I’ve just finished reading How To Succeed At Globalization by El Fisgón. Very good; a poor person’s view of how capitalism works (or doesn’t, depending on who you are), with a few short history lessons thrown in. If you are not left-leaning, you probably won’t like this book.

The book is not sourced, so I’d recommend supplemental reading, to get additional facts. At any rate, I found it to be an eye opener, and very good at explaining things in an accessible manner. It gave me a clear understanding of how economic imperialism works, and what the motivations are (natural resrources, and money, of course! ) Excellent drawings, as well, btw.

For more on this book, and an excerpt, visit the American Empire Project.

inspired by friends + strangers:

1. always have more than one kernel.
2. make an emergency boot disk. Always.
3. have a spare key somewhere else.
4. crowbars are cheap and very handy.
5. be ready to run.

So, I’ve worked in the same office for six years. It’s Gilmore Hall, on the campus at the University of Iowa. My name is on the door outside my office.

For some reason, however, there is a fellow who works down the hall who is convinced my name is “Terry”. I cannot for the life of me figure out why. And of course, the first few times he said, “Hi Terry” to me in passing, I was confused (what? did he say ‘terry’?!), so I didn’t correct him.

Now this has been going on for 5 awkward years! I always just say, “Hi” in return, and then puzzle over the curiosity of it. I mean, my name is right there! Sometimes I’m standing near the sign when he says it. Has he noticed, but continues to call me “Terry” to see if I’ll ever correct him? Does he think I’m crazy? Does he constantly wonder who ‘Naomi’ is?

What does it mean? Where will it end? Do I look like a Terry?? or is it actually Terri?

on a related note, in the course of constructing this post, I became fascinated by Google’s Image Search, and the results returned from typing in various womens names. For example, the names mentioned in this post return some rather torrid photos, whereas other names do not. try it!

This is the flagship entry on TextBandit! This is where friends + family can see what I’m up to. Hopefully I’ll be able to take the time to actually update this on a daily basis. I’m taking a basic Perlcourse here at the UI. It’s part of the graduate SLIS program. Eventually, I hope to become an SLIS student, somewhere, maybe in Iowa, maybe not. It depends on many factors.

Anyways, right now the class is really challenging for me, and takes up most of my time outside of work. I’m sorta getting the hang of it, though, so perhaps my time will be more flexible.