A Simple Way To Go Faster Than Light That Does Not Work

I am under the impression that several of this blog's readers have nonzero knowledge or interest in the topic of the Historical Jesus: the ancient Jewish prophet and rabble-rouser. No more divine than you or I, perhaps, but apparently possessing of a remarkable presence, and maybe a shocking orator for his time, so outrageous that the authorities saw it necessary to silence him.

To you I ask: if I wanted to read a really solid, secular account of the life of this man, where would I turn?

I suppose I would prefer non-fiction, but fiction is OK, so long as it's appropriately informed. Specific books and chapters of the New Testament are also OK to recommend. Assume I know nothing. I am coming at this not so much raw as tinted. I carry nearly 20 years of actively Christian education and upbringing and all its attendant assumptions in my personal baggage, and I have never really properly unpacked it.

(Is this for a project? Yes, it is for a project.)

Arrived at Fairfield yesterday. Sometime after I made the Zipcar reservation I became determined to shift my mind into a more graceful posture for this visit, a loose kung-fu pose of good cheer and readiness to casually flip any bad crap over my shoulder and onto the mat behind me. And really, I've been having an okay time! And truth to tell, it helps that Ricky's in fairly balanced humors.

Tried to teach the family Ticket to Ride yesterday. Ricky took to it quickly, and as with other games I could tell he liked it because he started telling stories within the confines of the game's rules. He'd draw additional train-car cards not because he needed to build up his hand, but because his men at the switchyard were getting restless with only one car to work on. Since TtR has such a narrow set of possible actions, you can play like this and still play well. When we play Batttle Cry or Memoir '44, he makes tactically terrible moves that give his opponent an advantage, but it furthers the story he's telling so it's OK by him.

I understand now that Ricky's much more interested in rules than gameplay as a whole. This is related to how he became enamored with Catholicism a few years ago, adopting many of its practices - regular mass, the rosary, confession, all of that - and continues to stick to them diligently. So much rigorous ceremony, things he can do every day! I can see the relationship between this and the small, reality-confining space of a game's ruleset, for one with a mind like RIcky's. It's a relief for him to step into, a way to tune himself down for a while, and I can't blame him for being more interested in exploring the rules than trying to win.

Via Making Light, a daily three-panel gag strip about Prometheus. Yes, that Prometheus. Enjoy.

(And here is every single strip so far on a single page.)

Th' junkie and I are gonna spend the day at the aquarium now. Laters.

classicaljunkie, Ricky and I were in my apt on Saturday evening. Ricky announces that he's going to Shaw's to get some sour cream, and leaves. CJ and I, who hadn't been alone together in a week, take advantage of our short span of solitude. About when we'd expect him to come back, Ricky re-enters the room to announce that he's going to Shaw's to get some sour cream.

Uh, sez I. Hadn't he just come back from doing that?

No, sez he; he had been in the kitchen, one room over, praying on his rosary.

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FAQ:
Wait, Ricky's Catholic?

Kinda. He more or less spontaneously started acting like a devout one a year or two ago, I think after hearing a Mass on the radio and liking what he heard. During his most recent two visits he's overcome his fears of strange neighborhoods to brave the 10-minute walk from my apt to the nearest Catholic church for Mass.

I gather that he takes comfort in all the rigorous structure of observant Catholicism's many repetitive prayers and rituals.

I got called out about insinuating in an earlier post that Romney would institute an ultrapatriarchal dystopia should he become POTUS. Listing my justifications for this hyperbole, I came to the realization that, while he is famously anti-abortion and anti-teh-gay[1], I wasn't able to name his stances on the big political-scientific issues. So let's do a little research, shall we?

Generally, I get the impression that he doesn't really give a shit about any of this stuff and is willing to say whatever his machine thinks the base - that magical 27 percent - wants to hear, with each position given the little "but we don't know for sure!" wink meant to mollify more moderate conservatives cough cough. But I did find at least one surprise here.

Global Warming: As his governorship started to morph into a presidential run, he publically mumbled that maybe there wasn't any global warming, and later backed the state out of environmental responsibilities. Now his campaign issues press releases talking about "the radical environmental ideas of the liberal left ".

Stem cells: Oh, I remember this now. He's been openly anti-stem-cell-research for years, telling researchers in his own state to stuff it. He hasn't changed his mind in current press releases, where he speaks of how, after he thought about it for a while, it became clear to him that stem cell research is a dead end, and nevermind what some ethically challenged eggheads up in their towers think.

Evolution: In a recent interview, Romney said he found it reasonable to believe that God set evolution in motion - a common position for non-backwards religious folks to take, and one I don't have much of a problem with. This surprises me, because it's not the obvious cynical "Teach the Controversy!" play to the jesus-base. Keep your eye on this one; it's a clear outlier and I bet it changes.

This all just confirms for me that Romney's down in the "I'd vote for a random number generator over this guy" category, much like our current president. I don't know if the lack of a bumbling-manchild vibe makes him more or less likable than GWB. But really, it doesn't matter.

[1] Yes yes, lol flip-flop. Listen, that's allowed. In 2004 I spit acid at those who mocked Kerry for changing his mind on positions ever, and I reserve the same treatment for those who challenge Romney on the same grounds. You get some spit in both eyes if you defended Kerry then and attack Romney now on this non-issue. There are so many more valid targets than this, folks.

* There's an really annoying bug with volity.net that isn't going away no matter how often I think I kill it. I am feeling really spring fevery and don't wanna fix it, but this afternoon's really the best time to do it.

* Ha ha ha I fixed it in the time between I wrote the above paragraph and now. No more blank game records.

* misuba sent the Andys and I some core web client code. We're going to look at it tonight duirng our regular biweekly meeting. The goal is to get a "Hello World" working demonstrably enough that we can check the whole thing into public Subversion. It's very important to me that this project go beta this year.

* Mailed first invoice to the new and magical client today. Mixing the advices of a random web page and taskboy3000, now that I have a plurality of clients I have stopped serially numbering my invoices and instead switched to the format TLAYYYYMMDD, where TLA is some three-letter code that reminds me which client this is. The date is the date I mailed the invoice. (Though it occurs to me now that there ought to be another digit there in case I need to mail two or more in one day. Hm.)

* Here is a talk by Vernor Vinge titled "What if the Singularity does not happen?" I listened to the MP3 version while lightly dozing on my couch below an open window last night.

* I am swinging back into a more active interest in transhumanism. I think step one is to investigate just what my feelings are. As much as I find attractive, there's a lot I find repellant, embarrassing fairly tales out of a 1988 issue of Omni. I owe myself an essay. The possible key phrase "make your own damn afterlife" came to me today, which appeals to me for personal reasons, though I'm not sure it fits perfectly.

Zarf has finished all the trumps (major arcana) for his SVG tarot deck. PNG preview here.

Why don't I have any tarot-cardy icons? I guess because I'd have to pick one to start with.

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Fact you may not have known about me: During my fifth and final year of college, and for a little ways after graduation, I was deeply involved in the cartomancy aspect of tarot, to the point where I believed that I experienced something mystical through it (and also to the point where, ten years later, I can still easily summon the word "cartomancy"). I was also under a tremendous amount of stress and confusion from various sources. No doubt these were linked, but I don't think the relationship of the two is merely symptomatic: screwing around with the cards helped me get through that rough time. Typical story of someone lonely employing religion, really.

I left it behind around the time I reconnected with friends, the people I think of as my Maine tribe, a couple of years after graduation. As things stabilized, I reëvaluated my spiritual standing and found that the woo-woo was no longer part of it. The deck I used for all that, a Robin Wood Tarot I bought from Silo Seven in Bangor, was repurposed for a while as a Zarcana/Gnostica deck, but I eventually retired it in favor of the Aquarian Tarot's far more mellow and game-appropriate imagery.

I still have it, though, up on my game shelf, in its original, beat-up box. I don't regret going through that period, though for a long while before now I was hesitant to admit to it. Learning the tradition of tarot and all its elemental symbolism was a lot of fun, and I still enjoy seeing it used as a source of fantastic stories. (And I have long held a solid association between the four core Volity Games folks - prog, daerr, radiotelescope, jtroutman - and the four suit-elements. Though this sort of thinking was inspired as much by the comic The Invisibles as by anything else.)

Lola@Cafe Rossini was trying to explain Easter and its role in America to a young foreign gentleman hanging out there, and, struggling to remember what its religious meaning was, got Good Friday mixed up with Passover. I remarked aloud at this impressive display of track-jumping. We have this kind of a relationship I suppose.

I have to do my taxes now. I am tickled that we New Englander get an extra day to do em coz the regional IRS office is in Boston, which is closed tomorrow due to the wacky Boston-only holiday of Patriot's Day.

Yesterday, in a church, Kibo told me that I was Philip K. Dick.