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31 October 2001 
Horse Puns
Hackneyed puns over at MeFi.
Ayn Rand Quotes
Andrew Sullivan's "Thought of the Day" recently was this passage from The Fountainhead.
I would give the greatest sunset in the world for one sight of New York's skyline. Particularly when one can't see the details. Just the shapes, the shapes and the thought that made them. The sky over New York and the will of man made visible. What other religion do we need? And then people tell me about pilgrimages to some dank pesthole in a jungle where they go to do homage to a crumbling temple, to a leering stone monster with a pot belly, created by some leprous savage. Is it beauty and genius they want to see? Do they seek a sense of the sublime? Let them come to New York, stand on the shore of the Hudson, look and kneel. When I see the city from my window—no, I don't feel how small I am—but I feel that if a war came to threaten this, I would like to throw myself into space, over the city, and protect these buildings with my body.
The Twin Towers weren't built when this was written, but how poignant these words are right now. They'll never be read in quite the same way as before September 11th, that's for sure.
While we're on the topic of Ayn Rand quotes let me share one of my favorites, from Atlas Shrugged:
To hold an unchanging youth is to reach, at the end, the vision with which one started.
This is what I think of when I hear cynics belittling the idealism of young people. That attitude of idealism, hope, and confidence is what we need to hold onto ourselves and encourage in others.
30 October 2001
Welcome
Welcome to my blog!
I'm Mark. You can find a bit of information about me in the About section. To be honest, I'm not 100% sure what I'll end up writing about here. I have some strong (and non-mainstream) political and philosophical views, so those opinions are no doubt going to be expressed. Computers and the internet are how I make a living, so that's probably going to come up. I live in a big North American city with hundreds of digital cable channels, a fat internet connection, and newspapers and magazines coming into my home every day, so it's safe to bet on some ramblings about pop culture. But other than those broad topics, I'll be as interested as anyone to see what develops here. Whatever route this site ends up taking, I hope you'll find it worth a visit now and then.