roz_mcclure wrote a rather gorgeous post about the differences between American dating culture and the early stages of relationships in the UK. It's just the right mix of humour and seriousness to generate some really interesting discussion, which I also recommend. doseybat followed up with poll about ways people meet partners, again giving rise to some good discussions.

( a bunch of related thoughts )

I don't have a solution, mind you. I understand that there are disadvantages to the extremely blunt approach that I prefer; "make everyone in the world more like me" is extremely unlikely to be a successful approach to any perceived social problem. But anyway. Tell me, what do you think is a good (preferably in the sense of morally good as well as in the sense of effective) way of meeting interesting people? Of getting to know them well enough to have a clear idea whether a relationship would have a good chance? Of letting them know about your feelings to find out if theirs are congruent?

(Oh, and in case anyone's wondering, I'm not particularly distressed about this on a personal level; I'm quite content in my single status and therefore not having to deal directly with most of this stuff.)

...make a post, the saying goes. This has been a bit of a nothing week. So a pot-pourri update to let you guys know I'm still around:

( stuff )

Now to finish preparing my Torah reading for tomorrow...

In a good way, I hasten to add. I know nobody ever follows links, but you should really make an exception for these three posts. The clever people on my flist make excellent and important points in their posts, which are also fine examples of the best kind of blogging, really good persuasive writing.

If you follow UK politics at all, you need to read hairyears on the degeneration of the criminal justice system. Also worth reading the comments to see a very good refutation of an articulate but morally insensitive Labour politician wannabe who shows up argue that it's worth eroding the rights of suspects and increasing police powers in order to protect little old ladies from getting mugged.

rho has an excellent response to that Salon article on The T in LGBT. It's a very potent mixture of extremely convincing arguments, with some more controversial personal opinions. Even if you disagree with her conclusions you really ought to be aware of her reasoning.

Finally, siderea absolutely blew my socks off with her take-down of that awful book The Secret as well as a really fantastic explanation of the genuine psychological discipline that the book mangled in popularizing. Seriously, stop doing whatever you're doing and read her post. You will catch awesome from it.

(Me, I'm doing ok. Fighting the procrastination beast, sometimes successfully and sometimes going under. More frequent and original posts to follow soon, I hope.)

I've spent this week learning how to be a better microscopist. ( microphotography )

Not a particularly major event, but something to note: Making Light posted a link to kd lang singing Hallelujah. If you haven't heard this already, you really should; it's the first time I've been motivated to find software for saving YouTube videos (though really I only want the soundtrack, the video is just of a concert at Sidney Opera House). I am a purist about that song; I care too much about Leonard Cohen's original to like most covers. And I don't generally like kd lang all that much. But this performance is seriously awesome. And then there was some discussion about Cohen covers and I found out that the Jennifer Warnes cover album Famous blue raincoat has been rereleased. And it's even on eMusic, so now I have a copy of Warnes' duet with Cohen himself, Joan of Arc, where she sings Joan and he sings the fire. rysmiel played it to me when I was in Montréal in 2005, and it is just about the most emotionally powerful song I have ever heard.

On the planning front, well. I tend to stress about travel more than is really required, and in this case I'm not nearly as pre-organized as I would like to be. However, I have booked all the travel from here to London via Finland, Estonia, Germany, Holland and briefly Belgium, and all the accommmodation I need at the stopover points. That's the important thing. I reckon once I'm in England I can be flexible and if some of my planned meetups don't work out, well, it's a pain that I don't get to see people I'd hoped to see, but at least I won't be stranded. And I haven't planned what I'm going to do in any of the cities on my whistle-stop tour of northern Europe. But if I'm only going to be in each city for between a few hours and a day and half, I think I can get away with just wandering around and soaking up the atmosphere, rather than going to specific Tourist Sites. (I have to do it all on a 64Mb camera memory, which should be an interesting discipline, as apparently they no longer make the cards that fit my camera.)

Not connected to anything else at all, but while I'm posting, have a link to the writer Catherynne M Valente's thoughtful and personal essay on porn.

I'm in that annoying stage where I don't quite have time to write about the things I want to write about. This is partly because I've been spending my free time following links around and reading other people's writing, instead of posting.

So I might as well share some of the gems. The internet is full of instant gratification, but this year I'm starting to find myself drawn to full-length, properly though out essays much more than in the past, and the fact they're online rather than in foreign newspapers I wouldn't otherwise read is just a matter of convenience.

( links with some commentary )

Hm, so much for not having time to post so I'll just put up a few links! That turned into a long essay after all. Let's see if I can harness that verbal energy into writing the review I'm working on.

So, imagine that Tefillin Barbie has children one day. (She'd have some anatomical problems, but hey, I hear they can do some wonderful things with fertility treatment these days.) And then imagine that those children want to play with teeny-tiny meta-dolls of their own. Would you believe that someone out there has already hand-knitted teeny-tiny clothes for the teeny-tiny meta-dolls? Let's not think what it would be like if the baby Barbies wanted their dollies to have little dolly tefillin as well...

Over at Making Light: LOLcatz in ur canon, pastichin ur potry. Some highlights from a long and hilarious thread:

Abi's original sonnet which started the game

Heresiarch's meta joke

Xopher's LOLhaiku

Kathryn's LOLcreation

Eric's ultra-abridged Kubla Khan

Abi again with P&P

Kathryn again with hypertext poetry

Heresiarch lives up to his handle with the LOLiad

Eris' utlra-abridged Grecian Urn

Abi's zombie kittehs

Abi's poetic commentary on the thread

Elise's paired translations (you need to read both her consecutive comments for the effect) into LOLcat and text adventure. So beautiful that they inspired me to look read the original poem, which turns out to be Edna St Vincent Millay.

nwhepcat's TS Eliot

But seriously, if you have many hours to spare, read the whole thread, it's fantastic.

I tried my hand at a couple too, and I'm putting them here mainly so that I can find them again easily in future. Read behind the cut if you want to see attempting to be witty in LOLcat verse. ( mine ) I'm really feeling I ought to write some real poetry now, if only to convince myself (and the Making Light crew if I come up with something of exceptionally high quality) that I can in fact scan when I put my mind to it.

I managed to get myself sunburnt yesterday! ( weekend summary )

I've been meaning for ages to post a link to The ecstasy of influence. It's long, 13 typescript pages, but it's worth the effort; it's a beautiful piece of writing and argumentation. I'm not entirely sure I agree, but it's a refreshing change from the usual ignorant mouthings about intellectual property popular with certain geek subcultures.

For a more topical essay, I strongly recommend misia's response to the recent paedophilia / fandom kerfuffle. It's interesting that the comments to that sane and balanced essay contain an example of exactly the kind of thing she's complaining about: at least one commentator berates her for being insufficiently outraged about paedophilia and all but calls her a child rapist, simply because she mentioned the topic. It does seem a shame that this climate makes it impossible for Misia to write her book on statutory rape and age of consent, but for now at least we get a highly articulate and thoughtful article.

You all know how gnimmel wins the internets, right? Well, now she wins even more!

I am speechless with admiration. Seriously, if you follow only one link this month, that second post of hers should be it. It's the distilled essence of brilliant blogging, in colourful cartoon form.

I have had a crush on Gnimmel's brain since I met her at a party in 99, and listened to her off-the-cuff exposition of Kabbalah (which beat most rabbis I've heard on the subject hands down) and why Adam Kadmon doesn't map onto a manifestation of a god in a Pagan, polytheistic context.

I was going to post about other stuff but Gnimmel's brilliance has dazzled it out of my brain.

pleonastic said something really cool about gender and mystery and stereotyping and conformity recently. Even though it's personal opinion rather than a statement of fact, I think it's a really good summary of what is wrong with a lot of received ideas about romance and how gender plays into that.

And on the subject of how a lot of journalism is based on stereotyping assumptions, The Gimp Parade linked to an article about media portrayals of disability that really struck a chord with me. There are definitely worse ways of talking about disability than the type that article discusses, but it's a very good example of how one type of basically well-intentioned journalism can be annoying.

---

Today has been more or less: ( a conspiracy of irritations )

To catch up on the weekend, while I'm at it: on Friday evening we went out as a group for a Chinese meal. It was a perfectly pleasant evening, and my new jacket got an outing, and was much admired. But the restaurant, New Peking City in Östermalm, contrived to make it impossible to eat within even my lax standards of kosher observance. Other than that, the shabbat service was fun and I spent most of the rest of the weekend pottering around and unwinding. I managed to get a convincing win at CivII on the King level, and I'm trying to pretend I'm not proud of that.

So Yom Kippur was ok. Even good in some aspects. ( notes )

I'd better sleep now or I'll continue to be a wreck tomorrow. I hope everyone who fasted today had a nicer time of it than I did, and that everyone who kept the festival gets all sorts of good conclusions and good writing and all that.

Just to add some content that's not babbling about religion, people should go and read lavendersparkle's essay about feminism and abortion. I like what she has to say, even though I'm not a big fan of claiming that stuff is caused by patriarchy. Am I crazy enough to expand my own thoughts on such a contentious topic? Not sure; I'll decide after I've had some sleep.

It's Rosh HaShana (Jewish New Year) tomorrow evening. Spiritually, I'm barely paying attention, practically I'm in chaos. I have to finish a grant application by, um, several hours ago. I have spent the last week and a half fretting about it rather than actually making progress. And the fretting has got in the way of doing any housework, any real communication with my people, or any logistics. Gah. I got through a whole Oxford degree without letting an essay crisis get to this point; what has happened to my willpower?!

Tomorrow I'm supposed to be going to an all-day conference, then going to the service for the start of RH, then somehow or other meeting up with ploni_bat_ploni to go to Chabad for a meal. The arrangements for meeting up are kind of vague, partly because of the aforementioned fretting instead of doing logistics, partly because ploni_bat_ploni is willing to pray with Chabad who are after all hosting her, and I'm really not. I'm going to get up as early as I can bear and blitz the last bit of the application. But I suspect I'm not going to make it to much of the conference, and that's really annoying. And I'm not sure what kind of a state I'll be in by the time I've done application, half of a brain-stretching conference (I hope!), service, meal and being polite to strangers and probably going on really late into the night, on 6 hours' sleep.

My watch is broken. I have left things at work that I really rather need today and tomorrow (the power adapter for the work laptop. My notebook, including the directions I wrote down for getting myself to the conference.) I am sleep deprived and about to make it worse. Lots of this stuff is my fault, which really doesn't make me feel any better.

On the positive side, though, people are playing online charades, which is amusing me no end.

Happy New Year to my Jewish friends, and happy random date in the middle of September to everyone else.

Both our internal information people and the local press are getting very excited because some Karolinska people have made some pretty good progress towards developing a test that will predict dementia 20 years ahead. [Press release, with links to the original article] It's cool science, no doubt about it, but I can't help wondering, would you want to take a test at the age of 50 that might predict that you had a high chance of being senile by the time you were 70? I guess it's the same problem as with any predictive medical testing: in the absence of a cure or even sensible prevention, what's the point of knowing?

I think it's the timescale that bothers me, in part; I don't have the same objection to, say, cervical smears which tell me whether I might be at risk for cancer in the coming few years. That allows me to do something about it in terms of possibly readjusting my life plans. But I can't plan on the basis of some terrible thing that might happen in 20 years' time; I'd just have to live with the knowledge that this was likely to happen to me, which I don't think would be good psychologically.

It's true that almost everybody expects to be mortal (the exceptions are a few religious people and a few quasi-religious geeks who think the Singularity is going to cure death). So you always have to run your life on the basis that you have a few decades at best and possibly even less. But I'd still rather not know the probable time and manner of my demise more than a few years in advance, I think.

In non-morbid news: Stockholm is full of magicians and flamboyantly gay people with rainbow banners at the moment. I find this very cool, it's a bit like living in the Paul Gallico novel The man who was magic.

There's lots of stressful stuff going on LJ at the moment, both in terms of difficult conversations shading into drama, and people posting about stress in their non-LJ lives. Someone posted the following in a community I belong to, and really, a sexy actor reading a sexy Shakespeare sonnet is something that needs to be propagated further. (I guess there might be some Kinsey 0 guys around who don't understand the appeal of Alan Rickman, but a good actor reading Shakespeare is worth something even so.)

Mmmmmm (Requires Flash, but it's one of the few sites that are worth it. And it's technically work-safe if you can get away with playing sound, since Shakespeare is generally exempt from the usual standards of what counts as erotic.)

j4, you might want to pay attention to this bit, if you're not too distracted by Alan Rickman. While I'm posting links, I was searching on my blog's tagline to find out where this journal is linked, and Google came up with some random badgers as a potentially relevant site. And how can anyone resist random badgers?

I don't usually squee over the latest Medical Breakthrough because that sort of thing is always horribly over-hyped. There's an element of that going on here, but in this case I'd say even the proof of concept is cool.

Wow!

While it's true that this kind of thing is on my radar because of personal interest, this technology is not at all likely to be helpful for Screwy. It's just very, very cool that they've got something like this to work.

I don't have much content right now. But in the couple of months I have been here I've made mental notes of several very cool posts and discussions that I didn't have time to join in with. Mental notes don't persist forever, and besides, some of you guys who don't necessarily know eachother might appreciate some of these, so I'm going to post a list.

ploni_bat_ploni has an interesting post about the status of women in Orthodox Judaism. It's pretty technical stuff, but some of you at least, naomichana, kassrachel among others, are interested in technical discussions about details of Jewish law and practice. Worth reading the discussion, too; hatam_soferet makes some really fascinating observations in the discussion thread.

pleonastic was thinky and fascinating on the subject of listening and racism. Again, some of the discussion is really chewy.

pleonastic was riffing on a huge kerfuffle that is going on at the edges of my blogdar about cultural appropriation; misia has one of her usual really impressive posts on the topic

papersky on lying. Her post is vaguely connected to the msscribe controversy, which is another of those big talking points I'm only peripherally aware of. But it covers a lot of ground and is fascinating in its own right.

cakmpls asks some good questions about intimacy and gets some quite thought-provoking answers. She is also discussing the lying / false identity issue in quite a lot of depth, so if you're interested in that several of her recent entries are worth checking out.

I wrote a really dumb post, probably the post I'm least proud of in the three years I've been on LJ. But to my startlement, my terrible post prompted some really good responses, both in the comments there from adrian_turtle and redbird and this post on feminism and violence from pleonastic. redbird has been throwing out some really interesting preliminary ideas about feminism and gender essentialism, but she says they're not ready for public consumption yet so I'm not linking. But I wanted to mention that I'm grateful for the discussion and for the ways she's making me think.

That lot should keep you going until I have something interesting to report! And all the people I've linked have generally cool journals anyway, so if you're looking for new people to read and new perspectives, consider them recommended.

Author: Louis de Bernières

Details: (c) Louis de Bernières 2004; Pub Secker & Warburg 2004; ISBN 0-436-20549-1

Verdict: Birds without wings has moments, but is rambly and preachy more of the time than it's successful.

Reasons for reading it: I enjoyed Captain Corelli's Mandolin.

How it came into my hands: Libary.

( detailed review )

hatam_soferet makes the point a lot better in about 200 words. Please read her post if you are Jewish, and read it if you consider yourself a moral person. In fact, even if you read nothing else on LJ all month, read that post. Thank you, hatam_soferet.

It occurred to me the other day that I don't really care about immortality. This may be a common theme to quite a few of my quirks.

( introspective junk )

Unrelatedly, pleonastic has some inspiration for people who are bogged down by paperwork, which is a fair proportion of us.

I will resist the temptation to go through my entire journal adding location data. I will. I have far more important things to do. But ee, location data!

I love my friends. Last night was very good for communication; first I had a very fun long phone conversation with darcydodo, and as soon as I got off the phone, I managed to catch LB and RB, my homies from Dundee, on IM. Both are working very hard, LB at curing sick children and RB at learning lots of very impressive Jewish stuff. But both seem happy. I wish I could corrupt them into LJ, the ultimate geography killer, but it's good to talk to them even if not regularly.

And I meant to post, but forgot, that hatam_soferet has made the most gorgeous set of illuminated letters (Hebrew ones). My friends are not only wonderful, but stylish and talented. Do go and admire; you won't regret it!

In case anyone is living under a rock, they've just released a Narnia film. This has led to lots of fun discussion about Narnia. daegaer has collected a lot of links, from both traditional and alternative media. On the whole the bloggers do a better job than the journalists, IMO. She has some good discussion in her own journal too.

If you don't want to plough through all those essays, the key one to read is Andrew Rilstone's Lipstick on my scholar. ( my take on the Problem of Susan )

With that preamble, what I really wanted to talk about is sartorias' recent post: Lewis vs. Susan. sartorias is reading the pshat of the Narnia Chronicles, rather than the nimshal of the Christian allegory. (If English has any technical terms for analysing allegorical text, I don't know them, so I borrow the terms from Jewish Biblical scholarship.) Why, within the story's own terms as opposed to the wider Christian context, is Susan excluded? The discussion on that post is really fascinating, and covers the religious questions, the feminist issues and all kinds of different viewpoints. There's one thing that stood out for me even with all these lovely thoughtful ideas, though: this comment of papersky's.

Let me highlight this sentence from papersky's comment, because I think it really brilliantly captures the experience of feeling yourself to be the only authentic human drowning in a sea of sheeple:

When I was a teenager there was a point where it really did seem to me that my female friends were actually ceasing to be people in their pursuit of being teenagers -- it wasn't sex so much as a desire to be attractive (fashion and make-up and dieting) a desire to have a boyfriend as an accessory and a desire to be "in" (changing, or affecting to change their personal tastes in music, films and culture generally to the majority taste)

The thing is, I think that's a hugely common experience among teenagers: believing you're the only one in your entire peer group who isn't totally superficial. Browsing around on LJ is a good way to get a perspective on this; you can see journal after journal after journal where teenagers, mostly girls, talk about how most of the people they know are idiots who only care about fashion and being popular, and they're the only one with ideals. I have this vision that the girls a particular unique snowflake despises are simultaneously writing in their journals about how they're so lonely being the only person who cares about anything beyond fashion and meaningless "relationships"...

I'm not going to embarrass myself by reproducing here the bad blank verse I used to write (and publish in the school magazine) when I was a teenager. I was luckier than most, because I managed to connect with other real people even before I had the maturity to realize that most people are worth getting to know, and you just have to make the effort. This led to some really intense and precious friendships; feeling that my friends and I were the last bastion of resaon against moronic popular culture was a very bonding thing. I had blue_mai, and Spanish M, and doseybat; I wasn't entirely alone.

CS Lewis was of course writing for children. If he actually intended to portray being Christian in a secular world as like being the only teenager ever to care about higher things, he was being very clever in some ways. The trouble is of course that Susan is discarded so suddenly; Lewis' readers are just as likely to identify with Susan (who is of course a very sensible and likeable person for the whole series up to the very last bit at the end) as anyone else. And the other trouble is that any really mature reader, as opposed to a child who thinks they are mature, is going to be able to see the worth even of someone who cares about mainstream culture, and therefore be annoyed that Lewis' Aslan doesn't value such a person.

While I'm (vaguely) on the subject, cakmpls has a very cool piece on The Outsider in A Christmas Carol. Scrooge, unlike the kids in Narnia, is saved precisely because he learns that he isn't actually superior to everyone else. He doesn't have to be an Outsider. Lewis' characters effectively get divine sanction for their smugness, and maybe that's the problem.

All the new people who recently friended me are probably thinking my journal is full of whining and downbeat stuff, judging by the last couple of entries. In fact, my odd mood of yesterday is quite dispelled. Welcome, people; this is normally a happy place with lots of tea.

Spice is good for the bluesy feelings induced by truly miserable weather and lack of sunlight. My butternut squash soup where I was very liberal with the ginger has turned out delicious, and is also bright orange, which hurts not at all. And I put extra garlic in my mushroom and pasta bake, the one that also involves double cream and three different kinds of cheese. And tea is good for just about any human problem, and when just tea doesn't cut it the addition of cardamom, cinnamon and a little ginger does wonders.

Retail therapy: I've won two eBay auctions for things I've been coveting for a while. Some The Sims games (original; I'm waiting to get TS2 until I have a better computer, which means until I have more money), and a VNV Nation CD. They probably won't arrive before I leave, mind you, but knowing they are coming is still a happy thing!

I am more blessed in my friends than I can easily describe. pseudomonas and rysmiel both got in touch with me after I posted a somewhat downbeat entry, and were sympathetic and chatty and generally wonderful. Lots of other people are being nice to me too. Wow, my friends are all thoughtful and lovely and really nice to me, and I'm sorry to everyone I've been whiny at recently.

Also, my friends list has angsty gay pirates in Shakespearean pentameter. You should read it even if none of those elements appeal to you, because it's also stunningly good.

I find myself strangely compelled to make observations about gender politics. I'm not the person to do this, really, given that I'm somewhere between bored and confused by most dicussions couched in gender terms. I'm interested in people, not some trivial detail of how their reproductive organs are organized.

Also, my most recent round of attempting to get my head round feminism led to getting myself banned by ginmar (ok, it was probably inevitable sooner or later, and I precipitated it by succumbing to the temptation to snark). And getting labelled an anti-feminist on a fairly high-profile blog. I almost want to see it as a badge of honour (certainly it's good for generating traffic), except that I'm not all that comfortable with anti-feminist; I'm more indifferent than anti, I think.

Anyway. All this would imply that my opinions on the subject are not all that much worth listening to. So I'm going to link to other people having thought-provoking discussions instead:

james_nicoll talks about SF marketing slanted towards a male audience, and generates lots of interesting discussion. In this context, I must mention