05:25 am - QotD
"You know it's bad when people are too pissed off to macro."
![[info]](http://stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
machineplay
2008-03-12, regarding PR disasters (especially those taking
place on LJ)
Okay, I give up. How does one set the date-out-of-order flag on a new entry via one of the three LJ APIs? (Preferably the flat interface, since that's what the code I'm modifying already uses?) The 'backdated' property doesn't seem to take care of it, and I haven't spotted anything else likely-looking in the documentation.
Worst case, I guess having someone confirm that some other open-source client correctly handles the DOOO property would help, 'cause then I can crawl through the source code for that, looking for the relevant property. But I don't want to start off by downloading more clents at random to look.
Guh ... that was a long, complicated, shifting sequece of dreams all blurring into each other ... when I woke, I wasn't suree whether it was morning or evening, nor did I think it was the right day (I wasn't even sure which month I'd woken up in, for a moment) -- it felt as though I'd lived through, and dreamt between, about three days, even accounting for ordinary amounts of time compression in dreams.
It combined a team consulting gig working for Karl, Pennsic, blogging, and bits from multiple bands, in a most confusing mishmash. I was on electric bas guitar at the end.
( Read more... )There was, of course, a lot more in the middle. I can only faintly recall some of the associations in it, no additional details. Toward the very end of the dream, my awareness narrowed to just my fingers and the bass guitar and trying to remember the tune I hadn't played in so long.
"You know it's bad when people are too pissed off to macro."
machineplay
2008-03-12, regarding PR disasters (especially those taking
place on LJ)
"You do not examine legislation in the light of the benefits it will convey if properly administered, but in the light of the wrongs it would do and the harms it would cause if improperly administered." -- Lyndon Johnson (b. 1908-08-27, d. 1973-01-22; US President 1963-1969)
Ugh. More alert yet, but also in more pain, with hyperacute hearing to boot (had to sleep with earplugs in last night; would still have them in, but they start to hurt after a few hours -- will probably put them back in soon though; cars passing by no longer hurt terribly unless their stereos are cranked, but the sound of a passing truck or bus is pretty #$%^ing painful). Have somewhere I really ought to go tonight, somewhere it'd be fun to go tonight, and places it would be good to get to this afternoon ... and I think I'm not likely to get anywhere at all the way I feel this afternoon. (And I did remember to take pain meds; this is despite those.) Feh.
Made progress on mods to journal client, auto-QotD script, and auto-crossposting script, but still having problems deep in source code for Clive (rather decently commented in some aspects, effectively uncommented in others; suspect there's a few "if you're reading this then you will have already read such-and-such" assumptions in it). For a while I had a version that would only post to DeadJournal, and only if comments were disabled. Found out how to turn on debugging messages but find the choice of which bits get reported at which level of verbosity ... less than ideal for my purposes. (Tempted to rewrite the debugging code to display which function it's called from. Also tempted to use the Clive source mostly as examples/documentation, and hack a new client from scratch, but should probably resist. It's not broken, nor all that seriously mis-organized, just not architected quite the way I woulda done it and I'm having trouble following parts of it.) Part of my problem grokking the code is probably the effects of pain and hyperacusis on attention span. I know part is from the effects of fibromyalgia on short-term memory, and that's the really frustrating part: knowing how good at this I used to be.
Anywho, hope to have ability to specify tags on command line soon (the main reason I gave up on tags was the nuisance of having to go edit each mirrored copy of each entry to add tags after posting it), but can't find documentation for how to set "date out of order" flag on an entry via the LJ API (which will be important when a QotD entry fails to post to a site, and the next scheduled retry happens after I've posted something else). Found a property that sounded like it should do that, but it doesn't seem to. Trying to get it all sorted before LJ's changes on the 28th. Also plan to make site-to-post-to a command-line option (currently using separate copies of Clive executable, each compiled to post to a different site). Hmm. Guess I should've checked to see whether there's a more recent version to work from than the one I've been tinkering with, but haven't seen any signs of life on that front in a long time. (Checking now ... nope, 0.4.5 is still the most recent version I see at SourceForge.)
Acutely disheartened by what has become standard way of dealing with protesters in my country nowadays (restrict them to a spot so far away from what they're protesting that neither the media nor the folks they're trying to address can even see them, and arrest the ones who try to protest someplace effective). Even if they're protesting against something I support, freedoms of speech & assembly seem to demand better. (N.b.: picketing private events like funerals, and blockading abortion clinics, seem to be 'obvious' special cases to me, but haven't worked out how to articulate where the line should be drawn.)
Also perplexed by reading opinion of someone who supports McCain over Obama because he doesn't like Obama's attitudes towards our soldiers. WTF? Which one wants to keep sending 'em to the meat grinder yet opposes benefits or even decent medical treatment when they come home?
Ugh. Anyhow: body not working well, brain apparently not working great either despite feeling more alart, awfully tired, hating loud vehicles.
"The day begins with a morning meeting where material harvested
from 15 TiVos and even more newspapers, magazines and Web sites is
reviewed. That meeting, Mr. Stewart said, 'would be very unpleasant
for most people to watch: its really a gathering of curmudgeons
expressing frustration and upset, and the rest of the day is spent
trying to mask or repress that through whatever creative devices we
can find.'" -- from
"Is Jon Stewart the Most Trusted Man in America?", by Michiko
Kakutani, 2008-08-15 (quoted passage appears on
page 2)
[thanks
to
vvalkyri
and
osewalrus
for pointing
it out]
Feeling more coherent than yesterday, but not feeling coordinated enough to want to get on I-95. :-( Going to stay in.
"Any system that has people spending more and getting less is, by definition, not efficient. And these efficiency leaks are, almost entirely, due to private greed. There is no logical way that a private system can pay eight-figure CEO compensation packages, turn a handsome a profit for shareholders, and still be 'efficient.' In fact, in order to deliver those profits and salaries, the American system has built up a vast, Kafkaesque administrative machinery of approval, denial, and fraud management, which inflates the US system's administrative costs to well over double that seen in other countries -- or even in our own public systems, including Medicare and the VA system." -- Sara Robinson, "Mythbusting Canadian Healthcare, Part II: Debunking the Free Marketeers", 2008-02-11
From the Quotation of the day mailing list, 2007-01-30:
"...To look at the chemical composition of any common food plant is to realize just how much complexity lurks within it. Here's a list of just the antioxidants that have been identified in garden-variety thyme:
"4-Terpineol, alanine, anethole, apigenin, ascorbic acid, beta carotene, caffeic acid, camphene, carvacrol, chlorogenic acid, chrysoeriol, eriodictyol, eugenol, ferulic acid, gallic acid, gamma- terpinene isochlorogenic acid, isoeugenol, isothymonin, kaempferol, labiatic acid, lauric acid, linalyl acetate, luteolin, methionine, myrcene, myristic acid, naringenin, oleanolic acid, p-coumoric acid, p-hydroxy-benzoic acid, palmitic acid, rosmarinic acid, selenium, tannin, thymol, tryptophan, ursolic acid, vanillic acid.
"This is what you're ingesting when you eat food flavored with thyme. Some of these chemicals are broken down by your digestion, but others are going on to do undetermined things to your body: turning some gene's expression on or off, perhaps, or heading off a free radical before it disturbs a strand of DNA deep in some cell. It would be great to know how this all works, but in the meantime we can enjoy thyme in the knowledge that it probably doesn't do any harm (since people have been eating it forever) and that it may actually do some good (since people have been eating it forever) and that even if it does nothing, we like the way it tastes."
-- Michael Pollan, "Unhappy Meals", January 28, 2007, "The New York Times Magazine".
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/28/magazi
ne/28nutritionism.t.html
(submitted to the mailing list by Kelly Groves)
Finally made it to pharmacy.
Also got to nail salon. And Petsmart.
... Progress.
(Had one serving of cat food left, so is good I got more.)
Tried to do too much in one day,
got past painfully-tired, all the way to stupid-tired.
... Which is not good to combine with driving.
(Embarassing whoops but fortunately no bangcrunch, just
looked foolish.)
ATM reported different balance than expected;
fear I've screwed up finances --
and new gas/elec bill arrived.
... Worried.
(And combined with the tired, verges on self-pity.)
Rereading entry so far:
... Apparently still stupid-tired.
Guess I'll see just how badly I over-did by how long it takes to have a good enough day to do anything else.
Hate hate hate the limitations of my body. <sulk />
"With audiences nowadays I see it with these late-night [TV show] people, Jay Leno, David Letterman and so on the audience applauds the jokes rather than laughs at them, which is very discouraging.
"Laughter is involuntary. If it's funny you laugh. But you can easily clap just to say [deadpan]: 'A ha, that's funny, I think that's funny.' Sometimes they cut to the audience and you can see they are applauding madly. But they're not laughing."
-- Tom Lehrer, in a 2003 interview in the Sydney Morning Herald (interviewer: Tony Davis)
Did not get to pharmacy. Did not get to nail salon. Did get to rehearsal (after applying CA glue as a temporary fix for nails that need fill-in). Played poorly. Still, progress, compared to most of week so far. Head hurts.
Dog nearby (not next-door neighbour's) is woofing & whining about being left outside & lonely. If it teaches mockingbirds to bark, I'll be even more annoyed. Likely where bird learned puppy-whine sound.
Cat somewhat less bored now: birdwatching, last I checked.
"A woman can never be so misogynistic that she proofs herself
against misogyny." --
"I call myself a feminist, but only reluctantly because it's
like declaring yourself in the fight against leprosy. Everyone thinks
leprosy was cured long ago." -- Heather Mallick,
2008-07-02, CBCnews
(
thanks to
"The annoying part is, of course, it's like that...and then you
point to a case of leprosy, live and on the news, and people say 'well,
that's not real leprosy.'" --
tacky_tramp,
theweaselking
for linking to it and
larabeaton
for calling attention to that quote in particular)
scifantasy,
2008-07-09 (responding to
larabeaton's
pointing it out)
From the first link:
One Eagle pilot says had the pilots not been so attentive, the damaged probes could have caused problems inflight. TSA agents "are now doing things to our aircraft that may put our lives, and the lives of our passengers at risk," the pilot wrote on the forum.
Grounding the planes to replace the TAT probes affected about 40 flights, according to American Airlines spokeswoman Mary Frances. "We think it's an unfortunate situation," she told ABCNews.com.
[...]
The TSA has NO BUSINESS putting untrained personnel in a position to damage aircraft. Their bizarre games, in the name of security, do NOTHING to enhance security and do much to inhibit safety. Aviation personnel -- pilots, A&P's, ground personnel -- are all either licensed or supervised by licensed personnel and this kind of tampering, had it been accomplished by anyone else, would have subjected that person to criminal charges.
[
Thanks to
theweaselking
for pointing it out.]
I just heard a puppy softly whining.
...
In a tree.
I suspect avian deception.
[EDIT:] Okay, that's funny. Y'see, before I heard the puppy in the tree, I had been planning to ask for help identifying a bird that looks kinda like a sparrow but in black and grey instead of brown and white. I'm back from my Google Images search. Now both questions are answered.
Perrine is bored. I was a lump all yesterday -- I did manage to crawl downstairs to move the car (street cleaning day) and accept a gift of interesting homegrown tomatoes from my neighbour, but then I retreated to bed because my whole %$#^ing body just hurt too much to move. Every so often, Perrine came in, cried or chirped or raised her paw -- or dragged the slicker brush off the headboard as a hint -- then left again because I was being a lump. The time I did try to brush her, she was less enthusiastic than usual, leading me to suspect that she really just wanted attention in general, not brushing in particular, and asked for the brush because it's something she knows how to ask me for. If my back didn't hurt so terribly, I would chase her around the house (the exercise would probably do us both good).
She's not the only one I've been neglecting due to feeling so extremely awful, just the one present to complain in person.
I just took this morning's meds ... and it looks like I missed yesterday's morning dose of Ultram. Er ... that might explain why yesterday was an 'I can't move' day instead of just a 'damn, this hurts' day. Whoops. (Have I mentioned lately how I dislike needing so many doggone pills and inhalers and such? *pout*)
I'd planned to visit the pharmacy and the nail salon but accomplished neither -- just getting to the other side of the street was a challenge. Oh well, I've got my agenda for today if I feel any better, I guess. I did take my Ultram and naproxen this morning, so let's see how his goes. I have to pace myself if I'm going to get to HCB rehearsal.
I've got my agenda, and tomatoes. (And some root vegetables
grown by another friend, given to me at the end of Pennsic.)
The tomatoes are not going to last very long. They're rather
sweet (as I think I've mentioned other tomatoes grown in the
area being this summer are as well). And they showed up on a
day when I was feeling too wretched to cook. Nope, snack-worthy
fruit aren't going to last very long. (The remaining beets
aren't going to remain much longer either; it'll take me a bit
longer to get through the onions.) The wee yellow tomatoes are
already gone, sacrificed to my lack of restraint (they were
yummy). I don't think I'd had yellow tomatoes before, just
red and orange ones. These weren't quite as sweet as
anniemal's
tiny red tomatoes, but they were certainly in the "can't
possibly mistake this fruit for a vegetable" range, verging
on "but you might mistake it for candy" for a few specimens.
A propos of which (fruit, that is): I caught an Arabber
in my neighbourhood a few days ago (I'm not usually quick enough;
this isn't a spot where they linger), and bought bananas from him
-- which let me postpone a trip to the supermarket that I wasn't
really up for. Apparently the city is still trying to drive Arabbers
off the streets -- or is trying to do something else which has that
as a side effect, I'm not entirely certain which -- despite their
being an element of Baltimore's history and its charm. (And isn't
it nice when food comes to you instead of your having to
walk|drive|ride a bus to a shopping center?) He said he'd been
an Arabber since he was twelve years old: thirty-six years in that
trade. The bananas weren't spectacular, but they were worth what I
paid for them and fresh enough that I could eat them all in the
following few days before they got browner and spottier than I like.
Which is about all one can reasonably ask of bananas, innit?
On my way across the street to buy the bananas, I did have a somewhat disconcerting encounter with the Arabber's previous customer, who appeared to be an official with the fire department (office attire and a shiny red car with Baltimore Fire Department markings on the doors). He asked me about my choice of clothing, which isn't all that unusual a beginning to encounters with strangers ... but then he acted suspicious and a little bit hostile at my response. Not the common homophobic hostility or the sees-me-as-betraying-my-sex hostility that I've seen so often (and his initial question was polite and he seemed relaxed when he asked it), but more like he had a problem with my answer ("It's just who I am"). The effect was as though he were a cop instead of a firefighter, and was convinced that I was Up To No Good but he just didn't have enough on me to do anything about it yet and wanted to prolong the encounter in order to find some excuse. Not a vibe I appreciate from city authorities (or any other). A bit of esprit d'escalier: I realized later that when his tone shifted, instead of repeating my first answer, I should have said, "Oh, I'm sorry, I gave you the wrong answer the first time. I meant to say, 'it's not any business of yours.'" What did he think, that a T-shirt and broomstick skirt is the uniform of some arsonist sisterhood or something?
I'm accustomed to folks who start out relaxed and politely curious staying that way (or thanking me for satisfying their curiosity), and folks who are going to be hostile and wary being that way from the get-go. I found the sudden shift disconcerting and even offensive. Not to mention just plain perplexing.
Okay, time to feed the kitty-cat and myself, drag myself out for errands, and try to finish the math email I started before and didn't finish because the pain took over. Then I have some coding to do before the 28th (rewriting my auto-posting script). Eventually I need to make time to edit those couple-thousand Pennsic photos. (Photos which portray a fraction -- a largeish fraction perhaps but still the lesser part -- of What Pennsic Is.) Here's one last photo I felt like tossing into this entry just because it was in between a couple of the others on the memory card.
Oh, today's the PUG deadline, isn't it? Hmm.
"If you look back at history, there has not been a single instance where people have overcome a deeply entrenched prejudice without first being forced to interact with the people they detest." -- Julia Serano, "Frustration", 2006-08-14
"For the philosophically minded - I humbly submit the following lesson: Only preach to the converted.
"When I found out about the hidden world of government malfeasance and financial cabals that are responsible for so much misery in this world, and that exist with the help of the media's complicity, I naturally assumed a lot of people would want to know. I spent all sorts of time and emotional energy on my soapbox, to be met with bored stares or snide remarks. The only time such speech-making and arguing was productive was when I had found someone already inclined to my way of thinking who was looking for answers, as I was.
"So Liberals, stop trying to convert Conservatives, and vice versa. Veggies, leave those BBQ eaters alone. If you want to change the world, start with yourself so as to provide an example, and then only preach to people who ask for a sermon!"
-- Ernie,
2008-04-03, responding to a
Things I Wish They Had Taught Me In School essay (which
was pointed
out by
siderea.)
Not Good: still not moving well, feel like I'm thinking at quarter-speed, got too little sleep and it's now too late to safely nap and expect to wake up again in time for rehearsal.
Call it about a 25% of my actually getting out the door this evening. *sigh*
"The annoyance we put up with at the airport is not a by-product of terrorism; it is the goal. It has become increasingly obvious that the real aim of terrorists is not to blow up plans but to inconvenience travelers and cripple an already overburdened airline industry. When one thinks of the staggering loss of time, money, and materials that are a result of increased security measures only one conclusion can be drawn: the terrorists have already won." -- Billy Biondi, 2007-12-29 (comment)
From the Quotation of the day mailing list, 2007-01-10:
"Omne tulit punctum qui miscuit utile dulci." -- Horace (Quintus Horatius Flaccus)
["He who mingles the useful with the agreeable bears away the prize."]
(submitted to the mailing list by Patsy Wang-Iverson)
Ugh. Not having a good day. Ran an errand earlier that was so close I felt guilty about driving, but when I noticed that just working the accelerator pedal was painful I figured that walking wouldn't have gotten me there today. Had planned to go to Storvik post-Pennsic revel tonight, but not sure pain meds will be enough. :-(
Also having problems with random stuff (not just my body) failing to work. Cell phone charger died (have kludged substitute working now), kitchen scale broke (may or may not be repairable with plastic cement), and clothes-dryer finally made good on its threatening noises and stopped working last night (with a load of sheets and towels in it).
On plus side, have fresh vegetables in kitchen given to me at Pennsic by the friend who grew them, have bananas purchased from an arabber yesterday, and have been promised some of neighbour's too-many tomatoes. (That's four people I know or have heard of who wound up with absurd quantities of tomatoes this year. OTOH, tomato consumption seems to be way up as well, so they're finding people to give the excess to. And the small tomatoes (especially grape tomatoes) are amazingly sweet this year, at least the ones being grown in MD and VA, which may account for increased tomato consumption.)
"Car accidents are a leading cause of death for teenagers. The school board and your elected representatives want to make sure that you and your families are spared from such a tragedy, which is why the money for driver's ed was eliminated from the budget. Whereas last year I was teaching your older siblings how to shift and brake and three-point-turn during a six-week course, it has since been decreed that I actually need just one afternoon to tell you the only piece of safety information I'm permitted by law to share:
"The ONLY 100 percent effective method for avoiding car accidents is to ABSTAIN from driving until marriage.
"Yes, yes, I know you've been bombarded with messages from popular culture about how much fun it would be to get behind the wheel of a red convertible, find an unbroken stretch of country road, and, with the wind in your hair, see what she can do. I know that up until now you had the mistaken belief that getting a driver's license was a cherished milestone of your young, sweet, innocent lives. It isn't. It's a milestone, all right: a milestone indicating terrible pain, degradation, and certain death."
-- from "Abstinence-Only Driver's Ed.", by Suzanne Kleid, McSweeney's, 2008-02-22
Does anybody have a good idea approximately how many tents there are at Pennsic? Do you think it's safe to assume that the ratio of tents:people is reasonably close to 1:1 (what with dining tents and storage tents, vs. tents with more than one person in them (and folks living in non-tent structures)) or is my guess regarding how many people share tents too low? Will the US Air Force (or Army, or whomever it is that uses us for photometry and reconaissance practice) tell us how many tents they counted? (I've heard they check the attendance numbers to find out how well their population estimation algorithms work, and that we make a rather convenient test case that way.)
"They say that if a thought has occurred to you, somebody else has already thought of it too, and posted porn about it on the internets.
"So why can't I find Mark Foley/Bill O'Reilly slashfic that ends in MPreg?"
--
sabotabby,
Gaybortion! comic strip,
2006-10-18
[I do not know whether any was created in response to that cartoon.]
"Age is a matter of feeling, not of years." -- Washington Irving (b. 1783-04-03, d. 1859-11-28)
"It says something about the Bush regime that they've managed
to turn me into someone who cheers when people die." --
violachic,
2008-07-12 (regarding the death of former White House
spokesman, Tony Snow)
Although there's nothing particularly Pennsic-ish about this photo, I did shoot it at Pennsic. (I was showing off my macro skillz for some of my camp-mates after they'd watched me photograph an insect.) And I like it enough that I couldn't wait to post it. I'm especially pleased by the reflection of the salt.
Er, yeah, that thing that folks keep saying looks like an ice cube is a grain of table salt. :-) And the blobby, round thing on the left is neither a meatball nor falafel, but a single grain of ground black pepper. They're resting on the screen of my PDA, lit from the side by a flash.
No conventional microscope involved, though the question of whether the combination of lenses I cobbled together constitutes an improvised microscope or just a scary-looking macro lens is left as an exercise for my readers. From the camera out, it was a 2x teleconverter, a 200mm lens, then a 50mm lens backwards (attached to the 200mm lens by gaffing their lens hoods together). I set the flash on 1/16th power and adjusted its brightness by sliding it slightly closer or farther away.
1000x641 versionOkay, so I'm mostly back from Pennsic ... I got in yesterday, pulled
all my stuff out of the truck, made a brief stab at organizing things a
little (barely enough to count, really), rested a little, then started
getting ready to go to 3LF rehearsal ... failed to get everything
together in time (I spent too long figuring out how to bungee the bass
in place in the back of the truck without enough of my other stuff
around it to keep it from sliding around on the sheet of plywood that
was the top of the pile), skipped rehearsal, delivered the truck to
the merchant who paid me to drive it to Pennsic and back, and proceeded
to the home of
anniemal
and
syntonic-comma
to finish burning to CD the photos that I'd copied off of CF cards
during Pennsic, and to borrow their lawn to rinse and dry my tent's
groundcloth. So I feel like I'm not quite completely home from Pennsic
yet. Almost ...
Also not yet caught up on electronic (or any other) communication.
I feel like babbling a bit about photographic and technological aspects of my trip; I'll write a more rounded trip report a little later.
The final photographic tally for Pennsic, including the drive up
and the drive home: three rolls of film (one roll of 135 and two
rolls of 120), six gigabytes worth of CF cards (spread over fourteen
cards because I started off with the small cards in order to be using
the 1G cards at the end when I expected to be shooting more) that
have been copied to nine CDs, two thousand three hundred and one
digital photos (not counting the ones I deleted before removing the
card from the camera, of course), and a metric crapload of editing
to do over the next few weeksmonths. I got a number
of adorable shots of children with and without their parents, which
need to get emailed to the right parents as I sort and edit them.
And I sold one photo on site the day I shot it (I delivered it on a
CD).
I took a RV/marine battery with me, and an inverter, hoping to be
able to run the Vaio. That didn't work. The battery didn't have
enough juice to power the laptop when I got there, though it did
run the chargers for my cell phone, PDA, and iPod. Hooking it up
to solar panels (two different rigs) only got it as far as 11.6V,
never enough to run a computer. :-( I did borrow
anniemal's
iBook once she arrived (and recharged it from
syntonic-comma's
battery while his solar panel tried to recharge my battery), but
I never got around to plugging the Vaio into a working battery, so
I never got the addresses off it for some folks I'd planned to send
SMS messages to but whose email addresses weren't already in my phone;
I also never connected to the Internet from Mystic Mail (the on-site
ISP) or through anybody else's portable connection. At the moment
my battery is hooked to a car-battery-charger and is fully charged,
but loses about a hundredth of a volt every ten seconds when the
charger is disconnected.
On the last day, my cell phone charger stopped working reliably. I thought it was a problem with the power it was getting from the inverter, but now I've got it plugged into house current and it's still not doing much. Eek! (I never see the phone say it's charging, but the battery indicator does read halfway now, as opposed to dead last night. So the charger must be doing something some of the time.)
The drive home got off to a rocky start, what with loading my gear into the truck in heavy rain, then having to get the truck pulled out of the campsite by a backhoe because the ground softened under it during loading. (They tried using a tractor first, but just spun the tractor's wheels. So plan B was to move it a few feet at a time with the backhoe. I'd never fully realized what an impressive piece of equipment a backhoe is, until now.)
Next year, I must make sure that all the email addresses I'll want are copied to my phone and/or PDA before I leave, instead of counting on being able to access them on the laptop. And find out whether there's any cure for a lead-acid battery that self-discharges at a rate of a millivolt per second.
I'll write up more of what my Pennsic was like, as opposed to how my electronics worked or didn't, after I get back to Baltimore again and have a proper tire on my minivan where the toy spare is currently mounted. And then I've got twenty three hundred photos to sift through and edit.
[Florence Ambrose is a genetically-engineered "Bowman's Wolf", and a spaceship engineer. Sam Starfall, a squidlike alien in a humanoid environment suit, is her captain. Varroa Jacobsoni is a psychologist working for the corporation that created Florence's species, testing the "don't hurt humans" safeguards designed into her brain.]
| Varroa Jacobsoni: | "Given only a second to react, how do you decide if someone is human?" |
| Florence Ambrose: | "Clothes! They're wearing clothes. And I look for shape." |
| [...] | |
| Varroa Jacobsoni: | "Why did you choose clothing first?" |
| Florence Ambrose: | "If humans ever modify themselves to live in space without suits, they may not look human, but will probably still want pockets. So, given that you can't use size, shape, or even D.N.A. as being one hundred percent accurate, how would you define human?" |
| Varroa Jacobsoni: | "I'm passing you, because it's a lot easier to pass you than to answer your question." |
| Sam Starfall: | "Now that's human!" |
-- from "Freefall" by Mark Stanley, 2008-06-02 and 2008-06-04 (quoted strips are part of a story arc that started 2008-03-17)
[Posted from my cell phone via SMS]
Am home, unpacking. Not checked email or LJ yet.
"There are guys out there who imagine that anti-discrimination and affirmative action regulations intended to level the playing field put traditionally disadvantaged groups--women, blacks and other ethnic minorites--at an unfair disadvantage because they don't recognize that the treatment that they used to take for granted was in fact a special privilege that members of traditionally disadvantaged groups didn't have.
"They took it for granted that of course they'd be able to get car loans at reasonable terms, that they wouldn't be stuck working at boring dead-end pink-collar jobs, and that they wouldn't have to compete with women or minorities. So to them leveling the playing field looks like putting them down in order to provide unfair advantages to women and minorities.
"They don't believe that women or minorities are disadvantaged and so they read any suggestion that they are as illegitimate 'whining.' But you can't say that about minorities, so women are a surrogate for their complaints. But make no mistake: what's underlying the sexism directed against Clinton is resentment against the recognition that women and minorities have been, and continue to be, disadvantaged and against policies that would level the playing field."
"My 'friend' at work has been sending me anti-Hillary emails for, oh, about 12 years now. Disgusting jokes. Bad pictures. Photoshopped pictures. Wild stories involving killing Vince Foster and lesbianism. Every month. 12 years. There was a bit of a flurry in 2004 - a bunch of John Kerry is a traitor emails. But the constant was Hillary Clinton.
[...]
"If you all think that this won't happen to Michelle Obama you are sadly mistaken. Just wait until she has anything to say about any little policy an Obama administration might consider.
"And when the shit comes down no doubt you will all gasp and clutch at your pearls - how dare they do that to Michelle - those racists!
"Another work 'friend' put it well today: 'GWB has been a disaster, but at least Laura knew how to act like a first lady.' Better start teaching Michelle how to bake fucking cookies...that's all she will be doing in a few months. And that's not about racism, my friends."
-- luko, 2008-06-13
[Posted from my cell phone via SMS]
There are 7 robins in front of me checking out spots that had been under tents.
From the Quotation of the day mailing list, 2007-01-19:
"For those of you who don't have a blog yet, think of one as a large yellow Labrador: friendly, fun, not all that bright, but constantly demanding your attention." -- David Carr, The New York Times, Jan 15, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/15/busine
ss/media/15carr.html?th&emc=th
(submitted to the mailing list by Lynn Kisilenko)
"Such is the nature of men, that howsoever they may acknowledge many others to be more witty, or more eloquent, or more learned; yet they will hardly believe there be many so wise as themselves." -- Thomas Hobbes (b. 1588-04-05, d. 1679-12-04)
[Posted from my cell phone via SMS]
2 Viking memorial boat burnings this year. 2nd ended a little while ago.
"You can't win them all -- but you can try." -- Mildred Ella ("Babe") Didrikson Zaharias (b. 1911-06-26, d. 1956-09-27), American athlete (basketball, track & field, golf) and musician (vocals, harmonica) (via Jone Johnson Lewis' collection of quotations on about.com)
"[Opposing homosexuality is] kind of like 'opposing left handedness', and about as useful." -- "recovering ex-Pentecostal", 2008-06-03 (3rd comment)
[Posted from my cell phone via SMS]
New rule: if it gives you an ice cream headache rinsing your hair, the shower is too damn cold.
"Some may say to me, 'You are only encouraging this ridiculous
fellow.' To them I say of course I am. He amuses me to no end. I will
goad him until there is no longer any hilarious inside him for him to
excrete." -- David Willis
(
shortpacked),
author/artist of
Shortpacked!,
2008-07-16
[Posted from my cell phone via SMS]
Made it down the hill and got bass safely stowed shortly before skies opened up.
"First, we need to bust down that old conservative trope that tax money is always wasted. The conservatives originally sold themselves as the party of prudent, business-like management of the public purse, contrasting themselves to 'tax-and-spend liberals' (an accusation that finally seems to be dying a painful and ironic death). But if they actually were running this country as you'd run a business, they'd be taking that revenue and looking for the best possible investment. And, since the beginning of the nation, the best investments we've ever made have been those made directly in the American people themselves.
"Invest in a school, and over the course of the next several decades, you'll get tens of thousands of literate, creative workers . a few of whom will go forth and transform the world, and the rest of whom will do well, pay taxes, obey the law and contribute to the life of their communities. Invest in housing, and you put more families on the road to accumulating middle-class wealth, which will make a difference for generations. Invest in transportation and communication, and you streamline commerce for the next 50 years. Invest in new technologies, and you seed new industries that will create jobs and generate tax revenue -- which can be invested again for even further prosperity. Invest in a GI Bill, and you get the Greatest Generation, and the postwar boom they created."
-- Sara Robinson, "Stealing Our Future II: Democracy, Fear, and the War on the Middle Class", 2008-01-31
[Posted from my cell phone via SMS]
Made it up the hill with the bass and played with Wolgemut in the market.
[In response to Bruce Schneier's "The War on the Unexpected":]
The problem is there are two types that Don't Fit; extreme Reactionaries and extreme Progressives. Both disturb the Conservative masses. However, the progressives (especially the freakish techno-geeks) make things more difficult for the reactionaries, by making the world harder and harder even for them to understand, let alone attack... and the threat today is from violent Reactionary radicals.
"Perhaps Homeland Security should start recruiting at SF, Anime, and comic book conventions. Or perhaps Burning Man. Anyone that pegs the weirdometer on their typical attendees deserves attention. Pair a Conservative guard with a Progressive-Weird partner, and if they don't kill each other, the Reactionaries will get highly focused attention from both of them.
-- abb3w, 2007-11-01
From the Quotation of the day mailing list, 2007-01-16:
"This is a marine biological station with her history of over sixty years ... Take care of this place and protect the possibility for the continuation of our peaceful research. You can destroy the weapons and the war instruments, but save the civil equipments for Japanese students. When you are through with your job here, notify to the University and let us come back to our scientific home.
"The last one to go" -- Katsuma Dan, marine biologist, from a handwritten notice he left at the Misaki Marine Biological Station for U.S. forces occupying Japanese installations at the end of World War II. The station survived the war.
(submitted to the mailing list by David Bergman)
"Some weekend just recently, most of my apartment neighbors went stir fry bonkers. They dressed in brightly colored tribal clothing and some of them painted their faces. They gathered together in large groups, played very loud music for a very very long time, while eating specific types of fattening food and drinking alcoholic beverages. They watched this particular show and became so emotionally involved that they jeering, cheered, screamed, moaned, shouted, argued and otherwise carried on like loonies.
"They were watching the superbowl. I don't consider their behavior normal because there are more psycho sports fans than psycho sci-fi fans. I consider their behavior normal because tribalism is normal amongst human beings. All tribalism calls for ritualistic displays of adherence, be it face paint and beer or fanfic and costumes.
"There. Is. No. Difference.
"Except members of the larger tribe will almost invariably claim, at some point, that their greater community size confers greater social approval upon its members.
"Nah. Most people are weird and it takes guts to have fun. Life is short, then you die, and nobody cares in the end. Live it up!"
--
kkglinka
"The Internet is like red wine. Despite all the studies proving it's good for you, drinking too much of it constantly can make you stupid and addicted." -- Rex Hammock, 2008-06-16 [ thanks to Fernando on PDML for linking to it]
[Posted from my cell phone via SMS]
Got a bat! Blurry but recognizeable.
"Although I disagree with Nisbet, I won't try to shut him up. On the other hand, if he ever tells me to shut up he'll get the same sort of terse and hostile response that he got from PZ Myers recently.
"Now, if someone tried to use the coercive power of the state to prevent Nisbet saying 'Shut up,' to Myers, I'd defend him (i.e., I'd defend Nisbet). In that sense, but only in that rather weak sense, he has the right to say it. I'm all for freedom of speech. But he doesn't have the right to say it without getting a rude reply.
"Once it's said, Myers has the same right to reply, as he did, 'Fuck you very much.' Beyond that, I think that it's actually quite an appropriate response to 'Shut up.' When you are told to shut up, the conversation has moved to a meta-level where you need not follow it: no one need feel that they have to justify their actions in arguing for their views, as opposed to giving their arguments for the views themselves."
-- Russell Blackford, 2008-04-05
"Whenever an editor puts a '?' at the end of a headline, I wonder why I'm reading the article. Are they asking the reader for the answer? Are they hedging their bets? Hey, you sold me the magazine -- you're the writer. You tell me, don't ask me." -- Rex Hammock, 2008-06-16
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