hate dogs

Seriously, folks,
What's up with you all hating hot dogs? Why all the lack of love? What's not to like about tubular meat? Now, granted, the pig lips and rat tails that you get from an Oscar Meyer weiner (which, I think we can all agree, nobody wants to be) aren't what I'm talking about. Nobody in their right mind can get behind junk food. I'm talking about all beef, I'm talking about relish, I'm talking about gourmet, sesame-coated buns. Why can't we all get behind sesame-coated buns? Why all of this hate? Why can't you let go of your vegetarian, mildly homophobic neuroticisms and appreciate one of the greatest inventions of Person?
Speaking of hate, I've found out that I know people who have it! One person I know has hate for people who listen to reggae music. If you listen to reggae, this friend of mine automatically hates you! While I think this a little bit harsh, I can see the path one could go down to get to reggae-hating.
I also found out that I know somebody who is a spirituality-hater. You like crystals? Don't talk about them around this person: you will be hated! It must be something about Boston (cities?) that makes people want to enact that hating. Some sort of self-preservation mechanism that lets you transfer your rage at the driver who almost ran your bike over, the surly waiter, the drunken crazy person who accosted you, transfer all of that rage to reggae, or hippies.
The moral of the story is: don't let the city get the better of you! Tame that hate! Take Shaolin White Crane Long Fist Kung-Fu and feel better by punching! Punch-therapy, or as I prefer to call it: acupunchure.
Aaaaaaaaaand, I'm spent.

Latiflearned.com - Go Transfer your Rage

there i was
watching movies at my feet with my neck craned
while i should have been biking
jerking, the road bumps underneath
evading cars, but instead
there i was playing pool
when i should have been thinking
of a better way to describe
the way you make a tiny noise
when i accost you unexpectedly
and lift you off your feet, then another
noise, but
there i was trying to coax a rhyme
out of a vacuous phrase,
looking for a pattern or a meaning
when i should have been sleeping

Latiflearned.com - Go Listen

yesterday i spent a while choosing
the right shirt color
to go with the cranberry shade
of my stretchy pants

it's important, truly important
VERY important to choose the right color
because not a lot of colors
go with the cranberry shade
of my stretchy pants

not to mention the texture
which, given the corduroy nature
of the pants, should be lesser,
softer

i just woke up.
i can't move my head.
some malady possesses me,
and the cranberry shade
of my stretchy pants
seems less important
(i think i'll stay in bed)

Latiflearned.com has lyrics, not poetry.

machines?

Computers are like crops. In both, the rules of natural selection apply. For crops, you have predators such as insects, beetles and worms who contribute to the ecosystem by eating one specific variety of corn, of which you've planted 89 hectares worth. Damn! So, coat that corn in pesticide, kill the beetles, and call it a day! With computers, you've got viruses and adware/malware, which target specific operating systems and programs (which constitute "species" of computers for the sake of this argument). So, slap on some antivirus software and forget about the problem. Forget... It'll go away... Forget...
So the point I'm getting at is that we have a computing monoculture, which is bad for exactly the same reason that food monoculture is bad: it only takes one variety of beetle that wants to eat it for all 89 hectares to go to ruin. You don't have to learn anything new here, just universally apply my metaphor, and encourage computing diversity! You'll be more robust! Use alternative browsers! Try out some Linux! Try your best to stay away from commercial office software solutions!
This makes me think about living systems, and how they're different from human mechanical systems. The ideal ecosystem, for example, has many parts, often interchangeable or overlapping, held together by diversity. An ideal system in the "natural" world is the one with the greatest co-existing diversity of parts. An ideal system (in terms of robustness/longevity) in the human-designed world, however, is the most generic an heterogeneous one.
Take cars, for example. Is it easier to maintain a Bugatti or a Toyota Camry? Arguably, the Bugatti is theoretically higher performance in many ways. But a Toyota Camry can take the most abuse - there are a plethora of available spare parts should it break, and most mechanics know or can figure out how to fix one... Try getting Joe at JP Auto to fix your mint-condition 1963 Aston-Martin, and you may run into difficulties.
So human systems seem to be, in this respect, in direct antipathy to natural systems. The most robust human-designed system is the one most representing a monoculture, which in the natural world is the worst system. This implies to me that we sould possibly shift our way of thinking to be more like the natural world, and thus more robust in the face of calamity. Encourage diversity! Customization! Make everything you do unique, and when the proverbial shit hits the proverbial pan, you'll stand a greater likelihood of being able to tough it out.
At least, that was what I thought this morning.

Latiflearned.com is far less pesudo-intellectual than this page.