Wearing the Moon

How far, Doctor? Back, back to your beginning...

2012-01-30T07:47:00.000-07:00

Back in October, a friend asked my opinion on the best place for someone who hadn't watched Doctor Who before to start. I answered "Rose," the first episode of the 2005 revival of the series. Googling "where to start" and "Doctor Who" suggests that I'm hardly alone in making that recommendation. I'm not sure I'm pleased with the prevalence of potshots taken at the perceived quality of the older seasons of Who, though.

While the vast majority of Doctor Who stories can be enjoyed (or, at least, understood) without any previous exposure to the series—thus, cherry-picking a few of the best episodes is the most obvious way to generate an interest to see more in the uninitiated—the level of connection that a Doctor Who fan achieves with the series can only occur when there is some appreciation of the show's continuity. Watching episodes in order is important, but there are some very good reasons not to start at the very beginning. I've identified seven particularly good possible starting points below and made a few notes that might help the new to Who work out how far back they'd like to go. Obviously, the further back one goes, the more primitive the production methods utilized become. Apart from that, here are some of the other points to consider.

The Eleventh Hour - Series Five (2010)
- The place to start if your goal is to get up to speed as quickly as possible.
- You must go back at least this far. It's only 28 episodes.
Rose - Series One (2005)
- The best place for the new to Who to start.
- Doctor Who's last regular season had aired sixteen years earlier. It was assumed most viewers would be unfamiliar with the show.
- There are five episodes between Series Four and Series Five, collected on The Specials box set.
- There are two spin-offs, Torchwood and The Sarah Jane Adventures, to keep track of (or ignore) as well:
  - Torchwood Series One slots in after Doctor Who Series Two.
  - Sarah Jane Series One comes after Who Series Three.
  - Torchwood Series Two is between Sarah Jane Series One and Who Series Four.
  - Sarah Jane Series Two aired between Who Series Four and "The Next Doctor."
  - Torchwood Series Three aired between "Planet of the Dead" and "The Waters of Mars."
  - Sarah Jane Series Three began after Torchwood Series Three and finished shortly after "Waters of Mars."
  - Sarah Jane Series Four aired after Who Series Five
  - Torchwood Series Four aired concurrently with Who Series Six.
  - Sarah Jane Series Five aired after Who Series Six.
- Actually, there's a third spin-off: K-9, but its relationship with its parent program is not as tight.
The Leisure Hive - Season Eighteen (1980 - 1981)
- Classic series episodes are not released as season box sets, making it more difficult to obtain stories in order.
- Some episodes have yet to be released to DVD at all!
- The spin-off K-9 and Company aired between Seasons Eighteen and Nineteen.
The Time Warrior - Season Eleven (1973 - 1974)
- The first season to feature Elisabeth Sladen as Sarah Jane Smith.
Spearhead from Space - Season Seven (1970)
- Though originally shot in color, a number of episodes now exist only in black and white.
The Dominators - Season Six (1968 - 1969)
- The first six seasons of Doctor Who were shot in black & white.
- Seven episodes are missing from Season Six (out of forty-four).
  - The BBC destroyed the master tapes of many programs they thought were no longer of interest in the 1970s.
  - The audio of the missing episodes was preserved in recordings made by fans.
  - Animated versions of two of the missing episodes are available (completing the serial "The Invasion").
  - The other five missing episodes are all from "The Space Pirates." Just skip it, or get the audio or a reconstruction.
  - This is the earliest place you can start without being seriously inconvenienced by missing episodes.
An Unearthly Child - Season One (1963 - 1964)
- 106 total episodes are missing from Who's first six seasons (out of 253).
  - Audio versions are available, as well as fan-produced reconstructions.
  - While seasons one and two are relatively intact, seasons three through five barely exist in their original form.

From Wikipedia (you'll want to keep this handy): the List of Doctor Who serials.

This is a Fake—in Felt-tip

2012-01-27T01:19:00.000-07:00

I posted a review of Stephen Fry's The Liar on Goodreads. It's a pretty common thing to see Goodreads users complaining about the inability to give half stars when assigning ratings and I'm often torn between giving a book three or four stars; The Liar, however, represents the first time I found it difficult to decide whether to give the book two, three, or four stars—all I felt sure of was that it didn't deserve either one star or five. I had enjoyed reading The Liar quite a bit, but, nonetheless, judged it to be a pretty poor novel.

To my mind, one of the most important qualities necessary to a good novel is truth. Many would hold that fiction, by definition, is composed of untruths—lies, even—but I beg to differ. As Ralph Waldo Emerson put it, "Fiction reveals truth that reality obscures." A novel gives us a God's-eye view of an entire universe. We will never, no matter how far our science advances, be able see the whole of our own reality from outside of reality. No mere chronicler of fact will ever have the ability to compose a complete record of any occurrence within our reality. The novelist, however, can show us how things fit together in the world of the novel and this can give us some idea of how things might fit together in our own. In order to do this, it is necessary that the pieces of the novel actually do fit together—the world of the novel must be consistent. The Liar is not consistent; it really is composed of untruths and lies are lies whether they're lies about our reality or an imaginary one.

Some interesting Liar related links:

I Hated This Book—Please Buy It!

2012-01-18T00:48:00.000-07:00

I use the social book recommendation site Goodreads to track what I'm reading. Yesterday, I started a book and added it to the list of books I am "currently reading"; a few minutes later, I deleted it. The reason: the book is one that I am reading for the purpose of producing a professional audiobook. When it's released, the audiobook edition will show up on my Goodreads profile; it is, therefore, redundant to have it listed among the books I've read. Also, it seems odd to rate a book that I have a financial stake in. I'm unlikely to be narrating only five-star masterpieces of literature—indeed, my goal is more along the lines of maintaining a steady work flow—but publicly rating books I'm trying to sell as less than five out of five may not be in my own best interest. Is the best thing just to keep my opinion on the works I'm narrating to myself?

None of this should be taken as suggesting that the book I'm currently narrating is lousy. So far it's pretty good. But if it takes a sudden turn towards crap, I may neglect to mention it.

Transcendence

2012-01-08T18:50:00.000-07:00

There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable.
There is another which states that this has already happened.

—Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

It may not even be necessary for anyone to figure the old one out; complexity, it seems, tends to aggregate until sufficient energy is applied to break it down. Thus, a state of nothingness requires enormous (perhaps infinite?) energy to maintain, with the universe undergoing "spontaneous phase transitions to more complex structures of lower energy" as it cools over time. It seems to be part of the natural order of things for something to spontaneously pop into being out of nothing. There is something, rather than nothing, because nothing is inherently unstable, it's ultimate simplicity inevitably becoming cluttered with possibilities.

The universe could not fail to exist if it tried, as, if it were able for a moment to succeed, there would be nothing, and nothing, by definition, would no longer contain anything that could continue striving not to be (or any of the energy that would have been necessary to simplify the structure of everything to the point that there wasn't anything including energy). Except that in no time at all, it continues, or begins again, or begins for the first time (the only time and every time). And when the aggregation of complexity achieves some form of sentience it wonders, "What's it all about? Why am I here? Why is there something rather than nothing?" Accepting that the laws of the universe dictate that simple systems will stabilize as more complex ones doesn't mean that we can't still wonder why there are any laws of the universe dictating anything of any kind.

There is an expectation—possibly one founded on false assumptions, but it doesn't seem particularly unreasonable to expect causality to be maintained—that there must be some sort of first cause, something that acted in some manner to bring the entire system of being into being. Something that dictates the form of the universal laws which cause nothingness to decay into structure. Whatever that first cause is, it would have to be able to transcend the laws of nature: it would have to exist independently of everything and continue to be when there was nothing. That there must be some sort of being outside of being has, historically, been put forward as an argument for the existence of God. It certainly doesn't, however, provide evidence for the existence of the sort of God that any of the world's various religions might expect; it simply states that whatever the first, sustaining cause of creation turns out to be, the word for that cause is God.

In that case, all one has to do to find God is to work out what exists when nothing exists. The transcendently simply answer is that mathematics exist independently of any physical forms and that it is possible to model any state of being mathematically. One nothing plus one nothing equals two nothings? Utter drivel, obviously, but the point is that you don't actually need concrete objects—the traditions of mathematical education would dictate apples—to add; numbers don't feel any particular drive to be attached to objects, people just find it easier to think about them after they have been. The tendency is to think of apples as being real while numbers are intangible and abstract, but if you made a complete and accurate mathematical model of an apple—which in order to be really complete would have to include the tree the apple grew in, the orchard containing the tree, the man who picked and ate the apple, and everything else connected in any way to the apple's existence or the existence of anything else in the model (i.e. the entire universe, all of space and time)—the man in the model would enjoy his apple as much as you enjoy yours.

While the laws of physics describe the way our universe has been observed to behave, and could not necessarily be expected to describe the behavior of any other universe, the laws of mathematics could be applied to model any possible universe. If we assume that an intelligence is necessary to form the equations which generate mathematical models of realities then we aren't really any closer to a first cause; however, the laws of mathematics continue to be true even in the absence of anyone who understands them. It is not really possible to create a mathematical equation, as that would imply that the two sides of the equation had not been equal until the mathematician defined them to be so. We can only discover equations. Whether or not anyone is aware of it, there is an equation or set of equations that accurately models the whole of our universe. Those equations would be true—and, thus, could be said to be, to exist—in the absence of any concrete reality. As part of the system described by the equations, we would never be able to perceive anything outside of the equations. Since we exist inside the equations and the equations must exist because they are mathematically true, we exist because we logically must and God is ultimate truth, the essence of pure mathematics.

Mountain Mellow Massacre

2011-12-28T04:40:00.000-07:00

I saw this in a soda machine at the grocery store the other day. I decided just to stick with a cream soda.

Dinosaurian Formality

2011-12-18T20:22:00.000-07:00

At the last meeting of my book club, this question was posed: why does Tyrannosaurus Rex have two names when other dinosaurs get only one? (No, our book had not been about dinosaurs; we read The Tiger's Wife). Turns out the other dinosaurs have two names too, but T.'s Rex is the only one we know about due to a scattershot education overseen by the popular media.

Tyrannosaurus Rex is a binomial name. All species known to science are known by their own binomial name; if you're reading this blog you are most likely a member of the species Homo sapiens. Note that sapiens is not capitalized; neither should rex be, so I'll do my best to present it correctly from here on. The genus Homo also includes several other species, including erectus and neanderthalensis. If one imagines an individual to represent a species, that individual's family would be its genus. So rex is the only dinosaur—correct capitalization does nothing for this analogy—with whom we are on first name terms. The ever popular king of dinosaurs is as familiar as Elvis. It's dinosaurian subjects, on the other hand, are known only by their family names: a Mrs. Triceratops here, a Mr. Iguanodon there, et cetera. Armatus, stenops, and longispinus are all seen by the wider world as three matching stegosaurians.

Fame of the magnitude of rex's can distance a lizard from his roots. At one time, Aublysodon laid claim to him, and other genera have and will likely in future challenge his position in the dinosaurian hierarchy. Rex's stature is such, however, that his is a nomen conservandum; if the Aublysodon story had held up, they would have won the right to be known as Tyrannosaurus, rather than forcing rex to reveal himself as rex Dwight.

In Search of Lost Tim

2011-12-12T11:02:00.000-07:00

Last night, while working myself up to the point at which I could begin banging something out for this blog, I tried to locate all the entries I wiped from its original version when I decided rolling around in the muck wasn't making me feel any cleaner. I was sure that I had kept copies of everything, but I can't find any of it. Actually, it's possible I found all of it, but I can't tell what may be missing because it's all such a mess. I'm definitely missing some comments. As one might expect, I found the bits that most prompted me to start again by searching around online.

About a year after I wiped everything, I decided I ought to start putting stuff back. Not just stuff that had originally been here, either, but stuff from the various blogs I had maintained around the internet pre-Blogger. There's a school of thought that holds it best to maintain multiple separate blogs with strong themes linking all the content so that readers know what to expect and can begin to find your blog valuable. I tend to think there's something to this, but the theme around here has always been me and whatever may be on my mind at the time.

I found a song last night called "Why Were You Wearing the Moon?" by the group Family Fodder. Have a listen:

Why were you wearing the moon? by The state51 Conspiracy

Animal Nature

2011-12-05T13:04:00.000-07:00

When I was in junior high, I thought of myself as a writer. I assumed then that I would be a world-famous novelist long before I attained my current number of years. I loved to write. It didn't matter what kind of writing, either: I enjoyed writing papers as much as stories; I found joy in creating outlines, essays, and poems. I wasn't much of a student, as I only did the work that interested me, but what I deigned to do I did to the best of my ability.

My junior high English teacher set us a writing prompt: choose the animal you would most like to be and explain why. After some consideration, I concluded that there was no form in the animal kingdom that I preferred to the one I fortunately already possessed. I wrote something to that effect. I do not know the whereabouts of my original composition, or if it even still exists; it would be interesting to go over it again now. I believe I praised human intellect. I reveled in our inventions. I exalted in our power to change the form of the world around us. I may have mentioned language. How, as a tiger or an eagle or a llama, would I even know that I was happier if I didn't know the word happier?

When I received my paper back, it had been marked with an F. This was justified by the claim that I had not followed the assignment. I should have complained. I should have involved my parents and/or administration. I was a quiet, timid child; I never said a word about it to anyone. Inside I seethed.

My response clearly wasn't along the lines my teacher had in mind, but I never figured out exactly what she objected to about it. Did she not consider the human animal to be an animal (we're hardly vegetable or mineral)?

Perhaps she thought my answer showed a lack of imagination. On the contrary, I had imagined myself as a number of animals during the composition process and found the notion of becoming any of these creatures absolutely unbearable. I should have written why I didn't want to be a lion, why I didn't want to be an eagle, in place of why I wanted to be a man.

I was given an F because I failed to produce what was expected, despite the fact that I had produced that which had been requested. I wonder if she asked more clearly for what she wanted from the next group of students given the assignment, if she learned that it fell to her to craft a prompt that could produce the result she wanted. I wonder what I was supposed to learn. That the things I love, believe in, and desire are wrong? Not to be so foolish as to answer a question honestly? To answer only what the asker desires to hear?

Good and Evil? Who Says?

2011-11-28T00:13:00.000-07:00

It's clearly going to take some effort to get into the swing of this regular blogging thing. I've only got about half an hour of this Sunday left and I'm still way up here at the top of the page.

Do things become moral because God approves of them or is God moral because he approves of good things? A quick search on Google tells me that this is a version of the Euthyphro Dilemma; I can't remember at this point if I came up with it on my own or read it somewhere, but I answered it to my own satisfaction and my answer is a defining part of my personal philosophy.

My conclusion: if what is right is so only because God wills it to be, then God is an absolute dictator, a tyrant. Tyranny is evil. As I identify a possible action of God as evil, my perception of morality is clearly not defined by the will of God (or God has some pretty severe, self-destructive personality issues). Morality, therefore, exists independently of God and God is only a moral being insofar as he behaves according to moral dictates. While God may know more than I do and possess unimaginable powers I could barely dream of, he isn't necessarily a better person on any fundamental level.

This rather knocks the poor chap down a peg. If he goes around demanding people worship him, he comes off as little more than a big bully. If there really is a God, what's he up to? What's he for? If the sun would still rise and set, the stars still shine, the wind still blow, and what's right would still be right if he wasn't there, it hardly makes any difference if he's real or imaginary.

Draft Dodging

2011-11-24T22:58:00.000-07:00

I'm making old year's resolutions, fueled by desperation and fear because hope tends to be full of itself, an attribute it shares with art; I'm throwing off hope so that my art can be full of itself again. Resolution number one is: new blog post every Sunday.

Now that's decided, what shall I write about? I've got six unfinished drafts for posts already started: one on the similarities between the teachings of numerous self-help gurus and those of Aleister Crowley; two on vegetarianism (which I'm not so interested in finishing; read The Omnivore's Dilemma if you want to think about food); one on the relationship between music and freedom; one about the junior high English writing prompt that I'm still pissed off about; and one which might have been going to be about the inverse proportionality of rights and freedom, but was off to a pretty weak start and it's anybody's guess where I planned to go with it at this point. I'm also interested in building up a comprehensive picture of just what it is that I believe in.

Any other requests?

My Exciting Wordpress Adventure

2011-05-12T10:20:00.000-06:00

The day before yesterday I moved my blog to Wordpress. Yesterday I moved it back (well, it was here all the time, so really I just stopped fiddling with the unnecessary new mirror site). It's highly doubtful anybody noticed.

I had been frustrated by the difficulty of creating a sticky post on Blogger. As it's easy to do with Wordpress, I found myself thinking that the easiest solution would be to move all my existing content to a new platform, redo all the design and layout work, set up redirection from the old site to the new one, and then - easily and without fuss - create the sticky post I wanted. Luckily, a night's sleep cured me of my delusion and I set about constructing my sticky surrogate out of a page and a widget. It should, shortly, be just about possible to comment on it, even.

This current post is the first I've written using my phone. I think I'll be able to get a few things written in my odd spare moments this way.

The Wheel of Lost Time

2011-01-29T23:17:00.002-07:00

There are two competing definitions of the word adult, as it is applied to literature, film, and other arts. It may signify a thematic complexity and denseness likely to be off-putting to younger folk; or, it may mean the sorts of things you would have really enjoyed when you were twelve if only your mother had let you get your hands on them. I suspect most of the books using the anti-Tolkien label to sell themselves fall into the second category rather than the first. (I've hardly performed an exhaustive survey of the genre. I'm planning to read Moorcock's Doctor Who novel when it comes out, if that counts for anything. No? Thought not.)

As influential and defining a figure as Tolkien undoubtedly is, he doesn't seem to me to be enough of an extreme to be seen as one end of a spectrum, something with a clear opposite. Having given this some thought, I've come up with two figures who, perhaps, could be seen as opposing bookends, existing on opposite sides of all their literary fellows. Both are known primarily for producing an extremely long multi-volume work, but that is as far as I can stretch their similarity: Robert Jordan, author of The Wheel of Time; and Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time.

I've read the first volume of both works. Jordan's The Eye of the World marked the moment I decided to stop reading popular fantasy novels. Upon finishing the book, I thought to myself, "Ungh. I bet this series drags on forever. I bet the author dies before finishing it." I listened to an audiobook of Swann's Way a few months ago. I thought it was delightful. What Jordan's and Proust's works have in common is length; their most significant difference can also be summed up in one word: urgency. People are always going on about how the world could end any minute in Eye of the World. In Swann's Way, life simply carries on as it always has. People have their private little dramas, but the world is untouched.

Tolkien's focus was on the good people who struggled against evil in the world. The anti-Tolkien view is that to show the world as it really is there has to be a focus on the evil as well. Which is fine, as far as it goes, but it's just as ridiculous to show a world without any good in it as one where good always triumphs. It seems less that one of these depictions is more realistic, and more that there is a desire in many of us to revel in wickedness once in a while; for some, that is what fantasy is for, and Tolkien can't provide for that need.

Contrasting Proust and Jordan, it's not about good and evil. In Jordan's fantasy world, the characters' actions matter and not just to themselves and those immediately around them; the fate of everything lies in the balance. None of Proust's characters' actions shape the world around them in anything but the most insignificant ways. The world rolls by; time marches on and is lost. The fantasy that our actions matter, more than just in this brief moment and only to ourselves, that we are somehow the most significant people at the center of our universe, is at the heart of adventure fantasies of all kinds. That we will inevitably be forgotten, in most cases sooner rather than later, as soon as we depart this life, is the real opposite to the concept of the fantasy heroes and villains who—rather than canceling each other out—are actually totally dependent on one another in order to exist.

Per Ardua Ad Astra:Christian Attitudes Towards Violence

2011-01-16T18:12:00.001-07:00

Per Ardua Ad Astra: Christian Attitudes Towards Violence: "I've been pondering a question for a long time and was hoping you might give me some insight. The question is: How can any Christian condone, support, or encourage physical violence against any person, for any reason?"

I commented a few times on this, and I think I had some interesting things to say. Anyway, I enjoyed saying them. :-)

Servants of the Anti-Tolkien

2011-01-16T02:58:00.003-07:00

Looking online for some background on Mervyn Peake—I just read the first of his Gormenghast novels, Titus Groan—I found myself wandering into the strange territory of the cult of the anti-Tolkien. Apparently, some consider Peake to be the anti-Tolkien, though others bestow that honor upon Michael Moorcock or George R. R. Martin (or various others). The effect all this had on me was to cause me to wonder if I somehow had been born with no discernment at all, as what other explanation could there be for the fact that I was capable of enjoying Titus Groan and The Lord of the Rings as if they were on, more or less, an equal footing (rather than being works so fundamentally opposed that if you were to place them next to each other on a bookshelf your entire library would implode in an unflash of verbosity)? Or, to put it another way, what's all this Tolkien bashing about and where does it come from?

I suspect the publishers are partly to blame: every fantasy novel to appear since the mid-60s has been hailed by someone as the best since The Lord of the Rings. It was inevitable that, at some point, this statement would wind up on the back cover of a book by someone who didn't care for Tolkien all that much. Of course, to that author, his book is being ridiculously compared to a dissimilar and (possibly) inferior work; to the publishers the statement just means that they're expecting it to sell well. For example, this is what was meant when many media outlets pegged Stephenie Meyer's Twilight books as the successors to J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter series; no one thought that Meyer had decided to start a career in writing because she'd enjoyed Rowling's books so much. I suspect that is exactly what anti-Tolkien writers are afraid people might think about them, though.

While some modern fantasy writers were inspired by Tolkien, many were not, and none of them ever produce anything really similar to Tolkien's work—most likely because it is not possible to approach writing the way Tolkien did and make a living at it (he published only two novels, and they only began to achieve popularity shortly before he died). It was never really the case that fantasy novelists only appeared after Tolkien arose to inspire them; rather, publishers sought out greater numbers of fantasy works after The Lord of the Rings proved commercially successful.

Here are a few related articles if you're still interested:

"Ad effigiem: the strawman fallacy in Utopian fiction"*: this is tackling a broader subject, but mentions Moorcock's anti-Tolkien stance as part of a bigger picutre. It put me in mind of the following line (one of my favorites) from T. H. White's The Once and Future King: "Mordred and Agravaine thought Arthur hypocritical—as all decent men must be, if you assume that decency can’t exist."
"Rape in MY Anti-Tolkien?": about the tendency of so-called anti-Tolkien novels to be pretty much like the so-called Tolkien-inspired novels, but with more rape scenes.
"Children of Húrin or, Tolkien: The Scholars and the Critics": on the failure of Tolkien's critics to consistently apply their own rules to Tolkien's work.
"How to Critique Tolkien's Prose Style": thoughts on how critics could better interact with Tolkien.

* I disagree with the assessment of James Randi's methods in "Ad effigiem". I'm a big fan of Randi; I even bought a Randi fish, but I haven't gotten around to putting it on my car. I urge anyone unfamiliar with the James Randi/Uri Geller business to read this entry in The Skeptic's Dictionary. Watch the video at the bottom of the page, too.

Jack, the Pump King's Kin

2010-10-31T20:50:00.000-06:00

Happy Halloween! Thanks Angela, for the nudge in the right direction (well, this direction and I'm happy where I wound up at any rate).

Reaching into the Current

2010-10-06T11:37:00.002-06:00

I posted the following paragraphs on Facebook earlier this morning (last night from my point of view as it was just before I went to sleep). Earlier in the discussion, I'd said that what made Packer's talk dangerous was not any part of the message he intended, but that his words were regrettably easy to misconstrue. One response to that was that the HRC actively wanted to misconstrue his words to further their own devious purposes and, while I suppose that could be possible, I rejected the notion thus:

I wouldn't say that the HRC are jumping at the chance either, but I would agree that they are jumping. A small, but vitally important distinction. As none of us are either part of the HRC group that drafted the article or Elder Packer, we are forced to make assumptions based on what information we do have as to what ends they intended to achieve by making their statements. I currently assume that both parties are laboring to improve the lot of humanity.

As I followed it, Packer said that God doesn't make mistakes; therefore, homosexuals are, like everyone else, fully capable of attaining the highest degree of salvation - a requirement of which is a heterosexual temple marriage. Homosexuals can, through God, become heterosexual.

The HRC’s position, again, as I follow it, is that homosexuality cannot be cured. They fear that when LDS homosexuals attempt to pray themselves hetero and fail, they will come to the conclusion that since they can’t make themselves straight, Elder Packer must be wrong and God must have made a mistake creating them after all. Obviously, this reasoning is insane (on the part of the hypothetical LDS homosexual), as if Elder Packer is wrong on one count he’s probably wrong on the lot, but, it’s in line with typically observed behavior of depressed people. The HRC’s fears are not totally unfounded.

Elder Packer’s message seems to be (to me) that no one needs to settle for the small rewards offered by the world; everyone is capable of achieving exaltation through Christ. It takes a lot of boiling down to get to that, though. While I’m not sure that it would be possible to rework Packer’s talk to the point that the HRC would be really happy with it (without reworking major points of doctrine), I’m certain that he could have found better ways to put the things that he wanted to say.

The message a speaker intends ceases to exist at the moment he speaks; it is forever lost in the endless sea of messages received. Effective speakers account for that sea’s currents and steer accordingly. While I can appreciate the argument that those currents are hardly enough to in any way shift the course of an almighty God, that hardly justifies blind sailing. The object, surely, is to pull people free of the currents and into understanding. This, necessarily, entails reaching into the currents.

The Natural Man

2010-10-05T06:03:00.000-06:00

The Natural Man: sounds like a good name for some sort of gay website or magazine, doesn't it? The kind of thing with lots of fit young men out in the woods putting up tent poles. But perhaps you prefer your fit young men to start out neatly dressed in a suit and tie. Perhaps you prefer the sort of thing that a cheeky pornographer might entitle Elder Packer. Not that it matters to me what you get up to; I've got my share of quirks too, to say the least.

Anyway, before I allowed the aforementioned quirks to lead me astray (will I still respect that first paragraph in the morning?), what I wanted to remark upon was Boyd K. Packer's total failure to refer to Mosiah 3:19 in the little talk he gave the other day which has since set the blogosphere alight:

For the natural man is an enemy to God, and has been from the fall of Adam, and will be, forever and ever, unless he yields to the enticings of the Holy Spirit, and putteth off the natural man and becometh a saint through the atonement of Christ the Lord, and becometh as a child, submissive, meek, humble, patient, full of love, willing to submit to all things which the Lord seeth fit to inflict upon him, even as a child doth submit to his father.

Instead, he flew in the face of reason, declaring homosexuality to be unnatural. As if everything that is natural is good. The urge to separate us from them seems, unfortunately, to be natural. If we ever want to build ourselves some kind of heaven we'll have to get over it, though; the natural man is an enemy to God.

Fay Heaver

2010-08-13T14:11:00.001-06:00

With apologies to Richard Doyle.

How to be Free

2010-08-11T13:57:00.000-06:00

People define themselves in terms of what they are not. If I am forced to accede that one who is not like me is like me, it cancels out my concept of self and I cease to exist. I am frightened of this, but must learn not to be; it is the definition of freedom.

People define their needs in terms of what they do not have. If I see that you have something I do not, I am oppressed by my lack. I allow my lack to rule my life, seeking always that which will fill the gap, but I must learn not to; this is the definition of slavery.

The Midges of Bradison County

2010-07-15T07:31:00.001-06:00

Lop Sweaters

2010-06-28T17:46:00.000-06:00

Dear Mr. Spooner,

I must admit that I may not have fully grasped what was meant by your suggestion that we "lop sweaters," particularly as you said you'd be waiting expectantly for mine to arrive in the post. Anyway, I've sent along this drawing, which I hope you may appreciate even if it isn't remotely what you had in mind.

Ever yours,

R B

Conspiracy Theory

2010-03-15T08:44:00.001-06:00

This is going to be one of those pieces that start off with the definition of a word. Casting my mind back, trying to remember some of the various times I've encountered this technique, I asked myself whether I thought this approach was more often clever and successful or tacky and redundant. I either can't remember or can't decide, I can't decide which. Anyway, here goes (definitions courtesy of The Merriam-Webster OnLine Dictionary):

con·spir·a·cy
1 : the act of conspiring together
2 a : an agreement among conspirators b : a group of conspirators

Wow. That's compelling stuff. But lo! Conspiring is a hyperlink; we shall follow where it leads.

con·spire
1 a : to join in a secret agreement to do an unlawful or wrongful act or an act which becomes unlawful as a result of the secret agreement b : scheme
2 : to act in harmony toward a common end

Ah ha! Much more the sort of thing I was after. Definition one is what immediately goes through the average person's head, but definition two is what the word really means (as far as I'm concerned) or, at the very least, what it originally meant. The breakdown of the word's etymology makes that quite clear: "Middle English, from Anglo-French conspirer, from Latin conspirare to be in harmony, conspire, from com- + spirare to breathe."

So, I enjoy imagining you ask, what are you getting at with all this? Well, I like to think that I keep a particularly open mind. When I hear outrageous accusations—the government is setting up death camps for old people; 9/11 was an inside job; vaccines are to make us sicker; fluoride in the water is used for mind control—I may scoff at the foolishness of such things but, nonetheless, I file the suggestion away and see how the evidence stacks up. That's what I strive to do, at any rate; that's my ideal.

Sometimes these ideas really are just foolish nonsense; sometimes I can see what people are getting at, though the evidence is often spotty and circumstantial. I have never been convinced of the existence of a global conspiracy of any kind, however, and my contention is that a global conspiracy to destroy/enslave the world is an utterly ludicrous thing because you just don't get people who are motivated either by a desire to win power and glory for themselves or by a drive to cause chaos and devastation acting "in harmony toward a common end." A secret shadow government would splinter into bickering factions and ultimately self-destruct, rendering it quite incapable of carrying on a nefarious plot spanning centuries.

There are, of course, smaller scale conspiracies of the wrongful and unlawful variety: bank robbery immediately comes to mind. Even though bank robbers are clearly involved in definition one conspiring, successful conspiring has to incorporate definition two. To successfully get their hands on the loot, the bank robbers must act in harmony with one another. Obviously they are not acting in harmony with the bank or the people who have accounts there, but those aren't members of the conspiracy. With conspiracy on a global scale, if the conspiracy is to be successful everyone in the world must conspire to make it so. That would include the people who are uncovering the truth about the conspiracy. It would take the joint efforts of everyone in the world to bring about the total destruction of freedom throughout the world.

None of that means the death camps aren't being readied as we speak, however. It just suggests, quite strongly, that most of the evil and awful things that go on are not part of a larger scheme. The traditional idea is that the typical conspiracy theorist is an extremely paranoid individual; perhaps not. The belief that everything ties together neatly could be viewed as a sort of optimism which, in turn, would explain why they tend to be so undauntable about spreading their truth to the world in the face of contempt, derision, and indifference. Evil seems so much more manageable if it's all in one place; we have to know where it is before we can conspire to do away with it.

When What Jesus Would Do Clearly Won't

2009-12-22T07:25:00.000-07:00

I recently involved myself in a Facebook discussion on the subject of "Happy Holidays" overtaking "Merry Christmas" as a standard yuletide greeting in the United States. The owner of the profile sent us packing just as I thought things were really getting interesting. I could just make out on the horizon the meeting place of minds, after arriving at which the various posters might actually start understanding one another's points. Mine was that you shouldn't allow yourself to be pressured into issuing homogonized compromise salutations, but that you also shouldn't be upset about the greetings you receive from others—especially if they are sincere wishes for your happiness, as the sentiment should trump the wording.

Also, I was angling for some acknowledgment that it wasn't my fault, as at one point I felt things were heading in a blame the filthy atheists direction. The filthy atheists as one pointed the finger at capitalism. See last year's Christmas post.

While banging out a scathing rebuttal of something or another, I struck upon the idea of applying the "What Would Jesus Do?" test to the question of choice of holiday greeting. It seemed to me that, for Jesus, "Merry Christmas" would be a really weird thing to say to people. From him, it seems a tad self-centered, somewhat comparable, perhaps, to people who go around wishing others "Happy My Birthday!"

Clearly, then, there is a point at which what Jesus would do is too personal to do anyone seeking to emulate his behavior any good. For example, if I was in Heaven and met the Virgin Mary, I wouldn't want to look to Jesus for what to do. It might not be good form to say "Hi Mom!" and give her a big hug when it's only the first time we've met.

And Another Thing...

2009-11-19T15:52:00.002-07:00

I placed a request on the new Hitchhiker's novel. Check out my initial position in the hold queue!

The thing that has made me happiest about this book so far (we'll see if that changes after reading it) is a last minute change to the cover design that demonstrates the level of respect the folks behind this volume have for Hitchhiker's creator Douglas Adams: the pre-release images of the cover art say "Douglas Adams'" at the top; someone caught this and had it changed to "Adams's" before the books hit shelves.

Secret Grafitti [sic]

2009-10-31T23:17:00.001-06:00

I love secrets, don't you? Does anybody else think the double T could actually be the Greek letter Pi?

In Order to Forge More Unions (Possibly Perfect, but I Doubt It)

2009-10-17T02:04:00.003-06:00

Gay marriage seems like a pretty straightforward proposition to me: the only argument against it is religious and therefore should not be imposed on anyone who happens to believe differently (if we're keeping the state out of religion and vice versa and we believe in allowing everyone the freedom to believe what they will). It's not a particularly exciting or emotionally charged issue for me, as from my perspective it boils down largely to a matter of income tax filing statuses. You can save quite a bit of dough by filing a joint return, though; it almost amounts to a tax on homosexual cohabitation.

It's clear to me that taxpayers should be able to mark the box that best corresponds to their living arrangements, regardless of sexual orientation or religious affiliation. The question is, if they were, would it make it any less possible for the people who say that they shouldn't to carry on living their lives in the manner that they believe they are meant to? My immediate reaction is no, as it is vital to the preservation of religious freedom that the government not recognize an argument that would force it to endorse a particular view of God. It occurs to me, however, that as mainstream acceptance of homosexual unions develops, religious organizations that do not recognize gay marriage may find themselves under enormous societal pressure to bring themselves up to date.

My first thought is, "Well, thank God for that!" and wouldn't it be nice if mainstream acceptance of rationality could elbow religion out altogether while we're at it. While I have no sympathy with those who desire to impose their views on others, I still occasionally (erm, fine, OK—often) find myself wishing that some group with views antithetical to my own would just wake up and smell things my way. It's no good, however, to use the cause of religious freedom to negate the argument against gay marriage and then to turn a blind eye (or even a jubilant one) to the collapse of a religious tradition simply because it is at odds with one's own (obviously much more enlightened and, well, better) views.

It's a neat trick to ensure that everyone's rights, both religious and civil, are respected. One problem is that some people get it into their heads that religious freedom means that they can belong to any church they might choose; it doesn't. Religious freedom means that people with similar beliefs can organize into groups and gather publicly to celebrate those beliefs, even if said beliefs run counter to common sense, societal norms, or the law (though religious affiliation doesn't allow, in most cases, the ability to actually break the laws that are found objectionable). Protecting religious freedom means protecting the rights of churches to exclude homosexuals (and any others they might find undesirable). Marriage laws of any kind restrict a religious group's freedom to practice their beliefs. While the movement against gay marriage has religious roots, I suspect that quite a number of churches would very happily provide such services (the ones with gay clergy seem like an obvious bet, but you can never be too sure with religion).

If the desired end result is to maximize religious freedom, government needs to get out of the marriage business altogether. This could either mean no special tax statuses for couples at all, or it could mean that only government licensed civil unions, available to any couple, would be recognized for such purposes; marriage would be between a couple and their God and of no concern to Uncle Sam. While some sort of age-of-consent laws would likely still be necessary, churches would be free to marry (or refuse to marry) any couple (or larger group) they pleased to. Being married would be like being baptized or confirmed: of great significance within ones own religious community but of absolutely no (or at least considerably less) significance to society as a whole. Existing marriages would be grandfathered in as civil unions, probably with an option to opt-out in writing within a certain time frame. Homosexuals would be free to marry in any church open to marrying them; they would also be able to claim any government mandated benefits granted to committed couples (doing both would probably entail two separate trips, though). The right of religion to exclude all those it deems unfit must, however, be upheld.

I came across this while writing the above post: Dobrich: The Growing Subculture of Religious Exclusion and Prejudice in Public Schools. I thought it was quite interesting; that's why I'm putting up the link.

Poll Results

2009-09-30T20:32:00.001-06:00

I am emphatically in favor of Pay Period 21. I hope that answers the question. Where are the checks?

No Memory of Success

2009-09-12T22:59:00.000-06:00

I interviewed for a new position in the library system about a fortnight ago. They asked me if I could remember an instance when I had resolved an issue with a patron in such a way that everyone involved walked away happy. It didn't seem wise to answer no, so I sat there blankly for a bit too long before launching into a rambling story that contained little that would impress anyone and possibly convinced my interviewers that I couldn't operate our RFID system. I spent a fair amount of time trying to come up with a better customer service story that I could tell the next time I went in for an interview; instead, I came up with an explanation of my inability to remember any of my most accomplished customer interactions (which I emailed to the interviewers—a good move?):

After interviewing with you yesterday, I was struck by how difficult it was for me to recall in detail any instance when I had smoothly resolved a prickly patron issue though I know that I have on several occasions. I first put this memory trouble down to the fact that I was in a job interview, but began to wonder if there was something else at work when, hours later, I still hadn’t dredged up anything worth relating. The memories vivid enough to function as relatable narratives tended to have some aspect that would nix any notion of their presentation during a job interview. This led me to realize a significant connection between a memorable encounter and poor customer service: allowing oneself to become emotionally invested in the problem rather than the patron. The surest commitment to excellent customer service is investment in the patrons. Problems must be addressed, but in service to the patron (rather than the patron being addressed in service to the problem, as this tends to upset the patron and the problem is rarely bothered either way). So it seems possible that the reason I can't bring to mind what I'm doing to handle an upset patron's problem, is that when I do it right I'm not focused on solving the problem as much as I am on caring for the patron. Because I'm purposefully centering my emotional involvement away from the details, I don't remember them and, as a result, don't have any compelling good customer service stories.

The email didn't include my assessment that I was both better at and far more interested in solving problems than serving patrons; that thought, however, is what finally led me to what, hopefully, will be a usable answer for next time: if another, more empathic coworker is present, she could be given the task of talking to the patron while I determine the root of the problem and set all to rights. That sounds like good management to me: putting staff where their talents are best utilized. And, even though I may be happier sorting out problems, I have stepped in to calm patrons when a coworker less empathic than I am has threatened to speak to them; I can, when the need arises, keep a calm and friendly demeanor toward the customer and either find my fellow most suited to solving the problem or tackle it myself.

The Whole Four-Dimensional Enchilada

2009-07-17T02:30:00.001-06:00

I've been thinking about God's relationship to time. This is thought experiment stuff, not anything to do with anybody's (mine, yours, your neighbor's cats) beliefs, though you can certainly believe it if you want to. I started out thinking about Dr. Manhattan from Watchmen and his relationship to time. I found myself wondering, if God can comprehend, all at once, everything that will ever happen, what, if anything, does that imply about free will?

If you think of time as linear, if the end of the line is predetermined then there can be no free will. A line, however, is one-dimensional and time is supposed to be the fourth dimension. Even a two-dimensional representation of time, like the one I seem to remember Doc Brown drawing on a chalkboard in Back to the Future, Part II (refresh your memory—someone's printed it on a T-shirt), allows for choice. From line to plane to space, there are more and more directions to wander off in; time, therefore, must be so full of possible directions that there aren't even words (up, down, right, left, north, east, south, west) for all of them.

Dr. Manhattan seems to his human fellows to perceive all of time simultaneously; but, as he observes, he is no God, merely "a puppet who can see the strings." He is locked into a single line of time and has no sense of how making a different choice at a given moment might impact the future.

A proper God should be able to see the whole four-dimensional enchilada: every possible choice and every possible outcome all simultaneously apparent and all of it fully absorbed and understood (someone who can see it all but just thinks it's a bewildering mess probably still is a god, albeit a sad and pathetic, lower-end of the pantheon sort of god). From a vantage point outside existence as we understand it, none of these choices or outcomes would be any more real than any other. To a God with the view I'm imagining, the things I did today wouldn't be any more real than the things I chose not to do. Every time I've made a choice, I've done the right thing and the wrong thing across an infinite number of parallel moments, none of which is the real moment, because there isn't one.

If that is how God sees us, it would seem to render superfluous quite a few of the more popular notions of the world's religions. There would be no need of a multi-level Heaven/Hell system to sort people into; the best version of everyone could be taken from the segments of time in which they had made the most of their lives. Everyone would be saved, no one left behind (though this obviously depends on one's point of view and the numbers would dictate that the vast majority of available views would tend to disagree). It's more like infinite reincarnation until you get it right than Heaven if you're good, Hell if you're bad. It's more like Groundhog Day than reincarnation, except we don't get to be aware of what's going on or learn from our mistakes.

But if we're not learning from our mistakes, what's different each time? Does it make any kind of sense that confronted with exactly the same situation I can make an infinite number of different choices? Why don't I do the same thing consistently? Can I steer my own course, or am I at the mercy of blind luck? What makes me think I have free will?

Perhaps that doesn't matter so much, though; it may be enough that I do think that I have free will. Like the idea of a quantum event that can only occur if it is observed to occur, perhaps free will is only possessed by those who believe they possess it. To contemplate free will is to begin to understand the spider's web of time as a tangled mass of possibilities rather than a single thread spinning toward the future. To choose one must first perceive the choice.

Often I find myself frightened to make a choice because the outcome of any action is hidden from me. It is an attribute of God to understand all that any given choice means, but I take a stab at making them anyway. Perhaps that is what most separates humans from other animals: we aspire to be Gods. Maybe someone is looking in at us from outside, maybe not; maybe someday (maybe now, as time hardly matters once your standing outside of it) it'll be me.

Recycled Electrons

2009-07-16T23:08:00.000-06:00

Well, it looks like I've been neglecting my blog again. Sigh. In the absence of new content (and I swear, I've got stuff in the works), I'm starting to republish entries from my various past blogs. They will be going up with their original publication dates intact, which means you'll have to hunt through the archives if you want to look at them. Why would I bother doing this? Well, why not?

Because I Want To

2009-05-08T11:36:00.000-06:00

On my sixtieth birthday, I have lunch with T., one of my few religious friends. Or do I mean faith-professing? Anyway, he is Catholic, wears a cross around his neck and, to the alarm of some past girlfriends, has a crucifix on the wall above his bed. Yes, that does sound more like religious than faith-professing, I know. T. is soon to marry R., who may or may not have the power to remove the crucifix. This being my birthday, I allow myself more interrogatory latitude, so ask why—apart from having been brought up as a Catholic—he believes in God and his religion. He thinks for a while and replies, "I believe because I want to believe." Sounding perhaps a little like my brother, I counter with, "If you said to me, 'I love R. because I want to love R.,' I wouldn't be too impressed, and nor would she." As it is my birthday, T. refrains from throwing his drink over me.

I was particularly struck by this passage from Julian Barnes's Nothing to Be Frightened Of as I actually told my wife that I loved her because I wanted to love her. Perhaps that's where I went wrong. Actually, I can't think of any other reason to do anything. It still seems like I wind up doing things I don't want to do, though. Perhaps that's where I'm continuing to go wrong.

The Enemy Within: The Abortion Article II

2009-05-07T07:20:00.001-06:00

I set out to write a piece that would detail my views on abortion—that it is morally repugnant, that like other things that are morally repugnant (e.g. war) it is occasionally morally defensible, and that there is no practical reason to legislate against it—in such a way that the reader would have no rational choice but to agree with me. Instead, I wrote several paragraphs on the subject of my own superiority to the rest of the human race. Where did I go wrong?

Now that I have some distance from the original post, I can see that I allowed myself to be caught up in the same madness that I was chastising in others. Though it is superficially funny, there is a nastiness to what I wrote that had me feeling uncomfortable only minutes after I'd posted it. Eventually, I figured out the problem: I thought what I was writing was pro-rationality, but it turned out to really be anti-idiot—because that's what scares me more than anything else. I think I was right to say that fear is the enemy, but I'm not doing that much better than anyone else.

Anyway, I think I've really said all that I need to about abortion in the first sentence of this post. I'd like to add one thing, which probably won't advance my argument in any way, but man does this bug me: life does not begin at conception, as, prior to that point, both the egg and the sperm are clearly alive. When you think of all the sperm that had a shot up until then, the loss in life represented by the moment of conception is staggering.

My Hunger's Eyes are Nothing Like Its Thirst

2009-03-21T12:45:00.001-06:00

I drove past a Sonic the other day and noticed that their sign read, "Feed Your Hunger." Which would mean to starve yourself; feeding yourself would starve your hunger. So, Sonic seem to be suggesting that it is preferable to starve than to consume one of their hamburgers. While I have to agree that Sonic has some fairly repugnant fare, I think this stance goes too far.

I Still Think Computers are Cool

2009-03-06T03:16:00.001-07:00

The idea that the young kids know way more about computers than any adults do is very persistent. When I was one of the young kids, I figured it was true; now that I have passed beyond the point UC Berkeley's Free Speech Movement recommends as the demarcation for trustworthiness, today's young kids—the ones I encounter at the library, anyway—are failing to give me a run for my money. Actually, it's hardly even a brisk walk. Maybe it's only that the kids I see are the ones that don't have computers at home (that's why they're at the library). Even within that subset of kids, the ones I really notice are the ones who have problems that they want me to sort out; the kids that don't come to me for help might be computer whizzes.

The thing is, as a young computer whiz, I liked to show off my whizardy. Library patrons about my age seem to be the most likely to inflict geeky help on their struggling fellows; the kids just play games and check MySpace. An important distinction: the kids I see tend to be able to use the internet. They are comfortable around computers, unlike the technophobes from older generations who still can't figure computers out, ever though they've had several decades now to do it in. They know how to use computers, if not expertly, then functionally: they can make them do most of the things they are interested in making them do. They are, however, extraordinarily poor troubleshooters when the unexpected occurs. On many occasions, I have responded to the complaint that the screen suddenly went blank; every time this was caused by the user disconnecting the power with a poorly placed kick. The kids these days don't even know that computers have to be plugged in to work.

When I was a kid, computers were cool; now they are just everyday appliances, like dishwashers or toasters. Of course, I think I've got a pretty cool toaster, so maybe it's just that I and everyone I ever hung out with was a total geek, so my impression of my own age group leans toward geekery. Or maybe we really do know more, but only because you had to know more in those days to get the games to load (if you're old enough, think back to the incredible sequence of text commands required to start a game on the Commodore 64). Computers are so easy to use now. You don't have to memorize even one text command. Kids today don't really like computers they way my peers and I did. They may be exited by content they access; I get excited by the thrum of the things coming to life when I power them on.

The Abortion Article (part one)

2009-02-17T05:37:00.000-07:00

The Miller Lite Theory of Reproductive Rights: or, is it truer to say that the blood of the innocent tastes great, or that is is less filling?

In my seventh grade English class, we all had to get up in front of the class and explain our position on the subject of abortion. I think we were given a day to prepare our arguments. I told the teacher that I didn't have an opinion and she dismissed this as impossible. I went home and asked my mother what she thought and repeated her answer back to the class verbatim. I had not given a single thought to the subject prior to that point; I've spent the nineteen years since working out what my position actually is. My teacher told me, "Everyone has an opinion about abortion." When I was standing in front of that class, I felt like the only person who hadn't come to grips with what was clearly an important issue. Now I begin to suspect that I am the only person to have expended any thought on the topic whatsoever.

Thought is largely surplus to requirements when what you're actually expected to do is select one of two bizarrely unrelated soundbites which you are then supposed to defend to the last breath: do you believe that (1) life begins at conception; or, (2) in a woman's right to choose? The masses that gather together to wave banners emblazoned with these sentiments at one another bear an uncanny resemblance to the absurd denizens of Miller Lite commercials, endlessly and uselessly shouting "Tastes Great!" and "Less Filling!" back and forth across the town square. The pro-life movement argues from an ethics perspective while the pro-choice movement argues from a political one; its two separate conversations going on in the same room. A beer enthusiast will, of course, clear things up immediately: Miller Lite is crap. It's the same with the abortion debate: neither side can possibly win the argument, not only because they're not having the same argument, but because they're both wrong in various ways.

The reason that the abortion debate looks like a beer commercial is that both the pro-choice and pro-life movements have been hobbled by their perceived need to advertise. Through advertisement, they hope to sell their positions and triumph over the competition. To this end, both have adopted the time-tested technique of selling a product by showing the potential buyer how much better the people who already have it are than everyone else. Doing this shifts the focus from the issues onto the people and replaces discussion with "We're better than you." Each side refers to itself in only positive terms and its opposite in only negative terms. This is why the pro-choice side of things carefully avoid the anti-abortion label.

Neither of these groups is pro anything, but they adopted the names that they did to position themselves as the good guys. Good guys vs. bad guys: pro-life vs. anti-life; pro-choice vs. anti-choice. Anti is, rightly, perceived as negative, motivated by fear, disgust, and distrust, but that's what both sides clearly are. Neither group is against what the other claims it is, though: they are anti-abortion, on the one hand, and anti-subjugation, on the other. No one I know is pro-abortion or pro-subjugation; they're not particularly supportable propositions and, as such, these two supposedly opposed groups might not have differences as irreconcilable as they believe themselves to. Real communication could lead the realization that both sides have been right all along. The shared fear of letting anyone see that they're afraid, however, ensures that it is impossible for either side's fears to be addressed and each group remains ensconced behind a facade of strength made up of all the things that they've got wrong.

Unpacking My Books

2009-01-11T18:02:00.000-07:00

I clearly must love to be surrounded by boxes. In the last apartment I lived in we never really unpacked anything. Then when we moved in to our house we moved the boxes into a room in the back and some out into the shed and ignored them there as well; they were considerably less in the way, but still available if the urge to stand surrounded by cardboard towers taller than oneself became irresistible. Now I'm moving many (but not all) of them again and for the first time in years I am approaching the job of going through the boxes containing my books and getting my books out onto shelves.

Now I wouldn't think anyone would want to rush such a long anticipated activity, so I've come across a scheme that will help draw it out across many pleasurable months of shelving: I am taking one book out of a box at a time, deciding if it is a book I wish to keep or discard, and, if I have decided to keep it, entering it into my list of books on LibraryThing. So far, I've put away seventeen books.

The Chocolate Philosopher

2008-12-28T17:29:00.002-07:00

I was eating some Dove dark chocolate pieces the other day. There are messages on the foil wrappers which can be read on the occasions one does not destroy them in the process of extracting the chocolate. Often they are very dull, not exactly, but along the lines of, "Mmm... isn't chocolate tasty?" On this occasion, however, I got "Love is the master key which opens the gates of happiness." These are, apparently, the words of Oliver Wendell Holmes; he is uncredited on the foil, but I've googled it.

Prior to the googling, I was wondering whether the statement is, in fact, a correct one. I'm sure it says something about me that the knowledge someone other than an employee at Dove had said it first instantly made it more dependable. Still, my immediate thought on first reading the wrapper was that it seemed more accurate backwards: happiness is the master key which opens the gates of love.

So I've been flip-flopping between the two for a week or so now. Then I happened to read something in my daughter's geometry text book about contrapositive statements and that set me off googling again. The version of the statement I initially preferred is the converse of the original (coincidentally, in addition to converse statements I also prefer Converse shoes and have just bought some). When the converse of a statement and the statement itself are both true, I have just learned that the relationship can be said to be biconditional. So, throwing poetry, for the moment, out the window, we are left with: Love ↔ Happiness. Which is, at the very least, much more reassuring than Love → Building on Fire.

Being Happy

2008-12-10T13:02:00.001-07:00

It occurred to me a few days ago that while everyone is guaranteed to experience some sadness in life, experiencing or having sadness is quite a different thing from being sad. Being sad, a state where sadness is a defining characteristic of who a person can be said to be, sounds more or less like depression, except that even depression sometimes goes away.

So while sadness is a necessary and important part of life, being sad is to be avoided at all costs. But what about being happy? This sounds like it would be a good thing, but is it? It just crossed my mind that maybe it was better to just experience all kinds of emotion, rather than letting any of them define my life. Then again, maybe being any kind of positive emotion could get me through those times when I'm experiencing the negative ones. Yeah, I think that sounds like the ticket.

This is all reminding me of the Pet Shop Boys song "Being Boring," which is making me think about my daughter (who is always being bored).

Where Would America Be Without the War on Christmas?

2008-12-03T16:44:00.000-07:00

Senator Chris Buttars wants the Utah Legislature to pass a non-binding resolution encouraging retailers to say "Merry Christmas" instead of "Happy Holidays." Ignore, for the moment, that there is almost no point whatsoever in passing any kind of non-binding resolution. Ignore also the obvious First Amendment issues that people will insist on bringing up.

Buttars says "I'm sick of the Christmas wars—we're a Christian nation and ought to use the word." So, first question: what makes us a Christian nation? Ignore, for the moment any of the arguments that we are not that may come into your mind. This country is a Christian nation because, by and large, the people who founded it were Christians of one or another stripe. As every school child is taught, our founding fathers came to the New World from England to escape religious persecution. The thing is, one reason the English couldn't stand our pilgrim forebears is that they kept trying to ban Christmas. As good protestants, they knew Christmas to be an evil mixture of papacy and paganism. Christmas met with little enthusiasm in the United States until the nineteenth century when Irish and German immigrants brought their love of it with them.

If it weren't for the Puritans' utter loathing of Christmas, America as we know it might never have come to be. And any talk of America being a Christian nation can be discounted by one glance at our relationship with Christmas—we're a Capitalist nation and have been so proudly since the nineteenth century descendants of this country's Puritan fathers overcame their distaste for the holiday when they discovered that Christmas actually made quite a workable excuse for picking the pockets of their Irish immigrant workforce every twenty-fifth of December.

Slate: Cleaned

2008-11-30T19:12:00.005-07:00

I started a blog of this title when I thought my marriage was ending and I wanted to work out all the negative feelings I had for my wife in full view of anyone with an internet connection. Then we patched things up and I lost interest. Now the marriage really is ending but I'm still not interested in doing the sort of thing I had originally planned. I've deleted all the old entries and I'm starting from scratch. I used to blog regularly (a decade and change ago when having a blog was something that set me apart from everyone else); I thought it would be nice to get back in the habit.

I've kept the title, because I really like it. It was meant as an obscure reference to infidelity; I think it won't be too hard to nudge it into meaning something else. Deciding what to keep is an interesting process. Everything I have and everything I am are tainted; some things are still too precious to give up.

I found a bottle of white vinegar (Debi had it to clean her guinea pig cages); I think I'll descale my kettle.

Goings On

2007-07-18T13:49:00.000-06:00

The post below this one has been in the works for about a month. It was supposed to be much more in depth, but writing it has been slow going. Part two will, hopefully, not be so hard to get off the ground.

The results on the paternity test came back a few weeks ago; according to the lab, I am the father. Bwa ha ha ha! Er—anyway, Loren doesn't quite believe it; there's currently some confirmation testing underway (to show that the sample didn't get mixed up). I'm now moving forward on the assumption that I will be staying with Masami in the house that we bought.

I'm going in for my interview at the Postal REC site today. I'm going to need a second job to bring in enough money to make our mortgage payments. I went down there to interview yesterday, but just missed the person who could do it. When I went to the pre-employment meeting (or whatever they called it) they said it wasn't necessary to have an appointment and I took them at their word. Luckily, I've spoken to Merinda (the interviewer) on the phone today and now have an appointment to come in after I get off work at the library.

Back to the subject of the previous post: I think part of my problem with the writing is that I'd taken to the idea of writing about the complete history of my relationship with Masami as something to help me get through the breakup that with each passing day looked more and more inevitable. Now that things seem to be going a different way, I'm not sure I want to approach this project the same way. It's not the same to write about something that's still going on as to write about something that is over.

Creative Writing, part one

2007-07-18T13:21:00.000-06:00

Smiling Heart

cute little smiling heart
feet facing out
arms outstretched
walking toward
outstretched arms

discarded toy
lifeless lump
red plastic
somewhere
in the dark

somewhere
smiling
somewhere
arms
reach out to
someone else

cute little plastic heart
walking forward
smiling

The emphasis in Alma McKertich's creative writing classes was on the process of revision. She favored the three draft approach championed by Piers Anthony in the author's notes at the end of each of his novels. The class formed a peer review group and with their reactions duly noted, one could rework a piece of material with the aim of bringing the intended reaction in line with that of actual readers. I started the first of three such classes that I would attend—the later two focused specifically on a type of writing, one on fiction and one on poetry—in January 2006.

Trasi Tadehara had a red Grease lunchbox instead of a purse. That may or may not have been what I noticed about her first. I remember I liked the skirt she had on—it was a really cool crinkly fabric and it was purple. She looked pretty cool. She was very friendly and gregarious, enough that even I could feel like she was a friend after knowing her only for a day or two. She gave Valentine's cards to everyone on Valentine's Day. I was thrilled to get mine—it was my twentieth birthday.

Housekeeping

2007-06-25T12:00:00.000-06:00

Housekeeping is a real pain. Without anyone to tell us off we leave things strewn about everywhere. The front room is just frightful. I mean, it could be a lot worse, but it could also be considerably better.

I can't be sure, but it might help if we had more furniture. For example, I would really enjoy having a dresser to keep my clothes in. Most of my furniture is being stored in the shed in back of my parents' house and I haven't felt like going and getting it. I don't want to move large heavy objects around more than I have to and if I wind up living somewhere else in a month it will be nice to only have to move all my crap once. Also, Masami may want to come with me to oversee things and she is not currently on my parents' list of favorite people. Actually, my mother has taken to calling her Satan.

So my clothes are just in a collection of laundry baskets and cardboard boxes (some of the things that go in closets have been hung up) in our guest bedroom. And we've got a guest this week, so I've got to creep in without waking him if I want a pair of clean underpants in the morning. Actually, I moved the basket with my underpants in it upstairs this morning.

We've had a security system installed—a man came to the door and said they'd put it in for free if we allowed them to display a sign in our front yard advertising the system. Nobody ever put up the sign and I'm not sure that the thing is connected up properly, but we've got it. It's a lot of fun to play with. It should raise the value of the house a bit to have it. There are rumors that Masami's dad may buy a new range for the kitchen as a housewarming gift, which would really make the place much nicer.

My parents' think buying the house is the stupidest thing I've ever done in my life. My mother had allowed me to use one of her credit cards to pay off an old card of Masami's. This gave us a lower interest rate and made the situation more manageable. I paid on the balance on my mom's card online each month. Because my parents were so frightened that I would not have enough money to make the payments on this house, they thought I might be tempted to order a duplicate card through the website and use it to make the payments. I would not have done this, I'm fairly sure; however, to ensure that I did not, my mother changed the password to access the account, locking me out of the website. She then told me that I should make payments directly to her. This is probably all within her rights and not something I should complain (much) about, but the revised situation makes me extremely uncomfortable. It is never a good situation for family members or friends to be forced into the roles of debtor and creditor.

The car I drive is actually my mother's. I had the thought that she could sell it to pay the debt. As I see it, the car contains value which is used up as I drive it—in a few years it will be a worthless lump of metal and we'll have to pay someone to tow it away. If I'm allowed to use that value, why not redirect it toward paying off my debt? No one is having any of it, though. I nearly left the car with them anyway. I had serious misgivings about accepting the use of it when it was offered in February. The car is a solid manifestation of the lack of trust my parents have for me. I'm not trusted to make a credit card payment without running the bill up even higher. I'm not trusted to be able to get from place to place without their help. I'm not trusted to come back home to visit if I haven't got a bungee cord clipped to my belt, pulling me back to West Valley for Sunday dinners and endless critiques of my chosen life and family.

I know I'll feel a lot better if I can get out from under the weight of debt to my mother sooner rather than later. Masami is looking into taking the money out of the 401K she has from when she worked at ARUP. I feel a little weird about doing that, as my impression is that you're supposed to leave money in 401Ks, not take it out—at least, until you're old. Still, I suppose it's important to do what we have to do to at least get to being old and then figure things out from there. Just like always.

Not the Voice of Mel Gibson

2007-06-09T03:45:00.000-06:00

There is no time; there are only memories. There is no truth; there are only stories.

I wonder how the other people in my life think the story goes. Maybe it does go that way—that's their story; maybe it's better than mine. If you find yourself reading about a representation of yourself and have a story you think is better than mine, register with Blogger and leave a comment. That's my nod toward fairness and accuracy. Now I'm going to tell my story the way I remember it. I remember I rode the Greyhound to Parowan. I must have rode it home from Cedar City, but, apart from a vague impression of waiting for it in some nameless little store, I can't remember coming home at all.

Maralee had asked me to come to a dance that she was DJing. I put on some lipstick and mascara and threw myself at the walls while she played records. Most of the people there managed to ignore me, thank God. Actually, I had a great time. Some cowboys asked me if was gay ("Sorry, no. Why, were you interested?") and I saw my first signpost pointing toward Maralee's future lesbianism (which she was resisting valiantly).

I came because I was in love with her. I'd thought of myself as her boyfriend during the previous summer, but she told me that actually I wasn't. We watched the entire Mad Max trilogy in one day. I miserably failed to progress from making out to fucking her during Beyond Thunderdome and she just gave up on me. I was too innocent and she could find satisfaction without the guilt she'd feel if she corrupted me. Her decision was abrupt. I felt so lost when she went up stairs to sleep in her room. I felt like I had to take a bath so I did. The bathroom didn't lock and was lit only by candlelight. I must have slept eventually. In the morning we went to church with her parents and an old lady told her she looked like a model.

I went to the dance at Parowan High because I thought I might get another chance. I didn't, or if I did I messed it up somehow. By the time the bus got back to Salt Lake, I'd finally worked out that I needed to get myself another girl. Maralee had been the first girl I'd kissed. She was the most intense experience of my life (to that point). I didn't know how I'd get by without her. Luckily, I would be going back to school (at SLCC) in January—there would be significant numbers of girls there.

A Statement of Intent

2007-05-07T00:00:00.000-06:00

Originally from my old blog @ www.timhinkle.com:

I've started a new blog, Wearing the Moon. It's hard to say exactly why I felt compelled to have yet another space on the internet, especially as I've hardly been posting anything to the sites I already have, but since I use this site to promote my music and other projects (I guess I think of it as my artistic hub) it seems less appropriate to go on about my personal life here. I have had the idea in the back of my mind for quite some time that I should write a book about my marriage, but I never start. I think it's because I want the story to have a beginning, middle and end before I start writing. The nature of blogging may help me around the problem. It's worth a shot.

Grandma Beverly's Tobacco Stash

2006-09-23T00:00:00.000-06:00

Masami found a bag of loose tobacco in her Grandma's car the other day when she borrowed it to take her paycheck to the bank. She was dumbfounded. When she got home she shared her discovery with me. Images of Grandma Beverly fiddling with cigarette papers and lighting up behind the Hawaiian Cultural Center with a group of aging ukulele players sprang unbound into my mind. Tonight, I got the real scoop from G-ma B, though, and it's nothing like that interesting or disturbing. It's for her class on Native Americans; they're making some kind of Indian medicine pouch for a class project.

101 Things to Do with a Slow Cooker

2006-08-31T18:49:00.004-06:00

I'm very disappointed in this book. It claims to tell of 101 things that can be done with a slow cooker; however, it only actually touches on the most obvious one: slow cooking things. I knew you could slow cook things with a slow cooker. I can think of a few others on my own; for example, a cooker might make a good paperweight or doorstop. The same authors even had the audacity to publish 101 More Things to Do With a Slow Cooker a year after their first attempt and they still only tell you about slow cooking!

16 July 2009: More creative use is made of a slow cooker in the possibly charming (but I don't know as I only read the first couple of pages) Harlequin Pink manga Three Wishes: a genie lives inside! The heroine only want to be able to cook, alas; what is it with people who own slow cookers?

Stationed in the Future

2006-08-10T00:00:00.000-06:00

I saw DeVotchKa last night at Ego's; they were absolutely brilliant! My friend Maralee met me there. She let me crash on her sofa for a few hours after the show; I couldn't get back home as the show went on past the last train back to Sandy.

Speaking of the train, I went up to Sweet Tomatoes on Monday. I like to go on Monday because that's the day when they have cream of mushroom soup. Anyway, UTA is building a new train station in between the existing ones at 9000 South and 10000 South. It isn't functional yet—there are no ticket machines and the shelter is only partially constructed—but the train stops there and sits for a minute before going on. Why does it do this?

Penguins Speak French

2006-07-21T00:00:00.000-06:00

I left my box of CDs at the train station today. I'm either taking the loss well or the reality of it hasn't sunk in. It had my copy of The Blurred Crusade in it; that's the worst loss.

I bought a DVD from JSDVD Mall today, probably. I wanted to get a copy of La Marche de l'empereur in the original French version with English subtitles. So I had to buy a DVD from Taiwan. I'll have to see what I can rig up to handle Region 3 when it gets here. If only Warner Bros. had the sense to put a French language track on their DVD. I guess the American version is also about two minutes shorter or something, so the French audio track doesn't line up to the American video. Anyway, I can't enjoy my penguins waddling about in the cold unless they've been dubbed over with the voices originally intended by the filmmakers.

There is a penguin documentary that is a lot better than March of the Penguins that I want to recommend people see, but I can't come up with the title. I've got it taped off of television somewhere; I'll have to see if I can find it.

Work Never Ends

2006-06-23T00:00:00.001-06:00

I was eating with my family at the Old Spaghetti Factory when an atomic bomb went off. Half the restaurant was suddenly gone and a blast of radiation washed over us. It really ruined the meal.

The next day I went into work at the library as normal. Operations had been moved into the basement. We had to wear protective suits to go upstairs to get materials that hadn't been moved into the basement yet. No patrons came into the building; I'm not sure how people actually picked up materials but we took phone calls and got things ready for someone eventually to take out of the building. We were tagging items with names of patrons. We were checking in books. We were shelving. And we were occasionally venturing out (in radiation gear) to check the bookdrops.

It was very dark in the basement. We had lots of late '70s/early '80s computer equipment and we had to type to do everything. None of the computers had a mouse; we were not dealing with GUI interfaces. The computer monitors were the only source of light.

Grandma Beverly's Whiskey Stash

2006-06-23T00:00:00.000-06:00

I found a bottle of whiskey in a cupboard in the basement. I drank about a quarter of the bottle and put the rest in the closet in my den (of iniquity). I then forgot about it.

Some time later (this is unclear, it was a dream after all) Grandma Beverly comes downstairs and is looking for her special bottle of whiskey. As far as I can tell it's going to be Thanksgiving tomorrow and she wants to serve it with Thanksgiving dinner. For people not familiar with my grandmother-in-law, she does not drink, she does not have any bottles of whiskey stashed in her basement, and she would not approve of anyone drinking at Thanksgiving dinner. She does, however, pop down into the basement looking for odd things that have been put away for decades that she suddenly needs for some reason. Also on the subject of out-of-character behavior: I don't like whiskey. I like rum with soda pop or fruit juice. I can withstand some vodka-based drinks. I like dark beer. I don't like whiskey.

I said I would keep an eye out for her bottle of whiskey and she stopped looking for it and went upstairs. I was going to have to buy another bottle to cover for myself, but I was broke; hopefully this wasn't expensive whiskey.

Then I woke up. I don't know if people were able to get pissed at Thanksgiving dinner or not (and if not how pissed they were about it).

Bleeping Cold Tea!

2005-10-31T00:00:00.000-07:00

My wife, my daughter and I have recently moved in with my grandmother-in-law. In most ways I think it's a big improvement over the apartment we were in before, but there are a few things I just can't stand; one of these things is the obnoxious beeping of the microwave oven. Most such ovens beep when the timer reaches zero but this one continues to beep at regular intervals until you actually get up and open the microwave door. My tea will often get a bit cold before I've managed to empty the cup, so I put it in the microwave for thirty to forty seconds to warm it back up again. With my old microwave (which has now been relegated to storage) I would often forget about the tea before those forty seconds were up and find it in the microwave hours later when I suddenly remembered about it and went looking for it. There is, perhaps, something slightly pathetic about this, but I would rather be allowed to forget my tea than to have to put up with the continual obnoxious bleeping that the microwave here subjects me to.

Say I pop my tea in the microwave and then while it's heating I nip downstairs to write something for a blog entry like this one. The first beep isn't that upsetting and is easily ignored as I sit down and pull up Notepad. I can hardly type the first third of a sentence, though, before I'm jolted from my thoughts by the first set of reminder beeps; there are three quick beeps in a row and for some reason those three beeps send a cold shiver down my spine. I shrug it off and start to regather my thoughts but just as I'm about to get going again there are another three quick piercing beeps. So I stomp up the stairs and try to get my tea out of the microwave but the door doesn't open when I press the release button. I remember that I have to hold down the release button with one hand and pry the door open with the other (I mentioned this as a reason to replace my grandmother-in-law's microwave with mine when discussing the matter with my wife; it sounds quite a bit saner than this beeping business) and then I'm able to get my tea, though not before it beeps at me again while I'm standing right next to it. On occasion I shout at it: "Yes, I know you idiot machine!"

Then I take my tea downstairs with me and set it on the shelf to my right. After reaching a natural stopping place in whatever it is that I'm fiddling with I pick up my mug and drink some of my tea. Which is now stone cold, so I take it back upstairs and put it in the microwave.

Update - 3 November 2005: I thought that when the microwave finished heating it first beeped a single beep, but last night I noticed that it actually beeps four beeps. The fan continues to run until just after the final beep which may be a large part of what makes the quality of the sound different from the sets of three reminder beeps that follow.

Blood and Feathers

2003-11-30T00:00:00.003-07:00

I walked slowly across the parking lot toward my car. I couldn't decide what I wanted to eat for lunch; I knew it had to be something quick, though, because I had to stop at the bank on my way. When I got to the car I lost my appetite. The driver's side door was covered in blood...

At first, I didn't realize what it was; then I saw the dead magpie nearby in the snow. I stared for a moment in disgust then I found the least bloody corner of the door handle, got in, and drove to the bank. I'd given up on any hope that this might turn out to be a good day.

Good & Almost Enough

2003-10-13T00:00:00.001-06:00

I love licorice candy. I like to keep some candy tucked away in my locker at work, because work can be very hard to deal with when there isn't any candy involved, and various sorts of licorice candy are among my favorite sorts to discover upon opening my locker door in search of sweetness.

The best licorice I am aware of is Panda licorice, which is made in Finland. A lot of stuff passed off as licorice by the greedy and uncaring corporations of America is basically a dumping ground for unused food coloring - it takes a lot of blue number this and red number that to make candy look black. Real black licorice is black because it's made with molasses. Panda's all-natural black licorice contains these four ingredients: molasses, wheat flour, licorice extract, and aniseed oil. This is what licorice should be.

The American licorice candy Good & Plenty actually is quite good. I bought a bag a few days ago and enjoyed it immensely. While I was eating it, I spent some time thinking about the name. I understand the "good" part, but why "plenty"? I bought a 7 oz. bag, and that was probably plenty, but I could have bought a 1.8 oz. box and I very much doubt it would have been. This led me to envision different names for the different sizes of package: the large package could say "Good & Plenty"; a smaller one might say "Good & Almost Enough"; while the small boxes would read "Good & Why Don't You Save Time and Buy Some More Right Now!" This would make more sense from a sales perspective; eliminating "plenty" from the name altogether would make even more sense because you never want people to think they have enough of your product - you want them to buy more and more and more!

Radiohead Concert

2003-09-01T00:00:00.000-06:00

I had a lovely time at the Radiohead concert a few nights ago - it was definitely one of the best rock shows I have seen. The lighting was superb and they sounded wonderful (though I never understand why the sound people at these events feel it necessary to push the volume just slightly over the levels that can optimally be handled by the speaker system). Anyway, a couple of things related to my library career (it's a small world) managed to happen while I was there, so I thought I'd take a moment to write down a few things here.

First, the opening act was Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks. I had heard of Stephen Malkmus prior to the show only because someone in the library system decided to attempt to artificially manipulate our library catalog software to encourage librarians across the system to order more copies of the new Stephen Malkmus album Pig Lib. The computer system tracks the number of hold requests placed on an item; if there are a large number of requests for an item that the system owns only a few copies of, the item is placed on an alert list so that other librarians will know the item is in demand and can order copies for their library. A hold request for Pig Lib was placed on my account (and on several other people's accounts) in the attempt to make it look like a really popular item. I cancelled the hold after about a month because I had no idea what Pig Lib was and wanted to set a hold on something else (accounts are limited to 10 hold requests at one time). It seems I was destined to be exposed to this music. They were actually pretty good.

Second, my ex-coworker Rich (now a high school German teacher) and his wife arrived at the show while stage people were shuffling things around between sets. I leapt up and started waving my arms around in the air when I saw them. They sat down in front of us. In keeping with the last couple of things written in this spot, they were wearing T-shirts promoting a vegan lifestyle.

Third, they said that they had won their concert tickets. I had to pay for mine. I have never won any concert tickets. I did once win a large box full of frozen burritos. I think Rich and his wife won tickets to concerts while I was working with him, too. They told us that they use multiple phones to increase the chances of getting through to the radio station giving the tickets away. I would feel like I was cheating if I did that. My current co-worker, Jared, also won concert tickets not too long ago to a Coldplay concert that I wanted to see but which sold out before I could get any money together.

I'm not sure what the point of all this is; just, I guess, that it's a funny old world and that at some point I'd like to win some concert tickets.

Anarchy!

2003-08-23T00:01:00.001-06:00

A few hours ago I started shopping for some new shoes. I eventually bought the ones pictured here, but before I did I decided I'd plug the word "anarchy" into Google and see what came up. I've spent the past several hours reading through some very thought-provoking articles: "Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Anarchy" on Anarchy.org; many interesting bits on the Anarchy for Anybody site, including a piece that will please my wife, as it sings the praises of pirates; and "Avoiding Plato's Republic in America" on the beautiful infoshop.org.

18 September 2009: I found another anarchist website today while migrating this blog entry and checking its links: Anarchy.net. There I read "Democracy, Class, and Revolution," an article whose title made me happy through use of an Oxford comma.

Beef for Lunch

2003-08-11T00:00:00.000-06:00

Just the other day I wound up in Dee's on my lunch break and, despite the articles I'd been reading for the past week or so on mad cow disease, I decided to order a french dip. At first I thought this was a good compromise decision, remembering reading somewhere that steak was meant to be marginally safer than hamburger (as who knows exactly what bits of the cow are ground up in it), but then I realized that the au jous had an even higher risk factor, as soup is derived from bone material.

Apparently, mad cow disease is present only in the brain and nervous system, but can wind up anywhere in the body when the brain is blown to bits as the first step in turning the animal into product. It seems like it would be a good idea to kill the cows in some other way if we know that this method is responsible for spreading particles of disease throughout the animal, but it also seems like a good idea to stop feeding the cows disease-ridden feed from the rendering plant. Cows get this stuff the same way people do - by eating infected tissue.

Since one lonely mad cow was declared to be the only one that could possibly ever have been in Canada (yeah, right), I've been one step closer to vegetarianism. Not real vegetarianism, obviously, as mad cow disease makes a lousy deterrent against, say, eating bacon at breakfast, or pork chops, or chicken, but it's still a step in that direction. I already refuse to eat fish (I just don't like eating them - blurgh).

More than just the fear attached to the possibility of getting a horrible disease, though, mad cows, to my mind, help enforce the moral argument in favor of vegetarianism (an argument which, in most ways, I agree with, but I have not yet successfully incorporated into my lifestyle, because I am weak). The mad cow clearly places the companies that are selling us food they know to be potentially unsafe - because taking the necessary steps to make it safe would cut into their profits - on the side of evil.

Penned in by evil on all sides, I have, like most Americans, become somewhat apathetic; I'm going to try to be better, though - really I am. Just let me finish this burger.

Don't Have a Cow

2003-06-23T00:00:00.000-06:00

There are times when I feel guilty about eating meat. So far the part of my mind that feels bad about killing poor animals that haven't done anything to me hasn't been able to win outright against the part of mind that says "Yeah, but they taste good!" The obvious weakness of that last statement as a moral argument leaves me thinking that vegetarians must be on to something.

Extreme veganism, however, leaves me bewildered. I see a clear difference between eating a piece of cheese and eating a hamburger. The moral position against all products derived in any way from an animal source just isn't as strong if the animal in question is still alive and well at the end of it all, but, while there can be little argument over what constitutes a living animal as opposed to a dead one, endless discussion can ensue over whether or not a particular creature can be considered to be well. The vegan position, as I understand it, is that animals such as the dairy cow are treated less than ethically. It probably varies through the movement whether it is the conditions in which the animals are kept, or the likely slaughter any animal that outlives its usefulness has to look forward to, or simply the fact that the animals are expected to produce for their human masters.

I can't think what there is for a dairy cow to do apart from producing milk. Maybe they could be released into the wild, but they're not really wild animals. If they are supported by human society, then they should have to work, just like I do. It would make sense to me to support dairies which had clean, pleasant working conditions for their cows rather than ones which didn't, in much the way that if I found out a certain brand of shoes were made in third-world sweatshops I'd be inclined to buy shoes from someone else; I wouldn't stop wearing shoes altogether, so I can't see why I'd want to stop eating dairy products.

Perhaps dairy cows should get days off. Perhaps they should have a nice retirement, rather than slaughter, to look forward to at the end of their careers. I could see the moral argument behind these ideas. If we could provide better things for them, I don't see what's wrong with them providing some things for us. At the moment we probably aren't giving these animals as much in return as some surely think they deserve, but that's what the vegans can go out and campaign for, that's a social change with a certain kind of justice behind it, that's what would make a lot more sense to me than cutting dairy products out of my diet and walking around feeling superior about it.

Infocom Text Adventures

2003-02-14T00:01:00.000-07:00

I discovered something last night which made me very happy. It's called Frotz and it lets me play my old Infocom text adventure games in Windows 2000. If such a thing sounds like it would make you happy as well, it can be downloaded free from this page. Many other operating systems are also supported, so check it out!