Madcap insanity! - 29 May 2007

Nailed one further down as to location and time - time got changed, so I took advantage of that and made sure I knew where it was - it’s a five-hour interview, including a tour, which I think will be spiffy. And then, there’s a frenzied amount of plotting and planning going on, as I have to make sure I can stand bleacher-bottom long enough to watch my little brother graduate from high school. (Said little brother, whom I see eye-to-eye with now, physically.) Over the weekend, my grandfather achieved 90 years of existence, and was still chatting and remembering all sorts of people. While he’s not going to climb Everest, as a 71-year-old Japanese man did, he’s still a big font of information for the local area and the genealogy. So lots happened. I also found out that my paid account status is set to expire in 12 days. So, decision time.

There was also the day where people remember that war kills, although they’ve often dressed it in the fashion of “remember these heroes who nobly died for us” so that the underlying part doesn’t trouble them. We’ll keep in that vein with Faces of the Fallen, which has the names and faces of those who have died in Iraq and Afghanistan. 3,814 total fatalities, and rising. Making a statement about the current administration’s technique, most likely, flags on veterans' graves were burnt, after some had swastikas drawn on them. Rather than being “aww, free speech, how cute”, the authorities are very admant that this is a crime. Perhaps because of the swastikas? (I admit, I’m not up on the relevant laws regarding what is considered acceptable free speech involving a flag.) bradhicks offers up two easy ways for the Republicans to support the troops - by enlisting themselves, and by not trying to screw the Democratic-leaning servicepersons out of their absentee ballots. There’s also a special appearance of the Yellow Elephant Bingo Card, which is worth seeing. There’s also news that a visible protest is ending as Cindy Sheehan packs up and heads home, although not without skewering several groups on both right and left for not being able to achieve peace and for playing politics with human lives.

More political stuff - taking pictures of French fries could involve you being fingered as a terrorist wannabe. I wonder what sorts of sensitive material is near the French fry stand, in that case. Glenn Greenwald has a similar bout with the absurd in some jumping-to-conclusions from bloggers with a conservative bent about a memo that was apparently talking about a possibly true thing, but had a rather odd-looking logo on it. Having been declared a fake, it turns out that what the memo was talking about was accurate. Ace of Spades, one of the bloggers named by Greenwald, offers his rationale for believing the memo copy he looked at was fake. And offers a couple opinions about how he believes the media uncritically accepts anything that makes the government and military look bad. Seems to me that the media is always accused of fellating the other side and thumbing its nose at your preferred viewpoint. This would be the point where, either knowingly or unknowingly, I put in “Liberal media, my tailscales.” just to see if anyone would notice.

Flying the finger to the Roman Catholic Church, a female bishop ordained several more women and a married man in a ceremony. The Vatican, of course, doesn’t recognize any of the ordinations officially, preferring to stay a boys-only club.

In a different sort of protest a Missouri man started burning his book collection after being unable to find a place to donate them to. Luckily, bibliophiles have started coming to the rescue, buying the man’s books of him for their own collections in hopes to save them from the pyre. Whew. Yomiko would die if she saw that. Of course, then she’d probably buy up all the books that weren’t burnt. I hope that the collection finds good homes, rather than the ash pile.

In what is hopefully a good sign, the United States and Iran officially restored their diplomatic relations with each other, meeting over Iraqi security. I have no idea at all whether or not this will help toward keeping the world in a relatively stable situation or further push it toward the point where people keep their fingers on the Big Red Nuclear Weapon button.

Following up on an earlier remark, Newsweek notes that media coverage of the Pew study finding most Muslims aren't malajusted or homicidal was negative. The focus was on the small minority, rather than the large majority. Sounds kind of like who gets all the attention in Christian... you know, I think the two are probably related.

Proving that technology is still not really ready for prime time on total automation, a woman who shared the same name as a registered sex offender had her MySpace page pulled. The appeal process was less than satisfactory, according to the article, and there is speculation that the Angry Lawyerbots might have a field day with the current procedure. Staying in the technology vein, the Washington Post has a small blurb on e-mail bankruptcy, a decision to not answer the e-mail already piling up in one's inbox, often based on being so far behind they’ll never catch up. Going from e-mail to cars, Lithium Technologies has retrofitted a Toyota Pruis to allow for what it claims is 125-plus miles per gallon of fuel efficiency, using a bank of lithium batteries for the plug-in hybrid. I wonder what the cost of the retrofit was, though. Something that’s probably more affordable and pretty cool is the oil lamp made from the lightbulb.

The former head of China's food and drug administration, convicted of corruption, has been sentenced to death. The bribery allowed for things to be approved of that shouldn’t have been, and resulted in deaths of those on the other end of it. But Hammurabi’s Code seems harsh, these days. Of course, had it been someone I knew, I might be more willing to hand him over for such a punishment.

Wanting to encourage financial independence in the college-age crowd, The Problem With the Bank of Mom and Dad talks about the potential pitfalls of regular gifts from Mom and Dad. Not everyone will fall victim to them, of course. And some of us know what’s coming when it’s time to go solo and independent. (A left jab followed by a right cross.) It’s still worth reading, though.

In news of the odd, a man pinned a leopard that wandered into his house for twenty minutes until authorities arrived. The leopard was weakened from not having a nice diet, which is why the man could pin him in the first place.

Researchers at the University of Michigan suggest that planting observatories and research stations on Luna would be ideal for studying Terra. Makes sense, right? Natural satellite, good placement. Of course, the expense and the lack of atmosphere do impede the ideal considerably. Changing gears to something more Hitchiker’s Guide, mice that have a gene that contributes to Alzheimer's turned off perform better on associative learning tasks.

Last for tonight is something contemplative - a company that will build or rent you a labyrinth. The pattern, anyway, not necessarily the walls and the other parts - although the pattern could then be used to construct a hedge maze or some such thing. Anyway, I like the idea of being able to trace out the pattern by walking it as much as I would by tracing it on a smaller, similarly-inscribed object. If labyrinths aren’t your thing for meditation or contemplation, though, fear not, for here is a launching point for touring several Japanese gardens, which could serve your wandering-by-Web needs.

Okay, heading off to bed soon, then. Much to do tomorrow before the day is finished.

Take two: The "What Now" phase.

While I was enjoying the fruits of greyweirdo‘s grilling technique, but before we watched Time Bandits (I think - might have been after Time Bandits. Either way, starkruzr and moltare, that icon makes so much more sense now.), I was lamenting that while I had managed to achieve everything I had strove for fairly quickly, the delay on obtaining a job has annoyed me significantly. From there, though, I think I hit the much more interesting revelation that while I’ve got the degree that I started on the six-year quest for, I don’t particualrly feel any different. While part of that might be because I haven’t had the “relatives-and-friends big celebratory bash” for that graudation yet, a bigger part of it is that I was expecting something out of this. greyweirdo pointed out that up until this point, the sequence had played out pretty well - you do well in each grade to pass on to the next, then do well in high school to get to a good university, then do well in the good university to get to grad school (in my case), and then do well in grad school to get the degree and the job. Had things continued apace, I would probably have had this particular bit later on in life than earlier, but I suspect it would have arrived at some point (my initial guess would be at the point where I mustered sufficient courage to actually explore some fragment of the dating scene).

As greyweirdo put it, “Now what?” So you got the degree, and the good grades, and all that. Now what? After getting a job, now what? Significant other? House? Children? Part of it is anticipating the next stage, and the other part is expecting that after you achieve this milestone, then you’ll be content or important or whatever it is that we’re shooting for. (Buying this thing will solve your problems and fill that empty hole in your life! For 666 easy payments of $666.66! Order yours today!) So, I was expecting some sort of turning-the-corner kind of event, and when it failed to materialize in the way I expected it to, well, now what? I think I keep expecting to see “silveradept finished graduate school! WIS +5, INT +10, CHA -3!” (well, okay, I don’t know if my charisma went down, but some days I wonder...) and that there would be some quest reward at the end (there are, but it’s a subtle set of them, I suspect.) where I got a Big Shiny that proves that I did it. Maybe the diploma counts, maybe not. Would a diploma be a useful artifact for me to equip? I have no idea if “librarian” or “scholar” derives from a wizard-type character who might benefit. Considering history, though, we probably descend from the clerics as clerks, and so would be better suited to wield hammers than books. And now I wonder if Nethack has the “Pinball Wizard” character class. As it is, I’m probably having a milder version of the mid-life crisis at this point in my life. I never know if there ever was a cure to such a thing, perhaps aside from the achievement of nirvana.

So yeah. All’s quiet on the job front, and it’s making the other fronts look around at each other and wonder what they’re supposed to be doing. At some point, I think they turned around and started staring at me and saying, “Well? What now?” I just don’t know if it’s okay to shrug and say “Got me.”