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Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in
Matt Schmidt's LiveJournal:
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| Wednesday, September 10th, 2008 | | 1:36 pm |
| | Sunday, June 15th, 2008 | | 12:06 pm |
| | Friday, June 1st, 2007 | | 2:32 am |
Fucking Epic
My friend Steve has invited me to join him at a new blog: http://www.fuckingepic.com/As you can tell (if you surf on over there) I plan to post a lot more at the new place than I do here. | | Tuesday, May 15th, 2007 | | 8:57 am |
2008 Republicans
Although I find almost everything about the Republican field in 2008 to be amusing, this is super great: Multiple Choice: In 1960, JFK went before the Greater Houston Ministerial Association to put the Catholic issue behind him. Today, Rudy Giuliani spoke at Houston Baptist University in yet another attempt to put the abortion issue behind him. JFK wanted to prove that in America, there is no religious test to become president. As he labors to explain his ever-changing heart on choice, Giuliani seems determined to prove that there is no history test, either.
Giuliani is not alone. Mitt Romney doesn't want a religious test or a history test. His about-face on abortion is even less convincing than Giuliani's. Sam Brownback, Mike Huckabee, and Tom Tancredo, who don't believe in evolution, want to prove there's no science test. All the Republican candidates are supply-siders, hoping to prove there's still no math test. In other news, they're debating again tonight. It's probably still a bit early, but I can't wait for the dogpile on Rudy over abortion. | | Friday, May 4th, 2007 | | 1:36 pm |
Democratic Debate
I finally got a chance to watch the Democratic debate from last week. Oh goodness, Mike Gravel is awesome. If I were a rich liberal I'd throw him a couple grand to continue his campaign. | | Monday, April 30th, 2007 | | 4:09 pm |
| | Wednesday, April 18th, 2007 | | 7:56 pm |
| | Thursday, April 5th, 2007 | | 1:26 am |
I Have The Power!
So I've got this magnet I'm playing with here at the desk. And on the back of it it reads "CAUTION MAGNETIC". I feel pretty good about that. | | Wednesday, March 28th, 2007 | | 8:22 pm |
| | Tuesday, March 13th, 2007 | | 8:33 pm |
| | Sunday, March 11th, 2007 | | 11:25 pm |
A nifty meme
The rules: 1. Leave me a comment saying, "I too am an egomaniac." 2. I respond by asking you five some number of questions. You will answer them, because you like talking about yourself. 3. You will update your LJ with the answers to the questions. 4. You will include this explanation and an offer to interview someone else in the post. 5. When others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five some questions.
From ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) paper_machine: 1.) If the Gods made you an editor, what would you nuke? Why? [He is referring to the website http://www.everything2.com, where we are both users, and which is how we met.] Honestly, nothing. I think the site needs more content, not less, and I think the problem is things which shouldn't be nuked but are, rather than thins which should be and aren't. That said, I might cull some of the other crap -- stuff that wouldn't pass muster today but sticks around for stupid reasons. As far as I can remember, I've only requested the gods nuke one post that I didn't write myself. It was an old node about Protagoras, and it was inaccurate. I wrote up a new and better node that superseded it, asked the user to self-terminate it (he refused) so I asked a god to arbitrate, and she found in my favor and nuked the fucker. If given editor powers, I can't see myself behaving in a much different fashion. That is to say, I can't really see nuking anything unless it was factually inaccurate, and I could write a better piece. Of course, having an editor do this might be kind of dangerous -- judge, jury, and executioner all in one, if you will, so I doubt I'd do this often, even then. 2.) Who wins a knife fight on the moon: analytic or continental?Analytic, for a number of reasons. First, Analytic Philosophy, being concerned with things like "reality" and "science" would have a definitive advantage. Postmodern deconstructive literature is not a helpful specialty when in a knife fight. Second, Continental philosophers are all pussies. Thirdly, Continental Philosophy would have a hard time getting to the moon, as their lame-ass countries don't have space programs with the capacity to put a man on the moon. 3.) If you found out your closest friends and family (i.e., not me) decided to put you on the TV Show Intervention, would you go to rehab, or would you disown them all for making a poorly-edited mockery of your life on public television?I have no problem with my life appearing as a poorly edited mockery of itself on television -- that's what it often seems like here. I've never actually seen the show, but I assume it's a reality TV show about Interventions. I would probably view the situation as fairly comical. Also, would I get paid for this? I don't think I'd disown anyone, but anyone who thinks I have a problem so severe as to require an intervention probably doesn't know me that well to begin with. 4.) Do you have faith in humanity? For why?I find this question and its underlying premises very strange, but I suspect you don't, so I'll try to answer in full. Does the word "Faith" have any special meaning? I generally take it to mean "belief without evidence" and under that definition, I don't have "Faith" in anything, although I have a good many beliefs that other people might think are unsubstantiated. This is a common phrase that atheist humanitarians use when confronted by religious types who accuse them of not having faith in anything. I may have used it once or twice in such a manner, although since such a faith does not share the same metaphysical or epistemological space as religious beliefs, the phrase is meaningless. But since I am an outspoken liberal, perhaps the question is whether or not I think that humanity is "good enough" to adopt my particular social beliefs (egalitarianism, vegetarianism, pacifism, etc.). The answer to that question is resoundingly yes. I have no doubt on this score. I am both cynical about the present and yet boundlessly optimistic about the future. I am heavily involved in contemporary politics, and have no illusions about how wretched people can be. On the other hand, I always have an eye towards history, which shows us just how bad things have been in the past. The abolition of slavery, in particular, is of great comfort to me. Throughout the entirety of human history certain persons were kept in bondage (and if one honestly evaluates the status of women, this percentage is almost always over 50% of the population), and yet now slavery has been abolished in almost every country, to the point where it strikes us a the height of barbarity. I do indeed have a sort of "faith" in the ability of humanity to progress, but this is a justified belief, based upon the level of progress we have already made. So cheer up, gloomy, the future's so bright, we gotta wear shades. Now I'm going to go read some Hume and brush up on my zero-G knife-fighting skillz. | | 3:55 pm |
Tom Eagleton
The Post printed Senator Eagleton's farewell address today. Take a minute to read it, even if you didn't know the guy or aren't political -- it's smart, funny, and short. I only met Sen. Eagleton once, when I was a boy. My father took me to see him speak to a fairly small crowd -- this would have been in the late eighties or early nineties, after he was out of the Senate but before he was fully canonized as a mythic figure in St. Louis (largely because he brought the Rams here). I don't remember much of Eagleton's talk, save for a portion about JFK. Eagleton was the first person I ever heard argue that Kennedy wasn't that impressive a President. As an American Martyr, public criticism of JFK is nearly forbidden in this country, and I doubt Eagleton expressed this view when TV cameras were around. He argued that had Kennedy had been a fairly frustrated President, almost none of his domestic agenda got passed, and he almost certainly would have been a one-termer. In foreign policy Kennedy had one failure (the bay of pigs) and one success (the cuban missile crisis) and he was escalating in Vietnam. In domestic policy, nearly everything that anyone thinks Kennedy* did, Johnson actually passed after his death. Without Kennedy's death, the great legislative triumphs of the sixties that people tend to attribute to him would never have happened. That was a strange digression, I know, but that was the one thing I remembered about hearing Tom Eagleton speak over 15 years ago. *For example, Republicans like to say that Kennedy cut taxes, he did not. Democrats like to think that Kennedy was a civil rights President, he was not. | | Thursday, March 8th, 2007 | | 3:09 pm |
| | Tuesday, March 6th, 2007 | | 9:11 pm |
GOP 2008
This column on the GOP's potential nominees for 2008 is pretty dead-on. The only person running for the Republican nomination in 2008 that has a prayer of winning the general election is Mike Huckabee. I don't think they're smart enough for that, though. | | Saturday, February 24th, 2007 | | 5:56 pm |
Presidential Politics
This is a pretty interesting chart on where all the Presidential candidates are and have been on Iraq: http://www.nytimes.com/ref/us/politics/IRAQPOSITIONS.html?hpThe distinctions between the positions strike me as a bit fruity, as I think all the Democrats are pretty much on the same page as far as what comes next, although maybe not. Judging from their past statements I think Obama, Edwards, Kucinich, Gravel, and Richardson more or less favor immediate withdrawal, while Biden and Clinton would probably stick around for a few months or so. Of course, by the time Jan. 2009 rolls around, whoever is the democratic nominee will favor immediate withdrawal, so the point isn't that important. Of course, politics wouldn't be politics without kabuki. That said, Iraq can also show us what the future President would likely do after Iraq, which is one of the reasons I will not be voting for Hillary and Joe Biden scares the shit out of me. | | Friday, February 9th, 2007 | | 1:49 pm |
Harriett Woods is dead.
I just called my little sister up to tell her Harriett Woods had finally died from leukemia. "Oh no! She gave me cheese bread!"
As many of you know, I spent about 2 years working on the Howard Dean campaign. After he lost the primary race and Kerry lost the presidency, Dean decided to run for DNC Chairman. The remnants of his campaign organization set up a rally for him in St. Louis before the a DNC meeting here that winter, I took my little sister with me, figuring she could use exposure to politics. After the rally, us old Dean hands decided to go out to dinner -- joining us were some Dean folks from KC, a couple of reporters, a staffer or two, an alderman from Chicago who supported Dean in his bid, and Harriett Woods, the first woman to hold statewide office in Missouri. I'm sure most of you aren't familiar to her, but to women over the age of 35, she was Missouri's symbol of progress. As we sat down to dinner, I made sure that Rachel got to sit next to Harriett. I'm not sure what they talked about during dinner, as I was my usual self, bitching about Kerry and Bush, and discussing in great detail what Dean's changes to the DNC would look like (they've been pretty successful so far, thankyouverymuch), etc. I knew more than half the people at the table pretty well, and I'm afraid I kind of ignored my sister. Every time I looked over to see how she was doing, she was laughing and trading stories with Harriett. And, apparently, sharing her cheese bread. "I teach in order to pass on to others what I have learned and because of a serious concern that younger women are not stepping up to power." -- Harriett Woods, 1927-2007 | | Tuesday, January 30th, 2007 | | 4:29 am |
FYI: Women are Stupid
As a feminist male, nothing quite upsets me so much as the fact that most women are
willfully ignorant. As a character in the West Wing noted: The gender gap is 52/48 amongst voters in this country. That's a 4% advantage. Why don't you control the agenda? Why don't women rule the country? Because they're fucking retarded, that's why. Or, as J.S. Mill wrote: Women are made to be partners in their own subjection. see alsoAnd even better | | Tuesday, January 23rd, 2007 | | 7:45 am |
| | Thursday, January 18th, 2007 | | 12:46 am |
I wrote this for open mic night
Written for my aged friends: Dinosaur Platitudes, Part 1 By Matthew Schmidt Where have all the Pteradons gone? K-T took them from you and me. Tyrannosaurus is a scavenger, despite being a Tyrant Lizard King. Styracosaurus, second cousin ceratopsin, is always horny. Apatosaurus was Brontosaurus, you think you have identity issues. Famed disputer, Pachycephalosaurus (pak-ee-sef-a-la-soar-us), Is always butting heads. Dimetrodon, his sail unfurled, Triassic majesty, hot or cold. Stegosaurus, With a Walnut sized brain, We are not friends. Triceratops, Childhood favorite, Cretaceous buffalo, Herbivorous tank, Herd or flock? A reptile pack. Elephant graveyards wither in shame for the denisty of your debris, Stone skeletons from the primeval. After that avian innovation, Which began the Theropod migration, Feathers to scales, teeth to beaks, quail, wren, and hen. Past the K-T barrier, meteor dust, 'neath the shadow of the pteradon's ghost. Now remains the eagle, son of the lion, The falcon has been vanquished. The bear has been declawed, The dragon cannot fly, And you become Icarus. | | Monday, December 11th, 2006 | | 6:01 am |
Survey
I've got a quick serious and yet unscientific question for people, could you please list the first names of the five funniest people you know in real life? |
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