Experiments in Woolgathering

...you woke up not only to snow on the ground, but snow still falling.

Not a lot, and it’s not even sticking on the roads, but the grass and trees are getting a nice layer of it.

Winter seems to always get in one last gasp some time in April, it’s just rarely this late. We had had the heat off for a couple weeks, until last night of course. Crazy weather.

I wonder what early summer local produce will be the most affected by this. We’ll have a sweet corn shortage or something.

In other news, I’m off to New York (City) for 4 day, for work, this evening. Rachel’s decidedly unhappy about this, and I’m not really thrilled, and we both have to suck it up.

The occasion is an ‘off-site’ meeting, which, despite its label, will occur on JPMC property. To add to the irony, NYC was chosen because that’s where the largest group of people are. Of course, the 2nd largest group is in Columbus which is a much cheaper city and more centrally located. Oh well.

I’ll probably have a good enough time once I’m there, my coworkers are a good bunch, I’m not into the trip part of this. Columbus? Cheaper? Anyone?

Anyhow, lots to do, not the least of which is packing for this little escapade.

I seem to be behind on book reviews. The couple books I’ve read have been small (around 200 pages), and I’ve been working enough extra hours at work that I just haven’t been willing to take the time away from reading to blog about them. I’ve not only finished Cat’s Cradle but Veniss Underground (by Jeff Vandermeer) and listening to an unabridged reading of ::American Gods:: by Neil Gaiman as well.

So, starting with the first finished, let’s talk about Vonnegut’s most famous (in most circles at least) book. (more…)

I’ve been trying to be optimistic about the continuing debacle (at least from a progressive point of view) that is the Bush presidency. It’s been alternately easy and difficult.

Easy because I’ve been so busy, I can sort of forget about. Also, like many things, these things go in cycles and eventually (I hope) the country will swing back around. Additionally, he’s out after this term, and hopefully he’s done enough damage that enough people will vote for some other party that we can at least get a moderate Democrat as president. (I’ve no illusions about actually getting someone progressive in; I’m optimistic, not delusional.)

Hard because everytime I turn around it seems like I’m hearing about thinly veiled religious groups trying to introduce junk-science into our science class rooms, our president claiming his God is on our side (as if God takes sides, I would assume you choose to be on his side, or not), his administration is commiting another foreign policy debacle or assault on the environment; a book is being banned from some school because it ‘promotes’ paganism/occultism/homosexuality/swearing (usually means mention, and typically in the context of how deal it). As an aside, if someone is worried about books promoting sweating in high school. they are seriously barking up the wrong tree. The swearing is there already, quite a bit of it in fact.

Anyhow, you get the idea.

Then I read this article, Welcome to Doomsday, by Bill Moyers. (Go read it, this post will still be here when you’re done.) If you didn’t google for the “Rapture Index” here’s the page to which he’s referring.

Now, granted Moyers gives us a few slivers of hope, but all-in-all that’s a pretty depressing and scary summation of the state of things in this country. Also, I’ll certainly grant that Moyers is liberal, but I think he tends to be an honest journalist. (Unlike, say Michael Moore, who, despite so much verifiably true material on the subjects of his documentaries still can’t resist overstating and misrepresenting.)

While personally I think this Rapture business is a bunch of fucking bullshit and any god that would inflict this on a world is a sadistic asshole, I will allow for possibility, however slim that the Rapture is just around the corner and what we do as far as the environment doesn’t matter for beans. But guess what? Maybe we shouldn’t bet the farm on this. ‘Cause, you know what, if you’re wrong and we have to clean this mess up, the price tag is only going up. Not to mention that in the meanwhile, we have to deal with and suffer through all the pollution driven problems that already exist.

How did we come to this delusional justification of our irresponsibility? I mean, really. 33% of the world is Christian and only a fraction of them buy into this – and really this seems to be a very tiny fraction outside of the US. It’s a very dangerous state of affairs. Because the US, which is still the most influential and polluting country in the world and because, given the currently political landscape here clearly are able influence things a great deal, here we are. The country most able to do harm or help is tipped to the side of “screw it, it won’t matter anyhow”. How depressing.

Doomsday indeed.

Quitting coffee sucks.

I’ve done it before – coffee isn’t great for my guts or, at least in the long term, my energy level. Eventually, at some point, I’ll go through a stretch where I am just so busy, I need some coffee (black tea’s not enough) to make it through the days.

Quitting coffee means breaking both the psychological want and waiting out the horrible headaches that the physical lack of caffiene gives me for a couple weeks.

I’m not sure which is worse. Probably the headaches. The tend to set off my tinnitus. Acetamenophin barely takes the edge off of them. A cup of black tea does better, and isn’t nearly as hard on my guts, but it a bit of a step backward. So.. argh.

Aside from a small cup of coffee today I haven’t had any in about a week and a half, so that’s pretty good. Once the friggin’ headaches stop I can stop drinking black tea too, or at least mostly stop.

Then I just need to drag my ass back to the dojo, which I’ve not been to in far too long. Coworker Lonnie and I have made a pack to go Tuesday (which is the first of the month, so it made sense from a dues standpoint).

New version of WordPress, new style theme, new commenting hoop.

Somehow I missed WP 1.4, but 1.5 went gold a few days ago, and, being one who likes to stay current, I upgraded.

The difference that proved the most problematical was the move from styles to themes. In theory, I should be able to get the Mars Spirit style converted to a WP 1-5-style theme. I tried the quick way of doing that and it 70% worked, so I’ll have to beat on that later.

In the meanwhile, you get the GreenTrack theme – which is pretty nice after a small amount of tweaking.

I also installed the AuthImage plugin, which will let folks comment without being registered and logged in by asking for them to enter an obfuscated word given on an image – obfuscated to defeat OCR attempts. (And I’m just amazed that spammers are so desparate that they build OCR into their bots.)

Installing AuthImage proved to be a pain in the ass (at least for my setup), mostly because of the verifcation word image creation, which was somewhat broken on a couple of levels.

Anyhow, enjoy the cool greenitude while it lasts!

Lately I’ve been thinking I would like to get into writing again. Not that I have ever written a lot, but I’ve done some here and there. Maybe what I really want to get into it more seriously.

So, anyhow, I’ve been looking over my copy of De Profundis which is not really an RPG in the proper sense. Essentially, the players take the roles of letter writers in a Lovecraftian setting. You are not seeking out things as one does in most RPGs, you are experiencing them, describing them.

Nominally the you have the choice to write letters set in the present day, wherein you write as yourself more or less, or in the 1920s, where you as a character who at least could be one of Lovecraft’s, if not one in actuality.

The author also strongly suggests you avoid e-mail and write hand-written letters. Of course my first thought here is that I can barely write clearly enough for me to read it, let alone someone else; and, truth be told, writing by hand is definitely different than typing something up on a computer where you can easily edit and rearrange. It forces you to think ahead, at least if you want to write something coherent. Because the game obviously revolves around writing, I understand why he recommends this – the difference between writing about horror and terror and conveying the experince of it are two different things.

So, obviously, I’d like to play this – else, why blather on about it here? I’m inclined to write the letters here in my blog, but follow the spirit of the author’s recommendation: no going back and editing, rearranging, etc. The second option is to do the same, but set up a new blog and invite a few others to play as well. Lastly, there’s finding someone to whom I’d send actual write hand written letters.

My dilemmas with how to play De Profundis aside, this is a game I would recommend. Obviously it’s something different and innovative, as well as demanding. The book is well written (as one might expect) – despite the author not being a native English speaker.

Unfortunately, the book is out of print, so it is hard to find, but not impossible. So, if you get a change, get it. It’s small 32 pages and cheap, around $7.

Lots of people bitch about Christian fundamentalists or Muslim fundamentalists, but really, most fundamentalists of all stripes are a pretty lame lot.

The irony of most fundamentalist movements is that they are rarely about the fundamentals, they’re about control over others, and imposing their views and beliefs on non-believers (and this is not limited to religion of course).

Anyhow, this deplorable behavior aside, frequently fundamentalists have some rather strange ideas compared to the mainstream.

For example, take people who object to the teaching of evolution in science classes. The Pope has stated that the teaching of evolution is not damaging to religion. Now, differences between Catholicism and various Protestant sects aside, I’m going to state that the Pope is way more qualified to speak on what is damaging to religion than most other people. What the Pope realizes here is that, regardless of how the present state of the universe came to be (God, aliens, spiritually sterile Big Big+evolution) the 150 year history and refinement of evolutionary science has demonstrated countless times that experientially, this is how the world works. And thus, because God seemingly intended it this way/the Aliens designed it/it just worked out this way we are required to work with in this framework if we really want to advance human understanding, and do things like cure cancer, or AIDS, or the common cold.

Now, I don’t want to pick on just one group of fundamentalists (Christian ones are primarily responsible for the assault on science in the science classroom). Therefore I present excepts from The Ayatollah’s Book Of Etiquette (come to us by way of Bookslut).

Just remember ladies, if your period starts while you’re praying, you have to start over. The Ayatollah says so.

Before I get to the actual duck metaphor discussion I have to give some backstory.

Columbus Comprehensive Health Center (no link, site has been taken down by us) was the brain child of a friend of ours, Melinda. The basic idea was a much more holistic approach, which included not only traditional western medicine, but practicioners of a host of other modes of treatment: reiki, image therapy, massage, life coaching, ayurveda, homeopathy, psychology, and a few others. Your first appointment with there was an interview in which you basically dumped all your physical and mental issues, the profile was then given to all the practioners to comment on and offer up how they would treat the patient (and obviously not all modes addressed all the patient’s issues). So, you got several opinions and ideas for the issues you brought up. Clearly not your typical doctor’s office visit. (more…)

This conversation took place a few days ago, I pasted into a draft post and only just now got around to finishing the post. (more…)

The vet called at about 8 this morning to let us know we could come get Ru. So, I dragged Rachel out of bed and off we headed. 50 minutes later we’re home, with dog and fast food breakfast (heh, it’s my day off).

Rusalka was pretty lively when she came out, at least more that I expected. They gave us some antibiotics to give to her, and depending on the results of the culture from her bladder, which we should get in a few days, they may change them to something more effective against whatever bacteria they find.

In addition to the bladder stone removal, they also removed a mole from her lower right eyebrow. It bugged me to look at it, I can only imagine how much it bugged her having it. To do this, they shaved around her eye. Needless to say, it looks pretty weird, and not in an attractive way. Other than that, unless you look at her belly, the only other odd thing is the shaved band on her foreleg where they had the IV stuck in. It’s like some poodle affectation.

She conked out pretty quickly once we got her home, and no doubt she’ll be pretty out of it for a few days. Aside from the meds, we just have to keep her relatively calm for the next two week, to give things time to heal.

And, lastly, an image of the post surgery Ru. You see her weird shave eye area, and bald band on her foreleg.

Ru’s surgery was today, and it went well. She’s spending the night at the vet and we’ll get her back tomorrow.

I am realizing (as is Rachel) how used to her we are. Now, it’s not like we’re never not around. I travel for work, for example. But we’re never both home without her – if we’re both here, Ru is too.

Not feeding her, giving her her medicine, having her come start at me while I eat (never know when something might get dropped, and even at 13 she’ll move fast to grab dropped food), is proving quite odd, disconcerting.

I’d just never really thought about this, since, obviously from what I just wrote, this situation hasn’t come up. It’s never an issue if I’m at a hotel in New York or DC or something, but my instincts here, with Rachel present, are completely that Rusalka should be as well.

Let’s hope the call to come get her comes earlier rather than later!

I’ve been thinking about the parallels in two things lately: ::role-playing game:: systems and ::programming language::s.

In both areas there have been efforts to make universal or generic solutions. The write-once, run-anywhere mantra of Java and the similar message of .NET (which are really only the most successful of many attempts at software portability). In games we have systems like ::GURPS::, ::D20::, Unisystem, TriStat, and so on.

The problem is, and this is recognized to some extent in both camps, though moreso in programming I think (more on this in a bit though) is that when we take part in or participate in these activities, we do so (or should at least) with a particular end in mind. I.e. the goal is not ‘just to write code’ or ‘just to have fun’.

The former is self-evident I should think; we want our code to do something, even if it’s something trivially simple.

In the latter case, I don’t think as many people recognize this. However, if it weren’t true, why is there such a profusion of RPGs and RPG systems? I suggest that it’s because people want to RP in a particular way in a particular setting. I also think that few RPers really recognize this and this contributes a great deal to the ‘failure’ of games. On top of the fact that few RPers are aware of how they want to play, there’s no guarantee that all players in a given group even want the same type of play (consciously or otherwise).

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Our dog, Rusalka is 13, roughly (she was a rescue, so we don’t know her exact age). Like pretty much all dogs, she’s figured out what a few English words mean. For example, ‘treat’, which a few years ago, we started to spell out, since we couldn’t talk about a grocery list with dog treats in it without her hearing the word and getting in our face, ready for the aforementioned treat.

Eventually though she figured out that ‘tee are ee ay tee’ meant the same thing. So, now we have all sorts of euphimisms for ‘treat’ – which aren’t the point of this post so I’m not going to list here.

Now, Rusalka has problems with bladder stones occasionally. Sometimes we can give her some prescription dog food and that will get rid of them. This time, however, that didn’t work. So she has to have them surgically removed.

Now, to the actual point. Yesterday morning we were sitting around, with Ru, and Rachel brought up the surgery. Naturally, we are concerned for Ru. She’s old, and although it’s a fairly simple surgery, there’s still risk involved. Apparently, Rachel was feeling very sensitive about this, because rather than say ‘surgery’, she spelled it out – as if the dog, which has had surgery a grand total of twice before (and once when she was very young to get spayed), knows what the word means.

Needless to say, I sort of felt compelled to point out that the dog hasn’t had surgery enough to recognize the word. Hell, if she had, we’d probably be broke – even this simple surgery is going to cost us about $1000. Good thing we’re getting a big tax return this year.

Anyhow, we got quite a chuckle out of it, and I promised to blog this, so … ta da.

Okay, people who want to comment here now need to be registered, courtesy of a small hack for WordPress. (The lack of this feature stock WordPress I find annoying and inexplicable.) Hopefully this will cut down on the casino spam bots.

In other news, I have a beard. It will be 4 weeks this Thursday since I last shaved. I have to say it’s very interesting having facial hair. To feel it when the wind blows is an odd sensation. Feeling the water in it after I shower is weird too. In general people seem to like it, which is a good sign. Eventually I’ll post a picture for the curious.

I finished China Miéville’s Iron Council this morning. I’ll write a full review later, but I’ll say now that I did not like it as much as Perdido Street Station or The Scar (his other books I’ve read, which are set in the same world).

While we’re on the topic of books, I discovered that there was a movie made of “Arturo Pérez-Reverte’s:Lhttp://www.capitanalatriste.com/ The Flanders Panel which stars Kate Beckinsale (who is on The List). So, since I liked Ninth Gate which was (loosely) based on Pérez-Reverte’s The Club Dumas (which is much better than the movie) and Kate is in it, I figured that was a good enough excuse to read The Flanders Panel next and then watch the movie, this being the opposite order in which I experienced The Ninth Gate and The Club Dumas. The symmetry of it pleases me.

Continuing with the biology theme, I present ‘The List’ – that is the list of famous women for whom I’d leave Rachel. Don’t worry, she has her list (of men) too.

Recently several school boards here in the US have started requiring that Intelligent Design (if you aren’t up on what ID is and want to read the rest of this post and not be confused, read the stuff at this link) be taught in biology classes. Their reasoning for this is that because there are aspects of the development of life on Earth that the Theory of Evolution can’t explain we have no recourse but to fall back on some supernatural entity to fill in the gaps.

I see this as akin to humans thousands of years ago trying to appease deities to which they’d accredited the causation of natural phenomenon in order to stave off the next drought or to induce a milder winter or to keep them safe from lightning. They have no rational explanation (yet), and so they throw up their hands and don’t try.

(This also gives me visions of the Barbie doll that used to say ‘math is hard’ or something similarly implicitly demeaning toward women, although this is perhaps less relevant.)

Now, first of all, pretty much all theories have or have had gaps and these gaps are steadily filled through research and experimentation (and history bears this out again and again and again and again – you get the idea). Can you imagine where we’d be if Louis Pasteur and Robert Koch had just thrown up their hands and attributed the causation of disease to intelligent design just because biology and medicine didn’t yet have a theory to explain the communicability of disease? Hurrah for 18th century medicine and sepsis!

Are we to explain the timing of earthquakes by appealing to Poseidon’s (and you thought he was just in charge of the oceans, hah) irritation with us because geologists haven’t figured out how to predict them?

What reveals their agenda to some extent is that they don’t attack other theories, some of which are much less solid than evolution. This agenda, of course, is to promote religion in public schools. And ‘they’ are mainly the neo-conservatives and religious right – the overwhelming majority of scientists feel that introducing ID into the classroom is a very bad idea.

What’s funny is that it’s really a false dichotomy if you ask me. Maybe there really is an intelligent designer. Maybe the Christian God did create the world 6K years ago and just set up everything to make it look like it all kicked off 15 billion years ago with a huge explosion. How do we tell the difference?

Even if there is an ID, we can not deny that modern scientific research and methodogy has been a successful mechanism for discovery and learning for hundreds of years. Now, I’m not going to try to argue that science is some sort of holy grail (sic) – we’ve done some pretty horrible things with the tools science has given us, as well as some truly great things I’m just saying that clearly it works, whether because we live in a theistically vacuous universe or because the ID set it up to work the way it does.

Either way, it seems to that we have an obligation to keep pecking away at the truth. To figure out how to predict earthquakes, to find a cure for cancer, to develop renewable energy sources. Maybe somewhere in our explorations we’ll discover real evidence of ID. Even if we never do, it doesn’t rule out matters of faith. By definition, it can’t. If it turns out that the ID is omnipotent/omniscience and its existence really is a matter of faith then so be it, we’re never going to find the evidence, but there still seems worth in advancing human understanding!

I have a couple other basic issues with the ID agenda. First, the main idea behind the separation of church and state is to protect everyone’s religious freedom. If the IDers succeed in getting their creationist toe in the door, what next? How do we decide who’s brand of creationism to teach? To say we’re a Christian nation (which makes my teeth itch, btw) and leave it at that is ridiculously naive. Christians span a huge range of creationist scenarios: young earth, old earth, biblically literal, biblically metaphorical, and so on. Not to mention the fact that there are Christians who are evolutionists! Keep subjective religious matters out of the objective scientific classroom, for all our sakes.

Second, by promoting the ID agenda, these people are in essence admitting that they need scientific proof – i.e. denying the role of faith. Now, obviously this isn’t the case for all religions, but most (all?) Judeo-Christian sects(and lets face it, that’s who makes up the religious right in this country) state that belief in God is a matter of faith, not proof. Can’t they see they’re taking a huge risk here?

What happens if we do finally come up with a seamless theory of evolution? By hitching their religion, their ‘faith’, to a formerly incomplete scientific theory they’ve done the truly faithful a monstrous disservice and left the ones who bought into their crazy scheme out in the cold.

Here’s a link to start exploring this who ID/evolution this. It’s anti-ID in the classroom, but there are links that will get you to the pro-ID in the classroom stuff. And here’s a link that explains the over all argument, albeit from the anti-ID-in-schools side as well.

We went book shopping today, and for cheap! Half Price Books was having a 20% off sale, so it was 60% off all told. I picked up a couple calendars, an Italian dictionary (just need a Portuguese one and I’ll have one for each of the ‘big’ romance languages), a DVD of the original Terminator (we have T2 already), and a few novels.

• Girl In Landscape by Jonathan Lethem
• A Canticle For Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller, Jr.
• The High House by James Stoddard
• Baudolino by Umberto Eco

Toss in a blank book and the grand total, including tax, came to a bit over $40. Yay me.

Ah yes, haven’t had a good miss-IMing lately, now have we? (more…)

So.. re-relaxing. Ice storms. Power outages. Bitter cold. Fun fun! And “clearly this bottle it too heavy, I must not be drinking fast enough.”

I like storms. Even if it’s not real, or so weak as to be less dangerous that driving to the grocery when the weather’s good, there’s a certain thrill that comes with them. It’s something primal, that touches the inner survival instinct, and by overcoming it – or just sitting in my living room through it – I get a small thrill.

Going out, driving on the ice, even only half a mile to the aforementioned grocery, become an adventure in hunter-gathering – hunter I suppose, if I were to assume the ‘proper’ gender role, though I have difficulty forming the simile with gathering food at the grocery, no matter the mood of the other shoppers.

Ice storms: we had a serious one. On top of several inches of snow, we got a night and part of a morning of sleet and freezing rain. Add in the single digit to subzero temps we got right after that, and I can no walk on snow like a snow hare, just in a fleece pullover and sneakers instead of a soft pelt and hairy feet.

The other consequence of this ice storm is that power was out, at its worst, for 280,000 customers of the local electric company. Including some friend of ours. They gave us a call Thursday evening. Their power had been out since 10 am and they have a toddler and an infant, so, needless to say, we could hardly turn them down! The spent the night at our house and most of the the next day (today for the next 13 minutes) with us.

Now, to preface this next section, I’ll explain our ‘plan’ for the holidays. It was a simple plan really, stay at home, relax, spend time with one another, watch some movies, do some work for R’s clients. Also, add in that we have no plans to have kids – we like kids, we have nieces and nephews we spoil and will continue to spoil, but when it comes right down to it we simply don’t want to make the kind of commitment. At least we’re honest about it.

So anyhow, having our home invaded by two kinds and their parents even for a day and half was… traumatic for us. There’s no way I’d want them to stay at their place under these conditions, but still I resented it. I suppose this just makes me human, but part of me still feels guilty about it.

That selfish bit, that part of me that wants for me, wants the peace and relative tranquility of just being alone with my wife. To read, to watch DVDs, to cook, to code on my own scheduld, blah blah blah, all that was suddenly threatened.

When R, in an inadvertant nicety, invited their extended families (she was thinking to only invite them) over for Xmas day, I was shocked, to say the least. Threatened. Fortunately, breakfast on them and their power coming on a few hours ago assuaged all.

Xmas is saved, we can be relative Hermits over the Holidays.

Go us.

Cary

I was stuck for a subject for a entry in which I was going to write about nothing in particular, so this ludicrous quotation by the New York Times on the cover of Fluke, by Christopher Moore, seemed a good enough one. Ludicrous because it’s Moore’s seventh novel. The question isn’t where has he been hiding, but how have you missed him. (And shame on them if they have been missing him for 6 novels, he’s great.)

I’ve been enjoying my time off immensely. This morning was the first one where I didn’t wake up and check the clock to see how much time I had to get ready for work. Of course I normally work from home on Wednesdays, so maybe that had something to do with it. I’m prefer to think I’m slowly relaxing.

Since we’re doing Xmas on the cheap this year, our gifts are of the crafty kind (in the sense of us making them, not in the sense of being deceptive – though we’ve done that upon occasion as well). Rachel is making bath salts, bubble bath and massage oil – and mixing up the scents herself. The first round of testing left my nose reeling from sniffing the various mixtures and anyone making an ascent to the second floor walked into an almost physical wall of nasal confusion as their scent receptors attempted to sort out all the various essential oils floating around in the air.

I’m making and canning some salsa. I hope. The last time I canned it was under duress and I was about 10 and helping my mother, it should be an interesting time – I’m just hoping it’s not interesting in the Chinese curse sort of way.

Much to the joy of Christmas traditionalists here, a white Christmas seems virtually assured. The forecast calls for a lot of snow and some freezing rain and sleet on top of the few inches we have already. After that the temperatures are going to drop into the teens for highs and subzero at night, so no melting will be going on.

See? Nothing in particular.