elisteran

I have to learn to be more fixed in my resolve.

Way of the Kings by Brandon Sanderson
Return: An Inn-Keeper's World story by Peter Beagle
Lady Protector by LE Modesitt, Jr
A Hard Day's Knight by Simon R Green
Five Odd Honors: Breaking the Wall by Jane Lindskold
Iorich by Steven Brust
Where Angels Fear to Tread by Thomas E Sniegoski

Electronic journals probably felt super futuristic back in the day; I wonder if they still do, or if the entire notion of a journal where you record what happened to you and what you think (a very introspective journal) is dying. Most of the blogs I read are very externally focused, with emphasis on linking to external sites and news, and the occasional introspective post that rarely combines to form a coherent narrative. Of course, this gives rise to a horrible confirmation bias; much like the sense that most people are exhibitionist/extroverts, because most people you notice are ...

Of course, there are essayists who manage to keep blogs that don't link outwards; e.g., see Paul Graham. Of course, you may not want to read him; I'm just about done with Hackers & Painters; I think I recall reading some of the essays on his blog when they were first written and being much more favorably impressed than I am reading the book today. Now, when reading it, I think it's glib, superficial, self-impressed self-aggrandizement ; has the zeitgeist changed or was I simply more easily impressed back then? I just re-added his RSS feed to my Reader feed so I'll be able to judge his new essays as they appear.

Incidentally, as I was writing up this entry, I ran across Blurb, a blog->book producer. I can't imagine ever writing something I'd want to make so permanent, but the sample they show sure does look pretty.

One thing I noticed in The Social Network (fantastic movie, by the way) is when Zuckerberg was using LiveJournal, he posted very quick, single paragraph updates, basically bereft of any external links. It's not the way most of my LJ friends post, certainly -- with the exception of those who dump twitter to their livejournal, most of my friends list post multiple paragraphs, or at the very least are writing a paragraph linking to a multi-paragraph content, but of course, this is a very biased selection. It certainly fits in with facebook status updates or even twitter comments, though.

Incidentally, because I had my doubts regarding the accuracy of parts of the film: the blog entries in the film match closely, if not exactly, the excerpts of his actual blog shown in this Slate story, and this Quora thread has a lot of other commentary.

Once upon a time there was a story that had a beginning, a middle, and no

So I experimented today with, when I was feeling tired (not just drained, which I was all day) with going to the gym in the afternoon. Quite good. xxx calories burned, and I feel more able to tackle the work day. On the other hand, I came back up and had a small helping of pasta and peaches for dinner, so I'll be stuck going back down to the gym to work on the stepper and maybe treadmill in a few hours.

Test

I wouldn't have bothered saying something, but some normally interesting locations are leaping into this fray with over-excited headlines and little rational argument: Ken Buck, a conservative candidate for Senate in Colorado, said that ""I think that birth has an influence over [homosexuality], like alcoholism and some other things, but I think that basically you have a choice." This has prompted a number of normally sober sites such as http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2010_10/026169.php to run around accusing Buck of some incredible comparison.

Yes, he did compare homosexuality with alcoholism. In the sense that he is claiming both are diseases that are influenced by birth/genes which individuals have power to choose how they're expressed. People are familiar with this argument about alcoholism; drawing a comparison between the two mechanisms is thus useful for debate purposes. This is entirely distinct from talking about the actual results of said mechanisms.

Basically, in my longwinded way, it annoys me that certain people in my rough ideological spectrum don't seem interested in actual good-faith debate; if someone advances an argument which is then siezed upon and irrationally screamed about, then soon there won't be any actual debate. It's just sloganeering and shouting down the other side.

This weekend was taken up with an intense west coast swing workshop at Two Left Feet. For the uninitiated, I should point out that Two Left Feet is probably the best venue in the entire bay area for west coast swing; however, it's located out in the middle of nowhere, roughly an hour away on the other side of the Bay. So I unfortunately don't make it out there often -- once every few months, perhaps.

I went there on Saturday with the ever-delightful M around 4pm on Saturday and left there about 1:30am ; almost the entire time in between was spent on the floor (Sunday was a comparatively gentle 2 hours of dancing). There was a bit of a gender imbalance, but unlike the Peninsula, there were more followers than leaders; such a novelty is to be treasured. But they were disciplined about rotation ; I suppose that's a benefit of a non-travelling dance, in part, but it helps make sure everybody dances fairly with everybody else during the lesson.

The lessons were great; I took some notes although not enough, and got a lot of social dancing. I was a little repetitive in the social dance afterwards, and didn't integrate the lessons well enough, but I felt pretty good following it; I got at least a few style variations in with the different partners, and I had some really good dances. Somewhere either that night or on Sunday, I even started getting comfortable with a move that's confounded me for over a year, and is basically one of my favorite west coast swing moves to witness ever.

On the minus side, I was making some really stupid mistakes during some of the lessons, like just not remembering which side pass they wanted to do, screwing up the initial move into the bow&arrow position because I started rotating the person wrongly, so forth. Just not thinking far enough ahead, or having a very limited short-term memory. Le sigh.

Afterwards, I went down and had group dinner with some old friends; an unusually busy weekend for me, but a lot of fun.