Letter Never Sent

Leeroy Jenkins, of World of Warcraft fame, now has his own soundboard.

Although I’m far from being a close observer of politics I was surprised as anyone at Mark Felt’s admission that he is the mysterious Watergate source known as “Deep Throat”. I thought about this a lot, as I’m sure many people around the country are now doing. When I heard the family’s reasons for coming forward now it sounded calculated. I wince whenever I hear anyone talking about themselves or a family member as a “hero”. After all, if you’ve kept the secret for 33 years why not just keep it until you die? It seems strange unless you desire some sort of fame or celebrity while you still draw breath.

The revelations are not that surprising given Mark Felt’s position within the FBI at the time. As a deputy director, he would have been privy to the findings of the original Watergate investigation. Still, the entire affair begs a number of questions:

1. Given that the now public Mark Felt is Jewish, does this effect in any way the widely held negative perception of Nixon as a paranoid anti-Semite? Clearly, his suspicions about Felt we now know to be justified.
2. What was Felt’s motivation for the original leak? Moral repugnance? Patriotic duty? Personal gain? We know that Felt was passed over by Nixon for the directorship of the FBI. Nixon’s removal or defeat as president could have changed his own fortunes. As for moral or patriotic sentiment, Mark Felt was convicted in 1980 of authorizing FBI agents to secretly break into the homes of Weather Underground members without a search warrant. Searches both he and Nixon regarded as legal. Nixon even appeared at his trial as a defense witness. In light of this, Felt should not be regarded as a champion of civil liberties or democracy.

A lot of people have had to lie to conceal the truth of “Deep Throat” and things are never as they seem. We will probably never know everything as it happened then for what it really was, but there is one thing I do know. Few villains and heroes of history are quite as villainous or as heroic as they appear.

Yesterday, Jody came up with the great idea of going out to Pedernales Falls State Park in nearby Johnson City, TX. We had a lot of fun hiking around the falls and swimming in the Pedernales River. Here are a few photos.

NY Times: Devoid of Content by Stanley Fish. Found while reading Metafilter, the best group blog. I couldn’t agree more, although in college I hated anything associated with grammar:

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So, I know I’m supposed to be focusing on running my own business now, but I had an opportunity to interview with an internet marketing firm where a friend of mine works that I couldn’t pass up. I’d essentially be doing the same thing I do now, which is work with clients and build websites. The interview went well, I think, but I never know for sure with anything like this. I wasn’t prepared to give numbers when they asked “how much” so I went home and thought about it until I came up with a ballpark figure then I called back. I may be asking too much, so I hope that doesn’t sit badly with the owner. Hopefully that will not be the deciding factor.

I’ve done what I can. It’s out of my hands now. If something comes of it, great. If not, nothing changes.

There’s a funny video that’s been going around that shows a group of World of Warcraft players about to go on a guild-organized dungeon crawl. Check it out here.

Edit: See the comments for more information. The original file was removed from the server for bandwidth reasons, but there is now a bittorrent available here.

Took this quiz on my worldview (via robotwisdom). Results:

You scored as Cultural Creative.

Cultural Creatives are probably the newest group to enter this realm. You are a modern thinker who tends to shy away from organized religion but still feels as if there is something greater than ourselves. You are very spiritual, even if you are not religious. Life has a meaning outside of the rational.

Somewhat surprising, but true. I am spiritual in a very pessimistic fashion. Second highest ranking was for Postmodernist, which I still don’t understand the meaning of.

Found some great stuff while surfing around this weekend.

• Inspirational, courtesy of the wonderfully thematic Growabrain blog. How to Make a Million Dollars by Marshall Brain of HowStuffWorks: “There are two mentalities: Be an employee, or Hire employees” A must read.
• Five Habits of Millionaires by Barbara Reinhold. “Michael LeBoeuf, author of The Millionaire in You, points out that to increase wealth, it’s essential to emulate millionaires who view money as something to save and invest, rather than income to spend. Many wealthy people live quite simply, he points out, choosing less pretentious homes than they could theoretically afford and opting for financial independence over material showmanship.” Warren Buffett still lives in the same small home in Omaha he bought long before he was a multi-billionaire.
• Encrypt your “mailto” links with this handy form. It will prevent most spam spiders from pulling your email addresses from mailto links.
• Godaddy’s Bob Parsons on his 16 rules for life: “1. Get and stay out of your comfort zone. I believe that not much happens of any significance when we’re in our comfort zone. I hear people say, “But I’m concerned about security.” My response to that is simple: “Security is for cadavers.”
• RandText. Awesome free Perl script to include random bits in your webpages. I’m using it for the testimonials at my Duet Design page. Refresh to see it in action.

How long will it take this very cool large-scale marionette event in France (via Waxy.org posted this morning) to appear on Boing Boing?

Dorky admission: I’m a member of Toastmasters International. It’s basically a club to improve your public speaking skills.

We meet every Monday at 6:45am at IHOP for about an hour and a half where everyone has to speak in front of the group in some fashion during each meeting, either as a prepared speaker, an evaluator, or extemporaneously. Since I was out of town I didn’t make it in for the last week’s meeting. That’s what caused this whole thing.

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