As much as I love my house, I miss my condo today. It had central A/C. And a pool.

Indoor temperatures that exceed 80F are not conducive to work.

Eh, more likely just an excuse to procrastinate for five minutes…

I’m starting to think I should offer profile consulting to people on match.com (men and women alike — but definitely men, since I’ve read hundreds of men’s profiles over the years). What would one charge for that, anyway?

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The new theme seems to be working now. Please let me know if you come across any bugs as you’re reading. Thanks!

From today’s NYTimes: He Who Cast the First Stone Probably Didn’t

Retaliation is a normal human impulse…

After all, it is wrong to punch anyone except a puncher, and our language even has special words — like “retaliation” and “retribution” and “revenge” — whose common prefix is meant to remind us that a punch thrown second is legally and morally different than a punch thrown first.

But responding out of proportion is perceived (by an outside observer) to be wrong.

If the first principle of legitimate punching is that punches must be even-numbered, the second principle is that an even-numbered punch may be no more forceful than the odd-numbered punch that preceded it. Legitimate retribution is meant to restore balance, and thus an eye for an eye is fair, but an eye for an eyelash is not. When the European Union condemned Israel for bombing Lebanon in retaliation for the kidnapping of two Israeli soldiers, it did not question Israel’s right to respond, but rather, its “disproportionate use of force.” It is O.K. to hit back, just not too hard.

Problem is, escalation often *feels* like a response in-kind to the person responding.

The researcher began the game by exerting a fixed amount of pressure on the first volunteer’s finger. The first volunteer was then asked to exert precisely the same amount of pressure on the second volunteer’s finger. The second volunteer was then asked to exert the same amount of pressure on the first volunteer’s finger. And so on. The two volunteers took turns applying equal amounts of pressure to each other’s fingers while the researchers measured the actual amount of pressure they applied.

The results were striking. Although volunteers tried to respond to each other’s touches with equal force, they typically responded with about 40 percent more force than they had just experienced. Each time a volunteer was touched, he touched back harder, which led the other volunteer to touch back even harder. What began as a game of soft touches quickly became a game of moderate pokes and then hard prods, even though both volunteers were doing their level best to respond in kind.

Each volunteer was convinced that he was responding with equal force and that for some reason the other volunteer was escalating. Neither realized that the escalation was the natural byproduct of a neurological quirk that causes the pain we receive to seem more painful than the pain we produce, so we usually give more pain than we have received.

(emphasis added)

Owwww, quit it.

Pardon the dust.

I’m remodeling.

~~~~~

Okay, I’ve given up on K2 for the evening. We’ll try again tomorrow, and until then, it’s back to the happy layout (you know, the one that functions) without all the bells and whistles.

~~~~~

Update: Hacking can be a very. good. thing. So can Google’s cache — I found the answer to my photo/Firefox issue on a cached page that doesn’t exist anymore! I *think* the layout issues in IE are fixed now, too. If you happen to see anything that seems off, let me know. For now, I know my bullets aren’t displaying properly in IE, but I think that’s it.

Oooh, shiny. Sidebar posts!

We went to Iraq because Saddam’s supposed WMD stockpile threatened our peace. (See? We’re the Department of Defense. We’re *defending* you — this isn’t unprovoked aggression, golly, gee no! They could hurt us!)

Now, I learn that FAUXNews is already spinning some not-verified ideas (not even the facts, people) to say that Hezbollah might have the WMDs that Saddam never had in the first place. Good fucking god. We’re going to war. Again.

Who wants to bet that, just as we left Afghanistan “unfinished,” that the same will hapen in Iraq, and the new-and-shiny war will become the most important factor in “protecting American peace?”

I no longer think Kevin Phillips was being alarmist.

h/t Echidne for the MM story.

God bless Statcounter.

Or was that, “ignorance is bliss?”

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…I had a very nice first date last night.

The food was simply awful (but my date was rather gracious about it, even when the restaurant owner stopped by to visit). I ordered: Crepes Provencale: Sauteed beef tenderloin in crepes with a fresh thyme and mushroom cream sauce. For the starch, I chose pasta with red sauce. I got: thick, rubbery pancake-type “crepes” with what seemed to be overcooked stew meat, topped with a sauce that seemed to be from Campbells and canned mushrooms; spaghetti that could well have come from Chef Boy-r-Dee. My date’s steak had more tendon and fat threaded through it than I’d expect to feed my dogs. Horrendous. At least the salad and wine were good.

And the company? Great. There’s a good click there (chemistry, too), and in theory, he’s asked me out for next weekend. I say “in theory,” because until we have formal plans, I take anything with a grain of salt. That’s the cynic in me coming out to rain on the parade.

What a nice change of pace to have a date with a man instead of a “guy.”

(chemistry, but really, it’s the same thing)

This description goes with the theory that less is more so….I’m a laid back, athletic, type B person. I’ve travelled. I’ve stayed home. I like both. Prefer college sports to pro but even more, prefer doing to watching. Thats all you get for now. Since you’ve read this far, that means you’re interested which is understandable of course;-) You’ll have to earn the rest. Drop me a line.

Um, I’ve read that far, but it only means you told me nothing, nada, zip, zilch about yourself. Try again. You might be an amazing person, but I sure can’t tell anything about you from your profile that differentiates you from the thousands of other “buzzword compliant” Colorado guys out there.