Eclectic Views

    
Ported with permission:

gratitude.ind 55: Being seized by the day: the incredible thing I just
saw, heard, experienced
#71 of 109: Shekhar Ghosh (ersatzids) Tue 21 Sep 2004 (04:35 AM)

Reading Becca's story here (she raved and ranted to me that night over
the phone, and I told her that she would find the kittens the next
mroning; but I never get any credit) reminded of my best friend in this
city. I'm his daughter's godfather and we are pretty close. But unlike
me, he keeps his sentimental self hidden. For anyone meeting him for
the first time, he'll come across as the most unsentimental kind of a
guy. He's a chief pilot with one of teh domestic airlines. A couple of
years ago, he had gone to Bangalore (a neighbouring city, India's IT
capital) on a flight. During the break, he was speaking with the
stewards when one of them told him of this conversation she had
overheard between two business executives flying. It seems one of the
pharmaceutical companies in bangalore had imported some 30 dogs (the
same breed as Snoopy; i think they're called beagles) for testing some
medicines. But somehow the then Health Minsiter of India got wind of
this and threw a racket. The MNC had to release those dogs and they
were for sale, but no on would buy those dogs as they were "tainted"
by the pharma research. 

My friend heard of this, he took another flight to Bangalore the next
day, asked one of his pals in bangalore to find out about this company,
went there and paid top money to buy a sickly looking Beagle. Before
we knew it, the dog was at their home in Mumbai. 

Folks you've gotta experience what fright is. Everytime my friend came
home from work in his Pilot's uniform, the dog would start whimpering
and pee wherever he was almost rooted to the spot. The white pilot's
uniform must be reminding him of the doctors who experimented on him.
It has taken two years for Quasi (that's what he named him) to get
back to normal, but he still runs away from the white uniform. 

He could have gotten any dog, but once he heard of the plight, he just
couldn't help but procure that dog. Now Quasi is with us for all our
outings... 
  

    
Ported with permission:

life 150: On becoming golden
#57 of 61: golden girl (aurum) Wed 29 Sep 2004 (04:35 AM)

I wrote the following on the airplane yesterday.  It seems to belong
here. I know there's a lot between my last post and this one that ought
to be filled in; I'll get there eventually.

-----
I was having a surreal conversation with a friend the other day. And
in the middle of it, I had a thought. One that does a nice job of
clarifying that sense of home I feel when I'm in Boston. Maybe people
who have not moved a lot take this feeling for granted. But it is one
of my absolute biggest sources for peace, contentment, and getting my
priorities in order.

Not only do I love Boston, it loves me.

I don't mean the skyscrapers, or the happy little grasses, or the cows
or the trees, or anything like that. I mean the collective community
I'm part of. It's an odd sensation -- I can't name any one person
living there about whom I can say with certainty "This person loves me"
-- but there are enough people there who care about me, even if I'm
not in their thoughts very often, that it's a sensation very much like
being loved.

The sensation persists even when I'm wandering around alone. These are
my cafes, and my communities, and my bike paths, and my squares
(never, of course, actually in the shape of a square.) These are some
bits of what I have access to. It's kind of like tracing the lines or
the freckles on a lover's face.

Looking back, I can see how I was beginning to feel the same way about
Mobile at the end of high school. But my communities there have
dispersed, and Mobile is estranged from me now. I've got eight years of
my life invested in Boston, which is twice the amount of time I've
ever lived anywhere else. And I have lines of communication to keep my
investment alive, which I didn't have into Mobile for very long.
(Community, communication -- it's not just the shared root that makes
these words related.) I can see the beginnings of this feeling in
Oxford and London. Oxford will be hard to maintain, because of the
transitory nature of being a student, but the community there overlaps
quite a bit with London, which isn't going anywhere.

I look forward to seeing how it develops. It's hard to believe that I
could be so fortunate as to have two homes like this, one day.
  

    
Ported with permission, from my co-host <mpk>:

news 2947: Experts on the Well (8/23/4+++)
#676 of 1002: mirror-adhering motion moocher (mpk) Wed 22 Sep 2004
(12:57 PM)

Whether it's illegal to say something's illegal when it's legal
depends on what's considered illegal and what's legal in legal terms.
Legally, "legal" has a defined legal meaning and while legally it might
be illegal to make claims that define something legal as illegal when
legally it's legal, plenty folks are so confused with the woolly
non-legal definitions of legal and illegal that legally speaking they
have enough trouble coming up with a legally binding definition of
legal (one that's not illegal) that what's legal and what's illegal can
sometimes become a serious legal problem which, especially lacking any
clear precedent declaring what was legally thought to be illegal to in
fact be legal (or what was thought to be legal to be, in fact,
illegal) that most legal authorities will just sigh and say that 
simply put, what they say is legally illegal is illegal and legal,
legal, legally, and if you go around saying that what they legally
think is illegal's legal or that their interpretation of what's legal
is in fact  legally illegal, then they'll just sigh before sending you
down for contempt and going off for a pleasantly long lunch.
  

    
LOL!  (Not that there weren't already enough L's in that post.)
  

    
(fainting dead away...)
  

    
hilarious,

[and BTW, thanks to <wellelp> for this really super topic idea!]
  

    
Ported with permission, from a special topic in the <words.>
conference, where the object is to only use single syllable words. It's
written after the hurricanes in Florida:
                   -----OR-------
Here is a post, with T's say so, from a cool thread in the <words.>
conf, where the thing is to use words of one beat, not two or more.
She wrote it when the storms down South had passed:

words 1586: Small Words from More Great Minds
#513 of 572: obstacle illusion (therese) Fri 01 Oct 2004 (03:58 AM)

Thanks! At first I thought no big deal on the lights; the last storm I
was out for two days and all was fine. This time, by the third day, I
had had it. When I went out it was what I asked the ones next door
first, 'are your lights on yet?' It was the heat, most of all, that did
me in; it was four score and eight by mid day. All the cold food was
lost on the third day, and that's a big mess; I didn't want to toss it
out for fear of wild things that might want it, and then there would be
more of a mess to clean, but I had to. The smell does get bad. Had I
known it was to be five days I would have left and come back, but each
day I would think it will be soon, I just know the lights will be back
on, and those bright thoughts made me stay. 

Is it good to have so much of your life in great need of a plug? I
doubt I could live a life that I would want off the grid.
  

    
maybe <therese> is from the midwest, in which case "didn't" would be
pronounced "di'nt"...
  

    
Good ear! Yes, Chicago born, I am. Doesn't everyone pronounce "didn't"
as "dint?"  I blame Mayor Daley. We have a topic in the <words.>
conference that discusses just this sort of thing: How do YOU
pronounce...

Come join us.
  

    
good idea:  i'm teleporting over there as we speak
  

    
For a minute I thought "di'nt" referred to the African-American
pronunciation, with a glottal stop in the middle (i.e. the sound you
make in the middle of "uh-oh").
  

    
Ported with permission:

wellcome 101: Introductions: The how-do-you-do's continue
#623 of 630: Thomas G. Digby (bubbles) Wed 22 Sep 2004 (02:06 PM)

Mention of navigating the WELL without panic attacks leads me to
thoughts of how one might navigate with them, in the sense of using
them as some sort of navigational tool.  

Perhaps one could wear a bunch of bio-sensors wired up to the
computer, with some kind of algorithm that would figure out the user's
emotional state and use that to determine which conference to go to
next.  If it sensed a hint of panic it could take you to a bunch of
calm peaceful conferences, while if it sensed impending boredom it
could take you to more lively ones, perhaps even at the risk of a
flame-fest.  More subtle moods, such as melancholy or despair or
puzzlement or jubilation, would be harder to decode, but perhaps future
technology will be up to the task.  

Anyway, have fun, even if you have to figure out your own navigation
for the next few years.  
  

    
Ported with permission from all five authors:

cooking 365: Weird foods - do NOT taste like chicken!
#640 of 691: relaxing my gluten (peoples) Wed 06 Oct 2004 (09:47 AM)

I think my cats are trying to tell me something...


About a month ago, I got up in the night to get a drink of water. I
wandered (in the dark) into the kitchen and promptly stepped on
something furry that was laying atop the throw rug at the sink.

It was a dead rat. Not a huge rat, its body was maybe six inches long,
it's tail another six inches. Wacky cat brought it in and left it
there for me.

Last night I woke up to the sounds of a squeek toy being compressed
over and over again. SQUEE-eeeek SQUEE-eeek SQUEE-eeek

Weird, I thought, my cats don't have squeek toys. 

Except Tweezer did have one. Only thing was, it didn't consider itself
a toy. It thought of itself as a living creature, a mouse, in fact.
I'd forgotten that the reasons squeek toys make the sound they make is
because it's such a good imitation of the noises a small rodent makes
when cornered by a predator. "quiet as a mouse" my ass! They're noisy
little bastards.

  ****************

Anyway, I fell back asleep eventually. The mouse body showed up this
morning at the foot of my bed. Clearly my cats want me to do something
with these little treats they keep bringing in.

Do they want me to eat 'em? Perhaps they want me to cook 'em for them?

How do you prepare mouse? And does it taste like chicken?



cooking 365: Weird foods - do NOT taste like chicken!
#641 of 691: Where do you want me to put the kielbasa, Mrs. Prickley?
(jstraw) Wed 06 Oct 2004 (10:24 AM)

Your cats are expressing their unwavering love and fealty toward you.
They are hunters. Prey is food. They're giving the fruits of their
conquest to you. They're not only good at their job, they're doing it
for *you.

If you love them, you'll eat the rodents.



cooking 365: Weird foods - do NOT taste like chicken!
#642 of 691: Angry European Potato (captward) Wed 06 Oct 2004 (11:39
AM)

Yeah, but she was asking for *recipes*. 



cooking 365: Weird foods - do NOT taste like chicken!
#643 of 691: david adam edelstein (davadam) Wed 06 Oct 2004 (11:53 AM)

Surely the old JOC has something useful to say here.


cooking 365: Weird foods - do NOT taste like chicken!
#644 of 691: the people, they want cheeseball (wiggly) Wed 06 Oct 2004
(12:49 PM)

The squirrel recipes probably need only minor tweaking. Rodent
nuggets! Braised mousie saddle! Bubble and Squeak!
  

    
eeek!  eeek!
  

    
My Cocoa left me a mousie anatomy lesson the other morning:  head with
2 or 3 organs still attached.  She's not telling where the rest of the
lesson went.
  

    
mmmmmmmmmmmm... mousies.
  

    
chew they little feet
  

    

Ahem.   If you're gonna quote it, get it right, please.
It's "nibble on they tiny feet".

Thanks awfully.
  

    
Ported with permission of the author:

politics 2240: Instant runoff elections
#28 of 33: vote early and often (oz) Sun 03 Oct 2004 (10:15 PM)

Oh, I can think of a situation where instant runoffs would enhance the
power of a third party by actually electing a party member.  Suppose,
if you will, a *partisan* election with three candidates (and I'm
twisting history here to make the point):  Richard Daley, machine
Democrat, Alan Keyes, conservative Republican, and Bernie Sanders,
Social Democrat (a party Sanders would love to represent in real life,
if it existed).  Registration: 50% Democrat, 30% Republican, 20% minor
party/independent.  However, 20% of the voters are Democrats who hate
the machine and have Sanders as their first choice, while only 5% of
the Republicans are doctrinaire conservatives.  Everyone but those 20%
vote for their party and the first round is:

Sanders:  30% (20% from the Dems, 10% from the minor/independents)
Keyes:    29% (allright, a few old ladies were too sick to vote)
Daley:    32%
Scatter:   9%

The moderate republicans (15%) list Sanders as their second choice,
since they hate the Democratic Machine.  The scatters split between
Sanders and Dailey.  Result, second round:

Sanders: 49% (his original total, most Republicans, a few scatters)
Daley:   37% (his original total and some scatters

Too disgusted to vote for either: 14%.  Sanders has a total of all
second round votes actually cast that is a majority, and wins.  In real
life, Sanders won because of a weak Democratic candidate and as I
recall a badly split Republican party, and he would have won under
instant runoff, too, though of course his opponents were Vermonters now
forgotten.

Strategic voting will also work:  Simply imagine the typical Southern
California Republican district, 65-35 GOP.  And of that 65, 40 support
a right-wing religious zealot, who has won year after year because he
outpolls the moderates in the primary and most of the moderates just
can't bring themselves to vote Democratic.  With strategic voting, a
moderate Republican can win, sure of 25% of the vote (the moderate
Republicans). To get to the finish line, he needs to convince, say, 15%
of the Democrats to vote for him as first choice, making his first
round total 40, the same as the troglodyte.  In the second round,
virtually every remaining democrat or independent will choose him, and
he'll get in.

I think a lot of that is going to happen if it is adopted statewide,
and it will (a) reduce the power of the gerrymander, (b) reduce the
power of extremists to win in districts that heavily favor their party,
and (c) encourage third party candidates to run in districts where
they have a strong base, and campaign on the basis "You in the minority
party may not like my politics, but at least I'm honest, and I'm not
going to be a sure vote for the legislative leaders of the majority
party."


[ed: I made minor spelling corrections.]
  

    
Ported with permission of the author:

media 2272: Media Coverage of the 2004 general election
 #681 of 976: a fan of your more action-oriented religions  (argh) Wed
06 Oct 2004 (08:24 PM)


Well, watch if you must, but the Canadians simply can't be trusted.
For example, one of their submarines (rented, I understand) is on fire
off Ireland and being towed, as we speak, back to England where the
ham-handed errors of Canuck seamanship will be repaired. Unfortunately,
one of those seagoing Canadian farm boys has died and others have been
injured, but it all underscores the basic problem of Canadian
incompetence. And if more proof were needed, think back to 9/11 -- who
agreed to accept dozens of airliners full of potential suicide bombers
when the U.S. closed its air space? The fucking Canadians. Talk about
dumber than a bag of hammers -- it's not so much that they're
treacherous, but they're just not very smart. 

Whatever you do, don't reach any conclusions based on Canadian
broadcasting.
  

    
Ported with the permission of the author:

gratitude.ind 27: Look what the cat drug in: entertaining gleanings
from The Well, the Web, and Evewywhewe Else
 #740 of 750: Paderewski v. Piano, 3 Rounds, Tonight  (poet-lariat)
Thu 07 Oct 2004 (10:44 PM)


I had seen this excerpted before, but now I have the whole thing, a
re-telling in musicologist Nicolas Slonimsky's Book of Musical
Anecdotes.  For those not into classical music, there was a big period
in the late 19th-early 20th century when great pianists would go around
barn-storming towns all over America.  This was also the period of the
Romantic Greats, moody giants with great mops of hair and monster
hands, and of those, none was greater than the great Ignace
Paderewski....

"When Padereski reached New Orleans on his triumphant American tour in
1896, the New Orleans Item, which had never harbored a music critic,
sent a prizefight reporter to review the concert.  The following was
the result:

    'I am here to say that in my opinion he is the best two-handed
piano fighter that ever wore hair.   He looked like a licked man when
he left his corner, shuffling his feet across the stage with his fins
dangling like a pair of empty stirrups.  It looked like a cinch for the
piano.  Then all of a sudden, he swings his left on the bass end of
the keyboard with a smash that rattles the chandeliers.  After landing
heavily with his left on the stomach of Mr. Piano, he got in a right
hand smash or two over the heart that would put any ordinary box of
wires out of the business.  After some sparring at long range, he
commenced fiddling for the head again with the right, running the
fingers of his left through his hair.

   'Paddy let up a bit in the second round.  For an opener, he took on
one of those soft, easy things.  Anyhow, it gave the piano a chance to
get its second wind.  But the man with the mess of hair saved all his
steam for the final round.  The air in front of that piano was filled
with flying hands and hair.  The practiced ear might have picked out of
the crash and jumble a concord of sweet sounds, but I was too busy
looking to listen.  If I were a piano, I wouldn't travel as
Paderewski's sparring partner for two-thirds of the gross receipts.'"
  

    
Sounds like a review of a Jerry Lee Lewis performance.
  

    
LOL!  You're right!
  

    
Ported with permission from the author. Originally posted upon the
news of Pierre Salinger's death on October 16th.

news 2944: Obits (continued)
 #815 of 903: that awful corporate feeling  (the-voidmstr) Mon 18 Oct
2004 (10:36 PM)

....

In 1963, I was the News Director of WHHS FM, a 10-watt station at
Haverford High outside of Philadelphia.

I was a huge JFK fan, and typed out a letter to Pierre Salinger on
WHHS stationery asking if I could attend one of JFK's press conferences
on behalf of the station.

Several weeks later I got called out of algebra class and sent down to
the office. 

I had a letter from the White House, inviting me to DC.

I went a few weeks later, caught JFK's press conference at the State
Department Auditorium, and later went to the afternoon press briefing
at the White House.

The guards at the White House were a bit baffled when I showed up, but
sure enough, my name was on the list, and I had my newly-issued Social
Security card as ID.

Pierre Salinger wasn't there, but Andrew Hatcher was, and I attended
the regular briefing with the White House beat reporters.

Later, when I was back from my big adventure, I remember someone at 
school admonishing me to never use WHHS stationery again, but by then,
it was too late.

Heh.

Thanks, Pierre!
  

    
Ported with the permission of the author (with one small edit as
requested by the author):

wellcome 101: Introductions: The how-do-you-do's continue
 #644 of 663: powered by hot air  (skeptic) Fri 22 Oct 2004 (12:09 PM)

Somewhat belatedly in response to <631>, depending what you mean by
online, I could say I went online for the first time in June of 1974.

I worked in Ventura California on a machine in Bethesda, Maryland. 
The development group was distributed around the country, so we
communicated using email, tell's and the phone.  The email was an app
hosted by the machine in Bethesda.  Its workings were remarkably
similar to text based mail clients today.  The fun stuff was building
the logical structure for filing and searching saved emails.

In Sep 1975, I moved to Isla Vista and took an IBM 2741 (selectric 2
typewriter w/integrated acoustic coupler).  I worked from home at 150
baud.  The access number I dialed was 50 miles away. They had me
expense the charges until @$500/mo they decided it was cheaper to setup
an 800 number for me to use.

I have always had a terminal at home since then.  Almost everyplace I
have worked has allowed me remote access.  Lurked on BBS's in the '80s
and even had a Well account in about 87 or 88.  Was working remotely
for HP at the time enhancing a report writer to use middle eastern
character sets, so I didn't have enough time to stay up with the gd
conference.  My roommates at the time forced me to print out long
stretches of posts so they could pass them around.  It took forever on
my old slow color dot matrix printer. The machine at the time was an
IBM PC Portable with a 2400 baud modem. I had an external EGA monitor.
Almost 20 years later its still on the closet floor.

Had a brush with ARPA-Net and packet switched networks while in Isla
Vista, but I was oriented elsewhere at the time.  Didn't play with
usenet until '90, but I did buy my condo from an ad I read on the ucb
forsale group in '92.  8-)