Dan Lipka Web Log

Be Born - done Have nice childhood - done Get phony degree - done Find Career Path - done Find Girl of Dreams - done Get married - done Find new apartment - almost there; eta: two weeks Get second phony degree - in progress; eta: May Make a baby - in progress; eta: June Find an improved job - in progress; eta: August Buy Home - eta; 2006 Live happily ever after - in progress.

"There he goes. One of God's own prototypes. Some kind of high powered mutant never even considered for mass production. Too weird to live, and too rare to die." In light of Hunter Thompson’s recent death I would like to pay homage to some of the writers that redefined the rules for writing (at least in my mind). Here are a few, in no order. Hunter Thompson: If you’ve seen Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, you will find it a truly originally, fanatic, interesting, surreal, and destructive story. However, possible more interesting is how Hunter did his research. Before his trip, he duct taped an audio recorder (and they didn’t have small recorders back in the 70s) to his arm and than just recorded everything he did. He took those recording and turned them into a novel. In the book, he transcribes some parts directly from the tape because he has no idea what any of it means. However, the parts that he could figure out were describes in the type brilliant detail that mad

The more I learn about Bruce Lee, the more impressed I am. He was a philosopher, an innovator, a practitioner, and least importantly, a movie star. Although his movies were brilliant, and brought his ideas to the mainstream, they only touched on the true attributes of Bruce Lee. There are some people that I put in an elite category, in which their skills, in their specialty, were vastly superior to any of their contemporaries. Most of these people showed their brilliance as very young ages, worked harder than the others, and were overwhelming successful in what they did. This list would include Mozart , Einstein , Wayne Gretzky , Archimedes , Bobby Fischer , and Bruce Lee . Of course there are others throughout history. Who would you put on your list?

One of my favorite new shows last year was Monk. It was clever and friendly and a nice twist to a cop drama. However, after only one season (an award winning season), the show has written out Monk's co-star Sharona ( click here for more ). Sharona, played by Bitty Schram, was a great compliment to Monk and now she is gone. Sharona understood Monk, she was genuine and would have said that she was really Monk's friend and not just his nurse. Sharona has been replaced by Natalie, a mean, bitchy, girl who doesn't even like Monk. She thinks that his obsessive compulsive disorders are stupid. I was almost sad for Monk watching them having to work together. I miss Sharona. I don't know if the show can go on and I'm not the only. People around the web share my disappointment ( click here ). So, in my little way, I call upon the USA network to beg and plead Sharona to come back to the show. I'm watching the show right now and Natalie is yelling at Monk. Poo

Although, I can say we have been pretty successful looking at apartments (Lindy and I have several good, affordable places), I feel that I must share some of our adventures. “This place has a nice ............................................................., ................................., .............................................. ...................................................., ........................................, ..........................................., ..................................., ....................................................., a nice...................living room” – Lawrence, professional real estate guy. Lawrence runs a little real estate company in Brooklyn with his son. His son was dressed like a late 70’s Italian Casanova (open shirt, big gold necklace, greasy hair, etc.), which was better than his father, because at least it tried to have some style. The son actually seemed pretty sincere and friendly, but since we wanted to see some apart

In case anyone watched the Superbowl last weekend, they might have noticed a commercial for godaddy.com (a web hosting company) . The commercial showed a buxom young girl, with the straps of her tanktop falling off, being questioned by a bunch of officials, in what looked like a Senate hearing. ( Watch the commercial here ) The whole commercial was making fun of the censorship-mania that followed Janet Jackson’s wardrobe malfunction during last year’s Superbowl. The godaddy commercial was funny and relatively tasteless. However, I just read that it was supposed to be shown twice during the Superbowl, but Fox censored its scheduled second half showing. . I know Fox is a huge bastion for conservative ideas, but their hypocrisy is just plain silly. The godaddy girl was sexy, but certainly not immoral. Well let’s look at Fox’s regularly scheduled programming. There are just as many girls, wearing less clothes and acting promiscuously, in the OC. In a show called “playing is s

Lindy and I are considering getting an apartment for a year somewhere around the city. The problem is that there are so many places and we need to narrow it down. If anyone knows about neighborhoods in Brooklyn or Queens we would appreciate any help. If you know what areas are nice or trendy or communist or anything that would be great. Here are two maps that break down the areas into the names that real estate people use. Thanks. Click Here for Map of Brooklyn Click Here for Map of Queens

I think I might be hitting the wall. There is so much to do and I haven’t had good focus lately. However, there is no time to slack, I have to pull it together. I need to find an apartment, I need to get ready for the baby, I need to deal with school, I need to deal with work, and I need to start exploring my career options. There is just so much, but I can do. I hope. There was a lot that I wanted to write about, but of course, this hasn’t exactly been tops on my list of priorities. I wanted to read the Iliad, but instead I’m reading a Pulitzer-prize winning biography on Khrushchev. It’s way to long for me and I’m debated whether reading this is help or hinder my ability to think clearly. It also doesn’t seem to be a book I can just read on the subway. We’ll see how it goes. In my ethics class, we talk a lot about Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, and I am amazed by the complexity and insights they possessed two thousand years ago. The progress they were making was remar

I have updated my wedding website to include some pictures from that magical day. They can be found at http://www.wedding.kokopop.com/end.htm . Of course I don’t like any of them, in fact I don’t like pictures at all. Why can’t we just remember things the way we want to? Last night I watched the State of Union address. What if every President from now on had to open the State of Union by presenting certain yearly statistics such as change in GDP, unemployment rate, jobs created, national deficit and debt, interest rates, inflation, etc. In addition, the President should clearly state their goals for the next 12 months as they pertain to unemployment rate, budget deficit/surplus, one piece of legislation, and one quantitative international action. The following year, the President must restate his goals and than say what really happened. It’s called accountability; it’s a good thing.

I have no idea how it happened, but Howard Dean is going to be the new head honcho for the Democratic Party. I think this is great news. I really liked Howard’s policies and passion; however, after scream-gate he didn’t respond well at all. If he would have said “No, I didn’t over-react, I was screaming because those people, who worked so hard, needed to know that they are not alone. Regular people are passionate and care about this country and so do I. And if I have to yell to inspire some people or get some attention for good policy, than that’s what I will do. I don’t walk softly, but I carry a big stick, and the republicans better watch out! Arrrrrrr!”, but instead he listened to pollsters and lifetime politicians and tried to clean himself up and act all proper. If the Howard Dean that provided universal healthcare to an entire state (even if it was small), and was against a war he believed was unjustified, is going to run the DNC, than I think my biggest worry won’t come

I finished Dan Brown’s Angels and Demons the other day. I had high expectations and the book started off ok, but in the end, it was a disaster. I couldn’t wait till it was over. The basic idea of the book is that an ancient anti-church, pro-science cult stole anti-matter (which can blow up a city. Uggg, don’t ask) and put it somewhere in Vatican City. This sounds similar to some Bruce Willis action movie and the plots twists at the end were just silly. The book was neither informative nor interesting. Unlike The DaVinci Code, in which the plot was used to further the research, this book used random scientific words to try to make the plot more compelling. The book made way too many assumptions (based on nothing but conjecture) and took real scientific theory and mashed it to bits. I was surprised that the Church was not the bad guy in the book, but neither was science. I will give credit for the writing style which draws the reader in. However, it is the exact same style as