Just finished my editing final! The semester is over! I can now read for pleasure without guilt!

In fact, I think that’s what I’ll go do right now.

This section from Making Light’s comment thread particularly amused me.

It’s about puncuation, and even mentions the Chicago Manual of Style.

Alas! My mornings are undone!

Today is Bob Edward’s last day at Morning Edition.

For as long as I have had a clock radio (excluding a few years when I was in college or working nights) I’ve woken up to Bob Edwards. For me, he is indellibly associated with mornings.

I don’t know how I’ll be able to get out of bed anymore…

I’d wanted to play since I ran into it at languagehat but attempting to study and going through books are mutually exclusive activities for me.

Anyway, here is the Exquisite Corpse of page 23.

The rules for 23/5 Exquisite Corpse are:
Take the nearest six to ten books from your shelf.
Open them to page 23, and find the fifth sentence.
Write down those sentences and arrange them to form a short story.
Post the text in your journal along with these instructions.

I cheated a bit, since I only have reference books here in the basement with the computer–I grabbed the books by the bed that had bookmarks, in the hopes that it was a random enough selection to qualify.

But what Gnostics celebrated as proof of spiritual maturity, the orthodox denounced as “deviation” from apostolic tradition. (1) It is usually the journalists and popular novelists who have picked up a few odds and ends of half-baked science from textbooks who go in for them. (2) In addition, modern science provides massive amounts of additional, no less genuine knowledge—that electrons are smaller than asteroids, that fish are not mammals, that the Moon is not made of green (or any other type of) cheese, and so on. (3) These should occur frequently at sites extending from Old Mexico to New York. (4)
‘Of course!’ said Bilbo, and sat down in a hurry. (5) I see people ignore them and even bully them. (6)

1. The Gnostic Gospels Elaine Pagels
2. Mere Christianity C.S. Lewis
3. The Matrix and Philosophy William Irwin
4. Making Book Teresa Nielsen Hayden
5. The Hobbit J.R.R. Tolkein
6. An Open Heart The Dalai Lama

Sentence six only works if you pretend it’s in quotes. Or if you imagine that I, with my infinitely wonderful typing skills, just forgot to add the quotes.

By the way, you can visit Andrei Codrescu’s Exquisite Corpse. I’m such an NPR geek that Andrei Codrescu is who I immediately thought of when I saw ‘exquisite corpse’.

And if you were curious, the books closest to my computer are: The Bible (New American Bible for Catholics), The Koran, Teach Yourself CSS, HTML4 for the World Wide Web, Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, and The Chicago Manual of Style.
Pretty horrible short story material I think.

ADDENDUM the First:
By the way, fnord.

Got this in my mail yesterday:

3) PLANT SALE UNDER WAY AT GREENHOUSE
As gardening season kicks into high gear, WVU’s Plant and Soil Sciences Greenhouse is preparing for its annual spring plant sale. The sale will start with special hours from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday, May 1. Regular sale hours will be 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Monday through Friday, beginning Monday, May 3. The Greenhouse is located on WVU’s Evansdale Campus across from the Agricultural Sciences Building. “We have a good selection of vegetables, herbs, and annual and perennial flowers,” said Brooke Hart, a horticulture student who is helping to organize this year’s sale. The Greenhouse is a multipurpose facility of WVU’s Davis College of Agriculture, Forestry and Consumer Sciences, supporting teaching, research and service programs of the College.

So if you’re going to be in town this weekend, check out the WVU plant sale!

I’ll be looking for some plants to replace the lavendar that died over the winter, some sort of shade plant to put on the other side of the driveway, and perhaps some flowers to put into the shrub border, while my shurbs are still small and insignificant.

I also see a mulch buying trip in my near future.

It’s pledge time for WV Public Radio, but I’m such the geek that I don’t bother to change the station (I will, however, change the station when Prarie Home Companion comes on. Yetch.)

I’m glad I didn’t change the station, because All Things Considered has been doing a series on Nelson Mandela and South Africa to mark the ten year anniversary of democracy in South Africa.

Today’s segment was Robben Island, which is the island to which the ANC leaders were sent to serve their life prison sentences. But they also talked about what else was going on in the country at the time, and described the student march in Soweto where children marched to protest the fact that they were being required to learn in Afrikaans. Chills went down my spine as the woman being interviewed matter-of-factly described how the police and soldiers fired upon the peacefully demonstrating school children.

I suppose that after nearly thirty years, the horror of the experience would have, perhaps, rubbed off for her, but it was absolutely chilling to me. Yet again I’m confronted with the concept of evil. Apartheid was evil. But were all those who enforced apartheid evil? What about the rest of us? The rest of the world sat by and allowed apartheid to continue. What guilt do we have in this?

And once again, I don’t know the answers. The questions lead only to more questions.

But, if you have the time, and the bandwidth, I’d highly recommend listening.

The Vlad Taltos Novels by Steven Brust

Once I finished reading Sethra Lavode, I just had to go back and read the Vlad Taltos novels. All of them. I averaged about one a night, which tells you 1) that the books are a relatively fast read and 2) that I was not studying as I should have been.

Read More about The Vlad Taltos Novels

Sethra Lavode: Book Three of the Viscount of Adrilankha by Steven Brust

In this book we learn how Zerika finally solidifies her claim to the throne, we learn whether Khaavren and Piro reconcile, and we learn more about Morrolan’s destructive tendencies. If you’ve read the Vlad Taltos books, you already know that Zerika is going to rule the empire, and you know that Morrolan is going to be destructive, so what happens isn’t nearly as important as how it happens, and the how the story is told.

Read More about Sethra Lavode

Several weeks ago there was a discussion at Making Light on the nature of evil, and what constitutes evil. Does taking an evil action make you evil? How many evil acts do you have to commit before you are irredeemable?

Thinking about it has brought to mind several other questions: Can you be evil without committing evil actions, or is evil necessarily defined by actions? How common is evil? Is it something that is found everywhere or is it a rare thing, to be found only in the most unusual circumstances?

It seems to me that some of the stories that fascinate me the most don’t have a set line between good and evil.

Thieves’ World contains lots of characters who commit lots of actions that could easily be construed as evil, except that when viewed in a different way, you can often understand why the character acted as they did. The fact that so many of the stories were written from multiple viewpoints really emphasizes this; that is how things tend to be. Different people see things in different ways, and the same incident is going to be told different ways by different people. This makes motive all the more foggy.

Deep Space Nine is full of characters who walk the line between good and evil. Garak is definitely not a good person, yet he’s one of my favorite characters. He takes many actions that could easily be considered evil, yet I find it hard to consider him so, and in fact frequently find him admirable, if for no other reason that he always acts upon his convictions, whatever they may be. Gul Ducat is easily despisable, but I find it hard to say he’s evil. He seemed to truly believe that he was doing the right thing, even if he was going about it the wrong way. And after that, he went insane, and I find it hard to claim that someone who is insane is truly evil. Even the “good” characters commit evil acts. There is no clear line between what is good and what is evil. And it fascinates me.

I just finished rereading Steven Brust’s Vlad Taltos series, and there is yet another character who should be evil, yet isn’t really. He’s an assassin. He kills people for money, and is part of a giant criminal organization. But he clearly isn’t unredeemable. I can’t say that he is evil either.

Yeah, those are all fictional examples, but it’s easier than using real people. And I think that it pans out a similar way in the real world.

I think that this is how I have changed most in recent years. When I was younger I saw things clearly as good and evil, right and wrong. But the more people I know, the more life I experience, the harder I find it to categorize people as such. There is no longer any black and white. Sometimes good people have to do bad things, and doing bad things doesn’t necessarily make one a bad person.

I no longer know where to draw that line.

Everyone has motives, and it’s very easy to allow those motives to blind us to the morality of the actions we take, or even to forget about the morality of our actions as we become caught up in the moment. That doesn’t make us bad people, and it doesn’t make us evil.

To put it another way, how many evil actions does one have to take to become evil? How many good actions must they take to redeem themselves? Can just a single action make us unredeemably evil?

I don’t know the answer to any of these questions, and I’m learning that I’m unlikely to find the answer, as the deeper I delve, the more questions I find.

Done! Final is over. Wasn’t too bad really. Six short answer, one short essay, one long essay. My only fear is that I didn’t answer the long essay in the way he wanted–it sort of turned into a rant against society’s unwillingness to care for the poor and elderly. But he lilkes that, so I may be okay.

At least I hope.

While we were in Akron, more flowers bloomed, so you can see some of my new flowers if you like. I also have pictures of the awning for the kitchen door, although I have not yet taken pictures of the new light and the trim. Later.

Fantstic article from the Guardian on America’s obsession with weight.

Hey, it’s public health. That means it’s studying, right?
(via Neil Gaiman)

(This was written as we were driving to Akron. I am, of course, not spending time on the web right now. Because I’m studying. Really.)

I said several months ago, that the idea of Nativism was strange to me, and that anti-Catholicism was a foreign concept that seemed part of another time. I found it hard to believe that people feared Catholics and the Roman influence of the pope.

I believe that I spoke too soon.

Regardless of how one feels about his stance on abortion, it is profoundly disturbing that the Catholic church–or at least some individuals of the Catholic hierarchy–are attempting to influence Catholic politicians by saying that they should be denied Communion if they don’t tow the Catholic line.

Not only is it disturbing that a religious body is attempting to dictate American political policy, it is also, as was mentioned elsewhere, profoundly hypocritical. There has been no backlash against Catholic politicians who support the death penalty. There has been no backlash again Catholic politicians who have voted against Universal Health Care.

As I said earlier, and others have said more eloquently, the political stance of “right-to-life” groups makes no sense, as it provides no solutions or support for women’s health, or for the health and well-being of children.

The Catholic Church is right to ask its members to support life–and to support life from birth to death–but it crosses the line when it attempts to dictate political policy in the United States. We have a constitutional separation of Church and State, and American Catholics, just like most other Americans, have a highly individual streak.

I have heard for years that if the Vatican has taken stances that are driving away American Catholics, and could even lead to a split within the American Catholic church. I’ve always taken such pronouncements with a grain of salt; after all despite the split with the Orthodox church a thousand years ago, and then the Protestant reformation, it has always seemed to me as if those splits were far in the past, and the continuing splits have occurred within Protestant branches of Christianity. But then I don’t know the rate at which Catholics leave the Catholic church for other denominations. Perhaps this is something that has been occurring for years and I’ve just not paid attention. Perhaps Catholics who become disaffected with the church will simply leave for Anglican or Orthodox churches, or any other denomination that they find compatible, or perhaps there finally will be a major division within the American Catholic church. Regardless, I don’t see it as a good thing that Rome seems to be attempting to place American Catholics under greater control.

But I don’t really know. As I’ve said before, as a disaffected Catholic, I am hardly one to make pronouncements upon what the Catholic church should be doing. After all, if I really cared I’d be doing it from inside the Church.

Wednesday, March 17 9:03 a.m. Mix ingenuity and determination with no small measure of courage and you have the daring overnight heist of a child’s scooter from the front of an Alliance Road home.

Amount it cost for a Japanese man to take a cab from Argentina to New York City:
$58,000

I’d forgotten to mention my exciting news, which is that Giant Eagle now has Pudding Pops!

Okay, you can stop laughing now, because I really do love Pudding Pops. They seem to have disappeared off the face of the earth from about the time I was in high school until this year. I’d occasionally peruse the freezer aisle, just checking to see if anyone had anything like them, but no one ever did.

Yet when we were in Giant Eagle, walking past the freezer section, Michael said, “Look! Pudding Pops!” I immediately assumed he was taunting me; after all, I hadn’t seen them in years, why would they appear now? Yet there they were. A single box. Sitting, waiting for me.

I snagged the box, took it home, and ate four.

Strange thing is that I’m not even sure why I like them so much. I don’t particularly like the vanilla ones (in fact, I told Michael he could eat those, although not any other flavor [No, I don't know why he puts up with me either]) but the chocolate—ah, the chocolate. It’s slightly different from fudgesicles, and slightly better, but I can’t explain why. Perhaps because fudgesicles should only be eaten at the pool, walking fast across burning hot cement, to get to the shade where you eat them as fast as possible before the entire thing melts and drips down your arm.

But Pudding Pops are to be eaten whenever and wherever, until there is nothing left but a stick, and that sitck you chew on while you wander around, until you hear the voice in your head say, “If you fall with that stick in your mouth you’ll hurt yourself!” So you stop chewing on the stick and throw it away, feeling guilty about allowing grown-up things to intrude upon a childish pleasure.

So you eat a second, because when you were a kid, you were only allowed to have one at a time; so you convince your brain that there are advantages to being an adult after all.

Given that we are approaching finals, and I have to take ‘em, posting will be sporadic.

Right now I’m tired, can’t study, and can’t concentrate, so that doesn’t bode well for intelligible posts.

If you’re looking for something to read in the interm, I have several suggestions:
This post on politics and the Catholic church, from Jeanne at Body and Soul.
A beautiful essay, Old Man Cedar, from Real Live Preacher.
Some lovely pictures from pericat at Unlocking the Air.
And anything you care to read over at languagehat.

Enjoy.

I made it to last night’s final Festival of Ideas speaker, Ken Auletta, who talked about media bias.

Unfortunately, I was incredibly tired (still am actually) so I didn’t take notes or write anything when I got home. That leaves you an article in the DP (you’ll notice that the DP article talks about him, but gives very little substance of the talk. Considering the quality of the DP, this is unsurprising, but somewhat appropriate, given the subject) or the article in the Daily Athenaeum. Sorry.

He did mention the four things he believed were most wrong with today’s media: Synergy, lack of humility, hubris, and bias. I think he’s right on as far as that goes. Synergy covered one of the biggest problems (at least to me) and that is the fact that news stories are written to sell copy, not to inform the reader. I was reminded of the summer of 2001 when the story that dominated the news was Shark Attacks! (do you remember that?) All you heard about were shark attacks, and the dangers of sharks, despite the fact that there really had not been an increase in shark attacks that year.

My point is that it seems as if the media often manufactures a crisis that they think will see papers, because the real crises today aren’t sexy and glamorous. Homelessness and unemployment aren’t glamorous. Lack of quality housing and health care aren’t sexy. So the real crises in America go unaddressed while there is a media circus around spectacles that are unimportant.

Anyway, that was the gist of last night’s talk.

:: how jedi are you? ::

Ha! I get Princess Leia!

We had to take the car to the dealdership, because the check engine light came on. Michael just called to tell me what was wrong.

The gas cap was loose.

No excuse voting for the WV primary begins Wednesday the 21st. For statewide information, see the Secretary of State webpage. (Warning: the website was redesigned after Manchin took office, and has some serious issues. Be forwarned that if you’re using anything other than IE, you may run into difficulty. [And this may be a reason I won't vote for Manchin for governor. No state official should have a website that is inaccessible to anyone, or that works poorly. The secretary of state's website provides information about voting to the entire state, and as such should be accessible to the entire population. (But I rant.)])

Call your county courthouse to find out where early voting will be held in your area. (Last primary in Monongalia county it was in a building across the way from the Mon County Courthouse.)

For more information in candidates in your area, see: Project Vote Smart.

Remember: VOTE! It’s your true patriotic duty.

We went to dinner with Kim and Mike Saturday, and one of the discussions reminded me of a theory I heard several years ago, about creature phobias. The details are foggy, I just remember that it was a biologist of some sort who worked with creepy crawlies, and he said that he’d noticed that people tended to have a fear of snakes, or a fear of spiders, but typically not both.

Oddly enough, I’ve found this to be true. People seem to be disturbed by creatures with either too many legs, or not enough legs. I don’t mind snakes, but I have an absolute horror of centipedes. I don’t mind spiders too much, but then spiders kill things like roaches and ants and other nasty bugs that creep me out.

So as part of our after dinner discussion (Lesson: Don’t have dinner with a group of people who like biology), we discovered that Mike and I were both grossed out by the mere thought of centipedes, while Kim completely flips out when we talk about snakes and slugs (Mike joked about getting her a UCSC Banana Slugs T-shirt, to which Kim replied that if he did, she’d put spiders in his bed.) Michael had little to say about the whole subject. He tends to sit back and listen, thinking whatever deep thoughts he thinks at times like that. Either that or he’s secretly laughing at us.

So I’m curious as to whether this is something tends to be true for a larger part of the population—whether we have in some built in fear of either too many legs, or not enough legs, but typically not both.

Busy weekend. Saturday morning Michael went up on the roof, while I prepared the door trim and attempted to replace the light.

Sometimes I wonder why I even bother to try these projects, except as a reaffirmation of Murphy’s Law. As I worked with the light, I was reminded of several years ago and the first time I put together a computer.

Various friends had for years been showing me the ins and outs of tearing apart computers, and I had a pretty good grasp of how things went. So when my new case and motherboard arrived, I decided not to wait for Michael to come home, but to transfer everything myself. I pulled all the various parts and pieces out into the middle of the floor where there was plenty of open space, struggled but eventually managed to get the new motherboard into the new case, and then began moving parts from the old case into the new case. I got everything seated properly, and then got it all hooked back up without major incident. I plugged it in, hit the power button, and….

Nothing. Absolutely nothing.

You can not imagine how disappointed I was. All that work and I’d obviously made some stupid mistake and hooked something up improperly. So I took the case back off, took everything out, and put it back together, checked to make sure I did it correctly. I plugged it back in. Still nothing.

I was convinced that I was a complete idiot who thought she knew what she was doing but was obviously totally clueless and should be kept away from anything more difficult than say, a manual toothbrush, and went off to sulk.

When Michael came home he quickly determined that the power supply was bad and had to be sent back to the company for a replacement.

Changing the light Saturday was a similar exercise in futility. The thing was obviously rusted together, so I liberally applied WD-40 before getting started. After about an hour and a half, multiple trips up the ladder to get suggestions from Michael, and finally completely dismantling the entire fixture, I got the horrid thing off the wall. I then pulled out the new lamp, and attempted to attach the brace to the box. The screws were too large.

No big deal, I could just use the screws from the old brace. Except that I could only find one screw. I went through the entire trash bag only to find that the second crew had completely disappeared. Off to the basement to find a replacement. Replacement found. I put up the new brace, attached the wires, and then went to the basement to turn the electricity back on (notice that I was smart enough not to screw the fixture to the wall. I do learn eventually.) Come upstairs, pull out the power sensor—nothing. Doesn’t work.

I climb the ladder to tell Michael this, and he tells me to try a bulb anyway. This, of course, fails to work. Back up the ladder. I suggest that perhaps when they replaced the outlet where the switch is with a GFCI outlet, they’d messed something up. Michael agreed that this was not only possible, but highly probably. Back downstairs to turn off the power.

Now I have to explain about this box. It contained three switches and one outlet, all jammed into the space where one normally has a double light switch. (You know the kind I mean—where you have two light switches in a single place, and the plate and whole thing is pretty much square.) So I unscrew the face plate, and then unscrew the switches and the plug. I go to pull out the two switches, when POP! there’s a spark that scares the crap out of me.

I climb back up the ladder to tell Michael that I’m okay, the yell was nothing, but that I’m an idiot. The third switch was for the overhead light, which I knew was on a different breaker. (I know this because we are slowly but thoroughly labeling all the breakers in the box, so when we go to replace something, we don’t always have to go through the Click. NO! Click. Click. NO! Click. Click. NO! Click. Click! Got It! game. (This is not a fun game, but when the breaker box has three switches all helpfully named “kitchen” there’s not much else to do.)

So back downstairs to see that yes, the breaker for overhead lights was tripped. I leave it off and finish pulling out the switches. To say that behind those switches was a mess of wires would be a complete understatement. It reminded me of pictures I’ve seen of garter snake mating season.

So, I gave the whole thing up as bad luck, and wandered off to do some more gardening.

The only thing that made me feel better, was that it took Michael a quite a long time to figure out what they’d done, the short answer of which was: lots, including messing up the three way switch for the overhead light. But of course he didn’t realize the wiring was messed up until we’d already gone back to Lowe’s to get a replacement switch, assuming that I’d toasted that switch when I’d forgotten to turn the power off. I hadn’t. Someone just royally messed up the wiring, but Michael wasn’t about to fix it, since a simple 30 minute project had already spiraled out of control.

I’m thinking that in the future, I may just stick to gardening.

This is absolutely fascinating:

During Tuesday’s Good Morning America, a representative of Tyco Fire and Security displayed the amazing properties of the chemical that’s called “Sapphire.”

The chemical has all the firefighting properties of water, yet it will not cause the damage to items that is usually associated with water.

Tha material is god, obviously for libraries and museums, but the business applications are there as well. Think about the damage done when a sprinkler system leaks, or malfunctions, which could be avoided with the use of non-wet water.

It reminds me of the breathable water that I saw a few years ago, that applications for helping premature infants with repiratory problems.

Science continues to amaze me.
(via Monkeys In My Pants)

Here is an entire collection of candidates for the Darwin Award. The Naval Safety Center has a photo of the week, of people doing really stupid things, like tying ladders together so they can reach high places.

I immediately sent this off to my dad, who will now have a whole variety of pictures to use in his afety classes.

I’m sure his students will thank me.
(via Iron Monkey)

When is it appropriate to sing the Smurf Song at work?