Don’t ask where I’ve been. It’s been dark and full of things like strangely proud “humble views”, polka dots and stripes, mock objects, skiing, the IRS, gradients, and a strange dampness.

Still not sure where the dampness is from.

Getting back into the swing of things, have some links!

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This week’s internet cruising:

• Big Rocks First: Double Your Productivity This Week – This is an old, old Zen Habits post (and one I read a long time ago), but I’m finding it necessary to think beyond the day-to-day MITs lately to get bigger things done. …Like, you know, the upcoming wedding posts and pictures.
• Reader Story: How I Built My Own House — Without a Mortgage – Sustainability, small and frugal living, and willingness to be nontraditional. I'm still not interested in truly going off the grid, but his solar energy and house design ideas are interesting, and earth sheltered houses are adorable, although me being me, I’d worry about ground-loving bugs. I'm not sure if solar power is as helpful in North Carolina as out in Arizona (if I judged the landscape correctly).
• Should you fly or drive on your summer vacation? – Greg and I have been thinking about planning for future vacations (my family was never a vacationing family). This article hits on some good considerations in flying vs. driving, although it doesn't really address a flyer's resistance to participating the sham of airport "security" as a major deterrent to flying.
• School bans graduation "Bohemian Rhapsody" because Freddy Mercury was gay, but gives in after uproar – Seriously? "Wasilla High School officials said parents had complained that it was inappropriate for the school's symphonic jazz choir to perform 1975 smash "Bohemian Rhapsody" because Freddy Mercury, singer of the bombastic operatic rock act, was gay."
• Jellyvampire :: Bloom Like an Artist – This is very cute and well done. Love the art style.

I’ve been all over The Incidental Economist lately, and it’s really hard not to link to every one of their posts that I can make heads or tails of. They’re really prolific by my standards, though, which means it’s a struggle to keep their posts from falling off the 30-day cut-off in Google Reader.

• Simply put: Marginal cost/benefit – "You’ll consume as much health care as you think worth it for the transaction price (your copayment if you’re insured). The lower the price, the more you’ll consume. You’ll keep using health services until the marginal benefit falls below the price you pay."

  I'm not sure I agree that people will keep gobbling and gobbling up health care, but I definitely understand that people will use more if it's cheaper.

• Student drowning in debt needs professional help – I think my brain stopped working when I saw the mortgage payment of $1900 a month. That's… what? A $350,000 house? Fer skerious. That’s a whole lotta house. Keep reading >>

This week’s internet cruising:

• Coding Horror: Trouble In the House of Google – Jeff isn't the first to point out the problems with Google's search results lately (the content mills are clearly winning, and I swim through a lot of mess to get good results anymore), but he's done a lot of due diligence to try to improve Stack Exchange's rankings over the content scrapers, with mixed results. Excellent post.
• Sphinx – A better way to write your docs – This looks like an awesome doc writing/management system–I struggle with how much documentation to produce for the internals of a system (i.e. not a publicly exposed API), but I'd definitely play around with a system like Sphinx.
• Buttersafe – Flowers – Bees’ knees!
• Baptist Press – N.C. court voids same-sex adoption – What? What?! (Warning: Christian news source)

  "'Many homosexuals and their sex partners may sincerely believe they can be good parents. But children are not guinea pigs for grand social experiments in redefining marriage, and should not be placed in settings that are unsuitable for raising children,' Dailey noted in the article. He cited a study in the Netherlands that found the average duration of a homosexual relationship to be 18 months and that 'committed' homosexual couples have an average of eight other sexual partners each year."

• Gay former service members praise Senate vote on ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ – latimes.com – "Carpenter, who comes from a family with a tradition of military service dating back to the Revolutionary War, thought that he would make a career in the Marine Corps. But when he fell in love with another Marine pilot, he decided he "couldn't continue living a lie" and left the military as a captain."
• Hawaii-bound, Obama signals his opposition to gay marriage ‘evolving’ – Key quotes:

  "I still believe that it doesn’t make sense for us to provide tax cuts to people like myself who don’t need them when our deficit and debts are growing."

  "With respect to the issue of whether gays and lesbians should be able to get married, [...] my feelings about this are constantly evolving. [...] At this point, what I’ve said is, is that my baseline is a strong civil union that provides them the protections and the legal rights that married couples have. And I think — and I think that’s the right thing to do."

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I’m still flying high from a wonderful 3 hours of dance last night. I had a whole lot of energy, even at the end, and managed to do all right at keeping up. I blame the belly dance show last weekend.

There are a fair number of posts this week. I’ve been oot and aboot.

• Roleplaying Tips: Delegating – I really like the idea of splitting up some of the administrative work in running a game, especially in a game with 5+ people that will be running for a long time. I've seen in a 4-year one-on-one game how difficult it is to keep track of what's happened and who I've spoken with. If there were more than just me, this kind of delegation would be necessary.
• Is this for real? – Let's hope it's not. Texas seems to be seriously considering dropping out of federal Medicaid in order to cover their budget shortfall this year.
• My son is gay « Nerdy Apple Bottom – "If you think that me allowing my son to be a female character for Halloween is somehow going to ‘make’ him gay then you are an idiot. Firstly, what a ridiculous concept. Secondly, if my son is gay, OK. I will love him no less. Thirdly, I am not worried that your son will grow up to be an actual ninja so back off."

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