My apartment for the last few days has been incredibly surreal. This morning, I woke up, it was 34°F, and cold mist was coming through the house. In the basement, huge amounts of water were coming down from part of the ceiling (but not, apparently, going through my part of the apartment to reach there), making a moat and mist, which then swirled out through the open door to the snow beyond. I then turned the stove back on (door open), which is now slowly getting me back up into the 40s. This adds onto the late night fireman visit a few nights ago, spendig a lot more time meeting my neighbours, and seeing the last of the hot water still in the tank sputter out. I think it was bad judgement for me to stay in my apartment through all of this. It's hard to leave a malfunctioning home though. Fortunately, the landlord apparetly is to fix this today. Unfortunately, prolonged cold seems to have made me rather ill (and irritable). I might stay home today.

Here's yet another yahoo, Mauricio Feitas, who doesn't understand what an encyclopedia is and get deeply offended when something they have personal ties to is (correctly) seen to be not noteworthy by encyclopedic sense. It's really irritating that people can't distinguish what's noteworthy and deeply meaningful to them (e.g. their relationship with their child, charity work they do downtown, and similar) from things that have a greater impact on society. If they're hurt and offended by *any* noninclusion, it shows that they really don't understand what an encyclopedia is about. If paper encyclopedia were constructed to let people feel warm fuzzies about their lives and express themselves as much as possible (like Everything2 or h2g2), even igoring size issues they would never have been considered worthwhile to continue as an educational institution.

• It's interesting when judges don't carry out their sentences "to minimize the impact on the economy". I find it disappointing that we don't have more trials when companies act against the public good though.
• Web Surfing Exposes Children to Unwanted Porn Content? What planet are they from? Did they not grow up in the America where kids started seeing porn just as early in magazine form? Prudish revisionism is dangerous stuff.
• Attacking Iran may be a disaster. Unlike Iraq, not attacking Iran may also be a disaster. As for Israel-Palestine, mentioned at the bottom, I'm now inclined to think that it's more of a convenient distraction that brings in the interests of the rest of the world, not a continual source of regional instability. Sunni-Shiite and other politics would probably lead to just as many, if not more, wars if it were not for that rallying call against the non-Muslim enemy.

I see social factions and patterns in them instantiated again in radically different sets of people. It's interesting, even if some of these patterns are unfortunate.