Minor life updates

2009 08 11

For a variety of reasons, I’m moving to Johannesburg next month for about a year. There’s not much industry there, so I’m going to be plugging away at a few personal projects I’ve thought up over the past few years. Probably barbecue some things. The usual. There’s a travel log that’ll get updated at some point. I’ve known for awhile, but I felt it prudent to exercise caution re: my job situation at the time. The consequences of being a part of a large corporation and all.

Muji now has an online store for US residents oh god oh god, this is the sound of my bank account slowly draining into Japan.

SCHNITZEL TRUCK! (and their website)!

I’m pretty isolated from “Real America,” so the health care debate is something that, for me, exists only in the abstract. It shouldn’t be, really; since I’m no longer among the majority of Americans who get health care via my employer I guess it would behoove me to follow the arguments. But that brings me right to my point: there isn’t an argument going on, there is one guy with an idea on how to address some problems, and then there are about a hundred thousand raging idiots screaming at the top of their lungs. I mean, we are literally to the point where people are taking virulent, righteous stands against completely fictional, fabricated positions. The textbook definition of the strawman logical fallacy. When that kind of unchecked ignorance is at work in the marketplace it actually ends up saving me a lot of effort. I don’t have to really analyze everything on offer. I know instinctually that whatever people so gloriously ignorant oppose is almost by definition the right answer. Accordingly: bring on single-payer health care, you have my vote, etc.