Correlation is not Causation

Blah

2009-11-11T05:18:37Z

Haven't been around much; no change on that any time soon, sorry. Just too tired all the time. I'm not even getting through my mail, and I only get like 5 emails a day. :(

Fucked up shit.

2009-09-14T04:51:54Z

This...

I was playing follow the clicks on youtube, watching sad commercials. I came across this, which is an sad anti-discrimination ad - for the first 50 seconds. After which it abruptly morphs into something... completely different and really fucked up. It's a toothpaste commercial, and one I find really disturbing for reasons that I can't quite explain (which may have something to do with the fact that it's one in the morning).

Have you seen this?

2009-09-12T21:40:07Z

This? This is an awesome Michael Jackson tribute remix.

kdorian @ 2009-09-07T14:41:00

2009-09-07T18:43:16Z

Flist management time!

Anyone who is on DW is being added on DW and dropped here.

Anyone who is on LJ and not on DW is being added on LJ and dropped here. If I didn't add you on your alternate account, please let me know!

Rec

2009-08-27T01:46:13Z

I'm not in the habit of recommending journals, especially ones in languages that I can't even read, but if you like garden photography or food photography, you might want to take a gander at tanusha.livejournal.com.

She has lately started posting garden photos with a clickable music player at the bottom. The art/music combo really works well for me.

Ijay Help?

2009-06-16T02:54:23Z

So how the heck do you kick someone off being VIEWED on your flist on Ijay, without unfriending them? I have people and comms that I bring up on an individual basis - I don't want them on my flist too! And for some reason, I'm coming up blank.

This is NEWS?

2009-05-21T23:27:57Z

It boggles the mind - for me at least - that this is considered news. But I guess some people don't know.

The High Cost of Poverty

Poor? Pay Up.
Having Little Money Often Means No Car, No Washing Machine, No Checking Account And No Break From Fees and High Prices

Time is money, and both are in short supply: Quintin Strange, left, and Kenneth Thomas say they've cut back their weekly laundering to every third week because of the recession. (Photos By Lois Raimondo -- The Washington Post)

Harrison Blakeney pays his phone bill through a check-cashing operation that charges 10 percent extra to send the payment. "That's how they make their money," he says.

You have to be rich to be poor.

That's what some people who have never lived below the poverty line don't understand.

Put it another way: The poorer you are, the more things cost. More in money, time, hassle, exhaustion, menace. This is a fact of life that reality television and magazines don't often explain.

So we'll explain it here. Consider this a primer on the economics of poverty.

"The poor pay more for a gallon of milk; they pay more on a capital basis for inferior housing," says Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.). "The poor and 100 million who are struggling for the middle class actually end up paying more for transportation, for housing, for health care, for mortgages. They get steered to subprime lending. . . . The poor pay more for things middle-class America takes for granted."

Poverty 101: We'll start with the basics.

Like food: You don't have a car to get to a supermarket, much less to Costco or Trader Joe's, where the middle class goes to save money. You don't have three hours to take the bus. So you buy groceries at the corner store, where a gallon of milk costs an extra dollar.

A loaf of bread there costs you $2.99 for white. For wheat, it's $3.79. The clerk behind the counter tells you the gallon of leaking milk in the bottom of the back cooler is $4.99. She holds up four fingers to clarify. The milk is beneath the shelf that holds beef bologna for $3.79. A pound of butter sells for $4.49. In the back of the store are fruits and vegetables. The green peppers are shriveled, the bananas are more brown than yellow, the oranges are picked over.

(At a Safeway on Bradley Boulevard in Bethesda, the wheat bread costs $1.19, and white bread is on sale for $1. A gallon of milk costs $3.49 -- $2.99 if you buy two gallons. A pound of butter is $2.49. Beef bologna is on sale, two packages for $5.)

Prices in urban corner stores are almost always higher, economists say. And sometimes, prices in supermarkets in poorer neighborhoods are higher. Many of these stores charge more because the cost of doing business in some neighborhoods is higher. "First, they are probably paying more on goods because they don't get the low wholesale price that bigger stores get," says Bradley R. Schiller, a professor emeritus at American University and the author of "The Economics of Poverty and Discrimination."

"The real estate is higher. The fact that volume is low means fewer sales per worker. They make fewer dollars of revenue per square foot of space. They don't end up making more money. Every corner grocery store wishes they had profits their customers think they have."

According to the Census Bureau, more than 37 million people in the country live below the poverty line. The poor know these facts of life. These facts become their lives.

Time is money, they say, and the poor pay more in time, too.

When you are poor, you don't have the luxury of throwing a load into the washing machine and then taking your morning jog while it cycles. You wait until Monday afternoon, when the laundromat is most likely to be empty, and you put all of that laundry from four kids into four heaps, bundle it in sheets, load a cart and drag it to the corner.

"If I had my choice, I would have a washer and a dryer," says Nya Oti, 37, a food-service worker who lives in Brightwood. She stands on her toes to reach the top of a washer in the laundromat on Georgia Avenue NW and pours in detergent. The four loads of laundry will take her about two hours. A soap opera is playing loudly on the television hanging from the ceiling. A man comes in talking to himself. He drags his loads of dirty sheets and mattress pads and dumps them one by one into the machines next to Oti.

She does not seem to notice. She is talking about other costs of poverty. "My car broke down this weekend, and it took a lot of time getting on the bus, standing on the bus stop. It was a waste of a whole lot of times. Waiting. The transfer to the different bus."

When she has her car, she drives to Maryland, where she shops for her groceries at Shoppers Food Warehouse or Save-A-Lot, where she says some items are cheaper and some are higher. "They have a way of getting you in there on a bargain. You go in for something cheap, but something else is more expensive." She buys bags of oranges or apples, but not the organic kind. "Organic is too much," she says.

"When you are poor, you substitute time for money," says Randy Albelda, an economics professor at the University of Massachusetts at Boston. "You have to work a lot of hours and still not make a lot of money. You get squeezed, and your money is squeezed."
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The poor pay more in hassle: the calls from the bill collectors, the landlord, the utility company. So they spend money to avoid the hassle. The poor pay for caller identification because it gives them peace of mind to weed out calls from bill collectors.

The rich have direct deposit for their paychecks. The poor have check-cashing and payday loan joints, which cost time and money. Payday advance companies say they are providing an essential service to people who most need them. Their critics say they are preying on people who are the most "economically vulnerable."

"As you've seen with the financial services industry, if people can cut a profit, they do it," Blumenauer says. "The poor pay more for financial services. A lot of people who are 'unbanked' pay $3 for a money order to pay their electric bill. They pay a 2 percent check-cashing fee because they don't have bank services. The reasons? Part of it is lack of education. But part of it is because people target them. There is evidence that credit-card mills have recently started trolling for the poor. They are targeting the recently bankrupt."

Outside the ACE check-cashing office on Georgia Avenue in Petworth, Harrison Blakeney, 67, explains a hard financial lesson of poverty. He uses the check-cashing store to pay his telephone bill. The store charges 10 percent to take Blakeney's money and send the payment to the phone company. That 10 percent becomes what it costs him to get his payment to the telephone company on time. Ten percent is more than the cost of a stamp. But, Blakeney says: "I don't have time to mail it. You come here and get it done. Then you don't get charged with the late fee."

Blakeney, a retired auto mechanic who now lives on a fixed income, says: "We could send the payment ahead of time but sometimes you don't have money ahead of time. That's why you pay extra money to get them to send it."

Blakeney, wearing a purple jacket, leans on his cane. He has no criticism for the check-cashing place. "That's how they make their money," he says. "I don't care about the charge."

Just then, Lenwood Brooks walks out of the check-cashing place. He is angry about how much it just cost him to cash a check. "They charged me $15 to cash a $300 check," he says.

You ask him why he didn't just go to a bank. But his story is as complicated as the various reasons people find themselves in poverty and in need of a check-cashing joint. He says he lost his driver's license and now his regular bank "won't recognize me as a human. That's why I had to come here. It's a rip-off, but it's like a convenience store. You pay for the convenience."

Then there's credit. The poor don't have it. What they had was a place like First Cash Advance in D.C.'s Manor Park neighborhood, where a neon sign once flashed "PAYDAY ADVANCE." Through the bulletproof glass, a cashier in white eyeliner and long white nails explained what you needed to get an advance on your paycheck -- a pay stub, a legitimate ID, a checkbook. This meant you're doing well enough to have a checking account, but you're still poor.

And if you qualify, the fee for borrowing $300 is $46.50.

That was not for a year -- it's for seven days, although the terms can vary. How much interest will this payday loan cost you? In simple terms, the company is charging a $15.50 fee for every $100 that you borrow. On your $300 payday loan -- borrowed for a term of seven days -- the effective annual percentage rate is 806 percent.

The cashier says that what you do is write First Cash Advance a check for $345.50 plus another $1 fee, and it will give you $300 in cash upfront. It holds the check until you get paid. Then you bring in $346.50 and it returns your check. Or it cashes the check and keeps your $346.50, or you have the option of extending the loan with additional fees. You'll be out $46.50, which you'd rather have for the late fee on the rent you didn't pay on time. Or the gas bill you swear you paid last month but the gas company swears it never got.
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But now the payday advance place has closed, shuttered by metal doors. A sign in the front door says the business has moved. After the D.C. government passed a law requiring payday lenders to abide by a 24-percent limit on the annual percentage rate charged on a loan, many such stores in the District closed. Now advocates for the poor say they are concerned about other businesses that prey on poor people by extending loans in exchange for car titles. If a person does not pay back the loan, then the business becomes the owner of the car.

All these costs can lead the poor to a collective depression. Douglas J. Besharov, resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, says: "There are social costs of being poor, though it is not clear where the cause and effect is. We know for a fact that on certain measures, people who are poor are often more depressed than people who are not. I don't know if poverty made them depressed or the depression made them poor. I think the cause and effect is an open question. Some people are so depressed they are not functional. 'I live in a crummy neighborhood. My kids go to a crummy school.' That is not the kind of scenario that would make them happy." Another effect of all this, he says: "Would you want to hire someone like that?"

The poor suspect that prices are higher where they live, even the prices in major supermarkets. The suspicions sometimes spill over into frustration.

On a hot spring afternoon, Jacob Carter finds himself standing in a checkout line at the Giant on Alabama Avenue SE. Before the cashier finishes ringing up his items, he puts $43 on the conveyor belt. But his bill comes to $52.07. He has no more money, so he tells the clerk to start removing items.

The clerk suggests that he use his "bonus card" for savings.

Carter tells the clerk he has no such card.

He puts back the liter of soda. Puts back the paper towels. Sets aside $9 worth of hot fried chicken wings. He returns $13 worth of groceries. "Y'all got some high prices in this [expletive]," he says, standing in Aisle 4, blue shirt over work clothes.

The clerk suggests that he take his cash off the conveyor belt, because if she moves the belt the money will be carried into the machinery. Then the money will be gone.

Carter, a building engineer, snatches up the money, then gives it to the clerk. His final bill is $39.07.

He looks at the receipt and then announces without the slightest indication as to why: "Just give me all my [expletive] money back. It's too high in this [expletive]." The clerk calls the supervisor, who comes over. The supervisor doesn't argue with Carter. She just starts the process of giving him a refund.

"I want my money back. This [expletive] is too high. My grandmother told me about this store."

The supervisor returns $39.07 in cash. "Sir," she says, "have a blessed day."

The food in this supermarket might be cheaper than the goods at a corner store. But Carter still feels frustrated by what he thinks is a mark-up on prices in supermarkets in poor neighborhoods. Carter walks out.

The poor pay in other ways, ways you might never imagine. Jeanette Reed, who is retired and lives on a fixed income, sold her blood when she needed money. "I had no other source to get money," she says. "I went to the blood bank. And they gave me $30.
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"I needed the money. I didn't have the money and no source of getting money. No gas. No food. I have to go to a center that gives out boxes of food once a month. They give you cereal or vouchers for $10. They give you canned tuna and macaroni and cheese. Crackers and soup. They give you commodities like day-old bread."

The poor know the special economics of their housing, too.

"You pay rent that might be more than a mortgage," Reed says. "But you don't have the credit or the down payment to buy a house. Apartments are not going down. They are going up. They say houses are better, cheaper. But how are you going to get in a house if you don't have any money for a down payment?"

There is also an economic cost to living in low-income neighborhoods.

"The cheaper housing is in more-dangerous areas," says Reed, who lives in Southeast Washington. "I moved out of my old apartment. I hate that area. They be walking up and down the street. Couldn't take the dog out at night because strangers walking up and down the street. They will knock on your door. Either they rob you, kill or ask for money. If you're not there, they will steal air conditioners and copper. They will sell your copper [pipes] for money."

And then there is the particular unpleasantness when you make too much money to fall below the poverty line, but not enough to move up, up and away from it.

For our final guest lecturer on poverty we take you to the Thrift Store on Georgia Avenue and Marie Nicholas, 35, in an orange shirt, purple pants and thick black eyeliner. She is what economists call the working poor.

She is picking through the racks. The store is busy with customers on a Monday afternoon. There is the shrill sound of hangers sliding across racks under fluorescent lights. An old confirmation dress hangs from the ceiling. It has faded to yellow. It's not far from the used silver pumps, size 9 1/2 , nearly new, on sale for $9.99.

"People working who don't make a lot of money go to the system for help, and they deny them," Nicholas says. "They say I make too much. It almost helps if you don't work."

She says she makes $15 an hour working as a certified nursing assistant. She pays $850 for rent for a one-bedroom that she shares with her boyfriend and child. She went looking for a two-bedroom unit recently and found it would cost her $1,400. She pays $300 a month for child care for her 11-year-old son, who is developmentally delayed. She tried to put him in a subsidized child-care facility, but was told she makes too much money. "My son was not chosen for Head Start because I wasn't in a shelter or on welfare. People's kids who do go don't do nothing but sit at home."
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Money and time. "I ride the bus to get to work," Nicholas says. It takes an hour. "If I could drive, it would take me 10 minutes. I have to catch two buses." She gets to the bus stop at 6:30 a.m. The bus is supposed to come every 10 or 15 minutes. Sometimes, she says, it comes every 30 minutes.

What could you accomplish with the lost 20 minutes standing there in the rain? Waiting. That's another cost of poverty. You wait in lines. You wait at bus stops. You wait on the bus as it makes it way up Georgia Avenue, hitting every stop. No sense in trying to hurry when you are poor.

When you are poor, you wait.

So Willow and I got chatting about ST Reboot...

2009-05-21T03:11:55Z

Willow: So apparently I'm still a Trekker in my heart.
kdorian: Are you?
kdorian: And did I mention what movie I saw last night?
kdorian:
Willow: Just wrote this long rant about why I don't like the acronymn AOS for the Trek Reboot.
Willow: And heh, Coolio.
Willow: Liked?
kdorian: My response: SQEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!
Willow: hee
kdorian: I wanna see it AGAIN
Willow: 10 yrs is a long time to wait for a decent Trek.
kdorian: And buy the DVD
kdorian: Oh man
kdorian: I walked out of the theater wondering how long it was going to take for them to make the sequel
Willow: I am planning on buying the DVD. But I've got it downloaded for when I want to rewatch till then on the fly.
kdorian: They'd BETTER be working on it already
Willow: I still say it makes a good 2hr pilot for a series :p
kdorian: O_O
kdorian: YES!!!!
Willow: I think people underestimate how much ENTERPRISE the series, sucked.
Willow: though given it's the only Trek to ever get -cancelled-
Willow: it says something.
kdorian: *Nods*
kdorian: Yes
Willow: So while there are problems in the movie-reboot. It's got a Trek sensibility for the first time in -ages-
kdorian: Yes
kdorian: AND it gives a whole new angle on everything
kdorian: Trek's interesting again
Willow: Then you might get my pov in my entry.
Willow: http://willow.dreamwidth.org/1487769.html?style=mine
Willow: If you want to read it now or later.
Willow: In writing out just that little rant, I realized how much Trek history I have up in my head
kdorian: Alos hate the AOS thing
Willow: Does it make -you- want to smack people and go "Listen up Noobs!" ?
Willow: I like New!Trek. I like Trek!Reboot. I like Trek 2009.
kdorian: *L* Yes!
Willow: But AOS seriously makes me want to smack people.
Willow: I may just add that to the bottom of the post. I'm feeling cheeky enough.
Willow: yup. added.
kdorian: I was thinking further back on changes - issues with the Romulons are going to be MUCH different - because I saw no mention or even the slightest HINT of the fact that while Nero was sitting around twiddling his thumbs, while sitting on a sun-destroying weapon, did he bother to take care of that sun that's going to destroy his homeworld. Which is the big downside of single-minded vengance.

And is even a century plus enough time to evacuate a world with a population of billions, now that the red matter has been completely destroyed?
Willow: Oh crap! You're so right.
Willow: STARFLEET is aware that Romulus gets destroyed in 129 years!
kdorian: Yes. And giving that information freely, and offering to help, is the biggest diplomatic weapon they've ever been handed.

And do not forget that Spock was a science officer. If he choses to do so, he can leapfrog the science available to the Federation by two generations or more!
Willow: *nods* Spock Prime. Yes.
Willow: He's already given them transwarp tech.
kdorian: It took him, what? Two seconds? Yeah. And the top scientists of the day thought it was not possible at ALL.
Willow: Poor Scotty.
kdorian: He still gets credit
Willow: But yeah, proving Scotty right?
Willow: All of a sudden, they can't discount people because of -age- or -this is how science says a thing is-
kdorian: And I suspect Scotty was close, given how fast he picked it up
Willow: not with someone with 100 years of superior tech on them.
kdorian: HEE!
kdorian: Yes
Willow: And the Vulcans!
Willow: They might not have a planet anymore. But they have Spock Prime!
Willow: -They- are the ones holding that 100 yrs of experience.
kdorian: And in addition, while he's too old (and valuable) to go on his own, can you imagine diplomats trained by Spock Prime? Just based on what he knows?
kdorian: Knows about people and cultures, I mean - not events, which will change.
Willow: heck, Spock's relationship with the Romulans prior to the sun going nova was second to -no one-
kdorian: Oh man
kdorian: Yes
kdorian: He was a HUGE figure on Romulus
Willow: He was part of the Romulan underground in TNG.
Willow: Agitating for a change of the status quo.
kdorian: He knows them - but at the same time, at the same time they learn about HIM the big thing will be that he's the one that didn't save their world
Willow: So yeah. He knows Romulus inside out.
Willow: Yeah, though he did -try-. Of course, he can also point out 'Your countryman didn't take the redmatter to the sun and deal with it in this time either. He was too busy trying to get rid of everything that made th technology possible to even -try- and save Romulus in the first place'
kdorian: Yes. Nero is going to be an embarassment for them, to put it mildly
Willow: He didn't even capture Spock and take him, his ship, AND the redmatter to Romulus, saying he had to wait 25 yrs to have physical evidence.
Willow: Nope.
Willow: He went to destroy Vulcan.
Willow: Romulans. They COULD save themselves, but they'd rather hurt you.
kdorian: "Oh, yeah, did I mention the only one who might have a CLUE how to save your planet just watched HIS planet be destroyed by one of your race?"
kdorian: This is why single minded vengance is a bad thing
Willow: Very and indeed.
Willow: But yes, AOS does not take ANY of that into consideration.
Willow: This is more than an -alternate- version.
Willow: It's very very NEW.
Willow: It's an alternate reality with incredibly far reaching consequences.
kdorian: I want an icon of that, once the movie is out of theaters:

3 panel rotation:
Nero: Waited 25 yeats to destroy Vulcan.
Forgot to destroy the sun that would destroy his world. This is why single minded vengance is a bad thing.

Willow: heh
kdorian: Everything is new
And honestly? I think I'm most glad about the new take on Spock. Because we've seen that before, both in the original series and in reverse, with data
kdorian: Data
kdorian: that=logic vs emotions
kdorian: I want to see the take on logic PLUS emotions
kdorian: because that could make for a very appealing and very scary Spock
kdorian: Also, on some things - like, if Spock tells people about the marqui, and all that - would the cardassians accept the peace treaty, given what it cost them?
Willow: *snickers*
Willow: Oh haiz. You be swatting the Marquis. The Dominion be pwning your Empire. Hello!
Willow: Also randomly?
Willow: I always thought Data would have gotten along a whole lot better if he'd spent more time with Vulcans than with Humans.
kdorian: Yiz?
kdorian: This is true
Willow: Emotions are important, but physical representation of emotions isn't the pinnacle of Vulcan expression.
kdorian: Though I suspect vlucans will be a little different, in this
Willow: There wouldn't have been people going 'he can't feel, therefore he's not real!'
Willow: A being that's absolute pure logic?
kdorian: Argh. Yes
Willow: That was my personal beef with Data's storyline all along.
Willow: I felt his journey should have been about being accepted as an autonomous SENTIENT BEING, not as 'being human'
kdorian: That would have been so much better
Willow: Also I loathed all the stuff about how he'd never have a romantic partner.
Willow: Because I was all 'A Vulcan woman would appreciate Data like no one's business - assuming he was inclined to deal with things heterosexually'
kdorian: I've been thinking about (you just reminded me) pairings for vulcans in reboot. Because if there are married couples who survived intact, they had to have been working together off-planet, just based on odds
Willow: And the whole thing with him building himself a daughter. If he was involved with a Vulcan scientist it would have been -their- child, conceived and created and designed by both of them.
Willow: *nods*
Willow: But yeah, it really irked me. Because it was white American accented human Federation people wanting to treat Data as Property.
Willow: And I always thought the Vulcans should have objected to claims that lack of emotions = lack of sentience.
kdorian: Very much so
kdorian: Of course, that leads to questions as to the exact nature of self-awareness
kdorian: The vulcans could chew on that one for centuries
Willow: But they'd -like- it.
kdorian: Oh HELL yeah
kdorian: Meat and drink to a vulcan

Discovery!

2009-04-23T01:38:45Z

I was looking around in the back of hard-to-reach places, looking for quart Mason jars. I'd bought half a dozen of them a couple of years back, to make cordials (take vodka, add fruit and sugar, seal, wait 3 months, remove fruit to put on ice cream, filter remaining liquid, and use small quantities for an aperitif or dessert or cooking).

Now I want to make brandied peaches - yes, I do have a thing about fruit and alcohol, I've got a dish of gin raisins on the counter right now - and finally located them in the back behind the alcohol on the very bottom. Behind a bunch of stuff that had been there forever.

So I start hauling out stuff, and get to the mason jars, and grab it to pull it out... and it's heavy.

Seem that someone (probably my sister) got tired of them being where-ever they were, and put them out of the way. Only problem is, I'm an out-of-sight, out-of-mind kind of person. I have my 'memory' systems set up so that something will sound, flash, or at least be in my line of sight before I have a chance to remember it more than a week at best. A day is closer to the mark; sometimes I can't make it past 3 minutes.

So now I have two quart jars full of some dark cordial (purple? reddish? Possibly raspberry?), one full of a light colored cordial (maybe the first of the peaches?), and 3 jars full of cordial with peaches, which I must now remove the peaches from, so that I can make my brandied apricots.

Goodness.

ETA: On tasting, I think this must have been one of my early batches, before I learned that frozen fruit just doesn't work. I may have to wait for peach season and retry. I'll see how it tastes once it settles again.

Susan Boyle

2009-04-18T00:09:28Z

For the 3 people in the world who haven't heard of her, she's the surprise phenom of this year's Britain's Got Talent competition.

For those of you, like myself, who are mourning the fact that she won't be performing again for weeks... Surprise! Turns out that she sang a song on a small run charity album - only 1000 albums were made. Turns out she's not just limited to Broadway; she can also sing the blues.

kdorian @ 2009-04-03T21:25:00

2009-04-04T01:25:31Z

see more Political Pictures

The Spoon Game

2009-04-03T02:48:44Z

So for some insane reason, on the way home from class, my mind was occupied with the idea of turning the Spoon Theory of Chronic Disease (pdf warning) into a board game. At rolled the Spoon Dice to discover how many spoons you had that day, and tried to get through one day of work and enough chores to keep going. You'd pick a card that modified the day for good or bad*. You could borrow against tomorrow's spoons, but had to roll the 3-2-1 die (3 1s, 2 2s, 1 3) to discover the 'exchange rate' - and this happened AFTER you declared how many you were going to borrow.

If you had less than 4 spoons for a day you had to take a Sick Day. Too many sick days and you rolled to either be fired or go to part time work; either way you had to apply for benefits, which had its own spoon cost...

I don't think it would be an especially FUN game, but I imagine it could be very educational.

*Possible cards:
Twin spoons - you find a little extra energy and get one extra spoon for today!
Broken spoon - everything takes more work than you expected, lose one spoon
Good day - two actions of your choice cost 1 spoon less (minimum cost 0 spoons)
Unhelpful advice - a family member or government worker tells you that you should "just try harder." Lose half your spoons for today.

Great quote of the day

2009-03-29T02:50:57Z

...the vast majority of human herbivores I've met are perfectly normal people who do not feel the need to preach at others about their diet, themselves having bigger okra in life to fry, and this is as it should be. (The division here is not actually between vegetarians and carnivores, I think, it's between "people who feel the need to justify their lifestyle as superior to others" and "people who have hobbies.") - UrsulaV on LJ

Quote of the day

2009-03-21T01:18:52Z

"I also realized a while back that 1) white people, as a rule and as a group, kind of suck and 2) I don't have to take that personally because 3) I often reap the benefits of white privelege so I can handle having my poor wittle white girl ego bruised every now and again by being reminded that non-white people might think I suck sometimes even though I haven't done anything racist that day that I am aware of."

No link, as I don't know how to contact the OP to get an OK for that (it was in a comment to a blog post).

kdorian @ 2009-03-19T22:31:00

2009-03-20T02:33:21Z

Because everyone should witness Extreme Shepherding!

So I've been following along as best as I've been able...

2009-03-10T03:48:58Z

Which feels like I'm just skimming the surface - I missed the original exchanges entirely, and I've barely read a handful of the reaction posts.

Every time I feel I'm ready to say something (for me, a long and slow procedure - I process big thoughts, but I do it slowly), I end up reading something else that gives me pause. By the time I'm done examining that thought, something else pops up.

So, just a few mostly-incoherent thoughts that have been running through my head:

I'm privileged, in ways I don't even realize. I'm working on figuring out my own unexamined privileges (to quote Bayleaf on LJ, "Holy shit, this means me" ). I don't think I will ever be done with this. I don't expect or deserve cookies for realizing this and trying to fix it.

I've not been contributing (as I don't to almost any argument, online or off) not because I don't have a position, but because A) I can't cope with conflict - I freeze up (and yes, isn't it nice for me that I have the option of not being involved if I don't want to), and B) as I said above, I'm a slow thinker on things - by the time I know what I want to say, the conversation's been over for two days.

What I have seen has made me furious and heartsick. It also makes me feel painfully powerless, because there doesn't seem to be anything I can DO. At the same time, I know this is not true. I've done some small things, both now and in the past. I will try to do them in the future. I know I don't do as much as I could.

There's this fucking mountain and this big-assed rock to roll up it, and while mine is by no means the strongest shoulder, I am trying to push. I don't expect or deserve cookies for that, either.

And on that subject: if you see me fuck up, whether it be real life or fiction or whatever, please tell me. I do have the tendency to come to the conclusion that my shit don't stink, and look at how wonderful and sparkly I am, wonderful enlightened person that I am. I'm trying to become automatically suspicious of myself if I get to pleased with myself on the subject, but I'll take what help I can get.

I want to read more stories that make/allow me to see from different cultures and histories, instead of stories where all the Important Characters come from some white enclave in the stars.

(In the event someone doesn't know what I'm talking about here, see this post by popelizbet on LJ, and start following links.)

kdorian @ 2009-02-19T23:14:00

2009-02-20T04:15:44Z

"There are people who say they are vampires. And they are upset at other people who say they are vampires. Because the other people are faking it."

From here.

Aaand...

2009-02-17T02:00:42Z

...all of a sudden the net starts working again. Go computer!

I'm glad I didn't buy a new one yet.

Also: I'm restarting my writing challenge, starting Wednesday.

Also

2009-02-13T21:22:33Z

Anyone have any suggestions for a 'new' PC (which will probably be a refurbished, or a used off ebay)? How much disk space? What speed processor? How much RAM?

Note: I use my computer for internet, word processing, small games, and spreadsheets. I don't need anything fancy - just general home use by someone who tends to have 15 Firefox tabs, 1 game, and 3 IM programs open at the same time.

Anyone have experience with Open Office? Are documents and spreadsheets convertable back and forth with MS Office? Is someone used to MS Office going to have a lot of trouble converting?

headdesk

2009-02-13T20:19:49Z

My computer is no longer able to get online. Repair would cost as much as a new comp, so that's what we're doing.

Does anyone know if there are any computers for sale that still have XP? I do NOT want Vista!

Bah

2009-02-12T04:33:11Z

Class yesterday, class tomorrow, and computer problems tonight. No writing done, and I wanted to.

Today's word total

2009-02-09T04:41:39Z

80 / 250
(32.0%)

NaNoWriMo it's not.

2009-02-08T01:21:24Z

I'm going to try to write an average of 250 words a day for the next two weeks, starting tomorrow.

Self-imposed rules:

The writing must be part of one of the five stories I've already started. Anything that is part of a new story doesn't count. No, not even the one I've got plotted out for the Lost Boys fandom... (Makes a note to self that I need a title for that one.)
They must be NEW words. Writing and re-writing the same twenty words until they're perfect only counts as 20 words.
Any new writing that I delete that day does not count. Writing then destroying adds nothing to my totals.
Any old writing that I delete does not effect the total. If that scene has to go, it has to go. Unlike NaNo, it's not total word count I'm after here - I'm just pushing the actual writing part.
Writing something I don't like then waiting to the next day to delete it is cheating.
There is no rule six.
I can make up words I'm behind on days to bring my count up to where it should be. (I don't anticipate doing much writing on days I have class, for example.)
I cannot 'write ahead' - extra words don't count. If I suddenly come out with a scene of 2000 words, I still need to to 250 the next day.

Other rules will be added as needed.

0 / 3,500
(0.0%)

Quote of the day

2009-01-24T01:45:14Z

"On the scale of very bad ideas this scheme fell somewhere between “New Coke” and “Let’s store poisonous snakes in my pants!”"

The "Skippy" of the "Skippy's List" this links to, BTW, is THAT Skippy of THE "Skippy's List: 213 things Skippy is no longer allowed to do in the U.S. Army," which can also be found on the site (look for the link "THE List" at the top). Some of the stranger items on the list are explained at various points in the blog.

Snow Day

2009-01-20T20:36:29Z

It started to snow last night (or early morning, it was supposed to start around 1 am); by the time it was time to head out to work, we had 4+ inches on the ground. I might have been willing to drive it, but as it turned out my snow cables were too small for my current car, and the snow was on top of a layer of ice which was on top of a layer of water (melted ice/snow, because the ground wasn't frozen). So that didn't happen.

We did get out after watching the inauguration (which I would otherwise have missed watching). I got new cables, which I'll put on this evening after I pick up my sister, so she'll be able to do papers at two or three in the morning, when everything that's currently slush has turned back into ice.

I stopped by work after I dropped her off - I figured I could get a few hours in, anyway, but it turns out that everyone else was gone, so I went home. (Work requires that some sort of supervisor be there while I'm clocked in.)

The snow is tapering off and should stop soon. Depending where I measure, we got between 6.5 and 7.5 inches. Predictions were for around 4-6 inches in my area, so I suppose they didn't do too badly.

I was impressed by Obama's speech. It mixed hope with a good dose of realism; there is a hell of a lot to do to fix things, but nothing we are not capable of. I'm going to read the text of the speech (there were a few distractions while it was going on, and I missed a few things) and give it some thought.

Correlation is not Causation

Blah

Fucked up shit.

Have you seen this?

kdorian @ 2009-09-07T14:41:00

Rec

Ijay Help?

This is NEWS?

So Willow and I got chatting about ST Reboot...

Discovery!

Susan Boyle

kdorian @ 2009-04-03T21:25:00

The Spoon Game

Great quote of the day

Quote of the day

kdorian @ 2009-03-19T22:31:00

So I've been following along as best as I've been able...

kdorian @ 2009-02-19T23:14:00

Aaand...

Also

*headdesk*

Bah

Today's word total

NaNoWriMo it's not.

Quote of the day

Snow Day

headdesk