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Thursday, October 9th, 2008
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4:44 pm - Modify as appropriate ...
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Via ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) commodorified; it's National Poetry Day in Britain, and the theme is "Work". Therefore:
Elegy in a Country Churchyard
G.K. Chesterton
The men that worked for England
They have their graves at home;
So bees and birds of England
About the cross can roam.
But they that fought for England,
Following a falling star -
Alas, alas for England,
They have their graves afar.
And they that rule in England
In stately conclave met,
Alas, alas for England,
They have no graves - as yet.
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| Wednesday, October 1st, 2008
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10:51 pm - Ends, not means
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R. v. Morgentaler [1988] 1 S.C.R. 30 was a decision of the Supreme Court of Canada wherein the abortion provision in the Criminal Code of Canada was found to be unconstitutional, as it violated a woman's right under section 7 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms to "security of person". Ever since this ruling, there have been no laws regulating abortion in Canada.
Forcing a woman, by threat of criminal sanction, to carry a foetus to term unless she meets certain criteria unrelated to her own priorities and aspirations, is a profound interference with a woman's body and thus an infringement of security of the person.
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| Sunday, September 28th, 2008
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10:42 pm - Counterfactual conversations
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Yesterday, at the last rest-stop on the Bike the Barns ride, somebody asked, of the garment I was wearing, "Is that a kilt?"
Now that I take up my pen, it occurs to me to kick myself that I didn't just say "No, it's a skirt," in high dudgeon. Too late one thinks of what one should have said. Instead, I said, "Yes."
"Soooo.. does that mean you're Scottish?"
Oh man. There are a couple of tiers of wrong in this statement. The assumption that some article of clothing is an infallible signifier of cultural background is one, but I'm generally content to let that sit. Then I had my mouth open to deliver the whole rant about the Sobieski-Stuarts, and romanticizing a culture after annihilating it, ending up with John Prebble: "The Lowlander has inherited the hills, and the tartan is a shroud!" Possibly I would even need to explain the Highland Clearances, sometimes a necessity when living in some strange part of the world that was deprived of Highlanders for bizarre reasons of its own (climate too pleasant, agriculture too easy, not enough rocks, whatever).
Instead, my usual conflict-avoiding self, I just said "Not in the slightest," and pointed out that, being a plain black Utilikilt and not a tartan, there was no intended association with any Scots group. However mendacious such associations actually are, I didn't say.
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| Saturday, September 27th, 2008
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7:47 pm - There are no barns, for they have been biked.
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I finished Bike the Barns, and in reasonable time, and I can even still walk and stuff, though it's not fun. 63 miles! I'm pretty proud of that, though I realize that for some of you that's just an afternoon ride. This summer I had excellent intentions of taking a lot of trips and building distance, but life sort of intervened. As it does.
It was pretty much a perfect day, with the mild quibble that it got a little toasty midday for my thick Newfoundland blood. There was a little wind but not enough to create serious headwinds.
The route was extremely pretty. Also? Extremely hilly. Not Seattle hilly, thank God, otherwise I would be writing this from my grave. The food? Well, hmmm. I think my expectations might have been pegged a bit high. Breakfast was rolls and croissants from L'Etoile with Just Coffee, fine. The midmorning stop had apples and granola bars from Nature's Bakery, producing a vague sense of anti-climax - I had granola bars with me, for a start. One could also pick berries but, being a slow rider, I wanted to get moving. Lunch was almost like a potluck - a plate of tortillas with barbecue chicken and/or goat, some lentil thing, some slaw thing, and kale. I was ravenous so it seemed good, but not exactly riveting. Things picked up for snacks at the final stop: pesto bruschetta, and apple-cinnamon cookies with maple syrup ice cream and either raspberry or ground-cherry on top.
They haven't posted the list of sponsors yet so I don't know if anyone besides ladymondegreen (thank you, my love!) sponsored me. If so, thank you! If you just sent good wishes in my direction, that's awesome too. It's not a world-shaking accomplishment, but I feel I pushed my limitations, a little; I'm very tired of being so aware of my limitations.
current music: "Banks of Marble"
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| Tuesday, September 23rd, 2008
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10:01 pm - Things I am grateful for: apparently the Geek Edition
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1. The person who, having met me twice, agreed to let me borrow a laptop projector for the Python users' group meeting. (To which nobody but me and the speaker came, alas, but we had a good talk about Django all the same.)
2. A new Neal Stephenson book, which is big and full of crazy ideas as they all are. It also, so far, seems to have a bewildering number of made-up words in it.
3. My intended guest for the radio show on voting machines agreeing immediately to be interviewed.
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| Monday, September 22nd, 2008
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11:29 am - MACSAC Bike the Barns
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Dear friends,
(Man this may be totally out of line. I've seen people elsewhere on my flist post such things and not get savaged, but YMMV. If so, please accept my apologies and assurances that this kind of thing will continue to be very rare.)
On September 27th, I will be among 500 cyclists who will hit the hilly country roads west of Madison for a 72, 60 or 35 mile bike ride! It's called "Bike the Barns! MACSAC's Second Annual Tour de CSA".
We are riding to support the Madison Area Community Supported Agriculture Coalition, and its Partner Shares Program, which provides financial assistance for households with low incomes to receive fresh, organic produce from local CSA farms by providing matching funds toward the cost of CSA shares. Learn more about it at http://www.macsac.org/psp.html.
I am looking for your support.
Please consider sponsoring me as a Tour de CSA rider. It's easy to do:
1) online at http://www.macsac.org/bikethebarns, OR
2) by sending me a check made out to MACSAC.
Receipts for tax deductions are available upon request. The suggested donation is $60, or one dollar per mile, but any contribution is very welcome.
Thanks for your support!
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| Sunday, September 21st, 2008
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9:46 am - We are living in his world, after all...
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| Saturday, September 13th, 2008
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9:21 am - Plastic People!
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(Mit apologies for the short notice)
Legendary Czech underground psychedelic band the Plastic People of the Universe are playing 6:30 tonight at the Memorial Union (probably at the Theatre rather than Terrace, given the rain) as part of the Madison World Music Festival.
It's funny, until I saw the posters at the Union I hadn't thought about the Plastic People in years. And in fact I had never heard them! They were known in Canada partly because for several years they had a Canadian lead singer, Paul Wilson (who was deported, eventually, and became a well-known translator of modern Czech literature), but if you wanted to listen to them it was still a matter of painstakingly searching out imported LPs on Queen West, heavily wrapped in plastic and costing upward of forty dollars.
So really I'm drawn to this as much by the idea of the whole thing - acid rock vs. tyranny! - as by the music. Which is cool and all, in a sort of early Pink Floyd vein, if you like that kind of thing which I do. And it's free.
Anyone interested in coming along?
(There's also a show at 9 tomorrow at the Annex if that works better.)
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| Thursday, September 11th, 2008
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10:52 am
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A Major Port
W.H. Auden
No guidance can be found in ancient lore;
Banks jostle in the Sun for domination
Behind them stretch like sorry vegetation
The low recessive houses of the poor.
We have no destiny assigned us,
No data but our bodies - we plan
To better ourselves; bleak hospitals alone
Remind us of the equality of man.
Children are really loved here, even by police:
They speak of years before the big were lonely. Here
will be no recurrence.
Only the brass-bands throbbing in the parks foretell
Some future reign of happiness and peace:
We learn to pity and rebel.
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| Tuesday, September 9th, 2008
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11:07 pm - Things I am grateful for, today
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1. My bike, the Wumpus; an unsexy but very serviceable road-bike bought for me by Amy during a mental-health week in spring of 2007, and just now admirably restored to fighting trim by Revolution Cycles, after normal wear-and-tear and also a fascinating incident where I didn't realize quite how worn my brakes were and had a very hard time stopping crossing Odana Road while coming back from the Wild West End one night in early July; thus pulling back hard on the handlebars, thus snapping a delicate plastic part of my front shifter.
2. Our local pub, the Alchemy Cafe, with its civilized ambience, good beer, and decent food.
3. This:
which bears viewing in large size, that the fine spiderweb can be seen. I saw this while wandering along the bike-path out back of Revolution Cycles waiting for it to open, and it was just awe-inspiring in a way I am far too tired, after 12 hours of testing software, to put into words. But, well - thanks, world.
current music: Bruce Cockburn, "All the Diamonds in the World"
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| Saturday, September 6th, 2008
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10:41 am - Words I try to live by, part wev: more Mumford
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"Integration proceeds by just the opposite route: a deliberate heightening of every organic function; a release of impulses from circumstances that irrationally thwarted them; richer and more complex patterns of activity; an aesthetic heightening of anticipated realizations; a steady lengthening of the future; a faith in cosmic perspectives. Precisely out of this sense of abundance and fulness of life comes the readiness to embrace the divine. Instead of withdrawing from situations it cannot master in order to maintain mere bodily balance, love risks everything, even life itself, for the sake of a more complete engagement with that which lies outside it and beyond it.
...
Not a day, then, without nurturing or furthering life; without repairing some deficiency of love in our homes, our villages, our cities; without caring for a child, visiting the sick, tending a garden, or making at least some token payment of good manners on this common debt."
-Lewis Mumford, The Conduct of Life
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| Wednesday, September 3rd, 2008
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10:35 pm - More than Milton can
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Apparently angevin2's Western Civilization students were asked by their textbook "Do you have an answer to Job's dilemma? Explain."
I'm not sure that I can comprehensively justify the ways of God to man; not with beer, like Benjamin Franklin, or with modal logic, like Leibniz. Though I think both of these things are awesome. But on my way home this evening, it struck me that the mere existence of Skinny Puppy's "Worlock" may not be a theodicy all by itself, but somehow it makes life infinitely better.
Why this should be is a little mysterious. It is not, on the face of things, a cheery song. Musically, it is sort of a Dalek piloted by the tiny, twisted, mutated body of "Helter Skelter" left over after some kind of very nasty viral warfare. The Dalek is loud and scary and unstoppable, and yet it is clear "Helter Skelter" is in terrible torment. Lyrically, there's sort of a Noam Chomsky media manipulation thing going on. And also some self-hatred! And something about eating a dog.
Yet also: it is (to me anyway) irresistibly danceable; I have danced to it while falling in love, while mourning, in crowds, in my bedroom. And like all the best Skinny Puppy songs, you emerge at the end feeling like you have stared into the abyss with Ogre, your best friend, paid respects to the wounded animal inside you, and that, fucked up as the world is, things are, somehow, for now, going to be OK.
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| Tuesday, August 26th, 2008
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1:31 pm - Lunchtime update
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(From Auden's "New Year Letter"; and also from memory, so pardon any errors.)
"Disturb our negligence and chill,
Convict our pride of its offence;
In all things, even penitence,
Instruct us in the civil art
Of making from the muddled heart
A desert and a City where
The thoughts that have to labour there
May find locality and peace
And pent-up feelings their release.
Send strength sufficient for our day
And point our knowledge on its way:
O da quod jubes, Domine."
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7:16 am - And some men carve a statue of Isambard Brunel
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A small, happifying thing: the very day I was kvetching about having "A Map of Morocco" by the Men They Couldn't Hang stuck in my head with no way to actually listen to it, I checked emusic and found that my 2 favourite TMTCH albums (Silvertown and The Domino Club) were available for download! Awesome. Why didn't I replace them on CD ages ago, you ask? Sheer folly, I guess, because 20 years on Silvertown is as awesome as the first time I heard "Company Town" while waking up to CHRW in high school.
ETA: for anyone to care about this, I guess I should endeavour to explain why I think TMTCH rule so hard. Which is always tough. When I play them for people, the reaction is often "This sounds like the Pogues!" Wellll.. yes and no. That basic British Isles folk-punk thing, fast and melodic and sort of shouty and ass-kicking but in a sensitive, left-wing way, is there for sure; but by contrast with the Pogues' heart-on-the-sleeve Irishness (albeit London Irishness), the Men They Couldn't Hang are really, really English. Both melodically and lyrically. Their first single, "Ironmasters", was a mile-a-minute anthem about union organizing during the Industrial Revolution, ending in a vicious broadside against Margaret Thatcher, with the tune lifted from the trad song "Flowers of the Valley".
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| Sunday, August 24th, 2008
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12:23 pm - News from nowhere
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So I've sent in my passport renewal application. Touch wood, this will all go smoothly, and shortly I'll have all matching paperwork and can travel abroad; back to Canada, most significantly.
"Home" is a complex concept for me anymore, but was born and raised there, and spent 30 years there, which is an order of magnitude more than anyplace else. Thus there are a great many places there that I am deeply attached to and miss, and the knowledge that I wasn't able to visit them until the paperwork was fixed was unpleasant. So it will be good to banish that.
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| Monday, August 11th, 2008
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8:15 am - Make production subservient to education
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Because y'all haven't had a random, preachy quote from me in awhile.
.. the fact is that creative activity is finally the only important business of mankind, the chief justification and most durable fruit of its sojourn on the planet. The essential task of all sound economic activity is to produce a state in which creation will be a common fact in all experience: in which no group will be denied, by reason of toil or deficient education, their share in the cultural life of the community, up to the limits of their personal capacity. Unless we socialize creation, unless we make production subservient to education, a mechanized system of production, however efficient, will only harden into a servile byzantine formality, enriched by bread and circuses.
-Lewis Mumford, Technics and Civilization
current music: Oysterband, "Early Days of a Better Nation"
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| Sunday, August 10th, 2008
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9:55 pm - Monday morning, Monday morning, closing in on me..
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Friday night: Amy and I go to the Barrymore, roughly at the drop of a hat, to see She & Him, Zooey Deschanel's band, out of curiosity and feeling like local delegates of cadhla who would wonder why the heck we hadn't gone. Opening act is very, very twee female singer/songwriter. During one song in a slow country tempo she sings "I've never drunk the ocean, but the ocean might drink me", and Amy turns to me and sings, along with the walking bass, "glub, glub, glub". Hilarity ensues.
I am sort of 'meh' about She & Him; I'd read that the principals originally got together to record a cover of Richard Thompson's "When I Get To The Border", which is awesome, and that they sort of had a 60s folk-rock thing going on. I don't know what the Isthmus meant by that, but I imagined chiming twelve-strings, psychedelic Hammond organ, pretentious lyrics. I like that kind of thing. Instead they are in a sort of oldies/bluesy/Tin Pan Alley/country retro-Americana vein that I just don't really warm to. But Amy likes them, and we're at least sitting down so I can doze and half-listen.
We get home and discover that fairestcat, lovelokest, and izzybeth have been burgled, and head over with wine, vodka and sympathy, not these things are of tremendous use but, you know. Better than nothing.
Saturday and Sunday morning: relaxing, cleaning, and waiting for mellybean71 and sultrysong to arrive, kids in tow, which they do around 10:30 at night. There is food and drink and catching up. In the morning we have a leisurely breakfast for 6 - with brats, since this is Wisconsin after all - and send them on their way to the House on the Rock and points West. (They'll turn around once they get to the Pacific, basically.)
Then I put Amy on a bus to points East (Cedar Point) and then even more West (Alaska). Do some work. Walk home with a Red Eye from Ground Zero; on the way I see a tiger swallowtail, and a bright green grasshopper which lets me get down close to it and look as it paws the sidewalk deciding where to jump. Camera battery is still dead, oops.
Home is very quiet, and rather empty.
current music: Peter Gabriel, "Come Talk To Me"
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| Sunday, August 3rd, 2008
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10:01 pm - Seriously GIP
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| Thursday, July 31st, 2008
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6:21 pm - Science!
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So I'm going to be on Perpetual Notion Machine again tonight. This time I've actually written a couple of short news pieces (well, okay; one of them I cannibalized from a NASA press-relese, but the other I wrote largely based on the paper abstract) which I'll be reading. The main subject of the show is an interview with Mark Saffman of UW-Madison about quantum computing and the differences between the quantum and classical worlds.
As previously: 7:30-8PM Central Daylight Time, 89.9FM if you're in Madison, otherwise streamed live here and available post hoc as a podcast.
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| Tuesday, July 29th, 2008
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4:06 pm - Weird Music PSA, part wev
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This Friday, 7PM in the Courtyard of the Mosse Humanities Building at UW-Madison, there's a concert of Javanese gamelan music. I'll be going, since I'm pretty fond of gamelan and haven't heard any live since Gamelan Pacifica just after I moved to Seattle.
Any Madison people like to come along? It's guaranteed to be both melodic and clattery, and pretty interesting to watch even if the music doesn't grab you.
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