Monday Evening

July 20, 2008

Quote for the day

Filed under: Christianity — klaxophone @ 2:44 pm

Socrates is mortal

“Proposing that Jesus of Nazareth was raised from the dead was just as controversial nineteen hundred years ago as it is today. The discovery that dead people stayed dead was not first made by the philosophers of the Enlightenment. The historian who wishes to make such a proposal is therefore compelled to challenge a basic and fundamental assumption — not only, as is sometimes suggested, the position of eighteenth-century scepticism, or of the ’scientific worldview’ as opposed to a ‘pre-scientific worldview’, but also of almost all ancient and modern peoples outside the Jewish and Christian traditions.” — from The Resurrection of the Son of God, by N. T. Wright

July 19, 2008

Barack Obama jokes

Filed under: Politics — klaxophone @ 1:01 pm
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Let’s Learn to Laugh About Obama. Here’s my contribution:

Q: Why is Senator Obama sure to win the election?
A: Because no one else is running.

July 15, 2008

At the Table

Filed under: Food — klaxophone @ 5:46 pm

The other day
I saw a woman, hungry, impatient,
Who, sitting at the table,
Peeled a grapefruit like an orange,
And ate of it.
I said, “Is it good, friend?”
“It is bitter - bitter”, she answered,
“But I eat it
Although it is bitter,
‘Cause the grapefruit spoon’s a pain.”

UPDATE (with improvements): after Stephen Crane’s “In the desert”

July 13, 2008

“Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt”

Filed under: Christianity, Reading — klaxophone @ 1:51 pm
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Anne Rice’s “Christ the Lord” looks like something of a departure for the author of “Interview with the Vampire.” After growing up Catholic, Rice became an atheist in college, wrote a number of successful novels, and then in 1998 returned to the Catholic church. And the two (so far) novels in her “Christ the Lord” series, “Out of Egypt” and “The Road to Cana,” are the result of a religious experience. This change of direction attracted attention from her fans and from the media, and she wrote an essay on her earlier works to make the case that her first-person narration of the life of Jesus has more continuity with her vampire stories than it might seem.

“Out of Egypt” is a good and enjoyable story. It’s an ambitious undertaking: have the adult Jesus tell the story of his childhood; engage the reader with an original story and characters; keep it all faithful to the gospels. As she says in the Author’s Note at the end, “Anybody could write about a liberal Jesus, a married Jesus, a gay Jesus, a Jesus who was a rebel. The true challenge was…to take the Jesus of the Gospels, and try to get inside him and imagine what he felt.” She manages to write about the Jesus who is fully human and fully divine.

The first person narration is a bit jarring at first. This is not, after all, the Bible. Putting words in Jesus’ mouth might seem the height of impiety. But you can go as wrong by denying Jesus’ humanity as by denying his divinity. Jesus was born into a human family and grew up as a human child, and it’s not unreasonable to explore what that might imply. Still, if you’re not in the market for a historical novel about Jesus, the Author’s Note at the end is worth reading. There’s some autobiography, an unsparing examination of contemporary New Testament scholarship, and some useful bibliographic material. I look forward to reading Rice’s sequel, “The Road to Cana.”

July 12, 2008

Cubicles and good intentions

Filed under: Privacy & Security, The World of Work — klaxophone @ 1:26 pm

“We used to dream of living in a corridor.”

The inventors of the cubicle meant well, but so did the inventors of the workhouse.

“While these humanistic sentiments remain common in writing about management and leadership, the cubicle has been detached from them entirely. In Dilbert, The Office, Office Space, and many other popular satires of contemporary work, cubicles are a symbol of all that is uninspiring about office life, and on this point, cubicles seem utterly without defenders. Fortune recently ran an article called “Cubicles: The great mistake,” complete with a public apology from one of the first cubicle designers. Twenty years after his Atlantic article extolling the virtues of the cubicled office, James Fallows wrote another on how he changed his mind. The promises of a cubicle utopia now seem curious, to say the least. In fact, the companies that make cubicles increasingly offer up apologies of their own. Steelcase, in its “State of the Cubicle” report, addresses the “Dilbert-type issues” that surround them, turning to head of design James Ludwig for a response. “Our goal in design would be to unfold the cubicle in ways that might make it unrecognizable.” The cubicle, once a cutting edge statement of corporate identity, has become an embarrassment, even for its makers.”

It’s almost as if there were something in human nature that subverts our good intentions. From Steelcase’s 2006 report on the state of the cubicle, linked above:

“…Siebert begins to outline the challenges that accompany the opportunity for new thinking about the cubicle. “It’s a balancing act,” he says. “You have to build in the ability to provide for both more and less interaction between people. You have to see that work and learning are social processes that have to flow naturally.” Most people work in a variety of different modes each day, he notes. Sometimes it’s in a team of six, more often in a team of two and then there is the solo work.

Huh. Maybe the architects could design some kind of structural element that can be user-configured to provide either openness or privacy as required.

July 9, 2008

Sophistication

Filed under: Politics — klaxophone @ 12:35 pm

“Sophistication is empty and insubstantial. It does not save lives. It does not free people. It simply dresses well and knows not to choose the chianti.” — Obama: Europeans so much better than Americans!

July 8, 2008

Not in Worldcat?

Filed under: Reading — klaxophone @ 4:43 pm

Mnemotechnics and Virgil, by Elizabeth-Anne Scarth.

It’s not in Not in Worldcat either, but it is available from Amazon.

July 7, 2008

Help! Help! I’m repressing myself!

Filed under: Civilization, Politics, Privacy & Security — klaxophone @ 9:45 am
Tags:

Jail knife carriers, says Cameron. The thing is, if knives are outlawed, outlaws will carry clubs. But knives and clubs, and even bare knuckles, are harmless unless the attacker is well muscled. British politicians need to strike at the root cause and jail anyone with significant upper body strength. An honest twenty-first century Englishman only needs leg muscles, and enough cardio-respiratory fitness to run away.

UPDATE: The de-volution continues: Now it’s rocks and clubs. I guess Britan is part of western Europe after all. h/t

June 29, 2008

More inaction by the UN

Filed under: Uncategorized — klaxophone @ 2:31 pm

What will be Teheran’s response? Must the US solve this problem alone? What does Father Phleger think? Will Ann Coulter remain silent? (well, probably not.)

What’s the crisis? A Birthday party snub sparks debate in the Swedish Parliament. An eight year old Swedish boy invited all his classmates to his birthday party, except for two kids he didn’t want to invite. He handed out the invitations in class, and when the teacher found out they weren’t for everyone, she (I sexistly assume) confiscated all the invitations. Okay, she’s the teacher. But then somehow it escalated to some kind of discriminatory civil rights violation.

The last question is, are American trial lawyers even now figuring out a way to profit from this?

June 28, 2008

Changes, part VII

Filed under: Tales — klaxophone @ 8:19 am

Clean and dry in a thick bath robe, I sat as the doctor worked on the back of my neck. He said there was necrotic tissue that had to be removed, and that I would feel “some discomfort.” As he scrubbed the back of my neck vigorously with a sponge and a cloth I felt a whole lot of discomfort in the form of intense pain. It felt good too though, like something that gets better when you didn’t even know it was bothering you.

The doctor worked in reconstructive jell and finished with a dressing, then taking a binder from his desk he pulled up a chair. He read, looked me over, and made some notes. “I am recording our conversation. There are cookies and juice on the table. Help yourself.” He watched closely as I poured a cup of apple juice. I was hungry and the cookies looked homemade, so I took a big handful. They were coconut macaroons with pineapple and some unusual spice, and were very good.

The doctor told me to describe in detail everything since our attack as part of operation Searchlight. He looked me in the eyes and listened carefully until I finished, then asked questions. Some made sense: my age; mother’s maiden name; simple logic problems. Others seemed kind of odd. He had me put together a child’s jigsaw puzzle, and build a house with Legos. He quizzed me about duck hunting. He played short bits of music, and I had to say if they were happy or sad. Finally he asked me questions about a series of pictures: the Mona Lisa, the Last Supper, other ‘Old Masters’ everyone has seen but can’t name, together with dogs playing poker, Elvis on black velvet, a poster of Marilyn Monroe, some comics and cartoons.

Finally he asked me if I was confident about reality. “Why do you believe you really are where you appear to be? After your experience wouldn’t doubt be more rational?”

“Well Sir, things never did quite hang together in there. Out here it’s just obvious, for lots of reasons. The people, sounds and smells, all the details. These cookies.”

“Would you like some more?”

“Yes, thank you, sir, these are great. I don’t know what spice this is.”

“Cardamom, I’m told.” He wrote in his notebook then added, “My sister makes them.”

“Sir? Where are the rest of us, from my unit? Where was I exactly?”

“Hmm. That’s limited both by what we know, and what you need to know.” I ate and drank while he looked out the window. I wondered if we were done, when he continued.

“You remember the attack, and your withdrawal to a defensive position, and the gas alarm. That much is true, you really were exposed to a powerful psychotropic. After that, you and some other members of your unit were…ingested by a large, quasi-reptilian cybernetic organism.”

“Ingested? Eaten?”

“Yes. Like a snake eats a mouse. Is that emotionally distressing?”

“Uhm, please go on.”

“Is this emotionally distressing for you, Private?”

“Uh, yes sir.” He made another notation.

“This biomechanical construct was large and armored. To bring it down without killing everyone inside, we broke its legs to fix it in place, immobilized it’s head and tail, and then began extracting the survivors.”

“Armored, reptilian, head, tail, legs… So you mean I was eaten by a dragon?”

“I meant just what I said, Private.”

“Yes, Sir.”

About half my unit had survived, but many were in bad shape: comatose, sedated, “confined under continuing observation.” I wondered what would have happened if I had failed the quiz. Some, including Corporal Ramsey, had been killed outright. Others had been dead when extracted from the thing we weren’t calling a dragon.

The cookies, though really good, were a little too brown on the bottom. That as much as anything convinced me I was in the real world. The doctor wasn’t a warm and friendly guy, but he did a good job on me. I would spend the night in the hospital, then if everything checked out I could rejoin my unit tomorrow afternoon. He said there would be some scaring on the back of my neck, and that all of us would need continued observation and testing “both physical and psychological.” He was right about that.

Tom Harrison, 2008

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