Tuesday, March 02, 2004

stamp out lice! 1947: DDT proves useful in keeping flies out of British grocery stores and getting rid of lice in displaced persons.  U.S. Camera 1947 stuns and amazes me every time I open it.  I scanned some of the pictures. They mostly deal with the turmoil following WWII.  Get ready for an onslaught.  The pictures are listed here.  I will be using some of them for the paper I wish I wrote on demobilization. 11:13:27 PM    comment []

The lighter side of Nuremburg 10:57:25 PM    comment []

To he who wrote the java programs I have to maintain: I curse your name 10 times daily. I curse you for having different stuff checked in to version control than is actually in production. I curse you for inventing your own stupid inscrutable templating system. I curse you for not leaving any comments in your code. I curse you for leaving some parts of your application calling a test database and others calling a production database. I curse you for naming methods f2, f3, f4, f5, f6, f7, f8, f9 etc but also for having a method named fl which in my editor is indistinguishable from f1 I curse you for the critical javascript functions called blah and blah2. I curse you for leaving me a java class with 3000 lines. I curse you for naming things ShowBean and MenuBean when they aren't really beans at all. 7:39:06 PM    comment []

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20040302/ap_on_re_us/killington_secession KILLINGTON, Vt. - Voting with a thunderous "aye," residents endorsed a plan Tuesday for this ski resort town to secede from Vermont and become a part of New Hampshire instead. The main source of discontent is Vermont's new system of financing education, adopted in 1997 on orders from the state Supreme Court. It dramatically increased property taxes in wealthy communities like Killington. Secession activists say Killington's restaurants, inns and other businesses send $20 million a year to Montpelier in sales, room and meal taxes, while the state returns just $1 million in municipal and education aid to the town of roughly 1,000 residents. 4:56:16 PM    comment []

Renounce and Enjoy I went to the Common Ground meditation center again Sunday night.  The lecture was on renunciation.  The practice of renunciation starts with observing your craving.  I crave donuts, sometimes to the exclusion of all other thought.  I also crave that the other assholes on the road get out of my way.  In this practice I would watch my craving for donuts or green lights and realize three things:  One is that the craving is a burning thing ( and it makes a fiery ring).  This is suffering.   Another is that if you observe it for a while, the craving passes even if you don't meet it.  Third, fulfillment of desire does not bring lasting happiness.  It is the promise that is never kept.   For me, the craving for donuts is easy to pick out as a problem.  I am not saying it is easy to resist the craving for donuts or not feel the urge to jump out of my car and attack another driver.  My problem with this practice comes when I crave a clean kitchen floor or I crave to be a better employee, father, citizen, steward.  In strict Buddhism, that kind of craving is also a problem.  Craving positive things also causes suffering brought on by the delusion that I will have lasting happiness if, for example, I lose 10 pounds.  BUT...  I am a householder and the best I can do is observe these cravings for things to be better while I act on them.  10:21:24 AM    comment []