Wednesday, January 26, 2022
Knowing stuff
I woke up this morning thinking about kids sitting in classrooms, sullen and resentful and wanting to be anywhere else. I imagined being there and telling them, "Knowing things is what gives you power over your own life. Knowing stuff means other people can't fool you on purpose because they want something from you, or by accident just because they have wrong information and don't actually know what they think they know." I would tell them, "Besides all that, knowing stuff is fun! like walking...
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Tuesday, January 25, 2022
Why blood type O might make a difference
This is the only article I have read that offers some actual reason for why O might make a difference, rather than just statistics. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2022-01-covid-transmission-blood.html Charlie points out that the actual results of research need to be backed up by the numbers of a statistically significant sampling to convince him that this is more than just hypothetical. I think seeing things happen through a microscope and actual experimentation that yields results that can be...
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Worth a quick read...
Here is an interesting idea about why Charlie, living with two covid-positive housemates, and I, also exposed through his household next door, and at the recent convention we both went to, where someone exposed everyone, have tested negative: https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2022/1/25/why-you-may-not-get-covid-19-even-when-those-around-you-have-it?fbclid=IwAR0-MB1UGRvzm5se9uElPYUg-syTA7Jg16lpwsZSMSj9emoD0mepfj5ce5w&sf158996694=1&sf158996646=1
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Wednesday, January 19, 2022
Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Religion
The hotel where we went for the COSine convention last weekend has changed ownership. We could not unload at the front door because workers were moving out a monolith of The Ten Commandments that the previous owners had placed there. Then I read of a case the Supreme Court is considering regarding whether or not the City of Boston could decline to fly a Christian flag alongside the US flag and the Massachusetts flag in front of the Boston city hall. The thing is, if a public display of religious...
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Sunday, January 9, 2022
Covid again
A good friend of mine here in the Springs has had it this past week, and her two teen girls have it, though lesser symptoms. She and they were vaccinated, so likely it will be miserably inconvenient, but not deadly. Another member of the local theater community died of it last week. He was not vaccinated. My feelings are mixed, seeing so many people I respect mourning his passing, and yet, I also am seeing it as a kind of suicide, to go about in the world full of risks, without taking the...
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Monday, December 13, 2021
Borrowed from a writers group chat
"What qualifies a story as a novella vs short story vs novel and other things?" Someone by the name of Jayson Charlesford responded: "I'm gonna risk saying it has little to do with word count. A novel is a story with a theme, a main plotline, and subplots that support both of those things. A novella is like a novel but has no subplots. A short story is, to my mind, the hardest to define, but has a tendency towards being a flash in time, the tightest possible focus around the resolution of an...
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Friday, December 10, 2021
Consequences.
I went to a show that required masks and vaccination or a recent covid test. A middle-aged person in line ahead of me sounded indignant and a little defensive when confronted with the query, maybe proud of being neither vaccinated nor tested. This put the box office folk in a very uncomfortable situation. Happily, there were tests on hand and the theater didn't have to deny her seating. If that had not been an option, no one would have been happy, everyone would have been uncomfortable with the...
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Thursday, December 2, 2021
Pandemic fears
I fear the virus more than I could possibly fear the shots! For one thing, I barely felt the shots--the booster, not at all! And it's free: no financial after-effects! And it does not significantly interrupt one's life. I fear much more the chance of weeks of hospitalization, months maybe years, maybe a lifetime of after-effects, if I don't die of it. Covid will be over once people who, for whatever reasons or excuses, don't get the shot, finally do get it, and quit giving the virus legs, quit...
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Musical Shenanigans
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tNgkxyMMfiE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BLXwpGCn2KQ
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Thursday, November 25, 2021
Happy Thanksgiving from across the Pond...
"Americans are a very modern people of course. "They are a very open people too. They wear their hearts on their sleeves. They don't stand on ceremony. They take people as they are. They make no distinction about a man's background, his parentage, his education. They say what they mean and there is a vivid muscularity about the way they say it. They admire everything about them without reserve or scholarship. They are always the first to put their hands in their pockets. They press you to visit...
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