Something to think about.
I was rummaging through backups this afternoon and stumbled onto this little tid bit. If you enjoy Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and have not read Terry Pratchett, you need to start now. If you think you might enjoy a sort of Forgotten Realms meets Benny Hill (65% geek, remember?), give them a shot. This is a tid bit from Hogfather, a conversation between Death and his granddaughter.
Thank you. Now...tell me..."
WHAT WOULD HAVE HAPPENED IF YOU HADN'T SAVED HIM?
"Yes! The sun would have risen just the same, yes?"
NO.
"Oh come on! You can't expect me to believe *that*. It's an astronomical *fact*."
THE SUN WOULD NOT HAVE RISEN.
She turned on him. "It's been a long night, Grandfather! I'm tired and I need a bath! I don't need silliness!"
THE SUN WOULD NOT HAVE RISEN.
"Really? Then would would have happened, pray?"
A MERE BALL OF GAS WOULD HAVE ILLUMINATED THE WORLD.
They walked in silence for a moment. "Ah," said Susan dully. "Trickery with words. I would have thought you'd have been more literal-minded than that."
I AM NOTHING IF NOT LITERAL-MINDED. TRICKERY WITH WORDS IS WHERE *HUMANS* LIVE.
"All right," said Susan. "I'm not stupid. You're saying humans need...*fantasies* to make life bearable?"
REALLY? AS IF IT WAS SOME KIND OF PINK PILL? NO. HUMANS NEED FANTASY TO BE HUMAN. TO BE THE PLACE WHERE THE FALLING ANGEL MEETS THE RISING APE.
"Tooth fairies? Hogfathers? Little--"
YES. AS PRACTICE. YOU HAVE TO START OUT LEARNING TO BELIEVE THE *LITTLE* LIES.
"So we can believe the big ones."
YES. JUSTICE. MERCY. DUTY. THAT SORT OF THING.
Department of Redundancy Department
A week or two ago, the mountain side at this end of the valley caught fire. 800 acres burned before it was put out. I can't even remember why now, but I was down town when it started. Driving home I could see the plume of smoke rising into the air. I could tell it was from my corner of the valley, but didn't think too much of it at first. I was sure that as I drove along and my perspective changed I would be able to tell that it wasn't anywhere near my house.
However, the longer I drove, the more it appeared to be dangerously close to my house. What is the first thing that would come to your mind if you feared your house was on fire? Your children? The cash you have rolled in a sock in the bottom of your sock drawer? For me it was my photos. I've well over 200GB of digital photos I've taken over the last five years or so. I'm not sure why I'm more afraid of losing the digital photos and don't seem to worry as much about the hundreds of slides I have boxed up. Maybe it's because I have a fair chunk of the slides scanned. On the other hand, it's not anywhere near close to being all of them and they would be just as lost in a fire as the digital files. Maybe it's because my life revolves around the digital world so that's where my mind goes first.
At any rate, I'm getting closer and closer to my house and I'm not getting the reassuring perspective I hope for. In fact the closer I get the more nervous I become that my neighborhood might actually be alight. I was just sick thinking about all the photos I would lose. (In case you're wondering my laptop was with me in the car, so that wasn't a concern.) Finally as I get to my exit I can tell that fire is actually not threatening my neighborhood. Still, the first thing I did when I got in the house was sit down and start looking at on-line backup services: someplace to store my photos that is not in the house.
There are a couple out there that offer unlimited backup space for a nominal monthly fee. Carbonite and Mozy are probably the best bang for your buck. I actually use Carbonite to back up my work files and, while I do have a few beefs with the software occasionally bogging down my laptop, it genreally does a pretty good job and the peace of mind is worth $50/year. The one catch they both have is they won't back up external drives. I've considered buying a desktop and packing it full of a few terabytes of hard disk space just to spite them, but it's not really in the budget right now. There are several others that give you a few gig for free, but when you start talking about hundreds of gig, things get ridiculously expensive. We're talking hundreds of dollars a month. I don't know what they're smoking. For that kind of money I could set up my own co-located server and that would be backed up as well.
In the end I bought two more 500GB hard drives. That will have the photos on three different hard drives, one of which will be kept in a safe deposit box at the bank. Periodically I'll take the more up to date drive to the bank and bring back its mate to sync up. May not be high tech, but I only spent $170 on two Western Digital drives. Most services were charging twice the price for 1/2 the space. And again, the $50/year or so for a safe deposit box will be worth the peace of mind.
Next time it looks like my house is on fire, I won't have to freak out over the possibility I might be losing all my photos.
What is it we really know?
I've been reading Rewriting the Soul: Multiple personality and the sciences of memory. It was recommended to me by one of my professors. I picked it up more for the "sciences of memory" part than the "multiple personality" part. I confess I am a skeptic of multiple personalities (officially Dissociative Identity Disorder or DID now). It's been a very interesting read. His commentary on how we acquire knowledge in the social sciences was particularly intriguing.
[Binet's] measures of "intelligence" had to agree, generally, with preexisting judgments and then be adapted at the margins. Had he declared that many children who could not cope with French elementary education were intelligent, he would have been mocked. Had he said that the better students at the lycées where stupid, he would have been reviled. ... Binet's great innovation, the testing of intelligence, made sense only against a background of shared judgments about intelligence, and it had to agree with them by and large, and also to explain when it disagreed. Who shared the judgments? Those who matter, namely the educators, other civil servants, and Binet's peers in the middle classes of society.
...One result of calibration is that prior judgments became both sharpened and objectified. What were once discrimination made by suitably educated or trained individuals were turned into impartial, distant, nonsubjective measures of intelligence. Intelligence became and object, independent of any human opinions (my emphasis).
Now, I was aware that IQ tests are under fire for being culturally (white, middle class) biased, but it wasn't until I read those words that I understood the why and wherefore.
Many sociologists of science, and a few philosophers, have recently welcomed the idea that scientific knowledge is a social construction. They contend that science does not discover facts, but constructs them (Hacking, 1995).
Makes you stop and think doesn't it?
Yippee!
Tired of feeling fat and out of shape, I've been making a concerted effort at getting to the gym on a regular basis. I started swimming a few weeks ago—at the gym, a full hour workout w/ QUAC would kill me right now—and today I was able to finish a length of butterfly w/o feeling like I was dying. OK, so it's a long way to go until I'm back to doing a 50m fly in just under 32 seconds, but it's progress and a milestone I feel pretty good about. Yea, me!
No, that's not me, but I did take the picture. It's a good friend kicking ass at the IGLA championships in Ft. Lauderdale a few years ago. He took home several medals. I don't remember if one of them was for fly or not. As a matter of fact, a sizable contingent of QUACers is in D.C. right now at this year's IGLA championships. Really wish I was there, but between the whole chubby-out-of-shape thing and the too-damn-much-on-the-credit-card-as-it-is thing, I stayed home this year.
There’s no place like behind the wheel of a new car. There’s no place like behind the wheel…
I replaced my dying Saturn over the weekend. Here' is my new beauty.
I went into my insurance agent today to update my policy. The two ladies in the office looked out the window and did some probably obligatory cooing over my new car. They liked the color. It's called copper red micah. In the sun it really does have a copper feel otherwise it feels more red. At any rate, the little grandma-type lady who was helping me said it looked like "what's her name's ruby slippers." Now, it really doesn't look ruby ever, but it can sparkle if the sun is hitting right. The other lady exclaimed, "Oh, that's just what he wants to hear. That's not a very manly color!" I, of course, was getting a good chuckle out of the whole exchange and thinking, "Oh, honey. If you only had any idea what either one of you was talking about."
While we were reviewing my policy and the attending kick in the wallet a new car was going to bring, she noticed that I was 10 years accident free. I've actually never been in an accident, but 10 years is all they track. She seemed surprised. "Oh, my that's very good." Really? Is it really that rare that someone can go 10 years w/o an accident? That's pretty sad.
Happy First of May
No celebrating spring today. (NSFW/NSFPWTS*)
*Not Safe For People With Tender Sensibilities
OMFH!
Went to Capitol Reef over the weekend and rode my first honest to goodness mountain bike trail. A few observations:
- My ideal bike trail is probably somewhere in Nebraska.
- Forward momentum is essential to a vertical orientation.
- Two inches of powder fine silt is not conducive to the aforementioned forward momentum nor the accompanying vertical orientation.
- @&%#@$! clips! Granted it was my first time out and they are probably too tight. However, if you've never ridden using clips you have no sense of what too tight is until you feel like you are falling over in slow motion desperately trying to get your foot free before you hit the ground. Fortunately I landed in the previously mentioned silt and the only thing injured was my ego.
- Have you ever been driving up a mountain road and passed someone toiling up the mountain on a bike and thought, "Man. That just does not look like fun." You know what? It's not.
- At some point it becomes a competition between you and the ground. "I'll be #@#$ if I'm going to &(%#$ me into the dirt!" I begin to understand the appeal this sport has to some folk.
- There were a couple of points where we contemplated turning around and heading back to the car. If we had we wouldn't have enjoyed the above vista from the top of the cliffs. I have to admit it did help ameliorate some of the frustration generated while getting there.
- Was the reward worth the effort? Yeah. Will I do it again? Most likely. Still...I have three letters for you. A. T. V.
- Here is an elevation profile of the ride. It's not terribly accurate as I didn't have the GPS recording our progress at small enough intervals, but you get the idea.
Woah.
Finished book two and no angels yet. There was a small tid bit about a heterosexual fellow discovering his feminine side, but that was about it.
In other news I was telling my sister that I wanted to go see The Golden Compass and she responded (with some passion) "No! Don't see that movie! [I'm thinking at this point she's joking.] It's an atheist agenda to destroy God! You do still believe in God, don't you?" Didn't see that coming. I had no response for her except to chuckle, which she didn't like much.
I'm not sure how unique it is to Mormonism, but the commonly held belief is if you leave the church eventually you will fall completely into wickedness and corruption. Hence the question asking after my belief. Probably checking that I'm not completely lost. Yes, I do believe in God, but probably not in a way she would find satisfactory.
You see, I don't believe in a jealous and petty god. I believe that heresy is man made because God doesn't need people to believe in him. I once told an atheist friend of mine, Tony, that my god doesn't mind that Tony doesn't believe in him. He doesn't throw tantrums when people don't do what he says. In fact, I'm not sure he has all that much to say. I don't think I believe in a god who is actively involved in the daily lives of individuals. I believe he is there and that human beings can reach out and tap into his power if they want, but if they don't that's fine too.
I call God "he" mostly out of habit. I'm not sure God has a sex and if he does I'd be stunned and disappointed if he conformed to our narrow and silly definitions of gender. While I'm open to the idea that what we understand to be God is really some pervasive, impersonal force that binds all life together (channeling Yoda now), I find it more comfortable to think about an actual being, an individual, but maybe that's just habit, too.
I read a Jewish proverb once that said something to the effect that God rejoices when his children out wit him. I like that.
All I could come up with for my sister was that I had been reading the books and that I was enjoying them, so no promises. I was kind of surprised I hadn't heard anything from the usual suspects condemning the movie, so I asked a friend of mine who's usually more on top of those kinds of things. Apparently the wingnuts are actually nervous because the movie takes a softer stance toward religion than the books. They're afraid people will like the movie and read the books. Because God, you know, hates it when people read something he hasn't written himself, or from which he hasn't at least got an endorsement deal.
Things that make you go hmmmm……
Have you ever stopped to wonder if all the evil in the world is the result of malcontent? Wanting what you don't have? Wanting something you can't have? Wanting more than what you already have? There's a line from The Matrix about the Merovingian. Neo asks, "What does he want?" and the Oracle replies, "He wants what every man with power wants. More power."
I guess I'm thinking mostly of the rich and powerful, 'cause it's one thing to be working three jobs to feed your family and to want to only have to work one. It's something else to want a third house in Tuscany cause your second house in Bordeaux isn't enough. I'm not sure where the cut off point is. There are certainly plenty in the middle class who are guilty, but does wanting a BMW instead of a Mazda count? I don't know. A Bentley instead of a Mercedes probably does.
A while back I read an article about the monstrous yachts the insanely wealthy own and some of them bitching because some harbors in the Caribbean aren't deep enough for their yachts to pull up pier side and they actually had to endure the inconvenience of taking a launch to shore. We're not talking about a rubber dinghy. The launches were full sized luxury speed boats. (When you're spending 15 million on a yacht what's a few hundred thousand more?) That definitely counts. I'm sorry, but there's some psychopathology there.
One would think wealth distribution would be relatively easy to get your head around, but it's always more complicated than it first appears. There are never easy answers, but one of the characters in The Golden Compass got me thinking along these lines. And they say fantasy is just fluff...
Oh, and if the movie does only cover the first book and it ends where the first book ends...people are going to be ticked.
The Golden Compass
Yes, I'm reading The Golden Compass. I needed to some light reading in part to fill the times on an airplane I can't use my laptop and in part to break up all the high-falootin' reading I've been doing lately. One can only read so much scholarly literature before one's brain goes to mush.
In an approach pioneered by Cleary, Humphreys, Kendrick, and Wesman (1975), a regression model is applied in which a test or indicator variable serves as the predictor variable, and the score on some important “gold standard” serves as the variable to be predicted. In this model, an indicator can be considered fair or unbiased for both groups only if the regression lines are the same for the groups in question. Regression lines can differ in both the slope of the line and its intercept value. Different slopes suggest that the indicator is differentially useful across levels of the indicator for the groups, whereas different intercepts suggest that the indicator is systematically over- or underpredicting the gold standard for some group.
Snooze-o-rama.
I picked this up not so much because of the impending movie release as a blurb in this month's issue of Out. It mentions the existence of two gay angel characters in the second book. Naturally my interest was piqued. I'm curious as to how that is presented in the book. I'll let you know when I get there.
Second book? Yes, it's a trilogy, a fact missing from all the marketing hype. Is the movie only the first book or all three? I don't know. I sure hope it's only the first. You try and munge a whole series into one movie and you are asking for a flop. Just ask Disney (The Black Cauldron) and 20th Century Fox (The Seeker: The Dark is Rising).
If the movie powers that be have a brain between them (which is often open to debate) they have produced the first book and are waiting to see how much money the first movie makes before committing to the other two. If the movie is as entertaining as the book, they should do well.