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While walking the dogs in the pouring rain I sang, and danced to, Roger Miller's "Walking in the Sunshine (sing a little sunshine song)." For a long time: two sides of the long block.

A chemical imbalance towards happiness is nice. Having great friends helps too. Still, maybe I should try to not get fired by Harvard.

Friedman has never struck me as anything more than a dolt. So it has frightened me that progressive-minded people have been so excited that he has said some things that aren't stupid, like that we need to find non-fossil sources of energy. (Saying that in 2008, rather than 1958, is not what I consider opinion leading.) But maybe he is freed from advocating the narrow, near-sighted, and dangerous world-view of the ultra-rich elite because perhaps he isn't one of them anymore:

http://www.tinyrevolution.com/mt/archives/002698.html

Thomas, welcome to the masses!

For the new-forming Radical Research Collective, we asked ourselves to share our influences (and the project we want to work on). Here's my attempt.

Influences

Number one largest influence on my understanding of the economy and some other aspects of society:

Jane Jacobs.
I read her in books, though some essays are online (some bad links) http://www.preservenet.com/theory/Jacobs.html
Most usefully http://www.preservenet.com/theory/Jacobsbiox.html

Billed as a Drupal learning day, not so much Drupal got done yesterday, but we had fun hanging out— Manda, Kathleen, and I, and for a while each also Veronica, Grandpa, and Mom as well as, of course, the dogs: Kathleen's Taedyn, Zelda, and grandpa's Rusty). We missed Anjali though, who couldn't make it– early Thanksgiving dinner.

Fantastic time for me, of course, spending time with a couple beautiful, brilliant people.

i, ah, tend to wear rather old shoes
Dan's dad (Max Hakimzadeh) is in the Natick office (the one Agaric borrows occasionally) of Comfort Shoes two days a week to meet his orthopedic clients.
I was there, hanging out and talking to him about everything while waiting for Dan, and then he asked for the size on my shoes and when I took them off to check (there was no tag left in either of them, and the soles had long since fallen off too for that matter)...

He took them and threw them in the trash.

And gave me a new pair.

I'm fairly certain it's my left elbow that I broke (fractured, but apparently medically there isn't really a distinction) in a bike accident (never ride a bike that only has front brakes, and then apply front and back brakes at the same time, it leads to other breaks).

Today I went for a short run, did 40 pushups straight (no break, and no none of this is meant to be puns), used the computer as always, made hummus and cooked vegetable fried rice (my impromptu recipe needs work) for business dinner (while using the computer), and now my elbow hurts significantly.

More than two percent of otherwise eligible-to-vote citizens of the United States of America are denied the right to vote for felony convictions.

In total numbers and in the political tendencies of the disenfranchised, that's about the same as denying Jews the vote in the U.S.

in 1998 "an estimated 3.9 million U.S. citizens are disenfranchised, including over one million who have fully completed their sentences."

http://www.hrw.org/reports98/vote/usvot98o.htm

Sean Donahue, Green Man Rambling, writes about the new rise of ancient practices of how people interact with each other and nature as (he says, I think it needs more help) capitalism crumbles:

Jeffrey Rowland says it best:

did you guys really have to take away people's rights? If you're against gay marriage then I have some advice for you -- don't go to gay weddings. It doesn't hurt you. If you honestly think your kids are going to turn gay because of it, you're not only ignorant but you're also insulting the independence and intelligence of your own kids. Dicks.

(I know a lot of you tried, that message was directed to the dicks).

Now, I've voted for no chance candidates in every election, but I can't believe that more than 17,000 people in Missouri, virtually all white I am sure and who think of themselves as progressive, couldn't figure out how important it was this election be voting with their black brothers and sisters in the state, what one more state in the middle of the country means for a mandate? For shame.

Worth a recount, but there may not be enough uncounted and spoiled ballots in Kansas City and St. Louis to make up that deficit... though there very well might be.