mushin no shin

Few things warm my heart like seeing a half million people standing up against oppression and bigotry. The ignorant xenophobic redneck chest beating has really gotten unbearable lately, and this is a fantastic antidote. As my Aussie friends would say, “good on ya, mates”. I’m with you.
UPDATE: Just want to give props to Harry at [...]

We had a little fun with some tricky SQL today, which put me in the mood to share my masterpiece, for the morbidly curious. There’s nothing particularly fancy here, just a whole lot of data coming from a lot of different places. Well anyway, enjoy:
# Days Sales Outstanding
$qry = $db->prepare(”
select
dss02_chan.description as chan,
if(master_sales.soldto like ‘9%’ or
master_sales.soldto=’FSFSFS’,
‘Company1′,’Company2′) [...]

Reasearchers have conducted a study of particular interest to those of us in the magazine business.

Nazim Qadir. Taxi Driver. Kirkuk. 2/7/06.
Who was Nazim Qadir? Is that the sum of his life? What where his dreams? What were his plans for 2/8/06? We’ll never know.
Yes, I just got back form the march, and it was truly a moving experience. I’ve attended a number of these things, but this one really got [...]

Well, I’m off to the protest, perhaps I’ll see ya there.

I’ve made a pleasant recent discovery — one of those “I can’t believe I never knew about this” sort of things. It’s called the Classic Arts Showcase, and it runs commercial-free on Comcast public-service channel 9. (According the website it’s also available for Dish).
It’s sort of like a classical or high-art version of MTV. Apparently [...]

Well that was an interesting way to spend the evening. Somehow I got pegged to take part in a survey for 105.9. They spun up 600 song clips and had us rate ‘em.
So if you notice the station suddenly playing a whole lot more from Genesis, Yes, The Police, and Rush — and a lot [...]

Yikes! Here’s the danger with that “save draft” function, it’s way too easy to leave something hanging. So anyway Huck tagged me with this here book meme, so let’s go ahead and lay it out.
[1] Name 5 of your favorite books

The Illuminatus Trilogy - Robert Shea & Robert Anton Wilson
Hoo-boy, how to describe this one? [...]

Just a quick pointer to an excellent article at Freedom Democrats that hits exactly the message I’ve been trying to push:
Democrats need to realize that while some of their liberal issues may break 50%, they need to focus on a higher bar of 60% or more. Something like a slim majority of Americans being pro-choice [...]

I almost never watch award shows. I think it must have been 15 years since the last time I watched the Oscars. But last night:

John Stewart was hosting
Brittney was liveblogging, and
I couldn’t find a damn thing else to watch. Fox didn’t even have the decency to give us re-runs of our Sunday cartoons — fuckers. [...]