Funsies

I just thought I’d mention that Convergence is coming up — I’ll be there the whole weekend and will be having a grand time. We usually go with the whole family, but this year we’re scattered and we’re just coming off an expensive reunion/wedding in Korea, so it’ll just be me and my son Alaric.

I’ve also just now learned that there will be another NerdCon in October. I went to the one last fall, and it was excellent — a very writerly sort of event, all about getting those creative juices bubbling. I’ll probably go to that, too.

If you see me, say hello! I’m always happy to meet you all.

As long as I’m planning ahead, how could I forget to mention Skepticon in November?

My hometown does good

Kent-Syrian-Refugees

I grew up in Kent, Washington, and I just learned that Kent is one of a small number of cities chosen to settle Syrian refugees.

Among a divided community, Twenty five, ten-member families will resettle in Kent in the coming weeks.

“Kent has affordable housing, ample job opportunities, and a welcoming community,” said Dave Duea, director of refugee and immigration services for the Seattle-based Lutheran Community Services of Washington. “We expect to resettle many more families in Kent, along with many other refugee groups we are proud to serve.”

Well, I hope it’s welcoming. On the forum where I heard about this, people were talking about “savages” and declaring that “the jungle just opened up”. I see it as good news, though. Not only are they praising the town, but it’s a reflection of a vast improvement since I lived there. I remember Kent as a barren wasteland of banks and gas stations, with farms being steadily paved over and replaced with warehouses. When I’ve been back to visit, it is much improved (although traffic is much worse), with an entertainment complex, an expanded library, and a light rail station. When I left, I thought I’d never be back. Now it looks like a lovely place to retire to (except for the traffic).

Having some more ethnic diversity is just another big plus.

It is too bad, though, that a religious organization is front and center in assisting in this humanitarian effort. If only secular organizations were larger and more involved…

NEVER MIND. Snopes has the source for this one, the “Nevada Scooper”, as a fake news site. I hadn’t checked because it was such a mundane and unsurprising story, and didn’t seem particularly like clickbait — it was just something happening in my hometown. But apparently, “settling refugees in America” is one of those subjects that draws in outraged readers.

Friday Cephalopod: Force of arms

octopusarmimage

Who among you has taught or studied vertebrate anatomy? I have. It’s cool. Skeletal and muscular anatomy are weird, though, because we so take the principles for granted that we’re often not aware of it. We can move because we have a jointed framework, a collection of levers that are moved by the contractions of muscle fibers, which have distinctive attachments and insertions via tendons on those bones (or, in some cases, the muscles attach to sheets of connective tissue called fascia). The musculoskeletal part of anatomy classes consists of a lot of memorization of muscles, their origins and insertions, and the effect of the action of contracting the muscle. In some ways, vertebrate limbs are actually rather crude, made up of bony rods with joints that are prone to failure (I am very aware of that as I get older), with a collection of long muscles cobbled together to carry out specific movements.

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Predictability

Donald Trump has reacted to Elizabeth Warren’s speech. How, you might wonder? Guess.

If your bet was placed on “demeaning nickname, ethnic slur, and fact-free insult”, you’re a winner! Unfortunately, everyone bet that way, so this was basically an even odds gamble, and you just get your money back.

I was tempted to put a nickel on “substantive, intellectual response” because the odds on that meant I’d be a millionaire now, but decided it would just be throwing away five cents.

Warren replies.

The problem with games

The hot new game of the hour seems to be Overwatch — it looks fun and very well done, and a lot of my online friends are playing it. But I’m not even tempted. Zero interest. Don’t even want to try.

Why? Because it’s a multiplayer game, and hell is other people.

I used to play World of Warcraft, and what finally drove me to give it up was that there were big chunks of the game I could not play — not because of what Blizzard had done, but because I’d have to team up with assholes, and it was incredibly frustrating to have to drop out of a group because someone in it was a homophobic racist with a mouth. Note: and it was always me leaving voluntarily. I never once saw a group kick out the bigot.

Actually, it was something Blizzard did: the absence of any policy against hate speech is a kind of action, too.

And now for the deeper dose of reality

Here’s the basic political reality right now: Hillary Clinton has the nomination. Trump is a colossal raging goon. I think the Democrats are going to have a field day romping over the Republicans.

But there is danger in that attitude, the problem of complacency and of being able to continue in the same old unsuccessful way, because the opposition is a lunatic. Matt Taibbi explains the problem brilliantly. If there’s anything we should learn from the Democratic campaign so far, it’s that there is a rising insurgency, a dissatisfaction with business as usual, and the victory of the establishment candidate means that the conservative leadership of the Democrats can heave a sigh of relief and can avoid making substantive changes in how power is administered.

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“thin-skinned racist bully”

I wish it were Bernie Sanders who had the nomination, but short of that, I am anticipating a spectacular campaign season, now that the Democratic focus is going to be exclusively on taking out Trump, rather than internecine warfare. Here’s Elizabeth Warren, taking the gloves off and giving us a preview of what is to come.

That’s a thing of beauty. Not only is she sinking Trump, she’s stitching the Republican establishment into the sack with him. This is precisely what we need, to not only campaign against the short-fingered vulgarian bigot, but to wreck the rest of party that’s propping him up.

Parks have rules for a reason

Jebus, people. Lately it’s nothing but bad news about people doing stupid things in our national parks: ignoring signs and strolling out to fragile ponds, picking up abandoned bison calves, getting up close to adult bison and getting trampled for their trouble, and now the most horrible story of them all: a young man left the boardwalk and fell into a boiling hot spring.

The grisly death of a tourist who left a boardwalk and fell into a high-temperature, acidic spring in Yellowstone National Park offers a sobering reminder that visitors need to follow park rules, park officials and observers said.

Efforts to recover the body of Colin Nathaniel Scott, 23, of Portland, Oregon, were suspended on Wednesday after rangers determined there were no remains left in the hot spring.

There’s just a thin mineral crust over the seething water, which is highly acidic, so boiling a body in that for a day leaves nothing. Stay on the designated trails. Wild animals are wild and active volcanic springs are deadly dangerous.

Also to keep in mind, besides personal danger: it’s a good thing the body dissolved, because park rangers were risking their lives trying to recover the remains, until it became pointless.

Dennis Prager has just two questions for atheists

They’re enlightening, because they tell us just how screwed up his preconceptions are. His two questions are:

1. Do you hope you are right or wrong?

2. Do you ever doubt your atheism?

What’s most interesting is how Prager answers the questions, exposing his own assumptions. So in response to his first question, this is how he thinks atheists ought to answer.

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