I watch the ripples change their size
But never leave the stream
Of warm impermanence
And so the days float through my eyes
But still the days seem the same
And these children that you spit on
As they try to change their worlds
Are immune to your consultations
They're quite aware of what they're goin' through

Monday, February 18, 2013

Linkee-poo, they say he's got to go… go, go Godzilla

This one is for John. "Okay, seriously, these guys have no idea that litter laws apply to them, too, do they?" An article exploring chat rooms on where to leave religious tracts. (Grokked from the Slactivists)

"'I thought I could prove I wasn't really ill if I could get off the medication…'" Elyn Saks on living with schizophrenia. (Grokked from Jay Lake)

My friend, Dan, does his yearly crazy by jumping in a cold lake for charity.

Fred Clark reminds me that it's not too late to write my book with a list of End of Times thought in current events. Including how there are those who are actively waiting for the Rapture.

Optical calibration targets. Only these are big ones. (Grokked from Jay Lake)

"Guess what else? Depression is not a sin… I'll say it again, Jesus is not all you need… Sometimes you need a Doctor. Sometimes you need medication. There's really no crime in that." (Grokked from the Slactivist)

The Radio Lab "Sperm" episode. Quite fascinating on several levels, and it includes some human reproductive knowledge I had never heard about before (which changes a part of my post about how sperm only get the energy they bring with them, turns out there's a "sweet spot" in the fallopian tubes which will hold sperm for a few days, bathe them in glucose, all while waiting for ovulation). It also touches on the history, theology, animal biology, artificial insemination… really just fascinating stuff. Note: adult themes throughout the podcast, as you might expect.

Jay Lake on the journey down the final path. There's a secret language of babies, twins, and the dying. A language only they know and share. It's not a language you can study in school, it's one you need to live.

More examples on the inherent sexism in our culture where being male is normative, and being female is the exception. (Grokked from Jay Lake)

Oh look potential voter fraud, and this time it's a Democrat. After scouring the nation, the conservatives have finally found one. And while some reports have her being subpoenaed, and Melowese Richardson does have several subpoenas in her name I couldn't find one for this case (sorry, the web link doesn't keep the search parameters). It also appears that the Hamilton County Board of Elections is investigating 80-90 cases of voter fraud. For reference, Hamilton County is a heavily Republican County. So it'll be interesting to see how this plays out, if it does at all.

A funny thing happened on the way to the revolution. In this case the gender equality revolution. It's strange to see the time you've been alive become history that people research. There's a lot in there about feminism, the stall of equality, who did what, and how it all leads to unmet expectations and intra-couple struggles, and (again) how America was once a leader, but has now fallen behind the curve. I'll let you guess why and who is to blame. (Grokked from Jay Lake)

5 comments:

Eric said...

The more things change, the more they stay the same: the link re: "Where to leave tracts" reminded me of Wilkie Collins' The Moonstone, which I only got around to recently. There's a character--one of the narrative viewpoints, in fact (the story rotates through a series of narrators)--who leaves Christian tracts everywhere she visits. Indeed, it's a running gag, with the character spending paragraphs and paragraphs describing all the places in a room she considered leaving a pamphlet, and all the places she actually left one, just so one of the poor unsaved wretches she has to deal with can stumble across the Word at just the right time. (Her efforts eventually put her in the right place at the right time to secretly eavesdrop on a minor plot development.)

The Moonstone was originally published in 1868. Collins, if you don't know, was a chum of Charles Dickens'. Religious litterers have been around forever, it seems, and it turns out others have been making fun of them for almost as long.

Steve Buchheit said...

Yup. There's actually a whole history on the publishing of religious tracts of the "You're Going to Burn In Hell" variety (as compared to the Martin Luther "I think the Church is wrong about this" tracts that actually got the movable type printing business going strong). But my friend John has quite a collection of them. It's kind of a hobby of his (the collections of them, not so much the distribution).

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Steve Buchheit said...

Hey Cris Brown, thanks for the compliment, but your comment looks like link spam. If it's not, you can repost without the non sequitur link, or explain how the link relates.

Steve Buchheit said...

Ronti, If you would like to repost without making your comment appear as spam, that would be fantastic.