This page shows recent posts from all categories. It will probably be fancier later.
Making OS X a little smarter: Conditional network configuration (2013/04/16)
So, I have ethernet, but I don’t always use it. If I’m not plugged in, I want my laptop to use the wireless. If I am, I want it to not use the wireless. [read more...]
Dear Casey's: Also, autistics speak. (2013/04/15)
While I was out picking up delicious pizza last night, I noticed that our local convenience store (Casey’s General Store) was doing fundraising for Autism Speaks. This makes me unhappy. On the whole, I like existing. [read more...]
The difference between doubts and questions. (2013/04/14)
There is a fascinating dialect quirk which has caused occasional confusions, which I think ought to get talked about. Many people who learned English in India tend to use the word “doubt” where most other English speakers would use “question”. I have been told that this is because, in one of the common languages around there, there’s a single word which is the best translation for both “doubt” and “question”, and people get told to translate it to “doubt”. [read more...]
Theme and variations (2013/04/02)
Music tends to rely heavily on the use of recognizable themes; little bits and pieces of melody and/or rhythm which are repeated to create consistency in structure. In the simplest form, a theme may simply be repeated. The “rounds” often used in early music classes add the complexity that each part may be at a different point in the theme than the others, but all the parts are still the same. The famous example is “Row, Row, Row Your Boat”, a piece of music which still has the power to enthrall children up through the age of seven or so, but tends to pale a little after that. [read more...]
A thought experiment... (2013/03/18)
As commented previously, there’s a lot of outrage because a couple of kids who raped underage girls got sentenced as though they had comitted a crime. [read more...]
Rape culture in a nutshell (2013/03/17)
I used to be pretty skeptical of the notion of “rape culture”. The idea that there was a strong cultural bias towards excusing, justifying, and overlooking rape struck me as, frankly, insane. I have since been reminded: Humans are, in fact, generally insane. [read more...]
Sex-obsessed gay guys, privileged white males, and the fallacy of division (2013/03/11)
I was, at one point, derided for attempting to explain intersectionality (the awareness that people might be “privileged” in one category, but “opppressed” in another) to someone who was, I was informed, an autistic female person of color, and thus presumably aware of it. But given that I was explaining it in response to an allegation that white males cannot comprehend oppression, I somehow suspect the awareness had not quite percolated through to application. [read more...]
Jesse talks about the "cure for autism" issue... (2013/03/11)
Occasionally people mention the importance of “curing” autism, and a lot of autistic people usually react with a little concern; while the strangers who would replace us may be very nice people, they are not us. [read more...]
Changes in society and how they affect literature (2013/02/28)
Been reading Raymond Chandler’s writing recently for a Project. So, in the last day, I’ve learned slurs I didn’t know before for gays, blacks, and women. Okay, maybe I’d heard the gay ones before, maybe, but probably not in ten or twenty years, and possibly not as slurs. I definitely didn’t know some of the stereotypes. The ones for blacks? Heck, I couldn’t figure out what half of them were until I’d seen them in enough contexts to pick them up (which took a chapter or two). Women? Pretty easy to guess, but seriously, wow. [read more...]
Humor and apologies... (2013/02/25)
The Onion recently did something they have, so far as I know, never done before in their entire history. They apologized. Specifically, they apologized for a tweet in which they called a nine-year-old girl a “cunt”. Well, okay, that does sort of merit an apology, but I think commentary on this is missing something important. [read more...]