Journal of No. 118

I have the weirdest feeling Rupert Sheldrake is staring at the back of my head

2013-05-22T20:24:43Z

So before I dig into the boring stuff about me, first check out this neat article on "How to Humble a Wingnut":

First, people were asked to state their positions on a series of political issues ... They were asked to describe their position on a seven-point scale whose endpoints were “strongly in favor” and “strongly opposed.”

Second, people were asked to rate their degree of understanding of each issue on a seven-point scale. The third step was the crucial one; they were asked to “describe all the details you know about ... going from the first step to the last, and providing the causal connection between the steps.” Fourth, people were asked to rerate their understanding on the seven-point scale and to restate their position on the relevant issue.

The results were stunning. On every issue, the result of requesting an explanation was to persuade people to give a lower rating of their own understanding -- and to offer a more moderate view on each issue.

Okay, now look back at me. Some of you in Facebooklandia saw snippets (or more) of my participation in an evolution/creationism thread on Tony's page. I know Tony only through the internet, as one of the more reasonable people on one of those many Christian forums I've been kicked off of. Anyway, he's in Alabama, and his friendslist has a somewhat different composition than mine. So it was interesting foray deep into Redstatia.

And curiously it came on the heels of another mini-kerfuffle on a Christian forum that I haven't been kicked off. But this time, it wasn't religion or evolution, but parapsychology. It started with Dean Radin, but quickly moved over to Rupert Sheldrake, and the he-said/she-said war between Sheldrake and Randi. And then, one of the posters says, "Rupert Sheldrake kindly agreed to weigh in on this controversy."
While I have no way to confirm that (skeptic that I am) I can at least say I was having a discussion with pseudo-Sheldrake.

And now most recently back on FB, my best friend from high school(*) approvingly posted Sheldrake's 'banned' TEDx talk. Mainly to annoy Prime, I make it a point of principle to never watch TED talks, so I don't have any opinion on the matter. But it did make me look at my friend's profile page, and what did I find, but that a few months back, he made a half dozen creationist YouTube videos. I don't have the heart to watch them.

The Secret Life of Words: How English Became English, by Henry Hitchings

2013-05-21T23:10:58Z

The Secret Life of Words is part history of the English language, part history of the English people (and Empire and post-Empire). Lots of interesting details about how the winds of fortune and history have affected our lexicon. Many times, it reads a bit too much as trivia... long lists of words that derive from one language or another, but sometimes those little bits of trivia are amusing or surprising.

I feel slightly idiotic, but I had no idea that honcho (as in head honcho) derives from Japanese. I guess I implicitly assumed (it's not like I ever thought about it before) it came from the same place we got rancho and poncho.

Here are some of the other tasty trivia nuggets I picked out:

Picnic was first used by the Earl of Chesterfield, the modish eighteenth-century politico and arbiter of public taste, whose letters were considered by Dr. Johnson to ‘teach the morals of a whore and the manners of a dancing master’.

The Swahili madigadi is a version of the English ‘mudguards’, and the same language takes the delightful word kiplefti, meaning ‘traffic island’, from the English ‘keep left’.

The nineteenth-century clergyman William Barnes preferred wheelsaddle to bicycle and folkwain to omnibus. By the same token forceps would be nipperlings, and pathology would be painlore. Some of his new words recalled the language of Old English poetry: he proposed glee-mote in place of concert, and the wonderful cellar-thane instead of butler.

In German folklore, cobalt’s reputation for enfeebling the miners who brought it up from the ground was linked to the presence in the mines of a malign spirit known as a Kobold. The association between digging underground and coming across wicked sprites was popular: the English nickel comes from Swedish, but can be traced back to the German Kupfernickel – the half of this word that the English preserves is another German term for a mischievous, mine-dwelling imp. [It had not occurred to us, dude, that kobolds are cobalt. Or that the 'Old Nick' that bedeviled copper mining is nickel. Who knew the periodic table was full of mischievous imps?]

'Of pseudo-Latin plurals one need not speak at length,’ he adds. ‘It is enough to remark that men have been heard to talk of “the throngs of omnibi that ply the London streets.”'

Heritage Auction of Natural Specimens.

2013-05-21T02:14:51Z

Carved meteoric glass:

Yog Sothoth in hematite:

Knife made from meteoric iron:

Oh, just a piece of the Moon:

California crystallized gold:

Game over man.

Guess how big that opalescent ammonite is. Go on. Guess.

Joan Pujol Garcia - Best/Laziest Spy in the World

2013-05-20T03:18:24Z

Another great ~~character~~ real person from the History of MI6.

After the Spanish Civil War, Pujol Garcia came to hate fascism and tried to to become a spy for Britain. He was turned down. Not to be discouraged, on his own initiative, he worked up a fictitious existence as a pro-Nazi sympathizer and was accepted as a spy by Germany. He was supposed to travel to Britain and spy, but instead he went to Lisbon and manufactured information based on "a tourist's guide to England, reference books and magazines from the Lisbon public library and newsreel reports he saw in cinemas".

Now the Allies were interested, and he finally did get to England, where now he sent back info to the Germans supplied to him by the secret service. He apparently became the Germans 'best' spy and ultimately 'recruited' and 'ran' a 'network' of dozens of 'agents'.

"Pujol was, on 29 July 1944, awarded the Iron Cross Second Class for his services to the German war effort. The award was normally reserved for front-line fighting men and required Hitler's personal authorisation."

For his services to the British war effort, he was awarded an MBE.

After the war, reasonably concerned that the Germans might want retribution, he "travelled to Angola and faked his death of malaria".

Winston take a dustbath

2013-05-19T20:49:49Z

Winston take a dustbath a video by Essentialsaltes on Flickr.

Quite an endorsement

2013-05-14T15:52:39Z

Landsat timelapse imagery

2013-05-13T15:43:21Z

Google & TIME paired up to process and display Landsat satellite imagery over a few decades.

Over the entire earth.

It's pretty awesome.

After they show a few canned timelapses, hit Explore the World and put in your hometown. Or watch the Aral Sea vanish.

The war ends (?)

2013-04-30T22:24:02Z

I got off to a good start as the aliens, but it was too good a start, and everyone took the opportunity to smite me. And, although I completed a mission to get a victory point, that precludes you from getting a resource card, so I never had the armies to build back up, while the other people were sucking down some tasty resource cards. So I was swept into irrelevance, and even off the board, though I came back the next round and hung on to the end. Having dined on the corpse of my empire, the others started smiting each other, and Graydon came out on top. But that still meant that Ken was the undisputed overall campaign winner.

Ken - 4 wins
Mike - 3 wins
Aaron - 3 wins
Graydon - 3 wins
Smaug - 2 wins

This? This is mine.

2013-04-30T01:56:45Z

This? This is mine., a photo by Essentialsaltes on Flickr.

Spotted in Smithsonian

2013-04-29T15:41:34Z

by El Zeft

Imperialism in four lines

2013-04-26T14:24:33Z

The faithless Cherokee obeys;
Rich Senegal her Tribute pays;
And Ganges' Tyrant shakes with Fear,
For Vengeance whispers, 'Clive is near.'

From an Ode in honor of George III, by J. Duncombe (in imitation of Horace)
(spotted in The Secret Life of Words: How English Became English)

Do what we say, give us what we want, or we will thump you.

In old game news...

2013-04-23T20:52:28Z

Still enjoying replaying OG Bioshock. The number of pixels and the controller button set-up are about the only two things that are worse in Bioshock than BS Infinite.

A while back, my Nyko guitar controller broke. I decided to go for an authentic Rock Band guitar as a replacement, and I have to say I am not a fan. I'm slowly getting used to it, but I doubt I'll ever match what I could do on the old one. The one advantage is that it has the extra set of frets for the solos, but they're so small I find them hard to use, and switching between the two sets accurately ain't easy. The star power sensor is a bit dodgy, which is very annoying. I don't mind the non-clicky strum bar that much, but the frets themselves are really loud, and you can't slide from one to the next as easily. All right, that's the end of my 1st world problems.

Oh, okay, in new game news, I got word this morning that my live game did not win the Larpwriter Challenge. I still haven't seen any official announcement about who did win.

Araminta Station, by Jack Vance

2013-04-23T20:42:56Z

Araminta Station is pretty solid SF that I think must have had a bit of a retro vibe even when it was fresh from the printers in 1987. It might easily have hopped out of the pages of Astounding in the 1940s. Nevertheless, it's solidly put together and has some interesting themes and details here and there. However, the worst thing about the book is clearly the Boris Vallejo cover:

PS Jack Vance is still alive and kicking, at 96.

They will haunt my dreams

2013-04-22T19:34:46Z

(more)

How Kitty is Killing the Dolphins

2013-04-20T18:35:21Z

Fascinating/Horrifying story in the current SciAm (only a wee preview available) about how traditionally land-based pathogens are infecting sea creatures. Possum cooties killing California sea otters. MRSA in dolphins. Meningitis (presumably originating from human sewage) killing off 90% of the Caribbean's elkhorn coral. Drug resistant bacteria from livestock (treated with antibiotics) in sea mammals. And, yes, Flipper getting your cat's toxoplasmosis.

Not this shit again... oh wait!

2013-04-20T14:42:12Z

West Virginia lawmaker pushing to insert something as a mandatory part of education. Oh, wait, it's science fiction.

On the minus side, I'm not sure it's going to have the intended positive effect on promoting interest in STEM. And then there's this:

"I'm not interested in fantasy novels about dragons,"

Suck it, Tolkien!

"I'm primarily interested in things where advanced technology is a key component of the storyline, both in terms of the problems that it presents and the solutions that it offers."

Hm, that's a pretty limited box there. It would leave out both 1984 and Fahrenheit 451, both correctly mentioned by David Brin as books that kids maybe oughtta read.

ETA: "Please contact the server administrator, webmaster@livejournalinc.com and inform them of the time the error occurred, and anything you might have done that may have caused the error."

Fuck you, LJ.

SNAFU

2013-04-18T13:52:37Z

You're a teacher.
Your mom dies.
The obit mentions your same-sex partner.
An anonymous parent rats you out to the school.
You get fired.

A new captive

2013-04-17T02:59:17Z

Untitled, a photo by Essentialsaltes on Flickr.

We spotted this guy hanging out with the urban pigeons on the gas station roof this weekend. He was clearly not doing a good job pretending he was 'street'. In fact, Dr. Pookie spotted that he has a band, so he must belong to some pigeon fancier. She put out some seed for him. She also called the Compton Pigeon Fanciers or something like that, but no one there showed any interest in collecting said bird, but if we caught it, and read the band, they would find the owner.This evening, he was hanging around again, and so I got the job of catching him. Fortunately, he's a domesticated little beastie, so I got him on my second try. We've put in a call to the pigeon fanciers, so if they get back to us in a day or two, all is well. If not, it's roasted squab on Friday.

It came from the Christian Forum

2013-04-16T16:02:43Z

"It looks like right after Boston there was a HUGE earthquake that hit the Taliban stronghold on the border of Iran & Pakistan. This may remove any doubt as to who was responsible for the Boston bombing."

I am not even going to touch the logic of this argument.

But I will point out that the earthquake that hit the Taliban stronghold was in January 2011 along the Afghan-Pakistan border. The 7.8 yesterday was indeed the Iran-Pakistan border.

Maybe God was punishing the Taliban in advance.

Pollo Pibil

2013-04-14T01:24:29Z

IMG_1300, a photo by Essentialsaltes on Flickr.

The war draws near its close

2013-04-12T20:15:09Z

Last night, we gathered again to decide the fate of the world. Some weird placement, forced somewhat by the proximity of Aaron's home city to Alien Island. If the aliens start at their Island, Aaron can't start in his city, and vice-versa. Aaron won that one, and so the aliens wound up blocking me from my home city, and so on and so forth. If I'd known (or used more forethought) I coulda done a lot wiser things in the draft phase. But I didn't, so I started off in S. Africa with the Saharans (close enough). On my second turn I went for Smaug's jugular, and failed comically. That left me with no wind in my sails, and a vengeful Smaug. I survived, but was never very significant. I thought there was going to be a humongous battle over Alien Island and the World Capital, but as it turned out, Ken as the Aliens also had a pretty lousy start, and he's the only one who can take the World Capital without sacrificing 5 troops. So instead of being a battleground, the WC turned out to be a barrier protecting Aaron, who just sat like a cancer in Australia, slowly spreading and building until he metastasized and dropped 36 troops on the map and smashed his way to victory. Other fun details: Ken got eliminated by Graydon, and Graydon got smacked hard by a viral outbreak.

Only 1 game left in the campaign, and here are the standings:

Ken 4 victories
Aaron 3 (and on a 2 win streak)
Mike 3
Smaug 2
Graydon 2 (last in this list, so he has more to complain about)

Bioshock Infinite

2013-04-05T23:34:09Z

A real mixed bag, in my opinion. Lots to love, but lots to really hate, too.

Pluses:
Absolutely gorgeous to look at, and detailed up the wazoo.
The companion AI is pretty awesome. Sure it's not hard to like a gal who tosses you money and ammo (and can revive you after you've died). But I'm most impressed with the occasions where after picking through an area looking for clu... oh, who am I kidding? looking for treasure, you finally decide, okay let's go somewhere else, and rather than tagging along behind you, Elizabeth will go flying off running in front of you, usually picking the right way to go. And it's always neat to see her doing something other than standing around like a moron when you turn around and happen to look at her: she's peering here and there, or sitting bored on a bench, or possibly hyperventilating at the threat of danger.
Yes, the plot twist is pretty sweet.
Stuff blows up real good.

Minuses:
In Bioshock, the variety of enemies is a bit greater (or at least seems so). Sure, they're all insane drug-fiends, but the different types have different voice stylings and 'personalities' in addition to using different weapons. In Infinite, they're pretty much cops and anarchists, and there's not as much variety (and no, adding a few minibosses doesn't help).

Related to this, while fending off crazies underwater does give you the feel of 'survival horror', mowing down cops trying to apprehend you (well, okay, kill you) just doesn't feel the same. It's not scary, it's just depressing.

Perhaps as a third entry in the series, we should be jaded about guns and plasmids/vigors, but it felt to me like the game was jaded about its own mechanics. They aren't introduced to the player with the same excitement.

Some pretty big themes about race and religion are tossed out at you right at the beginning. But they don't really mean anything. The game goes out of its way to rub your face in some turn-of-the-century racism, and then... doesn't do anything with it. Alluding to powerful themes is not the same as dealing with them; nor is it 'deep'.

The antagonist is a crazy religious figure, but he has very little real screen time or voice time. He's just a bugaboo with no particular plan other than to be an antagonist. It just doesn't hold a candle to Andrew Ryan's all-too believable Randroid megalomania in the first two games. You come to know Ryan, and love the mad bastard just a little. Cutscenes may not be your thing, but it's hard to imagine something more awesome and jaw-dropping than your interview with Ryan in Bioshock. Oh, I guess Infinite has cutscenes that are eye-popping, but they don't engage the emotions enough to persuade the jaw to drop.

Slight spoiler ahead

Speaking of cutscenes -- or the equivalent -- after the interminable climactic firefight (at which I failed rather a lot, adding to my irksomeness) there is a long sequence that is not exactly a cutscene, but you are really stuck on the rails. You have no choice. Walk down there. Open that door. Press that button for the story to continue. During this, some more of the plot is revealed in dialogue and visuals, and there are a couple good tugs at the emotions here [Oh, and perhaps my favorite funny line -- you get a brief glimpse of Rapture, and Dewitt says something like "An underwater city? That's ridiculous!"] However, the lack of any choice for a pretty long sequence made it pretty annoying; it ceased to be a game way back at the end of the firefight.

Anyway, sure it didn't suck, but I think it doesn't hold a candle to the original Bioshock. The silver lining? Bioshock Infinite comes with a free copy of Bioshock. I'll probably play it again and see if my memory is wrong about how magnificent Bioshock is.

I mean, some of my best friends are white people, but...

2013-04-03T20:22:24Z

when whites have murdered a couple federal prosecutors and scared another one off the case, it may be time for racial profiling and stricter government surveillance. I know some of you liberals will want to paint these terrorists as white "extremists", and suggest that the vast majority of white people don't share their views, or murder innocent people. But here we're talking about a direct attack on our government; we just can't go all soft on whitey in these circumstances.

Establishment Grandstanding

2013-04-03T14:00:42Z

Though filed on April 1, it seems this proposed law in North Carolina is no joke.

"The North Carolina General Assembly asserts that the Constitution of the United States of America does not prohibit states or their subsidiaries from making laws respecting an establishment of religion."

HuffPo link.

I'm not an expert on the Constitution, but I did get the home game as a lovely parting gift. So my understanding is that the Supreme Court has ruled that the guarantees of the First Amendment have been incorporated to apply to the individual states.

California Klansmen.... I hate these guys

2013-04-03T01:50:17Z

Today was the city elections in Inglewood. Poking around looking for information... any information... on some of the candidates somehow led me to Ku Klux Klan raid (Inglewood).

Pretty hair-raising stuff. An Inglewood city constable killed by gunshot. Oh, but he was a Klansman (as were several other Inglewood police). And he was shot and killed by an Inglewood city marshal, responding to a Klan raid to terrorize a local bootlegger.

The raiders were charged, but ultimately found not guilty.

"It was this scandal, according to the Los Angeles Times, that eventually led to the outlawing of the Klan in California."