tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-55216102007-05-04T12:52:59.251-04:00JohnBlogger62125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5521610.post-596727653862850542007-05-04T12:45:00.000-04:002007-05-04T12:52:59.286-04:00

Josh Hancock Here's a post that I submitted to the discussion board of the Yahoo! Fantasy Baseball league I play in: I'm interested in other people's take on the whole Josh Hancock saga. Now it appears that at the time of his crash, he was: - Drunk off his ass (0.157) - Smoking dope - Talking to some chick on his cell phone - Doing 68 MPH in a 55 zone - Not wearing his seat belt It's a sad

Johntag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5521610.post-1176082523569526812007-04-08T21:31:00.000-04:002007-04-08T21:35:59.363-04:00

I yet live! Not that I have anything to say right now, but I wanted to rejoin the ranks of humanity that A) have blogs and B) have actually posted something in the past 12 months. Hopefully I'll get back in the swing of things soon. One inspiration has been that I'm back in the photo-publishing business thanks to getting JAlbum up and running once again locally. I tried Picasa but didn't

Johntag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5521610.post-1117592127282140102005-05-31T22:09:00.000-04:002005-05-31T22:15:27.293-04:00

Focus On Misinforming Your Family Johnny Letter has struck with an outraged missive to Jim Dobson and his boys at Focus On the Family! The fact that I got an actual case number (below) makes my mouth water in anticipation of the patronizing response I am likely to receive. Here's the case number and response-promise from FoF: Thank you for submitting a comment or question. We are pleased that

Johntag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5521610.post-1114631943824394162005-04-27T15:44:00.000-04:002005-04-27T16:15:11.593-04:00

Quantum Taters This will be of no interest whatsoever to anyone, but it needs to be published somewhere, so tough luck. I submitted the essay to an online publication called Baseball Prospectus, where--given the nerdiness of their typical article--I actually thought I had a good chance of seeing print, but no dice. To quote from my rejection letter: I'd sat [sic] first thing you need to do is

Johntag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5521610.post-1111766574069928582005-03-25T10:58:00.000-05:002005-03-25T11:02:54.073-05:00

Schiavo-Rant! What better way to post my first item in months than to join the thousands of other bloggers who are blogging away about Terri Schiavo? I was spurred to action by a short article (they are all short, have you noticed?) on FoxNews.com written by a young priest. He brazenly compared Terri Shiavo with Jesus Christ and implored us all not to forget the humanity of Terri. My ranting

Johntag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5521610.post-1102300386191103062004-12-05T19:55:00.000-05:002004-12-10T08:58:09.023-05:00

Thank-You, Gentle Reader! My fellow Democrats here in Tampa sure do like to try to use my lumrant words against me, for some unknown reason! I am going to look upon it as a positive thing: it suggests that there must be at least a handful of readers of my site outside my immediate family. Gentle Reader, I write today for thee. For the benefit of my traditional audience (my sister and my

Johntag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5521610.post-1102039675965276792004-12-02T19:13:00.000-05:002004-12-02T21:07:55.966-05:00

More Election Failure: Pettiness and Manipulation Writ Small! The last few weeks I have been helping out a local candidate in his bid to become Chair of the county's Democratic party. Out of respect to him, I'll leave his name out, but anyone involved knows who it is. My motivations were clear and pretty unassailable (or so I like to think). Between May and November, I got to work

Johntag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5521610.post-1099877650119663722004-11-07T20:31:00.000-05:002004-11-13T02:07:22.946-05:00

Hating My Conspiracy-Minded Fellow Dems! Here's the first of what I suspect will be a lot of new items from me. I wrote this in response to the tidal wave of Floridians I met, both during and after the campaign, who insist on believing that the big problems in front of us have something to do with electronic voting machines. Here's my problem: There was more real-time scrutiny on the

Johntag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5521610.post-1100328942731779212004-11-12T22:21:00.000-05:002004-11-13T01:55:42.730-05:00

Campaign Reflections (ii) The woman on the phone at the HCDEC headquarters turned out to be the right-hand man (so to speak) of Spencer, the main Kerry guy who had been sent down by the Democrats. Not that there were really any official roles established! In fact, the only people on the scene at all at this early date turned out to be Spencer, Andrea, and Sara, and Spencer was the only

Johntag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5521610.post-1099973138724735512004-11-08T22:08:00.000-05:002004-11-08T23:05:38.723-05:00

Campaign Reflections (i) My mom got me started. After some half-hearted efforts on my part that included submitting my name to the johnkerry.com Web site, I still hadn't received a reply from anyone. Mom finally just told me to look up the local Democrats in the phone book--something that honestly just hadn't occurred to me in this age of the Internet. So, I called. And miraculously, in

Johntag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5521610.post-1093926144593199342004-08-31T00:03:00.000-04:002004-08-31T00:22:24.593-04:00

All The President's Kids (I hope) By god, there's still time to salvage the month of August with a post! Phew. The archive will not reveal the depths of my abandonment of this blog just yet... So, here's a stream-of-consciousness sort of rant about the last few weeks. The campaign thing has definitely been in high gear, and I'm finding the local democratic scene to be full of ineffective

Johntag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5521610.post-1090729599283782412004-07-25T00:26:00.000-04:002004-07-25T00:26:39.283-04:00

America's Dumbest Town! Sadly, quitting NI now is going to cost me in terms of underwater stock options, unless someone can pull a sort of a Reverse 9/11 and give the economy a huge kick in the pants. But I think it's time to cut the cord with NI for now so that I can try to focus more energy on Kerry. If all goes well, after November 2 I will be feeling like I fulfilled at least a little of

Johntag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5521610.post-1090728993667381272004-07-25T00:16:00.000-04:002004-07-25T00:16:33.666-04:00

Lots of exciting happenings in my life! This post will be long but ugly, as I am using my new i700 and a WAP interface to blogger that doesn't allow carriage returns. Item 1: the Kerry campaign is going great guns. It appears that I am to be a de facto District Leader, in charge of a whole bunch of north Tampa precincts in collaboration with my new friend Alvin Wolfe. Essentially, it's all

Johntag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5521610.post-1089856775971751152004-07-14T21:59:00.000-04:002004-07-14T21:59:35.970-04:00

OK. now to re-enact a doonesbury cartoon from 1992! i should note that i am pecking out this post on my new toy, an i700 pda/phone from verizon. engage handwriting recognition: heregoesl. Not too bad. It is tastier than typing, ok I meant to say faster! That is better Boy. the period is tough. well. Enough of this. I can report that the Democratic stuff is going very well. Check out

Johntag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5521610.post-1089856059332573132004-07-14T21:47:00.000-04:002004-07-14T21:47:39.333-04:00

Ah, my poor blog! it is only because i am playing with my new pocket pc that it is getting some attention. Let's see if this will post...

Johntag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5521610.post-1086836789436870542004-06-09T22:55:00.000-04:002004-06-09T23:07:21.166-04:00

WAP! With the help of Knave, I have stuck it to The Man! The Man in this case being Verizon. I can now once again browse various Web resources for free using my cell phone, provided that: - Road Runner does not change my IP address to something different - My home computer is up and running OK, admittedly, it's fairly brittle. But still, it's better than relying on somebody else to

Johntag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5521610.post-1086807848368046302004-06-09T14:52:00.000-04:002004-06-09T15:04:08.366-04:00

Ah, blogger. Sadly, I come not to add anything meaningful, but instead to record some details of my hunt for a free WAP gateway. For a couple of months now, my bootlegger WAP Gateway on my cell phone has not been working, and I've been too lazy to figure out why. Today, inspired by the discovery that I can access my ISP's Web mail client via WAP, I have decided to get to the bottom of it.

Johntag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5521610.post-1085027849730484512004-05-20T00:32:00.000-04:002004-05-20T00:37:29.730-04:00

Lum the Activist...finally? Just a short blog here (Blogger just redid their UI, and I am not yet a fan) to prove that I yet live. Last week I finally got hooked up with the local Democratic Party faithful--specifically, the folks down at the Hillsborough Country Democratic Executive Committee. Why is it a committee? You got me. Anyway, I attended a monthly meeting they have at a

Johntag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5521610.post-1083350068684276682004-04-30T14:34:00.000-04:002004-04-30T16:51:56.996-04:00

Being Reasonable: the Godsend Movie I stumbled upon something interesting today: the makers of a movie called Godsend have recently begun a major marketing blitz in preparation for the movie's upcoming release. Though I haven't read much in the news about the movie yet, I suspect that I will soon, as more Christian groups and "concerned citizens" band together to protest it. To fully

Johntag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5521610.post-1083298365847761922004-04-30T00:12:00.000-04:002004-04-30T01:17:32.966-04:00

Transparent Opinion One of the problems with this blogging thing is that it encourages a person to keep on cranking out new pulp without really refining any ideas to the point of usefulness. I definitely don't need that encouragement, but I tell myself that it's marginally better to write something (while not taking real action) than it is to write nothing (while not taking real action). To

Johntag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5521610.post-1083258209093211162004-04-29T13:03:00.000-04:002004-04-29T13:06:35.466-04:00

Maggie Lum! My brother called to inform me that I now officially have as many nieces as I have nephews! (I think.) My newest relative (and the second human being over whom I could viably claim paternity if I so desired!) was born a little while ago: something like 8 lbs., 15 oz . "A load," as my brother confirmed for me. Don't know the length or any of that crap. Congratulations to

Johntag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5521610.post-1083112218581947012004-04-27T20:30:00.000-04:002004-04-27T20:52:22.686-04:00

Lum the Poet, circa 1989 The Berlin Wall would fall later that year, and I didn't give a damn. But for a brief moment in Mrs. uh...Mrs. Someone's English class in my Junior year in high school, I turned philosopher for a few days! We had just learned about consonance and assonance (huh-huh), meter, rhyme, etc, and our assignment was to write a poem. Here's what I wrote: Smaller and

Johntag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5521610.post-1083040656897757942004-04-27T00:37:00.000-04:002004-04-27T20:24:37.716-04:00

Jeanie vs. John on Naturalism Jeanie and I had an interesting argument the other day. She asked me about the book I was reading (Tower of Babel, by Robert Pennock), and I told her a little about it. The main idea of the book is to illuminate the rise of the "New Creationism" over the last 15 years or so and to debunk the arguments (both scientific and philosophical) that Creationists pose

Johntag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5521610.post-1082667391329914742004-04-22T16:56:00.000-04:002004-04-22T17:28:23.890-04:00

The Case Against Bush (work in progress) Primary Strategic Issues Facing America: Ensure our global securityProblem: fundamentalist terrorism and rogue people/powersSolution: effectively promote free-market, liberal democracy worldwide with multilateral initiatives Preserve and promote Life, Liberty, and Happiness for all AmericansProblem: yawning gap between rich and poor means “wage

Johntag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5521610.post-1082621592432720642004-04-22T04:13:00.000-04:002004-04-22T04:16:11.326-04:00

Middle O' the Night Blog I was reflecting today on how this blog is shaping up to be most of what I have to show for myself after having worked 1/2 my old workload over the past five months. Well, that and having read about a million pretty good books. Steve Lohmeyer (NI Buddy) told me today that he had bought a house! That link is bound to go bad soon, but at moment Steve's house is

John