tales of an ordinary girl

I haven't posted in a while and I actually have given a lot of thought to closing the blog down. I still enjoy writing, but I haven't felt motivated to write here. But then I found out that my sister is reading the blog, and (OMG my sister is reading my blog!) I thought it'd be rather rude to shut down after she took the time to find me.

So, the blog will be up for a little while longer while I mull it over.

I'm still reading your blogs though and finding a lot of good content on the Internet even if I don't always comment.

I have an exam in a few hours. No lucky charms, I studied and that should be enough. But I don't mind people wishing me well.

Next week is another photo assignment and I still have to get all my photos mounted for the final portfolio presentation the following week.

I can see the light at the end of the tunnel, but it still looks like the train.

I'm really want to share my thoughts about Torn By God, but I want to do the book justice without throwing in process groups or scheduling formulas. I'll be back to posting more often soon.

You may have wondered lately when I'm going to post something other than pictures and links. Well, I have a couple of posts in my head, but I haven't had time to get them to the computer yet. I thought I'd have time this weekend, but then the weekend was gone before I knew it.

My time on the blog is probably going to be meager over the next couple of months. I started a photography class a couple of weeks ago that meets six hours a week for the spring semester and then I start a certification class for work in mid-February that meets seven hours a week for five weeks. I haven't had this much school in over a decade and contemplating my weekends taken up with homework assignments scares me a bit.

I've also started working with the Youth Friends program and am mentoring a fourteen year old girl at a local junior high school. She's cute and completely undecided about her future. I'm shaking in my boots afraid that I'll lead her to drugs and a life of crime. Okay, probably not. I'm more afraid of how uncool I am as an adult and that she'll be bored.

Work has been crazy again too, but this week looks a little better so far and so I just might be able to think about something else in the evenings.

But other than that it's been just the normal sense that too much stuff is happening in my life. I'm busy and despite my friends all telling me it's a good thing, I've always shied away from too many commitments. Except over the holidays somehow little by little I threw myself into getting everything I plan to accomplish this year done before May.

So my natural instinct is to hide out playing video games, where there's a false sense of getting stuff done, although in actuality it's a complete waste of time.

Anyway, that's the long explanation. There are more substantive posts coming soon.

Paul, over at Cafe Philos has bestowed upon me the Flower Smeller Award. I'm a bit dubious about it all. I wonder just how well Paul knows me. Me, the constant worrier, who has angst over the smallest choices, always looking forwards and backwards.

Okay, maybe that's a little dramatic... I certainly do strive to enjoy the moment, especially when I find myself fantasizing about changing past events. And I have learned that it's better to let things go than hold onto them. My rather lame motto is, "I'll do better next time," because I think they only positive thing that I can gain from past experiences, other than good memories, is a little more experience in the world and drive to handle tricky situations with more grace next time around.

And now, curse you Paul for making me pick more people to bestow this award on. I'm beginning to feel a bit like I'm perpetuating a chain letter, albeit a very nice chain letter without the crappy superstitious message.

I select PBS because she always finds a way to be thankful in the worst of situations, Venjanz because I really think it'd be interesting to read his post on this, and Vistaluna because he's one of the most fantastic, humble, intelligent, caring friends I have.

And now that my good deed for the day is done I'm off to eat babies, or whatever else atheists do during Christmas.

P.S. I'm still editing pictures. My weekly sun post should be out sometime this evening. For some reason I thought I needed a nap last night and never got around to getting back up.

The 29th Humanist Symposium is up at a Nadder and my article on gay marriage and adoption was included. Michael wrote this edition in haiku format.

Also, Chappy at An Apostate's Chapel is currently hosting the Carnival of the Godless Holiday Feast Edition.

I updated my template again. Don't worry if you hate it. I'll probably change it in the spring. I already have a template picked out.. unless I change my mind between now and then.

I have about six posts in my head that I haven't been able to get out in writing. But, I'll be back to blogging soon. In the meantime I heard Zoe Keating on Radio Lab a couple of weeks ago (on my way to Dragon Con as a matter of fact). I hope you enjoy this piece.

Despite my anti-social tendencies, I've joined Facebook. You can find me here.

Yeah, I'm still here. I've just been busier than normal lately and that doesn't look to be changing soon. I found out last week that I was being transferred to a new team effective yesterday. So far nothing has changed, but I'm bracing myself for the new projects that will be coming in. It's likely I'll have to finish all of the projects I'm currently working on as well since the team I'm leaving isn't replacing me, so work hours will be longer for a little while and hours at home are more likely to be zombie-fied as I try to de-stress.

Until my brain recovers and I feel like doing more than sleeping I may be a little sparse on posts. Don't worry though. I'm sure inspiration will strike me at least a once or twice a week and I'll still have my weekly posts.

Blogging
AP Goes After Bloggers For Posting Article Headlines And Snippets
And, now, it's expanding its target list. Rather than just going after the big aggregators (surprisingly, Google settled), it appears that the Associated Press is going after bloggers for merely posting a linked headline and a tiny snippet of text from the article. In this case, Rogers Cadenhead informs us that the AP sent 7 DMCA takedown notices last week to his site, the Drudge Retort (a site that mocks the Drudge Report). In six cases, a blog post on the site quoted just a small snippet of text from an AP article (between 33 and 79 words -- nowhere near the full length of the article). In every case, they also contained links back to the original AP article. Five of the six used a different headline than the original AP article. The other complaint was about a comment to a blog post, which also included a very short snippet and a link.

Civil Rights
Destroying Marriages to “Protect” Marriage
I was married in California and lived part of my married life there, so I feel somewhat invested in this. First and foremost, the idea that marriage in general needs to be “protected” by denying it to same-sex couples is ridiculous, just as it was when people believed that marriage needed to be “protected” by denying it to interracial couples. Second and more specifically, the idea that my marriage needs to be protected by a bunch of hyperventilating ninnies in the midst of a queer panic makes me want to retch. Please do keep your clammy, quivering, homophobic fingers off my state of matrimony, if you please. My marriage has not once been threatened by same-sex marriage; heck, I’ve been to Massachusetts at least four times since same-sex marriage was made legal in that commonwealth. Roving bands of same-sex married couples did not trample my marriage rights while I was there.

I Do -- And Why
Look at the patchwork of laws around this country regarding same-sex marriage. Look at the states that have banned it, and the ones that have gone so far as to ban the recognition of same-sex marriages performed in other states. Look at the fact that if my partner and I travel to Alabama or Michigan, Alaska or Pennsylvania, or any of over two dozen other states, our marriage will be seen as not having existed at all. Null. Void. Look at the Defense of Marriage Act, passed by Congress and signed by President William Jefferson Clinton in 1996, stating that the Federal government will not recognize same-sex marriages, even if they're completely legal in the state where they were performed.

What does that tell you about how those states, and the country as a whole, sees us?

Second place award That's the weird paradox of the California ruling. It's thrilling. It's unbelievably great news. It's a huge historical step. But at the same time, it throws the true meaning of this legal patchwork into sharp focus. It makes it that much clearer that queers in this country are, in a very literal sense, second-class citizens. We pay taxes, we serve on juries, we have to obey the same laws that everyone else does... but in a very practical, codified- into- law sense, we just don't count for as much.

Comics
Waking the Feminist inside the Fangirl
Women don’t just like a story because it is about women. We like stories that are well-written and well-developed, just like anyone else. There’s no need for Lifetime comics. As comic story lines become more grounded in the real world, the fact that often their female characters are mere sketches becomes more apparent. That is not to say that there aren’t more developed depictions of women in super hero comics. One example is the push to make Ms. Marvel a major player in the Marvel U, a heroine with some authority. I appreciate moves like that. However, it’s a small step and since the marketing is not there how are girls and women to know that there might be a story they'd enjoy coming from the Big 2?

Government
Authorization or Declaration?
Because they gave him discretion, the likes of John Kerry and Hillary Clinton were able to question how the President conducted this war, and say, “I would’ve never done it that way.”

To all the “patriots” out there that “support the troops,” this was the dumbest thing you could’ve done. You gave the President’s opponents an out. Congress basically voted to say, “We’re not responsible,” and then proceeded to act that way.

Every member of Congress, in an hour where young lives are going to be committed and some will surely die, must be on record, for or against. They must take responsibility for the decision they have made. They should not be able to hand it off.

Government “Strike Teams” Invade Homes, Harass Flood Victims
No warrant, no knock home invasions are being carried out on the flimsy pretext of "checking for structural damage" as cops harass and threaten with arrest people who refuse to have their homes ransacked by thugs in uniforms.

Cedar Rapids police chief Greg Graham promised residents over the weekend that "Law enforcement officers are not entering homes," and that firefighters would only enter homes through unlocked doors and windows yet the video clearly shows locked houses being broken in to.

Nonbelieving Literati
Humanist blogging à la Voltaire!
Printed books are a form of one-way communication -- like television -- from knowledge producers to knowledge consumers. There's one big difference, however: less is more. The less your infotainment consumes of your brain's attention, the more your brain has to work on its own in response. Caleb Crain argues this in The Twilight of Reading: "It makes you smarter because it leaves more of your brain alone." Darnton's research illustrates this in his chapter analyzing police records of (spying on) nightly conversations taking place in taverns around town. Unlike television today which can consume all of your brain's leisure time without your brain ever having the strain of producing a single thought of its own, in those days you could only read books for so long, and then the next natural step is to go down to the pub and discuss them.

Pardon My French, Voltaire
Anyway, the whole book has a spontaneously knocked-off quality, as if it were made up by someone who had never actually told a coherent story before. I can imagine Voltaire, sitting down at his desk, setting his pocket watch (watch de poche) for an hour (soixante minutes), and saying to himself: “Today, I’m going to write exactly 1,000 words.” (Aujourd'hui, je vais écrire exactement 1.000 mots, give au take dix mots.) And that’s apparently what he did. Some of those words were shaped into blasphemous or satiric sentences, which no doubt made him chuckle. Me, too, in a bland sort of way. An example of his irreligious wit: Is there anything more worthy of respect than an abuse dating from ancient times? Cute. I won’t cite any more here, because I’m going to leave the best quotes for the other Nonbelieving Literati to steal; there aren’t really enough to go around. Still, I do identify with someone using that kind of automatic-writing authorship style, and can easily picture Voltaire slapping himself in the knee: “I think this stuff is very funny.” (Je pense que cette substance est très drôle. Ouch. Mon knee.)

Thoughts on Zadig
Zadig has the answer:

Reason is of more antient Date than the Custom you plead for.

Interesting thought, isn’t it? We atheists confront this sentiment routinely in debates with theists. How often do we have to refute a book written anywhere between 2000 and 4000 years ago, depending on the appropriate chapter? This is “antient’ wisdom we’re talking about here, set down, if not by god, at least by god’s scriveners. Well, now I’ve got the perfect rejoinder.

Nonbelieving Literati: Zadig - Voltaire
This passage as after Zadig convinced his master, Sétoc, that he was wrong to worship the elements in the representation of the sun and the moon after Zadig made a great show of bowing down to a lantern. But instead of picking up on the idea of worshipping nothing he instead worshipped Zadig's god. Not so wise there, in my opinion. Would it not have been better for Sétoc to then show Zadig that he was just as ridiculous? But then the entire point of the story would have been thrown off its rails (much to the better, I think).

"It would have been a great pity if he had been hanged."
That's one of the funniest sentences I found in Zadig, this "sardonic* comedy" about a man named Zadig, written by the French Enlightenment figure Voltaire. It's not laugh-out-loud funny, but rather silly in its understatement, especially if you imagine it being said by very rich people in an off-hand way, and if you know that the reason he was almost hanged was because of half a poem. But of course it was all solved in the end - with an assist from a parrot - because Zadig was a nearly perfect, charming, intelligent, reasonable, handsome, and modest character. It could be argued that the theme of the book is how tragic it is that he lives in a world of less perfect, less intelligent, absurd people, like the woman who begged to be beaten after she asked for help not to be beaten by her lover, which sort of brings to mind the cycle of violence, except that it was over-the-top.

NL: Zadig
But there is a difference between Zadig and Candide more profound than the degree of the heroes' trials. Candide eventually comes to understand that Dr Pangloss's outlook is absurd and useless; he settles instead on "we must tend our garden". Zadig, on the other hand, musters nothing more than a feeble and - crucially - unanswered "But..." in response to the angel.

Photography
Solstice Moonrise, Cape Sounion



Tech
Men Write Code from Mars, Women Write More Helpful Code from Venus
Emma McGrattan, the senior vice-president of engineering for computer-database company Ingres–and one of Silicon Valley’s highest-ranking female programmers–insists that men and women write code differently. Women are more touchy-feely and considerate of those who will use the code later, she says. They’ll intersperse their code–those strings of instructions that result in nifty applications and programs–with helpful comments and directions, explaining why they wrote the lines the way they did and exactly how they did it.

The code becomes a type of “roadmap” for others who might want to alter it or add to it later, says McGrattan, a native of Ireland who has been with Ingres since 1992.

Men, on the other hand, have no such pretenses. Often, “they try to show how clever they are by writing very cryptic code,” she tells the Business Technology Blog. “They try to obfuscate things in the code,” and don’t leave clear directions for people using it later. McGrattan boasts that 70% to 80% of the time, she can look at a chunk of computer code and tell if it was written by a man or a woman.

Woo
CityNews Exclusive: The Mother, The Child, The School Board And The Psychic
The frightened mother rushed back to the campus and was stunned by what she heard - the principal, vice-principal and her daughter's teacher were all waiting for her in the office, telling her they'd received allegations that Victoria had been the victim of sexual abuse - and that the CAS had been notified.

How did they come by such startling knowledge? Leduc was incredulous as they poured out their story.

"The teacher looked and me and said: 'We have to tell you something. The educational assistant who works with Victoria went to see a psychic last night, and the psychic asked the educational assistant at that particular time if she works with a little girl by the name of "V." And she said 'yes, I do.' And she said, 'well, you need to know that that child is being sexually abused by a man between the ages of 23 and 26.'"

I spent 9 hours in the Memphis airport yesterday. I don't like Memphis anymore. You guys aren't the barbeque capital of the world, so serve something else... anything else, OK?

My flight was delayed while we fueled due to the possibility of thunderstorms in Memphis. Then we sat on the tarmac for 25 minutes burning the fuel because they miscalculated and over-fueled. Nice to see they're not concerned about the cost of all of all that fuel or the passengers they stranded in Memphis all day, huh?

I'm still tired, but I got more than three hours of sleep last night. Regular posting should resume next week.

Pictures this week will be delayed. The "high speed" wireless here at the hotel, which costs an additional $4.99, chokes when I try to upload a picture. Expect something maybe on Thursday if I don't go comatose as soon as I get home Wed night. :)

The trip is going OK. I'll post more details when I get back. I'm hoping for something interesting tomorrow.

Lately I've been receiving emails asking for link love on my site or reviews of music or books or comments on my posts. Some of these are a kind of interesting, so I thought I'd share.

After reading Ute's post on the rules of marriage I received information about a new artist named Charlotte Sometimes and a link to one of her videos. The two immediately clicked, although I think they're only related superficially. Read Ute's post and then watch this video and see if you don't think so too.



A couple of years wrote a post about a license plate that I thought was funny. A very nice local wrote to let me know that the plate still exists and sent me proof. Thanks!



I received an email from Dreamr about my American Idol - Shout to the Lord post.

I am very familiar with that song and we go to a Baptist church. I think it was awesome that they sang it. My only complaint is they changed Jesus to shepherd the first night. Any time Jesus' name can get out there is fine with me, as His word will never return void. Why should people be offended, we live in AMERICA, you know the America that is supposed to be a Christian country. If I was in Iran I would expect to hear musllim songs. I am so tired of being politically correct. If you don't like it, you can always go back to where you came from. Just my thoughts, Dreamr

Um, Dreamr, I come from Illinios. If I went back I don't think that would solve your problem. See, America wasn't founded as a Christian nation. Besides, I didn't say that I wanted the song to be banned or anything. I found it odd is all and of course I thought it was kind of silly to be singing it on a pop idol show.

Thinking about it some more I suppose it did give me the impression that the charity event was supposed to be in some way "religious" as if the only way humans can be charitable is to be religious. But that might be my own sensitivity to the issue coloring my perception.

Mostly I had no idea at the time the song was so popular. I suppose that explains why they sang it. I went to churches that met in houses, basements, a hotel, and even an office building when I was growing up. We didn't sing traditional Christian hymns and much of the music that we sang was written by members of the church. It wasn't until a couple of people commented on my post that I realized that this song was popular outside of the small churches I attended.

Oh and I'm not moving back to Illinois. So you can just learn to deal with someone who has a different opinion than you, especially when you're coming to my blog to read my thoughts. That's the real philosophy that America was founded on, you know.

Kelly over at The Choice Is Now tagged me for an "E" for Excellent award. Thanks, Kelly! It's an honor especially to be listed in with the blogs I was tagged with.

I nominate the following bloggers (in alphabetical order):

(((Billy))) The Atheist
The Apostate's Chapel
Cafe Philos
EnoNomi
Evolutionary Middleman
Flumadiddle
La Vie Quotidienne
No More Hornets
Spanish Inquisitor
You Made Me Say It

Yesterday the site reached 20,000 visitors. Well, 20,000 page hits from when I first started counting sometime after the site went live. It's probably more like 14,000 unique visitors, but hey, not bad. Thanks for stopping by!

The Exterminator over at No More Hornets recently posted on the art form of Googl-oetry. Here is my contribution.

conclusion of biblical doctrines for lay christian
i'm odinary girl
     snorting girl
     girl in the kinoki commercial

why homeopathy is saying bad of baby girls and all girls?

an an ordinary girl
     achmed girl
     pig girl stories snort

i fell under the power
ordinary girls games

     anal sex
     china ass
     domestic discipline
     cow together sex movie
i have more sympathy for animals than humans

ordinary girl
     public education girls
     no ordinary girl

what happen when the ordinary person turn to very smart one


Update: For more googl-oetry visit
Letters from a broad
An Apostate's Chapel
The Choice Is Now
Primordial Blog
Greta Christina's Blog

When did I become the College of Arts, Celtic Studies & Social Science? Wow. Maybe I can give out wacky degrees now.

And somehow I wrote an article about self-deception and Hitler too. Hah! Hitler-zombie rises again!

I know these are probably bot sites, but the results are still very strange.

I changed my template again. If anything looks odd, let me know. The font is a bit small, but it did some odd things when I increased it. But if it's unreadable let me know and I'll see what I can do.

Nelson Primus (1843 - 1916? ) "Portrait of a Lady (Lady with Golden Hair)" Oil on canvas 1907

I decided it was time for a new template. I still like the old one, but I've lost most of the vintage text and theme in the upgrade to the new Blogger.

I wanted some sort of "girl" theme since the blog is titled "tales of an ordinary girl," yet I didn't want anything sexy or young teenage-girly. Not that there's anything wrong with a sexy theme, but it's not what I want for this blog. It was difficult to just find an ordinary girly (womanly?) theme. I hope you like the new look. Let me know if there are any problems with any of the images or links.