Crow Feathers

Great story on an effort to support local agriculture

2008-10-16T08:55:00.000-07:00

Uniting Around Food to Save an Ailing Town

The Devil Who Sells You Prada

2007-09-19T13:14:00.000-07:00

Interesting interview with Dana Thomas about her book, "How Luxury Lost its Luster".

I think the ultimate effect of this is that the true cognoscenti will be abandoning Prada etc. and buying their goods from little hole-in-the-wall companies that still make stuff by hand. When the luxury brand name is so diluted that it's become a mass brand without a luxury cachet, the people who can afford well-made stuff will spend the money for something that nobody else has -- a really hand-made leather satchel or hand-sewn suit.

The Entitlement Generation

2007-05-14T05:00:00.000-07:00

Franklin's post about an encounter with a college student with an overwhelming sense of entitlement is, as usual, just perfect.

It makes me realize that my email encounter with a twit about something on my website wasn't really an isolated incident. Yes, some people really DO have an overwhelming sense of entitlement, and have no idea how rude they are.

I feel relieved, and somewhat justified. (Well, I felt justified before, but now even more so.)

The short version:
Twit emails me ~~asking~~ demanding that I take down pictures/descrition of an item from my website, as she now owns the item (a piece of vintage clothing), and my having a description and photos of the item on my website (taken, with permission, from the website of the person who was offering the item for sale) constitutes copyright infringement.

Um, no.

a) I had permission from the person who wrote up the description of the item and took the pictures (i.e., it was her intellectual property), and that person has not rescinded her permission. The reason I posted the pics / description in the first place is that the seller didn't want the additional traffic that would be caused by my simply putting up a link.

b) You can't own "copyright" on a 200+ year old item of clothing, especially one as common as this one. It's public domain. The design is not copyrighted, nor could it be.

c) Ms. Twit was confusing physical ownership of the item with ownership of any intellectual property pertaining to that item. (Yes, really. We went around and around on this point, several times.) I told her that what she was demanding was the equivalent of telling an author they had to retract any articles they'd written about an item when one museum sold it to another.

Oh, and sis, before you contradict me again, yes, she was really rude; no, she had no idea what copyright law said on the issue, and yes, I will send you all the relevant posts if you really want to see what I'm talking about.

"A Troubling Thought"

2007-04-24T13:29:00.000-07:00

Rod Dreher says, more eloquently, some of the things I was trying to say last week.

"It's Not Just Pet Food"

2007-04-24T05:01:00.000-07:00

Another reason to eat less processed food: ingredients from China that go into much of our processed food and vitamins aren't well-regulated, and likely contain heavy metals and other harmful substances.

Oh, yay. Well, given my allergies, I don't eat a lot of processed foods anyway, but I do take vitamins. Think I'd better start looking at where those vitamins come from.

Radioactive

2007-04-23T09:53:00.000-07:00

A friend recently started treatment (radiation, chemo) for cancer. She shaved her head preemptively, and is refusing to wear "cute" chemo hats etc., opting instead for a baseball cap. Her SO says she looks better bald than Britney (which wouldn't take much, frankly).

I ordered her a tshirt with the radiation symbol on it. I think it'll suit her twisted sense of humor.

Heck, what else can you do in the face of Death but flip him the finger?

The Vortex, 2

2007-04-19T05:25:00.000-07:00

Ok, this kid, Cho, was beyond the edge -- he'd been living IN the Vortex for a long time, and the system failed to help him or prevent him from hurting others.

It's apparently very difficult in Virginia to get someone psychiatric treatment if they're delusional and refuse treatment. That needs to change. The kid who shot up the police station in Chantilly is another case in point, and there were a number of articles and essays in the Post about how hard it is for the parents of mentally ill kids to get their kids proper treatment; the kids wind up being a danger to themselves and others. This is the latest instance.

The law used to make it possible to commit people who were not mentally ill, which was wrong. But now it's gone too far in the opposite direction. I hope the state of VA takes a serious look at this.

---------------------------
The rant he mailed to NBC is interesting. He targets rich kids and our consumerist culture. That certainly doesn't justify his actions, but it's clear that alienation and bullying aggravated whatever else might have been wrong with his brain.

The opposite of alienation is connectedness/community. He was uprooted at a young age (8) and thrown into a completely alien environment. That's a difficult experience even for kids who don't have mental health issues. Some come through it (Cho has a brother who is, by all accounts, highly successful), but in this instance, maybe it pushed a fragile child further toward being broken.

The Vortex

2007-04-17T04:57:00.000-07:00

Re: the VT shooting --

So all the chirpy media types are going on about "how could this happen?" I want to smack them upside the head and say, "Fuckin' DUH". Another poor kid was teetering on the brink of the abyss of rage, alienation and despair, and fell in. It was suicide. Only he decided to take other students with him, which is the difference between him and, say, a random student who might have hung himself or taken pills. You never hear about those kids on the national news, because they go quietly. This one decided to go with a splash.

--------------------------------------------------------------
From "Dark Matter: The Psychology Of Mass Murder" in today's Post:
"They're not looking for highs -- they're depressed, angry and humiliated. They tend to be rejected in some romantic relationship, or are sexually incompetent, are paranoid, and their resentment builds. They develop shooting fantasies for months or years, stockpiling dreams and ammunition. The event that finally sets them off, Welner says, is usually anticlimactic -- an argument, a small personal loss that magnifies a sense of catastrophic failure.

"But they don't 'snap,' as you so often hear people say," Welner says. "It's more like a hinge swings open, and all this anger comes out."

They plan everything about the killings, he says, except how to get away.

"It's about suicide," Welner says. "It's about tying one's masculinity to destruction."

It's also rare for them to be truly psychotic, he says."
--------------------------------------------------------------
So. Alienation, disconnection, frustration, rage. Modern dis-eases, sicknesses of the soul.

Most of us dance around the vortex. Many of us develop ways to cope. Some don't. The difference between the shooter and the rest of us isn't that big. Or maybe the difference is that we're hanging on to hope with our fingernails. Dostoyevski's little oak leaves in the spring, the damned dandelions popping up their optimistic yellow heads despite death, destruction and Roundup. You just have to keep going.

April is the Cruellest Month

2007-04-17T04:50:00.000-07:00

I. THE BURIAL OF THE DEAD

APRIL is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
Winter kept us warm, covering
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
A little life with dried tubers.

....

Ich bin ein curmudgeon

2007-04-11T05:51:00.000-07:00

People suck. In particular, I've been dealing with two people -- one is a friend, one a complete stranger -- who attacked me for doing things they thought were wrong. In the first instance, the friend is a known "sea lawyer" (i.e., someone with no legal background who gets into arguments on subjects he knows nothing about), and he tried to tell me I was "price fixing" when I was simply negotiating my wholesale price with someone who wanted me to make an item for his shop (it's not price fixing if you aren't the sole supplier, and I'm not). In the second instance, I was attacked by someone (and yes, I mean attacked -- you should see the emails) out of the blue for posting something on my website that I have full permission from the author to post. The attacker now owns the item in question, having bought it from the author, and thinks she owns all the intellectual property pertaining to that item as well. Which is ridiculous.

Yeesh.

You know, being an author (even of a relatively obscure book) can be a real pain in the ass. I have no delusions of grandeur about this book. It's netted me a few thousand dollars, which has paid for my garden beds and some plants and otherwise paid off some bills. It's been a modest success in the hobby. But I still have to go to work every day to pay the bills, and I still put my socks on one foot at a time. I don't like the kind of fawning adulation I get from some people; any competent writer participating in the hobby could have written the book. It's not that big a deal. Worse yet are the few people I run into who think they have to score points off me by proving me wrong in an argument. That's just dumb, and ugly.

All this has put me off writing any more books. I really should write #2, and get it published, but there you are.

I can only imagine what a huge pain it would be if one were a truly famous person. Makes you understand some of the famously reclusive authors. At least I have the option of switching hobbies and being completely unknown again.

B.C.: Johnny Hart is an Ass.

2007-03-16T04:37:00.000-07:00

Johnny Hart is an ass.

Today's comic: One character (a caveman, fittingly enough) says "Show me a magpie of a wife who hasn't said a word in three weeks...", and the other answers, "And I'll show you a husband who's running seriously low on duct tape."

His comic strips routinely make fun of women. Since Hart is a well-known Christian fundamentalist, this is obviously his idea of being a "good witness" to the Gospel. Sort of like having a bumper sticker that says "God is my Co-Pilot" and then cutting people off in traffic, eh, Hart?

RIP Sparky

2006-09-05T06:08:00.000-07:00

He was a very good dog.

Cats that look like Hitler

2006-08-05T18:23:00.000-07:00

Here

Now they need dogs who look like Mussolini, or something.

I love Caller ID

2006-08-03T13:22:00.000-07:00

Apparently we got a telemarketing call from the Dove Foundation. We didn't actually answer the call, but their number is now blocked.

More on this fraudulent organization here.

American Thermidor

2006-07-28T18:45:00.000-07:00

American Thermidor
"...There is a strong sign that the political tide has turned, away from the 25 year belief that "a tax cut is a pay raise" – and towards the belief that a market owned by corporations isn't really free."

Amen. More here.

I'm embarrassed that I had to look up Thermidor.

Clothing

2006-07-26T06:59:00.000-07:00

I have been feeling rather insecure about clothing lately. I think there are several factors involved:
a) It's summer. I usually hate summer fashions. They show too much skin for office wear (IMO), and I also hate the usual summer colors, which are way too "cotton candy" for my taste, which runs toward more muted colors. Never mind that I really hate current fashions, too -- way too late '70s/early '80s. I remember that stuff the first time around, and had to wear them as thrift-store buys in early high school days, so I associate those styles with penny-pinching and tight budgets, never mind that they're just plain ugly.

b) There's a contingent of young, skinny, fashionable girls in my office, and I feel like an elephant next to them, because, at 5'7" and with fairly wide shoulders/hips, I'll never be that willowy, even if I dropped 20 lbs. I've also never been that fashionable, even when I was their age. (Yes, this is really more about my state of mind than about them; so it's fixable.)

I used to get the J. Jill catalog, but they stopped sending them to me because I couldn't bring myself to pay that much for their clothing. They make beautiful stuff, but it has always seemed too expensive to me. Another thing that put me off (which is silly) is that they seemed to be marketing to "women of a certain age". I think, however, that I'm going to start keeping an eye out for sales and shopping for their clothes on Ebay. Their styles are (relatively) timeless and graceful, and probably won't need fall out of fashion too quickly.

And, well, at 37 years old, maybe I am a "woman of a certain age." Nothing wrong with that.

Twit Olympics

2006-07-19T05:53:00.000-07:00

It's becoming more and more obvious that our Dear Leader is the American equivalent of the Upper Class British Twit. Also see RW's comments at Cunning Realist about what it means to be a legacy -- social promotion, being given a "pass" even when you don't deserve it. Obviously ok for the upper classes, not so much for everyone else.

Joss Whedon's Strong Women

2006-07-19T04:20:00.000-07:00

on YouTube, via Slacktivist

Sake review

2006-07-17T12:19:00.000-07:00

Ok, I'm not a sake connoiseur. We drink the house brand when we go out. I'm much more conversant with single malt scotch.

That being said, I went out with friends last Saturday to a sushi restaurant that had a pretty extensive (and expensive) sake list, and we decided to buy two bottles to see what they were like. One bottle was unfiltered sake, which I hadn't tried before; the other was a filtered sake that was said to have won awards. Both were served cold. Neither was very good.

Here's what we bought:
Unfiltered
Kuromatsu-Hakushika
Nigori Sake
Snow Beauty
Product of Nishinomiya Hyogo, Japan
Produced by Tatsuuma-Honke Brewing Co.
Alcohol: 15-15% by volume

Filtered
Hakushika Junmai Ginjo
Product of Nishinomiya, Japan
Produced & Bottled by Tatsuuma-Honke Brewing Co.
Alcohol: 15-15% by volume

The problem with the unfiltered sake is that it tasted pasty to me -- but also had such a strong taste that it was difficult to drink. The pasty texture reminded me of pepto bismol.

The filtered sake had less taste than I'm used to in sake. Maybe it's because it was served cold -- that might tone down the "nose" on the sake. It really was overwhelmed by the sushi, though, which is not a good thing.

We wound up mixing the two half-and-half to get something palatable, which is probably a major crime in Japan. But at least we got through dinner.

Funny tshirts

2006-07-07T09:49:00.000-07:00

at Noisebot.com

Zencast

2006-07-05T12:50:00.000-07:00

Zencast

I'm listening to the one on "Doubt" right now. The speaker just mentioned that Zen doesn't really encourage too much self-examination, because you get too caught up in a swirl of thoughts and feelings and it distracts from the practice of mindfulness (awareness).

Sounds true (for me, anyway). I get pulled into that vortex very easily; it's unproductive. Better just to drop it and move forward.

um, what kind of muffin was that, again?

2006-06-30T18:25:00.000-07:00

You ain't seen nothin', from Slacktivist

When I first saw the phrase "Prairie Muffin", I was thinking, "these women would name their organization after cow pies?" Apparently there are other meanings to the term "muffin". "Muff", I've heard. Hadn't heard the other term used in a sexual context, but I guess it's a natural extension of the phrase.

Anyway. Ooof. I'd be inclined to think the whole thing was a spoof, except that I do know people like this who are quite serious.

I don't know why I bother.

2006-06-30T12:43:00.000-07:00

I called a coworker to tell her some news about an upcoming departmental restructuring, and she immediately imputed the worst possible motives (power grab) to the parties in question. I disagree; the restructuring makes sense, and I've been wondering for a while why they hadn't moved in that direction before.

This coworker has a poison tongue, and always comes up with the worst motives possible for any action. Granted, she has good reason to be paranoid -- she's obnoxious, and has pretty much worked her way down the corporate ladder. "Just because you're paranoid, doesn't mean they're not out to get you" definitely applies to her. But it's her own fault -- she's made her own bad luck.

Oh, well. 'Nuff venting. I told her I refuse to speculate about matters that I can't change and which probably won't directly affect my workload.

Crunchy Frog, anyone?

2006-06-29T18:01:00.000-07:00

Hotlix Candy

2006-06-29T17:02:00.000-07:00

Who Should Paint You: Salvador Dali

You're a complex, intense creature who displays many layers.
There's no way a traditional portrait could ever capture you!

What Artist Should Paint Your Portrait?

Funny, I never did like Dali very much... Go figure!