Now, I'm not the best blogspace citizen, I hardly keep my civic duties in posting, and moreover I should really not be using words like blogspace. I suspect it went out of fashion sometime in 1999.
But lately I've been reading some blogs, I mentioned Deltoid in my last post, and now I thought I should mention that other one, Aaron Swartz (no thought left behind). I don't remember how I came across his blog, I followed some link somewhere and came across an entry, then bookmarked it because I thought it was well written.
Now experienced bloggers might laugh at me when I say that I believed this was just some random interesting blog, not too famous, not too unknown either. I suppose when you find them like that, odds are they are pretty big. Anyway, Aaron Swartz seems to be a well-known hacker/internet celebrity, co-inventing RSS at age 14 ro something, and now he's just started at Stanford, chronicling his adventures as he goes. It's great writing, however some of the comments he get seem to have a certain patronizing tone. I suppose that's what you get for being clever and political at the same time.
But enough about other people. I have some work to do: I have to deliver a progress report on my database project, and also a rather large economy assignment. I really envy people like Aaron and for that matter my webmaster who go to universities and can actually choose most of their courses themselves. I'm stuck with the only major database that doesn't have a linux version as mandatory, and a lot of very "workplace-oriented" prep talks.
On the other hand, doing things this way allowed me to have some other things, like a wonderful wife and a home of our own, so I really can't complain! :-)
I should add a so-called blogroll to my site. One weblog I've come across several times is Tim Lambert's blog. First time I came across it was when he criticised the Alexis de Torqueville Institute and think-tanks in general. He also writes a lot of very sane, reasonable stuff on guns, global warming, and statistics. And no, I don't say that just because I agree with him, but I mostly do :-)
On that blog I found a link to a "better version" of The political compass, namely the "Beasts" political survey, which uses mathematical techniques to determine what the axes should be (They do name them a little oddly though. Calling the second vector pragmatism/idealism - it would be cool if this was what was actually measured, but I don't think it fits quite)
Interestingly, I appear on approximately the same place as I do on the "old" compass. My results can be seen here, in case you wonder where I stand on different issues.
Disclaimer: I filled that out in a hurry. The occasional double negative may have tripped me up, and I can't say that I used a lot of time on all the questions.
Interestingly, when the author has tried to place famous historical persons on his scale, he assumed that Stalin would oppose abortions. Can this really be true? That doesn't rhyme well with that book Pandolphia read, "Revolution and Marriage", a book from the 1920s describing the experiences of a russian woman who later escaped to the west. You should write reviews of these interesting books you come across, dear :-)
I was under the impression that Paranoidkoala had removed mt, so I didn't update the weblog in a long time.
Well, now at least the spam is deleted. Ugh. Never mention words like s*ck or 1ll, or they'll spam your blog to death.
But I like comments, and I won't turn them off. Yet.
Pandolphia has updated her blog, that's what prompted me to do the same. That, and she called my attention to all the v1agr--a spam.
Mi ankoraŭ lernadas Esperanton, kaj mi havas novan laboron: mi estas bibliotekisto!