Packbat's Journal
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Below are the 50 most recent journal entries recorded in the "Robin Zimmermann" journal:[<< Previous 50 entries]
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11:59 pm
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Open Thread 2009
And, for the new year, an open thread! You know the rules, and so do I - anything that doesn't respond to a recent post can go here.
Tags: open thread
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11:59 pm
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National Novel Writing Month
This is the future-posted National Novel-Writing Month post.
My goal of this month is to write a story about a young man who gets superpowers he is entirely unprepared for. He is not a hero, nor is he a villain. As for what he will become – I do not know. He has fallen into a sea he has never seen and where he swims will be up to him and the tides.
I am titling it "Momentum", as the concept is deeply relevant to the premise. I am titling the chapters after basic physics concepts because I'm that much of a geek. I have no idea if I'll make 50,000, but if you'd like to follow along, just ask.
Current Location: downtown\Mayorga
Current Mood:  calm
Current Music: "Radar Love" - Golden Earring
Tags: journalling, meta, nanowrimo09
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11:57 am
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Writer's Block: Book worms unite!
With the caveat that I'm just naming books off the top of my head, and I might miss something perfectly obvious, and the further caveat that I only include books that I've read straight through:
Best:
- Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome
- One of the best English humor books ever written. Three English blokes (and a dog) decide to go on a trip up the Thames river. What makes it hilarious is J's writing - he is a brilliant raconteur with a poetic, charmingly digressive style, and he finds exceptional material in his reminisces.
(Conveniently, it is available online in several places.)
- Islands in the Net by Bruce Sterling
- You could describe it many ways, but it feels to me a bit like film noir Twenty Minutes in the Future (as they say on the Tropes of the TV). Remarkably, it's still Twenty Minutes in the Future despite being published in 1988 (five years before the Eternal September), which should give you an idea of how strong Sterling's SF chops are. In any case, this stands out for its skilled worldbuilding (of course), characterization, and pacing. Events occur kinetically yet vividly, which is a fine line to walk.
- Watership Down by Richard Adams
- Reportedly, somewhere in the television series Lost, a character named Sawyer says about this: "Hell of a book! It's about bunnies." It would be difficult to describe it more eloquently in less space.
Taking advantage, then, of having more: this is my very first favorite book, and I'm proud to say that it's held up well for more than half my life, reading it again and again. Richard Adams possesses the most fluent descriptive voice that I have ever encountered, and paces it with a master's grace. There is a simply beautiful passage where Hazel (the protagonist) pauses at the mouth of a burrow to check the surroundings before going out in the field, and Adams takes this moment of time to describe in lyrical terms the sights, smells, and sounds of that instant. It is a beautiful trick of the writing art, and Adams wields it with virtuosic skill. A true classic, in the sense of a work which survives the test of time.
And fun to read! Hell of a book, like the man said.
Some books which I considered, but did not include in the top three:
- Shardik by Richard Adams
- A Fire Upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge
- A Woman of the Iron People by Eleanor Arnason
- A Contemporary Introduction to Free Will by Robert Kane
- Fooling Some of the People All of the Time by David Einhorn
- The Doomsday Book by Connie Willis
- Seven Days in May by Fletcher Knebel and Charles W. Bailey II
Worst:
Caveat: I enjoyed most of these. All of them, if I'm honest. I (mostly) don't finish books if I don't. That said...
- Born to Run by Mercedes Lackey and Larry Dixon
- Cheesy modern fantasy. It makes this list less out of any flaw than out of general lack of merit.
- War of Honor by David Weber (Book Ten of the Honor Harrington series)
- The Honor Harrington series follows a very simple formula. That formula has worn paper-thin by Book Ten. The new elements Weber introduces to liven it up do precisely the opposite, except where they introduce a little excitement by being profoundly stupid. I had enjoyed the first two books in the series, continued reading the series out of intertia, and ran out on this one.
In truth, this is probably the worst of my three-worst list. But I feel obliged to bump it from that slot in light of...
- The Radiant Warrior by Leo Frankowski (Book Three of the Conrad Starguard series)
- ...which features ( censored ) trope. The first four books are pure fluff otherwise - time-travel wish fulfillment fantasy of the most elemental sort - but the misogynistic aspects are utterly grating. Fortunately, the most epochal Crowning Moment of Awesome for the series is in Book Two. Unfortunately, as far as respect for women is concerned, the aforementioned ( censored ) is more a dip than a chasm in the narrative.
(I will not include a near-misses list here - I have too much respect for NAME REDACTED and NAME REDACTED, and TITLE REDACTED wasn't supposed to be good in the first place.)
(Edit: Actually below all three books on the list is a Dean Koontz book I read ages ago, my former copy of which my mother decided should be dismembered and recycled rather than continue to exist. I take pride in not remembering the title - it featured incest, Body Horror, thoroughly horrible people, and was written in a loving style which cannot reflect well on the author.)
Current Location: home\west_bedrooom
Current Mood:  analytical
Current Music: "Tin Soldier" by the Small Faces
Tags: books, thoughts, writer's block
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12:06 am
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Why I'm up at midnight on a school night
( Screenshot )
Yes, I just spent hours of my life 'painting' a virtual car with a virtual skyline and a Maryland flag. But that's not the ridiculous part.
No, the ridiculous part is that I didn't plan on putting that Maryland flag on my hood. I was only making it so that I could put it on the license plate.
( Second screenshot )
P.S. Many thanks to netstate.com, for Maryland flag information.
Current Location: home\west_bedroom\
Current Mood:  amused
Current Music: "Crazy Love, Vol. II" - Paul Simon
Tags: geekery, journalling, pictures, silliness
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12:02 pm
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Some much-needed profanity. tldr: I'm still writing, but not for Nano.
( You are about to view content that may not be appropriate for minors. )
Current Location: home\west_bedroom\
Current Mood:  angry
Tags: journalling, nanowrimo09, writing
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09:57 am
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Writer's Block: Message in a bottle
...oh, wait - it's future human generations! That makes things simpler!
I'd say the following would be quite informative of my personal habits and development:
- Imre Lakatos, Proofs and Refutations.
- Turn 10 Studios, Forza Motorsport 2.
- Hergé, The Adventures of Tintin: Red Rackham's Treasure.
If the videogame is out, substitute Abramowitz and Stegun.
Current Location: home\west_bedroom
Current Mood: amused
Current Music: "Planned Obsolescence" - 10,000 Maniacs
Tags: books, writer's block
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12:54 pm
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Greta Christina: The Top One Reason Religion Is Harmful
On AlterNet.
Caveat: If the title suggests that you don't want to read this, then please don't read it. I'm mostly posting for my own reference.
Tags: atheism, link time: few minutes, links, rants, read time: 10 seconds
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09:55 pm
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Pulling another zero.
Sick today - no writing. (Broke 10k yesterday at the College Park write-in, though!)
Tags: journalling, nanowrimo09
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11:14 pm
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4104 and writing war
I'm falling further behind, but I've discovered the writing war trick at my brother's insistence - more updatage in the future, probably after I've finished this chapter.
Tags: journalling, nanowrimo09, read time: 10 seconds
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11:20 pm
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Pulled a zero.
More Nano tomorrow - studying for test today.
Tags: journalling, nanowrimo09, read time: 10 seconds
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06:00 pm
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1741 words
Back from the write-in with my quota - barely.
A question I forgot to ask: does anyone want to read f-locked posts of the Novel So Far? I'm thinking I'll go with the classic make-a-filter option if anyone is interested. (For what it's worth, my brother - who wrote 5074 words - seemed to enjoy it.)
Current Location: home\basement
Current Mood:  creative
Current Music: "Tuesday Afternoon" - The Moody Blues
Tags: journalling, nanowrimo09, read time: 10 seconds, writing
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03:37 pm
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1040 words
60% of one day's wordcount, and I've kicked things off with a literal bang. Unfortunately, I've a headache, $2.50 of iced coffee I don't want, 1/3 of a brownie I don't want, and a bit of a block.
I guess I just need to remind myself, as the Bard once said, to "lay on - and curst be he who first cries, 'Halt, enough!'"
Current Location: downtown/Mayorga
Current Mood:  ditzy
Current Music: "Walk of Life" - Dire Straits
Tags: journalling, link time: a minute, nanowrimo09, read time: 10 seconds, writing
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11:06 am
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Writer's Block: Would you talk to the dead?
I haven't - I might attend one as a favor for a close friend if they wanted me there. If I did, though, I wouldn't be planning on trying to summon any spirit at all, or expect to get any message from the dead. I'm fairly sure that death is the end.
That said, I wouldn't object having a chance to have a real conversation with my maternal grandfather. I just think it's impossible.
Current Location: home\basement
Current Mood:  hungry
Current Music: "You Get What You Give" - New Radicals
Tags: dead, link time: substantial, ouiji, read time: 10 seconds, seance, thoughts, writer's block
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05:04 pm
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A couple days ago.
And I just got a stack of CDs to import, too.
Current Location: home\basement
Current Mood:  cynical
Current Music: "All I Wanna Do" - Sheryl Crow
Tags: journalling, read time: 10 seconds
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09:00 pm
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For anyone who doesn't follow xkcd daily: Bag Check
(Or rather, because I was incapable of not reposting this.)
Current Location: home\basement
Current Mood: amused
Current Music: "Material Girl" - Madonna
Tags: comics, geekery, link time: many minutes, read time: 10 seconds
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12:40 am
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Entered NaNoWriMo.
Packbat's writer profile.
Still thinking about what to write.
Tags: journalling, link time: substantial, psa, read time: 10 seconds, writing
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08:11 pm
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As you know, Bob, Tony Perkins lies a lot for money.
A link to pass on: Slacktivist explains the lie Tony Perkins is telling for money about the expansion of hate crime legislation to cover LGBT persons. Money quote:
The only extent to which hate-crime protections pertain to "thought" is in the way that all criminal law does, which is to say that motive matters. If you truly believe that the law should make no distinction between accidental manslaughter and premeditated first-degree homicide, because you truly believe that any such distinction constitutes the establishment of "thought crime," then I will accept that you are making this "thought-crime" objection to hate-crime legislation in good faith. (I'll think you're kind of an idiot, but at least a sincere idiot.) But you can't accept that distinction and still argue in good faith that hate crimes are "thought crimes."
P.S. If anyone you know is concerned that hate crime legislation could infringe their freedom of speech, two words: Fred Phelps.
P.P.S. On a related note, a riddle courtesy of eyelessgame in the comments: What terrorist organization has killed more Americans than al Qaeda?
Current Location: home\basement
Current Mood: angry
Current Music: "Long Ride Home" - Patty Griffin
Tags: link time: few minutes, links, politics, rants, read time: a minute
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02:14 pm
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Packbat NaNoWriMo (Y/N)?
Poll #1471665 Should I try NaNoWriMo this year?
This poll is closed.
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 6Should I enter National Novel Writing Month 2009?
If it matters, some Reasons To Enter:
- Eric Burns-White said so [teal deer version: because if I like writing, I ought to actually write something, and NaNoWriMo provides motive and emotional support]
- Because I'll be going into a PhD program soon, and that'll make it harder to carry out major projects.
- Because it's just cool.
...and some Reasons Not To Enter:
- Because I'm in a MS program, and that makes it harder to carry out major projects.
- Because
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/community.gif) nomicide is heating up and I need to be available.
- Because I'm not getting enough sleep as it is.
- Because I'm rubbish at dialogue and plot.
...and some Reasons To Ignore The Above Reasons:
- Because I'm not really that busy this semester.
- Because nomicide isn't a huge burden anyway.
- Because I'm not getting sleep thanks to screwing around on the Internet all night.
- Because I won't become any good at dialogue and plot without trying.
...not to mention Reasons To Ignore The Further Above Reasons:
- Because there are ways to get writing experience which are more likely to produce good literature.
- Because the PhD program won't be forever, and I'll have the rest of my life to do crazy things like this.
- Because very few people will be particularly impressed.
...yeah.
Current Location: school\office
Current Mood: contemplative
Current Music: "All I Want" - Joni Mitchell
Tags: link time: substantial, polls, questions, read time: a minute, writing
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09:36 am
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Writer's Block: What is your muse?
Oddly, I don't usually think of other people when I'm working on an aesthetic endeavor (as opposed to a practical matter, such as a user interface). Perhaps I should - when I judge it purely for myself I rather come off poorly.
Current Location: school\ASME_lounge
Current Mood:  sleepy
Current Music: "Thinking Of You" - Tracy Chapman
Tags: creative muse, creative process, inspiration, thoughts, writer's block
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10:59 pm
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Because we should celebrate
From across the blagocube:
Comment here and tell me something you did recently that you're proud of and I'll comment and tell you that you're awesome and I'm proud of you. And if you see anyone comment and you know them (or understand why they'd be proud of that thing), then you comment to them and tell them why they should be pleased with themselves.
Current Location: home\basement
Current Mood:  busy
Tags: memes, read time: 10 seconds
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07:34 pm
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Writer's Block: Go to the head of the class
I usually want to sit near the front and far from the exits - near the exit if I have to leave early, but I rarely do. As for paying attention, I have trouble when I'm sleep-deprived, but boring material is rarely an obstacle: you can always treat it as an anthropological expedition when all else fails.
Current Location: home\basement
Current Mood: amused
Current Music: "The Vgly Vnderneath" - XTC
Tags: classroom, meeting etiquette, read time: 10 seconds, sit close, writer's block
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06:48 pm
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A letter to Eden Games, developers of Test Drive Unlimited
To whom it may concern:
I am writing to you as a great fan of Test Drive Unlimited for two reasons: first, to thank you for making such a great game, and second, to suggest a few things I noticed that could make it even better.
Before I say anything else, I want to say that TDU is probably my favorite videogame of all time. The driving physics feel realistic without being unmanageable, the fleet of available cars is extensive and well-crafted, the traffic AI is beautifully implemented, and the variety of missions and challenges is enough to satisfy anyone. Most importantly, the major selling point of the game - the freedom to simply drive anywhere on the network of roads covering the island of Oahu - simply works; in contrast to previous games (such as GTA: Vice City), only the rarest of hiccups interrupt one's drive.
I would say that there are only three things to which I must direct your attention. I am sure you are well aware of the corresponding issues, but I will mention them nonetheless.
First, I notice that the game seems to have been designed with the outside-the-car cameras in mind. I don't really object to this - I know many people like to play that way - but I've noticed that when I am using the inside-the-car camera I (a) can't see traffic lights when I stop at the intersection and (b) can't turn the camera quickly to look in directions away from where I'm going. These aren't game-breaking issues, but it would be cool if the team could spend a little more time on them.
Second, the classification system for the cars is somewhat unsatisfactory. For example, in Class G, the Mercedes Gullwing is much slower than the Pontiac Firebird, which is much slower than the Lamborghini Miura, which is much slower than the Shelby Daytona. In the other classes, too, several assignments are dubious (e.g. the TVR T440R as C instead of A). Adding a numerical rating system like in Forza 2 would be able to capture these details more clearly (although even in Forza 2 the Porsche 914 was underrated). It would also support the addition of a more complicated tuning system, like in the Forza and Gran Turismo series.
Third, there's no way to tell whether another human car is a fair challenge for you before you challenge them except by knowing all the models. Again, the numerical system could help with this: for example, an identical opponent could be displayed with a white halo (like the health indications in Left 4 Dead), and the halo could fade towards pink and red for faster opponents and toward gray and black for slower. (I chose these colors arbitrarily - if you have better ideas, please ignore them.)
Thank you for your time and trouble,
Robin Zimmermann
P.S. I just finished all the missions to get "Ace" rank in TDU!
Current Location: home\basement
Current Mood:  cheerful
Current Music: "All She Wants To Do Is Dance" - Don Henley
Tags: geekery, read time: a minute, video games
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01:34 pm
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"and if you’re against it, then get out of the way."
From ![[info]](http://s.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png) baldanders, here and there:
Alan Grayson (D-FL) is my hero. Seriously, he tells it like it is, without fear of the insurance companies, and certainly not without fear of the Republican lie machine:
"We as a party have spent the last six months, the greatest minds in our party, dwelling on the question, the unbelievably consuming question of how to get Olympia Snowe to vote on health care reform. I want to remind us all that Olympia Snowe was not elected President last year. Olympia Snowe has no veto power in the Senate. Olympia Snowe represents a state with one half of one percent of America's population.
"What America wants is health care reform. America doesn't care if it gets 51 votes in the Senate or 60 votes in the Senate or 83 votes in the Senate, in fact America doesn't even care about that, it doesn't care about that at all. What America cares about is this; there are over 1 million Americans who go broke every single year trying to pay their health care bills. America cares a lot about that. America cares about the fact that there are 44,780 Americans who die every single year on account of not having health care, that's 122 every day. America sure cares a lot about that. America cares about the fact that if you have a pre-existing condition, even if you have health insurance, it's not covered. America cares about that a lot. America cares about the fact that you can get all the health care you need as long as you don't need any. America cares about that a lot. But America does not care about procedures, processes, personalities, America doesn't care about that at all." [. . .]
"Last week I held up this report here and I pointed out that in America there are 44,789 Americans that die every year according to this Harvard report published in this peer reviewed journal because they have no health insurance. That's an extra 44,789 Americans who die whose lives could be saved, and their response was to ask me for an apology." [. . .]
"Well, I'm telling you this; I will not apologize. I will not apologize. I will not apologize for a simple reason; America doesn't care about your feelings. [. . .] America does care about health care in America. And if you're against it, then get out of the way. You can lead, you can follow or you can get out of the way. [. . .] America understands that there is one party in this country that is favor of health care reform and one party that is against it, and they know why.
"They understand that if Barack Obama were somehow able to cure hunger in the world the Republicans would blame him for overpopulation. They understand that if Barack Obama could somehow bring about world peace they would blame him for destroying the defense industry. In fact, they understand that if Barack Obama has a BLT sandwich tomorrow for lunch, they will try to ban bacon.
"But that's not what America wants; America wants solutions to its problems, and that begins with health care."
Current Location: school\ASME_lounge
Current Mood:  impressed
Tags: politics, rants, read time: few minutes, speeches, united states, youtube
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04:39 pm
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New jacket!
Went to Value Village today to get some cheap new-to-me slacks for work. And while I was there, I found a pair of leather shoes in my size and ... this.
Only twenty bucks, too! There's a seam with a few stiches loose in the lining, but the zipper is intact and the snap-closures don't stick.
awesome++.
(In other news, eating spaghetti with a spoon is ... less than elegant. Also, Interviewing Leather is still a great read.)
Current Location: home\basement
Current Mood:  jubilant
Current Music: "Sister Andrea" - Mahavishnu Orchestra
Tags: journalling, link time: many minutes, read time: 10 seconds, shopping
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10:24 pm
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Desktop Snapshot
Meme via ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) wingywolf, shamelessly adulterated by myself:
1. Take a snapshot of your desktop. Now. No changing it!
2. Explain in no more than five sentences why you're using that wallpaper!
3. Post!
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Desktop snapshot
As you can see, the icons are right-oriented as per the Macintosh convention. The image is from DeviantArt here. |
Why this image? Three reasons: first, it's work-safe; second, it's low-brightness (good for late-night eye-ruining!); and three, it looks quite good.
Current Location: home\basement
Current Mood: amused
Current Music: "Dude Looks Like A Lady" - Aerosmith
Tags: memes, pictures, read time: 10 seconds
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08:07 pm
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My Atheism
Greta Christina recently posted something rather brilliant about atheism and self-definition that ... well, it inspires me to define my atheism, just so people know where I'm coming from.
I'd love to see people's reactions to this, by the way. I might be too busy to react properly, but I'll try to answer questions, comments, complains, and arguments, whatever reaction you have to what I say.
*clears throat*
I'm an atheist. What that means is that I don't believe that anything like a god is real. I'm not totally certain - I don't think any atheist is totally certain, however hyperbolic their rhetoric might become in the heat of debate - but I've thought about this quite a lot for quite a while, I've read a lot of arguments, and all told I simply don't believe it. I'm pretty sure that the people who do believe there are any gods, be it one, a few, or many, are simply mistaken.
I'm an atheist. I'm a strong atheist - I believe that no such thing as a god is real. Now, this distinction commonly causes semantic confusion: "I don't believe gods are real" doesn't mean "I believe gods are imaginary", never mind that I could state both truthfully; it's perfectly common for atheists to not believe that gods exist, while simultaneously not believing that gods don't exist. Such persons don't believe they have the evidence to commit either way on the question. I do.
I'm an atheist. I'm a metaphysical naturalist - I think the universe operates according to fundamentally non-mental principles. Richard Carrier defined supernaturalism well in an essay a couple years ago: supernatural things cannot be broken down into non-mental pieces. That makes no sense to me. Everything I have ever learned - my education in philosophy, in physics, in psychology, in mathematics, in computer science, in literature - has given me a strong instinct that somewhere at the base of it all are simple mathematical laws. I draw the comparison to Conway's Game of Life: the rules are basic and unbreakable, but through their implications on higher and higher levels of complexity in the world shaped as it is we find everything with which we are familiar.
I'm an atheist. I don't believe there's any overlord of the universe to dictate moral laws for us, nor any afterlife wherein our acts can be judged. Our morals are our own - earned in the struggles and victories of our ancestral species, forged on the anvil of a world which does not tell us what we should do, but merely referees. Our senses of beauty, of honor, of justice, of fairness, of charity, of love, of pride, of disgust ... every subjective experience we have is ours, proven on the steppes from which we came and coming together to create that which is us. To declare that this makes goodness into something meaningless is, if you'll forgive the rhyme, senseless - we're not stupid, and if we value goodness, that is meaning enough.
I'm an atheist. I am an atheist because I have the freedom to be thus - the freedom to learn, to decide, and to proclaim. I would not live where I was required to be thus by ignorance, deception, or coercion: to be an atheist freely is to be aware of the need for freedom. As Alfred Tarski is quoted to have said, "The sentence 'snow is white' is true if and only if snow is white" - and to be forced to believe that snow is white is to be coerced to believe, be that belief true or false. The only way to be free to believe truth is to be free to believe what one must on the strength of one's own judgement.
I'm an atheist. I care about being an atheist - I care about what I believe, and about being true to what I believe. I want to be treated decently and with respect. I want the people who disagree with me to listen to me - to trust my sincerity and my rationality - and when they argue with me, I want them to be sincere and rational in doing so. I want the arguments against me to stem from a fair and charitable reading of my sometimes-clumsy explanations - you can fight me, but fight the true implications of my world-view with the true implications of yours.
Tags: life, link time: few minutes, philosophy, read time: few minutes, thoughts
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07:47 pm
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Writer's Block: What if calories didn't count?
If a bonafide, JREF-certified magical genie I could trust to be truthful said my calories wouldn't count for 24 hours ... I'd try something which filthspigot mentioned in the commentary to A Girl And Her Fed: a milkshake with a stick of butter in it.
Tags: calories, dieting, food, read time: 10 seconds, writer's block
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12:56 am
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Easy Hard Problems
"What's the easiest unsolved math problem to explain?" I asked my dad tonight, just out of curiosity. I asked because the two obvious, famous answers - Fermat's last theorem and the four-color problem - are both (probably) solved.
Well, I can't guarantee the actual answer is here, but a few candidates he pointed me to:
- The P = NP problem: if the answer to a computational yes-no question can be checked quickly (in polynomial time), does that imply it may be answered quickly (in polynomial time)? This is a marginal case, as a lot of people don't know what "polynomial time" is, so two better candidates are...
- Goldbach's conjecture: that every even integer greater than 2 can be written as the sum of two primes, and...
- The twin prime conjecture: that there exist an infinite number of twin primes - primes separated by two (like 3 and 5). (Bonus: this is a special case of Polignac's conjecture.) However, there are a pair which do not even require understanding primes...
- The existence of (a) an infinite number of even perfect numbers and/or (b) the existence of any odd perfect number. Perfect numbers being, in these examples, those which equal the sum of all the divisors smaller than themselves - such as 6, equal to 1+2+3, and 28, equal to 1+2+4+7+14.
(Now, one could argue that an even easier hard problem to state is "how come things fall", but that's physics!)
Tags: link time: many minutes, links, math, read time: a minute
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01:25 pm
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Writer's Block: Do you see psychics in your future?
If, today, someone online proclaimed to have discovered through psychic powers that I should not leave home, I would consider three possibilities:
1. They were trolling in an attempt to disrupt my life.
2. They knew something, and were hiding that knowledge behind the excuse of "psychic powers".
3. They had a strong feeling that I was in danger, and interpreted it as a warning.
The first implies nothing. The second is extremely unlikely, but implies danger. The third implies almost nothing.* Whatever the true facts, I would not let it interfere with my plans (although I might be marginally more alert to unusual circumstances).
As for astrological signs ... frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn.
* I am aware that there are individuals on my friends list that would dispute this. Such persons should trust their own judgements on the matter as far as they feel justified in doing so - I shall trust my own judgement likewise.
Current Location: home\basement
Current Mood: calm
Current Music: "Shut Us Down" - Lindsey Buckingham
Tags: paranormal, read time: 10 seconds, writer's block
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09:09 pm
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The Sliding Scale of Cooking From Scratch
(You can tell I TVTropes too much, can't you?)
0: Selected. This is (almost1) the theoretical minimum - telling someone else what you want so they can prepare it for you. When you call the pizza place, this is what you're doing.
1: Heated. Whether it be oven, microwave, or boiling water, this degree of preparation consists of "take prepackaged food and make it hot".2 When you put a toaster pastry in the toaster, that's this.
2: From mix. At this point, you begin to put some genuine effort into the dish - at the least, measuring and stirring - but the tricky parts of the recipe are still taken care of for you. As you might guess, this covers any product with "mix" in its name - chili mix, cake mix - as well as those horrid "mac & cheese" boxes with the powdered chemical byproducts.
3: From ingredients. The minimum level to actually count as "cooking from scratch" - here you go all the way back to butter, flour, sugar, baking soda, salt, chopped nuts, egg, semi-sweet chocolate, vanilla extract, ¼ teaspoon water, and drop by half-teaspoonfuls onto greased baking sheets to bake at 375 °F for 10-12 minutes. If you went to a grocery store, bought items with fewer than five ingredients listed on the label, and put them together at home to make the dish, that's this.
4: From organisms. When you go hunting, fishing, berry-picking, or the like, you've reached this level.
5: Farmed. When a dish is composed of food you grew yourself - from a tomato patch to a laying chicken all the way up to a full-fledged farm - you have reached the top of the scale.3 Congratulations.
As a rule of thumb, if all the major components of a dish are on the same level, the dish should be counted on that level. (If you shoot a deer and fry up a cut with seasoned salt, it's still a "4".) However, if major components span multiple levels, that should be indicated. (A pie filling made from ingredients and baked in a store-bought shell is a "1 to 3".)
1. I say "almost" because going to a dinner with a set menu would remove even this degree of control over the proceedings. ^
2. On reflection, pouring milk into cereal would probably count as this level too, despite no heating being involved. ^
3. Technically, the human mind can conceive a more basic level, but it's not commonly practiced. ^
Current Location: home\basement
Current Mood: amused
Tags: food, read time: few minutes, thoughts
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09:26 pm
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Diary Function Evaluated At Arbitrary Timestamp
(This is electrickeet's fault, by the way.)
So, what was I doing at 09-09-09 09:09 (GMT-09)?
Let's see ... order of magnitude distance estimate, convert to time, divide by reciprocal six ... correct for error in watch time ... I believe I was on the fourth floor of physics, panting heavily, having just run up from the basement two buildings over carrying a 2/3rds complement of Standard College Student Backpack Items trying to make class lecture before it started.
Current Location: home\basement
Current Mood:  lethargic
Current Music: "Ball And Chain" - Janis Joplin, Big Brother and the Holding Company
Tags: geekery, journalling, read time: 10 seconds
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01:20 pm
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Writer's Block: Top of the Charts
Weirdly, not Joni Mitchell, Paul Simon, Tracy Chapman, Suzanne Vega, R.E.M., Shawn Colvin, Dire Straits, Tom Petty, Patty Griffin, 10,000 Maniacs, Counting Crows, Spoon, Peter Gabriel, Regina Spektor, Alanis Morrissette, The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Who, The Doors, The Police, or even The Be Good Tanyas. Remarkably, the track in question is "Nowheres Nigh" by Parts and Labor, a track off the Jagjaguwar 2008/2009 Sampler Amazon.com had as a free download a while back.
It's pretty kickin' when you crank the volume, though, so that's cool.
Current Location: home\basement
Current Mood:  curious
Current Music: Janie's Got A Gun - Aerosmith
Tags: music, read time: 10 seconds, writer's block
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05:37 pm
[Link] | Bookmarks!
(Actually from August 17, but I forgot to post.)
Tags: bookmarks, link time: substantial
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11:38 pm
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The PA "Seduction Community" Dialogue - Another Response
Day before yesterday, Jerry "Tycho" Holkins commented on his fascination with the deeply disturbing "seduction community", and Mike "Gabe" Krahulik stepped in to play devil's advocate.
I completely see where both of these people are coming from, here. But in this particular case, Tycho is very straightforwardly correct, and Gabe's instinctive fairmindness is misplaced. And normally I wouldn't be so confident staking out my spot in this minefield, but I happen to have an advantage: just last month, a completely unrelated community which I have been involved in discussed this question, and the conclusions of the discussion are pretty clear.
The seduction community, or pick-up artist community, or whatever it's called, explicitly treats sexual relations between persons as a game in which the player - singular - seeks to win against opposition. This attributes an explicit status imbalance in which only the man is an actor (cf. Bark/Bite, "Do You Tell a Football What Time the Superbowl Starts?") and in which sexual congress raises the status of the man and lowers that of the woman. It's sexist, offensive, and wrong.
End of line.
P.S. Obviously, two days being an eternity in the wonderful world of cyberspace, I have been preceded in remarking on this discussion - goblinpaladin, pandagon's Amanda Marcotte.
P.P.S. If there are people reading this is frustrated in their desire to find sexual partners, recall that people are complicated. Anyone offering shortcuts is lying.
Tags: ethics, etiquette, life, link time: many minutes, links, rants, read time: a minute, thoughts
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10:09 pm
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Repost: An argument.
On Fred Clark's blog, slacktivist:
A: Sarah Palin is lying about health care reform.
B: Whoa, hold on there. That's quite the accusation. You want to use the L-word, you're going to have to prove it.
A: That's not difficult. Here is the outrageous and demonstrably untrue lie in question, from her Facebook page:
The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama’s “death panel” so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their “level of productivity in society,” whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil.
She's accusing President Obama of trying to create a "death panel" in which bureaucrats will decide whether or not to euthanize the elderly and handicapped children. That simply isn't true. It isn't close to anything that's close to being true. She's lying.
B: So you say.
A: No, what I say is irrelevant. What matters is what she said versus what the reality is. She is lying.
B: OK, let's just say for the sake of argument that what she is saying there isn't true ...
Enjoy the followup as well.
Tags: link time: few minutes, links, politics, read time: 10 seconds
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10:22 am
[Link] | From padparadscha (don't blame me!)
INFO
1. Name:
2. Birthday:
3. Where do you live:
4. IM:
5. What are you studying/What are you working as:
6. What makes you happy:
7. What are you listening to now/have listened to last:
8. Weirdest food you like:
9. An interesting fact about you:
10. Are you in love/have a crush at the moment:
11. Favorite place to be:
12. Favorite lyric:
13. Best time of the year:
14. Put a picture of yourself:
RECOMMEND
1. A film:
2. A book:
3. A song:
4. A band:
5. A tv show:
PLUS
1. One thing you like about me:
2. Two things you like about yourself:
3. Put this in your lj so I can tell you what I think of you?
Tags: read time: few minutes
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10:59 am
[Link] | From peterchayward
Don't take too long to think about it. 15 books you've read that will always stick with you. They don't have to be the greatest books you've ever read, just the ones that stick with you. First 15 you can recall in no more than 15 minutes. Copy these instructions and do it yourself, because I'm interested in seeing what books are in your head.
(I spent more than 15 minutes. I r slo.)
1. A Gentleman's Agreement by Laura Z. Hobson. This is the book I often talk about when I'm talking about racism - the movie is good as well, although I prefer the text. The thing is: the problem doesn't stop with the people who go out hunting with baseball bats and chains and trucks on back roads. It's an education, for sure.
2. Watership Down by Richard Adams. This is merely one of the best written books in the English language. Adams is very simply a master of description, and he uses it in a way which flows seamlessly with the narration - I remember vividly scenes where a pause in the action is indicated, not by any explicit statement, but by the opening up of the world which occurs in the pauses, the sounds and sights that awaken in the silences of our conversations.
3 & 4. A Woman Of The Iron People by Eleanor Aranson, Islands in the Net by Bruce Sterling. These are simply good SF - books that take you to a place that does not exist and let you live with its natives. The former is one of the best anthropological SF stories I have read, better than Ursula Le Guin - simply very, very interesting. The latter is a political thriller in a world not unlike our own that is just a superb piece of storytelling - a story with all the tempo of a potboiler, but just intellectual in a way which those are not.
5. Transmetropolitan #1 by Warren Ellis and Darick Robertson. I swear this book is the most anti-classy ode to Truth I have ever read. It's a series I haven't finished reading, but even Vol. 1 alone is a poem. A poem you wouldn't want to read in church, but still.
6. Abel's Island by William Steig. An illustrated talking-animals book for the younger set (not youngest set, but those to whom Watership Down is incorrectly marketed, I believe); a simple bildungsroman, but well done.
7. Proofs and Refutations by Imre Lakatos. A lesson in the form of dialogue (polylogue? "Dia" always seems wrong when many people are speaking) in the nature of mathematical proofs, surrounding Euler's formula and the counterexamples to it. Suggests many things, including (and this counters a widespread myth) that mathematical proofs aren't truly perfect and irrefutable deliverances of knowledge.
8. Slaughterhouse 5 by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. It's just a fantastic example of someone breaking the rules of novels in a way which works, breaking narrative order, breaking the division between falsity and truth ... it's somehow still readable. And it has a reality to it, a coherency in the face of its manifest contradictions and blatant insertions of biography into fiction.
9. Consciousness Explained by Daniel Dennett. Just an impressive, impressive dissection of the thing that is us, destroying an army of illusions in its wake.
10. Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome. One of the best humor books of all time. No more need be said. (Except that it's old, so you can find it for free online and for cheap in the shops.)
11. Still River by Hal Clement. This is not what you might call a great book - every flaw that Hal Clement's writing is prone to, this book suffers from ... but the setting! I will long remember this one fondly just as an utterly science-fiction potboiler - only no bodies, just the brute mystery of the research project the protagonists have to complete.
12. Mission of Gravity by Hal Clement. Probably one of his best books (although Needle might be more popular). Don't read Still River if you don't like Mission of Gravity, but Mission of Gravity is a classic. Especially if you have the edition with the discussion of the creation of the book, a discussion which I highly recommend to every SF fan.
13. Shardik by Richard Adams. I joked with toya121 that if I had a million dollars, I'd give everyone I know a copy of this book - like Watership Down, it is just magnificently written. Much more depressing, though, and epic on a grander scale.
14. A Fire Upon The Deep by Vernor Vinge. Science fiction rather than fantasy, but still greater in scope and grandeur. A real potboiler, too. Pay attention to the side stories.
15. I will cheat a little with the last slot: On War by Carl von Clausewitz. I have not finished reading it, but it is a simply muscular work. I anticipate much of it.
Tags: books, read time: few minutes
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09:40 pm
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"Don't Look Back" by Terry Cavanagh
A retelling of the legend of Orpheus descending into Hades to bring back his dead wife. A platformer - a little tricky, but not long.
Via Emily Short.
Tags: link time: many minutes, read time: 10 seconds
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04:37 pm
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Word of the Day: Mardy
Mardy: Throwing a tantrum and/or feeling self-pity because you didn't get your way.
Via Mitz's "Plan B", where Veronica heads home "in a mard". Urban Dictionary also mentions telling people, "Stop being such a mard arse!"
(This post attempts to imitate prettygoodword, a much more reliable source of nifty words. Checkit.)
Tags: link time: many minutes, read time: 10 seconds, words
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03:01 pm
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Five Good Things About Today
Memesheeped from stagemanager.
1. I finished writing the summary of events in Issue #1 of my Truth & Justice campaign. (Linked post was not xposted as it was posted with iPhone app.) (Technically, this was last Evening, but clock-time was today.)
2. All my transfers this morning (boarding the train near my house, switching trains downtown, and catching the shuttle to school) went quite well.
3. Tasty, tasty co-op burrito! Also juice.
4. Had a great rambling convo with some dudes in the Lounge of the ASME. Among other things, we concluded that Maryland is, in fact, a Southern State, despite the facts that (1) Wikipedia disagrees and (2) the Baltimore-Washington Metropolitan Area is generally more cosmopolitan.
5. Air conditioning! Yeah, it's probably ecologically unsustainable, but it sure is nice!
This entry was originally posted at http://packbat.dreamwidth.org/266032.html.
Tags: glurge, memes, read time: 10 seconds
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06:58 pm
![[User Picture]](http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/86923007/6424329) [Link] |
Truth & Justice #1!
So! Yesterday, I had the character creation and first "issue" of my Truth & Justice campaign! Good:
- The players weren't too many - only two, actually - and they both came up with great superhero concepts, real characters. Set up a lot of potential story hooks!
- The campaign intro I started with went well - the two heroes have now met, and are implicitly on the same side (as is good and proper), the existence of a Big Bad has been hinted at, and the first fight scene has been paused at an appropriately dramatic point. Oh yes, the tension is magnificent!
- Everyone had a good time.
Bad Evil Not So Good Unfortunate:
- All of us are still really shaky on the rules.
- The campaign intro I've set up I set up mid-session, clunkily, while everyone was upstairs eating chips and drinking root beer. Side effects: not so much sense of space, heavily imbalanced combat scene. If I hadn't thought up a Big Bad in advance - and a spare super whom I could turn villanous and drop in - I'd be in it deep.
Anyway - next session is next week. Guess I know how I need to spend my evenings!Posted via LiveJournal.app.
Tags: comics, games, geekery, read time: 10 seconds, via ljapp
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09:22 am
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Writer's Block: Little White Lies
Lies are always risky - gambling for a chance of the good outcome against a chance of a disaster. The odds are fairly favorable for little lies about small things, but it's usually better to be honest if there's a way to get a similar outcome without the lie. I can easily forgive failing to accomplish this under the time pressure of normal conversation, though.
Tags: read time: 10 seconds, thoughts, writer's block
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10:52 am
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Writer's Block: Newsworthy
Most often would be the AP newswire in the form of the "AP Mobile" app on iPhone - for example, their coverage of the recent DC rail accident was excellent. I also use the NYTimes app frequently.
Other than that, I will occasionally pick up my parent's (paper) copy of the Washington Post, and I will read links in blogs or emails from my parents.
Tags: link time: a minute, news, read time: 10 seconds, writer's block
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10:44 pm
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Writer's Block: All-Nighter
The lock-in at X3O! Yep, that was a fun night of videogaming, indeedy! (And we rocked out in the Left 4 Dead tournament!)
Tags: journalling, read time: 10 seconds, video games, writer's block
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09:30 am
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FiveThirtyEight: Worst. Damage Control. Ever.
I've generally tended to take the position that while the people running Iran are a bunch of reactionary thugs, they're at least a fairly intelligent bunch of reactionary thugs.
After this revelation on Iranian Press TV, however, I'm not so certain.
FiveThirtyEight: Worst. Damage Control. Ever.
(As I mentioned in the Google Reader repost, NY Times noted that Iranians are allowed to vote in districts they aren't registered in. This in no way suffices to explain what we're seeing here.)
Tags: iran, link time: a minute, links, politics, read time: 10 seconds
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10:02 pm
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"The Wire", Season One
I mentioned picking up the complete first season of The Wire - finished that today.
I'll say this much: I wasn't disappointed. Glad I paid for that one.
Current Location: home\west_bedroom\south_bed
Current Mood: satisfied
Current Music: "Making Love Out Of Nothing At All", Air Supply
Tags: read time: 10 seconds, reviews, tv
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10:32 pm
![[User Picture]](http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/48671133/6424329) [Link] |
Not an update.
I haven't read my flist in ages - so many ages, in fact, that I actually lost entries.
But for the record: every personal journal on my friendslist I read.
(P.S. Excluding work-related material, the main news in my life is my new DVDs: the first ADV English-dub/sub DVD of Azumanga Daioh - only five episodes - watched, Volume One of Batman: The Animated Series, watched first two episodes, and The Wire: The Complete First Season, watched first three episodes. Oh, and I should probably write a review of the first Dresden Files book, but I need to reread it to do that. And I want to run a Truth & Justice campaign next month, so I really ought to prepare...)
Current Mood:  tired
Tags: journalling, read time: 10 seconds
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07:57 pm
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Tank Man
On the twentieth anniversary of Tiananmen Square, the New York Times "Lens" blog made two memorial posts regarding the photographs of the Tank Man: first, the classic four photos with comments from the photographers, and second, the fifth photo, unreleased until now.
I am sure I can say nothing to add to these. But I am wondering: what of the driver and other crew of that lead Type 59 tank? It seems to me an incredible thing, that these four PLA soldiers, presumably with orders to drive away the protesters from the square, saw this single man (incongruously carrying plastic bags, as if he was just out shopping) walk out in front of them ... and they stopped. Their guns were silent. Ashamedly, the driver turns the tank to go around the man - like you might turn your car to avoid a pothole - but the man puts his body in the way, seventy or so kilos of meat and bone against thirty six thousand of metal, and ... I don't know. Were they confused? Or did they, somehow, in the midst of the machinegunning of hundreds of people, look out through their periscopes and see a person, a fellow human being, before them?
I have been thinking for a while that nonviolent protest is the strangest sort of moral judo - if war is an extension of diplomacy, seeking victory by the destruction of your enemies personhood, then this is likewise an extension, an anti-war, seeking victory by the construction of your own personhood. The acts of passive resistance bewilder because it is impossibly to justify as war. It can only be understood as human.
We don't know who the Tank Man is. As far as I am aware, we don't even know who was in the tanks.
Tags: history, link time: few minutes, read time: a minute, thoughts
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09:19 pm
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Mishle Packbat: The Proper Shape and Stiffness of Moral Strictures
Hi! I'm going to talk to you about morality, because I'm arrogant and you're imperfect.
No, these facts have no relation. Everyone is imperfect - myself more than you, I wager - and I'd be arrogant even if the lot of you were plaster saints. But the second has interesting consequences which the first permits me to address.
(And as long as I'm blathering, let me make a quick clarification: morality is not law, and law is not morality. If you find yourself interchanging the two, you need to recheck your math. Moving on.)
The thing about morality I want to address today is not the content, but the form. Morality acts on three grammatical persons - the first, the second, and the third - and among most people it tends to be different for all three. (This is why Mormons come to your door - it's harder to be rude to a face than a phone.) This makes sense except for one important factor: a lot of people (though probably fewer than it seems) get the proportions backwards, and need correction. So let me break it down for you.
In the first person - in your morality for you - you ought to be strict but fair. As some wit commonly cited as "Yahl, J." is quoted: "Perfection is our goal, excellence will be tolerated." Stick to the straight and narrow road, get it right the first time, and if you get it wrong, get it right the next time. Practice your morality with all the intensity, precision, and dedication that you were supposed to practice the piano when you were growing up.
In the second person, and still more in the third person - in your morality for your friends and for your strangers - be looser. If your personal code is the double-yellow line, give your friends the entire road and strangers two city blocks in both directions. If your personal code is the Geneva Conventions, let your friends have the Declaration of Independence and allow the rest the Golden Rule. Or, if you prefer: an it harm none, let everyone else do what they will.
Why this? Because you don't really know what's right and wrong, not to any sensible degree of accuracy. Oh, you're better off than the Hittite slave holder who, lacking our hard-won experience, never made the connection between the wretched condition of the slave and the moral repugnance of the institution, but "better off" is a long way from omniscient. And the hard part about morality is that it's chaotic - it depends on a tremendous array of details which you might (if you're lucky) know for your own situation but which you are more ignorant of the farther you look from your center of consciousness. While on the one side you want to do right, on the other you don't want to be - in fact, you shouldn't be - the one who beats people up when they haven't done anything wrong.
So how do you do this? You set an engineering margin of error - draw yourself a circumference small enough that you may be confident it (mostly) resides within the right and aim for that, while drawing for others a loop which (mostly) circumscribes the right and nudge what falls outside back in. In other words, you be the anti-hypocrite: you criticize in yourself what you let pass in others.
And that's the form to take, in the first, second, and third persons. Thank you for your patience.
Current Location: home\west_bedroom\south_bed
Current Mood: accomplished
Tags: ethics, take my advice, thoughts
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08:42 am
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Writer's Block: There Can Be Only One
I don't believe in enforced monogamy, no. That said, first, most people do better in closed monogamous relationships, and second, it's not a good idea to betray the trust of the people you're with.
Current Location: school\EGR\ASME_lounge
Current Mood:  thoughtful
Tags: monogamy, read time: 10 seconds, thoughts, writer's block
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