neck_nibbler

Sociopath wannabes

bike4fish — Sun, 21 Aug 2011 22:20:20 GMT

Over the years I've observed a number of types of sociopath wannabe, such as the Randroids, the whiny "libertarians", and the angry young male "anarchists". They use their various dogmas to excuse their anti-social behaviors - "I don't owe anyone else for my success, so I can be a jerk" or "I'm oppressed by the government, so I can be a jerk" or "I'm fighting the Man, so I can be a jerk." In general, ignoring the contribution of their positions of privilege and the society around them to their well being, while grasping at some myth of "individuality" to justify their bad behavior. My take is, if you want to be an ass, be an ass. If you have to make excuses for it, you are a hypocritical ass, which is considerably lower on the scale than a simple, natural ass.

Recently, I've noticed another sort of sociopath wannabe - the sort that uses Christianity as their enabler for their behavior. The logic seems to be "I've accepted Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior, so I will be forgiven for whatever I do, so I can behave badly, but there will be no real consequences, because Jesus will take me to heaven." While one can see this manifested over and over in the peccadilloes of public Christian figures, it was brought home by observing the behavior of someone I'm acquainted with. What gets me is that this variety of hypocrisy is so blatantly counter to what Jesus said.

(Personal aside: while I'm a dyed in the wool atheist, I am a firm believer in what I see as a "state of grace". I've seen seen people reach such a state both through religion, and completely without it. Harking back to Luther, the path to a state of grace (salvation, if you would) cannot be bought by good works. (Or, IMHO, by adhering to a specific behavior code.) However, one in a state of grace cannot avoid performing good works. (Also, while performing good works with the idea of "buying" salvation isn't likely to get you there, performing good works for their own sake may well.)

I'm not saying that using one's religion as an excuse for sociopathy is limited to Christians - I'm aware of similar trips in Buddhist and pagan communities. But their reasons are much more in line with the Randroid/libertarian/anarchist path - they rationalize that what they do is OK. The Christian sociopath wannabes seem to be different - they seem to know what they are doing is wrong, but as they individually will be OK in the end, it doesn't matter.

Jesus is spinning on his cross.

Writer's Block: Beep, Bop, Boop

bike4fish — Sat, 23 Apr 2011 21:55:51 GMT

Space War, on one of the University of Michigan's computers back in 1971.
I found out then that I don't have the hand-eye coordination for real-time games. I've had much more success at games like Adventure.

Rain

bike4fish — Tue, 19 Apr 2011 06:00:44 GMT

Yay!!!

Wheeee! Thump!

bike4fish — Tue, 11 Jan 2011 05:06:14 GMT

I was up in Eagle visiting my sister this weekend, and drove up to Edwards to have lunch with my friend, Kristin. On the way back to Eagle, I hit a patch of slush (the road was wet, but I had seen no slush before that point. The car spun out and unless a miracle occurs, totalled.

I just have a mildly sore shoulder and a few bruises.

Four Mile Canyon fire

bike4fish — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 06:59:33 GMT

Four Mile Canyon fire

Fires

bike4fish — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 06:44:24 GMT

It's really smoky tonight in - worse even than last night and worse than this morning. What is probably worse is that the current smoke smells fresh, while that this morning could be described as stale.

I suspect that means that the fire retardant dropped from planes (I heard them every few minutes this evening until it got too dark for them to fly) hasn't kept the fire from spreading further. The reports of 7100 acres burned were hours ago. The fire is officially 0% contained.

So far, 90-some buildings (including a good number of houses) have burned, but that's only from the areas where it has been possible to make an accurate assessment. The total will probably be several hundred.

We all knew it was going to happen, the question was 'when?'

Music Meme: Brought to you by the letter P and insomnia.

bike4fish — Sat, 19 Jun 2010 07:43:19 GMT

Here's a music meme from sabotabby.

1. Reply to this post and I'll assign you a letter.
2. List 5 songs that start with that letter.
3. Post them to your journal with these instructions.

Peaches en Regalia - The Mothers of Invention. This is actually the "hold" music my ISP plays. Zappa was one inventive mother.
Plastic Fantastic Lover - Jefferson Airplane deriding the TV. I wonder what they would have said if they had known iPhones were in the future.
Pretty Fly for a Rabbi - Weird Al. Can I help it that I like this better than the original?
Planxty Irwin - A haunting tune by Turlough O'Carolan. Played by a gazillion Irish bands, for good reason.
Pie in the Sky - aka The Preacher and the Slave - Joe Hill. A parody of "In the Sweet By-and-By". A good old Wobbly song. My current copy is on Fellow Workers, a collaboration of Ani Difranco and Utah Phillips.

P took a bit of effort - I went through my entire CD and vinyl collection and only came up with about 10 titles. Believe me, there are some I'm protecting you from. Think Don Ho. (No, I don't have any Don Ho, but I do have a set of "Hawaiian music" records - probably from the 60's.)

Dissertation edits

bike4fish — Sat, 10 Apr 2010 23:54:08 GMT

I just finished the final (I hope) editing on the dissertation and got all the signatures I need. I sent a copy off to the grad school to get it checked to see that it meets the formatting standards.

I should be human next week.

Dissertation ...

bike4fish — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 14:24:27 GMT

... is defended and passed.

I just have to hunt down one signature, prepare a final copy of the monster, and submit it all before next Friday.

I think I need some recovery time.

Dissertation ...

bike4fish — Sun, 04 Apr 2010 20:52:23 GMT

... is writ.

Sure, there may be some revisions, and I need to fix the question marks that are in the paces some of the references are missing (they seem to come and go), but it hangs together pretty well, and even has a flow through it.

So, now I need to transfer the flow to the presentation.

Update

bike4fish — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 06:01:53 GMT

It's almost midnight, and I'm about to go to bed. I haven't been getting to bed at a reasonable hour recently - between work and the dissertation, my brain has been running at a gazillion miles an hour. I hope I can sleep tonight.

I'm taking today and tomorrow (Tuesday & Wednesday) off the paying job to work on the dissertation. I've written quite a bit in the last couple of days and today I ripped out a bunch of crud (repetitive stuff, irrelevant stuff, things I was planning to do but never did) and the text (ignoring front matter and Appendices is still over 170 pages. I think I've got about 10 more pages to write (these are double-spaced pages, thank goodness) and I think it will be about ready to send out as a draft to my committee.

Then I get to finish up the defense presentation.

Dissertation Status

bike4fish — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 06:28:00 GMT

I've finished the programming. All four scenarios I'm going to use in the defense are working.

They are really neat (I think). Instead of having to call the programs from the client code, you essentially tell my system what you want to do, and it goes and finds a program that will do it for you. If the client doesn't like what that program is doing, it can tell the system to go find something else that is better suited to its needs.

What's left:

Get a draft ready to send to the committee by next Thursday (up to 214 pages and counting)
Get the defense presentation done and practiced by the 6th
Defend on the 6th
Get the final version done and submitted (with all paperwork) by the 16th.

bike4fish — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 07:10:07 GMT

You (well. some of you) may wonder if I've disappeared.

Well, no, but I have been working a lot on the dissertation (2 to 4 hours after work, 6 to 10 hours each of Saturday and Sunday).

Tonight I got the software to actually produce the expected results. Yay! I still have some programming to do (I have several scenarios displaying a range of capabilities), but it's going to be pretty easy from here on. Next week it's back to writing - maybe 30-50 pages? Some of that is redoing stuff already there. At last peek, it's up to about 190 pages (counting front matter and bibliography, but not a number of appendices I still need to write).

The defense is 6 April. Final text has to be done by the 16th.

The joys of working on dissertation software

bike4fish — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 07:13:23 GMT

I spent two days trying to fix a problem that turned out to be a lower case 'c' (it should have been uppercase) in a configuration file.

Just what I needed.

I am slowly slogging through things. Keeping the cat off the keyboard is a challenge, though.

Progress

bike4fish — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 03:48:07 GMT

I met with my dissertation adviser this morning, and realized that I'm in a lot better shape for getting everything done for my defense (in April) than I thought I was.

I still have a lot of work, but I should have something working (as in the sense of getting data in and out of the repository) by this weekend.

Ashley and I have decided that Hawai'i is going to happen the third week of August. I'm excited.

Having a permanent job is a big relief. I think the biggest relief is having paid vacation - I can get away without having to worry about paying bills when I get back.

bike4fish — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 00:30:19 GMT

Do not get on Santa's bad side.

Parenting

bike4fish — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 18:09:15 GMT

One thing that should be emphasized to those who are considering having kids: Parenting is a life-time job, and it doesn't necessarily get easier when your kids hit adulthood.

If you are lucky, your kids will never stop thinking you are there to help, even if all you really have to offer is another viewpoint, because, in truth, you don't know any more than they do.

And I know I have it a lot easier than some.

What has become of me?

bike4fish — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 18:37:32 GMT

I'm buying a new car. With air conditioning, no less.

It will be nice not to be dripping oil everywhere I go, though.

Back from Dragonfest, etc.

bike4fish — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 05:55:04 GMT

I was at Dragonfest, the local annual pagan festival this weekend, We are now supposed to call a "retreat", instead of a festival, now that admission is fairly open, as to not attract the "hey, let's party" element. Local means it's nearby, not that it's small. 700 people came this year, down from 1000 for the last few years. A good bit of the attrition seems to be economy related - a number of people from a good distance away were missing (the Canadian Embassy was sorely missed (or else I just missed them)), as were a number of those in financial straits who lived closer. I did, however, see regulars from Louisiana and California.

All-in-all, it was similar to previous years, with (as far as I could see) considerably less drama than others. Rituals (i only go to the ones that interest me), workshops (I went to one), and hanging out with friends - pretty much the same as every year. The big difference for me is that I only did one kitchen breakfast shift. Last year I seriously burned out working in the kitchen - being in charge of making breakfast for hundreds of people (or cooking eggs for hundreds of people when I wasn't in charge), plus being in charge of making soup for Saturday afternoon, which turned into an ordeal as a storm flooded the kitchen with water over a foot of water. Saturday was the first day I hadn't worked the breakfast kitchen shift in at least a dozen Dragonfests. It felt so good.

In other news, two weeks ago, I visited my friend Ashley in Chicago (Ashley was with whom I had the Hot Date^TM back in the fall). She found Boulder too provincial (my word, not hers) and wanted to go back to a real city. We had a great time, and I'm going back to visit her over Labor Day. She's going to drag me up to Madison (Wisconsin, for those not in the US) to meet her mother. Life remains exciting.

The weekend before that I went to a small Dionysian gathering. They had a Iron Chef-like contest last year, but this year, none of the other contestants offered entries. So, instead, I made fettuccine Alfredo for Friday night, and a veggie curry for Saturday. Both were big hits.

Life is change

bike4fish — Wed, 27 May 2009 04:16:15 GMT

Ashley, my best friend in Boulder, is moving back to Chicago Thursday. As I'm flying out to Boston tomorrow, we had our last dinner together (for now) tonight. She said "no tears - we'll see each other soon", but it's going to be hard to stave them off completely - I suspect for both of us.

She is planning to come visit in July, and I plan to visit her later in the summer. Chicago isn't that far away.

On the bright side, I'm going to Boston - well, first to New Hampshire to see my mom for a few days (and possibly fix her computer), and then go down to Massachusetts to enjoy the festivities surrounding dreams_of_wings and aatish's wedding. A number of friends whom I haven't seen in ages will also be there (as well as some I've seen quite recently). It should be much fun.

I don't know what I'm doing Monday and Tuesday before I fly back on Wednesday - I may just wing it. I would like to take a trip up to Maine to visit my childhood haunts and maybe find a lobster.

Swine flu – Feh

bike4fish — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 06:44:21 GMT

Swine flu – Feh

Ok, I’m a pig.

I should be used to humans beings distorting reality to fit their own little preconceptions. Taping dogs to refrigerators is cruelty[1], but making pigs live in circumstances that make a little refrigerator taping look like a vacation to the Caribbean just because some of you humans think we taste better than dogs is OK.

(Have you tried dog recently? You ought to.)

But I digress. We are here to talk about swine flu.

Swine flu? People don’t even notice it when it’s only a porcine problem. You people start whining when they get it. But when you get it, it isn’t a swine infection anymore, is it? You give the poor birds the same bum rap. Or even other humans, if they live on some other continent.

It’s understandable that you humans name things you don’t like for things that don’t fall too close to your doorways. Even the word you use for the behavior, scape-goating, comes from a classical case of us animals getting screwed over for human problems. It’s hard for you to blame yourselves for your own problems. It would be nice, though, if you took a bit more care to get the association between cause and effect right.

You just might notice that high density populations of host animals, be they humans, chickens, or pigs, give viruses fantastic opportunity to multiply, mingle and mutate. Factory farms, thus, provide the perfect places for breeding new strains of viruses. And believe me, they aren’t high-class neighborhoods.

(As an aside, human population isn't going to destroy civilization by starvation - instead, the human equivalents of factory farms are going to serve as the breeding ground for diseases that will overwhelm the best medical systems.)

From the news reports[2],[3], it appears that the latest “swine flu” outbreak originated in a small town in Mexico, not far from a large “industrial pig production facility”, owned by a subsidiary of the US-based Smithfield Foods. While not all the data is in, there is speculation that the original vectors for the virus were flies which frequented the manure lagoons of the pig farm. It’s even possible that the original strain was communicated from humans to pigs – though there is some suspicion that birds were involved, too. Poor birds.

I would suggest that, in fairness to my fellow swine, that this strain be renamed the “Smithfield flu”.

(For a less porco-centric perspective, see Biosurveillance, “Swine Flu in Mexico- Timeline of Events”, http://biosurveillance.typepad.com/biosurveillance/2009/04/swine-flu-in-mexico-timeline-of-events.html )

[1] “Woman to police: 'There's a dog taped to the fridge'”, Daily Camera, 14 April 2009, http://www.dailycamera.com/news/2009/apr/14/animal-cruelty-boulder-domestic-dispute/

[2] “Four-year-old could hold key in search for source of swine flu outbreak”, guardian.co.uk, 27 April 2009, http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/apr/27/swine-flu-search-outbreak-source

[3] “Swine-flu outbreak could be linked to Smithfield factory farms”, grist.org, 25 April 2009, http://www.grist.org/article/2009-04-25-swine-flu-smithfield/

Flu?

bike4fish — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 04:28:58 GMT

I propose that we refer to the "Smithfield flu", not "swine flu".

Poor piggies get all the blame...

bike4fish — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 01:26:07 GMT

I have a fever - not much else seems to be wrong, aside from passing headaches, my brain doesn't want to do any intricate thinking, and my attention span is suffering.

I've spent most of the day in bed.

I'm becoming terribly bored.

Causes of lack of sleep this last week

bike4fish — Sun, 08 Mar 2009 23:38:43 GMT

Waking up at 3 am thinking about the dissertation (x 2)
Too much coffee after noon (x 1)
Skunk going off at 2 am (x 1)

I almost feel sorry for whoever set the skunk off. I just hope they were sober enough to get some of the smell off before they went to bed.

Venturing into the dark side

bike4fish — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 15:43:42 GMT

I've succumbed.

I think I'm going to get a cell phone, if only to be able to coordinate dinner plans better.

I don't want anything fancy - probably basic phone services plus texting. You know, like 10 year old technology. Just for peace of mind, I'd probably want an unlimited usage plan.

So, any advice? Either on services or phones.