Previously, in Trip's Life...
31 July 2001 - Tuesday
Bleargh. Woken up by the NOC at oh-dark-thirty this morning because
they couldn't get hold of anyone else. I can't really blame them, and
they were very nice about it, but it did not really help me become less
tired. (Neither did staying up late doing nothing of any consequence
after virtuously watching anime early so I could get to bed early. Stupid
STUPID parasite creature.)
LiveJournal continues to
suck in those of weak will. Today I found out that Christy and Bryant have fallen prey to it. I think
I'm facing some serious competition in the brain-sucking
department...
* * *
Since I watched anime last night, tonight had to be Writing Night even
though I am lethargic and small-brained. Despite these handicaps, I wrote
almost as much as usual, and in noticeably less time. Yay me.
Now, however, I will finish my book and go to bed.
Make a comment!
30 July 2001 - Monday
Yay no more on call! Hurrah!
Although really, aside from that unfortunate incident on
Friday morning it was a very quiet week. Not a single call over the
weekend, for example. But I'm still glad to be free.
* * *
I am less glad, of course, to find that in fact the Diet Dr Pepper bin
emptied out over the weekend or early this morning. I must write a
Strongly Worded letter to the Proper Authorities.
Make a comment!
29 July 2001 - Sunday
HAPPY RACHELDAY!
Make a comment!
28 July 2001 - Saturday
Last night, Rebecca and the Bertani-Youngs came over and we taught Christy how
to play Mythos.
Much fun was had, even by Rebecca, who suffered from the usual flaws of
her untested deck, and Chrisber came up with a couple of good phrases
that I must incorporate into Lovecraft Country.
Today, on the way back from yummy Thai lunch, I had a small bookstore
accident (TM Kit). I define it
as "small" only because it came to less than $100 (barely). On the good
side, I picked up a book which Amazon had not yet shipped to me, so I was
able to cancel that order and feel virtuous about giving my money to,
well, at least it's a local chain bookstore. The course of right
action is difficult sometimes.
* * *
I've been sitting here listening to the new Flash Girls album
and all I can think about the song "Lily of the West" is "what, are we
supposed to have sympathy for this bozo?" (Short summary: guy
goes to Louisville, hits on a chick, she likes some other guy, he blows
his top, knifes the other guy, goes to the gallows, singing the whole
time about how it's all her fault.) People suck.
Other than that, it's a nice song, though.
Make a comment!
27 July 2001 - Friday
Blargh. So much for the quiet week of on-call.
I got oncalled about 03:20 this morning, but that wasn't too bad; log
in, restart the service, back to sleep. But then shortly after 4 I got
called again, about a customer complaining that the service they were
paying us money for wasn't working. I poked at the service in every way
my sleep-addled little brain could think of, and it looked fine to me.
Finally I wimped out and roused my boss, who also spent a while
investigating before decide that our service really was fine and the
problem must be on their end. Unconsciousness all around, but by that
time it was well after 5. I don't know how much lost sleep that all
equates to, but I felt little or no guilt about setting my alarm an hour
later. And, in fact, I got to work pretty much exactly one hour later
than usual, but with a distressing tendency to lapse into somnolence
whenever I stop moving.
Caffeine doesn't actually have much stimulant effect on me, but I
suspect I will be experiencing more than usual of Diet Dr Pepper's
unnaturally invigorating taste today.
I think the dream I had between going to bed for the last time and
getting up to go to work was cool and interesting, but I don't remember
much of it. Something about a mostly depopulated world, and conflicts
between good and evil, and a holy weapon that looked sort of like an
abstract gun-shape rendered in blazing white light with a long tail
extending from where the magazine well would be to wrap around the
wielder's wrist, which shot flechettes of pure darkness or something, and
selling one's soul to the devil but becoming undamned by using the dark
powers for sufficient good* (there were lots of black, white,
and silvery grey auras representing people's damnation, salvation, or
indeterminacy), and a road pirate and his number five wife.
*This reminds me of a dream I had a while
back about a family who had been given great magical power by the Devil
in exchange for owing him a favor to be called in sometime in the future.
They planned to use the powers how they pleased (mostly for good, the
latest generation being mostly reasonable people) and then when the Devil
showed up to call in his favor to "Neener neener!" at him and watch his
plan winning Armageddon crumble. Once I booted up my conscious mind, of
course, it was obvious that the Devil was going to show up and say, "In
accordance with the terms of our bargain, I demand that you ensure that
under no circumstances is anyone allowed to... EAT... THIS... KITTEN!"
and then they'd be trapped in an infinite regress of double-think and
have to decide the fate of the world by tossing a coin, but oh
well.
* * *
Infinite Sea last night went reasonably well, despite or
because of the pregame metagaming session where everyone got to go on
about what they thought was wrong with the game. Since we ended last
session standing confusedly on the deck of a ship as it unexpectedly cast
off, not all of our suggestions could be implemented, but the restricted
environment made many of our objections nonissues, and we got to be
relatively competent and beat up the wererats who stole our stuff and
everything. Now onward, to the giant stone kraken and the mysterious
entity that is leading Danilo around by his glands!
Make a comment!
26 July 2001 - Thursday
Finally, the drink machine has been refilled with Diet Dr Pepper! The
elixir of life!
I wonder how long it'll last. I bet the person who drinks it all works
on the weekends.
Pessimistic? Me?
Make a comment!
25 July 2001 - Wednesday
Sleepy parasite. But this time I sort of have a good reason: last
night some people were doing some work on some systems, scheduled to
complete sometime between 18:00 and 24:00, at which time I would have to
log in to the Master Server and clue it in. Fortunately, this did not
happen while I was at the Bertani-Youngs' watching anime without the ability
to get to the Master Server, but neither did it conveniently happen right
when I got home. I didn't want to get woken up to deal with it, so I
stayed up waiting for the the call, well past my bedtime as it turned
out. Half an hour after I finally gave up and went to sleep, the NOC
called. As was pointed out to me this morning, they would have called
half an hour after I went to sleep no matter what, so I should have just
gone to bed right when I got home. Oh well.
So now I am sleepy, but it's being a quiet week at work (knock on
Formica), which gives me plenty of time to waffle about Lovecraft
Country (the prophesied successor to SCOOS,
which will appear when the stars are right).
You must understand that my waffling on this matter puts entire
national chains of 24 Hr Breakfast joints to shame. If the survival of
humanity was dependent on my making a decision, the carrion eaters of the
world would be praying to me as a god of prosperity. I have half-written
and discarded at least three sets of game mechanics for LC
without finding the Perfect Mechanics. Possibly this is a sign that I
should give up on trying to bring Yet Another RPG System into the world
and (ab)use an existing one, but none of the ones I have handy is really
quite right. BESM2 is
close, but there are several things I don't like about it.
The work in progress is a fairly straightforward
small_stat+large_skill+die roll vs target number system, using
point-based character generation with the added wrinkle that buying up a
skill is cheaper if the associated stat is higher. I've thus avoided
Deadlands Syndrom ("How unique can we make a system while still being
able to claim it's theoretically functional?"), but I worry that this is
still too complex for LC, which after all is a comedic horror
game.
Now I'm thinking about switching to more but more important stats,
with less significant but more free-form skills, since that seems to
better express the cinematic nature of the genre (the smart character is
usually smart at everything, not just some things), and a
big-handful-of-dice system, since it occured to me last night that such a
system lets a player more easily keep track of bonuses and penalties by
literally adding them to or removing them from her hand.
Give ME the brain, I
have to design an RPG!
Make a comment!
24 July 2001 - Tuesday
Wow, everyone is using LiveJournal. Tara started it,
and immediately dragged Liralen in, and now
I find that Ambar,
Gretchen, and Cyrano all have
journals up there. I now feel quite retro to be writing about my life on
my own website (never mind typing raw HTML into a text editor, producing
black text on a white background)!
* * *
The one soda machine in the entire building that sells Diet Dr Pepper
is out again. Apparently there is only one other person in the company
who drinks it, but he drinks like twelve cans a day. I guess moderation
just isn't competitive.
* * *
Oh, I am reminded to appreciate Cyrano for his gift of diet Stewart's
Rootbeer. Yay Cyrano!
Make a comment!
23 July 2001 - Monday
Despite hideous procrastination, this has been a reasonably successful
writing night. About a thousand words, finishing off chapter 2.
Oh, and last Saturday was my youngest* sister's wedding,
which I did not go to basically because I suck. If you happen to read
this, Amber, congratulations and stuff.
*Or should that be "younger sister", since I
only have two? But they're both younger...
Make a comment!
22 July 2001 - Sunday
Well, this has been a pretty useless weekend. Aside from normal
maintenance (laundry, grocery shopping) I have accomplished pretty
exactly nothing. On the other hand, my sleep schedule is now all messed
up so I should be ready for on-call this coming week.
* * *
Okay, I have now gotten the last N months of new comics sorted and
partially bagged, and bought tape to close the bags. I'm not sure where
I'll find shelf space for them, but that can wait for a more ambitious
day.
Today's recommendations: the Pokéthulhu
RPG, and Play
Each Morning Wild Queen by the Flash
Girls.
Make a comment!
20 July 2001 - Friday
Infinite
Sea last night went pretty well, or at least triumphantly: monsters
were defeated, some birthday presents were saved, the cute guys did not
get badly hurt. Sadly, however, I did not enjoy the session as much as I
think I should have, and I'm not sure why. It wasn't because the GMing
wasn't good, nor because the other players were inadequate in pleasing
me. This is clearly my own problem, I just don't understand it.
It might just be that everyone was sort of sleepy, and the monsters
negated my character's primary combat ability, and I am trying to play a
character who talks to people, which never works if there is anyone else
in the game. But I have been vaguely dissatisfied with most games
recently, both ones I play in and ones I've run. Someone suggested that
I'm outgrowing gaming, but I don't *think* my real life has suddenly, or
even gradually, become more exciting. Perhaps it's just that in my old
age I am becoming too crotchety to play well with others.
Or perhaps I will figure out what it is I want that I'm not getting,
and then I'll be able to feel sorry for myself in a more concrete
fashion.
Make a comment!
19 July 2001 - Thursday
Last night I went to bed early, to make up for having gotten up early.
So of course I woke up well before my alarm and couldn't get back to
sleep. Now I have no brain to play Infinite Sea with.
* * *
Today I received mail from my doctor indicating that my kidneys are
not disintegrating from diabetes. Yay.
Make a comment!
18 July 2001 - Wednesday
The psychiatrist agreed to continue prescribing me drugs. Yay.
Last night's exciting dream involved terraforming Jupiter: modify
the temperature and atmosphere to be human-compatible (I think; maybe
there was some modification of humanity too) and then inflate it so
there's a huge human-habitable volume of great three-dimensional
cloudscapes. Our Heroine was raised on (in?) Jupiter and eventually rose
to rule it. Whether she ruled well or poorly, she was eventually
overthrown by someone else, or many someone elses, who did not appear to
be natives. Chase scenes ensued, on huge blocky platforms and stairs of
white marble floating apparently unsupported in the semi-infinite air.
Despite the far-future nature of the setting, everyone carried swords,
which made things a lot easier, even when they threw them. Finally O.H.
managed to break line-of-sight long enough to get rid of the distinctive
blue glow that marked her as a noble of the old regime and disguise
herself as one of the usurpers. That only worked for a while though, and
eventually she was spotted and had to run for it again, down one of the
cyclopean staircases with only two supporters. The woman was wounded by a
thrown sword and died from being dragged down the staircase, and the man
made a last stand over her body, covering O.H.'s escape.
What the new regime didn't know was that O.H. had retained, or
recovered, control of one of the black holes that powered the whole
thing. It only gave her a measly 4-5% of the Sun's output to play with,
but hopefully that would be enough. Going further down the staircase, to
where not only the stairs but the width of the triangular helix they
formed tapered toward the point where the black hole lived and, wedging
herself into a corner where she'd be safe, used the black hole to launch
the whole stairway away from the occupied platform.
A stairway with a black hole at one end makes a poor ship, but it was
going okay until the Master Villainess (backed up by her dark-robed
council of flunkies) opened fire with the big lasers. O.H. was shielded
from direct hits by the black hole at the trailing tip of the stairs, but
enough got shot away that she couldn't continue, and then usurper
swordsmen wearing robes that functioned as spacesuits boarded, stuffed
her into a robe, and hauled her off for trial.
Then the alarm went off and I got up early to go to Sunnyvale, so now
I am a sleeeepy parasite.
Make a comment!
17 July 2001 - Tuesday
The only thing of interest that happened today was that I went to the
Bertani-Youngs' to watch another few episodes of
Sailor Moon Super S: The
Condensed Version (which seems to contain about 2/3 of the episodes).
Now I must go to bed early so I can get up early and go tell the
psychiatrist lady that my drugs are still working.
Make a comment!
16 July 2001 - Monday
Therapy today, whee. Since I bitch about not getting chicks so much,
my homework is to find a paper with local personal ads and go through it,
circling the ones that seem interesting. Then Norm will interrogate me on
why those particular ones, or something.
Writing night! Got off to a late start between eating dinner
inefficiently and not wanting to stop MUDding, but I got a thousand words
done, so I am not displeased.
Make a comment!
15 July 2001 - Sunday
Today, I went to Ayse's BAMM graduation from the Level Two class. Many
simulated muggers were kicked in the head by students and graduates of
past classes alike. Very hard.
Grocery shopping, the graduation, and dinner afterwards with
much conversation... Yah, that pretty much covers today.
Work tomorrow, bleagh.
Make a comment!
14 July 2001 - Saturday
Amber High
School went well. For a change, we had an actual adventure: trapped
with non-functional Trumps in a Shadow full of vampires and combine
harvesters . Fortunately, we were in a sort of a dwelling, so the
vampires couldn't really get at us, and our spiffy new sorcerer was able
to disenchant the combine harvester, but it was a nerve-wracking night.
Now we have determined that we must free the people of this Shadow from
the vampiric scourge, which gives us something to do with our
vacations.
By amusing coincidence, the issue of Dragon
that I discovered in my mailbox after gaming has an article on fighting
vampires.
Make a comment!
13 July 2001 - Friday
Tonight has been the night of much fine Japanese visual entertainment.
Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within was, if somewhat lacking in plot and
snappiness of dialog, visually very impressive, and had reasonably
original monsters.
Though not Japanese (unless Japan has recently annexed NZ), the
trailer for Fellowship of the
Ring was very fine. Tentacles standing on end and
everything.
Then, because I have no life, I stayed up watching the last three
episodes of Weiss Kreuz. No spoilers here, but it was pretty swell,
although many things were just not explained.
Now there should be sleeping, because I have to play Amber High
School tomorrow. I hope I remember what my character is like.
Make a comment!
12 July 2001 - Thursday
No Infinite
Sea tonight, because Janis
is sick. So more Weiss Kreuz!
* * *
Only three episodes left! But now it is time for sleeping, so I will
finish up um sometime later. Maybe Saturday night, since tomorrow night I
am apparently going to watch the Final Fantasy movie with Marith.
Make a comment!
10 July 2001 - Tuesday
Argh. For the first time in like ten or fifteen years (no, really!) I
failed to have my alarm set for the correct time to get. I guess my habit
of obsessively checking that my clock-radio is both in the correct alarm
mode and set to the correct alarm time is actually important.
So much for sneaking away from work early to make sure I have plenty
of time to hike to anime. Feh.
I have declared what I wrote
last night to be the completion of a
chapter. Test readers have unanimously called it sweet. I think my
manliness is supposed to be impugned or something.
* * *
Okay, it's pretty definite that I'm going to Hell. Not only has
another large pile of stuff arrived from Amazon, thus driving the stake
deeper into the heart of local merchants, but I have fed the crawling
evil that is the MPAA by purchasing a DVD.
Make a comment!
9 July 2001 - Monday
Although idleness gets boring after a while, it's amazing how work
doesn't get any more appealing.
Instead of watching the remaining 10 episodes of Weiss Kreuz, I wrote,
because Monday is Writing Night. Perhaps I have finished a chapter, but
perhaps not.
Tomorrow is Anime Night, Wednesday is New Comics Night, Thursday is
Gaming Night, Saturday is Gaming Day, and Sunday afternoon at least is
also booked, so I have no idea when I *will* get to finish Weiss Kreuz.
Sniff.
Make a comment!
8 July 2001 - Sunday
Sniff, no more vacation. :(
I don't actually have to go to work until tomorrow, but the routine is
already closing in: buy healthy food to eat at work, make sure I have
sufficient clean laundry, force myself to put down whatever book I'm
reading promptly at 22:00, ...
But I have October Project to listen to, which pretty much
makes everything okay.
Make a comment!
7 July 2001 - Saturday
Well, that was a night. About the time I wanted to go to bed,
our local example of why investing in
legislators is just good financial sense started spazzing the power
on and off. Just when it looked like they had gotten their act together
enough that it seemed worthwhile to start the stupid STUPID Mac creature,
they went out for an extended period, so I finally gave up and went to
bed.
Whether because in the irritation I forgot to take my somnia pill or
because my fan was unable to provide coolth and a street-noise-curing
hum, I failed utterly to sleep for quite some time, tossing and turning
and replanning (probably for the better) writing projects I should
currently be working on. Eventually I remembered to take a pill, and
shortly after that the power (and hence fan) came on, and that's when the
really surreal part started.
First dream sequence: I, more or less myself, as a character on Buffy. No fighting ability, no respect,
almost no screen time, but hey, I'd survived six seasons (apparently,
this alternate universe was a year ahead of us, bastards) which is pretty
darn good for a normal human in that setting. Miscellaneous running
around, culminating in having to kill a demon doctor in a clinic which
actually did fix people up... if you gave the doctor another person to
eat or experiment on or whatever it is demons do. That was sort of
difficult, since when I seized a bone saw and cut his head in half
vertically, it reformed into two heads, but a handy bottle of Corrosive
Fluid(TM) (as seen on TV) put a stop to that.
That segued into something I don't recall to even that limited extent,
involving a giant creature of some kind that normally lived in a big cave
only slightly larger than itself (possibly attached to the demon clinic,
thus providing an actual segue) and was vaguely trustworthy, but
occasionally displayed alarming powers like shrinking to human size or
passing through solid matter.
Part three of that sequence involved three or four old men who were
apparently all aspects or iterations or timeslices or something of a
Spanish explorer from the early part of last century, annoying a fairly
ordinary modern family who wanted to be polite to the old guys, but
didn't really understand. There was descent in gravity-powered carts
along a path spiraling around the inside of a very large, sourcelessly
lit shaft, and at one point the old guys appeared or were symbolized as
Lego men, disassembled to keep them out of trouble but still with a
tendency to move when no one was watching. In fact, one head+torso
managed to attach some legs and make his way over to a separate pile
containing some arms, which he was in the process of attaching when
apprehended. I'm not sure how this connected from the last bit, except
that the giant creature might have been going to the house where the old
men were confusing the normals when it was demonstrating ability to get
out of its cave.
Second dream sequence: I was reading the third of a series of Tamora
Pierce books (which do not actually exist, alas) of the same pattern as
the Tortall books: young girl goes to the capital to become woman warrior
in defiance of suckful medieval attitudes. At the end of the third of
these imaginary books, Our Heroine, whose name was inconstant in the way
of all dream-writing but seemed to average out to Coralen, or maybe
Coralenth, was fourteen and had helped a cop-equivalent (not just city
watch, but an investigator of some kind) solve a mystery of some kind
that may or may or not have been related to the kittens being raised
under his desk. At the same time I was reading this book (and also
experiencing it almost first-person, in the way of books read in dreams)
I was apparently transcribing it into my external brain, so I'd have it
more conveniently available for rereading or something.
More wandering around, at a festival of some sort in a grassy place
with archaic buildings (looked like a university campus to my modern
brain, but was probably supposed to be a noble or royal estate), while
assorted people gossiped about Our Heroine having a crush on the cop guy.
Then a Mysterious Noble appeared, and turned out to be female, to the
suprise of Our Heroine (and others), and took O.H. under her wing.
Needless to say, O.H. was then accused of having a crush on the M.N.,
whose name only appeared once and thus was unambiguously Giulianne.
However, G. was acting pretty strange and O.H. eventually deduced that
she was possessed by a spirit from another, more thoroughly paved world
(EG, ours; TamoraPierceMUD, anyone?). Like a good subject, she tried to
inform the queen of this, but (of course) the queen was possessed
too.
Then one of those unpleasant
trying-to-wake-up-but-never-reaching-full-consciousness sequences, made
less unpleasant by the "awake" state not being the real world, but
something archaic but more money-intensive than anyplace I've ever lived.
Apparently I had been lying around semiconscious in a dressing gown for
an extended period, because the mother of the person I was in the dream
was about to leave after visiting for a week, and was grumbling about not
having gotten to talk to me for more than few moments.
I knew I was finally awake when the snippet "We can fall from rocket's
red glare / Down to 'Brother can you spare--' / Another war -- another
waste land -- / And another lost generation..." (from "Between The
Wheels" by Rush) started playing in my head, as I remembered it having
done before I went to sleep. Not that I really needed it; I can usually
tell when I am really awake when I'm awake; it's only when I'm asleep
that I get false positives (and never remember to pinch myself, not that
I think it would help any).
And no, I don't feel guilty about blathering on about my dreams; if
you're bored, go find a more
interesting page to read.
Make a comment!
6 July 2001 - Friday
My Amazon shipment finally arrived! Hurrah! Now I have 15(!) Tamora Pierce (young
adult fantasy) books, which is apparently everything she's written that's
appeared in paperback so far. Oh, and two more random SF books.
Also, I have successfully obtained stamps with which to pay my bills,
and picked up my nice clean garments from the cleaner's, and my apartment
has been declared termite-free.
Make a comment!
4 July 2001 - Wednesday
Happy "Bite Me, Georgie" Day!
Yesterday, I accomplished everything I had set forth to do, and even
did some extra bonus job work. Today, I have accomplished the one thing I
set forth to do (see Atlantis). I'm not sure where
this leaves me for the rest of my vacation, or even the rest of my day.
Perhaps I will succeed in writing more, or perhaps I will just read a
lot.
Atlantis was pretty okay. It had reasonable dialogue, no cute animal
companion, and no musical numbers, which is a fair amount of progress for
Disney. The art was interesting, and in some places really very nice, and
the Atlantean princess was a cutie. However, it had standard Disney plot
#3, with almost no elaboration, and only one of the Atlanteans got any
personality development (only a handful got any lines at all). So, it was
no Road to El Dorado, but
it was worth matinee price, at least.
Apparently, my Amazon shipment travelled in the usual way as far as
Sunnyvale (about ten kilometers from where I sit), and then mysteriously
teleported to Idaho, of all places. Now it is slowly creeping back toward
California. I am very confused (but not, apparently, as confused as
UPS).
Yesterday's extra bonus loot: History of the
World, one of the few board games I like. Sadly, it is the new
improved version, with extra marketing glitzconsumer
appeal, but the nice clean version is out of print and I have not yet
succumbed to the pit of despair and poverty that is eBay. Plus, I used up
the last of the Gamescape store credit Geni left me when she fled the country,
so the amount I actually paid wasn't excessive.
Make a comment!
3 July 2001 - Tuesday
I have been asked to put up my own opinion on the argument over the preservation of
mystery. I don't believe this will do any good, in the sense of
persuading anyone to my views, or even making people take my opinion more
seriously, but here it is:
To say "I don't want to know that; I'd rather imagine what might be
there" is to reject fact in favor of fancy, which I view as an abdication
of one's existance as a rational being (and though rationality has gotten
a lot of bad press lately, it still beats the alternatives). One can't
even claim this view is necessary to permit the exercise of imagination,
because for every question we answer about the world, there are a
thousand more to be asked, and wondered about.
Even if, in any particular instance, thinking this way does no harm,
it's still the mindset that brings us Creation "Science" and a myriad
other ills of its ilk, and it's still wrong, just like stealing something
worth only 59 cents is still theft.
You may now go back to ridiculing me. I'm off to see Tomb Raider.
* * *
Tomb Raider was mediocre action-adventure, clearly aimed at the niche
market of mammalian-dominated planets. About as good as Mummy Returns,
I'd say.
So, no intellectual activity occured at the theater, but I had two bus
rides during which I could contemplate how poorly written my above rant
is, and try to come up with a more memorable way to phrase it. Here goes
nothing.
A worldview is, sort of by definition, a model of the world and how it
works, and therefore what you can expect from it. Every sophont has its
own worldview, but they fall into distinct enough categories that one can
reasonably speak of the scientific worldview, the religious worldview,
etc.
Because knowledge is finite, any worldview has to be constructed both
of verifiable facts and unverified or unverifiable supposition. What
makes the scientific worldview unique is that it treats supposition only
as a temporary scaffolding to extend the solid structure formed of blocks
of fact, or to shore in place facts not well connected to each other:
when facts become available, the supposition is discarded and the facts
put in its place. (Likewise, facts that prove flawed, and unable to
support the palace of knowledge, are discarded and replaced by more sound
ones, in a perpetual renovation*.)
Because science uses supposition primarily at the edges, and no longer
than necessary, it has a much more solid structure than worldviews build
upon cores of supposition and only later encased in fact. Certainly you
can build usable structures that contain a large proportion of lathe and
plaster, and even quite beautiful ones of nothing else, but they will not
be as strong as one built of solid masonry, and that is why biologists
and doctors, not priests or "alien abductees", cured poliomyelitis.
Now, every sophont is free to build its worldview out of whatever mix
of those materials it finds fitting, but the ones that build their
worldviews primarily out of supposition should keep in mind that they are
only alive to do so because of those who preferred usable facts.
(This is probably a sons
of Mary vs sons of Martha thing.)
*There is a common image of scientists as
rigid dogmatists who know the One Truth and brook no deviation or
revision; this image is then used to support the claim that they are
really just priests of a religion with modern trappings but identical
essence to all others. I think this quote from a real, formerly live,
scientist says all that's necessary here:
"In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a
really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they actually
change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again.
They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because
scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens
every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened
in politics or religion." -- Carl Sagan, 1987 CSICOP keynote
address
End of 2 July 2001
I have actually done everything that was on my todo list for today!
Between that and dinner, I ended up slogging like 8 kilometers in Earth's
hideous gravitational field, so I only wrote 555 words, but still!
Accomplishment!
Tomorrow, I will take the clothes too stained or expensive to launder
to the cleaner's, see a movie or two, and call my mom.
Make a comment!
2 July 2001 - Monday
For reasons that are not entirely clear (perhaps 9 for 4 was too
efficient a use of vacation days to pass up?) I have taken the four days
of this week that are not Independence Day as vacation. And what, you may
ask, do I plan to do with this vacation?
On the agenda for today, my first day of vaction, I have:
- Do a hit of Web
- Refill prescription
- Do laundry
- Go grocery shopping
- Expire of anticipation over my incoming Amazon order
- Write
Later in the week I hope to accomplish many other exciting things,
such as:
- Read my Amazon order (the parts I haven't already read, anyway)
- See Atlantis
- See Tomb Raider
- Pick up comics
(One problem with being on record as opposed
to all forms of imagination is that one is not then considered friend
material by anyone who values imagination, which is pretty much everyone
I know. This is very sad, of course, but from the standpoint of the
reader, what it mostly does is make my page even duller than it was
before. Flee now while you still can.)
Make a comment!
1 July 2001 - Sunday
A new month! Time to work on the archival system for keeping records
of previous months accessible in a vaguely Euclidian fashion. It'll be
kind of funny-looking with only one previous month archived, but oh
well.
Make a comment!
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