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my tuba is ready for the HONK lantern parade!

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By analyzing the beliefs of nearly 5,000 people in the United States and Sweden, he found that atheists and theists share a number of moral values: Both groups fervently believe in fairness, liberty (including freedom of belief), and the importance of protecting the vulnerable, and both groups hold surprisingly strong bents toward rationality and evidence-based knowledge.

Where they differ is revealing

• Theists are likely to support morals such as reverence for authority, loyalty, and sanctity, which all fuel group cohesion (versus individuality).
• Atheists tend to decide whether or not something is moral by the consequences of a behavior, rather than the morality of the action that caused it (for instance, the common atheist bent that sex acts are fine as long as they're consensual and no one gets hurt).

Ståhl suggests that this duo of differences may fuel the widespread stereotype that atheists lack a moral compass: They do, in fact, have quite strong morals, but fail to show reverence for the authority and holiness that believers hold dear, while evaluating morality case by case based on consequences. "They are less inclined than religious people to view [these] as relevant for morality," said Ståhl in a news release.

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Last 4 are from Daveed's 60th Birthday party, quite the shindig! Pádraig Ó Tuama's Poetry Unbound podcast recently began a new season. I was moved by the latest episode on Michael Kleber-Diggs' "Gloria Mundi" and had small cathartic cry during my noontime walk.

Pádraig underlines the humbleness of the poetic narrator's request in how to be remembered at his death; embracing the smallness, the transience.

I had a tangential thought about anyone who has ever been romantically left, dumped (and this is not foreboding or foreshadowing, just me being my usual foolish nostalgic self) - the most humble yet magnanimous stance I can think of is to sincerely wish the other person doesn't regret leaving you. I can barely even imagine putting aside one's ego and leaning into that.

I guess to really live that, you'd either have to be extremely satisfied with your life, or have absolutely extreme self-image problems. But Kleber-Diggs points to another way of framing such things, as accepting being a small, transient part of the grander narratives.

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I'm the best there is at what I do, but mostly what I do is gather nuts for winter.

Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor.

Been thinking on two related quotes lately:

If you get the least bit bored,
just flick the nudity switch
and remember that everyone around you
could possibly get nude at any moment.

The epigraph for "Schnick Schnack Schnuck", a German indie porn film - very women- and people-in-general- friendly relative to most porn, I'd say.

"Rach, ya know, I can see you naked any time I want."
"What?"
"All I have to do is close my eyes. See? Woohoo!"
"Ross! Stop that!"
"Ah, I'm sorry."
"Come on! I don't want you thinking of me like that any more!"
"Uh, sorry. Nothing you can do about it. It's one of my, uh, rights as the ex-boyfriend. Oop... oh yeah!"
"Stop it, cut it out! Cut it out!"
"Okay, okay, I'm sorry, it will never happen... Uh-oh! Wait a minute! Wait... wait... now there are a hundred of you--and I'm the king."

Been thinking about this lately. Is it ok to do that? It's interesting because if memory is mostly an act of reconstruction - as I believe it is - than the line between fantasy and memory - at least for our objective experience - is quite a bit blurred! Maybe it's fine to do so long as the people you are featuring in your naked imagings are never, ever aware of it. Which is why I'm posting this on my blog and not mirroring it on FB I guess...

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Billie Ellish defying gravity on SNL - not bad for a live show. Besides the Fred Astaire and Lionel Richie references, it's also a call back to the SNL <SPOILER>Penn & Teller magic skit</SPOILER>...

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For human kindness for people paid to interact with you, the jokes to avoid...

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I remember once upon a time I was sort impressed with Giuliani? Like in his mayor of NYC days... yeah they made mussolini jokes about him, but there was that whole clean up of times square thing...

...but now...

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I had a dream that the lil 7up dot was the KoolAid guy's son and I can't stop thinking about it

Now, the key word for both of you, the word that unlocks you both, is the word future. I can even sort of see why. Both of you are the kind that wants to change things, to Make a Better World. You figure like this: the past is gone, unchangeable. The present is here right now and it's too late. So the only part you can change is the future. You're both heavy into politics, am I right? Right? So one day, it dawned on you that the best way to change the future is to colonize it. With little Xeroxes of yourselves. Of course one of the first concerns of a colonizing country is to properly condition the colonists. To ensure their loyalty. Because a colonist is supposed to give you the things you want to have in exchange for the things you want him to have, and for this golden opportunity he is supposed to be properly grateful. It wouldn't do for him to get any treasonous ideas about his own destiny, his own goals.

He also tends to call couples looking to adopt (in a world where kids and parents are more free to divorce each other) "Atlases", as in folks carrying the world on their shoulders, but also looking to hand the burden off to something else.

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"I think it comes down to a kind of innate failure of mathematical intuition, common to most humans. We tend to confuse any sufficiently high number with infinity."
"Well, anything above ten to the eighty-fifth might as well be infinity."
"Beg pardon?"
"Sorry--I should not have interrupted. That is the current best-guess for the number of atoms in the Universe. Go on."
She struggled to get back on the rails. "Well, it takes a lot less than that to equal 'infinity' in most minds. For millions of years we looked at the ocean and said, 'That is infinite. It will accept our garbage and waste forever.' We looked at the sky and said, 'That is infinite: it will hold an infinite amount of smoke.' We like the idea of infinity. A problem with infinity in it is easily solved. How long can you pollute a planet infinitely large? Easy: forever. Stop thinking.

This must be where I got to speculating about how many possible melodies (or, to be more specific: single voice tunes expressible in more or less standard Western musical notation) there are, but I had forgotten and thought the idea was my own - a lapse that harmonizes well with the theme of the story, actually.

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Beware Mozart at Midnight.

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I always liked the Matrix sequels. Admittedly, it was probably more for the shallow reasons, but this video argues the philosophy holds up:

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I'm cis + goy but this is a fascinating thread on talmudic rulings and transgender issues.

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There should absolutely be a regulation against boldly displaying calorie counts and then playing games with serving size. Oh, this popcorn is one of those 150 Calories ones? Awesome. Oh but there's 3 servings per bag? Get bent. "PER 2 TBSP UNPOPPED" - you know, because of all that unpopped popcorn people enjoy eating. People are such goofy essentialists that they just can't believe that something has good parts and bad parts especially if it's something they like or feel loyal to.

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"To become wise you must learn to listen to the wild dogs barking in your cellar."

I enjoyed his book "Staring at the Sun" both for it's views on coping with mortality (the main emphasis was the symmetry of non-being preceding your birth with the time after your death) and appreciating the "ripples" and how we can live on after our death in the people we touched. Also I liked the insight the book provided into the therapeutic courses others have taken.
--from A Quick Perspective, a really cool series of photos and videos. This is the largest oil tanker ever produced placed in the main lake in Central Park. Ah, the New American Exceptionalism. Every developed nation has its conservatives, only ours deny climate science.

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http://gazettegalore.blogspot.com/ - My COMPUTE!'s Gazette blog finally got to my all time favorite, Crossroads! Definitely worth checking out for any fan of games on the system

(To celebrate I'm going to start providing direct disk images for the games I call 4 or 5 star...) So, my mom informed that the "Kirk Tree", an umbrella plant that was planted when I was born, is no longer with us. Here we are in 2008...

It had been struggling lately, with only a few leaves at the top.

I admit I'm bummed, even though I had foisted care and feeding of it onto my mom lo these many years, it was a cool thing to know was around. It's not like it was my picture of Dorian Gray or my horcrux or anything, but as a bit of a plant sibling of mine, I feel its loss.

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Poem of the Moment

Margaret, are you grieving
Over Goldengrove unleaving?
Leaves, like the things of man, you
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
Ah! as the heart grows older
It will come to such sights colder
By and by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;
And yet you will weep and know why.
Now no matter, child, the name:
Sorrow's springs are the same.
Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
What héart héard of, ghóst guéssed:
It is the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for.

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Overheard at Alewife just now: "There's a Dunkins - We're saved!"

I had a couple of Drowsy Lifeguards, which is the local cocktail.

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Humans are evolving into a higher form and a lower form at the same time. Confused? Then guess which one you are.

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Haha, our own political frolics as seen through our own international coverage lens... welcome to something slightly less than the first world. http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/09/28/aircraft_carriers_in_space - sci fi and real navies

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from Seanbaby on "The Ministry of Clowning"
--via 22words (was a collection of Mr. Rogers Neighborhoods openings, 1967 to 2000)

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That's not even the tragedy of the commons anymore. That's the tragedy of you're a dick.

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Life is full of second guessing. But life is full.
--Plutchik's Wheel of Emotions, from Wikipedia's page on List of Emotions. Started wondering about this when I read about Graham Mann's attempts to make programs that have emotion.

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http://www.slate.com/id/2267815 - Wrestler Mick Foley <3s Tori Amos. (like http://music.ign.com/articles/691/691277p1.html - DMC <3s Sarah McLaughlin...)

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http://www.slate.com/id/2268833/ - "America fights while China does business"

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Seems like anti-<table> folk aspire to moving all layout to .css files (not HTML). But the <div>s need css hacks and/or awkward html anyway!

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http://is.gd/fCoWX - the country has gone nuts. AT+T can claim that it, a company, has a Right to Privacy? For reals? Sweet jimminy.

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http://js1k.com/home - 1K Javascript is kinda amazing!

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"Trickle down economics" is hereby renamed "homeopathic wealth distribution".

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http://www.enlightennext.org/magazine/j44/lachman.asp - what to do when it's 2013 and the world's still here...

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Grr. I wonder if Apple is deliberately not including any photo album management on the iPhone itself to be released later...

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http://www.homedics.com/products/ceramic-tile-digital-scale.html - Amber and I bought this ceramic tile scale. Odd blend of stone and technology, like William Gibson's Idoru "sandbenders" --Maybe not as definitive/accepted as it implies, still an interest mind-expander in how dimensions might work - via So this weekend I went to an interesting event... FoSO hosted a small concert in her home, the singer/songwriter Jess Yoakum. She did a set of songs (mostly her own lovely and sometimes moving work, one cover) accompanying herself on guitar, though on a few pieces she was singing to a recorded piano accompaniment.

Anyway, it was a great time, excellent music, a nice pass-the-hat hippy feel to it all. Jess has a blog about her "house tour" -- this was just the kickoff performance. She's associated with Concerts in your Home, it's kind of a small movement for independent artists.

Anyway, great music, and a cool event.

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Excerpt of the Moment

All the time we are aware of millions of things around us--these changing shapes, these burning hills, the sound of the engine, the feel of the throttle, each rock and weed and fence post and piece of debris beside the road--aware of these things but not really conscious of them unless there is something unusual or unless they reflect something we are predisposed to see. We could not possibly be conscious of these things and remember all of them because our mind would be so full of useless details we would be unable to think. From all this awareness we must select, and what we select and call consciousness is never the same as awareness because the process of selection mutates it. We take a handful of sand from the endless landscape of awareness around us and call that handful of sand the world.

I read that book this past March, mostly on trains in Japan, and am rereading it sooner than I otherwise would because my UU Science and Spirituality group chose it as a discussion topic. (Probably in part because of my vigorous defense of it at the last meeting before Summer... I thought it was being unfairly maligned as "just a bunch of moraless hippies going around" or some such. But the person making the accusation had actually been thinking of "On the World", recanted, read the book and ended up liking it very much.

This paragraph really is hugely important in the setup for the Taoist-ish interpretation of the world that comes later in the book, and that final sentence is just beautiful.

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Link of the Moment
After pointing out Twitter's "live politics" bit, I got some personalized email mentioning C-SPAN's Debate Hub including the gizmodo writeup.

Heh, I'm guessing C-SPAN must be monitoring sites that link to Twitter's feature and then writing relatively personalized notes to webmasters. (Relatively; it felt maybe a bit astroturfed, but not too blatantly Spam-y.) Still, it was pretty focused, and the C-span site seems to have some nifty knickknacks.

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life is too short so love the one you got cause you might get runover or you might get shot

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I guess I'm enough of a europhile that it seems weirdly cool to be corresponding with friends from there.

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And readjusting to still plan to have fun in an evening, even though it's seven and dark already, feels downright Nordic.
click to run

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"all your ducks in rows and columns"
// source code // built with Processing

As promised... "Ducks. Lots of ducks. A virtual plane full of an infinite number of graphpaper ducks." Mildly interactive with the mouse pointer and mouse button.

I came up with the design of the duck during a dull meeting. Using a notebook of graphpaper for notes has its disadvantages! I ended up drawing an 8x8 grid of these things, but making this program seemed more interesting than posting a scan. (It probably took less time to make the program, come to think of it.)

Why Ksenia and I can get used to Miller as a housemate, Exhibit A:



Admittedly, not an every day (or even every weekend) kind of thing, but still...

I found out that my company's parent company offers some free mental health counseling sessions. You call an 800 number for an assessment and then you have the option of setting up sessions with a local counselor or even scheduling further phone appointments. Since by the end of the assessment I had already rambled at the guy and it seemed easier to not have to travel to some office and back, I went with the phone option.

It's been interesting. Something Kevin (the counselor guy) has picked up on is how I subject almost everything I feel to an intense bit of rational inspection. He put it in terms of "shaping and hammering at an emotion until it becomes a thought"...an oddly poetic idea, the possibility of one being transmorgified into the other.

To be fair, I've been able to wield logic like a weapon since I was 9 or so, I have memories of mounting an argument about the immaculate conception vs Mary and Joseph just fooling around, deliberatly forcing the woman into a high stakes all-or-nothing position when it comes to traditional Christian faith. I remember her saying I had won her over by the end of it.

Kevin had another neat insight...I was talking about one not-useful behavior I'd been getting a handle on lately: endlessly returning to the same 2 or 3 websites--frequently-updated websites, but not as frequently as I'd been bouncing back to them--as a way of avoiding tasks that I didn't have confidence in solving. I had been labeling this behavior "noodling" after the musical "noodling" I've heard at Johnny D's jazz brunch, where some guy on xylophone and another on guitar just kind of sloppily and casually jazz around, noodle noodle noodle, no hooks, barely a rhythm.

Drawing the parallel between my negative behavior and that jazz stuff had been helping me to mend my ways, but Kevin was more interested in my disdain for free, light jazz improvisation. Based on other things I've discussed with him, he sees insisting on structure and order in many aspects of life. (Now, this might amuse some people who know me, because the first thing that comes to mind when seeing my desk at work, or (often) my living room is NOT "structure and order", but still...I think that might be an issue of "things whose structures matter, really matter, and things whose don't, really don't"--and that time and energy can "better" be devoted to other pursuits.)

This could also tie into the way I get really angry at some things that aren't the way they "should be"...traffic jams, computer hardware or complex system failures, or even some broken computer code that is resistant to analysis and repair. I've learned how to real this rage in, sometimes even surfing it and laughing at myself, like when I work to channel my aggression into a big continuous stream of non-repeating swear words. Overall, though, it's not one of my favorite things about myself.

Going further out on a limb, I wonder if the desire for logical order is tied into my intermitent problems with pointlessly exaggerated anxiety. My thinking might be that if this contains some new unexpected problems, who knows what kind of further unexpected problems might be waiting in the wings to blindside us? And who knows if we'll be able to cope. Could this have its roots in a childhood full of moving around every year or two, a certain instability? Or the death of my dad when I was 14? I don't know...though like I said, there's evidence that the "rationality" predates the loss of my father.

Of course the ability to analyze and think about emotions isn't all negative...it lets one isolate causes and effect and make specific positive changes. The question is figuring out when it becomes negative, creating a feedback loop where emotion becomes thought which then bends back and squelches or warps the emotion. Actually, there's even the question if a deliberate (and rational) effort can do much to change that loop, or if it's too ingrained than that.

Hmmm! Sorry this got so long! I'll try to get back to your regular scheduled kisraeling tomorrow.

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Quote and Article of the Moment

But the critics are missing the beauty of this new theory. Because the really great thing about intelligent design is that it takes all the awkward uncertainty out of science. It says, "You know those damn theoretical gaps and conundrums that send microbiology graduate students into dank basement laboratories at 3 a.m.? They don't need to be resolved at all. Go back to bed, sleepy little grad students. God fills those gaps."

Also in Slate, William Saletan wrote a more relaxed piece on how "there's no there"...ID is just a negative response to Darwnism, it only pretends to explain anything.

Quote and Ramble of the Moment

Considerable evidence suggests that if we use an increase in our incomes, as many of us do, simply to buy bigger houses and more expensive cars, then we do not end up any happier than before. But if we use an increase in our incomes to buy more of certain inconspicuous goods -- such as freedom from a long commute or a stressful job -- then the evidence paints a very different picture. The less we spend on conspicuous consumption goods, the better we can afford to alleviate congestion; and the more time we can devote to family and friends, to exercise, sleep, travel, and other restorative activities. On the best available evidence, reallocating our time and money in these and similar ways would result in healthier, longer -- and happier -- lives.

Man, what a thought-provoking statement!

I wish I knew how to act on it. Wish I had a better understanding of how my budget worked. It seems like I should be able to live on a lot less and I'm essentially debt-free (and with a comfortable buffer from the house) but my Savings grows very. Very. Slowly. Is it the toys? Media? Rent?

I can't complain about my job: it's not very strenuous, it's not physical labor, it pays well, my team has added some interesting and fun people. I must complain about my job: it's really tough to get motivated about its random projects, it has an awful commute, and I'm not happy with my work there. I guess most of my complaints are about the cosmic injustice that we all have to work except for this exceedingly tiny minority. Is it a life out of balance? Am I missing some fundamental daoist thing in not being able to find a deep satisfaction with my daily efforts?

There was an interesting Ask Slashdot about how to make programming fun again. It sounds like this guy really has it together.

One question: how restorative is travel? It always seems kind of stressful but fun, along with being something people "should" do. Or maybe the problem is that vacations always get lumped into these 1 or 2 week chunks, enough time that you feel compelled to "do something cool", but not enough time to really fit into the new lifestyle?

Sometimes it feels like my life and relationships and nation's politics all need a reboot. Not to wipe everything out, just get rid of the cruft, start with mostly the same installed programs, but free and clean to make a better go of it all.

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Image of the Moment

--Ksenia (this very nice gal I've been dating as of late) at the top of the stairs. I like the way the lighting came out.

Link of the Moment
Lore Sjöberg (of Brunching Shuttlecocks fame) on Ways The Web Is Better than it was 6 years ago. One is he's "in a lot more sigs", heh.

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Image and Quote of the Moment

"Human beings were created by water to transport it uphill"

Thanks to Ross for quoting this provocative little idea. Though I wonder, then, what water thinks of evaporation.

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Column of the Moment
Lileks has a ton of cool stuff, I've linked to it many times. I've recently rediscovered his every-weekday journal, "Bleats". I get bogged down when I try to plow through its extensive archive, though he is a good writer. (Partially because of the so-so navigation that makes it easier to jump to the next week rather than the next day.) Kneejerk moderates such as myself might find his politics a bit to the Libertarian right for their liking, but at least the opinions are usually well-presented. Sorry this won't be such a good update, haven't got back into the swing of checking my regular sources for interesting stuff.

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News of the Moment
We're doomed! Doomed I tell you !

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Movie Quote of the Moment

FADE UP ON:
JULES AND VINCENT
In their T-shirts and swim trunks. They look a million miles away from the black-suited, bad-asses we first met.

THE WOLF

Perfect. Perfect. We couldn't've planned his better. You guys look like . . . what do they look like, Jimmie?

JIMMIE

Dorks. They look like a couple of dorks.
The Wolf and Jimmie laugh.

JULES

Ha ha ha. They're your clothes, motherfucker.

[JIMMIE

I guess you just gotta know how to wear them.

JULES

Yeah, well, our asses ain't the expert on wearin' dorky shit that yours is.]

I've found that "They're your clothes" line fits a surprisingly large number of situations, when someone is mocking something that they were mostly responsible for. The part in square brackets was cut from the original movie, but makes the whole exchange that much better. Funny of the Moment

The sanest New Year's I ever spent was two years ago, when my best friend Donald and I split a bottle of wine and played Jenga and a sort of mechanical fishing game with magnetic rods. At twelve o'clock we went outside to look at the fireworks and shook hands briskly. No nonsense, no drunken emotion, and we were in bed with cocoa by half past twelve. We vowed then and there to do the same for the Millennium, except maybe at Stonehenge.

Unfortunately, in the interim Donald has become affianced to a New Age lunatic, and he will be spending the Millennium several thousand feet above Stonehenge, performing a naked parachute jump with his intended and a white witch who will be performing a pagan wedding ritual in mid-air. As midnight approaches Donald will be required to penetrate his beloved whilst plummeting like a stone; the plan is that at the twelfth stroke he will bring her to orgasm, conceive their child, and pull the ripcords, all at the same time. As Donald has poor timing, a complete lack of ejaculatory control, and a hilarious history of handles breaking off at his touch, a unique combination of death and embarrassment seems likely to result.

He has a collection of essays on his website. At his best, he comes across as a British Fran Lebowitz, good cynical stuff.