Someone was adamant about refusing to join Facebook, so I proposed the only reasonable solution, viz. rosham she had to join.

An observer noted that it was a rather unfair, one-sided rosham. Now, normally I can talk the other person into the one-sided rosham, but last night, I thought it would be way funnier to flip the tables on myself and make it extremely unfair in the other direction, by putting up the offer of quitting Facebook if I lost.

I lost.

It turns out deleting your FB account is hard. They hide the link and encourage you to “deactivate” instead, which keeps all of your information around. I guess I could have done that, but I’ve never welshed on a rosham before, and not about to start now over some silly web page.

This is the link you’re looking for: http://www.facebook.com/help/contact.php?show_form=delete_account

But don’t panic — you’re already reading my blog which makes you cool, and if you want access to my hilarious braignettes, you should follow me on twitter.

Liberation.

Bathtub IV from Keith Loutit on Vimeo.

3:33 of delicious tilt-shifting zen. With an awesome soundtrack:

“CLEMENTINE” (Megan Washington)
Performed by Washington

HT: http://www.morningbirdcollective.com/

The first one: Taiwan welcomes China’s tourism boom. But Chinese tourists, not so much.

Choice quote:

for many Taiwanese, especially refined residents of Taipei, Chinese tourists are the bumpkin cousins tracking mud into their expensive foyer. Taiwanese stereotype the Chinese as smoking, spitting, coughing, bellowing, and generally uncouth visitors.

The second one: The Narcissism of the Small Difference by Hitchens.

In numerous cases of apparently ethno-nationalist conflict, the deepest hatreds are manifested between people who—to most outward appearances—exhibit very few significant distinctions. It is one of the great contradictions of civilization and one of the great sources of its discontents, and Sigmund Freud even found a term for it: “the narcissism of the small difference.” As he wrote, “It is precisely the minor differences in people who are otherwise alike that form the basis of feelings of hostility between them.”

Of course, Hitchens is writing about ethno-nationalist conflict, whereas the differences between China and Taiwan are political.

I’ve heard it said that some people in Taiwan consider themselves the true China, because they were the ones who escaped with the culture and protected it from Mao’s horrible revolution. It’s an interesting line of thought, but practically speaking, needlessly inflammatory.

In any case, I can now expect to receive a flood of spam, as I always seem to do after posting anything regarding China and Taiwan.

Go checkout the little blurb I wrote for Cohere: Humanity through pants.

We thought we were going to Lake Geneva for Becca’s 30th birthday.

In a sense we did.

But it turns out Devin had a much bigger surprise in store for all of us.

Becca agrees. Devin celebrates.

The happy couple, and their loving friends, getting contact highs off Sharpie-infused posterboard.

Nice rock!

Congratulations, Devin and Becca!

[nb, this is now the second engagement that I've inadvertently photographed.]

Some folks have heard me describe my job as a hobby I get paid for. Their reactions are usually a melange of mild disbelief and a twinge of envy, but rarely does anyone ever probe deeper into why contributing to open source is my hobby in the first place.

This video is not only visually striking, it captures the essence of why people write free software or spend hours contributing to Wikipedia. Give it a go. At 10 minutes, somewhere between a long YouTube clip and a short TED talk. it’s worth it.

In other news, I wish I had a whiteboard that large.

There’s a clearly identifiable cameo by YT in here, but the catch is you have to know me (or at least my warddrobe) pretty well. And I’m not talking about the group photo at the end.

Can you find me?

Share my zombie-like mental state induced by international travel and watch these silly but entertaining videos with me.

Love the wiggly-jiggly salamis.

Blooooooop!

This one starts off slow but ends jawesome. Worth it, trust me.

How can you not enjoy Star Wars and Legos!

In my ongoing quest to find the perfect setup for a theoretical year-long around-the-world trip, I’m constantly evaluating pieces of kit.

Long time blog readers may remember an older post of all the crap I brought along for a mere three weeks of travel. Well, I sold the Northface Doubletrack in that photo and replaced it with a Patagonia MLC. [HT Joey Ferrari]

The Northface bag was a little on the heavy side and a little bit too long to comfortably fit into all the variable-sized overhead bins I’ve encountered in my travels. Its roll-aboard nature makes twitchy gate attendants want to check it occasionally, which defeats the entire purpose of a roll-aboard.

The MLC has just as much volume, but much more importantly, looks like a backpack, meaning it won’t draw the ire of gate attendants who have god-like powers over you. So, I’m pretty excited about it.

One negative I discovered was that the shoulder strap is ridiculously long and makes the bag way too low, which is uncomfortable. So last night, I got Mikey Brown to do a little surgery on it, and the results were great. Just two dudes, drinking the Champagne of beers, listening to American sports radio broadcasts, and doing a little sewing. We are such excellent modern men.

One nice thing I will say is that the Doubletrack’s daypack was very nice. Thus leading me to my next quest of finding the perfect self-stowing daypack.

Currently under evaluation are the Chico Daypack20, the Patagonia Lightweight Travel Pack, and the REI Zip Travel Daypack.

Out of the running are the Kiva bag and the Sea to Summit bag since they just don’t look like they have enough support.

It’s devilishly hard to find the packed size of these bags online, and even harder to figure out how they compare to each other. Luckily, a few folks in town have the Chico bag and the Patagonia one, so I borrowed them for comparison purposes.

You can see that the Patagonia bag dwarfs the Chico bag. This sort of comparison is utterly unavailable anywhere else on the entire wombat, as far as I can tell.

I really wish I were able to find the REI bag, but alas, no one I know has it and the local store is out of stock.

Decisions, decisions.

Ooh baby, the 23andMe spit kit arrived in a bright, fun-colored box.

Even though the instructions were utterly simple, I still managed to botch them slightly.

The blue thingy is a funnel to catch your spit. The lid has some chemical in it that gets popped when you close the lid and is supposed to get mixed in with your DNA. Then, you’re supposed to unscrew the funnel, screw a separate lid on, and then shake. It turns out that even though the funnel lid thingy snaps shut in a very satisfying manner — a manner that might convince you it’s sealed shut — it’s actually not sealed all that well.

So if you are tricked into thinking that you can shake the spit + secret weird funny-bad-smelling chemical with the blue funnel thingy on, you will be wrong. And you will get your own DNA + secret weird funny-bad-smelling chemical on your skin. And you will probably worry, just like I did, what, exactly, you have just been exposed to.

The one thing you won’t do is post sweet lightbox pictures and write a hilarious blog entry because I done stoled your thunder!

But don’t worry, I’ll be sure to introduce all my jawesome bloggy audience to you when they come visit us in the hospital. And by “hospital”, I’m secretly hoping it’s Dr. Xavier’s mansion and that I got a totally sweet power like Wolverine, not something totally lame like Jean Grey who doesn’t even have a nickname.

Anyhow, the spillage was minimal, the panic fleeting, and I managed to seal the test tube correctly, place it in the BIOHAZARD bag, and send it off in the mail. Now I just have to wait 6–8 weeks to find out way more than either you or I wanted to know about me!