Shine On

11:56 am - Mr. Foibos, Man of the World

This monday I attended a session with a really outstanding Swedish writer. Afterwards in the signing queue, I was trying to come up with something nice, witty, and above all brief to say (the queue was a mile long). Now, the woman selling books at the table beside the signing table was oddly familiar... OMG it's my old BFF whom I lost contact with 20 years ago (we both married and changed our last names) squee OMG how are you and do you live around here and... suddenly I was aware that I was holding up the queue and that the writer was looking quizzically at me. So I said "oh, I don't care about *you*, I just met an old friend". "Well, alright then", he responded cooly and started signing for the next person in line.

Still, it was nice to see you again, K.

12:55 pm - The Bible, ret(theo)conned

The estimable solarbird alerted us to the great news: Conservapedia is re-writing the Bible to make it less liberal.

Let's hope this means the end of misconceptions like Christ dying for our sins or grace being offered freely; clearly the new version of the Bible must show how God is still able to make a profit even as the price for salvation is determined by the market according to the holy supply/demand formula.

12:56 pm - ...

I'm a broken record.

And I don't even like the song anymore.

I'm a broken record...

11:57 am - Ineffective, well...

I'm bingeing Just A Bit Off... and found one about the (near) futility of using a squirt gun to train a cat.

Back when our Astrid was just a few months old, she would get up on tables. You really had to watch your food lest she sample it for you. I started carrying a small sprayer around to persuade her to control herself. Once when we were eating, she came up between the twins and started to get up on the table. Instinctively, I picked up the sprayer and sent a stream of water straight between her eyes (the twins ducking away to either side). As Astrid disappeared behind the table edge my older son, who was into CS at the time, said in a perfect imitation of the CS speaker voice: "HEAD SHOT".

:)

08:42 am - Dog sitting: cat supercilious

We're taking care of my sister-in-law's poodle for a few days. Our cat has already progressed from "OMG deres an ANIMAL in here!!!" to "Ugh do we have to have a dog". Maybe they will be friends.

05:01 pm - Well said.

rape and accountability

I find the notion that my hormones would make me unable to stop myself from committing a serious crime extremely insulting.

11:27 pm - RIP, Erik Naggum

I've been in hospital for a few days with a case of vestibular neuronitis. Coming back to the computer, I was stunned to learn that Erik Naggum had died.

Erik was an acutely intelligent and very learned man, mostly known--I believe--for his activity within the Common Lisp and SGML areas. He was also known as a "flamer's flamer": he absolutely loathed irrationality and unreasoned arguments, and usually responded harshly and at length to such.

At first, I found him annoying, but I soon realized how insightful and valuable his postings were. When finally a coalition of nincompoops more or less forced him off comp.lang.lisp, I more or less stopped reading the group.

Our loss.

more here, and here

and, my favorite EN sig:

"Act from reason, and failure makes you rethink and study harder. Act from faith, and failure makes you blame someone and push harder."

12:11 pm - stupid

During the 80s, I listened to Rush a lot. I passive-aggressively played the crappy older ones like A Farewell to Kings when my sister's boyfriend visited, and played the endless science-fantasy pieces to my friends when were played role-playing games.

It wasn't until the late 90s that I realized that the lyrics are (often) 'rightist' (they can be interpreted in other ways, and I did). Ayn Rand isn't very well-known in Europe, and I thought that she was just an sf writer. When I began to hear about Neil Peart's political views, I thought that it must be a misrepresentation: surely no one could as stupid as that.

Well, it seems that I'm the stupid one.

Politically, I'm left-center. I believe in a strong society, and I'd much rather be a citizen than a customer (though I realize that politicians only treat us as citizens during election years, and screw us over like good customers in between). I believe that a society that doesn't care has no right to survive. The problem is that my brain is wired much the same way as a typical conservative. I'm inclined to respect authority, and I'm disgusted by a lot of things. It might have something to do with my Asperger.

The end result seems to be that if I take a look at libertarians et al, I react to them with unreasoned disgust. I suppose I really should stop doing it, but it's hard.

(This is largely inspired by this article.)

08:09 am - Someone thought of the children

"Children with lesbian mothers have a lower risk of developing psychological illnesses than children growing up with a father and a mother, a recent University of Copenhagen study finds."

link

I suspect we will see more of these kinds of results in the future, as homosexual relationships become more integrated with 'mainstream' society.

Not that the theocon nuts will care, of course.

01:42 pm - Neocon newspeak dictionary

For years, I tried to reason with American Conservatives of the neocon variety, and foolishly thought that it would be possible to get a grip on what their goals were or even to make them realize that the opposite view isn't always without merit.

I don't believe that anymore. The Conservapedia, neocon blog activity, and the ridiculous reaction to the election of President Obama has convinced me that the very language they use is so different from ordinary English that discussion is impossible -- indeed, attempts at refutation or even at understanding only enrages them further.

Someone ought to write a dictionary...


Born-again -- according to the Gospel of John, Jesus used this term, but the Conservapedia claims that it was invented by conservatives in 1961.

Chivalry -- the notion that the only human right women have is to have men hold doors for them.

Double standard -- to hold a double standard is wrong, unless conservatives do it.

Good Samaritan -- "how genuine charity is the best approach" (the meme originally comes from the Gospel and actually says that someone who is despised by society can still be a good person)

Islamofascist -- a Muslim who has similar views on religion, ethics, and politics as fundamentalist Christians (NB: does not apply if the Muslim in question comes from a country allied with USA).

Libertarianism -- the belief that less economic and political power makes a person more free.

Self-evident -- unsupported by proof or demonstration

Socialism -- 1) economic policies that don't exclusively benefit yourself or your buddies; 2) (if you're a Democrat) continuing the policies of the W-Bush administration.

Terrorist -- someone who uses unlawful violence for political, religious, or ideological reasons (NB: does not describe, say, a pro-life activist killing a physician who performs abortions).

To have a closed mind -- to have a skeptic mindset, expecting arguments to be supported by some kind of proof.

To have an open mind -- to accept neocon dogma without questioning it.

Trustworthy -- (of the Conservapedia) contents are guaranteed not to contradict neocon beliefs (any similarity to actual fact is purely coincidental).

Yankee ingenuity -- a mythical trait that allows conservatives to disregard the importance of free, critical thinking in innovation.


Note: I think the Conservapedia is a Good Thing, as it exposes the arrogance and dishonesty of the homeschooled neocon goons. Hopefully, we will see a reaction to this that lets the more enlightened conservatives take control of the GOP once more.

09:00 am - Redefinition of marriage

Marriage is, and has always been, the creation of a formal and public bond between people who intend to live together.

Don't try to re-define marriage to be nothing more than glorified rutting.

My wife and I married because we loved each other and wanted to create our own family, not simply because we happened to have the relevant genitalia.

By insisting that marriage is between a man and a woman, you're attacking the foundation of my marriage and of every marriage that isn't solely based on animal instinct.

03:03 pm

Someone linked to the thoseshirts.com site. Well, wow. Idiocy rampant.

I was especially amused/nauseated by this one. How about a more realistic record of the US armed forces achievements during the last century?

France 1918: showed up too late to take part in any significant manner
Russia 1918: intervention against bolsheviks FAILED
WWII: didn't take part in the main hostilities, some limited action to assert US political supremacy
Korea 1950-53: limited success
Lebanon 1958: successful (if brief) intervention! YAY!
Vietnam 1965-1973: FAILED
Lebanon 1983-84: FAILED
Kuwait 1991: successful intervention! YAY!
Afghanistan 2001-: undecided
Iraq 2002-: undecided

A German general during WWII remarked on the US troops that he had never before seen soldiers as unwilling to fight a battle to conclusion. I suppose that this is still true.

Current Mood: blah

08:40 am - Pastel Defender Heliotrope

It's ended now, so you'll simply have to read the archives.

I liked this one very much, for a number of reasons, for instance:

* The tone of the story. It's soft-spoken but hard-hitting.
* The art. Every page is hand-painted in radiant colors; the style is very individual.
* The treatment. The ethics and politics are about as convoluted and nasty as in real life, but the story is almost entirely non-judgmental. The story shows quite convincingly how force differs from virtue.
* The characters. They are rich and lovable (even when unlikable). Everyone is flawed, except the main character, whose main flaw and hurt is her perfection.
* The romance. There are a couple of very pretty love stories (some reciprocated, some unrequited).
* The notes. Many pages have thought-provoking essays attached to them.
* Jennifer Reitz is a consummate builder of universes. The Pastel universe is breathtakingly alien but still somehow mundane and believable.

12:57 pm

A meme via this entry:



The quote is from Miss Piggy, and the image is by coldraine.

12:25 am - It's Working

I've started to work again. It's been awhile, 3 -- 5 years depending what you count as work. It's only two hours / day, but it's great to have a place to go to and a task to do.

I fix up old computers: install memory, replace CD drives etc if they are faulty, nuke and pave the hard disk. It's not exactly PhD work, but it's what I can get -- and handle -- today.

Hopefully this will help rebuild my ability to do the kind of work I'd rather be doing.

01:12 pm - And so he woke up...

Oookay. I'm beginning to wake up, as it were. I've been pretty much out of my mind for a few months. It happens once or twice a year, I think. One week I'm working on projects and attending communities, and the next I've lost the mind I was doing it with.

Before summer, for instance, I was working on a toy Lisp compiler. Now the code looks like someone else wrote it, and I can't recall the way I thought about it or why I cared so much. It's not amnesia (I do remember working on it), it's more like some kind of mental/emotional state of mind was swapped out and lost.

And, as usual, a bunch of people I thought I was getting to be friends with are now strangers again. Damn.

Sure, I've been present in my life. I've even had a good summer, the best in many years. I've held together and then some. Still, now that the deeper part of me is waking up again, I have realized what was lost.

On the plus side, I now have a cat! I thought it would be impossible to me to have a cat of my own, but tomorrow the kitten Astrid will have been with us for two weeks.

Current Mood: gloomy

07:15 pm - He was giving me the Eye

I played Battle for Middle-Earth today. I had shut off the game music and had the media player on in the background. When I started the scenario, U2's "When I Look at the World" was on, and Bono was singing "when you look at the world / what do you see".

As in reply, the computer player's Sauron's Eye moved across the screen, and Sauron's voice whispered: "I. See. You".

01:28 am - Good-bye, Bruno.

It's been some years since I first met her, the girl with the improbable name and the impossible life.

Some of us seem to have been born on the wrong planet, finding it difficult to fit in or even to properly understand what makes the people around them act like they do. It's not that you don't care or don't understand (Bruno is a caring, intelligent person). It just seems to be so hard to make feelings stick, to have your emotional life perform on demand. Your life can still be exciting and wonderful; hopefully you'll have friends. Yet, always happiness and a sense of belonging will be out of your reach.

Following Bruno's life through the years has been a strange journey on many levels, sometimes wonderful, sometimes exasperating, (nearly) always fascinating. As she and her friends sit at the table in a "Last Supper" scene, as a tear (of joy?) rolls from her eye, perforce we part company.

So. Good night, sweet princess, and flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.

11:34 pm - Karin Boye

Today, 65 years ago, Karin Boye disappeared. She took some sleeping-pills and probably died during the chilly night. She was found curled up on a hill on the 27th. She was forty years old.

09:12 am - Fundamentalist Science

Observation:

1. A puddle of water
   
2. Dual overlapping wet bike tracks to the west of the puddle
   
3. Lack of bike tracks on the other side of the puddle
   

Wouldn't the other tire continue to leave wet tracks?

It would, but the vehicle was obviously a unicycle.

Then what about the dual tracks to the west?

That's just an anomaly; we'll pay no attention to it.

Even if the tire is empty of water, it would still be wet and leave tracks.

This actually proves the existence of an Itinerant Drier (ID), who happened to pass by with his towel. Acting quickly, he dried the tire as the vehicle passed.

Current Mood: mischievous