Below are the most recent 5 friends' journal entries.

Tuesday, December 15th, 2009
thegameiam	8:59p	False choices I've noticed a lot of very binary thinking in the public sphere lately. A recent example of this is the kerfluffle regarding Sen. Lieberman and the so-called "public option." The possibility that he might like some incarnation of a health-care bill which is not the one in front of him doesn't seem to even be a possibility to his detractors. Personally, I'm in favor of reforms, but not the reforms that Congress has written. I think that this bill would benefit from being taken to one of the oft-described "death panels" and buried, if I didn't fear that it would return, zombie-like, from the grave in search of the brains of the public. Only Congress themselves would have nothing to fear: it's the only organism I know of with 1070 legs and no brain. Many many folks are over-eager to take an "if you're not with us, you must be against us" approach. This is not an attractive phenomenon. Some more examples that I've seen have to do with the climate folks. There is a chain of logic which starts with "we have some temperature readings which show a long term warming trend" through "we know why that is" all the way to "if you don't agree with X proposal for changing this, then you are a bad person." However, those statements have independent truth values, not dependent ones, and in fact the logic connecting them is hardly inexorable. A person could agree with the first and disagree with the other two - but that approach doesn't even seem to get a seat at the table. Worse, I've encountered a non-trivial amount of sentiment along the lines of "oh, the climate guys are all nuts, so I'm going to go let my hummer idle in front of a hippie's house." This is hardly a good idea, because regardless of whether the carbon emissions are in the causal chain of a global warming trend, the smog from cars causes lots of well-documented unpleasant local effects, and the fuel for said hummer is disproportionally derived from places with disagreeable policies toward American interests. I get the sense that the adults have taken their football and gone home. I hope that this trend diminishes. Current Mood: tired Current Music: Porcupine Tree - My Ashes | Powered by Last.fm (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, December 11th, 2009
thegameiam	11:04a	On protectiveness Sarah and I were talking last night, and the subject of baby blankets came up. Sarah told me that it was completely normal to not let infants sleep with a blanket, and that this was well-known wisdom learned over the past several decade - something to do with preventing SIDS (a relevant issue in my family: I lost an uncle that way). I responded, as I am wont to do, quite skeptically - I certainly slept with a blanket as an infant, and I turned out okay (well, that's up for debate, but that's beside the point). So this morning, I decided to go seek out precisely the source of this idea. The hyper-over-protective Consumer Product Safety Commission has this to say: Consider using a sleeper or other sleep clothing as an alternative to blankets, with no other covering. If using a blanket, put baby with feet at the foot of the crib. Tuck a thin blanket around the crib mattress, reaching only as far as the baby's chest. Hm! Well, so that's an interesting recommendation - I wonder where that came from? The sources I find talk mostly about sleep position and relative socioeconomic factors. Interestingly, the American Association of Pediatrics has two contradictory statements in its recent publication - it includes SIDS is not … Caused by smothering. If a baby was found face down or with bedclothes over the face it might be thought that smothering was the cause of death. Sometimes babies are covered with bedclothes, but others are found uncovered and free of bedclothes entirely. While it is possible for an infant to smother accidentally — and the incidence of smothering appears to be increasing — this is still somewhat rare. Not uncommonly the child is lying undisturbed as when last put to bed. but it also includes the following recommendation in "steps to reduce the risk of sudden death": Bed behavior. Never place your baby to sleep on pillows, quilts, sheepskins, or other soft surfaces. This includes sofas, chairs, cushions, waterbeds, etc. Also, keep soft objects, toys, and loose bedding out of your baby’s sleep area. Don’t use pillows, blankets, quilts, sheepskins, and pillow-like crib bumpers in your baby’s sleep area, and keep any other items away from your baby’s face. And of further interest is that the Mayo Clinic does not list "suffocation" or "soft bedding" in their list of risk factors for SIDS. So from whence comes this recommendation? I don't know, but I suspect received folk tales from a time when suffocation was thought to be a major cause of SIDS. Qui bono? Well, the manufacturers of the "sleep sacks" and other such non-blankets certainly benefit, although I do not accuse them of instigating such a rumor. However, pretty much everyone involved in the baby-industrial-complex brags about how much safer their stuff is than everyone else's - "if you don't buy our X, then you're neglecting the safety of your child, and you wouldn't want to do that, would you?" It's exploitive and extortive, but unsurprising. Bill Willingham has a thought-provoking article about risk tolerance in society and its implications. Current Mood: thoughtful Current Music: Plastic Passion - We Have Come So Far | Powered by Last.fm (9 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, December 10th, 2009
thegameiam	10:51p	Kacy is just all right with me Sarah went to the National Integrated Health Associates last week, to seek further treatment about her Lyme disease and the attendant lingering problems. We've tried a lot of different things over the past three years, and going to NIHA was pretty much an "okay, now for the bazooka" approach to getting her better. NIHA does a lot of stuff which can safely be described as "fringy," so I (who could safely be described as "conservative") was expecting to feel like a missionary at a séance. Fortunately, there wasn't too much of that: the naturopath Sarah saw had a pretty good troubleshooting methodology. There were a couple of points when I wanted to stick my fingers in my ears and chant "la la la can't hear you" - i.e. the idea that an infrared sauna would be a good idea coming from the same folks who are worried about electromagnetic emissions... Here's a hint: deep infrared = microwaves. The reason that "infrared sauna" works is the same reason that a microwave oven cooks food. In any event, Sarah's got lots of scrips for really, really hardcore antibiotics (to treat the co-infection bordatella) and hardcore antifungals to get the other stuff. Yuck! I was glad that the naturopath pointed out that she should expect to feel worse for a couple weeks before she feels better. I'm hopeful that this might be the silver bullet that finally gets her around the corner. Current Mood: tired Current Music: Shinedown, "Energy" (Comment on this)
Wednesday, December 9th, 2009
thegameiam	9:10p	How do you say "meh" in English? Darwyn Cooke's adaptation of Richard Stark's Parker is pretty good. The art is fabulous, which is no surprise. However, the story (with which I was not previously familiar) is lacking: Parker himself is simply too effective as a badass. I found myself hoping that some of the later pages would include a beat-down or something which would actually stop him. Further, his personality is a little bit like that of De Niro's Max Cady - so filled with righteous indignation, and perfectly willing to kill anyone who stands in his way. Bleah. Apparently Parker was one of the characters on whom many other notable baddasses were based, but his lack of humanity makes him unappealing to me. I'll probably read the other books, simply because Cooke's storytelling is that damn good - he actually can make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. On the other hand, Terry Bisson's novel Pirates of the Universe didn't hold my attention (and I read books on philosophy and number theory by choice). Bisson created a frenetic world, lavishly described; however, the whole is substantively less than the sum of the parts. I didn't have the sense that Bisson actually followed his various ideas all the way through the world-building process: anyone can predict the car, only a visionary can predict the traffic jam or suburban sprawl. In addition, the protagonist has an "alice through the looking glass" passivity in the face of events transpiring, without conveying the sense of helplessness required for true satire (see Brazil, also with De Niro, for a good example of how to do that). Current Mood: happy Current Music: Buddy Rich - Mexicali Nose | Powered by Last.fm (2 Comments |Comment on this)
thegameiam	4:17a	da'at yahid part 3 I drink alone, yeah, with nobody else I drink alone, yeah, with nobody else You know when I drink alone, I prefer to be by myself. ---George Thorogood There are multiple ways to be alone. One way, obviously, is to not be near other people. The way that interests me now is not that: it's the solitude one experiences even surrounded by others. Some folks of a philosophical bent call this "existential loneliness" - the experience of being inherently unknowable by others. This isn't quite what I'm looking for: it's definitional and inherent to the human condition, uncorrectable, and while it's useful in the context of differentiating faith from other things, it doesn't have a whole lot of interpersonal lessons to teach. No, what I mean is a little more like the experience of seeing a public accomplishment of an acquaintance, and realizing that there is a side to them you had never realized existed - and then wondering what other sides there are of the people around you. I was recently told by someone "you never told me you felt that way"; part of my response was "you didn't ask." And yet, that answer is not fulfilling - there isn't a "give me a full dump of all your thoughts and feelings" question which someone even could ask, so clearly it isn't reasonable to expect them to do so. From whence comes this approach? I'm not sure that I understand the answer to that - I still stand by what I wrote about Brilliant Disguise three years ago: is there actually a self underneath the onionskin layers of personality? I've come to think of this more as the turtles all the way down regression to nothingness. But this too is unsatisfying, and worse, doesn't quite capture the essence of being alone in company. There are the internal monologues which are unspoken and unshared, the unvoiced and unasked assumptions about the meanings of the words and actions of others, etc. Perhaps the essence here is irreducible - Thorogood provides a clear example of the difference between being alone and being "by myself," but even his statements don't presuppose the state of being alone not in a crowd, but among friends. So where does this leave me? I think I'll be more inquisitive about the people around me. Current Mood: awake Current Music: none (Comment on this)