❮❮prevnext❯❯

brilliant minimum wage art Keeping on keeping on through all of Vonnegut's novels; I liked "Deadeye Dick" more than its near kin "Breakfast of Champions". (Also interesting seeing how amphetamine was being framed as such a horror even then...)

---

That is my principal objection to life, I think: It is too easy, when alive, to make perfectly horrible mistakes.

---

My wife has been killed by a machine which should never have come into the hands of any human being. It is called a firearm. It makes the blackest of all human wishes come true at once, at a distance: that something die.

There is evil for you. "We cannot get rid of mankind's fleetingly wicked wishes.

We can get rid of the machines that make them come true.

I give you a holy word: DISARM.

---

We all see our lives as stories, it seems to me, and I am convinced that psychologists and sociologists and historians and so on would find it useful to acknowledge that. If a person survives an ordinary span of sixty years or more, there is every chance that his or her life as a shapely story has ended, and all that remains to be experienced is epilogue. Life is not over, but the story is.

Some people, of course, find inhabiting an epilogue so uncongenial that they commit suicide. Ernest Hemmingway comes to mind.

[...]

I suppose that's really what so many American women are complaining about these days: They find their lives short on story and overburdened with epilogue.

Mother's story ended when she married the handsomest rich man in town.

---

souls are in our bone marrow Last night Erika, the co-facilitator of the Science and Spirituality reading/discusson group I manage, led a discussion on the first 3 lectures in William James' 1902 book The Varieties of Religious Experience. I think most of the other folks in the group resonated with the James more than I did...

James speaks highly of an ecstatic form of religious moment, periods of deep wonderment that transcend thought, that can only be achieved by feeling. I think I did well laying out why this doesn't hit home for me during the zoom call. (And as co-facilitator, making sure we heard from everyone who was willing to share... 2 of the quietest people when given the floor had a lot of smart stuff to say!)

I put my stock in rationality, a rationality that's smart enough to realize it won't have all the answers at hand, and so respects other ways of knowing, even as it tries to analyze them. (Or dissect them, as the cynic might accuse!) To many people my approach seems almost inhumanly cold, but my argument is it has the potential to be MORE human + empathetic.

I am suspicious of any spirituality that leans so heavily on revelation - whether personal, as in the moments of ecstasy James lectures on, or parlayed into the institutional, like the organizations built on what God said to Moses, or to Paul on the Road to Damascus, or to Mohammed, or to Joseph Smith, or whomever. Make no mistake- the length of that latter list, and the variance of those revelations, is key to why I don't trust it. Like Omar Khayyâm put it:

And do you think that unto such as you
A maggot-minded, starved, fanatic crew
God gave a secret, and denied it me?
Well, well--what matters it? Believe that, too!

For me, a spirituality needs to be potentially universal, or it is nothing. (Even if any single faith path is incomplete - despite how those faiths so often claim to being universally and objectively true - and we have to go "meta" and accept a multi-path view, and/or say the the ultimate objective truth involves accepting a range of idiosyncratic and incompatible and even feuding paths) And language and rationality are how we can try to reach to one another. If we have a hope of building bridges that go beyond the subjective it is in that kind of honest, forthright, loving and empathetic analysis.

I think it's useful to see this in the lens of our general day-to-day psychology. One of my favorite metaphors for that is The Elephant and the Rider, posting our fragile logical and narrative self as hanging on top of the emotional Elephant providing all the energy, that rider-self claiming credit for where the Elephant goes but only having limited influence. The Rider plays a crucial role in explaining ourselves to ourselves and to others, and thus allowing social dialog and trust and co-operation to exist.

James of course seems to encourage the life of the elephant as the key to enlightenment. And although he's too reserved to say it, you start to suspect that he holds to it as a connection to something supernatural, a transcendence to connect outside of our system rather than an emergent something, a pattern miraculously rising from our base materials and energies.

Let me know if you're interested in joining the "Science and Spirituality" reading and discussion group at the Belmont UU Church! About 6-10 regulars meet the third Thursday of every month (these days by Zoom of course) and try and tackle a medium length read together - excerpts from a book or a collection of related articles, etc. It's a really thoughtful group of people, with artists and educators in the mix. We're able to find good readings and then the 90 minute session often ends up being one of the better parts of my month.

---

I think my fellow liberals need to listen more to moderate voices, when they can find them, even they disagree with them, or find what they say disagreeable. (UPDATE: but we always, always need to listen to the voices of the oppressed, and to progressives with good ideas about how to press to a better future for this country and humanity in general.)

I listen to the Sam Harris podcast, and there are a lot of things I don't agree with, and some that I do. But one podcast that has stuck with me was from February 2018, with Scottish historian Niall Ferguson - glancing at Ferguson's twitter these day I find plenty to disagree with (especially about Brexit) - but a few passages from his dialog with Harris have really struck with me over those 2 years (before the current Ukraine quid pro quo scandal, so the focus is on the then-ongoing Mueller report.)

I am almost surprised I was able to locate the bits (I didn't even remember Ferguson's name) but I think his longer-term perspective is useful today as the House votes to impeach:

The Republicans weren't exactly in a hurry for Nixon to fall, and only abandoned him when there was simply no way of refuting the evidence of obstruction of justice. I think it will be very similar this time around in that the big issue will be obstruction and the Republican party will stick with Trump until there is no way of being able to do that. If his approval rating stays in the 38-40% range, then they're not going to desert. They deserted Nixon when Nixon was in free fall. So let me make clear: this is not new territory for American politics. What should strike us is- its familiarity. And it wasn't just Nixon. With Reagan it was Iran-Contra, with Clinton we all know what the impeachment was about. This is how American politics is played, it's a contact sport.

So my paradoxical view is that liberalism will ultimately be the beneficiary of the Trump presidency and Conservatism will be the casualty. The question of impeachment I think should be seen in that light. By the time we get there, if we get there [...] we know from the experience of Clinton and also the Iran-Contra scandal that it can backfire on Congress if it goes down that road. It doesn't necessarily guarantee the collapse of a presidency. Clinton became even more popular even as he was being impeached.

Having been put to the test by being elected and becoming president Trump is almost bound to disappoint his supporters over the 4 year time frame... and if he doesn't, if the economy miraculously keeps going all the way to 2020, if wages rise in real terms in ways that they didn't during the Obama years then Hey! He'll be entitled to re-election, because he'll have delivered something to the kind of people who didn't get much out of the previous 8 years. One can't rule that scenario out. And when I ask myself is this a 2-year presidency or a 4-year presidency or an 8 year presidency, well probably I'm inclined to the 4-year view but I wouldn't give *very* low odds to re-election, presidents tend to get re-elected, even ones as mercurial as Trump.

I checked the "real wage" chart, and it looks like - as with a lot of trends - Trump has managed to continue the trajectories started in the Obama years, which given the cyclical nature of economies is kind of impressive, though I think his tax cuts were dumping fuel into an engine that was going along well already.

I think the point about Clinton's popularity increasing during and after impeachment is important. You get resentment at the question being asked. For Clinton, it was the Republicans bringing sex into politics so stupidly. I fear for Trump it might be "look, the folks who voted for him knew he was gonna run the place like a wanna-be Mafia Don, sending out his consigliere Giuliani to replace actual ambassadors, so what's the big deal"...

And don't get it twisted - I am no Trump fan. The damage he has done to so many things we hold valuable - international alliances, judicial appointments, the balance of powers as lesser Republicans follow him like the pied piper - is immense.

---

Figure out who you are, and then do it on purpose.

(repost but bears repeating! Though come to think of it maybe Trump does that too much, so nevermind.)

These are simple, no-frills strategies, like being present and showing up for what you can, like your work and your friends and your trivia night and your cat. Limit your phone time and consumption of Internet content, whether that's social media, the 24-hour news cycle, or both. Our smartphones now feel like baby monitors that we should constantly be checking, but they can quickly turn into triggers for feelings of fear, isolation, sadness, despair, helplessness, anger, and frustration.

I liked the "baby monitor" metaphor.

---

Whereas Lauren Bacall was shocked to hear of his antics, John Wayne didn't bat an eye when Hudson "took a member of the Los Angeles Rams to bed with him" at the end of a day's shooting: "I think Rock's a hell of a guy," he said. "Who the hell cares if he's queer? The man plays great chess."

The parking lot music system playing a schmaltzy version of Auld Lang Syne makes me feel like I'm trapped in some old movie flashback sequence.

---

I did not like any of this. As I've mentioned, I am an only child. This makes me a member of the world-wide, super-smart, afraid-of-conflict narcissist club. And let me emphasize: afraid-of-conflict. Since I had no siblings to routinely challenge or hit me, and equally no interest in playing sports, I'd grown up without any experience in conflicts. I therefore had no reason to imagine confrontation of ANY kind, ranging from fighting to kissing was not, probably, fatal.

---

The big trouble with dumb bastards is that they are too dumb to believe there is such a thing as being smart.

It reminds me this recent Sam Harris podcast with Tom Nichols, Defending the Experts - a super bright guy (a Never-Trumper despite being a Republican - and firmly in the 'Trump probably didn't want to win for reals' camp) who is just aghast at how "my common sense gut feel is better than your studied expertise" is running over the land. He made an interesting point about the kind of people who revel in Trump's success - apart from the white nationalist element, there are people who just feel left out by age of increasing technological change and expertise. I knew that, but pointing out that many of these people aren't even struggling financially, from communities stuck by heavy industry screw-over and the opioid epidemic - but they still feel chronically out of the loop - that part was a new angle for me, with some explanatory power. Watched Rogue One - Spoiler Free Thoughts, mostly about the gear and ships and possible art influences.

I think I liked it better than Force Awakens, in part because it wasn't trying to duplicate the beats of the original.

Besides a few touches of Mad Max (Forest Whitaker's character had a bit of a trace of Immortan Joe - and almost served like an echo of Darth Vader) the probable influence I most enjoyed recognizing was the Star Wars video games - flying low under radar through fog filled trenches (ala N64 Rogue Squadron) Walkers through shallow tropical waters (ala the GameCube entry in the series) - probably a touch of the Battlefront series in the soldiers running around combat as well. I'm assuming.

Also, seeing Star Destroyers directly over urban areas made me think of those "Death Star over SF Bay video", circa 2008:



Another art influence I think, but obscure: the lanky K-2SO reminds me a LOT of the robots in Paul Rivoche's art in the appendix of Isaac Asimov-moderated "Robot City"-- see the art at the bottom here.

There was a bit too much "THIS year's toy" in the ships- (which is funny, I think one thing I didn't like about Force Awakens was how the ships didn't feel different *enough*) - for geeks who care about that kind of thing it's going to be tougher to justify why more of them didn't show up in the Original Trilogy. (Unless they make another Lucas-ian touch up and rerelease A New Hope)

You know, most prominent in that are all Imperial Shuttle-derived transports, ships with a center body and then 2, 3, or 4 folding wings, like Kylo Ren's ship. When the Vader's Shuttle started up Return of the Jedi, it was unlike anything we'd seen in Star Wars and Empire Strikes Back, but now they're everywhere, they just decided to sit out two films.

Speaking of making Return of the Jedi look bad - I know Star Wars has a "bad guys built a superweapon, good guys have to take it out" problem, but this movie talks about the criticality of the Death Star plans SO MUCH that it becomes weird how Return of the Jedi was just able to throw in a "the Death Star - again! But bigger!" so easily.

(Also everywhere in this movie: those little things that look like fancy pens in Imperial (and others?) pockets. I guess they're "Imperial Code Cylinders" but they're so ubiquitous as to be distracting.)

I loved the humanity in the opening scene at the farm - like what life might be like in an Empire dominated galaxy. Oh and Jyn Erso is a total badass gal. I wish we'd seen Carrie Fisher doing more of that kind of leading, either in the original trilogy or the new movie. (Though I guess technically she grew up in very protected royal circumstances...)

---

Oh, though I guess Luke's toy T-16 kind of had that Imperial Shuttle look.

---

advent day 18
advent day 18

---

The purpose of gameplay is to hide secrets.

I find the idea immensely thought provoking. Like David Gelernter's "Beauty = simplicity + power" formulation, at first blush it seems too simplistic, and leaving out swaths of human experience, but I feel like most of that experience could be shoehorned into a loose reading of the definition.

advent day 18

---

You know how there's always that lifehack "bet you never noticed that Reynolds Wrap foil has a place to push in the ends of the box to hold the roll!"? Turns out that it looks to be perforated, but is actually THE FRICKIN' STRONGEST PART OF THE BOX.

Well played, Reynolds.
advent day 18

---

If you can not able use Perl for answer, you are ask wrong question.

---

I always loved the classic Mega Man 'bot design, so seeing the sketches for 9 (including unused Honey Woman) was cool.

---

Figure out who you are, and then do it on purpose.

---

I've never seen a tax cut build a bridge.

via

---

http://www.boingboing.net/2009/12/17/the-simpsons-turns-2.html - Simpsons is only 20? Coulda SWORN I saw "black bart" t-shirts in middle school - hey remember SIMPSONS VS COSBY for the heart and soul of Thursday evenings?

---

I'd love to hear a gender studies analysis of eminem's kind of atrocious song "FACK". I'm not sure but I think he goes from heteronormative guy to faux porn starlet to flaming meterosexual barely clinging to his straightness.

---

I like paying taxes. With them I buy civilization

---

'I pay taxes' is the best retort to 'If you don't vote you can't complain'

-- yeah but you should still vote....

mark hamill on the muppet show

---

Google for "penis". Wikipedia's "Human penis size" comes before plain old article for "Penis" which is probably rather telling.

---

Also: Wikimedia Commons: "Note: This gallery does not need more general home-made images of penises." So much for my public service plan.

---

"Will It Blend?" makes me happy. What an excellent way of selling a product.

---

Wikipedia quote of the moment: "The Merovingian king was the master of the booty of war"-far more amused by "booty of war" than I should be.

---

CNN headline of the moment: "No good way to tell kids they have cancer". Almost ripe for dark humor, but it might be too sad for that.

---

Interesting trying to explain "Yankee Swaps" to Finns, esp. when you're a little unclear on the rules yourself. Result: Sex in the City DVD.

---

Huh, googling it, we did a bad variation where you didn't get another pick if someone took your gift (but you got to unwrap before deciding)

---

Bldg Mgmt is giving us grief about handing out individual bathroom keys--having to ask the guard for the key is low-dignity all around. So "Plato and a Platypus Walk into a Bar" also references David Hume pointing out the danger of analogies when describing something as unique as the entire universe. (I couldn't google up other references to Hume having this thought, but still.)

In particular, it's the trouble of the "watchmaker" analogy, where you say just like if you found a beautifully designed watch on the ground, you'd assume there was a skilled maker somewhere, rather than it just shake itself into being, a well "designed" universe implies a maker as well. But why, the book says Hume asks, pick a watch? Why not a kangaroo? Which is a complex and interconnected and organic system, much like the universe. In that case, our universe would have come from another universe, after that parent universe had sex with a third universe. So clearly, analogies are not always a way to definitive knowledge.

---

Excerpt of the Moment

I was about ready to say I think I better go down and see my mom now when she leaned forward and kissed me with an open mouth on the lips. It wasn't like with Jilly. Nothing could distract me, not even the living corpse of her father. She took my hand in hers and slipped it inside her shirt. It was more romantic than it sounds.

(The "living corpse" is about her father in a coma.) Always weird when the book you've had on your "read this someday" pile for years was made into a move in the meanwhile and you didn't even realize. Odd book, set in '78 but with some anachronisms, I'd say, like tasers and diet coke, and turns of phrase like "the 'rents" for parents. It feels like an 80s child writing about the 70s but sounding more like the 90s movie Cruel Intentions (which in turn is based on a book from the 1780s) Oof-dah. Between the holiday hectics and back-to-back business trips, it's a challenge to make this site interesting... my apologies for that!

---

Baseball of the Moment

1. I'm just glad to be here. I just want to help the club any way I can.
2. Baseball's a funny game.
3. I'd rather be lucky than good.
4. We're going to take the season one game at a time.
5. You're only as good as your last game (last at-bat).
6. This game has really changed.
7. If we stay healthy we should be right there.
8. It takes 24 (25) players.
9. We need two more players to take us over the top: Babe Ruth & Lou Gehrig.
10. We have a different hero every day.
11. We'll get 'em tomorrow.
12. This team seems ready to gel.
13. With a couple breaks, we win that game.
14. That All-Star voting is a joke.
15. The catcher and I were on the same wavelength.
16. I just went right at 'em.
17. I did my best and that's all I can do.
18. You just can't pitch behind.
19. That's the name of the game.
20. We've got to have fun.
21. I didn't have my good stuff, but I battled 'em.
22. Give the guy some credit; he hit a good pitch.
23. He, we were due to catch a break or two.
24. Yes.
25. No.
26. That's why they pay him _____ million dollars.
27. Even I could have hit that pitch.
28. I know you are but what am I?
29. I was getting my off-speed stuff over so they couldn't sit on the fastball.
30. I have my at 'em ball going today.
31. I have some great plays made behind me tonight.
32. I couldn't have done it without my teammates.
33. You saw it... write it.
34. I just wanted to go as hard as I could as long as I could.
35. I'm seeing the ball real good.
36. I hit that ball good.
37. I don't get paid to hit.

I guess that might have been some of the inspiration for that bit in "Bull Durham" where the rookie gets taught all the happy talk... I couldn't find the whole routine online though.

---

Billboard of the Moment
After actually thinking a few months prior that it seemed like that Abercrombie model in a billboard at Porter Square would be getting pretty damn cold, I was entertained that they gave the guy a coat. (Someone else was less amused, this board replaced the same one that had been vandalized with either tomatoes or maybe a paintball gun.) Still, I think the funniest take on the whole "why are we using naked male posers to sell clothing even to men" thing was that one men store's ad that showed two shlubs playing some touch football, running circles around the black and white models too busy posing with footballs in slo-mo to actually do anything.

Patriots got a tremendous win last yesterday against a team widely regarded as pretty decent. Great to see! Lets people have theories like the first part of the season was just a bunch of injuries plus Belichick going "back to basics" like he does almost every year.

Anyway, I just wanted to point out that this photo of Brady that has been seen frequent web use lately just isn't that flattering:



It kind of looks like some foppish dance step...1 2 Kick! and 3 4 Spin! and 1 2 Throw!

---

Aside of the Moment
I find the language that I've seen Ksenia use on Instant Messenger programs sometimes interesting: Russian, written phonetically, I think with English pronunciation. As far as I can tell it doesn't have very formal rules for spelling. Does that count as a pidgin? I guess it happens with a lot of different languages, especially Asian ones. Does anyone study these, or is it just a little side thing?

Ramble of the Moment
Alright, this might fall under the category of "too much information", not that that's ever stopped me before...

I've noticed an odd change in what I find inherently physically appealling in women. I mean, I think most everyone has their "type"...not that they don't recongize the beauty of people not matching that type, but anyone they meet who fits the category gets kind of a "bonus" in how attractive they seem. Like guys who say they go for "leggy blonds". And for the longest time for me it was short, compact women who would get that boost.

But not so much lately. Probably not coincidentally, around since a month or so after starting to go out with Ksenia, who has a nice long lean look. So I wonder about the chicken and egg nature of this. Though the appeal of women who might be said to fit Ksenia's type isn't as pronounced as my previous attraction to compact women. But a majority of my fun relationships from half way through high school to...well, Mo...were with women who could be considered short. So maybe that explains it, that being with someone who I find attractive in many ways has an influence on what I find physically appealing in the outside world.

Eh, who knows. Warning: this ramble gets worse. The squeamish or prudish may want to skip to the cute little doggie picture below.

In other news...I'm trying to think of an equivalent of the metaphor for "shot my load", one that I can actually use in polite conversation. I mean, it's a useful concept; I want to say how I kind of "shot my load" in terms of thougtful gifts for Ksenia because her birthday was in November, and now Christmas is coming up. But of course I can't say that without being really offensive. Anyone know of an equivalent metaphor, the idea of using up all your resources so now you don't have any left?

---

Image of the Moment

--A dog with large ears from cellar.org's Image of the Day.

Feh, my unique visitor counter may be gradually return to its pre-Popular Science levels (assuming that's what caused the boost.) It was 1300 for a few days, then a jump to 400 for a week or so, now its around 200. Ah well! Hopefully a few of the new visitors have decided to stick around and check out things on a regular basis...

---

Exchange of the Moment

Etoile says, "When someone annoys you, it takes 42 muscles to frown, but it only takes 4 muscles to extend your arm and whack them in the head."
Gilmore says, "it takes no muscles at all to use your psychic abilities to give them inoperable tumors throughout their vital organs"

Very fun stuff, but also very heavy on the gay and dick jokes. So if that's your cup of tea, read on! It's very funny. People of a less sophomoric bend may not enjoy it so much.

---

Link of the Moment
You're not alone when you dream of spitting teeth, here are the 12 Universal Dreams. Oy, weird, I just remember I had a dream last night where I was going to kill myself at A dinner party for my 29th or 30th birthday, had my head in a noose and everything for a while, but then I decided not to. I said to the party "they say a lot of people who attempt suicide just want the attention... and I certainly wouldn't put that past me!"

Reminds me of one of my favorite Simpsons clips...this clip was one of the more useful ones to have at hand at work, along with this one. (Hey, it's easy to dehydrate when you''re codemonkeying--thank heavens that job offered free softdrinks. Actually, I kid. Free softdrinks aren't such a hot idea.)

---

Quote of the Moment

No computer has ever been designed that is ever aware of what it's doing, but most of the time, we aren't either.

I added this one to my mortality guide, it's a good reminder that our flavor of consciousness isn't all we crack it up to be. Quote of the Moment

It should not be surprising kids like the stuff. Dried nasal discharge is largely composed of complex sugars, sodium and water -- the same ingredients as most junk foods.

(via Ranjit)

---

Mystery of the Moment
What the heck is this?? Perhaps there are some things I just wasn't meant to know.