Scalia at his most scathing and bashing his younger conservative bretheren for their judicial activism. City of Arlington v. FCC.
Leaving aside the awesome stuff and stuff that makes me personally happy (I laughed out loud at footnote 1), Scalia puts the critical issue succinctly when he writes that those who fear unelected bureaucrats interpreting the law make no improvement by shifting the interpretation of the laws to unelected and even less accountable judges.
This is the real core philosophical difference between conservative jurists who genuinely despise "judicial activism" and those who simply despise it when liberal judges exercise the prerogatives of conservative judges. The dissent is all about how awful big government is and the essential role of the judiciary to reign it in. The majority opinion by Scalia is that this is poppycock. Congress is the legislative body. If it wants to "reign in" the exercise of "big government," it should pass laws to that effect. Where Congress deliberately delegates broad authority to the executive, that delegation must be respected by the judiciary.
Tumblr discussions about trigger warnings and whether or not they are oppressive.
Many thanks to fiddlingfrog who posted that OMNI magazine is now available for free at the Internet Archive. There is much that is awesome in that trove, and I'll be unearthing some of it. But the crowning issue, as far as I am concerned, was February 1986. It was the issue which introduced me to the word "tetrodoxin", the concept of ethnobotany, and the existance of the Exploratorium. And the jewel in the crown was a short story, which remains one of my all-time favorite works of fiction. Neither SFF nor magic realism, it introduced me to -- though it never used the word and I only figured it out later -- Surrealism.
I reproduce it here in full.
The Man Who Wasn't There
by William Kotzwinkle
Idle one evening and dully curious, I chanced to turn over a painting that hung upon the wall of the rooming house. Wrapped around the wire was a little scroll of paper. I opened it and read: Now you have met me/ Can you forget me?/ I offer you a chance.
In the bottom corner of the paper was the name of a tramp steamer and its next port of call. I rolled the little scroll back up, but instead of placing it back upon the wire, I slipped it in my pocket, as a souvenir.
I thought no more of the matter, but fate, or chance, had me on that tramp steamer when next it sailed. It was a voyage of several weeks, and I'd been staring at the empty springs of the bunk above me for many nights and mornings before I noticed there was a tiny figure tucked inside the coils---a figure of a unicorn, cleverly shaped out of folded paper. Examining it, I suddenly knew that it had been made by the man whose note I carried. I'd followed his thoughts---to the unicorn, mythical creature never seen.
I made inquiries; no one onboard, from cabin boy to captain, recalled a passenger with the habit of folding paper into little animals. But when we docked in port, ( I had not forgotten him.Collapse )
 | VoicePost  128K 0:44 | “That was one of the more worthwhile things I've done recently. I had a great time watching the kids commence. Everyone was delighted to see me and hugged me and told me that I've been missed. I got to meet the lady who has the job I used to have and she's very nice, and I told her she was going to have a great time. And the juniors made me promise that I would come to their commencement, so I need to remember to put that on my calendar. Transcribed by:  bikergeek |
The events around the 1988 Illyria-Aid music festival have been commemorated in the play "Twelfth Night." Where are they now?
The publicity around Sebastian & Viola's reappearance, after they were both presumed dead in a tour bus crash, catapulted them from obscurity to stardom. Realizing their remarkable resemblance, they began dressing alike onstage, only to see their popularity dwindle as the fad for Nagelesque androgeny faded. Interest in the duo returned with the website sebastianorviola.net, where visitors have to tell one from the other in a series of pictures (average score: 58%.) They continue to tour, although most of her time is spent managing the ringtone business she founded in 2002, Viola-Tor Inc. Sebastian, or course, is the star of the MTV reality show "Hard Rock Life."
Viola and Count Orsino divorced in 1994, due to the stress of touring separately and his continued fascination with the unavailable. He contined to arrange benefit concerts for distressed towns in the Rust Belt. "O!" tattoos, identifying the bearer as a "Jorsino," remain common in Ohio, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. He married Tawny Kitaen in 1999, filing for divorce three years later on grounds of physical abuse.
Olivia & the Wailers split up aimiably, to pursue separate projects. Toby and Maria Belch and Fabian Nunez (performing as "Fab Belch") formed the core of the band Belch, still remembered as a founding influence in the thrashabilly movement. Olivia became a solo act, and a vehement advocate for same-sex marriage. Her own marriage, to Sebastian, lasted eighteen days.
Eunice Malvolio's lawsuit against Toby, Maria, and Feste was dropped when it was revealed that the three of them had assets totalling $571.48. She resigned as Olivia's agent and had a brief career performing under the name "Notorious MOAI" before returning to artist management. She is currently a lobbyist for the RIAA's efforts to make posting music files on public servers a class "A" felony.
The band Belch continued touring until 2001, when Toby Belch died in a simultaneous overdose/car crash/boating accident, an event eulogized as "metal as fuck," which later became the title of his best-selling biography.
After Toby's death, Maria Belch retired from performing and became a music therapist for at-risk youths in the Los Angeles public school system. She returned to the news briefly in 2005, when a student drew a pistol in her classroom and she beat him into unconsciousness with a trash can.
Fabian Nunez also moved to Los Angeles, where he is a professional houseguest.
Andrew Aguecheek, his suit rejected by Olivia, sadly returned home. He is currently lieutenant governor of Texas.
Curio Valentine's Full Fathom Five spent five weeks on the charts. However, she never managed to duplicate that success. These days, she works tech support, two cubicles away from Tommy Heath of Tommy Tutone fame.
Feste Abramowitz continues to be active on the comedy club circuit, and is the host of Showtime's Funny Or Die.
After his fourth restraining order, Antonio Merchant overcame his more obsessive tendencies, via a combination of court-ordered therapy and near-toxic doses of prozac. He is currently a venture capitalist in Venice CA.
Things to write about tomorrow, because today I don't have the time:
* Star Trek: Into Darkness This was a... Star Trek movie. Yup. It sure was, yessirree. I didn't even dislike it.
* Coursera's Introduction to Data Science class: I'm... starting to have issues with the pedagogical approach on display. But more about that later, too.
Other than that, ILLITERAL.
Crossposted from silmaril.dreamwidth.org. You can comment here or there.
All the mouse-catching applications for this apartment have failed. There's one who climbs across the sink from behind the frigerator and climbs into the stove, and there's a baby mouse hiding somewhere between the homoffis chair and a bookcase. They aren't interested in the baited traps and the Hot Season is about to dawn. Therefore, Catman and I have come to the decision that this might be the time to let him bring in a cat.
I'd semi-agreed to discuss the subject when he moved in two years ago. I warned him then that he would need to institute chaos control for his room, and share kitchen maintenance. He currently lives in the dwarfish sedimentary style, with all manner of stuff stuffed in the corners. I Insist that he maintain a clear passage to the front door, so he wouldn't generate a fire hazard. I cleared out the Ex's full closet some time ago, but he has yet to use it for more than his winter coats. His DVD collection is deep but disorderly, and tends to stack on things.
This said, it's been long enough since Finster that I have not rejected the idea.
I put an actual decision of acquisition on Hold for two weeks. I don't want to bring in a new life form on the verge of going off to a convention for a weekend. I insist that the prospective cat be spayed/neutered and Not a kitten.
The danger is IF a cat were added to his present level of chaos, he would recreate the conditions that led to the loss of his previous apartment. This I shall NOT permit as long as I have functioning knees. However, I refuse to do all the work, and I do not trust Catman to maintain the necessary maintenance protocols.
I remember the Departed John Vanible and Mike Moslow, and how each of them kept house.
I warned Catman verbally that IF I agreed, said cat would be solely HIS responsibility, and He would need to institute chaos control for his room and the kitchen, including training said cat to use the litterbox wherever placed, and nowhere else. In the previous administration, Finster knew enough to open the cabinet door, where her litter box was kept. This is a slippery slop.
Via Flickr:
The Street Fair is the culminating event of the spectacular 31-day Philadelphia International Festival of the Arts.
(via sweet.afternoon-love.com/post/5091458307
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Via Flickr:
The Street Fair is the culminating event of the spectacular 31-day Philadelphia International Festival of the Arts.
(via sweet.afternoon-love.com/post/5082904099
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If you were to log into StarCityGames about two years back, you’d have logged in with your username. And once you’d chosen your username, you could never ever change it. If you had, in a fit of pique, chosen “SirPoopyhead” as your user name, that was what you’d have to use forever.
The reason you couldn’t change it was because of a silly choice that had been made back in the year 2000, when we’d first purchased our shopping cart software. The people who had designed that shopping cart decided to use the login name as the unique way of determining who you were – and when we’d created our own customized shopping cart, we hadn’t changed that. So for all intents and purposes, that arbitrary string of characters – “SirPoopyhead” – was the single factor that made you you.
Problem is, that’s actually terrible design.
See, on the back end of an application, we have literally hundreds of places where we store the answer to the question, “What customer did this?” What customer placed this order? What customer tried to log in at 4:56:15 am? What customer ordered a Premium subscription? What customer has $14.15 in store credit? And the answer to each of those questions, each answer stored in a separate location, was “SirPoopyhead.”
The problem is that if we changed that string of characters to, say, “SirGalahad,” then we’d have to manually change that string in every one of the hundreds of tables that referenced it. If we forgot to update just one table (or something went wrong in the middle of all these updates), then somewhere lurking in our database there would be a bunch of records that referenced the now-no-longer existing “SirPoopyhead,” which means that we’d have lost data. This could be very troubling if we were asking the question, “What customer had paid us money?” when we needed to give you a refund.
And with every new feature we added, this problem got worse. We added gift certificates, so here’s yet another place we need to store “SirPoopyhead.” We added wishlists, each of which was duly recorded under “SirPoopyhead.” Hundreds, thousands, of locations each keyed to this arbitrary string of letters.
Worse, turns out logins are a terrible idea. Customers forget their logins all the time, having made them up to check out. If their login was associated with an old email address, they might not even be able to get access to their old login without manual intervention. We literally had, in some cases, customers who’d created twelve separate accounts because they kept forgetting what their login was supposed to be.
No, what we needed was a nice clean email login like Facebook. Everybody remembers their emails. But people change their email addresses a lot – and as noted, having to constantly change “SirPoopyhead@hotmail.com” to something else had a nonzero risk of something going wrong.
What you need, as it turns out, is a unique ID to reference each customer that never changes! You! SirPoopyhead! You’re now customer #123456, and every question we’ll ever ask about you now returns the answer, “Customer #123456.” Then you can change your email, you can change your login, you can change anything you want – all we’ll be doing is looking up the information for Customer #123456.
But.
But.
Come this point in our shopping cart’s development, we had literally thousands of places in the code that used the login name instead of the customer ID to answer questions. And it wasn’t as simple as a “search-and-replace”; some of these were complex queries that we’d completely have to rewrite from scratch. And then, because we’re responsible website owners, we’d want to test all of these changes thoroughly to make sure nothing got broken.
Yet if we wanted to do this, we’d have to do it soon. Because we were hiring more and more programmers, and adding new features daily, each of which referenced “SirPoopyhead.” The longer we put this change off, the more places we’d have to change the code.
That’s what’s called technological debt. Thanks to a bad decision made literally twelve years ago, we had a ton of code that caused us to have to jump through a lot of hoops for what seemed like it should be a simple thing. And every month that went by without changing this sprawling, underlying code was another month’s worth of updates that would also, eventually, have to be changed.
What followed next was a tedious and gruellng five-week project where I looked through each of the hundreds of thousands of lines of code that touched literally every page on StarCityGames.com, changing instances of “login name” to “customer ID.” You cannot understand how magnificently boring this was. There are fun things a programmer can do, usually learning new techniques or doing something flashy – this was basically me, being a smart search-and-replace, doing something a computer wasn’t quite equipped to do.
When it was done, we ran some conversion scripts, and then rolled it out. Zingo! To you, the customer, the only change was that there was now a notification saying, “Please log in using your email.” But to the back end, there was literally a whole new day.
That’s why it’s sometimes hard to change software. How difficult could it be to change your user name? Well, as it turns out, thanks to factors that are hard to explain to your average customer, it can be incredibly hard – an unpleasant task requiring weeks to fix, one that adds almost no new features whatsoever, one that can introduce bugs into stable sections of code that haven’t had problems in years…. yet one that ultimately needs to get done in order to make way for bigger changes later on.
That’s why programming is weird.
Cross-posted from Ferrett's Real Blog.
This entry has also been posted at http://theferrett.dreamwidth.org/303537.hWow that was a busy and tiring weekend. I'm so glad to be back at work where I can sit and relax for the day.
( Saturday was yard sales and yard workCollapse )
( Sunday was City Spree!Collapse )
After dinner we watched The Hobbit since it was free Redbox day, which was... disappointing, I guess. It was really pretty and nothing was bad, but it just didn't feel as gripping or as energetic as the LotR movies did. [Athough the amount of falling long distances onto solid rock without seemingly getting hurt that several characters repeatedly did was kind of off-putting. Yes I KNOW it's fantasy but certain science should still work!] But it was a nice way to end a good weekend.
Today I'm stiff and sore in a few places, but mostly different places than I was stiff and sore a couple weeks ago, interestingly. Sitting and not having to move around or go up/down and stairs is feeling rather nice right now. This week focus goes to kids and school and visiting parents and planning for camping next weekend.
I handed over A Greater Genius for Jenny to edit. When she's done, it's self-publishing time.
I am considering a change in titles for the series. Something like "Cult of the Iron Duke", or "Forge of the Iron Duke." I don't know which direction I'll take.
Hers Truly has been doing karate and has now earned her jr. yellow belt.
In storytelling, my daughter has turned on the mash-up supercollider. She wanted a MLP-Rio-Angry Birds mashup. Sheesh!
I've been movie watching. I just did X-Men Wolverine and Prometheus this week. Wolverine was a proper popcorn movie. I have no complaints. I got what I expected. Prometheus was pretty, but it sure did get wacky in parts. Noomi Rapace was half the entertainment and quite droolworthy at times.
My Doctor Who theories were wrong, but I still beat out 99% of fandom who ignored the blatant "something new" messaging of the author. I picked up on the important themes but put them together wrong.
http://dglenn.insanejournal.com/757956.h
"I was born, lucky me
In a land that I love
Though I am poor, I am free
When I grow I shall fight
For this land I shall die
Let her sun never set
Victoria, Victoria, Victoria, 'toria
Victoria, Victoria, Victoria, 'toria."
-- from "Victoria" by The Kinks (1969,
Arthur), written by Ray Davies
[Happy Victoria Day to my Canadian friends! Yeah, I know I just quoted an English, not Canadian songwriter, but he did mention Canada in the last verse ...]
Foggy Morning
Oh, hivemind! I come bearing a puzzlement.
I was certain that I recalled a certain fact about the movie "The Hunt for Red October" which doesn't seem to be so, and now I'm trying to figure out what happened.
I recall seeing the movie either when it came out or sometime not too long thereafter on video (so early 90s). I was very struck by a detail of the Russian defector's motivation: the cause of his wife's death.
But I rewatched the movie, and, at least in the version streaming on Netflix, the cause of his wife's death is never mentioned.
According to Wikipedia, the novel -- which I've never read -- does reveal the cause of the wife's death, but, at least according to Wikipedia, it's similar but importantly different from the cause I recall from the movie.
According to wikipedia: "His wife, Natalia, died at the hands of an incompetent doctor who went unpunished because he was the son of a Politburo member." That's a kind of political corruption, and makes a statement about political privilege in the USSR.
What I remember is that his wife died because the antibiotic with which she was treated turned out to be nothing but water; something to the effect of factory workers defrauding the factory or the factory defrauding the state. This is a different sort of corruption, and it makes a different statement about what was wrong at the time in the USSR.
Am I remembering some other film? Presumably from the same time period? I was very struck by that plot point, and it adhered in my memory to "The Hunt for Red October" ever since.
This week’s episode of Game of Thrones opens on a single awakening eye. It’s a cool and peaceful morning, and young Arya Stark has murder on her mind and a rock in her filthy hands. The Hound is off his bender, though, and isn’t to be snuck up on. Lesson learned: next time,...( Read more )
Saturday's big evening performance is the Spectacle of Doom, a variety show done with whatever performers make it to the show that weekend. This time around the show started pretty near on-time, which is always remarkable. It also moved from performance to performance without much of the awkward pause and sense of ``we forgot who's on next'' that inspire nervous giggling in the audience. But it still had that homemade quality, including at least one sketch in which they apparently couldn't figure what sketch punchline they wanted so included them all, with the result that it wasn't clear when the thing was over or what the big laugh was supposed to be. It was also surprisingly short, perhaps 40 minutes or so, in part I suppose because they lacked the puppet track for reasons I have no knowledge of and no willingness to speculate about. I did notice the emcee mention that they're always looking for performers and writers and I wonder if I can get myself into trouble that way.
There was a dance that night too, in the same room as before, and we popped in for a while. This was again a small group, although it was livened up by one of the con's attendees, apparently a professional impersonator, doing rather good Michael Jackson moves. (He also was dancing in the hallway, near the con suite, while bunny_hugger walked around with her guitar.) And someone earned a quick dose of ire from bunny_hugger when the DJ started playing ``Domo Arigato, Mister Roboto'' --- the long cut, the one that takes about as long as the 80s --- and the kid grumbled about their playing such old music, as in, ``what is this, the 40s?'' Fighting words, especially with a simulated Michael Jackson around.
Besides the dance was also a room party, in the suite, room 269/267, and that suggested the feel of the Frozen Oasis party although, by being in a much smaller space, managed to push everyone to the point where body heat threatened to set the drinks on fire. The drinks were kept in the bathtub full of ice, and the bathroom's toilet was roped off with a warning that using it, in the circumstances, would be gross. But while it was packed, and I wasn't willing to risk anything more adventurous than a Mike's Hard Lemonade, we did get to see several people, including one of bunny_hugger's old devilbunny friends and one of our 
spindizzy_muck friends before we realized the hour was getting on. We'd have happily stayed longer but we had that most dread of things, an early-morning con panel.
Trivia: When William Gibbs McAdoo's Hudson and Manhattan Railroad (ancestor to the PATH trains) began passenger service in 1908, he hired women to staff the ticket windows, and paid them wages equal to male employee's. Source: Railroads of New Jersey: Fragments of the Past in the Garden State Landscape, Lorett Treese.
Currently Reading: The Science Fiction hall Of Fame Volume III, Editors Arthur C Clarke, George W Proctor. Nebula-award winning short story, novelette, and novella for 1966 to 1969, and my realization that I've tried reading Jack Vance's ``The Last Castle'' enough, I don't need to try reading it again, and I'm pretty sure I'm not going to miss something I like by skipping it again. Also, ``Dragonrider'' in novella form is like 800 pages long, which I forgot.
... was not Star Trek: Into Darkness. (I'm going to watch that later this week; I'm compiling a list of reaction posts and stories to get back to after I do. So far the impression I have is that I'll like most things except the plot, but I'll see.) Tonight's movie, which WD generously took me to, was The Iceman. ( spoileryCollapse )
contemplativeI am arriving Thursday afternoon, possibly in time for the Room of One's Own reception and readings, weather and traffic through O'Hare allowing, and will be leaving after breakfast on Monday. Seattle is a lot further from Madison than New York is, and there are no nonstop flights. I'm not on programming this year (I didn't volunteer, because I wasn't sure I could attend the con until after the sign-up deadline), which means either that I am more flexible than usual, or that I will spend more time wondering what to do when.
Cross-posted from Dreamwidth (http://redbird.dreamwidth.org/1385829.h comments. I welcome comments here or there (OpenID and "anonymous" are fine if you don't have a DW account).
The pre-registration deadline for NEFilk 23/Conterpoint 2013 is just over a week away - May 28, 2013 to be exact. $50 for a regular membership, $20 for a supporting membershop, and $100 for a premiere membership. More details (including children's rates) and a registration form can be found on the Conterpoint website. Most of the committee will be at Balticon this weekend, so you can catch one of us there as well. (This is why we normally set the deadline for the last day of Balticon, except I seem to have accidentally made it the Tuesday after Memorial Day this time around.)
We're putting the finishing touches on what promises to be a great program. In addition to our GOHs and Toastmaster, several of the usual suspects from the NE corridor will take to the stage, as well as a few friends from points south. Plus workshops, theme filks, one-shots, our Women in Space song contest, and more. All leading up to the very special Space Concert on Sunday afternoon honoring the various key anniversaries of spaceflight occurring this year.
Hope to see you next month in Maryland!
Via Flickr:
1039 Hamilton Street
Philadelphia, PA
Copyright © 2012, Bob Bruhin. All rights reserved.
(via bruhinb.deviantart.com/art/Panorama-1592-h
( You are about to view content that may only be appropriate for adults. )
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-envir
I am really delighted and touched by the fact that I was sent a dozen or so links to this and related articles in the last week. *beams gratefully*
gratefulRangers 1
Bruins 2
I believe I am on the verge of an important personal transformation.
Can anyone recommend an NHL Hockey gam for Mac?
Putitiop
Jenny Joseph wrote poem which starts
When I am an old woman I shall wear purple
With a red hat which doesn't go, and doesn't suit me.
When they write an epitaph for the American Empire it will read “You can’t manage what you can’t measure”.
-- bourbaki, Balloon Juice, comments
Randomness cannot be controlled or held to account or even planned for. It's like the heavens above are filled with cold, uncaring stars--many of which died eons ago but continue to shine because light of their death hasn't reached us yet.
-- Derelict, Alicublog, comments
In the lobby, there were bleeding runners—not, it turned out, hurt by the explosions, but who had been in the medical tent next door, being treated for such comparatively mundane maladies as dehydration. They’d ripped out their IVs and made space on the cots for the injured.
-- Charles P. Pierce, "Boston Bombing," Esquire
[M]ethinks a live writing sample (with no dictionary, internet or sms available) would flush out many a headache producing employee before hire.
-- Spectator, Respectful Insolence, comments [Tech writers pretty much have to do this as a matter of course. -- ?!]
You may never use a quadratic equation again for the rest of your days, but no matter where you're headed, your life will be forever richer if you know how to informally test an idea, play on a team, make a satisfying dinner, speak some basic Spanish, handle a wrench and a drill, and write an engaging narrative on a subject you care about.
-- Sara Robinson, “How the Conservative Worldview Quashes Critical Thinking -- and What That Means For Our Kids' Future,” Alternet.org
( She's enjoying the bird sounds too.Collapse )
Five chapters to go, all done bar a couple of tweaks.
Now I need to write something else...yup, it's blank piece of paper time.
Originally posted on http://avevale_intelligencer.dreamw
My poly bureaucracy creeps slow. Very slow. This is for my wife and girlfriend’s protection, because I am a dumbass.
See, I have a tendency of assuming that emotional intimacy == compatibility. Yes, it feels wonderfully cozy that we share all of these fears and concerns and relationship patterns, and finding your most sensitive feelings reflected in someone else is a beautiful thing.
The problem is that I’m fucking crazy. So finding someone I really resonate with immediately? It usually means they’re as bad as I am, and that we’re actually going to exacerbate each others’ issues.
I’ve been known to dive head-first into relationships without checking for compatibility first, just sort of assuming that because we have A Connection it’s going to work out. Then, after months of daily fights, me wringing my hands 24/7 about WHY WON’T SHE UNDERSTAND, and an eventual slow death by slices, I’ve learned that I need to spend more time getting to know people before I start getting committed…. if only so my wife isn’t obligated to play psychotherapist for me when things turn sideways.
So there’s a six-month cooldown time in place, where we can make out but not have Teh Sexx0r… and usually that cooldown time stretches to nine months, or even a year, as we just take it slow and not rush getting permissions.
The big question is, why don’t I find this limitation confining?
Part of it is, of course, is that I chose this lifestyle. This isn’t an externally-produced ruleset, created in a process tantamount to blackmail; it’s one I helped shape, because after a series of four disastrous relationships that imploded messily across my poly web, I took an honest look and said, “Okay, that’s a bad pattern, what’s a potential fix?”
But more importantly, sex is the least important bit for me.
Don’t get me wrong; anyone who’s ever made out with me will tell you that I’m passionate as hell. But sex is something that’s common; particularly in the kink communities, it’s not particularly difficult to get. If you’re open about your desires, reasonably personable, and are sapiosexual as I am, you’ll have a lot of options.
What I can’t get elsewhere is you.
Sure, maybe I’ll spend nine months hanging out with you on our once-a-month dates, getting to know each other… but that’s the best part. For me, “getting to know people” is an activity I find desirable in and of itself. Chatting, snuggling, dining out… that’s all stuff I like. And the level of flirtation/innuendo is a beautiful spice for that.
If and when we eventually hook up, that’s gonna be a wondrous new layer to what we share, and not the entirety of it. So I’m perfectly okay waiting for that to happen, since that is far from the whole reason I’m here.
I’m in no rush.
So yeah, it’s a long time. It’s not a process I’d recommend as standard for most poly groups. But that’s the glory of poly relationships: there’s no objective set of rules. What would be insanely restrictive for one set of people is actually a wise and stabilizing force in ours, just as what would be joyous freedom for some couples would actually cause harm if I tried it at this time in my life.
But does it matter if my rules would work for you? Lemme repeat: if it’s working for you and the people you’re dating, then it’s great.
This glacial proceeding helps me to choose better partners, and keeps my wife and girlfriend happier (even as neither of them are bound by this six-month rule), and hopefully the people I’m dating in this slow process are still happy to see me even if I’m not whipping out Little Elvis yet.
It’s an approach. Because there’s no the approach. And there never will be a the approach as long as humans are varied creatures with differing needs.
Cross-posted from Ferrett's Real Blog.
This entry has also been posted at http://theferrett.dreamwidth.org/303286.hThe bio-barometer included as part of my middle-aged body package kicked in. Sue Cochrane called yesterday @ 11.0 A and I wasn't coordinating words yet. I thought it would just be a later start than usual but I didn't get out of bed all day. The knees, hips and lower back would not cooperate for any trip longer than the bathroom. Hulu, the Preakness & hockey play-offs constituted my day. I had to pass on the monthly FISTfA meeting last night, usually a 25 min. walk. The energy would not come up for the trip, like trying to start the car and it just wouldn't start.
Last night it FINALLY started to rain, which is what the joints had been predicting all day. No Rainbow Family Picnic today.
Errata: I largely dismissed a Gaiman-written ep last week without rousing any sort of complaint or protest. I started this season by wrongly identifying a voice actor and that was a crime. Don’t you people have any standards?
Our finale episode of Doctor Who opens with a reeling orgy of...( Read more )
Saw the new Star Trek movie yesterday, and was completely unimpressed. So unimpressed, that I can't think of much that's positive to say about it. The best part of the movie was going out for ice-cream afterward.
BEGIN SPOILERS HERE - read no further if you don't want things revealed.
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The Federal Reserve has been trying to stimulate the economy by creating $83 billion dollars a month. They make the money so they can do that. So far it has been going to banks who just sit on it. Because why lend it and take the risk when they can get 0.5% interest just letting it sit in their account at, you guessed it, the Federal Reserve. Charging negative interest would not help. Then banks would just let cash sit in their vaults.
There is a better way to stimulate the economy with $83 billion dollars a month. Run a lottery. A lottery where one million winners each month get $83 thousand dollars each. Make it open to everybody who files a tax form. That way you know you have a way to get the money to them once they have won. Anybody can win; the rich and the poor, the tall and the small, the just and the unjust. Because that way you are sure to get a lot of that money into the hands of people who will spend it. And those people who get the money will themselves spend it. And so on and so on. Eventually it will wind up at the banks anyway. But before that it will grow the economy and make people's lives better. And isn't that what this is all about?
thoughtful
YoungerSon's Eagle Project was officially signed off by the troop and handed in at 11AM yesterday morning, 13 hours before the deadline. Now it's in the hands of Council, and he still has to go through his Board of Review, but he's essentially done with it for the next few months until they schedule a Board of Review.
And as to that deadline?
As of today, I no longer have any minor children. YoungerSon is 18 (officially at 3:37 PM, but...today's the day).
I'm really proud of him :)
Happy Birthday, YoungerSon! Love you! DW comments
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cheerfulhttp://dglenn.insanejournal.com/757551.h
"If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his language, that goes to his heart." -- Nelson Mandela
[To Christians celebrating on the Western calendar: a blessed Whitsunday -- Pentecost -- to you!]
Via Flickr:
The Street Fair is the culminating event of the spectacular 31-day Philadelphia International Festival of the Arts.
(via sweet.afternoon-love.com/post/5073769977
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I slept in, went over to Artisan Knits and hung out with my friends for a few hours, came home to swap cars with jebra, used my 50% coupon at JoAnn Fabrics (where I bought a $1 spool of ribbon and more darning needles including the spiffy curved ones), then came home and weeded both the garden in front of the house and the patio. I was outside until it started to get dark, came in and took a shower, had a bit of dinner, and then stuffed two small toy bears. They'd be done by now if I hadn't mislaid the black yarn I need for their eyes and noses. I searched all the likely places but so far the stuff is nowhere to be seen.
( Before and after photos of our patioCollapse )
Another good thing was that three times I caught birds bathing in the pond. Birds can be surprisingly noisy bathers.
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satisfied One really great thing Morphicon offers is, besides a con suite that's pretty well-stocked if you're not vegetarian, hot meals on Friday and Saturday. Friday's was a pizza day, and while bunny_hugger and I were there early, we didn't stuff ourselves unduly and we waited for the line to fade out before going back for seconds. I forget what the dinner was Saturday, or what exactly we did do. We must've done something as I remember we weren't starving in that late-con-day mode in the evening, but, what we did have is a mystery to me. I have this impression of soups; possibly we stocked up at the con suite, which had minestrone at some point, and Cheetos at every point.
We brought bunny_hugger's guitar, and while she wasn't going to be playing it in any con-organized events, there was no particular reason she couldn't just take it out into the hallways and play where she found people willing to listen, and that she did. She couldn't do this in full fursuit --- the paws just don't allow for that fine motor control --- but that's all right. She went around with the simple bunny ears on her head and tail strapped to her belt, and I went in my ears and tail and with the guinea pig puppet, and we strolled around the hotel a couple times.
Part of what's great about Morphicon is that it's so easy to have furry/muggle interactions, and her strolling around, playing, in partial costume, delighted quite a few people who had no idea what was going on but knew for some reason their weekend in Columbus was surrounded by people in animal costumes waving merrily. We got to explain the goings-on as best as we could, and everybody left smiling and thinking things were really cool.
bunny_hugger has been practicing guitar in her spare time, although in the last weeks of term --- including finals week --- there's not much of that. It also turns out that nearly every Kinks song includes not just some freak impossible chord that requires seven fingers on each hand to play, but also shifts between them up to twelve times per second. But she did also work out the chords for a couple of Sparks songs, which are light and merry and fun and also much easier, musically, and she's got enough simpler Beatles or Paul McCartney pieces that she wasn't in danger of boring me or, I think, any onlooker.
Trivia: The first Anglo-French telephone cable, a modified telegraph wire, was laid in 1891. Source: How The World Was One: Beyond The Global Village, Arthur C Clarke.
Currently Reading: On The Edge: The Spectacular Rise And Fall Of Commodore, Brian Bagnall.
PS: Reading the Comics, 16 May 2013, another of those reviews of comic strips that mention mathematics topics.
The Onion!
The Onion was a wee smidge snippy about it.
Links thanks to Geek Press.
This entry was posted at http://nancylebov.dreamwidth.org/100861 comments so far on that entry.
Via Flickr:
11th and Hamilton Streets
Philadelphia, PA
Copyright © 2012, Bob Bruhin. All rights reserved.
(via bruhinb.deviantart.com/art/Panorama-1590-h
I recently read Sam Harris's essay on lying (it's a Kindle single), and it's absolutely fascinating. The usual school of thought on lying it's that it's bad, except white lies are OK. But he rejects most of that as a rationalization, and that telling the truth is still kinder. He also references a book I read two years ago, M. Scott Peck's PEOPLE OF THE LIE, which discusses the repercussions from an explicitly Christian viewpoint. But it's still fascinating for a non-believer like me (and Sam Harris). I'm still working on being more honest in my life, and I'm still angered by the sheer amount of bull**** I've been fed in my life. To get some distance from it, gives me some scope to the enormity of it. And for the folks who thought I was overreacting you have no idea just how many lies I was told, and how manipulated I was. So happy I am living in truth now, and the lesson I'm taking away is it's better to walk away and be in pain than to be pulled into a lie, and be in pain later, and for longer.
thoughtfulSo ![[profile]](http://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ahf and I wandered porchfest today (http://www.somervilleartscouncil.org/p
This year's music that we saw:
Somerville Symphony Orkestar - http://www.ssoband.com/ - VERY STRONG recommendation. If you like Balkan and/or Honk-y and/or BiL, I totally advise seeking out these guys.
Grand Fatilla - http://www.reverbnation.com/grandfatill
Atwoods Bluegrass Band (Sean Staples and His Bluegrass Rangers) - many different URLs. Stumbled on them between the 1st 2 above. Solid.
The Michael J. Epstein Memorial Library - http://michaeljepstein.com/ - I wanted more vocal strength. The über-hipster vibe I think is just inherent in MJE's work.
The Pennies - http://www.thepenniesmusic.com/ - Enjoyable, lightly quirky on the originals we heard, solid on the covers. I'd see 'em again.
Jon Bernhardt - http://www.wobblymusic.com/spaceman/
The Ways and Means Committee - http://www.boston.com/yourtown/news/som
Educate the Antidote - http://www.muziclab.com/artist.php?id=1
The New Babushkas - http://www.voortrek.com/thenewbabus
Dust Clouds of Mars - https://www.facebook.com/DustCloudsofMa
Truckdrivin' Neighbors Downstairs - http://www.truckdrivingneighborsdownsta
The Rhythm Sons - http://www.facebook.com/TheRhythmS
And finally, sadly the Somerville Ukulele Club (SUC) - no web presence - were drowned off their porch by their much louder neighbors.
All in all, a good day and I eagerly await next year!
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happyOk, so I have not been very social with people during Festival this year. My fault. My dad had a bit of a health scare this past month. So a good chunk of my non-work time has been spent helping out with that one way or another. He's recovering and doing well now, which is good. So I'm back to doing social things along with catching up on the usual 'administrivia'. Now I'm sure my readers in Botswana will be sad. "Festival has been ruined," they will say. Delayed, perhaps, but hardly ruined. Nothing says I can't do social things after Festival is over. And I've got the rest of spring and all summer to practice the Official Sport of Festival; croquet. Festival delayed is not Festival denied.
Plus my dad is ok, and will be able to enjoy Festival for many years to come. I'd say that makes 2013 a pretty damn good Festival all by itself.
Watching the show alone, naff. Happily snarking with friends on Facebook, brilliant! :) And I quite like the winning song from Denmark, even if Romania's falsetto vampire was more fun!
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Hi! My name is Dayna, I'm 29 yr old pre op mtf. I used to have a journal but lost the password to my old email, so cannot retrieve it :( So, Alot has went on. see deadjournal.com/users/tsprincessdana (for my ld entries that maybe arent private >.<).....sooo, I decided after some deliberation to make a new journal to document my transition. For those not in the know, I plan on keeping this a little private, but am open to new friends. Alot has changed from the age of 26 to 30- and alot hasnt. This gender dysphoria never went away and was always rearing its ugly head as I tried to.
My fiancee of five years has always known since we were kids (since 13, we turn 30 this year), and she says its been obvious I've been suppressing myself. (apparently my feminine nature rears her head alot when im not trying to act male). After a long talk with an old old friend, and then the wife, I just decided "fuck it, I gotta be me before its too late to", and sometimes, I feel like its too late to do so :(
Ya, I'd have years where I'd live female/ the try (ya try) to live male. and I cant pretend the woman I am isnt real, isnt me. And its just time to tackle my insecurities and realize I should have done this a long long long time ago. So, I talked with my Primary Care Dr. on how I've been diagnosed Gender Dysphoric by multiple counsilors/therapists growing up and he wrote me a letter for "hormone therapy" to an Endo. My question is, in Michigan, is that the document I need for full time HRT?
Further more I've been self medicating with Estradiol Valerate daily (pill form). I know its dangers, and I wont post the dosage, but its not high at all. I've self medicated on and off in the past, so i know the risks, and what to look for, and as it stands, I have one month till my appt with the Endo. If anyone lives downriver in michigan and knows any trans-friendly Endos, speak up! This guy was listed on the transgendered yellow pages but other then that, I know nothing about them :/ I just want to be fully under the care of somone, so I know I'm doing the right thing in those regards.
Anyhow, jsut wanted to say hi :)
optimisticRe this post.
Well, lots of people seem to be going "ooh" and "wow" and "gosh" and such like, so I'm guessing the episode wasn't an anticlimax.
Revised prediction: modified number 4 (with soy sauce and a pancake roll). We don't get to learn the Doctor's name, or if we do it doesn't matter. Instead, having teased us for weeks with The Name Of The Doctor, His Greatest Secret, The First Question and so on and so on, the episode suddenly goes into "what on earth are you bothering about trivia like his name for? There are giant fizzing wardrobes laying waste to the galaxy! Look!! Explosions!!! Lesbian Silurian detective lady!!! Whoosh!! BANG!! Who cares about his name? Who really wants to know the answer to 'Doctor Who?'??? This is FUN!!!!"
Or maybe there's an option 5, somewhere outside the realms of the logic I learned. We shall see. Well, I shall see. You lot already have.
Why do I keep watching it? Good question. Maybe I just can't crush out the last flickering ember of hope that one day it will turn back into the programme I loved. One day, maybe, I will be wowed in spite of myself, and not left going "hang on, that doesn't make sense..."
Hope. It's a real pain sometimes.
Eventually, if you’re trying to make it as a writer, you’re going to despair. You can’t write well enough. This story will never sell. If you do sell it, it’ll never be popular.
This terrible feeling like you’re just wasting your time and nobody cares happens, absurdly enough, to very popular writers. It happens to nobodys. It happens to writers, period. If you’re putting words down and trying to get people to read them, there will be times you’ll want to take everything you wrote, set it on fire, and then fling yourself in to burn with it.
Here is what you do when those down days come: you write more.
Took a nasty rejection straight to the sternum? Write more.
Had a confidence-shredding bad review? Write more.
This grand story in your head is completely beyond your ability to commit it to the page? Write more.
This terrible book you’re reading made millions, and your better work can’t find a home? Write more.
Feel like you’re a fraud who’s somehow lucked out when better writers languish behind you? Write more.
Your favorite author just told you he abhorred what you wrote? Write more.
The thing about writing is that so much of it comes down to tenacity. The most popular writers in the world can all tell you about this fellow they knew when they were starting out, a colleague who could write stories that would charm the petals from a rose… and yet these natural geniuses didn’t stick with it. They either let life swamp them, or couldn’t stand the rejections, or didn’t feel like it. And these magnificently talented people never became Writers, because for whatever reason they never pushed through.
It’s not that they weren’t very good. It’s just that they stopped knocking on doors. While the writer you’ve heard of kept ringing doorbells until she got an answer.
So pushing through is what you need to do. Write when you’re sad. Write when you’re busy. Write when you’re uninspired. Write when you’re utterly consumed with the idea that you cannot do this. Learn to take all of that despondence and to transform it into beauty, for writing in the throes of despair will do two things: when you are writing sad scenes, you will have so many more emotions to cram into it, and when you are writing happy scenes, you will be forced to emulate joy. One will make for better writing, the other will elevate your mood.
The truth is, though I’ve written in both despair and elation, I can’t really tell which mood I was in when I go back to revise. You must learn to write without hope. Keep creating through those dry spells, keep sending out stories during the rejections; decouple your personal contentment from your creative muse and make that bitch dance for you. She’ll be clumsy at first, foolish… but with time, you can make her do the most elaborate pirouettes when you’re barely able to move off the couch.
In fiction, there’s often a plot sequence: Try/fail, try/fail, try/succeed. In real life, there may be a hundred try/fails before you get to that succeed. But you’ll never know unless you stay in that execution loop.
Write.
Write more.
And then write more still.
(Inspired by Catherine Schaff-Stump’s Writers and Despair.)
Cross-posted from Ferrett's Real Blog.
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