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Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in Cat Sitting Still's LiveJournal:

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    Thursday, May 15th, 2008
    6:18 pm
    By now you've probably heard
    The California Supreme Court legalized gay marriage in California.  NPR had a report on it.  At the end of the report they did the standard quotes from both sides thing.

    The quote from the gay rights activist was (roughly "I just text-messaged my partner and asked her to marry me!  She said yes!" 

    The quote from the anti-gay activist was (roughly) "we were very surprised; the legally right decision would have been to uphold the lower court ruling."

    My reactions were "Oh, how sweet."  And "Dude, you got nothin'.  Admit you got nothing and move on; you're just embarrassing yourself"

    Because after "She said yes!" let's face it, there's nothing of similar poignancy that the other side can offer.
    Wednesday, May 14th, 2008
    1:52 pm
    What we have accomplished in Iraq.
    Here's an example.  For those who don't have time to follow the link, it's an article about a 17 year old Iraqi girl, murdered by her father and her brothers for talking--talking-- to a man who wasn't a member of her family.  This is a common practice in Iraq now; it's called "honor killing."

    I will just note that, however I might despise Saddam Hussein, while he ruled Iraq, honor killing was prosecuted as murder.  After the regime change we brought about, the police now congratulate these murderers.

    Oh, well done!
    Sunday, May 11th, 2008
    10:42 am
    More Kindle stuff; you can skip it if you want
    I've been reading a manuscript on my Kindle, checking for internal inconsistencies, and inconsistencies with previous books.  There are some aspects of the Kindle that make it very convenient for this.

    Thursday, May 8th, 2008
    10:26 am
    Real Controversies About Evolution
    I have been exposed, rather more than I would like, to the arguments of the anti-evolution people who try to work up political and social controversies and blur them with scientific controversies to which they don't apply, trying to make them sound as if there were real doubt about the theory of evolution.

    These always struck me as being like a rube watching two mechanics sitting on the front porch, listening to someone trying to start a car behind the building.  Mechanic 1 says "It's a Ford F 150, made in 1997.  Hear that slight metallic edge as the starter disengages at the end?"  The other one says "No, it's a Ford F 150, but it was made in 1998; the pitch of the engine has that slightly higher note that they got when they switched to aluminum cladding on the outside of the carburetor."

    The rube says "See? They can't even agree on what kind of car it is.   I told you all along; it's a horse."

    Now John Timmer at Nobel Intent has put up an excellent post analyzing the real scientific controversies in the field of Evolutionary Biology, and comparing them to the "controversies" manufactured by the Creationism/Intelligent Design/Discovery institute crowd.

    It's an excellent article; if you have time I recommend it to your attention.
    Thursday, May 1st, 2008
    10:18 am
    Fake robo-calls in North Carolina try to confuse voters
    From [info]filkertom's LJ:

    Robo-calls purporting to be from "Lamont Williams" have been going out recently to North Carolina voters, saying that they must fill out a registration packet that is coming in the mail in order to be able to vote.  This is deceptive in two ways: 1) the deadline for mail-in registrations has already passed in North Carolina, and 2) many of the victims are *already* registered.  Apparently, African-American households are being targeted in particular.

    The responsible group is called "Women's Voices, Women's Vote."  It has been involved in confusing voters in a number of previous elections.

    If you get a call like this--it is a lie.  Ignore it.  Pass it on.

    The local League of Women Voters in your area will have information on how to register to vote, and will be more than happy to provide it to all comers, male and female.

    That is all.
    Tuesday, April 29th, 2008
    10:33 am
    Correction: "zie" is not German
    In my last post I wrote:
    Then someone (I think it may have been my mom, actually) pointed out that German already has such a pronoun--"zie."  Well, English being a language that thinks nothing of pickpocketing other languages for spare vocabulary, I felt free to try that.  That actually works okay for me.  I just can't seem to persuade anyone else to use it.
    This was an error on my part.  Two errors, actually:

    1) German does not have a pronoun "zie"--they have a pronoun "sie" that is pronounced that way, but apparently it means "she."

    2) My mom knew German, therefore she wouldn't have made this mistake.  It must be mine.

    Oops.  My bad.

    Thanks to [info]thymidinekinase, [info]ndrosen and Alan Thiesen (via e-mail) for the correction.

    We now return you to your regularly scheduled livejournal.
    Monday, April 28th, 2008
    12:39 pm
    New Pronoun Observed In The Wild!
    Since I was a kid, I have felt the lack of a third person singular gender neutral pronoun in English.  (Like he or she, but without specifiying if the person you mean is male or female.)

    I started out using "they" as if it were number neutral, but I could never get the verbs to match naturally.  ("When a new student comes to college, they often finds new friends."?  "When a new student comes to college, they often find new friends."?)

    Then I read a science fiction book that used "per" so I tried that.  Never felt right.

    Then someone (I think it may have been my mom, actually) pointed out that German already has such a pronoun--"zie."  Well, English being a language that thinks nothing of pickpocketing other languages for spare vocabulary, I felt free to try that.  That actually works okay for me.  I just can't seem to persuade anyone else to use it.

    But now a new third person singular gender neutral pronoun has been spotted in the wild, in general use among school kids in Baltimore.  Read about it here.

    "Yo."  I don't know if I can get used to it.  I guess I can if other people can.  We'll see if it spreads.
    Sunday, April 27th, 2008
    9:39 am
    Playing with my new toy
    I'm really enjoying the Kindle so far.  I've gotten very little done around the house.  Some preliminary observations.

    8:21 am
    Consuming, producing, and sharing--what to do with the surplus of human thought-hours
    [info]peteralway linked to a very interesting article, called "Looking for the mouse."  [edit: the article is actually called "Gin, Television and Social Surplus."  I conflated the title of Peter's post with the title of the piece he was referring to.  Sorry.]

    For those who don't have time to read it, the basic points (I think) are these:

    1) since WWII, there has been an increase in the amount of human free time available.
    2) for a long time, a lot of that free time was soaked up by TV--most people passively consumed entertainment (or sometimes information) but did not significantly contribute to it.
    3) with the rise of participatory projects on the internet (the author mentions Wikipedia as an example, but things like Flickr and Youtube occur to me as well) it has become more and more possible for people to direct their free time into producing and sharing information (and entertainment).
    4) 1% of the present TV-watching time would add up to 10,000 Wikipedias.
    5) kids are very familiar with the participatory nature of entertainment (the title is about a small child mistaking a TV for a computer and looking for the mouse so she can give her input) and thus presumably information. The author implies that the trend for participating will only increase.

    I find this both fascinating and hopeful. On the other hand, it looks to me like this may be one of those ideas that takes off on the Internet because it fits in with our worldview ("Progress is good; participation is good; technological progress makes more participation possible; we'll put our brains together and make the earth a better place.") but maybe not so much because it's true.

    What do you think?
    Saturday, April 26th, 2008
    12:32 am
    Guess what?
    I am posting this from my new Kindle! :-)

    Current Mood: bouncy
    Thursday, April 24th, 2008
    3:02 pm
    Can't say I'm surprised.
    Yoko Ono has filed suit over Expelled using _Imagine_. 

    Good luck to her.
    Wednesday, April 23rd, 2008
    1:37 pm
    Gone and done it this time...
    I ordered a Kindle.

    It should be here Friday.

    Eeep!

    [Later add--I have been sending free samples of amazon books to my Kindle.  Chortle.  A bit of _Halting State_ for instance.  A bit of _Merle's Door_.  A bit of _Our Inner Ape_.  These things are like potato chips. ]

    [Another later comment: _The Sharing Knife: Passage_, which wasn't available in a Kindle edition yesterday, is available today.  Presumably because there's some technical problem with pre-ordering on the Kindle?  But anyway, it's only a day after my (pre-ordered) paper copy arrived.]

    Current Mood: hopeful
    12:11 pm
    Things that come in the mail
    Well, Ramp the mimmoth is home.

    Plus (chortle) this morning my copy of The Sharing Knife: Passage came in the mail. Finally!
    Monday, April 21st, 2008
    4:09 pm
    Get thee behind me!--or at least in my back pocket...
    The Kindle is back in stock.  It was in stock yesterday, but I thought it was just a fluke.  But it's in stock today too.

    It was a lot easier to resist when I thought I'd have to wait six weeks for it to arrive in any case.

    Thursday, April 17th, 2008
    2:18 pm
    What were they thinking?
    More information on Expelled

    Apparently they are using the music of John Lennon without permission.
    The flap concerns the film's use of the song "Imagine," by the late John Lennon. Bloggers had accused Ms. Ono, Mr. Lennon's wife, of selling out by licensing the song to the filmmakers. In fact, her lawyers say, she never granted permission for its use.
    Apparently they used about 25 seconds of the song, rather than the whole thing.  Maybe that makes it okay, I dunno.

    But won't the music industry take them apart?  I mean, isn't that what the music industry *does*? 
    Wednesday, April 16th, 2008
    2:42 pm
    Okay, this is weird...
    Remember that movie, Expelled?  Started as "Crossroads" claiming to be a documentary about the intersection of religion and science, turned out to be an anti-evolution movie equating biologists and Nazis, yeah you remember the basics.

    Well 1) it turns out the makers of Expelled copied the best part, a computer animation of various proteins working in a cell, from a video called "The Inner Life Of The Cell" made for Harvard by a small company called XVIVO  (The video is great, by the way; I can see why they wanted to use it.  I'm less clear on why they wanted to plagarize it. )  XVIVO has naturally taken action to protect their copyright.

    2) Apparently the makers of Expelled stole other parts of the movie from PBS.

    3) And now it turns out that the makers of Expelled are suing XVIVO.  I'm a little opaque on for what.  As near as I can figure out, it's for sullying Expelled's good name by complaining that it plagarizes their work.

    I think someone over at PBS should look into this.  If the makers of Expelled really did steal from PBS, PBS should sue the snot out of them.
    2:17 pm
    The new Bujold book is coming out soon.
    The Sharing Knife: Passage  is coming out soon.  I have already ordered my copy from Amazon.  8 days and counting :-)

    There's a review here, along with an interview of Lois McMaster Bujold.  She brings up a very interesting point--I think I'll just use her words for it:
    I have come to believe that if romances are fantasies of love, and mysteries are fantasies of justice, F&SF are fantasies of political agency. (Of which the stereotypical “male teen power fantasy” is again merely an especially gaudy and visible subset.)
    I'm not sure I'm understanding it right.  But I'm interested in trying.  Are science fiction and fantasy stories "fantasies of political agency"?  I would take that to mean that the political results of the characters' actions are sort of the point of the story--the way in a romance the development of the relationship is the point of the story, and in a mystery, the discovery of the truth is the point of the story.

    I'd always thought of science fiction as being stories about inventions or discoveries of scientific principles.  Some of these stories are about how they play out in a social arena (like part of the whole story of Wildside is how the government reacts to discovering that the main character has a Gate To Elsewhere, and how the characters deal with that).  I hadn't really thought about this being the point of the story, and certainly not about the political subset of the social being the point of the story, exactly, but I'm having trouble making a case that it's not, either.

    Or take another book I'm reading because it was free: Lord of the Isles.  It's about several characters who are magical in one way or another.  And their magic certainly gives them a lot of potential to change events around them.  And some of that has political implications.  I'm not done with the book yet so it's premature to state that the political changes (or the potential for them) are the point of the story.  But they certainly add to the sense that the characters are important, and that their choices and achievements matter.  (Also parenthetically I had expected to not like it, but started reading because what the heck, I got it free.  It turns out to not be great--as one person pointed out, pretty much any baddie has short legs and long arms; why is that?--but it's not lousy.  I might like that author's military fiction a lot less, but the straight out fantasy isn't so bad.)

    Whereas if I think of a non F&SF book--say Pride and Prejudice, the point of the story is the relationships between the characters.  Yes, they live within a social world that is not entirely apolitical, but I don't get the impression that the character's choices will change the political landscape.

    Hmm.  Interesting.  Anybody want to help me think about this, for example with examples of books that support or fail to support the proposition that F&SF are fantasies of political agency?
    Tuesday, April 15th, 2008
    3:45 pm
    Here's a Thought
    Here's a weird thought for Tax Day (I did mine in March, but since it's coming up a lot today).

    What if you could specify on your tax forms what you wanted the money spent on?  Say, 25% for social security, 25% for education 25% for public transit, fire and police, 20% for scientific research and 5% for the military?  What if all the government programs had to persuade taxpayers that they were the best bang-for-the-buck as far as funds went?

    Do you think it would work?  What do you think would happen? 
    Monday, April 14th, 2008
    7:45 pm
    E-book product development
    In an interesting twist, Mobipocket for Blackberry now allows wireless purchase and downloading of e-books.   It looks to me like the Kindle is pushing the market.  Which is just fine.
    10:04 am
    Lawyer seeks position
    Apparently Alberto "Torture Memo" Gonzales is having trouble finding a job.

    For those who haven't been watching the game, the sections "War On Terror,"  "Dismissal of Attorneys," "Right to Writ of Habeas Corpus In the US Constitution"  and "NSA Domestic Eavesdropping Program" in the first link above may help get you started.
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