Reading Denialism. Good. I think it overstates its case at some points, and it's quite clear the author has much more of a journalistic education than a scientific education, not to mention a clear bias toward positivism and "liberalism". As an example, without getting into what one might think about the issue of abortion, in the introduction, he lists tying aid to family planning organizations in third world countries to not mentioning abortion as an example of anti-scientific denialism. Again, whatever one thinks of the abortion issue, this is not an example. It is very clearly not an example. Less clear, as well, is opposition to the use of embryonic stem cells, though in that case there is an argument to be made, given that "scientific progress" does "depend" on this in some sense and many people are opposed for the same type of reasons which the book is propagandizing against.

In my haste to purchase a laser printer (it wasn't terribly hasty, but I did my internet shopping quickly, saw what looked like a good deal on a reliable printer, and went ahead and purchased it), I forgot that we were really in the market for a printer-copier-scanner-etc thing rather than merely a laser printer. We're cool, though. The scanner function would've been nice, but we're okay with not having it. We're printing often enough these days that a laser printer is the way to go.

I wanted to get some ideas for new music to listen to since I'm not in the scene much these days. Pitchfork has lasts of the best albums per year and decade and all that jazz, so I'm looking at the past couple years to see if there's anything on there that sounds like I might be into it. I glanced at the top 100 list for the 90s - man, I have a lot of these already and have heard of almost everybody. For the 2000s, I have a lot fewer and have heard of a lot fewer. Funny, since I was probably most into music between 2000 and 2007 or so. I suppose one other method to use is Pandora to find new music. However, my budget for this is near zero and I have little opportunity for listening - not listening at home and not, at the moment, listening on the train. Nothing much will happen, I guess.

Okay, some funky stuff is going on in $OTHER_DEPARTMENT about $PROGRAM_I_USED_TO_RUN. It's clear somebody didn't apply critical thinking to this and I think extra money is slipping out. I reached out and said, hey, I think things aren't going right based on the nonsense you just said, and they said, nah, we're fine. Not my jorb, not my problem, but I did try. Oh, wait, people are noticing things aren't adding up...

Looks like work is going to put in a fitness center of sorts. It will likely be inadequate. More expensive than current gym (current gym is less than $20/month), but fee is still relatively inexpensive. If it is marginally adequate for some purposes, I might hop on as supplemental to current gym for more convenient light or medium days. Or for bench days, as they will likely have a bench (and no squat rack), even though the bench press is far more dangerous than barbell squats (a lot of people die each year while bench pressing). In retrospect, I wouldn't like it and they probably wouldn't like it if I went heavy on bench or bench-related exercises there. Just a hunch. Therefore, the workplace fitness center would be useless to me unless I wanted to go in and ride a bike every once in a while or something.