Religion and Government

"The influence of the clergy, in an age of superstition, might be usefully employed to assert the rights of mankind; but so intimate is the connection between the throne and the altar, that the banner of the church has very seldom been seen on the side of the people. A martial nobility and stubborn commons, possessed of arms, tenacious of property, and collected into constitutional assemblies, form the only balance capable of preserving a free constitution against enterprises of an aspiring prince."

- Edward Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Chapter 3

http://www.his.com/cgi-bin/fortune.gibbon

And What About You?


Dollmont asks, "What would you do with $100,000,000,000?". In a nutshell: Improve the educational infrastructure in your country or depose a dictator?

Well, heck. Which one of these is better for the global community as a whole? What do I get to replace the deposed dictator with? How long will it take? Does everyone under the dictator have to die?

I know from personal experience that if you pay teachers what they're worth, they'll give even more energy, time, and dedication to their students. Do you know how many teachers shell out part of their paycheck every year just to keep the classroom lurching forward? Aside from the fact that teaching will look more attractive as a potential profession, if you can actually live on what they pay you.

If I had any integer followed by a gross of zeros? You bet I'd be giving it to teachers. There's looking to the long term, and then there's looking to the really long term, by investing in subsequent generations.

Onward, Pioneer

Though we'll never hear from you again. Pioneer 10, "the little spacecraft that could", was the first human craft to take detailed pictures of Jupiter, and the first human object to venture outside of our solar system. After 30 years, the power to its radio is finally dead, and the project team has "hung up their headphones".

Biblio:
One Giant Step Lasts for 30 Years

Pioneer 10 Sends Last Signal to Earth

Long Goodbye From Space's Pioneer

Pioneer 10 & 11 NASA's site for the project.

Cool Science

Neat stuff with water at the International Space Station.

"Quite by accident, we have made a most surprising observation," reports Don Pettit, the science officer of the International Space Station. It happened during his spare time on a Saturday morning last month. Pettit was preparing to make some weightless soap bubbles--just for fun--when he discovered a very curious property of water in space.

Saturday Morning Science

Shocked and Ashamed

Canadian in Passport Fiasco.

"A Toronto woman coming home from India says she was pulled aside at Chicago's O'Hare Airport, accused of using a fake Canadian passport, denied consular assistance and threatened with jail."

This is completely shameful. I feel like America has become Microsoft or something -- big, fat, willing to throw its weight around without regard for anybody, and thinks it can get away with anything. I am actually repulsed. How can this be my country? My wonderful land of opportunity and hope? This is the kind of story that you read about in some unstable totalitarian fly-by-night Third World joint with no regard for rights and the law, or worse, no rights to begin with. Not America. America is supposed to be a rufuge. I'm appalled.

Ms. Cruz, I'm so terribly, terribly sorry.

My country needs a swift kick in the ass, desperately.

Lysistrata Project

Staged readings of Aristaphanes' classic "Lysistrata". http://www.lysistrataproject.com. All over the world, hopefully near you.


Biblio:
Putting On a Play as Protest

UnderstandingYour Introvert

Caring For Your Introvert, by Jonathan Rauch.

A lovely article. I'm going to take one sentence to heart. "I'm an introvert. You're a wonderful person and I like you. Now, please shush."

It really isn't personal, truly, but if you don't give your introvert appropriate space, after a long enough period of time they will break and say whatever is necessary to get you to GO AWAY. This includes the kinds of things that can get them fired, you fired, or cause divorces. So give us our space.

My only complaint about the article? It's too short. A complete second article (paper! probably) is necessary to discuss extrovert-introvert interactions, recognizing and responding appropriately to your other-verted boss/subordinate/spouse.

Or you could just read David Kiersey's Please Understand Me, or Please Understand Me II.

Thanks, Medley, for the link!

Snow on Mars

Spiff!

NASA's Mars Odyssey Points To Melting Snow As Cause Of Gullies

Don't Boycott Your Vote!

ATLANTA -- If Georgia holds a referendum on the state flag, many blacks won't participate, civil rights leaders warned Wednesday.
A group including the NAACP, Concerned Black Clergy and labor unions vowed to boycott a statewide vote on returning the Confederate battle cross to prominence on the state flag. Black leaders called it insulting to even ask blacks whether they wanted to see a return to the Georgia flag of 1956-2001, which is dominated by the rebel emblem.
"Would you expect the Jewish community to participate in a campaign to raise the Swastika?" said the Rev. Joseph Lowery, former head of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.

I have two remarks regarding this. One, Rev Lowery's analogy to Jews and the swastika is quite apt, and many Americans ignore this. We tend to not see the systematic oppression of black slaves as equal in horror to the Holocaust, I believe, for two reasons: the Holocaust was about genocide, supported by racism, and took place over a timespan of less than a generation. Slavery in America was about economics, supported by racism, and was institutionalized for generations.

Two, it is unthinkable to suggest that you -- especially the native you, the black you, and the female you -- boycott voting on a subject because it's 'such an insult'. That you deliberately disenfranchise yourself, that you remove your input from determining if a referendum will pass. No, no, no.

The way to swing your political weight is to do the exact opposite: vote. Vote in droves. Make your friends register. Drive your neighbors to the polling place. The idea of a public referendum is to let you speak your piece, and you do that by voting.

Boycotting applies economic pressure to a corporation, and it's a decent tool for the job, since corporations live in their pocketbooks. Governments have pocketbooks, too, we know that, but the constitutionally guaranteed way for the average slob to apply pressure on our government is called voting.

To suggest that black voters in Georgia refrain from voting on this subject is to suggest they shut their mouths and give up control, and give it right back to the idiots who waited so long to hand over that vote in the first place.

If you don't use it, then what's the point in having it?


biblio:
http://augustachronicle.com/stories/022003/met_124-2547.shtml

Grumpy Gus, Spinning, Weekend in Review

I am grumpy. Do not try to cheer me up. It makes me feel manipulated. And when I feel manipulated, that's just a micron away from sheer, foaming-at-the-mouth, unhinged, unadulterated rage.

<hulk>Don't make me angry. You wouldn't like me when I'm angry< /hulk>

Maybe not even a micron.

In other news, I

* Rescued stranded party-goers in the wee hours of Sunday morning. Beaucoup karma points for me, as they were going 20 miles south and I was headed 30 miles north, home after work. There was a fracas with their cabbie on the way home from a concert in Solana Beach and they got dumped. At about 1:30 in the morning. In Miramar. Near the business parks. Man, there was no one there. The McDonald's on that corner rolls up the sidewalk at 10pm. We're talking no one. Good Samaritan, that's me. Truckin' complete strangers around Pacific Beach at 2 am. One of them insisted on giving me 'gas money'. I've earmarked it for the first bum I see. I don't take money for this kind of stuff.

* Oiled and assembled and began spinning on my Kromski Minstral, one of the most beautiful spinning wheels I've ever seen. Spun up some brown "unspecfied sheep" and the loaves-and-fishes lavender roving (both of these are rather bulky) in double drive mode, then switched to my test merino (this beautiful pink stuff I'll only ever use as accent yarn, so it's OK if slubby) and spun up an okay single with the wheel in single drive with scotch tension

[*quizzical look* What did that mean? There's 2 things that need to move aside from the big-ass wheel you actually see when looking at a spinning wheel. And they move around one another -- the flyer and the bobbin (where your yarn actually goes). You use different 'ratios' with different yarns (thick stuff v. thin stuff). In order to get those two things to move at different rates (ratios) -- using just the one big-ass wheel to drive them, you either use double-drive, where your drive band (the string going around the aforementioned big-ass wheel) is actually 2 bands, one you put on the bobbin pulley and one on the flyer pulley (which are different sizes or slightly different heights relative to one another), or you use one band on both so they spin at the same rate, and then put a brake on the bobbin to make it go slower. That's single drive mode with scotch tension. There's more going on, but that's it in a nutshell. Most people only ever notice the big-ass wheel, but all the action is really going on between the flyer and the bobbin. I happen to have purchased a wheel capable of both, but they're not all like that.]

* Began reading a VERY irritating edition of the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, presented as 'The Emperor's Handbook'. I didn't want a self-help book for the captains of industry with pullquotes in little gray boxes and an introduction that lasted forever, I just wanted the damn Meditations. I will finish it anyway. And then give it away when I find another copy. Maybe to a CEO.

Memo From the Twilight Zone

Tonight, we bring to you the story of a woman alone.

A woman who experiences the familiar parasomnia of believing someone is in her bedroom, when she is, in fact, alone.

Quite alone.

A woman, we might add, superstitious about the dead.

A woman who, for ill or no, has just viewed the X-Files episode "Millennium", before trundling off to her warm bed, her two cats curled up pleasantly nearby.

Tonight on The Twilight Zone, the chilling episode "Zombie FBI Agents Broke In and All I have is a Small Cat".

But first, this commercial break.... dee dee dee dee, dee dee dee dee

Oh, Poo, what the hell: Endless Trivia About Me

From shining moon, via Marshmallows & Bile:

1. What is your name? Too clever by half.
2. Age? 32.
3. How old do you look? Mid-20's? Early-20's?
4. How old do you act? Mmm. Varies.
5. What's the last song you sang? "Fallin'", by Alicia Keys. At the restaurant during lunch. I think. Though I might have sung something since then.
6. Have you recently become a member of anything? The ACLU.
7. What did you do yesterday? Worked. Read a book I've read a million times before. (Intersperse this with petting cats, btw.)
8. What did you do this weekend? Worked. Slept. Watched a dumb-silly action movie. Watched a funny-silly episode of "The Dead Zone". Studied the ClearQuest API.
9. Do you kiss with your eyes open or closed? Closed.
10. What's the sexiest thing about the opposite sex others? 'Bout men? As attracted as I am to hair and a great smile, what I find sexy is intelligence, passion, and humor.
11. Do you sing in the shower? Friend, you have to duct-tape my mouth shut to get me to not sing all the time. Really. Of course I sing in the shower.
12. Are you in love with anyone right now? I love several people. I don't think I'm in love with anyone. Well. Ask me again tomorrow.
13. Have you ever said "I love you" and not meant it? sigh. Yes. And it feels terrible.
14. Does anything on your body itch right now? Nope.
15. What color is the carpet in your bedroom? Gray-ish-beige-taupe-charcoal? Something?
16. Have you ever had a member of the opposite sex in your room? This apartment? Um, yes, the male segments of the band Moonlife (shameless plug! Moonlife rules!), I believe, and my dad. Oh, and the guys who delivered my bed. They kind of had to be in there, y'know?
17. Who is the sexiest (wo)man alive? Women: Kate Winslet. Gillian Anderson. Drew Barrymore. Melanie Lynskey. *fans self*. Men: Brad Pitt, Johnny Depp. Gabriel Byrne.
18. If your house was on fire and you could only save one thing, what would you save? Cats. No contest.
19. Who was your first best friend? My twin brother, of course. We've known each other, like, for ever.
20. Who is the next person you'll buy a birthday gift for? Does yesterday count? I had to get something new for Janis since the Amano calender is out of stock. Though, it was intended as a Christmas present. Well. Janis, I guess.
21. What's your favourite number? Pi. 9. Felicitous 3. I dunno.
22. Have you ever gotten detention, if so what for? I don't think so.
23. What is your fave place to go on vacation? Mountains. Evergreens. *breathes deep*. Yeah.
24. Up or down? Up.
25. Did you like playing truth or dare? No, thank you.
26. How many times a week do you bathe? Daily.
27. Perfect wedding song? (casting about aimlessly) ...Hell if I know.
28. The perfect breakfast? Eggs, sausage, maybe pancakes.
29. What is your deepest, darkest secret? The only way to keep a secret, is to not tell it to other people.
30. Funniest joke you ever heard? "Heisenberg walks into a bar. Maybe."
31. Saddest movie? Argh. Um. "Schindler's List", maybe.
32. Last movie you saw in the theatre? "The Two Towers."
33. When's the last time you rode a bike? Probably been over a year.
34. Who is the last person who asked for your phone number? I believe that was the first person who ever asked for my phone number.
35. What is it like outside? Gray. Rainy.
36. Last concert/play/sports event you went to? Beethoven's only opera, "Fidelio", with Janis.
37. Next venue you are going to? "Thérèse Raquin" , another opera, by Pickert.
38. Have you ever had phone sex? No.
39. Do you separate your darks from whites? Depends on how many quarters I have.
40. Do you have any piercings other than in your ears? Nope.
41. What do you wear to work? Reasonably nice clothes, usually.
42. Can you touch your toes without bending your knees? Yes.
43. Food you can't live without? Yes, very true.
44. Do you own handcuffs? Metal cop handcuffs, or...something else?
45. Do you like your friends? Isn't that part of the definition of "friend"?
46. Are you a flirt? If in the company of outrageous flirts, I flirt outrageously. If hanging with wallflowers, I flower the wall. Part self-defense technique, part not wishing to impose on someone else's lifestyle. I'm big on balance.
47. Do you miss anyone right now? I miss Bren the depth of oceans and the width of the wind.
48. Are you very ticklish? Who me? *shakes head vigorously* No, no. Whatever gave you that idea?
49. Would you ever go skinny-dipping? Nope. Bad self-image. Thanks for asking, though.
50. Have you ever kissed someone you weren't going out with? *sighs dreamily* Yeah.

Canda, Beware!

The Next Big Threat . You guessed it, our "neighbor" to the north. Because, America has decided Canadians need Biometric ID Cards to enter the US.

Does something ring funny about that to you? I mean, I've got a passport, which by definition is a certification by my country's government that I am who I say I am, when I try to enter your country. That's it. So, either the US is saying it doesn't want to recognize Canadian passports anymore, or.....or.... come again?

Patriot Act II

The Domestic Security Enhancement Act of 2003

I read about this kind of thing, and I don't feel secure. I feel the exact opposite. Don't you?

Phew

It's been a terribly long week, but the light at the end of the current tunnel doesn't look like a train after all.

Look upon my works, ye mighty,
and say, 'hey, cool'.
    -- Sidramandias.