| Massachusetts ballot questions: Question 2 |
[Oct. 25th, 2012|08:42 pm]
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Question 2 is a four-page monster that deals with physician-assisted suicide. The four pages are because it's got tons of different sections trying to anticipate ways that such a law could be abused and to try to limit its abuse potential.
And this one is a bit more of a question for me. For a lot of reasons.
The first thing is that I'm not entirely clear how I feel about human euthanasia. At all. And I'm not sure how I feel about suicide. At all. So I'm REALLY not clear how I feel about euthanasia-by-suicide. And I'm absolutely sure that I'm not clear on whether this proposed law actually WOULD protect against abuse. I mean, it's bringing up protections against forms of abuse I hadn't even considered, which is good and all, but it makes me even more certain that there are forms of abuse that HAVEN'T been considered by the writers of the law.
I'm truly on the fence about this.
Here's what I'm certain of: in this country, we ABSOLUTELY don't do enough with pain medication. We are willing to have untold numbers of people suffer, because of the possibility that someone, somewhere, might use those medications to entertain themselves instead of using them for pain management. There's something in our national psyche that believes that "suffering is good and makes us stronger", and is dubious about relieving suffering.
Obviously, this point will come up again talking about the Medical Marijuana question, but it's relevant here, too.
This law is limited to mentally competent adults who have no more than half a year left. If such people knew that their pain and discomfort could be genuinely alleviated for half a year, that might make the prospect of checking out early less appealing.
My mother is a hospital chaplain who works with hospice patients, and I've talked with her about this, too. And, like me, she doesn't see this as an easy or obvious question, either.
Well.
What about the moral questions around suicide, and around euthanasia? When you get right down to it, physician-assisted suicide kind of swirls a whole bunch of moral questions into a truly confusing grey area.
Let me start with "suicide".
I believe that the fundamental human right, the one that all other rights spring from, is the right of self-determination. People have the right to live their lives as they choose, so long as doing so doesn't impinge on the rights of others. And that would appear to imply that people have the right to end their own lives at the time and in the manner of their own choosing.
And yet.
I have had a friend involuntarily confined to a mental institution because zie was suicidal. Zie is alive today, and remembers very, very little about that whole time period, and we believe that I did the right thing. I believe I did the right thing.
But I don't know WHY I believe that I did the right thing. At the time, zie was arguing that I had a moral responsibility to respect zir right to self-determination and allow zir to commit suicide.
And I didn't, and don't, have a counterargument to that. When I take my ethical postulates, and follow them through my ethical calculus, it comes out that I was supposed to let zir die. And I didn't do that, and I KNOW that I was RIGHT not to do that, and I don't know why.
When I take my ethical postulates, and follow them through my ethical calculus, it comes out that a terminally-ill patient has the right to choose the time and manner of zir death. And that seems reasonable to me.
But I'm scared off of that conclusion because I'm sure that there's a difference between the terminally-ill patient and my depressed friend. But I can't put my finger on exactly WHAT that difference IS. And until I can figure out why one case is moral and the other isn't, I can't really be sure that one case actually IS moral, and the other case actually ISN'T moral.
I DON'T want to interfere with the right of self-determination of a terminally ill patient. And, well, if that right does include the choice to end life, that person certainly should be offered ways that are as painless and dignified as humanly possible.
But . . .
Edited to Add: if you're just skimming this, click through to the comments. They're ALL worth reading, but I especially want to point out both  tikva's and metahacker's. If you can read BOTH of those and STILL be sure what you believe. . . well, I don't know what the "then" clause would be. They both make 100% compelling arguments to vote in opposite ways. |
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| The Massachusetts ballot questions. Question #1: The Massachusetts Right to Repair Act |
[Oct. 25th, 2012|07:28 pm]
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This year, Massachusetts has three questions on the ballot: one which forces auto manufacturers to provide all the information they provide to their dealerships also to independent mechanics, on the same terms; one which covers human euthanasia; one which covers medical marijuana. And, honestly, I'm only COMPLETELY sure how I'm going to vote on Question 1.
I am totally in favor of the Right to Repair law. The auto manufacturers have, as a matter of policy, provided preferential pricing on their repair manuals, diagnostic codes, and all that sort of thing, to their own dealerships. Bruce, down at Tremont Street Garage, CAN get everything that the Toyota dealership up on Rte 1 can get -- but Bruce has to pay ten, twenty, even a hundred times more for that same information. The Right to Repair law disallows that kind of preferential pricing.
Why might people vote against it? Well, the dealerships have a whole bunch of reasons, which are basically BS. You might vote against it on libertarian grounds, of course, seeing this as simply a free market argument. You could argue that an entity that sells a product has the right to sell that product to another associated entity at a discounted price, and that this law would be an unfair imposition of governmental power to restrict free economic action. I could understand that reasoning. But the actual counterarguments the auto manufacturers and dealerships have been putting out are basically doubletalk, FUD, and BS. And, well, I'm NOT a libertarian, and I believe that a "free market" requires regulation, in PRECISELY this manner.
Actually, come to think of it -- this EXACTLY pits the two definitions of "free market" against one another. On the one hand, we have the definition which says that a free market is one that is free from governmental interference, and which allows entities to engage in any economic activity they wish, so long as it is free from fraud and coercion. On the other hand, we have the definition which says that a free market is one which is regulated such that no entity may use its monopolistic power in one area to restrain trade on its competitors.
It's a question of, "who is a free market free FROM, exactly?" Enacting the law increases the control of the government over the market, but decreases the control of the corporations.
Me, I believe that one of the very PURPOSES of government is to regulate and protect people against entities that have no discernible moral sense -- psychopaths, terrorists, hostile governments, corporations. In the case of corporations, to regulate them in such a way to use their powers for good -- because well-regulated corporations ARE a source of great power, which CAN be used for great good. But they're like fire. Controlled, they heat our homes, make our cars run, make our lives more pleasant, more fulfilled, just generally better. Uncontrolled, they run rampant and devour everything.
Question 1 regulates a market to prevent a larger entity from maintaining an unbalanced playing field. This allows larger and smaller entities to compete on a more equal footing. This is a type of corporate regulation that I am, in general, in favor of, and so I'm in favor of Question 1. |
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| Hunh. This is weird. |
[Oct. 22nd, 2012|07:33 am]
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According to the particular Daf Yomi bit on LJ I read:In connection with the preceding discussion of the laws of purity, the Talmud mentions the purity of glassware. Since glassware is not mentioned anywhere in the Torah, it should not be susceptible to ritual impurity. However, the Sages did decree such impurity. Why? Rabbi Yochanan quoted his favorite student Resh Lakish: "Since its formation is from sand, the Sages placed it in the same category as earthenware – which is mentioned in the Torah and is susceptible to impurity, though only from the inside."
This is supposedly somewhere in Shabbat 16, and I'm trying to find it, because it strikes me as weird. This suggests that the Sages knew about how glass was made, and, if so, it suggests that educated Jews throughout history ought to have know how glass was made, or, at least, to have had a really good clue, from reading that passage.
But, for centuries in the Middle Ages, Venice managed to maintain a monopoly on the secret of making glass -- a secret that there would have been a lot of money to be made in breaking. So how was it that that piece of information wasn't used to figure out that trade secret? |
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| A movie review. |
[Oct. 19th, 2012|01:50 pm]
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First off, you have to understand -- for folding laundry, I look for the absolute worst, dumbest movies I can find; usually direct-to-DVD action flicks filmed somewhere in Eastern Europe. That level of quality.
Like, I just got two movies. One is about a former cop who becomes a zombie and then eats criminals.
The other one is Lockout. About a man who was wrongly convicted of treason, who is offered his freedom if he can go into a maximum security prison that the inmates have taken over and rescue the President's daughter, and the prison is IN SPACE!!!
I just turned it off for being too dumb. I turned it on ready to watch a movie about a wrongly-convicted man who is the only man who can get the President's daughter out of the maximum-security prison in space, and WANTING that level of dumb, and yet, on THAT standard, it is dumb enough to be painful. |
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| A linguistic question (looking mainly at you thnidu, but there are other folks who might know, too) |
[Oct. 15th, 2012|07:39 am]
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Elsejournal, a couple days ago, someone wrote a post which quoted Bishop John Shelby Spong: "The verb 'to be' is the key verb in every human language. We use it to describe that which is of our very essence."
The post was, and is, a lovely meditation on the nature of coming out, and the reactions to National Coming Out Day, but I objected to that quote, saying that plenty of languages lack a verb "to be".
So it started me wondering: do languages with an explicit verb "to be" fall into any specific clusters? Do some language families have them, and others lack them, or is it more scattershot? |
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| My kitty-cat is pretty. |
[Oct. 11th, 2012|12:37 pm]
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So, when we got Nick and Nora, Nick was basically grey and white. And he still mostly is, except, over the past year, some of his medium-grey is starting to get a little bit of an orange-russet tone. It's pretty subtle, but I think it's very becoming on him. (And, no, he's not rolling in something orange or something like that -- we have our cats professionally bathed every few months.)
Anyone else heard of this -- three-year-old cats having subtle color changes? It's pretty. |
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| Lis observed something about Dunkin Donuts and technology |
[Oct. 4th, 2012|05:28 pm]
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So, around here, Dunkin Donuts is doing this thing where they have a life-sized standee of Rob Gronkowski, tight end for the Patriots, with his arm out at normal human shoulder height, so that you can take a photo with him. Do so, then post it to your Facebook, and you could win a lunch with Gronk. You can also post and upload a video or photo of you spiking a football. Or, as a last resort, and the only way available to people not on Facebook, is to email them an entry.
Let's look at all the assumptions that Dunks is making about their clientele here. First, obviously, they have Facebook accounts. Second, and less obviously, they have cell phones with cameras and the ability to upload photos to Facebook. Third, they are going to Dunks with friends who can take the photo for them. Or, I guess they could do the "hold the phone out to take a self-portrait thing", so maybe that third one doesn't really count. So let's replace the third one with "maybe SOME people aren't on Facebook, but the absolute dead minimum that ANYBODY would have is an email address."
But the first two do -- they believe that their market is people with cell phones with Internet access, and Facebook accounts. And Dunks have free Wi-Fi.
What makes this interesting is that it was only a couple years ago that Dunks made a snarky announcement that THEY wouldn't have Wi-Fi, like Starbucks does, because THEIR market was people who wanted to get coffee and donuts and then leave and go to work, but not THOSE kinds of PRETENTIOUS Starbuck-y people who sit around and Pretend To Write Their Novels and just take up space.
The thing is . . . since that time, Dunkin Donuts' hasn't changed who their customers are. But their core customers -- blue collar workers, high school kids, and general working stiffs -- HAVE changed how they use technology. The exact same plumbers and carpenters are going through the exact same Dunks -- but that Dunks NOW has Wi-Fi, because those carpenters need to check their email to download the new updated blueprints to their smartphones, while drinking their coffee and eating their donuts.
Having a smartphone and Wi-Fi access is now a requirement for skilled blue collar work. Dunks has Wi-Fi NOT because their customer base has changed, but because the technology requirements of their customer base have changed. |
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| Conversations between Lis and Ian: |
[Oct. 3rd, 2012|10:12 pm]
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LIS [in the other room, playing with cat Nicky]: Do we dote on our kitties?
IAN: What? Yes, yes we do.
LIS: But you know, we don't know that EVERYBODY would dote on the boy.
IAN: Why not?
LIS: Because the plural of a Nick-dote isn't data. |
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| The important, and sad, news in my life is that my grandmother died |
[Oct. 3rd, 2012|10:08 pm]
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My Nana, Barbara Becker, died, um, is it day before yesterday, now? Something like that.
This is not in the least unexpected. She's been in a nursing home for years, in hospice for months. And she's had advanced Alzheimers enough that she hasn't recognized any of us, as far as I know, for, I don't know, a year, maybe? I'm terrible with time. I mean, I think she might have been somewhat aware of her daughters as "people who I'm close to", even if she didn't know who they were particularly.
So, yeah. Of course it's sad, but there's a whole lot of relief mixed in with that sad. It's not even relief on behalf of Nana -- she was receiving very competent care, and my aunts and uncles and parents were extremely careful to make sure that she was in no distress or discomfort. So, it's not relief that "her suffering is over", because she wasn't suffering -- her kids made sure that she wouldn't be.
No, the relief is on behalf of everyone else. The relief is that my aunts and uncles and Mom and Dad aren't going to have to continue to put all their time, money, energy, and stress toward making sure that Nana isn't suffering, toward making sure that her quality of life is always as high as possible, no matter how limited that may be. It's not Nana's tribulations that are over -- it's my Mom's tribulations, and her brothers' and sisters', and their spouses, and, to a lesser extent, those of us in my generation.
They've all done heroic work in caring for Nana through her dementia.
So I'm not feeling relief that Nana is now allowed to lay down her burden. I'm feeling relief that Nana's children, my aunts and uncles, are now allowed to lay down the burden of caring for her. It's a burden they willingly shouldered, and they ought to be proud of the job they did.
But I feel great relief on their behalf that the job is finished. |
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| The one-ton mark has been broken for giant pumpkins. |
[Sep. 29th, 2012|08:27 am]
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Growing giant pumpkins has been a sport since the middle of the 19th century, but the last few years have pushed the boundaries of horticulture amazingly. It's an entirely new thing.
By the begining of the 20th century, the world-record pumpkins hovered around 400 pounds (180 kg or so). But 1976 saw a new run of records being shattered -- ten years later, the world record was 671 pounds (304 kg). This was due to both to the creation of new breeds of pumpkin, and of new greenhouse techniques. And it kept going. And the increase just kept going and going.
The world record was set at the Deerfield, NH a couple days ago. 1,844 pounds. But Steve Geddes didn't get to hold his record long: last night, at the Topsfield Fair, Ron Wallace's pumpkin weighed in at 2009 pounds. |
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| An observation I made to my cousin at a family gathering yesterday. |
[Sep. 24th, 2012|07:28 am]
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I'm a theist in a manner that is functionally indistinguishable from atheism.
Also, my cousin defines "agnosticism" as the ACTIVE belief that the existence or non-existence of God is fundamentally unknowable, and that theism and atheism are a continuum, with "not knowing" being a middle point on that continuum, rather than "agnosticism." My wife doesn't go by that, because her definition of "atheism" is "a word that means absolutely anything a particular society needs it too", since her primary exposure to the concept is Kit Marlowe's "atheism", which would, these days, be counted as something closer to "Satanism."
But I'm an "agnostic" by my cousin's definition, because I define the metaphysical to be, y'know, metaphysical, and thus undetectable by physical means. Which means that it can have no observable or measurable effect on the physical world, which is why my theism is functionally indistinguishable from atheism.
I suppose Deism is a similar thing -- theism functionally indistinguishable to atheism. |
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| You heard about the Pakistani protester who died of smoke inhalation after burning American flags? |
[Sep. 21st, 2012|11:07 am]
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Yeah, not a joke. I'd link to the story, but y'all don't want to read the comment sections.
But, well. That's basically the story. A protester at an anti-American flag-burning died of smoke inhalation. I'd like to say that it's not funny, because, y'know, a human being died, but, let's face it, it is.
But this story teaches us an important lesson: when you're burning American flags, look for the MADE IN THE USA label. You buy cheap flags from China or Indonesia or somewhere, and you have no idea WHAT kind of toxic crap that stuff is made of -- buy American, to make sure of getting QUALITY materials!
We also should thank that protester for saving the life of the Boy Scout who would have been performing the flag disposal ceremony after it wore out.
It also made Lis and me wonder -- what percentage of flag sales go to the US for display, and what percentage go to anti-US protesters? It seems to me that you'd have a much more dynamic, growing market if you marketed to the protesters. Plus, you can be a lot sloppier with quality control -- if you're just burning the thing, who cares if it's got fifty-three stars, or twelve stripes, or if the top stripe is white, or whatever? |
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| So, what tax loopholes IS Romney planning on closing? |
[Sep. 20th, 2012|07:33 am]
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Romney has claimed that he will give tax breaks to everyone, but make up the money by closing tax loopholes. He also claims that 47% of people not paying income tax is a bad thing.
This gives us some clues on the "tax loopholes" he wants to close. That 47% has a 0% tax liability because of tax credits: earned income credit, mortgage deductions, education deductions, dependents. A family with $50,000 a year, five kids, and a mortgage probably is in that 47% -- you can get a chunk of money taken out of your paycheck every week, and STILL have to write a check to the IRS at the end of the year, and be in the 47%. If you're self-employed, you're paying 15% of your income -- higher than the TOTAL Mitt pays on his -- right off the bat, BEFORE you're taking about income tax.
The only place Mitt COULD be talking about to close those tax loopholes is in THOSE tax credits, the ones that the working poor and the middle class use; indeed, depend upon. Romney has GOT to be talking about ending some of the following: mortgage interest deductions, education credits, medical expense deductions, earned income tax credit. That sort of thing. That's the only stuff that fits with what he's said. |
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| An observation about the senses of humor of the two candidates |
[Sep. 18th, 2012|09:34 am]
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When Mitt Romney tells a joke, or hears something funny, it hits his mouth, but not his eyes, unless he's with people he genuinely feels comfortable with. When Obama tells a joke or hears something funny, it hits his eyes, but he sometimes has to remember to have it hit his mouth.
Humor is both personal and interpersonal. As a personal thing, humor is a way to deal with stress and conceptualize out own experiences. As an interpersonal thing, humor is a way for us to connect with others and create shared experiences.
Romney has trouble with the personal part, unless he's feeling comfortable around the people he's with. You get the feeling that he's constantly sizing up the room, and that he's constantly trying to read the people around him, and figure out what they're thinking and feeling about him, which leaves little space for having a genuine experience of humor when he's in public.
Neither candidate is actually very good at the external connection part of humor, the way that, say, Bill Clinton is. Both of them are fundamentally introverts. But Obama tends to be a little more comfortable around strangers, and therefore has the space to experience humor.
Romney can't connect using humor, because he's too nervous and cautious to experience humor. He's capable of seeing that something is SUPPOSED to be funny, and so he laughs, because it's the appropriate thing to do, but he's not FEELING it, because he's not comfortable enough to do so. Obama, on the other hand, DOES experience the humor, but he's introverted enough that he doesn't always project it, although he's getting better about it.
I think this is probably because Romney's life has been a lot more about one-on-one interaction with people he's been working with, or in relatively small groups where he knows everyone. Obama, on the other hand, has been a lecturer, a lawyer, and a community organizer, which all include one-on-one interaction, and groups where he knows everyone, but also includes more working with strangers, so he's had more practice.
So, in public at least, Obama's sense of humor tends to be more genuine (as seen in the eyes) but less demonstrative (as seen in the mouth), while Romney's tends to be the other way around. |
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| Yet another reason creationism is just plain embarrassing. |
[Sep. 10th, 2012|01:09 pm]
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Like, I assume, ALL of you who are Americans, I find it downright HUMILIATING that a LOT of my countrymen are Biblical literalists. Do any of you have to deal with Creationists and Christian Biblical literalists in your lives?Usually, even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other elements of this world, about the motion and orbit of the stars and even their size and relative positions, about the predictable eclipses of the sun and moon, the cycles of the years and the seasons, about the kinds of animals, shrubs, stones, and so forth, and this knowledge he hold to as being certain from reason and experience. Now, it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on these topics; and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn. The shame is not so much that an ignorant individual is derided, but that people outside the household of faith think our sacred writers held such opinions, and, to the great loss of those for whose salvation we toil, the writers of our Scripture are criticized and rejected as unlearned men. If they find a Christian mistaken in a field which they themselves know well and hear him maintaining his foolish opinions about our books, how are they going to believe those books in matters concerning the resurrection of the dead, the hope of eternal life, and the kingdom of heaven, when they think their pages are full of falsehoods and on facts which they themselves have learnt from experience and the light of reason? Reckless and incompetent expounders of Holy Scripture bring untold trouble and sorrow on their wiser brethren when they are caught in one of their mischievous false opinions and are taken to task by those who are not bound by the authority of our sacred books. For then, to defend their utterly foolish and obviously untrue statements, they will try to call upon Holy Scripture for proof and even recite from memory many passages which they think support their position, although they understand neither what they say nor the things about which they make assertion. [1 Timothy 1.7]
That's Saint Augustine back in the fifth century.
Biblical literalism and creationism was considered primitive and stupid BEFORE the Middle Ages. Not only have Biblical literalists failed to come up to the 21st Century, they've failed to come up to the FIFTH Century. They're espousing ideas that were discredited in Christianity before the fall of Rome.
That's just plain embarrassing. Less embarrassing for me, I guess, since I'm Jewish, but still. |
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| I want to be the kind of person who enjoys puzzles . . . |
[Sep. 9th, 2012|08:46 am]
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So, over at today's IRREGULAR WEBCOMIC, David Morgan-Mar discusses the creation of good puzzles, a hobby which a number of you share. And he gives a bunch of examples of puzzles that he and his friends created.
And a lot of them look fun to me. So I print out a couple, and I figure out Step 1 in them, and then I start looking for the twist/looking for Step 2, and just don't have the mental energy to care enough to do it.
Now, see, in my mind, a major characteristic of "being smart" is "being interested in figuring things out", and another is "being able to look at things in different and creative ways." So this sort of puzzle creation and puzzle solving is EXACTLY what I think "being smart" is all about.
And I can remember being interested in this sort of thing; and I can remember even being, well, OKAY at it -- I've never been GOOD at it. But in this case, I look at the thing, start with the first part, and get bored before I even get to the twist. Sometimes I kind of get a vague sense of what sort of thing the twist might be, but I just can't work up the enthusiasm to follow through.
So, in effect, I'm significantly dumber than I used to be.
This is an effect of my bipolar II depression. I have a lack of desire and lack of ability to maintain mental effort to the level that is required to solve problems. |
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| A genetic/evolutionary question: |
[Sep. 8th, 2012|09:24 pm]
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In your opinion, have domestic/laboratory rats speciated from wild rats? Their behavior patterns are at least as different as between wolves and dogs, if not more so. They've certainly had enough generations to do so.
So would you consider them distinct species? |
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| You know, the whole party will wipe if you don't have characters who throw buffs and heals... |
[Sep. 2nd, 2012|11:54 pm]
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So, I sometimes comment that I feel like a secondary character in other people's lives: that I'm not the protagonist.
And some days, that feels really, really rewarding when I'm reminded how GOOD a secondary character I am.
Today, I went to a party for someone who is among my best friends. She just finished her gruelling three-year hospital residency and is finally starting up her practice. And I've been a shoulder for her to lean on during stressy times since she was eighteen -- nearly half her life.
I genuinely feel like I had some part in getting her through all this, and I find myself feeling just a little proud of myself in her accomplishment. More proud of her, of course, and proud to be her friend, but, yeah, proud of myself, too.
And then, tonight, when Jo Walton her Best Novel Hugo (against a whole bunch of other brilliant books, not a weak book on the list), she namechecked me.
I got quoted in a Best Novel Hugo acceptance speech!
If I was merely the protagonist in my own story, well, that would be one story. I'm starting to feel that it's better to be a supporting character in MANY stories. |
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| How do I find out if an author is a crackpot? |
[Aug. 31st, 2012|07:11 pm]
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So, someone in a comment thread on my friends list pointed to a book by Thomas Dalyrimple, in which he claims that opiate addiction is a myth, and that, indeed, nobody ever gets addicted to opiates; they just THINK they do, and society coddles them.
Something like that, anyway.
How do I find out if he's a crackpot, or if his ideas are worth considering? |
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| One of the questions that Obama ducked on his Reddit AMA |
[Aug. 30th, 2012|10:15 pm]
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So, President Obama went onto Reddit yesterday (yesterday? I dunno -- I lose track of these things) in order to do an Ask Me Anything thread.
But he ducked some of the tough questions thrown at him. One of the questions he ducked was the vitally important one, "Which would you rather fight: a hundred duck-sized horses, or one horse-sized duck?"
Now, since that time, I've been thinking about that question myself, and I feel that you just need to be a lot clearer about the parameters in order to give a reasonable answer.
First: how is the scaling up/scaling down done? By weight? A duck is about 3.5 pounds, so, by weight, you'd be fighting about 350 pounds of horses. While a horse is 1000 to 1500 pounds, so you could be fighting a half ton, three quarter ton of duck.
On the other hand, if you're just scaling up in all dimensions, then the square-cube ratio works in your favor, and that duck, with its hollow bones, is just going to collapse under its own weight.
Or are you talking about Bullockornis or Dromornis stirtoni as the horse-sized duck -- the Australian 8-foot-tall carnivorous ducks, which weighed a quarter ton?
Eohippus was approximately the size of a large duck. Dromornis stirtoni was approximately the weight of a pony.
One hundred shy, tiny herbivores who had about the same ecological niche as a bunny and whose reaction to a human would have to be to run and hide, or one carnivorous top predator with a bite that could snap coconuts in half, run at thirty miles an hour, and was three times your weight and half again your height and reach?
So, clearly, the answer is obvious -- but depends on what the question means. I'd much rather fight 100 eohippuses than a dromornis stirtoni, but, if we're talking about scaling a normal mallard up to the size of a quarter horse, well, I wouldn't be fighting it -- I'd be doing a mercy killing to put it out of its misery as its own bones crushed under its own weight. |
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| Do Mexican sodas really taste different? |
[Aug. 29th, 2012|07:48 pm]
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It is my belief that Coke products produced in Mexico taste better than ones made in the United States. Enough other people have this belief that it is now imported to our local stores. Still, is this just my imagination, or is it real? At my last grocery trip, I decided to find out. Sprite and Coke. I got six things: three Sprites and three Cokes, and we just tried the Sprites. We had Mexican Sprite in a glass bottle, a 7.5 oz can of American Sprite, and a 20 oz plastic bottle of American Sprite. We didn't taste them blind, though. Results? The Mexican Sprite had actual citrus flavor that the American ones lacked. They were barely even SIMILAR. However, all three were cloying to our taste. The Mexican Sprite would be good with a decent gin; the American ones just wouldn't work. |
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| An Abraham Lincoln quote going around Facebook: |
[Aug. 29th, 2012|01:47 pm]
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So, my father-in-law posted the following quote from Abraham Lincoln to his Facebook page:
I'm always skeptical about quotes from famous people that seem way, way too modern, so I looked it up.
Yup, it's accurate, and, in context, it's not too far off of what it looks like on its own. Oh, it doesn't mean that Lincoln would have been singing The Internationale or anything -- it's definitely pro-capitalist -- but pro-small-business-capitalism-open-to-everyone. Let me give the longer quote in a bit more context. It's right at the end of his speech:( Read more...Collapse ) |
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| Lis has a very Yankee thrifty side to her. |
[Aug. 26th, 2012|03:20 pm]
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Lis hates replacing things if she can help it. The "Q" key on our keyboard started working only intermittently yesterday, and stopped entirely today.
Naturally, my response to this was to rephrase things I was writing to avoid words with "q" in it. But when Lis started using the computer, she was unwilling to go with this workaround.
Fine, I said. Let's go out and get a new keyboard.
No, Lis said. This is a $50 keyboard. We're going to at least ATTEMPT to get the "q" key working before we throw it out. A $10 keyboard? Sure. We can replace that. And, well, in a $10 keyboard, it's pretty trivial to fix a sticking key, anyway. This, however, is a pretty fancy ergonomic keyboard. But, nonetheless, even though this will be a much more involved fix than a normal keyboard fix, we're going to try fixing it.
So we did.
Q Q Q Q Q Q Q Q Q. Just sayin'.
Edited to add:
Well, that was embarrassing. Half an hour after I posted this, the keyboard died entirely. Not only did "Q" cease working, but every other key did as well. *sigh*
We ended up going out to Staples to buy a new keyboard after all.
But the thing is, from Lis's point of view, the IMPORTANT thing was that we TRIED. She doesn't like being part of a disposable culture, so it's important to at least ATTEMPT to repair things. We made a good attempt, and it worked fine for half an hour, so we were at least CLOSE. And that's what's important to Lis: that we try to avoid filling landfills when we can -- understanding that we won't always succeed. |
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| Dear Afghanis: |
[Aug. 26th, 2012|09:40 am]
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Look, I know you're probably upset at how many innocent Afghanis we shoot in our war in your country, but I want to let you know it's not personal.
We do it in our own country, too.
(In the Empire State Building shooting, the shooter killed his boss. The police shot everybody else -- the shooter, and nine bystanders.) |
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| My understanding of what "privilege" means |
[Aug. 26th, 2012|08:48 am]
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So, elsewhere on LiveJournal, I'm in an argument about the term "privilege". And I unfortunately finally lost my cool about it. Oops.
But it gives me an opportunity to see if I can't lay out my understanding of the concept, and get your comments on it.
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| A followup to the "what genre is your life?" question |
[Aug. 25th, 2012|04:49 pm]
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I realized something else about myself, which that question brought up.
See, as you probably can tell, I've got a lot of really, really interesting friends, with really, really interesting lives. I mean, even my friends with what might SOUND like ordinary lives tend to live them, and conceptualize them, in really interesting ways.
And so, I tend to look at people's lives the way I look at art. As stories.
I really hope this doesn't offend any of you. When you go through tough times in your lives, I'm genuinely sympathetic for you -- but I'm also noticing and appreciating the dramatic and story twists in it. It's not in any way detachment, or lack-of-caring, or ANYTHING like that -- but I see it in terms of "story" -- I'm seeing you as a protagonist, as well as a friend.
As you might expect, this has effects on my philosophy and theology.
"Why do bad things happen to good people?"
"Dramatic irony."
Deep in my heart, I believe that. Horrible things happen to people because the fundamental nature of life is "story", and "story" involves loss, pain, tragedy, horror. That stories aren't guaranteed happy endings.
And I truly rejoice when my friends DO have happy twists in their stories. And I truly feel it when my friends have tragedies. But they both make sense to me, because that's what stories are.
Does that make sense? Is that disturbing? Is it offensive? |
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| More slice-of-life |
[Aug. 24th, 2012|06:05 pm]
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LIS: What's that you're pouring on the clothes?
IAN: Hydrogen peroxide. It will foam up over any blood I missed.
LIS: What? It does that?
IAN: Yeah, it's very useful in cleaning up bloodstains. What do you THINK hydrogen peroxide is for?
LIS: Bleaching hair?
IAN: It reacts with hemoglobin by foaming up.
LIS: How do you know this?
IAN: Um. . . that's a good question. Why DO I know how to clean up bloodstains? |
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| A couple "Call Me Maybe" variations |
[Aug. 24th, 2012|10:58 am]
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In this version, the verse is SPOT ON; the chorus is okay; the bridge doesn't quite work. But on the whole, I like it.
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| What's YOUR life's artistic format? |
[Aug. 24th, 2012|10:43 am]
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So, one of my friends was commenting to the effect that zie's life would make a good musical. And I commented that that's good -- I've got friends whose lives are actually opera. . .
How about you? The plot of your life is what?
I'm thinking mine is probably a prog-rock concept album. |
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| A DARPA/Boston Robotics walking robot |
[Aug. 22nd, 2012|08:44 am]
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Appropriate audio commentary was added by a third party, Tim Trusler, who is not associated with DARPA or Boston Robotics, but who was impressed enough by the original video that he felt he created this followup video, demonstrating his observations on the gait of the robot.
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| Found the mousie. (Or, possibly, a second one -- wild mice look the same to me.) |
[Aug. 22nd, 2012|07:48 am]
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Nora was sitting in on the bathmat with a rather smug expression. There was a dead, chewed mouse on the floor next to her. We praised her and flushed the thing.
The weird thing is that we figure that one of us ought to have heard her either digging the mouse corpse out of where it died, or, if it was a new mouse, heard her hunting it. So, no idea. |
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| Something Lis pointed out to me the other day: |
[Aug. 22nd, 2012|07:23 am]
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At the moment, the only Protestant on the ticket for either major party is Obama. Biden and Ryan are Catholic; Romney's a Mormon. Of the nine Supreme Court justices, five are Catholic, two are Jewish, and two are Protestant (one Episcopalian, one just identifies as "Protestant"). Harry Reid is Mormon; Nancy Pelosi is Catholic. Eric Cantor is Jewish, and Mitch McConnell, as a Southern Baptist, is the only Protestant in the list.
Things have been changing. |
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| A thought: |
[Aug. 21st, 2012|06:10 pm]
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How much of the "Obama wasn't REALLY born in the USA" stuff do you think comes from people who misread or misheard "Obama is a Keynesian" as "Obama is a Kenyan"? |
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| Great anagrams: |
[Aug. 20th, 2012|06:20 pm]
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Several people on my Facebook and elsewhere have been pointing out that "Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan" anagrams to "My ultimate Ayn Rand porn". Which is good, but, in a comment, someone pointed to two that are even more impressive:
"The jubilee day of Victoria, queen and empress" anagrams to "Joys are never quite complete, if a husband die".
But one contender for "the greatest anagrammatical feat in the English language" is David Shulman's 1936 sonnet "Washington Crossing the Delaware":A hard, howling, tossing water scene.
Strong tide was washing hero clean.
"How cold!" Weather stings as in anger.
O Silent night shows war ace danger!
The cold waters swashing on in rage.
Redcoats warn slow his hint engage.
When star general's action wish'd "Go!"
He saw his ragged continentals row.
Ah, he stands – sailor crew went going.
And so this general watches rowing.
He hastens – winter again grows cold.
A wet crew gain Hessian stronghold.
George can't lose war with's hands in;
He's astern – so go alight, crew, and win!
Every line in that is an anagram of "Washington Crossing the Delaware." |
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| Why I didn't sleep all that well last night . . . |
[Aug. 20th, 2012|06:48 am]
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So I'm sleeping in the bedroom, and Lis is sleeping on the daybed so that I can go ahead and snore without bothering her.
Around 11:30, Lis wakes me up and calls me into the front room, telling me that Nora is growling and Nick is staring at her. And there's something in Nora's mouth. She first thought it was one of our mousie toys, but then noticed that it had legs.
Yup, Nora had caught a mouse.
And she was dropping it, and letting it run off, and catching it again. As cats do.
It was getting slower and slower, and then she dropped it and it was just lying on its side, and Lis said, "I think it's finally dead," and Nora looked up at her, and the mouse ran off into the boxes in the side of the room.
Great. So we might have a dead mouse hidden in our front room.
Or not. Both cats spent the next several hours searching that place, and Lis said that, around 3:30, she heard Nora growling again, so maybe they got it?
Well, we'll keep an eye out, and hope to see it before we smell it. |
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| I swear, it's like living with three cats, instead of two cats and a human. |
[Aug. 13th, 2012|07:58 am]
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LIS: I'm hungry. And we don't have any of the yogurt I want -- just Greek yogurt, which I don't want right now.
IAN: We don't have Greek yogurt.
LIS: I don't want Greek yogurt.
IAN: Well, that's good, because we don't have any. We only have the yogurt you want.
LIS: Where?
IAN: [GOES TO THE KITCHEN, GETS THE YOGURT LIS WANTS OUT OF THE FRIDGE.] Here. See? It's the yogurt you want, not the yogurt you don't want.
LIS: Actually, I want milk instead. |
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| Discussion with my parents and grandparents on Saturday |
[Aug. 13th, 2012|07:00 am]
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We were talking about a friend who's joining a medical practice owned by a doctor who's in his early nineties and still practicing.
My grandmother says, "Sure, but, really, ninety is more like what seventy used to be. But, I have to admit, once you hit eighty, you really don't feel as young as you used to."
Me: "What does that mean? You can't pull all-nighters anymore? You can't stay up drinking tequila shots all night and still go to class in the morning like you did when you were seventy-five?"
My grandfather: "Yeah, something like that."
Me: "What I WILL say is that we GenX'ers are the first generation in history who are hitting middle age before our parents are. . . " |
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| Back from New York City |
[Aug. 9th, 2012|11:03 pm]
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Lis and I spent a couple days in NYC, because her parents had a trade show there, so having us help set up and break down was a good excuse to get together. We went to a couple museums, and saw a couple shows, and had some good meals, and generally got to spend time with my in-laws who are just really fun people whom I love.
I'd like to make one recommendation: all of you who are commedia dell'arte fans? You want to see the Tony-award winning play "One Man, Two Guvnors."
A quick background: commedia dell'arte was -- and is -- a form of improv comedy developed in the mid-fifteen-hundreds in Italy. The idea is that you had a bunch of standard characters, and you'd set up a scenario, and in each scene you'd have plot points which had to come out, but, basically, the troupe would improv the whole thing.
The ideas and characters were picked up by playwrights who used them in non-improv plays, too -- most of Shakespeare's comedies have a significant commedia influence, for instance. And, in 1743, Carlo Goldoni wrote what is considered to be one of the greatest commedia-like plays ever -- "Servant of Two Masters". Because it's actually written down, and not improv, it's not commedia dell'arte, but it's entirely based on the stock characters, stock themes, and stock setups of commedia.
Last year, English playwright Richard Bean wrote an adaptation, moving it from 18th-century Italy to 1963 Brighton. It had, and continues to have, a successful run on the West End, but the star actor opened the play on Broadway, where we saw it.
James Corden is the best Arlecchino I've ever seen. We were fortunate enough to see a matinee performance in which a few things went wrong. Because, well, just because it's a written-down play doesn't mean that the actors CAN'T improv. And, when props went flying off the stage and getting lost, or audience members totally messed with the plot (Arlecchino's motivation is the fact that he's really, really hungry. What happens when an audience member who's seen the play before brings him a sandwich?), and the play just went off the rails -- well, those were among the best parts. |
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| Reasons I'm in love with our Olympians |
[Aug. 2nd, 2012|07:54 pm]
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First, let me express my love for the American women's gymnastics team.
Okay, there's McKayla Maroney's vault. I've watched it over and over again, and I STILL can't see the wires that MUST be there. Either that, or it's CGI.
Note the bit where the one judge's jaw drops open.
That's why Buzzfeed just put together a post about Maroney's awesomeness. It's adorable.
Then there's Aly Raisman's parents being all "parents watching their kid play sports".
But the OTHER adorable thing is how they've been reacting to all this. On Twitter. Celebrities have been tweeting about how awesome they are, and they've been tweeting back.
Okay, so that's gymnastics. Let me now express my love for another local: Kayla Harrison, who lives one town north of me. She has One Of Those Stories -- sexually abused as a child by her judo coach, worked through it, and became the United States' best hope for our very first gold medal in judo.
Which she did.
And in another sport, I dare you to not be amazed by Rafalca and Jan Ebling. Mitt Romney said that he wasn't even going to bother being there to see his wife's horse compete. You should follow that link and see what he missed. He oughta have been there. ANY of you who are even a LITTLE bit horse-people? You're going to love that. Any of you who AREN'T even a little horsey? You will be after watching that.
And that only nabbed them thirteenth place! There were twelve EVEN BETTER than that.
Okay, so that's the Americans. Let me throw a little Australian love out there, too:
Here's Australian diver Matthew Mitcham showing that he's got artistic talent as well as athletic:
Oh, and let me ALSO throw some love over to British weightlifter Zoe Smith who absolutely ripped a bunch of Twitter sexist assholes to shreds.
'Cause, love.
Also, Mexican gymnast Elsa Garcia used the music from Legend of Zelda for her floor routine.
Okay, that's enough love for now, I guess. |
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| Pulling out to the top level a few more thoughts on the sexual harassment Readercon situation |
[Jul. 29th, 2012|11:09 pm]
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I've been expressing some thoughts in the comments of the previous post which I kind of want to pull out to the top-level. So I'm doing so.
A bunch of what I'm going to be saying is either stuff I've said before, or is implicit in stuff I've said before, so I'm probably repeating myself. But I'm trying to stack it up in a slightly more illuminating, I hope, manner.
Again, I'm cut-tagging this, so people who don't want to see it don't have to.
( Read more...Collapse ) |
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| Oh, wow. It's on YouTube. |
[Jul. 29th, 2012|05:16 pm]
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Before it's discovered and taken down:
This is worth 20 minutes of your time, especially if you're an old-school Doctor Who fan.
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| Is there any Latin root more versatile than "-ject"? |
[Jul. 29th, 2012|04:02 pm]
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Reject -- throw back
Deject -- throw down
Project -- throw forward
Subject -- throw under
Conjecture -- thing thrown together
Abject -- throw away
Inject -- throw in
Eject -- throw out
Object -- throw against
I dunno. My brain just asks these things sometimes. |
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