Sinabro

I don’t *want* to be caustic and biting.

I don’t want to fight. And I don’t want to make other people angry—no more than I would like to be angry myself.

But some issues (e.g. improper conduct by Microsoft re: OOXML ISO certification, and people sidestepping these issues in apparent support of Microsoft) get me so riled up that I can’t help but interject an acerbic comment.

Perhaps this is a good sign that I should close my eyes and plug my ears on this subject. It’s not like what I do (or say) matters in the grand scheme of things.

My ability to consciously control the subconscious surprises even me sometimes.

Well, after listening to Radiohead’s “In Rainbow” several times, I think I am finally beginning to like it. I thought that would never happen (it’s just not my usual type of music), but here it is. Once I decided I would like it (because it is one of the few that I can listen to with conscience, ever since I forswore anything produced by those evil enforcers of draconian copyright laws), I am liking it. It’s not messing up my concentration or giving me headaches.

It looks like my boycott will go well just fine. If no country singer or other easy-listening music artist would support the cause of Free Culture, I will just decide that I hate country music. That I hate elevator music.

This is why I get disgusted reading my old … “writings”, for lack of a better word (perhaps I could add another meaning to the wonderful word “barf”).

Here’s something I wrote in the old days when I used to troll UseNet a lot (the last response being mine, it alternates):

> > Simply put, let
> > P: person A is intelligent
> > Q: person A is able to graduate (from whatever school)
> >
> > I would assert that P->Q is true, but its converse is not.
>
> Simply put, if you would assert that
> P -> Q
> is true, then you would assert that
> not Q -> not P
> is true as well.
> In other words, using your choice of P and Q, you would assert that
> "if person A is not able to graduate implies
> that person A is not intelligent".

Hmm, unexpected thrust--as I was thinking about the other side of
logic. So you do know about contrapositives, eh? I think it would have
been more elegant if you said above, P -> Q is equivalent to not Q ->
not P. Or, P -> Q has the same truth table as not Q -> not P. 'Makes
you sound like a math (or computer science, as it happens) person,
whether you are one or not.

Of course, the very obvious problem with this reply is … it completely misses the point, as well as a counter-reply so obvious that I had to be dumb and blind to have missed it: i.e. how many of the real “dumb” population is hidden in the population that did graduate from high school (and hence assumed intelligent by inept statisticians)?

After all, that’s the implication of my initial argument. Sigh. What can I say. I am positively dumb and stupid now, but apparently it was possible to be dumber and stupider—as I was when I was younger.

I’m going to start entering more entries here. This is a new beginning for me. Why? Well, ask in person, and I might just tell you.

Well, I think in the end, I am really going to keep a journal here. I suppose as long as you don’t know who I am, there is no harm done. That reminds me of a story I heard about a preacher, a priest, and a rabbi, who were swimming in a lake naked. But then, some prankster came along and stole their clothes, so each of them had to walk back to the village with nothing but a bucket. Both the preacher and the priest put the bucket to hide their manhood, but the rabbi put it over his head and says, “I don’t know how your congregation recognizes you, but they usually know who I am by my face.”

i.e. I don’t mind people finding out horrible things about me, as long as you don’t know my face.