>>I have a good friend in NYC - we go to many jazz clubs. He's definitely left of center. We actually don't talk much politics - our conversations are usually about jazz, or the software industry, or our kids.
>
>There you go.

Tonight I was listening to some of the early Yes albums. I hadn't listened to them in quite a long time.

Amazing that a hardcore Ayn Rand fanatic like me would like the music of a bunch of ultra-liberal tree-hugging hippies, but the Yes albums from the 70's represent some of the most creative rock of all time.

I'm not sure if I'm more a smart-aleck these days or when I was in college. I was probably worse in college. I remember having to read "In the Shadow of Man" by Jane Goodall in a college anthropology class. The book was the most pretentious piece of garbage in existence. In the paper I had to write on the book, I began with...."To quote Shakespeare, Jane Goodall's 'In the Shadow of Man' is a 'tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing'". And then later in the paper, when I documented her parents buying her a stuffed animal to commemorate the opening of a zoo in London, I added the following comment...."What an inspiring notion!!! On my child's fifth birthday, I shall buy her that which I revere - a toy replicate of a nuclear power plant". My professor (a self-professed communist) refused to grade my paper.

So I guess I've mellowed - I didn't buy Katy a toy replica of a power plant on her last birthday - and I'm not getting her any Ayn Rand comic books for Christmas. Just toys associated with Disney Princesses and a new bike. Wow, I've mellowed.