![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
silveradeptUnfortunately, ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
greyweirdo, there were no pretty girls. There was practice, there was observation, but there were no pretty girls. This is unfortunate. Fortunately, though, there’s more than meets the eye, as I’ve signed off on one data model, assignment-wise. Tomorrow, perhaps, I will get inspired to do the other one. That’s what I’m hoping for, anyway. But since I can take my time, I will. No hurry, no worry.
I still have little to no actual social life, of course - everyone scatters to the winds when the break rolls around, and here I am. Oh, well. It’ll just help me get caught up on things, maybe a little ahead, maybe not. I dreamed about someone from the past this morning. I think the only reason that particular detail has stuck out is because it’s someone that I haven’t seen anything of for three years. And thus, was rather out of the blue, but such is the dreamscape. Might have been inspired by a series of posts and replies going over old ground - how gentlemen should go about making themselves favorable to women. It was all advice about getting oneself out of the Friend Zone, which is apparently an accursed black hole. There was something off-kilter about the person who was recommending what has become the standard advice for guys - behave as if you have a massive tool, without being a massive tool. The part that felt off to me, though, was that he said that women had two categories - “screw yes” and “screw no”. His advice was to get into a woman’s “screw yes” category - which means lots of touching, flirting, and easy on the being able and wanting to understand her emotions. Physical compatibility is not necessarily something to be tossed by the wayside, but it felt very off that his advice was to concentrate on a physical compatibility before getting to the point where empathy and other mental and emotional attributes come into play. So, those with experience in dating and the like, is he right? Does a woman want to know whether she’d go to bed with a prospective date before she decided to invest any time or open up to him? Or her, for that matter.
Anyway, it’s not necessarily that important, just odd. If people really want details, there are other ways of contacting me.
So, forthcoming are the linkies.
Joe Liberman staked out his position on Iraq and the troop surge today, offering an opinion in the Wall Street Journal of "new blood, new strategy - let's see if it works.". Mr. Liberman says that the last strategy failed because we were too optimistic about its effectiveness. He then asks us, and especially his fellow Senators, to think optimistically about the new strategy. After all, you don’t fund ventures you expect to fail, unless you’re proving a point with the failure that will help lead to a greater success.
The Iranian rocket launch on Sunday apparently could reach space, the Iranian media said. That gives a bit more for range and power, should Iran be constructing material for nuclear payloads to be delivered by those rockets. I wonder, if they knew then what they know now, whether those who developed atomic weaponry would go through with it a second time.
Reading the transcript of the 18 Doughty Street dot com commercial that offers an alternate history without America, my eyebrow only pops higher and higher. Apparently, without America, the Soviet revolution succeeds, there is no polio vaccine, Saddam Hussein gets nuclear weapons, and other such things. I’m rather impressed, of course - I didn’t realize that America was the only thing standing between Freedom and Terror for All Those Years. And this is supposedly aimed at the people who have been around, colonized, been kicked out of their colonies, and gone through two world wars. Cheeky little bastards, aren’t we, America?
In other things, the United Kingdom has given the green light to conduct genetic modification tests on human embyros. Only those experiments that could conclude within two weeks of the modification are currently allowed, but that could possibly change. I would guess it would depend on the viability of the results obtained in the short-run experiments. The designer-baby worries are already being voiced. I would think that with as much trouble as we have maintaining plant species that have had their genes somewhat homogenized or modified would be a good enough warning against trying to do the same to the human condition. We might find out own rot, then, and that would probably mean that someone would win the bet on a disaster that kills millions or more. In the Untied states, a bill prohibiting discrimination by jobs or insurace coverage based on genetic factors looks ready for passage, according to NewScientist. Which could neatly solve the problem of “When the superbabies take over”, at least in the letter of the law. As we’ve been strongly reminded of over the last few years, the law isn’t always followed to the letter. So I hope they instill a spirit of generosity, fairness, and justice in the designer babies.
I’m always amazed at how densely information can be packed into words, sentences, and paragraphs. What would have taken me five pages, someone else can do in one. And thus, the link that follows works well as a pamphlet or pocket guide to major parts of Gnosticism - The Gnostic World View, in about five paragraphs. Very densely packed material. Hopefully useful to many who want to be able to be inquisitive and find, rather than passively receive and follow a divinity. If you just wanted to watch a divinity flutter in teh breeze, paper gods like these ones might be more up your alley. Although, even then, I suspect the paper gods had an active kind of worship surrounding them, rather than the somewhat American tendency to sit in the pew for an hour and feel that everything necessary for salvation and enlightenment has happened. Of course, if the filmmakers are right and the ossuary alleged to be the casket of Jesus Christ actually turns out to be so, (although, how do you figure that part out? And all it would prove is that there was a person somewhere in that time frame with the name Jesus.) well, then maybe we may have to update foundational texts for a new generation.
The Slacktivist posted two opinions about religion and faith worth sharing tonight. The first is about how "people of faith" and "values voters" are phrases that don't mean what they mean, and how Mitt Romney is using them, to his peril. It also talks about what would be better phrases to use to get the message that Romney wants across, and reminds us of a segment in the Constitution that says there will never be such a thing as a religious test administered to those who would hold public office. The second thought of his is McFaith: A dialogue, which wisely and subtly pokes at the American want to be and do anything and call it whatever they want to, as opposed to giving something a name and a meaning behind it, and restricting the use of that name to the things that actually are associated with it. American faith really is the bastard child, sometimes. Whether it’s a forward-looking, ready-for-change one or a backwards-looking, fearing imaginary persecution one, we’ll find out eventually. Listening to that dialogue play out in my head had its moments of “Gah. Stupid, stupid rat creatures.”, while at the same time thinking “There are people who would probably have this conversation.” Guess I’m just weird that way.
As a matter left mostly to the states, reproductive rights have various degrees of freedoms and availabilities, including the often-heated debate over contraceptives, and who should be paying for them. The Statesman Journal from Oregon has an article today that says with the state in the hands of Democrats, a bill to require insurance providers to pay for contraception has a chance of passing. I guess it’s an individual decision by each company as to whether they want to fund contraceptives. If they’re willing to pay for all the things that happen to children as they grow up, one would think that contraceptives would be an economical thing to fund, especially in relation to things like medical procedures and all the necessary bits to ensure strong and healthy children.
Cadence Systems claims that chips with diagonal paths in the grids will consume less power and run faster. Which makes sense. I just wonder if there’s a greater chance of electron flow or other things running off-track if there are diagonals introduced. It certainly wouldn’t do to have your data stream switch processor paths accidentally in the middle of computing. I’m not familiar enough with chip design to know whether this actually happens, though, so I could be talking out my arse.
Xerox, responsible for things like photocopiers, the graphical user interface, and the mouse (as well as many other innovations in technology) is currently in the process of trying to perfect a printer/paper combination that is reusable - because the printer doesn't use ink, but UV light. If they can get that to work, and have it last for a sufficient amount of time, a large part of the paper waste will be defeated. For archivists and archival purposes, though, it could be the beginning of a nightmare. What is considered “archive-worthy” material might be a decision out of the hands of the archivist(s). (If it isn’t already). Preservation versus waste-reduction... which is kind of a battle going on right now. Eventually, someone will figure out a sensible policy on what gets printed on real paper for the archives. (Right?) They may not do it in meetings, though - in meetings, people are not as smart as they are individually. Hmm. Maybe that explains why geeks tend to shun the meetings - they already know about the brain-sucking power they have.
Something significantly overdue - The United States Post Office may be soon introducing a permanently first-class stamp. Regardless of what the postage rate is, these stamps will always be good for the first-class rate. I like this idea - it lets people buy their stamp at the rate they’re used to in whatever quantity they want to, and then they don’t have to worry about the rate increases until they run out of their stock of permanent stamps, at which point, they probably but another lot’s worth and continue on their way. The post office will probably have to retool its income plans to account for people who will buy a large load of stamps and then do nothing for the next few years while they use up all the stamps, but we might find that more people send mail because they don’t have to worry about the cost of the stamp. (Which is still pretty damn cheap for private correspondence.)
For whatever reason, I get to loop back to where I started from with the end of this entry - on a similar sort of note, although darker than just feeling discomfort at certain ideas being expressed. Through Majikthise, a New York Times Article about the Delta Zeta sorority’s national chapter recommended twenty-three women of the Depauw chapter for alumnus status sooner than they expected, apparently after the Depauw chapter was described as “socially awkward”, “offbeat hippies”, and “daddy’s little princesses”. The members chosen for eviction, however, had a running theme - some were overweight, others black or Koran or Vietnamese. Actually, even the chapter president wasn’t safe from the axe. The dozen that stayed were conventionally pretty and popular with fraternity men. The sorority says that the decisions were made because of a lack of commitment to meeting recruitment goals. From the perspective of those who were shown the door, one shared by Majikthise's take on the issue, the sorority basically culled out the “undesirable” population of the chapter under the guise of trying to recruit more people into the sorority. It is rather... coincidental that those chosen to remain all generally fit a particular standard of bodily figure. There will likely be investigations and allegations and possibly suits filed in court over this matter. I expect to see more of it at some point.
And thus, the landing point for tonight’s link frenzy - an opinion that I share heartily - Salon's Charles Taylor makes a plea for people to take a second look at glasses and see the people who wear them as sexy. And not just because I have junior (senior?) memberships in the Geek, Nerd, and Socially Awkward Clubs (hee-hee *snort*) do I find glasses-wearing women to be attractive. Like any other feature or facet of a person, glasses can benefit or detract from said person’s attractiveness. I can’t say I have no prejudices towards attractiveness, but I’d like to think that I have a fairly open mind about most things. So I’ve been enamored of women who wear glasses, women with contacts, and women who didn’t need either. Ah, well. The Friend Zone is comfortable enough for me - there’s a lounge chair here, and a game system, and if I look just right, there’s a couch for ultimate lazy. I’ll probably be here a while longer. It only bothers me at certain times, really. So here’s hoping for dreams of a different sort of weird tomorrow. Assuming that I remember anything about them at all. Night, folks.
(P.S. - I picked up another couple of people watching the journal, so say hi torowenablue and oletheros, if you should see them around. If they have time, I’d love to hear how they managed to find the place and why they decided to actually stick around.)
greyweirdo, there were no pretty girls. There was practice, there was observation, but there were no pretty girls. This is unfortunate. Fortunately, though, there’s more than meets the eye, as I’ve signed off on one data model, assignment-wise. Tomorrow, perhaps, I will get inspired to do the other one. That’s what I’m hoping for, anyway. But since I can take my time, I will. No hurry, no worry. I still have little to no actual social life, of course - everyone scatters to the winds when the break rolls around, and here I am. Oh, well. It’ll just help me get caught up on things, maybe a little ahead, maybe not. I dreamed about someone from the past this morning. I think the only reason that particular detail has stuck out is because it’s someone that I haven’t seen anything of for three years. And thus, was rather out of the blue, but such is the dreamscape. Might have been inspired by a series of posts and replies going over old ground - how gentlemen should go about making themselves favorable to women. It was all advice about getting oneself out of the Friend Zone, which is apparently an accursed black hole. There was something off-kilter about the person who was recommending what has become the standard advice for guys - behave as if you have a massive tool, without being a massive tool. The part that felt off to me, though, was that he said that women had two categories - “screw yes” and “screw no”. His advice was to get into a woman’s “screw yes” category - which means lots of touching, flirting, and easy on the being able and wanting to understand her emotions. Physical compatibility is not necessarily something to be tossed by the wayside, but it felt very off that his advice was to concentrate on a physical compatibility before getting to the point where empathy and other mental and emotional attributes come into play. So, those with experience in dating and the like, is he right? Does a woman want to know whether she’d go to bed with a prospective date before she decided to invest any time or open up to him? Or her, for that matter.
Anyway, it’s not necessarily that important, just odd. If people really want details, there are other ways of contacting me.
So, forthcoming are the linkies.
Joe Liberman staked out his position on Iraq and the troop surge today, offering an opinion in the Wall Street Journal of "new blood, new strategy - let's see if it works.". Mr. Liberman says that the last strategy failed because we were too optimistic about its effectiveness. He then asks us, and especially his fellow Senators, to think optimistically about the new strategy. After all, you don’t fund ventures you expect to fail, unless you’re proving a point with the failure that will help lead to a greater success.
The Iranian rocket launch on Sunday apparently could reach space, the Iranian media said. That gives a bit more for range and power, should Iran be constructing material for nuclear payloads to be delivered by those rockets. I wonder, if they knew then what they know now, whether those who developed atomic weaponry would go through with it a second time.
Reading the transcript of the 18 Doughty Street dot com commercial that offers an alternate history without America, my eyebrow only pops higher and higher. Apparently, without America, the Soviet revolution succeeds, there is no polio vaccine, Saddam Hussein gets nuclear weapons, and other such things. I’m rather impressed, of course - I didn’t realize that America was the only thing standing between Freedom and Terror for All Those Years. And this is supposedly aimed at the people who have been around, colonized, been kicked out of their colonies, and gone through two world wars. Cheeky little bastards, aren’t we, America?
In other things, the United Kingdom has given the green light to conduct genetic modification tests on human embyros. Only those experiments that could conclude within two weeks of the modification are currently allowed, but that could possibly change. I would guess it would depend on the viability of the results obtained in the short-run experiments. The designer-baby worries are already being voiced. I would think that with as much trouble as we have maintaining plant species that have had their genes somewhat homogenized or modified would be a good enough warning against trying to do the same to the human condition. We might find out own rot, then, and that would probably mean that someone would win the bet on a disaster that kills millions or more. In the Untied states, a bill prohibiting discrimination by jobs or insurace coverage based on genetic factors looks ready for passage, according to NewScientist. Which could neatly solve the problem of “When the superbabies take over”, at least in the letter of the law. As we’ve been strongly reminded of over the last few years, the law isn’t always followed to the letter. So I hope they instill a spirit of generosity, fairness, and justice in the designer babies.
I’m always amazed at how densely information can be packed into words, sentences, and paragraphs. What would have taken me five pages, someone else can do in one. And thus, the link that follows works well as a pamphlet or pocket guide to major parts of Gnosticism - The Gnostic World View, in about five paragraphs. Very densely packed material. Hopefully useful to many who want to be able to be inquisitive and find, rather than passively receive and follow a divinity. If you just wanted to watch a divinity flutter in teh breeze, paper gods like these ones might be more up your alley. Although, even then, I suspect the paper gods had an active kind of worship surrounding them, rather than the somewhat American tendency to sit in the pew for an hour and feel that everything necessary for salvation and enlightenment has happened. Of course, if the filmmakers are right and the ossuary alleged to be the casket of Jesus Christ actually turns out to be so, (although, how do you figure that part out? And all it would prove is that there was a person somewhere in that time frame with the name Jesus.) well, then maybe we may have to update foundational texts for a new generation.
The Slacktivist posted two opinions about religion and faith worth sharing tonight. The first is about how "people of faith" and "values voters" are phrases that don't mean what they mean, and how Mitt Romney is using them, to his peril. It also talks about what would be better phrases to use to get the message that Romney wants across, and reminds us of a segment in the Constitution that says there will never be such a thing as a religious test administered to those who would hold public office. The second thought of his is McFaith: A dialogue, which wisely and subtly pokes at the American want to be and do anything and call it whatever they want to, as opposed to giving something a name and a meaning behind it, and restricting the use of that name to the things that actually are associated with it. American faith really is the bastard child, sometimes. Whether it’s a forward-looking, ready-for-change one or a backwards-looking, fearing imaginary persecution one, we’ll find out eventually. Listening to that dialogue play out in my head had its moments of “Gah. Stupid, stupid rat creatures.”, while at the same time thinking “There are people who would probably have this conversation.” Guess I’m just weird that way.
As a matter left mostly to the states, reproductive rights have various degrees of freedoms and availabilities, including the often-heated debate over contraceptives, and who should be paying for them. The Statesman Journal from Oregon has an article today that says with the state in the hands of Democrats, a bill to require insurance providers to pay for contraception has a chance of passing. I guess it’s an individual decision by each company as to whether they want to fund contraceptives. If they’re willing to pay for all the things that happen to children as they grow up, one would think that contraceptives would be an economical thing to fund, especially in relation to things like medical procedures and all the necessary bits to ensure strong and healthy children.
Cadence Systems claims that chips with diagonal paths in the grids will consume less power and run faster. Which makes sense. I just wonder if there’s a greater chance of electron flow or other things running off-track if there are diagonals introduced. It certainly wouldn’t do to have your data stream switch processor paths accidentally in the middle of computing. I’m not familiar enough with chip design to know whether this actually happens, though, so I could be talking out my arse.
Xerox, responsible for things like photocopiers, the graphical user interface, and the mouse (as well as many other innovations in technology) is currently in the process of trying to perfect a printer/paper combination that is reusable - because the printer doesn't use ink, but UV light. If they can get that to work, and have it last for a sufficient amount of time, a large part of the paper waste will be defeated. For archivists and archival purposes, though, it could be the beginning of a nightmare. What is considered “archive-worthy” material might be a decision out of the hands of the archivist(s). (If it isn’t already). Preservation versus waste-reduction... which is kind of a battle going on right now. Eventually, someone will figure out a sensible policy on what gets printed on real paper for the archives. (Right?) They may not do it in meetings, though - in meetings, people are not as smart as they are individually. Hmm. Maybe that explains why geeks tend to shun the meetings - they already know about the brain-sucking power they have.
Something significantly overdue - The United States Post Office may be soon introducing a permanently first-class stamp. Regardless of what the postage rate is, these stamps will always be good for the first-class rate. I like this idea - it lets people buy their stamp at the rate they’re used to in whatever quantity they want to, and then they don’t have to worry about the rate increases until they run out of their stock of permanent stamps, at which point, they probably but another lot’s worth and continue on their way. The post office will probably have to retool its income plans to account for people who will buy a large load of stamps and then do nothing for the next few years while they use up all the stamps, but we might find that more people send mail because they don’t have to worry about the cost of the stamp. (Which is still pretty damn cheap for private correspondence.)
For whatever reason, I get to loop back to where I started from with the end of this entry - on a similar sort of note, although darker than just feeling discomfort at certain ideas being expressed. Through Majikthise, a New York Times Article about the Delta Zeta sorority’s national chapter recommended twenty-three women of the Depauw chapter for alumnus status sooner than they expected, apparently after the Depauw chapter was described as “socially awkward”, “offbeat hippies”, and “daddy’s little princesses”. The members chosen for eviction, however, had a running theme - some were overweight, others black or Koran or Vietnamese. Actually, even the chapter president wasn’t safe from the axe. The dozen that stayed were conventionally pretty and popular with fraternity men. The sorority says that the decisions were made because of a lack of commitment to meeting recruitment goals. From the perspective of those who were shown the door, one shared by Majikthise's take on the issue, the sorority basically culled out the “undesirable” population of the chapter under the guise of trying to recruit more people into the sorority. It is rather... coincidental that those chosen to remain all generally fit a particular standard of bodily figure. There will likely be investigations and allegations and possibly suits filed in court over this matter. I expect to see more of it at some point.
And thus, the landing point for tonight’s link frenzy - an opinion that I share heartily - Salon's Charles Taylor makes a plea for people to take a second look at glasses and see the people who wear them as sexy. And not just because I have junior (senior?) memberships in the Geek, Nerd, and Socially Awkward Clubs (hee-hee *snort*) do I find glasses-wearing women to be attractive. Like any other feature or facet of a person, glasses can benefit or detract from said person’s attractiveness. I can’t say I have no prejudices towards attractiveness, but I’d like to think that I have a fairly open mind about most things. So I’ve been enamored of women who wear glasses, women with contacts, and women who didn’t need either. Ah, well. The Friend Zone is comfortable enough for me - there’s a lounge chair here, and a game system, and if I look just right, there’s a couch for ultimate lazy. I’ll probably be here a while longer. It only bothers me at certain times, really. So here’s hoping for dreams of a different sort of weird tomorrow. Assuming that I remember anything about them at all. Night, folks.
(P.S. - I picked up another couple of people watching the journal, so say hi to
rowenablue and oletheros, if you should see them around. If they have time, I’d love to hear how they managed to find the place and why they decided to actually stick around.)
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2007-02-27 05:13 pm (UTC)A world without America, eh? Wouldn't it be possible that some of those discoveries would have been made by those people still, anyway? And if there was no America AT ALL, then well...history's pretty whacked out, and what's sitting between Canada and Mexico?
I think the whole speculation on that box being Jesus, Mary Magdalene, and their child is a bit silly. I mean, all it ever will be is mild speculation, because where the heck are they going to get DNA from Jesus to test it? Unless someone's got the holy grail and the over 2000 yr old DNA has survived....we'll never know. And sat it was determined to be Jesus Christ. Well...that's going to change a rather large aspect of Christianity.
McFaith had me in giggles. But you're right, there are people out there who have those types of conversations. Calling themselves one thing, but then doing something that would be against the religion. I'm surprised the person didn't mention the mixing of meat and dairy too, let alone the whole eating Pork thing. Although, I do know several Jewish people who will eat Shellfish, even though they're not supposed to because it "tastes good". Are they no longer Jewish because they eat the shellfish?
I'm surprised BC isn't being covered by insurance companies. I've never had a problem with my insurance paying for it, for me the problem is that I don't currently have insurance and have to shell out quite a bit for my pills each month. (and yes, I'm aware I could go to planned parenthood, but PP gives out one specific brand of pill, and it's a brand my doctor took me off of when I started having problems, so pp isn't really an option in my case).
I have no words for the sorority story. It makes me mad that a sorority on the NATIONAL level chooses to start kicking people out of a club because they don't fit the image they are seeking. sororities have a way of boosting a girl's self esteem in many ways, and I can only imagine what being told to leave could do to a person. Kick someone out because they can't maintain the minimum GPA, fine. But kicking people out because they don't fit the "image"? Ugh, stupidity. Especially when having a diverse sorority might have actually helped them to boost membership like they're supposed to be doing.
Glad that Glasses aren't as big of a turn-off as they seem. Although, I do have to admit that when I was in HS and college, I wore contact lenses on "special occasions". but, at the time the only real types of glasses to buy were all big and well, ugly. I don't think I got a pair of small glasses until partway through college, and I LOVED those little brown frames. When fashion finally caught up with the world of inexpensive glasses I think it was a big boost for all of us who had to wear glasses. No more did I have to hide behind glasses that covered most of my face....and now I have no problems with my glasses. (though I do still think i look better without glasses if my hair is pulled up). The one thing I do hate about my glasses though is that it's hard to snuggle into someone while still wearing them. I hate to press my glasses into someone's chest, and I don't want them to bend or break, so that's a bit of a challenge. As far as boys with glasses go, I've mostly dated boys who wear glasses for whatever reason now that I think back on things. (funniest part was when boyfriend and I picked up each other's glasses one morning....and we didn't notice it right away.) thats not to say that I don't find boys without glasses attractive, because I definitely do, but...glasses are rather sexy.
no subject
Date: 2007-02-27 10:05 pm (UTC)On the topic of challenging Christianity: well, yes, but then, since there's no existing primary evidence of the more mythical bits of the Christian history, it's hardly like that's news, is it?
On the topic of a world without America: quite so. Without America... it seems unlikely that the same advances wouldn't have been made by other people. Consider that the UK and Germany were the leading scientific centres in the world pre-1940s, and that's with the US actually still existing...
no subject
Date: 2007-02-27 10:09 pm (UTC)Oh, indeed. Glasses make you look smart, for some reason. I suppose it is because all us smart people read books all day and ruin our eyes, thus needing glasses...only, there are plenty of smart people I know who don't wear glasses, and plenty of unintelligent people I know who do.
On the topic of a world without America: quite so
*nods* so i'm not really sure why it is such a big deal that all those things happened "because of America". Besides, aren't a lot of our scientists originally from other counties?