(boing!) Cnoocy Mosque O'Witz

I was playing D&D last night, and it went pretty late. Around 3 in the morning we ended the session, and I was sort of annoyed at myself, because I know I had to get up early this morning, and I wanted to be well-rested. Then I woke up and realized I'd been asleep and dreaming the whole time.

So. Psyched.

Not reference books about zombies, reference books that are back from the dead. I now own a newly-printed copy of a type of reference book that's been out of print for more than a century.
( The full story )

So I wasn't actually going to participate in Yuletide.* I had plenty of stuff to do before we traveled down to Tennessee for the holiday, and all my fanfiction is in drabbles.** So a 1000-word story to a specified fandom seemed beyond me.

But then Yuletide Madness started, which is when the unclaimed prompts go open for people to write shorter work for. Which led to mail from jadelennox pointing me at schemingreader's very open prompt for the Beatles album Revolver. And that's just too much fun to turn down. At first I thought I was going to write just one drabble about one song. Then I thought I'd write different drabbles for each track. Then in the shower a structure for the album asserted itself. By the end of the day I had 3 written and a thought about the remaining 11. A busy Christmas Eve of writing and a little conversation with JL and I had written a 1400-word drabble sequence and posted it as an actual Yuletide contribution. It was just a lot of fun to write. I like making things. I think my New Year's resolution is to make more things this year.

"Revolver" by cnoocy


* A yearly small-fandom fanfiction exchange. For more details google "Yuletide".
** 100-word very short stories.

O Snow
You are so pretty
Thank you for being
Such pretty snow

Remember that hidden camera footage that claimed to show that ACORN employees offered legal advice on prostitution and other illegal activities?
Doctored.

The videos that have been released appear to have been edited, in some cases substantially, including the insertion of a substitute voiceover for significant portions of Mr. O'Keefe's and Ms. Giles's comments, which makes it difficult to determine the questions to which ACORN employees are responding. A comparison of the publicly available transcripts to the released videos confirms that large portions of the original video have been omitted from the released versions.

This is disgusting. I want to know who at Fox News knew that they were feeding lies to the public, and I want those people fired. I want public apologies and firings next time this happens, too.

From Digby. Full report.

Yes, really.


via cdevers

The scene: cnoocy, as part of a cassette inventory of the house, comes into his housemates' room to grab some cassettes to catalog. Cats T and K are in the room already, lounging on the bed.

T: Hey, Cnoocy.
K: Oh my god! A human! runs from room
Cnoocy grabs some tapes and leaves.

Ten minutes later:

Cnoocy comes into his housemates' room to grab some cassettes to catalog. Cats T and K are in the room already, lounging on the bed.

T: Hey, Cnoocy.
K: Oh my god! A human! runs from room
...

Repeat endlessly.

You might think that the topic of baby names would only be of interest to you if you are actively in the process of deciding what to name a baby. You would be wrong. As the Baby Name Wizard, Laura Wattenberg uses the statistical study of baby names as a lens to look at a fascinating array of topics, from a three-part series on the racial context of baby-naming urban legends to a discussion of romance author pen names to an analysis of the New England Patriots' influence on the popularity of the name Brady.

If you find statistical analysis at all interesting (and I would give odds you've spent some time reading fivethirtyeight.com), her blog is highly recommended.

It's official canon that a lightsaber is a short beam of very powerful destructive force, like a chainsaw or a blowtorch. Only Jedi (or Sith) can use them because you need the skills of a Jedi not to injure yourself or someone else with such a powerful weapon.

But what if it's the opposite?

It actually makes more sense to me if the blade of a lightsaber is an extraordinarily weak, but extremely precise force. The Jedi are so attuned to the Force that they can find the spaces between individual atoms and sever the bonds holding a wall or an arm together. Similarly, they can find the force of another lightsaber and block its passage. But a non-Jedi like me or Admiral Ackbar would find it easier to injure someone with a laser pointer.


This idea is based on the Taoist text Cutting Up an Ox in which a butcher explains that his skill at ox-dividing is due to the Way. He sees the "spaces in the joints" and makes so little effort that his blade is still sharp after 19 years of use.

We were only on board to be the entertainment. The Batyscaphic Juggernaut HMS Bishopsgate was to be the prototype of an entire fleet of submersible craft, and for the gala maiden voyage, the ministry hired the men of the Pataphysical String Quartet and the four of us in the Ladies' Chamber Music Society of Lancashire. When monsters attacked the ship, it was because a helpful and courteous Royal Marines sergeant shoved us into Escape Capsule Amber that we eight survived. So when we arrived at this new and beautiful land beneath the waves, we naturally named it after him: Pepperland.

There are plenty of people who argue that charter schools are unfair because they believe that charters use admissions tests to only take the smartest kids.
1. No, they don't. Charters (with very few exceptions) take all students that apply, and use a lottery to determine who gets a spot.
2. If you think that testing for admission to a public school is wrong, you're not arguing against charter schools. You're arguing against magnet schools and exam schools.

An Act establishing the number six as the official number of the commonwealth.

I suspect that Bert has something to do with this.

warning: Beginning of clip is a bit staticky.

What do you consider the key facts and applications that should appear in a short introduction to differential calculus?

Apparently there's talk about compromise on the health care bill, including on the public option. So here's what I think would be a reasonable compromise:

If a privately insured person dies after having a claim denied or being dropped from their insurance, the entire chain of people involved with the decision, especially the set of executives who make the company policies, is charged with murder. After all, if the private system works so well, then a jury should agree that the company acted morally.

"But that's unfair!" some might say. "A private company can't be expected to shoulder that kind of risk!"

What's that you're saying? The public option does make sense?

This is aimed at the world at large, not at my friends list.

Hey, lumpybeast and I are going to go to the 8:00 showing of Angels and Demons at the Capitol tonight. Anybody want to come and mock with us?

I'm still reading Isidore's Etymologies off and on. Here he is defending the inaccuracies of previous authors in language that could apply to him:

Unde nec historicos nec commentatores varia dicentes imperite condemnare debemus, quia antiquitas ipsa creavit errorem.
Therefore we ought to rashly condemn neither historians nor commentators saying various things, because antiquity itself has created the error.
(XV.i.2.)

When I started reading Isidore, I wasn't expecting the amount of personal respect I've gained for him.

I don't have a PS3, XBOX360, or Wii, so I'm not in the market for the game itself. But man, I could watch the cinematic* all day.


(via Offworld)
* This is the pre-game movie that plays once you load the game until you hit the button to jump to the menu.

So there's a new study that finds that animals that look different from their fellows are less likely to get munched by predators. It's interesting enough, but I'm mainly posting because of the headline at LiveScience:

Freaks Survive Because They Are Strange

And don't you forget it!

via BoingBoing

1. Discovered that I could subscribe to the videos of Jay Smooth and Sarah Haskins as video podcasts and watch them on my iPod.
2. Got to move carts around in the delightfully creepy U-Haul facility on the Medford-Arlington-Somerville border.
3. Saw 4 movies: a vampire movie, a historical epic, a shiny space adventure, and a superhero story. Perhaps surprisingly, the vampire movie had the lowest body count and the least bleak outlook.

So, a pretty good weekend.

So yesterday we drove from Atkins all
the way to here, the hotel where we stayed
last Friday night. Assuming all goes well
(that is, New Jersey fails to eat us when
we pass through it again) tonight we're home.
I'll probably have more to say from there.