Previously, in Trip's Life...
30 November 2010 - Tuesday
Work: Yay! The customer we had a twice-weekly phone
meeting with has decided that one meeting a week is enough! Also my boss
said nice things about me in the inbox of higher-ups, but it saddens me
that such baseline preparation is remarkable.
My, the Internet really is full of things: Space Lamprey Is
Here To Suck Your Planet's Juices.
Textual Educations: In The Myth of Sanity,
Martha Stout makes the case that all humans fall somewhere on the
spectrum of dissociative behavior, because dissociation is the natural
response to trauma and no human is free of trauma (lots of stuff is
really scary to little kids, even stuff adults think of as ordinary).
DID (formerly known as MPD) is just the far end of the curve.
Another blow stuck against the notion of a unitary consciousness that
exercises complete freedom of will!
Visual Entertainments:
- Ef 7: Ow.
- Higurashi When They Cry II 23-24 [end]: Anything I
could say would be a spoiler.
- Bakemonogatari 1-2: That was very peculiar. But also
pretty cool. I sure hope Senjougahara doesn't lose all 97kg of spite.
- Shakugan no Shana II 19: Hey, look, it's a clue!
Food: Dave felt guilty for eating so much of our
left-over pizza, so he made us chicken panang with peas. Maybe it was
albino panang, since it had a lot of coconut milk and not much red curry,
but it was definitely food, and probably better for us than pizza.
Cats:
Twelve paws!
Make a comment!
29 November 2010 - Monday
Work: I don't want to get up. Can't I stay in bed and
send Marmalade and Ghirardelli to work? They don't really need opposable
thumbs to do my job, do they?
Bah.
Gaming: Lately I've been using FreeMind in my
ongoing vague intention of designing a game that sucks less than D&D4. It
works pretty well for getting ideas to connect to other ideas, I think
better in this case than an omni-directional
concept map would. However, today I realized that even if I did create
a system that worked, Ayse and Carl and Marith and Earl would all just pat
me on the head like I'm retarded (with complete justification, I should
point out). Now I have no motivation for anything beyond Coin-Toss
Adventure (heads: you succeed at your immediate goal, which lands you in
even more trouble; tails: you fail at your immediate goal, remaining in
your current trouble, and another scoop of trouble is piled on top).
Bah.
Visual Entertainments: Finished watching Ah,
My Buddha!, which has no redeeming qualities whatsoever.
Food: For the first time in ages, I successfully
ate leftovers I had stashed in my fridge, instead of leaving them to
moulder!
Silly Computer Games: Check.
Cats:
Twelve paws that still don't have jobs!
would not! by marith (Wed Dec 1 23:21:30 2010)
Would not!
If you come up with a system that works and a game to play using it, I'd play. I bet Cera and Ken and Dave would too.
reading comprehension by marith (Wed Dec 1 23:22:17 2010)
...and probably Carl and Earl would, too.
Make a comment!
28 November 2010 - Sunday
Productivity: FAIL.
Textual Educations: Tim Harford, writing as The
Undercover Economist, explains basic economic concepts like
scarcity, marginal cost and profit, market segmentation, market efficiency,
externalities, asymmetric information, and more. He also examines how the
lack of the rule of law creates perverse incentives in poor countries that
keep them poor, China's transition from a centrally mismanaged Communist
economy to a booming quasi-capitalist economy, and why free trade and
globalization are pretty much entirely good (but not so good they can't be
swamped by dedicated suckage).
It's pretty basic, but I think a good intro.
Food: Marith made me go to Whole Foods with her
and I ended up buying a box of Thanksgiving (apparently I left
Roseville too soon) and a giant pretzel with cheese and jalapenos on
top. It was pretty good, but more than I could eat.
Gaming: For the first time in three months, we
played Thrace! A whole hour! We have a plan for how to make a plan for
rescuing the creepy village of creepy children, which is more than we
had before.
Cats:
Twelve paws!
Make a comment!
27 November 2010 - Saturday
Weather: Check.
Justification of Existence: FAIL.
Textual Edutainments: Somewhere I picked up a
recommendation for The Thing Around Your Neck, a collection of
short stories by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, who is famous and award-winning
and not part of the dominant class, so I picked it up at the library. As a
feeble-minded genre fiction reader, I can't judge the quality, but it was
certainly interesting to read stories from the point of view of Nigerian
women. (You know, in case I wasn't already aware humans suck.)
Cats:
Twelve furry paws!
Make a comment!
26 November 2010 - Friday
Gaming: We completely and utterly failed to play D&D,
but no one actually expected otherwise. I failed horribly in one more game
of Dominion (once
Pirate Ships come into play, you might just as well roll dice to determine
who wins) and then somehow won one by one point. Later, we played
The
Pillars of the Earth (which is apparently based on a novel about
building a cathedral or something). Ken was distracted by a cute baby, so
he misheard some of the rules explanation and took my rightful place at the
bottom, but the spread was only 8 points out of more than 50, which wasn't
too bad.
Food: Leftovers! Also, Chinese take-out, because it
was not turkey.
Travel: Marith ran out of spoons for visiting, and
there wasn't any room in Ayse and Ken's car so I had to go back with
her. (I was pretty worried about my cats anyway.) There was almost no
traffic, so we did not die from driving.
Cats:
Marith and I stopped to look in on Jinian and Aime and found that they
were completely out of water. That is Not Okay. It doesn't take very
many days to die of thirst even for cats in the peak of health, which
Jinian is not.
Grrr.
Cat Saving by Carl (Tue Nov 30 18:26:12 2010)
Hurray for returning in time to save Jinian and Aime from thirst.
And I hope your own cats came through their unheated two days still fluffy and warm.
Re: Cat Saving by Trip (Wed Dec 1 15:22:07 2010)
All cats ended up okay!
Make a comment!
25 November 2010 - Thursday
National Gluttony Day: big round check! I think
there were eighteen people this year, although some of them were pretty
small.
Gaming: Played two games of Dominion and came in
last by a large margin both times even though I was playing against an
8-year-old and a 12-year-old. But at least I got to see the
Alchemy
and Seaside
supplements, which we haven't played with down here. The Alchemy
cards are wacky, but the Seaside ones mostly seem to be okay. The next-turn
effects of the special actions are always the same as the immediate effects
(except that they never give actions next turn), so as long as you remember
to not discard them, they aren't too confusing.
Also played two games of
Dog
Eat Hot Dog, which I won despite not liking hot dogs. (It was
completely random, though.)
Textual Educations: You're Too Kind
(Richard Stengel) is, just like the subtitle says, a brief history of
flattery, from the ancient Egyptians through the Jews, classical Greece and
Rome, the Renaissance (Machiavelli, but also a horde of others), and up to
the modern day, with a detour to chimpanzees. Stengel makes a lot of claims
about the mindset of various pre-moderns which I'm dubious about. I have no
problem believing that they thought differently than moderns, but do we
actually know how their thoughts differed?
Naturally, talking about what flattery is, how it works, and how it's
been used, is a lot like providing a manual, which puts Stengel at the
end of a long line of authors of manuals on courtesy, etiquette, and getting
by in life.
It was an amusing book, but I hate humans.
Food: Sausage, croissants, vegetables, salmon
dip,bacon, turkey, stuffing, sweet potatoes, more stuffing, cranberry
sauce, rolls, green bean casserole, and more stuffing! And some dessert,
but I didn't eat very much because I probably shouldn't actively try to
make my eyestalks explode.
Cats:
They are probably okay.
Make a comment!
24 November 2010 - Wednesday
Work: I spent all day trying to reproduce the critical error
on test systems here and even on the customer's dev cluster, to no
avail. Eventually the customer gave in and made the configuration
change, and sure enough, all their queries instantly started working.
(They do have a reason for not wanting to make the change, but it really
isn't a strong enough reason to justify working over a holiday, and they
finally realized it.)
Since I was here three hours late yesterday, I felt no qualms about
leaving an hour early today. This makes me a bad start-up employee and a
failure as an American.
Visual Entertainments: Episode 13 of the
Princess Resurrection anime was the incident with the
village. Is that a trope in Japanese horror or something?
Travel: We didn't get on the road to Roseville until
21:30 or so, by which time most of the people had gotten off our road.
It was still a very late night for me.
Cats:
I worried and worried over whether they would be okay with no heat,
because it is very cold but I don't want to leave the heater on and come
back to find the apartment burned down. However, I suspect that they
will in fact be fine.
Make a comment!
23 November 2010 - Tuesday
Work: Apparently the customer we upgraded yesterday
didn't actually test anything with the new version, because today they
filed a whole bunch more panicked support cases that all must be resolved
before the holiday weekend. Most of them were either figured out
reasonably quickly or determined to not actually be critical, but one
can either be easily worked around with a simple configuration change
(and is probably a result of the customer's wacky configuration in any
case, since it's never been seen before) or will require significant changes
to core sections of the product.
No anime for me tonight.
Visual Entertainments: I didn't find this out until
later, but Marith and Dave bailed on anime too. Sheesh.
Cats:
Twelve paws!
Make a comment!
22 November 2010 - Monday
Work: If I had known I was going to be in charge of
upgrading Big Customer X to the new version, I would have paid attention
last week when the upgrade was being planned. (It actually went pretty
smoothly, although it took longer than I expected. They ran into one
real problem, which I worked around and filed a bug report on, and panicked
about one thing that wasn't actually a problem.
Textual Educations: Trilobite! (Richard
Fortey) is pretty much what it says on the tin shell:
why trilobites are cool (calcite eyes!), how we know they're cool, what
we can learn from trilobite lore, and the importance of natural history
museums.
Visual Entertainments: After a long hiatus, episode
12 of Princess Resurrection.
It's been a long time since I saw a new volume of the manga. I
suspect this means that I really am the only person in the world who
likes it.
Silly Computer Games: Check.
Cats:
Ghirardelli's fur is plush and wonderful, but it needs more taking care
of than he sometimes gives it.
Make a comment!
21 November 2010 - Sunday
Surprise: Apparently Adam isn't dead, just stuck
in airports a lot. We lured him down to eat at Hobee's and watch us
game, because we could.
Gaming: Still worst GM ever, with the lamest
opposition ever. I think half XP may actually be more reasonable than
two-thirds for monsters with half HP, or maybe it's just a bad idea
all around.
Anyway, the PCs successfully rescued the academics who had been
turned into motorized wheelbarrows in the metaphor within the stone, and
escaped with nine heartbeats to spare (which is how I can tell my
opposition was lame). Next session, perhaps some loot.
For reasons beyond my understanding, Adam wants to join the game.
He'll probably play another defender, since at the moment the line of
battle consists of one character. I'm not sure whether this means the NPC
will finally come to her senses, but probably.
Food: Jeremy and Rachel threatened people with the
cranberry-chocolate pit again, but I am wiser now.
Cats:
Twelve paws!
Make a comment!
20 November 2010 - Saturday
Accomplishment: FAIL.
Silly Computer Games: Check.
Cats:
Twelve adorable paws!
Make a comment!
19 November 2010 - Friday
Work: Check.
Textual Entertainments: The Boredom of Haruhi
Suzumiya (Nagaru Tanigawa) indeed finishes out the story covered by
the first season of the anime, including incidents such as the
<rot13> pbzchgre pyho cerfvqrag naq gur pnir pevpxrg, </rot13>
the <rot13> vfynaq bs zlfgrel, </rot13> and the <rot13>
onfronyy tnzr </rot13>.
Textual Educations: On Bullshit (Harry G
Frankfurt) is hardly a book at all, more like a medium-length essay that
somehow got published in stand-alone form. I don't think it needed to be
even that long to get across the point that where lying is an attempt to
make someone believe something that isn't true (two things, if you include
your mental state), bullshit is blathering on without regard to the truth
value of what's being said. I've heard this opinion before, but I don't
know if Frankfurt originated it (probably not, since the book only dates
back to 2005).
Cats:
Twelve paws!
Make a comment!
18 November 2010 - Thursday
Work: I think we sort of made the grouchy customer
happier. I managed to stick cow orker P with the upgrade at 17:30 by
having to leave work at 17:00, but now I feel bad because it took him
and superior cow orker G until midnight to get things working.
Gaming: Everyone in the Palo Alto game has picked
a paragon path, so I can try to arrange fights to let them show off
their new powers.
Textual Reallocations: I got about nine books at
the library, so watch this space for reviews
criticism mentions.
Textual Entertainments: The Sigh of Haruhi
Suzumiya (Nagaru Tanigawa) covers the movie-related parts of
the first anime season (well, vice-versa, but you know what I mean).
It goes into more detail in some places, but the plot and story are
very much the same. Poor Asahina.
Food: Ken induced us to abandon our
Rangoon
plan in favor of kohlrabi root mashed like potato, kohlrabi and
radish greens, roasted butternut squash, enough cabbage to crush a
mule, and the pork chops that ate Sheboygan. I think we chose
correctly.
Visual Entertainments: Failure! Ayse and Marith started
discussing Komarr and A Civil Campaign and Ken
and Dave started discussing Civ or WoW or something, so we never did get
around to watching any Slayers even though it is Thursday.
I should reread Komarr and A Civil
Campaign so that I can retroactively appreciate
Cyroburn more. (Maybe even Diplomatic
Immunity.)
I hear the next book will be from Ivan's point of view.
Cats:
Twelve paws!
Make a comment!
17 November 2010 - Wednesday
Work: Check.
Textual Entertainments: Yen Press has brought over translations
of the "Haruhi Suzumiya" books by Nagaru Tanigawa, on which the anime and
manga were based. (Is it just me, or is all anime based on light novels
these days, rather than on manga?) The first volume, The Melancholy
of Haruhi Suzumiya, covers roughly the beginning and ending of the
first season of the anime, and seems to follow very close to the same plot.
Strangely, Suzumiya seems even less sympathetic in text (maybe it's because
we get more of the narrator's internal irritation?) and Asahina even more
oppressed (anime characters blubber and flail so much that it's not taken
literally, but it is taken literally when described in words?).
It looks like the first three books will cover the first season of
the anime, in no particular order.
Visual Entertainments: Check.
Silly Computer Games: Check.
Cats:
Check.
Make a comment!
16 November 2010 - Tuesday
Work: Bah, customers always taking our perfectly
good product and breaking it.
Textual Entertainments: An Artificial
Night (Seanan McGuire) is the third book in the "October Daye"
series about a half-fae PI in San Francisco with weak magic and poor
survival instincts. Despite these handicaps, and an odd relationship with
death, after three books she's still mostly alive and has even helped many
of the people she set out to help.
Visual Entertainments:
- Ef 6: More writing, more romance, and amateur artist
vs professional artist!
- Higurashi When They Cry II 21-22: Can this plan
actually work? We'll find out next week! (Or maybe not, if the
conclusion of the storyline is put off until the OAVs.)
- Shakugan no Shana II 18: Yuji is levelling up! Maybe
this is really a shounen show after all!
- Chrome Shelled Regios 23-24 [end]: That appeared to be
triumphant, but it was completely unlike explaining anything.
And apparently there is no second season.
Next week, we start Bakemonogatari.
Cats:
Twelve paws!
Unexpected Anime Sequels by Carl (Tue Nov 30 18:24:02 2010)
Bakemonogatari will explain the ending to Chrome Shelled Regios, but you will have to think about it really, really hard. No, really!
Maybe.
Re: Unexpected Anime Sequels by Trip (Wed Dec 1 15:20:07 2010)
That's better than having to watch the second season of Suzumiya Haruhi in the right order to understand the end of Regios!
Make a comment!
15 November 2010 - Monday
Work: Why are weekends only two days? This seems
poorly-arranged. (Maybe I need to read more about the Industrial
Revolution, so I won't find my 9-10 hour workday oppressive.)
My, the Internet really is full of things:
Clover
cosplay.
XXXholic
cosplay.
Rumiko Takahashi
cosplay.
Mummy cosplay
(with extra gravity resistance).
Silly Computer Games: Blargh.
Cats:
The chair that used to be Ghirardelli's favored spot is now
Marmalade's. It's probably too close to where I usually sit for Aspen
to ever take it over, though.
gravity resistance by kit (Tue Nov 23 05:02:32 2010)
that's some serious gravity resistance. O.O
Re: gravity resistance by Trip (Tue Nov 23 08:37:48 2010)
Thanks for confirming I was right to wonder about the basic chemical composition there. (But for someone who apparently makes a living cosplaying anime and comic book characters, it's definitely a wise investment.)
By the way... by Trip (Tue Nov 23 08:55:39 2010)
I don't seem to have any working email addresses for Kits, so you should mail me!
Re: gravity resistance by kit (Tue Nov 30 14:13:36 2010)
Oh yeah. I too was obliged to wonder about the basic chemical composition there, but yeah, if that's how she makes her living I'd say it's worth it. If, you know. Slightly astonishing. :)
Make a comment!
14 November 2010 - Sunday
Work: There was a lot of work mail today, but it was
all from one engineer digging into one peculiar and annoying problem and
updating the ticket, so no action was required on my part.
Gaming: Because I could, I sent the PCs back into
the magic rock. This time it's all different, but I still can't run
skill challenges worth beans.
Today's perversion of all that is D&D4: twice as many monsters with half
the normal hit points each, so beating them up is less of a slog (the total
damage that has to be done is the same, but there are more accomplishments
along the way). I counted the monsters as half the normal XP, but I think I
was undervaluing them and it should be more like 2/3, since after all they
still have the initial damage output of twice as many monsters. (The
attrition is less blocky, though, so it ends up being a little better for
most of the fight.)
(This is the natural result of thinking that elites should get double
damage rather than double hit points.)
Because the PCs are on a spirit journey, I let them level up in the
middle of an adventure. At last, paragon tier! Now I can pull out the
really scary monsters!
Food: Rachel made Jeremy make chocolate-cranberry
pie, which is just weird.
Silly Computer Games: My wizard was doing well in Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup
until it started encountering player ghosts, which seem to be immune to
most non-physical damage (but have no problem pumping it out). Bah!
Cats:
Twelve fuzzy paws!
Make a comment!
13 November 2010 - Saturday
Work: No on-calls today, yay!
Gaming: I guess that's kind of like check.
Textual Entertainments: I liked
Cryoburn better than Diplomatic Immunity,
but sadly I still think it would have been okay to end the series with
A Civil Campaign. (The event at the end of the book could
be construed as it being time for Miles to stop having adventures, but
I'm not sure it actually works IC.)
Food: I went to the all-you-can-eat salad place
and had some vegetables to make up for the barbecue yesterday. Perhaps
I will not actually keel over dead before Monday now.
Cats:
Marmalade is very sneezy lately. He seems okay otherwise, though.
Make a comment!
12 November 2010 - Friday
Work: I'm on-call this weekend. I hope the
customers are relatively non-flammable.
Food: Company barbecue, nom nom nom.
Cats:
There was some confusion with keys (Marith has like twenty keys on her
keyring), but we eventually got Jinian and Aime more crunchyfoods,
more gooshyfoods, and fresh water.
Make a comment!
11 November 2010 - Thursday
Work: Last day on-site for new cow orker M, so now
he'll have to harrass us via chat. (New cow orker S doesn't fly out
until tomorrow afternoon.) Now that we have them and they are kind of
trained, oppressed cow orker P gets to fly back to India in a couple of
weeks.
Textual Entertainments: The Grimrose Path
is the second in Rob Thurman's "Trickster" series, and is full of titanic
doom. On the other hand, Trixa gets to make demons look extraordinarily
foolish.
Visual Entertainments: Ken and Ayse are busy packing
for Orycon, so there is no Slayers, but Dave is back from
Points East, so there can be makeup TNA!
- Ef 4-5: Ganbatte to write, Chihiro!
- Higurashi When They Cry II 20: The NPCs are acting
suspiciously reasonable. I wonder if this is supposed to presage a
triumphant ending, or just make the doom more crushing? Also, best
fansubber comment ever: <rot13> Uvanzvmnjn, jurer xvyyvat lbhe
sevraqf vf nyjnlf gur evtug nafjre </rot13>
- Chrome Shelled Regios 21-22: The plot threads are
coming together such that we can see there might be a finite number of
answers, but with only two episodes left, will we actually get any of
the answers?
- Shakugan no Shana II 17: Given the alternatives
presented, I don't think it's dishonorable to choose to be human.
Food: Yay for the pizza of Hawaii!
Cats:
Twelve paws!
Make a comment!
10 November 2010 - Wednesday
Work: I stayed until all hours again, bleah.
Admittedly, after a certain point the commute gets easier because the
trains make all stops and I can get off at San Antonio instead of
Mountain View, but having no time that's not at work (or commuting) is
not okay.
Visual Entertainments: Marith is still full of
germs, so no bonus Thursday Night Slayers tonight either.
Food: Also, no
Rangoon.
Cats:
Marmalade and Ghirardelli were pretty rambunctious tonight. Possibly
they need their bellies rubbed more often.
Make a comment!
9 November 2010 - Tuesday
Work: Check.
Textual Educations: Following thematically upon
Fortey's book, Mean and Lowly Things is herpetologist Kate
Jackson's account of her (first?) two expeditions into the Congo to collect
the reptilian and amphibious wildlife there for the Smithsonian, in 2005
and 2006. Apparently third-world bureaucracies have a a reputation for a
reason. Also, the tropics are full of bugs (but not so full of anything she
was actually looking for). I am impressed by how well she coped with all
that (I would have died horribly before even making it out of the US, so
perhaps it's just as well that I accept I'm a wimpy data plumber and don't
try to be a herpetologist.
Visual Entertainments: Dave is out of town, so no
Tuesday Night Anime, and Marith is sick, so no bonus Thursday Night
Slayers.
Food: If Marith had not been cruelly infected with
bad microbes by her cow orkers, we would have fed upon
Rangoon.
Maybe tomorrow.
Silly Computer Games: Additional blargh.
Cats:
I got postcards reminding me to take the cats in for checkups. I guess
I should try to make an appointment with the Correct Vet. (Ayse got
the Incorrect Vet when she took her cats in, and became sad.)
Make a comment!
8 November 2010 - Monday
Modern Medicine: I went in to have my eyestalks
examined by a more specialized specialist, which involved staring into
bright lights and having my veins filled with strange fluorescent
dyes. Apparently I really am that defective, and they want to shoot
laser beams into me in a few weeks.
Work: Eyestalk inspection took much longer than I was
hoping, so I got in just a little before the phone meeting with Important
Customer X and had to scramble to get all the notes ready. Bah! Then I
stayed late but didn't actually accomplish anything with the extra time.
Double bah!
Gaming: Hm, Ayse and Ken are out of town this
weekend. Maybe there could be extra bonus Palo Alto game.
Silly Computer Games: Blargh.
Cats:
Twelve paws!
Make a comment!
7 November 2010 - Sunday
Gaming: No gaming. Again. Maybe I need a hobby
that doesn't depend on other people.
Sequential Entertainments: I should have seen the
twist in Negima! 28 coming, but I totally didn't. (Dave
probably saw it in volume 9, but that's because he's actually smart,
unlike me.)
Textual Entertainments: Apparently I was too cheerful
despite the lack of gaming, so I spent the afternoon sitting on the couch
reading the rest of Charlie Huston's "Joe Pitt" series (Half the
Blood of Brooklyn, Every Last Drop, and My Dead
Body). That was a lot of doom, but in true hard-boiled fashion, the
main character survived to the very end (this is not a spoiler, given the
genre), and some of the people he killed even deserved it.
Silly Computer Games: Blargh.
Cats:
Marmalade always likes sleeping on fresh laundry, but he likes it
even better when the weather is bad.
Make a comment!
6 November 2010 - Saturday
Gaming: Suddenly, gaming is cancelled, as Earl has
to take a cat to the vet for unspecified reasons. (Dave is already
out, and Rachel and Jeremy would probably only be about half-present.)
Textual Educations: Dry Storeroom No. 1
(Richard Fortey) is about the British Museum of Natural History, where
Fortey worked for many years and met many eccentric characters. It is also
about natural history museums more generally, as respositories of
knowledge, about the fieldwork to gather that knowledge and the characters
who performed it, about the value of knowledge for its own sake and the
annoyingness of people who want a return in Euros by the end of the
quarter, and a tiny bit about museums as places to educate the public. I am
down with all this, so I enjoyed it.
Textual Entertainments:
No Dominion is the second book in Charlie Huston's rather
grimly hard-boiled series about the scheming vampire mobs of Manhattan and the
hard-luck case Joe Pitt who keeps getting dragged back into the trouble.
There is really no shortage at all of doom.
Silly Computer Games: Check, although I pretty
much suck at Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup.
Cats:
Miau miau miau!
Make a comment!
5 November 2010 - Friday
Work: Fortunately, the severity 0 case I was working
on got resolved (more or less). My cow orkers were not all so fortunate.
Gaming: Braining is hard.
Cats:
Still fuzzy!
Make a comment!
4 November 2010 - Thursday
Work: Check. Blargh.
Textual Entertainments: If you like other recent Simon
R Green books, you'll like Ghost of a Chance. If you don't,
you won't. (Whatever else you say about Green as a writer, he's
consistent!)
Visual Entertainments: Chez Monkeycat is full of
germs, so no Slayers Try tonight. (Dave is out of town
anyway.)
Cats:
Yay kitties!
Make a comment!
3 November 2010 - Wednesday
Work: If I were smarter, I would have fixed the
customer's problem sooner and with less help, but instead I am dumber.
(Shock, surprise.)
My, the Internet really is full of things: Maslow's
other hierarchy.
Textual Educations: The subtitle of Wilkinson and
Pickett's The Spirit Level is "Why Greater Equality Makes
Societies Stronger", and it pretty much sums up their position. However,
they have facts and figures to back it up, and their case that economic
inequality is not only correlated with but causative of most social woes:
violent crime, drug addiction, early death, mental illness, underage
spawning, educational failure, sexism, and more are all significantly worse
in countries with a bigger gap between rich and poor, and there are good
psychological explanations for why this is so. (The same relation holds
less strongly but still significantly for the states of the US.)
This is not an effect of total average income: the wealth-vs-suck
curve levels off before reaching even the bottom of what we consider
developed countries and is nearly flat from about Poland and Argentina
on up. The US and Norway are together at the high end of income, but on
opposite corners of the graphs for inequality and social problems.
(Caveat: this book has many graphs, but their X- and Y-axes are not very
numeric. However, they provide almost 400 references to the original
studies, so I'm going to tentatively accept the graphs as being
approximately truthful.)
This is also not an effect of poverty: the top 10% don't get as
much benefit from equality as the bottom 10% so, but they still end up
better off in quantifiable quality-of-life terms.
It doesn't seem to matter how the equality is achieved: some countries
do explicit wealth redistribution through taxation and welfare, while
others just don't have as wide a range of income, but both reap the
benefits.
More equal countries are obviously better to live in, but they are also
more generous with aid to less developed countries, which is probably
necessary if we want to do something about global-scale problems.
The authors acknowledge that talking about economic equality is easy, so
they offer a concrete proposal that can be implemented on a small scale:
more employee-owned businesses. Quite a few such business already exist, so
they're stable in the existing paradigm (unlike a direct legislative
solution to income inequality), and apparently they do quite well in the
short term as well as being a blow against the capitalist
bosses better for everyone in the long term. (As I sit here in
Silicon Valley, I have to wonder what the equivalent of a start-up would be
in a world in which employee-owned businesses were the norm, but it's not
like the current venture capital system is the only possible way to
start a new company.)
Cats:
I tried the cats on some new crunchyfood today, but they don't seem to
like it even though it is fancy and comes from Trader Joe's. Bah!
Ingrates!
Maslow's other hierarchy by marith (Sat Nov 6 10:43:38 2010)
giggles I am going to show that to Nickie.
Make a comment!
2 November 2010 - Tuesday
Work: Check.
Visual Entertainments:
- Ef 3: Aw, poor Chihiro!
- Higurashi When They Cry II 18-19: The art style
supports the alleged lack of doom, but I am deeply suspicious.
Neverthless, go Rika!
- Chrome Shelled Regios 20: We're rapidly running out of
space for an explanation of the random Engrish interludes.
- Shakugan no Shana II 15-16: What, she's just a human!
Food: I ate three pieces of pizza instead of two.
I'm pretty sure this makes me a bad parasite.
Cats:
Twelve paws!
pizza by kit (Thu Nov 4 09:19:11 2010)
bad, perhaps, but probably not hungry anymore, which counts for something! :)
Re: pizza by Trip (Thu Nov 4 11:42:18 2010)
Well, true, but I was not very hungry at all after the second piece. But the cheesy goodness badness tempted me!
cheesy goodness by kit (Fri Nov 5 09:39:59 2010)
now i totally want pizza. :)
Re: cheesy goodness by Trip (Fri Nov 5 10:39:13 2010)
Then you should have pizza! I decree it!
Make a comment!
1 November 2010 - Monday
Work: Check. So far only a few things are actually
on fire.
Cats:
Twelve paws!
Make a comment!
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