A thing just happened to me in my Research & Design class.

( Cut for maths and profanity.Collapse )

So I asked her, "Why on earth would you do that?" (Hoping she'd realize the error of her ways, silly me.)

"Because it's more convincing if you can say your results are statistically significant."

Click Here for My Johari!
And so that I can be fair and balanced:

My Nohari!

The Johari is a place where people who know me can select a few positive attributes about me so that I can learn more about myself through the eyes of others.

The Nohari is the same thing, only for negative attributes so that I can learn about how people perceive my weaknesses.

DISCLAIMER: I do not know how much information this thing saves, so if you are not comfortable being approached by me in the future to talk about a strength or (in particular) a weakness that you have identified please list yourself as 'anonymous.' I am approaching this as an opportunity to learn more about myself and the system itself gives precious little information.

To say that I have utterly neglected this account is an understatement. I've basically been using this account as a passive login power so that I can read folks on my flist.

That said, I have been inspired by the Occupy movement to start writing again.

I will be making a series of posts to this LJ which will likely become my last posts on livejournal as I will likely try to make the leap to an Honest-To-Goodness Blog.

I am using this post to solicit comments from anyone who might read this (if one can be said to 'read' an LJ that never updates) as to the future of my writing presence on the internet as well as guidance on what y'all found useful enough that you decided to follow me.

Watch this space for more in the next day or few. Please feel free to comment if you have stuff to say now.

Baaaaa!

( Booooooooks!Collapse )

I know a lot of people who seem to be muscling their way through something tough right now, and sometimes I find a kind word very helpful when I am struggling. So here's the basic idea: Comment below, and I will tell you something positive I think/feel about you. It can be big or small, but it will be a genuine source of positive regard--if I say it to you, I really think it about you. :)

Shamelessly ganked from dromeda who asked me the questions.

The Rules:
1. Leave me a comment saying, “interview me.”
2. I will respond by asking you five questions. I get to pick the questions.
3. Update your LJ with the answers to the questions. (You must do this, even if it's filtered for my eyes only!)
4. Include this explanation and an offer to interview someone else in the same post.
5. When others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five questions.

Comment to this post and I will give you 5 subjects/things I associate you with. Then post this in your LJ and elaborate on the subjects given.


1. What does your perfect environment look like?
Depends on the context! Clean air and water are a plus, but in terms of personal environment it depends on if I'm working or not. If I'm working I like a desk with room for computer + surfaces on which I can write notes. I like a lot of light as well. For social, I like small groups and activity that all can partake in to one degree or another (heckling is a form of participation). My natural habitat is a small social group engaged in gaming of one form or another.

2. Why raccoons?
Because they're cute, smart, play well with kitties, and my first-ever Changeling: The Dreaming character (who rocked) was a Racoon Pooka who became notorious among those who knew me. At some point people started getting me raccoon stuffies and the collection started. It just sort of stuck. But raccoons are certifiably awesome.

3. Favorite things(s) about Maine and Boston?
Respectively:

Maine - The cost of living. Hands down this is one of the cheapest places I've ever lived, or will likely ever live. It's the benefits of living in the south, without having to live in the south. I also really, really like the snow and climate. I will miss both dearly.

Boston - The social is the big appeal to Boston. Plus the political climate. (Maine has become especially toxic in this regard, of late.) Massachusetts is my home and I like living in my home. I really miss gaming so the social bits are super important to me, now.

4. Do you ever wish you could have made the massage therapist thing work?

Oh god yes. I really miss massage therapy a lot. My plan is to someday have enough space to set up a table in a permenant fashion and do massage as a hobby on the side. Right now I don't really have that kind of space (and my table has suffered for having been stored in a basement that flooded). That said, massage therapy is a small business kind of format and my health situation, plus my life and financial situation, mean I'm no good for that kind of life right now. I need more stability.

5. Is there a country that's really "doing it right"?

I'll be honest, I don't study other countries as much as I study my own, and from what studying I have done, there's no such thing as a country that gets everything right in my opinion. Canada's health insurance system is awesome. I'd like to have as much vacation as Scandinavians. I want to see more disaster management like Japan. But I've always been one to focus on what's in front of me and sort out what to do with it.

Topics:

Height: I has it. It's often quite annoying. It wouldn't be so bad except that I'm a custom size in damn near every dimension and that makes the clothing expensive (which is why 75% of what I own and wear is 4+ years old).

Urban Planning: Oi. I have a master's degree in this. My Master's program has six different concentrations. That's how broad this topic is. I ultimately decided to get out of Urban Planning because I didn't want to spend my life doing site plan reviews, and that's what a lot of planning work is, but the act of planning out an urban space is a very complicated and important process. Unplanned municipalities are almost universally a mess (see also: Boston's street map.)

Monkeys: I had to laugh at this one. I don't actually talk about Monkeys as much as everyone else around me. faerieboots uses the word as an expletive and all-purpose filler, which leads to hilarity sometimes especially since dromeda does this as well, and I've noticed other people starting to pick up on it. I actually don't care for monkeys like I care for raccoons. This makes it somewhat amusing that faerieboots has decided upon "monkey" as a term of endearment for me.

Politics: Both the lowest and highest profession - also just sort of the emergent reality of people dealing with each other. I am a fiscal conservative and a social liberal - which is supposed to mean that I favor a bunch of social programs but don't want to have to pay for them. Actually it means that I temper my American-As-Apple-Pie love of capitalism with an understanding that without social progams to shore up the poor unhealthy, and unlucky, you wind up with the politics of the bomb and the gun - which isn't so much with the good.

Conquest: So, funny thing about me: I'm a pacifist. I think violence is a terrible, terrible thing. But I'm also a wargamer, and find ethics, political philosophy, and the intersection of the two particularly interesting. This means, as many folks know, that I have particular opinions on legitimate warfare. These opinions tend not to be shared by many, especially the 'times when it is okay to conquer an independent people' parts. I am strongly influenced by the Milian Dialogue in this.

It is what it says on the tin. All those of you who signed up to receive beta drafts should have received them. If you did not, let me know and I'll get them sent to you. If you wanted to partake but didn't sign up, ditto.

For the record:

183,476 words written and revised once through already. Nano eat your heart out! :)

Okay, I'm far enough along now that it's time to start signing up interested beta readers (hat-tip to gaudior for the term) who would like to read and comment on the 2nd draft of From The Brink, my rebuttal-in-kind to Rand's Atlas Shrugged.


Before volunteering to read and comment you should know a few things about my work:

1) It is written (for the moment) as a work of (anti-)fan-fiction, set seven years after the lights went out in New York.
2) As the above line may have clued you in, this means that you will get much more out of it if you've read AS.
3) My work is long. Roughly 170,000 words written so far and still a couple of sections that will grow as I do some more research and fact checking. Of course, this is still less than one-third the length of AS (645k words), but it's not exactly 'bored-on-a-Sunday-night' light reading, either. Books of comparable length (and if they're longer or shorter): Moby Dick (longer), Life of Pi (just over half as long), Native son (Same), The House of Spirits (same), Uncle Tom's Cabin (slightly longer).
4) This project is intended for publishing, eventually. (I'm waiting for the movies to make my market for me.) Not in its current form, obviously, but I'd consider it a kindness if you didn't share manuscripts without asking me first.
5) This manuscript is heavy on exposition (it's a rebuttal to a philosophy-text-in-novel-form after all). In editing it is obvious to me that one of my influences is Tom Clancy (I'm nowhere near as wordy or geekgasmy as he is, though), as I tend to Show My Work. Because of the nature of the rebuttal some of this is necessary to defend the implied argument, the rest of it brings a reader up to speed on a topic (usually technical) that they may know nothing about, but upon which a plot point will turn.
5a) This exposition works in some places and drags in others. I am particularly interested in knowing which is which and why.
6) There is no six.
7)This manuscript is also heavy on monologues (though the longest of them is still but an eyeblink against a certain radio address I could mention...) 5a applies here too.

If, after all of these disclaimers, you are interested in reading this work and offering your honest opinions, suggestions, and commentary I would encourage you to:

1) Email me or comment here and say so!
2) Indicate whether you want all-at-once, or chapters (there are twenty six of them, plus or minus one, depending on how long some of the to-be-fleshed sections get) on an installment schedule (which you may set).
3) Indicate whether or not you have read AS, and if you have not, whether or not you'd like a crash course beyond a basic who's-who.
4) Indicate your preferred format (.doc, .odt, .pdf)
5) Briefly summarize your experience editing prose.
6) There is no six.
7) Indicate whether you'd like to be given more specific targets, and/or if you'd like to be assigned as a 'special subject' reader to verify that this text meets certain standards (e.g. Bechdel Test).

Saturday, January 8th, a 22-year old man wlked into an event being hosted by an elected member of the United States government, shot said elected official in the head, and then proceed to shoot as many other people as he could before being subdued by individuals present at the event. He is now in federal custody.

As news of the shooting hit, Twitter lit up with acusations aimed at Palin and her website which, not even subtly, called for people to "take aim" at the apparent target of the shooting. Palin and others have also discussed the use of "2nd amendment remedies" to democrat incumbents surviving challenges from teaparty challengers. "If votes don't work, bullets will" has been attributed to her as well.

The obvious behavioral connections between Palin's disgusting language and the actual execution of the deed itself make assigning the blame to Palin and her ilk an easy thing. Reckless speech suggesting that murder is an acceptable form of political action may, in fact, prove to be a contributing factor here, but it's where the sentiments went from there that are well and truly problematic.

Example Tweet from @gideonstrumpet: "The guy who shot the Congresswoman in Arizona must be white. You know how I know? Haven't heard the word "terrorist" once yet."

The sentiment was repeated over and over using different words but the point was the same. Loughran and, by extension - and in at least one case explicit mention - Andrew Stack III, is not being called a terrorist because he's white.

I would like to offer an alternative theory for why neither of these men was called a terrorist:

( Beause neither of them is.Collapse )

Politically motivated murder and mayhem is not sufficient to call someone a terrorist. In this case I do not see any reason to call Loughner a terrorist, nor do I see any reason why Andrew Stack should be similarly labeled. I do not make these determinations on the fact that these men are white - I make this determination on the grounds that they're not terrorists.

My condolences to those who lost friends and family in this tragedy.

"You know there's nothing to fear but fear itself... Yeah. That's called recursion, and that would lead to inifinite fear... so... thank you."
-Ze Frank, "The Show - Couldabin (02-22-07)"

In many ways, the terrorists have already won - not that they had to work that hard for it. We were only too happy to hand them the victory.

A little over four years ago, I was sitting in the Cambridge, Massachusetts Public Library watching "The Show," by Ze Frank ("Don't Be Afraid (08-10-06)" Transcript available here.). In his words, "apparently the Brits caught some douchebags who were going to blow up some planes." This is nothing new in our world. I can't think of a day in recent years when someone wasn't trying to blow something up. Sometimes it feels like someone has simply fed a bunch of nouns into a random number generator and makes whatever comes out into a bomb: Shoes, Sports Drinks (This is the one Ze Frank was commenting on), Underwear, dogs, and Printer Cartridges? Who the hell came up with that list? I feel like this is the terrorist version of Rule 34.

Ze Frank's commentary turns quickly from the (largely commonplace and banale) event to a basic analysis of how terrorism works. In so doing he demonstrates, in a few sentences, the brilliant appeal of "The show."

"As long as a small group of people can inflict mass panic across a large population, the tactic itself will remain viable. One way to deal with the effectiveness of terrorism is to deal with the terror itself."

He follows this with a quote from two people in positions of authority, and calls them both out in simple, starkly honest language:

The first was London's Deputy Policy Commissioner who was quoted by the media as having said that the plot was "intended to be mass murder on an unimaginable scale." Ze Frank fires back immediately and without hesitation:

"No. It is imaginable: Between three and ten flights out of thousands would have resulted in a terrible loss of human life."

Then he quotes Dubya who offered the nation, "This nation is at war with islamic fascists who will use any means to destroy those of us who love freedom." And this is where Ze Frank delivers the simplest possible statement of what this post is about:

"Generalized statements like this, which instill nebulous fear without specific information are exactly in line with the goals of terrorism."

( Four years later, Michael Leiter says some stuff that suggests the point is finally being grasped.Collapse )

Ze Frank charges the government with ensuring "that fear and terror are not disproportionate to the reality of the situation." The point he did not touch on, which is absolutely vital for people to understand is this:

It is not expedient or helpful to elected officials to work at calming a population. The incentive structure here is all mucked up. Terrorists want people afraid so that they will be more likely to behave in a specific manner. This lowered discrimination in judgment is useful to people other than the terrorists.