"You simply cannot solve problems that you do not want to identify."
- Dierdrie Walker
Twelve Fails of Christmas
Holidays.
These are periods of a few days or weeks, which you set aside and plan ahead to enjoy yourself. In the event you probably don't enjoy it, but you take some photos to look at later and tell yourself you did.
But there are two kinds of holidays. Ones where you go somewhere new, meet new people and try out new things. And ones where you stay at home (or go home), spend a long time with people you already know quite well enough...and eat too much.
Christmas...is the second kind.
So once you've eaten enough turkey and chocolates to feed a small African country, exchanged giftwrapped socks with distant cousins, made smalltalk with people you normally avoid because of their tedious smalltalk, and got slightly drunk on that bottle of special liquer that's been sitting on a shelf since last year...what is there to do?
Watch TV. Always a favourite.
Watch a DVD.
Read a book.
Practice the guitar. (Which I've been meaning to do.)
Have some friends over.
Catch up on sleep.
Wake yourself up with a refreshing shower.
Or a bath.
A big, luxurious bath.
Have a beer. Always a reliable time-filler. (Even though I hate beer.)
Put up the decorations.
Potter around on the computer. Write a blog post or something - and maybe find a use for some of those pictures which have been cluttering up your hard drive.
Guess which one I did?
So, have a happy Hannukah, prosperous Kwanzaa, merry Festival of Saturn, enjoyable Winter Solstice...or a Noodly Holiday if you're feeling geeky. Anything but christmas.
Happy, not Clappy
Aimee blogged, asking what benefits her atheism has over religious faith.
I wrote a response, which grew into a small essay, which I thought worth posting.
"Sometimes i still wonder though, whether i am really any better off now as a non-believer than i was as a believer."
I think it depends exactly what you mean by atheism. To me, there seem to be three common senses, which often get mixed up in people's heads - including atheistic heads:
1) Not believing in a cosmic tyrant - who sees all, knows all, and judges all according to some arbitrary (and inconsistent) moral code.
2) Not believing in anything supernatural or incredible - ghosts, reincarnation, telepathy, the illuminati, shapeshifting alien lizards, time travel etc. At least, until some decent evidence comes along, in which case they're no longer fantasy.
3) Believing that, if a problem is genuine and actually has a solution, whether it's theoretical or practucal, empirical or moral, reason can find it, given sufficient evidence and opportunity.
The third position is a kind of faith, and might be identified with humanism.
Specifically, it's faith based (inductively) on good but not perfect evidence - as opposed to faith based on no evidence, or weak evidence, or actually opposing the evidence. I wrote a lot of paragraphs about different kinds of faith, which I'll spare you.
It obviously can't be proven that every possible real problem is rationally soluble, but given the vast evidence, it's inductively very likely.
You're asking what benefits atheism has. I'd turn it around and ask what harm religion does.
An atheist in the first sense is free to live without the fear of an invisible abusive parent in the sky. They live without cosmic Stockholm syndrome.
The real world is a scary enough place, without inventing invincible demonic versions of real cultural barriers. Atheism here doesn't exactly make you happy, but it does make you less sad, and less scared.
An atheist in the second sense is a skeptic, or a rationalist - someone who's cautious about what they believe, and so isn't easy to fool or con. Again, skeptics don't always make great decisions, but they make fewer foolish ones.
GK Chesterton made a famous remark that ceasing to believe in god left one open to any other belief. It's quite possible to be an atheist in my first sense, but a gullible believer in my second.
I think the third position is, by definition, rationalism - in the broad, lower case sense, as opposed to the continental philosophy sense.
It may indeed not provide the pleasant fuzzy sensations of an imaginary friend, but as soon as you're required to make a practical decision, it's a lot more reliable.
Finally, there are plenty of sources of spiritual nourishment that don't involve irrational belief, so the unbeliever is left far from starving. Music, literature, film and theater are I find quite sufficient, and come with fewer strings attached. And let's not forget friendship, love and indeed sex.
So in short: Atheism doesn't make you happy, but it does make you sensible, and there's plenty of other things to make you happy.
Touched by the Hand
Touch screen technology - a solution waiting for a problem.
I tried it two years ago when I got a new phone. It was sleek, powerful, and an absolute pig to operate. After three days I took it back to the shop and swapped it for one with lower specifications - crappy camera, no ebook reading facility, very limited video viewing, sort-of but not-really MMS ability.
But it was actually usable, and the lack of such 'selling points' as mp3 ringtones, secondary camera and en-suite video editing wasn't an issue because, well, what kind of person buys a phone because it can play last months chart-topper instead of ringing?
However, that contract has nearly expired so...I've got a new one. With QWERTY keyboard for writing my novel, android apps for mapreading, and a 5 megapixel camera that can shoot video at 720x480 and 30 frames per second. In other words...DVD!
It's a frelling camera phone, and it can make movies of up to 2 hours in domestic DVD quality. Or rather it could...if it had a good quality lens. Is it me, or is that combination of overkill and cheap design a bit mad?
This new phone can read PDFs, and other ebook formats. It's got a second camera facing me so I can put video diaries on Youtube. There's an option to upload photos to Flikr immediately upon taking them...before I even review them. Whose idea was that?
It's got a special dedicated button for connecting to bloody Facebook. That alone speaks volumes about what the designers think about and of the target audience.
The battery life is two days - one third of my old phone. Oh, and it's got possibly the naffest name of any phone ever: The Cha Cha. Yes.
All of which I can happily live with. But the touchscreen aspect isn't as peripheral as the advertising copy suggested. It's absolutely central, and there's almost no keyboard alternative - which would be usually faster.
Imagine your computer didn't have a mouse, but you clicked and moved things by putting on a boxing glove and rubbing it around the screen. Gloves aren't precise, so to click anything you need to keep dabbing at the screen until it decides you've hit the right spot. And then you drag a slider up or down to where you want it, except you have to guess because you can't see the slider because...the fucking glove's in the way.
Look, technology doesn't advance by identifying problems and finding solutions. It advances by finding new things it can do, and then casting about for applications.
X-rays weren't discovered by someone looking for ways to diagnose bone fractures - they were a mysterious new wave that got beamed at anything and everything to see what happened, for decades. It was marketed as everything from a baldness cure to a replacement for the telegraph.
Nuclear fission still doesn't have a safe application, but it's still being pushed as an expensive and risky way to run steam turbines. If you think nuclear energy is green, ask yourself what infrastructure it relies on.
Electricity was a lab-bound curiosity for decades. Now we're so reliant in it, civilisation would collapse without it.
You can now get laptops with touchscreen capability - the new super gee-wiz version of the mouse. The one that doesn't work as well as the mouse, and gives you different, worse types of repetitive strain injury.
I've watched software engineers wax lyrical about how touchscreen will enable users to interact with the computers in whole new ways. But they never, ever, speculate what these new ways might be.
Hey, maybe there are uses for touchscreen that keyboards, speech recognition, Kinect, tracker balls and mouses (mice, meese, moose) can't do. There's just been no sign of them yet.
As for my new handset, it's got a full keyboard which might come in handy, occasionally useful apps, a pretty good camera, and I can read miniature books on it.
For everything else - music and audiobooks, battery life and, erm, talking to people on the phone, the old handset is actually superior. So I'll probably be moving the sim card over to it, having effectively signed a two year contract and got a free micro-palmtop.
Oh, and the old handset I bought two years ago: it was obsolete at the time.
Hey Kids, Don't Do Drugs
You remember I got hold of some legal drugs to see if they gave me some much needed energy? And you remember how I came over a bit weird?
Well they come in packs of two, and I found the other one, and took it just to see what would happen. They're called 'Speed Freak Ultra', but seeing as all "herbal supplements" have over the top brand names, I didn't think much of it.
It's seven in the morning, and I have just spent five hours being...intense. Specifically:
* Dry mouth
* Thirst
* Stomach cramps
* Being rather too wide awake
* Not exactly a headache but a kind of pressure from inside the temples.
* Having a desperate sexual craving. I've been known to have a fair sexual appetite sometimes, but I've never before spent five solid hours thinking obsessively about penises. Sucking and swallowing. Not even when I was thirteen.
* Having no physiological sexual response whatsoever. My nipples have been sensitive ever since I was nineteen when a deeply strange man showed me what they were for. Tonight: slightly less responsive than the average toenail.
As for traces of erection...or that sickly sweet feeling you get near your bladder for which there doesn't seem to be word. Or those tingles you sometimes get radiating outward from your groin. Not a hint.
It's probably good I was alone, as I'd most likely have been a complete pain to any company - though possibly less wall-climbingly frustrated.
It can be fun to mess with your own head. But I don't think I'll be doing this again. Some experiences are for remembering rather than having.
Everybody Likes Like
How many of the things you do for pleasure...actually give you pleasure?
Holidays? Famously stressful. There's something about paying to be in unfamiliar surroundings that makes families want to kill each other.
Friends? Be honest - how many of your friends are annoying people you've got into the habit of tolerating, but you've forgotten why?
Sporting events? Ninety minutes of watching highly trained minor celebrities simulate violent sex with each other, with occasional minutes of excitement when they, erm, 'score'.
Sex (violent or otherwise)? There's something rather deflating about letting someone try to make you substitute for their fantasy, in the hope they can subsitute for yours.
TV? I've often caught myself checking the clock to see how long it'll be till the programme ends and I can do something else. Since when was mindless entertainment a timetabled chore?
Music? How often do you put on some favourite music, and after ten minutes realise you've been ignoring the music while reading your emails?
Chocolate? If the taste is so good, why are you so keen to swallow that piece and start on the next?
If you really do enjoy any of these things, then fine. But I've come to the conclusion that everyone should take a long hard look at their list of enjoyments every few years, and prune it down to things they do enjoy - as opposed to things they used to enjoy, or only tell themselves they enjoy, or think they ought to enjoy.
And when we've all done that, we can ask the next question.
How many of the things you do to gain approval...acutally get you approval?
Words and Numbers 2
How many words with ten syllables does English have?
According to my wordlist (extracted from the digital version of the 1997 Shorter Oxford English Dictionary) the answer is: None
But it's not a simple as that, because it lists "floccinaucinihilipilification" (the act of estimating something to be valueless) with seven vowels or vowel+glide pairs, and thus seven syllables. Except I make it eleven.
"Praetertransubstantiationalism" is a word from catholic theology that I learned in seminary. I still don't know exactly what it means, but I reckon it's also got eleven syllables. It's not in the SOED.
Everyone's favourite pointlessly long word - "Antidisestablishmentarianisn" - isn't in there either, but I think it's got twelve syllables. Likewise "Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis" (a disease of the lungs) is absent but, by my reckoning, has sixteen.
I can sort-of pronounce "Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch" (nineteen syllables), mainly because my father lived there in the first world war.
Some people stick extra schwa vowels into words to make them easier to pronounce. Others glide adjacent vowels together, or skip over entire syllables. The two longest common surnames in Britain are "Cholmondalay" and "Featherstonehaugh" - pronounced (and often respelled) "Chumley" and "Fanshaw".
So, still no dectasyllablical squipidalianisms, but the SOED lists eight words with nine syllables. See how many syllables you say them with:
Reticuloendothelial (9)
Arteriosclerosis (I make it 7, probably)
Extraterritoriality (9)
Immunoelectrophoresis (9)
Otorhinolaryngology (9)
Polytetrafluoroethylene (9)
Propionibacterium (8)
Stachybotryotoxicosis (9)
Words and Numbers
English has 441 nouns that are pronounced the same in the plural as the singular. Most of them seem to be from the French, and I understand maybe a dozen of them. Here they are:
I can reveal this fascinating fact because I'm trying to write a bit of software to be a rhyming dictionary - with options for perfect rhymes, slant rhymes (rhymes which ignore the difference between similar pairs of consonants), vowel rhymes and more.
Actually, I've spent most of the last week trying to make scripts to tidy up the raw data of spelling and pronunciation. It's either that or spend a year doing it by hand.
In the meantime, there are 179 pronouns, including such rarities as 'Yez' (plural You), Whosoever, and Hern (Hers). And 261 prepositions, including Yond, Neath and Abune.
And 65,796 nouns, the last of which is Zythum - a kind of ancient Eqyptian wine made from fermented malt.
UPDATE: Thanks to the OED's not-entirely-consistent system of classification, I've found some more:
| Abonnement | Adage | Affaire |
| Agacerie | Allée | Allure |
| Amende | Andouille | Andouillette |
| Arc-Boutant | Arrière-Pensée | Arriviste |
| Arrondissement | Assemblé | Assemblée |
| Aubusson | Aumônière | Auteur |
| Auvergnat | Avoué | Bagarre |
| Bagne | Bahut | Baignoire |
| Balancé | Ballon | Ballonné |
| Batterie | Béguin | Bénitier |
| Berceuse | Bergère | Bêtise |
| Bevue | Biberon | Bibliothèque |
| Bidon | Biftek | Blagueur |
| Blanc | Blancbec | Blanquette |
| Boîte | Bondieuserie | Bouchée |
| Boulevardier | Bouleversement | Bourgade |
| Briquet | Brisé | Brouillon |
| Cache-Peigne | Café | Café |
| Cafetière | Cagot | Cagoulard |
| Cahier | Camaieu | Carmagnole |
| Carrefour | Causerie | Causeuse |
| Ceinture | Chaîné | Chaise |
| Chambranle | Changement | Chanson |
| Chanteuse | Chasse-Marée | Chassepot |
| Chateaubriand | Chaton | Chaussée |
| Chevalet | Chevelure | Cheville |
| Chiffonnier | Civet | Clochard |
| Cohue | Comble | Comédie |
| Compotier | Comptoir | Conférencier |
| Confrérie | Consigne | Conte |
| Convenance | Coureur | Couvert |
| Crémaillère | Crise | Croûte |
| Culotte | Curé | Dalle |
| Danseur | Danseuse | Débat |
| Débouché | Découpage | Dégringolade |
| Délassement | Démêlé | Démenti |
| Demi-Vierge | Développé | Diseuse |
| Dot | Drageoir | Ébauche |
| Ébéniste | Éboulement | Échevin |
| Échevin | Éclaircissement | Écrevisse |
| Élégante | Élève | Éloge |
| Embarras | Embusqué | Émeute |
| Émincé | Enceinte | Enchaînement |
| Encoignure | Enfantillage | Engouement |
| Engrenage | Entremet | Épanchement |
| Épaulement | Épicerie | Équipe |
| Érudit | Escargot | Esclandre |
| Esquisse | Estacade | Estafette |
| Estaminet | Estouffade | Étalage |
| Étang | Étourderie | Étrenne |
| Externat | Extincteur | Fanchon |
| Fauteuil | Faux-Bourdon | Félibre |
| Féra | Fillette | Filtre |
| Fine | Flacon | Flâneur |
| Flèche | Fontange | Fourgon |
| Fourniture | Friandise | Friseur |
| Frondeur | Galère | Garçon |
| Garconnière | Gare | Gargouillade |
| Garigue | Gavroche | Gilet |
| Girouette | Gîte | Glissé |
| Goûter | Grognard | Guérite |
| Guinguette | Hausse | Hausse-Col |
| Homme | Horizontale | Incroyable |
| Inédit | Intermède | Jabot |
| Japonaiserie | Jongleur | Jour |
| Lacet | Laisse | Lande |
| Langue | Lettre | Livraison |
| Loup | Madrier | Magnanerie |
| Maillot | Maire | |
| Mairie | Maison | Maître |
| Maîtresse | Majorat | Mamelière |
| Manchette | Manoir | Marigot |
| Marmiton | Marotte | Marouflage |
| Marsouin | Mascaret | Mâtin |
| Médaillon | Messagerie | Métairie |
| Métayer | Milice | Militaire |
| Millefeuille | Minaudière | Minot |
| Miroton | Mitrailleur | Mitrailleuse |
| Morgue | Mortier | Motard |
| Mouchard | Moule | Naïveté |
| Nécessaire | Nef | Négociant |
| Névé | Noceur | Non |
| Nouille | Nounou | Nouvelle |
| Objet | Oeillade | Oeuvre |
| Orage | Ouvert | Ouvreuse |
| Palmier | Palourde | Parapluie |
| Paratonnerre | Parfumerie | Parisienne |
| Parloir | Partage | Particule |
| Partie | Partouse | Patronne |
| Paysage | Paysanne | Pelouse |
| Pensionnaire | Pensionnat | Peulvan |
| Piedroit | Pignon | Pinard |
| Piou-Piou | Piqueur | Piqûre |
| Place | Plaidoyer | Plaisanterie |
| Planh | Plat | Plié |
| Plongeur | Pochoir | Poêlée |
| Point | Pointe | Poissarde |
| Poitrinaire | Policier | Polisson |
| Politique | Pomme | Popote |
| Portefeuille | Porteur | Portière |
| Post-Chaise | Potiche | Potin |
| Poudreuse | Poule | Poupée |
| Pourboire | Pourparler | Pousse-Café |
| Praire | Pré-Salé | Presbytère |
| Primeur | Procédé | Procureur |
| Projet | Prolonge | Provocateur |
| Puy | Quartier | Quillon |
| Quincaillerie | Quinton | Raccourci |
| Rafale | Raisonneur | Rapide |
| Rasta | Rastaquouère | Raté |
| Ratelier | Ravalement | Razet |
| Réchaud | Récit | Réclame |
| Récolte | Rédacteur | Reflet |
| Régie | Régisseur | Reglement |
| Relâche | Relance | Religieuse |
| Remaniement | Remboîtage | Remueur |
| Renseignement | Rente | Rentier |
| Réplique | Repoussoir | Résistant |
| Retiré | Retraite | Réveillon |
| Reverdie | Revirement | Rognon |
| Roman | Rôtisseur | Rouget |
| Roulement | Routier | Routinier |
| Royale | Salaud | Salmi |
| Salut | Sanglier | Saucier |
| Saucisson | Saut | Séjour |
| Servante | Sévigné | Signifiant |
| Signifié | Singerie | Sirop |
| Sirvente | Snobisme | Sociétaire |
| Soigneur | Solfège | Sommité |
| Sottise | Sottisier | Soubise |
| Soubresaut | Soubresaut | Souffre-Douleur |
| Soupe | Souper | Soupirant |
| Sous-Entendu | Souteneur | Spectacle |
| Strapontin | Suisse | Tabac |
| Tabagie | Tabatière | Taille |
| Tailleur | Tastevin | Tâtonnement |
| Tendre | Tendresse | Terrasse |
| Thé | Tian | Tirage |
| Tomme | Tonnelle | Tonton |
| Tourmente | Traiteur | Tranche |
| Tricoteuse | Tripot | Trouvaille |
| Urinoir | Vague | Veillée |
| Veilleuse | Vendange | Vendeuse |
| Vernissage | Vespasienne | Vie |
| Viguier | Vin | Virage |
| Viveur | Vivier | Voyant |
| Voyou | Vraisemblance | Vulgarisateur |
I can reveal this fascinating fact because I'm trying to write a bit of software to be a rhyming dictionary - with options for perfect rhymes, slant rhymes (rhymes which ignore the difference between similar pairs of consonants), vowel rhymes and more.
Actually, I've spent most of the last week trying to make scripts to tidy up the raw data of spelling and pronunciation. It's either that or spend a year doing it by hand.
In the meantime, there are 179 pronouns, including such rarities as 'Yez' (plural You), Whosoever, and Hern (Hers). And 261 prepositions, including Yond, Neath and Abune.
And 65,796 nouns, the last of which is Zythum - a kind of ancient Eqyptian wine made from fermented malt.
UPDATE: Thanks to the OED's not-entirely-consistent system of classification, I've found some more:
| cru | déclassé | déraciné |
| gratiné | journalier | lisse |
| affiche | aperçu | arrêt |
| assiette | assignat | attentat |
| battement | cache-pot | cache-sexe |
| charcuterie | chassé | comte |
| comtesse | congé | convive |
| couvre-pied | crème | cru |
| déclassé | déjeuner | démarche |
| demi-mondaine | déraciné | dévot |
| digestif | digue | dormeuse |
| entrechat | farceur | faubourg |
| ferronnière | ficelle | fiche |
| figurant | fouetté | frisson |
| Général | gratin | gratiné |
| habitué | illuminé | journalier |
| lavaret | lisse | loge |
| longueur | lycée | mandat |
| mascaron | mélange | mésalliance |
| mignardise | mouchoir | muscadin |
| musée | niaiserie | palafitte |
| papeterie | pari-mutuel | parti |
| pastourelle | pesade | pis |
| pissoir | plafond | pochade |
| pompier | pont-levis | potage |
| pot-et-fleur | poulet | renversement |
| répétiteur | rivière | ruelle |
| salle | sapin | suprême |
| tête | vicomte | vicomtesse |
| visite |
Manwatching
I used to know a man who, every month or so, would drive 100 or more miles - over state borders - to have sex with men he met on the net. He was happily married, active in the local church, and decidedly...traditional in attitudes to adultery and family.
Now, according to him the real buzz in these encounters was when men told him things like, "Gee, that's a real big dick you've got" and "Wow, what a great cock". They'd suck each other for half an hour, then he'd drive back to the wife and kids, generally in a cloud of guilt and determination never to do that again.
He also liked to watch me masturbate on webcam, but always said he didn't have a cam of his own - so I couldn't return his appreciation. Oh, and it might have been the settings on his monitor, but he was under the impression that I wasn't a completely white guy - "Yeah, jerk that coloured cock for me".
Are you getting the impression of mixed motives here? Enjoys being desired, but he's the one doing the looking. Likes mexican and 'dark' men, but politically conservative. Crosses state lines as a way to compartmentalise his sexual lives, and likes to say homosexuality is wrong because it's sex outside marriage.
I'm not moralising about someone else's hypocrisy - rather I'm thinking about how the lies we tell change with the role of who we're telling them to, and how the lies change when the role of the listener changes.
There are the lies we tell our aquaintences to make us look good to them, lies we tell ourselves to make us look good to ourselves...and lies we tell our confessors to make us look good to god. Or 'society', which is the same thing.
In my role as extramarital fun I got one story. In my role as listener afterwards I got another - which depended on whether I was listening to post-orgasm guilt, pillar of the community, or internal monologue validated by a nonjudgemental audience.
I have to wonder whether he liked sex with men at all, or was one of those straight men who fetishise masculinity - as bodybuilders do. Or whether he'd found that the people who made him feel sexy and desirable just happened to be other men. Or whether the half hour encounters with elaborate distancing rituals were more about the idea of sex than the reality.
The number of men who sit for hours at their computers to arrange sex, and then find ways to avoid it, should show how common this last is.
All this was well over a decade ago, and if he ever told me his name I've forgotten it. I don't think I could tell you one definite thing about what his motives were, least of all whether he knew them himself.
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