I've learned a new word for myself! I'm not just a Mugwump, I'm a Tranzi Mugwump.
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12:58:53 PM,
Friday 29 February 2008
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I can't find anything to like in the first 45 pages of Jane Eyre. It has everything I have learned to forgive in Dickens without any of the virtues. At this point, I'm pretty much reading it collecting awful clunking sentences, so I should probably stop.
Writing in the first person is a treacherous thing. If I'm making a mistake, and I'm actually supposed to find Jane an unbearably pretentious bundle of overwrought self-pity, and this is a portrayal of the child's world-view, and not the author's, let me know, and I'll take another run at it.
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06:17:23 PM,
Wednesday 27 February 2008
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Oh, that's right. I was going to blog the dreams I had last night. With my back playing up, I didn't sleep particularly well.
The first dream involved ending up in an underground library which consisted of those half cubicles, one for each band, A-ha, ABBA, and so on, with people shackled up in them singing the relevant songs and weeping. The emaciated librarians with bottle-cap glasses were chasing me around, riding shelving carts, quoting aristotle and trying to find out what kind of music I liked so they could 'shelve' me.
The second dream was far more peculiar. It involved this swimming pool in Utah, with these beautiful tile mosaics. When people swam in it, they'd get sort of possessed, and sing these kind of hymns while doing a sort of synchonized swimming. Which one they did depended how many people were in the pool; so, when there were 5 in, they'd do hymn number 5, which involved someone bobbing and diving in the deep end while the other 4 bounced back and forth, sort of like those steel balls people have on their desks, in the shallow end. there were 20 hymns all together. The information for the performances was somehow stored in these bits of oil buried under the pool; and was conveyed telepathically to the swimmers. The actual words would vary depending on the understanding and language of the people doing it. The people who lived in the area thought the songs were about God, but I'd realized that they actually formed the love story of the two engineers on a faster-than-light spaceship, and that hymn number 17 in particular held the key to understanding hyperspace. I was trying to write it down, but I couldn't write fast enough, and kept missing lines. That's when I woke up. On waking, I realized what I needed to do was round up 17 physicists and take them to Utah.
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(5)
03:23:52 PM,
Tuesday 26 February 2008
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12:28:06 PM, Sunday 24 February 2008
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12:27:37 PM, Sunday 24 February 2008
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Let it be known that ground cashews improve pizza sauce out of all knowledge.
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(6)
06:47:24 PM,
Saturday 23 February 2008
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In Vermont, you have to take an oath to vote.
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(1)
06:46:31 PM,
Thursday 21 February 2008
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10:47:48 PM, Wednesday 20 February 2008
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10:47:05 PM, Wednesday 20 February 2008
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Erika correctly predicted the full Myers-Briggs categories Slate stuck the 3 presidential candidates into. My camera will only take 100 pictures in burst mode, so my kite photography will remain low resolution. If anyone has ever made couscous or macaroni bread, they didn't see fit to put the recipe on the menu. I meant web, not menu, but I'm pleased enough with the mistake to leave it.
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(3)
06:58:55 PM,
Wednesday 20 February 2008
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James Fallows on the Great Firewall of China, and why it works despite the holes. A great article on what state censorship looks like, and why these things can persist.
Think again of the real importance of the Great Firewall. Does the Chinese government really care if a citizen can look up the Tiananmen Square entry on Wikipedia? Of course not. Anyone who wants that information will get it; by using a proxy server or VPN, by e-mailing to a friend overseas, even by looking at the surprisingly broad array of foreign magazines that arrive, uncensored, in Chinese public libraries._
What the government cares about is making the quest for information just enough of a nuisance that people generally won't bother. Most Chinese people, like most Americans, are interested mainly in their own country. All around them is more information about China and things Chinese than they could possibly take in. The newsstands are bulging with papers and countless glossy magazines. The bookstores are big, well stocked, and full of patrons, and so are the public libraries. Video stores, with pirated versions of anything. Lots of TV channels. And of course the Internet, where sites in Chinese and about China constantly proliferate. When this much is available inside the Great Firewall, why go to the expense and bother, or incur the possible risk, of trying to look outside?
All the technology employed by the Golden Shield, all the marvelous mirrors that help build the Great Firewall; these and other modern achievements matter mainly for an old-fashioned and pre-technological reason. By making the search for external information a nuisance, they drive Chinese people back to an environment in which familiar tools of social control come into play.
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09:50:41 AM, Wednesday 20 February 2008
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I find it difficult to express how pleased I am with my new kneeling chair. I just feel more human arranged this way. Sitting up straight in an office chair isn't in my nature.
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(6)
03:43:23 PM,
Tuesday 19 February 2008
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site & script courtesy of Moss
