Category Archives: Daily Post
Beyond the supernatural
When I was very young I used to search for the supernatural. I’ve always been interested in just about everything, and I had this passionate need to know things. I’d read lots of folklore and heard so many stories, most of which were contradictory, and I wanted to know the truth behind them.
I remember thinking that being a parapsychologist would be a great job. Hunt ghosts and track down the truth behind myths and legends. I used to find occult books to read, talk to people who claimed to have magical powers, or try to get into haunted places. I attended several modern pagan rituals, and probably would again if invited because they’re a lot of fun. I studied religions, and psychology, tried tarot cards and runes and Ouija boards. I even went to a séance or two. I did all this because I wanted to know the truth.
It wouldn’t be honest to say that I never found anything, but I never encountered anything genuinely supernatural. Read the rest of this entry
Crowdsourcing movies
Whoops, the time I should have spent blogging got sucked up by Star Wars: Uncut! Guess I’ll just blog about that, then.
This project is, simply put, awesome. And a little deranged. Watching a movie that drastically changes in tone and style and cast and even medium every 15 seconds is pretty surreal, but because it’s Star Wars and I’ve seen it like a hundred times, it works.
I wonder how that deals with copyright. I suppose it’s probably considered parody, but it must be toeing the line on that count. Still, it certainly feels like it’s within the spirit of fair use.
I found myself wondering what other films could be done like that. I really don’t think it would work without the kind of movie that’s so embedded into modern culture. I mean, it has to be popular enough that lots of people will actually participate. That’s a tough one right there, you need people who are fans of the work, who love it enough to put time and effort into it. And who also have the means to pull it off. And THEN in order to have something entertaining result from it you pretty much have to have something that your entire audience not only knows, but knows well, so they can get the in-jokes and so they know what’s going on when the artistic license gets a little extreme.
Offhand, I really can’t think of another movie that would work as well. But if you can, let us know in the comments!
No, I’m not going to talk about the State of the Union address. I’ve never seen one that said anything of substance, and I’ve no interest in boring speeches and empty pageantry.
Spam
I just realized I still haven’t written anything today. I’ve been loving the weather, cool but not cold, slightly breezy, and going from billowy clouds and sunshine to light rain all day and just sort of forgot. I’ve also spent some time reading archives of Clan of the Cats, a webcomic I used to read some ten years ago. Funny how different it seems now. Looking through the archives, I see that the comic’s comments have recently been infested by spam.
Not to be confused with SPAM, the surprisingly versatile canned meat from Hormel, spam is one of those irritating things that we sort of work around and put up with. I’ve heard claims that anywhere from a third to almost three-quarters of the internet’s bandwidth is wasted on this crap. It’s a classic example of the tendency of people to find a way to make any good thing suck.
Seriously, if SOPA stood for “Spam Offenders Punished Accordingly”, I’d probably be cheering the stupid thing without even looking twice.
Anyway, that’s all I’ve got for today, some tepid grumbling. Probably because most of my internet time today was spent in a world of witches and werewolves that could cross-over nicely with Buffy the Vampire Slayer. See you tomorrow!
On the value of whining.
The complainer is always wrong. I saw a bumper sticker that said something about ending whining the other day, and it’s been rolling around in my head ever since. There seems to be this pervasive attitude that pointing out flaws in the way we do things, not as individuals but as a culture, or even in the government that is intended to represent our interests, is just whining.
I’ve often seen that expressed as “Sure, X isn’t perfect, but…”, and it’s that “but” that gets me. It’s rarely if ever “Sure, things aren’t perfect, but if we think about it and work together we can probably improve the situation”, it’s generally more like “Sure, things aren’t perfect, but they’re not too bad and others have it worse, so stop whining”.
I always hear that second one as “Sure, things aren’t perfect, but I’m personally pretty comfortable and I’m not willing to put any work into improving things for others, so stop mentioning them because my conscience bothers me when you do.” Of course from a practical perspective, what’s being said is “Sure, things aren’t perfect, and I’m not going to help anyone try to make them so.”
I can understand feeling uncomfortable when someone points out an imperfection in the way your nation or religion or whatever social group does things, we all like to pretend we’re perfect, but to dismiss it as “just whining” smacks of thoughtless dogma. Worse, when valid criticism is coming from within the group, to denounce the critic as “disloyal” or some such shows profound weakness of character, as you’re not only attacking one of your own who’s (presumably, for this example at least) acting in good faith, but you’re passing up a chance to improve things. If you can’t face the flaws you can’t fix them, and if you love your group so much, you should be willing to make it better.
I should point out that I’m not talking about the sort of jabbering apes that just want to throw shit all over everything, like an internet troll who will not only exaggerate problems, but also lie and misrepresent in order to get a rise. I’m also willing to accept that at some point you have to assume that you have a good handle on the problem, and it’s time to start looking for solutions.
In fact that’s probably a good practical definition of “just whining” right there, when you’re no longer pointing out problems, but merely repeating that they exist while contributing nothing to a solution. That puts me in a strange position, because many of my posts on this blog straddle the line between “raising awareness” and “complaining without really helping”. But since the real purpose of this blog is to practice my writing, I’m not too put out by that.
The DMCA and SOPA
I’ve been trying to read SOPA, and it’s a pain. Here’s a pdf if you want to give it a shot, maybe you’ll do better than I. I’m hosting it here because I had some inconvenience tracking it down on the Library of Congress site, so I figured I’d save you the trouble.
My trouble reading it is partly the language and partly the way it’s formatted. It’s so nested with paragraphs and subsections and clauses and sub-clauses that when it refers later to a specific clause or subsection you’re not sure which one it means. I think it would benefit from hyperlinks, or perhaps a complete rewrite by someone who knows how to communicate clearly.
I’ll rant about obfuscation in legal texts later, though. (Maybe tomorrow?) Today I want to talk about this claim made at the beginning of the document:
3 (1) FIRST AMENDMENT.—Nothing in this Act
4 shall be construed to impose a prior restraint on free
5 speech or the press protected under the 1st Amend-
6 ment to the Constitution.
It’s probably true that they don’t intend this thing to impede free speech or censor anyone. But should it pass it will be used to do that, and I know this because the DMCA is used this way. Read the rest of this entry
Technical difficulties
Hi folks! Apparently the new Linux kernel broke something, and my network doesn’t work from the desktop computer anymore. Not sure how long that will take to fix, since I don’t have the faintest clue what’s wrong. My laptop still works fine, though, so I’ll see if I can’t find out what’s going on.
And even if I can’t fix it, I should be able to keep posting. It just won’t be as convenient for me.
So sorry there’s nothing interesting here, and have a very good evening!
A day offline
So during the SOPA strike I thought it would be interesting to not only black out my site and not post, but to not use the internet at all. The result is a fascinating lesson in how entwined into my daily life the thing has become.
I had already installed the operating system updates when I realized that counted as “using the internet”. But then I went and installed them on the laptop anyways, because there was security stuff in there.
I settled down to read Carl Sagan’s Cosmos, a book I picked up at a library sale for very cheap and never got around to opening. I had only read a few pages before an interesting math puzzle presented itself to me: How close to Hawaii did ancient explorers have to get before they could see it? Read the rest of this entry
Content Redacted
SOPA, H.R. 3261
PIPA, S. 968
In protest of these two bills, I will not be attending the internet for the day of January 18, 2012, as reckoned by United States Pacific Standard Time.
Busy day
Between looking after the lost dog I found yesterday, putting up fliers, returning the dog to his home, and then taking down the damned useless fliers, I didn’t really have time for much writing today.
It didn’t help that I got used to writing tomorrow’s post in the evenings, then managed to miss a day and wrote yesterday’s post yesterday evening. It was really weird when I was plotting out my evening and realized that I hadn’t posted anything yet today.
Anyways, here’s a story from London that really pissed me off. When I went to that blog just now to find that link, I saw another! So apparently threats of violence are effective at curtailing free speech in the UK. Good to know, I guess. Read the rest of this entry
In search of
It’s the 15th of the month again, and that means it’s time to look at my site stats for the last 30 days. Of course when I say site stats, I really mean the search terms, because everything else, while useful info, is a little boring.
So here’s what people searched for that led them to my blog over the last month. As usual, search terms are in bold, while my comments are italic. Read the rest of this entry
Storytime
Long ago in the time of fantasy, far away across the sea, a village was being terrorized by a dragon. It burned crops and houses, ate sheep and cattle, and even killed people. The village was very poor, but they knew this dragon would soon be the end of them, so they put together as much money as they could and offered it as a reward to anyone who could kill the dragon.
News didn’t spread as quickly back then, so mostly the only people who heard about the reward were those who passed by the village on their journey. One knight heard about the dragon, and decided a monster like that was too dangerous for him to deal with. Another knight heard the story but thought the reward was too small to be worth his time. And so the village suffered. Read the rest of this entry
Post stealing!
I wanted to blog about Jessica Ahlquist today, but it turns out that JT Eberhard already said everything I wanted to say, and more.
Funny thing is, if I’d written about it, and then seen Mr. Eberhard’s series of posts, I wouldn’t have minded at all. But somehow knowing those posts already exist completely takes the wind out of my sails.
So I guess this will do for a post unless I suddenly find something else to talk about.
Seriously, what is wrong with people?
Found this on Pharyngula, under the heading “Female genital mutilation has medical benefits?” and my first thought was “Oh how cute, those sick girl-cutters are copying a page from the sick boy-cutters and claiming bullshit hygiene improvements”. And at first it seemed to be exactly that, it started with some bullshit about secretions that accumulate causing an odor that leads to infections (odors cause infections? What?), but then I read this:
Circumcision reduces excessive sensitivity of the clitoris which may cause it to increase in size to 3 centimeters when aroused, which is very annoying to the husband, especially at the time of intercourse.
At some point during the reading of that sentence, part of my brain started screaming and hasn’t fully stopped yet.
The site is called Islam Question and Answer, and is pretty much exactly what it sounds like, a place to ask questions about Islam and have them answered by people who presumably know what they’re talking about.
Ok, first of all, listing the removal of an annoyance to her husband as a health benefit for her seems like a joke in very poor taste, considering the flimsy excuses abusive spouses use to justify their violence. Also it really suggests that the woman isn’t being considered a person in her own right, but rather a thing belonging to her husband, to be modified for his pleasure. My little fucktoy, or something. I want to emphasize that the part about considering a woman a person in her own right is more important than what follows, even though I’ll spend less time on it.
Second, I want a serious show of hands from any men in the audience who have ever been annoyed by a woman’s clit during sex. Seriously, as they say on Wikipedia, citation fucking needed! How is that even supposed to work? Read the rest of this entry
Gods Die
(I found this on an old hard disk. Going by the dates on the file, I probably wrote it in early July of 2010. I think it was probably a first draft. I’ve no idea now how accurate any of this info is, and I decided to resist the temptation to research and rewrite and just post it directly. I apologize for any misinformation.)
One of the greatest civilizations of the ancient world was Egypt, and for most of that time one of the principal gods was a Sun god named Ra, or perhaps Re, we aren’t sure what the vowel sound was. Re (or Ra) was worshiped throughout Egypt from the Fourth Dynasty up to the rise of Christianity in the Roman empire.
Ra (or Re) was not some idle superstition. Pharaohs were considered to be Earthly manifestations of the god. Millions of people sang hymns, offered prayers, and recited spells to help Him and His sun boat overcome Apep, the serpent, every day. Soldiers fought for His glory and died with His name on their lips. Priests devoted their entire lives to His service.
Re (or Ra) remained popular for over three thousand years. Huge temples were built to Him. Countless stories of His exploits were recorded in stone and papyrus. Sometimes He joined with other gods; Amun, Atum, Horus, or Khepri the scarab. Other times He was a solo act.
The earliest written record of the Hebrew people was Egyptian writing circa 900 b.c., and Ra (or Re) was already over two thousand years old. He lasted another thousand years before dwindling away, rather suddenly, about the fourth century c.e.
For more than thirty centuries Egypt lived, wrote, sang and died for Re (or Ra). Every morning ceremonial offerings were made to Him. His name is still carved into the stone walls of a thousand temples and pyramids, and now we don’t even know how to pronounce it.
Yet another end of the world
This time the prediction of doom comes from one Ronald Weinland who claims he “is the pastor of God’s Church on earth, has also been appointed by the God of Abraham to be His end-time prophet and one of the two end-time witnesses (and spokesman of both), preceding the return of Jesus Christ on May 27, 2012.”
Here’s the link I got that quote from, and here’s Weinland’s own home page.
I’ve seen some people express dismay that these end days guys get so much press now, but personally I’m glad they get so much attention. I figure the more of these predictions we see in the public sphere, the less credible they’ll be and the fewer people they’ll be able to scam into handing over their life savings.
The money isn’t trival either. I found this in the comments of that goddiscussion.com link, by the author of the article:
If he is following the teachings of Armstrong, then his church members are paying 30% of their gross income in tithes to his church every third year, and 20% in all the other years. I remember sitting in Worldwide Church of God services, listening to sermons about how tithes must be made on gross income as opposed to net.
Deborah
I shudder to think of poor families trying to survive while giving away a quarter of their income. The insistence on gross instead of net especially ticks me off, not only is it really going to hurt people with lots of expenses (like anyone with children) but he’s effectively prioritizing himself at the top of their budget.
Of course, this not only makes the church a lot of money, but it also feeds into the sunk-cost fallacy. When the proposed end date comes and goes, most of the congregation will stay with the church. A few will leave, and there will probably be a sermon about how awful those quitters were. But most will stay, and be even more invested in it. After all they’ve been putting all this money into it, and all this time, and now they’ve endured public ridicule over the failed prophecy. They have to stick with it, or all that sacrifice was for nothing.
So I say publicize it. Public scorn heaped on these charlatans may do little to help those already under their influence, but it will make joining them seem less appealing to others, sparing them this fate. And it may well help some that are already in cults like this, and that’s worthwhile.
The Adventures of Leo Tarvi 