Stomping as a social disorder

We have a new tenant upstairs. He's a very big guy, goes about six-three, two-eighty, a real football player type. And he's a stomper. We can hear his every move. Into the kitchen: stomp, stomp, stomp! back to the living room: stomp, stomp, stomp! over to the bathroom: stomp, stomp, stomp! down the stairs and out the front door: stomp, stomp, stomp, stomp, crash! It's as if we have an orc living above us.

And actually, that's somewhat apt. Because it's not just that he's a big guy who happens to be heavy-footed. He is a stomper. There's something innately stompy about him. His size-2 girlfriend is a stomper, too. With her it sounds more like clack, clack, clack! because she wears impractical shoes, even indoors. But she's a stomper, all right. Neither one of them ever seems to sit down.

I'm beginning to realize that stomping is a social disorder, not a physical one. We just happen to have two people living upstairs who stomp through life. Wherever they go and whatever they do, it is with a certain intensity of inward focus and disregard for what might be going on around them, say if a small baby is trying to go to sleep under their bathroom.

You've met stompers before, and you can tell they're stompers even if they're 99 pounds soaking wet and always go barefoot. Some people stomp all over a party. Somehow you can always hear half of their conversation at least as well as all of yours, even though they're on the other side of the room. Some people stomp all over a conversation. Even though you can sometimes get a word in edgewise, you're pretty sure they either don't hear it or they immediately dismiss it. But usually they're too busy starting their next sentence to let it sink in anyway.

I basically think people who stomp non-stop are just bad people. Pretty soon you don't want to be around a stomper anymore. After a while, you think to yourself, "It is really difficult to be around this person." And you go find someone who walks a little more gently through life.

I know I am a stomper at times. It's plain hard work to care about what's going on with the people around me, especially because everything I do seems so damned important. But as a Christian, I must dedicate myself to life in the way of Jesus, and somehow I can't imagine him stomping anywhere.

One of the most striking traits about Jesus (to me) was his quiet, gentle demeanor. Sure, he flipped over some temple tables once, but that's not the sort of thing you usually find Jesus doing. More often he was speaking kindly to whores or talking with his friends over dinner or holding small children. No, Jesus was most definitely not a stomper.

Maybe it was the sandals. Or maybe it was something much, much more.

Hilarity from Microsoft

Newsweek/MSNBC reports (link is to page 2 of the article, which is annoyingly not available un-paginated) on the verbal sniping between Apple and Microsoft regarding new operating systems, and I have to say, there's a lot of unintentional comedy in the article. Here's a particularly rich sample, with my comments bracketed in bold:

"To be fair, Microsoft has a heavier load [in its diaper?] when it comes to major upgrades. Its system runs on all kinds of different hardware [poor things!] and has to support many legacy [old and useless] apps. Microsoft's revamp also has to make major strides toward fixing the security flaws that plague Windows. [That's a good point. And we should be forgiving about their multi-year delay because their security is a disaster?] Still, Longhorn is not only years overdue but missing what was once going to be its keystone feature, a revolutionary way of handling files called WinFS. [Read that last sentence again.] (Microsoft admitted it was too hard to implement in the first version of Longhorn.) [Maybe they should be in a different business?] Windows czar Jim Allchin now says that the company's wizards have figured out how to deliver some of the benefits anyway—stuff like deep desktop searching [*cough*Spotlight*cough*] and visualization technology that replaces the old icons with a thumbnail of what the document actually looks like. [Now that is cool. I noticed it and thought so immediately when I switched to Mac two years ago]"

Rich!

Ah, Rochester, whither thy identity?

Written in passing in an article about the Stockholm Jazz Festival (via Yahoo! News):

"The Festival is produced by Canadian-born John Nugent, who has also been the producer of other music festivals, among them the Rochester International Jazz Festival outside New York city."

Uh...yeah. Rochester is definitely not within New York's city limits. I think it's just northwest of Yonkers...

Procrastination post

The NFL draft is finally over, which means I can go back to visiting ESPN.com again without having to dodge enormous headlines about obscure nonsense. I love the NFL, but I can't begin to fathom why anyone would care how some college kid performed in the 3-cone drill at the scouting combine, or whose core stabilization improved the most in the last season.

Come to think of it, maybe my beef is really with college football in general. The only other time of year I find myself skipping ESPN.com is during the college football bowl season. The ranking system is incomprehensible, there are about 800 games that I'm supposed to care about, and plus the players show bare leg between the top of their sock and the bottom of their pants. I can't get into it at all.

It's mystifying to me that on the first two days of the NBA playoffs, which promise to be very compelling this year, the big "news" of the day is that some 20-year old quarterback was taken over another, when neither one is likely to play a single down until 2007. Oh well. Back to my paper.

On second thought, screw that. I'm going to bed.

Safari flies

The latest OS X update (10.3.9) includes a significant speed increase for Safari, writes developer Dave Hyatt:

"Page Load Performance
Safari 1.3 loads pages overall 35% faster than 1.2 as measured by IBench. In addition to improving the overall page load, Safari 1.3 will display content sooner than 1.2 did, so that subresources don't hold up the initial display of the page."

Yeah, pages are pretty much snapping now. Rock and roll!

Three 10-second thoughts

1. You know Saturday Night Live has gotten bad when Tom Brady is hosting and there is no noticeable difference in acting talent between him and the cast.

2. Can we all just agree that when we use twist ties for bread, it's clockwise to close and counter-clockeise to open? Please?

3. Some people prefer to substitute shortening for butter when making chocolate chip cookies. This makes the cookies a bit softer and flatter. My position is that this doesn't make you a bad person, but it does make you wrong.

Lesser-known features of OS X "Tiger"

Apple has just released a full list of new features in Mac OS 10.4, commonly known as "Tiger."

By now, anyone paying attention has heard about Spotlight, Dashboard and Automater, and those are killer features that Microsoft will undoubtedly be scrambling to duplicate (or already plans to include) in its next version of Windows, which should be released just in time for my son to use in his middle school computer lab. (He won't be using it at home, that's for sure.)

We Mac users are all anticipating these great major features, but here are a few of my favorite lesser-known features due to arrive April 29 (quotation marks contain exact text from Apple's website):

PDF Annotations
"View and create annotations to a PDF document from Preview." Mac owners can already save any file as a PDF without buying the full version of Adobe's Acrobat Professional software ($449). Now we can presumably grab some of the other pro-level features of Acrobat. Translation: add another few hundred dollars to the cost of bringing Windows machines up to speed with software comparable to that which comes free on every new Mac.

Dictionary Service
"Call up a dictionary definition for any word on-screen with just one click." Cool. I usually use Answers.com, either directly or by Googling and clicking the hypertext in the search results page, but it will be nice to have it built into the OS.

Safari and iPhoto Integration
"Easily save a picture from the web to iPhoto with a single click." And they've also made it a snap to send photos you receive in Mail straight into iPhoto. Just two more ways iPhoto will integrate with the rest of my digital life. Ah, you don't know what you're missing, my friend.

Email Web Page or Link
"Email the contents or URL of the current [Safari] web page without the hassle of cutting and pasting into a message." I imagine I'll use this feature regularly. They should add iChat integration so I can send the link to anyone in my IM list, though. (Obviously, the best feature of the new version of Safari will be RSS capability, but remember: I'm talking about lesser-known features here.)

Grapher
"Create 2D and 3D graphs with this full-featured equation grapher." I'm not really enough of a mathlete to care, but that's pretty nifty.

Switch to...
"Quickly switch to different iChat accounts (AIM or Jabber) with just a few clicks."
...and
Buddy Groups
"Organize all of your iChat AV buddies with a convenient grouping interface." It's about time...especially that first one. Also added to iChat, a feature that shows your pals what you're listening to in iTunes. Sure, it's a shameless grab for people to link to the iTunes Music Store and buy the song, but it's also a popular hack that will no longer be a hack.

Smart Mailboxes
"Organize your email to match the way you work using Smart Mailboxes that automatically fill themselves with email based on your criteria." Smart playlists, smart albums, smart spotlight searches, smart mailboxes. Smart technology.

And on top of all this, I've heard that system performance actually improves when you migrate to the next version of the OS. Now that is cause for celebration.

Redmond has its work cut out for it. There's a whole lot to try to copy...good thing they've allowed themselves plenty of time.

The passion of soccer fans

A soccer match in Italy was halted after one of the goalies was hit by a flare that a fan threw. Great aim, you say? No. In fact, fans threw "dozens" of flares.

I don't know if this reflects badly on Italians or soccer fans in general. I'm guessing the latter, since Pavoratti always seemed to escape his concerts without being set on fire.

There's a photo depicting just how cool and passionate soccer fans are (read: just how on fire the goalie was), so make sure you click through and check out the story.

Leahy and Schumer on judicial nominees

From Power Line: That Was Then, This Is Now.

Granted, I don't know the exact context of these comments, but I find them very interesting.

Siamese Dream in the springtime

We all have certain "time machine" recordings that seem capable of magically whisking us away to long-forgotten season of life. Throw in a connection to a certain season of the year, and the sense memories pile up to be quite impressive. For me, listening to Smashing Pumpkins' Siamese Dream in the springtime is an unparalleled combination.

In the spring of 1994, I was a junior in high school, and I was spending every weekday afternoon and most weekend days on the tennis courts, and most evenings at my first real girlfriend's house. I drove to and from the school courts or her house in an old yellow pickup truck. That spring, the truck's tape deck almost always held a copy of Siamese Dream, which was at the height of its popularity. I spent many hours hurrying from one exciting thing to the next listening to that tape a few songs at a time.

Someday these posts will launch into decade-overdue record reviews or thoughts on music as a metaphor for life. But I don't have that kind of time right now because I have to go read a couple hundred pages of Karl Barth. I'll just say that right now I'm cranking Siamese Dream in my iPod, enjoying the warm sunshine, and experiencing a nostalgic remembrance of those fine days in southern Maine.

Anyone else want to share a "time machine" recording?

Great...

Fantastic. NBC's new show Revelations is sure to give ignorant people even more reason to pluralize the title of the last book of the Bible.

Some old dude marries some old bag

Yahoo! News - Prince Charles, Duchess of Cornwall Marry

In other news no one should really give two squirts of piss about, my neighbor's house is still red. I sent the story to the AP, but they haven't run with it yet.

Judging the Senate

Light posting lately, as I press to finish up my seminary career. I figured I'd share a quick thought about what's about to occur in the Senate, because I'm tried of everyone asking me what I think about it all the time, and I figure it will be easier to direct them here than to repeat myself over and over. (That was a dry joke, in case you're wondering. Really I'm just posting this for the sake of people who are sick of endless Mac fanboyism.)

Anyway, it seems the Republicans in the Senate want to prevent another session of filibustering by the Democrats in the Senate, who want to prevent the President's more controversial judicial nominees from being approved, which they most certainly would be if it were left to a simple majority. (It is left to a simple majority according to the Constitution, actually, but it takes a supermajority of 60 votes to break a filibuster by the minority party.)

This reminds me of a recent episode of The Apprentice, where two contestants were tearing each other apart in the boardroom, and the third actually interrupted them to say something in his defense, even though he wasn't being attacked. Trump turned to that third contestant and berated him for being so stupid as to intervene in the argument between his two opponents. Then Trump fired him.

Do the Republicans not see that they are willingly surrendering the high ground (at least in public perception) here? Has no one told them that Tom Daschle lost his recent Senate seat to John Thune because he, Daschle, was perceived to be an obstructionist? It seems to me they'd be more than happy to sacrifice a few judicial nominees so a couple more Democrats facing tough reelection battles would have to go on record as being part of more obstruction.

But no. The Republican leadership has threatened to change Senate rules to eliminate the possibility of a filibuster on judicial nominees, which has been just the rhetorical foothold the Democrats need to claim moral victory. Are the Republicans shredding the Constitution by changing these rules? No. (No more than the Democrats would be shredding the Constitution by filibustering until 2008, when they hope to have their man, or likely their woman, in the White House.) But either course of action is political stupidity.

Personally, I think they're all a bunch of nuts. Filibustering a dozen or so nominees is an abuse of the system, and removing the option of a filibuster is an abuse of power. The President has earned the right to have his nominees evaluated by the entire Senate, and the Democrats have the right to obstruct the process.

The Democrats need to get over themselves, accept that they are essentially out of power, and set about the task of gaining ground in the 2006 midterm elections. And the Republicans need to stop assuming that their majority status gives them such a mandate that they can do whatever they'd like without political consequence. But at this point, neither party seems willing to stop trumping the other party's self-destruction long enough to get anything done.

Thoughts inspired by John Paull II

To commemorate the death of Pope John Paul II, I want to link to a wonderful document he wrote in 1995 entitled Evangelium Vitae ("The Gospel of Life"). In it, the pope affirms the essential dignity of human life in all its stages and forms. I understand it is precisely this perspective that has made John Paul II unpopular with many "progressive" Catholics (not to mention secular society), but I admire his unwillingness to compromise his view in the face of this criticism. I also admire the skill with which he crafts his argument.

I would like to propose that conservative Protestants who are uneasy about Roman Catholicism should read this document. You may find yourself amazed at how well this Roman Catholic leader articulates the scriptural argument against the violation of life. (You may also find yourself challenged, as I have, to expand your views on life and make them more consistent.) Click here to read the entire encyclical.

For further reading on the ecumenical movement, I suggest Evangelicals and Catholics Together, a fine document signed by many prominent leaders on both "sides" of the faith spectrum.

May the Lord Jesus welcome his servant John Paul II into his loving arms, and may the dignity of the pope's life and death inspire us all.