However, today, while purchasing a soda from CVS, the cashier asked me, “Would you like to donate a dollar to St. Jude’s?” After immediately responding that I did, I was overwhelmed with a sense of joy. So much that I thanked her for enabling me to feel so good. And it was only a dollar. What a cheap drug! And good for society!

I hope to encounter more giving opportunities like this (quick and easy) and plan to seek out other types of giving. I’ve changed the order of my ToRead list, moving Bill Clinton’s ‘Giving: How Each of Us Can Change the World’ ahead of Darwin’s ‘Origin of Species’, which I will resume at a later date.

I woke up from a bad dream last night only to have another one during the next cycle. Both involved criminals trying to harm me or my friends. Pretty action packed, but I wasn’t watching a movie…at the time, it felt like reality. terrorized. it was worse then what happened in reality. with the amount of work i have ahead of me, i may just skip a night of sleep…it’s rare that i have a justification for doing so.

A friend of mine was recently wronged by a black person and has been liberal with his use of the n-word and i’ve objected to it every time, telling him not to let one person distort his view of an entire race…and if you can’t resist this urge, why not let Barack Obama distort your view?

anyway, i don’t like being preachy, but i’m comfortable making statements that ultimately guide one’s own behavior by making use of the motivation that MOST people have, which is to AVOID being a hypocrite. so, to all my friends who i’ve gotten onto for smoking, or saying the N-word, or littering…just let me continue. i’d love for you to stop, but i’m most concerned with helping myself, i think.

Anyhow, I took a cab home after the episode and after hearing my story the cab driver made a racist remark that normally would make one cringe…and while i didn’t vocalize his sentiments or agree with him, i noticed my cringe was absent. this is not good. i also noticed increased racial profiling on my trip to the grocery store just a few hours ago.

I normally go when my hunger becomes unbearable…tonight i left early and without an appetite…reasoning that 11:30pm was safer than 2:30am. I consider this a positive change in behavior.

I also took much more notice of the police cars and security guards that I walked past and came close to expressing my gratitude for their presence (maybe another time). I consider this a positive change, as well. However, this change is a part of a broader change…that of increased attentiveness…which sounds good…but it can take on the feeling of terror.

and while some of the accompanying thoughts can be positive like the example above (”Man, these guys are great. Sure glad they’re here”), others were pretty negative and shaming. and its these thoughts that…well they don’t even creep in…they jump into your consciousness.

i’m not really worried that this will be a lingering problem…i think my mind is just trying to integrate this experience and adapt my behavior to serve the goal that all creatures’ ancestors have had.

it’s just that the experience is still recent and is strongly weighted…(and yes, i’m just guessing at how this works…if any cogsci people come across this post, i would love to be enlightened)…with time i’ll feel like my old self, with a software mindware patch.

the negative change i have just become aware of is that this incident is preventing me from completing my project. so i will stop now. but there are a couple of things i intend to blog about soon.

i have been thinking alot about a mugging experience that happened to me about 4 years ago…the aftermath was more traumatic…and the perpetrator was a 40-something white guy. but i can’t recall any quasi-instinctual racial profiling afterwards. i’ll explore this in my next post.

another thing i’ve been thinking about is all the times i imagined what i’d do if something like this were to occur, and i can’t say i followed any kind of premeditated plan. in hindsight, i could say i made the optimal decision…(more optimal may have been to take the cab just to the subway and not ALL the way home)…which was to run through the street towards a cab i saw at a redlight a block and a half away. But my information is/was limited…i wasn’t proposing situational factors and considering different options…i had to fucking act. “fight or flight” is a very fitting phrase. if anyone is reading this…what would you do? maybe some comments will give me something to write about.

and other things i’ve thought more about:

-the right to bear arms and whether or not having a firearm makes a situation more dangerous

-whether martial arts is worth the effort

-the death penalty

-the psychology of someone who robs people and how it’s even possible to behave that way, you stupid pieces of shit (yes, quite a bit of anger still)

-LEAVING THE CITY I LIVE IN BECAUSE THERE IS SO MUCH CRIME, or is there?

-and whether or not having worn an obama tshirt would’ve made me less of a target.

and one more thing: i’ve met a few racists in my day, and people who try to justify their use of the n-word*….and when i’ve asked them to explain their reasoning, i have not found their answers compelling or even remotely reasonable. most of the time, its just stupidity, ignorance, or “the way i was raised (stupid AND ignorant)”. but we are not always reasonable creatures. while my experience was relatively tame, i wonder what a much more traumatic experience might do to someone’s racial prejudices. from an evopsych perspective, its easy to understand how xenophobia could’ve once served a purpose. But a lot has been done towards making this emotion/prejudice obsolete. it just sucks that, seemingly, one misguided person can make the xenophobic monster rear its ugly head in another.

*i am guilty of this myself. i now think it foolish, but i once thought that if everybody said it to everyone all the time, it would lose its power as a hateful word. that may be true, akin to how some african-americans use it amongst themselves, but everyone/all the time would never happen. what’s more likely is you run around pissing people off while always having to explain your unattainable goal.

I was playing around in Settings->Tags and noticed that you can make any tag a Public Page, which also has a feed. So, create a tag for a friend you share posts with often, make the tag public, and tell them to add the feed to their reader. Now whenever you want to share a post with a specific person, just tag it with their name (keyboard shortcut: ‘T’). No more clogged inboxes…and you can look at what you’ve shared with them by looking at the tag.

btw, i don’t like that when i send email from non-gmail google services that it is not in my sent mail.

Bike-sharing program is launching in Washington, D.C. next month. Similar to Zipcar and PhillyCarShare, users pay an annual fee ($40) and can pickup bikes from computerized racks stationed around the city. I remember watching a film about Holland called ‘Sex, Drugs and Democracy’ that featured, among other things, this very idea…except it was state-run and free to use.

U.S. Hispanic Population Growth driven by Domestic Birthrate

Births to Death Ratio b/w 2000 and 2007 by Race

Whites 1.6

Blacks 2.4

Hispanics 8.4!!!

And their disposable income is $860 billion/year, expected to hit $1.3 trillion by 2012. How can I benefit from this? I took 3 years of Spanish.

Anyhow, I use Google Docs to take notes on projects/subjects I’m working on / learning about and thus tend to have a lot of tabs open. To prevent firefox from getting bogged down, I’ve started running Google Docs with Mozilla’s Prism. I’m not sure if Prism supports Addons (better gmail2), or else I’d probably use it for Gmail, too.

Bill Clinton = Mighty Spouse.

“Look at this schedule- you’ve got me down for four events. Give me six, eight a day. Get me to the suburbs where I can make a difference.”

That’s what he told Hillary’s campaign managers. How did he do? Statewide, Hillary won by 26 points among rural voters. But in the counties that Charismatic William paid a visit to- Armstrong, Cambria, Carbon, and Green Counties- she won by 44,44,48, and 50 points.

Kazakhstan Appeals

I noticed, but did not read, a 6 page advertisement insert for Kazakhstan espousing its promising business environment. Looks like a lot of executive testimonials. Do many countries do this? Or only ones that have been misrepresented by comedians? Surely, businessmen do more research into international opportunities than watching a Borat film. Actually, it’s 8 pages.

Cincinnati had Jerry Springer, Detroit has Kwame Kilpatrick

I’m gonna guess Detroit’s Mayor listens to music that degrades women, promotes promiscuity and conspicuous consumption of material goods. But who raps about being a corrupt politician?

1. Sports diamond earring and has “mayor” embroidered on is French-cuffs.
2. Used $200,000 of city funds for Spa Treatments and Champagne while cutting police officers and auditors to plug a $250M budget deficit
3. Allegedly, while celebrating his election at the mayoral mansion, his wife stopped by, caught him consorting with a stripper, and decided to beat her with a bat. We can’t ask the stripper about it because she was gunned down a few months later.
4. Staff were arranging extramarital affairs for the mayor, including one with his Chief of Staff.
5. He fired the cops who were investigating the party and his sexual liaisons.

This behavior sounds like that of Pacman Jones, but its a mayor? The article goes on to point out his terrible economic policies.

Designing for the Senior Surge

This article points some new features of appliances that help our senior citizens.

1. Adjustable font sizes and color contrast options on oven display panels. You can also change the volume and pitch of the oven’s alarm.
2. The rest weren’t that interesting. toilets with lights, different faucets handles, sorry this is stupid.

Outsourcing Childbirth

What do you call yourself if you have a surrogate mother? An IP, short for “Intended Parent.” I learned that surrogacy is quicker than adoption: no home visits or parenting classes required. Surrogate births have increased 30% in the last 3 years. Apparently, the money surrogates receive ends up being about minimum wage.

I have to do some other work now, but I hope to continue to note what I read in the WSJ. It’s a way to start this blogging thing.

Many times I’ve thought, “I wish there were keyboard shortcuts for reader.” I’ve even looked for firefox addons for reader. Today I found that Google Reader has its own native shortcuts.

To get started using them, you only need to learn one: ? , the question mark will show the others. Plowing through feeds will be fun and faster.