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Thursday, July 3rd, 2008
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3:24 pm - Me, on the aether
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So I am going to be on the radio this evening, reading some science news tidbits on WORT FM's community science show, Perpetual Notion Machine which runs 7:30-8PM Central Time. (I'm still getting over a lurgy, so I may sound even more sepulchral than usual.)
Should you happen to be curious, WORT is at 89.9 (for those here in Madison), and you can also get an audio stream here. The show is also archived after broadcasting, and available as a podcast.
current music: Lowest of the Low, "Bleed A Little While Tonight"
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(comment on this)
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| Monday, June 30th, 2008
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12:02 pm - The usual course of.. throats
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Woke up still mildly feverish, and still with an adenoid gland feeling like a huge spiked ball just under my left ear, so called in sick, again. Seems to be better now, touch wood.
While entertaining myself desultorily I stumbled, again, across Horrible Moments in the History of Philosophy, ranging from the off-the-wall:Friedrich Nietzsche begins to hoard feces in a bedroom drawer. His long suffering and devoted sister Elizabeth explains for the tenth time that he's supposed to be staring into the void, not doing this, this thing that he's doing. to the sad-but-true:1952 C.E.- After he had saved his home country and the entire free world by decrypting the German's Enigma Code and had also moved British science to the forefront of the world by developing the first digital computer, the government of Great Britain shows its gratitude by imprisoning Alan Turing for "acts of gross indecency" and then forcing him to take massive amounts of hormones to "cure" his homosexuality.
Turing's treatment had the result not only of robbing the world of one of her greatest minds when he took his life, but also raised a lively debate in historical scholarship. How could a country ruled by such idiots possibly have managed to to keep an Empire that long?
This sad outcome has, however, bequeathed a nigh-invincible rhetorical hammer to posterity; I was once able to respond to a fellow theoretical CS student's homophobic shit-talking with the four magic words: "Alan Turing was gay". Silence. Instant change of subject. Awesome. If only this worked on a segment of the population larger than the infinitesimal sliver that is theoretical computer scientists.
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| Saturday, June 28th, 2008
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12:44 pm - Diocletian's cabbages
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Our first CSA share arrived this week, and as a first use of it I made a spinach, herb and cream risotto, using spinach and red onions from the share, and basil and parsley from my own window-box. I'm not going to post a picture, because (a) I'm sort of not great at photographing food to begin with, and (b) it's risotto which means that it just sort of looks like glop. But I will testify that it was very tasty, and miraculously only took about an hour and a half, which is a lot less time than I recall from my previous attempt at risotto.
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| Friday, June 27th, 2008
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1:46 pm - What say the reeds at Runnymede?
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Chalked on the sidewalk outside the federal courthouse in downtown Madison:
WELCOME BACK, HABEAS CORPUS
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| Wednesday, June 25th, 2008
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7:15 am - Strange brew (An Inconsequential Post)
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Before I started this journal, I went to a summer school in formal methods in software at a little town in Germany called Marktoberdorf. A couple of weeks before I went, my advisor turned to me at a conference reception, and out of nowhere asked: "How much do you love beer?"
This is not something I've ever been asked to quantify, so I allowed as how I liked it fine. (Arie, my fellow-student, with whom I was sharing a postage-stamp sized hotel room in Copenhagen for ten days at the time -- a situation which amazingly did not end in murder or even harsh words, probably mostly due to Arie's level disposition -- said that I should have spread my arms out as far as I could and answered "I love it thiiiiiis much." He was right of course.)
She nodded judiciously and said "Then you'll have a good time at Marktoberdorf."
Which I did, and maybe should even post about one of these days. The point here, though, is that I am reasonably fond of beer. And last night I went to buy some and forgot again about Wisconsin's no-beer-sales-after-9PM thing, and thought again about how baffling the liquor laws of American states are to me. Now, lest anybody get defensive, let me explain that this bafflement is mostly in my head, because I was born and raised in Ontario, which has extremely peculiar laws regarding the sale of liquor; so I am somewhat in the position of an inhabitant of that one Escher print, complaining that I went all the way down a staircase and didn't end up back where I started, and what is up with this house of yours anyway?
In Ontario, with a very few exceptions, you can buy beer in one of two places: the Liquor Control Board of Ontario store ("the LCBO"), and the Beer Store. No, for reals, that's what it's called. It used to be called the Brewers' Retail but that name was deemed too confusing. Anyway, that's it. I think the reason I find some states' laws confusing is because they do allow supermarkets and convenience stores to sell booze, but restrict when they can do so to a strict subset of their actual hours of business! Back at home, when the LCBO is closed - no booze for you. When I walk into a place that I know sells alcohol and the cabinet is locked up, or there's a sign saying that they can't sell me any, that is just to me bizarre: it's right there! You're open!
I don't suppose there was much reason to post this other than this realization amused me.
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| Tuesday, June 17th, 2008
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6:12 am - Some are born to plough the fields of home
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James Reaney died last Wednesday.
Southwestern Ontario is about the last place on Earth anyone would consider beautiful, enchanted, or mythical. Almost into historical time it was the bottom of a lake; what forests it once had are long gone, replaced with a grid of farms and roads, joining towns and cities named after random places elsewhere in the Empire. At its heart, London, on the Thames River: the capital of unrequited dreams, hacked out of the wilderness and then forgotten again, a little too close to Brother Jonathan for the seat of government, but a serviceable market-town; awkwardly wearing the name of the greater city like an oversized suit. To grow up there is to learn that everything happens someplace else: no closer than Toronto, at the very least.
( Like most of us Jamie Reaney did go to Toronto as a youth... )
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| Monday, June 16th, 2008
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10:03 pm - Gourd help us
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In lieu of an actual life update, or deep thoughts, here's a random thing that happened to me lately: I won a mate set, which included a gourd, one of those be-strainered metal sippy straws, and a pound of yerba mate.
This happened because I was at the Marquette Waterfront Festival (before it was rained out), and there was a booth for some Rainforest Biodiversity Network. They asked if I wanted to buy raffle tickets. Now commonly my answer to this is "no", because I never win things, and I prefer to just donate money. But, for one, the word 'biodiversity' appears to be some enchanted switch that turns off my critical faculties and makes me nod in approbation, and I was in a deliriously good mood besides, so I said yes I will Yes. Wrote my name and phone number on 3 tickets. Forgot about it.
Late last week I got a call from these people saying I had won a mate set, and giving me precise if surreal directions to their office, which still has the name of its previous occupant - Something Something Marketing on the door - which I followed, and found myself the proud owner of gourd, straw, and bag of loose-leaf yerba mate.
Right now the gourd is sitting on my desk at work, curing - you have, apparently, to let some mate steep in it for 48 hours first and then scrape out the inside of the gourd. The outside of the gourd is pretty styling, bearing a pattern that looks like a moon of Jupiter. The label says it's a "Fire Gourd", and I don't know if they just grow like that, or if heat is applied to get that look.
So far none of my coworkers has wandered by and asked me what the heck is that thing. I don't know whether to be disappointed, or cheered that by now I'd have to deploy something more extreme than a gourd full of green goop to elicit any surprise from them.
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| Monday, June 9th, 2008
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8:08 pm - Rather belated icon explanation..
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The camera's eye
Does not lie,
But it cannot show
The life within,
The life of a runner
Or yours or mine,
That race which is neither
Fast nor slow,
For nothing can ever
Happen twice,
That story which moves
Like music when
Begotten notes
New notes beget,
Making the flowing
Of Time a growing,
Till what it could be
At last it is,
Where Fate is Freedom,
Grace and Surprise.
-W.H. Auden, "Runner"
and actually he liked that last bit enough he used it again, with a slight emendation that I'm rather fond of:
.. Making the flowing
Of Time a growing
Till what it could be
At last it is,
Where even sadness
Is a form of gladness,
Where Fate is Freedom,
Grace and Surprise.
(And the image is by Greg Curnoe.)
current music: Pogues, "Lorelei"
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| Tuesday, June 3rd, 2008
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7:07 pm - That real republic
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| Saturday, May 17th, 2008
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2:30 pm - OMG turtles
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So I haven't been posting much lately. Partly work was mad busy for awhile; partly things have been, not uneventful, but a little lacking in the kind of event that I can just blather on LJ about. In lieu of such things, though, I present to you something nobody (I dare swear) can dislike: Baby Turtles.
Around noon today I took my bike up to Cherokee Marsh, the south section at the top of School Road, and while wandering at the edge of the marsh proper I found this fellow - moving through the wet grasses like some painstakingly-crafted clasp from a cloak, fallen to the ground and granted feet and an outsized, curious head. The picture is not 100% perfect - my camera is cheap, and the macro lens has a tendency to focus on things at random no matter what I do (in this case, some dried grass and the turtle's hind foot), but you get the general impression.
current music: Hassan Hakmoun
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| Wednesday, April 30th, 2008
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2:54 pm - Thought du Jour
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"If we could see things as they really are, we should spend several minutes each morning bowing over the hand of the newsboy - thus creating some sensation in the neighbourhood."
-G.K. Chesterton (from memory, so wording may not be quite as printed)
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| Tuesday, April 29th, 2008
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9:32 pm - A wonder is what it is..
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A Warning to My Readers
Wendell Berry
Do not think me gentle
because I speak in praise
of gentleness, or elegant
because I honor the grace
that keeps this world. I am
a man crude as any,
gross of speech, intolerant,
stubborn, angry, full
of fits and furies. That I
may have spoken well
at times, is not natural.
A wonder is what it is.
current music: Messiaen, "Reveil des oiseaux"
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| Wednesday, April 23rd, 2008
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7:58 am - Delayed from Monday
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April 21st is John Muir's birthday.
.. a poet may lament, "Where is Telford whose bridged canals are still a Shropshire glory,
where Muir who on a Douglas spruce
Rode out a storm, and called an earthquake noble.."
-W.H. Auden
We all travel the milky way together, trees and men, but it never occurred to me until this storm day that trees are travelers in the ordinary sense. they make many journeys, not extensive ones, it is true, but our own little journeys, away and back again, are only little more than tree-wavings - many of them not so much.
-John Muir, The Mountains of California
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| Thursday, April 3rd, 2008
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7:41 am - Lift the lid on the crimes he did
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The phenomenon of rickrolling, recently honoured by YouTube as their corporate April Fool's joke, produces a similar "too soon?" reaction in me as drollery about the Great Hunger. Have we really forgotten what a Dark Age in pop music Rick Ghastly represented - those years from roughly 1987 to 1992 when New Wave/synth-pop was basically dead, with Depeche Mode's Music for the Masses as its swan-song, and grunge had yet to come along and, all its flaws aside, at least inject some thought and musical interest into the proceedings?
During those grim years, more than once my complaints about the lyrical banality of, say, Paula Abdul, were met with the unanswerable riposte: "Well, she's a really good dancer!" Sure, I could answer it with "What the balls does that have to do with anything?" and did, but to no effect.
(PS. If you can attribute the title line - without resorting to a search engine! - I will give you a pie.)
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7:38 am - Lulz Verne
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| Wednesday, April 2nd, 2008
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7:35 am - Bonus track
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7:29 am - Biophilia
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On the Companionship with Nature
Archibald Lampman
Let us be much with Nature; not as they
That labour without seeing, that employ
Her unloved forces, blindly without joy;
Nor those whose hands and crude delights obey
The old brute passion to hunt down and slay;
But rather as children of one common birth,
Discerning in each natural fruit of earth
Kinship and bond with this diviner clay.
Let us be with her wholly at all hours,
With the fond lover's zest, who is content
If his ear hears, and if his eye but sees;
So shall we grow like her in mould and bent,
Our bodies stately as her blessèd trees,
Our thoughts as sweet and sumptuous as her flowers.
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(comment on this)
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| Tuesday, April 1st, 2008
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6:50 am - A world of made is not a world of born
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pity this busy monster, manunkind,
e.e. cummings
pity this busy monster, manunkind,
not. Progress is a comfortable disease:
your victim (death and life safely beyond)
plays with the bigness of his littleness
--- electrons deify one razorblade
into a mountainrange; lenses extend
unwish through curving wherewhen till unwish
returns on its unself.
A world of made
is not a world of born --- pity poor flesh
and trees, poor stars and stones, but never this
fine specimen of hypermagical
ultraomnipotence. We doctors know
a hopeless case if --- listen: there's a hell
of a good universe next door; let's go
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(comment on this)
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| Monday, March 31st, 2008
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6:47 pm - Canadian Raising
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An odd phenomenon I would run into occasionally at home in Canada is the thing where I would allude to [some rather obscure musical act I like] and my interlocutor would assume that I meant to allude to [rather better-known Canadian act with a similar name]. Often I wouldn't even get a "Do you mean ..?", just the blithe assumption that I mis-spoke, or they mis-heard, or something. It's a blessing of life abroad that this rarely happens anymore.
Three egregious examples that I ran into more than once:
- No, the Oyster Band is not my cute pet name for Prairie Oyster, but an actual band.
- When I refer to the Incredible String Band, I am simply referring to a band I like by its proper name, not expressing admiration for wholesome Canfolk act Stringband.
- I know the fact that I speak, like most North Americans, with an alveolar tap, makes telling my t's from my d's in the middle of a word tricky, but in truth Katie Lee and k.d. lang are two rather different singers.
This operation does have an inverse; at least once I had someone think I meant the Rollins Band when I referred to Rawlins Cross.
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| Sunday, March 30th, 2008
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10:00 am - Comfort food reading
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Last night, not having anything new to read that was really moving me, I took down Arthur C. Clarke's Imperial Earth, one of my standard comfort-food-for-the-mind-books. Like a number of others in that category, it has the feature that nothing particularly bad happens to anybody in it. This it shares with Kim Stanley Robinson's more purely utopian outings, like Blue Mars, Pacific Edge, and the whole Science in the Capital trilogy. So like Utopia itself it has more the feel of a travelogue than a novel, strictly, but that's just fine. When I'm in the mood for something familiar and relaxing I tend to avoid things that have memorable nastiness - I love, say, Charles de Lint's The Riddle of the Wren, but unless I'm feeling fairly resilient I cringe at the thought of the first couple of chapters.
Anyway, Imperial Earth is a longtime favourite. I was probably about 12 or 13 when I first read it, and the casual, unremarked-upon bisexuality and polyamory doubtless soared right over my head, but I like to think that they helped me get used to the ideas and to be less shocked when I encountered them as things real people did. Now, I was reading a lot of Heinlein at the time too, and these things can be found in Heinlein (along with tinges of BDSM, which is absent from Clarke) - but to me that portrayal had a rather different character. From Heinlein, whether right or wrong, I always got the feeling that alternative sexualities were a privilege, like living on Secundus: something you earned by dint of being an immortal bad-ass with a lot of money.
Clarke's protagonists tend to be ordinary people for their time and place. Duncan Makenzie, the protagonist of Imperial Earth, is the third in a line of interplanetary tycoons, but there is no sense either in him or in those who interact with him that he is some kind of dynamic Randian overman - he's just this guy. (Well, and Clarke's 23rd century Solar System is kind of Scandinavian anyway; successful entrepreneurs enjoy prestige and influence, but tend not to amass large personal fortunes.)
Also I just ran across this nicely Firefly-ish touch: "He found himself using Terran figures of speech, adopting the slightly sing-song intonation now universal on Earth, and employing more and more words of Chinese origin."
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benet's journal