Category Archives: Daily Post
Random Stuff I Learned Today: Ley Lines
I think I first encountered the concept of ley lines in one of the role-playing games by Palladium Books, though I couldn’t tell you whether it was Beyond the Supernatural or RIFTS. It’s now a fairly common plot device in fiction, especially urban fantasy or paranormal investigator stories set more or less in the present day. Ley lines appear in The Dresden Files, which was what inspired me to look them up this afternoon.
The basic concept is lines of mystical energy that crisscross the globe. Sometimes they are like magnetic lines of force, strong places in a more or less static field, other times they flow like rivers or arc like electrical currents. In RIFTS they have been supercharged so that they visibly glow, but in every other case I can think of they aren’t easily detected, at least not by regular people.
If you’d asked me to guess, I’d have probably thought the idea emerged during the spiritualism fad in the late 19th century. I would have been very wrong, the term “ley line” was coined in 1921 by an amateur archaeologist named Alfred Watkins. Watkins noticed that many ancient British sites such as Stonehenge lined up with landmarks in the local geography. He speculated that prehistoric people built them that way to make navigation easy. Sort of like sight-based rhumb lines for people walking overland without maps.
You’ll notice that’s nothing like the lines in fiction that I mentioned above. Not even a little.
The idea of ley lines as spiritually significant is less than ten years older than I am, it apparently came about in 1969 when a writer named John Michell combined Watkins’ lines with feng shui. It’s about a hundred years newer than I expected.
So that’s something I learned today, ley lines aren’t an old idea. Now you know, too!
Totally extra post!
Nuts, it didn’t work.
This is a candle stand I saw that I thought was neat. $75 is a little pricey, though.
This post was meant as another test of posting from my phone. I was hoping I had found a way to do more than post a bare picture & title. Oh well, I’ll keep trying!
Something lost, something found
Been quiet lately. I’d love to offer wonderful excuses, but I’m not going to. I loaded up a saved draft of a very large post I was working on, and found that only a tiny part of it had been saved, consigning hours of work to digital oblivion. Maybe I’ll try to rewrite it later, but for now just thinking about it puts me in a foul mood.
In less grumpy news, while I was out walking I found a rattle on the sidewalk. I wonder how it came to be there, what its story is.
How many parents make a family?
Here’s an interesting thing a friend pointed me to, California Senate Bill 1476. The short of it is that this bill would allow for a child to have more than two legally recognized parents.
Here’s a link to a summarized text of the bill, where you can also find a link to the latest version of the complete bill.
The implications of this are pretty interesting. At first I was thinking of things like “who can make medical decisions if a kid’s legal parents are married, but not to each other?”, but on reflection I kinda figure that has to be already addressed somewhere, or maybe the non-parents can act as a legal proxy for their spouses. Reading the bill and the article linked above it looks like it’s mostly intended to allow judges more leeway in cases where parenthood is being contested. So, a judge could give parental rights & responsibilities to spouses without stripping any away from biological parents, for example.
It sounds like a good idea to me. So naturally, people are opposing it on religious terms. Read the rest of this entry
Canadians deserve better!
Happy Canada Day!
So, I subscribe to the poem-a-day email list from Poets.org. I’m not really a big fan of poetry, the few that I like I really, really like, but most of them don’t do much for me. Today’s daily poem is allegedly in honor of Canada, and probably the worst poem I’ve seen since I first subscribed to that email list.
It’s hilariously bad, I found myself feeling a lot of sympathy for Canada.
This is the poem that appeared in my email this morning, feel free to tell me if there’s some context or knowledge I’m lacking that makes it seem worse than it is.
Birth of Canada as a Nation, July First, 1867
by James McIntyreHail Britannia’s noblest daughter,
Who is surrounded by the water
Of many a lake and broad sea,
Land of beaver and of maple tree.Her lofty brow is wreathed with smiles,
For from the far Atlantic isles
In pomp have come their delegates,
All seeking to unite their fates.With Canada great northern queen,
And now throughout the land is seen,
High festival and stately dance,
Triumphant nuptials to advance.And soon shall Red River valley
And distant Vancouver rally,
To form this Empire gigantic
From Pacific to Atlantic.
Pride
It’s the last day of June, the last day of pride month, and I’m feeling reflective.
I generally like June. Usually the hot weather hasn’t really started to wear on me yet and I’m still enjoying it. There are bright colors and rainbows all over, which are far too rare in my opinion. And of course there are parades and social activism events, which are usually fun.
I write a lot about the rights (or lack thereof) of people who aren’t hetero-normative (which is hard to type so I’m going to use “gay” in an absurdly broad, inclusive definition for the rest of this post). The reasons for this are many and varied, and frankly kind of tedious. When you really boil it all down, I think people should be happy, or at the very least have a fair chance at happiness, no matter who they are, and I often read really horrible words, deeds and legislation which all seem to have the sole purpose of making gay people miserable, so I write about it.
This isn’t about anything specific. This is just musing on why it’s called Pride, why it’s about pride. I realize that in many ways I’ve been fortunate, the recipient of a lot of social privilege, and that to a large degree I don’t really know what I’m talking about here. I can only listen and hope that my imagination and empathy haven’t led me astray. I hope that I get it.
“Pride” is a common theme in oppressed groups, but especially the gay community. Read the rest of this entry
Though my soul may set in darkness…
It’s often tempting for me to cheat on this blog.
When I wrote the rules, I knew that I would have trouble writing something original and whole every day, and I knew that sometimes I wouldn’t be able to do it. I deliberately made it easy for me to fulfill the letter of the rules if I had a day where the spirit of the blog was beyond me, because that would only feel like half a failure and be far less demoralizing to me.
This unnecessarily long introduction is my way to keeping the spirit of this blog, of writing more and stretching my ability to write, active and alive on a day when I really just want to post other people’s stuff that I think is cool. Now that I’ve done that, here’s one of my favorite poems, The Old Astronomer by Sarah Williams.
Reach me down my Tycho Brahe, I would know him when we meet,
When I share my later science, sitting humbly at his feet;
He may know the law of all things, yet be ignorant of how
We are working to completion, working on from then to now.Pray remember that I leave you all my theory complete,
Lacking only certain data for your adding, as is meet,
And remember men will scorn it, ’tis original and true,
And the obliquy of newness may fall bitterly on you.But, my pupil, as my pupil you have learned the worth of scorn,
You have laughed with me at pity, we have joyed to be forlorn,
What for us are all distractions of men’s fellowship and smiles;
What for us the Goddess Pleasure with her meretricious smiles.You may tell that German College that their honor comes too late,
But they must not waste repentance on the grizzly savant’s fate.
Though my soul may set in darkness, it will rise in perfect light;
I have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night.
MRI birth
This is pretty cool, a human birth seen through magnetic resonance imaging. Shame it’s so short, it cuts out just as it gets interesting!
Anyone else get a sore neck in sympathy? No wonder babies are so squishy.
Texas Republicans want your kids to be stupid.
I really wish that were hyperbole. Here’s a video of some guy ranting about it.
And here’s a link to the Texas Freedom Network’s analysis. And here’s a link to a PDF of the platform itself.
Check this out,
Controversial Theories – We support objective teaching and equal treatment of all sides of scientific theories. We believe theories such as life origins and environmental change should be taught as challengeable scientific theories subject to change as new data is produced. Teachers and students should be able to discuss the strengths and weaknesses of these theories openly and without fear of retribution or discrimination of any kind.
Except students won’t be able to discuss the strengths and weaknesses because two paragraphs later they oppose the teaching of critical thinking skills. So what does this actually come down to?
A phrase I’ve often heard in discussions of education is “Teach kids how to think, not what to think.” Critical thinking skills is, of course, the biggest part of that and the Texas GOP has now convinced me that we should have critical thinking exercises in fucking preschool.
I have nothing more to say here, it’s just blown my mind that people could advance this as a public policy platform and not be instantly laughed out of politics forever.
Space Legends
I can’t seem to remember how I wound up browsing Surly Amy’s Etsy store yesterday. Probably someone dropped a link on a blog and I middle-clicked then kept reading, so that by the time I looked at the link I’d lost the association.
Anyway, while I was looking through the wearable ceramic art, I saw this “Space Day of the Dead Skull”
which is pretty neat all by itself, but it reminded me of this Freefall comic in which the colonists celebrate “Arrival Day”, also known as the “Day of the Dead”. This would be the perfect accessory to wear during that festival.
In Freefall Arrival Day is the anniversary of the day the colony ship arrived at the planet. Because the hibernation technology they use to sleep away the long space voyage isn’t perfect, not all the colonists survived the trip, hence the Day of the Dead. It’s a chilling thought to imagine waking up and wondering who didn’t make it.
I like the line “I thought spirits could follow helium trails through interstellar space”. A superstition Florence Ambrose takes for granted which is not universally accepted on the colony world, where one of the purposes of the Day of the Dead festival is to serve as a beacon to call home the souls of those who died in the deep silence between stars. It’s a very human thing, finding ways to comfort ourselves and each other in the face of sorrow and loss.
And it’s interesting to ponder what sort of superstitions might gain hold in the public consciousness in the future. We’re living in a time of change, our technology is rapidly advancing and bringing together the various cultures of the world like never before. There’s really no way to tell what myths and legends might emerge from that fusion of ideas, but it’s fun to speculate and I wish more science fiction would do so.
It’s not only a fun creative exercise, but it leads to richer, more human feeling fictional cultures, even when those cultures are made up of robots and aliens. It permeates the tone and language of the setting, giving it a unique identity. I like that in my fiction.
I suppose that’s all I have to say for the moment, so until next time may the Force be with you.
Sugar Rainbow!
Ok, I mostly just wanted to post this picture, because I think it’s awesome.
Incidentally, should Oreo decide to market six-layer rainbow Pride Oreos I will totally buy some. And probably make myself sick eating all that sugar, but still!
Buzzfeed has this post highlighting some comments from people who are upset about this image.
There’s something comical about the idea of boycotting a cookie, but reading the comments it quickly stops being funny. Once more I’m left puzzled by how important treating the gays like shit seems to be to some people.
Captain of My Soul
Sometimes when we’re feeling weak, we need a reminder how strong we can be. In that vein, I present to you Invictus, by William Ernest Henley.
Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.
Oh yeah? Well I’ll just sue EVERYBODY!
This is what I get for thinking I could take time off to enjoy myself. I leave the internet for a week and nearly miss one of the most impressive lawsuits ever filed. And by “impressive” I mean “stupid”.
You may recall Charles Carreon as the lawyer who sent a ridiculous threat of legal action to a webcartoonist a couple of weeks ago. The situation has escalated since. (All of Popehat’s posts on this case can be found at this tag search.) Carreon has actually filed suit against:
- Matthew Inman, the cartoonist,
- indiegogo.com, the site Inman is using to collect the funds,
- the two named charities, the National Wildlife Federation and the American Cancer Society, and
- up to 100 unknown people, presumably he’ll fill in the names as he discovers them.
Yes, he’s really suing the charities. He doesn’t actually say why in his complaint, it just trails off near the end of paragraph 6, like he couldn’t think of anything and intended to go back and add a reason later. Read the rest of this entry
…and we’re back!
I’ve returned from my camping trip alive and whole. Didn’t even get a tick, at least not that I’ve found yet. Trying to catch up on email and news and laundry. Lots of laundry. Hopefully posting more soon, stay tuned!
The Adventures of Leo Tarvi 