Head Noises

Pink Ribbon Buying Is ON!

2012-02-02T09:24:00.002-08:00

Who knows if it will stick, but.... Komen is breaking off their long lasting partnership with Planned Parenthood, AND (h/t Darwin in the comments for the above link) they're quietly dropping funding of embryo-destructive research!

To steal an observation, maybe they can redirect the formerly PP-directed grant towards mammograms, maybe some of the mobile ones?

Finally, the #1 pink ribbon group may not be an automatic dis-qualifier for buying stuff! (Of course I'm going to keep an eye out to see if they stick to it.)

So.....

2012-02-01T15:46:00.003-08:00

Cain was "unqualified" because he didn't expect to have anonymous accusations and wasn't prepared to deal with them, and he didn't expect the media to be utter twerps, but somehow Mitt is qualified when he HANDS OVER SOUNDBITES EVERY OTHER WEEK?!?!? "I like to fire people." "I'm not worried about the very poor." I'm sure there's more. Argh! Give me the guy who SHOULDN'T know better!

Ever Notice

2012-01-26T20:30:00.001-08:00

theories of a basic level of human decency tend to fair poorly in contact with actual humans?

Had an… interaction… with one of the thoughtlessly selfish today. Ironically, she got prissy because I tried to be nice—she was on the phone in the gym, clearly yelling to be heard, so I hopped off my machine and turned off the far-too-loud music—even with my earbuds up too high, it was too loud. She then felt the need to lecture me that I should have interrupted her and asked if she wanted it off, then tried to order me to turn it back on. I demurred the opportunity to obey, and she managed to raise her volume. (Yeah, me responding poorly to unauthorized orders. Shock, that.)

Since then, I’ve been watching my back, and trying to make sure that I don’t give indications of any soft targets—a self-centered idiot with no sense of proportion is way more dangerous than an actively malicious one with a sense of proportion. Seriously bad people will judge risk for reward—selfish, childish, short-sighted ones will get you killed because you crossed them, even if it would destroy their life.

There’s some philosophy on the nature of sin in there, but I’m too freaking tired to deal with it.

Dark Day

2012-01-23T10:46:00.001-08:00

Lifted straight from John C. Wright’s blog:

A prayer for the unborn

O Heavenly Father, Creator and Giver of all life, Author of justice, Source of love and mercy: Although it is deserving of thine anger and punishment, look with mercy on our nation, which has offended thee by condoning the killing of millions of innocent children, thy precious sons and daughters, who, like all of us, were created in thine image and likeness, but whose only offense was their very existence. Amen.

A prayer for Right to Life

O heavenly Father, strengthen us against the mounting forces of anti-life; enlighten those who walk in this deadly way that they may see the enormity of their sin and return to the generous observance of the divine law. We pray, too, for mothers, that they may prize the great privilege of motherhood; and that they may bring up their children in the holy love and fear of God, thus saving their own immortal souls and furthering the honor and glory of their Maker. Through Christ, our Lord. Amen.
Pray for us, St. Gerard, protector of the mother and her unborn child,
that we may be worthy of the promises of Christ!

~~ from “Prayers for Today,” published by Leaflet Missal Co.

Prayer for Life by Pope John Paul II

O Mary, bright dawn of the new world,
Mother of the living,
to you do we entrust the cause of life:
Look down, O Mother, upon the vast numbers
of babies to be born,
of the poor whose lives are made difficult,
of men and women who are victims of brutal violence,
of the elderly and the sick killed
by indifference or out of misguided mercy.
Grant that all who believe in your Son
may proclaim the Gospel of life
with honesty and love to the people of our time.
Obtain for them the grace
to accept that Gospel as a gift ever new,
the joy of celebrating it with gratitude
throughout their lives
and the courage to bear witness to it resolutely,
in order to build,
together with all people of good will,
the civilization of truth and love,
to the praise and glory of God,
the Creator and lover of life.

~~ Pope John Paul II
Encyclical Letter “The Gospel of Life”
Given in Rome, on March 25,
the Solemnity of the Annunciation of

Short

2012-01-23T09:08:00.001-08:00

But accurate enough:

In short, we face a global war waged by a well-established alliance of Iranian and Syrian Islamists, Russian and Chinese crony plutocrats, and Latin American radical leftists who share a love of totalitarian control of their own people and a hatred of America. We have failed to design a strategy to win this war, and indeed it often seems as if our leaders share the world view of our enemies. Obama thought he could make deals with all of them, apparently believing this would come about when they realized he shared their conviction that most of the world’s problems are America’s fault. Indeed, when push comes to shove in their own countries, his instinctive response, as Fouad Ajami recently wrote regarding Syria, is to favor the success of the anti-American tyrants.

Everybody hates the cops. Doesn’t mean you get rid of the cops and everything is peachy-keen.

There Is Still Much To Be Done-

2012-01-21T22:51:00.001-08:00

“…to reach our ultimate goal of zero deaths on the road!”

I’m not sure that’s an exact quote of the PSA I’ve been meaning to blog about, but it’s as close as hearing it on the radio and remembering I wanted to mention it, then jumping (… all right, rolling rather stiffly) out of bed can get it.

I think it’s a drunk driving PSA. Doesn’t really matter, because it’s stupid. There is no way you can get “zero deaths on the road.” The notion of a government action HAVING that as a goal means one of two things: someone has no sense, or someone realized how to make sure that their job will go on forever.

Maybe I’ve been reading too much Robin McKinley, but this seems awful symbolic: a quest that can never be finished, and inch by inch new rules will be imposed – “optional” to the states, but with the lovely carrot of getting some of the tax dollars from their citizens back in grants – in a vain (I hope) attempt to reach zero on the diminishing returns. Why do I hope it’s a vain attempt? Because I can think of two ways to make it work—make sure there is no-one on the roads, and destroy the roads.

Sorry so short, I’m heading back to bed. Just wanted to point out that the law of diminishing returns is not one that can be ignored while you hope no authority will call you on it.

Base Assumptions

2012-01-21T16:19:00.001-08:00

They really are rather important.

There’s a TV show called Grimm—it’s rather enjoyable, check Hulu—that I’ve seen a few episodes of, but have let fall by the wayside.

One scene keeps sticking in my head—it’s a one-episode character looking at the protagonist and asking him to imagine what it’s like to have your culture totally suppressed by an alien majority. By the music, the lighting, the focus and the main character’s response, this is supposed to be a really, hugely sympathetic moment that questions the hero’s whole world-view and motivation in trying to do what he’s doing.

They’re talking about kidnapping those outside of the questioner’s group, torturing and then ritually murdering them in a rigged ‘hunt’ as a rite of passage. There’s implications that cannibalism (?) may be involved, too, although it’s rather indirect.

It really rang false with me, and makes me wonder—how much do you have to idolize the notion of minority culture for not ritually murdering outsiders to be something that causes a conflict?

On reflection, the character that asks it fits the stereotype of “acting white”— if you saw a screenshot, you’d peg him as an office drone in a second. Lawyer, I think, since the protagonist gets him to help stop the murder by pointing out how much legal trouble the murders would get into. ‘Cus you need law school to figure that out, right? *headdesk*

Doubling in Price in Twenty Years

2012-01-19T14:54:00.001-08:00

I just looked at one of my “comfort” books—great books that you go to for the book version of a fluffy blanket and a mug of cocoa.

Happened to look at the spine, and noticed that it was four dollars suggested price. Turns out it was printed in ‘91.

Most of the paperbacks of similar size and quality that I’ve seen of late are either nine or ten dollars, and I KNOW they don’t stand up as well.

If this is the result of the *sarc* wonderful */sarc* publishing industry, ebooks may have come along just in time to save reading.

Iced In

2012-01-19T13:57:00.001-08:00

That’s like “snowed in,” but when you get freezing rain on top of it.

Usually, this would mean that I’ll have a bunch of things to post… but the base is shut down, too, so my dear husband is home, I’ve got a raging headache, and the Princess is in a temper. (her problem: Things aren’t supposed to change! *laughs*)

I’m glad Perry’s out. I don’t care enough about Newt to figure out what his ex said vs spin vs whatever.

The Duchess is busy practicing going from her back to her belly and trying not to fall asleep.

I’m going to go nurse this headache with a cup of iced decaf… –.-

Why I Want To Reform The Electoral College

2012-01-15T12:00:00.009-08:00

Bryan Suits had a topic (1/11/2012, first topic) that helped bring it into focus: down in San Diego area, they're going to charge people who live in rural areas for the costs of fighting wild fires. Bryan, having lived out there, knows that there are a lot of regulations about keeping brush under control, cut back from your house, etc-- and that fires tend to get started when someone isn't following the rules. From the point of view of the city, it's not "the rulebreakers" who are causing the problem, though-- they have to spend money saving all the rural people. So that's who they want to charge.

Makes perfect sense-- make pretty much any group of "them," and "they" will have a bunch of very important sub-groups, only a few of which will embody all the characteristics of "them."

This, because Dear Husband has been musing on the topic, made me think about the way that the Electoral College is supposed to work. (to my understanding, of course; on an aside, my love and I don't agree on the solution)

The point of the Electoral College is that this population won't watch that populations' interest as closely as their own. (Also a key point on why I'm conservative.)

The reform I want for the EC is that I want it broken down to representative districts-- maybe even just have your HoR member auto-vote for whoever wins the election in your district. Town kids just don't understand the realities of rural life, even if they have a vacation home out there. I'd like to see that respected on a national level.

It Depends

2012-01-15T12:00:00.002-08:00

Over at the Darwins' place they started musing on high-comment posts.

Predictably-- and of expected quality for the location-- a LOT of suggestions for high-comment topics came up. Nursing, parenting, modesty, sex, traditional Mass, traditional culture, pop icons (in my head: It's not you I hate, Kardashian....) and Ron Paulitics.

A common thread popped out-- it depends. Almost everything was "it depends" type stuff.

Is it OK to nurse during Mass? It depends. You want to do it with love, of course-- I don't know what your church is like. I've gone to churches where there are dozens of places that are just fine to nurse in, with a blanket; I've gone to churches where you'd have to duck inside of the confessional, and to ones where it was held in a spot where there wasn't any polite place to nurse. (Last one was on a ship, where there shouldn't be nursing anyways, but still!)

A lot of stuff depends on context, intention, and who's there.

Slightly related, one of the topics on a post Paul was mentioned in said this:

Instead, I look at it and wonder how it’ll be used to show I’m a bad person or how I should be forced to do something the media likes. I remember doing those surveys in college and seeing clumsy attempts to ask the same question in different ways. They were clumsy because the different ways of asking the same question changed the meaning of the question, and often I’d answer them differently because of that truthful streak, knowing it would simply get my answer sheet thrown out. This does not encourage me to trust the results I see in the media.
Graves

Basically, different ways of asking the question change the question. It takes a LOT of skill to ask a question in different ways without changing the meaning!

Another reason I mention it is that it also has great mention of the first hint I had that there was a geek culture-- Fallen Angels. (Thankfully, I never found Mike Flynn's blog until after I was past massively embarrassing myself with fangirl enthusiasm. Only took a decade.)

PS-

K. Know how annoying it is to have something echo your thoughts? In fiction?

"Because the questions you ask shape the answer you seek,"

And doesn't THAT just sum up the issue....

Toddler Tips

2012-01-13T12:00:00.000-08:00

Of course, most of this is YMMV, seen through my balance of priorities. And my girls are spoiled.

*Don't want to get your kid hooked on brightly colored characters, or just sick of trying to clean the little straw cups? Those big plastic cups for iced coffee work very nice: *Your toddler keeps taking the baby's blanket because it's crazy-soft? Not the normal polar fleece, but that fluffy, furry, super soft ones. Go to the fabric store and choose one that you like, get about two yards and hem the ends. Doesn't even have to be a good seam, mine looks horrible-- and the Princess LOVES it, especially since it's big enough to snuggle with mom and dad. (you could buy a big, really soft blanket, if you can find one for less than about $20 and it interest your kid...) * Toddler likes the baby's car seat toy? Put them next to each other. The toddler can activate the music better than the baby, anyways. * Toddler songs drive you nuts? Try out Gilbert & Sullivan. Watching "The Backyardigans" with Princess and Duchess, I stared at the TV for a good thirty seconds before freaking out my dear husband by starting to sing the song whose tune they'd..."borrowed".... (I've ribbons and laces to set off the faces of pretty young sweethearts and wives....) If your kids can resist "Three Little Maids" or the Major General's song, I'm amazed. * Dry Erase Crayons. AWESOME. They write on glass very well, and come off of walls with a damp cloth. (Wrap in duct tape before giving them to your toddler-- they snap rather easily, and it's easier to hold.)

* Speaking of duct tape-- we all know it's awesome, right? Get some of the colored and/or patterned stuff. It's handy to put on the feet of chairs to save floors, or to strengthen toddler furniture, or patch much-loved toys, or give too-big balls some grip, or close things. Also patching doll clothes.... (What? It's hot pink tiger stripes! That's kinda stylish! And Dolly didn't complain!)

* Don't like the stuff they put on kids' clothes these days? Buy packs of blank shirts or onesies and a pack of fabric pens and/or that gel stuff that comes in those vials that look a bit like eye drop bottles. (Couldn't find it to link. Very big during the 80s, comes in colors or glitter or glow in the dark, etc.) Also works for baby showers as an activity that doesn't involve diapers.

Why The Recent Lack of Posting

2012-01-11T15:11:00.003-08:00

And why the sudden bunch of posts: (She sleeps!!!!!)

A Response To The Inspiration For "Being "Poor" and Being Responsible"

2012-01-11T14:53:00.005-08:00

Found via here.

Short form: it's expensive for the poor to live like the rich. If you invest at the start, you can pay less over the long run.*

(Note: I didn't meet him until several years later. Frankly, I was rather intimidated by him, at first-- I got over it.)

Gee, if only there was a place they could go that has everything, from soup to nuts to bolts to cleaning supplies, that had low prices and almost always has a bus stop... With wall to wall savings... call it... wall-to-wall-savings-store...or something....

Honestly, I should do a point-by-point refutation, but it won't work. Nobody would listen. Never mind that I've lived it, and come out of it-- there'd always be some out.

My story: I get back stateside, stay with my parents for about...um... a month before it becomes obvious that I NEED to have some space. Plus, local economy suck(s/ed) I looked around and find a one-bedroom place with washer and dryer provided that was in (long) walking distance of both a mall and a couple of general stores, and I had my seabag for big shopping trips. (I did the math and figured out that the extra $10 or so bucks a month was worth it for the washer, since water was included, looking forward to my then future marriage. Depending on what you care about, the math is different. There was also a 7/11 a two-minute walk for impulse buys.)

You've got to THINK, you can't just DO. One of my goals is to someday be able to buy things without thinking about it.

* mildly annoyed they didn't do a h/t to Terry Pratchett, a lot of his Vimes/Lady Ramkin stuff is made of this trope. Then again, that would require an over-arching sense of...well, having sense.

Ah, Anti-Catholic Bias.

2012-01-11T12:54:00.005-08:00

Seriously?

After making such scientific observations -- at the time underappreciated -- Steno got religion.
He became Roman Catholic in 1667 and tossed aside science. In 1675, he became a priest and in 1677 a bishop. He was apostolic vicar of northern Germany and Scandinavia and spent the remainder of his life -- which wasn't that long -- doing missionary work. He died at age 48.

Um... I don't know if I'm more annoyed at the ignorance of the amount of science the Church has promoted, or the notion that becoming a Catholic and a priest is somehow a repudiation of his prior work. I can see how the average LA Times blogger, or Wikipedia editor, may not see how it's a natural though radical progression... but dang, what flat bias. By the way, he didn't stop science after becoming a Catholic, and HE PROPOSED SUPERPOSITION AFTER HE WAS CATHOLIC. (1669, while he became Catholic in late '67. Amusingly, the "dismay" some of his colleagues felt in the 1669 link is because being Catholic meant they couldn't claim his brilliance. Oops.

Freaking bigots. (Aimed more at now than then.)

Suburban Banshee has another angle.

Wisdom's Where You Find It...

2012-01-09T14:42:00.003-08:00

The Water Tribe has warriors. The Fire Nation and the Earth Kingdom have soldiers. The gap in ethics and acceptable tactics between the two can be as wide as the Great Divide...

This is a quote from a fan fiction (ch 23) of a cartoon. ("Fan Fiction"-- ever read a story or watch a show and wish that there was another book or a new episode? That's what this is-- "fan" produced new material. Warning, follows the "90% of anything is crud" rule.) A cartoon I wouldn't be upset to let my daughter watch, although we'll have some discussions about when actions are acceptable....

Anyways....

I kind of bumped off of this over at Marcel's place, objecting to a guy talking about how villages run on honor, not coin. A village is a really small town-- I think he may have meant a family complex, a clan, a tribe, something like that. You get a "village" when the leather-worker, the baker and the smith put their houses together because they don't need room to do their stuff and it's easier for them to get supplies that way; you get a family complex when great-grandma had a lot of kids that survived, and you are all working the land. Generally called a family farm, although there's ranching, and it doesn't fit the modern "corn farm" notion of doing just one crop. (I can't even imagine... even cattle farms usually do something else, usually farming something they can hay for the cows to eat. You've got to be REALLY big to manage doing just one crop, be it animal or plant!)

If you enjoyed Avatar: The Last Airbender, I suggest you read the story. Well, if you're conservative, anyways; there's a bit too much "different cultures really are freaking different" for liberal viewpoints to go over well.)

Kahona Achmed

2012-01-09T12:53:00.002-08:00

Dear Spam senders:

this is not a name that is likely to inspire confidence, even if it is asking for "advise to invest in country!"

A Thought

2012-01-03T13:00:00.003-08:00

Over at Legal Insurrection, the most honorable host noted the practice of declaring acting in a "colorblind" manner as racist.

In my usual charming manner, I pointed out that I'd heard of it a few years earlier-- with the ever-readable Mrs. Wright and her run-in with people putting their views in her mouth. (I can't resist the pun, no matter that she doesn't go by that name on LJ or professionally. Sorry.)

If you've been following my nattering for very long, you've probably run into me noting the tendency of liberals to accuse others of what they are doing themselves.

I call that to your mind, I offer this quote from Arhyalon (the afore mentioned Mrs. Wright) a few posts later:

Colorblind: Thinking of other people as just like you without noticing significant differences.

I would also like to point out that one of my complaints about modern, English-language liberals is that they have a disturbing tendency to assume that Christian morality-- "all men are your brothers," meaning they are real people, is a universal human view. Other bits of debased Christianity, but that's the biggest one, the notion of loving ("brotherly love" type) all humans.

There's also a habit of assuming that those who simply do not AGREE are evil. If someone had the same basic world view that I do, but came to seriously different conclusions about, say, the right way to respond, they'd be evil; most other cases, they'd be wrong or ignorant. (note: being "wrong" or "ignorant" or any other way of saying your mind ain't right doesn't mean I won't kill you if you threaten my family, it just means that I'll feel extra bad about it)

Trying out Windows Live Writer

2012-01-01T17:45:00.001-08:00

With Blogger “updating” to really freaking ugly and counter-intuitive, I thought I’d try the experts in taking good things and “upgrading” them to uselessness. (RIP, window’s express email program… I still miss thee….)

Already see one problem, besides that it pulls in the background from the blog for some unknown reason and is using the middle quarter of the screen: it looks like the “improved” email program. Which, sadly, is still better than the new gmail interface…..

If you’re going to post any smart-blank remarks about “it’s free! You shouldn’t complain!”, can it. It’s not free, they just don’t charge for use. Google isn’t in the business of giving things away for fun.

On a related note, I’ve signed up for an automatic update when the guy who’s building a replacement of the “share” function for google reader finishes his thing; if it’s good, I’ll recommend it. As it is, I haven’t used google reader basically since they “fixed” it to force use of google+—haven’t used google+, either.

And On This Happy (???) Anniversary....

2011-12-31T20:04:00.001-08:00

My darling Elf has taken up the lance of an internet Quixote and has started a blog of his own!

You may notice some of the reasons I married him....

12/31/04

2011-12-31T01:01:00.001-08:00

I started blogging.

Wow.

(Automatic post; was going through the archives in October and realized there's no way I'd remember to post this during the holidays!)

Lileks

2011-12-27T15:28:00.000-08:00

As usual, I agree:

Forgot to note that trip: Urban Outfitters has all your hipster gear, including a wide array of real cheap film cameras that take real lousy pictures. Why, people use their iPhones to reproduce these lousy pictures - go for the authentic thing, dude! They also had cards that said HAVE A MERRY $%ING CHRISTMAS, because authentic people who don’t buy your tired old rules like to cuss, particularly when it upends the Normal Rockwell lingo, don’t you know. There was a nice old mom looking at the items on the shelf, perhaps because a grandson said he wanted something from the store or had a “lomo camera” on his list, and when she searched the google this store came up. I wanted to take her by the elbow and guide her away from the stack of MERRY $%ING CHRISTMAS cards.
I know this sounds terribly old-fashioned, but I believe a 65-year old grey-haired lady ought to be able to walk into any store in a large mall and not see the F word on a Christmas card.

The older I guess, the less tolerance I have for this sort of "authentic" action. I was a freaking doormat in school-- the "free expression" (that is, figuring out what you care about so they can desecrate it) of everyone else too precedence, and my comfort was that I was mature and well-behaved. Now I'm getting closer to thirty, and noticing that many of my age-set-- and older-- have yet to grow up. I was a brat-- that there are adults walking around who are less mature than I was is embarrassing to the human race.

"Ooh! Ooh! I was able to shock you by going counter to expectations! But it's OK because you haven't gone ballistic on me, like I go on you if you fail to bow to my desires." Of course, if you DO go ballistic, it's counter their expectations, so you're a bad person... no shock, those who are biggest on dishing it out STILL can't take it.

Gov't Funding Idea

2011-12-26T19:51:00.000-08:00

Once-a-month shooting ranges with nifty military toys.

My husband would pay twenty bucks a bullet to fire that 50 cal sniper rifle, and I'd love to try out that simi-auto shotgun!

Christ with you

2011-12-25T00:01:00.000-08:00

And with all of yours!

A Fatal Flaw

2011-12-24T08:00:00.000-08:00

In the-- ahem-- downstairs water closet, we've got a book. Well, several books, but I'm focusing on one, here: It is, obviously, a book of Klingon philosophy.

Problem: these days, in part because of blogs like The American Catholic, I think a little bit deeper about philosophy...and find myself in the same place as Quark, in the episode where he married a Klingon lady. Their culture just doesn't work. Either they're bullies, not very bright, or just totally RIPE for the picking from a good Catholic apologist, or even just a mildly talented Christian Vulcan!

Revenge is the best revenge? How about heaping burning coals on their heads?

If I had more time, I'd go page by page with responses and links... of course, if I had more time, it wouldn't be pot reading, would it?

A Mental Exercise

2011-12-23T19:22:00.001-08:00

There are enough geeks on this blog that I can hope someone else read the old defense of The Empire from Star Wars, written long before the new movies came out; it can be summed up as "great, they killed the Emperor. Hello, power vacuum-- who's going to pay the police now? Who's going to be in charge, the Hutts?"

In keeping with the season, I offer this from NRO:
Scrooge: The First 1 Percenter. A sample:

Either way, such actions are not really going to do much to improve the human condition. I contend that Scrooge, before he became “enlightened,” was already doing more to help his fellow man than any of the other main characters we meet in A Christmas Carol. Moreover, by giving away a substantial portion of his accumulated fortune, he drastically reduced his ability to do even more good in the world.

Scrooge was a “man of business” and evidently a shrewd and successful one. Although Dickens fails to tell us exactly what line of business Scrooge is in, a typical 19th-century “man of business” could be expected to involve himself in many endeavors — what investment advisers today refer to as diversifying one’s risk. One can infer from A Christmas Carol that Scrooge was a financier, who lent money to both businesses and individuals. He also spent long hours at the Exchange, probably speculating on commodities, buying and selling government debt, and purchasing and selling shares in various joint stock companies. We can also infer some things about Scrooge that Dickens does not tell us directly. He left boarding school early, supposedly because his father had a change of heart toward him and wanted him home. A lack of finances may also have had something to do with it, as Scrooge’s formal education ended early and he was apprenticed as a low-level clerk to a tradesman — Mr. Fezziwig. From this low start, Scrooge exhibited a relentless drive that eventually made him rich. Along the way, his business had to survive the Napoleonic Wars, adapt to the Industrial Revolution, and fight its way through several severe economic depressions. In fact, in the year A Christmas Carol was written (1843), Britain was just coming out of a five-year economic slowdown in which only the most nimble and carefully managed enterprises survived. During Scrooge’s business life, upwards of 100 businesses failed for every one that succeeded. Scrooge must have been a very good businessman indeed.

In a nutshell, he argues that it's a bad thing in the long run that Scrooge ended his prior ways and turned to being generous; I don't know if I've ever even read the actual story, but I recall that almost everyone tells me the Muppet Christmas Carol is accurate, and I could built a refutation of the article from that; when I originally read the Star Wars one, I couldn't-- I just knew it was somehow wrong.

I already cheated and read the comments, but would anyone like to build a counter-argument here? (I do suggest reading the comments... at least, the ones that I saw so far....)

This could be a good conversation starter around the Christmas table-- hopefully a safe one, too, if you keep it light!

Always Winter, Never Christmas

2011-12-21T15:05:00.000-08:00

It's not as dire as the situation that quote refers to, but it reflects my state of mind. There's often a nasty point at the start of winter, everywhere I've wintered where it's wintery, when the first snow has left and you have cold, mud, slimy dead leaves and it just looks dirty. (Halloween, most years....)

That's the last several months here in SeaTacOlyMeReNewcasTukwila. Cold without freezing enough to solidify the mud, soggy teeth sinking straight through your coat, moldy, with some glorious foggy mornings that tease you with the glowing promise of snow, occasional warm afternoons that warm the plants just enough to let the rot set in even better....

I'm not a fan of cold. Last Christmas, in SoCal, was nice. I miss Japan. (Yes, that well-known tropical area of Sasebo. Meh, there were flowers during Christmas, and they weren't soggy. Ditto for China Lake.) Growing up, Christmases when it was snowing were good and bad, practically speaking-- snow makes it a bit warmer, it's not that cold if it's snowing, it's not generally humid enough to bite straight through your coat, but heavy snow means that the animals might need you, etc.

I keep trying to get into the Christmas spirit and failing. Music just doesn't stick, did the Christmas cards and it just all seemed... alien. Just doesn't fit.

For once, I am actually dreaming of a white Christmas.

Talk about a petty funk.

From My Email

2011-12-18T11:05:00.006-08:00

THE OLD DENTED BUCKET

Our house was directly across the street from the clinic entrance of Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore . We lived downstairs and rented the upstairs rooms to out-patients at the clinic.
One summer evening as I was fixing supper, there was a knock at the door. I opened it to see a truly awful looking man. "Why, he's hardly taller than my 8-year-old," I thought as I stared at the stooped, shriveled body. But the appalling thing was his face, lopsided from swelling, red and raw.
Yet his voice was pleasant as he said, "Good evening. I've come to see if you've a room for just one night. I came for a treatment this morning from the eastern shore, and there's no bus 'til morning."
He told me he'd been hunting for a room since noon but with no success, no one seemed to have a room. "I guess it's my face .... I know it looks terrible, but my doctor says with a few more treatments .."
For a moment I hesitated, but his next words convinced me: "I could sleep in this rocking chair on the porch. My bus leaves early in the morning."
I told him we would find him a bed, but to rest on the porch.. I went inside and finished getting supper. When we were ready, I asked the old man if he would join us. "No, thank you. I have plenty." And he held up a brown paper bag .
When I had finished the dishes, I went out on the porch to talk with him a few minutes. It didn't take a long time to see that this old man had an oversized heart crowded into that tiny body. He told me he fished for a living to support his daughter, her 5 children, and her husband, who was hopelessly crippled from a back injury.
He didn't tell it by way of complaint; in fact, every other sentence was preface with a thanks to God for a blessing. He was grateful that no pain accompanied his disease, which was apparently a form of skin cancer. He thanked God for giving him the strength to keep going...
At bedtime, we put a camp cot in the children's room for him. When I got up in the morning, the bed linens were neatly folded and the little man was out on the porch.
He refused breakfast, but just before he left for his bus, haltingly, as if asking a great favor, he said, "Could I please come back and stay the next time I have a treatment? I won't put you out a bit. I can sleep fine in a chair." He paused a moment and then added, "Your children made me feel at home. Grownups are bothered by my face, but children don't seem to mind."
I told him he was welcome to come again.
And, on his next trip, he arrived a little after 7 in the morning. As a gift, he brought a big fish and a quart of the largest oysters I had ever seen! He said he had shucked them that morning before he left so that they'd be nice and fresh. I knew his bus left at 4:00 a.m. And I wondered what time he had to get up in order to do this for us.
In the years he came to stay overnight with us, there was never a time that he did not bring us fish or oysters or vegetables from his garden.
Other times we received packages in the mail, always by special delivery; fish and oysters packed in a box of fresh young spinach or kale, every leaf carefully washed. Knowing that he must walk 3 miles to mail these, and knowing how little money he had made the gifts doubly precious.
When I received these little remembrances, I often thought of a comment our next-door neighbor made after he left that first morning.
"Did you keep that awful looking man last night? I turned him away! You can lose roomers by putting up such people!"
Maybe we did lose roomers once or twice. But, oh!, if only they could have known him, perhaps their illnesses would have been easier to bear.
I know our family always will be grateful to have known him; from him we learned what it was to accept the bad without complaint and the good with gratitude to God.
Recently I was visiting a friend, who has a greenhouse, as she showed me her flowers, we came to the most beautiful one of all, a golden chrysanthemum, bursting with blooms. But to my great surprise, it was growing in an old dented, rusty bucket. I thought to myself, "If this were my plant, I'd put it in the loveliest container I had!"
My friend changed my mind. "I ran short of pots," she explained, "and knowing how beautiful this one would be, I thought it wouldn't mind starting out in this old pail. It's just for a little while, till I can put it out in the garden."
She must have wondered why I laughed so delightedly, but I was imagining just such a scene in heaven.
"Here's an especially beautiful one," God might have said when he came to the soul of the sweet old fisherman. "He won't mind starting in this small body."
All this happened long ago - and now, in God's garden, how tall this lovely soul must stand.
The LORD does not look at the things man looks at. Man looks at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart." (1 Samuel 16:7b)
Friends are very special. They make you smile and encourage you to succeed. They lend an ear and they share a word of praise. Show your friends how much you care. Pass this on, and brighten someone's day.
Nothing will happen if you do not decide to pass it along. The only thing that will happen if you DO pass it on is that someone might smile (because of you).

Oh, Goodness.....

2011-12-16T11:52:00.000-08:00

Get something to snuffle into; I read this at Ricochet, on the post memoralizing Christopher Hitchens, who just passed:

Astonishing
Hitchens and I had something in common--cancer likely to be terminal all too soon, which interested me in his thoughts about the divine, the immortal, and the mortal. I envied his certainty, exactly the way I envy the certainty of people of unshakeable faith.
For me it's mostly an unsolved question.
Love and beauty convince me of one thing. Only a God could create them, and give us a capacity for them, our great consolations in a world otherwise too uncaring and brutal. Beyond that, I just don't know. Immortality would be like a beggar who needed five dollars and was given six. Would he complain if he wasn't given six, only five?
There's a third convincing thing. Desperation. I'm desperate for meaning. Without God, existence would be meaningless, because meaning can't arise by accident. There is much meaning in this world. Not just man-made meaning, although I don't deny a human capacity to contribute to meaningfulness. Desperation for meaning convinces me the way thirst would convince me of water. Even lost in a desert, I'd believe water exists. Especially then.
It's impossible to solve . . . {continued in next post}
Edited on Dec 16 at 11:49 am
#35 ·Dec 16 at 10:04am ·Like, Share,
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Joined
Nov '11
Astonishing
{continued from previous post} . . . rationally what will hereafter happen to the personal "me," and almost impossible not to think about it . . . especially for someone in the situation Hitchens was in, the situation I'm still in. My apologies to him for this presumptuousness when he's not able express disagreement: that he kept addressing these questions near the end of his life tells me he hadn't solved them for himself, any more than I have.
But for me that thinking "process" gradually has become less an active process and more a passive process, letting formless ideas of divine, mortal, and immortal float free in a receptive mind. Finally, the solution is, I can stop thinking about it . . . quite so much. That's not anti-philosophical. I can't open my presents before Christmas. I have to accept waiting to see what's next. So instead, I think about certain mundane practical things, which don't seem all that mundane anymore. "I must clean out the garage this spring. I need to make sure S____ knows how to change the A/C filters. I need to find her a new car before the old one starts breaking down."
Edited on Dec 16 at 11:46 am
#36 ·Dec 16 at 10:04am ·Like, Share,
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There are many more good posts, but oh my....

Belated Realization-

2011-12-15T21:49:00.000-08:00

you know how people complain about modern movies referencing pop culture all the time, rather than "timeless classics"?

Can't remember what I was doing, but it lead to a chain of thought on how neat it is to figure out the references in old movies or cartoons...and then I realized they were doing exactly what is being held up as a sign that our culture is too shallow. A lot of what is supposedly so bad about modern culture is old.

Superhero references? There's that Bugs Bunny cartoon from WWII where he's running around in a wool costume with a cape.

"The Simpsons" is mostly a chance for pop culture personalities to show up, all a flash in the pan? I STILL can't identify half of the characters that are in various club scenes in the old movies-- I only recently found out that the guy who looks like Gomez Adams in the old shows was supposed to be the same guy, not an archetype!

Adults watching cartoons? Do you think that Snow White got to be a box office hit in the 30s off of only pre-teens?

Random Pop Culture Icon seems bent on destroying basic old fashioned morality? Flappers, the 40s Hollywood style and the long history of idolizing mobsters all come to mind as examples.

It's nothing new-- we have less of a foundation to chip away at, but it's not new. I seem to remember Shakespeare was a pop culture sensation in his day.

Word Of The Year-

2011-12-15T10:07:00.000-08:00

is "pragmatic." (chosen by searches of MW's site)

Second up is "insidious."

So....

Elim Garak is the man of the year?

Cool Little Things

2011-12-13T08:50:00.001-08:00

Although it's "little" in the sense of "smaller than a dishwasher" way....

Got an email flyer for Walmart and noticed that their "Nosalgia Electrics" pretzel thing had removable plates, so I went to find out if you can sometimes get just one and a bunch of different plates.... I was quickly derailed by the nifty other stuff they have. *grin*

Like this:

If you can't see the little ad picture very well, it's a coffee maker with a toaster oven and a one-egg frying pan. (not from the same company, but it's the same idea)

And who wouldn't want to make tiny little pies? Or mini donuts?

Wow, the three in one breakfast things come in blue?

I rather like the two design styles they have, classic:

and... I'm not sure what to call it, but it's the same thing that makes the Transformers and camper interior design cool:

And yes, that retro one is a hot dog toaster. Still not sure if that's cooler than a fold-down grill on your toaster.

"If There Were More Women In X, Then"

2011-12-12T22:59:00.000-08:00

Why on earth is that phrase, when X= a position of power and it is followed by a "positive" state of being, so popular?

The first time I can remember hearing it from someone who seemed normal was during a class trip to DC, when a girl (...I was a girl then, too, but I fancy even from this vantage that I was more mature) tried to tell me that if there were more women in power, there wouldn't be war.

I don't remember exactly what I said, but I think it was along the lines of asking if she'd ever been around any women in power. We are no less prone to abuse of power, it just tends to take different forms-- I'd argue that women tend to be crueler, while men tend to be more brutal. (I can take brutality better than cruelty; my husband is slightly the opposite, but is stronger all-around, able to not take it personally. We actually discussed this on one of our first dates, and not infrequently since then, though not generally in so blunt of a way.) In modern times, women seem to be worse, because their abuse is "for your own good."

Brought to mind because our thief senator decided to imbue women with an amazing budget sense, never mind any evidence to the contrary. (Money sense is something that is learned. I'd even bet that it's culturally influenced, although it's no assurance-- my sister is too generous to be good with money, while I'm so cheap that it's a family joke.)

Long Quote from Derb

2011-12-06T18:27:00.000-08:00

Go read from the start, but this long section is rather interesting:

He really pushed me into the red zone when, after an hour or so of defending our data liberties, he got on to file sharing. In his mind, that is one of the liberties. Books, music, movies — they should all be shared freely on the Internet.
Stallman is smart enough to see that this raises issues of remuneration for us content providers. Why make a movie if people can watch it for free? He offered two solutions: (1) payment of content providers to be taken over by the government, (2) payment all voluntary, via a click-button on the computer screen.

That was it. Seething quietly, I got in line for the after-lecture questions. Did Stallman really imagine, I asked him when I reached the mike, that handing the payment of content providers over to some state Bureau of Culture would lead to an increase in creative freedom?

We got into what diplomats call “a full and frank exchange of views” (i.e., we were just short of a fistfight) before the moderator cut us off, leaving me no time to point out the problem with Stallman’s second proposal. Problem: If running a bookstore on the voluntary-payment principle — “How much is this book?” “Oh, whatever you feel like paying” — is a viable business model, how come no one has ever implemented it successfully?

I left still seething. Liberals talk a nice game about freedom and the, yes, often malign machinations of big corporations; but if you listen carefully, in the background you can always hear the rumbling sound of ever-increasing state power. A liberal is always a totalitarian at heart, though half of them don’t know it.

Then, the following day, I was sitting next to Stallman at an informal gathering. We got to chatting. I found out that, those lefty hang-ups aside, he is a thoughtful and witty man, a good listener, and by no means a closed-minded ideologue.

This happens to me a lot. I meet someone whom, on ideological grounds, I ought to hate, but I end up getting the hate all charmed out of me. As an ideologue, I’m a total failure. I bond too easily with people, even people whose ideas I find obnoxious. Career-wise, this is a weakness, but it’s at least one I share with the founder of National Review, whose circle of friends included the likes of Ted Kennedy.

This is a big difference between liberals I dislike and those I like-- tolerance. Not celebration, not approval, just plain old tolerance. (The one time I had to actively cut off an association with someone, it's because they suddenly let politics get in the way of basic friendship-- while still expecting friendship from me. It sort of makes sense, though-- I mean, I was so obviously wrong that it was only fair.... /sarc )

From TV Tropes

2011-12-05T15:56:00.000-08:00

Text copied and pasted without further comment:

Mao Zedong's quote about China's ability to survive a nuclear attack:
"The atomic bomb is nothing to be afraid of. China has millions of people. It cannot be bombed out of existence. If someone else can drop an atomic bomb, I can too. The death of 10 or 20 million people is nothing to be afraid of."
- Which was rather savagely subverted by Real Life soon after:
  "A Chinese Officer here once on exchange produced the standard line about how the Chinese could lose 500 million people in a nuclear war and keep going with the survivors. So his hosts got out a demographic map (one that shows population densities rather than topographical data) and got to work with pie-cutters using a few classified tricks - and got virtually the entire population of China using only a small proportion of the US arsenal. The guest stared at the map for a couple of minutes then went and tossed his cookies into the toilet bowl."

Ninjas Demonstrate

2011-12-05T10:10:00.000-08:00

in front of the Capital Building in DC, in support of the Day of the Ninja.

(photo courtesy of Ninja Class Reunion of 2001)

"I Know My Rights"

2011-12-04T20:10:00.000-08:00

The serious, important version:

Keith Doherty
A few years ago in San Francisco, I met with a South African friend for lunch. We were in a cafe that happened to be directly across from an elementary school. At one point he looked over at the noisy playground, paused, and said: "Those kids over there, they know their rights. They'll stand up for themselves if they feel they're being wronged. Where I grew up, kids learn that whoever is holding the gun to them is the one who decides rights."
Edited on Dec 04 at 01:37 pm
#40 ·Dec 4 at 1:34pm ·Like, Share,
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Do not forget this....

In A Nutshell...

2011-11-28T21:57:00.000-08:00

This wiki article (no, I don't account them for much, which is why I'm going to copy the parts I want to refer to) has most of the modern arguments writ small....

K, first part:

In 1968, Ehrlich published The Population Bomb, which argued that mankind was facing a demographic catastrophe with the rate of population growth quickly outstripping growth in the supply of food and resources. Simon was highly skeptical of such claims, so proposed a wager, telling Ehrlich to select any raw material he wanted and select "any date more than a year away," and Simon would bet that the commodity's price on that date would be lower than what it was at the time of the wager.
Ehrlich and his colleagues (including John Holdren, later an advisor to President Barack Obama for Science and Technology) picked five metals that they thought would undergo big price increases: chromium, copper, nickel, tin, and tungsten. Then, on paper, they bought $200 worth of each, for a total bet of $1,000, using the prices on September 29, 1980, as an index. They designated September 29, 1990, 10 years hence, as the payoff date. If the inflation-adjusted prices of the various metals rose in the interim, Simon would pay Ehrlich the combined difference. If the prices fell, Ehrlich et al. would pay Simon.
Between 1980 and 1990, the world's population grew by more than 800 million, the largest increase in one decade in all of history. But by September 1990, without a single exception, the price of each of Ehrlich's selected metals had fallen, and in some cases had dropped significantly. Chromium, which had sold for $3.90 a pound in 1980, was down to $3.70 in 1990. Tin, which was $8.72 a pound in 1980, was down to $3.88 a decade later.[1]
As a result, in October 1990, Paul Ehrlich mailed Julian Simon a check for $576.07 to settle the wager in Simon's favor.

Guy making give-me-power claims makes a fairly objectively judgable wager and loses. Then:

Simon offered to raise the wager to $20,000 and to use any resources at any time that Ehrlich preferred. Ehrlich countered with a challenge to bet that temperatures would increase in the future.[2] The two were unable to reach an agreement on the terms of a second wager before Simon died.

Garak style lesson learned: don't make bets where there's no favorable thumb on the scale.

"An honorable way for an honest woman-"

2011-11-27T15:40:00.000-08:00

"-to get admirers."

The lady quoted is Italian, but I think that's a very nicely general way to explain why I love to cook for people... and also why I am utterly terrified by it. There's a lot of me put into to making something for people, and frankly people tend to be "polite" to the point where I'm never sure if people actually like what I made or not...

Still. "An honorable way for an honest woman to get admirers." I like that.

Fifteen or Twenty Years Ago....

2011-11-22T18:46:00.000-08:00

My uncle was trying to nurture my love of reading, so he gave me a couple of books from a second hand store-- one of them was this one:

(sorry the picture isn't very big)

I was entranced. I read it until it fell to pieces, read every one of the books I could lay hands on, and I still can recite the poem. (The little queen all golden...) I still get teary-eyed thinking about the Masterharper's death. I moved on to other books of hers, some that I liked, some that I didn't, and on to other authors...but that book was special, and not just because my favorite uncle wanted me to read it.

I know that the last several years, all the books with her name that I've seen have had her son's name on them as well, and I recently saw a Pern book with only his name. I knew she was quite old, and probably not in the best of health.

She's moved on. Anne McCaffery is dead. At home, "shortly after a stroke."

May she rest in peace.

Great Article

2011-11-21T13:25:00.000-08:00

with a really cool line:

The problem isn’t that Jesus didn’t know He was God. The problem is that you are not first century Jews.

Much punchier than my mom's "what you're hearing may not be what they're saying"-- which a dose of folks finding evidence of what they want to see.

Google Reader

2011-11-13T17:12:00.000-08:00

If anyone's noticed that I haven't been responding on their sites recently and come to check on me, I'm fine-- just can't stand the new Reader, especially since they removed my frakkin' share button.

If I wanted to have to make an entirely new blogpost for everything that was interesting, I'd be copying the Commune and be done with it.

"A Radical Re-thinking of How Education Works"

2011-11-13T08:04:00.001-08:00

And about bloody time!

Short story: a few schools are offering the option of taking classes online, even if you're still a kid-- I know that the billboards for adults to get their GED, for free, online have been around for at least five years. The response to having slightly more control over your kids' education breaks down along obvious lines; the folks who perform this think it's great, the folks who don't like normal schools think it's great, the normal school advocates think it's horrible-- but what about socialization!!?!?!-- and in the end, it depends on the kids and parents. I love how the stat about the average on standardized tests being lower is thrown out there without any mention of the source/method used to get it-- as I mentioned, I know that in my state, this was aimed at dropouts. Who, by definition, aren't generally included in the tests of normal schools-- even though they are a product. Betcha they're included, as well as the target program I heard of a year or two back that's for 'deeply troubled' kids.

Naturally, online classes don't teach themselves, and kids aren't naturally personally motivated. This would take adult interaction to work-- I hope it's around when my girls are old enough, I'd love to be able to blend the advantages of home schooling with the resources of a curriculum, plus the built in advantage that if they're "enrolled" in a local school, they can sign up for school groups or sports much more easily, plus the advantage of the library.... *daydreams*

Allison Brown, a Georgia mother of three, says that she intended to enroll her son in the local public school for kindergarten last year until she met with an administrator there to discuss how the school might accommodate his advanced reading skills. She says the teacher told her that her son would be challenged—by helping other kids to learn their letters. So she enrolled her son in an online school where he could advance rapidly into higher grade levels.

I remember THAT sort of thing!
Great socialization! Taught me that "help" generally means "do the work for them, get insulted for it while you're doing it, and attract disdain because you "think you're smarter than everyone."

SHE SPEAKS!

2011-11-12T08:27:00.000-08:00

Kit and I have had our first entirely coherent conversation!

It consisted of her getting her finger stuck in the lid of her fruit slushy while I was in rush hour traffic, her informing me that it hurt, my getting it loose and her pointing out that it had spilt all over her pants and was wet and cold! When I fixed that, I sternly told her not to do it again, and she said sorry.

This is even cooler than her habit of repeating words that I say.

Right-Wing Catholics

2011-11-11T13:07:00.000-08:00

explained.

If you're interested in the Church or politics, it's a good, quick read.

Big Freakin' Cluebat Announcement.

2011-11-09T16:02:00.000-08:00

I AM NOT A WASP.

"WASP" means "white, Anglo-Saxon Protestant."

Hi, I'm Foxy. I'm Catholic. Not especially good, as is normal for Catholics and anyone else that has decent levels of behavior, but Catholic.

I also, by the measures put forward by various race-obsessed groups (like that Famous Woman I'm Supposed To Remember a few months back who's suing for full custody because she considers herself black, so her husband is a different race than their son), am not even white-- I've got an Indian ancestress back there either four or five generations, Grampa died before I could be curious about such things so I don't know his mom's background, beyond "really obviously an Indian lady."
That my skin shouts my Scotch-Irish background is no nevermind. Germanic, sure, and English I'll gladly agree to-- but just those two tribes? No. WAY. I've too much Celt, for starters, and frankly nobody knows for sure.

I'm white and Christian, and rather cautious at that; if, as most mean when they use it, you're accusing me of being a "square"?

Guilty and guilty, gladly I'll admit.

I find no joy in tearing down things just to destroy them, or to satisfy an impulse or moment's desire.

Awkward Quibbles

2011-11-09T14:32:00.000-08:00

There's a wonderful post over at The American Catholic that you should go read.

I don't just like it because they were kind enough to ask me to blog over there-- no idea why, I'm no good, sometimes folks are just too nice-- but because it's got Kipling and thinking. Go read.

That said, one of the problems with the way my mind works-- it was there before I ever heard of blogs-- is that when I really enjoy and agree with something, a little divergent thought will distract me. I don't even know if it's a disagreement, so much as a wild hare.

At one level the poem is a fairly straight-forward paean to John Bunyan, the English writer who penned Pilgrims’s Progress, which every school child used to read back in days when schools spent far more time on academics and far less time on political indoctrination and fake subjects like “Consumer Ed”.

I have no idea what they mean by "consumer ed;" I'd suspect it ends up being "anti-organizational hogwash." That said, consumer education could be a GREAT class!

What does a consumer need to do broadly?

Evaluate what is inherently required in an item-- food must be safe to eat, clothing must be wearable, vehicles must be something you can drive. Deciding point: at what point would you not buy it at any price due to inherent characteristics?
Evaluate what is inherently desired of an item-- beef over chicken, low fat, low sodium.
Decide what things that aren't inherent characteristics that are at least mostly required/banned: I won't buy Chinese made items, or companies that support immoral causes, or highly negative associations.
Decide which non-inherent characteristics are desired: name brand, place offering them, etc.
Budget out how much you can afford, and how much you value each aspect.

What does a consumer need to do specifically?

Know how to calculate cost for comparison. (This can be as simple as dividing total cost by ounces, or as complicated as figuring out the value of your time and the stuff you have on hand vs buying pre-made for, say, a pumpkin pie.)
Know how to know what they value enough to pay extra for, rather than going off of impulse-- advertising is the art of encouraging impulses.
Understand how to read labels. Serving size, actual size, and reading what they say instead of what your think they're implying.

There are other things, like figuring out what can be repaired and what can't, figuring out what is worth repairing vs what isn't, knowing how to find someone to provide what you're looking for, understanding garantees, reading contracts, recognizing non-shopping costs (planning out shopping trips-- there are nonmaterial effects to shopping, so at least recognize if you enjoy walking around the grocery store, or would rather save cash by driving as seldom as possible.)

There's a LOT of good stuff that would fit under "Consumer Ed."

Pop or Popular

2011-11-09T09:06:00.000-08:00

This is spoiler-free, for two reasons: one, I haven't seen an episode of Mad Men, and two, I don't want to spend an hour trying to figure out episodes and times for story points in NCIS.

From Ricochet guest writer, Richard Rushfield.

Next March, AMC’s Mad Men will return to the airwaves after a year and a half absence. It’s return will be treated as the most significant cultural event of the year. Its stars will blanket the covers of our glossy magazines. Articles will be written in the New York Times and our most elite literary journals dissecting the show’s meaning. Banana Republic will promote its high end Mad Men line.

Mad Men at its height was watched by 2.9 million viewers. In contrast, CBS’ military police procedural drama NCIS last week was seen by 19.7 million viewers. As far as I can tell, NCIS has never been featured on the cover of any major American magazine apart from TV Guide and one issue of Inland Empire, the magazine of California’s suburban Riverside and San Bernadino counties.

First, let me say-- as polished and stylish as the guys in Mad Men look, let alone the lovely lady, I gotta prefer Gibbs and co. It's nice to hear that there's a decent number of my fellow Americans who are likewise getting their dose. ;^)

This is not to say that NCIS is more deserving of a magazine cover than Mad Men, or that ratings numbers alone should determine what gets coverage and critical attention and what gets ignored. With its layered, morally ambiguous plotting and characters, Mad Men no doubt provides much richer fields for critical inquiry than the straightforward crime of the week NCIS.

I'd say that NCIS is more deserving of a cover. There's no shortage of writers who lived through the sixties-- there's a definite shortage of those who can write modern military stories and get it right often enough to be enjoyable. (My biggest complaint is on technology, for crying out loud, not military.)

Then again, I also think that NCIS is a lot more worthy of consideration than he's giving them credit for. Mad Men is, from the promotional stuff, pretentiously 'deep.' It's got a great big sign hanging over it with flashing neon lettering saying "I AM SERIOUS AND DEEP. DEEPLY SERIOUS."

NCIS, on the other hand-- Elf borrowed the entire series up to season six from a coworker, and I'm constantly surprised at how good it is. If you pay attention-- or if you're watching two or three episodes in order, two or three times a week-- they are amazing. At least once a week-- usually once an evening-- while we were burning through the series, I'd suddenly get hit over the head with things they'd been hinting at for weeks. The relationships between the characters, especially, are very well done.

I hate being manipulated by a show, and I know enough about narrative structure, musical tricks and basic production to catch on to the things that shows usually do as shortcuts. Can't count the number of times Elf has ordered me to stop thinking and enjoy something.

NCIS not only doesn't lean on those shortcuts, it generally uses them correctly as intensifiers when they've already laid the story-and-acting ground, or to give a misleading impression that heightens the payoff. (Misleading, not false. There is a difference.)

Unlike the umpty-bazillion police shows, I generally can't tell you who will be the bad guy in the first five minutes of an episode of NCIS, and if I can there's a good reason for it. (Such as that the characters know it, too, or they're the bad guy for totally different reasons than I assumed.)

Probably part of NCIS' success is due to their lack of pretension. Just like actual military folks I know, they are serious, silly, noble, immoral, utter jerks and have hearts of gold at different times with different motivations. Some things strain credibility from an outside point-- like Abby's antics-- but reality does that, if you are introduced to a situation with no background. Failure to realize that is part of why so many workplaces are soulless; new boss comes in and destroys any character that a places had. (I'll agree that the repeated failure of new powers to succeed in wiping out the awesome characteristics of the NCIS workplace is a bit unlikely, but there's got to be some wish fulfillment here.)

Open Question...

2011-11-07T19:49:00.000-08:00

Is there a delicate way to say "we don't agree on who is really a person?"

Kind of a big deal, given that a sizable portion of the current US population doesn't think that humans before a set age are people, and many additionally hold that a view that all human organisms are people-- with the life-rights inherent to that-- is evidence of holding an entire sex as lower level persons.

Cabela's and Veteran's Day-

2011-11-06T14:19:00.000-08:00

My husband just got an alert that they're offering the employee discount to those that fight wars, fire and crime. (Vets and EMS included, and yes I stole the prior phrase.)

Great Investment-

2011-11-05T20:29:00.000-07:00

Twelve bucks (with shipping), over 140 episodes. Elf had me snag it the other day, remembered it as being awesome.

The Adventures of Robin Hood: The Complete Series

It is. Great bedtime show for the babies, too.

Sincere Ad, or Trick?

2011-11-04T08:16:00.000-07:00

Tooling along, in silence because it's impossible to listen to the radio right now-- every commercial break there's an anti-1183 ad, followed either by the opposition's ad or the very same ad again.

1183 is the proposal to get the state gov't out of the business side of selling hard alcohol. I support it, not the least because it'd be nice to not have the state wasting so much fuel to bring EVERYTHING through Seattle. I don't see how anyone can not be infuriated to know that trucks of liquor drive all the way across the state... in to Seattle... offload at the LCB's distribution center... and then they can be sent to individual stores, including those that they drove past some 300 miles back.
A digression: when we were in Spokane, the liquor store was always worried that they'd run out of product because of the passes being bad. The manager/main desk guy knew that if folks got mad enough to drive the ten-twenty miles to the Idaho store, he'd lose a lot of business. I'm highly amused about what I've observed in the liquor tax-- it's regressive, and massively so. All the folks with money buy massive amounts of liquor when they're in states where it's less expensive-- I'm talking a case or two of each item in their bar. Lower middle class and down, two gallons of one type is a massive amount.

Here's the ad that I'm wondering about:

Do it for the children!

It was on a rather libertarian page.

...

Dang, I hope our state isn't dumb enough to fall for that. Not much confidence, but I can hope. Maybe the really obvious and open lies the no campaign has been telling will annoy folks into voting yes, who knows.

Here's A Mental Image:

2011-11-01T16:40:00.000-07:00

Jason-- from the Friday the 13th movies-- chasing after a living shadow around a classically scary old jail.

That's how Hollywood Ghost Hunters was founded. ^.^

Just got around to reading the Nightwatch e-letter from Coast to Coast AM.
Quote:

In the first hour, stuntman Rick McCallum and creature effects artist Robert Pendergraft talked about the Hollywood Ghost Hunters and horror films. McCallum explained that he founded the group alongside actor Kane Hodder, who portrayed "Jason" in the Friday the 13th films, after they went ghost hunting while filming a movie at Ohio's Mansfield Reformatory. When they encountered a shadow person, Hodder actually chased after the being rather than away from it, which inspired McCallum to officially launch the HGH with him. During the hour, HGH members Hodder and actor R.A. Mihailoff, who portrayed "Leatherface" in the Texas Chainsaw Massacre III, also called in to the program to share scary stories and reflect on the popularity of horror films.

No, I didn't listen to the show last night-- I know that I'm easily spooked!

Language Coolness

2011-11-01T11:39:00.000-07:00

Over at Troletarian, there's a link to a pretty cool idea-- a language that you can puzzle out if you speak a Latin language.

Background: I am horrible at learning languages. I love English, I love Latin and how languages work and such...but I utterly fail at actually grasping them. I soldiered through three years of Spanish, and I learned enough Japanese to be polite.

I'm actually able to figure out some of the labels on this site!

This Hit a Nerve

2011-11-01T00:39:00.000-07:00

It's not entirely crazy to suspect, as Orwell did, that this has something to do with money. Specifically, you sneer at the customs of the people you might be mistaken for. For aside from a few very stuffy conservatives, no white people I know sneer at hip-hop music, telenovelas, Tyler Perry films, or any of the other things often consumed by people of modest incomes who don't look like them. They save it for Thomas Kinkade paintings, "Cozy cottage" style home decoration, collectibles, child beauty pageants, large pickup trucks***, and so forth.

Look, I'm a geek. I would have to look to do serious investigation to find out if folks in my "social strata" did the kind of stuff mentioned or not... but I have noticed bloggers sneering at Kinkade, or being derisive against other "common" things.

Yes, I'm moving away from giving citations of source or author in the post body when I do small quotes; source and author drive folks away, in any case that I'm doing a tiny post.

New Google Reader-

2011-10-31T22:05:00.001-07:00

Is ugly and keeps losing posts that I very carefully clicked "do not mark as read" on.

Also, it manages to be slower.

Anybody got a better suggestion?

So far, the only upside is that I found out that Windows Live Mail had subscribed me to MSNBC, so I could delete that.

EDIT:
Update:
Hey! It's trying to balance out the whole "losing posts I clicked save" on thing by saving posts I already read!!!!!

This Will Piss Some of You Off

2011-10-30T09:01:00.000-07:00

-- but it's too good not to share.

From a comment thread on John C. Wright's blog:

The OFloinn says:
October 21, 2011 at 2:54 pm
Addendum
Christianity to a Quaker is different than Christianity to a Southern Baptist, or a Pentecostal, or a Catholic, or a Methodist, or a Jew, or a Muslim, or an agnostic, or an atheist.
As if these were all equally empowered to define Christianity. The Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church (which always seems to get overlooked) are the two largest bodies of Christendom and together comprise roughly two-thirds of all Christians. Furthermore, they have been in continued organizational existence for nearly 2000 years and their foundational documents: the Epistles, the Gospels, the writings of Basil, Gregory, John C., Clement, Polycarp, Ignatius, Irenaeus, Justin, Augustine, et al. hammered out the details. The inventions of johnny-come-lately sects like Bill and Ted’s Excellent Bible Shack simply do not stack up. IOW, there are historical grounds for saying what Christianity has been for the vast majority of believers over the past two millennia.
The suppositions of those outside are no more meaningful than the suppositions of most Americans regarding Islam.

Incidentally, I think the Orthodox Church gets overlooked because they're not so very big in the west.

Rocket Scientist

2011-10-25T22:50:00.000-07:00

Went and made a Cafe Press store, because I was talking to my husband he found it funny:

Maybe it DOES take a Rocket Scientist.
Herman Cain 2012.

Pro-life Reasoning

2011-10-23T20:05:00.001-07:00

Basically, you get this, and understand, or you go "oh, wait, but it's more complicated than that....All shades of gray, not gray that's gotten grubby.

Euthanasia is the sickly elder sister of Aborticide: once it seems unabominable and unremarkable to murder the young on the grounds that they are killed at an age too young to be properly called alive, it must logically seem unabominable and unremarkable to murder the old on the grounds that they are too old and too weak to properly be called alive, or too sick to live.

Free Association

2011-10-22T13:12:00.000-07:00

is a dangerous technique.

Zoning out, had the news on in the background, and thought the protesters said something about them being "the 90%."

Sounds about right to me.

Pink Ribbon Time!

2011-10-19T12:57:00.002-07:00

You know what that means-- check the small print to make sure that your money to "fight breast cancer" doesn't go somewhere else-- say, Planned Parenthood or embryonic stem cell funding.

Lifenews on Facebook is pretty good about hammering on this point.

If you got here on a search for stem cells, the JPII institute might be up your alley. Cures without sacrificing children.

Imagine, by Herman Cain

2011-10-18T16:30:00.000-07:00

I must admit, I've been avoiding it. I can't stand "Imagine"-- it just drives me up the wall, sort of like reading historical characters talk about how great socialism is; that it's objectively beautiful just makes it worse.

Well, one of the morning shows played a clip.

It is well worth seeing. ^.^

All that I'm saying... is give pizza a chance....

Part-Time Workers

2011-10-17T10:17:00.000-07:00

Something for folks to keep in mind is that single mothers-- I'm thinking of a couple of separated-or-divorced gals who WANT to work-- often only work part-time because a lot of entry level jobs in retail only offer part-time. My sister was warned that if she went over her time or did anything work-related off the clock, she'd be fired. (She did something like pack a small box to one of the counters on her way out, since she was going to talk to someone there anyway.) Just yesterday, I overheard a young man at WalMart telling a friend how he couldn't risk doing something, because he went a few minutes over his hours last week and he didn't want to risk losing his job.

I don't know about other businesses, but I know Target's hours are utterly random-- other than seeming to be built around the idea that it's a good idea to have a late-night shift directly before early morning opening shifts. This really cuts into the "get two jobs" option, especially if you already have to calculate child-care into the system.

How much do you want to bet that some of those lovely "protect the poor" laws made this happen?

Fish Friday

2011-10-14T16:43:00.004-07:00

I don’t know about anyone else— at least this time of year, come Lent I know it’ll be a group obsession — but I’m constantly on the look-out for something to make that doesn’t involve carne.

Beyond the staples of fried cheese sandwiches (Thank you, George Foreman), the treat of deep-fried calamari, and various canned soups, my childhood only offers one option:

Clam chowder.

Take a big soup pot, put a glob of bacon fat in the bottom and heat it up to frying temp.
Chop a small potato per person into cubes and fry in the fat until tender or slightly translucent.
Pepper and garlic salt to taste, if you wish.
Turn down to simmering temp.
Add a can of chopped clams and add milk until the potatoes are covered, then about a quarter inch more.
Simmer until thickened and serve. (Has the big advantage of being something that doesn’t have a point where it’s ready and MUST be served right now—it can set on the stove for an hour, just fine.)

You can add some onion when you’re frying the potatoes, or add dried onion when you add milk, and probably add some other things to taste, it’s kind of like jazz.

As good as this is, my husband got tired of it pretty early, so I had to branch out; unfortunately, our budget was extremely limited at the time. Grandma to the rescue—she raised a whole flock of boys, mostly on casseroles or one-pan bakes. (To the point that we never had them when I was growing up, unless we ate at her place—my dad can’t stand them!) The format of a cup or two of carbs like leftover rice or pasta, a can or two of tuna, a cup or so of cheese and enough ranch dressing to make it stick together is very simple while leaving room for adjustment.

Substituting mushrooms or eggs for meat can also help with existing recipes.

Anyone have some favorites?

cross posted

SeeSaw Effect on Food

2011-10-12T23:10:00.001-07:00

Earlier today, I noticed that apples were more expensive than the chicken I buy for cheap protein-- apples! In Washington! During harvest season, even! I know I'm coast side, but really?-- the most inexpensive, least desirable fresh apples were only $1.25 a lb, while the bulk, mechanically butchered leg quarters or thighs go for 99c a lb when not on sale. (Costco's big pack of six or eight bladders, or Walmart's ten pound bag, if you're wondering; the Walmart quarters can be got for about six bucks a bag when they go on sale, a few days before their sell-by. Cook the whole shebang, debone and freeze, and you've got part of a really quick meal.)

Well, I was musing on it again after Elf went to bed, and had a notion: I think I know why this odd economic state may be.

Demand.

ALL of the starter cooking classes I know tell people to buy chicken breasts because they're so very easy to cook with and considered so healthy, and "buffalo wings" are incredibly popular so chicken wings go up in price; with the price of pork going up (corn prices are up, farrowing crates are banned in many places so fewer piglets survive, pork is the other healthy, cheap, easy to cook meat) and beef being WAY out of range (thank God for my family, I don't want to contemplate not having beef!) the chicken thighs are easy to cook chunks of meat that don't make easy chicken strips and aren't as "cool" as white meat.

Apples, on the other hand, are THE go-to choice for an easy to pack, long-lasting plant option when you're packing lunch. A cooked chicken breast on rice or pasta, container of yogurt and an apple make for a really easy packed lunch at a fraction of the price of buying lunch, and apples are really good, easy, relatively inexpensive snack that everyone is familiar with.

Even potatoes have gone up in price! (Not by nearly as much, but "baked potato" is another insanely easy thing to make.)

A pork roast would be a lot cheaper than chicken breasts, no idea what the health fad angle would be, but cooking a pork roast is a lot harder for someone who doesn't even know how to cook a chicken breast. (I have a hard time with this, really--- I've been helping with cooking since I could toddle, and was in charge of cooking dinner one night a week as a young teen.)

Thinking about it, this also (partly) explains why all the canned meats have jumped so insanely in price-- although I know tuna has something to do with the minimum wage law being expanded to America Samoa, mostly because the folks who use to work there are now living in my area and going to my church. Canned meats are pretty dang easy to use. Even RAMEN has gone up! It's something like 25c instead of 15c, yeah, but it's enough to get my notice. It's a strange world where making Hawaiian style teriyaki spam sushi is a treat because of the price of Spam....

Fun With Math!

2011-10-08T16:07:00.000-07:00

... K, not really fun.

But it's applied math. And it's interesting.

From John's place:

Defense spending, where Democrats look first for any cutting? It increased a lethargic 1 percent, as did Medicaid spending. Social Security and Medicare, on the other hand, increased 4 percent, according to The Hill’s reporting. That would mean none of those four even reached the total Federal Budget increase of 4.2 percent. So where was the huge increase?

As usual, go read the rest.

Conversation Of The Day:

2011-10-08T15:58:00.003-07:00

musing on "fresh prunes" and "dried plums"-- both available at Costco!

Isn't my life exciting? ;^)

Beuricrats Are Often Officious Jerks

2011-10-06T15:59:00.002-07:00

who try to abuse power they don't have....

At least, that's my main take-away from Paul's latest post. There's good stuff there, too, but I'm in that sort of mood.

FEMA came in and told those volunteers and Kenna that they had to leave, FEMA was here now. Kenna told them she worked for the firefighters, not them. They were obnoxious, bossy, got in the way, and criticized everything. The volunteers refused to back down and kept doing their job, and doing it well. Next FEMA said the HEB supplies and kitchen had to go, that was blatant commercialism. Kenna said they stayed. They stayed.

New "Buffett Rule"

2011-10-05T10:00:00.003-07:00

Let's do like they want, and make it so the guy's secretary isn't being taxed at a higher rate than he is-- lower income tax to 15% across the board....

Different Views

2011-10-03T12:46:00.000-07:00

are no good if you haven't got a window.

Fake-traditional proverb that bubbled up from my musing on the growing-more-common pop wisdom about how we need to seek out views that we disagree with online. Basically, it doesn't matter if you agree or disagree with someone's point of view if you don't share, in some way, their world view.

What is the point in a Catholic arguing abortion with someone who thinks humans are just animals and thus another human's life is worth no more than his dog's?

Sometimes the road one chooses is more important than the shoes one wears-- no amount of walking in another's shoes will get you to a destination that's on a different path.

Vulcan Security Officers Suing

2011-09-30T12:12:00.000-07:00

That is what I read....

Now, my mind provided a mental image of a bunch of pointy-eared logical fellows in court.

What it actually was about had to do with a company named Vulcan....

Only Scanned-

2011-09-28T22:57:00.000-07:00

this post, so not even going to TRY to comment on the points, but now I have a filk stuck in my mind:
If you wanna be happy for the rest of your life/
help to make sure you only take-a one wife/
from my informed point of view/
ask only one woman to marry you.

(Major reason I can think of against polygamy, other than natural law and other philosophy or religion reasons? Power imbalance. There's enough of an issue when the power is so out of balance that consent would be given for an additional spouse, actually having one would put the weaker member on weaker ground.)

Who's Johnny?

2011-09-28T14:25:00.000-07:00

Now I want to watch Short Circuit again.....

Nursing and Alcohol

2011-09-27T11:30:00.000-07:00

Last time I checked, nobody had done research on how much alcohol goes from the bloodstream to breastmilk.

It is established that there is SOME, but levels haven't been studied.

Well, if the "sweat it out" cure for being drunk does not work, and there's nothing else odd about milk glands, then the highest amount of alcohol that could possibly be in the milk is the same amount as there is in the blood.

*Pauses to see if the resources to test the theory magically appear. Carries on when they fail to materialize.*

A BAC of .4 is in the lethal zone-- and happens to be the same amount of alcohol in nonalcoholic beers.

(Came to mind because I was reminded of a story of a woman being arrested for child endangerment because the cops came, in response to her domestic violence call, and she nursed her child while drunk.)

Too Much Information, and Bad Assumptions

2011-09-27T00:22:00.000-07:00

World's "Oldest Baby" - The world's "oldest baby" was born to twenty-five year old Beulah Hunter, who gave birth to a daughter at a staggering 375 days after conception. Normal gestation in humans only lasts 280 days. Proof of this amazing gestation goes back to the original pregnancy test done in March 1944 and her last menstruation on February 10, 1944. The baby was a very normal six pounds and fifteen ounces. According to her prenatal doctors the baby had grown exceptionally slowly but was otherwise normal upon it's birth in 1945.

One of the silly things I do when trying to fall asleep is play the "What If I Was In The Story" game. Among my many guilty pleasures (alcohol, caffeine, fan fiction, etc-- in no specific order) are Mrs. Lackey's Elemental Masters books. (Sherlock-ish England with magic and elves-- it's steampunk for urban fantasy folks)

This, given my ties to my ancestors and heavy Star Trek addiction, means that my mind puts all these coy little figurings on what Mary so Sue Me might say, which means I spend a lot of trying-to-fall-asleep time thinking on timelines.

My great-grandfather was born and/or started his married life during the time of the last few books I've read, which made me think about how much dodge room there is in admitting that you had a great-grand-father at X time, which reminded me that my first supervisor in the Navy had a GRANDMOTHER that was younger than my parents-- he was 15 years in, two teen-mothers, really freaked both of us out when I mentioned that my mom's 50th was coming up, and REALLY freaked me out (yay, start of realizing "generations" are very, very vague)-- which made me sigh, realize I wasn't going to fall asleep easily tonight, and get up to go google the oldest father on record....

Well, Kit has that "oldest baby" beat by a long shot.

Guys? Anyone freaked out by talks of girl-cycles? Leave now, you won't really miss anything. Promise.

Kit beat that kid by a LONG time. My cycles stopped basically as soon as I hit my ship, second assignment in the Navy. Two years there, then nearly two years before Elf and I got married, then roughly a year before Kit was conceived and no cycle. I actually talked to Elf about my deep, deep fear that I wouldn't be able to have children without some bio-chemical help WHILE I WAS UNKNOWINGLY PREGGERS WITH KIT. (No idea why, but it's an enduring fear in my family-- my sister, mom and grandmother {one, three and five children, respectively} shared it. After getting pregnant. No, it doesn't make logical sense, even when you consider the lost children.)

Keep this in mind, oh ladies who are deeply hurt by not being blessed by a pregnancy. I DO know how you feel-- I've been looking into adoption for years. Try thinking on that, before you start attacking a lady who dares complain when pregnancy hurts.

When I got a positive pregnancy test--which I only took because I'm paranoid-- for Kit, I didn't know what to do. After a lot of looking around, Elf and I went to "iChoice." Only went there because I noticed a pro-life bias to one of their billboards-- the word "choice" usually means "kill your child, it's easier." (Cynical? Hell, yes, but with reason.)

iChoice is NOT like that. The office we went to were very grounded in science, research and the law-- rather protestant with a polite evangelical tinge, but utterly polite. They wouldn't even do an ultrasound when they found out that I hadn't had a cycle in years, because there's some sort of law about first trimester vs second trimester. They were able to point me to an OBGYN that didn't ask "was she planned" and offer abortion referrals when we said "no," though. Heck, they didn't even ask if I wanted to be sterilized. (Something that I was asked several times by multiple members of FHS, although I suspect lawsuits were involved in that. Sometimes, I hate Seattle.)

Digression: Elf and I don't 'plan' our kids. We know freaking basic biology, and know that our... activities... are designed to produce children. We pay attention to biological cycles if we're trying to avoid that. We have health insurance, I take vitamins and watch my diet as closely as I watch our funds, and even when I think there's no chance of the actions bearing fruit I take pregnancy tests before doing anything that could possibly hurt our kids. I know some folks need to work hard to have kids; we would have to work hard to not have them, from current evidence, although the spacing is satisfactory to my doctors. I don't want to imagine what their response to MY mom would've been!

Both of my girls were about eight pounds. I was just over seven, IIRC.
I wonder if kids are getting bigger, now-- heaven knows that I am not bigger than my ancestors, unless you're talking circumferences!

Heck, Duchess was just 38 weeks and was bigger than that, with no raised levels of bloodsugar even!

Protect Conscientious Objection

2011-09-20T14:01:00.000-07:00

With the USCCB.

Action Alert: Write to Protect Conscience Rights in Health Care by 9/30
Share · Public Event
Time
Monday, September 19 at 4:00pm - September 30 at 11:30pm
Location
Your Own Computer
Created By
United States Conference of Catholic Bishops
More Info
Religious liberty is under unprecedented attack...but you can do something about it TODAY!

On August 1, HHS issued an "interim final rule" that will require nearly all private health plans to include full coverage for all drugs approved by the FDA as contraceptives and sterilization procedures (for both women AND men).

These are listed among "preventive services for women" that all health plans will have to include without co-pays or other cost-sharing -- overriding the conscientiously-held objections of the insurer, the employer/plan sponsor, or even the woman herself!

Not even Jesus himself would qualify for HHS's narrow "religious exemption."

That means that regardless of our beliefs and morals, we will be forced to subsidize drugs, devices & surgical procedures that treat pregnancy as a disease and fertility as a pathological condition.

Some of those drugs & devices (IUD's) can act as abortifacients, killing unborn humans at their earliest, most delicate stages of development. "Ella" (which is marketed as an "emergency contraceptive") can actually interrupt an established pregnancy after implantation, like the abortion drug it's related to, RU-486.

Let HHS know: Pregnancy is NOT a disease -- and we will not be forced to treat it that way with our private insurance premiums.

To hear a podcast of the bishops' action alert put out through NCHLA, go to: http://nchla.org/datasource/idocuments/9aaHHSmandate1e.11.wma.

Visit the USCCB's Conscience Protection page @ www.usccb.org/conscience to learn more and send your personalized pre-written message.

We have until 11:59 pm on Friday, Sept 30 to make our voices heard.

Thank you!

PS: You don't have to be Catholic to be deeply concerned about conscience rights. We welcome participation from other concerned citizens, too.

A Very Good Point

2011-09-20T11:42:00.000-07:00

Reading a good post on Ricochet, trying to put my finger on how I can possibly use the topic without it all going wahoonie shaped, and from left field a lady makes a really, really good point:

Judithann Campbell
There is a way to empower both men and women without taking away women's rights; parents should stop forcing their daughters to pursue careers. I am 41; I have never wanted a career, but I used to make up stories about careers that I supposedly wanted, because saying that one doesn't want a career is socially unacceptable. I doubt that I am the only women who has done this; many or most women pursue careers not necessarily because they want to, but because they are told that they must; if we allowed young women to do what they wanted, many or most would stay out of the workforce. A few would still want careers, and they would have every right to pursue them, but everyone would be better off if parents would stop trying to turn their daughters into Hillary Clinton.
#56 ·Sep 19 at 7:09pm

Very much this. I am glad I spent the time I did in the Navy-- in no small part because that's how I met Elf-- but oy am I sick of folks talking about how I'm "wasting" my life by raising my own children. Total crab bucket, too, with unhappy women who regret their choices trying to force girls to follow them. Those ladies I know who are genuinely happy with what they did tend to encourage folks to follow (I'm looking at you, mom, with your constant when-am-I-going-to-finish-a-degree stuff) and most assuredly still do the guilt trips, but they don't try to invoke some sort of sex loyalty thing. In general, of course-- if someone hasn't figured out that you can come up with one or two specific examples that counter the tendencies, they should probably be reading elsewhere....

What's really sad is that our technology right now is perfect for making 'traditional' feminine living highly productive in a large number of ways, but the all-women-must-ACHIEVE thing is counter-productive to that goal. (Among many other factors.)
Thank goodness for the internet, I'd go nuts without someone to "talk" to, some mental stimulation. I love Elf dearly, but he's working--he doesn't have time to play with ideas, and the weekends aren't long enough for all the half-baked notions to be hammered out. The net (especially blogs) let me find the ideas, hammer them out and either discard them or store them for future thought. Really good ones I can send to him, and we can polish them before introducing them to others.

I hesitate to hold myself as a norm, but since I rather lack in female friends of the same age... I am really, really sick of Boomers working out their issues on my generation. My history class was poisoned by it, social studies was poisoned by it, the time I should have had to work out what I wanted was instead guided to filling out the holes they felt from the freaking sixties-- without the framework that held those holes. The Ricochet podcast was pushing a book that is a good example of the blow-back I sense-- called something like "Your Teacher Said WHAT?!" Many dry jokes about the "kill the Indians, slavery, WWII Internment camps" theory of history. I gotta say-- not funny. Most of the history I was offered in school was aimed at correcting the notion that America is perfect... problem being that we're two generations, at least, past that being commonly taught, and from those Boomers I've spoken to, it was more complex than that if you were paying attention. (Don't get me started on the mangling of world history. Or on the paying attention thing, really-- that idiot girl in Canada is a great example of not paying attention.)

In school, I greatly annoyed a couple of teachers because I persisted in pointing out that their broad-strokes-correction-stuff wasn't entirely accurate. An annoyingly pig-headed ranch kid with a teacher mother and two professional, college-educated grandmothers is not someone who buffallos easily, especially when you're trying to paint the pre-60s as a wasteland where women cowered in fear and were ignorant, powerless, uneducated sops.

Now, I can look back and understand that we were looking at different sorts of power-- they were measuring it by how much of the recognized man's power a woman had, I was looking at a more amorphous form. (Major irony points: I'm a geek girl, which means that my brain is more "masculine" in the language they were speaking, while they were and are better at "nurturing"{education} and cooperation style things... these uber-feminist 60s gals were using masculine measures of power while I was using feminine ones. A large part of the problem came from us speaking in different frameworks, and our frameworks were reversed from what one would expect!)

An ever present problem with these flavor of topics is the outlying problem-- who are the outliers? The standard Dr. Quinn beaten-and-cowering-wife, the old Matriarch that has utter control over EVERYTHING, or folks like Elf and I? (The mostly joking way of explaining Elf and I coming down to Elf gets the final say, but doesn't even exercise an initial say most of the time.)

Why Atheists Still Blasphemy

2011-09-18T07:59:00.000-07:00

It takes a very special and strong-minded atheist to jump up and down with their hand clasped under their other armpit and shout, "Oh, random-fluctuations-in-the-space-time-continuum!" or "Aaargh, primitive-and-outmoded-concept on a crutch!"

- Men At Arms, Terry Pratchett, 1997.

Enough With The Memes!

2011-09-18T05:00:00.005-07:00

I'm coming to hate Perry's supporters, just because they are so freaking wed to spreading memes-- dumb ones, at that! It's not to Ronulan levels of annoying, yet, but cut it out!

Focusing on the mandated vaccination for an STD for school girls, I'll list off a few, with responses:
"It had an opt-out, it's not really a mandate."
That opt-out is exactly the same as for every other mandatory vaccine in Texas. You ask the gov't to send you the form, fill it out, get it notarized and then you get permission to not be vaccinated with whatever for two years. (In theory, at least.)

"It's horrible that Bachmann is giving support to the anti-vaccine movement!"
Possibly the locations I'm most familiar with-- Seattle, Portland and SoCal-- messes with the sampling I have in this, but none of the folks I know who are "anti-vaccine" are feeling validated by anything a Republican would say, because THEY ARE LIBERALS. The same sort of folks who think "organic" means "healthier" and "more nutritious."

"It's OK, Perry was just making it so the insurance companies would pay for the vaccine."
Oh, that's a lovely defense of someone going for the Republican nomination: his goal wasn't to abuse his power and interfere with parental rights by mandating a new STD drug on little girls from a company that gave him money and hired his friend-- he was just trying to force a private company to pay for something he personally thought was a good idea.

"Perry said he messed up/is sorry/wouldn't do it that way again/etc."
Where? Please, seriously, I've asked for folks to give a link to exactly what he actually said, and nobody will do it-- there is a WORLD of difference between him saying "that looked really bad," "I shouldn't have used an executive order," "I should have gone with an opt-in instead of an opt-out" or "I would not do something like that again." Or even, "yeah, I was an utter idiot with my rhetoric on that...sorry." (The "pro-life" justification, the various polio claims, etc.)

"Watch this video with an interview of people who know someone who died of cervical cancer!"
Wow! Women dying is a bad thing-- I had no idea! I am now utterly on the side of government ordered everything that someone claims could save a few in a hundred thousand lives, if someone can find an emotional argument for it, and to heck with any consideration for personal rights!

"You just hate science/are ignorant/are anti-medicine!"
No, you ad hominem slinging idiot; there's no shortage of medical professionals who also did not think it was a great idea. Even the "preventing cancer" thing isn't open-shut, even with those who go from "associated with" into "causes." While you're at it, could you please educate yourself on HPV, and stop spreading flat misinformation? At least figure out a bit about the various types, and pay attention to the stats that folks throw around...

Introducing The Duchess

2011-09-17T11:00:00.001-07:00

A few days after we got home from the hospital, while she was catching some reflected rays. The temps were in the 80s, for those who are worried because the baby isn't wrapped up. *grin*

Also, we discovered last night that she's scared of the dark. I didn't know you could be scared of the dark this early in life.... (Explains why she sleeps so well during the day, and while I'm reading in bed, but keeps waking up when I turn off the light to sleep!)

Two Things

2011-09-16T13:22:00.004-07:00

There are two things about recovering from a major surgery that I really hate:

1) not being able to do things for myself

2) the amount of time I spend fixing things after I've been "helped." Especially when it WAS one of the few things I could do for myself, and double-especially when I'd explained several times that no, I did not want help on that thing.

Prayers, Please

2011-09-14T15:19:00.001-07:00

Bob the Ape's dad is in a bad way.

An Essay

2011-09-12T07:00:00.000-07:00

I really hope you will read it; I can't sum up my point, and I can't do it justice in summary, but I think it helps clarify the current situation of flash-mobs, the Greek, French and English riots, and so on. (Published in '03.)

Yes, an essay that starts out being about some standard grimdark of the darkgrim fantasy and how they throw their shoulders out patting themselves on the back for being so "authentic" is relevant to current social unrest. No, I haven't had a lot of sleep lately, but I don't think that being punchy is the cause of the connection.

Better yet, it has a solution. Not an panacea, more of a... tactic. A goal. An idea.

First encountered the author online under the nom that he gives this tactic-- Superversive.

Thanks to Mr. Wright, who linked several of the gentleman's essays, including the Superversive one-- I didn't know Mr. Simon had a non-LJ website.

A Decade Later.

2011-09-11T07:00:00.000-07:00

So much is different.

As I've mentioned before, I didn't see anything for over a week-- I was in bootcamp at the time. Our youngest instructor snuck in a VHS tape of one of the news stations doing a week in review. The head instructor didn't want us to be told about it at all, and tried to chew out the girl that saw it on the news when she was at medical. (Yes, he was rather psycho. Even tried to pull the lame "you were all specially selected" bad family movie trick at the start of camp, complete with the 'big reveal' on the last night....)

I didn't read anything about it until October, when one of the security guys left a newspaper in the galley. (Got chewed out for that. Don't regret it. Only remember reading about how the Catholic Church in the area had somehow escaped without being destroyed, full of praying people.)

Now, I'm out, I'm married, I'm a mother-- the newest was due on 9/11, even. (I'm writing this ahead of time, since I will probably still be on drugs and might even still be in the hospital on the 11th. Hope not, since that will mean Something Went Wrong.)

My baby brother is a SEAL watcher. (Alright, alright, "support.") My entire family has internalized things I never thought of-- watching to see if someone seems oddly nervous, thinking twice about following ANY regular route on a regular schedule. Now we have disaster kits that include "psychos trying to Make A Statement" in the consideration. We consider "what if I have to defend my family?" at random times, and consider the defensive possibilities of places we visit. As a kid, I never considered the best way to kill someone that might try to kill me-- the notion was just foreign.

"Post 9/11" has been my entire adult life. My daughter won't know a world where her parents don't include tactics in people watching. (People watching is a family tradition with my folks, it's just now a bit more serious.)

Prayers going out for those who died, and those who were left. God bless us all.

But There Are No Editors, And It's Mostly Horrible!

2011-09-10T07:00:00.000-07:00

That's supposed to be the problem with e-publishing.

Frankly, it makes me wonder if the person complaining has picked up a random book lately and noticed that even the really big named books have basic spelling and grammar errors, or if he's familiar with Sturgeon's Law. (Going to rehash a bit of that page here; Sturgeon's Law is "90% of everything is crud," phrased in response to someone standing up and telling him that 90% of science fiction was crud.)

Here is a published but not-a-big-name writer venting about the guts of the system, from the inside, followed by this:

THIS model. THIS MODEL is what the bright eyed harbingers of the establishment, the blue eyed boys of privilege want me to get maudlin about. Both as a reader and as a writer, let me say RIGHT NOW that I’m not going to.

She points out that she doesn't know what epublishing will do, how it will be and so on, but she does know that the current publishing setup is fat and lazy. (Abusive in fact, as her extended metaphor shows.) Alright, so the "employee" side thinks the business is in trouble. Turns out that the "boss" side agrees that publishers need to change if they're going to stay afloat-- to quote, after following the links, "book publishing needs to return to the simple task of connecting readers and writers."

Hm, sounds like fanfiction.net, but with a budget.

If they're smart, they'll look at Baen's library (and authors) and work on making it easy for folks to do the promoting and selecting for them-- say, the way that Maureen pointed me to Embers.

"Why Didn't The Post 9/11 Unity Last?"

2011-09-09T13:13:00.002-07:00

"It's because the post-9/11 unity was hijacked by Those People wipe out a religion; if THEY were really serious about responding to 9/11, they'd be "doing something" for their neighbors now, the people they actually know."

...

Serious paraphrase from the radio this morning, while I was giving Kit a bath.
From the most neutral radio station in the Seattle area; two-host talk show, kinda libertarian-and-nice-guy-dem team.

*sigh*

Not sure if it was a sort of ironic act to get attention or what.

Rest In Peace

2011-09-08T14:44:00.001-07:00

The guy who started Project Gutenberg has passed away.

Between that and-- according to my favorite Banshee-- inventing the ebook, Prof. Hart is a very worthy modern successor for all the meaning packed in to "Gutenberg."

God bless him and keep him.

You Know That Joke...

2011-09-08T14:33:00.000-07:00

about how "compromise" in politics means that the conservatives do what the liberals want, sometimes for a promise of future conservative actions? (which almost never show up....)

Neo-Neo suggests that Obama may not know why it's such a standard joke.

So now, when Obama fumes at Republican refusal to “compromise,” it is likely that he is actually being sincere rather than disingenuous. After all, he is accustomed to getting what he wants from conservatives, and may rarely have faced a situation before where the stakes were high enough for the opposition to take a firm stance and not be quickly swayed by his silver tongue and his let-us-reason-together demeanor.

That makes a worrying amount of sense....

Semantics

2011-09-07T07:00:00.109-07:00

As you may or may not know, I hate the phrase "just semantics."

Think about it. Would you ever say, to a stranger, "Oh, stop that-- you're just being picky about what I said, instead of what I meant!" Heck, even my family doesn't get away with that-- we'll sometimes fumble around an idea for a bit and then say "you know what I mean, not what I'm saying, right?" Much different from stating something and then being called on the meaning of the words.

Perhaps the reason the phrase annoys so is because of something I grew up being reminded: "What you hear may not be what they're saying." Even if both sides mean well, are intelligent and well informed, misunderstandings can explode from this "little" thing. (Sometimes it's Inigo Montoya-- "You keep using that word. I do not think that it means what you think it means."-- and sometimes it's jargon; sometimes it's shades of meaning, sometimes regional or cultural differences and sometimes it's a mixture of a bunch of things.)

This came to mind because someone on the radio was waxing hugely indignant about how only an idiot could believe that a feral cat couldn't be tamed-- or maybe she was against the notion, it really wasn't too clear.

I know several answers to the notion that "you can not tame a feral cat." Problem being, the answer changes depending on what you mean.

Feral: born without human contact, has been living on its own without human contact, an outside cat or a cat that visits several homes but isn't claimed by any of them?

Cat: a fully adult cat, a yearling/teenage cat or an actual still-a-baby kitten?

Tame: get them comfortable with a human, integrate them to a household, get them to be friendly to a family or get them to be friendly to people in general?

For starters, some cats are just never going to be people-cats. I seem to remember some breeds even have this mentioned in their descriptions-- they may bond with one person, or they may be aloof in general. On the flip side, every house cat I've ever lived with was born to a feral queen, entered human contact no later than six weeks of age and turned out to be very comfortable with people.

*Picks kitten up off of keyboard and puts him on the floor. Again.*

Sometimes too comfortable....

Born-wild adult cats, it's harder for me to know-- my dad has a major way with animals, and he's the one that feeds the barn cats, but there are still some who will vanish the instant he opens the door. Gone-wild cats can be tamed back down in at least some cases. The cynic in me says that the harder a time the gone-feral cat had in the wild, the easier they are to tame back down, but I do think some just like being around people.

(Why I know about this topic: my folks' place has a huge red barn, right near the road; you would not believe how many people dump off their cats at it. When we moved in, there was a small and starving population of house pets and a freaking biblical curse of rodents all over the place-- you'd turn on the oven in the house, and mice would scatter. It costs about a bag of feed a month and takes a few placings of the sweeter abandoned pets, but we now have a very healthy colony of feral cats...and even our neighbors have noticed how much the rodent situation has improved. No, they haven't wiped out the local birds, either-- although they do clean up the pest-birds that die of sudden onset lead poisoning. They even avoid the guineas, although a couple of the better hunters have brought in marmots from the fields. This does NOT mean it's a good thing to do to your house pet when you don't want him-- a lot of these animals die to coyotes and other predators. You made that animal a promise when you took ownership, live up to it, or you're the one that's degraded.)

When I say "feral cat," I mean one that shows no signs of having been associated with humans-- they show fear or bravado when cornered by a human, generally act like a wild animal. I don't generally include actual kittens in this category, since most that I've ever seen act the same-- spitting and hissing at anything. I've never tried, but I don't believe these adults can be tamed down enough to fully integrate into a household. All the instances of truly feral cats, where they hated and feared humans at the outset but became housecats at the end, were half-grown cats-- what my mom calls "teenagers," and the animal shelter calls "kittens." They're usually still pretty skittish. (The one my uncle had, I only ever saw the tail of-- someone she didn't know showed up, she was gone.)

I don't consider cats that have several homes but aren't really claimed by any to be feral; they're neighborhood cats, for crying out loud. Doesn't matter if they're mooching food, cooing and scratches at three restaurants, a barber shop and a nice little old lady's, then sleeping in the back room of the book store-- they're tame, they're just not claimed. Feral means a domestic animal that's reverted to the wild, not a domestic animal doesn't live in one house....

2011-09-04T20:51:00.000-07:00

One:
When gov't regulation becomes bad.
Two:
Why bringing the gov't in to meet your goal isn't wise.
Three:
Steampunk today! Just... not in the cool way.
Four:
When the power-drunk to oppose regulations besides #1.

Off topic:
things may be a bit odd, Kaboodle showed up early. She is healthy and darling, her sister is being a doll, but obviously there's going to be major effects on my blogging quality and time. (Even with Elf having time to stay home next week, adjusting is always complicated, and the mental effects of the hormones, sleep interruptions and pain meds are kinda funky.)
Not going to touch the pre-programmed posts, since I might "fix" them into oblivion. Be well, all!

Why Personhood Matters

2011-09-04T07:00:00.000-07:00

Imagine you lost your mother, after an illness, at the hospital. In as much as any death is easy, hers is... and then it starts.

Months later, after much legal fighting, they finally give you her mortal remains-- a couple of tissue samples in little boxes, kept behind the secretary’s counter for when you came in to get them for a proper burial. You’re handed the shoebox and told to sign here, here and here, be careful, those are bio waste.

Horrifying, isn’t it?

How about this:

Your little son’s best friend, the youngest in his family, is a little corker-- always cheerful, full of mischief like boys often are, a whirlwind of energy. He’s nearly a decade younger than his older brother, who has a dire medical condition. Your son mentions that his friend will be in the hospital for a while, but doesn’t really have any details-- it’s doctor stuff, and his friend hadn’t given much detail.

The little boy doesn’t come back. After a lot of trying to find out why, you find out that he was born to be a suitable donor for his older brother. There was a complication in the donation, and the little boy didn’t make it. His mother is considering hormone treatment or possibly a surrogacy pregnancy (sorry, hiring a “gestational carrier” or two) if the transplant doesn’t “take” in the older son.

Maybe you’ve seen Blade Runner? Pretty ridiculous, right? A cop that goes around killing people because they happen to be clones that had a bit of a quirk added to mark them as not “really” people....

Ooops.

That only took about four years from when they started publicly suggesting cloning humans in emptied animal eggs.

Hey, how about that proposal to bring back Neanderthals? If they stick to that pattern, we’ve got about three years until we find out they’ve already done it. Not sure when we’ll find out they’ve been gestated, although I can’t imagine it will be too very long until we find out that the animal-egg-humans have been. Given the low success rate for cloning mammals, I shudder at the number of small, dead people.

Even clones who are utterly identical aren’t automatically treated as people in pop culture-- Star Trek: The Next Generation had an episode where an entire colony of clones was on screen, passing seamlessly as totally normal humans, and ended with a main character killing his own clone. Righteously indignant that someone had dared copy him without permission, in fact. (About a decade later they tried to “fix” this philosophical issue, but only with a fully developed clone that could speak. For added irony, the character was a womanizer-- that’s how they got his DNA, he was flirting with one of the clone ladies.)

Hey, while we're busy pruning the tree, how about a few modifications? They mean well, after all. (In fairness to Star Trek, they touched on this in Deep Space Nine-- modified humans are basically second-class citizens, but that's just to keep people from saying "screw it" and taking the risk. They had several episodes about the bad results, even when it went as intended. Played as a sort of induced autism, which seemed like a pretty good choice....)

Look to the Netherlands for a notion of where we may be headed; ’non-voluntary’ euthanasia, killing babies for ‘quality of life’ reasons... amazing how many lives just aren’t worthy of life once you start in that direction, isn’t it?

The comments over at this article on Ricochet lead me to a description of “The Thanatos Syndrome.” I can’t bring myself to read it-- some things are just too close to be enjoyable, and I really don’t need the situation to be humanized. Already read a few books on the Nazis, back in high school. Still remember those simple black-and-white photos of lady’s gloves made from human skin, and lampshades with the tattoos carefully displayed.

Hey, anyone want a Pepsi?

Cross-posted to The American Catholic.

Non-Human People

2011-09-01T07:00:00.006-07:00

(First post to TAC.)

Time for a bit of Catholic applied to geekery! (Not to be confused with straight up Catholic Geekery, which is more the Holy Father’s area-- does anyone doubt that he dearly loves thinking about, playing with and elaborating on Catholic theology? You just don’t end up writing THREE books on the life of Jesus without the love, intellectual interest and deep enjoyment of a geek for his geekdom.)

There’s something about Catholics and blogs that always ends up going into the old question of what makes a man-- or, more correctly, a person. “Man” in this context would be a human, and there are several examples of people that aren’t humans-- like most of the Trinity. Sadly, the topic usually comes up in terms of abortion; even the utterly simple-science-based reasoning that all humans are human and should be treated thus will bring out the attacks. (Amusingly, the line of attack is usually that someone is trying to force their religious beliefs on others, rather than an attempt to explain why a demonstrably human life is objectively different from, say, an adult human. The “bioethicist” Singer is famous for being open about valuing life in a utilitarian manner, but there aren’t many who will support that angle.[thank God])

Slowly looping around to the point, one of the topics that got me interested in Catholic blogs in the first place was the Catholic musing on what a “person” is; Jimmy Akin’s post on zombies was probably the first time I'd ever seen it discussed. (I think I actually found his writing while looking for a good site to explain to my driven-away-Catholic geek friends that D&D wasn’t antithetical to Catholicism.) I’d never heard anything about an organized Catholic theory of...well, much of anything, but that’s a different topic. I had-- of course-- seen a bit of Catholic theology on EWTN, but I seem to remember that I had the impression that theology was more focused on explicitly religious things, rather than theoretical musings.

Deathly dull and serious, not fun.

Option #2, that of a non-human, rational soul was very interesting to me, since-- being a geek-- I’d read a lot of stories with elves where a big to-do about how the local church (which always looks familiar) holds that non-Humans don’t have souls. Sometimes they go really anvilicious and have the dark-skinned, mystical non-local humans be counted as not being human. (Mercedies Lackey is really, really bad about this.) It hadn’t sounded right, since it was really obvious that the story-elves (usually repackaged Tolkien elves, with a smattering of some Irish legends) were people. Heck, half the time they could even have families with normal humans, and there are quarter-elves, or all magic-using humans have “elvish” blood, so they’re more a sub-group of humans than another species. (Homo Sapien Pointy-Eared-Magica, to riff off a similar notion?) It's a staple of fantastic fiction to have a normal person that the reader can relate to meeting up and befriending-- at the very least-- nonhuman people, often with a sub-plot about how the people who don't agree are misguided at best or evil at worst.

I pointed folks to the explanation for non-human people for a few years, and at some point a blog I ran into mentioned St Augustine’s definition of “man”. (That blogger has thought a bit on the matter of non-human intelligence and Catholicism.)

The author John Wright recently republished an article he wrote about space Christians and their impact on Catholicism-- prefaced with the sly warning that “The Magisterium of the Church has yet to rule on the theological implications of intelligent extraterrestrials. Perhaps they are wisely awaiting for alien intelligent life to be discovered first.

Mr. Wright’s reason for re-publishing is actually what got me thinking on the subject again-- one of my many peeves is being the established mythology of fandom that the Church would have mad issues with, well, pretty much anything that’s outside of the currently accepted mundane, or the “cool” parody of it. (It’s to the point where I half wonder if Laura K. Hamilton is making a really, really sneaky point... her first “Anita Blake” book mentions that the namesake character was born and raised Catholic, but switched because the Church said that doing what she does for a living is immoral and would lead to degeneration; umpteen books later, the series is...uh... rather notorious in fandom for breaking any moral reservation she expresses in a book or two, and the main character has become a sort of necromancer-vampire-wereanimal succubus.)

The most frequent reminder in every Catholic discussion I’ve seen about non-human, physical, rational beings is that charity requires that we assume those who show evidence of being a rational being have a soul. I don’t know if that’s supposed to jump out, or if it just jumps out because most explorations of the “what measure makes a man” question tend to either hand-wave things so that it comes out so that of course so and so is really a person, or utterly violate it. (Looking back, it would’ve been really nice if someone in a teaching position in my Catholic education had used that Star Trek: The Next Generation episode where they almost decide that Data is StarFleet property that can be chopped up for research, not a person, as a launch block for the whole moral being discussion...or even just an abortion, ESCR or personhood type discussion.... Um, any moral discussion, launched for any reason, come to think of it.)

This sort of moral question is perfect for science fiction and fantasy-- you can set up any variation on the theme that you want, play with it, use “what if” to your heart’s content. (This sometimes means that all a story does is tell you what the author wants you to think.) What if the non-humans look like humans, but live a lot longer? What if Neanderthals survived to the modern day? What if we can interbreed with aliens? What if we can’t? What if aliens-- or dragons-- are so mentally different that it’s hard to wrap your mind around their thought processes? What is the impact on dealing with a species that considers you food? (A question that’s sometimes touched on in vampire novels, usually either indirectly-- by unstated emotional appeal that helps you not hate the mass murdering blood suckers-- or simi-directly, by making the dividing line between good and bad vampires a question of who kills intelligent beings to survive.)

Somehow, though, these opportunities usually go by the wayside, both with pro apologists (a few exceptions like Jimmy, of course) and with just-people-who-are-Catholic. (As clumsy as I am, I managed to get folks thinking without being bored by working things like Natural Law into my character stories-- or by choosing my Paladin's god based on who was most compatible with Catholic theology, and playing that way.)

I can count on my fingers the number of fantastic fiction authors that are friendly to religion, let alone ones that work Catholic theology (or natural philosophy) into into the stories.

Meanwhile, I was the only practicing Catholic in my geek group in no small part because the rest had been told that such things were against Church teaching. (Other factors: they’d never been introduced to any of the reasoning behind various teachings, or even been told that there was reasoning; different people had told them different things were binding, and none had offered justifications. The Harry Potter/B16 thing is an example of the sort of thing that seriously damaged their childhood faith. “Helpful” relatives that saw “Mazes and Monsters” and went straight into a mode Darwin commented on before.)

I’d bet that anime has done more to make geeky folks, ones who could so easily become as fascinated with Catholicism as our Pope is, sympathetic to Catholicism than...well... actual Catholics have done. Blogging is (maybe?) changing that, slowly, and it's hard to figure out the right sort of touch to use when talking about religion. Thankfully, geekdom is pretty forgiving if you're obviously a fanboy about a topic. I sincerely believe that if we could just folks to listen to what the Church teaches, a lot of those geeks would end up being great apologists.

Cross-posted to The American Catholic. (Don't bother reading the comments past the first three or five on this one-- there's nothing there. Warning for those who know TAC and thus expect really good comment sections.)

BS Detector PSA

2011-08-31T14:41:00.002-07:00

If the headline "Boeing Paid More For CEO Than Federal Taxes"-- let alone the spin "Boeing Paid More To CEO Than Taxes"-- did not set off your BS detector, it is broken.

Seriously. Come on. I'm not sure if this is worse than the "aliens could invade and kill us because we're causing global warming" suggestion; it's probably worse than the "aliens did it" theory of life on earth. (Yes, they've both been seriously suggested. The second one is, believe it or not, considered an alternative to "intelligent design.")

I'm sure that it can be forced into being technically true-- say, Boeing overpaid last year, looking only at taxes paid at the end of the year (as opposed to deductions through the year), government deals where Boeing does X, Y and Z rather than paying taxes directly, finding one line in some paperwork that says "taxes paid", looking at only a section of Boeing instead of the entire company, etc. Possibly several of these, and some more that I haven't thought of, to make it technically true. Same way that it's technically true that I've got a lot of ancestors who are Mormon...according to the Mormon belief of post-death baptism. (Came to mind because of some genealogy research a relative did.) Same way the Obama kids are Muslims. (A male ancestor was Muslim, so they are as well. *eyeroll*)

Doesn't make it any less bull feces. (Go. Listen. Baxter Black is awesome.)

The Methow Wolf Pack

2011-08-27T09:35:00.000-07:00

And why people think it had help showing up.

First, there's the way that they showed up the fiscal year after a wolf habitat study was done. (It wasn't announced, the biologist doing it was just friendly and the locals like to talk.)

Second, there's the way that pet disappearances just suddenly started, without any sort of a path that the animals may have followed, and no sightings.

Third, there's the link here that's labeled "other such problems." That would be when they got all excited in our area because they'd found a bunch of evidence for lynx!!!
...
Then someone noticed that the DNA was from the same lynx, and he had a freaking HUGE range. Eventually they found another problem, because he was a dead hide in the forest service headquarters and had been for some time....

There's also the way that fences mysteriously are found cut, even when it's not hunting season, just before range inspections. That might be local activists, though-- there are a lot of Seattle idiots who "just love" the area and thus do everything they can to destroy it. (Nothing like seeing the logical end of the mindset that insists milk comes from the store, after all.)

I've Got a Little List....

2011-08-25T07:00:00.116-07:00

Actually, a notebook. It's got a lot of lists in it, though.

I picked up a bread machine at a yard sale for ten bucks a few months back, and the book that came with it is...er... somewhat less than helpful. The recipes work just fine, it's just that they all assume you'll only be baking with powdered milk. Before Kit came around, that would have been a safe enough bet, although I prefer to keep canned instead of powder as an emergency staple; since both child and husband drink the horrible white stuff, though, it's silly for me not to buy it in the bladder, and so I look for recipes that use it instead....

These go into my recipe notebook.

Simple, old spiral notebook, first page is Nancy Cookies because I'd rather have a paper notebook than my laptop computer, and I was making a big batch for then-Fiance-Elf. (They are great because if you put them in zipper-bags and ship them to the other side of the world, they still taste fresh when they get there, and for about a month after.)

It probably won't ever turn into the great packs of notecards that my grandmothers had. Unlike theirs I've tried to put in every trick that I use to get results that I like-- theirs were a memory aid so they knew the basic route, then their skill turned the variable ingredients into what they wanted; since my ingredients are of incredibly consistent quality and I don't have anything like the skills they did, there are a lot of notes like "add a little extra water if they don't look flat enough." I've got real recipe books as well, including the classic Better Homes and Gardens from the 70s or so. (Since I got it at the Base's thrift store, it's also stuffed with clippings from magazines...I still end up getting most of the information I need from the internet, since most of the time I just can't remember how hot the oven should be for a pork roast, or if I'm supposed to put foil on the bird until the last ten minutes, or not do it until then....)

Adding a recipe to my little list is a sort of big deal for my cooking-- there's a ton of scrap paper around the kitchen, from a scribbled tamagoyaki recipe taped to the microwave to a scribbled list of what I need to prepare for fishstick tacos. I have to try a recipe several times, get consistent results and really like the results for something to be added.

This is one that made it (although I still need to scribe it....)
It Came From The Bread Machine: Son of Cinnabon

The night before:
Get two gallon ziplocks and a sandwich bag.
Draw a line down the middle of one side of the bags.
On one side of the first one, write:

4 1/2 cups bread flour
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup white sugar
2 1/2 teaspoons bread machine yeast

go to the other side, and write:

1 cup warm milk
2 eggs, room temperature
1/3 cup margarine, melted

Put the dry ingredients in that bag, seal, mix a bit if you feel like it, and set aside.

Get the second large bag and, on the same side you wrote the dry ingredents for the one above, write:

1 cup brown sugar, packed
2 1/2 tablespoons ground cinnamon

On the other side, write:

1/3 cup butter, softened

Put the sugar and cinnamon in, seal, mix a bit if you feel like it, set with the flour bag.

Get the little bag, and write:

1 1/2 cups confectioners’ sugar
1/8 teaspoon salt

On the other side, or below, write:

1 (3 ounce) package cream cheese, softened
1/4 cup butter, softened
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

Put in the sugar and salt, seal, put with the other bags. Pull out a stick of butter to soften overnight. Get a microwave safe bowl-- soup bowl works fine-- and put 1/3 cup margarine and 1 cup milk in it; put it in the fridge beside your eggs.

Put tinfoil on your cookie sheet, clear a space on the counter near the bread machine and go to bed.

When you stumble down stairs to turn on the coffee machine next morning, put the milk and margarine in the microwave for about 30 seconds. Put the eggs under running hot water, or-- if you're a desert kid like me-- give the milk mix an extra ten or so seconds and make sure the eggs are mixed in well in the bread machine. Pour in bag #1, set the machine to "dough," and go have your coffee. (Or go back to sleep for an hour, if you're the sort who can; if not, when you're done with your coffee and email, refill the bag.)

When the dough is done, dump it on to the counter and leave it there for about ten minutes. (Good time to rinse the bread machine and refill the ziplock, if you didn't already.)

Roll it out to a 16x21' rectangle-- that's "about a hand bigger on every side than the big cookie sheet" for me; you'll find a shorthand that works for you. Cover with the butter that's been softening overnight. Make sure that bag #2 is well mixed, then sprinkle as evenly as you can over the buttered dough. Roll it, so you end up with a dough tube that's nearly two feet long.

Slice into even rolls-- I used two and a half fingers to "measure," do whatever trick so you end up with about a dozen, even-ish rolls. The ends will be ugly; it doesn't really matter....

Put on the sheet, and put aside until they're about double in size. (~30 minutes, depends; my first batch took nearly an hour, because I was enjoying the cool morning air and the room was about 60*....)

Set oven to 400*F.

Get a little mixing bowl and empty the third bag into it. (At least three times the size of a soup bowl was the smallest that worked for me.) Put the cream cheese and butter in the bowl you used for the milk mix earlier, microwave 10-20 seconds so it's soft, mix into the sugar mix with the vanilla. Clean off the beater and put the bowl over the exhaust for your oven. (usually the back right burner-- this will make it really easy to pour)

Clean up and re-fill any bags that are still empty. (This really does make it a lot nicer.)

Put the doubled rolls into the oven for about fifteen minutes, so they're golden brown.

Pull out, dribble frosting over them-- I find it easiest to do a bare dribble circuit, let it soak in a bit, and then do one or two more so that I don't run out of frosting or make a mess. You might even want to have one or two without frosting, although I suggest either putting butter on them or eating them fresh if you do.

These taste like the best cinnabon you've ever had, and even two days later they were better than the worst I've had. (And the whole batch costs less than just one!)

From The Comments Over At Coyote's Place

2011-08-24T18:28:00.000-07:00

caseyboy:
Russ R, Warren Buffet pays a lower overall tax rate because of the complicated structuring he uses to manage his various investments. He takes no W-2 income out of Berkshire so he avoids withholding at appropriate bracket rates. His income flows from his highly structured investments in the form of capital gains, taxed at a lower rate. He could easily remedy the variance by collapsing the structures and taking ordinary income from his investments. I suspect Warren’s tax the rich mantra has more to do with preventing his younger competitors from gaining the critical mass of wealth necessary to dominate and move markets. Warren and Soros are alike in that way.

Biiiiingoooo......

Demo's Got A Good Point And Link

2011-08-21T14:22:00.000-07:00

Beers with Demo: OK, it isn't just about the economy, stupid

Pointing to another post-- from PJM-- which points out that, basically, the right to life is the most basic of rights. If you can't defend it, if the government gets to decide how important it is, and when, then you don't have much of any rights at all.

Asking The Flash for Help

2011-08-10T14:15:00.000-07:00

because you know him!

Score one for superheroes.

The levels of adorable are just incredible.

Are We Really At The Place-

2011-08-08T10:10:00.000-07:00

where following through on intel about where bin Laden is, with lethal results, is a #1 accomplishment? Seriously, we're supposed to admire that he didn't...what? Pull a Clinton* in a post-9/11 world?

Sorry, folks don't get big pluses in my book from failing to screw up spectacularly in a single, incredibly big way, and it really doesn't fix any other screw-ups and personal failings.

You want someone to congratulate you for doing the bare minimum when handed the fruit nearly a decade's worth of work, you're in the wrong place.

* While it makes me shudder in the might-have-been manner, Clinton refusing permission to take out bin Laden is understandable, even though I disagree with the lawfare vs warfare divide; doing the same post smoking holes in the ground would be...otherwise.

Quoting A Commment Elsewhere

2011-08-08T08:26:00.000-07:00

I actually care quite deeply about the poor. My problem is that I cannot reconcile the huge and growing gap between who is actually impoverished and who my government defines as poor (and who my government thinks they need to redistribute my wealth to.)
America's poor aren't. Only a miniscule few suffer food insecurity, actual hunger, lack shelter or serviceable clothes.

Not mine; it's a fellow on Ricochet who is amusingly named "Instugator."

One of the things that make me spitting mad are the constant radio ads from Catholic Charities that goes something like "they say America is the land of opportunity, but over XYZ thousand people are poor." Very emotionally manipulative and flatly irrational, trying to confuse the point between having opportunity and results. The quality of the research they're most likely quoting would be a whole 'nother post, too....

Thing is, almost everything we hear about poverty in America is this. They find a few poster-children and try to act like they are representative examples. The role of mental illness in long-term involuntary homelessness is ignored. (at best-- sometimes pointing it out gets you attacked as-- you guessed it, evil)

Don't get me started on "food insecurity"-- good heavens, some regional food pantries claim a 95% use rate among those eligible. (MAYBE roads have that high of a level of utilization by those eligible to use them-- but food pantries? If someone handed me those results, I'd want to see their numbers, methods and find someone to double-check, and if it didn't change much I'd start looking at how the fraud was being committed. For comparison, the type of figures for food stamps is that 90% of eligible adults don't apply-- that's from people who want to make it easier to commit benefit fraud, but you get my point. Even school lunch discounts, which schools push and you don't do any paperwork for, don't reach 90% utilization. {My family had an ongoing fight with the school I went to as a teen, because they kept signing us up for discounted school lunches without even asking; eventually I stopped eating school lunches because I didn't want to deal with fixing it every freaking month. In a school where almost everyone with a license drove to school, most of the lunch-ticket box was free or reduced lunches.})
All of that to get to the point that "food insecurity" gets horribly abused as well. I do NOT want anybody going to bed hungry; that doesn't mean that I believe the bull feces that gets shoveled trying to claim that it's common for lower income families to miss meals. (On a rational level, I also suspect that a lot of the few kids who do go to bed hungry are officially counted as provided for, and the benefits collected in their name get washed for parental gain.)

I can't really blame Papa Murphy's Take and Bake for accepting EBT cards when they're eligible, but I don't think they should be eligible. Perhaps shift things so EBT (electronic food stamp cards-- make it a bit harder to do fraud) only works on the same things as WIC? (Women, Infants, Children-- another food program, you've probably seen the stickers at the store. When I was in the Navy, one of my shops had a gal whose husband spent most of his time looking for programs to exploit, or working under the counter. Gave them a lot of disposable income, with the two boys. He helped two of the guys commit what I'm pretty sure was fraud to get cash from Cali for college classes...which the Navy was already paying for. One was getting money from his home state, as well, same guy who had never had an official job before joining the Navy and constantly complained about how he didn't qualify for all his favorite programs anymore.)

Want to help the really poor? Stop grouping them with folks who are just relatively poor, stop punishing those who work, stop confusing things by manipulating data, stop pushing to make it easier to steal money from the system, start looking for ways to get the seriously mentally incapacitated off the streets and look to build folks instead of just handing them a care package and patting yourself on the back. ESPECIALLY if you didn't even pay for the care package you're handing out!

I hate it, but there really are people who flatly refuse to work. There really are people who go all grasshopper about what the world owes them for existing. There really are people you can't help, who will destroy rather than build, who will blow off the opportunity they assured you they wanted before you worked your tail off to get it for them. It sucks. I don't think it's solvable. We should NOT build policy around making sure that they get what they want!