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Left Friday evening to go the performance of Video Games Live. Of the three concert series that I’ve seen now, VGL was the one geared most toward “the populous”, as it were, with video game tournaments, costume contests, and a light, video, and stage show to accompany the music. Most visual material of the three, hands-down. The music itself, I would rate as a superb performance from the DSO, but also the material was much less geared toward “we have a great symphony, let’s see them show off” and more toward “We have all this great light, video, and a great symphony. Let’s put them all together.” All told, however, it was worth the price of the ticket purchase. I also got to sit next to ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
kaijumaster and his beautiful wife for the performance. From there, I spent the night on greyweirdo‘s couch, to get up and go to Greenfield Village, where I spent most of the afternoon watching a game of 1867-rules base ball with greyweirdo and hollygrahm. Different enough from the modern game to be interesting, and reminded me mostly of slow-pitch softball in its execution. Now that I’ve seen one, if I go again before I leave, I’ll probably walk around the village and the museum more, which will let me probe greyweirdo’s expansive knowledge of the matters at hand, including the parts of Henry Ford’s history that are conspicuously absent from his shrine. And why eating a chili-and-onions hot dog should make one wonder where the rabbit meat is. I was also gifted with two DVDs of film noir, possibly so that I can get acquainted with a genre that greyweirdo likes to write and watch. I suspect his choices are high-quality movies, and so I will get around to them at some point. Today has been spent recovering and reducing my tabs to a manageable amount, which is why there’s plenty of links to be had this time around. Two of my major sources have gone on sabbatical or technical difficulties, but my like of odd things and such has permeated out sufficiently that you, semi-loyal readers, are filling in the gaps nicely. Without you, I’d actually have to talk about my life (which, incidentally, men use about the same amount of words as women do in any given sequence of days), and that’s just boring. (Although not as potentially boring as How to Hard Boil an Egg - which I wouldn’t think is a particularly tough task.)
Although, boring is sometimes nice. Just ask the guest who found the bodies of the host's wife and stepson in the freezer. They could do well with some boring. The victims of a gang-rape of a mother where her son was forced to rape her, and then had cleaning fluids poured in his (the son's) eyes probably never want an interesting day in their lives again. Or the fight that has sprung up over the care of a child born to an Asperger's woman, with relatives offering to take on the child if the state absolutely has to take the child away from the mother, which would seem odd. I think I may be missing something here - what would make Asperger’s such a danger, other than the post-natal depression mentioned in the article?
A new study suggests that children actively contribute to parents having less time to exercise. Because, y’know, there’s a child there that requires attention, and it’s a little harder to schedule larger chunks of “exercise” when you might get interrupted by a newborn. Still, that’s formal exercise. The article does include a small bit of the opinion that parenting is significant exercise in itself. I suspect that an exercise regimen that allows for watching and attending to a child’s needs is doable. It may just not involve running five miles with free weights. Instead, it could be five miles with a baby carrier.
Political campaign support car runs out of gas in parade. I suspect there are several who wish the campaign would die in a similar manner. A large part of the campaign offerings so far have not impressed me in any sort of “I’d vote for them” way. Besides, I’m waiting until the primaries are somewhere close to being on the horizon before I start really caring, because then all the candidates that are actually going to be available will be there, rather than the ones that have declared already. Assuming that the country doesn’t give a strong thumping to the people who believe themselves above the law, and work to perpetuate this thought. Plus, by waiting, I get to see the ridiculous things like people complaining that Mitt Romney didn't do more to take pornography off of Marriot hotel offerings when he was on the board. The dirt-digging is silly. What’s serious is that Illinois is requiring testing for PTSD and brain injuries on all returning National Guard members from their state. I think that’s a very good indication of how serious things have become in Iraq, and how ragged the troops are being run trying to keep order there. The candidate fielded that can put an end to the matter and be able to do the repairs will be a candidate more likely to garner votes this election cycle.
A child-goddess has had her goddess status revoked because she left her country to promote a movie. As she aged, she would have been considered no longer a goddess as well, but the saddening part is that local custom believes that those who marry the former child-goddesses suffer early deaths. So, instead, the girls are likely to suffer. Not exactly a great system, I’d say.
Getting into that murky, mired, and often unfriendly area where religion and the law mix, a judge has required a business owner accused of dismissing a gay employee on discriminatory grounds to testify about his personal beliefs. The owner has refused, claiming that such inquiries are a violation of his ability to freely exercise his religion. The objection was apparently that the questions were not asking on what the defendant said or did, which could be inquired into, but his personal beliefs. The judge found that because those beliefs may have been part of the motivation for the plantiff's dismissal, they can be inquired into. (A bit more legalese in this link, but understandable nonetheless.) As a private citizen, he’s allowed to believe whatever he wants. As a businessman and employer, he is required to abide by the law, which forbids dismissal based on sexual orientation. On a similar note, although no lawsuit attached (as of yet), a lesbian was bounced from the women's room for looking "too masclune", according to her complaint. Even after offering to show identification and prove her female gender, she was still sent away. And there’s the Washington woman who claims her employer kept harassing her to pray and go to church, retaliating when she didn't do so. Finally, someone posted to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
dark_christian a survey and donation mailing from the Traditional Values Coalition. Always nice to know that the TVC is interested in only two things - your money and your support of their agenda.
Last out of this section are some opinions about Supreme Court opinions and the Episcopal priest who claims to be both Christian and Muslim. We certainly have our opinions on everything. Which wouldn’t be so bad, except that our opinion on matters of science is generally not backed up by much/any knowledge thereof. Hopefully, it will fall out of fashion to be ignorant of science, even if you want to reason based on nonscientific entities and proclamations. With things like the failure of a perpetual motion machine demonstration, maybe the silly bits of some of these beliefs will finally be seen as silly to those who believe them.
The researcher and librarian in me brightens greatly at the purchase of a collection of political pamphlets, clippings, and such collected by a conservative mother, beginning in the 1940s up to her death. Original source materials, in good condition, always is a great thing to have in the academic library. This will help preserve what the past actually thought about each other. Speaking of my profession, here's a great New York Times article about the changing face and hipness of librarianship. We’re not shushers anymore. We may not be hip to the extreme edge, but we’re not stuck in the 1950s, either. Believe it!
Australia raises spectres of terrorism in Indonesia with travel advisory, Indonesian police say, "What you say?". One would think that if there’s such an immanent encounter to be had, that the Indonesian police would want to know about it and do something about it. So, is this bad blood between the two countries, or what?
In the “Well, if you’re up for that” department, a Heinlein Concordance. Having not read much for Heinlein (other than Friday, and that was some time ago), I don’t necessarily understand the need, but for those who do, here it is.
The “Far too much money and time” department offers a two-person WoW raid setup, controlling multiple accounts. On the forums where many of those pictures are posted, there’s some “fake!” cries among other things. I don’t doubt that it’s possible to engage in this kind of thing, but there’s got to be some very fine-tuned mechanics going on to control that many characters simultaneously. Unless there’s a gambit system being engaged there that automates much of the work. Also from the same department, someone who's eye-modded so that they look like they're from Arrakis.
The “Hey, these might be useful!” department offers in response, Tater Mitts, gloves that you can use to peel potatoes with.
I’ve had a chuckle after reading the following Salon piece. Jennifer Niesslein gave a serious go at all types of self-help to see if they worked, and the results were mixed. Seeing what happens when someone goes for the whole of self-help, even with someone who willingly plays along, is worthy of a laugh when things fall down spectacularly at times.
Last marks for tonight - if you’ve got pr0n, don't take your computer to Geek Squad for service, lest they decide they’re making a copy of it for themselves. If they’re going to take that, there’s a big potential worry that they could take something else, too, something far more damaging. Better to find a place that you can trust to do good, secure repairs. To brighten that rather dark story, have a look at light graffiti - using glowsticks and time-lapse photography to create shapes and objects. Unless viewed at the right angle with the right conditions, though, they look meaningless. Some of the same pictures, bigger, and some other designs. Certainly an alternative to a more permanent manner of tagging, with paint and stickers and graffiti and such, but it requires the right kinds of cameras and technologies to make it work out, especially if you want to do shapes that actually require depth perception or other such tricks. Still, really neat to see these sorts of things - it says that we’re not completely out of ideas yet.
Tomorrow, of course, things begin anew. More job applications, more hunting, more wondering whether or not life is going to come through in the clutch, and most likely, more time spent playing games trying not to think of all of those things. It’s nice being out of class, sure, but the bills don’t wait for me to find a job, and they’re not flexible on when they are to be paid. Still, all I can do is try. It being the beginning of the month again, perhaps there will be a rush of interviews.
kaijumaster and his beautiful wife for the performance. From there, I spent the night on greyweirdo‘s couch, to get up and go to Greenfield Village, where I spent most of the afternoon watching a game of 1867-rules base ball with greyweirdo and hollygrahm. Different enough from the modern game to be interesting, and reminded me mostly of slow-pitch softball in its execution. Now that I’ve seen one, if I go again before I leave, I’ll probably walk around the village and the museum more, which will let me probe greyweirdo’s expansive knowledge of the matters at hand, including the parts of Henry Ford’s history that are conspicuously absent from his shrine. And why eating a chili-and-onions hot dog should make one wonder where the rabbit meat is. I was also gifted with two DVDs of film noir, possibly so that I can get acquainted with a genre that greyweirdo likes to write and watch. I suspect his choices are high-quality movies, and so I will get around to them at some point. Today has been spent recovering and reducing my tabs to a manageable amount, which is why there’s plenty of links to be had this time around. Two of my major sources have gone on sabbatical or technical difficulties, but my like of odd things and such has permeated out sufficiently that you, semi-loyal readers, are filling in the gaps nicely. Without you, I’d actually have to talk about my life (which, incidentally, men use about the same amount of words as women do in any given sequence of days), and that’s just boring. (Although not as potentially boring as How to Hard Boil an Egg - which I wouldn’t think is a particularly tough task.)Although, boring is sometimes nice. Just ask the guest who found the bodies of the host's wife and stepson in the freezer. They could do well with some boring. The victims of a gang-rape of a mother where her son was forced to rape her, and then had cleaning fluids poured in his (the son's) eyes probably never want an interesting day in their lives again. Or the fight that has sprung up over the care of a child born to an Asperger's woman, with relatives offering to take on the child if the state absolutely has to take the child away from the mother, which would seem odd. I think I may be missing something here - what would make Asperger’s such a danger, other than the post-natal depression mentioned in the article?
A new study suggests that children actively contribute to parents having less time to exercise. Because, y’know, there’s a child there that requires attention, and it’s a little harder to schedule larger chunks of “exercise” when you might get interrupted by a newborn. Still, that’s formal exercise. The article does include a small bit of the opinion that parenting is significant exercise in itself. I suspect that an exercise regimen that allows for watching and attending to a child’s needs is doable. It may just not involve running five miles with free weights. Instead, it could be five miles with a baby carrier.
Political campaign support car runs out of gas in parade. I suspect there are several who wish the campaign would die in a similar manner. A large part of the campaign offerings so far have not impressed me in any sort of “I’d vote for them” way. Besides, I’m waiting until the primaries are somewhere close to being on the horizon before I start really caring, because then all the candidates that are actually going to be available will be there, rather than the ones that have declared already. Assuming that the country doesn’t give a strong thumping to the people who believe themselves above the law, and work to perpetuate this thought. Plus, by waiting, I get to see the ridiculous things like people complaining that Mitt Romney didn't do more to take pornography off of Marriot hotel offerings when he was on the board. The dirt-digging is silly. What’s serious is that Illinois is requiring testing for PTSD and brain injuries on all returning National Guard members from their state. I think that’s a very good indication of how serious things have become in Iraq, and how ragged the troops are being run trying to keep order there. The candidate fielded that can put an end to the matter and be able to do the repairs will be a candidate more likely to garner votes this election cycle.
A child-goddess has had her goddess status revoked because she left her country to promote a movie. As she aged, she would have been considered no longer a goddess as well, but the saddening part is that local custom believes that those who marry the former child-goddesses suffer early deaths. So, instead, the girls are likely to suffer. Not exactly a great system, I’d say.
Getting into that murky, mired, and often unfriendly area where religion and the law mix, a judge has required a business owner accused of dismissing a gay employee on discriminatory grounds to testify about his personal beliefs. The owner has refused, claiming that such inquiries are a violation of his ability to freely exercise his religion. The objection was apparently that the questions were not asking on what the defendant said or did, which could be inquired into, but his personal beliefs. The judge found that because those beliefs may have been part of the motivation for the plantiff's dismissal, they can be inquired into. (A bit more legalese in this link, but understandable nonetheless.) As a private citizen, he’s allowed to believe whatever he wants. As a businessman and employer, he is required to abide by the law, which forbids dismissal based on sexual orientation. On a similar note, although no lawsuit attached (as of yet), a lesbian was bounced from the women's room for looking "too masclune", according to her complaint. Even after offering to show identification and prove her female gender, she was still sent away. And there’s the Washington woman who claims her employer kept harassing her to pray and go to church, retaliating when she didn't do so. Finally, someone posted to
dark_christian a survey and donation mailing from the Traditional Values Coalition. Always nice to know that the TVC is interested in only two things - your money and your support of their agenda.Last out of this section are some opinions about Supreme Court opinions and the Episcopal priest who claims to be both Christian and Muslim. We certainly have our opinions on everything. Which wouldn’t be so bad, except that our opinion on matters of science is generally not backed up by much/any knowledge thereof. Hopefully, it will fall out of fashion to be ignorant of science, even if you want to reason based on nonscientific entities and proclamations. With things like the failure of a perpetual motion machine demonstration, maybe the silly bits of some of these beliefs will finally be seen as silly to those who believe them.
The researcher and librarian in me brightens greatly at the purchase of a collection of political pamphlets, clippings, and such collected by a conservative mother, beginning in the 1940s up to her death. Original source materials, in good condition, always is a great thing to have in the academic library. This will help preserve what the past actually thought about each other. Speaking of my profession, here's a great New York Times article about the changing face and hipness of librarianship. We’re not shushers anymore. We may not be hip to the extreme edge, but we’re not stuck in the 1950s, either. Believe it!
Australia raises spectres of terrorism in Indonesia with travel advisory, Indonesian police say, "What you say?". One would think that if there’s such an immanent encounter to be had, that the Indonesian police would want to know about it and do something about it. So, is this bad blood between the two countries, or what?
In the “Well, if you’re up for that” department, a Heinlein Concordance. Having not read much for Heinlein (other than Friday, and that was some time ago), I don’t necessarily understand the need, but for those who do, here it is.
The “Far too much money and time” department offers a two-person WoW raid setup, controlling multiple accounts. On the forums where many of those pictures are posted, there’s some “fake!” cries among other things. I don’t doubt that it’s possible to engage in this kind of thing, but there’s got to be some very fine-tuned mechanics going on to control that many characters simultaneously. Unless there’s a gambit system being engaged there that automates much of the work. Also from the same department, someone who's eye-modded so that they look like they're from Arrakis.
The “Hey, these might be useful!” department offers in response, Tater Mitts, gloves that you can use to peel potatoes with.
I’ve had a chuckle after reading the following Salon piece. Jennifer Niesslein gave a serious go at all types of self-help to see if they worked, and the results were mixed. Seeing what happens when someone goes for the whole of self-help, even with someone who willingly plays along, is worthy of a laugh when things fall down spectacularly at times.
Last marks for tonight - if you’ve got pr0n, don't take your computer to Geek Squad for service, lest they decide they’re making a copy of it for themselves. If they’re going to take that, there’s a big potential worry that they could take something else, too, something far more damaging. Better to find a place that you can trust to do good, secure repairs. To brighten that rather dark story, have a look at light graffiti - using glowsticks and time-lapse photography to create shapes and objects. Unless viewed at the right angle with the right conditions, though, they look meaningless. Some of the same pictures, bigger, and some other designs. Certainly an alternative to a more permanent manner of tagging, with paint and stickers and graffiti and such, but it requires the right kinds of cameras and technologies to make it work out, especially if you want to do shapes that actually require depth perception or other such tricks. Still, really neat to see these sorts of things - it says that we’re not completely out of ideas yet.
Tomorrow, of course, things begin anew. More job applications, more hunting, more wondering whether or not life is going to come through in the clutch, and most likely, more time spent playing games trying not to think of all of those things. It’s nice being out of class, sure, but the bills don’t wait for me to find a job, and they’re not flexible on when they are to be paid. Still, all I can do is try. It being the beginning of the month again, perhaps there will be a rush of interviews.
