The Accidental Weblog

So I get a sorta middling traffic in linkspam in the comments ‘round here. Generally find I have to clean up a few times a week, collecting a few dozen comments each time…

It’s usually the standard internet/organized crime crap. Presumably bogus pharmaceutical come ons, loan thingies that are just as probably fronts for phishing rings as anything else, gambling sites. Barely worth raising an eyebrow. Yes, there are people crooked enough to sell this crap. Yes, there are people stupid enough to buy it. Noted. Select all/delete…

But I did find myself marginally more amused when, over the past few days, there were a few links in there to various religious-type proselytizers. Two sites in particular, whose names I will in no way be promoting (no, dearies, I don’t do for free what your paid ‘search engine ranking’ service tries to do, any more than I’m gonna pay to host the droppings they leave)…

Yeah, amused. There is a certain appropriateness to it.

As in: they’re falling to the level they always belonged at, really. ‘Herbal viagra’ (yes, this phrase still makes me laugh), phishing schemes, online gambling, and religions…

Birds of a feather, after all.

Also vaguely funny: as with all these BS services, the model is: leave comments that might sound plausibly like they’re legit, find some excuse to put the link whose ranking you’re trying to pump in there somewhere… So they’ll frequently try to say glowingly lovely stuff they figure you’re unlikely to delete like ‘Nice post!’ or ‘I so agree!’… Which is especially amusing when they’re obviously just grepping on terms vaguely related to the topic of the site they’re pushing…

And so you wind up with a comment from a site pushing some flim-flam religion ‘n scarcely veiled Dominionism glowingly praising a post like This is me, bein’ all contumelious again down there.

(/Thanks, pal. Allow me then to reprint your kind endorsement on the dust jacket of my forthcoming book: Religion, spam, and why they both suck rocks.)

… as we always knew the denizens of fishing villages are tough. Seems a recent experiment done on the ISS indicates a certain cyanobacterium found in the rocks near a UK fishing village can survive in space for better than 500 days.

Researchers suggest (see the attached video) one interesting thing about this is cyanobacteria have obvious potential uses for gas recycling. Stick ‘em under sunlight in an appropriately arranged system, you can turn your CO₂ back into O₂. Which has obvious utility…

Another comment briefly touches on panspermia. And this, I must confess, I find interesting, but hardly a slam dunk…

As in: yes, there’ve been suggestions previously that the ability of certain bacteria to take on a dormant spore form that can survive in conditions as hostile as this for some time might mean it’s not so wacky to imagine that life can actually seed itself between star systems…

To this, all I can say is: ‘kay, but a year and a half isn’t generally going to get you between star systems. Nor is it even much of a fraction, really, of the time you would need. So call it a step in that direction, a suggestive little factoid, I guess.

Still. Impressive. Tough little bugs, no question.

SMBC modestly presents ‘The Law of Futurology’…

(/In honestly unrelated news, Kurzweil’s been making some noise of late… Say, just how old is that guy, anyway?)

Just saw Guy X….

Much liked. But then, I’ve always had this thing about stuff that just doesn’t feel like being any particular genre all the way through. Honestly, I can read or hear a critic or viewer whining about that about a work, how it just can’t be that one thing, how this apparently made things so terribly confusing for them, and I say aloud ‘dumbass’, and then go off to watch it with great expectations…

‘Course, it had an in. Got this thing about drama in the arctic, too. Always gets me right there.

Come to think of it, my life has fit no particular genre, so far, either. Nor will it do so merely to make things easy on the reviewers.

(/Well, okay, as to that life, some parts, mebbe farce. Or, at least the second time for each bit, anyway.)

As you may have heard from like a few thousand sources, one of the Kepler team scientists gave a conference about a week back in which they stated Kepler has, among its current confirmation targets, some 140 planets that are Earthish in size.

This isn’t, actually, so much a huge surprise. In a sense, it’s more a confirmation of what you might expect. Insofar as (a) our solar system has a few of those (broadly speaking, all the terrestrial planets, Mercury to Mars), and (b) planetary systems seem pretty common in general (see the exoplanet results of the past few years), but (c) our detectors ‘til now were generally heavily biased toward finding larger gassy blobs that make a more easily measurable dent in their parent stars’ detected outputs.

So Kepler, having solved that latter problem, confirms what you might expect: our system isn’t so unusual. Now that we can see small rocks, we’re confirming: yep, they’re there. In droves, even.

Still, yes, it’s exciting. Previous statements repeated, and saying the obvious: next job, start working on the techniques and instruments that get spectra off those vastly smaller and trickier surfaces, toward getting surface/atmospheric compositions. Then the science to try to sift out the places where the chemical mixes found are suggestive of biotic processes actively shuttling electrons ‘round, in ways abiotic processes would be unlikely to explain…

It’s gonna be a busy decade, methinks. And quite possibly an incredibly interesting one. I am increasingly pleased to have lived to see it.

One Lynna, over on the thread that shall not die, quotes an old Oklahoma statute on ‘crimes against religion and conscience’:

Blasphemy consists in wantonly uttering or publishing words, casting contumelious reproach or profane ridicule upon God, Jesus Christ, the Holy Ghost, the Holy Scriptures or the Christian or any other religion.

(Original source here.)

… and there’s a reveal there, and as I also said there, and as I’ve also said previously (and me only one of the many). In that part of what’s such rot about the ‘new atheists’ label is really, there’s nothing so much new about it. Lots of us were roughly as directly rude long before certain book sales records set certain hollow-headed pundits off to draft a proper label for a certain groundswell of relative outspokenness and visibility… And we were far from the originals. Like by a few millenia, probably…

The statute’s a nice little reminder, too: not only were there people bein’ all contumelious about it quite some years ago, but there were also certain asshats trying to shush them, then as now. Tho’ then, of course, they did it with legal penalties. As opposed to using bullshit misinformation campaigns, smears, and drawers full of sockpuppets—the current strategy in certain corners of the blagosphere.

Either way, the thrust is the same ole’ same ole’. And the message is: shut up. Be invisible. Disbelieve if you must, but don’t go calling bullshit bullshit out loud. Nowadays, ‘round here, given that laws like that don’t always fly so well (y’know, ‘cept in the UK), a million reasons are given, instead. It’s dangerous. It’s pointless. You should be doing somethin’ else. Like painting your nails or somethin’, whatever. Hell, do anything else.

But it’s just the same ole’ schtick. Or much of it the same. And the main reasons are still probably mostly about hegemony, about power. And established social institutions with a thousand plus years of surviving purveying deliberate unreason got a million ways to protect themselves and their bullshit, and a critical one remains: keep the natural doubt (and even laughter) that spontaneously and continually arises invisible. However you must. Impress upon people even who don’t so much believe that you just don’t say these things, that it will cost you, that works, too…

My message, simply: don’t fall for it. Don’t buy it. Just keep laughing at them. Very out loud, when you’ve got a moment. Don’t gotta make it your life or nothin’—that could easily be just as large a waste, if you’ve another life you’d rather be living. But don’t shush. Let your laughter ring.

Mostly just because, honestly: you’ll need to. But also ‘cos, actually, it still works…

They’ll say stridency hurts you, see, too. But they say that sort of thing a lot, and ‘stridency’, you may well note, is just anything they don’t want to hear said out loud, really. Doesn’t matter how calm your voice is, how measured your observations, how nuanced your language: if you say something that cuts too close to the bone, suddenly, you’re ‘strident’…

Truth is: they lie a lot in general, and especially about things like that. It’s a funny thing, too, how you’ll see religious voices pulling that one out of their asses all the time: ‘Oh, you’re helping my cause by being so direct…’

Right. Sure I am. And you’re telling me this why, then?

The truth remains what it was when that law was written: calling bullshit bullshit directly mostly hurts those spreading said bullshit. And Clemens’ line about colossal humbugs also comes to mind. That, too, remains as true as ever.

… are weird. But there really should be a song with that title.

(Checks…)

Nope. Not yet. In fact, the phrase ‘ski hills in the summer’ only returns eight hits in Google, as of this writing.

Presumably, when the spiders make it this way, this will rise to nine…

Slightly more seriously: we were at Tremblant this weekend. Pre-season business. Arranging a condo, getting pass photos taken. There for the day, anyway, as a side effect, so we walked ‘round, did this ‘luge’ thing they’d set up, which is this cars-rolling-down-a-grade thing. Kinda a natural when you’ve got grades anyway. Then hit the beach.

Yeah, we’re gambling a bit on the biggest hill in the east this year. Thought being: rain’s been coming hard all summer, looks like a La Nina year, let’s hope there’s snow…

Ski runs in the summer are… enlightening. You count exposed rocks, try to remember where they are for later. The crowd at the hill’s interesting. I must confess, I was glancing sideways at legs, trying to work out: those ever been used for skiing or boarding?

Yes, that’s really the main reason I was looking at those.

Okay, it’s among the reasons. And I never really drew any conclusions, there. Anyway…

Anyway, the beach was good. Built a sand castle with the little guy. He got a bit of an education in spoken French, as the other little ones running around were mostly using that.

Vignette of the day: me saying to the Francophone mother of those as the castle finally washes out, kids pouring water under it, through the tunnel we’d built, ‘Well, they do say this about castles made of sand…’

Do they say that in French?

(Checks…)

Apparently they do. Guess that’s good. Mebbe not entirely incomprehensible at the other end. It’s sometimes hard to tell.

Anyway: so we’re ready. Or as ready as we’re going to be, I guess.

Did a second lesson yestereve. Much less stressful conditions. Wind was generally just enough to keep the sail from luffing, with occasional slightly more vigourous gusts. I got to the point where I could reasonably systematically sail back and forth across the wind, beam reach to beam reach, stepping around the sail at either end without too much drama. Was doing these 30 to 50 metre tacks out toward the middle of the river and back.

Fell maybe three times, all just at the very beginning of it, dropped the sail once or twice otherwise—that more later—body getting tired. For most of the three or so hours, it went pretty smoothly. Was actually dry when I finally stepped off the board at the end.

Muscles seem to be getting a lot more used to it, already. After that first session, my legs were screaming. This morning they just feel a little tighter. Well used, is all. Like they usually do early on in snowboarding season.

Liking this. Will definitely try to squeeze in a few more sessions while we’ve still got the weather.

So I took a sailboarding lesson the other day.

I know, I know. It’s like a new hobby or sport every few months ‘round here…

But hey, I figure lotsa guys have a midlife crisis, buy a red convertible sportscar and/or find ‘emselves a mistress. I’m going with somethin’ a little cheaper, a little easier on everyone involved: a new sport/hobby on a regular basis until I’m satisfied I’ve crossed enough off my ‘things to do before dying’ list for this decade. Or dead. Or just dead tired. Whichever.

And no, in case anyone’s wondering, I’m not particularly having a crisis. I don’t think. Just kinda getting some stuff done I’d always meant to. Had meant to try sailboarding for years and years, somehow just never got it to happen. Used to sail, decades ago, but never on a board—so it was a sort of unfinished business. Tried once on a vacation, got stood up by the instructor… So anyway, it was overdue. And what with this being a mostly stay at home summer for various reasons, and what with there being decent winds on the river down by Brittania, and, apparently, a sizeable contingent of sailers and instructors locally, I figured now was good. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

And speaking of dead/dead tired, I’m the latter of those right now. Lessons learned about sailboarding: it does require some effort from the limbs. Lesson learned about my body: it’s not really in great shape right now. Tho’ this is kinda standard for me, in the summer, when there’s not normally much I’d actually use muscle tone for. So legs and arms are a bit tired right now.

Legs especially. I think this was a combination of the fact that they do have work to do in this sport, and mine had just enough tone ‘n strength left from the winter that I kept thinking I could do more with them than I really can. So they’d get into this bouncing/twitching tired/spasming muscle thing, which tends to end poorly. Like with me in the water and my legs only that much more shot. And the wind was a smidge high for training yestereve, apparently. Instructor was offering we might also try it another night, with more learning-friendly winds, but I figured, hey, I’m here, things are happening, if painfully, let’s just see what I can get done. I can come back on an easier night, too—it’ll be a breeze.

If you’ll pardon the expression. Anyway: I did eventually manage to start getting the sail out of the water and pulling the thing slowly forward. And I did get some half-competent speed control going, in a very narrow range between barely moving and slightly more than barely moving, gusty winds notwithstanding, even through tired, wobbly limbs. And some somewhat less competent directional control. And managed to turn the board right around from reach to reach in what I guess is the boarding equivalent of tacking several times, many of them, eventually, without even falling off—which had been my initial problem with that maneuver. Tho’ for some reason, it doth seem I’m better at handling it with the wind to the port of the board than the starboard, go fig. The former, I could go some tens of metres reliably enough (before having to come about, on account of being well out of reach of the instructor). The latter, that was a lot harder. Somethin’ about my stance, I’d guess. Kept going like for a few seconds at a time, losing balance, and/or dropping the sail from fatigue…

Anyway: I’m liking it so far. Trying to set up another night, sometime soon. Hopefully, a few critical muscle groups will be a little more ready for it next time.

… or the alignment of the axial tilt with the position of the sun…

Anyhoo, as that progresses, there are now bags from Tommy and Lefebvre—the local provisioner of gear required for certain sacred rites—in the front hall.

The annual warehouse sale has passed. More importantly: the solstice is more than four weeks gone. Winter, she is icumen in. Or icumen a little closer, anyway. Arrangements are in progress. Passes purchased. Places to stay arranged…

I mean, sure all this flying stuff’s okay as diversion. In this, that other season. But we should be back to real life shortly…

Real life. Y’know… snow… vertical acceleration…

(/Gets faraway look…)