Happy Canadian Thanksgiving!

Today is a meaningful day up north, on which they will all give thanks that they are not part of the United States, and pray that they never will be.

Meanwhile, down here, most places call this Columbus Day, on which we celebrate genocide, the murder, rape, and enslavement of the indigenous people’s of this continent. We only do this to add a special fervor to the Canadian celebration because we like them all so much.

Nah, I lied. We do this because it is our nature to take over and exploit whatever we want. Manifest destiny and all that. Canada is just lucky that they don’t have anything we want…hey, oil in Alberta, huh? And global warming is going to expand agricultural opportunities northward?

Pray harder.

2 Corinthians 4: 17-18

You knew this day would come.

Your beautiful wife has been on a cleaning kick. She has been tidying the upstairs bedrooms, which used to be the boys’ rooms, which were an awful mess of teenage boys’ junk. You thought you could tuck your preciousses in there, where they would blend in and she would never notice. No one would notice. They were safe.

But then, one evening, she drops a great big box on the ottoman. She looks at you, accusingly.

“I thought you weren’t hoarding these things anymore,” she says.

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“You never know when you might need that special cable,” you say, “You might give me some big home improvement project some day, and that box will hold exactly what will do the job.”

She gives you that look. You know the one. The one where she’d really like to say something critical, but she’s holding it back, because she’s so darned nice all the time.

“Sort it out now,” she says. “I’m hauling everything away tomorrow.”

You go through it all. There was ribbon cable in there. A Centronics parallel interface. A 1200 baud modem. You never know when you might suddenly have a use for a 1200 baud modem, and they’re just about impossible to find nowadays! Oh my god, Firewire cable. You know how much that stuff cost? Appletalk to ethernet adapters. Phone wire. Ancient mice that only worked with the old school Apple mouse connectors. You untangle and sort, and she glares at you and you end up throwing all that history away. You finally cling to only a couple of nice ethernet switches, and you found your handy RS-232 patch adapter, which you slip into your pocket when she wasn’t looking. It’s all going to the dump now.

She doesn’t know about the much bigger stash you keep in the lab, though, so you’ll still be OK if the apocalypse comes and you absolutely must solder up a serial-to-parallel cable, or you’ll die.

Oh, no! She just came down the stairs with the big spool of Cat5! We can’t get rid of that!

Donate!

Everyone wants our money right now — presidential candidates are begging every day. But there are two other organizations that could use some help.

  • Skepticon! They have a contributor matching all donations until midnight tonight. You’ve got six hours!

  • RationalWiki! Help them out in their quarterly fundraiser — it’s all that’s keeping the doors open.

Oh, sure, give some money to Clinton, too.

Thursday goddamn

Labs, classes, committee meetings, and now I have to somehow squeeze my flu shot into the schedule. Have I ever mentioned how much I hate Thursdays this semester?

Oh, yes, you should get your flu vaccination too. For the good of your community. And so you’re less likely to spend a day or two puking your guts out at some time this year.

Feeling existential today

And now, back to grading.

But wait.

And you may ask yourself
How do I work this?
And you may ask yourself
Where is that large automobile?
And you may tell yourself
This is not my beautiful office
And you may tell yourself
These are not my beautiful papers.

Same as it ever was…
Same as it ever was…
Same as it ever was…
Same as it ever was…
Same as it ever was…
Same as it ever was…
Same as it ever was…
Same as it ever was…

And you may ask yourself
Am I right?…Am I wrong?
And you may say to yourself yourself
My God!…What have I done?!

Sorry. Lost it for a few minutes there. And now…I must go feed the fish.

The word for Niki was VIVID

nikimassey

I first met Niki Massey several years ago — I think it was at Convergence that this force of nature asserted herself to me. She got this response a lot, I suspect; you’d meet her and be staggered by this sassy, loud, laughing, determined woman, and you’d know she was going to be whirling back to bounce off you again in the near future.

Except now she’s not.

Niki died unexpectedly in her sleep this weekend, and now I’m seeing this far-flung community of skeptics and atheists, and also all of her friends in the Minneapolis area, simply reeling in dismay. She was too young. She was too fierce. This can’t have happened. But it did, because death doesn’t give a damn about what you want.

All I can say is that I will remember Niki. I can’t help it, she won’t let me, she was unforgettable.

niki

Best cameo ever

I just watched Luke Cage on Netflix, and it was awesome (no spoilers, don’t worry). One of the nicest surprises, though, was that there was no Stan Lee cameo. Instead, they had…

Method Man. Just blew me away.

From now on, in all the Marvel movies, I want to see the Wu-Tang Clan represented. I’ll settle for nothing less.