Needles in the Eyes!

I want to punch Joe Scarborough in the head

2008-11-12T12:33:35Z

Seriously, sometimes he is awesome, but most of the time he's a fucking jackass and I just want to whack him with a board. And yet I can't stop watching Morning Joe, because I'm addicted to MSNBC. Yesterday, they were discussing Lawrence Summers and how there was some sort of academic conspiracy to get him thrown out of Harvard for asking a "good question". Yeah. That came from Mika. I want to like her, but I can't. She is way too conciliatory on important issues and seems to mostly have opinions on things that don't actually matter. So anyway, there was a feminist intellectual conspiracy to oust Lawrence Summers after he suggested that females were innately inferior to males in maths and sciences, because his daughter treated toy trucks like dolls. All the reasons that was a dumbass thing to say were enumerated by smarter people than I when it happened, so I won't go into it. But I couldn't believe Mika called it a conspiracy, said it was a reasonable question, and then they all agreed it was sooooo hard for poor Larry.

It's not a reasonable question, and when the president of a preeminent institution of learning makes stupid comments implying women aren't as good as men at a conference on diversity in the sciences, he should know what's coming (and he plainly did, with his disclaimers about provoking the audience). Frankly, I'm surprised that he didn't include a quaint anecdote about how girls like Easy-Bake Ovens and excel at home economics, even if they suck at regular, manly-man economics. But implying that girls are bad at maths and sciences based on flimsy (at best) scientific evidence and personal observation is bullshit, and there doesn't need to be a conspiracy of the intelligentsia to kick his ass out the door. (Honestly, university professors are too busy fighting amongst themselves to engage in conspiracy. A casual lunch is fraught with complex status issues; any discussion is likely as not to be gossip about so-and-so's doctoral students, how much the dean sucks, why the new department secretary isn't as good as the old department secretary, and how ridiculous all the university's policies are. Any conspiracy will be dedicated solely to stealing someone else's research, or possibly pinching a promising postdoc.)

And yet I still watch Morning Joe, even though I end up in frothy rage, wanting to throw things at the TV.

(I have no real opinion on Summers' possible appointment as Treasury Secretary, because I don't know what his qualifications are and I don't really care; if he can get the economy out of the tank I will take a slightly misogynist jerk, so long as he isn't in charge of HR. I will feel slightly less warm and fuzzy about Obama, though.)

w00t

2008-11-05T04:40:51Z

YES WE DID.

lol debate

2008-10-03T03:44:43Z

I'm watching MSNBC's post-debate coverage, and there's a guy in the audience behind Chris Matthews with a sign saying "Never gonna let you down". Did the debate just get rickrolled? Because liek, LULZ.

Sarah Palin did a lot better than I was hoping (like Jon Stewart said, I am addicted to The Sarah Palin Show), although I was disappointed that no one called her on the fact that she wasn't answering the questions, and, in fact, stated that she wasn't going to answer the questions. I think she's good at rhetoric, which is all I saw from her, but I laughed when she talked about how terrorists hate us for having women's rights (and I wish women's rights had been addressed, in the only VP debate...). I'm kind of proud of Joe Biden; I though he sounded intelligent and composed, and after he choked up when talking about losing a child, I really just want to give him a hug. A lot of analysts are calling him boring, but I don't necessarily think that's a bad thing here.

I like that Gwen Ifill brought up gay rights. Palin gave the expected answer, which is that gay marriage is bad, deliberately misinterpreting Biden's question and quite clearly indicating her position on civil rights (gay people shouldn't have any). I'm scared of her New Federalist attitude, because she's perfectly willing to let important issues of human rights be decided by states. I'm for state rights, but some things should be national policy, and historically, civil rights had to be a matter of national policy, because local values would have created huge discrepancies in human rights across the country. Where does she think she's going to fit in the institutionalized caste system?

When she talked about personal responsibility for debt, that was interesting, because I'm all for personal responsibility, but way to blame the American public with backhanded lessons, Palin! Can I vote for you as my mom? Also, can I have a raise in my allowance? I promise I won't spend it on video games or mortgages!

But Christ, she scares me more than Cheney, because at least Cheney is clearly an evil old man bent on world domination, while Palin is cute and charming. She thinks the VP is part of the legislative branch? For reals? Has she read the Constitution? And the VP's powers should be expanded? Yeah, good, let's just give the president more control over the legislative process; separate branches of government is so last century! Also, it's kind of silly to dismiss constitutional separation of powers while holding up constitutionally guaranteed state rights. Maybe we should get some scissors and cut out the first few articles, yeah?

This woman cannot be allowed anywhere near Washington, please please please.

ETA: It was also extremely LOL when she said she didn't want to talk to the media anymore. But I thought The Sarah Palin Show was doing great in the ratings! ):

ETA2: Pat Buchanan thinks we should vote for her cos she's preeeeetty.

that's it, no more breakfast food for dinner

2008-08-09T07:18:05Z

I have nightmares about sudoku. Or rather, one specific game of sudoku, the ultimate game of sudoku, that my brain is slowly solving one horrific dream at a time.

Which is weird, because until about a week ago, I had never played sudoku, and I pretty much hated the whole fad.

The nightmares are proving that I was right to do so. *hates*

LOLward

2008-08-06T00:41:54Z

I keep picturing Edward from Twilight as Edward from Full Metal Alchemist, with the lulzy anime-style flip-outs and running around and general snarky emo-ness, and OMG, I can't stop laughing. I <3 u both, bbs!

babby garlics!

2008-08-03T02:16:31Z

In addition to cooking, I'm learning to garden. I planted garlic before I ran off to New York, and when I got back two weeks later, they had sprouted. I love cooking with garlic, and it's apparently good to grow in desert country because it likes dry soil, so I figured it'd be a good Texas plant. Also, it's super easy to grow; all you have to do is stick one of the cloves into some dirt and water it a little bit, and voila! (Protip: Plant about an inch deep or it can't sprout; the one at the back left is tiny because it was too deep and I only fished it out a couple of days ago — but look, it's sprouted already.)

I've also got an avocado seed trying to sprout, but I'm not sure if it'll work. The seed has cracked, but I don't see any roots appearing. I planted some nasturtiums and some passion flowers, but the seeds were more than ten years old and they haven't sprouted; I think they're probably bad by now. I might try some onions, and an orange tree. I have a peach seed in the fridge, but peaches are high maintenance! I'm looking for other easy things to grow; gardening is fun, but the less I'm obligated to take care of it, the more I will be willing to take care of it.

I got eggs and ground turkey at the store today, because I am going to make ravioli! It will have some combination of mushroom/ricotta/turkey; possibly turkey/ricotta in mushroom sauce? Or mushroom/ricotta with turkey. Dunno. I'm going to make the pasta myself, I think it'll be fun.

I need more food/plant icons to reflect my new hobbies. Hmm.

let's play good idea, bad idea

2008-08-02T00:46:12Z

When my mum packed the chicken in the freezer, she put it in the compartments on the door. Boned chicken. In flexible Ziploc bags.

Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeah.

Now there are two pounds of frozen chicken stuck in the freezer door. The compartments have front-wall sort of things that connect to the door via tabs on either side. But the chicken all fell to the bottom of the bags before freezing, so it's stuck against the lip of the front-wall-thing, which can't be removed because the chicken is pressed too close to the tabs. And when I first tried to pull the bags out, they ripped apart. So there are two pounds of unwrapped frozen chicken stuck in the freezer door.

Who thought stupid compartments with weird lips on the inside edge were a good design feature anyway? What happened to little plastic bars? Why tabs? Why not easy-lift hooks?

Also, Jesus Christ, Mom, who taught you to freeze meat? FLAT. Flat, and stacked, preferably in the drawer.

srs chef is srs

2008-08-01T21:29:58Z

I'm in Texas for the summer, spending time with my family, and particularly my mum, who is reminding me more and more of Bella Swan's mother in the Twilight series. I love her, she's sweet, but she's incredibly naive about certain things, and I have no idea how she managed to live on her own for large parts of her life -- let alone to climb the ranks in the Army Chemical Corps, considering some of the bizarre beliefs she seems to have about actual chemistry these days. (Like expired titanium dioxide causing a white chocolate coffee bean to taste like raspberries. Sure, mum, more likely? It was a raspberry-flavoured white chocolate coffee bean.)

Part of taking care of my mum involves cooking. She used to cook sometimes when I was very little, and in fact did quite good souffles, but lately her recipes all end up as a bog-standard "casserole" that involves throwing everything into a casserole dish with the same boring herbs and baking it. I know her influence is mostly English and Western European, but sweet lord, there are herbs other than rosemary and thyme! Also, rice and pasta in the same dish? Eww. And because it's all one-dish stuff, everything tastes like everything else, so what's the point of eating different foods? I'm not a food snob by any means, but I don't want to eat carrots that taste like potatoes that taste like rice that tastes like chicken that tastes like rosemary, the leaves of which are dried and have to be picked out before they poke holes in my gums.

So lately, I've been learning to cook. It's shockingly easy! I've gotten several good recipes off f_w (omgz ILU "recipes in the comments" tag!), and Google is proving awesome not only at stalking people IRL, but at finding recipes for the random ingredients I have lying around. Joy of Cooking is rapidly becoming one of my favourite books, even though I have an old copy from like, the 1960s; I love the informational section and I like how there are alternatives and suggestions in a lot of the recipes.

I did Parmesan chicken last night -- the recipe looked good, but I only had drumsticks, and trying to get chunks of meat off drumsticks is an arduous process. I substituted flour for breadcrumbs, which probably would have been fine if I hadn't had a flour accident, and then tried to fix it by using more butter, meaning the dish had to cook longer to get it brown, and by then the tiny bits of meat from the drumsticks were getting tough. It was actually pretty good anyway, though it did taste a bit of flour, and if I'd had breasts or thighs I think it'd have been delicious.

I bought spinach at the grocery store, knowing that it's good for you but with no clue what I was going to do with it, and then I found this recipe for creamed spinach which is amazing. I only had one bunch of spinach, so I couldn't make very much, but it was still fantastic, and I'm going to buy a lot more spinach next trip.

I make curries a lot, because I like that you can throw a bunch of things in the pan and get a lot of flavours and it all tastes good. But I've only done meat curries, and I usually use coconut milk, which means sweet curry. Yogurt curry scares me! I did vegetable curry (heavily modified) on Sunday, though, using eggplant, spinach, and potatoes, with no sauce, and it was OM NOM NOM worthy. I only have yellow curry powder and red curry paste right now, so I need to find the Asian super market around here and pick up different curry mixes. I used to have a bunch of them, but I tossed most of them when I moved because I hardly ever cooked and they were getting stale.

I'm liking the whole vegetable thing, though. I have an electric steamer that I bought when I started college, because I knew I'd have to cook and it was super easy. It came with a rice/pasta bowl and a divider for separating foods, and is probably one of the best purchases I've ever made. I use it to cook rice and I do fresh vegetables with every meal. Fresh steamed broccoli is my one true vegetable love. (I had to use frozen broccoli once because I ran out of fresh; it wasn't nasty, but it was incredibly dull.) Also, string beans? So much better when they're not soggy and out of a can. Potatoes can also be cooked remarkably fast when cut up and steamed. Excellent, because I love potatoes but hate boiling them for hours.

I think I'm having a love-affair not so much with food as with the actual process. I like figuring out what flavours work together, what order to mix things in to get the best results, finding the balance between too long and not long enough. People say cooking is chemistry, but I never really believed it. I used to think cooking was pretty damn boring, and if I was in the kitchen at all it was only to like the bowl after making brownies. But now, I'm having fun with it, and if I had to compare it to science, I'd go for chemistry meets mechanical engineering. For me, cooking is an intuitive process: I have parts, I know what the results should be, and I make a lot of stuff up based on what I know should happen. I always read the notes in chemistry lab, but usually I'm the girl who refuses to read the manual because that would take the fun out of it. Similarly, unless it's finicky, I tend not to read recipes beyond the ingredients list and stuff like "bake at 400° for 1 hour". I'm treating cooking like DIY, and having only basic guidelines is more of a challenge, and yields more rewarding results when you end up with yummy foodz.

Science is less fun when you have to work for it

2008-07-21T03:12:31Z

So............ I have all these spectra. They have to be "fit" -- you have to find all the peaks and get their areas and blah blah blah.

It's so damn boring, and I've been sitting here for four hours doing NOTHING ELSE. UGH.

It's not creative, it's just endless typing and clicking, over and over: open spectrum, rename fit file, rename xcl file, fit background, add peaks, fit peaks, save peaks, change ratio, fit peaks, save peaks, export xcl file, open xcl, copy, paste, close, open spectrum, rename fit file....

And I'm not even done with the iron samples yet. BLAH. You know what we need? A macro that will do it all with the click of a button. I should go learn to program such a thing, and that will save me a lot of time and clicking!

Yeah, not really. This sucks. Kill me now, please.

Also sucky: My BFF is on vacation and I have no one to bother, and I had Pop Tarts for lunch/dinner. Hate Pop Tarts. SUCKS!

ETA 01:01: The Fe samples have a linear correlation with r^2 = 0.9974! Sweeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeet.

w00t!

2008-07-18T15:19:53Z

My zinc standards have an r^2 of 0.9916 with a linear trendline!

I.e., the parts-per-million values have an almost perfect linear correlation with the X-ray photon counts -- and I'm only working with rough ppms now, so hopefully they'll get even better when I have exact ppm values.

THIS IS SO PERFECT. *does the beamline dance*

other people? in MY reality?

2008-05-25T19:30:27Z

So.... someone is filming something on campus. Something that involves extras. I was innocently sitting outside, soaking up the sunshine after being trapped in the windowless, asbestos-filled concrete dungeon that functions as our "lab" for hours, when some woman came up and asked me if I was an extra. I was like, "A whu'? Huh?" -- not really coherent at this point -- and then she said if I wasn't an extra, then I needed to move so I wouldn't accidentally get in the shot. Which is like, okay, because I don't really want to be on film, regardless of what they're actually filming, but on the other hand, I really resent being kicked off my bench, dammit! I just wanted the vitamin-D-producing, jean-warming, cancer-causing solar rays, is that too much to ask? Now I'm stuck inside again with the fluorescent lights and dust and seething bitterness. *seethe*

I hate abstracts and love the Cullens

2008-05-17T05:48:42Z

Argh, argh, argh, two days to conference and I haven't finished my poster or my advisor's presentation, because I've been sitting here debating the right words to use in an email and doodling women in Victorian dresses. Being depressed is NOT productive.

Also, what's with all the Twilight-related venom on JF lately? Is the fandom suddenly starting to implode? I don't really know anything about the fandom except what I've learned on the macro comm, which would have you believe that Robert Pattinson is a smokin' bitch and Kellan Lutz is a pretty princess. Can't really argue with that.

The macro comm, like most macro comms, does not take itself or its subject very seriously, so I'm still looking at Twilight as Torchwood for vampire romances. It's so clearly over-the-top, plotless, and angsty that you can't take it seriously, you can only lol. SPARKLY VAMPIRES, guys. EDWARD:CHEESE::BELLA:WHINE. And yes, it's addictive like crack, if you like that sort of thing. ~~Also Alice and Carlisle and Emmett are totes awesome and should get capes and fight crime!~~

*shrug* There is plenty in the source material for a good sporking, but it seems like there is less mocking of the wankiness and the books than there is mocking of the fact that people like the books. Which seems... wrong to me. It's like people are mad that the fandom exists, and I don't get it.

But that's okay. More sparkly vampires for me.

Sigh. Back to work now. ):

I don't need new fandoms!

2008-05-11T06:31:26Z

I read an article the other day about Stephanie Meyer and how religion influenced her writing, and it was surprisingly not boring, so when I wandered into Borders looking for a book I had not read a dozen times, I was compelled to pick up "Twilight".

Six days later, I've read all three of the books twice, and I'm starting "Twilight" again.

God damn it, I have like, two posters and four poster abstracts and a lecture to write by Friday! I'm not supposed to be reading anything unless it mentions synchrotrons, metalloproteins, or Gaussian peak-fitting!

And I watched the trailer a little while ago. A couple of times. You know, just seven or eight... teen.

Can it be December yet?

I think the trailer broke my brain. I don't know about the casting -- Robert Pattinson doesn't really look like the Edward in my head, but he seems to play Edward very well. Very, very well. Kristen Stewart is like, awesome and totally Bella. I loff her. And Kellan Lutz! OMG, he's SO Emmett! Smaller than I imagined him, but his attitude is perfect! I love Emmett. He is quite possibly my favourite character in the whole series, if only for that line where he's like, "How come Bella gets to fight with werewolves?" OMG, Emmett.

Ashley Greene is less petite than the teeny-tiny Alice that Bella goes on about, but she's got the perfectly freakish look going on. Yay Alice! Esme's too old, Carlisle blond hair looks HORRIBLE -- every time I read "Carlisle" in the books, I wonder why they all call him by his last name, because I keep thinking of Peter Carlisle from Blackpool, and it really messes me up -- and Rosalie just looks too nice and not bitchy enough. But based on the clips I've seen, they're all really, really good in their roles.

But this summarizes pretty much how I feel about the whole thing, including the part where I had to download the series to my iPod. *headdesk*

If it can't be December, can it at least be August already?

Update: Cookies Still Better Than Sex

2008-04-16T07:16:18Z

Or at least Guy Ritchie thinks so.

lol

2008-04-09T04:46:10Z

Remember how cookies are better than sex? This girl found the solution.

Dear Rusty, I <3 you. But also, WTF?

2008-04-07T02:31:56Z

Yeah, so, that new series of Doctor Who?

- Donna rocks my socks. Using her H&S ID to sneak into Adipose Industries? Hahahaha, SNEAKY!

- Also, Catherine Tate is hot.

- Two people running around barely missing the other person is kind of old, but whatever. It's DW; if it weren't cliched, I'd be srsly worried about RTD's health.

- "You be health, I'll be safety." Awkward Doctor is awkward!

- I love how Ten is always running around with devices, and not just sonic devices. Boys and their toys are incredibly adorable, especially when they involve LEDs.
- Adipose babies? SOOOOOOOOOOOO CUTE. Cute like little crystals of meth, which obviously played a large role in script development. But still. CUUUUUUUUUUUUTE. (And someone has made little crochet ones. LULZ.)

- Donna is not a shrill bridezilla now, but she is still awesome.

- The Doctor is listening with a stethoscope? AHAHAHAHA.

- PANTOMIME!!!!!!!!! Love the Doctor's completely baffled expressions and Donna's rather bizarre motions. Also, Foster's "Am I interrupting you?" YES, BITCH.

- "Don't you ever change?" Oh, Donna, plox to be never changing. :D

- "The bees are disappearing! The internets say so and they never lie!" Lol IRL.

- Foster has a sonic pen? But she's not from the future, so how come more aliens don't have sonic devices?

- Okay, the Adipose babies? Cutest thing evar. But also kind of freaky, because you know it's the really cute ones that want to hug you and then melt your face off when you least suspect it.

- DONNA IS AWESOME. And when the Doctor's freaking, and she's just like, "Tell me what you need," and she produces a pendant? Because she is made of win. <3

- Blah blah blah boring end game stuff. Soooooo not interested. This was a boring story, even considering it's DW and I've pretty much turned off my brain at this point. If I watch it again, it'll just be fast-forwarding to the lol scenes.

- "She fancied me." "Mad Martha, that one." OOOOHHH PWNT!!!!

- Lol reporter girl! It's funny how they ttly ignore her, and she ends up fine (instead of dead; the death toll was incredibly low this episode). I find it interesting that Donna ignores her, too, though, since in RB Donna was the one who asked the Doctor to help everyone. The Doctor needs someone to stop him, so hopefully Donna will fulfill that role in later eps.

- Donna goes around with her bags? Lol. Also, remember how Rose's bag was a backpack? Donna has like, five. And a hat box. I love her!

- I like the interaction between Donna and the Doctor. Donna is a lot softer now, but she still will go on, and she still snaps at him, which is good and true to her character. The Doctor's learning to talk to people about serious emotional things, which is great, considering that Martha had to practically beat him over the head about it. Please don't screw up the character development, Rusty!

- "You're not mating with me, sunshine!"

- No hugs? Awwww. ): Plox to be having more hugs thank you.

- It took me a really long time to realize why Rose looked weird. It is because she a) has lighter eyebrows (OMG, BBC discovered facial hair bleach!) and b) is wearing hardly any eye makeup. So what happened, Pete's world ran out of cosmetics and Rose had to come back for some mascara? (I can be snarky, but you know I'm doing cartwheels in my brain right now. Vanishing Rose? Doomsday theme? WHY ARE YOU TORTURING MEEEEEE???)

- I pretty much have no thoughts on Rose. I still love Donna, after Martha's turn on Torchwood I srsly love her a lot more than I did in DW, and yep, Ten/Rose is still my OTP. I'm gonna keep watching whether she comes back or not, and if people want to throw tantrums and storm out of fandom because Rose is back? Yeah, I will just remind everyone that DW is being produced by the same brilliant team that brought us Torchwood, alien sex pollen, Pterodactyl vs. Cyberwoman, giant space whale, guy with fish-head, canonical Jack/Jack, "the Risen Mitten", moar guy with fish-head, etc., etc., etc. If you're taking DW seriously, you're doing it wrong.

Also, I am unspoiled for basically the whole series, except for companion casting in the finale. So please don't spoil me!

Anonycon

2008-03-25T00:20:02Z

ANONYCON WAS EPIC WIN!!!!!!!!!!!

The backstory:

We were gonna have a party at the Marriott next to the Woodley Park Metro Station. But the Scilons went crying to mommy about how MEEN we were, and the Marriott kicked us out. They may or may not have fired the girl who made our reservation, but no one can get in touch with her to confirm.

But did Anonymous sit down and take it? No fucking way. FLASH RAID BABY!

We protested outside the Metro. And although it started out slow, we had a decent number of people by the end. We were a little short on dox, but a lot of people already knew who we were and what we were doing, and people walking by recognised us as Anonymous. That was pretty cool, considering we haven't really been in the local news. I spent the whole time photographing and filming, but I'm going to have to get some more camera memory cards before 4/12, because I ran out of memory halfway through and had to delete a bunch of stuff.

Also, God is still on our side, because even though it drizzled a bit early on, it didn't actually rain.

Pix on flickr.

We had a kid who drummed on the sidewalk, a panda, two Burger Kings, the Marcab flag, and my favourite Scilon PIs! Srsly, I love them, they are my CoS OTP:

About 30 minutes after we started, we had an incident. A CoS bullbaiter came around and tried to pull an Anon's mask off. My camera was off at the time, but I happened to be looking in that direction, and this is what I remember:

It looked like the Anon stepped back, but the guy had his arm out, so maybe he was just pulling his arm away. I started fiddling with my camera, because I wanted to get him on film, but it seemed to take forever because my heart was pounding. The guy started throwing up his arms and saying "Take my picture, take my picture," and I really thought he might hit someone. Some other Anons started calling to him (not yelling or taunting, just like, "Hey, stop!" sort of thing), and he walked over to where I was standing (maybe 15-20 ft away). I finally got my camera to turn on, but it was on photo and not film! Argh. I could hear my blood rushing through my ears; I was seriously freaked at this point, and thought he might grab my camera and smash it, but I didn't back off because I didn't know if anyone else was documenting it.

It took a hundred years (really less than a minute, I think), but I finally managed to start recording. He taunted the King, who was standing near me handing out fliers. Anons were laughing and joking, and I laughed too because I was so tense. He said again to take his picture, and I told him I was filming him. He said "okay", and started to play nice, posing with the King, and then he walked off. He didn't want to be caught on camera acting like a total douche. Too late! Anonymous handled it awesomely, though, because we are made of win!

YouTubed for great justice.

I don't know if we're going to have this problem again. As far as I know, there haven't been any other physical incidents between the DCfags and the Scilons. But someone mentioned on the DC boards that the local org is being suspiciously quiet compared to some other orgs, and since we're dealing with an organisation that could be diagnosed as paranoid schizophrenic, you kind of have to wonder what they're going to do to "handle" Anonymous.

I handed out fliers on 3/15, but I think for 4/12 I'm going to document. I'm going to get as much on camera as I can. And maybe we need some coordinated camera work, so that someone with a camera is ready at each street corner, etc.

This incident also proves how much team work is important, because the Anon who was assaulted was alone. But the scary part is that he wasn't far from us; the Metro station is on a triangular street corner, and he was standing at one corner, and he was in plain view of a dozen other Anons on that side of the street. The rule is that you travel in groups of three or more, but we need to be in groups of two or three even when handing out fliers, and at least one Anon in each group needs to have a camera, preferably with recording capability. CoS is getting desperate, and if fair game holds, I wouldn't be surprised if they tried to hurt some of us at a public protest. Their foot-shooting skills are unparalleled.

After the protest, we all piled on the Metro and hit Crystal City for the actual party. We got yelled at for not being able to cross the street, but whateva! We all live in our mom's basement, what do we know about traffic lights??? O.O

Our live feed was set up, there was rickrolling, glow sticks, Xenu, a totally crap auction -- Epic Fail Brigade did a barrell roll!!! I <3 EFB. There was cake! It had a mudkip on it, and it was delicious. OM NOM NOM NOM.

There was a Freezoner who spoke for a while. Freezone is basically heretical Scientology. We listened respectfully, but frankly I thought it was a bunch of crap. I don't think Scientology, whether CoS or FZ, is a religion per se. I think it's a lifestyle thing, like yoga, or vegetarianism. And hey, if they want to believe in Thetans, whatever. But I see Dianetics/Scientology for what it is, which is a pirated and corrupt version of various psychological theories and techniques. And it pains me to sit there and listen to a Scientologist talk about engrams (a term they use incorrectly, btw) and PTSD (any concept of PTSD which does not involve the hippocampus is wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong ahem) in bizarre terms that don't mean anything to a psychologist.

I find it offensive that they're practicing psychology with no formal training and no research to back them up. Seriously. I'm a citationfag. I want to see the refs. I want to be able to pubmed it (PubMed is like Google for bioscience types). Scientologists haven't published their theories in a peer-reviewed journal. Even Freud published. He was crazy as fuck, but he at least did case studies. Is that asking too much? (Also, Freud published medical research before he got into psychoanalysis, and his medical research was actually pretty good.) And considering that "Auditing" is basically talk-therapy, which Freud popularised, Scientologists sure are butthurt over the rest of psychoanalysis. IT'S CAUSE L. RON DIDN'T WANT YOU TO KNOW HE WAS ONE OF THOSE DAMNED HARRY POTTER PLAGIARISTS!!!

I did like what the Freezoner had to say about disconnection, because in psychology we also believe in disconnection. What he said is that in FZ, disconnection is not forced, but it is encouraged in cases where an individual is currently unable to cope with a situation (psychologists say "cope", Scientologists say "handle"). E.g., if you are fighting with someone and cannot resolve it, then you disconnect from that person -- you remove yourself from the negative situation until you are able to resolve it. The CoS Disconnection policy is different, because it's not a choice that an individual makes; it is a choice that the Org makes for the individual. I can respect the disconnection concept in FZ.

After the speeches, we partied hard. We had musikz and dancing and a pillow fight! At one point we overloaded the speakers and you could smell ozone! We had the IRC chat on the screen and lol'd at the comments about the live feed, and we lost the game 3 or 4 times. A lot of people (including me) took off their masks, which I'm not sure was the best idea, but really, if there were any CoS spies there at that point, they're going to need so much auditing that it's worth it. :D

Then Arnie Lerma came, and we all sat down and listened to him talk. He answered a lot of questions, and it was really cool to actually hear him speak about CoS.

After Arnie finished, we did clean up, popped all the balloons and threw away the trash, and I went with some other Anons to IHOP, and we had real food instead of the gazillion-dollar food they had at the hotel restaurant. It was a lot of fun, and I enjoyed getting to relax and make friends with Anonymous. 4/12 is going to be even moar epic than previous raids, and I can't wait.

IRL stuff: I'm off to NY on Wednesday, gone for a week; my boss decided my project was over budget and fired me; and I have an awful, awful sinus infection thing that is making my throat and ears hurt. Plus, I am still sore all over from the dancing. Also, Tony is busy this week and probably won't have time to show me where I am going wrong in the data analysis, so... yeah. Three months work wasted and I still haven't fixed it. *headdesk*

I'm Making a Note Here, Huge Success

2008-03-17T09:29:42Z

The D.C. raid was AWESOME. I'm definitely going to Anonycon next weekend, and I cannot wait for Operation Reconnect. 4/12! I'm trying to recruit all my IRL friends into going, but they are lazy and think it's political. They don't understand the lulz, and thus they will not get delicious cake. (The cake, btw, was not a lie. And it was delicious.)

I handed out fliers most of the day. They kind of sucked and lots weren't folded properly -- I ttly appreciate the effort that Anonymous went to getting them made and all, but I'm also incredibly neurotic and the margins completely ruined the folding. So next time I'm going to have some printed properly and folded beforehand.

While we were doing setup, the first PI of the day showed up and started photographing us. He was SO INCREDIBLY obvious, and yet he kept trying to look like a tourist, just photographing the general area. I don't know why he bothered. We KNOW that he's a PI. We KNOW that his routine is an attempt at distraction so we'll feel safe in his incompetence, and maybe we won't notice that there are serious PIs watching us. Why don't they just stop the pretense and film us openly? WE DON'T CARE. Hell, we're filming ourselves anyway.

So yeah, we're setting up the sound equipment and the delicious cake, and he starts snapping pics, so I start filming him. There's only like 10 of us, max, at that point, because the rest of Anon are a couple blocks away getting ready for the march. Obvious PI starts taking photos of the corner across the street, where NO ANONS WERE, like we seriously believe he's interested in the Starbucks. I like coffee, but no one likes coffee that much. Then he wanders off, like tourists do -- only to come back from the opposite direction! I'm just like, WTF are you doing d00d? And then I ended up with this footage of Obvious PI being obvious. So here is a youtubes of it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ecu1CXA4S8o

There was a PLAN to go take a picture under Stephen Colbert's portrait at the National Portrait Gallery after the raid, but we failed at using Metro so a bunch of us got off at the wrong stop. We should have got off at Gallery Place, which is, hahahaha, right next to the GALLERY. WE R SMRT. Instead we got off at Smithsonian, which is over 9000 blocks from Gallery Place, and we had to walk there. But it was pretty cool, because we had a megaphone and an iPod with "LULZ: A Corruption of L.O.L." on it. So we played memey songs and scared the tourists and handed out fliers at a stoplight, and talked about mudkipz, and it was fun. It was also incredibly awesome to see a hundred Anons piling into the Metro station. We took up the whole damn platform and the operators had to yell at us to spread out because we were endangering lives by standing too close to the edge or something. (We weren't really, and if Metrorail would finish the fuck up with whatever "repairs" they've been doing for at least 100 years now, we wouldn't have had to stand there so long, but whatevs.)

OH AND. At Metro Center, we all switched to the Orange line, but the train that came was FULL of people (because of the repairs, there are fewer trains so they're all packed), and only half the Anons could get on and the rest of us were like WTF??? But THEN, a challenger appeared Metrorail operator came down and held the train for us, because the front car had space, so all the Anons zerg rushed the front car and we all got on! AWESOME.

And then our rogue group met the rest of Anon at the Portrait Gallery and we got pix and it was lulz.

THE END.

YouTube: Spanking in Westerns

2007-12-18T11:26:11Z

Yeah, so this is pretty fucked up.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w4XCjJidY_I

I don't necessarily have anything against spanking; I was spanked and belted as a child, and although I have lingering issues with my father (who was universally the corporeal disciplinarian), I don't think they can be attributed solely to spanking. In conversations with friends who grew up with spankings, we all seem to agree that spanking was beneficial for us, and feel that it gave us a keener sense of proper behavior (because misbehavior means you get smacked). All things being equal, I think spanking can a useful form of punishment for a child if implemented properly, but a detrimental one if implemented poorly.

Even then, beyond a certain age, I think it loses its effectiveness and is no longer an appropriate punishment. Children are smart, if you explain why they are in trouble, why their behavior is inappropriate, and if you treat them with respect, they'll learn. It depends on the child, of course, but in broad generalisations, I'd say after age four or five, spanking is probably not necessary. Before that, I think it can be useful because it's a very firm and absolute way of conveying that Behavior X is bad. Behavior X leads to Consequence Y — that's operant conditioning. (Therefore, in order to be successful, there are rules governing the application of Consequence Y.) Since spanking causes pain, it can be good if the child is too young to understand a more abstract idea like time-out, or to follow the logical explanation for punishment.

Adults, on the other hand, are pretty much all capable of understanding why Behavior X is bad if it's explained to them. Unless you're dealing with a sociopathic individual, there's no need for corporeal punishment in the operant paradigm. Spanking an adult is essentially reducing them to young children and implying that the disciplinarian views the victim as incapable of rationality, which is a) insulting and b) humiliating. And since it only seems to be applied to women (with the implied or stated intent to "beat the meanness" out of them), it's also incredibly and disturbingly misogynistic.

I'm kind of freaked out by the reverential sense I get from that video. Spanking between two consenting adults is one thing, but the women in those films don't seem to be enjoying it, or inviting it. They're kicking and struggling — but not really very hard, huh? Notice how none of those men had much trouble flipping the girls over, none of them went away with bloodied noses or sore groins or even a hangnail. That's even more disturbing. Okay, I get it, it's a film, it's the script, they aren't supposed to fight because their characters have been bad and are being punished, and they deserve it for being uppity, right?

I threw up a little bit as I typed that.

I know Westerns are not the pinnacle of egalitarianism, but as I have never actually seen a Western, I though it was mostly confined to racism and all the women being prostitutes and getting called "Little Lady".

I grew up during the 90s, in a cushy environment of Montessori values and third-wave feminism, when the catch-phrase for pre-teens was "girl power". The idea of an infantilised woman is so alien to my ethos that I have difficulty accepting the idea as real. At the same time, I have observed this behavior in my own family; my male relatives tend to speak of women as one would speak of children. I find this tendency disturbing and difficult to relate to, so seeing these scenes, I feel as though I've entered an alien world, one governed not by reason, or logic, or sanity, but by petulant man-children who can't handle refusal or rebellion by a woman without resorting to base physical abuse to resolve their discomfort. How is spanking a woman different from slapping or punching a woman? It's not, except that it has the added benefit of humiliation. If you put a man in that position, we'd call him a bitch, or a pussy — a woman. Because it's still acceptable to treat a woman like a child. It's still acceptable to say that women are emotional, and irrational, and therefore can be spanked. And that's the most disturbing part of all.

ETA: None of the other vids from that user are any better. And apparently it's not just Westerns. Yeah. Nice to know.

Tuesday Night FTW

2007-09-26T23:49:47Z

Bones plus House? AWESOME.

~~~

Okay, so what the hell is up with Zack? I FREAKED OUT at the beginning because I LOVE Zack and if I didn't love Brennan and Booth and Angela and Hodgins so much, I would only be watching for Zack. So they CAN'T get rid of him, WHAT??? But then I saw Eric Millegan on the credits and calmed down a bit.

Until he showed up, and then I FREAKED OUT again.

HIS HAIR. OMG. WHAT DID HE DO TO HIS HAIR? WHAT DID HE LET THEM DO TO HIS HAIR?

Not to mention how completely OOC it is for Zack to go join the military anyway.

HIS HAIR.

First, they ruined it in S2 by giving him that awful haircut for his graduation. S1 hair was SO CUTE AND ADORABLE. I WANT IT BACK! And now there is just NO hair!!! *sob*

Brennan and Booth, though, are way hilarious. I LOVE the dialogue. And Hodgins and Angela are so adorable in love, it makes me sick. Sick with squee.

Also, was New Guy the same New Guy from Crossing Jordan a couple of years ago? Sidney? Because I think he had a name in this episode, but I just wanted to call him New Guy.

~~~

House.

I'd forgotten this show could be funny, because it's been so bogged down in the emo and the angst and the shippiness for the last two series that I lost interest.

But dear God, the writers have come off the crack and finally written a show with just the Ubertrio being fantastic. I always thought we didn't really need the Ducklings, although I think House does need a team, but how exciting was it to see House and Wilson and Cuddy on screen so much? They are wonderful actors and they are all wonderful together, and they don't interact nearly enough most of the time. Wilson kidnapping the guitar? Awesome. Cuddy refusing to enable House, but giving in because she's still a doctor, damn it? Awesome. House being less of an outright ass and just sort of prickly and annoying? Awesome. Interview of Doom? AWESOME.

I don't even know how we got rid of the Ducklings, which leads me to suspect I missed the finale last series, which just shows how impressed I was with it last year. But I would buy the series 4 DVD set just for this premiere. It was that awesome.

I should stop saying awesome, but I can't. Because it was awesome. House and Wilson and Cuddy are HILARIOUS. And awesome.

~~~

I have awesome thoughts about BNL, but I'm still a little off kilter and will post them later. They are squeeful. And awesome. Awesomely.

Obviously, Uncle Rusty Has Been Sharing the Crack

2007-09-12T23:37:15Z

See, there was a reason for Tinkerbell Jesus.

I cannot stop laughing.

Ficaholic

2007-09-12T22:07:11Z

I spent most of last night mainlining honorh's Who fic, and I've suddenly remembered why I don't read fic: because I like it, and then I lose track of time and end up staying awake until five in the morning reading it.

I've been avoiding reading fic even by people on my flist because I know I will get addicted and it will ruin my life because I have zero self-control when it comes to fic. Especially nicely packaged fic, which is only a few pages long, and it takes such a short time to read, so why not read another one, and oh, a chapter-fic, but it's only 15 chapters, and they're kind of short chapters, so it's just like reading a couple of short fics, right? No harm in that, why not read another? Oh, and that's an interesting premise, it's only one in the morning, I'll stop at two — oh, is it three already? Well, I'm not really tired, I'll just read this quick series of drabbles — what the hell, it's five? I have to get up tomorrow! I will go to sleep after I finish this one chapter, oh, these two chapters, well, maybe three because I have to know what happens next . . .

And then before I know it, it's daylight outside and I'm reading a paragraph for the third time because I'm so tired that I can't remember what I've just read — and I still just want to read one more chapter.

Maybe I need an intervention.

Pining for the Fjords

2007-09-11T21:32:05Z

Alex, the African grey parrot made famous by Dr. Irene Pepperberg's groundbreaking research into language and cognition, has died.

AP: Brain bird dies after years of research.

Firefox is Love

2007-09-11T17:41:10Z

The best thing about Firefox is that if you delete it and then have to reinstall it, it stores all the old settings and extensions so that you don't lose your settings for ABP, TabMixPlus, or your history.

Yes, I have just had to discover this marvelous feature for myself. I was prepared to be full of WOE, and now I am full of JOY.

The only bad thing is that the session manager doesn't seem to save more than two sessions back, which sucks because there was an internets problem and my last session, which had nine or ten tabs open, got overwritten, and then someone else opened Firefox and now that previous-to-last session is gone! I can only vaguely recall what the tabs were were. Now I have to sort through my history to find out, because they were things I left open so I could back to read them. WOE.

CEILING LAURIE KING IS WATCHING YOU . . . WRITE FIC

2007-09-10T04:32:25Z

I had a prolonged and pernicious series of nightmares last night, bad enough that when I woke up at nine this morning, I had to lay still with the light on and the covers drawn up for two hours before I could stop freaking out enough to get out of bed. And the only reason I calmed down is because I had an epiphany about the one thing that could banish the demons: crackfic. And not just any crackfic, mind you, but one of the most cracktacular fics in the entire world, which I read several years ago and still ponder amusedly from time to time. And what is that fic?

A Russell/Holmes high school AU.

Yes. Yes. It was brilliant. It was so bad, I had to stop reading several times. It was so bad that, even after I stopped reading, I had to keep going back to read more. It was on ff.net, of course. And now I must read it again, or I will forever have nightmares about Sherwood Forest being inside a pharmaceutical factory with glass elevators and a serial killer outside, and the only way to escape the serial killer (who is quite a nice man, really, except that he wants to kill me and mummify my remains) will be to crawl up a wooden playground structure, which mysteriously has wooden gates with locks on and is actually a spaceship (the spaceship is also a wooden playground structure, which makes one wonder about aerospace engineers until one realises that it is a TARDIS — and somehow, this is all Russell T Davies fault).

Anyway. I didn't really want to slog through ff.net to find this fic, so I decided to google for it, and google brought me to this wonderful quote from Laurie R. King's official blog:

Q: Kay asks, Will we find out what happens to Russell/Holmes in the large gap of time between Monstrous and Letter of Mary? The other books follow one after another within less than a year span (excluding O, Jerusalem).

A: Probably not in detail, to the disappointment of Russell readers with prurient interests concerning The Wedding Night (Yeah, I’m talking about you—do you think I don’t know about the Russell fanfic?)

Oh, how I lol'd. Holmes fangirls are a bunch of pervs, let me tell you. King is entirely complicit — who but a pervy Holmes fancier would write a young girl married to the man? Not that I'm complaining, mind — I'm perfectly happy to live out my pervy Holmes fantasies through Russell — and anyone still in the fandom after "Locked Rooms" is either with me on this or hoping desperately that King is just overworked and will stop writing ~~glowing Tinkerbell Jesus~~ sentimental Holmes posthaste. Although after ~~Doomsday~~ MREG, I don't know why anyone should be expecting that . . .

ETA: Speaking of crackfic, fandom_wank is 100% responsible for all of my most traumatic fic experiences. Coincidence? Or is f_w, in fact, destroying fandom?