wasn't there a movie about this?

"Robots must be constrained to adhere to the same laws as humans or they should not be permitted on the battlefield," Arkin wrote. Asimov already came up with excellent laws of robotics, but by definition war robots can not conform to them.

this is NOT a suggestion. Just popped into my head.

When I read Stranger in a Strange Land as a teenager, the messages about freedom and religion and sex didn’t seem too profound to me. But eating dead bodies- that was something to think about. Made sense, after all. Maybe that’s why Soylent Green never made an impact on me. It was only logical, what with the hunger and overpopulation, and meat was harvested in a rather less disturbing way than in the warren surrounded by snares in Watership Down.

my dreams are serials

While the plots of my dreams do not pick up again, incidental details do all the time. One example: dreams about Twin Trees, my family’s cabin in the Adirondacks. Over the past year or so I’ve dreamed about it numerous times and there are several things about Dreamworld Twin Trees that are different from the real one. But they remain consistent within Dreamworld. There is another bedroom in the basement (no basement in the real world) that my aunt and uncle normally sleep in. I do occasionally when they’re not there, but don’t like it because it’s creepy. A secret door off this bedroom leads to a deep closet. There are lamps and dishes that are consistent in my dreams that are nothing like the ones actually there. The woodstove is a different style in a different location (where the telephone table is) and includes an oven for baking. In one of my dreams the oven broke and my relatives slid parts of a broken electric oven into the opening, so the stucco-ish woodstove sports the door of a 70’s-era oven on its side. It’s been there in all my dreams since.

maybe I should've gone for a Harlequin

A few weeks ago I realized that I couldn’t recall ever having read a romance novel. I decided to remedy this with Pride and Prejudice. I was unimpressed.

I remember getting into a debate with a women’s studies professor at Alfred about whether Tom Sawyer was more entertaining than Little Women. I felt exploring caves to be inherently more interesting than reading Pilgrim’s Progress. She pointed out that the values placed on stereotypically gendered diversions were socially defined, and that my preference for action/ adventure stories was likely because they, like masculinity, were valued more by my culture. I’m still not sure how much I agree with her. But even the March girls, whom I found boring, were more interesting than the Bennets. Both books concluded in marrying off a passel of sisters but at least in Little Women they did a few other things too.

I do not however miss tape drives

In fourth grade or so I did an in-depth research project on the Pony Express. My mother suggested I dig up newspaper articles as source material and escorted me to the Schenectady Library (the main branch of our library system). Paper indices of the New York Times were cross-referenced to the boxes of microfilm I needed, but staying on-task once the film was loaded into the reader was near impossible. These were real newspapers from the 1860s! The advertisements! The headlines! Sitting in front of the machine with the stories glowing in front of me, the film whirring as I skipped forward and back, heightened the sense of time-travel.

The process became somewhat less exciting as my academic career progressed; looking up 20-year-old academic articles isn’t quite so fascinating. But in graduate school I worked in the library’s microfilm department and was again enchanted. Most people were too lazy to get their articles themselves so they sent in a request and paid me to do it. I’ll admit to occasionally being glad when they wanted something from the less time-consuming microfiche collection. But the process of seeking out articles on all subjects from all eras was made more romantic by the pages of the microfilm flying by, and I became adept at stopping on the right page on the first try.

Long periods of reading microfilm is awful on your eyes; storage and retrieval is space and time inefficient. But it gives me the same pleasure as a few other time-consuming anachronisms- darkroom work and mixed-cassette-tape production come to mind. There’s the visceral pleasure in the process itself plus the technical pleasure in accomplishing something that requires some work- it gives a sense that you’ve Done Something, not just hit “print” after using a search engine or clicked an icon in Photoshop. I miss it.

(Reminded by this.)

"I take my family everywhere I run."

Interestingly, this cell phone ad clearly articulates one of my major reasons for NOT purchasing a phone. If you have one people assume you're always on call. I want to avoid this primarily for selfish reasons, but being unavailable also empowers other people to work out their own problems. Really, a caregiver who's regularly interrupting her exercise to discuss pacifiers ought to be fired or divorced.

(Imagine a gender role reversal in this ad. Click on picture for larger image.)

Dollhouse review

The most annoying character on Firefly was a girl named River, who spent most of her time walking around in a dreamy daze but occasionally said and did batshit crazy things. This was a side effect of the government manipulating her brain to turn her into a weapon or something. In the first episode, Dollhouse appears to be all about a group of underweight but otherwise attractive women who walk around in dreamy dazes until they are injected with mission-appropriate personalities, and then they kick ass with occasional craziness thrown in. They have new-agey names like Echo and Sierra. I am thusfar unimpressed, but I’ll admit that it took more than one episode to draw me into Firefly.

I hate difference feminism

Women can not save an economy. Different values can. But they're not "women's values."

head wounds bleed a lot

C just walked into my room with blood dripping in his face. He'd hit his head on the corner of the medicine cabinet. Tiny cut, he's not in pain or even as stressed out as he normally is over these things. But feigning calm when your kid's head is COVERED IN BLOOD is really really hard.

And I don't know how to put a Band-Aid on when there's hair in the way.

regional foods fail

In small print on my "Cape Cod Cranberry" juice: "Cranberries in this product are not from Cape Cod."

technology fail

30 Boxes is down and Dan and I have no idea where we're supposed to be. We converted away from the paper calendar about six months ago so we could both access our info when I was at work.

Orin Scrivello is looking attractive right now

Dan’s been having trouble with his teeth for a year or so and decided to go to the dentist. I suggested he make appointments for all of us, since the kids have never gone and the grown-ups haven’t since living in Seattle. (We’ve tried but had administrative issues at several different offices.) It was a several-month wait before anyone could fit us in but he got appointments for us all for this morning.

A, C, and I were all supposed to be seen simultaneously. We checked with C to make sure he was okay being on his own, so Dan could stay with A, and he said it was fine. We foolishly believed him. Apparently the hygienist said something about him “missing” teeth, perhaps referring to some permanent teeth that haven’t come in yet, and he got scared and freaked out. Even after Dan tried to soothe him, the dentist was unwilling to make any effort to work with him and gave up.

I was unaware of this because I was being tortured by an X-ray machine for 45 minutes. In the past when I’ve gotten X-rays they put small pieces of plastic in my mouth and take a few shots. This involved moving a large uncomfortable metal contraption around my mouth for each of about 20 takes. The hygienist commented on how small my mouth was. I could not reply because there was metal digging into the roof of my mouth.

Apparently I desperately need a cleaning and have a few small cavities. I have to make another appointment for the cleaning and a third for the cavities, however. Because why get everything done at once when they can charge for three visits? (Seriously, why couldn’t they do a cleaning today?)

A was happy enough with her dad and actually got a cleaning, but the dentist claimed that her teeth were too close together and she was going to need all sorts of work done and blah blah blah bad stuff. I suspect exaggeration.

Dan was supposed to have his appointment when I was done. But they told him, “Oh, we’re running behind, so we’ll have to schedule you for another time. We might have some openings in March.” What? Someone comes in for an appointment and you say “oops, sorry, just kidding?” Dan, you may recall, was the one who actually needed to go to the dentist in the first place.

This is why we avoid doctors.

there are so many things I don't anticipate

My bike lock was frozen this morning.

everyone's gonna be jealous of my beans

Note to self:

When you're already cutting it a little close to meet a friend on time, it might not be the best idea to grab three of the surplused bulk bins the food co-op is selling for $2. It will very much confuse the cashier, though I did have a PLU. And then when you try to push your cart full of groceries, with the bins balanced precariously on top, you will fail. The 50# bag of oats alone, draped halfway over the front edge of the cart, would make it hard to navigate the parking lot because of their weight. A parking lot full of ice, slush, and potholes? Even harder. When you can only push the cart with one hand because you have to use the other to keep the bins from smashing to the ground? Nearly impossible.

But I was only a little late, and even if I can't find anywhere to put these bins, they're still pretty damn cool.

Milestone!

As of April '08, more than half of our monthly mortgage payment started going toward principal rather than interest. Last month 62% went to principal. Even without making additional payments, which we do whenever we have extra money in our checking account, we're on track to pay it off in less than half its 30-year term.

(Excluding, of course, property tax escrow, which is 29% of what we give the bank every month. And likely to only increase, since state education funding is decreasing. Thanks Governor Paterson!)

SimCity and urban planning

This reminded me that I once tried to set up a city with no roads, just rail. Didn’t work. I tried building one road leading from the edge of the screen (presumably where other cities might be) that stopped on the outskirts of town but that didn’t work either. Wonder if it would in real life. If there’s not a SimSustainableCity out yet, that allows you to build windmills and greenhouses and bike trails and horse stables, there should be.

(The rate of nuclear meltdowns, incidentally, was more than a little high in the Sim universe. I guess that was the only way they had to provide a reason NOT to go nuclear, because otherwise it was by far the best choice. Maybe they should have had protestors instead, or bad-karma points.)

don't let Tumnus break your heart

A has informed me that she doesn’t believe in Jesus but does believe in Santa Claus. She cites Santa’s presence at the Delmar holiday parade as evidence for this position. I’ve cautiously suggested that sometimes people like to dress up as Santa, but she does not think anyone other than Santa himself could produce a costume that good. Dan wonders if she’ll convert if we take her to a production of Jesus Christ Superstar.

Some people say they felt betrayed upon learning that Santa wasn’t real. I’m not concerned about that. The big betrayal of my childhood was perpetrated by C.S. Lewis. I read and reread The Chronicles of Narnia at an age when I could immerse myself in fantasy and half-believe that it was real. I longed to be Lucy and set up elaborate worlds with paper and glue and Playmobils and gerbils (one named Aslan).

I was 12 or so when I picked up The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe again and saw the religious symbolism. I was truly devastated. To see that something that meant so much to me was nothing more than a medium Lewis created to forward his religion (which was, by chance, the same ones I’d been raised in, but had never particularly subscribed to) was profoundly disillusioning. Now I can appreciate that most of the books can be read as damn good stories irregardless of Lewis’s intent (or was it that he used the proselytizing as an excuse to justify writing fantasy?) but as a teenager, no.

I’m not the only one who had this experience. I thoughtlessly mentioned it to an unsuspecting friend at summer camp in 1989 and he had to fight back tears.

I don’t think that C is as fanatical a reader as I was. While he reads continuously he never rereads books or uses their characters in his play. If I hand him the first book* it’s likely that he’ll whip through it cheerfully and then go back to drawing up his plans for snowball-throwing tanks**. On the one hand this makes me sad because I’d like to share the experience with him (in a way I really couldn’t with his WWII obsession) but on the other I hope it means that he’ll never experience the same sense of betrayal I did.

Until now I put off giving him the books because of the violence, but given his research on the invasion of Normandy that’s not really relevant at this point. I’ve considered mentioning the allegorical components to him but decided against it. I’m hoping that the joy he may obtain from reading them uncritically*** will override any loss he might feel when he recognizes what’s behind the story. And if he doesn’t read them soon he won’t appreciate it in the ways that only children can. But I still hesitate to do it, remembering how hurt I was and wanting to protect him from that.

* Meaning The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe- there’s a movement to reorder the books chronologically but starting with The Magician’s Nephew is WRONG. Gee, you think I have any emotional investment in this?

** Inspired by the go-carts in The Dangerous Book for Boys. Thanks Shannon- I think.

*** I am usually incapable of reading uncritically now which is somewhat of a shame.

it's all what you're used to

I love it when the New York Times talks about the economic troubles of people with lifestyles insanely outside of the norm.

Shortly after Scott lost his job, the couple replaced their full-time nanny with a more cost-effective au pair and began choosing long-weekend getaways instead of weeklong family vacations. Some expenses, though, haven’t changed: they still shell out for membership at a local country club (“the most modest one in town,” Tracey said); they rented a condo last summer on Block Island; and they continue to pay hundreds a month for soccer, skating, T-ball and karate lessons for the children. They afford these things by dipping into the savings Scott put away during the flush years.

I’m betting their downsized vacation expenses are more than my family’s annual income. Oh the suffering!

stocking up again

I can make wheat flour prices a regular feature! Slightly down from last time- $56.00 for a 50-pound bag instead of $69.50. But it’s unclear whether or not that price included a 10% case discount (former prices listed did not) so it’s probably not as dramatic a drop as it appears.

Seems that we’re consistently going through 50 pounds in a bit less than five months. We use more than 10 pounds of white flour in that timeframe too. I was thinking that was a lot but average annual consumption is 147 pounds per capita. We’re buying about 180 pounds per year for the whole family. We eat more than that- C buys school lunches, we eat out occasionally, etc.- but the vast majority of our meals are prepared at home. We also buy bulgher (best guess- 20 pounds a year) and crackers and breakfast cereal in small quantities.

why no one gets newspapers anymore

I need to remember to check in on the awesomely random comments of the Bethlehem blog more frequently. A post on a pleasant experience at the Delmar post office led to a shrill indictment of Bethlehem snobbishness (recurring theme), a rail trail announcement became a forum to complain about irresponsible hunters, and a picture of my kids led to the TU being damned for using children to push their political agenda.