Denvention

I.e., the World Science Fiction Convention, which held in Denver over this past weekend under the name Denvention.

I went, I drifted along, I moped around, I ran into some people, Leonore and I ate dinner with Daniel, Becca, and John Stith on Friday evening, I was on a panel on Friday and attended a couple of panels on Saturday, I came home. It was an odd experience. I think it's better to go to a convention of this level (i.e., World SF Con, World Horror Con, World Fantasy Con) when it's in another city. That's much more expensive, obviously, but you're in the convention hotel and you spend much more time at the actual con. As it was, I had my usual weekend chores -- mainly, all the grocery shopping -- and I squeezed the con in as best I could. When I had my doubts about going downtown to the con, as I did this morning, it was easiest simply not to go.

Denver won the bid to host the 2008 Worldcon two years ago. When I heard that, I was excited, convinced that I would be much further along professionally than I turned out to be. Clearly, I'm not there. For a while, I wasn't sure I'd attend the con at all, but then I decided that that would be silly, given that it's here in town.

On the bright side, I saw various people I normally only see at cons, and some people I didn't expect to see at all, such as a former coworker from back when I was a software developer (happy days!). On the negative side, I missed a lot of people I had hoped to see, and I heard grim news about some local people, leaving me depressed and guilty because my complaint is that I'm not rich and famous, whereas their situations are much more serious. On the third, and grayish, side, I was able to give useful advice to another local acquaintance about reentering tech writing and even about the writing biz. ("Shoot yourself now.") (Kidding.) (Mostly.)

I could ramble on, but I don't want to get portentous, and I'm afraid that would be the next phase of this.

Costco creates bad drivers

Or so I have to assume.

I just got back from a shopping trip to Costco. The store was packed, probably with people shopping early to avoid the heat (predicted high of 100 degrees or more today), and as usual, I was astonished at how many people do things with their shopping carts that they wouldn't do in their cars. Driving on the wrong side of the aisle. Leaving their carts across the middle of the traffic flow while they wander off to find something on the shelves. Stopping to chat or eat free samples, with their carts sticking out into the flow.

To be fair, it's not just Costco. I see the same thing in the regular supermarket, where I'll be going in a couple of hours. Interestingly, it's almost always women who do these things. Male shoppers seem to drive their carts much more rationally. I expect some disagreement with that statement.

Maybe it's not the carts that do that to people. You do see the equivalent strange behavior when people are driving cars, so maybe the dangerous cart drivers I'm complaining about are actually the same people I have to watch out for while driving my car in Denver.

Orson Scott Card's non-fiction side

Opinions he doesn't express in his fiction:

http://mormontimes.com/ME_blogs.php?id=1586

David's Definitions for September 2008

Eponymous

(Will appear in the September 2008 issue of Community News)

An eponymous person is the person something is named after. For example, Hamlet is the eponymous protagonist of Shakespeare's play of the same name. Queen Victoria is the eponymous monarch who reigned during the Victorian age. Andrew Jackson is the eponymous American president whose political philosophy is known as Jacksonian Democracy. The practice of using a famous name to refer to something is ancient, but the word eponymous only dates to the middle of the 19th century. What's curious is that in recent times, the word has begun to be used to refer to the thing being named, instead of to the person. If opera singer John Hugevoice puts out a CD named John Hugevoice, you might hear the CD referred to as eponymous. But that's hugely wrong. It's the man who's eponymous, not the CD.




I'm collecting all of these at: http://www.dvorkin.com/davidsdefs.html

Zombie Harmony

There really is a site for everyone on the Wonderful World Wide Web.

Even zombies looking for love.

It's not an ethnic pejorative

It's the very odd nickname for a piece of electronic equipment.

For uncounted ages, a microphone was commonly called a mike. Some time during the last few years, everyone started spelling that short form mic. I don't know how that slipped by me. (It's my fault! I was asleep on guard duty!)

Why the change? It makes no sense. Mic should be pronounced mick, whereas mike is a sensible phonetic spelling. Did someone decree that mike was out out because the full word isn't spelled mikerophone? If that's the argument, then why don't people ride bics instead of bikes?

("Because if they did they'd risk getting burned in an awful place" is not an acceptable answer.)

Every presidency begins with an affront to the Constitution

The presidential oath of office is specified in Article II, Section of the Constitution: "I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."

Article VI, Section 3 decrees that "[N]o religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States."

Yet we can be sure that whoever wins the upcoming election, on January 20, 2009, he will place his hand on a copy of the Bible (the press will make much of the history of that particular Bible; if the winner is Obama, rumors will circulate that a Koran was used instead) and will repeat the above oath, adding to the end of it, "so help me God," a phrase that the framers of the Constitution were careful not to include. The cheering of the crowds will drown out the sound of the Founding Fathers rolling over in their graves.

Countdown to the end of the world!

With the skeery Large Hadron Collider activation counter.

Except that the date they were assuming when they set that up turned out not to be the actual date for activation of the LHC and Destruction of THE WORLD! That was delayed. But stay tuned, because the counter will be updated. Thus you will be kept informed and will have time to get all your affairs in order.

On second thought, why would you bother?

Leaden Man: A movie review

Also known as "Iron Man", this is a little-boy flick disguised as a guy flick that pours the prodigious acting talents of Robert Downey, Jr. into a metal suit, where it hides them so well that they're mostly invisible even when he's not wearing the suit. Actually, when he's not wearing the suit, Downey seems more interested in showing off his brand-new muscles than in acting. The movie wastes Gwyneth Paltrow in a role she should have been ashamed to accept; could she possibly need the money that badly? The only actor whose reputation might be enhanced by this is Jeff Bridges, who spends the movie chewing a cigar and the scenery with equal gusto.

Downey plays absurdly brilliant weapons inventor Tony Stark. Kidnapped by bad guys in Afghanistan, he escapes by building himself a heavily armed metal flying suit from those high-tech scraps that apparently fill the mountain caves in that part of the world. After getting back home and undergoing what must be the most fuzzily defined moral crisis in movie history, he builds himself a much more advanced version of the same metal suit and sets off to save the part of the world that the weapons made by his company have heretofore been used to destroy.

Along the way, we see astonishingly advanced robots and Artificial Intelligence software, created by Stark but used mostly for plot convenience and comic relief. But these are inventions that would have transformed the world far more than any of Stark's weapons could, and would have made him far richer, too. Or, if he really did want to destroy things, then instead of a suit for a man, Stark could have used the robot and AI technology to create very small robots that could have infiltrated any enemy position or country undetected and done all the damage required. The scriptwriters don't seem to have realized this. That shows you how focused they were on blowing things up instead of thinking about the story.

The politics of the movie are very strange. Stark realizes how much damage his weapons have done to civilians, but no blame is attached to the U.S. government, which has murdered thousands of innocent Afghan civilians - in the movie, by using Stark's weapons. Nor do the moviemakers seem to want to blame the vile Taliban, who are mysteriously absent from the story. Instead, they invent a third group of unnamed terrorists who are killing civilians and Americans and anyone else available, who seem to have no connection to any of the real factions in Afghanistan, and whose goal apparently is to use Stark's weapons to conquer the world. They're led by a sinister figure who speaks English perfectly and thinks deeply and should be a great villain except that, when the plot requires it, he turns out to be absurdly easy to eliminate.

That scene must be one of the worst anticlimactic letdowns in action-movie history, just as the scene in which we learn the identity of the bad guy who is behind everything, and which should be a stunning revelation, instead elicits a no-shit-Sherlock response from anyone in the audience with an IQ above 60.

But this movie isn't aimed at them.

Two stars for the CGI, which are undeniably cool

The Armed Society

There have been a few shootings in Denver lately. In one incident, two cars were firing at each other, and a bullet hit an eight-year-old girl playing nearby. She'll live, fortunately. The police caught the shooter, and a local TV station interviewed him in jail, where he's all weepy and remorseful, explaining to us that it wasn't intentional, that he would never have shot at a little girl. He, his girlfriend, and their eight-month-old daughter had been in a nearby park when he got into an argument with some men, one of whom is his cousin. He, his girlfriend, and their daughter left, but as they were getting ready to drive away, his cousin pulled up beside them.

"And he pulled out a gun," the weepy perp told the camera, mimicking putting his hand in his pocket and pulling out a gun. "Like this! So what was I supposed to do? I had to protect my family. I had my little girl in the back seat. I couldn't just pull over and let him shoot at me. So I pulled out my gun." Mimicks pulling gun from pocket, pointing it. "I put it out the window and went bam, bam, bam, just like that." Bursts into tears again. "I didn't mean to hurt the little girl! It wasn't intentional! I'd never do that!" He was just trying to kill a grownup, which would have been okay.

Libertarians like to say that an armed society is a polite society, quoting one of their heroes, Robert H. Heinlein. Noooo. An armed society is a society splashed with blood, littered with corpses, and filled with broken hearts.

In my ideal society, neither of those men would have had a gun. And each of them would have had a vasectomy.

Update: On the way to work this morning (Thursday, 6/26), I saw a local paper in a vending box with a headline reading that the shooter in the above story has a felony (conviction?) and therefore should not have been able to get a gun. This illustrates a whole separate problem. We need to agree on what laws to have, but they also have to be enforced; gun control laws seem to be particularly susceptible to not being enforced.

Update 2: This evening (also Thursday), there was a story about a local one-car accident. The car rolled multiple times, for some reason. The driver was thrown out and severely injured. But the car then rolled into the path of a freight train and was smooshed. So if he had been wearing his seatbelt, he'd have been smooshed too! From which we conclude that drivers shouldn't wear seatbelts, right? No. We conclude that that driver was a very, very lucky idiot. The relevance is that whenever someone does defend himself against bad guys with a handgun, certain types say that that shows that handguns are the best defense for the individual, and never mind the far greater number of innocents who get killed by idiots or bad guys with guns. I call that the Adolescent Red Dawn Fantasy Bullshit argument.

David's Definitions for August 2008

Goldbrick

(Will appear in the August 2008 issue of Community News)

Nowadays, this generally refers to a person who doesn't do his part, a loafer, someone who shirks his work. In earlier days, especially during the World Wars, it usually referred to a soldier who didn't do his part of the work. It can also refer to an investment that looks good but turns out to be worthless. Supposedly, the word originated in late 19th-century America, when people were fooled into buying bricks of gold that were only gold on the outside. In World War One, new recruits were sometimes promoted to lieutenant before they knew what they were doing, earning the scorn of their men and being called goldbricks because of the color and shape of their insignia. From there, the term became general, first for lazy soldiers and then for lazy civilians. Personally, I think this story smacks of folk etymology and we'd know the real origin of this word if the etymologists would just stop goldbricking.




I'm collecting all of these at: http://www.dvorkin.com/davidsdefs.html

Bread and Circuses, without the Bread

It's my impression (subjective, so it could be wrong, but of course I don't think it is) that sports coverage has been increasing on national and local radio and TV news broadcasts. Increasing, I mean, both in saliva-spraying intensity and in the percentage of the average news broadcast consumed by sports nonsense.

I hate sports, and I'll admit right away that, despite my general commitment to a philosophy of living and letting live, if I were king of the world (if only!), watching or discussing sports would be outlawed for anyone old enough to drive. If they wanted to discuss the latest exploits of people who kick or hit or throw balls of various sizes and shapes, adults would be forced to gather in dark, dank, garbage-strewn alleys and talk in murmurs - until the Royal Vice Police swooped in to brutally arrest the perverts and ship them off to reeducation camps.

Be that as it may, sports exist, as they always have and - sigh - probably always will. But why is an ever greater chunk of what is supposed to be broadcast news being devoted to them? Why is it displacing real news, even the fluffy, local stuff? Why are sports statistics referred to as history and the outcomes of games given more weight than major political events?

Ask a Roman emperor. Sports news is our bread and circuses, but without the bread. The aim is to fire the viewers up about something they can feel involved in, to delude them that they can win, albeit vicariously, or if they lose, they can feel hope for next year. That idea isn't new, but the increase in the emphasis on sports is. The news media seem to feel that ever more misdirection is needed. It makes me wonder what they think may be coming, in this empire of ours. Or perhaps they fear that reality is seeping through, as in a Philip K. Dick story, so they have to shout louder and longer to mask it.

An open letter to the un-American coward who stole our Obama sign

Some time during the night of June 10, you stole the Obama sign from our front yard. It's a small matter, and we'll replace it easily enough. But your action signifies something much larger.

I have no idea what your politics are, although it's reasonable to assume that you oppose Barack Obama becoming president. What's important, though, is that I imagine you consider yourself a patriot and that when you stole our sign, you thought you were acting in the interests of our country.

I invite you to think about that.

Dictatorships of both the left and the right commonly have in place almost all the machinery of democracy -- parliaments, congresses, prime ministers, presidents, elections, vote counting, inaugurations. The crucial item that is always missing is a political opposition with the freedom to campaign. You have just declared that that's what you want for America.

Is that the act of a patriotic American, of a believer in democracy? If you want to suppress those who differ from you politically, then at least be honest with yourself: never stand during the Pledge of Allegiance, never salute the flag, never celebrate the Fourth of July, never call yourself a patriot, never praise the Founding Fathers. Above all, never claim to support democracy or to believe in the idea of America that inspired so many before you.

I'll see your Arnold and raise you a Jennifer

I keep getting in strange arguments, on liberal Web sites, with liberals, about the absurd Constitutional provision prohibiting naturalized citizens' becoming president or vice president. I expect xenophobia on the right, but I'm always surprised when I encounter it on the left.

Not that I want to run for president. A short, fat, bald atheist who hates suits and ties and would tell reporters that his personal life is none of their fucking business wouldn't have a chance, no matter where he was born. And if I somehow won, I wouldn't want to live in Washington - although Little Georgie has shown that that's not necessary. I certainly wouldn't want to answer that damned telephone at 3 a.m. "Mr. President! Mr. President! India and China are lobbing nuclear missiles at each other! Millions of people have already been incinerated! Radioactive clouds are drifting all over Asia! Non-combatant nations are putting all their forces on high alert! Your commanders are clamoring for instructions! Do you want to order the End of the World?" "Go awaaaaaay! Ten minutes' snoooooooze!"

The point is, I want to be able to run for pres or veep, if madness suddenly overcomes me. I don't want to be told that I'm not the equal of other citizens. I don't want to be told that a walking anal sphincter such as Little Georgie or Reagan the Abominable is legally qualified to run for president but that the Constitution says I'm not allowed to do so. Yes, that would mean that Arnold Schwarzenegger could run for president. And why not? It would also mean that Jennifer Granholm could do so. Or do liberals fear that Granholm, who was born in Vancouver, BC but moved to the U.S. when she was four years old, has divided loyalties? When no real Americans are within hearing, does she end her sentences with "eh"? If she became president, would she set in motion the secret plan to deliver us into the hellish hands of Canuckistan? (And why would that be bad?)

Suppose the Constitution required that, to be president or v.p., you had to be male. I hope that would have been amended away long ago. The natural-born requirement is no different. Whether or not it was justified in the 1780s (it wasn't), it certainly stopped being justified by, say, the 1840s.

Ah, well. Xenophobia and nativism have always been popular in this nation of immigrants.

Blogger's New Template

It's an improvement, and I need to switch to it and update my blog links. But it's going to be messy and painful, so I keep putting it off.

If vast numbers of people read this blog, maybe I'd feel obligated to make such changes. Or not.

Update: I updated. Now I'm wondering what I missed. Or screwed up.

Clueless about George III and 1776

On the political blog Dailykos, a poster quoted the famous entry for July 4, 1776 from George III's diary: "Nothing important happened today." As is so often the case, this was described by the poster as evidence of King George's cluelessness. The American colonists' declaration of independence! Nothing important!? Ho, ho, ho! Silly old king!

The really clueless ones are those who think that news traveled across the Atlantic instantly in 1776. It didn't even travel all that quickly across the colonies or across England, let alone across 3,000 miles of water.

Also, it's usually not clear at the time how important an event is. Sure, contemporaries can see the significance of major military victories or defeats, or major assassinations. Pompous declarations are another matter. Those happen all the time during unsettled times, and most of them come to nothing.

There's also an irony here. Suppose news had traveled instantaneously in 1776. If George III had heard right away about the gathering of those treasonous colonists for the purpose of announcing their renunciation of George's rule, he would have instantaneously sent orders to the appropriate commanders in the colonies, and the signers of the Declaration of Independence would have been rounded up and hanged. Later, the British would have known about the desperate situation of Washington at Valley Forge. Cornwallis would not have been trapped while waiting for a naval evacuation that wasn't going to happen. The very slowness of communication was a major reason that the American Revolution got started and succeeded.

Urdu!

This is nifty. I just got this e-mail:

sir !! we have done a job of translation of your beautiful article "why do we artice"? in urdu language.I am editor of literary serial niqaat which is leading journal of urdu world from pakistan. your article is very beautiful.we want to send you a copy of this issue.where?

please send your postal address.we proud to translate your article in urdu.

there is much praise over this.
QASIM YAQUB
URDU LITERARY JOURNAL 'NIQAAT'
FAISALABAD.PAKISTAN

The essay he's referring to must be this one.

I've had novels republished in Italian, German, and Hebrew. Not long ago, as I posted about on this blog, an essay of mine about the joys of being unemployed was translated into Turkish and posted on various Turkish Web sites. This is the first time anything I've written has been translated into Urdu.

Not that I can read any of the translations mentioned above, of course. But it's nifty to look at them, anyway.

500 years of experience between them!

This really bugs me. I see companies advertising how many years of experience each of their principals has, and then those years are added up, and the ad says something like, "They have 530 years of experience between them!" *

What strange logic. Experience isn't cumulative in that way.

Consider:

Heinz Wolfsburger has been working on Volkswagens for 30 years. He's taken courses on various VW models in Germany. He eats and dreams Volkswagens. He can resolve problems with Volkswagens that cause the experts at VW HQ to throw up their hands and drink too much beer. (Fortunately it's German beer, so that's okay.)

Meanwhile, on Facebook, a group of 1,000 Facebook friends, all of them 13 years old, and each of them with six months' experience tinkering with cars of various sorts, decide to form a virtual company named SomeDumbNameInvolvingDigitsAndTheLetterZ, or SDNIDATLZ. They create a snazzy Web site, advertising that they have a cumulative 500 years of experience fixing cars!!!!!

One day, your Volkswagen starts making strange noises and exhibiting other strange symptoms. Who ya gonna call? The pitiful wimp with a mere 30 years of experience, or SDNIDATLZ with 500 years!!!!



* Grammarians would say that, assuming there are more than two principals, the word should be "among", not "between", ** but never mind.

** American *** purists would insist that those commas should be inside the quotations marks, but never mind.

*** I was taught by South African purists.

David's Definitions for July 2008

Apocryphal

(Will appear in the July 2008 issue of Community News)

In ordinary use, this word means false, spurious, or doubtful, especially when referring to stories about the past that almost certainly never happened - for example, George Washington chopping down the cherry tree and then refusing to lie about it to his father. It comes from a Greek word meaning something that is hidden away. Originally, around 500 years ago, it referred to books of magic or other special, supposedly sacred knowledge that was to be kept hidden away from ordinary people. During the 16th century, European scholars were trying to decide which books belonged in the Bible - i.e., were to be considered canon - and which ones didn't. A lot of very strange books were proposed and rejected, especially books filled with magical stories - apocryphal books. During this process, apocryphal took on its modern meaning. The word also has a non-negative meaning, however. Certain books were felt to be religiously important but not truly canonical; collectively, these were called the Apocrypha. (Precisely what books those are has varied over time and varies from one religious group to another.)




I'm collecting all of these at: http://www.dvorkin.com/davidsdefs.html

Ghastly Excerpt

Galleycat has an item about a new novel, an excerpt from which made galleycat eager to read the whole novel. The excerpt is here.

I feel compelled to offer my own literary reaction to that excerpt: Barf!

Snoot

Apparently, only blacks and snooty white folk vote for Obama. According to some Clinton spokeslime, anyway.

Well, I'm white, and I admit that I'm occasionally snooty. Oh, all right: often.

So to that slime, I have this to say: "Snoot."

Space is big

Really big.

This animated gif compares the sizes of various bodies, starting with Earth and ending with the largest known star.

Very kewl.

http://www.techdo.com/images/largest-know-star.htm

Very Clever Parody

http://www.hillaryis404.org/

(Referring to http://www.hillaryis44.org/)

A Paucity of Posts

Because I don't have anything to say.

I'm home sick today, so I thought I'd take the opportunity to unpauce.

But I still don't have anything to say.

David's Definitions for June 2008

Sanction, Cleave

(Will appear in the June 2008 issue of Community News)

These are interesting words that are famous because each has two diametrically opposite meanings.

Cleave, from an old Germanic word meaning to stick, can mean to stick to. The Bible refers to a man "cleaving to his wife." But another old Germanic word gives us the meaning of cutting apart - for example, a cloven hoof, meaning a hoof that is split in two.

Sanction, from the Latin sancire, to make holy, can refer to approval or disapproval. The world can sanction Iran's nuclear program by saying that it's peaceful and can go forward, or the world can disapprove of it and impose sanctions.

It's a good thing we English speakers are so logical, orderly, and rational. Otherwise, words like these would get us all confused - which comes from a Latin word meaning to mix together, which certainly describes these two words.




I'm collecting all of these at: http://www.dvorkin.com/davidsdefs.html

Heinz von Jaegermann, War Hero, Political Candidate

One of the sons of an old Juncker family, he joined the Luftwaffe in the 1930s both to carry on the family's martial traditions and beause he thought that would be simultaneously a way to serve the Fatherland and a good foundation for a later political career.

Unfortunately, he turned out to be a crappy pilot. Fortunately, Germany was so hungry for men eager to drop bombs on England that they put him in a cockpit and aimed him westwards.

What fun he had! London, that enormous city, was nothing but targets. He could drop his bombs anywhere and be sure to hit something. He loved the way his exploding bombs lit up the city streets below him, defying the blackout. Of course, most of what he hit was residential areas, and most of the people he killed were civilians cowering in fear. Don't quibble. Heinz hates quibblers.

Sometimes, continuing west from London, before turning south to return to the airfield on the Continent, Heinz's bomber would thunder over the small city of Reading at the edge of the defensive ring of searchlights and anti-aircraft guns surrounding London. Heinz never had any bombs left by then, or he would have dropped them there, just for amusement.

And a good thing, too, for the pregnant mother cowering in the basement of her house with her two sleepy little daughters beside her.* Her husband had put on his helmet and air-raid warden's armband when the sirens went off and had left to patrol the streets, looking for cracks of light showing through blackout curtains or people wandering the streets who shouldn't be.

As we all know, the war itself didn't turn out well for Germany. But Heinz did quite well. Decades later, old and doddering and arthritic and prone to the occasional senior moment, Heinz has risen to the leadership of PESP, the Posturing and Empty Symbolism Party. There's a good chance that, after the upcoming election, he'll be Germany's chancellor.

Some Germans are outraged. How, they ask, can we choose as our face to the world a man who dropped bombs on innocent civilians during an evil war of aggression? But others, wearing little flag pins on their lapels, respond with fury that any man who wore the uniform of his country in time of war is to be honored as a hero, no matter what. All military service, they insist loudly, is honorable. No matter what.

Fortunately, Heinz does not exist. He's purely fictional, and if he did exist, such a man could never have any chance of attaining the highest elected office in an advanced, civilized country.




* And a good thing, too, for the baby she was carrying, who grew up to write this blog post.

40th Wedding Anniversary

Today. I'm taking the day off from work so that I can ... stay home and work on taxes. Leonore's at the campus for a standard day of tutoring.

We'll go out for an early dinner this evening - early, because we don't do the late-night thing, these days, or not intentionally.

We had big plans for this anniversary, involving a long vacation in New Zealand, but we've had to lower our sights and so, instead of NZ, we'll be going to Ted's Montana Grill.

In the past, for major anniversaries, we've put on fancyish duds and gone to expensive places and paid absurd amounts for mediocre food and pretentious service. We thought we'd try something more middle of the road and reliable, this time.

Forty years! It does seem strange and not quite real. Forty years ago, we were just a coupla crazy kids, and it seems like we're still just a coupla crazy kids with achy knees.

Name This Book - a contest

My wife's book about her experience with breast cancer will be reissued by a different publisher next year, and she needs a new title for it. She's been wrestling with title possibilities, including many suggested by friends and relatives, and has yet to find one that really clicks. So she decided to ask billions of total strangers for help.

For many more details, please go here. Her e-mail address is at the top and bottom of that page.

Thanks.

David's Definitions for May 2008

Toe the Line

(Will appear in the May 2008 issue of Community News)

To toe the line is to fall in line with a group and to follow its rules and customs. Linguists think it originated in the 19th Century, from athletes putting their toe to the line at the beginning of a race. In some old books, the phrase toe the mark is also used, with the same meaning as toe the line. Another suggested origin is from navies having sailors line up with their toes at the line formed by one of the deck planks. Tour guides at the House of Commons in London claim that the expression comes from two straight lines drawn on opposite sides of the room. They tell tourists that, back when gentlemen wore swords, when parliamentary discussions got too heated, the Speaker would shout, "Toe the line!" The Members would have to stand behind the two lines, which were deliberately painted more than a sword's length apart, so that the only blood drawn would be rhetorical. It's a great story, but the present House of Commons was built after World War Two, the older one having been damaged in the air raids, and old paintings of Parliamentary meetings from the days when men did wear swords don't show those lines, so that tale is probably untrue. You'll often see this phrase misspelled as tow the line, which is incorrect and makes no sense. Perhaps people think of barges being towed, but then the phrase would refer to a heavy burden, not to falling in line.



I'm collecting all of these at: http://www.dvorkin.com/davidsdefs.html

The Insatiable

There was a vampire movie on the Sci-Fi Channel last night called The Insatiable. It was made a couple of years ago, but I hadn't heard of it before.

I read the plot summary, hoping it would turn out to be an unauthorized movie version of my vampire novel, Insatiable, in the hopes that I could pull a Harlan Ellison and sue for some huge amount, or more likely some very moderate amount.

I didn't really expect there to be a connection, and there isn't. The title is a coincidence. For that matter, Insatiable wasn't my title for the book; the editor chose it.

So there goes my mansion in Vancouver!

Dissolving in Solutions

When I was a lad, by cracky, well maybe a bit oldish to be strictly called a lad but never mind that, I was a member of the awesome, godlike clan of techies known as computer programmers because we programmed computers by writing computer programs, and people bowed down to us in the street and threw money at our feet and sacrificed virgin goats to us and beautiful women threw themselves at us, panting. Slight exaggeration; the goats probably weren't virgins.

Then some of us became programmer analysts. For a while, I was even a Senior Analyst. Lord of the World! (For a certain very limited definition of lord. And world.)

Still later, some became (software) engineers, and some became developers, and some became architects. That's all silly enough, but title inflation is common in all professions. Even the profession I'm now ensconced in, technical writing, isn't immune. Some tech writers are information developers. Are there also documentation engineers? Senior, junior, mid-level documentation engineers? Senior enterprise documentation architectural engineer? I wouldn't be surprised, but don't tell me, cause I don't wanna know.

So job title inflation is to be expected. What I didn't expect was product title inflation, although I should have. Computer programs became applications. Some of them grew into suites. Some effloresced into enterprise suites. (Enterprise. That's another one. Don't get me started.)

But even that wasn't enough. Nooooo. The marketeers had to pretend to earn their excessive pay. So they came up with solution. Now any bunch of code, no matter how buggy, how infuriatingly uncommented and clunkily architected (Yes! That's a word, in the solutions biz!), is now a solution. Because it solves your problems, you see! Isn't that brilliant? Doesn't it give you shivers? Doesn't it just make you want to puke?

Back during the days of the Apollo Project, marketeers picked up the term systems and started applying it to all sorts of commercial products. Instead of buying blinds for your windows, you bought a blinds systems. But even that wasn't enough. Noooooo. Now they've picked up on solution. I've seen window blinds advertised as window blind solutions.

In a way, it's appropriate, because, as the title of this post points out, in addition to being something that solves a problem, a solution can also refer to the dissolution of something that was previously solid. Such as brain cells. Remember: Every time someone uses the word solution to you in this marketeering fashion, some of your brain cells will dissolve. So do what those poor, virgin goats couldn't do: run away.

Local Stupid TV Sports Newscreature Oxymoron of the Week

"Important game."

Google Easter hits ramping up

Google hits on this blog and my Web site with "Easter" in the search string have been getting more frequent over the last few days. This morning, there was one with the search string: "Do Jews celebrate Easter?"

Groan.

The Might of the Meteorologist

It bugs me when TV weathermen say things like, "We'll try to keep the snow away on Wednesday." Or, "We kept the rain away, and now we'll see about getting those temperatures up for tomorrow." Nature isn't in control, they are! The mighty meteorologist is standing guard!

It also bugs me when they talk about a front "working its way" instead of moving. "This big cold, wet system is working its way over Utah now, heading in our direction." It may be moving, sliding, meandering, but it's not working.

Oh, but now I understand: fronts and systems have to work their way because they have to fight against the defenses erected by the TV weathermen. All that stands between us and inclement weather is the Might of the Meteoroligist!

I was saved from wolves by Obama supporters

I was driving along a dark, rutted, two-lane road in the wilderness a couple of nights ago when all four tires blew out simultaneously. Of course, I stopped and got out, filled with despair, to survey the damage. My flashlight revealed that the road was covered with nails!

Then I heard wolves howling! A pack of them was circling, preparing to rush me and tear me limb from limb!

Just at that moment, another car pulled up, ingeniously avoiding the nails. Five men jumped out. While one held the wolves at bay, snarling horribly at them, the other four swept the nails off the road and replaced my tires with spares they had brought with them. I was saved!

They refused to accept payment. "If you want to thank us," the four said together, "just vote for Obama!"

"What about you?" I asked the fourth man, the brave fellow who had faced down the wolves.

"I'm an Edwards guy," he said, a note of sadness in his voice. "But -- " he shrugged " -- you know."

"I hear you, brother," I said.

Then we all drove away.

I'll always wonder if those wolves were intelligent enough to scatter those nails, or if it was done by Hillary Clinton. I guess we'll never know.

Why machine translation doesn't work

And why competent human translators should still be used, as illustrated by this e-mail:

Good time of day. You are disturbed by the charitable company Redd Cross of Slovenia. We have the business offer for you. We can offer to you of earnings, thus your salary will make from 1000$ to 2000$ per one month, at an incomplete working day. Your earnings can be and higher. The more and forces you will give time, the there will be your salary more. If it is interesting to you, you write on the address of e-mail of our agent: manager_on_connections@yahoo.com he will contact you within 24 hours and will throw off to you all details, and will answer you on all your questions.


Thank you for attention Redd Cross of Slovenia!

Possibly this was done by a human being mechanically using a two-language dictionary, but the problem is the same.

Letter to Hillary Clinton

We sent this tonight, via the form on her campaign's Web site. I sort of think it would have been improved if I'd had a Harrumph! or two in there.


Senator Clinton:

We are two lifelong Democrats, both in our sixties, white, and middleclass. We were staunch supporters of your husband throughout his presidency. When talk first began about you possibly running for president some day, we assumed we would support you, as well.

In 2004, we supported John Edwards, and we supported him this time until he suspended his campaign. By that point, we had begun to prefer Barack Obama as our second choice, but we both still felt that we would be happy to give you our money and our votes if you were to win the nomination. We no longer feel that way.

What has made the difference? Not policies but the tenor of your campaign. We have become disgusted with its nastiness and your whining and the vile and undisguised racism of some of your campaign functionaries. We're not alone in this reaction. Friends of ours who are also staunch Democrats have told us that they will never vote for you and that if you win the nomination, they'll either not vote at all or will vote for a third-party candidate.

Since we live in Colorado, which you have apparently written off as an unimportant "boutique state," perhaps this doesn't matter to you. If you're also a staunch Democrat, it should. If Senator Obama is the candidate, our party has a good chance of carrying this state and others in the Rocky Mountain West. As president, he would represent all races and regions of the country. Apparently, you don't aspire to do that.

Tonight, we will be donating money to the Obama campaign. We intend to donate more to his campaign in the future.


David and Leonore Dvorkin
Denver, Colorado

Overblownment: Movie Review

Overblownment, a movie starring Keira Slightly, a bunch of other folks, and with a special appearance at the end by Vanessa Redgrave playing ancient, losing-her-brain Briony.

This is a painfully bad chick flick with sophomoric artistic pretensions. Mysteriously, it won oodles of awards and respectful reviews - I suspect by reviewers who were afraid to admit that this emperor has no clothes or, even worse, couldn't tell. The flick is fraught, I tell you, fraught. With what? With great ghastly gobs of fraughtness. It's silly and empty and shallow and hollow and uses time jumps and camera trickery and serious stares by the actors to try to bully us into thinking that it's deep and meaningful and significant.

The story starts in 1935, in a country house filled with characters who act and speak and have names like Hollywood parodies of English country-house characters. Thirteen-year-old aspiring writer Briony Tallis, for reasons that make absolutely no sense, falsely accuses stout young Robbie Turner, son of the groundskeeper, of rape, thus breaking the heart of Briony's breastless older sister, Cecilia, who loves Robbie and is loved by him in turn. Sob! Oh, and also allowing the real rapist -- whose identity is obvious to everyone in the audience but not to any of the pretty dimwits on the screen -- to escape with a sleazy smirky smile. Hint: He's the only young male character present who has a moustache. He's also the most convincing actor.

Robbie is taken away to jail, and is saved a few years later by the fortunate invasion of Poland by Germany, when he's given the choice of staying in jail or joining the Army. Since the war will be over in no time and the boys will be home by Christmas, the Army is obviously the better choice.

Oops! Robbie ends up with a few hundred thousand other desperate men on the beach at Dunkirk, is evacuated home to England, gets back together with Cecilia, and, except for occasional bouts of murderous rage because of PTSD, spends the rest of his life happily with her, gamboling in the surf in sight of the frightfully famous white cliffs of Dover. And yes, there is a moment where voices sing "There'll be blue birds over etc." How fucking manipulative can you get?

But, wait! He didn't make it home! He died of septicemia during the night before he would have been evacuated! And Cecilia died when a German bomb hit a water main and the underground station in which she was sheltering from the blitz was flooded! All of the other stuff was just an invention in a novel titled Atonement, written by the ancient, losing-her-brain Briony! Which we learn when we jump suddenly to the present and see Briony being interviewed for a TV show and explaining everything to us! Oh, God, that's soooooo artistic! You can weep and feel waves of vicarious romance and think you're experiencing an elevated moment of awful artistic artistry, all at the same time!

Here's what would have improved this movie: If only the script had been written by a reincarnation of P. G. Wodehouse! Then it would have been a delightful tale of comic confusion, with witty dialog and amusing coincidences and cleverly silly characters. And the guy and the girl would have gotten each other at the end for real.

Alternatively, during the war scenes, they could have shown us stuff getting blowed up real good. Including the script.

This movie sucks. It sucks with a suckitude so mighty that it puts black holes to shame. Rating: Minus 52 stars.

Unidentifiable Doohickeys

Like most people, we have a drawer in our kitchen that holds things, stuff, doohickeys. This evening, Leonore held one of those up and asked me if I knew what it was. It looked vaguely familiar but that was the best I could do, so I agreed that we should throw it away.

Leonore: "Good. We don't need any more unidentifiable doohickeys."

Me: "So exactly how many unidentifiable doohickeys do we need?"

Now I'm wondering if anyone has studied this question. Is there an algorithm one can use to determine exactly how many unidentifiable doohickeys one needs?

Sent Partial Off

To the agent who wants an exclusive.

After the long wait and no response to my prompting e-mail, I just didn't feel I could keep waiting for the agent who had a partial already.

We move on! To ... somewhere.

Fudge and Retirement

Fudge recipe.

I just made a batch and absentmindedly skipped the whipping step. Now it's not hardening, which may answer the question I've always had: Why is the whipping step necessary? This is great fudge, by the way. If you don't skip any of the steps.

And retirement. Still a long way away.

David's Definitions for April 2008

Restive

(Will appear in the April 2008 issue of Community News)

A restive person is resistant to being controlled. It can also mean that the person is impatient or unhappy when an attempt is made to control or restrict him. The word comes from the French word rester - which used to have the meaning to resist. Restive is a nifty word, but it's easy to confuse with restless, which has nothing to do with being controlled and comes from an entirely different root - the old Germanic word rasta. One could lead to the other, though. For example, parents whose restive child refuses to go to bed will end up restless. Both will probably get whiney, which comes from another Old English word.



I'm collecting all of these at: http://www.dvorkin.com/davidsdefs.html

Dangling and Squirming

Ew, that's an awful image! But, anyway.

I think it's now been about a month and three quarters since I sent the requested partial to the agent. According to the advice given here by the always amusing Nathan Bransford, the proper prodding period is one month.

The agent I want to prod would be a great match for what I write, so I don't want to be too proddy and annoy anyone. (And there's also that damned Britishish upbringing nattering in my ear about not annoying people.) What complicates things is that he's part of an agency that says in numerous places on its Web site that they don't want e-mail queries. I did the query and partial via snail mail, but what about a prod? Wouldn't e-mail be okay for that? Or would an e-mail be, just, you know, rather too too? (I never knew anyone who actually spoke that way, but the voice in my head does sometimes.) (I mean, it's a metaphorical voice! I don't really hear voices!) (Stop saying that!)

I feel like one of those divorced middleaged people who's trying to get back into the dating game, and all the rules have changed.

Explanation of Benefits

Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.

I just got two of these from the so-called medical insurance company regarding dental work Leonore and I had done. As is always the case, the forms are in fact a list of how much isn't covered and how much we have to pay ourselves (oodles).

They ought to at least be honest and call the form Itemization of Exclusions.

Dangling Man Syndrome

That's what Leonore calls it when I get like this. She's referring to the Bellow novel, which I've never read and don't intend to, but the title is useful.

As I mentioned here before, an agent requested a partial of Time and the Soldier. I sent it and have been waiting with zero patience for the response. Another agent has the whole book (he wanted it as part of the original query) and recently asked for a full bibliography and sales figures. A third asked for a partial, but on an exclusive basis, so I can't send him anything pending the response from the first agent (which of course I hope will be a request for the full ms.).

So now I'm dangling. And unable to do anything productive at all.

Bush deserves prison in this life and the lake of fire in the next

Prison in this life for what he's done to America and the eternal lake of fire* in the next for what he's done to Iraq.

In reality, though, come January 20, 2009 he'll smirk his way out of the White House and into a plush life in Dallas. I hope the next president will be a Democrat, and I assume that Democrat will be either Obama or Clinton, but what are the chances that the next president will order a full, aggressive investigation of the Bush Administration's evildoing? What are the chances that Dubya will ever suffer anything for what he's done?

Zero.

Fucking depressing.






* I'm an atheist, but I fully understand the appeal of that idea.

I first voted in 1964

LBJ vs. Goldwater.

I was a college student of the 1960s variety. I hated (and very rationally feared) the Vietnam war and the draft, but I voted for LBJ because I was sure Goldwater would be worse. I'm still sure I did the right thing.

So I've voted in a lot of national and local elections by now, and in the vast majority of them, my preferred candidate wasn't on the ballot. But I chose the least of the evils, or the best of those available, as the case may have been. I don't regret any of my votes.

My fellow liberals often rejected that position and either didn't vote at all or voted for a third-party candidate. In 1968, that gave us the vile Nixon. In 1980, that helped give us the viler Reagan. In 2000, that contributed to giving us the vilest of all, Bush.

I'm more convinced than ever that I did the right thing in the past, when I voted for the best, or least objectionable, Democrat. I'll continue to do that.

Stupid Stubble

Since I ranted, a few months ago, against women wearing high heels, it's only fair that also rant against something men have been doing that's no less absurd: not shaving.

I don't mean growing beards. I mean growing stubble. The unshaven look.

To be fair, I almost never see that on actual, human, three-dimensional men but rather on the strange versions of men depicted in certain TV shows. Oh, and also on some actors when they're not acting, to the extent that they're ever not acting.

The first time that look showed up, to my memory, was on the Sonny Crockett character in the TV show Miami Vice, a show I remember as being often great and often laughable, frequently in the same episode. For a while, there was even an electric shaver for sale that would give you the same unshaven look at Sonny Crockett. It was called the Miami Device. That name is almost as clever as the idea of selling men an expensive electric shaver designed to not shave them.

That silly look was okay for the Crockett character, though. He was a recovering alcoholic vice cop who was always on the edge of a breakdown of some sort, and the street-bum whiskers helped get that message across.

But why in the world are we seeing that absurd look on modern TV characters who are supposed to be ordinary middle-class folks? "Middle class" in the movie sense, that is. I.e., they live in huge houses and drive expensive cars and never worry about the monthly bills. Despite that, they apparently can't afford a good razor.

Of course styles change constantly, and most of the time they're weird, especially in the eyes of older people. That's the only constant. So my objection to the stupid stubble look is on a par with the objection of one generation to beards and of another generation to clean-shaven faces. ("They look like chamber pots," someone said of the latter, a couple of hundred years ago.) I can't even make a safety argument against the stupid stubble, the way one can against high heels. Or a noise argument. Or a damage-to-floors-and-legs-and-feet-and-hips-and-lower-back argument.

But it looks so God damned stupid!

David's Definitions for March '08

Implode

(Will appear in the March 2008 issue of Community News)

An object implodes when it collapses inwards. For example, to prevent damage to surrounding structures, buildings are sometimes demolished by timed explosions that destroy their internal supports, resulting in those spectacular implosions we all love to watch on television. Physics teachers sometimes demonstrate the force of air pressure by drawing the air out of a container (evacuating it) so that the container collapses in upon itself - it implodes. This is obviously the opposite of explode, in which something breaks apart and the parts fly outwards. Unfortunately, implode is now often used for any kind of collapse. People say that the Soviet Union imploded, when in fact it fragmented - broke apart into a number of separate countries, a common process when an empire dies. In this election season, when a politician withdraws from the presidential race, you'll hear that his campaign imploded, but of course it really just fizzled out, a very different kind of catastrophe.



I'm collecting all of these at: http://www.dvorkin.com/davidsdefs.html

Better Abdominals through Death and Semiresurrection

Death, I gather from horror movies, is a remarkably transformative experience, even an improving one. Or at least, semiresurrection is.

On the Buffy and Angel television shows (of beloved memory, curse the networks involved for not extending both to infinity), those who were killed and came back to life as vampires gained impressive martial-arts skills in the process.

That's uncommon. What does seem to be common, though, is reanimated corpses gaining the ability to perform a smooth, easy straight-leg situp while lying on a gurney, covered with a sheet, and with no one holding their feet down!

Now, I've been doing leg lifts for years. Okay, not regularly. Not even often. But never mind that. My abdominals are okay but far from great, and they're covered by a layer of, er, beer converted to manly flesh. I don't think I could do that kind of situp even with someone holding down my ankles. (And if I were on a gurney and covered by a sheet, I'd be too freaked out to try. Especially if there were hands gripping my ankles.)

So I guess leg lifts aren't the answer. But I don't know about getting myself killed by a supernatural creature and then being resurrected, gurney, sheet, etc. It seems a bit extreme. Especially since all the resurrected critters get to do is terrify a living character by grabbing her (almost always her) shoulder and mumbling something vague and enigmatic and significant. It's true that the shoulder almost always belong to a major babe, but even that's not really enough, considering that the resurrected critter, despite the great abs, returns limply to being dead shortly after the shoulder grabbing and mumbling.

I'll stick to leg lifts.

Baltimore Photos

I realized that I left out a crucial bit of information concerning Emily, our granddaughter, namely that she just turned 14. We last saw her when she was a toddler. So she's not a newborn, as some of my friends assumed. Sorry. I knew all that, of course, and so I assumed that everyone else did, too. You guys neglected to read my mind.

Anyhoo, in addition to the USS Constellation pics from before, here are picture of:

Emily and other people and some sights around the Baltimore inner harbor

The National Aquarium

We took a lot of photos inside the aquarium but few of them came out. The fish have appropriate formal names, none of which we wrote down, so we made up names suited to their appearance.

(Update on 1/20: I just fixed the links, which were bad before. So if you clicked on them and got a 404, please try again.)

USS Constellation

Last night, we got our photos from our tour of the USS Constellation, which is moored in Baltimore's inner harbor, uploaded to the Kodak Web site. Click here to see that album.

More to come - photos of the inner harbor and, of course, of Emily and various other people. And a cat.

The Great Google Christmas Atheist Search

A few years ago, I put on our Web site an essay titled Should Atheists Celebrate Christmas? (Answer: no. Rather: NO!)

It was written mostly to express my annoyance at the atheists - and other non-Christians - who do celebrate Christmas, and I didn't expect a lot of people to see it. I reckoned without Google and the number of people using it around Christmas to look for information about Christmas and Hanukah and atheists and various other words used in the essay.

Some of the search terms are odd or amusing. Below is a list of them from a year's worth of Google (and other search engine) searches that brought people to the essay. I changed everything to lowercase, sorted, eliminated duplicates. I also corrected some misspellings, because those were creating spurious dupes; I'm sure I've missed a lot. (E.g., one I corrected is the ever popular athiest, which causes atheists to make jokes like, "I'm athier than you!" "Are not!" "Are too!" That one never gets old.) (Okay, it does get old.) Even with all of that, it's still a long list.

a atheists christmas
aethist who celebrate christmas
africa and how they celebrate christmas
africa celebrate christmas
africa celebrating christmas
african christmas hannukah
african pagan festivals
afrikaans celebrating christmas
afrikaans christmas poem
afrikaans judaism
afrikaans religion christmas
all countries that celebrate christmas that has religion judaism
american atheists celebrate christmas
american celebrate christmas
american how to celebrate the christmas
american jews celebrate christmas
american who celebrate christmas
americans celebrate christmas
americans celebrating christmas
americans don't celebrate christmas
americans who celebrate christmas
americans who don't celebrate christmas
an atheist at christmas
an atheist christmas
an atheist christmas poem
an atheist looks at christmas
an atheist who celebrates christmas
an atheists christmas
an athiest christmas
an essay about american way of celebrating christmas
as an atheist should i celebrate christmas
atheiists and christmas
atheism and christmas
atheism christmas
atheist and christmas
atheist and festivals
atheist and pagan
atheist at christmas
atheist before christmas
atheist can celebrate christmas
atheist celebrate
atheist celebrate christmas
atheist celebrate christmas but doesn't believe
atheist celebrate christmas pagan
atheist celebrate easter
atheist celebrate holidays kids
atheist celebrate new year instead of christmas
atheist celebrate new years
atheist celebrate xmas
atheist celebrates christmas
atheist celebrating christmas
atheist celebration of life
atheist chanukah
atheist children christmas
atheist christian jew joke
atheist christmas
atheist christmas -challenge -carol
atheist christmas celebrate
atheist christmas easter
atheist christmas jokes
atheist christmas kids
atheist christmas poem
atheist christmas solstice
atheist christmas story
atheist don't celebrate christmas
atheist essays judaism
atheist festival
atheist festivals
atheist for christmas
atheist in afrikaans
atheist joke christmas new york
atheist jokes christmas
atheist night before christmasgglg,gglg:2005-45,gglg:en
atheist on christmas
atheist origin christmas
atheist pagan
atheist solstice christmas
atheist that celbrate christmas
atheist that does not celebrate christmas
atheist what celebrate new year
atheist who celebrate christmas
atheist who don't celebrate christmas
atheist why celebrate christmas
atheists
atheists and christianity
atheists and christmas
atheists and judaism
atheists are pagan
atheists at christmas
atheists celebrate christmas
atheists celebrate holidays
atheists celebrate new years
atheists celebrate solstice
atheists celebrate solstice not christmas
atheists celebrates christmas
atheists celebrating christian festivals
atheists celebrating christmas
atheists celebrating holiday
atheists celebration christmas
atheists christmas
atheists christmas celebrate
atheists christmas poem
atheists converted to christians story
atheists create fake religion
atheists do not celebrate christmas
atheists do they have festivals
atheists don't celebrate christmas
atheists excuse for celebrating christmas
atheists festivals
atheists for christmas
atheists in south africa
atheists jokes
atheists little christians
atheists names of important festivals
atheists on christmas
atheists on christmas essays
atheists or jews stopping christmas
atheists pagan
atheists should not celebrate christmas
atheists that celebrate christmas
atheists that celebrate religious holidays
atheists weird
atheists who became christians
atheists who celebrate christmas
atheists who celebrate christmas images
atheists who don't celebrate christmas
atheists who had cancer
atheists why celebrate christmas
atheists why do they celebrate christmas
athiest and celebrating christmas
athiest believe in christmas
athiest celebrate christmas
can an atheist believe in christmas
can an atheist celebrate christmas
can atheist celebrate christmas
can atheist celebrate xmas
can atheists celebrate christmas
can i celebrate christmas without religion
can jew celebrate christmas
can jews celebrate christmas
can wiccans celebrate christmas
celebrate an atheist christmas
celebrate atheists
celebrate christmas
celebrate christmas after children are grown up
celebrate christmas as an atheist
celebrate christmas atheist
celebrate christmas but not a christian
celebrate christmas but not christian
celebrate christmas in america
celebrate christmas in south africa
celebrate christmas in the usa
celebrate christmas not christian
celebrate christmas or not
celebrate christmas without religion
celebrate hannukah and celebrate christmas
celebrate hannukah and christmas together
celebrating a pagan christmas
celebrating an atheist christmas
celebrating christmas as an atheist
celebrating christmas atheist
celebrating christmas in south africa
celebrating christmas in the u.s.
celebrating christmas not christian pagan
celebrating christmas on america
celebrating christmas when not christian
celebrating christmas when youre not religious
celebrating christmas with jews
celebrating christmas without believingcom
celebrating christmas without christianity
celebrating christmas without religion
celebrating hannukah
celebrating hannukah and christmas in harmony
celebrating hannukah without being religious
celebrating the solstice not christmas
celebrating without christmas
christian americans all celebrate christmas
christian atheist christmas
christian celebrating christmas
christian festival atheists celebrate in
christian festivals atheists
christian jokes for atheists
christian of festival celebrates
christian pagan festivals
christian population celebrating christmas
christian should celebrate christmas
christian should not celebrate christmas
christian version of twas' the night before christmas
christianity how they celebrate
christians and why they celebrate christmas
christians celebrate christmas jews celebrate
christians celebrate hannukah
christians coopted christmas
christians pretending to be atheist
christians should only celebrate christmas
christians who don't celebrate christmas
christmas a pagan festival
christmas and atheism
christmas and atheists
christmas and judaism
christmas as atheist
christmas atheism
christmas atheist
christmas atheist joke
christmas atheist poem
christmas atheists
christmas celebrate pagan atheist
christmas celebrating africa
christmas co opted by christians
christmas coopted by christianity
christmas essays
christmas for an atheist
christmas for atheist
christmas for atheists
christmas for atheists poem
christmas hannukah africa
christmas hannukah combined word
christmas hannukah joke
christmas hannukah jokes
christmas is not hannukah
christmas jewish celebrate
christmas jokes for atheists
christmas never was pagan
christmas not really religious pagan
christmas pagan atheism
christmas pagan festival
christmas should be called holiday
christmas solstice co-opted
christmas solstice hannukah
christmas south africa how do they celebrate
christmas story atheist
christmas story atheist children
christmas story for atheists
christmas with atheists
commercialized christmas essays on
converted jews celebrating christmas
coopted christmas traditions
countries that don't celebrate christmas
countries with most atheists
country with most atheists
creepy christmas
david dvorkin atheist
do afrikaans celebrate christmas
do american jews celebrate christmas
do atheism celebrate christmas
do atheist believe in christmas
do atheist celebrate christmas
do atheist celebrate easter
do atheist celebrate new year
do atheist celebrate xmas
do atheist children celebrate christmas
do atheists believe in christmas
do atheists believe in christmas easter etc
do atheists celebrate
do atheists celebrate christmas
do atheists celebrate christmas and easter
do atheists celebrate easter
do atheists celebrate festivals
do atheists celebrate holidays
do atheists celebrate xmas
do atheists enjoy christmas
do atheists have a christmas
do christians care if atheists celebrate christmas
do christians think that atheists should celebrate christmas
do christians think that they should only celebrate christmas
do jew celebrate christmas
do jewish celebrate christmas
do jews celebrate christmas
do jews celebrate easter and christmas
do most atheists embrace pagan rituals at christmas time
do south africa celebrate christmas
do the atheist celebrate christmas
do the poor in south africa celebrate christmas
do wicca's celebrate christmas
do wicca celebrate christma
does a atheist believe in christmas
does africa celebrate christmas
does an atheist celebrate christmas
does atheists celebrate christmas
does atheists celebrate easter
does atheists have festival they celebrate
does south africa celebrate christmas
doesn't celebrate christmas
don't celebrate christmas
don't celebrate christmas africa
don't celebrate christmas countries
don't have to celebrate christmas
don't need to celebrate christmas
don't pre celebrate christmas
easter atheists
easter atheists celebrate
easter christmas co opted pagan
essay celebrating christmas
essay on christmas for atheists
essays about christmas
essays on celebrating christmas
essays on christmas being commercialized
fake christians at christmas
fantasy atheist novels
female atheists
festival atheist jew
festivals for atheists
festivals that atheists celebrate
for god's sake afrikaans
forms that jews celebrate christmas
fundamental literature about atheists
hannukah and united states and christmas
hannukah bushes
hannukah christians
hannukah christmas
hannukah commercialized
hannukah essays
hannukah how to celebrate it
hannukah jokes
hannukah presents origin
hannukah story
hannukah tinsel
he won't celebrate christmas
historical basis for christmas story
historical basis of christmas
holidays atheists celebrate
hollywood makes fun of christians at christmas
how a christian in south africa celebrates christmas!!
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Baltimore!

We're in Baltimore, meeting our granddaughter Emily* at last, seeing some sights, and eating as much seafood as I can find. Having great time, etc.

I hope the pics turn out well. If so, I'll post them somewhere -- here, on my Web site, or perhaps as an album on the Kodak site.


* She's the sweetest, most intelligent, most delightful, and prettiest granddaughter anyone could want. Thank you for asking.

Can vegetables! First come first serve!

Not to mention license daycare.

This seems to be the latest fad mangling of English sweeping America. Am I imagining that at one time stores advertised canned vegetables? That daycare was licensed? That those who came first were served first? What happened to the final ed?

And do supermarkets have a special aisle for can't vegetables?

Respect

Is a word I would gladly see removed from the English language. Of course that would mean the elimination of disrespect as well.

The word has its uses, but it's so often misused as a rhetorical club that the bad outweighs the good, and we'd be better off without it. What I mean by "rhetorical club" is that people use the word to keep you from attacking silly people or silly ideas.

The silly ideas tend to be religious ones - specifically, the standard, accepted religious institutions. So you can advocate something real, such as evolution, or something made up, such as the Flying Spaghetti Monster, and idiots all over will have no problem attacking you for it. But if you dare to sneer even slightly at Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, and so on, you'll be sternly upbraided and lectured about how important it is to respect the beliefs of others. Or they'll murder you. Which isn't very respectful on their part.

The silly ideas may also be ethnic folkways. If you jump up and down ten times at noon every day, moaning "Groo!" with each jump, you're an obsessive-compulsive weirdo and an eye should be kept on you. If I do it because it's a custom of my people and dates back a thousand years, you'd better not disrespect my culture by saying anything negative about my jumping.

The silly people tend to be George Dubya Bush, and occasionally other, equally revolting Republicans. During the Clinton presidency, Republicans felt free to spout the most outrageous, scurrilous, lying nonsense about Bill Clinton, but during the 2000 election, when someone (I think it was Bill Clinton, in fact) dared to question Dubya, Republicans screamed in falsetto and sought their fainting couches, while protesting that the questioner was being disrespectful.

Dented

I have this week off, and I'm using the time to write a synopsis of Time and the Soldier for an agent who asked for a partial. It's snowing like mad outside. And then Leonore got cabin fever.

So we set out sloooowly on the snowy, icy street, headed for the only Middle East restaurant we could find that's open today. Just south of our house, the street curves to the left through a right angle. As I was approaching that curve slooooowly, an SUV came barreling along from the other direction. I could see that it wouldn't make the curve, so I stopped and waited to see how serious the disaster would be. The SUV driver realized she was in trouble partway through the curve. She apparently stepped on the brakes, making matters worse. We sat there and time sloooooowed down as we watched the SUV sliding toward us. I was wondering whether she'd pass in front of us and into one of the houses, or if she'd manage to make it past us on the left. Neither. She slid into us.

The damage was minor, but of course we had to wait for the police. The police car made a wrong turn on its way and got stuck in the snow a couple of blocks away. After an hour or so, two more police cars showed up to help get the first one out. (Some neighbors and I offered to push the first car out, but the policewoman driving it refused.) Sort of amusing, in retrospect.

Eventually it was all ironed out and we got our lamb shank and hummus and all that stuff. And now we're back, and it's still snowing like mad. I wish I'd stayed at home.

And what have we learned from this, kids? How about, when it's snowy and the streets are icy, always drive sloooooowly, especially around curves. Yes, I do believe that we did learn that. Rather, that the other driver learned it, since I already knew that.

David's Definitions for February '08

Frock

(Will appear in the February 2008 issue of Community News

Those of us who are old enough remember when frock was used to refer to a woman's dress. It's a much older word than that, going back at least to the 14th century. In those days, it could mean any item of clothing, for men or women, that was long, loose, and had full sleeves. Over the centuries, frock was applied to various types of clothing, from women's dresses to men's frock coats to various items of sailor's clothing. The clothing worn by a priest was called a frock. If a priest was thrown out of the priesthood, he had to give up his priestly clothes, and he was said to have been defrocked. Because the robes worn by judges are commonly believed to have evolved from the clothing of priests, a judge who is expelled from the bench is also said to be defrocked.



I'm collecting all of these at: http://www.dvorkin.com/davidsdefs.html

They Really Are Illegal Aliens

It’s hard to keep up with the phrases we leftists are supposed to avoid. The Secret Liberal Euphemisms List keeps growing, and terms we’ve been using for years suddenly get added to it. Recently, the word went out (Memo #3322745A-32) from Secret Leftwing Headquarters that we shouldn’t refer to illegal aliens because NO ONE IS ILLEGAL!

Yeah, but verbal shorthand is common and awfully convenient. Moreover, the substitutes that are proposed for the terms on that list are usually awkward, ungainly, unaesthetic, and ill chosen. For example, some prefer undocumented immigrant to illegal alien. But let’s say that someone who is in this country without the proper legal permission is caught and is handed a card stamped ILLEGAL IMMIGRANT and ordered to have it on him at all times while he’s being processed for deportation. Then he’d be a documented immigrant! But also still an illegal alien. (I don’t think such cards exist, but it’s depressingly easy to imagine the dweebs at Homeland Security inventing them.)

(Admittedly, one problem with my otherwise stunningly logical and admirable position is the presence of xenophobic jerks among us - many of them on my side of the political spectrum. Hack, ptuie. There: I lob a gob of sputum at them. I suppose that such people are unaware that there was no such thing as an undocumented immigrant or illegal alien before about 80 years ago. Odds are their own ancestors entered this country without any kind of papers. Before the 1920s eruption of xenophobia and racism – a reaction, I assume, to a wave of post-WWI immigration – anyone who wanted to come to America simply came. Zillions did, and few were turned away. But who expects logic and historical awareness from xenophobic jerks? More to the point, I refuse to stop using a logical and accurate and convenient phrase because it’s misused by a bunch of xenophobic jerks. I’m not going to let them control me or define the terms of the discourse.)

Some of the euphemisms on the Secret Liberal Euphemisms List are unintentionally insulting or degrading. Wheelchair user, for example. That implies that people in wheelchairs are there by choice and because they like having to use wheelchairs to get around. Sure they do.

Fortunately, not all of the euphemisms on that list catch on. Years ago, there was a movement not only to ditch the word disabled (that succeeded, apparently) but also to label the rest of us temporarily abled (didn't succeed). Well, I’m doing my best to keep myself permanently abled, and I also intend to permanently use the term illegal alien.

If I were feeling pugnacious, I might even go so far as to add that I speak as a legal immigrant and also as a white African-American.

He Made a Mistake

Some politician just resigned from office because an affair he had was exposed. (He's married, and so is the woman.) In his resignation, he referred to his "mistake".

Man, I'm sick of deliberate, vile acts being referred to as mistakes. Sometimes it's what amounts to treason, as in the case Iran-Contra. In that case, Ronald Reagan, that slimy bastard, even pushed it all off into the fuzzy world of the passive voice: "Mistakes were made." More often, "mistake" is used to refer to a personal transgression - cheating on one's spouse or robbing a Seven Eleven. Relatives and supporters will even tell us that the slimeball in question "has learned from his mistakes."

Well, no. He hasn't. Not if he's still calling his evil actions "mistakes".

A mistake is an oversight, like dropping a letter in the mailbox without having put a stamp on it. Or it can be an action based on misinformation, like showing up at the theater on the wrong day or time because you saw an out-of-date showtime listing. "Mistake" doesn't apply to walking into a convenience store with a gun in your pocket. And you don't slip your willy into someone else's receptacle, or vice versa, by mistake. You do it on purpose, usually with planning or at least a few minutes of foreknowlege, and always, unless you're astonishingly stupid, with full knowledge of the terrible injury you're doing.

But maybe it depends on who's evaluating the actions. Relatives and friends of the holdup man or cheater may be willing to minimize the transgression as a mistake. Republicans are remarkably willing to excuse the actions of Republican officeholders.