Friday

Sinus pressure is making it hard to focus, but I've gotten my head back together and am resuming forward motion. Culling of the clutter has begun in earnest.

"... skeezily chaste ..."

The Christian Side-Hug: “Front Hugs Be Too Sinful” - The Sexist - Washington City Paper: "The Christian Side-Hug strikes me as almost skeezily chaste—I’d much rather have a brief normal embrace with a stranger than a hip-tap from a person who I know sexualizes even the most mundane forms of human contact.

O.o

Them's Fighting Words

Will Cadbury be betrayed with a Hershey's Kiss? | Life and style | guardian.co.uk: "For those of you fortunate never to have these confections so beloved of American kids, Reese's Peanut Butter Cups look like small chocolate quiches. The filling has a an abidingly awful flavour that only someone brought up entirely on a diet of bubblegum and Dr Pepper's could love. It combines nuttiness with a greasy, cloyingly adhesive quality in a way that calls to mind squirrel vomit."

Starship economics

Charlie's Diary: Designing society for posterity: "Economic libertarianism -- in the contemporary American sense -- aboard a generation ship would be just plain suicidal. It's dog-eat-dog capitalism with the brakes off; I'm of the opinion that libertarian ideology is based on a falacious theory of mind, and would in practice degenerate rapidly into a rather nasty form of industrial feudalism. The end point of which is monarchism, and bloody handed revolution. Not the kind of metastable multiple-attractor society I have in mind at all ...!"

From the Department of Simple Blessings

I'm thankful for the simple act of being able to do chores without the "aid" of a manic episode. Consistent energy is a blessing.

Went home for lunch and have gotten the kitchen 85 percent done. Still have to put away some dry goods, sort through a last box of doodads, and hang a couple pictures. Am going to have to invite some peeps over for hot pumpkin bread once I'm done.

Seeing

Letters of Note: Your own private book event: "Well, tell your dead grandpa the old German (Goethe) saying: 'The longer you look, the more stars you see...' I prefer that to going crazy." --Chuck Palahniuk

Conservatism?

Eunomia: "The point here is not to rehearse all the reasons why hawkish, nationalist and hegemonist views are antithetical to a conservative disposition and damaging to all of the things conservatives claim to want to preserve, true as these claims are, but to recognize that there is no persuading such people when many of the fundamental assumptions they hold are diametrically opposed to ours and utterly wrong. There no longer seems any value in making the effort to persuade them."

Kiss my Halloween-loving arse

The Danger of Celebrating Halloween: Spiritual Life in God: "Lucifer is a part of the demonic godhead. Remember, everything God has, the devil has a counterfeit. Halloween is a counterfeit holy day that is dedicated to celebrating the demonic trinity of : the Luciferian Spirit (the false father); the Antichrist Spirit (the false holy spirit); and the Spirit of Belial (the false son)."

I wonder where the hell this woman's "theology" comes from?

".. molten-faced moon ..."

Charlie's Diary: How habitable is the Earth?: "But don't get the idea that late Hadean Earth was a fun place to be. For one thing: that great big moon of ours didn't condense from a debris cloud at its current orbital distance. Tidal dragging is widening the lunar orbit by about 3.8 metres per century; it's now orbits roughly twice as far out as it did when it formed. Which in turn means that the young Earth spun on its axis far faster than it does today, and the tides the newborn molten-faced moon raised during the Hadean aeon would have been something to behold (preferably from a very high altitude)."

Veddy Interesting

Werner Herzog's Rogue Film School: "Related, but more practical subjects, will be the art of lockpicking. Traveling on foot. The exhilaration of being shot at unsuccessfully. The athletic side of filmmaking. The creation of your own shooting permits. The neutralization of bureaucracy. Guerrilla tactics. Self reliance."

"... the time for wedgies is at an end."

John Hodgman: A conversation with a famous writer and minor television personality - Kansas City News - Plog: "Jockdom is very noble. It's not deliberative. It's certainly the best way to win wars. It's the best way to motivate teams of people to fulfill a goal -- not just war, but getting things done. The most important way to motivate a factory floor. But as you know, we're not as much of a manufacturing society as we were before. China and other big industrial nations are rewarding their nerds and technicians rather than creating a culture that makes fun of them -- it would be wise for us to embrace the book-smart as much as our culture has traditionally embraced the street-smart, the jock-smart. I'm not saying nerds must have their revenge; I'm just saying the time for wedgies is at an end."