I fixed an HTML bug this afternoon that was preventing IE users from copying text from my web site. The layered DIVs weren't allowing text to be selected, so I had to revert back to a single table to define the base layout. It's antiquated, it's simple, it's clean. It works. The end.

Part five in a series of monologues and short dialogues from Richard Linklater's film Waking Life. This is a dialog between a married couple, discussing the difference between dream consciousness and the waking life, reincarnation, and collective memory:

When discussing who we were in a previous lifetime, we're obviously limited to the names that have survived history so far, or else suggesting some anonymous member of a society that history only vaguely recollects through history as it is remembered, which is not necessarily how it happened.

So given those limitations, if I were someone in a previous lifetime, who was I? Who were you?

I was right about my egosurfing post boosting my livejournal in the Google ranks when using my name as the search query. The top seven results when searching for "paul mccord" (sans quotes) are:

1. paul mccord writes here
2. Paul J. McCord, Attorney at Law
3. Paul McCord DVDs and Videos at Search Extreme (porn!)
4. paul mccord writes here, too
5. Football Special Teams Video (by coach Paul McCord)
6. my Amazon.com reviews
7. Political State Report's Georgia story archive

Maybe in another ten days my livejournal will be #2!

Regardless of what the "experts" say, the human body boils down to technology. Anything is possible, anything can be healed. Just because almost no one knows how to do it doesn't mean it can't be done. I know people who have "miraculously" gotten better from a variety of illnesses, mental and physical, and I've read accounts of medical doctors who have witnessed such. (Of course it could all be an elaborate hoax...)

Maybe it's all just chance? But chance or not, there is a reason why these things decide to dissipate and disappear when they do. It can be scientifically, medically, and reasonably explained if only someone investigated it and were able to comprehend it. And as with countless other developments of modern scientific and medical evolution, I believe it's only a matter of time before so many more new and wonderful breakthroughs lead to more definitive results.

No expectations, just pragmatic hopes based on recent history.

Call it my version of faith.

All feelings are temporary. All life is temporary. Life is short enough as it is, and it provides its own way out in the end. To rob yourself of the full experience of what life has to offer is a slap in the face of whatever/whomever allowed you here in the first place.

Things get better, things get worse -- this is constant, because change is constant. Just enjoy what you can. The happy lives we lead according to our photo albums aren't accurate, but in a way they represent the struggles we endure between one happy snapshot and the next. So even if life is a series of struggles to be rewarded by a few moments of bliss here and there, only to endure the struggles again... it's worth every second!

Matt Drudge didn't report it until 9:20pm Sunday night; I had all the data from Paris Hilton's phone some 12 hours earlier and told several friends, but I didn't bother actually writing about it. Why?! *ponders calling Christina Aguilera*

Part four in a series of monologues and short dialogues from Richard Linklater's film Waking Life. This one is the shortest so far, and speaks of chaos and the silent majority.

President Richard Nixon in 1969 used the term "silent majority" to refer to a specific percentage of a given population that does not publicly express their opinions. From WikiPedia: "Specifically, when Nixon used it for the first time, it referred to those Americans who did not join in the large demonstrations against the [establishment], who did not engage in riots, who did not join in the Counterculture, and who did not loudly thrust their opinions on others through public discourse or the media..."

The above monologue is more of a direct tribute to the Counterculture, the collective whose values and norms are widely at odds with the socio-political mainstream, as well as an attempt to justify chaos and civil disobedience in the face of a mainstream culture that is at odds with how one believes the world really should be.

My only concerns with this little speech is a glaring oversight: there is only one culture in the world of any significant size that can even remotely be considered "conservative", and it isn't really -- it's a conservative-liberal hybrid that is merely doing everything it can to resist the fall into a socialist-communist hybrid like every other nation in the world. Maybe socialism or communism is the best political system for most of the world's nations, but to remove the last standing test of that theory would be a grave mistake, and the incessant attempts to make this country more like the others is just as idiotic -- because how can we really compare the difference in systems and really know what's best for anyone if we only allow ourselves one of them?

I say there are only two reasons why American "conservatism" doesn't seem to work: (1) it is constantly bastardized by American liberals who sabotage any public policy or act that seems conservative in nature; (2) conservatism in America is too closely tied to a particular brand of religious morality that it attempts to apply to everyone. Fix these two problems, and conservatism is essentially a more pragmatic (less idealistic) version of American liberalism.

A friend was stressing out over calculus homework a few days ago and came to me for help, or maybe just for moral support. She was working on some optimization problems (fixed rectangular area with adjustable side lengths, find the minimum perimeter necessary -- or fixed perimeter, find the maximum area it can encompass), stuff I hadn't actually done since my senior year in high school (over five years ago). But I did what I could.

It turns out that not only was I able to figure out the problem, but I was able to explain it in such a way that she figured out several more problems on her own and even led her class in the next few days while that topic was still being discussed. Apparently my quirky method for solving math problems, my appetite for helping others, and my ability to adjust to another's level of understanding means the same thing it did five years ago -- I could teach if I wanted to. Or, well, I could teach one tiny section of calculus if I wanted to. I'm unproven in any other area.

Ehh, I just wanted to mention this because I feel good about it, and she feels good about understanding the calculus! I'm glad I'm useful for something. :)

Apparently, "egosurfing" is a popular internet pastime in which more than 99% of internet surfers partake at least occasionally. It can be loosely defined as searching for your own name in a search engine, or specifically defined as Googling yourself.

For a few years now, Googling Paul McCord would yield consistent results: my site was first, "Paul J. McCord, Attorney at Law" was second, and porn star "Paul McCord DVDs and Videos at Search Extreme" was third. In fourth and fifth were me and me again -- fourth being my short list of reviews at Amazon.com, and fifth being various articles I've written for Polstate. Below that are links involving a medical doctor, a (former?) football coach, and American Sector's owner (whatever that is). And, of course, there's much more me -- my contributions to the WordGizmo dictionary, my writing for Tomahawk, and several more Paul McCord links that I'm not exactly sure about.

Well, my pornographic namesake has made some moves, or else the porn industry has figured out a way to climb in the Google ranks, because he has jumped to second over the attorney and to fourth over my Amazon and Polstate links with a site that I had never seen on the list before. Interesting, you think?

Well, it's only a matter of time before my livejournal climbs higher. And since I've copied this post over there, I think it might make a better showing on the list in the next few weeks.

Part three in a series of reactions to monologues and short dialogues from Richard Linklater's film Waking Life. The subject matter this time is "the new evolution". This one mostly speaks for itself.

This fits nicely with my idea concerning languages and human communication. I've recently considered the plausibility of English adopting words and phrases from other languages in great number and gradually becoming a new language all its own, the world's first universal language, while other languages would simply be considered dialects where they are still spoken in their "true" form.

This would take a generation or two, of course, but English is already being taught as a second language nearly everywhere in the world, and the internet is making it easier and easier for everyone to communicate with another person no matter how many miles separate them. With the exception of the Chinese languages (which are relegated to a particular region of the world), more people speak English than any other language and it is already virtually the language of the internet.

Of course, I'm not saying other languages will become things of the past. Those languages represent culture and won't die, and knowledge of those languages may become something like status symbols among those who hold that culture dear.

I can't make this stuff up.

I've known for many years that I had a great uncle (or something like that, since stricken from the family record, which I don't believe in, but whatever) who was something like a co-founder of the KKK. Tonight I found out that a different McCord was arrested in 1972 at the Watergate in Washington DC. Coincidence?

From A Story of the Original Ku Klux Klan, published by the Pulaski Citizen in Pulaski, Tennessee, in 1924 (revised 1934) by Mr. and Mrs. W.B. Romine, as posted here:

Calvin Jones, John B. Kennedy, Frank O. McCord, John C. Lester, Richard B. Reed, and James R. Crowe conceived the idea of forming a social club which was organized Dec. 24, 1865, in the law office of Judge Thos. M. Jones, whose office now bears upon its historic walls in the town of Pulaski, a tablet to these immortal men. The widow of John B. Kennedy, who was the last of the organizers to answer the final roll call, unveiled this tablet May 21, 1917, shortly after the fifty-first anniversary of the organization. [p. 4]

According to the KKK's history (see WikiPedia article here), Mr. McCord was indeed one of the founding members of the post-Civil War white-supremacy fraternity. (Please keep in mind that I despite nearly everything the KKK has ever stood for, but I don't believe hiding the past changes it, and I'm not ashamed that some historical persons bearing my surname committed wrong acts. Every family has black sheep!)

It is strange that I didn't discover James W. McCord's connection to Watergate before now, since I linked to WikiPedia's article on Watergate just days ago when discussing the idea that George H.W. Bush might be Deep Throat, and McCord's name is listed in the second paragraph after the introduction! According to reports, James W. McCord was one of the five burglars arrested on June 17, 1972, for breaking into the Democratic National Committee headquarters. And he wasn't just with them, but apparently he was their "leader"! From WikiPedia:

McCord led the June 17, 1972 early-morning burglary of the Democratic National Committee's headquarters at the Watergate office building in Washington, D.C., and pled guilty to six charges. He later issued a letter to Judge John Sirica stating that his plea and testimony, some of which he claimed was perjured, were compelled by pressure from White House counsel John Dean and former Attorney General John N. Mitchell. His letter set off the Watergate scandal by implicating many higher-ups in the Richard Nixon Administration for covering up the conspiracy that led to the burglary.

It only makes me wonder if Mr. McCord was/is Deep Throat!

Part two in a series of reactions to monologues and short dialogues from Richard Linklater's film Waking Life. The subject matter this time is communication, language, and intangible concepts.

I no longer recall the conversation, but I remember Claire complaining about something (probably about three years ago) and getting upset that I didn't understand something she was thinking that I simply should have known, I guess by osmosis. I quipped something about being unable to read people's minds, and she snapped back that it would be much easier if we could, which is what inspired the next line: "If god intended for us to understand each other, we wouldn't have voices!"

I had to look up the quote on my quotes page for exactness, but I'll never forget the lesson I learned that day: we communicate on the outside but we think on the inside, and therein lies the difficulty in construing messages as we intend. And I'm not just talking about words; the meanings of gestures and other symbols are at least as ambiguous as the meanings of the sounds that come out of our mouths.

Everyone's cognitive development takes place under different influences -- different environment, parents, peers, etc. -- therefore so does our linguistive development. This partially explains why different words and concepts connote slightly or wholly differently: we learn them under different circumstances, and it is our own experiences and the words we use to express ourselves that define any emotion or thought process. No one is raised exactly the same, so no one thinks exactly the same, so no one can possibly mean exactly the same thing even if they're using the exact same words.

But to be exact is to be ridiculously attentive to detail, and only linguists or philosophers are that obsessive, and only some of the time. Despite our complexity, we can come pretty close to understanding each other, and therein lies the beauty of our communication. Not only is there a psychological or intellectual response when a reaction indicates that a message was received as the communicator had intended it, but there is a certain emotion attached as well: it excites us in very personal ways when someone appears to understand us almost as well as we understand ourselves.

This is what I think the speaker says we are looking for at the conclusion of the monologue above: an emotional high that lowers our guard but also sets us at ease, because we think we may have found another person that truly understands not just our thoughts, but how we think.

Google Maps at maps.google.com -- check it out! I played with it for about ten minutes, and I already like it much more than Mapquest or Yahoo Maps. Google's map interface is much cleaner, simpler, and easier to use. And if nothing else, it's another alternative for map-searching.

Copied unabashedly from poynter.org (quick link), an entire letter from Andrew Havill asserting that the 41st President of the United States is Deep Throat, the famed secret informant to the Washington Post who leaked information about President Richard Nixon's involvement in Watergate (I've removed a couple of the less interesting lines):

Conspiracy theory? Or are we finally getting closer to the truth? It has been said that (1) only Woodward, Carl Bernstein, their then-editor Benjamin Bradlee, and the informant himself know the identity of Deep Throat, who Woodward has confirmed to be a male member of Nixon's administration, and (2) he shall not be identified until he dies or he agrees to let his name be made public.

Comment on this post on my livejournal.

I am going to post a series of monologues and short dialogues from Richard Linklater's film Waking Life, along with a few comments of my own. I figure the subject matter is perfect for this little community, given its defined purpose. If you like the quoted material from these posts, perhaps you should consider purchasing the film.

This is the first of many posts on this subject. You can see others' comments and post your own at the philosophymuse livejournal community.

This first monologue from the film sits well with a revelation I had on Thanksgiving 2002: "I don't know my purpose in life and you don't know yours; no one does. The only guarantee that we have is that we are all intended to live different lives; each and every person's purpose is as different from mine as it is from yours. That is the foundation of my philosophy." This is simplified further in a previous statement I had made in one of my earliest college writing assignments: "the sole purpose of life is to just go with the flow. Whatever happens should happen naturally, and it cannot happen by any other method." That is, the purpose of life is simply to live.

To put it another way, I don't objectively believe in obligation -- to myself, you, my family, any god, or anything else in this world -- because that would require concrete understanding of my purpose or the meaning of life, the universe, and everything. I can't even logically prove that this world exists outside of my own mind. All I know for certain, by virtue of my own consciousness, is that I exist. My only purpose, therefore, is to live the life and experience the moments I am granted. Likewise, the only thing I must do, at some point, is die. It's the only necessary action any life requires.

Maybe some other science or philosophy defines life in such a way as to justify more rigid beliefs about purpose and meaning, and therefore obligation and responsibility. But as I see the world, those things are only subjective abstracts that each individual, conscious mind can determine for itself. (That is, of course I feel obligated to some extent to serve the interests of myself and loved ones, but not because I think it's necessary (I don't), but because I feel like it's the correct way of thinking for me.)

I hadn't checked my Gmail accounts in a long time until just now, and it pains me to realize how much more useful they should be than either Hotmail or Yahoo Mail. I don't like webmail, but Gmail has just significantly impressed me, because I logged in for the first time in four months and everything in my inbox was still there! Hotmail deletes everything after 30 days and Yahoo, if I recall correctly, locks your account after 30 days and deletes everything after 90. Either way, Google's Gmail is abundantly superior, and its gigabyte storage limit is just icing on the cake. (My Hotmail account is up to a 250 MB limit, which is plenty, and I've had that account for about nine years so I'll hang onto it just for kicks.)

But the purpose of this post is to let you know that I have 55 Gmail invites -- 50 on one account and 5 on another -- that I may dish out in any way that I choose. Maybe I should invite myself to open several more Gmail accounts. But, no, I think two is enough. Is anyone still in need?

People keep asking me about my job; I've even received a few emails asking for details about it. Well, here's what I can tell you: if you know me privately (i.e., you have my private email address and/or you occasionally chat with me one-on-one in person), then I'll probably tell you the specifics of what I would be doing via some private communication. But I'm not sure that anything I say on this web site needs to be associated with any official business I ever conduct. And as long as I'm not the one calling the shots for someone or some organization, I'm not going to be the one to affiliate it with my web site.

So let's just keep it simple: I'll let you know when I land a job (or when they land me, depending on what everyone thinks about it), and those of you who really care can pester me about it.

The Grammy nominees have been announced, and taking a cue from Brett, below I have bolded my picks in the categories I care for (I skipped R&B, rap, country, and the singles awards for pop and movies).

Record of the Year
"Let's Get It Started", The Black Eyed Peas
"Here We Go Again", Ray Charles & Norah Jones
"American Idiot", Green Day
"Heaven", Los Lonely Boys
"Yeah!", Usher featuring Lil Jon & Ludacris

Album of the Year
Genius Loves Company, Ray Charles & Various Artists
American Idiot, Green Day
The Diary Of Alicia Keys, Alicia Keys
Confessions, Usher
The College Dropout, Kanye West

Song of the Year
"Daughters", John Mayer
"If I Ain't Got You", Alicia Keys
"Jesus Walks", C. Smith & Kanye West
"Live Like You Were Dying", Tim McGraw
"The Reason", Hoobastank

Best New Artist
Los Lonely Boys
Maroon5
Joss Stone
Kanye West
Gretchen Wilson

Best Pop Performance By A Duo Or Group
"My Immortal", Evanescence
"The Reason", Hoobastank
"Heaven", Los Lonely Boys
"She Will Be Loved", Maroon5
"It's My Life", No Doubt

Best Pop Album
Genius Loves Company, Ray Charles & Various Artists
Feels Like Home, Norah Jones
Afterglow, Sarah McLachlan
Mind, Body & Soul, Joss Stone
Brian Wilson Presents Smile, Brian Wilson

Best Solo Rock Performance
"Wonderwall", Ryan Adams
"The Revolution Starts Now", Steve Earle
"Breathe", Melissa Etheridge
"Code Of Silence", Bruce Springsteen
"Metropolitan Glide", Tom Waits

Best Rock Performance By A Duo Or Group
"Monkey To Man", Elvis Costello & The Imposters
"Take Me Out", Franz Ferdinand
"American Idiot", Green Day
"Somebody Told Me", The Killers
"Vertigo", U2

Best Rock Song
"American Idiot", Green Day
"Fall To Pieces", Velvet Revolver
"Float On", Modest Mouse
"Somebody Told Me", The Killers
"Vertigo", U2

Best Rock Album
The Delivery Man, Elvis Costello & The Imposters
American Idiot, Green Day
The Reason, Hoobastank
Hot Fuss, The Killers
Contraband, Velvet Revolver

Best Compilation Soundtrack Album
Cold Mountain
De-Lovely
Garden State
Kill Bill Vol. 2
Shrek 2

Best Score Soundtrack Album
Angels In America
Big Fish
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban
The Return of the King

I delivered the last of my paperwork to the human resources department at the Bibb County courthouse last week. I was told then that "the decision" would be made sometime in the next 5-10 business days, so by my estimate I have until February 9 at the latest before I know whether I am employed or still seeking employment. When/if I know anything, you'll know soon thereafter, and by then I'll also share with you what the job actually is (even if I don't get it).

Jen and I saw Hide and Seek (Robert de Niro, Dakota Fanning) and In Good Company (Topher Grace, Dennis Quaid, Scarlet Johansson) tonight -- two for the price of one at discount price, plus soda and popcorn. Good movies, too! After careful consideration, I am no longer disappointed about the way either movie turned out, although there is exactly one change I would make if I had been directing (whited out so I don't spoil it for you): The gun should have landed near Emily, and she should have pulled the trigger.

While in the theatre, I also told Jen that I would post my thoughts on why Signs was really just a film about the events of Independence Day from the perspective of some middle-of-nowhere town. You see, the aliens were focusing on destroying the big cities and military installations first. They never got to destroying the middles of all the nowheres because Will Smith and Jeff Goldblum saved the day, so Mel Gibson, Joaquin Phoenix, and family could live on and have no idea what happened until long afterward, when what's left of humanity put together the remaining pieces of itself.