So it’s Newtonmass. I hope it is (or was, depending on your time zone and when you read this) fun for you all. We had dinner last night with Miss Jiwaku’s cousin and her family, a gathering to which we brought a little of my beer, and cookies and smoked almonds we’d made that day. Today had a couple of friends over. The food included all kinds of wonderful things. (For my part, I made the caramelized carrot soup and smoked peppers stuffed with rice and cheese. Miss Jiwaku made braised spinach and maki — Japanese-styled sushi rolls. We collaborated …
Category: PERSONAL
Movetoamend
I’ve been thinking a lot of these things since the early 90s: I’m obviously not the only one. This is salutary. I think there needs to be more than just this. I think we need to rein in corporations to the point where they’re in service to human beings. I think it should be illegal to run a company where a percentage share of the profit, and of the responsibility, goes to every employee. Maybe not a huge percentage, but a percentage. We like the idea of democracy: it’s time to apply it to corporate structure, too — that is, …
“Teach Me How To Brew!”
A week or two ago, we were planning out the events for the semester, and it turned out we have funding for both a “cocktail party” and a “movie night.” During the course of the discussion, I suggested that it might be interesting to brew up some beer especially for the party, and that this would be quite easy to arrange. The question was whether we could get funding for such a thing. I finally just got approval for the idea — funding for ingredients will be available, so all systems are go. But I figured I’d like to make …
Subverting Democracy, One Vote at a Time
UPDATE (26 AUG 2011): So, the referendum failed due to low turnout. Er, hooray for talking people out of exercising their right to vote? Sigh. Well, at least the mayor resigned. Off, not doubt, to his fortified castle in Kangwon Province, to begin a long training session of necromantic rituals in preparation for the 2016 Presidential elections… ORIGINAL POST: There’s a referendum tomorrow, regarding with the lunches of schoolchildren should be subsidized by the government. This is an issue that has been building up, with the standard rhetoric on both sides: Right Wing: If we feed all the kids in …
Things to…
Lots of things going on, and if you call me I’ll talk about them. But for those without my phone number, the things aren’t bloggable. Anyway, here are some things that are, which I’ll go ahead and post because I’ve got windows upon windows open with links I’d like to post: Charles Tan asks whether .epub and .mobi ebook formats will go obsolete. I dunno, we’re still using .mp3 despite the obvious drawbacks. And for those who haven’t seen it yet, here’s the Philippine Speculative Fiction Sampler that Tan co-edited, and Best of Philippine Speculative Fiction 2009 edited by Tan as …
Links of Interest
I’m about to go judge a public speaking contest, but I wanted to note these links: World War II London Blitz Diary 1939-1945: someone is posting Great-Grandmother Ruby Thompson’s diary from during the Blitz in London. Very cool reading, interesting and, you know, detailed in ways that are worthy of note to people researching the time. (I found the link helping a student find resources for WWII London life, for a story she’s writing.) This post on the Women’s History Network Blog has a neat discussion of “Career Novels in the 1950s” — a kind of juvenile-oriented novel for girls …
Put Your Mouth Where Your Money Is
There’s an expression in English about following in action what one says: “Put your money where your mouth is.” This need not have anything to do with money, which in this expression is a metaphor for “action.” (It might include donating money, if one is advocating such behavior, but it need not be limited to that meaning. For example, one could exhort another to put his money where his mouth is in terms of, for example, following through on a claim or a professed belief.) When I was younger, I admired this concept: I liked to suggest people put their …
Some Stuff to Check Out
Stories: That New Yorker story about the AD&D gaming group… what? Yes, really, and it’s pretty good, too. (Thanks for the link, was it Ben?) Some MP3s narrated by Miette: Alfred Jarry’s “The Passion Considered as an Uphill Bicycle Race” and the story it inspired, JG Ballard’s “The Assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy Considered as a Downhill Motor Race.” Okay, this is just a book review, but I loved this book, and have had it in my mind often lately, for reasons obvious to those who are in the know, but which those who don’t know might guess wrongly about. …
The Underbridges of Internetland
Sometimes, there’s nothing to do but laugh at them: The internet has taught us a number of things about human beings: Weirdness is way more well-distributed than we used to admit or believe. Groups of people can achieve pretty incredible things acting in concert, across vast distances, like building and refining the OS I’m using. Unpopular is simply a different value of popular. There are some uncomfortable truths mixed in there, too, though. One of them is the following: Some people are unrepentantly, irredeemably assholes… and the more anonymous they are, the more they allow their nature to show. At …
Stepping Out of the Shadow of Maybe
Well, Miss Jiwaku and I are paying close attention to the news about Japan’s ongoing crisis in Fukushima, and the good news is that it seems to have stabilized. (The bad news is that it still doesn’t seem to be getting better, so the stability is probably precarious and it’s stable but at a very dangerous point.) It seems a little self-indulgent to worry too much, since compared to a lot of people in Japan we’re insanely lucky right now. But unlike some people around here, we’re both acutely aware that national borders, as fictions, do nothing to block the …