems very promising.

Fla. St. U. J. of Land Use & Envtl. L.

2009-09-09T21:00:33Z

So, nothing all that important going on in my life these days. Just a few little tidbits. First, I am now actually a professional blogger! I'm getting paid to work on the Georgetown Security Law Brief. I'm not providing commentary so it's really more of a news aggregator than a blog, and they don't pay me very much, but the important thing is that they are paying me to keep it updated. This is better than my last semi-pro blogging gig, where they only offered to pay me in beer. Mostly because I didn't actually get any beer out of it.

Second, I can announce that my article on climate change and the Kyoto Treaty will be published in the spring 2010 issue of the Florida State University Journal of Land Use and Environmental Law. Unlike that blogging thing, they are not paying me, and since I don't have any prospects for getting an after-graduation job anyway, it's not like this publication is likely to help with my career. But it's still something to brag about I guess. Next to driving a motorcycle, there's nothing that the ladies like more than a guy who's had a law review article published.

Third, this week is the fourth anniversary of my webcomic tiny ghosts. I thought everybody who knew me already knew about the comic, but I have recently been informed that this is not true. So if you are not familiar with it, become familiar with it, and then tell all your friends about it. They will thank you for it.

Finally, I'm sitting on campus right now in the library overlooking the courtyard and they are BBQ-ing something and the entire courtyard is filled with smoke. It looks like a forest fire. I hope the building doesn't burn down.

copyright

2009-09-03T11:45:37Z

I was reading my copyright law textbook the other day and in the intro it was saying that copyright was important because without it people couldn't make money and if they couldn't make money they wouldn't create. The idea being that copyright increases the social good because it encourages production of arts. But is money the proper motivator for the production of arts? It seems to me that if your sole goal in crating is to make money, you will deliberately create something designed to make money, and not something designed to be as 'artistic' as possible. This is why the world is subjected to crap like Britney Spears albums and Stephanie Meyers novels. There is little if any artistic merit to their work, but they bring in a pile of cash. I once heard that Stephen King said that he could write much more literary novels if he wanted to, but he writes scholck because schlock is what sells. Limiting (or getting rid of) copyright law wouldn't stop people from making money from their creative work, because even if there is copying and plagiarism going on, some people will still buy the original from you. However it would stop people from making obscene amounts of money from their work, because the only thing that gets copied in large quantities are the things that are the most popular. Perhaps if the law was such that you couldn't make an obscene amount of money from your work, people would stop trying to create works designed to make an obscene amount of money? Sure, there might be fewer creative 'arts' produced, and you'd have to do a little research to find them, but I think the overall quality would be higher, and maybe that would maximize the public good more than the current system which awards appealing to the lowest common denominator? (Side note, if you really want to make money you should probably be getting an MBA, not an English degree.)

I say this and put my money where my mouth is. All of the creative works I've made, including two novels and the comic strip are public domain. I retain no copyright on any of them, not even a Creative Commons license, and have probably given away more copies than I've sold. I created them because I wanted to create, not to make money. I suppose you could argue that they are pretty poor quality so I wouldn't make money anyway, but hey, at least I'm trying...

In other publication-related news, I just found out yesterday that one of my law articles was accepted for publication in an environmental law journal. That's pretty exciting I think, even though, like all scholarly journals, they aren't going to pay me a dime. Like most academics I'm interested in getting my scholarly articles published to impress the ladies, not to make bank.

alcoholism

2009-08-30T14:39:56Z

So I was at a bar last night where the menu had a Kerouac Cocktail, named after Jack Kerouac and his "love of tequila." Now I'm a big Kerouac fan and like to see things named after him, but do you think it's respectful to name a mixed drink after a guy who died of alcoholism? Isn't that like naming a brand of nails after Jesus or a fast sports car after James Dean?

Cocktail was good though. Like most good tequila drinks they were successfully able to completely smother the taste of the tequila.

anticipation

2009-08-27T13:04:25Z

For the past few months I've thought that I'll start feeling less depressed once I've had a chance to start sending out resumes. But I've sent out ~150 in the past three days and I don't feel any better at all. Most of the places I've applied to explicitly said on their web sites that they were not hiring anybody. So it seems more like I'm just checking off boxes than doing anything that will actually lead to a job. On the plus side, I'll soon have a large number of new rejection letters for my rejection letter collection. It's quite an impressive collection already, and this new batch should really make it something special.

Speaking of something special, I'm sure you all remember the one-hit wonder indie band The Innocence Mission, right? Did you know that they kept putting out albums? I did not know this until recently. Did you know that one of their later albums, Birds of My Neighborhood is completely awesome? You've really been missing out if you stopped listening to them back in 1989.

change

2009-08-19T23:15:11Z

I was standing in the kitchen in the office this morning, like I’ve done every morning for the past few months, making coffee and looking at the mountains through the window. I was thinking how this is going to be the last time I do that, since this is my last day at this office and I fly home tomorrow. I was holding this little spoon that I always use to stir my coffee tighter and tighter, realizing that, after today in my reality this spoon will cease to exist, this kitchen will cease to exist, this view will cease to exist, everything about my life in Alaska will simply cease to exist. I can’t go back to that bar and drink Alaskan Amber on draft, and I can’t hike in the hills by the abandoned mine anymore, or sit by the dock at twilight and watch the cruise ships sail out of town. It’s not even that I really liked Alaska all that much, it’s more the feeling of finality that I found so distressing, the knowledge that change is coming and that, for better or worse, my life won’t be the same tomorrow as it is today.

But I guess that’s true of everyone’s life every single day. I’ve lived in a dozen places and had a dozen jobs, and each time I left that part of my life was closed forever. Even if you try to go back later, things won’t be the same, things never stay static. Once I went back to my old college years after I graduated and I found myself staring up at a window that used to be my friend’s dorm room so long ago. But it isn’t his room anymore. It’ll never be his room again. That part of my life, that version of reality simply doesn’t exist anymore. Even if I came back to Alaska at some point things would never be the same as they are now. I’d live in a different place, some of the people I know wouldn’t be here anymore, jobs, stores, everything (including me) would be different. It might be great to live here again, but it would never be the same as it is now.

But maybe that’s something about life we should embrace. It’s inevitable after all, you can’t stop change. Even if you don’t leave things still change, just on a slower scale. People still move away, your favorite restaurant closes only to be replaced with a different restaurant, the weather one summer is much different than last. I guess there’s nothing to do but just accept it, watch each day go by, watch each season go by and realize that it’s all going to change, that no matter how much you want this particular version of reality to be static forever, that’s not possible, and the best we can do is to hope that the new version of reality right around the corner is somehow even better than the one we are living in right now, or at least good enough so that you don’t miss this one so much when you are gone.

That’s what I was thinking about this morning and a clutched that stupid little spoon trying to somehow hold onto it forever. But you can’t hold on to anything forever. Take a good hard look at where you are right this second, appreciate your surroundings. Understand that no matter how tightly you cling to the people, places, and things around you, the world will never ever be the same as it is this exact moment.

small town folk

2009-08-15T23:20:20Z

I think the year I spent in rural South Carolina really soured me on the idea of living in a small town. Since that time I've always said I want to live in a big city because small town folk are all inbred anti-intellectual uncultured hicks. But I'm starting think that maybe it was just South Carolina residents that are inbred anti-intellectual uncultured hicks. I've only been here in Juneau for two months now, and in some ways I'm starting to see that small town life isn't all that bad. The people here are, at least to a degree, friendly modern and interesting. And it's kinda fun to see the same people over and over again everywhere you go. I'm not the most outgoing person, and even I find it hard to go a day without bumping into someone I know on the street or in a coffeehouse or at the movies. I feel sort of welcome here, and that's a nice feeling. I can see why people like living in a place like this, even if there isn't as much to do here as in a big city. Maybe the people seem more interesting because they all have big city attitudes. Even though Juneau has less people living here then went to my college, it's still one of the biggest cities in Alaska, so the people here don't think of themselves as 'small town folk', they think of themselves as sophisticated city dwellers. So it's really the best of both worlds, you get the small town friendliness of living in the sticks, with some of the pro-culture, pro-intellectualism of living in the big city. Not a bad mix really.

north

2009-08-12T16:18:29Z

So, this weekend I travelled further north on the planet than I ever have before. It wasn't super-far north or anything, It was just above the 60th parallel, which is still 500 miles south of the Arctic Circle, but it was still pretty far north for me. And it also had the advantage of being in the Yukon. There isn't all that much in the Yukon to go see, outside of some mountains and forests, and Whitehorse makes Juneau look like a teeming metropolis, but it was still worth it to say that I've been to the Yukon. Plus I went swimming. who else here can say they've been swimming north of the 60th parallel? Not you.

Speaking of swimming, I learned that Alaska isn't the best place to shop for bathing suits. If you are coming up here to go swimming, you should probably bring your own suit with you. I'd imagine that this advice holds true whether you are considering swimming in Alaska or the Yukon.

glacier

2009-08-03T05:34:37Z

When my life is over, historians and biographers will no doubt engage in endless debates about my many accomplishments. And one question that will almost certainly come up again and again is "Did Chris ever lick a glacier?" My friends, the answer to that question is yes.

hoops

2009-08-01T05:26:32Z

So I've been working on my application to work at DOJ after graduation, and boy they don't make it easy. Their online submission form is the most annoying job application form I think I've ever seen. For example, it asks for references, but you can't just give them a name, phone, and email. You are required to find a street address for them too! You also can't just send them a transcript, you have to individually retype every single grade you got in every single class into their website. And then, at the end, just when you think you are done, they make you write TWO 2000 word essays about why you want to work at DOJ. Considering that I have almost no chance of actually getting a job there, having to write two essays seems like they are just trying to be difficult. I know that they probably want to 'weed out' people who aren't serious. But considering there are a million other opportunities working elsewhere that don't require writing essays and retyping your transcript into their website, they really aren't weeding out the unqualified, they are weeding out people who aren't so desperate that they are willing to jump through all these hoops for a miniscule chance at a job. Hiring the most desperate doesn't seem like the best way to staff your office DOJ! All that being said, I have to admit that I'm one of the losers desperate enough to jump through all those hoops for a miniscule chance at a job.

So there's this bar here in Juneau that has al these old-timey photos on the wall of life in Juneau 100+ years ago. The thing that really struck me about the photos is that in every one that shows the Channel, there are icebergs floating in it. Big ones. There are no icebergs anymore. I even asked some of the locals, and people who've been here for years told me they've never seen an iceberg in the Channel. I think that's pretty good evidence that the climate up here is radically different from where it was 100+ years ago.

water

2009-07-22T04:51:01Z

If I knew anything about how to get a company set up, I think it would be a cool idea to set up a water bottling plant here in Alaska that only bottles water coming off melting glaciers. There's plenty of those around nowadays. Then I'd ship it down to the lower 48 and sell it, with all the profits going to fund alternative energy research to stop global warming. I bet it would be a big success. It would make people feel better about drinking bottled water, and doesn't glacier melt water sound extra refreshing for some reason?

Alternately, if I was a rich republican, I'd start a company that would go to the poorest, driest regions of the world available, like Darfur or somewhere, and build a giant factory that would squeeze out all the water they could get from the soil, bottle it up, and export it back to the developed world to be sold as "the world's rarest water." I'm sure people would pay a premium for extra-rare water, don't you think? And if the peasants who lived near the factory really wanted the water, they'd be willing to outbid my factory for it, right? Isn't that the purest form of capitalism? Ayn Rand would be proud.

certainty

2009-07-19T03:11:22Z

I'm not the first person to say this, but I'm really starting to come to the conclusion that there is a major downside to the internet in that it makes almost everything instantly available. It sounds weird to say that, because everyone would agree that access to information generally a good thing. The problem is that it makes things too instantaneous. There's no room left for either wonder or debate. It used to be that kids could lie around and wonder what made the sky blue, or could discuss it with friends and argue their competing theories, or just ask around and see what other people said and try to deduce who's answer made the most sense. But now, type any question into Wikipedia and you have an almost indisputable answer in seconds. In a way it's great because it removes people's misperceptions and increases accuracy. But in another way it kinda sucks because it removes any need to think about anything, or argue your position with other people, or just lie around daydreaming and trying to figure it out yourself. I'm worried that the next generation of kids won't have the ability to work through problems themselves, and if the answer isn't easily available at their fingertips, they'll be completely stumped. I don't know, maybe I'm just becoming a grumpy old man who is afraid of change and new technology, but I think this is a problem.

In other news, if you hadn't noticed, tiny ghosts #200 came out the other day. Hooray me.

filling in the blank places on the map

2009-07-10T16:30:56Z

I'm always telling people that they should travel more and see the most exotic places they can get to, but I'm starting to think that maybe it isn't the best idea. The problem is that when you actually experience something first hand, it ruins any fantasy you have about a place, and that fantasy is often much better than the real thing. For example, I always figured that Vancouver Island was this vast uncharted primordial forest filled with mountains and bears, with very little human settlement. But I finally went there, and I drove all the way from Victoria to Nanaimo and the entire drive was filled with strip malls and fast food restaurants, and not really any places that could be considered uncharted or primordial. Turns out that Vancouver Island looks a lot like most of America, and there wasn't any time during the drive where I really felt that I might get lost anywhere. There were more Starbucks outlets in Naniamo than there are here in Juneau. Perhaps it would have been better to not have gone, and keep the fantasy alive you know? Everytime I actually go somewhere that I think is going to be really different, it is mostly the same old stuff. I've been thinking for a long time that I want to go to Madagascar and see primordial forest and get attacked my lemurs, and now I'm worried that it'll be nothing but mile after mile of McDonalds and car dealerships.

In other news, because semantics are important, I will no longer refer to the fact that I am incredibly bad at playing pool. Instead, I will claim that I am incredibly good at playing anti-pool. Please make a note of this.