] "People who are high in hardiness enjoy ongoing changes
] and difficulties," said Dr. Salvatore R. Maddi, a
] professor of psychology at the University of California,
] Irvine, and the author of a forthcoming book, "Resilience
] at Work." "They find themselves more involved in their
] work when it gets tougher and more complicated. They tend
] to think of stress as a normal part of life, rather than
] as something that's unfair.''

[ I definitely identify with the above, but I am strongly sensitive something they mention later in the article, which is control. I enjoy and work better under compressed timelines or when the product is mission critical, as long as I have the ability to control the project and my environment. If the stress is coming from the need for the work to get done, that's awesome. But when there's also stress being generated by a lack of appropriate tools, interruption by unrelated or menial tasks, someone elses shitty code, etc., my ability to cope rapidly degrades. Being forced to deal with frustrating circumstances that are beyond my control has always been the best way to send me into panic attack mode -- i tend to want to lock the door and scrap everything for a restart, which at the root is a way of establishing complete control over the product. If restarting isn't possible, i have a very hard time resigning myself to the crappy situation. Unfortunately for me, few things are created in a vacuum, so I tend to experience frustration of this sort on a fairly regular basis.

How do other people classify themselves? -k]

Sick of Work: Cracking Under the Pressure? It's Just the Opposite, for Some

] Indicators measure the nation's unemployment rate,
] consumer spending and other economic milestones, but Vice
] President Dick Cheney says it misses the hundreds of
] thousands who make money selling on eBay.
]
] "That's a source that didn't even exist 10
] years ago," Cheney told an audience in Cincinnati on
] Thursday. "Four hundred thousand people make some
] money trading on eBay."

[ Seriously, you can't even make up shit this absurd.

Edwards' response was right on : “If we only included bake sales and how much money kids make at lemonade stands, this economy would really be cooking.”

Selling shit on eBay is not a fucking job. -k]

Quad-City Times Newspaper Online - the Quad-Cities Home Page

] "We may hate our politicians, but the one thing we all
] have in common is that we were all once children," he
] continues. "We can all relate to that question, 'How did
] I get here?' We don't ask ourselves that big question
] everyday, but you know what? We should."

[ This show has intrigued me. If we get this channel, I think i'll TiVo it. -k]

CNN.com - Electioneering for 'Jack & Bobby' - Sep 10, 2004

] "I think we'll see a lot more of this type of technology
] in the future," said O'Connor. "Sustainable development
] and clean production through white biotechnology is the
] way forward. Not only bacteria to clean up the mess we
] make -- as in oil-eating bacteria -- but to prevent the
] mess in the first place."

[ Hear hear. Good stuff, man. -k]

Bacteria turn toxin into plastic

South Korea has pledged 3,600 troops to help U.S. operations in Iraq, the largest number of foreign soldiers following the United States and Britain.

[ Chimptastic job, yet again. -k]

World Tribune.com--Front Page

[ I think I'll give this a gold star. There are a lot of arguments in here that aren't new, but they're presented together, cohesively, and well supported by argument and citation.

The key statement, as I read it :

"None of this is intended to suggest that intellectual property is a bad idea. Far from it. Rather, the point is that we cannot and should not seek to internalize all positive externalities and prevent “free riding” on intellectual property. Granting intellectual property rights imposes a complex set of economic costs, and it can be justified only to the extent those rights are necessary to provide incentives to create. The economic justification for intellectual property simply does not map to the justification we offer for real property, because negative externalities dominate the analysis of real property and positive externalities dominate the analysis of intellectual property."

Thoughts? -k]

SSRN-Property, Intellectual Property, and Free Riding by Mark Lemley

] David Sirota of CAP picks up on the White House's Big Lie
] regarding Bush's National Guard records.
]
] CLAIM:
] "The White House says, `We've released all of [the
] documents]. You should take our word for it and this is
] the evidence.'"
]
] - CNN, 2/13/04
]
] FACT:
] "After the [CBS] broadcast, the White House, without
] comment, released to the news media two of the memos, one
] ordering Bush to report for his physical exam and the
] other suspending him from flight status."
]
] - AP, 9/9/04

[ Again it's not so much that he didn't show up, which *is* bad, but whatever, it was 30 years ago. It's that he's been patently lying about it ever since. *That's* the problem. -k]

Daily Kos :: Political Analysis and other daily rants on the state of the nation.

] The most dramatic polls were those published immediately
] after the Republican convention. Among likely voters, a
] poll by Gallup for CNN and USA Today found Mr Bush seven
] points ahead; Time put the lead at 11 points; a Newsweek
] poll gives the same lead among registered voters. No
] challenger has overcome a deficit that size after Labour
] Day and come back to win.

Bush's lead is not a temporary "post convention bounce."

[ Fortunately, he doesn't have to overcome that since those numbers are bullshit. Both Time and Newsweek collected their data *during* the convention, and NONE of the polling since then comes even close to echoing that kind of a lead. The word I've been seeing is that the bounce is closer to 4, and that in some highly independent areas, Bush actually lost support during the convention.

I wouldn't make the statement that the RNC was a failure, but it was not the coronation that Time and Newsweek made it out to be. The conspiratorial buzz on the liberal blogs is that the media purposefully inflated that score in order to generate a "Kerry's Unbelievable Comeback!" story down the line. I don't buy that either, but I'm convinced that Time and Newsweek are outliers, and that the real bounce, the small bounce, *is* temporary, particularly in light of the barrage of AWOL documentation, the worsening Iraq situation, the horrendous job picture and the mounting deficit projections.

In fact, this article supports what i said above, despite it's retarded headline. Their own poll put the bounce at 1. ONE. That's not even outstide the MOE, which means it's fucking worthless.

Also they blather about how there's some kind of "crisis of confidence" in the Kerry camp because some personnel was added after the RNC? Maybe it's because the campaign was saving their limited funds until after the convention, and that they wanted to see what was said there before hiring on the people that will help counter it. Deep fucking analysis there.

Did a bunch of us get a whole lotta worried when the first "BUSH IS KICKING ASS" stories started coming out? Hell yeah. But it's temporary, seeing now that those were retarded claims which never should've been published.

There are some trends which are disturbing, but it's way too early for fatalism here, and this article misleads. -k]

Economist.com | Bush is winning

] According to "60 Minutes," Killian's personal files show
] that he ordered Bush "suspended from flight status" on
] Aug. 1, 1972. National Guard documents already released
] by the White House and the Pentagon show that Bush was
] suspended from flight status on that day for "failure to
] accomplish annual medical examination" but do not mention
] his alleged failure to comply with National Guard and Air
] Force standards.
]
] In another "memo to file," dated Aug. 18, 1973, Killian
] complained that he was under pressure from his superior,
] Col. Walter B. "Buck" Staudt, to "sugar coat" Bush's
] officer evaluations. "I'm having trouble running
] interference and doing my job," he wrote in a memo titled
] "CYA." "I will not rate."

Bush disobeyed a direct order to get a medical exam.

Records Say Bush Balked at Order (washingtonpost.com)

] After weeks of media scrutiny of Democrat John Kerry's
] record in Vietnam, Bush was broadsided by several
] challenges to his account of his six-year stint in the
] air guard in Texas and Alabama, including:
]
] -- A CBS "60 Minutes" interview in which a former Texas
] speaker of the House said he helped secure a pilot's
] position for Bush in the Texas Air National Guard to keep
] him from being drafted.
]
] -- New memos obtained by CBS News suggesting that Bush's
] squadron commander in Texas was under pressure from his
] superiors to give Bush a strong performance review, which
] he refused to do.
]
] -- A Boston Globe investigation that concluded that Bush
] missed training assignments in Alabama and Massachusetts
] despite twice signing statements that warned that he
] could be put on active duty for two years for doing so.

Renewed focus on Bush time in military / Ex-official says he helped politician's son avoid Vietnam