Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

I couldn't decide whether to quote the long chunk or just the bumper-sticker-sized slogan at the end, so I'm hedging my bets and bolding the soundbite.

"[...] Free flow of information is the only safeguard against tyranny. The once-chained people whose leaders at last loose their grip on information flow will soon burst with freedom and vitality, but the free nation gradually constricting its grip on public discourse has begun its rapid slide into despotism. Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master." -- UN Commissioner Pravin Lal, a character in the game "Warring Factions" and/or the game "Alpha Centauri"

(I'm not sure whether the games are related, and if so, how. Neither am I certain what player or game designer actually authored that quote to put into the character's mouth. But searching the web for it leads back to pages related to both games. In one it's listed as coming from "U.N. Declaration of Rights", and in the other it's from "Librarian's Preface". Clues appreciated.)

I had trouble falling asleep last night, and a few hours after I finally did so, I was awakened by ( a less than pleasant dream )

But in keeping with my usual pattern for waking up from dreams, what woke me wasn't any of the disturbing elements of the dream, but when I got distracted from the plot and veered into trying to work out the science -- wondering what other species were similarly affected and which could be carriers, and thus how likely reinfection of the main population from wild animals and vermin would be despite incredibly thorough quarantine of infected humans.

I fell right back asleep again, but not for long.

---

A few days ago as I fell asleep, a tune kept chasing itself through my head. "Garoon Garoon", a ... Ladino? ... song. Except that it was playing in my head on electric guitar with distortion and massive application of a flanger and maybe a phase shifter as well. So heavy a shheeeoooowwwshhhooouuuueeeshhheeeooowwwshhh that I couldn't even hum an approximation of the effect at the same time as the melody, but I could hear it in my head. Kind of groovy, actually, but I sometimes wonder at the way my subconscious synthesizes things.

---

There are a number of things I don't know, which when brought to my attention, elicit from me a reaction of, "I ought to know that." There are the expected and explainable ones -- either related to something I do, or really in the "I used to know that" category -- but there are also a lot in the "Well everyone in my culture should know this and I'm ashamed not to" class, and a bunch more that I react to the same way (ashamed I lack General Background Knowledge) that on a little more thought make no sense in that context after all. Things that I feel I Ought To Know, feel as though others should have every right to expect me to know them, but which when examined rationally only really make sense in the "I'd like to know" category at best. Things that no reasonable person would expect me to have studied or to have picked up by chance, except that my gut "ought to know this" reaction clearly isn't reasonable.

I've been wondering who else experiences this.

Admittedly, there's an awful lot of Pretty Darned Random knowledge I've picked up from being exposed to it, well, randomly. So I get my share of "How/why do you know that?" as well. But is simply being accustomed to that enough to produce feelings of guilt for not knowing other obscure stuff, like how long tobacco leaves are cured before they're used (I'm not a smoker) or the pH of spinal fluid (I'm not a doctor) or the period of Pluto's orbit (I'm not an astr... oh wait, as a science fiction fan I probably should know that one...) or the number of cases in Basque (I'm not a linguist and don't speak Basque) when any of these come up in conversation?

Somebody give me a Ugol on this...

---

That last bit has been in my "get around to writing about" queue for quite some time. The reason I got around to it today was that while listening to the radio on Sunday I realized I didn't know what Polish sounds like. That is, I don't know the sound of it enough to recognize it and say, "Oh, that's Polish," when I hear it. I'm sure I've heard a few sentences of Polish here and there; I'm also sure I haven't heard much more than that. But my gut reaction to realizing I couldn't identify Polish was to feel that I really should be able to, like it was some failing on my part not to be able to identify most of the languages of the world, the vast majority of which I do not speak.

I was listening to a polka show, and a song came on in an unfamiliar language. I mean even more unfamiliar than "I don't understand that" -- I would have recognized German, and would have been pretty sure about Gaelic, either of which makes sense for a polka, but this was neither. Nor was it any othe the other languages I can recognize the sound of (and obviously it wasn't one of the two I'd have a shot at actually understanding). So I found myself wondering what language it was, and what the most likely candidates were, and for some reason found it startling and upsetting to realize how many European languages I can't identify by ear.

I never did find out what language it was. The announcer didn't say.

(It was way too soft and, uh, "swooshy" for German, and it didn't sound like a Romance language. I think of the polka as an Irish and German (and melting-pot American) dance, but I figure it's got to be popular in a lot more places than that. What are the other likely candidates?)

Fred finds the oddest tidbits on the web ... as he put it, "paint to imply the existence of something you can't see, to conceal something else you can't see anyway."

"Well, we'd be lying if we said we didn't think our new billboard campaign would turn some heads. Frankly, that was the whole idea. I mean, why put up a billboard unless it's going to grab some attention? However, little did we know that nude backs would cause so much angst.

"However, then an FM99 listener came up with what seemed like a great idea: Why not just paint bikini straps on our lovely models? And so that's how we wound up on Military Highway Monday morning, watching as a painter worked his magic. [...]"

Yes, they painted bikini straps across the photos of women's backs (their butts were already covered by a black bar with words on it that went across the whole width of the billboard) so that people wouldn't be upset about knowing that the women's fronts were bare. What were people scared to look in their rear view mirrors after passing the billboard lest they see (OMG EEK SCARY) bare breasts on the other side of the billboard or something? Or maybe it was just knowing that the models had been topless in front of the photographer during the shoot? Yow. What an odd culture I live in.

Before & after photos of the billboard at the link above.