Part of this is the creeping coarsening of our idioms. In an attempt to sound honest and unaffected, many common expressions over time have become "de-euphemized". For instance, what is the real ending of the expression "happy as a pig in...."? Most people nowadays will answer some word meaning "dung". The reasoning goes that pigs are dirty, and like to wallow in mud, which they are content, being lazy, to soil with their own excrement. Actually, the original version is "clover", which is one of the traditional hog feeds, along with acorns and wild spinach, something that a good segment of the population would have known up to fifty years ago. However, somewhere in the Seventies, the farmer's urbanized grandkids decided that what old Pops was saying was probably some kind of old-fangled euphemism, like the way he kept on saying "Dang!" and "Goodness gracious!" Since euphemisms were Out and obscenity was In, the current form became popular as a way to sound down-to-earth and mildly shocking.
Another example: "A cock and bull story" used to mean "lies" or at least "inflated nonsense", a usage dating back to the early 18th century, at least. From this we get "bull session", an expression meaning a sharing of such stories, something like "shooting the breeze", whose etymology meaning "talking together for the sheer fun of it" is pretty obvious, along with it's connotations of ease, leisure, and the like. "Bullshit" for the prior expression dates only from about the 1950's and "shooting the shit" (which makes me think of using a small pile for target practice), slightly later.
Don't get me started on donkeys, but this seems to be an unsettling trend....
What I'd heard (some years ago) was that cigarettes helped to soften the blow of phenothiazine-based drugs (Thorazine, Stelazine, etc.) that are commonly given to schizophrenics. These drugs work by removing L-dopa from the brain, and depressing the forebrain, thus making the subject more tractable and easy to deal with in institutional situations (the so-called chemical straitjacket, lobotomy in a pill, etc.) Marketed to doctors as "insulin for schizophrenics", they, indeed seem to work for a while: the subject becomes peaceful, and nearly unemotional, easily suggestible, and with few thoughts of their own. Higher cognition becomes more difficult: it's not unusual for someone on these drugs to go from, say, playing classical piano to watching, with interest, "Dancing with the Stars".
However, a few months later, side effects usually begin to occur: tics and twitches, a ravenous appetite, which coupled with the disinclination to move, quickly produces extreme obesity (and ironically Type 2 diabetes), and a pernicious apathy that slowly extends itself to jobs, appearance, other people and life itself. Worse, trying to get off these drugs means that psychotic symptoms reoccur, even worse than before, as the body's L-dopa production often has increased to unnatural levels. While it's true that some patients can function, and sometimes quite well, under these circumstances, the truth is that most of them do not, and the simple equation Psychotic - (L-dopa) = Normal simply does not hold up.
What nicotine, and to some extent, alcohol does is to increase L-dopa to a slight degree, but not as much as simply going without the drugs, and it does so fairly quickly. Part of the problem with the neuroleptics is that brain hormone production and consumption varies from moment to moment -- what would be "too much", say, waiting for a bus, would be "not enough" dancing at a lively party, brainstorming a new product, or trying to organize housework.
Without getting all Tom Cruise on you, I don't think that they're using the right angle.
...have already weighed in on this subject. Stephan Hawking is a man who is not the world's greatest physicist, nor is he doing any work now that is in any way in the forefront. Mostly what he is is a motor neuron disease survivor. If he were to die tomorrow, it would be a tragedy, but not in the way that he had great work in the future. He would have had significant work towards unifying quantum mechanics and relativity theory, at least thirty years ago, a beautiful family, and a wonderful face on what is often a very hard disease. I long to kiss that cheek. But I don't deny that flesh has had its day in about it's fortieth year. Let the world's embraces be felt. But he is not a Homo Novis.
Actually, both Protestants and Catholics were pretty good at burning, hanging, and otherwise spoiling each others' day during the Reformation (which is when most witch hunts occurred), since the greatest number of hunts were in Continental Europe, along fault lines that reached through France and Germany. Modern-day Wiccans are not a good historical source, since, like Fundamentalist Christians, they're notorious for rewriting history to suit their own witch-fulfilling fantasies....
Pretty much everyone who supports the vaccine subscribes to the idea that:
1. Cocaine use is a disease. and 2.Wouldn't it be just ducky if we could find a nice chemical intervention that would leave the idea of personal responsibility completely out of this?
Disease folks usually are interested in certainties: on or off. What they're really interested in is not stopping addicts, but stopping everyone. If I ever wanted to go the NA route, I would have a great story to tell about how many thousands of dollars cocaine cost me, how I was kept in coercive relationships because of it, how I was stolen from, abused, and given tons of grief by dealers, etc. Fact is, I just walked out. No doctor, no group, no mentor.
I have strong religious convictions against 12-step and other "recovery" (really, "maintainence", since they explicitly don't "cure" and don't hold out the hope of actually, physically, recovering from anything) groups. Oh, I believe in God all right: I'm even a churchgoer. And yes, I believe in carrying out God's will. What happened to me was a product of a bad environment, a situation perceived as being hopeless, and an overwhelming need to feel happy, by any means necessary. On a spiritual level, I believe it's probably part of my mission on Earth to have been given this as a challenge, and yes, I believe I've found a solution. Whether it works for anyone else is immaterial -- I'd be at a loss to try to tell anyone else what to do, in any case.
My model for this is not that I had, or have, a disease, but I had a love affair with a bad guy. You know, the kind of guy that you like, but know is wrong: he's charismatic, handsome, generous, and funny, but throws unpredictable temper tantrums, puts you down in public for fun, is jealous, and well, acts peculiarly. Still, you figure, you like this guy, and he's great! So you make a few compromises: your time, your energy, you change some things. Then, things happen. His temper, which was directed heretofore at others, gets focussed on YOU. He quits taking you out, since you "embarrass him" with your "rudeness" and "flirting". All of a sudden, you're not his Little Princess, but his Disturbed Spoiled Brat who "needs him". He might even get you to believe it yourself. Now you're stuck. You don't have friends to help get you perspective, because they want to "stay out of this". You don't know when you've seen them last, anyway. The things you liked that kept you going (crafts, hobbies) you dropped because you're broke, and you don't feel up to them. You want to leave, but can't figure out how. Besides, the last time you fought, he was so nice! And then...
You walk out. Maybe not just once, but several times. It's terrible, but you get in the habit of walking. He cools. You cool. You're apart from each other for a while. Each time, you develop a little more into someone who doesn't have him in your life. Maybe you see each other again a few times. You think it will be like before, now you've cooled. But he's the same, and you aren't. Finis!
Was I somehow "not addicted", that I could do this? No one who saw me back then would think so. Would I take cocaine again? Sure, if it were free, and I'd be safe, and I felt totally masochistic! Wouldn't that mean I'd "relapsed" and would be on my way back to active addiction? No, I'd still hate it, and probably wouldn't do it again for a long while. Wouldn't you really like to have a vaccine, to remove even that temptation? No. Would you vaccinate against love?
The NORAD Santa Report owes its existence to a typo in a local newspaper in Omaha,
Nebraska. In the mid-Fifties, a local department store had an actor impersonating Santa Claus,
that kids could call on Christmas Eve. (Presumably, the guy told the kids that "he'd be right over" and tell them to get to bed early.)
Unfortunately, the number had one digit wrong, which yuppers, patched the rugrats into NORAD.
The somewhat amused personnel, married and with kids themselves (as per regulation,
according to then-current psychological theory) took to saying "Well, we're an Air Force base, not
Santa Claus, but yes, we're tracking Santa right now."
A few winters of this were enough to get everyone's story straight, and to retire the number (except for Santa reports). In 1958, they began releasing live reports to TV and radio stations, casting high-ranking (and often retired) officers asuld get a "full NORAD welcome" (of escorting state-of-the-art fighter jets) if seen over US airspace. Creepy, when you think of it...
"Just say no." Well, that worked wonderfully, didn't it?
"Sorry, this is a job for grownups, not children. Stay out of trouble and we'll keep you safe."
Sorry, indeed. We're really sorry that we MIGHT want to help. We're really, really, sorry that the effort that's been done to stop SPAM and crack the RC-5 challenge can't be turned to "real", wartime use.
Yes, this is an attempt to keep terrorists from breaking into sensitive military secrets. Yes, this is probably work that might get people into trouble, if not with us, than with someone else.
But if there isn't something you can tell us that we CAN do, someone's going to try to do it anyway.And yes, maybe they'll get hurt. But maybe they'll save others from getting hurt. We aren't all under 35. We aren't the right shape, the right size, or even the right ideology for you. But we can't just sit there while others bumble. That's just not our way. Harness us. Use us. But don't ever insult us in this manner. That's all.
...and in some ways, I'm saddened, both by LEGO and by the American way of child-rearing these days. Recently, someone asked me whether I'd had any "activities" as a child. I laughed -- in my day, being part of a sports team, studying an instrument, or taking extracurricular classes would have marked me as an hopeless dullard -- not the bright math prodigy I was, who could amuse herself for weeks with a pad of paper, a scissors, a pencil, and a set of Lord of the Rings. If I wanted variety, I had the woods and fields near my house. (I lived in a New England suburb, on the "edge of the wild", as the forests and farms were called.)
LEGO, as I saw in the New York World's Fair of 1964-65, was part of this free-form childhood: even now, with my new LEGOs (folded into my 1966 kit with all care and due reverence) I can make a truck with an astronaut in full kit being driven out to launch (I titled this one, "Going to work, Mr. Armstrong?") one day, and a gas station the next. I look at the model kits in the store and think: hey, I don't have that kind of patience! I'd probably make a whole different story....one where the explorer has to give the ruby BACK to the Egyptians....but no. It's on the box...
Mindstorms I never touched. Too expensive. But I'd LOVE to make a nice little robot to drive the webcam around the apt to watch the cats....
Actually, there was a bit of folklore that sex was itself "debilitating", and stories were told of women who had succumbed as the result of "not having loved wisely but too well".
Funny, no one's told Madonna...
As a writer with little money but lots of time, I've often wanted to contribute something to the Open Source movement. So I've written a good deal for Everything, but with these more "serious" projects coming up, I've begun to reconsider my output of energies. Which do you propose I write for?
Time: Sophomore year in Hamden High School, 1974.
Place: A prefab building outside the school, somewhere in darkest Connecticut...
Me [14 years old, short, lots of hair, granny dress, enormous breasts, hyperventilating]: "I um, understand you've got a computer here? Like from the DoD? Can I see it?"
He [short sleeved dress shirt, real pocket protector, slide rule case, half specs]: "Sure. Want to try it out?"
Me: "Wow!"
He: "Sign the log, and here's a book..."
Me: "Gee, a TeleTYpe and everything! And a WATER COOLER! Wait until I tell Mom...I look like that groovy chick in Cosmopolitan!"
[Next day...]
Me: "I wonder what this does?"
Book:
10 PRINT "GOOD MORNING ALISSA"
20 GOTO 10
RUN
GOOD MORNING ALISSA
GOOD MORNING ALISSA
GOOD MORNING ALISSA
GOOD MORNING ALISSA
Me: EEK! That...that computer! It's got a mind of its own! It's not responding to SCR or NEW or even t\n! What do I do now??
GOOD MORNING ALISSA
GOOD MORNING ALISSA
GOOD MORNING ALISSA
[I drink a conical cup of water, try to remember some SF...]
Me: I know!!! It's in Isaac Asimov! I'll turn it off!!
[I switch off the TTY, and walk casually over to Dr. Berger, sitting under a chalk board with allocation of core memory...]
Me: I'd like to report a malfunction...
Hacker chorus in background: Berger!! You gave her the wrong book again!!
He: Um, I forgot to tell you, break is ^C. And by the way, you passed the test....
THE END.
Intelligence is beautiful!
on
Antitrust
·
· Score: 1
But not in the way of Hollywood stars or Prom Kings. As a chiXor, I've always thought that there was more outright goodlooking people on the developers' side of the line than in the suits', if you're willing to see the inherent sweetness in the "flush of youth" (it's literal -- it's a reddish line in the face), gently rounded bodies, equally gentle voices, intelligent soft hands, and a look of (mostly) excited happiness. You're all goodlooking! Sorry if I can't phrase it in macho enough terms...
For those who are not aware, the Voynich Manuscript is perhaps the only work of European literature that remains untranslated, or even undeciphered.
It is a handwritten work on vellum, 300+ pages long, written in a finely calligraphed alphabet found nowhere else in the world, and illustrated by drawings of plants, astronomical diagrams, and strange arrangements of pipes inhabited by frolicking naked women.
Unfortunately, this work can only be accessed by accredited scholars at Beineke Library at Yale, who has so far been unwilling to produce a full-color photocopy of it, although some pages are available through the Beineke web site. This represents a loss not only to scholars, but to artists, cryptographers, healers (it may be a medical text), and to the public at large. Please email Beineke library and petition them to make this work available, if not in a book, then online.
Slashdot Mirror
Another example: "A cock and bull story" used to mean "lies" or at least "inflated nonsense", a usage dating back to the early 18th century, at least. From this we get "bull session", an expression meaning a sharing of such stories, something like "shooting the breeze", whose etymology meaning "talking together for the sheer fun of it" is pretty obvious, along with it's connotations of ease, leisure, and the like. "Bullshit" for the prior expression dates only from about the 1950's and "shooting the shit" (which makes me think of using a small pile for target practice), slightly later.
Don't get me started on donkeys, but this seems to be an unsettling trend....
Or, what would you like as a name?
....Swift's Modest Proposal was satire, not a fact, something that hasn't been pointed out yet.
However, a few months later, side effects usually begin to occur: tics and twitches, a ravenous appetite, which coupled with the disinclination to move, quickly produces extreme obesity (and ironically Type 2 diabetes), and a pernicious apathy that slowly extends itself to jobs, appearance, other people and life itself. Worse, trying to get off these drugs means that psychotic symptoms reoccur, even worse than before, as the body's L-dopa production often has increased to unnatural levels. While it's true that some patients can function, and sometimes quite well, under these circumstances, the truth is that most of them do not, and the simple equation Psychotic - (L-dopa) = Normal simply does not hold up.
What nicotine, and to some extent, alcohol does is to increase L-dopa to a slight degree, but not as much as simply going without the drugs, and it does so fairly quickly. Part of the problem with the neuroleptics is that brain hormone production and consumption varies from moment to moment -- what would be "too much", say, waiting for a bus, would be "not enough" dancing at a lively party, brainstorming a new product, or trying to organize housework.
Without getting all Tom Cruise on you, I don't think that they're using the right angle.
...have already weighed in on this subject. Stephan Hawking is a man who is not the world's greatest physicist, nor is he doing any work now that is in any way in the forefront. Mostly what he is is a motor neuron disease survivor. If he were to die tomorrow, it would be a tragedy, but not in the way that he had great work in the future. He would have had significant work towards unifying quantum mechanics and relativity theory, at least thirty years ago, a beautiful family, and a wonderful face on what is often a very hard disease. I long to kiss that cheek. But I don't deny that flesh has had its day in about it's fortieth year. Let the world's embraces be felt. But he is not a Homo Novis.
Actually, both Protestants and Catholics were pretty good at burning, hanging, and otherwise spoiling each others' day during the Reformation (which is when most witch hunts occurred), since the greatest number of hunts were in Continental Europe, along fault lines that reached through France and Germany. Modern-day Wiccans are not a good historical source, since, like Fundamentalist Christians, they're notorious for rewriting history to suit their own witch-fulfilling fantasies....
Clearly this is in direct contradiction to the Tarvunty, and should be stopped, lest a holy jihad erupt! tarvuism.org
eeps! The true link
Clearly this is in direct contradiction to the Tarvunty, and should be stopped, lest a holy jihad erupt! tarvuism.org
...and really, with the economy the way it is, and everyone having to modify their TV's, do we really need another format change?
I think not.
...I iz pwning ur fone......with a tiny lizard?
I always liked the catherds...those brave men who herd cats through the prairie. Jeez, I miss that site that archived commercials....
Pretty much everyone who supports the vaccine subscribes to the idea that:
1. Cocaine use is a disease.
and
2.Wouldn't it be just ducky if we could find a nice chemical intervention that would leave the idea of personal responsibility completely out of this?
Disease folks usually are interested in certainties: on or off. What they're really interested in is not stopping addicts, but stopping everyone. If I ever wanted to go the NA route, I would have a great story to tell about how many thousands of dollars cocaine cost me, how I was kept in coercive relationships because of it, how I was stolen from, abused, and given tons of grief by dealers, etc. Fact is, I just walked out. No doctor, no group, no mentor.
I have strong religious convictions against 12-step and other "recovery" (really, "maintainence", since they explicitly don't "cure" and don't hold out the hope of actually, physically, recovering from anything) groups. Oh, I believe in God all right: I'm even a churchgoer. And yes, I believe in carrying out God's will. What happened to me was a product of a bad environment, a situation perceived as being hopeless, and an overwhelming need to feel happy, by any means necessary. On a spiritual level, I believe it's probably part of my mission on Earth to have been given this as a challenge, and yes, I believe I've found a solution. Whether it works for anyone else is immaterial -- I'd be at a loss to try to tell anyone else what to do, in any case.
My model for this is not that I had, or have, a disease, but I had a love affair with a bad guy. You know, the kind of guy that you like, but know is wrong: he's charismatic, handsome, generous, and funny, but throws unpredictable temper tantrums, puts you down in public for fun, is jealous, and well, acts peculiarly. Still, you figure, you like this guy, and he's great! So you make a few compromises: your time, your energy, you change some things. Then, things happen. His temper, which was directed heretofore at others, gets focussed on YOU. He quits taking you out, since you "embarrass him" with your "rudeness" and "flirting". All of a sudden, you're not his Little Princess, but his Disturbed Spoiled Brat who "needs him". He might even get you to believe it yourself. Now you're stuck. You don't have friends to help get you perspective, because they want to "stay out of this". You don't know when you've seen them last, anyway. The things you liked that kept you going (crafts, hobbies) you dropped because you're broke, and you don't feel up to them. You want to leave, but can't figure out how. Besides, the last time you fought, he was so nice! And then...
You walk out. Maybe not just once, but several times. It's terrible, but you get in the habit of walking. He cools. You cool. You're apart from each other for a while. Each time, you develop a little more into someone who doesn't have him in your life. Maybe you see each other again a few times. You think it will be like before, now you've cooled. But he's the same, and you aren't. Finis!
Was I somehow "not addicted", that I could do this? No one who saw me back then would think so. Would I take cocaine again? Sure, if it were free, and I'd be safe, and I felt totally masochistic! Wouldn't that mean I'd "relapsed" and would be on my way back to active addiction? No, I'd still hate it, and probably wouldn't do it again for a long while. Wouldn't you really like to have a vaccine, to remove even that temptation? No. Would you vaccinate against love?
Wasn't there a song in the movie "Steppenwolf" about time turning into space?
Mitnick was never that great a programmer. He was mostly a social engineer. Or so I've heard....
The NORAD Santa Report owes its existence to a typo in a local newspaper in Omaha,
Nebraska. In the mid-Fifties, a local department store had an actor impersonating Santa Claus,
that kids could call on Christmas Eve. (Presumably, the guy told the kids that "he'd be right over" and tell them to get to bed early.)
Unfortunately, the number had one digit wrong, which yuppers, patched the rugrats into NORAD.
The somewhat amused personnel, married and with kids themselves (as per regulation,
according to then-current psychological theory) took to saying "Well, we're an Air Force base, not
Santa Claus, but yes, we're tracking Santa right now."
A few winters of this were enough to get everyone's story straight, and to retire the number (except for Santa reports). In 1958, they began releasing live reports to TV and radio stations, casting high-ranking (and often retired) officers asuld get a "full NORAD welcome" (of escorting state-of-the-art fighter jets) if seen over US airspace. Creepy, when you think of it...
"Sorry, this is a job for grownups, not children. Stay out of trouble and we'll keep you safe."
Sorry, indeed. We're really sorry that we MIGHT want to help. We're really, really, sorry that the effort that's been done to stop SPAM and crack the RC-5 challenge can't be turned to "real", wartime use.
Yes, this is an attempt to keep terrorists from breaking into sensitive military secrets. Yes, this is probably work that might get people into trouble, if not with us, than with someone else.
But if there isn't something you can tell us that we CAN do, someone's going to try to do it anyway.And yes, maybe they'll get hurt. But maybe they'll save others from getting hurt. We aren't all under 35. We aren't the right shape, the right size, or even the right ideology for you. But we can't just sit there while others bumble. That's just not our way. Harness us. Use us. But don't ever insult us in this manner. That's all.
LEGO, as I saw in the New York World's Fair of 1964-65, was part of this free-form childhood: even now, with my new LEGOs (folded into my 1966 kit with all care and due reverence) I can make a truck with an astronaut in full kit being driven out to launch (I titled this one, "Going to work, Mr. Armstrong?") one day, and a gas station the next. I look at the model kits in the store and think: hey, I don't have that kind of patience! I'd probably make a whole different story....one where the explorer has to give the ruby BACK to the Egyptians....but no. It's on the box...
Mindstorms I never touched. Too expensive. But I'd LOVE to make a nice little robot to drive the webcam around the apt to watch the cats....
OK. It's not carbon, but it's the closest you're going to get to his only SF story (yes, an SF story!) "The Diamond as Big as The Ritz".
Actually, there was a bit of folklore that sex was itself "debilitating", and stories were told of women who had succumbed as the result of "not having loved wisely but too well".
Funny, no one's told Madonna...
As a writer with little money but lots of time, I've often wanted to contribute something to the Open Source movement. So I've written a good deal for Everything, but with these more "serious" projects coming up, I've begun to reconsider my output of energies. Which do you propose I write for?
Me [14 years old, short, lots of hair, granny dress, enormous breasts, hyperventilating]: "I um, understand you've got a computer here? Like from the DoD? Can I see it?"
He [short sleeved dress shirt, real pocket protector, slide rule case, half specs]: "Sure. Want to try it out?"
Me: "Wow!"
He: "Sign the log, and here's a book..."
Me: "Gee, a TeleTYpe and everything! And a WATER COOLER! Wait until I tell Mom...I look like that groovy chick in Cosmopolitan!"
[Next day...]
Me: "I wonder what this does?"
Book: 10 PRINT "GOOD MORNING ALISSA"
20 GOTO 10
RUN
GOOD MORNING ALISSA
GOOD MORNING ALISSA
GOOD MORNING ALISSA
GOOD MORNING ALISSA
Me: EEK! That...that computer! It's got a mind of its own! It's not responding to SCR or NEW or even t\n! What do I do now??
GOOD MORNING ALISSA
GOOD MORNING ALISSA
GOOD MORNING ALISSA
[I drink a conical cup of water, try to remember some SF...]
Me: I know!!! It's in Isaac Asimov! I'll turn it off!!
[I switch off the TTY, and walk casually over to Dr. Berger, sitting under a chalk board with allocation of core memory...]
Me: I'd like to report a malfunction...
Hacker chorus in background: Berger!! You gave her the wrong book again!!
He: Um, I forgot to tell you, break is ^C. And by the way, you passed the test....
THE END.
But not in the way of Hollywood stars or Prom Kings. As a chiXor, I've always thought that there was more outright goodlooking people on the developers' side of the line than in the suits', if you're willing to see the inherent sweetness in the "flush of youth" (it's literal -- it's a reddish line in the face), gently rounded bodies, equally gentle voices, intelligent soft hands, and a look of (mostly) excited happiness. You're all goodlooking! Sorry if I can't phrase it in macho enough terms...
Nope. Ten cuts on the album, plus four prints makes "fourteen pictures".
...and the noblest experiment of Corporate America. Hope there are garages in Heaven, Bill. Cook some steaks for us. We're going to miss you.
For those who are not aware, the Voynich Manuscript is perhaps the only work of European literature that remains untranslated, or even undeciphered. It is a handwritten work on vellum, 300+ pages long, written in a finely calligraphed alphabet found nowhere else in the world, and illustrated by drawings of plants, astronomical diagrams, and strange arrangements of pipes inhabited by frolicking naked women.
Unfortunately, this work can only be accessed by accredited scholars at Beineke Library at Yale, who has so far been unwilling to produce a full-color photocopy of it, although some pages are available through the Beineke web site. This represents a loss not only to scholars, but to artists, cryptographers, healers (it may be a medical text), and to the public at large. Please email Beineke library and petition them to make this work available, if not in a book, then online.