Rumblings From the Speaker

Stop SOPA Before it Stops the Internet!

noreply@blogger.com (SpeakerToManagers) — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 06:58:00 +0000

Steve Jobs: Say What you Want About Him, He's Left the World Changed.

noreply@blogger.com (SpeakerToManagers) — Sat, 08 Oct 2011 05:08:00 +0000

Steve Jobs is gone now, but the engine of change he built is still there, and still changing the world.

I met Jobs and Wozniak once, in the mid-seventies when they demonstrated the Apple 1 at a meeting of the Homebrew Computer Club at Stanford. Jobs seemed pretty intense to me, especially as I thought at the time that the Apple 1 was not powerful enough to be a useful computer and so was not worth the intensity. At that same meeting I had conversations with Victor French and Lee Felsenstein, and a long discussion about portable computers with Adam Osborne (and tried lifting an Osborne 1 prototype; at 25 pounds it was not by my definition a "portable computer"). At the time, Jobs and Wozniak faded into the background for me.

Over the next few years I worked with some of the technologies that went into the Lisa and the Macintosh¹, so when they were released I was a lot more sympathetic to their strategies. Since then I've owned 7 Macintosh desktops and laptops, as well as numerous iPods, and an iPhone, and I've very carefully watched how Jobs has used the advance of power and functionality to aid his main goal: producing computers which are intended to be used by people who are not technologists, as tools to get their work and play done. This goal is one of the reasons I became involved with personal computing in the 70s, and why I continued to work with computers of that class and the software that runs on them. It's been inspiring to watch how Jobs and his associates have grown these technologies to the point where they can be used as part of life's routine by average users, and as part of dealing with life's more special challenges by not-so average users².

A lot of words have been spilled about Apple's superior product design; there's a lot more to this than just good looks or good mechanical design. Apple's engineers and designers approach each product as a system, where good design has to include digital electronics, software, mechanical design, thermal packaging, noise management, and other aspects of the device as interacting and interdependent components. Several years ago I bought a flat-panel version of the iMac. My first act, after booting it up and confirming that it worked, was to open it up to upgrade the memory to its maximum. I took the opportunity to give the interior a careful examination, and was impressed to find that for engineering and design purposes, the iMac was a laptop with a slightly larger form-factor. All the lessons about mechanical and thermal design, and reliability that Apple had learned in the 5 or 6 generations of laptops up to that time had been applied to the iMac. This emphasis on systems design was a part of the demand of excellence that Steve Jobs made a point of in defining and marketing Apple products.

Many people have talked and written about Steve Jobs' eager grasp of the methods of marketing and capitalism, and his use of closed systems to increase his products' sales and profits. But I see all of the dealing and conniving and pursuit of profit as ways to bring to the market the tools that he envisioned as the basis for a widespread and long-term application of computers to the daily problems of large numbers of people. And I think that attaining this objective, and leaving behind an organization that will continue to follow his path for some time to come, is quite a bit of success for any one human lifetime, and certainly worthy of admiration.

^1. I got to use some Xerox Parc machines, including an Alto and a Magnolia, and (briefly) a Xerox Star, as well as several Tektronix computers based on the Parc designs. So I got early looks at bitmapped graphic displays with window GUIs using mice. And in 1983 I was hired by Tektronix to design a window-managed graphic system for their line of computer workstations.

^2. Since the late 1980's I've had a vision of a handheld computer that could effectively amplify the intelligence and memory of a user, whether to give people with special needs a boost up to more effectively live in the wider world or to give average people the tools to overcome some of the obstacles placed in their paths by the upper classes³; the iPod Touch/iPhone is that computer.

^3. One of the nastier tactics in the Class War is the way in which lower class people are pushed and persuaded to not use their money effectively; there are a number of apps for iPhones that make it easy to search for needed products and services at the best prices, and to budget money and find the best ways to pay for needed purchases so as to avoid usurious loans and gouging fees.

Two Movies: of Beauty and Evil

noreply@blogger.com (SpeakerToManagers) — Mon, 03 Oct 2011 18:02:00 +0000

A couple of weeks ago I watched a movie called Water, and a couple of days later I watched another one called Never Let Me Go. Although they're very different movies in many ways: Water was made in India, and takes place in Varanasi on the Ganges in 1938, and Never Let Me Go takes place in an alternate history late 20th Century England, they are visually and dramatically beautiful films made with great craft. and they are both about societies which accept, even profit from, great evil. I was deeply moved by both films, and couldn't escape being seriously disturbed by the evil in both. Strangely, I had not heard of either one before watching them (I usually at least read a review in the local paper of any new movie, though I've been missing them more lately because we've been going to the theater perhaps once a year), but after watching the second one I immediately thought of their similarities. I'll talk more about the films and why they are alike after the cut. Caution: there are spoilers for both movies.

Water was released in 2005, directed and story written by Deepa Mehta, an Indian-born director living in Canada. It's the story of a group of widows forced to live in poverty in a temple on the Ganges, set against the backdrop of the struggle for independence as Ghandi travels by train to rally the people of India to the cause. It's important to understand the place of widows in Hindu society at this time: they effectively had none. Many of them were married in early childhood (as early as 4 or 5) to men much older than themselves, and widowed before they became old enough to meet their husbands. Once widowed they have the same status as their husbands: they are dead to both his family and their own; they may not work, they may not interact with men other than priests or holy men of some kind, and they may not marry again. And, as a priest explains to one of them late in the movie, these strictures were created so that the widows would not have to be supported by their families: it's all about money.

The main plot revolves around one of the widows, Kalyani, who is young and beautiful, and who has been pimped out by the leader of the widows for money to run the household. Narayan, a young Brahmin and follower of Ghandi falls in love with Kalyani and asks her to marry him, in defiance of his father and mother (not only is she a widow, she is also lower caste). Around this story, and woven through it, is the story of Chuyia, a seven year-old widow who is delivered to the widows' ashram by her parents at the beginning of the movie. She refuses to accept her status, rebelling, throwing tantrums, and winning Kalyani's affection and the grudging respect of some of the other widows.

The movie was filmed in ultrawide screen, and uses the format to the fullest, especially in the shots on the banks of the river. As far as I could see, all the shots, interior and exterior, day and night, were shot in available light (with some practical lighting in lanterns, and perhaps some reflector work, to highlight faces). Despite the low light levels the image quality is crisp; there's no more grain or noise in the night shots than the day. The palette is primarily earth tones and whites in the day shots, and blue-white and dark grays for the night shots. The resultant images are often quite painterly. Composition of the fixed camera shots is mostly very strong and simple, with bold foreground figures; some of the tracking shots are breathtaking, going from strong composition to strong composition through intermediate stages which are all equally strong. This movie really is a feast for the eyes.

The acting is almost uniformly excellent: all the characters, even the supporting characters, of whom there are more than 10, are portrayed with depth and care. This is the result of superior work on the part of all the actors and the writer/director. For instance, the leader of the widows, who maintains strict control of the actions of all the widows, cajoling and forcing conformance to the customs and rules of widowhood, and who breaks those rules by pimping one of her charges in order for the ashram to survive, is shown as more than a flat character containing nothing but evil. The role of complete evil is reserved for the men who demand and maintain the state of the widows for their own convenience, especially Narayan's father, who is revealed by the end of the movie to be a whoremonger and pedophile.

Never Let Me Go was adapted from a novel by Kazuo Ishiguro. It is the story of three English children, Kathy, Tommy, and Ruth. They start the movie as students at a boarding school in the English countryside. Over the years they come to form a group, in which both Kathy and Ruth fall in love with Tommy, though Ruth deliberately steals Tommy from Kathy before Kathy admits her love. Shortly before graduation one of the teachers tells the children that they have been raised to be organ donors, and will die ("reach completion") before they are 30. They, the children around them, and all the adults in the school and outside, with the exception of the teacher who revealed their fate seem to accept this fate as fair and ethical.

After graduation Tommy and Ruth prepare to donate their organs, and Kathy becomes a "carer", someone who assists donors in accepting donation. By the end of the movie there have been mild objections to donation by a couple of ex-teachers from the childrens' school, which was shut down in favor of other techniques of raising donors which give them even less of a glimpse of life than Tommy, Ruth, and Kathy got. And at the end Tommy and Ruth have "completed", and Kathy is preparing for her first donation.

The acceptance with which the death of the children (who by this time are in their 20's but cannot be said to have been allowed to grow into a normal adult life) is viewed by the society they live in is truly horrifying; doctors, teachers, psychiatrists and other "caregivers" do their utmost to ensure that the donation process goes smoothly, sure in the knowledge that they will benefit from health organs should they become sick. Unlike in most other stories about oppression written in the West, especially in American science-fiction, there is no Resistance, no cabal of revolutionaries to save the donors. Why, people ask themselves in this alternative England, should we rebel against a policy that is so beneficial to us?

This movie is also very well mounted, though it's not quite so showy in its cinematography or its imagery. It's shot in standard widescreen format with pastel palette. Colors are not artificially desaturated, but they're not vivid; exterior shots are primarily in rural scenery with lots of light greens and interior shots contain a lot of blacks and whites. The result is an understated visual style which underscores the horror of the childrens' fate. The music is uniformly sad, at times almost wrenching in its emotional content.

The acting by the three principle characters is largely underplayed; they accept their fate and so believe they have nothing to regret about their lives and their deaths. They don't show deep emotion most of the time, because they've been raised in as stress-free a manner as possible, and their dialog and body language reflects this.

In both movies the theme of deeply-seated discrimination against a group of people based on the benefit to the rest of society, coupled with great, and largely unthinking, cruelty is contrasted to and underlined by visual beauty and understated action. This was, I think, a carefully-considered strategy by the filmmakers in both cases, and in both cases I think it's extremely successful. I highly recommend both movies, because of their themes and their craft. And I hope that other filmmakers follow their example in making films about horrific events and situations, whether fictional or real. Hitting the viewer over the head with a club has its place and its purpose (see Schindler's List or Carpenter's The Thing for good examples) but often the needle or the scalpel can do more with less.

Snarks in a M*F** Text!

noreply@blogger.com (SpeakerToManagers) — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 18:17:00 +0000

Via Pharyngula, a generator for Lorem Ipsum babble text in the mode of Samuel L. Jackson. After the cut, because, after all, it sounds like Samuel L. Jackson.

Uuummmm, this is a tasty burger!

You think water moves fast? You should see ice. It moves like it has a mind. Like it knows it killed the world once and got a taste for murder. After the avalanche, it took us a week to climb out. Now, I don't know exactly when we turned on each other, but I know that seven of us survived the slide... and only five made it out. Now we took an oath, that I'm breaking now. We said we'd say it was the snow that killed the other two, but it wasn't. Nature is lethal but it doesn't hold a candle to man.

No, motherfucker

Normally, both your asses would be dead as fucking fried chicken, but you happen to pull this shit while I'm in a transitional period so I don't wanna kill you, I wanna help you. But I can't give you this case, it don't belong to me. Besides, I've already been through too much shit this morning over this case to hand it over to your dumb ass.

Uuummmm, this is a tasty burger!

Congratulations Are In Order!

noreply@blogger.com (SpeakerToManagers) — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 23:52:00 +0000

I just got an email from my older son, telling me that he and his wife were both unanimously voted tenure by the members of their department at LSU. It's not official yet, there's lots of administrivia yet to be done, but that was the most critical step in the process. This has been one hella summer for them: first the baby and now a major step in both their careers. We're incredibly proud of them.

More Pictures of Ellie

noreply@blogger.com (SpeakerToManagers) — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 02:47:00 +0000

I've uploaded all the pictures I took last week of Ellie to Picassa. There are two albums, "Ellie #1" and "Elllie #2". Link here.

My Grandchild ...

noreply@blogger.com (SpeakerToManagers) — Thu, 15 Sep 2011 21:51:00 +0000

My grandchild is, of course, the cutest baby in the universe. She's just shy of 4 months old, and already knows all about performing, and holding the attention of the crowd. She's a happy baby, only cranky when she gets overtired or hungry. She's good with strangers, and strangers (or at least the grandparents she's never seen before) graduate to friends and family very quickly. Here's one picture, to give you a sense of why she's the best baby there is :-)

That's Eva (Grandma) holding Ellie. As you might expect, I've got about 60 or 70 more pictures of her, and I'll probably take a bunch more before we go back home on Monday. I'll start putting them up on the net, on either Flickr or Picassa most likely, in the next day or two.

Her name is Ellie, short for Ellanor (combining Ella Fitzgerald and Nora Jones, two of her parents' favorite singers. She seems to be quite at home in the heat and humidity of the Louisiana summer (which is more than I can say for myself). She really wants to get up and boogie, or at least crawl, and not being able to frustrates her sometimes. I think she's going to be a great kid, even discounting my prejudices.

UPDATE: There are more photos on my Flickr photo stream: Ellie at 3 1/2.

Travels and Home Maintenance

noreply@blogger.com (SpeakerToManagers) — Fri, 02 Sep 2011 23:45:00 +0000

Just so you know why my posts and comments are going to be coming in sporadic bunches: we're simultaneously getting ready to go to Louisiana for a week to meet our brand-new grandchild and boxing up everything in the bottom floor of the house so we can move it all out and have the floors redone. What we have right now is really crappy grey carpet, which picks up dog smells like you wouldn't believe, and is currently several shades darker than it was when we first moved in (and cleaning it helps only temporarily). And since kids and grandchild are coming to visit us here in a month or so, we need to toss the carpet. Also, because our TV set is an old CRT model that weighs more than 150 pounds, and even together the two of us can't move it, let alone carry it upstairs, we're going to replace it with a flatpanel and let the recyclers haul it off. So there'll be lots to do in RL here for the next couple of weeks, and not much time to push electrons around. But if nothing else I'll post some pictures from Louisiana by the time I get back.

Give Me That Old Time Politics (A Modest Proposal)

noreply@blogger.com (SpeakerToManagers) — Thu, 18 Aug 2011 02:11:00 +0000

Unlike half the (semi-)civilized world I haven't yet posted anything in my blog about the political singularity¹ in US politics that occurred a little while ago in the Great Deficit Debate². That's mostly because I'm thoroughly disgusted by the sheer stupidity, cupidity, and general malfeasance our political "representatives" have shown. But I have a modest proposal that might prevent such disasters in the future, one I first came up with many years ago, in a simpler time, when the crimes of our masters were simpler and perhaps more easily dealt with (and I didn't think my proposal was entirely justified. Now I do). After the cut, I'll give you the grisly details.

^1. Where "singularity'is defined as a change in technology or culture so great and so rapid that no one trying to forecast its effects beforehand can possibly do so. I think I can safely say that no one was crazy enough to predict as recently as a year ago the particularly insane and unnecessary game of "button, button, who's got the nuclear button" on the Republican side of the deficit debate countered by the response of "we win by caving in" that the Democrats and the President replied with.

^2. It's clear to me that the deficit is in their intelligence, not in our budget.

My idea harks back to the ancient era of the Greek city-states, when rulers were chosen by trial, often trial-by-combat, and the virtue of a great leader was considered a valuable resource, not to be squandered. So I suggest that from now on we select our leaders with great care, in competitive examinations of their knowledge, intelligence, physical prowess, and character, and allow them a single, fixed term of office, during which they can be challenged by others who believe themselves superior, so that we will always have in office the most qualified of all those who've sought the positions. And then at the end of their incumbency, whether they've lost out to a challenger or gotten to the end of their allotted time in office, we should hold a grand celebration, a feast in commemoration of their service to the nation, and there, amid toasts and laudatory speeches ... kill them and eat them.

This proposal would result in selection of public servants with a deep desire to sacrifice for the common good. It would mean that there would be a constant, Darwinian selection of the best of breed for each office. And it would ensure that the virtue embodied in these great statespeople would not be lost, but rather would be absorbed by those who assembled to celebrate their service. Of course it would probably be necessary to raffle off tickets to the celebratory banquet; even the most generous of officials couldn't possibly be stretched to serve all of the voters of the nation, even by the most ingenious of chefs³.

One additional benefit of this proposal is the reduction in the number of "elder statespersons", and the concomitant reduction in their memoirs, which are typically overly bombastic and self-absorbed. Instead, ghost-written biographies, of the sort rushed into print on the death of a public figure, could be published subsequent to the banquet. The subject of the book could even be given some choice as to the photograph to appear on the end flap before going to his or her final reward.

The one potential problem I foresee in implementing this proposal is the need to find an executive chef who is an expert in dealing with the more greasy and gamey sort of meat, for that is certainly what will be available, at least until the current supply of politicians is exhausted.

^3. I suppose some sort of "Politician Helper" could be developed by one of the convenience food vendors, but I think the dilution of virtue this would result in would be unacceptable.

Seniority

noreply@blogger.com (SpeakerToManagers) — Sat, 06 Aug 2011 23:10:00 +0000

So last week I officially became a senior citizen: I turned 65, and am now on Medicare (thank Ghu: it's hundreds of dollars a month cheaper than the previous health insurance¹ I had, with pretty much comparable coverage). Of course this happened in front of the backdrop of OHNO DEBT DISASTER THROW MEDICARE AND SOCIAL SECURITY RECIPIENTS TO THE WOLVES!!!! I was beginning to wonder if there would be any Medicare by the time my eligibility kicked in, but luckily my coverage started Aug. 1, before Standard & Poors could downgrade US Government credit and turn us into a Third World nation.</sarcasm>

Oh, and another landmark: I am now a grandfather. My older son Alex and his wife Melissa now have a bouncing baby girl, Ellanor, born about a month ago. Because they're in Louisiana, we haven't seen her in person yet, but we've seen lots of pictures, and she is, of course, the cutest grandchild ever.

^1. And why, he asks rhetorically, do we need health insurance? Just give me health care, and we can eliminate the 15 or 20% of the health care expenses in the US the insurance companies eat without providing any useful good or service.

A Geometry for the Many-Angled Ones

noreply@blogger.com (SpeakerToManagers) — Mon, 04 Jul 2011 04:35:00 +0000

You may know (or not) that I've become quite fond of the science fiction of Charlie Stross, a British writer living in Scotland, especially the "Laundry Files" series. The Laundry is a highly-classified British Intelligence and Counter-Espionage agency whose primary brief is the protection of the United Kingdom against the depredations of evil extra-dimensional beings who wish to invade, possess, destroy, and otherwise prey on humans and their world.

The basic conceit is that H. P. Lovecraft's writings are true: there are beings of great power lurking just around the corner in a higher-dimensional multiverse, beings who can be called forth using forms of geometry and computer software. In the world of the Laundry, Alan Turing didn't just invent the mathematical underpinnings of the theory of computation; the secret part of his work that the rest of the world didn't get to see shows how mathematics and computer programs can be used to do what amounts to "magic". Stross' hero, Bob Howard, is a middle-echelon IT sysadmin and secret agent, recruited into the Laundry just before his university computer graphics project could invite in beings that would have leveled the city of Wolverhampton¹.

Now it happens that I've been researching modern geometry in the last year or two. One of the subjects I've been studying intensively, for use in a software project I hope to blog about in the near future, is a field called "Geometric Algebra"². And Geometric Algebra just might be the geometry that Lovecraft's "Many-Angled Ones" use in navigating their sinister travels through the universes.. I'll explain more after the cut. Don't be too bothered by the mathematical terms; I'll try to summarize the meaning of it all so you won't have a mathematician to get it. And I'll try not to get eaten by the Great Old Ones before I finish.

One of the the things that always bugged me about geometry was that even after Klein's Erlangen Program³, which tried to build a single framework for all of geometry, there was no single formalism I had heard of that could contain geometries of different dimensions, like Plane and Solid Geometry, and that some of the more recent fields like differential geometry and linear algebra weren't coordinate-free, meaning that do any computation with them you've got use formulas that expand each point into a set of coordinate numbers, 1 for each dimension. Trying to learn about geometrical objects and their characteristics while hassling with the coordinates that describe them is really frustrating; all the coordinate shrubbery makes it hard to see the geometrical trees. Messing with the coordinates and having to think of everything as matrices is probably what's kept me from really learning Tensor Calculus and studying General Relativity, which is based on it.

But wait, there's hope, and it's not even new! Hermann Grassman developed an algebra in the mid-19^th century based on multiplying arbitrary numbers of vectors together to create other geometric objects in any dimension. So, for instance in the 2 dimensional plane, like you're looking at now:

A point is composed of 0 vectors:

A line is composed of 1 vector:

An area is composed of 2 vectors:

In 3D you have the point, line and area (a plane) as well as:

A volume is composed of 3 vectors:

... and so on ...

Grassman's work met with a deafening silence, and it wasn't until the year of his death that it was rediscovered by J. Willard Gibbs, who was inspired to invent the Vector Calculus (but not, regrettably, the Multivector Calculus). About the same time it was independently rediscovered by William Kingdon Clifford, who built what later was called Clifford Algebra on top of it. Clifford's algebra is composed of elements which are combinations of Grassman's multivectors. This algebra turns out to be what we now call "Geometric Algebra", at least after it in turn was forgotten and then rediscovered in the middle of the 20^th century.

Let's take a Clifford algebra for 3 dimensional Euclidean geometry, the kind they probably called "Solid Geometry" in your high-school geometry class as an example. The base geometry is constructed using three unit vectors at right-angles⁴, you can form any other vector by summing multiples of the unit vectors. So in classic Solid Geometry, what you have to work with when you want to compute the sizes, distances, and intersections of various geometric objects like lines and circles and planes and spheres is just vectors and their coordinates. That can get tedious. The Clifford Algebra that represents 3D Euclidean geometry has 8 components instead of 3: 1 number, 3 vectors, 3 bivectors (each the product of 2 vectors as in the drawing above), and 1 trivector (a volume). It turns out if you use combinations of these elements to describe your geometric objects you can do the same things you did before (you still have 3 vector components) but in addition, you can have additional data in those other components that let you find distances and intersections (and a lot of other useful information) using simple and (computationally) cheap numerical operations. And computationally cheap is exactly what you want when you're writing computer programs for graphics and visualization of geometry.

On top of that, it's easy to switch from Euclidean geometries to Non-Euclidean geometries in whatever dimensions you like, without changing the operations that work on the geometric objects. This is where the Many-Angled Ones would find it useful, because they could describe their own awful geometries in the same terms as our ordinary one, and perhaps even create geometries that bridge between the two. We'd better be careful how we use these tools lest some poor graduate student unwittingly open a portal into a dark universe and let loose something evil.

In the near future I'll post a description of the project I'm working for which I need Geometric Algebra; in the meantime, I highly recommend that you get a copy of the first Laundry novel, The Atrocity Archives.

^1. There seems to be some confusion about whether it was Wolverhampton or Birmingham that was almost annihilated, but as they're only about 15 miles apart I assume that the averted catastrophe would have fallen on them both.

^2.Not "Algebraic Geometry", René Descartes' bane of high school students . They're very different subjects.

^3.Klein managed to put Projective, Affine, Euclidean, Inversive, Spherical, and Hyperbolic geometries together by defining each as the study of those geometric entities that are invariant under certain classes of transformation. For instance, Euclidean geometry is invariant under translations, rotations, and reflections. But there's no good way to talk about the similarities and differences of 2 and 3 dimensional forms of these geometries, and so each kind is based on a grab-bag of special tricks and techniques. For instance, 3-dimensional rotations are often represented as quaternions, but there's no way to generalize quaternions to, say 2 dimensions, or 4 for that matter.

^4.Yes, I know that a basis set of vectors doesn't need to be either unitary or orthogonal, but I'm trying to keep it simple for the non-mathematicians who've made it this far. This description works "without loss of generality" as the saying goes.

... and One More Thing ...

noreply@blogger.com (SpeakerToManagers) — Sun, 26 Jun 2011 18:58:00 +0000

Eek, yet another thing to take away time and energy. A couple of weeks ago I noticed a bump on my back that was rather tender. Went to the doctor and she diagnosed an infected cyst, so I went to a surgeon (who just happened to be the surgeon who performed Eva's lumpectomy last year, someone we both really liked and respected after that) who set up an outpatient procedure a week later, and pumped me full of antibiotics.

The procedure went very well, and the incision is completely uninfected, and healing rapidly; there was no pain at all in the operation site after a couple of days. However, whether it's a result of the anesthetic or just the requirements for healing, my body has decided it doesn't have the energy to do anything other than lie around and heal. After walking the dogs in the park, which involves about a quarter of a mile walk up and down a hill, I usually have to take a nap for an hour or two in the afternoon. And I haven't even had the concentration to read technical books, so my project is stalled at the moment.

It feels like my energy is slowly increasing, and I'm hoping that it will come back once my back is healed and I don't need to put all that energy into growing new flesh and killing off bacteria. I'm going to try to write a couple of blog entries in the next day or two, and we'll see how that goes.

Still Here After All This Time

noreply@blogger.com (SpeakerToManagers) — Sun, 29 May 2011 04:37:00 +0000

It's been a really long time since my last post on this blog. That was caused by a number of things: recovery from surgery was slower than I expected, at least in terms of getting back the energy to do things during the day. For awhile there it was all I could do to go to the park and sit for an hour while the dogs walked around. It took almost six months to get up the energy to walk any distance myself, but once I started doing that, my energy started coming back at a faster pace. Now I can do 3 or 4 hours of (mostly non-physical) work a day after walking the dogs.

But once I had the energy, more things intervened. Our Lhasa Apso, Jemma, suddenly (over the course of 2 or 3 weeks) went blind. We spent some time going to vets and not getting a definitive diagnosis until we saw a veterinary opthalmologist. He diagnosed SORD (Sudden Onset Retinal Disorder), a disorder whose etiology and mechanism are pretty much unknown, but whose prognosis is 100% blindness in almost all cases, and which has no treatment. Jemma has been blind now for several months, and has mostly acclimated herself to it. Dogs aren't as strongly affected by blindness as humans, because smell and hearing are so much more acute for them. Jemma's only serious problem (aside from a non-related eye infection that lasted several weeks) is that when she gets excited or upset she gets disoriented and gets stuck in loops between obstacles, going back and forth until she accidentally goes off at an angle and misses one of them. We''re working with her on that, but she is a very stubborn dog (a breed quality) and is having trouble taking direction when she gets that way. Spencer, our Rat Terrier, has been very solicitous of her, following her and trying to help her (though not very consistently). He has come to get us a couple of times when she got into trouble in the back yard.

The other thing that's been keeping me from the blog is a project I've started. Now that I'm able to do useful work at least part of the day, I've decided to come partially out of retirement and create software that, with a little luck, I can sell to bring in a little extra money; at least enough, I hope, to pay for the additional hardware and software I've had to buy for the development work (that's not really a lot, but retirement hasn't been quite what it was supposed to be, thanks to the Current Financial Unpleasantness). I've got a project that I think I can do myself, one that I've been thinking about off and on for a year or so. It will start out as a Macintosh application, sold through Apple's Mac App Store, and if that's successful, I plan to port it to the iPad. Details in a near future blog post.

I'll continue to post here, but probably not as often as I was doing last fall. I'll be spending about 20 hours a week on the software project, and that will include some postings on a new blog I'm setting up now along with a website for the company that will sell the software. I'll post the details for the new site and blog here soon.

Swimming Towards the Surface

noreply@blogger.com (SpeakerToManagers) — Sun, 31 Oct 2010 19:41:00 +0000

As some of you few may know, I had back surgery a little over a week ago, and that's why there've been no posts for awhile. The recovery is going well, and I"m not as spaced out by the pain relief drugs as I was at first, so I'll be easing my way back into a life on the Web as well as in the Real World starting about now.

I'd like to thank Eva for taking care of me (and the dogs) so well and so carefully; I quite literally could not have done it without her.

More Poetry in Stock Than Ever Before!

noreply@blogger.com (SpeakerToManagers) — Fri, 10 Sep 2010 21:23:00 +0000

I have finally gathered all my poems from the archives of Making Light and put them onto my own web site, The Den of SpeakerToManagers, on the Miscellaneous Sonnets and Other Poems page. As the title implies, they're mostly sonnets, with a couple of villanelles thrown in for good measure. The poems are in chronological order of writing, the oldest at the top of the page. I hope you enjoy reading them.

ETA: I'll be fixing up the typography and the layout of the poems in the near future, but the content will remain the same.

Arise Ye Prisoners of Starvation

noreply@blogger.com (SpeakerToManagers) — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 23:05:00 +0000

The other day I watched "Capitalism: A Love Story" for the first time (we don't go to the movie theater but once or twice a year, so we have to wait for things to be put on cable), and was blown away by the trailing title song: a jazz version of The Internationale (in English). Listen for yourself:

Back for a Bit

noreply@blogger.com (SpeakerToManagers) — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 23:03:00 +0000

This blog has been very quiet the last few weeks. One of the reasons is that Eva has been going through a course of radiation therapy for the last 6 or 7 weeks; that's kept me busy driving her to the hospital every day, plus doing the chores that she hasn't been able to do because of the fatigue the therapy causes. In addition, I've had some medical appointments of my own, as I try to figure out what to do about my back. But now Eva's therapy is done, and I've come close to having some resolution on my own case, so I expect to be writing more, at least for the next few weeks.

More details on both Eva's and my medical adventures below the fold.

A few months ago Eva had an overdue mammogram done, and the results were ambiguous, so the doctor ordered more tests. This resulted in several X-rays, ultrasounds, and MRIs, all somewhat ambiguous, and ultimately in a biopsy. The biopsy showed what's called a Stage 0 ductal carcinoma in-site (DCIS), a small cluster of cancer cells walled up in a cyst in a duct in her left breast. This is the earliest, and the most easily and successfully treatable breast cancer, for which we are both tremendously grateful. We immediately scheduled a lumpectomy, which was completely successful; a lymph node biopsy at the same time showed that the cancer had not spread at all.

The standard treatment after this type of lumpectomy is a 6 week course of targeted radiation therapy: a beam of gamma rays aimed just at the area of that breast that contained the cancer. Statistically, the oncologist told us, this treatment reduces the probability of recurrence of the cancer from something like 18% to around 7% (I'm convinced from what I've read that Eva is on the far low-probability end of the distribution curve for recurrence to start with, so the reduction caused by the radiation makes a recurrence highly unlikely).

So the treatment is done, and now Eva needs a couple of weeks to get over the side-effects of the radiation: some fatigue and a lovely suntan on her left breast. On the last day of the treatment Eva told the technician that this was the worst tanning salon she'd ever been to: they couldn't even get both breasts the same color.

As for me, I've been talking to spine and neuro-surgeons; the partner of the spine surgeon who did my last surgery (see "A Very Sad Story" for what happened to him) has proposed another operation, somewhat less complicated than the previous one, but at several levels of my lumbar spine, to repair the damage caused by 2 disks that have ruptured, and to open up the foramina (the holes through which the nerves exit the spinal column) which are compressing the nerve roots going to my legs. I'm leaning strongly towards doing the operation, but I'm waiting right now for the neurosurgeon I saw to consult with the spine surgeon and give him any input he has on my problems. They're having trouble getting together because they have opposite schedules: when one is in his office the other is operating, and vice versa. They're working on it.

The End of the World Cup Game

noreply@blogger.com (SpeakerToManagers) — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 23:40:00 +0000

Really, you had to be there.

Whose Case Is It Anyway?

noreply@blogger.com (SpeakerToManagers) — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 23:34:00 +0000

Well, now I know why the doctors I've been seeing about my spine haven't been giving me advice on how to manage my problems. Seems that the neurologist now considers herself to be operating solely in an advisory capacity to the neurosurgeon, but she didn't mention that to me. Also the surgeon moved his practice from Providence St. Vincent Hospital to Legacy Meridian Hospital (different health systems and provider networks, of course), and that's the first I've heard of that, also. So it looks like I've fallen through the cracks. Time will tell, we've got messages in to the surgeon's new office asking what my status really is.

Oh, and quite by accident, this won't affect my health insurance situation. If I were staying on COBRA it would, since that coverage makes Providence a preferred provider network; anything done at Legacy costs me an extra 20% of the invoiced amount (which has been a problem because the neurologist is at Legacy Meridian). But as of the beginning of this month my COBRA coverage has expired (thanks, Congress), and I'm going on the Oregon Medical Insurance Pool. Coverage won't lapse, but I have to wait for the paperwork to be done and my coverage info sent to me before I can get it to the providers. I believe the OMIP coverage will be the same for both providers (at least I hope it will; Providence is more convenient for a lot of things, and I like the hospital itself better).

It's interesting to compare this situation with the therapy Eva is getting for breast cancer prophylaxis. There is a single person who is her case worker whose job it is to coordinate therapies and doctors, and to make sure that she knows what's going on, and that everyone is singing from the same page of the score. And all the health professionals go to great lengths to keep it that way. I think everybody should have a case worker, for all health concerns. I did a rough back of the envelope calculation: Eva's caseworker says she's carrying 300 active cases; for everybody to get one (and assuming an entire family gets the same caseworker, which makes sense to me) means we'd need considerably fewer than a million caseworkers nationwide. I bet we could train that many of the currently-unemployed to do the job in less than a year.

Undead on the Scene

noreply@blogger.com (SpeakerToManagers) — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 23:09:00 +0000

You really have to love Portland. It's not just that this is where silly things like the following happen, it's also where the police are cool with it.

After the jump: "Zombies" crash on I-84 near Lloyd exit

"Zombies" crash on I-84 near Lloyd exit

Credit: ODOT

Emergency crews had various lanes of eastbound I-84 shut down as they investigated the crash.

by Justin Burton, KGW news staff

Posted on July 9, 2010 at 11:38 PM

Updated Saturday, Jul 10 at 9:20 AM

PORTLAND, Ore. -- A car full of people dressed as zombies crashed on Interstate 84 near downtown Portland on Friday, causing initial confusion by people who witnessed the crash.

Portland Police said the car was swerving in the eastbound lanes of the freeway just east of the Lloyd District just after 9:30 p.m. when it rolled over and crashed onto its top.

Emergency crews took five victims from the crash to area hospitals with non-life-threatening injuries.

Police said that in their investigation they learned that the people inside the car were dressed as zombie costumes and they were headed to a party at the time of the crash.

Sgt. Greg Stewart said people who witnessed the crash initially thought the victims' injuries were much more serious, because of the zombie costumes.

"We're glad that everyone is alive, despite being 'undead'," Sgt. Stewart said, referring to the costumes.

While everyone in the car was taken to the hospital, Stewart said crews are investigating the possibility that more people were in the car at the time of the crash but fled the scene on foot.

The crash halted traffic in the eastbound lanes for about an hour, reducing travel to just one lane. All eastbound lanes were opened at around 11 p.m.

Hot Today

noreply@blogger.com (SpeakerToManagers) — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 23:51:00 +0000

It's hot today (94 ℉ at 5PM) and the upstairs floor of our house, not being air-conditioned, is uninhabitable. The downstairs floor is set into a hillside, so conduction into the dirt and rock keeps us reasonably cool unless we have a heat wave where it never gets cold enough at night for the air to cool down again. So right now my office, which is downstairs, is in the mid-70s. There's a portable airconditioner in the TV room, where we eat dinner most nights, that's holding that room at about 72 ℉. So the only uncomfortable part of the day (aside from having to go out, of course), is making dinner. I tend to keep that simple and fast.

The one thing I can't figure out is why the dogs like to lie around in the heat upstairs so much.

A Bit of FanFic

noreply@blogger.com (SpeakerToManagers) — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 23:25:00 +0000

Last month John Scalzi and Wil Wheaten started a contest for the readers of their blogs write a piece of fan fiction no longer than 2,000 words based on an illustration of a fantasy battle between the two of them. I entered a piece, and it was a lot of fun to write, so I thought I'd put it up here for you to enjoy. Like most fanfic there are a lot of in-jokes, but if you're not up on them, don't despair; the big one at the end comes from Scalzi's famed bacon-cat photo. My piece is at the Read More link below, but you should definitely look at the illustration first.

Revenge of Battle Cat

by Bruce Cohen

Selection

John
The crowd in the stadium was cheering so loudly that John could barely hear the Master of Ceremonies as he started to announce which one of the five candidates on the dais would be selected. John glanced nervously at the other candidates. All of them wore gladiatorial colors, and all had faced injury and death in combat with equanimity, but the fear of not being chosen for this ultimate honor had brought all of them to limit of their nerve. It didn’t help that the MC was milking the moment for all the excitement he could extract from the crowd.

“… and each of these candidates represents the finest competitors our nation has produced. Each of them is a hero, blooded in the arena but only one of these paragons can be our highest champion, so it is with the greatest pride and honor that I now introduce to you the champion chosen by our glorious Council of Lords, the citizen who will carry the honor of our ancient traditions to a righteous victory over our traditional enemy, the new Grand Champion of the Nation … John ‘Barefoot’ de Bradford, Senior Gladiator!”

The other candidates all took a moment to silently wish death and destruction (or at least immediate disqualification) on John, then crowded around him to offer congratulations. John gave a terrific yell, put a maniacal grin on his face, and did a quick, impromptu dance before the MC could grab him to shake his hand.

Wil
The 7th Lancer Brigade (“Demon Clowns”) were assembled in formation in front of the reviewing stand, from which their commanding officer, General Jean-Luc Surgelés was addressing them. After the usual Orders of the Day the general began one more announcement.

“The selection of the All-Forces Single-Combat Champion to represent our nation against our great adversary has been made. Nearly ten thousand of our fellows under arms were considered for this highest military mission, and I’m proud to say that five of the final 30 candidates came from this brigade. But there was one of those five who outclassed all the others, and I’m delighted to call him up here to receive his orders for detached duty in training and preparation for the mission of his career. Lieutenant Wil “Crusher” Wiezen, please report to the reviewing stand.”

As Will marched to the stand the general led the entire brigade in a cheer, and announced that in honor of Wil’s selection the brigade would be given the rest of the day off as soon as the assembly was over. His face didn’t change expression at all, but he grinned inside as he realized he was going to get very drunk tonight without paying for a single drink.

Deployment

John
“You understand, when you exit the portal into the combat area, you’ll be changed. We’re not sure exactly how; the instructions we get from beyond the gate are a little vague, but you should still have two arms, two legs, and a head, and you’ll be armed with familiar weapons and armor,” the training instructor said.

“I’ve got it,” John said, with some irritation, “Tell me something new.”

“All right, how about this secret: no one of our combatants has ever returned through the portal. We don’t know if they’ve all been killed, or what happened to them; some years we get word back that our warrior won, and some years we’re told theirs did, but no one comes back.”

John was upset by this news, but didn’t have any time to think about it or ask questions.

“It’s time,” said the instructor, and threw upon the iron door that covered the portal. John squinted against the glare of the rainbow colors that filled the 4 meter circle of the portal, hesitated for a moment to ready himself, and stepped in. There was a sensation of resistance to his movements for a second, as if the portal was filled with glue, and then he was through.

Opening his eyes wide he saw he was in the open, in a dimly lit landscape of rocks and small hills. In the middle distance were what looked like streams of hot magma flowing from molten lakes through rock berms and tall calderas. The air was full of smoke and sparks from the lava, and the stench of sulfur, and he coughed as the dry, hot air sucked the moisture from his mouth and throat.

Looking down, he froze for a moment when he discovered that his skin was now green. When he started to move his left hand to touch green skin on his right thigh he realized that both hands were encumbered; the left with a short-handled polearm with an axe blade at the end, and the right with an oblong shield. He was partially armored, with no protection except heavy boots for his legs and none for his lower arms.

“Oh, great,” he thought to himself as he peered through the smoke for a shape or movement that would announce his opponent, “I’m an Orc, and I get to fight in Hell.”

Wil
Wil stopped to examine himself as soon as he passed through the portal. He didn’t appear to have changed much physically, though he was sure that he hadn’t had a two-day beard before. In place of his battledress uniform, he was wearing dark purple shorts and a tee shirt with red sleeves and a large caricature of the Demon Clowns unit patch. He had no shoes, no helmet, and no armor. On the ground next to him was a long spear or short land with a narrow V-shaped blade on a metal shaft.

“How are you getting on?” said a voice behind him. He spun around and dropped to a crouch, grabbing the shaft of the spear.

“Surely you’ve seen a cat before,” said the voice, which was coming out of the mouth of a very large cat standing not 3 meters away and smiling at him.

“I didn’t know that cats could grin,” said WIl, “Let alone that they could be 2 meters long, have the hind legs of a horse, the wings of an eagle, and unicorn horns in the center of their foreheads.”

“You don’t get out much, do you?” asked the cat. It was clearly a rhetorical question, for the cat didn’t wait for an answer, but continued, “I’m your mount for this little contest of yours. You have had cavalry experience, I hope.”

Wil was taken aback by the question, and then somewhat insulted. “I’m a Senior Lieutenant of Cavalry, I’ll have you know, and I’ve had continual ratings of “Exceeds Expectations” on all my reviews since I was commissioned and I commanded a squad of heavy cavalry in the Battle of the Hump.”

“Good. If you can hold onto a rope, you might actually survive this. Climb on.” The cat turned so that WIl could see a narrow rein on the cat’s back just behind its head. The rein was attached to a harness around the cat’s neck and shoulders. There was no saddle or stirrups, and no bit or bridle either.

“How do I steer?” asked Wil.

“Just tell me what you need, and I’ll do it. Be sure to clamp your legs tight around me; if you ask for an Immelman turn I’ll give you one, and if you’re not holding on tight you’re sure to fall off. I’m not going to try and catch you.”

“My enemy will have the same problems, won’t he?” Wil asked when he’d settled down and found a comfortable position for the spear.

“Oh no,” said the cat, “He won’t have any problem with steering. He doesn’t get a mount, so he’ll be running around on the ground like a mouse for the catching. Of course, he’s got armor. Hope you don’t have a problem with heights.”

With that, the cat ran towards a drop off a short distance away. Will found himself rocking back and forth because the cat’s equine hind legs were a little longer than the feline paws on his front legs. But that ended quickly as the cat reached the drop and jumped off, spreading its wings and soaring up into the red gloom. Wil gulped but managed to hold his last meal down as the cat climbed above the nearest caldera and started down on its other side. His left hand clamped around on the spear shaft in a convulsive grip; he could feel the checking on the handle dig into his palm.

“Hang on tight, now,” the cat called back to him, “Your prey is right down there.”

Combat

A bright white light suddenly shone down on John, momentarily blinding him. He threw his hand up to shield his eyes and scanned the land around him outside the cone of the light. He thought he saw gleams of reflected white light not far off, as of reflections from the eyes of a crowd of spectators, but as he squinted to examine them closer he heard the sound of something moving through the air behind him. He threw himself to the ground and rolled over his axe, bringing it up to block any attack. The light moved with him, making everything more than a few meters away look black, but illuminating him. Looking up he saw another light following the source of the sound.

The sound was caused by the flight of the winged cat, with Wil mounted on its back. The cat flew away from John to a height of about 50 meters, then turned and dove towards him.

John stood up and raised his axe high with the edge facing the cat. He readied his shield to block Wil’s spear. Wil gave a yell as his spear slid off the shield.

The cat dodged John’s axe blow and turned to kick John in the chest with a hind hoof. The blow knocked John down and drove the breath out of his lungs. As he fell, his head hit a rock, and he lost consciousness.

Wil looked back at John’s body and gave another yell, telling the cat, “Land and let’s finish him!” The cat turned and dove again; at the last moment before crashing into John it turned up into a stall and landed in front of him. The maneuver caught Will by surprise; he fell off the cat’s back and landed in the dust face up, stunned.

The cat turned to Wil and grinned at him, showing the length of its fangs. Then it raised one paw over Wil’s face and extended a thumb from the inside edge. Reaching back towards its belly with the paw it opened a pack attached to its harness and removed a roll of gray tape and a small waterproof bag.

“Don’t move,” said the cat. “I can gore you with my horn before you can get to your feet.” Wil lay silently, watching for an opening to make an escape. The cat taped Wil’s feet together, then took some strips of smoked meat from the bag and taped them to Wil’s sides.

“The tape on your feet is temporary,” the cat said over its shoulder as it walked over to John. “I’ll take it off in a bit, to give you a running chance to get away. But I want to have some fun first.”

As the cat started to tape John in the same way, his eyes opened and he looked up at the cat uncertainly.

“What’s going on?” John asked.

“Surely,” the cat replied, “you’ve heard that cats like to play with their food before they eat it?” Then it raised it’s head and shouted, “I CAN HAZ BACON-PERSON!”

Exciting animal story for today

noreply@blogger.com (SpeakerToManagers) — Sat, 26 Jun 2010 23:01:00 +0000

(at least the animal found it exciting)

I was sitting here at the computer when Eva yelled down the stairs from the living room, "There's a bird trapped in here." Eva ran down as I ran up, because as a little girl she once got a bat trapped in her hair for a minute or two, and is very averse to that ever happening again.

The bird had come in the sliding door from the deck, which is at the end of the north wall of the living room. The rest of that wall is picture windows (this is an Atomic Age split-level ranch, and the amount of light coming into the living room was one of the reasons we bought the house), and the bird tried to get out again through a window. It was trapped in the window by Spencer, our rat terrier, who wanted to either play with the bird or eat it, either of which would have been seriously bad for the bird. Either way, Spencer was trying hard to get to the bird, and the bird was frantically flying around in the window, but afraid to move away from it, so it was trapped in the casement. The bird was further confused by the fact that another bird (perhaps its mate) was flying around just outside the same window, and the trapped bird clearly wanted to join it.

There's a baker's rack with plants and some display vases next to that window, and now there was also an excited terrier trying to get to the window, so I had to spend several minutes moving things out of the way while holding the dog off. Luckily, Jemma, the Lhasa Apso wasn't quite so excited about the bird, though she did circle around that part of the room, a few feet back from the window. Eventually the combination of my persuasion and Eva's calling the dogs from downstairs got them both to leave the living room. The bird by this point was too scared even to be fluttering around in the window; it had landed in the corner of the window and stayed there.

The bird didn't seem to be going anywhere, so I looked around the room for something to catch the bird in that wouldn't hurt it or let it hurt me. I grabbed a blue felt blanket off the couch, the security blanket that we put on Spencer at night (he likes to sleep curled up in the fetal position on the couch completely covered by the blanket). I carefully surrounded the bird with the blanket and very softly closed it up so that I had my hands around the bird's body and wings. The bird didn't move; I guess it was still pretty scared. Then I carried the blanket out on the deck, held it over the railing above the back yard, and shook the blanket gently so the bird could get out. It flew straight away from me as fast as it could, apparently undamaged.

Spencer doesn't seem to have noticed any new smells on his blanket, which I'm happy about. He can wind himself up quite enough even without the smell of prey to excite him.

Hurry Up and Wait

noreply@blogger.com (SpeakerToManagers) — Sat, 05 Jun 2010 23:58:00 +0000

A couple of weeks of medical drama for Eva, then a week or so of medical drama for me, neatly wrapped up with a minor medical procedure (installation of some electrodes under my skin for pain relief similar to the TENS unit I'm currently using) that was supposed to happen yesterday (Friday), but didn't because the doctor's office forgot to let me know I needed to get a blood test and an EKG beforehand. I'll blog about all this in a little more detail later on, but it explains why I haven't had time to post anything here in a couple of weeks.

Also, it's been a bad week for the good guys. Requiescat in Pace:

Mez (Merril Pye) died Jan. 1, 2010 after fighting cancer for several years, but I (and the rest of the Making Light community where she posted for the last few years) only just found out today.

Jeanne Robinson, wife of Spider, died last week of cancer, surrounded by her family and friends.

Update:

George Scithers' ashes were interred at Arlington Cemetery last week. George was for decades a giant in science fiction fandom and in publishing. He was a major force in creating and maintaining the Philadelphia Science Fiction Society.

Atlantis Goes Last Time A'Roving

noreply@blogger.com (SpeakerToManagers) — Sat, 15 May 2010 18:02:00 +0000

The launch of Space Shuttle mission STS-132, Atlantis' last flight, was observed by a group of science-fiction writers, editors, and other members of the Science Fiction Writers' Association taking time out from the Nebula Awards convention. At the link above, Patrick Nielson Hayden posted a photo of the launch, and several commenters on his blog posted poetry inspired by the launch (the sonnets by Fragano Ledgister and Lori Coulson are especially good, but I recommend you read the entire comment thread). Here's a sonnet that I wrote for the occasion:

They mount a thread of smoke to reach the sky;
we hold our breath below. Recall of sight
of those before who lost their lives gives fright
until calm voice reports all safe; we sigh.
And so again we've sent them to the black,
explorers yes, but artisans as well;
carrying breath for later ones to dwell
there and move outward on their track.
Rejoicing's tinged a melancholy hue:
Atlantis will not ride again the fire;
her sisters are all soon to follow suit.
Though plan's not made, I hope some day a crew
will board a future craft to journey higher,
while giving these adventurers salute.

Rumblings From the Speaker

Stop SOPA Before it Stops the Internet!

Steve Jobs: Say What you Want About Him, He's Left the World Changed.

Two Movies: of Beauty and Evil

Snarks in a M*****F****** Text!

Uuummmm, this is a tasty burger!

No, motherfucker

Uuummmm, this is a tasty burger!

Congratulations Are In Order!

More Pictures of Ellie

My Grandchild ...

Travels and Home Maintenance

Give Me That Old Time Politics (A Modest Proposal)

Seniority

A Geometry for the Many-Angled Ones

... and One More Thing ...

Still Here After All This Time

Swimming Towards the Surface

More Poetry in Stock Than Ever Before!

Arise Ye Prisoners of Starvation

Back for a Bit

The End of the World Cup Game

Whose Case Is It Anyway?

Undead on the Scene

"Zombies" crash on I-84 near Lloyd exit

Hot Today

A Bit of FanFic

Exciting animal story for today

Hurry Up and Wait

Atlantis Goes Last Time A'Roving

Snarks in a M*F** Text!