Froborr's Page of Stuffness

Contextual truth-values

Thu, 18 Dec 2008 22:41:36 GMT

I've been thinking a lot about what pristis said in the comments to my last post.

When I posted it, I felt like I was on the verge of understanding something big. After reading his comments, I feel like I'm even closer. But I'm still not quite there. It has something to do with the way mathematics allows you to change axiom sets and derive interesting results, and an analogy from there to New Criticism, and then somehow from there it expands to illuminate the big metaphysical and ethical questions.

It's right on the tip of my brain, but I can't quite straighten it out into something discussable. A little frustrating, honestly.

A Question of Categories

Mon, 08 Dec 2008 14:59:14 GMT

Are mathematical statements positive or normative?

How about statements about (established) fictional worlds (ex.: "Hobbits are typically between 4 and 5 feet tall,")?

What about statements about laws? Games?

If they're positive, it implies empirical experience of a construct which has no physical reality, which seems self-contradictory. If they're normative, they shouldn't have truth-values.

I am really stuck on this one this morning.

Important Question; Also, A Thought Regarding Vampires and the Traditional Weaknesses Thereof

Wed, 03 Dec 2008 01:21:03 GMT

Do any of you think I'd make a good professor? Obviously I'd have to go back to school. Either anthropology or writing, I'm thinking.

Thought: Vampires are afraid of crosses because the natural enemy of the vampire is the Hound of Tindalos.

Fri, 28 Nov 2008 04:07:31 GMT

Happy Thanksgiving! Mmm... tasties.

Random aside for TJ people: 10-year reunion for the Class of '99 is coming up. I'll go IFF people worth talking to are going. Any of you planning on it?

Sat, 15 Nov 2008 14:55:34 GMT

Viga's mother died suddenly, some time between Wednesday evening and the early hours of Thursday morning. We do not know why, and probably won't until the full toxicology report comes back in two months -- leading speculation is an adverse reaction to medication. She was discovered by a neighbor, and appeared to have just fallen asleep watching TV and never woke up.

Needless to say, this has been a huge shock for Viga. She's completely devastated, and it doesn't help that she's the next of kin, so she has to be there to sign all the paperwork, and two members of her family are being unrelentingly horrible to her.

I've just been trying to be there for her as much as I can. It's reminded me of a lot to do with my dad, which hurts, but not half as much as seeing her in pain hurts. And all of my pain is nothing compared to hers. The next couple of weeks are going to be all about Viga, until she's started to heal. Nothing else is important right now.

Still... I'm exactly where I want to be: By her side, in bad times as much as good. I love her, and I want her to heal. I think she will. She's not trying to be tough or strong or pretend there's anything good about this, or any of the other absolutely terrible advice everyone always gives grievers.

The bad news in this election...

Wed, 05 Nov 2008 17:34:22 GMT

Congratulations, California. Slightly more than half of you are disgusting, hateful bigots who should be utterly ashamed of themselves.

Likewise for all the voters everywhere who, this election or in any other, voted to ban gay marriage or adoption by gay couples, or who agree with such bans in other states. You disgust me.

Wed, 05 Nov 2008 05:31:56 GMT

The Schadenfreude Pie was quite good, by the way.

Time for Schadenfreude Pie!

Wed, 05 Nov 2008 02:50:51 GMT

CNN just called Ohio for Obama. Add their Pennsylvania call a couple of hours ago, and I'm ready to say that Obama's got this in the bag.

It is time for me to bake a Schadenfreude Pie.

Going to vote in a few minutes...

Tue, 04 Nov 2008 15:23:28 GMT

I am amused by the fact that the Republicans didn't even bother to run for House or in most of the local races -- it's all Democrats vs. Green.

I live...

Fri, 31 Oct 2008 18:04:07 GMT

And hunger for BRAINS...

Sorry to worry people. I still exist. I've just been really, really busy with the incredibly wonderfulness of having starlightv around all the time. It's seriously the best thing ever. I mean it. We've been living together over a month, and we're still lovey-dovey enough to send observers into insulin shock.

But yeah, I'm here, I just haven't had much to say. Good times make for boring reading; drama and comedy both arise from suffering.

I meant to post this Friday, but I was too tired.

Mon, 29 Sep 2008 19:34:30 GMT

48 new and modified web pages, including...

Over 60 (typed, 11-point, single-spaced, standard-margin 8.5x11) pages of entirely new content, most of it written and all of it proofed, edited, and formatted by yours truly (and did I mention said formatting involved lots of numbered and bulleted lists, mixed and nested as much as four deep, or that using tables for formatting violates handicapped accessibility rules?)...

142 new unique links (linking to the same place twice is very easy in AuthorIT, it’s the first time that takes effort)…

14 new external documents comprising lots more pages, including a pair of monster spreadsheets to the tune of 26 megs... each...

12 new glossary terms written by guess who, on a subject about which I knew nothing going into this…

The project of doom is DONE. It is published, it is finished, it is complete.

Gah…

Mon, 22 Sep 2008 17:32:59 GMT

So, um, bit of a major development this weekend: starlightv moved in. We had been talking seriously about living together a few months down the line, maybe starting early next year, but a series of unexpected events on Saturday led to her suddenly finding herself in need of a new place to live, so... yeah. I helped yesterday move a bunch of her stuff from her old place to my room -- now our room, which is amazing and awesome and slightly dizzying -- and she and a friend are getting more today while I'm at work. She starts a new job next week, and once she gets her first check from that and sees what it is we'll talk about how much and in what way she'll contribute to the household. Until then, we get to play at being office worker and housewife, which I imagine would get pretty old after a while, but at least for me is fun so far.

In other news, I'm reading Thomas Friedman's much less optimistic sequel to The World Is Flat, titled Hot, Flat, and Crowded. The argument in this one is basically that globablization is causing global resource consumption to grow much, much faster than population growth would suggest, and if this trend continues, we're all pretty much fucked. He claims he will outline a way for the U.S. to solve its national malaise (which he mentions here and there but takes as basically a given) by reinventing itself as a model of a nation in which economic growth is fostered by an increase in the efficiency, rather than volume, of resource consumption.

My main criticism of Friedman so far is that he treats globalization as an inevitability. It's true that, if it can be accomplished without environmental disaster, globabilization represents an opportunity to bring every country on Earth up to the standards of living of the richest countries, which is a Good Thing. But it's hardly inevitable: history is contingent, and any of countless events could derail the process.

I was talking this over with Economist Jim down the hall (he's featured in my posts once or twice before), and he argued that globalization has been tried and failed before. I am skeptical of a number of major points in his example, but find it interesting and potentially instructive nonetheless, so I shall share it.

He made the claim that the industrialization and construction of infrastructure in the Third World was begun in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, citing examples such as railroads in India and Africa and the big canal projects in the Middle East and Latin America. Yes, this was all done for the benefit of the major colonial powers, but it still required building infrastructure and pumping large amounts of money into Third World economies, which could have used it to industrialize. What happened instead, in his model, is that Europe decided they'd rather fight the two World Wars, the U.S. decided they'd rather go isolationist and protectionist, Africa and South Asia (and, to a lesser extent, Latin America) decided they'd rather work on political independence first, and Russia, China, and much of Latin America decided they'd rather be Communist.

I am like unto an avenging storm

Thu, 18 Sep 2008 22:19:51 GMT

I sweep down upon the project, destroying unnecessary capitalizations with my righteous wrath, leaving a trail of serial commas in my wake.

Long Post about Obama, Judaism, and Israel

Thu, 18 Sep 2008 04:43:13 GMT

A couple of weeks ago, Kirsten asked me how I can support Obama and still consider myself Jewish and an Israeli.

I didn’t answer at the time, not because I didn’t have an answer, but because I was too apoplectic with rage to give it. This is the first time I’ve been calm enough to answer the question.

First of all, I’m Jewish and proud of it. Most people don’t understand what being Jewish means. Hell, most Jews don’t understand what being Jewish means, especially in the U.S. Being Jewish isn’t about celebrating Hanukah and Pesach. It isn’t about going to synagogue and wearing a little hat. It’s about 6,000 years of history and heritage. It’s about being the Chosen People. Not Chosen like a favorite child, awarded special privileges. The Jews were Chosen to suffer. We were Chosen to be persecuted, spat on, exiled, enslaved, and murdered.

Why? To be a light unto the nations. To know what it is like to be persecuted, so that we can stand together with everyone who’s persecuted, everyone who’s weak, everyone who suffers. We say it during every Seder: “Because I was a slave in Egypt.” Not “they.” Not “my ancestors.” I.

It doesn’t matter that I have serious doubts whether the first 4,000 years of that history actually happened. It doesn’t matter that I don’t believe the being that supposedly chose us exists. I have been Chosen. I have a personal duty to be a light unto nations, because I was a slave in Egypt, because I wept by the waters of Babylon, because I was tortured by the Inquisition, because I died in the gas chambers.

Because he was a slave in Egypt, my father hitchhiked nearly 2,000 miles to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with his African-American brothers in bondage and watch Martin Luther King tell the world about his dream. Because she was a slave in Egypt, my mother risked (and suffered) repeated imprisonment for protesting apartheid in South Africa. Because I was a slave in Egypt, I stand today with the generation of blacks whose fathers have all been imprisoned, with the women who are paid less for the same work, and most of all with the gay couples that aren’t allowed to marry.

If you do not understand that, you have absolutely no right to tell me how Jews should vote.

But we’re in idealism country now. Let’s talk about practical matters. Let’s talk about what’s going to happen to Jews in a country run by people like Palin.

Palin is a right-wing Christian. That’s no secret. She believes America is a Christian nation, and she believes America should be a Christian nation. Her selection as the running mate for the oldest Presidential candidate in history – not to mention the selection of Bush as the Republican candidate in the 2000 primaries – says something about how powerful right-wing Christians have become in the Republican party. We can fully expect that, the more power the Republicans have, the more of a Christian country the U.S. will become. What does that mean for Jews? Total disaster.

Spain and Britain exiled us. Poland, Russia, the Ukraine – all of Eastern Europe – stuck us in ghettoes and then drove us from our towns, burned our homes, and slaughtered our children. Spain, Portugal, and Italy forced us to convert and then tortured us. France? Well, everyone knows what it’s always been like to be Jewish in France. And I don’t think I even have to mention Germany.

Sooner or later, every Christian country tries to get rid of its Jews.

Sooner or later, every Christian country tries to get rid of its Jews.

This is not a problem with Christians. It’s not a problem with Christianity. It’s a problem with Christian countries. The absolute worst thing that could happen to American Jews would be for America to become a Christian nation.

If you want to guarantee, beyond any doubt, that American Jews will suffer a pogrom, that American Jews will be put in ghettoes and concentration camps, then vote for the right-wing Christians. It doesn’t matter whether any of them want to persecute the Jews. If they succeed in making America a Christian nation, it will happen. It’s simply something that Christian nations do. Maybe it’ll be a week before they start, maybe it’ll be a generation, but it will happen.

And while you’re thinking about that, think about this: not even Iran has ever tried to get rid of its Jews. There have been Jews living in Iran for a good 2500 years, and nobody – not the Persian emperors, not the Muslim caliphs, not the Shahs, not even the Ayatollah, has ever tried to get rid of them.

Sooner or later, every Christian country tries to get rid of its Jews.

Now let’s talk about Israel. Let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that the Palestinian terror attacks are entirely unprovoked. What does Israel’s conservative government, backed by America’s unholy coalition of right-wing Christians and conservative Jews, do about it? They build a wall around the Palestinian territories. They block trade and limit the ability of Palestinians to get jobs in Israel. The result? As long as the Israeli government keeps this up, Palestine has no hope of rising out of poverty. Your typical Palestinian has no way to make sure his children stay fed – except one. If he becomes a suicide bomber, the terrorist organizations will take care of his family until the children are grown. Most Palestinians don’t make that choice. They’re not willing to do something that evil, even if it means their children will be safe. But some of them are willing to kill if it will guarantee their children’s futures. So they bomb innocent Israelis, so the Israeli government continues to keep Palestine in the third world. Meanwhile, they plant radical settlers – most of them American Jews – all along the West Bank and Gaza, where they throw rocks at Palestinian children and shout an endless stream of hate.

Israel and Palestine are both trapped in an endless cycle. The real enemies of Israel – and Palestine, for that matter – are the people perpetuating that cycle. Who is that? The Palestinian terrorist organizations, definitely and without a doubt. But the Israeli government and military are doing their part to keep it going, too. The settlers are nearly as big a cause as the Palestinian terrorists. American neo-cons, conservative Jews, and right-wing Christians are helping fuel the flames, too.

So, if I want to vote in a way that helps Israel, who should I vote for? Obviously, it’s someone who will oppose the terrorists AND the Israeli government AND the settlers AND the neo-cons AND the conservative Jews AND the right-wing Christians. McCain and Palin are going to oppose the terrorists, but they’re going to support everyone else on that list. Obama is definitely going to oppose the terrorists, the neo-cons, the conservative Jews, and the right-wing Christians. There’s a decent chance he’ll oppose the settlers, and (let’s be realistic) he might oppose the Israeli government in some small ways, if the political climate allows it. The better choice for Israel is obvious.

The better choice for America and the world is obvious, too, but that’s a whole different argument, and this has gotten long enough.

Good night everyone, and remember: We are never not obligated to be superheroes.

Well, one of you asked for it, so...

Wed, 17 Sep 2008 06:58:21 GMT

Suffer a politics-free post about my actual life! Bwahahaha!

First, some gushing: starlightv continues to be the awesomest person in the history of awesome. Which is a lot longer than the history of people, if you think about it. She kept nudging me to go to the doctor (see below) and finally helped me get there on Friday, when I hit the point of total collapse. I am completely in love with this woman. I've gotten past the honeymoon phase, I'm perfectly capable of seeing things she does that annoy me, and I don't care. We're still as disgustingly lovey-dovey as ever, and even when I'm annoyed with her I still love her, and it passes quickly.

Speaking of gushing, I have a nasty infection (probably staph) on my jaw. No idea where it came from, one morning I just suddenly had a lump on my jaw that leaked a nasty-smelling yellow liquid when I poked it. This lump soon grew bigger and oblong, and starting regularly leaking a more viscous version of the yellow liquid, which at times was brown. Also, sometimes blood. Last Friday I got suddenly sick as a dog, and Viga helped me to the doctor, who used a word you never want to hear your doctor say: "necrotic". Turns out a good chunk of the infected area was actually dead, and it had crossed the line over into "abscess". I have to get some lab work done tomorrow, and I need to contact a surgeon to drain the thing, but in the meantime I'm on heavy antibiotics and doing fairly well -- no more fever or vomiting, and the lump has gotten a little smaller and isn't oozing as often.

Work isn't so great. I got reprimanded for missing time again as a consequence of the infection and the awful bout of flu that preceded it. I then got reprimanded a few days later for spending too much time on the Internet at work. I think it's kind of silly that I'm getting in trouble for these things, because they always say they're satisfied with the work I'm doing. If my work is good enough, what difference does it make whether I'm there a certain number of hours or I'm spending a lot of time goofing off? What needs to get done is getting done! However, my therapist says (well, not really, but she very heavily implies) this is a childish attitude to take, and when I called Viga to bitch, she very diplomatically agreed, so I guess I'm probably going to lose on this one.

So, yeah, that's life of late. How're all of you?

Two Kinds of Voters

Wed, 17 Sep 2008 02:30:54 GMT

Increasingly it seems like voters can be split up into two camps: those who'll vote for the sort of person who names her kids things like "Trig" and "Piper", and those who won't.

It's a flippant way of putting it, but it's basically true: those who want someone average, someone like the people they know, and those who think a leader ought to be a little smarter, a little better than the rest of us.

The first kind of voter trusts someone based on how they appear. They don't care that Wasilla made rape victims pay for their own rape kits under Palin, or that McCain voted against a law that would require the states to pay for rape kits, just as they do for DNA testing and fingerprinting in any other crime. They don't care that McCain released an ad attacking Obama for supporting teaching kindergarteners the difference between "good touch" and "bad touch" (the entirety of the "comprehensive" sex-ed program for primary school).

No, McCain, and especially Palin, act like the good folks they know, so they must be trustworthy. And they say they're on the side of law and order and family, so it must be true, no matter how they act to the contrary. After all, nobody could pretend to be "good folks", right? It's not like we've spent the last eight years under a President who got into office on the strength of his ability to act like good folks, and then proceeded to completely screw over the country in every way imaginable by an incredible combination of bungling and corruption.

No, we know that McCain and Palin can be trusted to run the country no matter what they do, because they told us so. And we know that Obama is an evil schemer, because the people who say one thing and do another told us so.

Quick thought on my lunch break...

Tue, 16 Sep 2008 18:37:52 GMT

Thanks to Bob Altemeyer's excellent The Authoritarians, I now know that sociologists believe they have found a strong correlation between scoring highly on both of two quantifiable personality measures (right-wing* authoritarian follower traits and social dominance orientation) and being a power-hungry, unscrupulous, domineering bastard.

Political candidates should be given tests to detect authoritarian follower traits and level of social dominance orientation. The results should be published. No screening or anything, we don't want to start discriminating against personality types. But...

...the following ad should be all over the country during elections:

"We all want leaders we can trust. That's why we look at more than just what the candidates say: we look at their lives, their records, and their finances, so we know whether we can trust what they say.

"Well... researchers have found that people who test highly in social dominance and authoritarianism are more likely to seek power, more likely to lie to their constituents, and more likely to abuse their position. Some of history's worst tragedies have been caused by people who, researchers believe, were authoritarian social dominators.

"Shouldn't you find out where your candidates stand?"

*This has very little to do with the traditional American right-left distinction. Rather, it's to do with the way power and authority are constructed, so that Hitler (who would be way, way out on the extreme right of the American system) and Stalin (who would be way, way out on the extreme left of the American system) are both considered "right-wing" authoritarians.

Remember when you were a person?

Thu, 11 Sep 2008 16:38:48 GMT

We had to become employees to eat.

Then they turned us into human resources, things to consume.

Now they've announced the Federal Human Capital Survey.

We're things to be spent.

Remember when we were people?

Random Stuff, Including an Update on cnorgard

Wed, 10 Sep 2008 12:43:18 GMT

cnorgard e-mailed me, he's fine, he's just lost his phone and has computer trouble. So, apparently I'm contagious.

As of 8 a.m. EST, the LHC has not destroyed the world. So I guess I have to go to work. That sucks, because I really don't want to be wearing pants if the world ends.

Had a bizarre dream last night. I was in some sort of a class (with really bizarrely arranged desks, sort of loose clusters but all facing the center of the room), not paying attention and reading the new, much darker Ah! My Goddess manga (which doesn't exist). This got somehow scrambled with another dream in which Jason, Benny, and I had a whipped cream fight, greatly upsetting Kirsten, who was trying to home-school him. Then I got a call from the social worker (pets division) who was investigating the theft of K-9 (whom I had owned since childhood). Apparently a very wealthy man had registered K-9 as his pet, which I had never done since K-9 was, you know, a robot. Legally, I had no proof that K-9 was actually mine, so... At this point I became very upset and shouted that K-9 was my dog, and she promised to do what she could.

Then things got *really* scrambled, to the point that the first volume of the manga ended with Keichi used his newly developed psychic powers to win the trial and get back his dog, K-9, and I was just reading about it. Then I started up Volume II, subtitled "Belldandy Goes to Hell", and the class metamorphosed into a literature class on manga with two teachers, a very strident old lady and a Japanese man that needed an interpreter. We discussed the first two chapters of "Belldandy Goes to Hell", in which she died and encountered the Triple Woman, who, much like Neil Gaiman's version, kept shifting between different cultures' Triple Woman. I wanted to make a point about how odd it was for them to appear, as Belldandy is herself the Norn Verthandi, but there were a lot of hands up. The teacher created a list of the order in which people would get to speak, but she didn't know my name so she came over to introduce herself, tried to steal my pen, and then when I made her give it back tried to steal a blank sheet of paper off my desk, which I made her give back.

Quote of the Indefinite Time Period

Tue, 09 Sep 2008 03:25:51 GMT

Viga: Oh man, I'm farting up a storm. So unladylike.
Me: That's okay, I'm oozing pus and blood.

Aren't we just the cutest couple?

Has anybody heard from cnorgard in the last week?

Mon, 08 Sep 2008 02:14:14 GMT

dejapes spoke to him over a week ago, and he said he would "almost definitely" drive down that Saturday (eight days ago now). He didn't show up, but we didn't worry at first, because it was the third time in a row he said he was coming down and never showed without telling us he wasn't coming.

Except that we haven't heard from him since. We've both tried calling with no reply (I've left two messages), and I've e-mailed him twice. Earlier today I tried the number I had for his parents; it had been disconnected. I looked online and found a phone number connected to his address under his dad's first initial and last name; that rang and rang with no answer, not even a machine. I let it ring until I was automatically cut off.

So, anybody heard from him more recently than August 30? We're starting to worry.

So... Palin.

Fri, 05 Sep 2008 21:48:35 GMT

UPDATE (via mullenkamp): According to ABC,

Rick Davis, campaign manager for Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., just told Fox News Channel's Chris Wallace that McCain running mate Gov. Sarah Palin won't subject herself to any tough questions from reporters "until the point in time when she'll be treated with respect and deference."

Deference? DEFERENCE? Who the hell does she think she is? This is America! "Deference" is for kings. Elected leaders get hammered by questions both fair and unfair. As mullenkamp said, why should Palin get something no other VP or presidential candidate has ever gotten? And I mean ever -- you should see some of the stories newspapers ran about Jefferson when he ran.

Last week's Palin post continues below...

I've been waiting a few days on the Palin thing to see what we find out about her.

It is not a pretty picture.

Speaking of pretty, I've seen several comments on her appearance. I don't get it. I thought the people who think Obama is good-looking were weird (seriously, dude, Ross Perot wants his ears back), but Palin? Really? With that giant plastic smile surrounded by saggy plastic face and coated in way too much makeup? I suppose she's slightly ahead of Ann Coulter on the supposedly-good-looking-Republicans front, but when you compare her to Elizabeth Kucinich or (since Mrs. Kucinich is more than ten years Palin's junior) Ariana Huffington? Seriously, Republicans, if these half-melted, overly made-up Barbie dolls are what pass for good-looking in your neck of the woods, no wonder you hate sex so much!

Still, what matters is what's inside, not outside. And what's inside Palin is hate, hypocrisy, and abuse of power.

First of all, let's talk about her religion. A candidate's religion is usually not fair game, but when it preaches specific views on political questions, it makes itself fair game. For example, it was perfectly fair to question Edwards on the discrepancy between his church's teachings on abortion and his stated political stance (a question which he answered admirably during the YouTube primary debates, by the by).

Palin has belonged to three churches in her life. All three are dominionist churches with strong ties to the Assemblies of God, a metachurch organization identified by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a hate group. All three churches preach Kingdom Now theology (also known as Joel's Army) which teaches that believers have the right and obligation to physically impose Christian "dominion" on non-believers during "the end times". All three churches also preach that the end times are now. In short, all three churches she has belonged to in her life preach against the separation of church and state and in favor of the establishment of a totalitarian theocracy.

Palin is in favor of abstinence-only sex education despite overwhelming statistical evidence that it is less effective at reducing teen pregnancy and STD rates than comprehensive sex-ed. She is in favor of teaching creationism -- not just the ID Trojan horse, but actual, young Earth, biblically literal creationism -- in science classes. She attempted to ban books from the Wasilla Public Library when she was mayor (which, in case you're wondering, was only six years ago), and tried to fire the librarian when she balked.

Palin belongs to a supposedly feminist organization, the Feminists for Life, that opposes abortion in all cases, including rape, incest, and when the mother's life is endangered. They also teach that the ideal occupation for a woman (ANY woman) is as a stay-at-home wife and mother. In short, they're as anti-feminist as it comes. And this is the woman who's talking about "breaking the glass ceiling"? Talk about hypocrisy.

She is, of course, also against gay marriage and civil unions, and called the war in Iraq "God's work".

So there you have the new Republican wunderkind: a bog-standard hypocritical, authoritarian right-wing bigot, distinguishable from the likes of Dobson only by her age and possession of boobs. In every way that matters, she is nothing more than yet another Christofascist posing as a conservative.</lj>

Assorted Updates

Thu, 28 Aug 2008 22:51:30 GMT

The CNN article I linked? Some time in the last 24 hours they cut the quote where he said the Republicans would never nominate a black man. Yeah, that's some liberal bias you've got there, guys.

I have managed to track down one of the cofounders of the company that made Ramagon. He says that they are nearly sold out of the remaining stock, which is now in his closet. He says they would happily turn the molds and drawings over to anyone who wanted to build Ramagon again, but estimates it would cost around $15 million to get the project off the ground as a web business, closer to $50 million if you wanted to sell it through toy stores. He's snail-mailing me an info packet.

I have started drafting a Wikipedia article on it. I fully expect its notability to be challenged inside of an hour of my posting it, which is why I'm not going to post it until it's done.

Still looking through 4e. Amazingly, they've managed to take their fantastically moronic alignment system and make it even worse. Why is chaotic evil eviller than evil and lawful good better than good? I mean, seriously, who's the automatic go-to name for Ultimate Evil? Hitler. Lawful evil if ever there was one. And who's the only true role model the English-speaking world has? The Doctor, of course. Chaotic good through and through.

Lawful evil is always worse than regular evil, because lawful evil is organized, institutionalized, bureaucratized, and banal. Chaotic good is always better than regular good, because it doesn't let principles get in the way of doing what's right. What is wrong with the WotC guys? They've got this bizarre authoritarian streak sometimes.

Holy fnerking schnit

Thu, 28 Aug 2008 16:45:08 GMT

This will mean nothing to anyone, because no one but me knows who *both* these characters are. Well, pristis might be able to guess.

Anyway.

damurxac has given me an amazing epiphany by asking about the forum game I dropped out of. To wit:

Twill.

Is Lir's.

Teacher.

I'm glad I saw this at home, because posting it from work would be a federal crime...

Thu, 28 Aug 2008 07:08:08 GMT

Look, I try to give the Republicans and their supporters as much benefit of the doubt as I can. There are people... well, one person... anyway, there's a person I respect who usually votes Republican most of the time, and another who occasionally does. I think that Teddy Roosevelt was actually one of the better Presidents of the 20th Century, foreign policy weakness notwithstanding. I think Reagan was a monster, but it's hard to say whether the damage he actually did is worse than the damage Kennedy almost did -- the Cuban Missile Crisis was both entirely avoidable and came within a hair of turning into the deadliest single day in human history (in raw numbers, anyway; as a percentage, the eruption of Thera, among others, may have been deadlier).

And it's not that the Democrats are flawless, not by a longshot. In fact, they're pretty pathetic. Their failure to impeach Bush and hand him and his cronies over to an international war crimes tribunal disgusts me. Actually, what I really want to see, just for the irony, is Bush and his cronies tried for terrorism under the Patriot Act, followed immediately after conviction with its repeal.

Hmm... 'The definition also encompasses activities that are "dangerous to human life that are a violation of the criminal laws of the United States or of any State" and are intended to "intimidate or coerce a civilian population," "influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion," or are undertaken "to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination, or kidnapping" while in the jurisdiction of the United States.'

Lessee... Committing criminal fraud to start a war? That's a criminal activity dangerous to human life. And involves coercing the civilian population of the Unites States -- deception is a form of coercion. Not to mention the threat of being extraordinarily rendered, though it's arguable whether that's part of the same criminal act.

Seriously, though, there needs to be a law which punishes government officials who abuse their authority in a way that undermines the Constitution, with punishment greater the greater the abuse AND the higher up the official. Then again, I'm a firm believer in what you might call the inverse Hammurabi code, in which individuals of higher social class or greater authority are punished more severely for the same crimes, because they had more alternatives. (Not to mention that I consider authority and social class to both be innately evil, but I consider that to be an element of morality that properly lies outside the scope of law, which is more about social engineering than individual behavior.)

That's beside the point, though. The main point I want to make is this: I'm done. No more benefit of the doubt from me. I am fond of saying, "Opposing evil does not make one good." This is true. Look at the Democrats for an example. Hell, look at El Presidente: There's no doubt in my mind that terrorism is evil, that Hussein's actions against his own people were evil, or that George W. Bush and the majority of his administration are evil, despite that each of these opposes (or in the case of Hussein, opposed) the other two.

But the converse is not true. Failing to oppose a clear evil is, in itself, evil. Actively supporting evil is evil, period, even if you're not the one firing the bullets or drafting the signing statements.

And let there be no doubt: the Republicans are evil. Outright, pure, mustache-twirling, cartoon evil. It's absurd, I agree. Hard to believe that such people can exist in reality. But that's exactly how they've gotten this far: by exploiting the assumption that they can't really be as evil as they seem, there must be some misunderstanding. Well, that and exploiting the psychological need some people have to be led.

But the last straw was last night, when a Republican campaign consultant told CNN, without a trace of shame or even recognition that there might be reason to be ashamed, that the Republican party would never consider a black candidate for President.

Bigotry, of which racism is one (relatively) recently developed type*, is one of the purest forms of evil. There are individual acts that are more evil, but few things are more pointlessly destructive. Bigotry is counterfactual, hurts everyone involved including the bigot (though obviously it hurts the target of the racism far more), and produces absolutely no benefit whatsoever for anyone.

To have a major Republican campaigner freely say, "Yeah, we're racists," is unbelievably chilling. I mean, it's not a surprise. Republican politicians are rarely openly racist, but the most widespread Republican stances on immigration policy, war, terrorism, and English as a national language are racist in origin and intention for at least some Republicans, as the racist rhetoric around them shows. Their stances on those issues also show elements of linguistic, cultural, and religious bigotry. Not to mention the party's strong history of support for sexist and homophobic positions.

But let's just run down the line of Republican evil, shall we?

1) They want you to die so companies can profit.

2) They have a history of lying and obfuscation to invent controversies where none exist. See here, here, and here.

3) They support institutionalized bigotry against homosexual and related groups, women, minorities (especially blacks, Hispanics, and people of Middle Eastern and Central Asian descent)**, and non-Christians. (So do many Democrats, but not anywhere near as many or to such an extreme.)

4) They support corporate welfare and oppose the social safety net for individuals -- in short, comforting the comfortable and afflicting the afflicted.

5) They oppose nationalized medicine, which demonstrably provides more coverage to more people at a lower cost per person (in, among other places, Britain, Germany, Japan, and Canada).

6) They support spying on American citizens, jailing people for indefinite periods without warrant, preventing defendants and their attorneys from seeing the evidence against them, undermining the independent judiciary, expanding the power of the executive, using military resources for police and judicial functions, extensively employing mercenaries, reducing government accountability, and in general creating a police state.

7) Hypocrisy, the most glaring example of which being that they support increasing the influence of Christianity on politics when it gives an excuse to prevent people from being happy, but are strangely silent about the fact that the New Testament explicitly condemns wealth and the wealthy and specifically bars the mingling of church and state.

8) They support maintaining the highest incarceration rate in the world (5% of the population and 25% of the imprisoned -- and we call this a free country?), most of whom are not in jail for violent crimes or theft, but as a consequence of the disastrous "war on drugs".

9) They favor abandoning rather than reforming the public school system.

10) They favor economic and educational policies that reinforce societal stratification.

There's no reason it has to be this way. Liberalism is not good and conservatism evil; life is more complex than that. It is perfectly possible to have both a centrist party and a conservative party (much as I'd like one, there is no major American liberal party, there hasn't been one since the Progressive Party collapsed, and there is unlikely to be one anytime soon) which have the best interests of the nation, its people, and the world in mind, study history, the sciences, and the world around them to determine what policies are workable, and yet still disagree on a whole heck of a lot.

But voting for the current version of the Republican party is voting for immense evil. If you really oppose the Democrats' policies that strongly, fine, vote for a third party or not at all. But not for the Republicans. If you find you agree with them and support their goals? Congratulations, you're a minion. I strongly recommend re-evaluating your life, your morals, and your beliefs, but until then, I shall regard you with pity and continue to oppose your leaders.

*Historical ignorance is so much fun! The notion that humanity is separable into distinct groups on biological lines really only appears in the Middle Ages and didn't strongly catch on until the 17th century. Prior to that in Europe, and in most other cultures right up until the last 150 years, bigotry was primarily along familial (such as India's caste system), cultural/linguistic (ancient Greece's "barbarians", which just meant "people who don't speak Greek"), and economic (India's caste system again, Rome's patricians and plebians) lines. The reason was simple: dividing people up on appearance just doesn't make sense when most people spend their entire lives within a hundred miles of their birthplace, and therefore never see anyone who looks significantly different.

There were exceptions, of course. Pretty much anywhere you had significantly different-looking ethnic groups living near each other, particularly if one had power and the other didn't, you got something like modern racism. In some periods of ancient Egyptian history, for example, the light-skinned ruling class referred to the darker-skinned people in and near Egypt as "the demon race of Ish". The Japanese have a centuries-long history of systematically marginalizing and killing the densely bearded, crinkly-haired Ainu (also commonly called Utari, Ezo, or Emishi).

However, racism in the modern sense (based on skin color and tied roughly to continent of origin) can really be traced to the systematizing of biology in the 18th century. Linnaeus, for example, who is known for inventing the system of binomial nomenclature used (in modified form) by biologists to this day, identified four subspecies of humanity. He even ranked them from "superior" to "inferior," as: Homo sapiens europaeus (whites), Homo sapiens asiaticus (asians), Homo sapiens americanus (Native Americans), and Homo sapiens afer (blacks). (Hispanics did not yet exist at the time as a distinct ethnicity, and he either overlooked Middle Eastern, Central Asian, Polynesian, and Australian Aboriginal populations or considered them members of the groups he established.)

**The final straw in losing my respect for one Republican of my acquaintance was their incredibly bigoted attitude toward Muslims and Arabs, which they regard as being interchangeable terms. The point, however, at which I realized that this person was actually insane was when they argued that the draconian immigration policies they were describing were justified because, I kid you not, "Border patrols won't be able to tell Hispanics and Muslims [by which she presumably meant Arabs] apart."

How do you answer that kind of complete nutjobbery? I mean, even ignoring the spectacular racism of the suggestion that Arabs are more likely to commit terrorist acts on American soil (the likeliest group is, of course, American-born Caucasian males, such as Ted Kaczynski, Eric Rudolph, and Timothy McVeigh. Note also that, in the last 30 years or so, terrorist acts in the U.S. have been overwhelmingly more likely to be committed by social conservatives such as McVeigh, Kaczynski (arguably), Rudolph, and the Sept. 11 hijackers. I'm just sayin'.)

Anyway, even assuming that the racial profiling was justified, how on Earth can somebody actually divorce themselves from reality enough to say that it would be hard for a trained agent of whatever-the-INS-is-called-this-week to tell whether they're talking to a Nicaraguan or a Pakistani? And if it *is* that hard to tell, doesn't that kind of undermine the whole idea that there are racial features you can use to identify who's more likely to be a terrorist?

Then again, this person also believes that Asians can't drive and Obama is Muslim, so clearly they're not members of the reality-based community.