(boing!) Cnoocy Mosque O'Witz

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.

So now we're headed back to Arlington.
What did we do in Tennessee? Well, I
just hung around, spent time with lumpybeast,
her brother, mother, and their cat. The cat,
whose name is Daisy, is a sweetie-pie,
all white with big gray spots, who likes to climb
into a lap and purr. We got along.
The other major thing was lumpybeast
and mom's tattoos! For mom: a butterfly
in "sassy" stylized form, for beast: a star,
five-pointed, which is somewhat flowerlike.
(I'll post some pictures later if I can.)

So here it's Blank Verse Blog Week and I'm now
in Tennessee with lumpybeast. We had
some difficulty on our journey here;
we planned at first to get to Allentown
by Friday night, but we got started late
and in New Jersey we decided we
would find a place to sleep. But we did not
expect to tangle with Parsippany,
where going to the Days Inn from the mall
next door involves a fifteen-minute drive
to find some turning spots. And when we did
arrive they told us that they only had
a smoking room, and all the rooms we saw
were lacking windows. So we hit the road
again and headed Pennsylvania-wards.
Or so we thought. We went a ways and found
that we had no idea where we were.
So we got off and tried to find some place
where we could get directions. But we got
confused again and ended up at some
executive hotel where we found out
that we had sleepily confused our east
and west. But Jersey wasn't finished yet.
The westward ramp onto the interstate
was closed so we took detours all around
to find the path to take us out of state.
We counted mileposts down to twelve, and then
New Jersey had a final trick to throw.
We hit a spot of road construction, where
the speed went down to nothing. Half an hour
or something later we were out. A little drive
and we arrived outside of Allentown,
and checked into a nice hotel attached
by secret stairway to the furthest north
of all the Waffle Houses in the world.
(Hooray!) The other days were easier
except for storms in Eastern Tennessee.

And now we're at Panera posting this.

Just to remind y'all: Blank Verse Blog Week starts this Sunday! I'll be away for pretty much all of it, which actually may mean I have more time for posting than usual. We'll have to see.


Verse FAQ
Prose FAQ

ETA: corrected stupid typo in title

Congrats to Vermont for legalizing same-sex marriage!
What I could figure out with a quick check:
Text of the bill.
It goes into effect on September 1, 2009. A while to wait for Vermonters, but early Vermont September should produce some beautiful wedding photos.

Longevity prospects: Excellent. The Vermont constitution is really hard to amend, and cannot be amended by citizen initiative:

The Vermont General Assembly has the sole power to propose amendments to the Constitution of Vermont. An amendment must originate in the Senate, where it must receive a two-thirds vote. After passing the Senate, it must also receive a majority vote in the House. Any amendment that passes both Houses, must be repassed by majority votes, after a newly elected legislature is seated; again, first in the Senate, then in the House. The proposed amendment must then be passed by a majority of the state's voters at a referendum. Only every other Senate session may initiate the amendment process. Thus, Senates elected in off-year (i.e. non-Presidential) elections may initiate amendments, but not Senates elected during Presidential elections. (Vermont Constitution, Chapter 2, Section 72)

(From Wikipedia, but http://www.vermont-archives.org/govhistory/governance/Constitution/amending.html agrees.)
So the anti-marriage groups would need a significant legislative turnaround in both houses to repeal this.

Hi! I just wanted to point out the very readable summary of today's ruling from Iowa, especially pages 4-6 (of 6), where the court addresses the government's arguments in favor of a ban on same-sex marriage. Many of them take the form "whether or not X is a worthwhile goal, there's no evidence that excluding gays and lesbians from civil marriage would help X."

I've been keeping track of the discussion that is being called RaceFail09 on rydra_wong's lj. I don't have anything really deep to say about it, because I am very much reading and learning. But I do want to say this:

Publicizing any personal details, including their legal name, about someone who has requested that those details stay private is horrendously offensive and not to be easily forgiven. And you cannot make the argument that your target justified your behavior by saying bad things about your real name in public if you chose to participate in a discussion under your real name. You both brought a persona to the table, and each of you made the choice what data to link to that persona.