For those who missed the news, the European Rosetta spacecraft has caught up with its quarry, a comet called 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko (“67P” for short) and is now scouting out the best site for a landing. If all goes well, a landing module, called “Philae,” will separate from Rosetta and touch down on the comet in November. As some of the most scientifically interesting candidate sites are also the most hazardous, mission planners have some tough decisions ahead of them. Meanwhile, Rosetta is sending back images of the comet unlike anything astronomers have ever seen before.
Yay Rosetta!
Yay first post!
Last thread — Robert has a good point, as usual. Even if you’re in the right, people aren’t going to change their behavior if they think you’re being obnoxious, and changing their behavior is the point.
Understood.
September: the month I begin my online schooling. Also the month of Dave Mustaine’s birthday! Which I’m very exited for. Least of the reasons being that it’s my birthday, too.
Ich bin in Paris angekommen! Today was Notre Dame and Jardin du Luxembourg.
I also started learning German this week. Just by myself, but if/when I get past the basics it might be cool to actually have lessons.
Awesome!
I love notre dame! When I was in Paris, our apartment had an amazing view of it, and I still can’t get over the fact that it was all made without the help of computers.
It was built by generations of experience, resulting in rules of thumb that usually worked. Of course, we’ve forgotten about the ones that fell down, and we tend to ignore the ones where they got it a bit wrong. I’m trying to remember which English cathedral was built from opposite ends and didn’t quite meet properly in the middle.
There is the Collapsed Pyramid in Egypt that was built at too steep an angle, and then the Bent Pyramid where the bottom has one angle and the top has another and in the middle there’s a point where the angle changes and it looks, well, bent. It took them at least those two tries to get it right.
I visited the collapsed pyramid once. A determined little man in a loincloth tried to sell me a mummy, then the mummy’s hand, then one of its fingers. I wasn’t interested.
Did he tell you the mummy’s hand would grant three wishes? (Yes, yes, I know that was a MONKEY’S hand, I’m punning.)
I think he would have told me anything to unload that mummy, or even part of it. It wasn’t in very good shape.
Was it a real human mummy?
It was, in the sense that scrambled eggs are eggs: a pile of ancient human remains mixed with grimy rags. Most of the parts were recognizable, but they fell short of forming an integrated mummylike whole. Not the sort of thing I was tempted to shovel into the back of my Honda Civic and drive home with.
Understandably.
(GAPAs always have the best stories…)
Background: I am allergic to pollen, pet dander, shellfish, and a whole host of other things. Several years ago, I tried a macadamia nut cookie for the first time and then felt ill afterward (30-45 min after). I’ve had macadamia nut cookies a couple of times after that and consistently felt ill afterward. However, I enjoy pistachios and almonds, so I chalked it up to an intolerance of specifically macadamia nuts rather than a tree nut allergy.
Until today. I had a butter pecan cookie after lunch, and then about half an hour later felt ill. I told my parents and my mom told me to stop eating tree nuts and now I’m scheduled for a doctor’s appointment for yet another allergy test…
I hope it’s just pecans and macadamia nuts, if that’s even possible. I enjoy Nutella and Magnum chocolate ice cream things with almonds too much to give them up.
California problems: It stays hot into September and sometimes October, so the rest of the country is getting excited for sweaters and fall leaves and rainy days while here it still feels like summer but with school.
Rehearsals for 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee start soon! I told the stage manager I’m interested in doing lighting. Hopefully it will be fun and I can learn stuff and make friends.
Equestria Girls: Rainbow Rocks comes out soon, but all the friends I saw the first movie with have since gotten over MLP and don’t want to be associated with bronies anymore.
If it makes you feel any better, Boston is incredibly muggy at the moment, too.
Yup. Minnesota is the same.
California problems? *prances around happily in shorts without feeling gross and humid*
I’m cautiously optimistic about Rainbow Rocks. I’m glad Sunset Shimmer seems to have a few scenes!
Supertaster update: I got the strips in the mail last Thursday, but due to a variety of reasons failed to pick them up from the package center until yesterday. The result? Yeah… the strip tasted extremely bitter and I wound up spitting into a sink and eating a strawberry fruit strip to get the taste out. I gave it to my friend and while he didn’t have such a violent reaction, he said it tasted “pretty terrible”. He, however, will eat anything, which makes me a little suspicious. Time to increase my sample size…
Fun thing to do: Rewatch the first internet videos you ever remember seeing. For me that’s the Demented Cartoon Movie and Trogdor the Burninator.
I dunno if hamster dance counts as a video but probably is the first. That or the numa numa guy.
Not a video, but the first meme I saw was Hampster Dance. It holds a special place in my interweb heart.
I don’t know what my first one was, probably something on one of the Loch Ness Monster sites I found when my dad looked that up for me to show me how you could look things up on the Internet.
Ha, mine is probably They’re Taking the Hobbits to Isengard. Or Potter Puppet Pals, goodness.
I think mine were albinoblacksheep videos
Heeeyyy, Chaaaaarlie
Hey Charlie, wake up
I remember having internet videos quoted ad verbatim to me by my peers long before I watched any.
Which ones?
I have vague memories of Charlie the Unicorn quotes being thrown around a seventh grade classroom before I knew what that was, as well as the “ring ring bananaphone” one. I had one friend who I thought was hilarious till I realized everything funny he said came from the internet. :/
YO I’M SEVENTEEN (which it turns out is very much like being sixteen except now I can go see R-rated movies without bringing an 18-year-old friend)
I had a really, really nice day, and my friends are all wonderful people (y’all included, obviously). They brought me Starbucks in first period and took me out for dinner and then we ran around Trader Joe’s and bought a bunch of really weird snacks and ate them in the dark under a tree.
Anyway I’ve had an indescribable amount of sugar today and I just went running for four miles and I still have TERRIFYING AMOUNTS OF ENERGY so I guess I’m going to do homework for a long time, but. Wow. I love being a senior. I love being seventeen. I love having friends who will wake me up by calling at an ungodly hour and singing “Dancing Queen” into the phone. I hope the world is as kind to the rest of you as it is to me.
*resists urge to sing “Sixteen Going on Seventeen”*
Happy Birthday!
Happy birthdaaaaaaaay. ♥
I’m glad you had such a great day!
Welp, today is my last day in the lab. I’m waiting for my grad student to come back and then I’m taking off. What a great summer! I’ll report more Dispatches from Collegeland if I have time during the school year; but for now, toodles, friends!
I wish you didn’t need 3 dollars in quarters on you just to do a load of laundry in this dorm. They could at least put in a change machine…
I also wish you could go directly from Kenmore to the Museum of Fine Arts on the Green Line without having to transfer at Copley Square.
Ours allowed you to put money on an account and just swipe your student ID card.
Where I’m living now, however, you have to have quarters. Upside: it’s much closer to my room (just upstairs as opposed to the other side of my dorm).
The bigger dorms do let you do that, including the one I lived in for the past three years, but the small brownstones don’t.
I, uh… live close enough to home that I drive there to do laundry…. my freshman year when I lived in a dorm I could swipe an ID card… when I move this winter I am not sure how I will handle laundry but I’m pretty sure there won’t be a student ID option, as I will functionally be an adult. Are quarters really that bad?
Three dollars in quarters just takes up a lot of space.
Oh, and maybe we could have “coin return” slots that actually caking work so that when you absentmindedly put the 1.50 in quarters you needed for the dryer in the laundry machine you just took your clothes out of, you can get them back and actually run the dryer without having to go beg everybody in your building for more quarters…
WELP my computer lasted less than a week before the problem reemerged and it won’t go online anymore. I have an appointment to go back on Tuesday (couldn’t get one any earlier) but I am Pissed Off. This time they are not going to be allowed to take it until they agree to replace something more than what they have been since it clearly did not work the first two times.
Sometimes, you have to get cross and stamp your foot a bit.
Or, in the case of a mermaid, your fluke.
So I’m doing training for my new job (which basically involves learning a ton of marketing terms so that I’ll know what my boss is talking about when he asks me to make something) and I’m feeling a bit odd about parts of it. Like the part where they tell you how to get people to click on your stuff without even thinking about it. It feels wrong to manipulate people like that.
So I checked out The World is Flat from the library because I hadn’t ever read it.
It is hilarious how much the state of the world has changed from when it was published in 2005 and now. For example Ireland is used as an example for Europe of what to do to be wealthy, and look at it now.
Yes, “foreseeable future” is generally an oxymoron.
I always say it with a string of tacit asterisks.
Is that like a host of golden daffodils?
What can you expect from a book where the title is wrong? I have often joked about writing a rebuttal called “The World is an Oblate Spheroid”.
Funny how this place can bring up both nostalgia and existential doubt. Also cheer me up totally effortlessly.
Anyway, it’s good to be back.
And we’re glad to have you here.
“MuseBlog: making people nostalgic for existential doubt since 2005.”
Erm, wait, I don’t think that came out quite right…
Well, obviously, the nostalgia started later.
The existential doubts been there from the beginning.
My Instax-technically-not-a-Polaroid-because-that’s-another-company camera came today! I tried taking some pictures of myself in the mirror, but they came out too dark, I guess I was holding the camera too far away. The first one I took of a table to test it came out okay, as did the one of a tree, and the photo I took of the sunset is actually pretty decent-looking.
The first week of online school is going great. The classes are fun, and the teachers are fun.
The only thing I object to is my handwriting. I sometimes have to take notes. For an assignment in my Literature class, I was told to write something called “Book of Memories” which is technically a book about yourself. And I noted it. Then I went back to read my notes, and due to bad handwriting, I was stumped for a moment as I read it as;
“Write “Book of Jumbo Pies”
Inspiration strikes!
Be not dismayed. I blessed all the available gods when computers became affordable. My handwriting is either beautiful, calligraphic and SLOW, or practically fast and totally illegible, even to me.
I have now almost typed my ex-boyfriends phone number instead of the veterinary hospital’s phone number into at least 2 different discharge instructions for owner’s, because they have the same area code, and my finger have a mind of their own. Gonna be really bad if I accidentally do that without catching myself, because that’s not really gonna be useful to the owners if they have any questions or concerns about the continued care of their pet.
You know, it’s a whole lot of fun to have this Rosetta news coming in from all sides, because I originally heard of Rosetta about six months ago, and I heard about it from someone who’s working on the project.
I usually go to work with my father to do my school, because I can concentrate better there. And he works in spacecraft design, so the lunchtime conversations are almost always interesting.
That particular day, we ate lunch with somebody who was talking about how they were about to turn on this spacecraft after two years and they were hoping it would be in the right place, and then it would go orbit a comet at aproximately walking speed, but couldn’t tell us which comet because even after working on this project all this time he still couldn’t remember the name.
And then the project turns out to be cool enough that everybody cares about it.
It’s like a little sneak preview of what’ll happen next year when New Horizons reaches Pluto.
I know, Rosetta is amazing. Good luck, Philae!
Fall weather makes me very happy. So do all the pumpkin-flavored goodies appearing. It makes me want to put on my boots, chop down some trees, built a cabin with them and then make a bonfire with the leftovers. Actually, there are a few dead trees in the neighborhood that I doubt anyone would miss….
Busy, busy, busy…
I am less scared of public speaking than I am of reading email replies. This is one of those situations where I wish I could bottle whatever’s producing those weird behaviours / preferences and use it all the time / sell it / show it off.
words I learned yesterday while taping Says You:
apricity (the warmth of the sun in winter)
balter (a ballroom falter – when you step on the toes of your partner)
prend (a hairline crack)
jettatore (someone who brings bad luck)
today’s words:
porlock – to interrupt an artist in the act of creation
vorlage – the position a ski jumper wants to be in
oche – the line you have to stand behind when playing darts
I don’t remember the fourth word from the bluffing rounds, but there was this fantastic phrase that came up in another game:
spot tease – when you think you see an empty parking spot but as you get there it turns out there’s a motorcycle or tiny car there
Related to “spot tease” is “kawashock”, which is the feeling experienced upon pulling up the to last empty parking space, only to discover a motorcycle in it.
There should be a video game based around BU where you can encounter a ghost named Charlie who looks like the “T” mascot (except, y’know, a ghost), who will help you anywhere in the subway system but can’t come with you above ground unless you give him a nickel.
September resolution. Now I’ve banished the televison forever from my palatial residence, I shall spend more time on Museblog.
There is one problem. Apologies for cross-posting to anyone who has already read thsi on my Facebook page :
Steam is evil.
I finished New Vegas. Unlike previous Bethesda productions, it has an end game. A final battle, and that’s it. No particular temptation to leap back in and explore further. I just tried not to look at the “total hours played” count. I mean, I don’t watch television now, so it’s just a delightful substitute.
Then they flashed Crysis at me at a budget price. Published in 2007, and still one of the most breathtakingly realistic virtual worlds available.
I’m approaching the end of that too. Except they threw in the sequel.
But all this was manageable. I could feed my addiction without thinking too hard about Skyrim. Skyrim could wait.
Then this weekend on Steam – Skyrim. And three expansion packs. Seven quid the lot.
I am weak.
And they are evil.
I understand.
So many ways to entertain, so little time.
Thank you for your support.
Hello! I am currently ‘blogging from a COLLEGE! I showed up early for my campus tour, thought I’d say hi. Colleges are weird, America as a nation is mainly weird and cold, how’s everyone else doing today?
Paul (25): The only thing keeping me (relatively) safe is an underpowered computer. That, and my extended entwinement with Oblivion keeping me from delving too deep into any other game. Oblivion is a mistress sweet but jealous.
I’m not sure how to describe the absolutely physical cravings I’ve been having lately to ride a motorcycle again. There’s nothing in the world like being on a motorcycle, nothing at all. It is entirely singular. But I don’t really have the money for a motorcycle, and while I could have the money fairly quickly, I’m liable to whisk off to the monastery any day now (well, any month…year at the most). My dad’s bike is too big and too expensive for me; I can’t risk dropping it. Damned hell-machines!
Hi friends, I miss you.
I also have been spending an average of 7 hours in work and classroom time every single day, which along with then doing the work for those classes has left not so much time to keep up here.
Glad you could come up for air for a minute.
Greetings! Even if it’s brief. we miss you too.
For my birthday (in case anyone cares) I received:
A second book in a series of books that I’m very intrigued by.
A gift card to my favorite bookstore.
With the gift card, I received:
Metallica’s Ride the Lightning album, which has been on my mind ever since I heard it was pretty much the only one I didn’t own.
The first Death Note manga. Now I wish I had bought the second while I was there.
The Dracula novel. I had been itching to read the original classics such as this one for a long time, and now I can!
The Hunchback of Notre Dame novel. Yet another horror-type classic that I can finally read for myself.
And, the Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde novel. Just to see if the movies did these justice or not.
Nice!
I can tell you that there is a big difference between the original Jekyll and Hyde novel and almost every adaptation I’ve read (the Wishbone novelization being the exception.) It’s not so much in terms of what happens as in terms of what order the story is presented in.
What is the book?
It’s from the Inheritance Cycle; Eldest, I believe.
Death Note? Why, that was my first manga! Happy birthday!
“You know what today’s natural disaster is? It’s way too nice to be inside like this!”
My Earth Sciences professor is awesome.
He sounds like a GAPA.
Oh, if there is ever an opening for a semi-crazy German geologist GAPA, I recommend him.
Sounds as if he would fit right in.
Hello all, just a quick update from home. As I mentioned a little while ago, our family recently got a dog (a 6-year-old shih tzu) for the first time since I was 4, so I’ve been spending my time keeping an eye on her and making sure she doesn’t pee on the rug (she’s semi-housebroken…). She’s had a hard life — she was a breeder at a puppy mill or something, and when she couldn’t have as many puppies anymore they basically discarded her — so I try to be kind to her, even if years of allergies have made me resistant to petting/cuddling dogs. When I’m not watching or walking the dog (I usually geocache when walking her), I’m playing Pokemon X (Victory Road!) or watching Netflix (House! and various movies).
Also, tomorrow is my dad’s birthday, so he’s taking the day off and we’re spending the day together doing “whatever he wants” (which probably means driving practice for me, running errands, and eating out at Asian restaurants).
Classes begin on the 22nd and I fly out the 21st (yikes, one day to move in). Freshman orientation is in full swing, from what I’ve heard from my friends who are staffing in dorms this year. The staff members for my house next year are starting to send out emails, so I’m starting to get really excited. I bid farewell earlier, but it seems I underestimated just how much free time I would have at home, so it looks like you’re stuck with me until the 21st.
Congrats on the new dog!
My mother’s new career plan for me: be Sister Wendy.
It would be funnier, I think, if that weren’t basically my life goal.
So you’re going to become a nun?
Saw in this RC bar with no context; suddenly reminded of a silly anecdote from the other day that I now feel obligated to share. The other day I was talking to my mom about how stressful everything is and at the end of my mini-rant I just threw up my hands and said “I’m just going to go join a convent to be a nun.”
My mother gave me the weirdest look ever, paused, and then confusedly informed me: “I think that ended a while ago, sweetie.”
Me: “What are you even talking about?”
Mum: “That war’s been over for like a decade.”
Me: “Mom I said I wanted to JOIN A CONVENT. AND BE A NUN.”
Mum: “Oh, I heard you saying you wanted to join combat in Vietnam and got a little concerned…”
Ugh, why do I have to go to work tomorrow! I want to stay up all night and watch the referendum results come in. Right now No is winning 58% to 42% with the four least populated councils counted. The Scottish flag shirt I got when I was in Edinburgh is currently in the washing machine, which is the only reason I’m not wearing it right this moment.
Haha, I have to work tomorrow, as well (well, school but it’s the same as work just minus a paycheck), but I’m probably going to stay up later than advisable following the election results. I’m curious to see what happens.
Well, not *just* to watch the results. I also need to clean my apartment because my mom is coming for a visit. and she gets here tomorrow. and the place is a disaster zone
Wow the Lorde concert was amazing! I’m pretty much still in shock. she’s so talented and amazing and I’m in awe.
I think my plans to go to her concert will fall through… none of my friends particularly like her.
So. Cleaning my apartment. Starting with the bathroom because well frankly it’s kinda gross. So I was trying to remove hair that was all ensnarled in the drain in the shower (which was involving lots of cutting with scissors, b/c when you shed in the shower when your hair is 3 feet long…..it gets pretty entangled in the drain).
Ended up just prying the drain cover off. And cleaning the shower drain for the first time in 3 1/2 years, and OMG i’m quite frankly impressed that my shower was draining at all. because ew. ew ew ew ew ew. i think i pulled like a couple pounds of wet hair mat with gross smelling grey goo all over it out of the drain. ew. it was about 10+ times the size of the hair globs that more than clog the shower drain back home (which ironically, my dad who has the least hair of everyone in our house back home, is the one who gets to clean it…..)
but just ew.
I feel your pain of hair cleaning-out! I’m a little afraid of what the goo is–is it just soap? Or shampoo mixed with soap? Who knows?!
Late night trip down memory lane for me.
I started posting here when I was twelve. It was 2007. Still in the doldrums of 7th grade in Middle School. The iPhone hadn’t been released yet.
Museblog was my first real experience with the internet. It was great fun…the realization that I could communicate instantly with people around the country and the world who shared a common interest with me. I participated enthusiastically in many round robin ‘ritings. Pied people all around. Did the triangular sentences that took forever to type and were the epitome of pointless. Would get kind of obnoxious sometimes when discussing certain topics and annoyed a few people. (I am sorry about that.)
Stopped posting regularly for good in 2008. Poked in once or twice since.
I turn 20 next month. Junior in college now, studying radio/tv/film production. Have a part time job at a radio station nearby.
…I feel old, man.
I know I’m not, relatively speaking, but it’s like…I’m not a kid anymore. And that’s something you sort of form an identity around when you’re young. You are the kid. The grown-ups are the grown-ups. The adults run the world, drive the cars, are looked up to, obeyed and respected. The kids learn, play games, have fun.
Through your teenage years that begins to slip away. The boundary of adulthood becomes hazy. Jobs. Driving. Voting. They’re all “adult” things, but none of them feel like the definite stepping point. You can sense internally that you are more mature in many ways than you used to be when you were younger, but in many ways you feel like you haven’t grown up and are just pretending as you go along.
Then it becomes clear that adults can be just as fun-loving, silly and ‘immature’ among themselves as kids used to be, just in different ways.
I rotated through several different online communities. One centered on a movie franchise. One centered on a sports team. One centered around film-making. Met up with people in real life from all 3. Meeting people from online wasn’t as weird as I thought it would be. There’s a definite difference from talking to someone with internet terminology and community inside jokes vs. in person chit chat. But a person’s a person and you know how to interact with them. You’re not meeting an alien or something.
I think that was because social media became a thing. Back in the day when Museblog was starting, internet safety was the #1 priority. Never give out your name or any identifying information! Be super sensitive about showing your face! Be super careful about strangers online, they are very likely dangerous! Nowadays? Haha. Share your photos, videos, everyday thoughts, activities, job history, and everything else to the world, attach your name to it all, and have each site’s account connected to all the other ones so you can share things across all of them easily.
I’m rambling, I know. Well, this is the random thread, darn it. That’s what it’s for, still, I assume.
I guess my point is that it feels like a lot has changed in my life and in the surrounding world. But I come to MuseBlog, and aside from that one redesign, it still looks the same as it did all those years ago.
It’s like a piece of my childhood that I can still come back to. The apartment complex I lived in as a kid? Torn down. Favorite childhood playground…torn down. A lot of other places? Would take a long time to travel to. But Museblog is right at my fingertips, just an internet connection and a few keystrokes away. Many of the members are different, but several names in this thread I still recognize, and the same 4 GAPAs are all still here. That’s pretty awesome.
It’s good to stop by.
And it’s good to see you here, E2MB. Thanks for the kind words and all the news.
And it’s a No to independence! Thank goodness for that, a break up of the UK would have been messy … However, 45% voting Yes is pretty significant (and the Yes vote won a majority in Glasgow, Scotland’s biggest city) and I think there will have to be a fair few changes to politics in Scotland (more devolution, etc.)
I love that the pirate translator turned “Yes” to “Yarr”, because now I have the amusing mental image of ballots with “Yarr” written on them.
Them Scottish pirates be like: “Yarr we want our independence!”
ARRRR, we be castin’ off from them Limeys!
After a quick peek at the Recent Comments Game thread, I’ve discovered some piratey name-calling.
KaiY’es
Agent Lightnin’
Muselo’er
Ye Man For Aeou
Selenium t’Quafflebird
Luna thar Lo’ely.
Hey, who turned off the pirate translator already?
Aye, ’tis no longer Talk Like a Pirate Day, matey.
Well that scared the hell out of me. I just took some trash out to the dumpster, and as I was throwing it in, I was contemplating how taking trash to the dumpster after dark was probably not on the list of “intelligent decision making”, because despite the floodlight by the dumpster (which, except for a relatively small “doorway” is surrounded by 10 feet brick walls), someone could easily be lurking just on the other side of the brick wall, just out of sight.
And then suddenly I saw something large moving in my peripheral vision in exactly the area I was thinking someone could be lurking, as a giant 20+ pound raccoon went diving under the dumpster. And while I was colorfully cursing out the raccoon, I was thinking “well, good thing I’m vaccinated for rabies…..”
To KaiYves unposted comment about the pirate translator…..
I caught the beginning of your comment “Hey, who turned off the…..” as I was skimming through the comments in the queue, and my brain filled in the rest of it, before it processed what you *really* said as “Hey, who turned off the lights.” Yay Vashta Nerada.
Another recent vote, somewhat eclipsed in importance and coverage by the Scottish referendum: New Zealand’s parliamentary elections. I’m really unhappy about the way these went: National (center-right, although center-right in NZ is socialist in America) won with 48%, which is fairly massive, despite the fact that they’ve been offending people to no end recently. Labour dropped even more, which is upsetting to me. This after a campaign during which all sides, but particularly National, behaved horribly, and the Mana party (egged on, incidentally, by Kim Dotcom) had a tiny but scary moment in the spotlight. They got none of the vote- but a couple of more conservative parties had uncomfortable gains, as did the actual Conservative party, though thankfully not enough to get seats in Parliament.
Anyway. I really do not like the trend here; it seems to be in the direction of American-style politics, in terms of smear campaigns and conservative gains, and that’s something I hoped New Zealand would avoid because we have what I think is a much more respectful political culture.
On a happier note, I have a job! I tutor two times a week, and it’s within biking distance. I feel rather responsible.
So, walking across the Harvard Bridge today, I saw that it had been decorated with yarn and woven art pieces, as well as Tibetan prayer flags. Some of the flags had become tangled around the bars of the railings they were hanging off of, and I had read that it’s important for the flags to wave freely in the wind, so I untangled them. However, I also know that they’re sacred, so was it disrespectful to touch them at all, even to untangle them?
I’ve been told that it’s completely fine to touch them as long as your intentions are good (part of the idea is that hanging them in a windy place allows your blessings to be blown to other people and communities). Because they’re sacred, they’re not supposed to touch the ground, but people can touch them if needed. Prayer flags are definitely supposed to be able to wave freely; I think what you did was lovely!
And I think it’s lovely that both of you are concerned enough to worry about disrespecting others’ beliefs.
While we’re mulling over the Independence vote, I think we can all celebrate the OTHER Scottish vote that was somewhat overshadowed. The Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrews voted to admit women members, ending 260 years of men-only status.
To quote Kevin Garside in The Independent :
“No positive developments are expected immediately in the anachronistic dens of misogyny at Muirfield, Royal St George’s and Royal Troon, but all three will come under increasing pressure to leave the 19th Century behind now.”
Day 2 of my mom’s visit. About an hour after getting up started feeling a little like I was getting a cold, slight off feeling in throat, and a little bit of a localized sinus headache. And it is definitely well on it’s way to progressing into a cold I feel.
Blech. Really bad timing on my body’s part, I mean I don’t want to be sick while my mom is here visiting.
Althlugh she did just leave for a dayquil and chicken soup run. because suppoedly chicken soup does actually help.
I have a ramble I want to see you guys’ thoughts on. It’s nearly 1am, although that means little with my terrible sleeping schedule. Good luck making sense of more than half of it!
Is it disturbing that I always identify with the Mad Scientist character? The type who, in a sci-fi setting, represents major technological advancement and is also evil, presented in a way which I tend to interpret as “you arbitrarily made en evil so you could neatly have the protagonists fighting for tradition or something and dismiss itâ€. For example, pretty much everyone who wants immortality ever, Dr Khan Noonien Singh, anything else on the “Scale of Scientific Sins†page of The Site That Will Ruin Your Life, etc. (That Site also points out that it works with magic, e.g. HP and the Philosopher’s Stone. I don’t take Voldemort as an example, he does things mainly for the evulz.)
I also think of characters like Divergent’s Jeanine as this, although in that case the work is more pro-technology and she’s more focused on changing society.
It does seem that most or at least a lot of people like villains who have half a point(I’m not an anarchist, but Korra Book 3…), and if you manage to write a utopian world based on the power of science then darkness within it is one way to create conflict…
The trouble is, my reactions tend to be based on fangirling as well as a rational “nope, that doesn’t follow and it’s getting clichedâ€. There are things which creep me out, but generally my reaction is technophilic when the normal bias is the opposite. “WOOT GENETIC ENHANCEMENT†instead of ABOMINATION AGAINST NATUREâ€.
I’ve only started to notice this as a problem since reading singularitarians’ blog posts giving Dire Warnings about AI, probably because I’d much rather agree with my ingroup sci-fi nerds than the people who commit the naturalistic fallacy all the time and who I otherwise find distasteful. But reversed stupidity is not intelligence.
On the other other hand: maybe it’s disturbing that I drool so much over the Capitol in the Hunger Games, but for it to even work as social commentary that has to be something it’s plausible for our society’s desires to lead us to. I suck at people, but it looks like I’m not as extreme as what people explicitly say about it would lead you to believe. But I’m also a transhumanist and that’s weird even among the nerd crowd where it’s normal to drool when the Enterprise engages warp. *pulls out wallet, revealing student ID, bus pass, Bisexual Card, and various types of Nerd Cards. Weird Subculture Card materialises* Why would so many writers create cautionary tales unless they at least thought there was an attitude of the sort they’d want to caution against? (So why is the reverse uncommon?) It’s probably overstated in the way that both liberals and conservatives say the media is conservative/liberal biased. (It seems to be usually conservatives claiming liberal bias, but the inverse exists.)
Of course, speaking of politics, I don’t just drool over the Federation for its technology. My Star Trek utopia head canon includes diversity and Kirk/Spock and Dax/Kahn and Picard’s brother living happily in rural future France.
I feel like this says something deep and insightful about Enlightenment and the West, but I’m not sure what.
Hmmm, that’s interesting, I don’t know if I’m interepreting everything correctly, but let me try to respond…
I agree that the blanket “science=evil” attitude is annoying and can be dangerous in the real world– I’ve seen people on other sites say that human limb regeneration is a bad idea because of The Lizard, never mind that that was comic book science (and particularly specious comic book science at that.) Even if a limb regeneration treatment did involve adding some chemical or genetic sequence derived from lizards to the human body as opposed to simply stimulating the human body to do something lizards do, it wouldn’t turn you into a lizard man, any more than injecting pig insulin turns you into a pig-person. To create a lizard man, you’d have to extensively alter someone’s genetic code, probably before birth, not just change one little thing. And let’s not get started on how difficult it is to discuss nuclear power rationally…
However, I do believe in scientific ethics and often find myself opposed to mad scientist characters whose work I would otherwise support because of their unethical methods. It’s good that you want to try to cure a disease or something, but you cannot kidnap people and experiment on them without their consent. If you can go through the proper process and do animal tests and get permission for trials with willing humans, then by all means, go ahead, and I hope you succeed. But you can’t kidnap people and do what sometimes amounts to torture to them! I’m not opposed to science, but I am opposed to kidnapping and to painful and/or irreversible medical experimentation on the unwilling.
I don’t like the association of science and technology in fiction with people who kill/destroy/torture/steal/kidnap etc., because it does promote that negative association, but I do root against mad scientists who do do those things because I am opposed to those things. I would be opposed to someone who killed someone else to bathe in their blood and gain immortality just as I would be opposed to someone who killed someone else for money or envy or any other motive, because I oppose unprovoked killing.
Many of the scenarios under which such villains are featured additionally do not reflect real issues– for example, on your Transhumanism tangent, the general discussion (as far as I know) is of humans willingly voluneering to receive genetic or mechanical enhancements simply because they think it would be beneficial or fun. A fictional scenario would be more likely to show a malevolent individual wishing to gain abilities in order to do harm, or a malevolent scientist turning people into cyborgs or mutants against their will. These stories make for ready-made conflict, but they do not reflect the real debates and their villains are not representative of the patients or scientists involved in real life.
I just got back from helping my friends unpack in their new house. It was actually a lot of fun, especially because we were watching/listening to Star Trek at the same time.
A thing: I saw the Globe’s touring Hamlet when it was in my country and it was so fabulous I about burst, and I’ve become obsessed with Hamlet — if anyone wants to talk Hamlet at all, or if you want to hear about the production I saw, there’s literally nothing I’d like better. (GAPAs, is there a more appropriate thread for this? Books and Reading seems wrong; do we have a theater thread?)
Not since 2009, but I’ve just created a new one.
Robert; this link leads to the 2009 thread. Was this intentional?
Sheer carelessness. Sorry!
Congrats, MAVEN and MOM! This is a big week at Mars!
(Oddly, USA Today, who seem otherwise to have the best space coverage of any major newspaper I regularly read, has no article on MOM, while the Boston Globe and New York Times do.)
I just started reading Dune. It’s really, really good. I wish I had read it earlier.
I took the GRE! *collapses*
Congratulations!
I started tutoring a sixth-grader! What that means seems to be that he reads out loud to me and I explain words to him and correct his pronunciation. He’s reading a book about dragons which I would have been all over at his age, and it’s a lot of fun.
Happy Jewish New Year to all!
Seconded! Happy Rosh Hashanah!
Thirded! My house is so. full. of. apples. and I am extremely happy.
Okay, barring some sudden surprise, tomorrow I actually WILL be able to sleep in for the first time since Wednesday. Yay!
Police are firing tear gas at pro-democracy protestors in Hong Kong. I don’t really know what to think. I can’t believe the kind of stuff I’m seeing in pictures, news reports etc., is happening where I grew up.
*virtual hugs*
Okay, so I think I have an opportunity to go to Colombia. The tl;dr version is that a friend of mine from my parish, whom I’ve known for maybe six years, was ordained a priest last year and sent to a mission in Colombia. The past week or two he’s been back in the States doing fundraising, and today he came back home to talk to our parish, ask for prayers and donations, show us some pictures, etc. I chatted with him about what I’ve been up to, and I kind of jokingly said, “Maybe I’ll have to fly down and visit you sometime,” and instead of laughing like I expected, he started looking around for a piece of paper so he could give me his phone/email.
So not a formal thing–just me, flying to Colombia by myself and taking some form of transportation to the village he’s in, staying there for however long I want and helping out, and then coming home again. Round-trip plane tickets to Bogotá are only about $1000, no idea how much local transportation will cost, ditto the hotel (probably pretty cheap). I imagine I’d be fed, more or less. I think I’d have to get some vaccinations, though. Luckily I already speak Spanish.
I’m still trying to decide whether to go or not. I think he’d have me helping out at the school (which is currently just a couple of shacks, but they’re raising money to finish a nice three-story building before the end of the year). How long would I say–a week? two weeks? The strange thing is that my mother, who so drastically opposes my entering the monastery in Wyoming, is all gung-ho for me flying to Colombia by myself. I don’t think I fully understand motherhood.
I’ve never been to Bogotá, but I think you’re still young enough to qualify for youth hostels, which tend to be wonderfully affordable (I stayed in one in Malaysia that cost $4/night, and had WiFi). Go while you can still find cheap accommodation!
Accommodation probably isn’t a problem for me. The town I’d be going to is fairly small, and he showed us a picture of the one hotel; it wasn’t the kind of place that would set you back much. I might even be able to stay at the priests’ house.
I’m pretty tempted to go. I’d need to figure out vaccinations, and whether I’d need any sort of visa. Another two or three paychecks and I’ll almost certainly have the costs covered. Rural Colombia would be much cheaper traveling than most places in the world.
The latest issue of National Geographic Traveler has an article on Bogota, you should probably check it out for tips on what to see if you have free time away from the school.
So, um, holy cake was Rainbow Rocks great. Seriously it was way better than the first movie.
*looks up*
I seriously thought that was going to be a documentary about some sort of quasi-hippy-ish music thing out in the southwestern desert.
Yeah I guess I could have given more context!
All of those bands and festivals and things have names like that. Joshua Tree, etc.
We finally got out busking again and it was great. I think it’s good that I’m constantly wanting to improve my playing and focusing on what I need to work on, but it’s also really nice to sometimes realize how far I’ve come as a musician and how well we all play together as a band and just really appreciate it. We sounded great and we made more money than last time and we got a lot of compliments and people seemed to really enjoy our playing and it just felt really good.
Also I finally got the recordings from the radio performance we did last year, and Paul being a wonderful angel cleaned them up and put them into mp3 format and I’m being super narcissistic and listening to my own band right now but whatever.
Would you make a post of them?
Ugh, I had period cramps and just couldn’t get comfortable, and I got almost no sleep at all…
Note: stopping by and catching up on the Random Thread is a dangerous occupation during class because of the incredible need to laugh out loud, so one is forced to bite her fist to stifle her giggles.
I love this place.
So…been away a while, but here’s saying, “Hi!”. I’m now a senior in college (aah! when did that happen?), hoping to graduate in the spring with a BA in English Creative Writing. This semester I’m working on my portfolio and I also have an AWESOME internship – library and special projects for the Children’s Book Council. So. Much. Fun. Plus: FREE BOOKS!!!!!! As I hope to become a librarian/going into publishing/both, this internship is great.
Oh – you should know that Bunny Apocalypse came in handy in my Fiction Writing class. We had a writing prompt at the beginning of class to write a list of 10 things that you are an expert at, then write one down on a sticky note and put it on the teacher’s desk. Then we all picked a folded sticky not from the pile and wrote a short scene. Most of my expert things were boring, but the last one (and the one I wrote on the sticky note) was: Expert at fighting the magenta menace using blasters, depigmentizer darts, and music in 3/4 time.
The classmate who got my sticky note did a really good job with it, even though she had never heard of Museblog or BA.
Hm. Children’s publishing, you say?
Common App essay: DONE.
First two teacher recommendations: ACQUIRED.
Kudos to you on the essay; those prompts are *horrible*. For the life of me, I don’t know how I’ll write a whole essay off of them.