Adventures in Egotism

White people like many things. One of the main things they like is to be confronted with their “whiteness”. They want to atone for the sin of being white. Note that “being white” does not include shopping at Wal-Mart or following evangelicalism. “Being white” means acting in the manner of those white people who have power and interest in exploring their role in society. All of their attempts to better themselves or society though are in order to feel moral superiority or “less white”. White people who care about the pain of animals may choose not to eat them, but ultimately this is so they can feel as though they are helping the environment AND it gives them a sweet way to feel superior to others. White people who are excited by learning about other cultures do it in order that you know how special and unique they are.

Remember that white people are not poor people. White people are those with the privileges of computers and free time that they can spend it on a web site mocking them and providing ad revenue to the person generating generalizations of them.

Remember also that people “of color” (white people do not have a color—really they are so empty as to be translucent) do not exhibit the attributes above. Black people do not like coffee, Apple products, to study abroad, bicycles, or recycling. Black, yellow, red, brown, and purple people who do like any of the aforementioned things are not acting their color or being true to their cultures.

If you see a non-white person at Whole Foods, they are probably trying to be white.

p.s. white people also love the socially pacifying power of conspicuous irony

I just got a few e-mails from the neuroling mailing list. I was once an aspiring neurolinguist. Now I study open development of educational resources at CMU’s HCII.

So I’ve unsubscribed to the neuroling mailing list. It’s liberating to let go of dreams, to pursue new ones.

University Fences In a Berkeley Protest, and a New One Arises - New York Times

In Berkeley, Calif., a protest in the trees outside Memorial Stadium at the University of California has been business, and Berkeley, as usual.

This was my problem last night while shopping for a new monitor. I ultimately went with the Dell 2407WFP-HC - over the Samsung 245BW. (So I could connect a Wii, which I still long for.)

xkcd - A webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language - By Randall Munroe

This is a map from National Geographic’s February Issue.

The original post at The Creativity Exchange is worth visiting for the entertaining and thought-provoking comment thread.

Looking up at the stars, I know quite well
That, for all they care, I can go to hell
But on earth indifference is the least
We have to dread from man to beast.

How should we like it were stars to burn
With a passion for us we could not return?
If equal affection cannot be,
Let the more loving one be me.

Admirer as I think I am
Of stars that do not give a damn
I cannot, now I see them, say
I missed one terribly all day

Were all stars to disappear or die,
I should learn to look at an empty sky
And feel its total dark sublime,
Though this might take me a little time.

- W.H. Auden

Economist.com - Cities Guide
While helping the homeless has become a cause célèbre, one group managed to turn it into a controversial act. For the past few years Solidarity of the French, a far-right group, has run a soup kitchen offering pork soup to Paris’s homeless. Critics complain that the organisation chose pork as the main ingredient in order to exclude observant Jews and Muslims, whose dietary restrictions preclude eating pig. On its website, the group stated it would only serve full meals to those who first accepted the soup. The city’s police chief to suspend the soup kitchen’s operation on December 28th. An administrative tribunal reversed the decision, so Mr Delanoë urged France’s highest court, the Conseil d’Etat, to weigh in. In January the court banned Solidarity of the French from serving meals.

It is better to have loafed and lost than never to have loafed at all.
-James Thurber, writer and cartoonist (1894-1961)

I’ll be turning to that for the next five years at least.

If you use Google Transit, you may like this Google Gadget for Google Transit.

Langston Walker is 6-foot-8 and 345 pounds. He majored in economics at Cal. He plays football now for the Oakland Raiders.

He also lived opposite my door in Clark Kerr. As a Division I football player, I would see him rarely. He spent most of his time at practice, in class, or with tutors. Most of the time I did see him, he would be in my dorm suite mock-chocking the gymnasts I lived with. I never understood that, but they seemed to enjoy it. But I what I remember most is the heinous stench of his giant shoes.

He said this in a recent Sacramento Bee article:

“I bring a book for the plane ride,” Walker said. “Something that’s educational, something that will expand my mind.”

Such talk causes running back Justin Fargas to ask Walker, “Are you serious?”

Walker is very serious about reading. The last book he finished before leaving for Baltimore was “Freakonomics,” an alternative look at economics by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner.