Gary Farber

Speak To The Kitty: NEW OBWI EMAIL ADDRESS And Open Thread

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by Gary Farber

Longtime and valued commenter Uncle Kvetch asked an extremely important question here.

[…] While it was nice seeing a united front of commenters taking on avedis' all-too-familiar mix of dick-waving bravado and abject sexual terror, I do find myself wondering just what constitutes "beyond the pale" when it comes to homophobic remarks around here. I'm not referring to ban-worthy offenses, as the posting rules are clear enough. But I have to say that when the inevitable necrophilia/bestiality comparisons were dragged out and numerous commenters just kept on presuming good faith on avedis' part…well, it makes me wonder.

The answer is that the "New Banning Rules" were last updated, as you can see, by longtime front-pager Edward at 10:25 AM on January 26, 2005.

They include this:

One writer (but only one) from the other side of the fence must agree to the ban for it to move forward (Von can vote as either side of the fence as he wishes). For the record, currently Charles Bird, Andrew, and Sebastian Holsclaw are on the right; Von is in the center; and Hilzoy is on the left.;-) Yes, that's unbalanced…we're working on it.*

This has been discussed many many many times in comments since 2005, by various people.  Many emails to the kitty address have been sent since 2005.

The "New Banning Rules" remain as posted until someone with the ability and authority to post new rules does so.  Wording has been suggested. 

The Posting Rules were last updated 1/19/2007, with a further undated update by an unknown to me user of "SuperUser."  I can guess, but so can you.

Again, much email has been sent to the kitty address since then, and there have been various discussions in comments about this since that time.

The Posting Rules remain as posted until someone with the ability and authority to post new rules does so.

None of this will change until the co-bloggers communicate with each other about it, and appropriate action taken by the appropriate parties with the ability to do so.  As has always been the case. 

As of Wednesday, December 29th, the address to email the kitty has been: ObWings At gmail Dot com

Send Obsidian Wings related email there.

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Ngrams R Us: A Monday Open Thread.

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by Gary Farber

This new Google tool, which Bob Mackey mentioning reminded me that I'd bookmarked for blogging Analyzing Literature by Words and Numbers by Patricia Cohen, is truly useful and neat, at first look: Books Ngram Viewer.  Look up key words, and phrases, and thus track concepts over time, and much else, in hundreds of millions of books over the past couple of centuries, by frequency.

Then dig.  Yum.

Some link-dumping for you: How To Use PeaceTalk 101 by Suzette Haden Elgin.  Check out her writings on the Gentle Art of Verbal Self-Defense. 

Use of some of these techniques, which I first started reading Elgin's writings on in the early Eighties, might be helpful to some, but not to others. 

See also popularizer Deborah Tannen, though I agree with Elgin's critique of Tannen's extreme over-reliance on gender stereotyping.   As usual, I don't endorse everything either writer says, but they're both worth reading, in my opinion.

Which could lead one to G.K. Chesterton on this topic, if one ever feels cranky:

There is an apostolic injunction to suffer fools gladly. We always lay the stress on the word “suffer,” and interpret the passage as one urging resignation. It might be better, perhaps, to lay the stress upon the word “gladly,” and make our familiarity with fools a delight, and almost a dissipation. Nor is it necessary that our pleasure in fools (or at least in great and godlike fools) should be merely satiric or cruel. The great fool is he in whom we cannot tell which is the conscious and which the unconscious humour; we laugh with him and laugh at him at the same time. An obvious instance is that of ordinary and happy marriage. A man and a woman cannot live together without having against each other a kind of everlasting joke. Each has discovered that the other is a fool, but a great fool. This largeness, this grossness and gorgeousness of folly is the thing which we all find about those with whom we are in intimate contact; and it is the one enduring basis of affection, and even of respect.

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The BABBLE Begins

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by Gary Farber

Per previous announcement:

The ObWi Bay Area Bloggers & Bullsh*t League of Earth = ObBABBLE's first meeting is hereby announced. 

WHERE: Crepevine.  Specifically.

5600 College Avenue, Oakland, CA


5600 College Ave, Oakland,
CA 94618
Ph: (510) 658-2026

WHEN: Saturday, December 11th, 2010, 1 p.m. until we're done.

PURPOSE: Socializing, meeting each other, fun.  Talking about what we talk about on Obsidian Wings and our other favorite blogs.  Flame wars dampened with beverages and cheer.

QUESTIONS: email gary underscore farber at yahoo dot com. 

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ObBABBLE

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by Gary Farber The ObWi Bay Area Bloggers & Bullsh*t League of Earth = ObBABBLE's first meeting is proto-organized and is hereby announced.  Name likely to change, as is everything else.  Frequency to start will be monthly, but subject to further detail and change; possibilities of every other weekend subgroups may occur, or may not. … Read more

Don’t Listen To The Douchebags

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by Gary Farber

This is my sign-off post for at least three weeks or so, as a front-pager, as I'm in the final stages of my move to Oakland. (Any help, as described, much appreciated.)

But before I go, some quick parting links, and words from others.  George Takei on Clint McCance:

 

Meanwhile, the Texas Supreme Court has been only logical: Texas Supreme Court Cites The Wisdom Of Spock On Star Trek. 

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Don’t Fear The Reaper

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by Gary Farber

We must talk about the the War Logs of Wikileaks.

The amount of data is staggering.  Key stories abound. 

Let us start with death.

The Guardian's breakdowns include a breakdown of lethal casualties of the Iraq war.  (The New York Times approach is here; we'll get to that.)

America caused this.  It's a map of every Iraqi war-related death documented by the Coalition.

Hooray for freedom.

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Uh, Oh, You May Be Wearing Muslim Garb!

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by Gary Farber What it looks like:  I, for one, won't soon forget King Abudullah's Muslim garb:   But, seriously, view the many rest.  Former ObWier Lindsay Beyerstein wrote on Facebook: The phrase "Muslim garb" drives me crazy. A) It's meaningless. B) It's like the speaker's trying to recast Muslims as D&D characters. Also, a … Read more

Keep Them Doggies Movin’

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by Gary Farber

My apologies for having posted so little since becoming an official ObWier; I'm now leaving for Oakland, CA, in less than two weeks, and am working on moving, and minimizing my usual irrational panic. 

Perversely, I have done some link dump posts at my home blog, Amygdala, in recent weeks, so feel free to check those out before they're too aged, if you desperately need more reading.

I've certainly been frustrated to not join in on the income inequality discussions when there is such wrongness being perpetrated on the internet, and even ObWi, but I'm sure it will still be there when I get back, and meanwhile the rest of you do such a great job in comments, as do the other front page bloggers, it's not as if I'm necessary, anyway.  (But it's a topic I'm passionate on, nonetheless, so later on that, dudettes and dudes.)

Meanwhile, to briefly follow up on a past post of Dr. Science's, SF3 has withdrawn the invitation to Elizabeth Moon to attend WisCon 35 as guest of honor.  That followed SF3, the parent body of WisCon, having passed these two resolutions on October 3rd.  This is a precedent for sf conventions, for better or worse.

In another very quick hit, Why Does Abu Dhabi Own All of Chicago's Parking Meters? Yes, let's discuss privatization, virtues and faults, uses and limitations.  Let's start by reading some of Matt Taibbi's Griftopia: Bubble Machines, Vampire Squids, and the Long Con That is Breaking America, as excerpted at the link.

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Enough About You: Let’s Talk About Me

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by Gary Farber

My name is Gary Farber.  You killed my father.  Some of you are familiar with me, and some are not. 

Who the hell am I?

I'm the FNG as an Obsidian Wings front-page blogger.

But!

My first appearance at Obsidian Wings was via a post by Katherine R. on December 16th, 2003, when she linked to a post of mine, and named it Post Of The Week.  This attracted my attention to Obsidian Wings, with its first set of bloggers, Moe Lane, Katherine R,  and Von.

Set the Wayback Machine, Sherman!

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Don’t Do The Cybercrime If You Can’t Do The Time

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by Gary Farber

Except that who is responsible for Stuxnet is a mystery. 

What we know is that it's incredibly dangerous.  And it's at least possible it was targeted at Iran's nuclear program, perhaps the enrichment centrifuges in Natanz.

Cyber security experts say they have identified the world's first known cyber super weapon designed specifically to destroy a real-world target – a factory, a refinery, or just maybe a nuclear power plant.

The cyber worm, called Stuxnet, has been the object of intense study since its detection in June. As more has become known about it, alarm about its capabilities and purpose have grown. Some top cyber security experts now say Stuxnet's arrival heralds something blindingly new: a cyber weapon created to cross from the digital realm to the physical world – to destroy something.

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Which Came First: The Regulation Or The Egg?

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by Gary Farber

"One big 20-year experiment" has been conducted on what happens when you leave egg safety to lax federal regulation, spotty state regulation, and the market, and the results aren't pretty.

On a July night in 1987, scores of elderly and chronically ill patients at Bird S. Coler Memorial Hospital in New York City began to fall violently sick with food poisoning from eggs tainted with salmonella.

“It was like a war zone,” said Dr. Philippe Tassy, the doctor on call as the sickness started to rage through the hospital. By the time the outbreak ended more than two weeks later, nine people had died and about 500 people had become sick. It remains the deadliest outbreak in this country attributed to eggs infected with the bacteria known as Salmonella enteritidis.

If someone murdered nine people, and wounded five hundred, with a gun, we Americans would have paid as much attention to this as we did the Columbine high school massacre, or Nidal Malik Hassan, or Charles Whitman.

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