drdoug
Dr Doug - A Wide Halo Of Ease And Leisure
LiveJournal.com Profile
Full LiveJournal.com profile, including information such as interests and bio.
application/rss+xml
It should be obvious, but for the avoidance of any doubt, this is a personal blog/journal and is nothing to do with my employers. (Who, incidentally, rock.) Even my imaginatively-titled work-related blog is unofficial. Linking: I'm delighted if you want to link to anything I've written (except friends-locked/restricted/private posts). But please don't link my real name to it. (This helps keep the distinction between my personal stuff and my work stuff.) So, for instance, posting it on Twitter or Facebook would be fine, but linking my Twitter or Facebook accounts as you do so would not. Just linking to the post (rather than cut-and-pasting it) is plenty enough attribution. Thanks! Redirection This LiveJournal is now a secondary account - I've moved to Dreamwidth, where I'm doug.dreamwidth.org. I'm crossposting everything, so you won't miss anything here on LJ for now, but if you want to join the dreamy Dreamwidth posse, you know where to go. (Email me for an invite code if you need one.) Doug "They [...] said ... I had to see ... Doug. Well, I was terrified. Everyone was terrified of Doug. I've seen grown men pull their own heads off rather than see Doug." That was a very different Doug. We were all young and foolish once. Am I the Doug you're looking for? It's hard to say, but if he looks like my userpics, then yes. If the Doug you're looking for owes you large sums of money or is needed to help police with their inquiries, then no. All That Is The Case I agree with dear old J.B.S. Haldane: "Now, my own suspicion is that the universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose." And it is endlessly fascinating because of it. Or at least, I find it so. People and human endeavour particularly, but the natural world too. Although I don't share the Creator's inordinate fondness for beetles. LiveJournal Usenet News has been described as "the textual version of 50 people standing in a room, where some of them are talking to one another, some are screaming, some are staring at the walls and drooling and none of them are paying the slightest attention to what any of the others is saying." LiveJournal is like that, except that it isn't so much a series of separate rooms as a series of freakshow booths spilling out on to each other, with endless crowds of people hustling, jostling, arguing, spitting, hitting each other and (above all) ogling. And of course this is why I can't leave it alone. Slogans to live by [a.k.a. my abridged electronic commonplace book, the .plan for the Noughties Tenties] "I'm a man!" "Well nobody's perfect" - Some Like It Hot "AH GOO THE SEF" - Graffiti on a wall in York "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants." - Michael Pollan "It won't be hypothetical if and when it occurs." - Home Secretary Jacqui Smith "If we knew what we were doing it wouldn't be research, would it?" - Einstein, allegedly. "Markets can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent." - John Maynard Keynes "Sed quis custodiet ipsos custodes? Omnes!" - me doing a terribly pretentious Open Society/Web 2.0 riff on Juvenal "I drul in the webtv's box." - some random WebTV victim in the mid-90s doing no better "The fundamental cause of trouble in the world today is that the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt." - Bertrand Russell "Do not confuse the cylinder-shaped bomb with the rectangular food bags." - US Radio to Afghanis in October 2001 "While the State exists, there can be no freedom. When there is freedom there will be no State." - Lenin "A prim little man with a white-collar job, usually a secret teetotaller and often with vegetarian leanings, with a history of Nonconformity behind him, and, above all, with a social position which he has no intention of forfeiting." - George Orwell on me "Never wrestle a pig, for you both get covered in shit and the pig enjoys it." - unattributable "Human nature is reasonable but not saintly. People are fit to run their own lives, but nobody is fit to be boss over anybody else." - Donald Rooum "Aliens from space have stolen my brain!" - minusbat <path fill-rule="evenodd" d="M19.326 11.95c0 2.01 1.47 3.45 3.48 3.45 2.02 0 3.49-1.44 3.49-3.45 0-2.01-1.47-3.45-3.49-3.45-2.01 0-3.48 1.44-3.48 3.45Zm5.51 0c0 1.24-.8 2.19-2.03 2.19-1.23 0-2.02-.95-2.02-2.19 0-1.25.79-2.19 2.02-2.19s2.03.94 2.03 2.19ZM7.92 15.28H6.5V8.61h3.12c1.45 0 2.24.98 2.24 2.15 0 1.16-.8 2.15-2.24 2.15h-1.7v2.37Zm1.51-3.62c.56 0 .98-.35.98-.9 0-.56-.42-.9-.98-.9H7.92v1.8h1.51ZM18.3802 15.28h-1.63l-1.31-2.37h-1.04v2.37h-1.42V8.61h3.12c1.39 0 2.24.91 2.24 2.15 0 1.18-.74 1.81-1.46 1.98l1.5 2.54Zm-2.49-3.62c.57 0 1-.34 1-.9s-.43-.9-1-.9h-1.49v1.8h1.49Z" clip-rule="evenodd"/><path fill-rule="evenodd" d="M2 8c0-2.20914 1.79086-4 4-4h20.5c2.2091 0 4 1.79086 4 4v7.9c0 2.2091-1.7909 4-4 4H6c-2.20914 0-4-1.7909-4-4V8Zm4-2.5h20.5C27.8807 5.5 29 6.61929 29 8v7.9c0 1.3807-1.1193 2.5-2.5 2.5H6c-1.38071 0-2.5-1.1193-2.5-2.5V8c0-1.38071 1.11929-2.5 2.5-2.5Z" clip-rule="evenodd"/> "I wanna be ... a three minute hero!" - The Selecter "Freedom's just a new deodorant, the money's spent and you've been had" - The Beat "Do not overlook the sizeable liberal element, who often are supportively indifferent to disparate lifestyles around them." - Cambridge Univ LBG "Purple Book" "Anyway, who really cares whether I'm gay or straight? Do they really think they've got a chance of shagging me?" - George Michael "The really efficient labourer will be found not to crowd his day with work, but will saunter to his task surrounded by a wide halo of ease and leisure." - Henry David Thoreau "Only a foolish asceticism, usually vicarious, makes us continue to insist on work in excessive quantities now that the need no longer exists." - Bertrand Russell, In Praise of Idleness "It was the freshest move I've ever seen - like he was floating on air." - Benjamin Pew "Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." - Benjamin Franklin (apocryphally). "It's also true that those who would give up privacy for security are likely to end up with neither." - Bruce Schneier "We don't know what the problem is, and we don't know how long we're going to be here." - A train manager sums up the human condition (coincidentally the condition of the delayed 12.32 to Euston) "Everybody wants prosthetic foreheads on their real heads." - They Might Be Giants (Hard though it may be to believe, my own is, I hasten to add, entirely natural.) "a load of breezy people who go around saying yaka-wow" - The Right Hon Prof The Baroness Greenfield CBE, on me and my online chums "Let us understand, once and for all, that the ethical progress of society depends, not on imitating the cosmic process, still less in running away from it, but in combating it." - T. H. Huxley "Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy." - Benjamin Franklin, probably just as apocryphally as the liberty/safety thing but less contestedly. "If we expand the pie for the common interest, the pie will be larger and more delicious." - Chinese State Councilor Dai Bingguo on Sino-American relations in the Wikileaks diplomatic cables. Mmm, expanded pie. "If you're the smartest person in the room, go look for a room with smarter people in it." - kevinpet at Hacker News "We must respect the other fellow's religion, but only in the sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart." - H. L. Mencken making a more profound point than the surface sexism and general casual misanthropy might lead you to believe "A smell of petroleum pervades throughout." - The secret of the universe, as inspired by laughing-gas, via William James and Betrand Russell. "We are as gods and might as well get good at it" - Stewart Brand, 1968 "We are as gods and HAVE to get good at it" - Stewart Brand, 2009 "Beneath the elaborately constructed veneer of the bumbling buffoon, there may well be a bumbling buffoon. That is the nightmare we all have to live with." - Boris Johnson
academias
anarchisms
astronomies
beers
bicons
bike immunity news
bisexualities
bisexuals
black coffees
ceramics
diverting books
educational technologies
epistemologies
feminisms
finding everything fascinating
good quality chocolates
human condition (the)
inactivisms
indolences
interests
kay dekkers
londons
lying on livejournal
malt whiskies
metaphysics
modern dance
my cat
naked bisexual oil wrestling
pacifisms
philosophies
politics
potterings
procrastinations
puns
queer politics
queer practices
queer theories
queers
readings
sciences
self-determinations
sleepings
straights
stuffs
theatres
things
understanding systems
vegetarianisms
yaka-wow
youngbloke
YoungBloke
rosamicula
Rosamicula
plot_9
emmy_mallow
Plot 9
bethanthepurple
Bethan
I don't believe in suffering in silence...
lonelywonderer
parallelgirl
You'd like me to be sweet and small...
cloudwalker_3
Cloudwalker_3
Cloudwalker's Journal
riinapig
Riina
Are you local?
vinaigrettegirl
VinaigretteGirl
Salad days
uon
doop
magfish
aideen
i always do the right thing! (just not necessarily at the right time...)
fudebusho
ふでぶしょお
cheshcat
Chesh: BratCat[alyst]
Words in the heart cannot be taken.
simont
Simon Tatham
sibelian
sandy
The Story of my Life
kittybeard
Kittybeard's Bridge
kingginger
Jules Wilko
headgardener
Judith
angelmine
Angel
smorgasbord
Taglibro de la programistoj
Ĉiuj malfilistroj estas egala.
despina
Stepford Fembot
Domestic Kali
aca
Adam Auden
204 No Content
techiesnippets
Techiesnippets
Techie Snippets
lovelybug
d_floorlandmine
DancefloorLandmine
Devolution of a DancefloorLandmine
kissmeforlonger
Kriss
Queen of Wands
spiritrover
aster13
trying to be happy
Aster
neilhudson
Neil Hudson
vicki_t_veg
Vicki
ant_girl
Jo Violet
Small but incredibly strong
shedpete
Pete
pirate_gypsy
Nadezhda
Eccentric, Ecclectic, and Extra-ordinary
oolite
Oolite (progress)
syllopsium
Syllopsium
Miscellaneous meanderings and myriad mumblings
venta
Elizabeth
julietk
Juliet
djm4
David Matthewman
valkyriekaren
Valkyrie
circumnavigator
lovingboth
Ian
It not a joke!!! It is the truth!!!
chillies
Alex
Lentils should not be kept in the bathroom
pozorvlak
Beware of the Train
merryhouse
ingenious paradox
babyholly
topbit
Topbit
jhg
James
sara_lou
Sara
Emmy Mallow
Evolution of a Maternal Warrior
oldbloke
oldbloke's mutterings
evie_petrol
eciklb
BlackIce
Procrastination
andrewducker
Andrew Ducker
Made from Truth and Lies
mzfee
Fiona
thehalibutkid
angeoverhere
ange
views of the world from over here...
dr_d
Simon D
Dr. D's Office
reddragdiva
Run away to DreamWidth. Come with me.
Diary of an Information Technology call girl
clotilde
Clotilde
I used to be a corporate lawyer, but now I'm an anarchist.
mistdog
Entre Chien et Loup
clawbug
Lars
Carbon Unit 070678
memevector
thekumquat
The Kumquat
up_the_duff
booklectic
Booklectic
ofiwriter
Open Fidelity author
Open Fidelity
ciphergoth
Paul Crowley
ellbie
Ellbie
childeric
Simon
Ritzy glam chic in only-marginally-less-fabulous E17
louis_mallow
Michael (Marsh)
Where do we go from here?
haggis
An unexpected Haggis
Mamihlapinatapai
major_clanger
Simon Bradshaw
Whistles from a Small Planetoid
slightlyfoxed
Extensive footnotes
garklet
moral_vacuum
Your point being?
Moral_Vacuum - Thoughts from the Void
surliminal
The Whore of Mensa gets her P45
jaketherake
Jake The Rake
oilrig
Paul
Stop the world
babysimon
Simon MacMullen
green_amber
Constance Craving
Wherever you go, there you are.
thirstypixel
a gelatinous cube
diziet
Diziet Sma
The Accidental Civil Servant
andyguest
Andy Guest
wechsler
Grin with cat attached
hfnuala
Happy Fun Nuala
Books, politics, rantings, my daughters and an awful lot of knitting
Linz
Energy, matter, and enlightened self-interest
xxxlibris
Brash enthusiasm
plumsbitch
umeboshi
Cava Socialist
dryad_wombat
...green mechanisms beyond intellect await resurrection in rain
palmer1984
Palmer1984
zapruder
this space left intentionally blank
Amo Ut Invenio
countess_sophia
Sophia
Meanderings of a mad faerie
menthe_reglisse
opportunitygrrl
Opportunity M. Rover
karen2205
Karen
ippola
werenerd
Werenerd
the_wedge
The_Wedge
john_d_owen
The Shipyard News
randomstring
Arthur
Arthur's Journal
combatsquaddie
Combatsquaddie
The Life of Pete
jefurry
Jeffery Lay
Furry thoughts
vin_petrol
Vin Petrol
Nothing is impossible for an engineer
softfruit
SoftFruit
you're going to be my imaginary friend
kotenok
Charlie
You think you know what's to come, what you are.. You haven't even begun.
quatlet
calendril
Emma
sushidog
Sushidog
An angel in the bedroom, a whore in the kitchen
makyo
nicholas
a swamp of fear and loathing
jenny_gould
Jenny Gould
miss_wonderly
Helen
seph_hazard
Persephone Hazard
The Show Must Go On
squid314
Scott
Jackdaws love my big sphinx of quartz
heteronormative
Heteronormative
sweinhodge
Fire Hobbit
Look at the purrdy flames
ellemir
duranorak
DurAnorak
Damaris
amphioxa
Anna
lproven
Liam Proven
Liam's write-only LJ
feinoak
Feinoak's Folly
steer
Richard Clegg
Sex and Sums and a Controlled Dose of Rock and Roll
jvvw
Juliette Culver
firedraken
Tam
puzzle_
Puzzle
Thinking outside the box
barakta
nmg
Nick Gibbins
"Put down that wrench!"
no_ambiguity
Reducing the other to the same.
mhw
Muddle-headed Kay
雪見オナニー
girl_patrick
How Old Is Middle-Aged?
ias
Issy Stark
"A hardened and shameless tea drinker"
mankylarry
Larry
custancia
One Thing at a Time
blue_condition
My head is my only house unless it rains
eddie777