There's just something satisfying about stew that's been slow-cooked in a crockpot for 12+ hours. Not to mention the convenience of coming home, ladling some into a bowl, and having dinner ready instantly. I love stew.

Stumbled across this post on Europe's hypocrisy re: immigrants. Some of the quotes were pretty shocking. This one, for instance:

Democracy can only function among people mutually tied by an agreed geography and identity that binds them together with their own laws and taxes?as for considering the whole world one great society, unless people are capable of being generous and inclusive within their own communities first, they are certainly not going to vote for large overseas aid budgets, debt relief and opening up trade to poor countries.

Friday night Jen, Lindsay and I went to see Lilo and Stitch… this is the best movie to come out of Disney in years. We were practically falling out of our chairs for the first half of the movie. Definitely a "buy".

If you still need some yuks after seeing L&S, head to Barnes and Noble and hunt down a book called I am Puppy, Hear Me Yap. Cute and amusing at the same time. The picture of the Aussie puppy (somewhere around 2 or 3 from the last picture in the book) looks very much like Cindy did when she was a puppy.

Then, Jenny, Lindsay, my Grandma Phyllis and I all took a day trip to see New Harmony on Saturday. It was a bit of a drive (2 hours or so each way), but well worth it -- it's a very interesting ex-utopian community, primarily active between the early 1800s and the Civil War. If you're into history definitely a place to check out.

Finally, Conner, Lindsay, Jen and I played roller hockey this morning for a few hours. It's been a long time since any of us played (and it was Lindsay's first time), but we had a lot of fun for all that. Great weekend, even if it did involve 16 hours or so in the car. :-P

I'm starting to get really tired of the letter X. In fact it is beginning to achieve the same level of dislike previously reserved for the small letters i and e, the phrase "information superhighway", and related phrases. XM radio. Windows XP. The Athlon XP. Aqua Extreme. OS X*. The XFL. Knock it off with the Xs already. Sheesh.

* Yes, I know it's supposedly "OS Ten". But it's an X nevertheless.

Yes, yesterday was the one-year anniversary of our marriage. It went by very quickly, but seems like it was a long time -- as if we'd gotten to November, skipped a couple of years, and then started time normally again, if that makes any sense. Her family (minus Lauren), my family, my grandmas, my aunt Ginny, and my cousin Lisa all went out to Zephyr Cove Saturday for dinner to celebrate Jenny's dad's birthday, Lindsay's birthday, Ryan's graduation from high school, and our anniversary. It was a fantastically fun evening, for all my apprehension about it.

Jenny is in Louisville until mid-July teaching playwriting at the Young Writers' Workshop. Cara is with her, so the apartment is pretty lonely when I'm home. Every other time Jen's been out of the city, I at least have our dog to keep me company. The only bright spot is that that means I don't have to feel guilty about working overtime.

So somehow our lease on randomtree.org apparently expired this weekend, without me being aware of it. Fortunately I was able to reacquire it, with no harm done except a DNS outage that's lasted most of today. Quite irritating.

Why is Europe still so hung up on appeasement? How is it possible that they missed the lessons Hitler taught about appeasing an enemy? Does it have anything to do with their historic desire for consensus?

These questions brought to you by an interview with an Israeli woman I saw on Andrew Sullivan's page.

Looked at one way, I suppose it does make some sense that countries with large populations of vocal Muslims would rather try to appease the Palestinians -- at the relatively cheap cost (to them, of course) of Israeli lives than they would risk angering people already in their country. Looked at another way, what precisely would the French, for instance, do if the Palestinians did manage to get everything they wanted through terrorist tactics? Is that really a lesson they want to teach anyone? I think this is just a weakness of democracies, unfortunately -- elected politicians do better solving immediate problems (calming rioting subcultures) than they do avoiding long-term, nebulous future problems (what happens when terrorism is really validated as an effective "negotiation" strategy). Aside from just "wanting to do the best job they can" they really don't even have any incentive to try to avoid those future problems.

I don't know whether this is incredibly funny or incredibly sad, but I read some of pirated-sites.com over lunch today. It's amazing how blatant these ripoffs can be. Someone on the Evolt mailing list today pointed out the following URLS:
http://www.web-designers.co.uk/design.htm and

http://www.ezewebdesign.net/faqs.htm

Check the second heading specifically.

Update: It appears ezewebdesign has found out about being found out. You can still see the page in Google's cache, though I don't think it's the same version I saw earlier today. IIRC, earlier today the web page actually still had "Web Designers Limited" in at least one place.

Update: Even better, this site not only ripped off a website quite well-known among web designers, they did so in such an inept fashion that they left intact the HTML tag that identifies the copyright holder:

<META content="© 1999-2001 evolt.org and its members" name=copyright>

!! Well done, guys. All that and a bouncing marquee, too…

And sometimes it's completely and utterly incomprehensible. Among the other bizarre pieces of spam in my hotmail account today (including two notes from a very nice lady who wants to help me get www.randomtree.org listed in more search engines… she's so kind) was a truly bizarre rambling, crazed note. Click [more…] to read the whole thing.

I just scanned it, but it does raise interesting questions. Like what is Makail Gorbashev doing in a base in LA? How can a chip implanted in your hand or your forehead track your purchases? Who the hell is "Makail Gorbashev" anyway? Do chimpanzees have navel lint? Anyway, I found it briefly entertaining and decided to share.

In other news, Jenny and I turned in the paperwork for the apartment we're moving to in August. Both of us are a little ambivalent about the move -- we like the Central West End so much that it's a huge counter-argument to moving out. Hopefully the neighborhood in U. City will be fun as well. If not, I suppose we can always drive the 10 minutes to the CWE. :)

Randomly ran across this discussion of online directories like Google today, and something caught my eye:

So why does Google work so well? Because it's open and fair and seems smart (it's just a computer of course). Its algorithms figure out what the Web has to say on a given subject. Collectively we believe in Google, it's our memory, it's the way we share.

(emphasis mine)
I don't believe in a "genetic memory", or any of the other theories about shared memories I've seen (not that I've done an exhaustive review, you understand). But it seems to me that as the human race moves forward into a more and more interconnected world, one where vast volumes of information are nearly instantly accessible, we will develop one.

I wish I'd gone to UC Berkeley. I mean, UofL would never in a million years have a course on weblogs, taught by one of the co-founders of Wired magazine. What other fascinating once-a-week courses could I have taken to satisfy my myriad of interests?