Fresh, Hot Wastes of Time

George W. Bush sings Sunday Bloody Sunday.

Every time I turn around lately I see Stephen Hawking in the news. In the last week I read a story that he said Pope John Paul II asked him not to look into the Big Bang, that he’s talking to Chinese schoolchildren about global warming, and that he’s posted a question to Yahoo Answers. I wonder what he’s getting ready to sell.

Here’s an excerpt of a message I sent to someone today where I tried to distill my thoughts on “It’s just the internet.”

It may be just the internet, but there are real people behind every keyboard, and many of them are friends of mine in real life as well. I wouldn’t expect my friends to act like assholes in meat space, and if they do, it bugs me there, too.

The “It’s just the internet” argument seems to me to be a blanket excuse for bad behavior, although I know you feel totally differently about it. Good manners are so hard to come by these days, and the anonymizing properties of the internet make and schmo with a computer think he can bust out with behavior that would embarrass him, were he to do it in real life. Since it’s “just the internet,” it makes it ok for him – and it sends the message to everyone else around that, “Hey, it’s just the internet – let’s be dicks!” What if we were to say, “Hey, it’s just a sport event. Let’s go nuts!”? Soccer hooligans do that. They kill people. People at concerts bumrush the doors. They trample others. Those might be a bit extreme, but I hope you can see where I’m going. Mob mentality sucks. Dehumanization serves no purpose other than to make life less civilized.

To me, there is no excuse for churlish behavior no matter what medium. And to my friends who choose to act in a matter other than they would in real life because “it’s just the internet,” they’ll lose my respect, because it runs contrary to my personal beliefs as to how life, manners, and society need to run in order to remain civilized.

Richard Simmons is a surprise guest on Whose Line is it Anyway?.

This story was posted over on AR15.com and I really enjoyed it. I’ve found it on a couple of sites so I’m guessing it’s in the public domain, but if you know the author, please let me know so I can give proper credit.

—

So, there’s a man crawling through the desert.

He’d decided to try his SUV in a little bit of cross-country travel, had
great fun zooming over the badlands and through the sand, got lost, hit a
big rock, and then he couldn’t get it started again. There were no cell
phone towers anywhere near, so his cell phone was useless. He had no family,
his parents had died a few years before in an auto accident, and his few
friends had no idea he was out here.

He stayed with the car for a day or so, but his one bottle of water ran out
and he was getting thirsty. He thought maybe he knew the direction back, now
that he’d paid attention to the sun and thought he’d figured out which way
was north, so he decided to start walking. He figured he only had to go
about 30 miles or so and he’d be back to the small town he’d gotten gas in
last.
(more…)

**Update!** Wanna see my grades? 😀

It’s official: I have 219 points out of a possible 220 for my A-COMM 3301 course, Foundations of Organizational Communication. That’s a good, solid A, eh?

I went to see a very nice urologist on Friday (Dr. Jeffrey Kocurek, for those searching for a urologist in Austin; I do not recommend Dr. Elizabeth Houser for reasons listed in a previous post) and I have a tentative appointment on Thursday for a ureteroscopy, assuming I’m still uncomfortable and haven’t passed the stone on my own by then. Apparently it’s still right above the bladder. The lithotripsy that the other doctor scheduled me for only has a 65% success rate for stones in this area.

The ureteroscopy is similar to the horrible procedure the other doctor did on Monday, but I’ll be unconscious for it. Big difference. I’m still in pain from the first one. 🙁

Anyway, he gave me some Flomax, which is apparently a drug given to men with prostrate problems(!), and I took one yesterday and passed right out for about 5 hours. I think I’ll wait until bedtime tonight to take it.

Apparently I’ve also got another stone in my right kidney which is poised to cause serious problems as well, so I might end up doing the lithotripsy for that one. I’ve been reading some disturbing stuff about long-term consequences though, so I’m not sure if I’m comfortable with that.