(no subject)

Rather than hitting Chronos, I wound up taking care of a patient or two. I replaced the slowly-dying HD on my 3.5 year old Dell laptop (for which I paid too much, $145 30g, but at least I knew it would work properly) and reinstalled a metric ton of software etc. I think there are people making 80 grand doing the same thing for us where I work...well the government pays 80-150k each for them, but they probably only get 40-60k as contractors. Sure, they know more than I do and have other tricks they can play...but most of what they do is what I did. Nyah. It seems building computers is easier than it was - no dip switches, HDs don't have separate controllers, and compatibility is nowhere near the problem it used to be.

Speaking of really petty, does anyone know how to code LJ to default all views to left-justify [ p align = "left" ] (with the greater/less-than symbols)? I hate full justify, and have seen data that supports my theory that while to an idiot who doesn't read text it looks pretty to line everything up to both sides of the page, for those of us reading the page the shorter trips between letters in left justify add up to substantial time savings over time. I loathe full justify, but it clearly the mainstream. Hopefully the fad of using that neat trick from technology will fade with the sciences that prove greater efficiencies with left. Sure it sounds petty, but I'm sure if you ran a figure of economic waste based on the addition of time through kajillion words read over a day worldwide...

In other news: I was wrong, before Rush Limbaugh syndrome (being addicted to painkillers while bashing "drug users") there was Rehnquist syndrome. Now, to be fair, I understand he allegedly overcame that addiction - but I'd be curious when he designed his star-trek uniform vs. when he was in treatment for drug addiction.

Another minor win at work, but it was only over jurisdiction.

(no subject)

I lied: after running into one of those "recycling is bad for the environment" arguments, in which we rationally noted neither of us was going to bother to do research on the issue - I gave the intraweb a quick skim on the anti-recycling to save the environment angle. Turns out it's as much bunk as it sounds like. Most of the information I found on it were merely in the form of blogs, though the Cato institute did have an article about it (focusing mostly on economics, duh, but skipping the arguments they usually make about growing economies of scale). It turns out the whole myth and furor was stirred up in about 2002 through a NYT article, which was picked up and echoed in blogs to this day. I found a good counter-article, which included several references to environmental studies here: http://www.nrdc.org/cities/recycling/recyc/recyint.asp
This article is only about 50 pages long, but preceded by an easy to follow abstract and introduction, and has direct links to many of its references so you can fact/source check their conclusions about chemical components, amounts, environmental studies, and the like. It also traces a brief history of the anti-recycling hype's origins and fizzle.

Now, NRDC is hugely biased, so I'm open to counter-articles - but only if they cite data rather than merely making conclusory statements with nothing but their gut-feeling to back them up, and by that I mean "No truthiness."


On a more important note, I had the all-you-can-shovel buffet at India Curry House again. You must go there and eat the foods. They are most of good. Eat much, spend little.