scattered sand

evacuation update

2005-09-07T01:21:00.000-05:00

We made it to Florida well ahead of the main evacuation
rush, and my family there was wonderfully kind and
supportive. We didn't really have internet access there, so
here's a delayed update on our situation.

We stayed a week in Florida while some family in Tennessee
set up a room for us with my cousin in Sevierville.
We drove up yesterday and are getting settled in.

Everyone up here has been absolutely amazing. My aunt
got one of the local furniture stores to donate a new bed
and frame for us (!), and last night we slept well for the
first time in well over a week.

I'd also like to thank everyone who sent offers of shelter
and assistance-- just knowing that so many people care
about us has been a great source of hope and strength.

It looks like we'll be moving up here permanently or at
least for the forseeable future. M-----'s already beginning
the process of transferring to U.T. and I'm investigating
Tennessee's teacher mentoring program where I can begin
work as a math teaching assistant while I work on my
certification.

As soon as we get the signal that it's safe to return I'll
be driving down with my uncle for a salvage
operation. We have flood/renters' insurance, but can't file
a claim until the damage has been surveyed. We have also
registered with FEMA, but since we are lucky enough to have
immediate food and shelter, we won't be getting assistance
from them until after we know what's up with the insurance.

Whenever I regrow a brain I'll be posting some more details
of our experience and opinions about the situation on my
blog, if anyone is interested. Feel free post
any questions or topics you'd like to have answered. I've
got internet access again, so now I'll be able to write
real responses.

Katrina...

2005-08-28T01:58:00.000-05:00

... and the waves? Ah, no. Not that cool.

I just thought I should send out a notice to folks who
might worry about us letting everyone know what we're
planning on doing.

As of the midnight predictions, it looks like New Orleans
is gonna get plowed by hurricane Katrina.

Although at this time the computer models suggest that it
might not hit us directly, most scenarios place us within
or uncomfortably close to the hurricane's eyewall. That's
where you really don't want to be.

The storm spins counter-clockwise, and the worst weather is
on the right-hand side, where the winds are spinning up
from the south and carrying rain.

Things will be better if the storm goes east of us, because
you want to be on the west side of a hurricane. We were on
the west side of Dennis, and the day was absolutely lovely
at our house when it hit Mississippi.

Doesn't look like we'll get as lucky this time, so we're
bugging-out for the first time since we've lived here.

East or West, you don't want to be within sixty miles of a
hurricane center. And this looks to be a BIG one.

My great-uncle lives just north of Pensacola, Florida,
which got severely damaged by several storms over the past
couple of years, but looks safe for this one. They've got
the room and have generously offered it to us, and we're
taking them up on the offer!

We'll be leaving about 4-5 AM Sunday, headed for Milton,
FL.

It's normally a 3.5 hour drive, but we're planning for two
to three times this length, just in case. If traffic is
just lovely, then we'll get there between 8 and 9 in the
morning, which is the earliest I'd like to wake up Jimmy
and Darlene on a Sunday morning...

One problem is that the "contraflow" evacuation system is
in effect, meaning that most of the interstates leading out
of the area have both sides of traffic headed outward. This
does affect us, as we ordinarlily would have taken I-10
East, but that's not possible, so we're taking State Rt. 90
into Mississippi, and hooking up with I-10 later.

Not a problem, and actually traffic will probably be
lighter for us going this route! If the interstates become
weird along our route, we can actually take Route 90 almost
all the way there.

We're all packed up, gassed up, and I've been on MapQuest
printing out detailed maps of our route.

Our main reason for leaving is the loss of electricity
which is just assumed in any tropical system.

Every tropical system which has passed by us has killed out
electric.

New Orleans just loves it's live oak trees, which drape
dramatically across the streets... and fall dramatically
across the power lines during storms.

In Cincinnati there were harsh laws about how close trees
were allowed to get to power lines... and we rarely lost
power there. But, no, not here... trees equal tourism...

The last time during Dennis we were without power for over
a day and a half.

In this weather, with the heat indexes being over 100, we
don't want to be sitting here for several days like that.
New Orleans in August is just barely tolerable even with
A/C.

Our house probably will not flood, as we're almost next to
the Mississippi river levy and one of the higher points of
the city. I don't even think we're below sea level, like
much of the middle of the city. Also, our house is over a
century old, and sits up on yard-high brick pylons.
Flooding, we're not worried about.

Wish us luck!

Hope for the best for New Orleans, as possible storm paths
are the "worst case" paths for this town. Paths which drive
water into Lake Pontchartrain and over the levys and
flooding the town. And the pumps are clogged by debris and
can't work...

Of course, it's really a stupid place to put a city.
Everyone knows this, but it's been too much trouble to move
elsewhere... we all know that it's just a matter of time
until a big storm returns us to the swamp from whence we
came.

More later. I'll send notice and update when we're safe in Florida.

Book club?

2005-08-26T00:58:00.000-05:00

I've decided to start an online book club!

I'm envisioning a place where we pick a book every month, and, well, chat about it.

If you'd like to join, just post a comment to this thread, or send me an email.

It will be in a blog format, with different threads to suggest books for future months and threads to discuss the current book. Books will be chosen by consensus among the monthly nomination participants.

You don't have to always participate to join. Lurkers are welcome. I realize that not all books will be interesting to all people, and that some months you're just too busy. That's fine.

I'll send notice and pick members at first, but I envision that new members will be voted on in the future when this gets going.

I know folks are busy, so I'm suggesting the following process:

One book per month, with a healthy lead time to discuss possible selections, then acquire and read them before the official discussion thread begins.

The first week of every month is the current nomination thread. At the end of the week I determine the consensus (if any) and post a thread naming next month's book. We then have four weeks to locate and read it. (is this enough time, or too much, not enough?)

The second week of the next month begins the ongoing discussion thread of that book, which continues so long as folks are interested. (I thought of having only three weeks to acquire and read books, but didn't want the nomination to coincide with new book discussion. Or would folks like one intensive week followed by three fallow ones?)

And, finally, would folks prefer Blogger (like this) or LiveJournal.

I've already got a couple of Blogger addresses reserved, but LJ ones are easy enough to create, as well. Whatever you prefer, I'll moderate.

So far as the name goes, I suggest either "Litrachia" or "Booke Clubb".

Please let me know what you think if you're interested!

Phranc and The Knitters

2005-08-24T01:24:00.000-05:00

Another concert post.

We went to see The Knitters at Tipitina's with Phranc opening tonight. There was some doubt about whether I'd be attending, as Adrian Belew was also playing at a different venue. But, alas, Knitters tix had already been purchased, almost immediately by M----- when she heard about the show! While I would have loved to have finally seen Adrian with a backup band (the four times I'd seen him have been either solo or with King Crimson), it always sucks to go to a show alone. It would have also involved making M----- attend a show alone since she's found it oddly quite troublesome to locate friends willing to go see shows for free.

Anyway, as such shows go it was quite tasty, my grumpiness at missing Adrian aside. The Knitters were probably the best alt-country I've ever seen, at least tied with Gillian Welch, and are seriously worth checking out and especially seeing if you ever get the chance.

We were both thrilled that they (well, John Doe and Dave Alvin) opened with the classic "Send me my flowers while I'm living" which we'd last seen done by Homer Ledford in Northern Kentucky in one of the best mountain music concerts I've ever seen.

Phranc was awesome! Her voice has really gotten better in many ways, honestly. All of the stuff I'd heard had been at least twenty years old, but she was really able to be quite moving and powerful, in addition to entertaining and funny with her between songs patter. I knew she'd have a great sense of humor, having heard here stuff and reading her excellent interview in Angry Women in Rock.

She had no Tupperware for sale, alas, but she did sing a song about selling it, and took time to mention her "partner" and the fact that she's a "Jewish folksinging lesbian".

I didn't know it, but twenty years ago she toured with X, the classic punk band who forms the Knitters along with the always-excellent Dave Alvin, and this tour was kind-of a reunion for them all.

The Knitters were fun, and I totally and completely approve of a metal washtub used as a bass drum. The five-string Kay upright bass was also lovely.

This was the third time I'd seen Excene play, and the most enjoyable. I'd seen her once at Sudsy's with her solo band, once with X, and tonight. Although, honestly, John Doe is the better performer, in X and with the Knitters. Regardless, both her and John's voices always work well together, whether in punk or in classic country. Their version of Hank Williams' "Dough, re, me" was superb, and reminded me of the many duos who have recorded it.

John's a nice guy, I must say, as we chatted a bit before the aforementioned X show a couple of years ago. He seemed to enjoy hanging out with the fans, or at least the ones who wanted to have actual conversations and not just praise him.

We were right up front, but had to endure some annoying drunk people. For a while it was the anorexic woman who needed to take up as much space as possible with wild and chaotic dancing. But we didn't know how good we had it with her, because she was replaced by the overly enthusiastic drunk tall people towards the end of the night.

Now that I've been off both drinking and smoking for a while now, I have to say that drunk folks are far more annoying than smokers. I still wanted to smoke a couple of times during the evening, but the only times I thought about drinking was to acknowledge that if I'd been quaffing beer then I would have found the annoying drunk folks much less bothersome. Which isn't to say that I was craving a drink, just a simple observation of fact. However, when we got home, we both felt the need to change clothes and shower to get rid of the smoke smell. Bleh. But I never felt the profoundly strong need to punch any of the smokers tonight, but several drinkers needed the shit kicked out of them, for the benefit of humanity. Sincere and profound apologies to those who were around me drinking too much! Every time I go to shows I feel more and more sheepish.

I've been totally accumulating my lesbian cred lately in seeing Phranc, as last month we saw Le Tigre. Who totally bloody rocked! I'd kinda been hesitant about seeing them, as they digitise a lot of their show and I thought that it would be commodified. But it was stunningly good and energetic. One of the best shows I've seen in a long while.

It was weird seeing Kathleen Hanna, whom I'd last seen in Dayton playing with Bikini Kill very lo-tech, play with a band who was so very tech-y, but didn't let it interfere with their being punk as fsck. The previous week Mike had very generously paid for my ticket to see GBH, and they seemed tired and dated. Le Tigre seemed way more punk and extremely more politically aware and current.

Honestly, the Le Tigre show was probably the most political show I've ever been to, and the most politically effective. They had computer video showing along with their songs, nicely synched, and very effective at conveying both energy towards the live show and valuable information. None of the tech interfered with the energy of the show, as all vocals and guitar playing was live.

I must say that some of my enjoyment of Le Tigre, and my lack of enjoyment of seeing the Knitters and several other bands lately, was due to the fact that I was able to sit down during their show! We sat up in the balcony, and had a great view of the whole stage, great sound and not too loud, had the ventilation blowing near us, and weren't subjected to drunk obnoxious fans. I've been a fan of balcony views of shows since high school, when I ran lights for theatre and I got to like the above the stage view.

Since I've been going to shows, since I was 18, so almost twenty years now, I've most enjoyed shows where I could sit down and where I could watch the band play their instruments. I'm not a dancer, usually, especially if I'm sober, but a watcher, and that's what I enjoy doing at concerts. I really enjoy watching excellent musicians play excellent music, and I prefer sitting down to do so unless the music is just really incredibly moving. And even at excellent shows, there's a lot of wasted time when it's nice to have a seat.

But, really, having seats prevents the total drunk assholes from shoving in front of you and completely interfering with your enjoyment of the show. I'm very, very, tired of this.

The first few shows I ever saw were huge stadium affairs with assigned seating, and I still prefer that. And the shows I saw at medium venues which had seating instead of open floor were much more memorable. I can recall the songs I heard at such shows much more clearly that shows I saw which were standing.

Rock 'n' Roll

2005-08-08T02:38:00.000-05:00

We watched the PBS American Masters special on Sun Records the other night, which was pretty cool. Catch it on re-broadcast if you missed it.

During it, they showed various musicians, sometimes with original Sun musicians, performing classic songs from the Sun catalog.

After a while, M----- and I noticed a distinct pattern. All of the older musicians seemed to be trying to reproduce the originals as well as their own distinctive styles would allow, and seemed to choose songs which worked with their strengths. Newer artists seemed to be "reinterpreting" the classic songs and didn't seem concerned with any sort of reproduction.

After a few days' pondering, I managed to sum up the difference: older artists seemed to project, "This is so cool!" while newer artists seemed to project, "I'm so cool!"

Paul McCartney and Robert Plant seemed to be able to channel their inner little boys who grew up on Sun Records and be humble and respectful to the material while impressing their own profound identity upon the songs. Newer artists whose souls weren't changed by this music, who didn't grow up on it, didn't seem to manifest the same repect. Their new versions were invariably inferior, and left a bad taste. And I really like Ben Folds.

To my ears, which also didn't grow up on this stuff, but on music two and three generations removed, it's still definitive and classic, and I would never presume to try and change it. Especially on a nationally broadcast television show. But then again, perhaps I lack the ego necessary to do what's needed to get on that show to begin with...

People who seem to think that they're more creative than masters of the form are always less so.

Although, yes, some of the older musicians featured recorded their own versions of classic tunes. Given. But they always seemed to respect the essential soul of the music. M------ mentioned that none of the new artists who were on the show did versions which had a bloody backbeat! This was an essential feature of early Sun music! What's that line from the Beatles' Rock and Roll Music? "It's got a backbeat you can't lose it!"

I'd also like to complain that they showed Brian Ferry (of Roxy Music) during the segment with Mark Knopfler, but he wasn't shown ever doing anything. We were just a couple of days earlier wondering if Roxy Music and Squeeze ever knew each other, and it was nice to see confirmation, but...

M----- and I both think that Brian Ferry would do an amazing job on Roy Orbison tunes, and would also like to comment on the lack of attention on Roy during this program! They showed his picture but never even mentioned his name!!! We're aghast, aghast I say!

But, seriously, go check out the Sun Records catalog, it's some of the best music ever.

One other thing, though, is that Sam Phillips seems to come across as a complete nutjob. I guess you'd have to be a bit loopy to do what he did, but still...

Not mentioned on the program:

I have to note that he recorded, before Sun began, what is arguably the first rock song with Ike Turner, another nutcase, Rocket 88.

Julie

2005-07-19T01:06:00.000-05:00

Sorry for the long break.

A very dear friend of mine, who's M------'s closest relative, emotionally speaking, has been seriously ill and has since passed quite suddenly.

I treasured her comments about my writing during this little experiment, and in many ways I thought of her as my audience when writing entries. She was actually the only person who ever commented upon my writing and not what I was writing about. That meant a lot. I'll miss her terribly, for that, and for many, many other reasons.

I now realize in looking at the hole in my life that I was looking forward to many years of getting to know her better, as she was certainly a person worth getting to know as well as possible. I'm sorry I didn't use the time I did have to do more in that regard.

Not sure when I'll feel like resuming things, but I'm sure I will eventually.

Thanks for your attention.

Six Favorite Songs, Six Friends Meme

2005-06-16T02:40:00.000-05:00

Allright, I got hit by a chain letter. But several factors confluenced to make it inevitable that I'd respond... *sigh*

My sister included me on a LiveJournal "meme", which is a newfancy way of saying "chain letter". If you need to pass it along to more than one person, it's a chain letter. If there's money involved, it's a pyramid scheme.

First of all, it's from my sister, and I've got some weird guilt going on there, since for most of her life she's been living in a different town from me, and the few years we did live in the same town I was being a "need to get my own life going" asshole, and so was a terrible older brother. Not to mention some serious jealousy about my mom's new and happy family which caused me to want to basically stay away...

But, it was a question about music, and this has been one of the few ways by which we've connected even a little bit...

But, seriously, I have no idea what my favorite songs are!

I quipped in her journal that, "I always draw a blank when asked to name my list of favorite whatever. Were I to give astrology any creedence I'd say it simply screams 'libra', but I don't, so let's just say that I operate on a relational rather than a heirarchical paradigm. I usually quip that I couldn't choose between apples and oranges if you held a gun to my head..."

I really don't think this way!

I seriously do not think in terms of better / worse. Except in terms of specific features.

I hate this, but I'm a total and complete Libra about such things. And I don't give any bloody creedence to astrology, dammit! I'm an astronomer and I'd get kicked out of my guild for such crap! But it's entirely accurate.

New contest: provide two things which I cannot find more than three ways in which one is "better" than the other. One or two ways are too easy for me.

To start off, it would be relatively easy to create a little script which would play songs at me from my collection and would have me rank songs as better or not than the previous song played, but this would probably lead into a tangle.

Opinions are weird. It's enirely possible for completely rational people to have circular opinions about things.

Given three songs, normal people frequently do such things as like A better than B, B better than C, and C better than A.

Not kidding, I've seen studies about very serious topics like voting strategies which show this!

And then tonight we re-watched High Fidelity partly becuase Nick Hornby was on Fresh Aire and party because he's obsessive about musical lists and I wanted help!

No help.

The movie just served to remind me that there are just so damn many good songs out there...

Here's a weird list, but the best I can do.

List of significant songs:

CCR, Down on the Corner

My dad created a cool little world in our basement when I was a little kid. I had no idea at the time that it was because he and my mom weren't getting along at all. They were both pretty cool about keeping such conflicts away from me. I would go down there and be with him doing stuff, and he noted that I really liked the CCR song Down on the Corner. So much so that he made a little star on the reel-to-reel tape box. I always looked for that star on the box when I was down there, even when I stopped wanting to hear that song all the time. This was the first song I remember being fond of, because my dad noticed it and made a little note in something which I noticed years later and remembered.

My first mix tape... I only remember the first two songs:

Abba, SOS
Alicia Bridges, I Love the Nightlife

Damn, I wish I could recall the rest! I remember putting so much effort into it, like I seem to have done for every mix ever afterwards!

First music bought:

Goofy Greats (still own it!)

There was also a 50s collection which featured two songs each by the big artists of the day. And a Little Richard collection.

I could go on, but my point is that there is a very powerful emotional resonance whenever I hear these songs.

And later in life, I developed equally powerful emotional resonances with songs.

Sometimes this resonance lines up with songs which I think are good, and sometimes way not.

I could go on in a very trite and pathetic way to relate why Christopher Cross's Never Be the Same just still tears me up... but that's 8th grade and we'd all like to forget such things.

And it's hard for me to not put myself into my self as me of a certain age. Me at 12 had a favorites list, as did me at 17, 21, 26, etc...

My favorites ever? Does 23 trump 15?

Enough waffling! Commit, damn you!

Alright, here's a list, without any qualifications whatsoever...

I'll not waffle like my sister did and list several things under a specific band as one choice. I'm fully aware that I love bands more than songs, and that great songs can be one hit wonders or the like. This has nothing to do with my appreciation of the artists, just the song.

So, just songs only, and songs which I seem to return to time and again, or seem to include in mixes:

(in no particular order)

Talking Heads - Once in a Lifetime
Michelle Shocked - Come a Long Way
Rush - Red Barchetta
Allman Brothers - Blue Sky

and my favorite:

John Mellencamp and Meshell N'Degeocello - Wild Night

Yes, it's a cover, but it seems to be a song my brain likes to listen to, as I seem to hear it often. I also respect it on many levels, as it's incredible because it's a collaberation between two fantastic artists, of a cover of another magnificent artist, attacks stereotypes of race, gender, age, style, instrument, raspy voices, and sexual stereotype. Love his guitar and love her bass. Love their voices together. Wish they'd done more toghether. Love that race was irrelevant to the project. Would love to hear more like this.

Anthrax with Public Enemy did Bring the Noise, which I loved but not in my top favorites, but this seemed to squash respect for both bands. Oddly enough.

Okay, the Talking Heads was a total copout! There are Eagles, Fleetwood Mac, and Neil Diamond Songs which I totally enjoy more as songs! Aaaaugh!

And A Taste Of Honey's Boogie Oogie Oogie is now a great and wonderfully respected song now that I've seen them play it on a PBS special about disco. I had no idea that it was two women, and that they played guitar and bass while singing! And kicked ass playing it! I thought they were a band, not a duo.

Seriously, it's one of the best disco songs ever, and M----- found out that feminist tomes don't give them their props because they're black.

You explore acoustic blues and you have to get into Led Zeppelin, and you explore electric blues and you have to deal with Van Halen.

And there's a whole realm of songs which are metaphors for things.

Not sure what to think of my progressive rock infatuation. Rush, Yes, and King Crimson...

Shell Shocked

2005-06-09T02:00:00.000-05:00

We saw Michelle Shocked this afternoon down in Lafayette Square as part of the free Wednesday at the Square concert series the city puts on every year. Great show!

Just like with Jonathan Richman on Sunday, we got rained on. Part of Summer in New Orleans, I guess. Actually, we found a spiffy spot with a clear view of the stage under a huge live-oak tree which blocked the worst part of the rain. We could've been closer, but we'd have been wetter and in the mud.

And the sound guy seemed completely oblivious to a horrible spike around 12KHz which simply killed my ears every time the trumpet went altissimo or the piano went up into the top octaves. I really didn't want to get any closer to the speakers than we already were. I'm listening to one of her CDs now and it sounds a bit muffled, meaning my ears haven't recovered yet.

Paralleling Jonathan Richman, she put on a totally different show here than she did in Cincinnati. Similarly, that show was more straight-ahead and the one here in New Orleans was devoted to more improv and new material. I really enjoyed it, but have to admit to my inner teenager jumping up and down and whining, "why don't you play your hiiiiits..."

She was working with a fantastic array of local musicians. Good enough that they had only started working on the songs together the night before (!) but sounded amazingly tight. It was mostly N'awlins-influenced rockin' R&B souding, but with her unique twist on top, rather than the folky stuff she's usually known for, but it really worked. Evidently she lived here for a while, which I never knew. She seems to have come by the sound honestly as her reason for moving here back in the day was to work with Alan Toussaint, which is enough N'awlins music cred for this non-native.

She's one of those incredible but hard-to-classify artists who seem to keep doing new things. This irritates fans who only want more of the same, but I tend to prefer musicians like this. Especially when they always seem to do the new stuff damn well, like she does. And with a great sense of humor. It's always nice to see people who're having just a fantastic time up on stage.

She did a short acoustic bit when the band left the stage which I loved, as I fell in love with her for her Texas Campfire Tapes, and always will love her best when it's just her and her guitar. She did some of our faves, like Amsterdam, Come a Long Way, and Anchorage, all of which she said people were calling out for. Wonder what she would have done on her own choice? Come a Long Way is one of my favorite songs ever, but I liked the Cincinnati version better. Here it sounded like she was kinda sick of playing it, which doesn't surprise me. She seems like an artist who gets bored easily doing the same thing over and over.

She'd kinda been letting the excellence of the band do the heavy musical lifting for the first set. Not a complaint, and I'm sure it was just great fun for her to be working with such excellent professionals. But when she got up there by herself, and did some stunning acoustic fingerpicking while just belting out some powerfully emotional vocals... *chills*... oh, yeah! she's one of my favorite musicians and this is why!

Her trumpet player came back and added some beautiful and tasteful backup to a couple of songs. Acoustic guitar and trumpet is a combo I never would have thought of, but it was a great musical moment I'm glad I was there for.

Jonathan Richman

2005-06-07T03:08:00.000-05:00

We saw Jonathan Richman on Sunday night at One Eyed Jacks down in the quarter, and it was a great show.

Not as great as the show we saw at the Southgate House back in Cincinnati, but still quite tasty. We were talking after the show, and both feel that Jonathan got lots more radio support in Cincinnati. We never hear him on the radio here, and radio here is arguably superior in many ways, but there are some notable exceptions.

The before-the-show hassles were extremely frustrating, but we managed to not let it ruin our evening before it had begun. I had expressed a desire for an artery-killing cheeseburger earlier in the day, M----- concurred, so we decided to go down early and eat a late dinner at the new Fatburber in the old Jax brewery-mall, which was mere blocks away from the venue.

I munched some celery around dinnertime to assuage my appetite without blunting it while we watched the Tony awards waiting for the song from Spamalot, and was mightily hungry when we hopped in the car around 8:30. The show ostentably began at 10:00.

It had been raining heavily all day, but the TV weathercritters claimed that it would be ending before showtime. Indeed, there was but a light sprinkle when we departed.

We even found a street (free) parking spot right by the pay parking lot, which was a close to the diner and only a few blocks away from the venue! Amazing luck! Looked like a great evening was beginning...

Right as we were parking it started to rain something fierce, but we were listening to a very cool radio show, so we waited a bit until the rain let up. Which it did, so we started walking... and then RAIN... and we got utterly soaked... but it was warm, and so close to the restaurant... which was just closing as we got there. Grrrf.

As it was still raining hard, we sat under the awning and considered options. M----- wasn't really hungry, but I was, but I couldn't really think of anything nearby which sounded good, so we decided to just trek onward to the club, and waited until the rain let up a bit. It did, a bit, but we got much wetter.

One bitch... the artsy New Orleans balconies which are cast iron rails with balconies built from slats of wood are certainly pretty but crappy rain awnings! The wood slats seem to focus the rain, so that there are fewer raindrops, but underneath these balconies when you're hit with water leaking through it's much more water at once. You get the annoying illusion of being under cover but without much benefit.

At the club, the doors weren't open yet, and there weren't seats available in the foyer bar, so we waffled. And had a long while to wait since dinner fell through. And now the show wasn't starting until 10:30...

My blood sugar began to make me cranky, but I was sincerely trying to not be a jerk about it, which I am wont to do when that happens. I've been known to get highly irrational when not fed, and need to keep on top of it so as not to turn into a raving asshole. But it was really raining hard, and that was making me as cranky as the food issue was. *breathe*... *calm*

We tried to walk up a couple of blocks to check out what might be available when there was a break in the rain, but that just seemed to call an even harder rain squall which trapped us underneath a narrow awning half a block away from the horror that is Bourbon Street.

I was really looking forward to the show, and I knew M----- was really really looking forward to it, so I was honestly trying to not throw a mood on the evening, and I knew my food issue was irritating her.

At this point I decided to be cheerful by force of will if not blood chemistry and we went back to the club. Where the doors still weren't open. I eventually asked the doorman where one could get a quick bite to eat, and finally went down and got some fries where he recommended, which cheered me up immediately. M----- noticed me being more cheerful and that cheered her up!

Soon after this we were let in, and got to see the new decorations of the club. Last time we were there, to see X, the hall was laid-out in some unsuccessful barn decor, which severely didn't work at all with the hipster aesthetic they tried to project to the public. Now under new ownership, they've done a wonderful punky whorehouse motif which we both loved. The velvet nudes up beyond the lights were a nice touch.

One nice thing about the rain was that the show wasn't very crowded. The floor was full but not packed, which made for an intimate energy. We were right up next to the stage, and Jonathan and Robbie were close to the front edge, so things were nice and immediate. He played some of the hits, but lots of the evening was given to improv work. Some of it worked, and some of it didn't, but that's improv. "We try to split the evening between songs we know and songs we don't know."

I wonder if they would have done the same if they weren't in New Orleans, where such things are respected? He certainly didn't seem to in Cincinnati. Nice contrast, but he didn't play Hang On Sloopy here. I like it when I see gifted performers twice and each show is unique. Reminds me that I'm not seeing an amimated jukebox, but a real, live performer, and that this show is unique and very different from any other show. That's the kind of performance which is worth paying for!

However, I totally missed the blonde who was dancing and falling out of her dress, which M----- mentioned during the intermission. Teach me to pay attention to what's happening up on stage! I looked for her during the second set but it seems that the alchohol had shifted gears on her in the meantime and she just sat in the back.

During the intermission, when the band just walked out into the audience and bought a round of bottled water for their friends, we walked up two feet and sat on the edge of the stage. I had to watch where I put my hand so that I didn't move the bass drum mic. I got to peer at the box drum Robbie the percussionist played, which had a fantastic sound. It had a better snare and bass sound than his drum kit's snare and bass! It was a box he sat on to play the drum kit, but frequently he'd reach down and play it hand-drum style.

Turns out it was a Cajon La Peru, a version of a cajon box drum from Latin America.

The last time I saw Bela Fleck and the Flecktones play, Future Man played a box drum magnificently, and it's nice to know what they're called.

Oddly enough, the cajon is very popular in flamenco music, and today M----- asked me to research flamenco rhythms because this weekend she wants to attend a flamenco dance workshop!

Now I'm going to have to look into making one for us.

It's interesting to learn that drums don't have to look like "drums" in order to sound nicely. Then again, anyone who has turned over an acoustic guitar and played bongos on the two tones knows this...

No soap for you!

2005-06-07T02:44:00.000-05:00

Well, no one's even entered my Spot the Flaw in the Liberal Rhetoric Contest so I'll just have to put you all out of your misery...

In my earlier post I noted that each teacher has about five classes, but I failed to take into consideration that each student has in turn about five teachers. So, each student's increased earnings and tax revenue needs to be split amongst their five teachers.

I was in effect claiming that 1 = 5.

Bad mathematician! No biscuit!

I still think that my argument's valid, though, but let me borrow some Republican rhetoric to bolster my case... a rising tide raises all boats, a phrase which was used to justify cutting taxes for the rich, also works for the poor, yes?

Poor people who are more capable will earn more and will in turn earn more for the people they work for, who will in turn pay more taxes!

In short, more educated citizens contribute more to fund their society than their education costs, even if education itself costs more than it does now. That's my fundamental postulate, and I stand by it.

A similar argument can be made for more healthy citizens and universal health care, but let me wait on that one until I've got some numbers to throw at you.

A new contest, again for a bar of my elegantly sensual homemade soap: demonstrate how 1 can equal 5...

Star Wars

2005-05-30T06:10:00.000-05:00

Just saw Revenge of the Sith this past weekend, closing a chapter in my life opened when my dad took me to see the original Star Wars in the theater.

When leaving the theater Saturday, I almost fell to my knees and proclaimed, "It's over! Over! Thank you, thank you!" In a very real way it felt like a release not just for me, personally, but for science fiction in general.

I don't really want to get into a criticism of the movie per se but am more interested in criticizing the series as a whole. So let me just agree with most everyone else that it's again better than its predecessor in the new trilogy, as that was better than the first "new" movie.

H0wever, I'd like to use a question posed by M-----'s mother to point out some serious flaws I can't seem to get my inner geek to accept.

She hasn't seen any of the movies in the Star Wars saga, and asked if she should see this current one.

Damn good question!

In the original movie Star Wars George Lucas wanted to make a new version episode of a classic theater serial, with new fancy special effects. This is originally why it was called "Episode IV", because like classic serials, you were never expected to see every one of them, and you could start watching in the middle. Therefore, all characters and plots were easy to grasp and understand from any point in the storyline.

Lucas chose characters, themes, and plots from classic legends and mythology, because these are almost universally understood, and were the same types used in earlier serials. Everyone gets it, and everyone likes it.

Everyone got Star Wars, and everyone liked it!

That was the problem... it became too successful, too profitable, and there became too much money involved for new "episodes" to be treated as casually. Instead of continuing in the tradition of independant episodes and universal plots and characters, Lucas created a storyline based upon the original movie, locking everything else in place orbiting around the assumptions of what was supposed to be generic and universal.

Every movie after Star Wars suffered from this, although the immediate successor, The Empire Strikes Back, still seemed to cling to some of the classic cliffhanger type plot twists of the original genre, which Star Wars couldn't explore as a one-off. And it's a great movie, if you've seen the earlier one. So it suffers if looked at as a serial episode, which should be more-or-less independant.

However, the "new" trilogy starting at "Episode I" seems to be fatally flawed. Its whole point seems to be creating the characters of the original movie, and therefore all of the movies are forced to draw upon the energy of Star Wars and miss opportunities to create energy and enjoyable experiences on their own. Again, everything points towards Star Wars and all would have been better if they'd followed the premise of the original and tried to be movies self-contained enough to be enjoyable on their own, but with rewards for fans following the whole series.

None of them are powerful enough to change your perceptions of Star Wars, which would have been incredibly cool. Instead of these three newer movies being arrows pointing at the original, it would have been nice to treat these movies as actually having been released before Star Wars, and there being mysteries in SW which only made sense having seen the earlier flicks, and the meanings actually changed so as to have arrows pointing backward from SW to the new trilogy.

In the original trilogy, we get all of the characters from the first time we see them, and are happy to follow along in their adventures.

In the new trilogy, the only character which matters is that of Annakin, and he isn't developed so much as rationalized. And it takes three bloody movies to do this little character study!

It would have been nice if the six movies' overreaching arc was the rise, fall, and redemption of Annakin/Darth, but the newest three never seem to get the audience to care about him. Instead of a good and loving man whose fall and redemption we'd care about we get an annoying and arrogant little snot whose fall to evil is just an aside.

I originally thought the whole point of the new series was to expand the implicit story of Luke as central character into a more multilayered story of Luke-and-his-father mirrored in the story of the fall of the Jedi and with lots of references to classic father/son power dynamics and some great obvious but hearty metaphors. Classic stuff.

But, no...

So, if you haven't seen any of the other movies, Revenge of the Sithis wonderful theater and is visually spectacular enough to merit seeing big even if you don't care about anything else. It's great space opera. However, you'll miss some of the references and be prepared to not get the last half hour which is just a hasty checklist connecting these most recent movies to the three which ostentably come after them.

It's the most fun a SW movie has been in two decades, so, sure, go see it!

First Annual Spot the Flaw in the Liberal Rhetoric Contest!

2005-05-28T01:37:00.000-05:00

In the grand time-honored tradition of inflammatory political rhetoric, I was able to prove my point about paying some teachers more by ignoring a key fact of mathematics. No one's commented on it so far...

First reader to spot the mathematical flaw in my reasoning about teacher salary wins one free bar of home-made soap. The first person to show that it's not really a flaw, but a feature of the idea wins two bars!

Hint: no, it's not about the rounding, estimating, or outright guessing that I did with numbers. I did cop to that in the original post, yes? It's more fundamental.

Yet I believe the argument still holds water.

Paying teachers more can pay for itself?

2005-05-26T00:10:00.000-05:00

If they're the right teachers, yes.

I was going to put this as a response to a comment in my previous post, but I noticed that I was rambling on, so let's just make it a front-page entry. I want more people to look at this.

JMG wrote:

How about a law whereby teacher salary is *inversely* proportional to school achievement? And a strong enough inverse that working in the worst schools is *very* profitable?

but then wouldn't there be a disincentive to actually make the school better? JMG

I can see why you'd think this but honestly, I don't think so.

You seem to be seeing the following process: if teachers earn less the better the school achieves, then they have an incentive to do less in order for their students to succeed less, and therefore get paid more.

Do you think any parents or schoolboards anywhere would put up with this, for one thing? I'm sure more "successful" schools would be very keen on teacher accountability, seeing as how they are the districts with the most affluent and therefore active parents. We can weaken tenure, for one. If you suck, you're out.

Or how about a bonus program where your pension is based upon the earnings of the students you teach?

Secondly, let's link "success" to something which can't be faked so schools can't tell kids to do poorly on standardized tests for the sake of an easy A.

My idea is based upon the notion that an easier and more positive teaching experience is worth more to most educators than relatively small amounts of money.

I offer that the current system offers a doubly powerful incentive for teachers to choose rich school districts, and my modest suggestion is an attempt to provide a bit of balance.

You know New Orleans, JMG. Why is it that private schools can charge what they do but pay teachers almost a third less? Yes, there are powerful racial issues here, but where would you prefer to teach high school bio? What if I offered you twice as much to teach in a disadvaged school?

However, I think a different criterion than standardized test scores should be used for how "good" a school is, like the percentage of the students who go to college, weighted by the cost of those institutions. One Harvard is twenty trade schools or seven state schools (guessing).

I think many extremely talented and / or experienced school teachers would finally be persuaded to teach in underperforming schools if they were paid twice as much. But many others would still choose the excellent classroom experience an affluent district provides, and these districts could probably still pick and choose candidates.

One thing I really need to say is that I'm not suggesting lowering the salaries of any teachers, only increasing those for disadvantaged schools, and it would probably provide less chaos to have this gradually phased in.

Honestly, I think it's not so much socialism as good government, and in the long run would easily pay for itself. Better educated people earn more money and pay more taxes. I think most social programs can pay for themselves if they're structured properly.

Here are some estimates, very rounded to whole amounts, but I'm sure in the correct ballpark, for example:

Let's see, your average teacher teaches, say, five classes of twenty students, or 100 students a year.

Pay her, after taxes, an extra $20,000 a year to teach poor kids.

So, those 100 kids each need to get jobs after graduation (not weighted for inflation, humor me) which pay...

wait for it...

$200 a year more in taxes per kid, or an extra $2000 a year earned in a moderate tax bracket...

Competence in basic math and literacy is worth about an extra $10000 a year, on average, and illiterate or math-less kids tend to be in the lowest brackets, which pay the least or no taxes, so upward trends in earnings pay even more taxes.

I rest my case.

Except to say that I honestly believe that paying teachers more to teach poor kids might one day actually earn the government a profit on future taxes collected comparatively. I was being modest in my calculations.

When government invests in it's citizens, everybody wins.

!

2005-05-19T02:15:00.000-05:00

Okay, it seems like Blogger doesn't want me talking about an odd mathematical coincidence I've happened upon.

I've tried thrice to write about how there is a funky connection between the Number of the Beast and the Golden Mean, but each time I seem to accidentally hit a key wrong and my entry is erased...

Perhaps someone is unhappy with my insight, or I just need to save more often when I'm writing late at night and prone to mis-striking the keyboard, which seems more likely.

In the meantime, there are a few things I'm angry and unhappy about, all of which seem to include things which are situation normal for our society, but which are to my mind making things worse due to inherent contradictions.

For-profit hospitals:

Is there not an inherent contradiction in the Hippocratic oath and running a for-profit, publicly-traded, hospital or care facility?

Seems like the laws of publicly-held corporations are pretty clear: one must do anything which maximizes shareholder value, and if you don't you can be sued and replaced by boardmembers who will, and you might be liable for imaginary profits lost because you weren't profit-maximizing in the meantime.

In a care facility, oaths require one to do as much as possible to care for the patient, being reasonable and respectful for the patient's wishes. So you must maximize the care given within reason.

In a for-profit corporation, one must maximize profit, which means in a medical situation charging more for care and/or providing less care. Charging more quickly leads to less business or greater insurance cost, so providing less care becomes the easiest option when that balance tips.

I see a contradiction, and propose that for-profit medical care is contradictory to the fundamental goals of, well, medical care.

Related, churches.

Any church which posts a profit in excess of 50% of donations should lose not-for-profit status. Or perhaps, NFP status should only be for organizations which lose money, and there be a separate, but generous, progressive scale of taxation for profiters to net those shady churches and charities which seem to be raping the current system.

Secondly, education and why the best teachers aren't in the schools which need the best teachers...

In education, the kids who need the best teachers are in the poorest districts.

In education, the districts which pay their teachers the most are the richest discricts.

In education, the best districts, which are the easiest to teach in, are the most affluent. Rich kids know they need to do well and pay better attention. Rich kids are easier to teach, to sum up, and provide the most rewarding experience for educators. (for the most part, because one gets the most positive response for the least effort)

This is why private schools get away with paying less but advertising better teachers. And this is a strong signal to public schools: better experience is worth more to teachers than better pay.

In education, the best teachers gravitate towards either the most rewarding experience or the experience which pays the most. The teachers with the least experience go to the positions which are most demanding and most in need of experience.

Having the easiest and most rewarding teaching experiences be the same is a guarantee that the best teachers will almost always go to the richest districts. And, that the least capable and least experienced teachers will go to those districts which are most difficult and pay the least.

There are *R*A*R*E* teachers who seem to get the most reward by spending the most effort. These teachers are rare enough that documentaries tend to get made about them. And all of them talk about how they turn down rich job offers from rich districts for the sake of their teaching vision. And all of them seem to work other jobs to pay for the teaching aids they need but can't get funding for.

How about a law whereby teacher salary is *inversely* proportional to school achievement? And a strong enough inverse that working in the worst schools is *very* profitable?

Teachers in the least achieving districts get the most money?

A teacher can choose easy or profitable, with a strong weight towards difficult and profitable. Perhaps this might get more talented teachers where they seem to be needed most.

Inflation and interest rates:

The current model which drives interest rates seems geared towards the people who make the most money.

When inflation rises, the Fed raises interest rates, making money more scarce. This seems like a fine, fine, thing if you're a person rich enough to care about basic lending rates.

The Fed's model seems to assume that the econonmy is rich people, or people who's economy is most tied to fundamental interest rates: again, rich folks.

Poor people need *more* access to money and loans when times are tough and inflation is bad!

When inflation is large, making low-interest loans to ordinary folks makes it easier to pay off loans, makes it easier to start business, and makes it easier to buy goods. In a recession, poor people need more governmental help. It follows that the amount of social help necessarily follows inversely with the strength of the economy.

In a poor economy, providing more money to education and health care seems to make more educated and healthier workers, who work more and pay greater taxes for their more educated jobs, which makes for a stronger economy.

However, in the same situation, you certainly *Don't* want to make easy money available to rich folks, who will just hoard the money in investment shelters. Access to money in a healthy economy seems to be inversely proportional to your status in the economy which is inversely proportional to the rate of inflation in that economy.

The current situation assumes a strict inverse relationship, while I propose a two-valued relationship, needing a balance.

How to create a lever which one swings between rich and poor to drive the economy, instead of just goosing the rich?

Fun questions!

Making soap

2005-05-12T01:11:00.000-05:00

Really.

I'm making soap tonight.

Some of you may have received a couple of bars for Ambiguous Seasonal Holiday, which was the second batch I made. Tonight is the fourth batch, which is about exactly the same as the third, except that I threw out the distilled water by mistake a couple of months ago, and am just using Brita since I realized this at 11:30 tonight. Which shouldn't make a difference, but one never knows when chemistry rears its complicated head.

I've had one feedback review of the Holiday Soap, and it was positive. Mike and Family ran out of soap, and discovered to their dismay that my soap was the only thing on hand. With great trepidation they used it and, like many things people approach with initial trepidation, discovered that they quite liked it.

They've been fans of Dr. Bronner's soaps for a while, so the lack of lather of homemade soaps wasn't really a problem. Although I'm sure that the lack of text included with my soap led to a less interesting shower than that provided by the Good Doctor's verbosity. Do you know that the stuff they put into soap to make it lathery also makes it dry out your skin?

The lather problem has been ameliorated, with the happy addition of coconut oil to the mix, which adds lather but slight skin drying, which I counter with more olive oil in the superfatting stage...

Although tonight it freaked me out when I opened up the coconut oil tub and it was liquid. Coconut oil melts at 76 degrees, and the last time I made soap it was Winter, when coconut "oil" was a weird, flaky solid which I had to spoon onto my scale or into my pan for making popcorn. Coconut oil makes the world's best popcorn, by the way, which is also another reason to buy it if one is dismayed with having to buy a 32 oz. tub when only needing eight ounces for making soap. Like most "tropical oils" it'll kill you if you eat too much of it, since it's a pretty saturated fat, but it makes great popcorn. And great soap, since the trace elements in it help steer water towards that magical surface tension ratio which makes for bubbles, and which has little or nothing to do with soap's actual cleaning ability.

Really. Bubbles do not equal cleaning and are just a trick of surface tension physics. Bubbles and soap are merely an aesthetic pairing, and do quite well on their own.

I make soap using the Cold Process, or the "easy way" as I think of it. We used the other method in high school chemistry, and only one person in the class made useful soap in that lab!

Cold-process soap is pretty simple chemistry, needing just fat, lye, and water. The lye dissolved in water reacts with the triglyceride fat molecules to form soap and glycerin. The delicate part is in the measurements, as each different type of fat or oil requires a different amount of lye water to produce a particular soap result. Fortunately this is all pre-calculated.

Interestingly, in commercial soap they take out the glycerin, so that the soap hardens more quickly, but then they have to add skin softening agents so that the soap isn't too harsh. It's odd that "glycerin" soap is expensive stuff with glycerin added to the process later to make it clear instead of just leaving it alone!

I prefer a soap which has a decent amount of residual oil left un-transformed, which produces a soap which feels very nice on your skin. It is softer, however, and doesn't last as long. Did I mention that hardening agents also dry your skin?

All the stories about pioneers and harsh lye soaps are all the result of soap which wasn't made with careful attention to chemical balances and wasn't left to age properly. The saponification reaction takes about a month or so to complete after it solidifies into a bar, if it ever does. Most pioneer soaps were actually liquid! And you can make mild liquid soap if you want to, like Dr. Bronner's.

Any soap you use before the reactions are complete, however, will have unreacted lye left in it, which you really don't want in a soap that's getting anywhere near your skin.

It is nice, however, for soap you want to use for cleaning and disinfecting, and can be calculated thusly should you so wish. Harsh lye soap is great for scrubbing and disinfecting! Better than the horrific "antibacterial" crap which may end up killing us all...

When you're getting lye water by dripping ashes, and just boiling on the stove without measuring or weighing anything, it's easy to see how much of the early pioneer soap was still swimming with harsh lye, since if you didn't use enough lye it was like rubbing oily fat on your clothes and skin. Best err on the side of making actual soap.

However, today you can buy pure lye at most any grocery store in the drain cleaning section, and the ratios for nearly any fat or oil you can get are calculated to a far more accurate degree than the postal scale I use, so it's pretty easy to make some wonderful soap.

We've been using soap of the third batch here, and I really like it. It doesn't lather like commercial soaps but there are some small bubbles, yet I feel clean and my skin feels better. One nice thing about homemade soaps is that the glycerin is still in them. In commercial bar soap the glycerin is removed so that the bars solidify more quickly, but this removes one of the skin softening agents, so they have to add other stuff...

One curious thing... the commercial bar "Dove" really isn't soap! In their commercials where they say something like, "Dove isn't soap, it's a 'Beauty Bar'(tm)" they aren't lying. I'm not sure what i is, but it really and truly isn't soap. Dove has a pH of exactly 7, and the mildest soap possible is well above 8. Explains why when I've used Dove I never feel clean, just coated and perfumed. Yet nicely moist.

One of the most fascinating facts I discovered while learning about soap was the origin of shortening and other hydrogenated oils.

One of the biggest realizations in the health world has been that saturated fats are far worse for you than unsaturated fats. And lately artificially saturated fats seem to be even worse than the naturally saturated ones! Anything with "hydrogenated" in it will definately kill you.

When fats are "saturated" or "hydrogenated" they're processed so that they solidify at lower temperatures. Solid or more dense fats are more satisfying to eat, according to just about everyone. The only real difference between an "oil" and a "fat" is its consistency at room temperature, or whether it comes from a plant or an animal.

Interestingly, the process of hydrogenating oils to make them into solid fat-like stuff was created for the soap industry. More solid fats make better soap, and as the country grew in the 19th century, there wasn't enough solid fat to keep up with the country's cleaning needs, so some bright boys figured out how to make vegetable oils into solid fats for the soap industry.

The stuff wasn't considered fit for human consumption until the great depression, when real fat became too expensive for the utterly destitute, who turned to the far cheaper fatty oils produced for the detergent industry. Since capitalism siezed control after WWII ended, the cheapest solution for food fats has become the usual solution, leading to many current health problems according to current thinking. Looks like the original soap chemists were right when they considered the stuff not fit to eat. Still makes great soap, however, and quite cheaply.

From what I read, animal fats make the absolute best soap, but I've never tried them. Lard is actually the best soap making fat according to everyone, and is only slightly more expensive than vegetable shortening, but for some reason rubbing my body with dead animals makes me feel way less clean than with veggies. So I'll stick with vegetable shortening.

I still eat meat, though, but I'm working on that. I've worked down the evolutionary scale to flying lizards mostly except for pepperoni, having tried to forego mammals and seafood.

You'll get my pepperoni when you pry it from my cold, dead pizza.

Which sounds great except that my favorite pizza is mushroom, black olive, and garlic. Onions, green peppers, spinach, tomato, and artichoke are also groovy, but not essential. Anyway...

Tonight I'm making the soap about the same way I did last time, as it worked well, but I'm pouring it into different moulds.

Previously I've used two 18 x 6 x 2 plastic trays which worked well when cutting the soap into 12 bars per tray for nicely sized bars. However, I really like rounder bars which work better for softer soap since they last longer than rectangular bars. Actually rounded oval bars last the longest, but that takes individual moulds for each bar.

This time I'm using Pringle's tubes for circular soap. They're lined with plastic and sealed already, and I can just peel them off the soap cylinder after a couple of weeks of aging before cutting off round cakes of soap which I'll let dry for another month or so. Or at least that's the theory. I guess we'll see.

There's a lot to explore in the soap making universe, and you can start out like I did by typing "soap making" into google, which is recommended. I learned a lot by just digging around. Here are some links I've bookmarked but may not actually be the best pages for you to start out from:

Cold Process Soap for One 12 ox Can of Lye
Elaine's Soapmaking Pages
How to Make Cold Process Soap
Soap Problems
The Complete Guide to Soapmaking
Making Soap!

And the most useful link of all:

The MMS Lye Calculator which allows you to mix 'n' match different oils and fats, then click and get a chart of how much lye to use to get varying soap results.

I find 8-10% oil remaining produces a wonderful bath bar.

I've been using a 48 oz tub of vegetable shortening
17 oz bottle of olive oil (pure, not virgin, as the cheap stuff makes better soap, and 17 fluid oz is 16 oz by weight)
8 oz coconut oil, available in the oils/shortening section

Since cheap shortening is usually a blend of hydrogenated soy and cottonseed oils, I ran the numbers using a 25/75, 50/50, and 75/25 ratios of each oil, and just really went with the 50/50... the various percentages were less than my scale could measure anyway, so I just went for 9 and a bit less than a quarter ounces of lye.

I mixed the lye and VERY cold water in the plastic tub the shortening came in, after washing it out. It's non-reactive plastic, and I was going to dispose of it anyway!

Use the larger amount of water, as you need to be an expert to use less. The lye and water mixing can make the water boil and splatter with less water, and you don't want that. Do work outside or in a well-ventilated area when pouring the lye into the water, as the fumes are nasty.

Save some olive oil to add after you've mixed the lye water and oils together and have mixed for a while. This is called superfatting and helps guarantee that much of the leftover unreacted oil will be olive oil, which is nicest on your skin. You want the shortening and coconut oils to react the most.

Then you mix the soap, which takes a long while if you want nice leftover oils. You can stir for hours and hours, or use an electric mixer. The soap fluid is dense, and the chemical reaction needs mixing... Seriously. Use an electric mixer, because stirring a superfatted soap by hand can become endless. Use a mixer.

After a long while if your soap has leftover oil, when stirring produces a "trace" which lasts in the mixture, you're about ready to pour the soap into the mould. Add the fragrance oil, if used, at this last stage. Adding essential oils earlier just allows their expensive essence to be turned into soap!

I like lavender.

You can also get soap colorings. Michael's or any good crafty place should carry them, along with soap moulds if you want to get fancy.

I've just touched on the process, so please ask if you want more detail!

Happy saponification!

So why am I doing this, you ask?

For some weird reason, I really enjoy learning about the basic fundamental processes which underly our complicated civilization. I love learning how things work, how things are made, and how to make them myself.

Like soap.

I adore the Foxfire series of books, and similar tomes like How Things Work and so on.

It's interesting to me to learn how the process of something like soap came to be, and what's been gained and lost in that process.

I love computers, and I bought an early single board system to learn how to program in binary and hex, and programmed a clock to make the darned thing useful in today's world. I really enjoy the graphical interface and associated magic which allows me to create and you to read this blog, as well.

My ultimate goal is to make my own wire. At that point I'll feel comfortable that I could begin recreating civilization from scratch if need be.

Seriously. What do you think is the most fundamental technical process necessary for maintaining today's technology?

Go Figure

2005-05-01T04:26:00.001-05:00

I've been getting into the game of Go recently.

Go, known as Weiqi in China, is perhaps one of the most popular games in existence, and is probably one of the oldest, being three to four thousand years old verses chess's thousand or so, but is still not very well known in the west. In the east it's much more popular than chess is here. That is to say, many people in the east actually do play go, while most of the people who know how to play chess here in the west actually don't play much, if ever. Chart fancy chess sets owned compared to chess games played...

It's perhaps the supreme example of a deceptively simple strategy game which unfolds endless complexities as one learns it. The rules of play can be explained in a few minutes, and are intuitive enough that people have theorized that go might be played by aliens, because the rules are so simple and geometrically elegant that they would of course be discovered by anyone anywhere.

A tutorial.

The game Othello, beloved of M-----, was advertised by, "A minute to learn. A lifetime to master."

Go is similar, but no promise of mastery is ever implied! Go is never mastered, and "masters" constantly are surprised by new playing styles of bold innovative players.

I was a "smart" kid, got into the "gifted" program at school, and so on. My dad taught me chess at an early age, and I enjoyed the game but let it pass as I grew older. I never really got hooked by chess, but always assumed that it was "smart" and that chess skill somehow reflected intelligence. I never got interested enough to become really talented at the game, but I could hold my own and not play like a complete idiot. M----- actually has an attitude against the game, from when her supposed teacher in the gifted program she endured made everyone play chess because that's what smart people did. eek.

In high school I learned how to play bridge, and quickly learned that bridge is by far the most complicated card game ever. So far as ordinary strategy games went, I always assumed that chess was the ultimate board game, and that bridge was the ultimate card game. Other games were certainly interesting but in comparision were ultimately lacking in depth of possibility. Yes, I became an annoying little snot in many ways.

Both bridge and chess are complex and involved enough to provide a lifetime of interesting discovery, the hallmark of a truly great game.

Actually, that's the hallmark of a truly great anything.

But when I learned go, and studied it a bit, all other games suddenly became simple to me. The level of possibility and complexity that go provided was inexpressibly more rich than any other game I'd ever encountered. The variety of possible chess or bridge games seemed to shrink down to niggling variations, while the possibilities of go experience seemed wide open. Go is both global and local, requiring play of subtle broad and long term strategy yet offering vicious tactical local interaction. Chess is ultimately local, since nothing is ever more than eight spaces away from anything else, and all play focuses upon the kings.

The smallest go game anyone takes even remotely seriously is 9 x 9, and that's commonly referred to as a teaching board. The standard game is played on a 19 x 19 board.

One interesting thing to note is that chess has effectively moved into the realm of computers. Chess has been analyzed to such an extent that chess programs can beat all but the best of human players, and those the programs can fight to a draw. Just today I read that a new go program running on a network of 75 new computers was beat 8-0 by mid-level go enthusiasts. Amateurs, not pros. This is typical.

Go is so much more possible that the very best programs can't even beat decent amateur players. Professional go players don't even deign to bother with computer programs. Go has been "completely solved" as the game theorists like to say on a 5 x 5 board, and athe 9 x 9 "teaching" size is certainly well beyond modern game theory or computer science.

All that I'm trying to say here is that chess seems to be becoming less popular now that the goal of mastering it is now dominated by computer programs. Why bother?

Go remains an art which is truly an art, as it's not subject to any logic, and mastery of which is most effectively transmitted by spending time with a master. An average person with effort can become better than the best computer program out there. Really. Go is at its heart a fundamentally human game.

Go has been a feature of movies lately, like in A Beautiful Mind and Pi. In A Beutiful Mind the artistic aspect of go is noted when Nash plays a "perfect game" and still loses!

I'm also finding that it's just a much more beautiful game to experience. The patterns of form that the game evolves are some of the prettiest to be found in the game world. Get yoruself a full-sized wooden board and some nice stones, and just playing at all becomes a wonderfully satisfying aesthetic experience. Meditative and centering.

My favorite Go equipment dealer is Yutopian. I bought my board and stones there and a gift board with the same stones for my friend Mike which he loves, all quite reasonably.

If you'd like to find a go group in your area, try the American Go Association.

If you'd like to play me, I'm fatoudust on Dragon Go Server.

Sensei's Library, linked to above, is a fantastic source of information, but feel free to ask me and I'll do my best to answer any questions. Go's an amazingly friendly game!

Other thoughts on Chess verses Go: here and here.

Go vs. Chess is oddly similar to my recent discussions about Linux vs. Windows, and I think it's an interesting comparison. Seeming complexity and power verses actual complexity and power.

Multiple O/S Tango, interlude

2005-04-25T03:18:00.000-05:00

Learn to beware whenever you're learning something new and the phrase, "It's pretty easy once you get used to it" pops up.

A long time ago I had a car wreck, and in the savings-building interim between the two week insurance loaner and the purchace of the new wheels a couple of incredibly kind and generous friends let me borrow a second car they weren't using.

He bought it for Her, but She didn't have a license and was still freaked about driving, so they let me borrow it so it would be driven since Bad Things happen to cars which sit.

It was an Audi Fox, quite old and rusty at the time, and the agreement was that I was to be a sort of test pilot, identifying and hopefully correcting problems while I drove it so that She wouldn't be bothered by them.

Unfortunately for them, I'm freakishly adaptable to odd situations.

One big problem was that the starter stuck. Every time you got into the car and turned the key... nothing. However, we found out by listening to the subtle noises it produced that the starter solenoid engaged, and that current was flowing to the starter and it moved a little. A little tap with a hammer on the starter body always freed it up, no problem. Since replacing the starter was well beyond my troubleshooting mission, I very quickly got in the habit of grabbing the hammer I kept by the driver's seat, walking around to the passenger side, bending down, reaching under the fender, and striking the starter. This very quickly became automatic, and I soon learned where to hit instinctively without having to look under the car.

Not that I didn't work on it. It overheated and the cooling system exploded when I was using it, and I replaced the hoses and thermostat, in addition to many little easily fixed details.

Friends who often drove with me quickly got used to it as well, and one friend even had fun doing the hammer work for me. Hitting your car with a hammer to get it to start was just incredibly amusing to people of a certain mental bent.

By and by She got her license and about the same time I bought a new vehicle, so we met for me to demonstrate the Care and Feeding of her new baby...

I have no words to describe the Look on her face when I casually chatted about how to hit the starter with the hammer before you started it up... confusion, frustration, and slight horror come close... "It's pretty easy once you get the hang of it!"

The more I use different computer systems, and try to get things done and solve problems on all of them, the more I begin to understand how most people get in the habit of not thinking about having to crawl under the metaphorical car and hit it with a hammer. It's when you try and teach intelligent but novice people how to use computers that you begin to notice the looks of confusion, frustration, and slight horror at what you've gotten comfortable with.

And most powerfully, the look that almost screams, "There must be an easier way!"

Multiple O/S Tango, First Movement, in Gee Unnatural

2005-04-23T03:27:00.000-05:00

I've spent the past few hours dealing with one of those really, really little computer problems that seem to creep up from time to time. The ones that are so simple and insignificant they threaten to completely destroy the vast and complicated computing house of cards which is the modern operating system.

Our trusty little computer I built a few years ago has probably been the most reliable computer I've ever worked on. Not to say that things haven't gone wrong, they have, but the things which have gone wrong on this box have all been mild and simple to fix for the most part.

For the past couple of years I seduced it into running multiple operating systems. On my main hard drive I've got Windows, and on the second I've been running Linux.

I've always been of two minds about computers. Sometimes I want to geek out, open up the hood and tinker around with the innards, but much of the time I just want to do something. Much of the time I want the computer to not only get out of my way, but actually help me accomplish something useful, with a minimum of thought not focused on the task at hand.

And of course for every task there are usually two kinds of tools: ones that are easy to use, and ones which are hard to learn but ultimately more powerful and useful. This is very true of computers.

A good computing system should offer both kinds of tool. Hardly any do.

So, I've found that the route to having both kinds of tools available for our household's computing needs has been to run both Windows and Linux. (Although, I've been very intrigued by where Macs have gone lately.)

Oddly enough, I've found that the stereotypes of both Windows and Linux really aren't always true. Although they are true enough to justify the stereotypes' existences.

Windows has always been seen, or at least marketed as, the Everyman system. It does what You need it to do and you don't need to learn much.

Until you do. And then it quickly becomes an Odyssey of Initiation into the Heirarchy of the Black and Arcane Magicks necessary to placate the Great God System. Oh, Regedit, accept this humble and pathetic sacrifice of mine most Holy Weekend.

Or you need it to do something more than office, game, media, or internet.

However, what it does do it does damn well. Software installation is almost bloody effortless, which one doesn't fully appreciate until one runs Linux, where this has always been a serious weak point. Click and *pouf* There it is on your desktop! And nearly everything runs on Windows.

Nearly...

And, of course, if you work in an office, you probably use Windows, and Office, and if you have to take work home it's nice to have it at home as well. This is especially true because Microsoft likes to "tweak" the standards for Office file formats every so often so that other programs can't read Office files, forcing you to buy the latest version.

This is slowly becoming an issue with us. M----- uses Office at work, and likes to have Office at home so she can do stuff here and at work with no fuss. We've had Office '97 since, well, 97, and we've never needed anything better. We haven't even come close to using the features we already have, much less have need for anything better. We own a huge Tome on Office, and there are powers and functions I've never even come close to using. I know of someone who used Excel 95 to create a networked business system for a company and it handled everything from invoicing to payroll.

Office is honestly one of the best software suites ever created. With the incredibly HUGE exception of their file system.

Microsoft has always had Office write bizarre and arcanely complicated files, so that none of the competing products could read their output. And then they tie it into their Windows biz, or charge you twice as much, like Mac Office.

For instance, I just used Word 97 to create a file which was only the word "test". Four characters = four bytes plus layout and font info. 19,456 bytes. It's worse with every new realease. Someone with office XP, open up Word, do nothing else but type "test" and save. How big of a file did it create? Post a comment, I'm curious.

Anyway, while a good bit of that is stuff which allows Office to be flexible and powerful, a lot of it is obfuscation.

This really blew when I worked for places where people used different software, like Lotus or WordPerfect, or whathaveyou. It got tiresome for people to have to always request not to have that file in Word format, because someone couldn't open it.

I mean, Office is in any other respect clearly superior, so why were they worried? Was WordPerfect's 5% market share a real worry? Evidently, yes.

M----- uses a different version of Office at work than we do here at home. I've created a couple rather simple Word documents, emailed them to her, and had the formatting be all wonky when she opened them in the newer, and supposedly compatable, version of Word at work! And when she "fixed" the formatting and emailed it back to me... all wonky here. Seriously annoying for us personally, but I'm sure this has caused many corporate types to Look Bad when, say, giving presentations or taking work home and emailing it to the boss at work. Good for sales of new versions of Office, I'm sure.

Anyway... in contrast to the Windows universe of computing experience there's Linux. Which is mostly free and a product of the work of many thousands of hardcore computer geeks out there who live for making powerful programs and making them available for anyone to use. The central philosophy is that "information wants to be free" beloved of hippies, hackers, librarians, and academics not writing grant proposals everywhere.

Linux is what's known as an "open" system, where all the details are public and open to scrutinity. Somewhat like how science works, where new data and theories are subject to peer review to see if they work or not.

Linux has always had the reputation of being a tool of the second type. That is, ultimately more flexible and powerful, but with a heck of a learning curve. Over the past several years it's gotten much more friendly, but still lags behind Windows quite a bit if you aren't geeky.

Since it's been mostly the work of hardcore geeks, it still remains a weird hodgepodge of effortless and transparent power coupled with difficult arcania. Whenever some geek somewhere has gotten the bug to create the world's best and/or easiest tool for doing something, you have, well, sometimes the world's best and easiest tool. But sometimes just the best, but bloody difficult, and sometimes the easiest, but bloody limited.

Again, it's gotten so much easier lately as the Linux community has taken the useability question more seriously, and since there has been some actual money on the table for software development. Both Sun and IBM have invested quite a lot into the free software world, and notable IPOs like RedHat have brought more venture capital into the community. For good or ill, depending upon you viewpoint.

I've found that there are tasks which Linux does far more easily and powerfully than Windows. Where easy and powerful have been combined, it's freakin' magical.

I never use our scanner with Windows if I can possibly avoid it. So many of the software "tools" included with Windows devices are more pretty eye candy than substance, and often make it hard to do what their purported purpose is. The crap software included with my CD-ROM drive and scanner, to name two, are horrible. To paraphrase Bart Simpson, I never thought it was possible to both blow and suck at the same time.

Our scanner with Linux, on the other hand, just works. No other software needed. And the program Linux uses is downright helpful about options and choices of where to send the scan and what to do with it afterwards.

CD ripping/buring applications are likewise clean, simple, and powerful. The options to do just about anything are there if you need them, but nearly invisible if you don't.

Printing, on the other hand, is still the realm of Windows, because printer makers usually only provide Windows drivers, and Mac ones if you're lucky. Linux? pshaw...

There is a Linux printer program, which does a damn fine job on many of the more popular slightly older printers, but not always...

But on the Linux side, much of the "free" software for Windows you might find for Windows on the internet is just a front end to hook you into buying the "complete" version if you're lucky. If you're unlucky, you've just installed a keylogging program which is even now recording everything you do and sending it to Indonesia in the hope that you'll enter a credit card number or bank password.

Linux doesn't have virus scanning software, because it's not an issue. I went back to Windows 98 from Win2K because of the virus problems. And I've been happy about that choice ever since. Also, because Win98 simply runs faster. Every version of Windows seems to run slower and slower. Once again, why did you install the new version of Windows? Really? Installing Linux on a slow Windows machine often feels like an upgrade, because many things run so much faster.

Of course, then there's the new Mac, where every new version is faster than the old ones, and more powerful. But Apple's always been a hardware company, and you have to buy one of their expensive yet oh, so pretty systems.

So anyway, anyway... back to my original problem...

Since software installation has been a bit of an issue with Linux, once I got a working Linux system I pretty much left it alone. If it ain't broke, don't fix it!

However, while it worked, and worked well, I knew there were newer and other, perhaps easier to use options, available. But which to try? The Linux world offers hundreds of possibilities... or even the Big Few versions could confuse even hardcore geeks with their relative options.

The basic "Linux system" can be combined with thousands of other programs and packaged in various ways depending upon your particular need. Fantastic if you're informed, educated, and knowledgeable. Confusing as hell if you aren't.

*end of part one of the saga*

Reading Neal Stephenson's essaay In the Beginning Was The Command Line may be helpful. You can download it here or read it online here.

Note well that this is out of date in some respects. BeOS doesn't really exist anymore, but Mac has actually incorporated most of what Neil thought was cool about BeOS. MacOS is now built on top of a free system, BSD Unix, so you have the best of both worlds: a slick and easy to use top end over a free and open core system which you can open up and geek out on if you so desire. And Windows is, to use his car analogy, now producing huge, expensive SUVs. XP is kinda like those "luxury" SUVs: huge, gas-guzzling, hard to drive, and heaven help you if you actually dare to take what's in all respects but looks a suburban station wagon offroad, but it impresses people who don't know any better and looks good in your driveway if you care about such things.

Teaser for part two: how a few bytes of data on my hard drive almost rendered my entire system unusable when switching Linux systems!

Reader requests?

2005-04-16T02:00:00.000-05:00

Hey, the idea of a reader request week sounds fun.

What topics would you all like me to delve into / blather on / pontificate / lecture / wonder about?

Anything and Everything. The Great Fatoudust seezall, knowzall!

Requests in the comments to this post, and I'll begin in a week.

I think one request per reader should about fill a week...

One answer to a long-standing question

2005-04-16T01:14:00.000-05:00

Recently author John Scalzi asked for reader requests of blogging topics.

I chimed in with my perennial favorite, a question that's been bothering me for years and for which I have yet to hear a satisfactory answer, "Why do so many people suck?"

It sounds glib, but it's actually one of the more important questions I'd like to see addressed about humanity. Think about it. Really.

Didn't expect to hear an answer, as most people seem to chuckle at first. Then pause. And then after a bit say something like, "I don't know..." and assume a puzzled and troubled expression. And then change the subject.

John actually bothered to give a real answer. Cool.

Not necessarily a satisfying answer, mind you, and certainly not a comforting one, but I'm not sure either of those are possible. But, he did give an answer which included the only possible solution to the question I've ever seen:

How do we "... create a society where sucking is not actually the path of least resistance..."?

Excellent question!

I'll be pondering this and post any answers I come up with... how 'bout you?

An odd time was had by all

2005-04-14T03:01:00.000-05:00

I've been attending a drum circle with M----- these past few months, which has been fun.

One question I asked of the group's host was about odd time signatures.

All of the beats we had been playing have been in the usual even times. Mostly four, but lately in six, which has confused many people.

You probably don't realize it, but all of the music you like is rhythmically challenged.

Almost all of the music you would ever hear is in one of only a few very basic rhythmic signatures.

Just about every rock and pop song ever recorded is in 4/4 time.Four beats of one count per beat. Some punky things are in 2/4 time, or doubletime. Same thing, just faster.

The big rock 'n' roll revolution was a shift within the 4/4 beat, the transformation to a backbeat, or emphasis on beats 2 and 4 instead of beats 1 and 3.

If a movement as huge as Rock 'n' Roll could happen with merely a change in beat emphasis, what's possible with different beats altogether?

Waltzes and some western swing and country songs are in 3/4. Three counts per big beat. Doubletime to 6/4 for some alternacountry. And it's very different music, with a different industry behind it at the present time...

It's all still even, which is to say that there are an even number of beats per measure. When you're tapping out the rhythm, you'll count out an even number of beats before you repeat yourself.

Even with time in three most people hear dotted half notes, or a beat and a half, which is to say they hear a rhythm in two over top of the beat in three. Which is the basic waltz beat, which is a count of three against two. This is why a waltz is so hard to dance for most people, some folks hear a three, and some a two. If partners don't hear the same beat *ouch*

Most modern country is NOT in three, but in six, which allows a rock backbeat, and is thus EVEN.

Anyway, I'd asked about rhythms in five, the simplest truly odd time, which the drum leader hadn't heard about, so I thought I'd explore this.

I've been a fan of so-called progressive rock for a long time. These are rockers who play music more complicated than the usual three minute blues-based verse/chorus structures. Classic bands in the genre include Yes, Genesis, King Crimson, Rush, and so on... there are many, many, others.

Sometimes they got inspiration from other styles, like jazz or classical, but most often it was just a self-indulgent exercise in complexity. But sometimes truly wonderful music happened. Like anything, 95% was crap, but oh that other 5% ....

Anyway, one big exercise for a progressive rock band was to experiment with unusual time signatures.

In attempting to adapt these beats to hand drumming patterns, I must say that almost all of them sound very artificial when simplified to just right and left hands... they just stick an extra beat into an otherwise happy rhythym, which makes a beat with a hiccup. None of the odd beats felt natural or danceable or had swing or funk. They all felt like an otherwise natural beat with an extra bit of crap added artificially.

Which is probably because all the beats I've ever heard have been even. Of course that sounds natural... but then again...

Interestingly enough, one of the finest rhythms in five is a jazz rhythm from the early 50s. Dave Brubeck's "Take 5" is an excellent example of rhythmic fiveness which swings and feels natural, and adapts itself naturally to left/right hand drumming.

It's really fun, as it feels like a beat in four, with a "drag/scrape" beat, which if you hear the music and tap out, there will be one beat where you drag your hand across the table automatically as the other hand pauses briefly. It feels natural!

This is the best example of a beat in five I've discovered. Anyone out there have other examples?

M----- once challenged that there would never be good sex music composed in five.

I'm open to experimentation.

Updated soup recipe below

2005-03-31T00:09:00.000-06:00

I made a few changes to my soup recipe, below. All are noted by boldface. The strange part for me is trying to remember what I did as an improvisational cooking experiment about a year ago, trying to imaging what I did do then and what I would do now were I to make another pot.

I'm sure I mis-imagined some things, so if you make it, please email me and tell me what you did and did not like. Or what you changed and how that affected the soup.

Veggie Matzoh Ball Soup

2005-03-24T03:07:00.000-06:00

My sister asked about my veggie matzoh ball soup in a comment to the previous post, and I thought it an interesting enough topic to merit its own post.

I don't have a recipe per se for my veggie matzoh ball soup. I like to think of my soupmaking as having transcended recipes, but go with lazy if you'd like.

I'll try and remember what I did for you. I may be making it again in late April, so I'll take notes and post again.

The local Unitarian church had a Seder feast last year, and because so many Unitarians are vegeterians it was decided to have the Kosher (Parve) meal fall on the dairy side of the meat/dairy fault line.

I had attended "meat" Seder feasts, so a dairy/veggie one sounded interesting.

I love a good matzoh ball soup, but I had never had anything but a chicken-based version. I'm a huge fan of chicken 'n' dumplings in all forms, matzoh ball and Italian wedding included. Chicken was so yummy that I couldn't imagine deviating from this form too much, so I decided to try and create a veggie version that preserved the highlights of chicken-based recipes. For my big flavor notes, I went with butter, dill, pepper, and garlic notes in a rich vegetable broth.

I don't remember exactly what I did, but this should get you into the ballpark. Feel free to mess with it, and all measurements are very approximate and most importantly to taste!

I used a three quart pot, so adjust accordingly.

1 medium onion, finely diced (1/8")
1 carrot, finely diced
1 stalk celery with heavy leaves, finely diced
2 green onions, chopped fine
6 cloves garlic, pressed

Add half of the above to 2 quarts water and 1 - 15 oz can vegetable broth, or more broth and less water, turn on heat to low.

Add to pot:
1 tsp sea salt (Important, do not use regular table salt! Salt is a primary flavor of soup, and table salt is far too harsh for good soup. Even cheap sea salt is vastly superior.)

update: don't use "Kosher" salt, either, as it's still sodium chloride. The only difference between it and table salt is the size and shape of the crystals. Once it dissolves, it's the same. "Kosher" salt was designed to be rubbed onto meat during the kosher slaughter process to help preserve the meat and draw out the moisture and blood. It remains excellent for use on meat or vegetables where the size and shape of the salt will remain and matter to the finished dish, such as grilling or roasting. Sea salt is different chemically, and so has a different effect upon our taste buds. It's milder, less "salty", and more complex. Nicer all the way around, in other words. The trace elements are supposedly healthy, but who really knows. You can even get iodized versions, which I use in my salt shaker. I get a normal-sized cylinder of iodized Hain sea salt for about two bucks, which lasts me at least six months. The creme of the crop is the "Celtic" or "gray" sea salt from Brittany, which my local Whole Foods sells for an exhorbitant amount. But it's superb salt.

1/2 tsp black pepper.
1/8 tsp MSG (unless allergic. It does add a nice note if used in moderation, however)
1/2 tsp garlic powder
1/4 tsp onion powder
3 tbsp dried parsley
1 bay leaf
1 tsp dill
dash rosemary
dash thyme
3 tbsp butter (not margarine)
update: dash sage

Melt 2 tbsp butter (not margarine!) in a pan and sautee the other half of the above unused vegetables until lightly browned and carmelized. Add to pot. This is according to chef Paul Prudhomme's theory of flavor layering. Some ingredients can be separated and prepared in different ways before being combined to add complexity to a dish. Carmelized and boiled versions of the vegetables add interesting layers to the final product, as do fresh and powdered onion and garlic.

Finely dice 1 small Idaho potato, or other potato of choice, skin included. Add to pot.
Add 1 cup frozen chopped spinach, from the bag, not the brick.

Cover and simmer over low heat for 1-2 hours, or until all vegetables begin to dissolve into broth. Adjust seasoning and water/broth to taste and adjust water until 2.5 quarts or so. Basically, make the broth taste excellent before adding matzoh balls! It should be good enough on its own to serve as is. This is the key to good soup, the base should stand on its own before the "name" ingredient is added.

Take 1 cup broth and cool to room temperature. Add 1 egg yolk and stir to dissolve. Stir vigorously into pot. This addition of egg yolk helps to blend the oils into the broth.

Add matzoh balls, with added butter as below, cook according to package directions.

I find that Manischewitz instant matzoh ball mix does fabulously, found in the kosher section of most grocery stores. Highly recommended. For this recipe, add two tablespoons of melted butter to the package directions, which one would ordinarily NOT do when making the chicken-based version. I really like the butterly silky matzoh balls, and with the garlicky-dill-peppery veggie broth, don't really miss the chicken.

Enjoy!

Variations to the above might include adding a can of navy beans or chopped mushrooms or cream, but I find that the excellent broth and buttery matzoh balls don't need anything else.

On a philosophical note, I'm not Jewish nor do I keep Kosher, but when preparing foods in a tradition such as this, I respect such traditions and find that I enjoy the foods much more when I follow them. It's just polite. In this instance, I found a new and exciting version of a traditional classic by following those same traditions.

C.H. Week

2005-03-22T22:40:00.000-06:00

With Easter quickly approaching, we seem to be fiercely into the annual Charlton Heston week. The Ten Commandments was last night, and even as I type PBS seems determined to play along and is showing 55 Days at Peking. I can't wait for my Ben Hur fix, and will of course giggle all throughout the blatant homosexual imagery (which The Celluloid Closet claims Hes was completely oblivious to). Although, for my money, Olivier was a better Heathcliff.

This past Saturday one local station even replayed the Saturday Night Live episode from '93 where he hosted. The man's got a fine sense of humor about himself, I must say. As an aside, glancing at the hosts/guests list by season, it seems like a decent tool to chart musical trends. '93/'94 was firmly in the grip of grunge, for example.

I do have to point out that the name "Easter" comes from a pagan celebration, and if it were tied to passover like, you know, it is in the scriptures, then it would be in late April this year... just sayin' (I'm looking forward to making my celebrated vegeterian matzoh ball soup for the local seder we attend at the Unitarian Church)

Bunnies aside, there is, however, a lot of symbolism surrounding red eggs which has nothing whatsoever to do with the Germanic goddess. Red eggs seem to occur all over the world in nearly every culture all throughout history. They're still common in Eastern Orthodox tradition, and many images of Mary Magdeline holding a red egg exist (which, I suppose, fans of The DaVinci Code would find highly significant...) One could probably draw a nice line connecting the Greek Orthodox tradition back to the ancient Greek Orphic celebrations involving red eggs. The ancient Romans also seemed fond of them, as did the ancient Egyptians.

The next time you're in the grocery store, note that pickled eggs are often colored red.

In doing a bit of searching, I also found reference to an interesting Chinese tradition where one holds a red egg party to celebrate a baby's first month of life. The symbolism of a red egg featured prominently in one of my favorite alternate history books, Kim Stanley Robinson's The Years of Rice and Salt, which almost made my SF Literature List, below.

Literary Science Fiction

2005-03-19T00:15:00.000-06:00

One discussion I never seem to tire of is what science fiction works should be considered as literature. John Scalzi brought up the question in his blog here, and while I contributed, I just couldn't resist the temptation to blather on even further...

This, of course, begs two rather difficult questions almost immediately:

What is science fiction?
What is literature?

You can write a book, nay, a series of books, on either of these questions. People have. Here's my initial attempt at beginning to answer them.

Science fiction includes some scientific property or problem in a central manner-- whether in setting, plot, character, tone, or what have you. One important point to make is that a book doesn't have to be futuristic at all to be SF. To many people, lots of the starships and zap guns style of SF is more technically fantasy as it doesn't really address any questions of science at all. I don't want to be this picky, however, and I'll allow the Duck Criterion... if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it's a duck.

Fantasy as Literature is another discussion. Let me know if you'd like me to talk about it. I don't think Lord of the Rings is literature, to start off, even though I think it's one of the best stories ever told.

However, I do want to stress that many other works do feature scientific questions and deserve to be included as SF, even if they traditionally aren't shelved there in the library or bookstore. In the 60s they invented the term "speculative fiction" for SF books which were then marketed as "Fiction" in bookstores, to elevate them out of the very real science fiction ghetto of perception and marketing. This ghetto still exists. Read the NYT Review of Books and see how many SF titles they talk about, or read scholarly journals for the same. Have fun waiting...

And science isn't the same as the hard sciences such as physics, astronomy, or engineering. There are many excellent SF novels which deal with the social sciences like psychology, anthropology, and sociology. Perhaps even the philosophic scientific method should be a criterion, for many novels approach topics with it in mind or in it's manner. There's also a lot of work which deals with the many questions of humanity vs. technology, which I feel can be included in some instances.

The question of what literature might be is a little tougher. I'd start with the following criteria:

Excellence -- demonstrates a mastery of the craft of writing.

Timelessness -- will people still be reading it in a couple of centuries?

Expansiveness -- address questions larger than itself.

Innovation-- did something particularly well or novel.

Depth -- succeeds on more than one level. More than plot, character, setting, and so on, does it lend itself to analysis of abstraction, symbolism, or universality?

Some people would add the quality of literary awareness, but to my mind allusions to other works are certainly nice and add points to "Depth" but aren't strictly necessary.

What's always hard in these types of discussions is the culling out of the many incredibly superb SF novels which just aren't literary. There are just so many books which emotionally I really want to include in such lists, because I'd love for people who don't think they like SF to read them. But, dammit, they're just not literature by my standards so out they go! Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card comes oh, so close... but not quite literary enough *sigh*

Anyway, here's a start on the list of SF novels which I feel qualify as literature, in no particular order:

Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley (the first SF novel, by the way)
1984, by George Orwell
Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury
The Left Hand of Darkness, by Ursula K. LeGuinn
A Canticle for Leibowitz, by Walter M. Miller Jr.
The Handmaid's Tale, by Margaret Atwood
Gravity's Rainbow, by Thomas Pynchon
Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley
Flowers for Algernon, by Daniel Keyes

Novels which I'm not quite sure about, and which I'd love to hear opinions on, are:

American Gods, by Neil Gaiman (somewhat new, may need to age for timlessness' sake)
Doris Lessing's Canopus in Argos series (perhaps too symbolic for its own good)
Dune, by Frank Herbert (the characters are flat)
Cat's Cradle, by Kurt Vonnegut
Childhood's End, by Arthur C. Clarke
A Clockwork Orange, by Anthony Burgess

Authors who seem to write novels both literary and SF but whom I haven't read enough of to form an opinion about:

Stanislaw Lem
Samuel R. Delaney
Octavia Butler
J. G. Ballard

Novels which I've seen in similar discussions but haven't read yet:

Ada, by Vladimir Nabakov
Woman on the Edge of Time, by Marge Piercy (thought her He, She, It was lacking, though)
The Book of the New Sun, by Gene Wolfe
Winter's Tale, by Mark Helprin (may not be SF)

There are a couple of authors who are both literary and write SF whom I have to exclude because they don't write novels: Italo Calvino and Jorge Luis Borges, but who certainly deserve to be mentioned.

There are many authors who are supremely important in the world of science fiction, but for one reason or another don't quite make the cut into literature like Jules Verne, H. G. Wells, Isaac Asimov, and Robert Heinlein.

And finally, there are postmodern authors who seem to get included in discussions of literature, who arguably do write SF sometimes, but who I think won't be read in a couple of centuries: Dom DeLillo, John Barth, Umberto Eco...

To wrap up, Bruce Sterling coined a new term, "Slipstream", for writing which seems to blur the boundaries between the "Fiction" and the "Science Fiction" sections of the modern bookstore. He wrote an interesting article which concluded with a great reading list if you're ever looking for something good to pick up.

IWD

2005-03-14T03:09:00.000-06:00

Spent most of the day at the Blue Nile club down in the Faubourg Marigny, for the local celebration of International Women's Day.

Which was, of course, March 8. Odd interpersonal politics demanded that the New Orleans version happen on the 13th, however...

I was there to support M-----, who was reading some wonderful poetry written by Chinese Buddhist nuns, and to help with the powerpoint slideshow she created.

I helped a bit with that, including a nice slide about Hedy Lamarr, featuring this stunning picture. It's possible to create spread-spectrum radio, and look absolutely fabulous doing it!

I also contributed info for slides about women who were profoundly important to math and physics, areas which even still are stereotypically male.

It's a nice slideshow. Let me know if you'd like a copy.

Was given a marvelous button, "Feminist Chicks Dig Me" by Crystal.

I was there as "techy guy" even though when the laptop computer had problems, I was not able to discern a computer port into which my penis would fit. I was, however, able to get the damn thing working again when it decided to lock up. Win XP sucks, and is entirely too "helpful".

"I myself have never been able to find out what feminism is; I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat.”
--Rebecca West, speaking in 1913

HST, RIP

2005-02-21T01:38:00.000-06:00

Hunter S. Thompson, requiescat in pacem.

*sigh*

It's enough to make me want to go get a bottle of scotch and a 44 magnum loaded with tracer rounds, to see that hot metal hurtling across the night sky. I think the good doctor would've approved...

recent columns

Heavens-Above

2005-02-18T18:37:00.000-06:00

I was just out waiting at the ATM next door to get cash for the pizza delivery, and as I am wont to do when waiting around at night, I was looking up at the sky. Orion was nicely placed, and there was ruddy Betelgeuse on Orion's shoulder. I was contemplating a book I just finished which featured Betelgeuse going supernova as a plot point. Betelgeuse is the most likely candidate star near us to go supernova in the next while (we think), and if that should happen it could be a Very Bad Thing. Depending upon how much gamma radiation it might produce, our ozone layer could be completely ionized, ending most interesting life on this planet. It's a very pretty star though, one of the few bright enough for our eyes to discern its color.

While pondering this cheery thought, I saw a very bright satellite drifting slowly across the sky. After getting back in the house, I was able to use the incredibly cool Heavens-Above website to quickly identify my little moving blip of light as the Hubble Space Telescope.

The book, by the way, was Calculating God by Robert J. Sawyer, and is a very good read if you're interested in things like paleontology, the evolution vs. intelligent design debate, theology, museum politics, and the possible nature of an alien first contact scenario. Sawyer's website is pretty extensive, and contains a lot of interesting nuggets. I'm still exploring it.

Musical Realism

2005-02-17T01:09:00.000-06:00

M____ requested the movie Xanadu from the library and we picked it up tonight. (or last night, Wednesday, since I haven't been able to synch blogger to my own time)

You do know you can do that, don't you? Your local library system is, even as we speak, adding titles to their collection of movies. In our system, you can even type in "DVD" or "VHS" into the online search page and get an alphabetical list to request from, and have them delivered to the closest branch to your house. This week was Xanadu, last week was the first season of M*A*S*H, last month Yale lectures on Existentialism and Shakespeare's Twelvth Night. More varied than a video store, if not as well represented in new releases. Remember, libraries get public money based upon how much we use them! Next time you want to rent a movie, think about your local library!

You're already paying for it, so use it!

Anyway, I was as enchanted by Olivia Newton John as was the rest of my generation back in 1980, which may not mean anything to people not of my age. But trust me, she could do no wrong in 1980.

I only saw this on TV, because I was, well, a twelve year old boy and neither me nor any of my twelve year old friends would dare cop to wanting to see this to each other. So I saw it on TV a year or so later. Adored the soundtrack for ELO as much as ONJ, which I never owned because a whole ablum was a bit much for our household budget at the time. Read all the lyrics and credits at Aunt Chris' house, to be sure-- "'Destiny-y' will arive, not "destined the eve' will arrive! Ahhhh." I had a lot of 45s, though. $1.49 fit within my allowance, but $6.99 didn't.

Seeing it again, I think I may actually have liked it more than I did when I was twelve. This isn't usually the case as most movies completely suck when I watch them again. When the TV broadcast rolled around, the magic had worn off and it just seemed a bit cheesy. There was probably some lingering resentment about not being able to afford the soundtrack album, as well, but who knows...

Okay, it's still cheesy, but cheese which has aged and which a refined palate, properly prepared for the experience, can discern elements to appreciate in the proper context. Some nostalgia ages well, and some gets musty and bitter and best left alone. Then again, there's no cheese so musty and bitter that you can't find someone else to appreciate it, but Xanadu is many things but not bitter by any means!

The pacing still sucks, though, and there's no getting around that.

However, I've now got an excuse to finally rent TRON, since the visual effects guys from Xanadu who did all the back projection work which M____ really liked went on to greater glory there.

Tonight, I actually had seen enough movies and understood enough about the history of the movie musical to get all the many references to past movie musicals. And there were a lot. I had no idea who Gene Kelly was when I was 12, for instance, not to mention other obvious nods to people like Busby Berkeley. M____ is right about Kelly, though, he looks much less gay here than he did when he was younger and wearing a tight sailor suit all the time :)

In watching it and talking about musicals in general, I came up with an interesting phrase. She had pointed out that in the tap scene, sometimes their shoes tapped, and sometimes they were soft. Then in the next musical scene, I noticed that the "recording studio" they were in would be lousy for recording, but made a great dance area. I'd been thinking for a while about the literary concepts of Magical Realism, which I enjoy, and the ways in which cinematic magical realism differs from the literary kind.

I think that there needs to be a term Musical Realism which describes the genre of art where the presence of music alters the demands of physical reality. If there's a good song playing (from where? don't ask...) then you just dance around and six months of work and promotion gets done in an afternoon!

-----

In another note, when you make homemade half-whole wheat rolls and have dough left over, you can put it into a plastic baggie and save it for a few days in the fridge. Used the leftover Valentine's Day dough for pizza tonight. I should probably develop a post on tomato sauce for pizza vs. tomato sauce for pasta, because they're two very different things, and M____ tells me I do both quite well.

V.D.

2005-02-15T18:58:00.000-06:00

We had a nice, low-key Valentine's Day yesterday. M____ had her poetry class last night, so who was I to compete with three hours studying The Romantics?

She gave me a fun little grow your own chili peppers kit. Growing peppers has been a hobby of mine for a few years now, so it's nice to get another variety to play with. As she pointed out, they will turn red eventually!

On my side, I made one of her favorite meals: quiche, salad, home-made rolls, and Breyer's vanilla-bean with chocolate fudge ice cream for dessert. I also borrowed the DVD of Pretty in Pink from our cool next door neighbors and presented her with a very pretty rose when I picked her up from class. The rose has opened up nicely today and looks even better than it did yesterday. It's a nice multicolor with dark red edges turning to gold and warm orangish-pink in the middle.

Inspired by an evening studying lots of poetry about sex and death, we used a Halloween champagne flute as a bud vase. It has a plastic skeletal hand rising up out of a pentagram base as the stem holding the glass proper.

Today I saw an interesting page on the history of Valentine's Day. If you're someone who refuses to celebrate the Christian holidays which are actually re-named pagan holidays, looks like you should add Valentine's Day to the list. Others include Groundhog Day, Easter, May Day, Halloween, and of course Christmas.

One Ring Zero

2005-02-13T18:43:00.000-06:00

We saw an amazing show last night at Octavia Books, the wonderfully twisted duo One Ring Zero, and had a great time. How many other bands could move one to exclaim, "righteous theremin solo!" Not many, to be sure. And I totally want a claviola now.

I first heard about them on Neil Gaiman's online journal, and was intrigued enough to make a mental post-it note to check them out sometime. If they ever play nearby, do go see them.

The songs of their latest CD feature lyrics contributed by 17 top authors and the ones they played at the show last night were all fascinatingly fun. A must for literary geeks everywhere.

One highlight was a song penned by Paul Auster called Natty Man Blues which will be very amusing to anyone who's ever lived in Cincinnati. We both loved it.

At one point in the show they threatened the crowd with Free Bird as a joke, but I think that it would have totally rocked on accordian and claviola, personally. One of my favorite concert memories is of seeing The Slobs launch into a perfect version of it when some drunk joker in the crowd called it out.

Numb3rs, again.

2005-02-12T03:56:00.000-06:00

Watched Numb3rs again this week, and remain pleasantly surprised by this program.

Still no serial killers or pornographic violence against women since the pilot, and, yes, this is a good thing in my book. I can't stand more than five minutes of most other crime investigation shows, but I actually look forward to watching this one. Not just me, but my partner in crime *cough* enjoys it as well, so it seems to appeal to the female and male(?) demographics. It remains quite distinct from the typical, not only because I'm a math guy and I loved Northern Exposure and Taxi but the general level of production quality seems well above average. Glad to see Ridley Scott isn't selling himself cheaply.

The quality of dialogue seems to suffer sometimes, as they seem to be more worried about getting the ideas into play moreso than relationships, or as much as the relationships. This really isn't a complaint as the dialogue is still well above the TV median, and given the limitations of the format I can't see how they'd do much better in trying to foward both ideas and relationships, but it's just an observation.

Lady M____ did point out that to be a modern, sexy mathematician I don't have the right hair, as my do doesn't use enough Product. I should seriously consider this if I ever get back to grad school in math. I've been doing what I refer to as the "Buddhist monk" look-- a self-shaved head using a 1/4" guard on the clippers, but the trendy thing among TV and movie mathematicians seems to be gently tousled curls. Which I can do, but I need some length. Have to think hard about this since I live in the tropics and hate sweating. To tousle or not to tousle?

Filler

2005-02-12T02:13:00.000-06:00

What a crappy week. I've been down with a nasty intestinal bug which has sapped most of my will to live, and the less said about that the better. Pepto hasn't been able to keep up, so I stepped up to Immodium tonight, and I guess we'll see... *bleh*

I'm just going to shut up after tonight about my lack of posting frequency, because it seems to be asking for trouble.

In looking at the blogs of various folks who seem to actually be popular enough to be paid for this type of narcissism, I've noticed a certain amount of filler which I've tried to avoid among those who manage to post daily. Then again, I initially only promised to post daily, and never-ever mentioned any qualitative parameters... hmmmm... I suppose it was too much to ask of myself to write something interesting daily, when the exercise was just to get in the habit of writing itself. Quality is not the goal, merely a nice frosting. I think I was not posting unless I had some sprinkles, much less frosting. Let's work on the cake afore decoratin'.

I would, however, like to work towards more quality, but in the meantime my goal is to simply get back to daily postings. I'll go for quality whenever it presents itself, but no promises. In guessing who might actually be reading this, here's a list of filler topics which I may resort to if I don't have anything more interesting to say:

cooking / what I made for dinner
books I've finished
movies I've watched
observations / annoyances

Votes?

I'm leaning towards the cooking one. A number of folks have commented favorably upon my culinary skills, a number of folks possibly reading this seem to like reading and chatting about cooking, and it seems to be the filler topic which might include the most original material. Recipie? I ain' got no recipes. I don' cook wit' no recipes. We don' need no steenking recipes!

Here's a last topic: getting pedantic about words

A little knowledge is a dangerous thing, and I've got a little knowledge about many things involved with words, historical linguistics, etymology, and so on. Not grammar, mind you, as if my cavalier comma usage and irreverant fragments weren't clues enough, but words themselves.

Not sure I can come up with daily blathering about that last one, so I'm still voting for cooking. Let me know what you think.

Comments

2005-02-08T05:41:00.000-06:00

Trying to get back up to speed on posting, and sorry for the hiatus. I could blame Mardi Gras, and living in New Orleans it'd be a great excuse... but it's my own laziness and distraction, honestly. Apologies again *sigh*

My commitment to daily posts was of course a goal, rather than a promise. I have been missing the mark, technically sinning, which is what that term originally meant in Hebrew. I wonder how sinning wandered from, "Oops, try again!" to "You're going to suffer torment for all eternity"? Anyway...

Someone posted a vague and anonymous comment to this post, and while I answered there, I thought it was an important enough point to warrant it's own topic.

Blogger is annoying about comments, requiring people to register in order to comment if the host doesn't allow anonymous comments. That seems silly to me as it does not allow people to conceal their identity if they so wish and I'm in favor of options which promote free speech. This being my sandbox, I'm always free to dictatorially delete anything egregious, so what the hell...

However, I just want to state that I'm much more likely to feel like responding to your comments if there is an identifier of some sort. So if you want to kibbitz or don't feel like a response or are making wit or whatever, anonymize away! If you want to chat please do something like put a name, initials, or identity at the end of your post even if you don't feel like registering, e.g.:

Blather?
Blather, I found on google.
Blather, you moron!

-L'Idiot

So, then I can conversationally start my answer in a much more friendly, pleasing, and civilised manner, "L'Idiot, you ignorant slut..." or "Thanks for the info, L'Idiot, you've saved me and countless others from a lifetime of useless toil!"

Thank you!

Visualizing the year

2005-02-08T04:46:00.000-06:00

A while back I saw this interesting calendar which maps the year onto a circle instead of the usual grid, which never clicked with me intuitively.

I've always visualized the year as being roughly oval, so I was very excited to see something which hopefully would closely match my inner picture. There were enough differences from my inner year, however, to make this calendar as frustrating for me to use as the regular sort. I'm excited by their idea so I may eventually get around to making one which fits my own perceptions, poster-sized and laminated for writing. A rotating underlay with days of the week and little cutout windows for it on the main page would be handy as well. Not sure what to do about leap years, but just shifting a day on leap day seems simplest, with a little sticky note on the calendar for leap years before 2/28 as a reminder. Couldn't have this feature on a oval version, though. Have to ponder which would matter more to me, a perfect adaptation of my inner psychological year, or a quite handy tool to identify the dates to weekdays, which in my mind is the only benefit of the grid style calendars. Probably the latter.

Their year is a perfect circle, with the shortest day at the very top, and January 1 just a little bit clockwise of that. My inner year is an oval with the shortest day near the bottom, and the year goes counterclockwise. Odd, yet fascinating, that they chose to orient the circle based upon astronomical information, rather than calendric. I'm sure pagans and the like will be enthusiastic.

An odd bit of trivia to bring up here is that the actual shortest day isn't the same as the earliest sunset or the latest sunrise, which more affect psychological perceptions of the day's length. None of these correspond to the earth's distance from the sun, the actual closest distance (aphelion) oddly happens in early January.

From a very early age I had vivid mental pictures of such things as the year and numbers. Neither picture really lined up well with how these things were taught to me. My inner view of numbers is really weird, based upon how I added to ones I already knew (there's a right angle turn at 10, for instance).

I always saw the year as a rough oval larger in width than height. Winter at the bottom, with the week between Christmas and New Years being at the centerpoint (Christmas is before, and New Year after). The year proceeds counterclockwise from January 1 near the bottom. Since this visualization was formed in early Childhood, the area around Christmas takes up the most space, so I guess it's an ovoid rather than an oval. December is much larger than the other months. September is a bit larger as well, since it's the start of school and includes my birthday. The area around "now" seems to expand a bit in my mind too.

Summer is the brightest, colored with a hint of yellow, Spring with a vague greenish cast, Fall with a hint of brown, and Winter with greys. All colors are very faint, and brightness varies as well and much more vividly than color, there being a sharp contrast at January 1 and at the beginning and ending of typical Summer vacation. There's also a bit of variation around Thanksgiving, and in general my inner texture still corresponds to the typical school year.

I'll think about it some more, as my inner view is still more complex than I've related it, but I'm not sure how to accurately describe it. I'll add details in comments.

How do you all picture the year in your minds?

Googling neurotic frustrations

2005-01-31T01:37:00.000-06:00

I love the internet.

Specifically, I have just for the third time in a week been able to identify a song I heard on Musak based upon nothing else but a few snippets of remembered verses.

Oh, would that the Great and Mighty Internet had existed earlier. An experience which has nearly driven me to madness throughout my life has been hearing interesting songs but having no idea what they were called or who the artists were. I'm not sure why, but I get almost neurotically frustrated when I want to know the artist and title of a song but can't figure it out. Perhaps it's the frustration of repitition, but it can be a real thing with me.

I remember in around my sixth grade year ('79 - '80), I kept hearing this song on the radio, and its style and several of its lines were different and interesting enough from the pop norm at the time to really interest me. But I never heard a DJ identify it. It became a thing. One day I heard the end of it in the company of a good friend, and mentioned that I'd been kinda obsessing about it because I couldn't figure out what the damn song was so I could go buy the 45. I mentioned the first line which stuck in my head. He was a good friend, because one day he heard it begin, and actually unplugged his little radio and ran wildly up the hill to my place carrying it! I wasn't home, but he heard the title and remembered it. That's a buddy.

Fleetwood Mac's Sara by the way. Whatever your opinion of it, it was quite unusual for it's era, you have to admit. I still really enjoy it, it's music, and lyrics, but I"m sure part of that is nostalgia.

This week:

Isley Brothers, Who's That Lady
Ringo Starr, Photograph
Rolling Stones, Dead Flowers

The first is an amazing contact point between soul and progressive music.

And is it just me, or does that last one sound very, very much like another song? Dammit, can't figure out what... please comment if you have any ideas!

Math in the media

2005-01-31T01:34:00.000-06:00

Tonight, as is my wont, I listened to the fantastic program This American Life on my local NPR station. Their theme this week was Family Physics, and they took ideas from math and physics and told stories about how these ideas provided metaphors for complicated life situations. Good stuff, and you can listen to it online if you're curious.

I especially appreciated one part of the show's prologue. They interviewed a physicist who complained about people reading pop-physics books and then taking these ideas and running with them into areas where they were never intended to be applied. Like family dynamics. Ira Glass then noted that physicists were really just asking for it by giving their theories such interesting and evocative titles. Fair enough!

I had a great time listening to the show, but I have to note that this is the first time ever in an artistic forum that I have heard even a mention of the fact that mathy people have a real problem with artists "mis-using" their ideas (in the opinion of said mathy people), much less giving time for a real, live scientist to give voice to this.

Thank you, Mr. Glass!

We wouldn't have as much of a problem if more artistic folks seemed to actually understand the ideas whose titles they are appropriating (some do, yes).

Just this past week on the new TV show Numb3rs, I had to limit myself to one or two frustrated sentences when they mentioned the "uncertainty principle" and "measurement alters the thing measured" in the same set of lines. I had to say something, honour demandeth no less, but Lady M____ has heard my Rant on the subject often enough, and I doubt the cats were interested, either.

I shouldn't complain, because I can't think of any other time when a lead protagonist on a mainstream TV show has been a mathematician, and I'm happy to see Rob Morrow and Judd Hirsch working again, but here goes...

We had grave doubts about this show from seeing the pilot episode. Oh, yet another crime investigation show where women are being raped and murdered, but we're supposed to not find this luridly violent and pornographic because, you know, cops are investigating it so it's bad and the bad guys get caught even though oddly enough in almost every episode women seem to get raped and murdered in vividly creative and disturbing ways. How innovative.

Notice that I said crime investigation rather than criminal investigation. Emphasis upon topic and theme.

We gave it a shot again because, well, for one it was about a mathemetician and I just had to be sure that they were defaming my calling before I started writing angry letters, and two, from the previews we weren't sure whether the glimpsed saran-wrapped corpse was female or not. He wasn't. We were pleasantly surprised to see no women being raped and murdered as well, and the previews for next week's show seem to imply that this trend will continue. I guess we'll see.

However, I majored in mathematics, and have spent a lot of time hanging out with math and science types, and I've never met anyone who exhibits the stereotypical obsessive-compulsive behavior of the lead character. All of us loved the movie Pi but we're not really like that and most of us have never been approached by Kabalistic terrorists in search of The Secret. Or the FBI looking to solve crimes. Or, really, anybody anywhere looking for help from math for their lives. *sigh*

Smart people aren't usually like this. Almost every exceptionally smart person I've met can be charming and quite socially well-adapted, or at least as well-adapted as any other segment of the populace. Really. Smart and geeky are not the same thing.

I really can't speak to the mathematics of the show, because there honestly hasn't been enough to comment on. Lots of terms are thrown around, and the mathematics on chalkboards or graphical segues seem vaguely appropriate, but generic in the way that they could really apply to anything statistical. But it's prime-time, remember, and I've never seen an integral sign or indexed formula anywhere else on TV other than PBS, so whatever.

Jumping back to the "uncertainty principle", I lose track of the occasions where I have heard this bandied about as being the notion that perception alters the perceived. They are very different concepts. I have several Rants and even one Lecture devoted to this difference. I was preparing a course on Mathematics and Poetry for a local independant adult educational organization which specializes in poetry, and while the course never happened, I got around to preparing class outlines. One of my sessions would have focused on the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle in physical theory and poetic practice.

This goes back well over a decade, back to when a writer friend actually asked me to develop a talk about the uncertainty principle, because she found it evocative and wanted to make sure she really understood it. I never got to tell her about what I found, and I guess I've been lying in wait ever since...

Don't get me wrong, as there's been a lot of interesting art based up0n misconceptions of this idea, or at least calling other ideas by it's name. Perception does seem to alter the perceived, and it's a great metaphor, but this has little or nothing to do with the actual uncertainty principle, and is a different concept entirely.

Oddly enough, the uncertainty principle isn't physics, it's mathematics. It's actually a logically derivable mathematical identity which is true regardless no matter what physics might happen to be in reality. Werner Heiserberg noticed this math and gave a physical interpretation to it and a new physical metaphor. But his physics are still not what most people think they are and imply very different things from the usual interpretations.

I'll stop now, and continue in a more technical or metaphorical vein as the readership seems to want. *cough* comment *cough*

appetite

2005-01-29T03:04:00.000-06:00

For the past month I've been participating in a drug trial.

It's a test for a type of seratonin agonist which is supposed to target the areas of the brain responsible for hunger, appetite, and food cravings.

Now that the trial is over, I want to comment upon what I experienced, in case this drug is ever on the market.

I never lost weight.

However, I did lose interest in food as an emotional attachment. Food became irritating and problematic to me. I didn't enjoy food as much as I once did. And as the primary cook in the household, I became more irritating to live with. I needed to eat, and did the cooking, but I didn't like the idea of food. You can see the problems which developed.

However, I was as hungry as I ever was.

I needed to eat food, I just didn't enjoy it as much.

Appetites in general became much less enjoyable or demanding, run with the implications of that as you will.

I can see that this type of drug could possibly help someone who has an emotional attachment to food, but that doesn't seem to be my problem.

One nice thing about participating in a drug trial is that you get a really incredibly thorough medical checkup.

I've learned that I'm very healthy except that my cholesterol is high. However, every other blood test records that I am very, very healthy, including endocrine and liver functions.
Every week I got three pages of detailed medical analyses, which all suggested that I'm darned healthy. Not just medically healthy, but healthy enough to be considered for medical experiments, which is *Damned Healthy*. New tests seem to say that in the French high cholesterol happens but heart problems don't. Needless to say I'll be closely following the research in this area, while still trying to do the common-sense level stuff to reduce it.

I do eat a lot of dairy cholesterol, butter and cream. I almost never eat red meat. My blood pressure is low. I don't drink or smoke anymore, excepting rare lapses.

Next time I have a checkup, I'm asking about these new tests which seem to more accurately reflect heart congestion than just cholesterol.

This study did include thorough heart analysis, electro cardiograms and echo cardiograms. Both suggest that my heart is quite healthy, I'm happy to report.

I have no idea whether I should be worried, but I'm going to excercise more regardless, because I know I don't do that enough. Then we'll see in a year.

Generation Oscar

2005-01-26T23:44:00.000-06:00

Getting back up to speed here. I had a draining weekend, and, well, honestly just didn't feel like writing anything.

Here are some small random bits that have been floating around my own personal noosphere...

Oscars

The nominations were released this week, and for the first year in quite a while, I find myself not very interested. I love movies (as I do film, which usually doesn't get nominated) and usually enjoy Oscar night even though I have to approach it with a wryly cynical sense of humor about the whole process. But this year I just don't really care about who wins any of the major awards.

I admit to a certain amount of grumpiness over Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind not getting more nods, but it's got all the hallmarks of a classic cult favorite, so what was I expecting? That it got nominated at all, even if it doesn't have a chance, is a minor miracle and possibly a sign of actual taste creeping into the system. Or maybe it's like Lost in Translation was last year, a bit of indie cred.

There are a couple of the darlings which I haven't seen, but plan to as soon as the DVDs are released: Million Dollar Baby and Hotel Rwanda. Although, I probably know more about the Rwanda atrocities than many Americans, and I'm not sure when I'll be in the mood to face it.

Generations

No, I don't mean Star Tre k...

(hey, I had IMDB up for the last bit, and there it was...)

I was listening to NPR's show Morning Edition while driving to an appointment this morning, and they were talking about the Social Security "crisis" and the Baby Boomers. Lady M____ and I began to have an interesting conversation about how the media categorizes generations.

For instance, they described "baby boomers" as those having been born between 1946 and 1964. And that *shudder* Generation X includes those born between 1964 and 1982. That's 18 years a-piece!

I know that an 18-year generational clock may have made sense in the past, but in the 20th century culture began to accelerate at a pretty good clip. I think there would be an amazing difference between a person born in '46 and one born in '64, and even more of a difference between '64 and '82.

In just looking at this from a pop-cultural standpoint, we decided that you couldn't be called a Boomer if you couldn't remember life before the Beatles. So, this gives a cutoff at about, oh, say 1958 or so.

Now in this age of cultural acceleration, a twelve-year generational span for Boomers seems much more reasonable, and a mere decade for Gen-X is appropriate, but these numbers are all rough, mind you, so there's a lot of haziness to any dating. You're a part of the generation you feel like you're a part of.

And in a similar pop-cultural litmus test, we don't feel that anyone who doesn't significantly remember life before MTV should be considered a Gen-X-er. Call that '74-'76, and subtract a decade to get a lower bound of around 1964-66. In a geekier vein, you should appreciate life before video games.

There are certain transformational experiences which serve to define and unite generations. E.g.: for Boomers, growing up in the 50s, Sputnik, Kennedy assassination, The Beatles, etc...

Now, there's a gap there between 1958 and 1966, and I think this is an important but hitherto unrecognized generation. These are the people whose teenage experiences were in the cultural '70s, which was an admittedly short cutural "decade". Boomers were teens in the culture of the 60s, X-ers in the '80s.

I don't want to speak for this generation, so I'm going to resist trying to cleverly label you. Speaking as someone who has an entire rant available about how stupid the name "Gen-X" is for my own age group, I don't want to be the instrument of that kind of angst.

The Post-X generation (find your own name) is probably defined as people who aren't aware of life without MTV or video games, and whose first memores of a US president are of Reagan.

I'm sure there's lots of different ways to define the cultural breakwaters of the various decades, so I'm not gonna get into that very deeply right now.

So here's my bold idea in the field of generational analysis: generational identity is formed through common teen experience and culture. Or in the language of Leary, cultural sexual imprinting informs generational attachment.

SF questionnaire

2005-01-20T01:47:00.000-06:00

I read this BoingBoing post about how Farah Mendlesohn is writing a book about children and science fiction and is conducting an email survey on that topic:

The purpose of this questionnaire is to provide material for a book called (provisionally), The Inter-Galactic Playground of Children's Science Fiction to be published by McFarland Press. The research is supported by the Eileen Wallace Children's Library (University of New Brunswick), Middlesex University (London) and the British Academy.

Who am I? I am a science fiction fan and a critic. I'm co-organizing a British Eastercon, Concussion, and I edit the academic journal Foundation. The original article behind this research can be found at “Is There Any Such Thing as Children’s SF: A Position Piece” in The Lion and the Unicorn, A Critical Journal of Children’s Literature Vol. 28, no 2, April 2004, pp. 284-313

Besides the survey, her blog is fascinating to anyone interested in children's literature in general and science fiction in particular. I haven't dug too deeply, but immediately was moved to bookmark it.

Care and feeding of CD drives

2005-01-20T01:17:00.000-06:00

My CD-ROM/RW drive has been acting up lately-- not reading discs or creating errors when writing which cause write-once discs to be trashed. Very annoying. For some discs I'd have to open and close the drive, moving the disc slightly in the tray each time, up to twenty or thirty times before it was able to read. And some discs not at all.

I suspected that dust buildup was the problem, or that the tracking gears in the drive were wearing out.

Dust is a real issue. I built this computer myself, but the case I bought and motherboard layout really don't work well together. The CPU is blocked from a lot of airflow from the cooling fans by being right behind the power supply, and tended to overheat after a while, or at least run hotter than recommended. I found that I could just leave the side of the case facing away from me tilted open and it was fine. Not a great solution, but it worked and was good enough and didn't require that I spend any more money. However, dust buildup in the open case became an issue, so I had to unplug everyting and vacuum it out from time to time. No big deal.

For some reason a lot of dust seemed to accumulate around the CD drives, so I guessed that some of the dust worked its way into those same drives.

I made a CD lens cleaner, and it nicely solved the problem.

Here's how to make a nice lens cleaner for your CD drives and players.

DISCLAIMER
This is what worked for me and is an experimental device described for informational purposes ONLY. Not responsible for any damage done by following these instructions. Use at your own risk.

Take an old CD which you will never need again. I used one which didn't burn properly because my lens was dirty.

Cut a small (1/2" or so) piece of velvet into a rough circular shape (helps to be married to a seamstress!) and trim off any corners and loose bits of stuff and bits which could fall off in your drive.

Using a light layer of glue all over the backside of the patch, and NONE on the front which could scratch the lens, glue it onto the bottom side (not the side with the label) of the disc, on the inside near the middle hole but covering up the inside beginning of the data area.

Let it dry and brush off any loose bits or trim any loose corners.

Put it into your drive and let it spin for a second or two, remove quickly.

If it doesn't work the first time, put a small drop of rubbing alchohol on the velvet pad, and insert it again briefly.

Afterwards, let the drive sit open for a minute for alchohol to evaporate.

If that doesn't work, you probably have other problems besides a dirty lens.

You probably only need to use this every year or so and only when reading discs becomes a problem because you don't want to risk scratching your lens.

Hope this helps.

Heat

2005-01-19T02:18:00.000-06:00

You wouldn't think so at first, but heating your house can be a very big deal in New Orleans. I'm sure our getting down to freezing at night earns no sympathy whatsoever to anyone reading this, for nearly everywhere else in the country is colder than we are. But you have insulation. We don't. None whatsoever.

The old house we are renting part of has walls constructed of an inner layer of plaster over some thin slats nailed to wooden uprights, faced with clapboard. Nothing but air in the middle. I could probably figure out the insulative R-value if I felt like it, but it's not much. The house itself is built up about a yard high on brick pylons (it floods here) and so air is free to flow underneath our wooden, uninsulated floor as well.

When we first moved in, there was but one small gas wall heater in one of the rooms, and nothing else in the rest of the apartment. Our first winter when it dropped to around freezing or below, you could see your breath in the bathroom in the morning. This was after I'd gone around with a stick of incense, plugging up air leaks with duct tape or spray foam, including a huge eleven foot high, two inch wide gap between the chimney and the wall where air flowed in freely. I've been much, much warmer in 40 below weather in a lightly-insulated house up north with proper heating.

Since then, we've purchased an electric space heater, a little bathroom heater, and when the landlord replaced the air conditioner last Spring, she bought one which also included a heater, so Winter isn't quite as miserable. But, realisticly, the electric heaters don't do nearly as much as the gas unit and use a lot of energy. The gas heat began to work erraticly the first day of the projected coldest week of the year. Most people would have immediately called the landlord, but she'd made noises about removing the gas unit now that we had an electric one, but appeared to have forgotted about it. She pays gas, we pay electric, so I was loath to remind her of its existence.

It would operate for a while, then go off suddenly. You couldn't re-light the pilot light until it had sat idle for a while. If you turned it up to the highest setting, with three panels fired, it would shut off within minutes. Leaving only two going let it stay lit for at most an hour at a time, but the decrease in heating power by a third was very noticable. It couldn't really keep up at full power with falling temperatures and air-leaks in the old construction.

Last night was exhausting. I had to wake up every hour or so and re-light the damn thing. I learned new appreciation for ancestors who lived with small wood stoves or fireplaces which had to be re-banked regularly during the night if one didn't want to freeze to death. I don't mean to really compare our situation to theirs, as we weren't in any real danger, but the similarity did occur to me.

During the light of day, I was able to dig around on the net to find some pages about gas heater troubleshooting, and got a decent idea about the possible causes for its erratic behavior even if I couldn't find info about our specific model. I guessed that it was a thermocouple sending a wrong signal, causing the gas safety valve to shut off the flow. Or maybe the thermocouple was working perfectly, and the unit needed to be shut off so it wouldn't start a fire or poison us with carbon monoxide?

Was the thermocouple getting too much heat, or too little? How to figure this out without blowing myself up or suffocating us in our sleep. Not that the latter was much danger in our leaky place, but still...

I finally got a clue in one of the many web pages I consulted, which mentioned a yellow colored pilot light being a sign of poor gas flow through the pilot nozzle. This would make the thermocouple attached to the shutoff valve think that the flame had gone out, shutting off the gas flow so as not to poison us and create a fire hazard.

Our pilot light was yellow, slightly more yellow than I remember, I think, but I never gave it much thought before, honestly. And the flame wasn't toucing the thermocouple, but barlely missed it if you looked closely from the right angle. Aha! A little work with an eyelash brush supplied by Lady M____, some cleaning out of dust buildup inside the unit, and.... the pilot was a beautiful shade of blue and struck the thermocouple dead on... and it's still going several hours later at full blast. *relief*

And while it's not exactly warm in here, it's not exactly cold either, which is the best we can hope for in this weather. I'm tempted to sing a paen to the laws of thermodynamics, to the first law glowing orange and blue as the gas and oxygen combine in the firebricks, to the second law which allowed me to reduce the entropy in the pilot light assembly-- at the cost of increasing the universal entropy, alas. On the wonders that are radiant and convective heat transfer, and lastly to the humble but tireless diffusion whch carries the thermal energy 'round the apartment. Ahhhhh......

In a final note, let me also say that I've finally finished Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle. All three volumes and 2652 pages of it. I'll probably have more to say about this later, but just wanted to mention it to mark the occasion. Two nice achievements in one day.

Turkey day

2005-01-17T01:10:00.000-06:00

Before Christmas a savvy shoppper can find very good deals on large, bulky meat products. This savvy shopper located a ten pound turkey for less than six dollars . Hey, we've got a nice holiday centerpiece!

Then this savvy shopper located another less-than-six-dollar large hunk of meat. A ham. And the next week another ham, similarly priced.

I baked one ham over the holidays, and it was lovely. I served it with homemade au-gratin potatoes, fresh garlic buttered green beans, and home-baked rye crescent rolls. Yum. The turkey stayed in the freezer, along with the other ham.

And then I was done with the big production dinners for the season. I needed a break from the kitchen. Lately hot dogs and tater tots were about all you could talk me into without some grumbling from the surly chef-- not the nice endearing chef-about-to-create-a-culinary-masterpiece surliness, which can be forgiven and, indeed, adds to the succulence of a finely prepared dish-- but the whiny, irritating attitude of a lazy, burned-out chef who wouldn't be worthy to even watch Iron Chef, assuming he had cable.

But there were these two large, frozen, meaty things clogging up our freezer. Getting in the way and nearly breaking feet when they would suddenly leap out onto the floor while one accessed the ice trays.

Since ham was the last Big Meat I prepared, it seemed logical to do turkey next, and so I took the Damn Thing out of the freezer Friday morning and cleared out half of the bottom shelf of the fridge for it to thaw for two days. No brining the bird as it was pre-basted "with up to 8% of a solution". Hey, I said it was cheap.

And, yes, today I Cooked The Turkey. Oiled and salted it. Stuffed the cavity with aromatics: fresh herbs and whole spices and garlic and onion. Aluminum foil tent and hot oven at first then temp dropped. Chopped off the wing ends, tail, and skin flaps to make gravy along with the neck, gizzard, and heart. Added carrot, celery, onion, parsley, and garlic to the stock pot. Took an end of homemade bread baked last week to make croutons for stuffing along with cajun wild rice blend. Meat and veggies and strained bits from stock along with rice and bread and seasoning and stock for stuffing. Added flour and half and half to stock with pan drippings to make gravy. Brown 'n' serve rolls. And, yes, I used canned green beans this time, dammit. And forgot to add the chopped hazelnuts to the stuffing.

It was utterly delicious, but somehow a turkey without any Event to require all that trouble just seemed to lack something. And now we've got huge containers full of leftover turkey, stuffing, and gravy, yet I'm oddly unexcited. After Thanksgiving I really look forward to a week of turkey sandwiches-- better than the original dinner, in some ways-- yet this time I'm oddly unconcerned about the leftovers.

I stuck the bones and odd bits of meat into a stock pot and I'm going to make turkey and dumplings on the coldest day we should have this week (Tuesday), but it seems like another chore and not the joyous cooking thrill it would have been before the first of the year.

For some odd reason after the first of the year I emotionally need a time of simple foods. Before the new year is the time for excessive preparations and inordinately large meat products. Turkey in January just seems wrong, somehow.

But, living in New Orleans, this really should be the time when Big Meat ought to be prepared, it being carnival season, that time between Twelvth Night and Mardi Gras. Since carnival comes from the Latin carne vale, or "farewell to meat", one really should consume any leftover meats acquired during the holidays. Mardi Gras literally means "fat Tuesday" because it's the day you're supposed to use of the last of your fat stores before lent since drippings would be prohibited. Not that I've become Catholic, but if one likes the parades one feels the need to at least pretend to appreciate the other aspects of the celebration.

Turkey today still strikes me as weird, for some reason. I'm feeling oddly like a stereotypical Lutheran as described by Garrison Keillor on A Prairie Home Companion, who has a deep, emotional need to suffer in the wintertime as pennance for any sinful excesses commited during the holiday season. Real or imagined.

Connected addiction

2005-01-13T03:35:00.001-06:00

Addictions don't just live in isolated emotional spaces by themselves. They thrive by their connections to other addictive behaviors.

I need to stop drinking coffee.

Every time I do, later that night I get an amazing and powerful craving to smoke a cigarette.

Right now, I'm thinking, nay, wallowing about pawing through our neighbors' garbage, because they smoke and they might have thrown away a not-completely smoked cigarette which I could puff on.

I brew a damn fine cuppa coffee.

I buy green coffee beans from a local importer, and seeing as how I live in New Orleans which is the major place for all coffee imports, I get good stuff. And I'm aware of the roasting vs. character curve for any given bean as I roast them at home. Roasted coffee goes stale within a week, don't you know. So if you really love coffee, home roasting is the way to go.

But for some reason coffee caffeine and cigarettes are somehow inextricably intertwined in my brain chemistry. If I drink strong coffee, later that night I will need to sm0ke a cigarette.

I know that I get addictive behavior from both sides of my family. I'm a double addict, genetically speaking.

It doesn't help that I've caved a couple of times, and that the fairy tales my cravings are spinning are entirely correct. I *will* calm down and begin to think clearer if I smoke a cigarette. But, I also know that tobacco-suck moments of clarity are fairly fleeting, and that non-smoked moments of clarity last a lot longer.

Total bullshit, but necessary if I'd like to live a long while.

I just keep remembering Gunter smoking on Friends, "Oh, Dark Mother, once again I suckle at thy smoky teat!"

I'm an addict who will ALWAYS be an addict.

And I just need to manage that.

New Sci-Fi

2005-01-11T01:56:00.000-06:00

"We went to the moon to have fun, but the moon turned out to completely suck."

First line from an excellent book I just finished: Feed by M. T. Anderson. It's officially a young adult novel by our library's standards, and is apparantly an underground hit among teens, but I found it very powerful, engaging, and emotional. I even almost believed the invented slang the author created for futuristic teens, something which most authors fail miserably at.

It was a National Book Award finalist, deservedly so, and apparantly won a slew of other awards as well.

"A scathing critique of the incessant demands of an increasingly everpresent media behemoth," he said as though he were getting paid to talk about it. Hey, don't make me break out terms like "a stunning tour de force" on your ass...

You can read the plot synopsis and reviews at the above link, but I wanted to use it to segue into talking about a movement in current science fiction writing.

I've noticed that really good SF books these days are getting shorter. This is a good thing, because for a while I suspected that writers seemed to be on a Dickensonian paid-by-the-word deal, and vast tomes which stretched the limits of book-publishing technology were becoming the norm. That or the dreaded series tales, always seeming to be either 3, 5, or 10 books for some reason. If not, then they were usually divided up into parts... six books? My money's on two parts of three books.

Now, the trend for up-and-coming authors seems to be writing efficiently. Writers which have impressed me lately seem to be writing shorter works, but also seem to be putting a lot of thought into the fewer words they do use.

Cory Doctorow is an excellent example, just to name someone, as is John Scalzi.

I've decided that I like the new trend, and plan on working on efficiency in my own writing.

-------

Update: looks like this has been noticed.

When is an inch not an inch?

2005-01-09T02:45:00.000-06:00

I procured some materials to begin building my pan-pipes as mentioned in this earlier post.

1/2" x 10' CPVC pipe
new hacksaw (old one was in sad shape)
1/2" wooden plugs with 1/8" holes (for tuning)
1/8" wooden dowel (for handles on the tuning plugs)
sheet of balsa wood (for mounting to hold all the pipes together)

I have to admit, besides being thinner than standard PVC, the CPVC has a nice pale beige tint to it which seems less artificial and even vaguely wood-like. Totally worth the extra cost. I'm a bit of a connoisseur of PVC, having used it to construct everything from clothes racks to didgeridoos, and let me tell you, CPVC is the shiz.

Got everything home, and had the foresight to try fitting the plugs into the pipe before opening the plastic packaging. Didn't fit. Could it be the plastic wrapping? Instead of tearing the pack open, I got out a ruler and measured the plugs. Yep, 1/2" exactly... then a fell suspicion began to creep over me. I knew that 2 x 4s weren't really two inches by four inches, and that this held true for other building materials. So, could I actually believe the text on the pipe which said it was 1/2" inside diameter?

Apparantly not. My trusty Official 1976 Bicentennial Snoopy ruler gives a reading of about 7/16".

I checked the website for those pan-pipes I'm going to model mine after. *sigh* Inside diameter of 0.47". 7/16 = 0.4375, so Snoopy was pretty close.

So, when is an inch not an inch?

Answer: when you're trying to bloody well build something and you buy materials.

Yeah, yeah, I can go exchange the wooden plugs tomorrow for smaller ones, which will probably even work better than the ones which should have been an exact fit. I can wind thread around them to snug them into the pipes and it'll be a more smooth and firm motion and fit. It's just that my principles are offended. I really want to trust hardware stores, but this seems like yet another example of false advertising. That is to say, lying.

I'm used to assuming that when I read esoterica various things will be presented incorrectly, that the "initiate" will know about this and be able to know what they're really talking about. But plumbing?

I know that lumber measurements were changed to enable sawmills to produce 16 planks where they had been producing 15, like adding wax to candy bars. I guess the same thing happened with pipes, and is now standardized into the industry. Doesn't mean I have to like it.

Why am I doing this?

2005-01-07T01:03:00.000-06:00

I've been thinking about why I decided to start this log, how I'm going to go about it, and why I'm doing it at all.

I was inspired partly by the attitudes of Robert Fripp towards his online diary while I was reading it a few years ago. As a personal discipline, he commited himself to posting at least one entry a day in a publicly readable diary. One of the phrases I believe he used was that he wanted to open himself up to public humiliation.

Now, when I read to M______ a similar passage by Fripp regarding how he conducted his teaching of guitar students, which involved the word "humiliation," she hit the roof, or at least gave me a look and asked me pointed questions regarding my apparantly cult-like interests.

Having read a lot of his writing, it was clear to me that RF was using the term "humiliation" in its original and traditional sense-- an experience that provides humility, and not in the more modern usage of "shamed and degraded" which is how most people today would read it.

I was following this idea last night before drifting off to sleep, and it occured to me that the concepts of humility and pride have really switched places so far as society goes.

Pride used to be a sin.
Humility used be a virtue.

It was one of the seven deadlys. You could go to hell, be tormented for all eternity, for being proud!

In buddhist/hippie/new age terminology, pride is the experience of the self-importance of the Ego, the thing you're trying to rise above.

When did pride become good, become something that we are teaching our kids how to be, become something that as citizens we're expected to be? And when did things which gave humility become "humiliating"?

Really.
Which word would you link up with "getting a promotion and a raise": proud or humble?
And why?

Anyway, I'm writing this as a personal discipline. I'm going to post daily, on average. I think it will be an interesting excercise not only to commit myself to writing every day, but commiting myself to writing something every day which I expect will be read by other people. This is a very different thing from the standard writing excercise of writing something every day no matter what it is-- just write. The added dynamic of having an audience really changes things. I'm absolutely sure that it will be humiliating. I will become more humble about myself and my writing during this experience.

Also, part of it is an excercise in being more communicative to family and friends. When I launched this thing, I sent notice out to various folks whom I'd like to chat with more often. It'd be nice to have some comments and conversation, but really I'm just trying to work on giving more of myself to people that matter to me, and this is a nice way of doing that.

Finally, I'd like to get some of the short story ideas I've been ruminating on up and going. In order to get up to speed on writing I need to excercise by writing every day, and excercice by writing with the intent that what I write may be read by others.

So, I expect to grow, I expect to share, and I expect to learn. Sounds like a plan.

"Dude!"

2005-01-05T17:13:00.000-06:00

In the early 90s I played bass in a sort-of alternative, post-punk, industrial-lite band with a couple of other guys. These two had been friends since grade school, so they shared a lot of similar speaking quirks. One of the most noticable was their incessant use of the word "dude" to mean absolutely anything whatsover. This was pretty common at the time, but these two were the dude-ers I had the most contact with. I blame the media saturation of all things grunge just before this.

I was reminded of them today when I saw this Tom the Dancing Bug cartoon. And then this discussion of said cartoon (scroll down) and finally this strange analysis of how many times people use the letter "u" to spell the word for emphasis. The third link is a wonderful example of dry language geek humor. At least I thought so, but then again I'm a language geek m'self. The cartoon's from 1994, which is a little after the initial "dude" heyday. Probably about when it entered mainstream culture.

In his book Time Pressure, set in a hippie commune in the early 70s, Spider Robinson creates a wonderful scene where some people similarly use the phrase "far out" to also mean absolutely anything whatsoever.

So I'm wondering, are there other examples of a linguistic "wild card" out there? How many generations or subcultures have had their own "wild card" shibboleth?

Such a wild card should be able to express a wide range of emotions and concepts, from simple greetings to more complex things like, "Isn't this wonderful," "Please pass the chips," "I'm very sorry for your tragic loss," "Your behavior is socially unacceptable," and so on.

Appearances vs. Reality

2005-01-04T17:16:00.000-06:00

There's a new building going up down the street at the site of an old Burger King which got demolished last Spring. At the moment it's just a roughly cubical framework shell of 2 x 4s. There are no signs up explaining what it's going to be, so I've been trying to glean clues from the construction.

In the middle of the thing, they've put up a small room with solid concrete walls and ceiling. Also, there's new construction for a large entranceway using metal poles and beams. From these two details, I'm guessing that it's going to be a bank.

If I were going to guess what kind of new business would be building its nest in the neighborhood, without any clues at all, I'd have to say day spa. Without thinking about it too hard, there are at least five to eight of them around here, two having opened this past year. The word "infestation" springs to mind. Ah, perhaps the concrete room is a soundproof chamber where they administer the latest in trendy skin treatments, the "battery acid peel with invigourating lye wrap", so the agonized screams don't deter new business or disturb those getting the soothing aromalight facial therapy... or not.

Nearly every bank in existance tries to convey "solid & stable" with two things: a clearly visible bank vault (usually with the solid-seeming metal door left open so you can see how thick it is) and an impressive entrance structure. If it does turn out to be a bank, I'm predicting that those metal poles will be enclosed by a thin shell of stone.

The whole thing is a carefully constructed illusion. I think it's nicely telling that the front (false image) of a bank is in fact mostly in the building's acual front (the ponderous entrance structure). Also, the entrance itself has an iconic false front-- the "stone" colums are a thin stone veneer with no structural properties, the actual strength coming from thin steel poles. Most of the building is cheap wood. Multiple layers of reference to archaic secure building techniques. A "meta-front," if you will.

One could probably seque right into an allusion to The Fountainhead here, but one shall refrain.

Since your bank actually keeps your money in a computer file somewhere and most people increasingly only rarely visit a bank branch in person, I'm wondering how long these "reassuring" structures will continue to be built. I wonder how future banks will convey "rock solid computer security and identity theft protection" in the future?

Death & Taxes

2005-01-04T15:21:00.000-06:00

Here's an excellent chart diagramming how the government uses the tax revenue it collects from us. Each circle seems to be sized proportionally to the amount of money budgeted it. If you scroll down, there's an even bigger version.

I'm very impressed. With one well-thought out graphic, you instantly get a sense of the government's priorities. Then, of course, it's fun to think about how you'd design the chart if suddenly you had the power to sway congress to your whim and will. Which circles would get bigger, which would shrink?

I'd like to see a similar chart created for the sources of revenue, not just the sinks. With double circles, one for total revenue and a smaller one inside for percentage paid in taxes. It would be nice to see it split up into economic sectors on the corporate side (energy, manufacturing, transportation, retail, service, medicine, pharma, entertainment, etc...) On the individual side, have things split up into tax brackets, with a third circle indicating the total number of persons in each bracket, and the total amount each bracket pays. Such a chart would be quite enlightening. Hmmmm... I'm sure all the info you'd need is public, even if not easy to locate in some aspects. It would be fairly straightforward to at least do something in a spreadsheet to generate some charts, which would be easier if not as attractive. I'll think about it.

Krewe du Faye

2005-01-03T01:27:00.000-06:00

Tonight we met at a friend's house to begin planning for what looks to be a fun Mardi Gras parade. It's called the Krewe du Faye, and it's a walking parade in New Orleans' French Quarter with a faerie and fantasy theme. No web page that I know of, sorry. It's not really that organized. Basically, you wear wings or whatnot, beat drums, and march around having a good time and confusing the tourists.

We tried to attend it a couple of years ago just as marchers, but they had scheduled it the night before MG. During the Endymion parade if that means anything to you. If it does, you understand the brutal horror which confronted us poor naive pilgrims. If it doesn't, picture half a million drunk people packed into a wide boulevard. The police had erected rather bizzare labrynthine people-corralling barriers which we failed to navigate. My companion got her hand-made wings crushed and I lost my temper well before we got near the French Quarter so we gave up and went home.

Our friend Claudia hosts a middle eastern drumming group occasionally, and she asked some of us who can keep a beat to be the musical core of the Krewe this year. We started working on some songs she picked out and arranged-- medieval Latin church music with middle eastern martial beats. Sounds strange, but it ends up being very beautiful and rousing. I think it will be great music to parade along with.

I didn't bring a drum but borrowed a tambourine and had fun playing one for the first time in my life. Up until now they've always annoyed the holy crap out of me. Like guns, I think it matters which end of one you're on.

I'm not the best hand drummer in the world, so I'm thinking of building some pan-pipes out of PVC. I had the idea tonight during practice, inspired by a couple of PVC didgeridoos my friend Rob helped me construct while visiting a couple of years ago. As it turns out, someone has already made it happen. Nice that they've already worked the bugs out of the idea since I don't have that long to get them up and piping. Much less practice on them...

For musical geeks out there, the songs we're doing have vocal parts in the keys of either F or C. I'm thinking of a two-octave pentatonic set in C or F (CGDAE or FCGDA), or perhaps a hexatonic (FCGDAE).

Still up in the air about a costume. I've got a felt black and purple monks robe which I've used as a fallback costume for years now; or perhaps I'll look into some antlers as suggested by Lady M_____.

If you're going to be in New Orleans before Mardi Gras, it will tentatively be the Friday before MG. More later when I get a firm date, place, and time.

If you're going to be in NO on Saturday, January 22, may I suggest going to to the Krewe du Vieux. It's the only parade which still goes through the French Quarter, and is mainly geared towards the locals. It's almost never mentioned in tourist info. Very adult-oriented and irreverent, and about satire and politics much more so than shiny beads. Don't attend if you're easily offended! Of all the parades during Mardi Gras, it's the first one I ever attended, and the one I most look forward to every year.

Buddhist carol

2005-01-02T04:28:00.000-06:00

I've noticed that Buddhism, among other cultural systems, seems to be fond of numbered lists of things.

E.g.: the four noble truths, the eightfold path, the three pillars of the dharma, etc...

They aren't the only ones who really get into this idea. I've seen it a lot in many spiritual systems.

I asked about this on Monkeyfilter in this thread and the most reasonable response I got explained it as a useful mnemonic tool. I was pointed towards this very nice meta-list of Buddhist dharma lists.

The was also the answer I recieved from someone who studied briefly under a Tibetan Rimpoche. She mentioned him counting off things on his fingers as he explained them. Makes sense.

In a perverse fit of silliness, probably brought about by holiday madness, I came up with a Buddhist carol based upon the old saw "The Twelve Days of Christmas":

Twelve Days of Buddha

On the first meditation my Buddha gave to me...

A realization underneath the bodhi tree.

On the second (third...) meditation my Buddha gave to me...

False Duality
Three Dharma Pillars
Four Noble Truths
Five Hin...dran...ces!
Six Senses Sensing
Seven Enlightenment Factors
Eight Paths a-Folding
Nine Bodhisattvas
Ten Fetters Fettering
Eleven Monks a-chanting
Twelve Links a-Linking

.....

I'm trying to base each verse upon an actual Buddhist dharma list or concept, but haven't been able to find ones for nine and eleven. If anyone knows of some, please comment!

Feel free to pass it around if you don't mind crediting me. I'm happy to add to the internet's woefully small collection of Buddhist humor. I'm already pondering "Mr. Bojjhanga"...

Hello, world!

2005-01-02T04:23:00.000-06:00

A little trite, to be sure, but firmly traditional in the computer world.