Saturday, November 28, 2009
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
Approaches to politics
We're accustomed to thinking of liberalism and conservatism as parallel ideologies, with conservatives preferring less government and liberals preferring more. The equivalency breaks down, though, when you consider that liberals never claim that increasing the size of government is an end in itself. Liberals only support larger government if they have some reason to believe that it will lead to material improvement in people's lives. Conservatives also want material improvement in people's lives, of course, but proving that their policies can produce such an outcome is a luxury, not a necessity.
The contrast between economic liberalism and economic conservatism, then, ultimately lies not only in different values or preferences but in different epistemologies. Liberalism is a more deeply pragmatic governing philosophy -- more open to change, more receptive to empiricism, and ultimately better at producing policies that improve the human condition -- than conservatism.
Now, liberalism's pragmatic superiority wouldn't matter to a true ideological conservative any more than news about the medical benefits of pork (to pick an imaginary example) would cause a strictly observant Jew to begin eating ham sandwiches. But, if you have no particular a priori preference about the size of government and care only about tangible outcomes, then liberalism's aversion to dogma makes it superior as a practical governing philosophy.
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
Anniversary
Well, yesterday was our 15th Anniversary, so we went out for dinner to celebrate, to Acadia, definitely one of the nicest restaurants around here. It's perched on a bit of a hillside, with a series of staggered tiers of cedar planking, and beautifully light: and the hillside view I guess reminds me a bit of Wellington.
Had a wonderful meal, spinach salad then Duck breast, accompanied by a truly golden Hungarian Tokay - Cat had Lobster bisque and the pork tenderloin which was also quite wonderful - and generally talked about how amazed we were to have made it so far, and in such strange and unexpected directions. Somehow it seems our marriage has lasted no time at all, and to have gone on for as long as we can remember. The blessing of poor memory perhaps :)
Next month, on the 15th, is the anniversary I consider more important, 18 years since we first met: probably use that as an excuse to go out for dinner again :)
Had a wonderful meal, spinach salad then Duck breast, accompanied by a truly golden Hungarian Tokay - Cat had Lobster bisque and the pork tenderloin which was also quite wonderful - and generally talked about how amazed we were to have made it so far, and in such strange and unexpected directions. Somehow it seems our marriage has lasted no time at all, and to have gone on for as long as we can remember. The blessing of poor memory perhaps :)
Next month, on the 15th, is the anniversary I consider more important, 18 years since we first met: probably use that as an excuse to go out for dinner again :)
Friday, November 20, 2009
A little more cosmology
OK, second post for the day - I started to answer this in comments, but it got a bit unwieldy.
Martin observed:
Of course, the fact is that we exist and are sufficiently self-aware (ordered) to question why the universe is so ordered. I suggest that situation was _much_ more likely to have arisen in a relatively ordered (low entropy) universe.
Accordingly, the proposition that a low entropy universe was unlikely in some general sense is meaningless. Given the condition that intelligent beings are questioning the nature of their universe, I would suggest that the likelihood is high that they live in a low entropy universe.
It is a bit like knowing some one has thrown dice (each 1-6) totalling 10 - impossible if they only threw one die, unlikely if they threw 2 dice, but unexceptional if they threw 3 dice.
Bottom line - nothing about an event which only occurs once (that is, is truly unique, not one of a class of similar events) can be used as inference. Likelihood and probabilty are concepts properly applicable to repeated events.
The idea that this is true because we are here to observe it, has been labelled the anthropic principle*, and in the overall article, Carroll ... hmm, I was going to say addresses this, but actually he more or less just hand-waves in the direction of it without really taking it on board.
I have to say I'm decidedly iffy about the whole proposition of 'what the universe should be like' as it is so freighted with undefined expectations as to be untenable, and I have to concur that judging from a unique event is just a dodgy idea at best.
And also:
Of course the corollary of my view is that it is very likely (IMO vitually certain) that there are other intelligent beings elsewhere in our universe.
It is furthermore very likely that some of them (about half, for lack of any evidence) are cleverer and more advanced than us. Unfortunately, a race that is clever and expansionary enough to reach us may not be particularly nice (the nice races who are ecologically balanced etc will not have the same pressure to expand and seek out new frontiers). Our fate could easily be comparable to that of the Australian Aborigines - pushed aside by more powerful and numerous aliens looking to exploit the resources of our part of the universe in ways we didn't even know existed.
But it is also very likely that any aliens are all so far away that they will never contact us - so who cares.
One could also postulate that any race clever enough to survive and expand without poisoning their environment might have awoken to the benefits of cooperation and mutual assistance ... or just that they have already had a look at us and written us off as not worth contacting :)
But I agree, they are likely to be so far away that nothing short of gravity-radio (or something based on the Pauli principle perhaps) will enable contact.
* not spelled priniciple despite the persistent attempts of this stupid software to 'correct' it to that :(
Martin observed:
Of course, the fact is that we exist and are sufficiently self-aware (ordered) to question why the universe is so ordered. I suggest that situation was _much_ more likely to have arisen in a relatively ordered (low entropy) universe.
Accordingly, the proposition that a low entropy universe was unlikely in some general sense is meaningless. Given the condition that intelligent beings are questioning the nature of their universe, I would suggest that the likelihood is high that they live in a low entropy universe.
It is a bit like knowing some one has thrown dice (each 1-6) totalling 10 - impossible if they only threw one die, unlikely if they threw 2 dice, but unexceptional if they threw 3 dice.
Bottom line - nothing about an event which only occurs once (that is, is truly unique, not one of a class of similar events) can be used as inference. Likelihood and probabilty are concepts properly applicable to repeated events.
The idea that this is true because we are here to observe it, has been labelled the anthropic principle*, and in the overall article, Carroll ... hmm, I was going to say addresses this, but actually he more or less just hand-waves in the direction of it without really taking it on board.
I have to say I'm decidedly iffy about the whole proposition of 'what the universe should be like' as it is so freighted with undefined expectations as to be untenable, and I have to concur that judging from a unique event is just a dodgy idea at best.
And also:
Of course the corollary of my view is that it is very likely (IMO vitually certain) that there are other intelligent beings elsewhere in our universe.
It is furthermore very likely that some of them (about half, for lack of any evidence) are cleverer and more advanced than us. Unfortunately, a race that is clever and expansionary enough to reach us may not be particularly nice (the nice races who are ecologically balanced etc will not have the same pressure to expand and seek out new frontiers). Our fate could easily be comparable to that of the Australian Aborigines - pushed aside by more powerful and numerous aliens looking to exploit the resources of our part of the universe in ways we didn't even know existed.
But it is also very likely that any aliens are all so far away that they will never contact us - so who cares.
One could also postulate that any race clever enough to survive and expand without poisoning their environment might have awoken to the benefits of cooperation and mutual assistance ... or just that they have already had a look at us and written us off as not worth contacting :)
But I agree, they are likely to be so far away that nothing short of gravity-radio (or something based on the Pauli principle perhaps) will enable contact.
* not spelled priniciple despite the persistent attempts of this stupid software to 'correct' it to that :(
Arkansas people II
I'm still sitting around, slack-jawed in amazement at this story:
An Arkansas woman called the cops for a domestic dispute, not because her husband was beating her or anything like that, but because her 10-year-old daughter wouldn’t take a shower. Oh wait, it gets better. The cops show up and take this woman’s crap seriously, and try to put the little girl in cuffs and arrest her. For “disorderly conduct”. For throwing a fairly standard temper tantrum. But the girl, understandably at this point, if flailing around and refusing to cooperate with anyone, and so at the mother’s request, they tased the little girl.
oh, and also this:
I've almost become inured to the stories of criminally corrupt, inept, power-abusing cops in the USA (and Arkansas seems to make a speciality of them), but this, this is just ghastly. It's not corruption, just a sense of casual brutality and violence on a scale I had never quite grasped before. Truly, the police are the biggest and best-equipped gang.
An Arkansas woman called the cops for a domestic dispute, not because her husband was beating her or anything like that, but because her 10-year-old daughter wouldn’t take a shower. Oh wait, it gets better. The cops show up and take this woman’s crap seriously, and try to put the little girl in cuffs and arrest her. For “disorderly conduct”. For throwing a fairly standard temper tantrum. But the girl, understandably at this point, if flailing around and refusing to cooperate with anyone, and so at the mother’s request, they tased the little girl.
Now the little girl is in a juvenile facility and is being charged with disorderly conduct. For, again, not wanting to take a shower when her mother told her to.
oh, and also this:
I hardly know where to begin. That some people are bad parents, and might even think calling the cops on a 10-year-old is a good idea, is not too much of a surprise: after all, noone gets handbooks, it's all make it up as you go, and some kids can be real jewels, so to speak. That the cops would show up and agree to participate at all, appalls me. That they would use potentially lethal force and shoot her with 50,000 volts of electricity for throwing a temper tantrum is just horrible beyond belief.“We didn’t use the Taser to punish the child - just to bring the child under control so she wouldn’t hurt herself or somebody else,” he said.
The police chief said his department has never had to Taser a child before. But he said if the officer tried to forcefully put the girl in handcuffs, he could have accidentally broken her arm or leg.
I've almost become inured to the stories of criminally corrupt, inept, power-abusing cops in the USA (and Arkansas seems to make a speciality of them), but this, this is just ghastly. It's not corruption, just a sense of casual brutality and violence on a scale I had never quite grasped before. Truly, the police are the biggest and best-equipped gang.
Thursday, November 19, 2009
A little indigestible physics for a change
From deep-thinking physicist Sean Carroll:
If you didn't know any better, if you asked what the universe should be like, what configuration it should be in, you would say it should be in a high entropy configuration. ... There are a lot more ways to be disorderly and chaotic than there are to be orderly and uniform and well arranged. However, the real world is quite orderly. The entropy is much, much lower than it could be. The reason for this is that the early universe, near the Big Bang, 14 billion years ago, had incredibly low entropy compared to what is could have been. This is an absolute mystery in cosmology. This is something that modern cosmologists do not know the answer to, why our observable universe started out in a state of such pristine regularity and order — such low entropy. We know that if it does, it makes sense. We can tell a story that starts in the low entropy early universe, trace it through the present day and into the future. It's not going to go back to being low entropy. ... Our best model of the universe right now is one that began 14 billion years ago in a state of low entropy but will go on forever into the future in a state of high entropy.
Why do we find ourselves so close to the aftermath of this very strange event, this Big Bang, that has such low entropy? The answer is, we just don't know. The anthropic principle is just not enough to explain this. We really need to think deeply about what could have happened both at the Big Bang and even before the Big Bang. My favorite guess at the answer is that the reason why the universe started out at such a low entropy is the same reason that an egg starts out at low entropy. The classic example of entropy is that you can take an egg and make an omelette. You cannot take an omelette and turn it into an egg. That is because the entropy increases when you mix up the egg to make it into an omelette. Why did the egg start with such a low entropy in the first place? The answer is that it is not alone in the universe. The universe consists of more than just an egg. The egg came from a chicken. It was created by something that had a very low entropy that was part of a bigger system. The point is that our universe is part of a bigger system. Then you can start to try to understand why it had such a low entropy to begin with. I actually think that the fact that we can observe the early universe having such a low entropy is the best evidence we currently have that we live in a multiverse, that the universe we observe is not all that there is, that we are actually embedded in some much larger structure.
Wow ... interesting theory, I'm not sure that he isn't leading the data a bit, but it certainly has a certain plausibility, at least.
If you didn't know any better, if you asked what the universe should be like, what configuration it should be in, you would say it should be in a high entropy configuration. ... There are a lot more ways to be disorderly and chaotic than there are to be orderly and uniform and well arranged. However, the real world is quite orderly. The entropy is much, much lower than it could be. The reason for this is that the early universe, near the Big Bang, 14 billion years ago, had incredibly low entropy compared to what is could have been. This is an absolute mystery in cosmology. This is something that modern cosmologists do not know the answer to, why our observable universe started out in a state of such pristine regularity and order — such low entropy. We know that if it does, it makes sense. We can tell a story that starts in the low entropy early universe, trace it through the present day and into the future. It's not going to go back to being low entropy. ... Our best model of the universe right now is one that began 14 billion years ago in a state of low entropy but will go on forever into the future in a state of high entropy.
Why do we find ourselves so close to the aftermath of this very strange event, this Big Bang, that has such low entropy? The answer is, we just don't know. The anthropic principle is just not enough to explain this. We really need to think deeply about what could have happened both at the Big Bang and even before the Big Bang. My favorite guess at the answer is that the reason why the universe started out at such a low entropy is the same reason that an egg starts out at low entropy. The classic example of entropy is that you can take an egg and make an omelette. You cannot take an omelette and turn it into an egg. That is because the entropy increases when you mix up the egg to make it into an omelette. Why did the egg start with such a low entropy in the first place? The answer is that it is not alone in the universe. The universe consists of more than just an egg. The egg came from a chicken. It was created by something that had a very low entropy that was part of a bigger system. The point is that our universe is part of a bigger system. Then you can start to try to understand why it had such a low entropy to begin with. I actually think that the fact that we can observe the early universe having such a low entropy is the best evidence we currently have that we live in a multiverse, that the universe we observe is not all that there is, that we are actually embedded in some much larger structure.
Wow ... interesting theory, I'm not sure that he isn't leading the data a bit, but it certainly has a certain plausibility, at least.
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
Well I guess that's good news
Hmm, been a bit scary here for the last few days.
I started having a pounding pulse & rapid heartbeats, together with a pain in the left of my chest, not all the time, but coming occasionally and going. Rather hard and terrifying to think about, or try to handle, really.
But, I made an appointment, waited, and tried to increase my daily exercise in the meantime. It turns out to be a rather simple problem, a depletion of potassium in my blood due to prescription diuretics (to help with a swollen ankle/foot), so a switch of pill, and a potassium pill (designed for horses from the size of it) seem to be the straightforward solution.
Whew :)
One thing I'm relatively pleased with, is being able to look at the problem and deal with it at all - it used to be my wont to shy away/run away even when that was a terminally (bad joke) bad idea: for almost a decade I had a lump under my left nipple, which I tried really hard not to think about at all, until I gathered the courage to tell Cat (not long after we started living together) and she helped me get to a doctor to have it examined ... turned out to be a benign cyst which he removed with a small clinic surgery procedure. A decade of spasmodic bouts of worry and terror, for naught, pretty stupid really.
It would have been good to get over this idiotic attitude earlier in life, but, eh, so be it, better late than never.
--------------------------------------
Wandering off onto something less scary and more bizarre (OK, even more bizarre):
I keep getting pinged (er, stopped, queried, laughed at, asked to explain, whichever) by my use of strange words of excessive length and obscurity. Now, I know I do love strange obscure and antique words, but the ones I'm being hauled up on, I would have thought absolutely commonplace and normal. Just in the last month, these ones spring to mind:
Felicitations (on a birthday)
Loquacious
Eloquent
Elegant
Miniscule
Convex
oh, and numerous times, Fortnight - this is regarded as a seriously bizarre word in the USA for some reason.
On the other hand, I have to say I loathe the 'ghetto/rap slang' I keep having to deal with, online - pretty much invariably from teenage white boys wanting to be cool - and just to keep up my Grumpy Old Geezer cred, I usually refuse to respond to or acknowledge it, even when I understand (which ain't always).
I started having a pounding pulse & rapid heartbeats, together with a pain in the left of my chest, not all the time, but coming occasionally and going. Rather hard and terrifying to think about, or try to handle, really.
But, I made an appointment, waited, and tried to increase my daily exercise in the meantime. It turns out to be a rather simple problem, a depletion of potassium in my blood due to prescription diuretics (to help with a swollen ankle/foot), so a switch of pill, and a potassium pill (designed for horses from the size of it) seem to be the straightforward solution.
Whew :)
One thing I'm relatively pleased with, is being able to look at the problem and deal with it at all - it used to be my wont to shy away/run away even when that was a terminally (bad joke) bad idea: for almost a decade I had a lump under my left nipple, which I tried really hard not to think about at all, until I gathered the courage to tell Cat (not long after we started living together) and she helped me get to a doctor to have it examined ... turned out to be a benign cyst which he removed with a small clinic surgery procedure. A decade of spasmodic bouts of worry and terror, for naught, pretty stupid really.
It would have been good to get over this idiotic attitude earlier in life, but, eh, so be it, better late than never.
--------------------------------------
Wandering off onto something less scary and more bizarre (OK, even more bizarre):
I keep getting pinged (er, stopped, queried, laughed at, asked to explain, whichever) by my use of strange words of excessive length and obscurity. Now, I know I do love strange obscure and antique words, but the ones I'm being hauled up on, I would have thought absolutely commonplace and normal. Just in the last month, these ones spring to mind:
Felicitations (on a birthday)
Loquacious
Eloquent
Elegant
Miniscule
Convex
oh, and numerous times, Fortnight - this is regarded as a seriously bizarre word in the USA for some reason.
On the other hand, I have to say I loathe the 'ghetto/rap slang' I keep having to deal with, online - pretty much invariably from teenage white boys wanting to be cool - and just to keep up my Grumpy Old Geezer cred, I usually refuse to respond to or acknowledge it, even when I understand (which ain't always).
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
Zombie pondering
What is it with the current fascination with zombies, and vampires?
Well not-vampires in the current incarnation: I know they went from scary detestable monsters who were sometimes charismatic and charming, to mostly-scary detestable monsters who could be sexy and handsome as well, then Buffy the Vampire Slayer added the (one or two) 'good' vampires. But the latest versions, vampires who walk in the daytime? Who aren't scary bloodsuckers but sexless adoration objects? That just offends my sense of literary propriety I guess.
Aaaanyway, I kinda get the whole sublimation of sexual desire thing, especially for the teen market: and I definitely get the zombie apocalypse thing as part of the whole live-through-the-apocalypse survivor thing - after all, it isn't me that's going to be one of the zillions of dead - I remember getting bitten by that bug reading John Wyndham's apocalyptic SF*
But the absolute explosion of both genres, and the way they are being massively over-exploited and over-sold, just astonishes me. It's like the geekboys I grew up with managed to lay hands on control of the movie/tv/publishing empires, and started ramming their own tastes down everyone else's throats. And I suspect that's closer to the truth than I initially thought, after considering it some.
Of course, part of it is the barbarity of Hollywoodland**, always travelling in a pack and falling on the chosen victim to savage, drool, and cannabilise the flavour of the month, something that's been snowballing since at least the '60s.
I guess part of it is also just a massed flight into fantasy, an unconscious (or not) retreat from reality - it's too hard, it's too complex, it's too depressing, at least when you think about trying to change some of the more intolerable problems on the collective plate, and it's all just too much. Hmm, sounds like an old geezer rant at that point, am I talking collective cultural senility?
I should add, I don't especially feel like this - so far, I still find the complexity fascinating, and I haven't given up on effecting change, even if in the most zen-like fingerdrops on boulders fashion.
I don't really have any conclusion to this, by the way, just rambling on, really. But I do have a picture in the back of my brain, of a movie theatre being picketed by a bunch of werewolves and ghouls, holding up Equal Rights signs (in between tearing apart customers).
-------------------------------
Update #1:
This was a real giggle, even if you know nothing of the books/movie:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wlTtmtAQwfY
Update #2:
If you didnt see the TV series Buffy the Vampire Slayer? Go watch it, especially the first three series: provided you swallow the basic premise, it is an amazing exploration of basic feminism, growing up, and the quality of heroism (the movie, eh, not so much)
--------------------------------
*Not just Day of the Triffids, but Kraken Wakes & Chrysalids spring to mind
** that is, Big movie studios plus TV studios plus the publishing houses they mostly own, and the gaming software houses, i.e. the whole Empire of Taste thing.
Well not-vampires in the current incarnation: I know they went from scary detestable monsters who were sometimes charismatic and charming, to mostly-scary detestable monsters who could be sexy and handsome as well, then Buffy the Vampire Slayer added the (one or two) 'good' vampires. But the latest versions, vampires who walk in the daytime? Who aren't scary bloodsuckers but sexless adoration objects? That just offends my sense of literary propriety I guess.
Aaaanyway, I kinda get the whole sublimation of sexual desire thing, especially for the teen market: and I definitely get the zombie apocalypse thing as part of the whole live-through-the-apocalypse survivor thing - after all, it isn't me that's going to be one of the zillions of dead - I remember getting bitten by that bug reading John Wyndham's apocalyptic SF*
But the absolute explosion of both genres, and the way they are being massively over-exploited and over-sold, just astonishes me. It's like the geekboys I grew up with managed to lay hands on control of the movie/tv/publishing empires, and started ramming their own tastes down everyone else's throats. And I suspect that's closer to the truth than I initially thought, after considering it some.
Of course, part of it is the barbarity of Hollywoodland**, always travelling in a pack and falling on the chosen victim to savage, drool, and cannabilise the flavour of the month, something that's been snowballing since at least the '60s.
I guess part of it is also just a massed flight into fantasy, an unconscious (or not) retreat from reality - it's too hard, it's too complex, it's too depressing, at least when you think about trying to change some of the more intolerable problems on the collective plate, and it's all just too much. Hmm, sounds like an old geezer rant at that point, am I talking collective cultural senility?
I should add, I don't especially feel like this - so far, I still find the complexity fascinating, and I haven't given up on effecting change, even if in the most zen-like fingerdrops on boulders fashion.
I don't really have any conclusion to this, by the way, just rambling on, really. But I do have a picture in the back of my brain, of a movie theatre being picketed by a bunch of werewolves and ghouls, holding up Equal Rights signs (in between tearing apart customers).
-------------------------------
Update #1:
This was a real giggle, even if you know nothing of the books/movie:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wlTtmtAQwfY
Update #2:
If you didnt see the TV series Buffy the Vampire Slayer? Go watch it, especially the first three series: provided you swallow the basic premise, it is an amazing exploration of basic feminism, growing up, and the quality of heroism (the movie, eh, not so much)
--------------------------------
*Not just Day of the Triffids, but Kraken Wakes & Chrysalids spring to mind
** that is, Big movie studios plus TV studios plus the publishing houses they mostly own, and the gaming software houses, i.e. the whole Empire of Taste thing.
Monday, November 16, 2009
Brandy vs the Vaccuum cleaner, part 2
Ha! there it is, dormant, dozing in its cave, unsuspecting.
Hmm, better be careful, I'll give it a good sniff, and scent on its' corners
Good, that didnt wake it up!
Now what do I do? Too tough to scratch, and I'm not going to try biting it.
I know, I'll lean against it and doze for a bit while I think of a better plan - that way if it rouses, I'll know straight away and flee, umm, retire to my defenses.
There ... conquered at last! I shall look for a trophy, or just ...zzzzzzz
Hmm, better be careful, I'll give it a good sniff, and scent on its' corners
Good, that didnt wake it up!
Now what do I do? Too tough to scratch, and I'm not going to try biting it.
I know, I'll lean against it and doze for a bit while I think of a better plan - that way if it rouses, I'll know straight away and flee, umm, retire to my defenses.
There ... conquered at last! I shall look for a trophy, or just ...zzzzzzz
Brandy vs the Vaccuum cleaner, part 1
Oh noes! here I am, sleeping peacefully in possession of My bed, and the terrible long-nose monster is coming to scream at me! What can I do?
I'll snarl and hiss at it, that'll scare it off
Damn
OK, I'll lay my ears back and really hiss at it, that always works
Except this time
Right, time to retire to a previously prepared position - run to the other bed, quick, and hide under it, before it gets Ideas!!
I'll snarl and hiss at it, that'll scare it off
Damn
OK, I'll lay my ears back and really hiss at it, that always works
Except this time
Right, time to retire to a previously prepared position - run to the other bed, quick, and hide under it, before it gets Ideas!!
Thursday, November 12, 2009
Inside the House - Living room
The Hearth room, where we're living really (Living Room seems to mean something else in the US, like a formal parlour). It looks a lot more cramped & foreshortened in the pix than it actually is. There's a door to the back yard in the far left corner.
Inside the House - Kitchen
The Kitchen/galley - the laundry is just visible at the far end, and the end door leads to the garage. There is also a kinda waste of space they call a breakfast nook nearest the camera (with the Dining room behind where the camera is)
Inside the House - Dining Room
The Dining room, still full of junk - that's the room we initially unloaded into when we moved, so stuff that hasn't found a home yet are just kinda stuck there - and the main bathroom. Ray discretely didnt photograph the master bedroom & bathroom, so I'll have to try & get that done this weekend.
Inside the House - Bedrooms
Cat's sewing room, the guest room & the corridor leading to the bedrooms/bathrooms
Inside the House - Games room
My games room, still in mid-unpack with piles of cardboard boxes everywhere *sigh*
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
House - the Front
This is a series of pix of the front of our new place - first (or last actually seeing they are shown in descending chronological order) of a series of posts today with exterior shots.
Interior shots to follow in a couple of days - I think I've used up my upload limit for the day!
House - rear view
This is the house as seen from the back yard (the flash Mustang is Ray's, not ours!)
House - the Yard
This is a view of the back yard, more or less panning left behind the garage then from the corner of the garage just visible in the 3rd picture.
House - the Bog
The first in a series of posts of pictures of our new place - Ray was kind enough to wander around with a camera when he was over, and as his photographic skills far outweigh mine (i.e. he has any at all), I took the opportunity :)
This series is of the south side of the house, which has a sort of wide alley expanding out into the back yard. The tall wooden fence visible is actually screening off the street at the front of the property. To the left of these pix, is our neighbours house, screened with bamboo (and not having a window at all on that side of their house!) so is fairly private - unfortunately there is no actual fence in that section, so animals can wander in (or out) without hindrance, something we want to correct so we have a safe outside haven for the cats.
Unfortunately it also has a real boggy area, caused largely by runoff from the (slightly uphill) neighbours property, something we are currently exercised about solving ... Cat (of course) is researching and thinking of solutions, such as possibly a wetlands garden area, and/or a water feature, or ..... we shall see!
The current drainage ditch (vaguely visible) isn't really doing it, plus it gets clogged with soil erosion fairly rapidly.
This series is of the south side of the house, which has a sort of wide alley expanding out into the back yard. The tall wooden fence visible is actually screening off the street at the front of the property. To the left of these pix, is our neighbours house, screened with bamboo (and not having a window at all on that side of their house!) so is fairly private - unfortunately there is no actual fence in that section, so animals can wander in (or out) without hindrance, something we want to correct so we have a safe outside haven for the cats.
Unfortunately it also has a real boggy area, caused largely by runoff from the (slightly uphill) neighbours property, something we are currently exercised about solving ... Cat (of course) is researching and thinking of solutions, such as possibly a wetlands garden area, and/or a water feature, or ..... we shall see!
The current drainage ditch (vaguely visible) isn't really doing it, plus it gets clogged with soil erosion fairly rapidly.
Tuesday, November 3, 2009
Ingrained
Well, we had a surfeit of guests - first Ray came for the weekend, which was, as always, a good thing: as more or less my only friend in the flesh here, and a fellow wargamer. Sadly he was pretty sick this visit, and we didn't get to play a game, just sat around, mostly bitching about how bad the current rules & lists are, and floundering about trying to find a superior alternative. The current leaders for that, btw, are WRG 6th Edition, now a venerable 28 years old I think, and Armati, also not exactly fresh out of the gate, but so be it.
As always though, we stayed up very late watching movies & talking ... well, yattering on endlessly to be honest, about anything and everything. One thing that does disturb me about Ray is his seemingly reflexive sexism & racism, which - I'm not sure - either underpin or grow out of his elaborate & well-defended republicanism/conservatism. I know this periodically drives Cat absolutely wild, and occasionally leaves me aghast too, but it's a bit late to be trying to change his behaviour, so we both let it ride: besides, he has been a very staunch friend, and is in general such a good-hearted guy, it more or less just puzzles me that he hasn't grown out of that, for some reason.
Then we had 2 of Cat's friends over for lunch yesterday while I was working from home. They brought a grandson, and also their mother, and while the others were smoking, I had a fairly lengthy, and to be honest horrifying, discussion with the mother. Her racism was not just overt, but a bit breathtaking. Of course, she would be in her 60s or 70s, and I guess it may not be untypical for her generation, and for someone who grew up in rural Arkansas.
Naturally, as our guest, I didn't challenge these attitudes - they were too obviously deeply felt and strong, and having a blazing open argument over it was hardly going to change her mind, just upset everyone & terminate the visit, and possibly Cat's friendship. It did serve me as a reminder that these people are still around, and still oozing their poison where their grandkids and great grandkids can hear it, and probably absorb at least some of it.
Perhaps I was wrong to let it slide, when I think on it: that is the sort of attitude that does allow it to continue to fester. But I don't seem to have a strongly confrontational approach, and that sort of thought usually occurs to me only far after the fact.
One other thing she said almost did trip me into a heated argument though, and it's something I hear a -lot- of in the US: 'Oh they ain't poor, there's plenty of jobs if they wanted to work, they just don't want to work'.
Of course, I've heard this arrant nonsense everywhere I've lived - it was practically a mantra for Robs' Mob, and for most of the National Party, and it's endemic in bits of UK society, but over here it seems even more widespread. It always drives me a bit nuts, especially in times like these when there's 11% unemployment and we're going through a fairly severe depression*.
The truth is, people DO want to work, with amazingly few exceptions. Even when it is barely more than the dole, and sometimes when the net (after transport & such) is less than it, people will work, at the most amazingly wretched jobs, for disgustingly little pay.
Waitressing in this country, for instance. The legal minimum wage here is something like $7.25/hour now - except for waitresses & waiters, who have a special exemption to be paid a minimum of $2.13 .... and trust me, the number of places that pay more than the minimum is extremely small, even in quite high-tone places. The assumption is that they will make this up and more in tips, and most americans who have never worked these jobs assume that they not only make it up, but make very good money on top, just from tips.
I doubt it, severely. From what I've read and heard, there are an awful lot of tightwallets who tip minimally or not at all, and most waitstaff struggle to even make an extra $5 an hour to get to the usual legal minimum. Of course in the tightening economy, tips are one of the very easy economies: while it is 'customary' to leave a 15% tip, it is very easy to squeeze that - plus of course quite a few people just cut dining out to a minimum or nothing.
Our visitors on Monday both work as waitresses in the weekends, and one - an extremely good waitress and very popular - used to clear about $100 a day on the weekends, i.e. about $12 an hour, which is, well, OK, but hardly overwhelming. This has fallen by over 50% in the last year, so she is now getting $50 a day net ... after paying for travel, about an hours' drive each way, it leaves very little money indeed. Naturally she's looking for a position closer to home, but - also naturally - there's damn-all of them available in the current situation.
I wish I could make these people who bang on about plenty of jobs if you want them, see exactly what rubbish they are talking: and what wretched jobs are actually like. But then, I might as well wish for the moon :/
----------------------------
*That's a word that gives me a wry smile: originally it was called a crash, but that upset people, so they changed the word to a crisis - after a while that sounded too alarming, so they just called it a depression, something softer-sounding and less scarey. Of course 1929 screwed the pooch on that, so they switched to recession.
It all means the same thing tho - the economy is explosively shrinking, shedding jobs as though it were deciduous. At one point recession in the 80s started sounding scarey so they tried contraction, but that never caught on. You now have the ludicrous situation that some of the TV talking heads, exhibiting their complete cluelessness, argue about whether the current fiasco is a depression, or 'just' a recession. Duh.
As always though, we stayed up very late watching movies & talking ... well, yattering on endlessly to be honest, about anything and everything. One thing that does disturb me about Ray is his seemingly reflexive sexism & racism, which - I'm not sure - either underpin or grow out of his elaborate & well-defended republicanism/conservatism. I know this periodically drives Cat absolutely wild, and occasionally leaves me aghast too, but it's a bit late to be trying to change his behaviour, so we both let it ride: besides, he has been a very staunch friend, and is in general such a good-hearted guy, it more or less just puzzles me that he hasn't grown out of that, for some reason.
Then we had 2 of Cat's friends over for lunch yesterday while I was working from home. They brought a grandson, and also their mother, and while the others were smoking, I had a fairly lengthy, and to be honest horrifying, discussion with the mother. Her racism was not just overt, but a bit breathtaking. Of course, she would be in her 60s or 70s, and I guess it may not be untypical for her generation, and for someone who grew up in rural Arkansas.
Naturally, as our guest, I didn't challenge these attitudes - they were too obviously deeply felt and strong, and having a blazing open argument over it was hardly going to change her mind, just upset everyone & terminate the visit, and possibly Cat's friendship. It did serve me as a reminder that these people are still around, and still oozing their poison where their grandkids and great grandkids can hear it, and probably absorb at least some of it.
Perhaps I was wrong to let it slide, when I think on it: that is the sort of attitude that does allow it to continue to fester. But I don't seem to have a strongly confrontational approach, and that sort of thought usually occurs to me only far after the fact.
One other thing she said almost did trip me into a heated argument though, and it's something I hear a -lot- of in the US: 'Oh they ain't poor, there's plenty of jobs if they wanted to work, they just don't want to work'.
Of course, I've heard this arrant nonsense everywhere I've lived - it was practically a mantra for Robs' Mob, and for most of the National Party, and it's endemic in bits of UK society, but over here it seems even more widespread. It always drives me a bit nuts, especially in times like these when there's 11% unemployment and we're going through a fairly severe depression*.
The truth is, people DO want to work, with amazingly few exceptions. Even when it is barely more than the dole, and sometimes when the net (after transport & such) is less than it, people will work, at the most amazingly wretched jobs, for disgustingly little pay.
Waitressing in this country, for instance. The legal minimum wage here is something like $7.25/hour now - except for waitresses & waiters, who have a special exemption to be paid a minimum of $2.13 .... and trust me, the number of places that pay more than the minimum is extremely small, even in quite high-tone places. The assumption is that they will make this up and more in tips, and most americans who have never worked these jobs assume that they not only make it up, but make very good money on top, just from tips.
I doubt it, severely. From what I've read and heard, there are an awful lot of tightwallets who tip minimally or not at all, and most waitstaff struggle to even make an extra $5 an hour to get to the usual legal minimum. Of course in the tightening economy, tips are one of the very easy economies: while it is 'customary' to leave a 15% tip, it is very easy to squeeze that - plus of course quite a few people just cut dining out to a minimum or nothing.
Our visitors on Monday both work as waitresses in the weekends, and one - an extremely good waitress and very popular - used to clear about $100 a day on the weekends, i.e. about $12 an hour, which is, well, OK, but hardly overwhelming. This has fallen by over 50% in the last year, so she is now getting $50 a day net ... after paying for travel, about an hours' drive each way, it leaves very little money indeed. Naturally she's looking for a position closer to home, but - also naturally - there's damn-all of them available in the current situation.
I wish I could make these people who bang on about plenty of jobs if you want them, see exactly what rubbish they are talking: and what wretched jobs are actually like. But then, I might as well wish for the moon :/
----------------------------
*That's a word that gives me a wry smile: originally it was called a crash, but that upset people, so they changed the word to a crisis - after a while that sounded too alarming, so they just called it a depression, something softer-sounding and less scarey. Of course 1929 screwed the pooch on that, so they switched to recession.
It all means the same thing tho - the economy is explosively shrinking, shedding jobs as though it were deciduous. At one point recession in the 80s started sounding scarey so they tried contraction, but that never caught on. You now have the ludicrous situation that some of the TV talking heads, exhibiting their complete cluelessness, argue about whether the current fiasco is a depression, or 'just' a recession. Duh.
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