Category: Uncategorized

If you want to see what happens when I make a complete hash of communication, refer yesterday’s post.
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In the mail today, a great flyer that I’ve seen before but never hung on to. It’s the ‘Alternative Living’ flyer of Master Ching Hai’s God’s Direct Contact spiritual guidance centre. It’s essentially a nice promo about the benefits of vegetarianism, with a list of protein by weight from vege foods and on the flipside a list of vegetarian Nobel Laureates and Scientists.
(You can see a version of the promo here – be patient, the server is slow. If you’re really keen you can download the .pdf and print out your own copy.)
The reason why I love it is the kyoot cartoons of animals speaking to me! There is a chicken with chicks, and it says, We Pray for You! There is a pig and it says, Save our Lives! We Love You. There is a photo of a cow and it says, Thank You. And there is a dolphin too, it says Long Life to You.
Also the line: To stop the continuing gruesome sacrifice of billions of our sweet domestic animals, marine life and feathered friends daily, it’s wise to change to a vegetarian diet for good.
I heart this pamphlet. Although the pig that says it loves me kinda creeps me out.
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Reading Fisk’s Great War For Civilization still. Ploughing through the big chapter on Algeria. This is the first chapter I haven’t found myself eager to get back into, and I think it’s because I know absolutely nothing about Algeria – I have no frame of reference at all. (Which is kind of the point of the chapter.) Feeling not at all Fisked out, I should add. Over the half-way mark too!

(I remember where I was when I heard.)
There is no economy of tragedy. My brain rebels when I try and compare this disaster with that, one horrible event with another. 9/11 seems entirely of a piece with countless other terrible atrocities that have been visited upon innocents.
In terms of its impact, however, the felling of the WTC towers was a singular event. This was our cultural world despoiled. Nothing else in my lifetime comes remotely close. Perhaps the Blitz of London is the nearest referent I can imagine.
It casts a long shadow.
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Here in NZ, TVNZ screened last night ‘Path to 9/11’ part one and will follow tonight with part two. David McPhail, in his newspaper column last weekend, said we should all record it and keep it forever. If you’re watching it, be aware of the massive controversy over its content; at the very least, it is not as factual as it claims, and at most, it’s an outright distortion of history justifying a very right-wing mythology.
Wikipedia has a good overview.

This week has been mad busy, but positive-direction mad busy, not negative-direction. Achieved several key goals, wrote thousands and thousands of words, generally happy with life and work and life.
Finally got around to adding two new names to the blogroll. It would be three but I just checked the third and it looks like it doesn’t exist any more – hmm. In any case, at the bottom of the bloglist you’ll find Ado’s chap-in-London blog Suitable for Veges and Andrew’s chap-in-Auckland blog J.A.F.W. Good buggers the both of them.
Also, I’ve started an RPG game-design journal, because I’m doing a bunch of game-design stuff right now and doing some of it out in the open strikes me as both fun and worthwhile. It has generated 80-something comments inside of a week. Blimey. You can check that out over here:
http://gametime-nz.livejournal.com/
I invite you to check in if you’re into RPGs, or if you just want to see what a whole stack of really intense esoteric discussion looks like.

Been mad productive this week. Hating being away from the keyboard. It’s good to get on a roll like this.
Average time of going to bed these last three nights: 4am
Supplies have been dwindling here at Miss Marple Manor due to me being too disorganised to go shopping, but two things I did have in abundance last night were elbow pasta and cheese. So, I decided to whack out a big pile of that old faithful, macaroni cheese, to sustain me in my creative endeavours.
In a fit of sudden madness, I decided to google for a proper recipe (instead of just making the primitive race-memory macaroni cheese we Davies have been preparing since the time of Henry VIII). So I ended up on the BBC food pages, being instructed by the River Cottage guy to use oven gloves when I put things in the oven.
I didn’t follow the recipe with any great degree of precision, but I did learn a wee trick or two. And the macaroni cheese at the end was delicious. Definitely better than race-memory macaroni cheese. Better enough that it was worth the extra effort? Well, not really. Mac cheese is mac cheese. But it was fun to cook like a proper homo sapiens! (And: boys cook best.)
So it made me think of South Park. The one where the kids go off to Jew Camp and Moses appears to them in the form of the bad guy from Tron and tells them all in booming god-voice that he wants macaroni pictures.
Whatever happened to South Park? I used to love that show. Somewhere it just slipped off my caring radar completely. I understand new episodes are still being made. I think I’ve missed about five seasons. I dunno. Weird to go from *heart* to *huh* so quick.
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If you read through the loooong post on the Iran article, but missed Johnnie’s comment, go and read it. It does explain a few things.

Page B4 of the Dominion Post for Saturday September 2 2006 is entitled “Opinion”.
Opinions expressed include:
On Liam Ashley, the teenage offender beaten to death in a prison van by another prisoner:

• …one important point is being overlooked. If he had not stolen his mother’s car to go joyriding, none of the subsequent events would have happened
• Though it might seem to many that Liam Ashley died in vain, I beg to differ. Many young people today have no idea when they have stepped over the line… This is perhaps a timely lesson to young people – t’s a big bad world out there.

On Olaf Wiig, freed hostage in Gaza, who “converted to Islam” while in captivity:

• Congratulations to [Wiig’s wife]… when her husband Olaf – as a freshly converted Muslim – takes another three wives, she will be muchly relieved of her various home duties
• Olaf Wiig: death or Islam. You choose.

On the New Zealand Council for Civil Liberties ridiculing a proposed ban on hoodies by suggesting it would mean hats, sunglasses and burqas should also be banned:

• In this age of increasing lawlessness and with potential terrorists being apprehended by our closest neighbour, perhaps we would be right to suspect anyone who seeks to conceal their identity from security cameras.
• I keep seeing various pronouncements by the New Zealand Council for Civil Liberties… I cannot help but wonder whether it is a front for a terrorist organisation.

In response to a letter from the Iranian ambassador:

• The leaders and representatives of Arab nations continually blame everyone else for their problems except when they’re fighting among themselves, promoting worldwide terrorism or trying to unsuccessfully wipe Israel off the map…
• The Iranian ambassador’s response exhibits fully his diplomatic skills at avoiding facts and laying blame other than where it belongs. Israel wishes to live in peace within secure and recognised boundaries free from threats or acts of force… (this from Israel’s Honorary Consul; a better pot/kettle juxtaposition I’ve not seen in an age)

(And in the Dom Post’s “Last Word” section that runs on the page, apart from a frankly ridiculous attack on a silly cartoon, there is this piece of mind-numbing idiocy. The Human Rights Commission used the word “cheerios” in a newsletter and was contacted by lawyers protecting the trademark; the Last Word, perhaps in a desperate attempt to Ho Ho the fact that it is the HRC, chooses to lead the item with: “It seems that even cocktail sausages can have rights in these politically correct days…”)

Remember remember/the first of September/lambs and butterflies hurray!
It has been pleasant and sunny and even warm all week. Hurrah!
Last night I played in the third session of our four-part Mountain Witch game, and it kicked the ass something incredible. I am reminded almost every time I sit down to play why I so believe in this roleplaying business as a vector of serious fun, but man, this session put through one heavy payload of wild entertainment. Awesome, awesome, awesome. (Any Wellingtonians who are unconvinced of the funnitude of roleplaying games are invited to contact me and I shall show you one hell of a good time…)
Stuff I have enjoyed reading this week:
off-black has posted a list of conspiracies he believes in, conspiracies he doesn’t believe in, and conspiracies he’s undecided about
not-kate has posted what being a woman is all about, based on a visit to a ‘woman’s lifestyle expo’ over the weekend
the extremely positive reaction to Gregor’s Best Friends and Malc’s Cold City at Gen Con
Look out! He’s got a knife! continues to be your best source of Daily Goddamn madness – an essential start, middle, end and appendix to your day
and a journo on MSNBC delivered an *incredible* condemnation of Donald Rumsfeld – the transcript and video are both at the link
I have also enjoyed spying on my boss.
(I am going to see Snakes on a Plane tonight. 9.15, Embassy. You?)

Yesterday, I linked to an analysis that says voting in the US Senate is almost entirely driven by the senator’s position on economics – not on social issues.
I want to unpack that a wee bit more, because just pointing at it and saying Oh! doesn’t get us very far.
If we assume that the analysis is correct (and I suspect it is), does this mean that senators campaigning for election on the basis of their stance on social issues are being disingenuous? Or even, deceitful?
It is known that a lot of voting behaviour is based on perceived moral congruity between the voter and the candidate. (The book ‘What’s The Matter With Kansas’ says as much in its investigation of why Kansas keeps voting in people whose economic policies are disastrous for the state.)
Isn’t it, therefore, crucial for the legitimacy of the democratic process that voters understand their candidates will almost entirely be voting economically, not morally?
Perhaps. Perhaps not.
I suspect the key to this behaviour isn’t ignorance, it’s in the weighting assigned to different senatorial decisions. Sure, only 1 in 10 senate roll calls will turn on the candidate’s moral opinions – but if the voter believes these are the roll calls that matter, then that voter will be largely satisfied with their candidate even if the candidate acts against their interest on the other 9 roll calls.
A secondary factor driving this is economic confusion. Check out the logic :

• Economic issues are seen as complex. (And, let’s face it, it isn’t just perception – economic issues are complex.)
• On issues perceived as complex, all voters tend to accept the word of trusted authorities.
• All voters tend to place trust in authorities who share their moral outlook.
• Therefore, voters entrust their economic welfare to morally congruent authorities.

Thus we have the powerful US right wing. They have married conservative morality to a wealth-entrenching economics, knowing that one provides unthinking support for the other.
Yet there’s a further step. Some analysts think it’s no mere strategic positioning that has led to this marriage. The claim is that conservative morality goes hand-in-hand with this economic approach. Lakoff, for example, argues compellingly that every aspect of conservative policy is ultimately derived from a unified metaphor of morality.
Does this mean that conservative morality creates its own economic punishment? Is the economic extrapolation of conservative morality inevitably to the massive detriment of the very people who hold that morality?
I suspect this is so. Which puts us in a very odd position indeed.
I’m not sure where to go with this – it’s a shallow analysis, because I have a bunch of other stuff on my plate, and I’m uncomfortable pushing further without checking to see if I’ve messed up some crucial step along the way. But the logic seems clear to me right now at least.
This analysis says that everything is economic; I believe that forces us more into the realm of morality than before.
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Stephanie has done some further reading and provided a good link explaining the assignment of senators to positions on that chart. It’s jargon-heavy at the start but gets a lot clearer as it goes along, so stick with it. Thanks Steph!

(again via Making Light)
A chap in the US named Ben Hyde runs a blog where stats and politics get combined. This post here is absolutely fascinating.
In it, Hyde charts all the US Senators on a graph, based entirely on where they generally sit on social issues and where they sit on economic issues. It’s just like the political compass.
Then, for each senate vote, a line is drawn to separate the senators who voted yea from those who voted nay. Usually it isn’t possible to separate the two sides entirely with a line, but most of the time very few senators end up stuck on the wrong side. This shows it’s on to something interesting.
(The charts on his site show the line for lots of senate votes- it’s a half-meg changing chart so may take a moment to load. The one on the left shows all the senators that fit the line division, the one on the right-hand side shows all the senators that don’t – there are hardly any senators on the right-hand chart.)
Furthermore, you can tell how voting split from the angle of the line. If it’s up-down, then the split was based on economic issues; if it’s left-right, the split is based on social issues.
Then it gets very very interesting indeed. Hyde says:

The model is extremely accurate; around 95% these days. Amazingly you don

Making progress on the deadlines. Yesterday was particularly productive. I am enthused. It pleases me that I can sit down and write game stuff to a hazy outline knocked up months ago, and have it come out as something that I think is a damn good resource and an amusing read to boot. I’m trying to push myself here, not settle for something I’ve seen before, and it feels like it’s working. (Although in six months I’ll be cringing at it; that’s how these things work.)
Likewise, other work – it’s becoming increasingly clear that I finish assignments at the moment I fully understand them, and vice versa. Which is a nice realisation.
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Further to the Conspiracy Guff posts of the last few weeks about the Exploding Shampoo Plot, in my web catch-up I’ve found a fantastic article at Making Light that summarises the whole kerfuffle with plenty of relevant outgoing links.
Highlights:

• El Reg points out the plot is technically unfeasible – liquid bombs are the stuff of action movies, not real world activity
• Paul Krugman in the NYT analyses how the Bush administration has used fear as a political tool throughout its existence
• Ned Lamont as target of three-minutes hate
• The Washington Post on the Bush admin increasingly avoiding all press contact and scrutiny (again, the story of this political era is the failure of the media)
• and a link to a followup article by Craig Murray, whose first article was the focus of my last post on this subject.

Check it out.
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The artist formerly known as Comic Shop Andrew as a zombie. More pics elsewhere at the site.
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More airplane madness:
Dude in t-shirt with Arabic writing on it forced to change before being allowed on plane