Speaker For The Diodes

05:24 am - QotD

"A man without a vote is man without protection." -- Lyndon Johnson (b. 1908-08-27, d. 1973-01-22; US President 1963-1969)

[In light of what happened on this date ninety years ago, it's probably best to amend this to make it clearly gender-neutral: a person without a vote ... And on that note, let us continue:]

"Cautious, careful people, always casting about to preserve their reputation and social standing, never can bring about a reform. Those who are really in earnest must be willing to be anything or nothing in the world's estimation, and publicly and privately, in season and out, avow their sympathy with despised and persecuted ideas and their advocates, and bear the consequences." -- Susan B. Anthony (b. 1820-02-15, d. 1906-03-13), On the Campaign for Divorce Law Reform, 1860

"Feminism is the radical notion that women are people." -- Cheris Kramarae and Paula Treichler [For a long time, this has been my very favourite definition of feminism.]

02:46 pm - Where did I see a good discussion about improving the dreaded gender question?

[Oh, forgetful me ...]

So, for the umpteenth time, I got ticked off at a web site that required new registrants to pick a gender of "male" or "female" before leaving a comment, and for the several-th (but less than umpteenth) time, I fired off a note to the contact address for the site, asking why that was a mandatory field, and if it was mandatory then why didn't it include the right answer.

Uh, unlike most other web sites I've prodded about this, instead of getting completely ignored, or getting a patently insincere "to serve you better" with no farther explanation, or a buzzword-based brush-off, I got a polite note from a manager, explaining (acceptably vaguely) why the question is there^[1], promising to take it up with the relevant director when he gets back from someplace-else^[2], ...

... And asking for suggestions for labels to add to the list for that field, other than "other", which I had already pointed out was, by definition, 'othering' when it's the only option shown beyond M and F.

I want to make sure I'm giving good advice.

I remember reading some useful discussion of exactly this question sometime in -- uh, the last eighteen or twenty months? -- but can't remember where. It was the kind of discussion where folks supported their opinions and tried to take into account data-analysis messiness as well as the feelings of us folks with not quite "standard" gender (and, IIRC, at least part of the conversation looked specifically at "understand our readership better" and "tell advertisers what our demographic is" reasons for collecting the data in the first place, as opposed to medical situations or dating sites, for example.) Do any of y'all happen to remember where that/those discussions took place, or maybe even have them bookmarked? One of the trans-issues sites? Folks trying to get LJ to improve the gender field in user profiles? DW trying to decide how to set up the same field?

I'm mostly looking for a pointer to the discussion I remembered seeing before, rather than wanting to hash it all out from scratch in comments here, but I'll take folks' thoughts here too.

Off the top of my head, I'm inclined to suggest "male", "female", "both", "neither", "other", as a reasonable (though imperfect) starting point, assuming that they want to keep a pull-down list, don't want to try to list every gender-identity label currently in use, and think too many people would pick "decline to answer" if that were offered^[3]. But I've got this nagging feeling that there were some problems with that scheme that came out in the last discussion, that I really ought to remember.

[1] "This helps us better understand and define our audience which will in turn define and shape the future of our business. This is primarily a research question." This makes me wonder just what they think the gender info is really telling them -- are they working from a stale (or exaggerated) list of expected behaviours/tastes based on gender, or keeping careful track of how what correlations there are change over time, or just tweaking their content by trial and error to try to keep the male-identified:female-identified ratio in a range that makes their advertisers happy? But ultimately, not my problem. I just want the gender field to be made more inclusive, optional, or both. Whether they're being smart about what they do with the data, I'll probably never know.

[2] But no promise that anything would actually get done, because he doesn't know whether they have the ability to alter that part of the form -- which I'm guessing means that the registration/comments section of the site is a package they bought somewhere else or a setup hosted by someone else, rather than a system developed in-house.

[3] LiveJournal, which has "male", "female", and "unspecified", appears to have about 28% of users listed as "unspecified" (though the stats page makes the male & female numbers add up to 100% and ignores the unspecified precentagewise). InsaneJournal, with the same list of options (and the same way of counting percentages), shows about two-thirds of users picking "unspecified". Dreamwidth, with "male", "female", "other", and "rather not say", shows 39% under "rather not say" and 1.6% under "other". I'm guessing that the folks I'm talking to aren't going to like the idea of having one to two thirds of the answers to the gender question fall into a "myob" category if they do change the registration form.

05:24 am - QotD

"I find it interesting that whenever you hear about a crime, some mention is made of both the victim's and the perpetrator's Facebook pages. Looking at some of the things people put on there, do they really want that as their final message to the world should they fall victim to a crime today?" -- DaBroad, June 2009

05:26 am - QotD

"Originalism is a pretty weird ideological phenomenon from a Canadian point of view. It suggests that the Founding Fathers had some sort of super-human knowledge and foresight. Canadians like their national heroes, but I don't think that we tend to imbue any of them with godlike powers. But a significant portion of Americans place a faith in the infallibility of these men's documents that I can only compare to the passion of the most doctrinaire of Marxists." -- sabotabby, 2010-08-18

05:24 am - QotD

"Sure the guys who did this were Muslims, acting out their own particular interpretation of Islam. But they were also young men. And being a young man is probably a much stronger predictor of proclivity toward violence in our society than being a Muslim. Should we also prohibit young men from polluting the hallowed ground of Ground Zero with their unholy testosterone?" -- Dan Kervick, 2010-08-17

"[A]ll I can say about this matter is: build it. Build anything. And continue building.

"This is New York! New York should not tolerate boarded up buildings or unused empty lots. The fact that the WTC site was/is a big f-ing hole in the ground</u> for years after the fact enrages me much more than anything anyone can build near by. New York can build sykscrapers in a matter of months... The fact the even with all the opposition, this cultural center will probably still be finished before the WTC site is complete is much more offensive to me than any religious affiliations it may have."

05:24 am - QotD

From the Quotation of the day mailing list, 2010-01-01:

"Twitter offers the danger of instant gratification masked as real writing." -- Roger Ebert, posting on Twitter, about Twitter.
[http://twitter.com/ebertchicago/statuses/6753320451]

(submitted to the mailing list by Bob Bruhin)

05:24 am - QotD

The entirety of an entry by xpioti, 2010-08-18:

I just saw a pop-in ad: IQ Test! Today's High Score: 127! See if you can beat it! [Next]

I clicked the [x] to close the pop-in. I win.

05:24 am - QotD

"My serious writing energy, when I have it, goes into books and articles. I've always been better at brief summations or long explorations. The in-between size of blog posts is more of a challenge. I really admire people who do it well, [...]" --

05:24 am - QotD

"I wonder if this is just a property of a given audience and their worldview, and what attributes they can either accept in passing without much attention. If your background assumption is that gays are very rare and exotic, then having a gay character in the story feels like having a pistol hanging on the wall--it should be an important part of the plot, somehow. If your background assumption is that gays are part of the world that just show up now and again, then having a gay character in the story feels like having a painting on the wall--it could conceivably be important, but there's no need for the story to turn on that painting.

"And somewhere in here is the notion of visibility of differences. For all its brokenness, modern USian society doesn't hide away its gay members, handicapped members, black members, etc., as it once did. And that means that you can have a minor character in a wheelchair without justifying it by making the story about her struggles with life in a wheelchair, or a gay couple as important characters in a story, without the story being *about* them being gay. It's just another detail to bring those characters to life, like having someone with red hair or something."

-- albatross (commenter at Making Light), 2010-07-21

01:51 pm - On Linking To My Entries

A brief reminder ... while I do appreciate being told when folks quote me or link to one of my entries, you can save a little time with the knowledge that asking whether you may link to one of my public entries^[1] always gets the same answer: it's public, so yes. Same goes for quoting portions in ways that most reasonable (and reaonably educated on IP issues) people would consider "fair use"^[2]: I expect that you ask before reposting an entire essay, but reasonable-length quotations are fair game because I 'spoke' in public (as in, the equivalent of hearing me give a speech, not the equivalent of overhearing my personal conversation that happned to take place in the street). So yeah, please do let me know you've done it, but you don't need to wait for me to check my email and respond to a request for permission before you link to one of my public entries or quote portions thereof.

This goes double for when you want to re-quote something I've quoted from someone else: I have absolutely no legal, ethical, moral, or aesthetic claim on other's words I've quoted, and it's not my place to grant or refuse permission for anyone else to do the same thing I'd done.

[1] Which is well over 99% of what I post -- I'd have to go back and check, but I think I've posted fewer than a dozen friends-locked entries since I started blogging.

[2] Okay, admittedly a lot of people have really screwed up ideas about what this legal term actually means (for starters, not-for-profit does not automatically imply fair-use, nor is it defined as a fixed percentage of the whole ... and there's a degree of vagueness and requirement for judgement calls built in even after you do un-learn the various myths and misunderstandings about it).

05:24 am - QotD

"I've been thinking a lot about pain lately, now that I have the 'legitimate pain' of a broken ankle. I'm still kind of flabbergasted that my rheumatologist missed my broken ankle because she was so busily checking in to see if I'd been seeing a chronic pain shrink for my RA.

"But also just ... Having a broken ankle is like Queen for a Day. I mean, with chronic disease, you trudge through life trying to get your doctor to not put you in the category of med-seeking or whatever, but with a broken ankle, you get same-day appointments and specialists at a major research facility, relaxed-looking doctors who have lots of success stories under their belts and who have loads of fancy, fresh equipment. And insurance companies? They pay for it all without making you spend a year using a less effective treatment before they actually pay for the thing that works.

"To be honest, I'm in much less pain due to a broken ankle than I am when I'm having a flare, and yet this little break in my bone has opened so many doors for me that I can't help but wonder how different my life would be if RA pain treatment came with the same perks, and if chronic pain was the object of the level of funding that goes into, say, sports medicine.

"But then, of course, broken bones heal. Chronic disease is ... well, chronic. And depressing. Even for doctors and researchers, I'm sure. It's like a self-fulfilling prophecy."

-- smallstages, 2010-07-29

05:24 am - QotD

"There is a fine line between issuing blame and holding people accountable. When people do things that cause harm we should expect them to undo the damage. That's not blame; that's holding people to their obligations. When a coworker missed an important deadline last week that affected my ability to get my own work done on time, I think it was reasonable for me to press him to clean up some of the resulting mess. When I was involved in an accident years ago that was my fault, it was completely reasonable for the other driver to expect compensation. That's accountability, and it's an important principle. There's nothing wrong with this.

"Blame is different. I can hold my coworker to what he was supposed to do, but I shouldn't send out email to the whole company dressing him down no matter how tempted I am and how justified I feel. The other driver can hold me accountable for damage but -- if there's no evidence I did it maliciously or recklessly -- shouldn't start a whispering campaign among my neighbors about what a bad person I am. Accountability is about the act; blame is about the person. We hold people to actions but we don't attack them personally."

-- cellio, 2010-07-25

05:24 am - QotD

"[...] what I always wanted to do was write a sequel to _Atlas Shrugged_, where the first generation of kids to grow up in Galt's Gulch turn out to be a bunch of backstabbing amoral hellions. Ayn Rand had this sort-of tacit endorsement of politeness and morality, even while her characters kept preaching that the only good was what brings you individual monetary gain. Well, raise a bunch of kids by constantly hammering the message "Selfishness is good" into their heads, and just wait and see how they treat you when they grow up. Sharper than a serpent's tooth, I should think." -- Thomas Daulton, 2010-07-06

"I think someone did already. It's called 'Lord of the Flies'..." -- reynard61, 2010-07-21

05:24 am - QotD

From the Quotation of the day mailing list, 2010-01-04:

"I have a great husband, great kids. I had a great career as a federal tax attorney. And I don't need government to be successful." -- Michele Bachmann, U.S. Congressional Representative (R-Minnesota) on "The O'Reilly Factor", Oct 8, 2009.
[ http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/photofeatures/2009/11/michele-bachmann-this-is-why-the-dems-oppose-you.php?img=3]

(submitted to the mailing list by Chris Doherty)

05:24 am - QotD

"I try to avoid watching Fox News. I hear about it on the real news and I see its headlines on my iGoogle page, but I can't bring myself to waste the electricity changing the channel on my TV to 'FNC'." -- Tasha Fierce, 2010-07-24

05:26 am - QotD

"I'm a Pantheist. In my community in the Universal Pantheist Society, there is no conflict between religion and science, instead, science is viewed as a means to learn more about our awe-inspiring universe. It is by no means only Pantheists and Unitarian Universalists who see no conflict between science and religion. There are people from many religions, including Christianity, who feel the same way." -- Terry Hayden, 2010-07-26 (I don't see a way to link directly to that comment)

[Count me as one of those Christians who feels the same way -- Glenn]

05:24 am - QotD

"This reminds me of the regular conversations I have with check-out staffers who persistently encourage me to obtain one of their store discount membership cards. Because I am the person that I am, I will try to explain the principle of 'no free lunch' and that what they're doing is engaging me in a commercial transaction where I pay for that 'discount' with some unspecified and unknown piece of my identity. And I try to explain that I like my commercial transactions to be overt, explicit, and voluntary -- I want to buy something only when I choose to buy it and I want to know exactly what it is that I'm paying for it.

"And I am regularly met with complete incomprehension. These systems flourish not simply because many people accept the devil's bargain, but because they don't even recognize it as a bargain. The creepy stranger offers them candy and they respond, 'Ooooh! Candy!' and get in the car."

-- Heather Rose Jones, 2010-07-26

05:24 am - QotD

[A long entry today where you usually expect something shorter, thus the multiple cuts. (I hope I didn't screw up any of the formatting.) After I had stuck one of the following quotes into the queue, several other relevant ones that seem to help explain each other (see end-note) popped up in other places, so I'm putting them all here on the same day in the hope that the shared framework will make it clearer why the dominant cultural narrative is hosed. While all the authors quoted are talking about the same stuff, there are multiple contexts being mixed-and-matched here. (Some quoted passages are responses to one recent offense or another, others address multiple contexts at once. They all wind up making more or less the same point.) If you're inclined to disagree because of something you think is "obvious" from a dominant-group perspective, please read the conversations these quotes are pulled from, before chiming in (see end-note).]

"at what point in a dating relationship do you disclose your virulent transphobia?

"i mean, on the first date do you say 'oh wow, i'd totally kill you if you've ever had a vagina'? or do you wait until the intimate action is about to start and say 'if that isn't a flesh and blood cock you got there, i'm gonna bash your face in' as you're pulling down his zipper with your teeth?

"i mean, it's important that you're honest. trans people need to know who they're about to have sex with, and if you pose as someone who isn't transphobic but really are, then is it really consensual??

"no trans person would consent to sex with someone as transphobic as you -- i hope you carry around hardcopies of this thread just in case, so you don't rape any trans people fraudulently."

-- kynn, 2010-07-09

[If you think there's an obvious and simple rule to follow regarding disclosure, I'm going to have to ask you to do a lot of background reading on the subject before saying anything (especially since this'll probably get posted while I'm out of town). This is something that has been talked about and talked about and talked about and talked about within trans communities, it's something trans people think about and worry about a lot from both directions*, and you won't often see a trans person tossing in an opinion who hasn't already been through various debates and flamewars on the subject already, and/or had relevant personal experiences, so odds are high that whatever clear-cut solution you want to suggest is something we've already thought of and argued to death from eight different points of view. (As evidenced above, some cis people have also thought this through pretty thoroughly.) Seriously. (Please also note, in the discussions some of these are from, there are other Big Issues -- side issues and layers -- that colour the different debates interestingly.)]

[*] By which I mean both the pre-transition/pre-coming-out question of "when do I warn them that I don't see myself as the gender they see me as?", and the post-transition question of "do I need to tell them I used to have a different name and presentation / [have|used to have] genitals different from what they [expect|see on me now]; and if so, when?" (Note that I am seriously oversimplifying here to try to keep this short, since the quotes themselves are already long and I've just assigned y'all a big pile o' homework.)

05:24 am - QotD

"How many people have heard 'You have a responsibility to educate?' Or prompted a defensive response when saying 'It is not my responsibility to educate you?'

"It is my duty to constantly deconstruct other people's privilege, to explain to them what they're doing wrong, that I am required to either give a full 101 course right there on the spot or just walk away. I'm not allowed to say "You know, I found that offensive" and leave it at that. If I don't do the education, how will anyone learn? Right?

"Except what this means is that my energy and effort are available on demand. I have to be ready at a moment's notice to provide an exhaustive and exhausting rundown on all of the reasons why something someone said or did is oppressive and offensive. [...]

[...]

"So, this is why it is never any marginalized person's responsibility to educate you: Because no one owes you free labor, least of all when you've just made it abundantly clear that you hold institutional privilege over that marginalized person by fucking up."

-- Lisa Harney, 2010-08-05

05:24 am - QotD

"A leading politician today charged that the media, rather than informing people, now merely report on public ignorance.

"Do our viewers agree? Let's hear from some voices on the street ..."

-- unnamed television news anchor in the comic strip xkcd by Randall Munroe, 2010-06-21 (as always, remember to check the hover text)

[This strip echoes one of my own recurring annoyances with television news.]

05:04 am - War-ward Bound

I know my saying, "This past week did not go according to plan," is plain unsurprising, but wow, did last week not go according to plan, backup plan, revised plan, improvised replacement plan, or whole new plan. Somehow important stuff did happen anyhow, just not in the right order or at the expected times. And I'm finally en route to Pennsic.

I got started too late to get my nails done, and I really need to get them taken care of. But waiting a whole 'nuther day just for that seemed like too big a risk of having my recover-from-the-trip time swallow most of my at-Pennsic time. So depending on how long I sit here at the first rest stop in WV on my route, maybe I'll pass a nail salon during business hours as I get close to War. Or maybe I'll just tack the edges with cyanoacrylate glue before I unload the car, and deal with a town-run to get my guitar-picks taken care of after a day or two. We'll see.

I can still see out of more than 50% of the minivan's rear wondow. But I did have to limit myself to just one guitar. The 12-string didn't fit, after I put in the 6-string, the double bass, the winds, some percussion ... I think I'll manage to cope. I did bring the 12-string mandolin*, two sets of mandolin strings (I couldn't find a 12-string-mandolin set, so I'll have to use one and a half 8-string sets), a couple of attempts at shaping a bridge blank, and a set of files suitable for nuts and bridges. (The nut is already grooved for triple-stringing but the bridge is missing.) So i have a project for any days when I ache too much to be able to leave camp.

I wonder how long it'll take for Perrine to realize Mom's feeding her this week, and stop running away from Mom.

I'm taking this as a good omen: while I had an awful lot of last-minute stuff to do (that added a lot of extra miles to my outbound trip), I did wind up selling a CD while I was buying gas. Well, I met a couple who said they were interested in a CD after I showed it to them, but they had no cash; then we wound up at the same grocery store immediately thereafter, and they got cash from an ATM to buy the CD. So depending on how you count it, I either sold a CD buying gas, or buying driving-snacks.

Among my last-minute extra-driving tasks was a side trip back to my house to look for some things I had failed to gather on Friday. I still can't find the sabots that fit, so I'm stuck with the ones I have to wear three pairs of socks with, if War gets muddy. But I did manage to confirm my suspicion that I had grabbed the leaky air mattress instead of the good one, by finally locating the good one. That right there is probably worth the extra delay.

Okay, gonna close my eyes for half an hour, then see whether I feel like I can drive some more.

[*] Aka "mandriola"

05:24 am - QotD

From the Quotation of the day mailing list, 2008-08-13:

"There can be no compromise with war; it cannot be reformed or controlled; it cannot be disciplined into decency or codified into common sense, for war is the slaughter of human beings, temporarily regarded as enemies, on as large a scale as possible." -- Jeannette Rankin, first woman elected to the United States House of Representatives and the first female member of Congress, lifelong pacifist.

(submitted to the mailing list by Kathleen Magone)

05:24 am - QotD

"Si hubiera estado presente en la Creación, habría dado algunas indicaciones útiles." -- Alfonso X "el Sabio" (b 1221-11-23, d. 1284-04-04; king of Galicia, Castile and León 1252-1284). Translation via Wikiquote: "Had I been present at the Creation, I would have given some useful hints for the better ordering of the universe."

05:24 am - QotD

"Sure, I can understand how some people traumatized by 9/11 -- firefighters who survived it, or people whose loved ones didn't -- might not like the idea [of a mosque and community center two blocks from the site of the 9/11 attacks]. But I'd have thought that opinion leaders of all ideological stripes could reach consensus by applying a basic rule of thumb: Just ask, 'What would Osama bin Laden want?' and then do the opposite.

"Bin Laden would love to be able to say that in America you can build a church or synagogue anywhere you want, but not a mosque. That fits perfectly with his recruiting pitch -- that America has declared war on Islam. And bin Laden would thrill to the claim that a mosque near ground zero dishonors the victims of 9/11, because the unspoken premise is that the attacks really were, as he claims, a valid expression of Islam."

-- Robert Wright, 2010-07-20, The New York Times

05:24 am - QotD

"when we are willing to leave anyone behind in the effort to advance justice for ourselves, this is when we start to lose our credibility and effectiveness. that time and place is where the fractures between oppressed groups forms, and where the oppressors will strike - divide and conquer. those of us who stand at these intersections know - we are attacked from without by those who share none of our oppressions and from within by those who do share one of our oppressions. we see the harm from not dealing with intersections - though even we who stand at intersections are not immune to the inability to see our privileges that alienate other oppressed groups.

"the take away message here, as always, isn't wallow in guilt, but to do better. "

-- stoneself, 2010-07-17

05:24 am - QotD

"Mr. Chetty and his colleagues [...] estimate that a standout kindergarten teacher is worth about $320,000 a year. That's the present value of the additional money that a full class of students can expect to earn over their careers. This estimate doesn't take into account social gains, like better health and less crime." -- David Leonhardt, 2010-07-28 in The New York Times (writing about a study by Raj Chetty of Harvard, looking at adult differences between people who had been part of another study on early education in the 1980s)

05:24 am - QotD

"I'm halfway of the mind that when people like that say that 'civilisation' will end if something changes, they mean something on the order of 'their privilege' will end if something changes. Sort of like how when wingnuts say 'racist against white people' they mean 'give nonwhite people a fair shake,' or when they say 'family,' they mean 'patriarchy.'" -- realinterrobang 2010-07-02

05:24 am - QotD

"Every politician understands what is in his or her short-term interest. They know what the party leadership wants, what their campaign contributors want, and what lobbyists want. At what point does the long-term interest of the nation as a whole come into play? Who represents the interests of future generations? Today, our future is determined by cowardly politicians who can only think as far as the next election. Our economy is guided by short-sighted corporations that only care about hitting their quarterly numbers, lest their stock nosedives and they get taken over by a rival corporation. [...] With so many crises to address and such powerful interests opposing reforms, Washington cannot afford to play partisan games and conduct business as usual." -- Sanho Tree, 2010-06-26 (in an essay where he proposes a means to fix this* rather than merely complaining about the problem)

[*] Which I feel insufficiently well-informed to evaluate the feasibility of.

05:24 am - QotD

From the Quotation of the day mailing list, 2009-08-18:

"The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift." -- Albert Einstein

(submitted to the mailing list by Reddy, Michael)

[To my friends celebrating it, blessed Lughnasadh and a good harvest!]

05:24 am - QotD

"Oxy, meet moron. I can think of no better demonstration of the current business model of newspapers (i.e. to sell a readership to advertisers, rather than to sell information to readers) than the use of someone's half-arsed opinions to fill the spaces between the advertisements. Yes, they are cheaper than actual fact-centric stories from home-based reporters or bought from one of the press agencies, but they are worth NOTHING. If someone has access to special information on a subject that makes their analysis more cogent than other people's and a better guide to what's going on, then TELL ME THAT INFORMATION. If they don't then STFU. This is not journalism. When I want some dingbat's ill-informed opinions about the ephemeral distractions of the day, I go down to the pub and tape what I say after a few beers." -- Smut Clyde, comment at Sadly, No ( thanks to realinterrobang for quoting it earlier)

12:26 pm - Anybody wanna buy a treble viol?

One of my bandmates² is selling a treble viola da gamba¹. Moeck, with case, may need new strings, bow may or may not need re-hairing, otherwise excellent condition. US$475 OBO. Interested or know someone who is? Reply here or by email and I'll pass along her contact info.

[1] If you had to click that link to find out what it is, you're probably not in the market for one, but I thought I'd save curious folks a step there.

[2] Why yes, the one who plays bass viola da gamba in the band. She's keeping the bass of course, but hasn't been playing the treble, so ...

[Yes, footnotes deliberately numbered in that order.]

05:24 am - QotD

Robert David Hall (b. 1947-11-09) [IMDB, Wikipedia], who plays Dr. Albert Robbins on the CBS television program CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, interviewed on the PBS television program Tavis Smiley, 2010-07-07 (link has transcript and video):

03:40 pm - Pennsic

Figured I'd better get this out because some of the folks who'll be wondering are leaving tomorrow: I'm planning to be at Pennsic this year, but do not know yet for how much of it. Tomorrow I finish the Must-Be-Priority-#1 tasks at home and finally get to start preparing for War. Then I get to figure out how long it'll take me to pull myself together, and how much of Pennsic I can afford in both dollars and spoons. Likely arrival is right around the midpoint, but at the moment it's kinda hard to say.

Hope to see a bunch of you there.

03:22 pm - Critters

I scared a bat last night. It was attempting to cross the road and misjudged either my distance or speed. Fortunately bats change direction really, really sharply. Never seen a bat flap quite so furiously though.

This afternoon I saw a black lab not-quite-dog-but-not-quite-puppy-any-more somehow having folded itself into a pose such that the silhouette was that of a ginormous, black bunny. Urk? Moved before I could grab the camera.

05:24 am - QotD

"From their conflation of homosexuality with non-consensual acts like incest, child molestation, beastiality, etc. it's always been apparent to me that people who view homosexuality (and female promiscuity) as immoral have no concept of sexual consent. None. Beware the homophobe, and not just because s/he's homophobic." -- snobographer, 2010-07-02 [ thanks to realinterrobang for quoting it earlier]

05:24 am - QotD

"at a simple self-interested point of view, if you don't help other people, they won't help you. if you do not see how you are harming another, they will not feel obligated to deal with the way they are harming you. this is the heart of oppression olympics. if you don't help other's get theirs, you're going to lose yours.

"the horrible thing is that the unspoken narrative that repeats over and over is: 'if i help you get yours, i'm going to lose mine.' that storyline is a lie used to divide and conquer oppressed groups. social justice advances when people work together with consideration for all people.

"[...]

"in the fight against oppression, the answer should never be 'fuck you, i've got mine', it should ever be 'fuck that! we've got to get you yours.'"

-- stoneself, 2010-07-02

05:24 am - QotD

From the Quotation of the day mailing list, 2008-03-25:

"Three of cinema's greatest directors, two U.S. presidents and one Beatle have died during my time at the Chronicle, and I don't remember their passing generating more buzz in my inbox than that of Gygax." -- Peter Hartlab, San Francisco Chronicle Pop Culture Critic in an "Appreciation" of Dungeons and Dragons co-creator Gary Gygax who died March 4, 2008.

(submitted to the mailing list by Robert Stagmier)

[Gygax was born 1938-07-27]

12:20 am - Feeling Detached (from Internet)

Started three other entries lately w/o finishing them; one needs rethinking, which I realized when it was about 3/4 done -- others got sidelined by difficulty in posting. So this'n is about that</em>.

Am at Mom's. WiFi/router is down. Wall-wart died. So have to plug Mac directly into cablemodem to access net, and sit in uncomfortable place. Tried running it off four NiMH cells: LEDs came on and winked and blinked and twinkled, bit it wouldn't act as a router. Radio Shack already closed then, so waited until today ...

This evening, drove to five different stores, no suitable AC adaptor (only two even carried such things at all -- but the real surprise is how few salespeople knew what an AC adaptor is -- c'mon. the damn things are ubiquitous, ain't they?). Ran utterly out of spoons, putting tomorrow's plan (to finish clearing 3rd-floor bedroom at my house to make room for ceiling repair) in serious doubt ... so drained, so out-of-cope, that Mom's dog being distracting was nearly enough to bring tears, which means as little-seeming as driving around a couple hours in reasonable-for-a-change weather was, 'twas more than I was really capable of today. (Hate this, but that's not news.)

(Also, while Radio Shack didn't have an AC adaptor I could use, I noticed that the wall-warts they did have were around $23. WTF? Thought this was a $6 part ... $45 buys a whole new 802.11g router!))

Anybody close to Bowie have a 5 V DC, 2.5 A (well, anything ≥ 2.5 A) AC adaptor in your junk drawer?

And just in case I find myself capable of doing anything tomorrow, can anyone help me move a mattress, box spring, desk, and set of weights from the 3rd floor to elsewhere in the house^{[*]K/sup> tomorrow afternoon, evening, or night? Pretty sure desk disassembles (it had better: think it's too big for stairwell intact and not sure where to put it anyhow unless it breaks down into a stack of flattish parts). Can move box spring myself once I figure out where. Need help w/mattress for sure; also weights just because as many trips up and down the stairs as it'll take to move those is going to be more than I can do in one day. Plan has to be somewhat flexible, of course, given that I don't know right now whether my body is going to cooperate tomorrow or not ...}

Once I get 3rd floor ready for ceiling repair, I can start to think about preparing for Pennsic ... obviously not going to be pulled together in time to go for full 2 weeks; not sure exactly when I'll head up.

Hope to make less out-of-spoon-y post tomorrow sometime.

[*] Current plan is to put each weight in the middle of a rope, throw rope out window, have person on sidewalk use their end of rope to keep weight from smashing a 2nd-floor or 1st-floor window while person (probably me) on 3rd floor controls rate of descent; then Sheepie sticks the weights in her car. Using arms to lower weights slowly seems more feasible, based on how I've felt after last two times I worked on clearing those rooms, than taking stairs.

05:24 am - QotD

"Health care should not be a liberal or conservative issue, for disease, disability, and death do not recognize political affiliations. As a socially conservative Christian myself, my belief that health care is a fundamental human right, and my efforts on behalf of single payer universal health coverage stem from my faith, and not despite it. My faith calls for personal morality, but also for societal morality - how do we treat the sick amongst us, the weak amongst us, the least amongst us?" -- Sherif Emil, MD, CM Commencement Address, The University of California, Irvine School of Medicine, 2010-06-05

05:24 am - QotD

From the Quotation of the day mailing list, 2008-03-15:

"Dissertations vary in length, from a few pages for some mathematical papers to hundreds of pages for historical or literary studies, and they vary in readability, from the merely turgid to the utterly incomprehensible." -- Fred Lerner, in The Story of Libraries.

(submitted to the mailing list by Chris Doherty)

05:24 am - QotD

"While the rest of the species is descended from apes, redheads are descended from cats." -- Mark Twain (b. 1835-11-30, d. 1910-04-21)

05:24 am - QotD

"If Summit wants to respect the interests of others while still turning a profit, it should take a cue from the woman who created Twilight -- the books' author, Stephenie Meyer. Her official Web site includes links to hundreds of unofficial sites, which host fan-written fiction, art and photos from the films, along with commentary.

"Meyer does not forgo copyright protection -- she doesn't let her fans download her books for free and was justifiably upset when a draft of a Twilight sequel, 'Midnight Sun,' was leaked before it was completed. But by supporting fan fiction and art, Meyer recognizes that she's not the only person who has a say in what the Twilight series represents."

-- Christina Mulligan, "The Twilight copyright saga: Forbidden love and forbidden T-shirts", The Washington Post, 2010-07-04

05:24 am - QotD

The entirety of an LJ entry by sabotabby, 2010-07-02 (after the G20 summit and the related police and public-policy fuckage in Toronto), because it's short and I didn't see a good place to cut it:

They still haven't put many of the garbage cans back.

For me, the lack of garbage cans are a more poignant symbol than the fence, or the hippies being teargassed for singing Kumbaya. Without garbage cans on the sidewalks, private space remains untouched, but public space becomes filthy and unlivable. Garbage cans are the mark of the public service, of civility, of, dare I say it, the social contract itself.

It occurs to me that there are a lot of people who would be happy to live in a police state. Right up until the knock on the door in the middle of the night, they would assume protection because they'd done nothing wrong. They might even delight in the persecution of the Other.

But no one wants to live without garbage cans on the sidewalks. No one.

05:24 am - QotD

"I have learned that only two things are necessary to keep one's wife happy. First, let her think she's having her own way. And second, let her have it." -- Lyndon Johnson (b. 1908-08-27, d. 1973-01-22; US President 1963-1969)

05:24 am - QotD

"The achievements of Apollo were so bold and our subsequent efforts so timid that the energy of those years seems like a youthful dream." -- Buzz Aldrin (b. 1930-01-20, walked on the freaking Moon 1969-07-20)

05:24 am - QotD

"The consequences of the catastrophe are no mystery, either. In burning the Temple, the Roman legions abruptly ended the 1,000-year career of Judaism as a territorially bound sacrificial cult and launched it on its 2,000-year journey as an ethical code. It was a turning point in the career of the Jews, too, transforming them from a struggling nation into a powerless, scattered Diaspora." -- from "Lessons of Tisha B'Av", The Jewish Daily Forward, 2010-07-14

05:24 am - QotD

From the Quotation of the day mailing list, 2008-03-11:

"The harder one stares into the machinery of the brain, the starker the realisation that there is no one in there. There is no inner sanctum of the self. Neural networks have a life and logic of their own. There is no one running the show. The self is a shadow-puppet shaped by the firings of a hundred billion brain cells. These are conceptual conundrums. Intractable to current science, they call for an artistic response." -- Paul Broks, neuropsychologist and writer, in his essay for the catalogue of artist Susan Aldworth's Scribing the Soul exhibition.

(submitted to the mailing list by Mike Krawchuk)

[I don't think my mother reads my journal, but just in case I'm wrong: happy birthday, Mom!]

05:24 am - QotD

Robert David Hall (b. 1947-11-09) [IMDB, Wikipedia], who plays Dr. Albert Robbins on the CBS television program CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, interviewed on the PBS television program Tavis Smiley, 2010-07-07 (link has transcript and video):

05:24 am - QotD

"Music will always find its way to us, with or without business, politics, religion, or any other bullshit attached. Music survives everything, and like God, it is always present. It needs no help, and suffers no hindrance." -- Eric Clapton (b. 1945-03-30)

05:24 am - QotD

"[T]here's a lot to be said for being in a place where Weird is what they do best. Not techno-weird as I'm used to, more tree-hugging weird. I think that for either to be successful in the future, we'll need to form a synthesis of both.

"A return to the Good Old Days (sic) of low planetary population, kept in check by starvation, disease, child mortality, ignorance, etc is not in our future - because some smart-alec will always come up with a high-tech solution to prey on the low-tech 'sustainable development' types and take their carefully husbanded resources by force. But I'm not sure just how many people at the festival realised just how different it was from the Third World it superficially resembled.

"The water was clean; there were few beggars or indigents. People were well-fed, well-clothed, and the prices were low. Much of the transport was people-powered, despite the hilly topography: but many of the cycles were hi-tech mag alloy or titanium, not heavy mild steel. I doubt that the energy saved by their use came remotely close to the energy needed to produce them.

"[...]

"I was acutely aware of the industry, the factories and power plants, the transportation infrastructure, and the means of allocating and distributing the fruits of applied knowledge and effort that we all depend on. Just the fact that there are no water restrictions here was jarring, we've lived with those in Canberra for many years. No constant reminders, the illuminated signs by the side of each major road giving water usage targets, current consumption, and dam storage (now nearly 60% at last, after many years).

"It takes a high-tech civilisation to support a low-tech society in the manner to which it's become accustomed. We can't afford though some of the excesses of the past. Excesses caused because distortions of the market have made the price of many things completely different from the costs."

-- Zoe Brain, 2010-07-06