Year: 2008
Book Review: The Sheltering Sky
Posted on December 15, 2008 in Reading
Do not expect a happy or a triumphant story, but enjoy an unfeigned one.
On Net Wisdom and Net Ethics
Posted on December 14, 2008 in Internet Privacy Micro-blogging
I have not heard a single reasonable defense for net spying.
Dream
Posted on December 12, 2008 in Dreams
The little elephant is furry (maybe a baby mammoth?) and the size of a Boston Terrier.
Book Review: Day of the Triffids
Posted on December 10, 2008 in Reading
[amazonify]0812967127::text::::The Day of the Triffids[/amazonify] by John Wyndham
My review
rating: 5 of 5 stars
A prophetic book. In the opening pages, you might see this as a neo-conservative warning against the socialism of post-War England, but closer reading delivers a different message, namely how fragile our civilization really is. In 1951, Wyndham saw many potential threats including creeping neo-fascism, germ warfare, orbital weapons platforms, and genetic engineering, all of which conspire to make the narrator’s life hell.
You are left looking around you and wondering how you might survive if the conveniences of civilization abruptly disappeared and your neighbors became disabled. On this point the novel offers visions that transcend the Robinson Crusoe and Garden of Eden fairy tales that many people take up at narrative’s beginning. You see their schemes fail one by one while some survivors take a clue and others barricade themselves into extinction.
The choices we make, Wyndham asserts, matter. Think now.
[amazonify]0812967127::text::::Order this book here[/amazonify]
For the record, this is not a paid advertisement.
Armies of the Sun
Posted on December 8, 2008 in Weather
Millions of water droplets drafted from the Pacific Ocean march towards the fronts to the east. None will fall on local battlefields. We civilians will have to wait for the armies of the sun to arrive in the early part of next week when we will have to endure a siege and, possibly, a deluge.
Stigma in the Theater
Posted on December 5, 2008 in Bipolar Disorder Stigma
It is fashionable these days to show diseases such as autism in a positive light (e.g. The Black Balloon which is reviewed here), where the family learns that the sufferer has wonderful things to offer them. But in the literature of bipolar disorder, we see a different trend in which the sufferer is required to show that s/he was soley responsible for not seeing the effects the disease had on the people around her/him.
I’m not one to say that bipolar disorder is a party which if my family members’ eyes were just opened they, too, could participate in ((though it does feel that way when you are in a manic episode)) but too many accounts leave unsaid the important role that family can play in making things better or worse for the sufferer. The bipolar sufferer is often displayed as willfully insensitive to the needs of others. Even some doctors I know hold to this belief. In this model of manic-depression, we are said to be able to totally control the effects of our illness. The hallucinations, the being scared when our moods shift from exhilarating to feeling like a mossy old toad croaking doom in the wilderness, the racing thoughts, and the loss of control over our impulses are our fault. We let them go unabated. Society does not cut us the breaks it gives to the autistic even though both diseases are the result of brain dysfunction.
Little is said about the family members who rush us out of recovery and into jobs as soon as they think we are able to go. Or who tell us that we have to just stop being ill. Or who tell us that we aren’t ill at all, so why are we taking all these medications?
I would, for once, like to see a film which shows the external pressures a person afflicted with manic depression must undergo. I’d like to see a film where the family members have to come around to realizing that the bipolar sufferer has things to offer, that it is tough to have the disease, that s/he can grow well in her/his own good time, that they have to learn new ways of interacting with that person. Bipolar disorder needs its Rainman ((Blue Sky comes close, but we need more movies to show how crappy family members can be towards us. Note that my wife is great on this point. )) .
BHO and LBJ
Posted on December 2, 2008 in Childhood
Obama was greeted by a crazy mass of children at a Quaker school in Philadelphia. They shouted “Obama! Obama!” when they saw him. According to The Huffington Post: “When he came out of the hotel Obama crossed the street wearing a big grin. He shook hands and chatted with the kids for about a minute, smiling the whole time.”
I remember when I was young, my mother took me to see LBJ. Johnson was campaigning against Goldwater. He stopped in San Bernardino because he had history there: when he was a teenager, he ran away from home and ended up working as an elevator operator for a couple of weeks.
There were bright lights and flashes as he got out of his limousine and headed over to the Platt Building (now gone) where he had run people up and down the cables. Afterwards, he came out to press the flesh. He went down the line of people crowded on the sidewalk next to the California Theater, grabbing the hand of every voter he could seize.
My mother reported to my father “I shook his hand and Joel had his out, too, but he ignored him. That bastard only cared about the adults.”
I guess Johnson knew that by the time I would be old enough to cast a ballot, he’d be dead ((Even with the 18-year-old vote, I wasn’t eligible until 1976)) . Obama’s a young man and these young people may well vote for his successor in 2016. In any case, taking time with the kids shows that he respects their parents’ dreams and ambitions for them. I don’t think LBJ understood education beyond handing out Great Society pork.
The Convergence and the Dome of A Bald Man
Posted on December 2, 2008 in Weather
I witnessed the “frowning face” half of the convergence spectacle last night before I drove down the hill. It took some doing to see it. Trees at the end of our street blocked most of the view to the west. I had to skip, bend, and backtrack to see the moon, Jupiter, and Venus all at the same time. Just before I left for my support group meeting, I found a better observatory set between the liquid ambers near the waterfall. I took a photo with my cell phone, but all I got was a disappointing dot where the moon was.
Down in Laguna Hills, I tried to show a friend the planetary gathering. A dull, red-glowing haze obscured the view. After the meeting, Lynn and I went home in separate cars. As we climbed Lake Forest Drive, the fog grew thicker, prepping us for the evening’s real adventure. Because her car was running low on gas, I elected to follow her. A few times, I lost her tail lights in the greyness over the darkness. Where there were lights, it was as if I were driving beneath the vaults of a cathedral.
Lynn missed a potential turn to the gas station, so I followed her and gave her a little honk when she got to the next. The Mobil station turned out to be closed for repairs. We wove through streets and a Home Depot parking lot, looking for the other gas station of the district, a Shell. While she gassed up, she confessed that she was afraid that at any second the red arrow was going to flick to E and she would be stuck in some difficult spot.
“That’s why I followed you,” I said. “That’s what husbands are for.”
She finished filling the tank, then followed me home. The fog was thick down Portola and up Glenn Ranch. I had to follow the double yellow lines to find my left turn. Then, on the hard hill leading into my neighborhood, the mist suddenly parted and the stars shone again. It was like being a louse climbing the head of a bald man, hair on the sides and on top the open dome.
Book Review: The Highly Sensitive Person
Posted on December 1, 2008 in Bipolar Disorder Reading Stigma
Why is it, she asks, that HSPs are revered in China but at the bottom of their classes in Canada?
