Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

"Imagine a world where cursing and getting drunk were shocking, where sex was scandalous, where Christianity influenced government, and where society and its laws stood for no higher ideal than shoring up the comfort and stability of the rich." -- 'Vox Populi' in rec.org.sca, explaining the appeal of piracy while promoting a pirate-reenactors web site.

"Ummm, you mean like here in the US today?" -- Ron Bargoot, in response to 'Vox Populi'.

I just found out about this, kind of late in the day, but (thanks to lothie) let me point out that today is International Awareness Day for fibromyalgia, CFIDS, and ME. Ironically, I'm too wiped (fatigue and pain from fibromyalgia, no doubt exacerbated by my long day yesterday and having to force myself out of the house to get to a doctor appointment today) to write something meaningful about it, but a lot of what Lothie wrote applies, so I encourage y'all to please go read her entry (linked above). My story differs from hers but the important points are there. Some things that are easy for others are not easy for us; we don't look sick; it sucks to get hit with a double-whammy of having to change plans due to pain and/or fatigue and then feeling guilty for letting others down.

Believe it or not, there are still some folks out there claiming that it's "all in our heads". One of my bandmates pointed out this MSNBC article about new developments, including an objective proof that we're not imagining the pain.

This quote jumped out at me: "Often patients are workaholics who push themselves to the limit, despite years of escalating pain. Then a trigger -- a car accident, a viral infection -- pushes them over the edge and knocks their nervous systems out of whack." That sounds familiar.

• This looked like a fun article: Qapla'! Hospital seeks Klingon speaker (CNN.com, 10 May 2003). "'We have to provide information in all the languages our clients speak,' said Jerry Jelusich, a procurement specialist for the county Department of Human Services, which serves about 60,000 mental health clients." But on closer examination, this counter-article by Seth Finkelstein looks even more interesting!
"Every once in a while, in order to remind myself of the quality of information typically reported, I trace down the source of a particularly ridiculous story. The 'Klingon Language Interpreter' myth, which is spawning now, provides an amusing case study of the process of pack journalism." Though I did find one of the followup comments amusing: "But you know, prophecies can be self-fulfilling. All you need is an Oregonian who speaks some Klingon, has a good sense of humour, and (optionally :) is in need of some mental services."
• Of course, if you're so inclined, you can use the Klingon front-end for Google to search the web. (But I notice that the "translate this page" button is missing from a search result in French -- it's there for the same item if I search in English.) You can also use "Swedish Chef", "Ewmew Fudd", or l33t h4ckor
• Oh my. the iLoo, or as it's referred to in the article, a "www.c." An "Internet loo" for festivals and such, courtesey of MSN. (Reads like very dry satire, but I'm not entirely certain that's what it is. I do remember when one friend was declared "decadent" for installing a computer terminal in his bathroom back when us geeks had dumb terminals at home.)
• Related to the iLoo, here's an Internet Toilet Roll Browser. "The product allows you to search the Internet whilst sitting on the toilet and print out any pages you are interested in on your toilet roll."
• tcb shows off what he managed to do with Clutter to provide a glimpse into his musical headspace for a day.
• This has got to be somebody from talk.bizarre, no? Collected eBay Feedback Comments Left by andy46477. "I once had a fork. It looked like a spoon, so I called it a spoon. Was I wrong?" "When I open boxes of cereal, you should be inside. Yes, you're THAT GOOD!" "I forbid you to wear the blue sock! HEED MY COMMAND!!!!!"
• Somebody tried the monkeys/typewriter/Shakespeare" statistics experiment (sort of): "Give six monkeys one computer for a month, and they will make a mess."
• Inconspicuous Consumption by Paul Lukas is about "deconstructing the details of consumer culture -- details that are either so weird or obscure that we'd never see them, or so ubiquitous that we've essentially stopped seeing them." What I've seen so far sounds like stuff a bunch of my friends would enjoy reading...
• The Monastic Aptitude Test (cartoon). The questions from the sample page in the cartoon are reproduced in this page about the cartoon. "I thought that it would be silly to have a juxtaposition of the rigid standardized tests and the contemplative unsolvable Buddhist koans."
• NASA Warms Up To Maryland's Trash: "The space agency harnesses methane gas from a nearby landfill and uses it to fire boilers that produce steam, heating 31 buildings at the Center. [...] NASA will save taxpayers more than $3.5 million over the next decade in fuel costs. Goddard is the first federal facility to heat its buildings with landfill gas."
• An extremely powerful essay about affirmative action by Bee Lavender. Hard to decide what to quote from this, but I'll start with "I want to be extremely clear: it took the threat of a lawsuit to gain access to the classes I should have been enrolled in automatically. The simple existence of the federal law protecting my rights did not mean that I was safe." And, "I was a good student, a decent and honorable girl with a serious illness. The system should have worked for me instead of against me." And the kicker: "I confronted and lurched over many illegal barriers on my path to higher education; but the critical, fundamental truth is that I would not have been able to achieve my goal if not for affirmative action." But the essay is worth a whole lot more than the sound bites -- go read it.
• crackmonkeyjr stirred up a hornet's nest by asking "what is it about being gender queer, or transgendered that makes it a different sort of classification than being a nerd or jock, and should they be given any more protections than a person of one of the more traditional social groups?" in debate. Much of what follows shows how much ignorance there is about what genderqueer and transgendered mean. On one side I see a mixture of willfully refusing to "get it" (does that count as a form of "trolling"?) and folks simply waiting (and asking) for an explanation phrased so that it makes sense to them. On the other side I see a mixture of "you can't understand", real attempts to find better ways to get the point across, and some banging of heads against the wall by trying to use the same explanations over again and hoping that they'll sink in with repetition. At the same time, some interesting questions have been asked. I'm seeing it as a reminder of just how far from "getting it" many people are. It's a long thread.