I Haz Cookey Nao?

I got the above image from actor Kevin Sorbo's twitter feed (@KSorbs). See last year when I wrote "Should I Realy Be Blogging,"I thought of myself as a Liberal, and I thought this was a good thing. I was exploring other points of view because people I had been trained/socialized/conditioned to listen to weren't making sense to me anymore or were just offending me with their rudeness and/or hysteria.
This is actually one of the more inocuous status updates this particular facebook friend posted. I only have the redacted screencap because it was also posted on twitter so I saved it when I saw it.

I started watching an online talk show called The Stage Right Show and got invited/sucked/absorbed into its chatroom culture. The folks were friendly and THEY MADE SENSE. The more I listened to the host, guests, and interacted with the chatroom regulars (and occasionally the trolls), the more I realized that I agreed with many of them... on MANY issues.

I had gone to one of their events and met some bloggers and radio hosts and one of them told me, based on my answers about specific issues that I wasn't a Fiscally Conservative Liberal but a Libertarian.

As the year went on, I had more education setbacks (thank you California Community College District) and had do deal with potentially more industry regulations for my profession (AB 1822) which drastically changed my worldview.

I swung through the pendulum to the Dark Side; I had become a CONSERVATIVE.

(and the Dark Side does have cookies)

TO BE CONTINUED...

Should I Really Be Blogging

I want to write something important but don't really feel qualified. The older I get, the less qualified or capable I feel to do anything. I alternate between feeling like a failure or a fraud especially when somone my age says "oh, you're young, you have plenty of time" because they honestly think I am ten years younger than I am.

Someone on Twitter said Self-respect is knowing you have instrinsic value; Self-esteem is the hope others will value you.

I've never been confident of the first and continue to lose the second. I think the two are cross-correlated; when one is high, the other is low but in my case both are low right now. My whole life I was told I wasn't "working up to my potential" but no one could answer "potential for what?".

I've been hanging out with some bloggers lately and am finding myself in awe of their ability to do live their lives openly, honestly, and (as far as I can tell) responsibly. Most of them are 5-10 years younger than me. They are hard working, smart, resourceful and not prone to complaining. They all seem to know what they want out of life, are very aware of what is going on in the world and how it affects them and are on track to acheiving their goals. I guess what's bothering me is I haven't come any closer to acheiving my goals than when I moved out here to "start" my life.

Correlation Does Not Equal Causation

For fun: Correlation of US State with the number of clicks on online banners | R-statistics blog

Blogger Tal Galili wrote an excellent post demonstrating how simple correlations can be fun to graph and make "good?" headlines but not necessarily reflect what is actually being observed/studied.
He recommend empirical research and a heirarchy of evidence be used to support claims and that that evidence be fact based. click the link above to get the full story.

November is Write a novel month?

anyone doing this? should i write about the amazon queen i've been researching? does anyone read this blog?

Ghostwriter

One of the interesting parts of my job is that my employer is a phenomenally talented acupuncturist. She has a great opportunity to share her knowledge with the world (she has a website, a blog, and is listed on numerous social networking pages). Unfortunately, English is her second language.
This is where I come in. We have an agreement that she will post something new to her blog every week. Before she can post it, I have to proofread it. What should take 15 minutes tops, took 5 hours today. I thought I had a handle on Five Element Theory but, OMG!, the nuance required to diagnose according to TCM makes memorizing the Merck catalog look like a simple parlor trick.