LongTom

^ Yes. < Trying to cut back. V Pass it on.

^ Has a doppelgänger with an earlier birthday.

night light

Dim sum

^ craves cinnamon

True, but they can pull all that crap on you even if you don't let on about your feelings. Loving doesn't mean consenting to ill-treatment. Here's the funny part: loving freely makes it easier for others to love you, which makes it even easier to love freely. It is possible to find the wrong person into which to pour your love, like a drain, but that doesn't mean you should correct the situation by turning off the tap. Well, that might be an overstatement. It's just that you run a fair chance of losing some of that stuff anyway by dealing with this person at all, if they are the sort to treat people badly. And you know exactly what you are virtually guaranteed to lose by keeping mum. You are right, loving does make you vulnerable. Problem is, not loving doesn't make one quite as invulnerable as you let on. (I have spent rather too much of my own life hiding within myself, and still being miserable.) Also, there are the rewards to be foregone. It's a little bit like defending against being hit by a bus by refusing to come outdoors. Only the world. It has to do with how you view the world while loving. And then there is what unfolds in the world as a result. You know, I'm not sure I have the words to explain myself, about what I would have lost by not loving. Ask my children, maybe. Now, that reminds me of another quote: "It was the very thing he liked. To edge his way along the crowded paths of life, warning all human sympathy to keep its distance, was what the knowing ones call "nuts" to Scrooge."

At risk? Of what? Of not being loved in return? Where is the risk in that, compared to keeping silence? Doesn't keeping silence result in not being loved, too? It is not important that we are loved. It is vitally important that we love. It is the difference between asking another being to fill what is basically a drain, versus being a wellspring. Approached from that angle, there is nothing to be lost in loving, and everything to be lost in withholding love. "There is no good or evil; there is only power, and those too weak to seek it." -- Voldemort

Turkey. Yummmm.... If I said "loon" you all would think that entirely too fitting for me, so I'm going to go with Mallard.

Some highly illuminating reading: Tinker v Des Moines School District This is the Supreme Court decision whence came the line I misquoted earlier. Here's the actual wording: It can hardly be argued that either students or teachers shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate. Very interesting reading.

Easy, there... I mentioned Catholic because it is one of the branches of Christianity. I am unaware of any politically active proponents of Intelligent Design from other major faith groups such as Hinduism. I have no idea which specific branches of Christianity are active in Intelligent Design. (For that matter, I did not recall that you were Catholic at the time I wrote.) I suppose that I could have picked Southern Baptist instead, and it probably would have been nearer the mark for Kansas, but think how much that would be seen as a swipe. Regarding bunk, respecting and acknowledging others' beliefs is not the same as believing them to be true. Ganesha is certainly not part of Catholic canon. I doubt you "believe in him," in the same sense that you believe in Christ. (You could surprise me on this point. ) In my opinion, it says nothing disrespectful to claim that the average Catholic will regard Ganesha as a figure of myth rather than revealed truth. You could say the exact same thing about an adherent of Judaism, Islam, Jainism, or any other faith in which Ganesha does not play a part in the cosmology; but for me to be rigorously inclusive on this point of protocol would make my writing even more unwieldy than it is already. Regarding the Ganesha as boy vs as man aspect, I was remembering one of the stories of how he got his elephant head. If memory serves, he was a boy at the time; but it's been a while since I read that, and my memory is not the greatest. It is not my intent to provoke anybody, or anything other than some thought. I apologize if I got overenthusiastic. I wish you a joyous Easter.

Weights today. (Finally; been putting it off all week.) Done with Java! Woohoo! Now I have less excuses to shirk the weight workout in the evening. (Though there is that ship model that has been waiting since my last birthday...)

I do enjoy a vigorous debate. Thanks for adding your thoughts (and putting up with mine). Yup, or maybe worship an elephant-headed boy, if that's your thing. (That's Ganesha, from Hindu mythology. Probably sounds like bunk to the average Catholic.) Pastafarianism was not created to poke fun at Religion per se. Rather it pokes fun at the Kansas State Board of Education, granting "legitimate" status as science to something that obviously is not. To put it another way, Intelligent Design gets to be called Science (even though it's obviously not), but the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster does NOT get to be called Religion (even though it's obviously not)? Ironic indeed.

Large format printers (I assume you mean inkjet) are good for one-off prints, but if you are printing in any quantity, I advise getting a quote for an offset press run. Inkjet ink is notoriously expensive stuff.

Thanks, John and Asukaru. Family walks are nice. Enjoy! Whatever I did to my foot has finally subsided, so I can do the 3/4 mile leg between the train and work on foot again. That's a relief, because I still need all the exercise I can get. Also, the amount of time I spend commuting each day annoys me no end, unless I can turn it into "productive" time by exercising and by studying on the train.

Assuming the kid wasn't waving the blowup sword and cracking wise with Pastafarian piratese during the lesson, by far the smart thing for the teacher to do would have been to completely ignore his little, ahem, eccentricity. (There is nothing more deflating to a jokester than the sound of crickets chirping...) Then the ball would be in the kid's court to push the issue or not (read: anything further the kid did at that point would incontrovertibly be speaking out of turn, and would merit discipline). Assuming the opposite behavior (that he was in fact cutting up in class), then it is entirely appropriate to say "You'll get these back at the end of the day," or worse if necessary. If it was the other kids who were reacting to his get-up, then hell, send THEM out of the room. People should be responsible for their own behavior. Not knowing which of those dynamics was actually in play that day, I can't say why the teacher did what he did, or whether he was out of line or not. In all three cases, however, the message is consistent: You are here to LEARN. Either sit down, shut up, and learn, or get out. I don't give a damn what you wear, so long as you are participating civilly in my lesson, so you may as well give up trying to make a scene with it.

The problem is, it is only legitimate if it is about the distraction, or safety, or some other thing plausibly related to the conduct of instruction. The teacher does not get to be absolute dictator in his classroom. As the Supreme Court has famously said, students do not forfeit their Constitutional rights at the classroom door. That is kind of the whole point, isn't it? If you are in the business of deciding what is a "legitimate" religion and what is not, then you might as well start agitating to de-certify Presbyterianism, if it doesn't suit your agenda. Either you are for freedom of religion or you are not. There is no middle ground. Two thousand years, ago, there was this cult of Jesus that had, what, a dozen members? Are you siding with the duly constituted authorities who would have preferred to stamp it out in its infancy? This is why the argument must necessarily center not on whether my beliefs, as an individual or as part of a larger group, constitute "legitimate religion" or "a kitschy fad," but whether governmental actions to suppress or regulate my actions surrounding those beliefs have a rational basis. I am an avowed Jeffersonian on issues like this: "The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg." Of course the teacher may prohibit ice cream eating, as it interferes with the performance of classroom activities. Likewise the throwing of feces, as it is an undisputed health hazard to the targets. And so on. When the dispute boils down to the man occupying the seat of power simply disliking something, his powers of control take a backseat to the other person's freedom. Our system sets a higher bar than "because I'm in charge and I don't like it, that's why."

Don't mind me, I'm just a little grouchy because I'm not likely to be able to swing the plane ticket, nor the time away from the family. Vicarious thrills, these be...

Last night I ran across a reference to a ship named Mercury, taken by pirates in 1719. In General History of the Pyrates by (cough) Defoe, in the chapter on Capt England. You have a historical prototype!

Me? Laying around drunk, of course.

Sounds to me like the kid wasn't entirely clear on the concept going into the situation. Religious freedom perhaps, but it still doesn't excuse him infringing on the other students' ability to learn. A Muslim student would not be allowed to whip out a prayer rug and start chanting in the middle of class, and neither is the Pastafarian allowed to create a distraction. It is not difficult to formulate an argument that the eyepatch is a distraction because all the other students are staring at it instead of at the chalkboard, where their attention belongs. However, that does start verging into a gray area. Does a teacher in, say, Nebraska get to force a Muslim girl to remove her headscarf, because it is foreign to the students and thereby distracting?

I imagine there were a lot more maintenance activities than just scraping the bottom of the boat. Some possibilities that come to mind: -- collecting water (though that would imply a need for a fair collection of casks in camp) -- hunting and preparing the meat (um, "boucan"-ing?) -- collecting and/or preparing other edible or otherwise useful materials -- mending all sorts of ship's tackle -- making cordage (anybody have a rope walk?), and misc rope work with the results. -- teaching the waisters how to tie some of the more useful knots. Laying around drunk would be for when it was too dark to do any real work. Not sure what you would do for the watering demo, other than have a barrel in a rope sling and periodically march into or out of camp with it on a spar across several shoulders. Likewise, a properly scaled meat smoking fire is probably out of scope. But other handiwork-scale tasks should be doable. My two cents on the bell: At least on board ship, someone as undisciplined as a pirate is not going to be eager to extend their watch while their shipmates continue to snooze below. The bell would be not so much a form of martial discipline as a warning to "stir yer stumps out o' those bluidy 'ammocks afore we cuts' em daown with yez still in 'em." The same watch-on, watch-off principle would apply to any heavy work on shore.

I HIT 185 TODAY!!!! (185 was my goal for end of June, to be followed by 175 by end of year. All right then. Make it 175 by June and 165 by end of year.) Looks like those calorie calculations are not so far off after all! Never has a pirate been so pleased to be starvin'! Yarr!

Right, then. I'm in. Just finished Exquemelin, on to the other one.

I like a beard on a woman ... as long as it's my beard.

I've just been doing the daily ride to and from the train. I'm slightly less out of breath at the end of the ride home than I was three weeks ago. It's hard to make time for the weight workout right now because the deadline to complete my programming class is this Friday. I'm going to do one tonight, though. Kudos to Asukaru for keeping up on the machine.