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Arthur Chu

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Condensed from a much longer post I've given up on making make sense [Jul. 1st, 2009|02:21 pm]
( Warning: Standard armchair pop history blather about 'America losing its innocence' because of some celebrity death ahead, possibly a sequel to that post I wrote a long time ago about the Beatles )
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Once again [Jun. 26th, 2009|11:10 am]
Despite what you may have heard in the news, neither [info]elizaeffect nor I died yesterday.
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Clarification [Jun. 22nd, 2009|07:53 pm]
Neither [info]elizaeffect nor I are dead.
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(no subject) [Jun. 2nd, 2009|06:33 pm]
Poll #1410079 New poll!
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All

Should [info]arctangent attend Alumni Weekend 2009?

View Answers

Yes, because I'm also going and promise to show him a good time
0 (0.0%)

Yes, because I'm also going and promise to hang out with him a bit
7 (38.9%)

Yes, because I'm also going and promise to briefly converse with him while standing in line for something
2 (11.1%)

Yes, because I'm also going and promise to wave to him from 50 feet away while not breaking my stride when he says "Hi"
0 (0.0%)

No, because I'm not going and don't see why anyone else should
1 (5.6%)

No, because I'm going and having to pointedly ignore him would harsh my buzz
0 (0.0%)

No, because I'm going and suspect that if he goes he will end up mooching off of me for food, booze and crash space
0 (0.0%)

No, because I'm going but I suspect he will be horribly bored by the things I inexplicably consider fun
0 (0.0%)

No, because I'm not going and want to do something totally awesome and sexy with him that weekend
4 (22.2%)

No, because abandoning your girlfriend for two weekends in a row to hang out with Swatties kind of makes you a douche
0 (0.0%)

I don't really care about [info]arctangent's plans but I'm going to continue clicking the null option on these polls because I have nothing more fulfilling in my life
4 (22.2%)



ETA: People who actually want to do something sexy and awesome and non-AW with me the coming weekend should:

1) Live in the DC area, and

2) Be specific about what it is they want to do.
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Update from wingnutville [May. 28th, 2009|11:26 am]
Apparently how people pronounce "foreign" names is an important issue now, and our American tendency to mispronounce and mangle people's names in order to make them sound more "normal" is a laudable display of national unity rather than showing one's ignorance and rudeness.

What's especially hilarious is that IIRC Sotomayor hasn't actually made a big deal about how her name is pronounced anywhere I've seen -- Mr. Krikorian just seems *pre-emptively* mad that Obama and others pronounce her name correctly, thus putting a heavy burden on his back of having to use an "unnatural" pronunciation himself or else face criticism. He's not even complaining about having to have a correct Spanish pronunciation using all the right phonemes (which is indeed difficult when using a foreign word), but about *putting the emphasis on the right syllable* -- in other words, making even the barest effort to get it right is an affront to "Crickory-Anne", as I will now consistently refer to him. (This reminds me of the same flap over "Pockiston" or "OHR-eeon", both of which are, incidentally, more correct than the alternative pronunciations and thus apparently somehow "elitist".)

I don't actually care much how my name is pronounced, but I'm deeply annoyed that Anne here thinks America is somehow doing me a favor by letting me choose how my name is pronounced rather than me doing people a favor by cutting them slack over it. I may make it a rule that when Republicans talk to me they have to say my real name, with the correct tones and everything.

But of course, Anne is at least right in pegging name pronunciation as a Democrat issue that Republicans, with their good honest names that have been here since the Mayflower, never get pissy about or have conflicts over.
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(no subject) [May. 27th, 2009|06:42 pm]
Poll #1406787 Last-minute travel plans
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All

Should [info]arctangent attend Swat Graduation 2009?

View Answers

Yes, because I am graduating and I want him to be there
2 (10.5%)

Yes, because I am graduating, I want him to be there and I will reward him with fun and exciting activities if he's there
0 (0.0%)

Yes, because I am an alum/non-student traveling there to see someone else graduate and also want to see him
2 (10.5%)

Yes, because even though I'm not going I think he should attend out of general principle
2 (10.5%)

No, because I am not going and I don't see why anyone else should
2 (10.5%)

No, because even though I will be present, it will still not be interesting enough to justify traveling up from DC
0 (0.0%)

No, because I am going to be there and I don't want to see him because he's a jerk
0 (0.0%)

No, because I am graduating and I dislike him so much his presence would permanently mar my day
0 (0.0%)

No, because I am not going and would totally like to do something else with him that weekend instead
0 (0.0%)

I don't really care about [info]arctangent's plans but I like clicking on buttons
11 (57.9%)

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Dreamwidth [May. 24th, 2009|01:00 pm]
Encyclopedia Dramatica says everything I would want to say about it.

Given that I think of the specific cultural "LiveJournal-ness" of LiveJournal as, at best, a necessary evil of the site, a site that seems specifically constructed to be MORE LIVEJOURNAL THAN LIVEJOURNAL (such as taking LJ's stopgap bandwidth-saving solution of invite codes and making it *permanent* because they *want* an elitist, insular gated community) makes me feel like barfing.

And I will reiterate that no kind of hypocrisy pisses me off as much as the whole "We love diversity = we love people who are superficially diverse but are still 'our kind of people'" BS that SWPL is all over all the time.

ETA: I think a lot of my negative feelings can be summed up by saying that I think "LJ-the-service" and "LJ-the-community" can be seen as synonymous with the ubiquitous mouthfuls "SWIL-the-campus-club" and "SWIL-the-social-group" that we all got so familiar with in 2007.
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CA special election [May. 20th, 2009|05:08 pm]
I am not optimistic about our chances to have a decent, non-pathological budget now that 1A has failed, but then I was never particularly optimistic about our chances thereof if 1A had passed either, so whatev's. 1A, 1B and 1C all seemed like pretty half-baked ideas to me, complex legislative stuff that ordinary voters shouldn't be deciding on in the first place, so even though I'm doubtful that the legislature will now move *closer* to my ideal way to run the state from 1A rather than *further away*, I'm still not that bummed. We have a *chance* for a sound state budget based on crushing Prop 13 and bringing a sensible tax code back to CA now -- not a great chance, but I'll still take that over the band-aid measure of 1A any day. (And if disaster does come in the form of taking 1A's rejection as a mandate to go ahead with Arnie's well-named, untenable, utterly destructive "doomsday budget" -- well, at this point it's *so* untenable that the eventual crushing painful collapse would, despite hurting countless innocent people, at least probably lead to a new constitutional convention and a total sweeping away of the past, which is good in the long run.)

I'm just glad 1D and 1E were rejected. The most damaging thing by far would've been if everything else was rejected but 1D and 1E passed. Indeed, the fact that CA voters soundly rejected the suicidally irresponsible "Raid the funded mandates first!" philosophy of the CA legislature gives me some hope that if the "doomsday budget" becomes reality there will be a swift and widespread voter revolt against it.
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Upon a second watching of Star Trek [May. 18th, 2009|04:06 pm]
Me: Really, a Vulcan befriending a human is like a human adopting a cat. It's not that big a deal compared to your relationships with other people, because no matter what happens it's going to live a quarter of your lifespan at most. You can't get too attached.

[info]elizaeffect: And their brains are all primitive and flighty and emotional, and they do all kinds of stupid things that make no sense, but you put up with it because they're so cute.

Me: And if you decide to have sex with one, you become a social pariah.

ETA:

me: It's like that whole "Emotions run deeper for us than humans" thing.
A cat can get mad but not that mad.
eliza.destroyer.of.worlds:
They just sort of have huffs.
Or sulk.
But then you give them a treat and they forget what they were mad about.
me: Yeah.
So there's no reason to teach them to control their emotions.
You don't expect it of them.
Besides, even if one did get really really mad it wouldn't be smart enough to do anything about it.
You can just pinch it on the back of the neck and it's disabled.
eliza.destroyer.of.worlds: XD
Blog pls
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While we're on the topic of webcomics we don't like [May. 6th, 2009|04:11 pm]
I wish someone would force Scott Ramsoomair to shut up before he makes us "gamers" look any worse.
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Marketing at work [Apr. 21st, 2009|02:46 pm]
As with "Tropic Thunder", the main result of all the brouhaha over "Observe and Report" is that I am now deeply curious about seeing a movie I initially had no interest in whatsoever.
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(no subject) [Apr. 20th, 2009|11:08 pm]
I don't know if I agree that it's better than Buffy and Angel and whatnot, but here's a pretty good essay on why I like Dollhouse and why I worry it's been underrated by Joss Whedon's devoted fans.
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Extremely strong contender for best thing ever: [Apr. 10th, 2009|02:06 am]
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(no subject) [Mar. 31st, 2009|04:03 pm]
Actors who played demons on Angel are officially cursed.
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(no subject) [Mar. 26th, 2009|06:12 pm]
(6:09:01 PM) abstractmaniac: http://www.overheardintheoffice.com/archives/008795.html
(6:09:12 PM) abstractmaniac: "BRAAK!"
(6:09:14 PM) abstractmaniac: "Axis of evil!"
(6:09:17 PM) abstractmaniac: "BRAAK!"
(6:09:23 PM) abstractmaniac: "Terrorists win, terrorists win, evil evil!"
(6:09:29 PM) Metacognizant42: lol
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(no subject) [Mar. 25th, 2009|02:05 pm]
The whining, the whining.

Tim Burke already has a better response up for this than I do.

I will just add that, frankly, the best and most charitable way (if not the most likely) to view the AIG bailout, in my view, would be as a way to slowly dismantle the company while giving its employees time to find other work rather than allowing it to suddenly collapse. If the company can continue to function as a socially beneficial profit-making entity after it has bled out much of the bloat that allowed this supposedly tiny minority of irresponsible adventurers to destroy the economy from within its ranks while supposedly hiding it from their colleagues, great. If not, well, it was going to die before we intervened in the first place.

Either way I take Mr. DeSantis' resignation as a positive sign, not as the harbinger of doom he seems to want me to take it as.

The real anger I have is at the Obama administration's essentially conservative POV that there is nothing intrinsically wrong with these companies and that now that the bubble bursting has shaken out all the bad seeds we can go back to running business as usual. So much for Hope and Change -- any time we see anyone demand *actual* change, like putting failed banks in receivership or eviscerating executive compensation structures as a condition of the bailout, we're politely shut down and told that this is impractical or, worse, "socialist".

(Oh, except when the change is change in the rightwards direction, like forcing autoworkers to renegotiate all their contracts. *That's* okay. Autoworkers suffering for the bad decisions of their bosses is completely fine and acceptable; financial-products employees making six figures suffering for the bad decisions of their bosses is a crime against humanity. Contracts are only sacred when they're held by upper management, not ordinary union workers. Freaking A.)
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Another, more illustrative example [Mar. 23rd, 2009|06:34 pm]
Let's pretend some poor guy got wiped out entirely and needed a welfare check from the government just to stay alive.

Let's say this welfare check was a relatively small pittance from the government -- $17,500, below minimum wage and what you need to survive on, given just to keep him afloat while he's still expected to look for part-time work or other handouts from family or charities until he becomes financially solvent. (An all too common scenario depending on the state you live in.)

Let's say that just after he got his $17,500 check from the government, a Republican or libertarian pundit saw the man spend $16.50 on some random wasteful frivolity. Let's say he takes himself out to a steak dinner for $16.50, or blows $16.50 on a porno DVD, or drinks away $16.50 at a bar, or gets a violent video game for $16.50 from GameStop.

Guess what the Republican or libertarian pundit would say?

They would point their finger and sneer and yell about how this man had already proven himself economically insolvent by needing a welfare check in the first place and the fact that he's already gone out and spent $16.50 on some wasteful extravagance is further proof that his problems are his own fault and the government should not have bailed him out.

And if you protest that we didn't bail him out for *his* sake, but for the sake of his wife and kids, they might say that the government should then have put far stricter restrictions and strings on that check (note that most welfare programs for the poor *do* put ridiculous numbers of strings on various forms of welfare checks -- see intrusive welfare officers researching your employment history, see cumbersome restrictions on what can be bought with food stamps, etc.), or allowed the man to fail and found a way to bail out his wife and kids instead (usually vain huffing and puffing, since Republicans are also strongly opposed to any government intervention in "breaking up families"), etc.

Some of this rhetoric might be justified, and I would agree with some of it. A lot of it would not. What is certain is that there *would* be outrage about that $16.50, and that any claims of "But $16.50 *isn't all that much money* in the grand scheme of things -- it's less than 1/1000th of the total welfare check!" would be brushed aside as missing the point. "It's not about how much money it is," the Republican would shout, "It's that it's *my* money and he doesn't have the right to waste it! It's the *principle* of the thing!"

If you dared suggest that maybe the Republican was being overly harsh, that just because the man is on the dole doesn't mean he doesn't have any right to flexibility in how he spends his budget and that even the very poor and dependent should maybe have a little recreation in their life, that maybe all he was doing was just buying *one* porno DVD to console himself and celebrate that he just got a check that would keep him from becoming homeless this year... well, prepare yourself for a huge "CODDLING THE POOR AND WASTING OUR MONEY AND DEFENDING *SOCIALISM*" thunderstorm.

But now, turn the man into a giant corporation, and multiply all the numbers by 10^7, and...

I guess for the Republican establishment there really are two laws, one for the rich and one for the poor.

If any Republican -- and, yes, any libertarian -- wants to be *consistent*, then when they start saying "This is just a corporation trying to maintain business as usual" and "How intrusive do you want the government to be?" and "Blame Congress for not exercising due diligence, not the company" should never, ever start up one of their disgusting self-righteous "welfare queen" witch hunts again.

At the very least, no one would seriously try to deflect the right-wing anti-welfare ball-o'-outrage by patronizingly and offensively claiming that Republicans are too innumerate to understand the difference between a $16.50 steak dinner and a $17,500 welfare check.
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xkcd [Mar. 23rd, 2009|12:17 am]
I know trolling the zombie Slashdot libertarians is always a mistake, but I can't resist.

I'm so pissed off right now. I was willing to let the occasional (mostly self-deprecating) Ron Paul reference slide, but if Randall Munroe continues with the right-wing agitprop disguised as jokes, xkcd will very quickly finally take a permanent place in my "Dead To Me" file.
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Dollhouse [Mar. 22nd, 2009|01:17 am]
Is beginning to evince the same pattern as Star Trek movies -- the even-numbered ones are the awesome ones and the odd-numbered ones are the "meh" ones.

Hell, more than that, you can draw *specific* parallels between episodes of Dollhouse and Star Trek movies. Like how episode 5 is the one I just want to forget, the one that makes extensive use of rocky sandy Arizona landscape, and the one that makes an awkward point about God and religion.

And how episode 6 is the one everyone says you should see that brings everything up to a new standard of quality.

There may be some kind of deep hidden universal pattern here.
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(no subject) [Mar. 19th, 2009|07:46 pm]
Clearly, I spent my college years on the wrong quizbowl team.
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