Counterpoint

I was watching Labyrinth on a loop as a young boy, and I thought David Bowie was awesome, but I turned out… more or less straight. Mostly. Pretty much. I mean, of course Bowie is gorgeous, I’m not an idiot.

I fucking loved him as Mr. Hand. When he gets the John Murdoch memory upload he starts doing Rufus Sewell’s mannerisms and it’s honestly a little uncanny. Great performance.

Oof, ouch, my bones.

Is this even a controversial stance? I feel that the opposite take, claiming that artificial syrup is good, would be an actual unpopular opinion.

Someday I’d like to replicate Eratosthenes’ experiment with a long north-south road trip, but I never remember to make the measurements.

We do this at a used book store. It’s books that we don’t think we can sell inside for whatever reason, and we put them on shelves outside. There’s a big awning so they don’t really get rained on unless it’s raining sideways. We sell them for a dime or a quarter, and there’s a slot for overnight drops in case people want to get books at night. Every morning there’s at least a couple of bucks from the previous day/night.

We donate the proceeds to public radio, and over the years we’ve donated over $100,000.

I’m reminded of the movie Long Way North where a heavily-accented sailor tells a girl about a dog that lives on the ship: “He is punished. He chews the rigging and steals.”

If it’s a wormhole or Niven-style teleporter, it’s unarguably you coming through the process. Star Trek… I’ll grant that the conversation gets a little more complicated.

Here’s the video.

It’s been a while since I watched it, so judge for yourself.

I recall a Richard Feynman video where the interviewer asks him to explain how magnets work.

His answer amounts to “I can’t explain that to you because if I gave you an accurate answer it would be too technical for it to make sense to you, and if I simplified it to the extent that you could understand, it would no longer be a meaningful answer.”

Funny thing! Here’s a quote from the same book:

Of what use, then, are the American Communists?

They serve one function extremely useful to you and to the country, so useful that, if there were no Communists, we would almost be forced to create some. They are a reliable litmus paper for detecting real sources of danger to the Republic.

Communism is so repugnant to almost all Americans, when they are getting along even tolerably well, that one may predict with certainty that any social field or group in which the Communists make real strides in gaining members or acceptance of their doctrines, any such spot is in such bad shape from real and not imaginary social ills that the rest of us should take emergency, drastic action to investigate and correct the trouble.

Unfortunately we are more prone to ignore the sick spot thus disclosed and content ourselves with calling out more cops.

If you believe that laws forbidding gambling, sale of liquor, sale of contraceptives, requiring definite closing hours, enforcing the Sabbath, or any such, are necessary to the welfare of your community, that is your right and I do not ask you to surrender your beliefs or give up your efforts to put over such laws. But remember that such laws are, at most, a preliminary step in doing away with the evils they indict. Moral evils can never be solved by anything as easy as passing laws alone. If you aid in passing such laws without bothering to follow through by digging in to the involved questions of sociology, economics, and psychology which underlie the causes of the evils you are gunning for, you will not only fail to correct the evils you sought to prohibit but will create a dozen new evils as well.

—Robert A. Heinlein, Take Back Your Government

Interestingly enough…

Hannibal Lecter: Look for severe childhood disturbances associated with violence. Our Billy wasn’t born a criminal, Clarice. He was made one through years of systematic abuse. Billy hates his own identity, you see, and he thinks that makes him a transsexual. But his pathology is a thousand times more savage and more terrifying.

Gaston has a trio of smoking hot blondes that are all over him, but he goes for the bookworm who wants nothing to do with him. He wants a wife who won’t care when he goes on extended “hunting trips” with his manly man buddies, not one who will be all over him in the bedroom.

Well somebody should tell Zach Braff that.