Author: Charles Céleste Hutchins

Supercolliding since 2003

anonymous comments disabled

After mad comment spam, I’ve disabled anonymous commenting. Sorry.

The “word verification” thing that blogger offers is otherwise known as a CAPTCHA (an acronym for “completely automated public Turing test to tell computers and humans apart”). They’re problematic because they’re not actually Turing tests. They can be defeated by software which can figure out what the word is. Also, they can be defeated by motivated persons. For example, a script might grab my CAPTCHA image and post it to a pron site, telling a user there to de-scramble the CAPTCHA in exchange for access to naughty images.
In addition to not actually stopping spam, they also weed out real humans who have visual impairment and are thus a huge accessibility issue, to the point that it is surprising to me that they do not violate the Americans with Disabilities Act. I wouldn’t be surprised to see them in an ADA-related lawsuit.
I’d invite comment on whether CAPTCHAs are better or worse than making you sign up for a blogger account, but ironically, those most likely to be in favor of the CAPTCHA solution can’t actually comment. Blogger should take action to prevent the same IP address from hammering away too many times or too quickly.
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Why do people do what they do?

Because they’re stupid?

Because they’re frightened and want to think if they follow some set of rules, they’ll be spared the pain that seems to fall down randomly on anyone and everyone? Alas, they’re wrong. There is no sense to the madness. Nothing you do can make you secure. Society is in upheaval and capitlaist and no matter how “correctly” you do things, you could still wake up tomorrow and lose you job, lose your spouse, lose your home or lose your health. There’s no safety net for any of these things, really. But this cannot happen to you. You’ve protected yourself with some rules. The other people this happens to must have done something to earn themselves a horrible fate. Therefore, we should instal no safety net. It’s a feedback loop of fear, hopelessness and smug self-satisfaction. Where are the democrats when we need them?
Because they haven’t experienced something and ascribe all sorts of sins / motivations / whatever to people who have? Empathy is a good thing, no matter how unpopular it currently is. All sorts of misbehaviors can be avoided through use of it. Sure, it’s problematic because you can’t actually know or feel another person’s experience. The golden rule is imperfect. But it could stand to be applied more often. I will now offer advice in its application:
As it turns out, many (but of course not all, maybe not even most) men treat women poorly. Almost all of these men have no idea they’ve done anything wrong. I’m not talking about domestic violence, I’m talking about work and social situation where subtle and overt sexism can abound. Mr. A likes to tease or flirt with women, like Ms B, with whom he’s had some past acquaintance. He knows it’s ok, because Ms B smiles and laughs. What he doesn’t realize is that Ms B has a dagger in her purse which she sorely wants to stab Mr A with. Women smile, laugh and act approving when they don’t mean it. Yeah, it sucks. You cannot tell if you’re doing wrong by how they’re acting. Don’t get angry at this. It’s not their fault. They’re trained from earliest childhood to smile, to be polite and to not object. Some women will apologize when you step on their feet. A couple of weeks ago, a woman apologized to me because she tripped over a curb while I was watching. They’re trained not to frown, not to take up space, not to demand, and to speak as if every statement they make is a question. Assertiveness = bad. Smiling = good.
Oy vey! So what do you do if you can’t read or rely on cues? The golden rule! There are two ways to apply it. The first is best with business interactions. The second is better with social / flirting.

Before (or after) you say something, ask yourself, “Would I have said that to a guy?” If not, then you probably shouldn’t (have) said it.
Or, if you’re straight and you’re trying to flirt, ask yourself, “How would I feel if a man said that to me?” I know this gets tricky for many straight guys. If you would feel like the location was inappropriate and you had done nothing to indicate that you might be gay or interested, then well, you probably shouldn’t have said it. (Smiling politely is not indicating interest.) If she actually was interested, then you’re ok, but maybe the comment would have made you uncomfortable because it’s too personal or is somehow objectifying or whatever, then it was a no-no. If you always freak out about the idea of a man flirting with you, well, you’re homophobic and you don’t get to flirt at all until you get over it. Sorry. You have to apply the golden rule.
I know this is probably completely obvious to all of my readers. In She’s Not There Boylan writes about how she drones on and on and on about gender dynamics which are all new and interesting to her but are way old news and bring for other folks in their 40’s. It’s like that.
I don’t think people, even ones who misspell “moron” while name-calling, are stupid. I do think they haven’t thought things through sometimes, or haven’t tried to see things from the other side. I also think many, many judgmental and angry people are actually very frightened of the world and hope they can separate themselves from people who deserve misfortune.
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FAQ

It’s time again for questions and answers!

  • Is Xena going to France with you? No, she going to Apple Valley (part of the Inland Empire, between Barstow and Los Angeles) to live with Cola’s parents. They have two acres and three other dogs. I will miss her.
  • Do you have a place yet? Yes, see Cola’s post for address and pictures.
  • Can I come stay with you on XX dates? I have a pull out sofa bed in the living room which is at your disposal. Let me know when you want to come so I don’t double book.
  • $17000.00?? I had a whole post on this, but then, when I was consoling myself and Gi Jo (Formerly Gi Jen) with Absinthe, I decided it was too negative and nuked it. (Absinthe makes you feel kind, apparently.) Some of the money is for suing the builder, which contracts the CCNRs, and some of the money is for actually fixing the problem. There’s a meeting about this tonight, which is am SO going to.
  • GI Joe??? No, GI Josephine. She’s on Livejournal.
  • Is your pickup still for sale? Nope. Sarah D. is going to buy it. Yay!
  • So, are you ready to go? No, I dunno what I’m brining yet and I need to offer $ for help with that insurance document.
  • Are you excited? Yes. Oy, and I need to weigh all my gear and decide if I can bring my tuba (American Airlines does not allow overweight bags) and put all my stuff away in someplace where it won’t be underfoot for ellen and fix the broken things in this house and sell my car and I should buy one more shirt, a tweed jacket and some undershirts before I go (I just got new shoes) cuz I dunno how friendly stores are to cross dressers in France and I don’t want to find out when I’m in a pinch. And take the GRE, which I have to schedule and I owe many wonderful people cookies for helping me translate things and I need to have some sort of gathering where cookies can be distributed . . .
  • Am I going to get to see you before you go? I think there will be some sort of gathering. I will post more info when I figure stuff out.

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Absinthe makes the heart grow fonder

I just drank a couple of small shots of the absinthe that I brought back from the Cheque Republic in 2001 and it denfitely has more going on than just the 70% alchohol. It’s got Thujone and I think more of it would actually make me hallucinate, but it would also make me fall down drunk, so forget it.

Czech Republic of course.
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RIP Bob Moog

Bob Moog, inventor of the Moog Synthesizer just died of brain cancer. It’s sad news. I spent many hours in the Moog Studio at Mills, working on a gigantic Moog Modular P3. It was such a beautiful synthesizer. I miss it.

This morning, I heard on Democracy Now that Moog invented the analog synthesizer. Moog may have built the best synthesizer, but he didn’t invent it.
There were oscillators and pieces of things for music synthesis dating far back before the Moog. The term Amy Goodman was looking for was “Voltage-controlled Synthesizer.” But she still would have been wrong. Mills College has the first VCS ever built. It was commissioned by the San Francisco Tape Music Center (which moved to Mills and became the Center for Contemporary Music) and was built by Don Buchla.
The smithsonian wants it, but Mills has got it. I can’t say how their early Moog compares in sound to that first Buchla, because the Buchla wasn’t really working when I was there. I have seen it and seen the wiring for it. Oh my god, what a mess. Unshielded wires in a rat’s nest of incomprehensibility. Yeah, it was a prototype, but if anything went wrong, forget fixing it. I’ve heard the shipping ones weren’t all that much better. Moog, by contrast, published schematics and had a neat layout. Which means if your Moog broke, you could fix it. That certainly contributed to his success. That and his beautiful, lovely filters. The filters were so very very wonderful, especially the lowpass. (Cuts out high frequencies, allows lows through.) It has a round sound, warm. Like a great, german, big tuba. They were the filters that everyone was trying to copy. those squeely, squeltchy sounds of the TB303 et al didn’t come into vogue until recently. Back in the day, everybody wanted to sound like Moog.
The Times has a nice obit, but they felt the need to call Wendy Carlos “Walter”, followed by a parenthetical, ” (who later had a sex-change operation and is now Wendy Carlos)” and insisted on referring to her again as “Walter” when discussing Switched on Bach. In the same paragraph. In the next sentence. In a totally gratuitous re-use of first names that contradicts normal writing style. Also: my copy of Switched on Bach says “Wendy” on it.
Anyway, I recommend listening to Switch on Bach, “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer” some Maggi Payne and Bagels and Bongos. (Ok, I haven’t actually heard the last one . . . but I want to)
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Flirting

I recently complained about being flirted with, saying, “How do straight men get laid? Flirting seems to involve objectification and amplification of power systems.” But I’ve been thinking that seems to be an over-broad generalization.

First, I want my male readers to imagine what they would think if they went out one day and “straight” men were flirting with them that day. What would you do? Stop shaving for a while? Quit wearing your Pancakes for Pinkos T-shirt? Complain in your blog? There used to be something called the “gay panic” defense which straight men would use to get away with murder. It was basically the idea that a man flirting with you was SO upsetting that it’s ok to kill him. Why would the murder want to kill him? Because when he’s treating you like an object you know what he’s thinking and what it means?
I think the golden rule should apply: flirt as you would want to be flirted with and don’t murder.
Men only flirt with me very occasionally. It annoys me when I’m trying to have a professional conversation and he makes it inappropriately personal or, like the car guy on Friday, highlights a power imbalance. Flirting in social settings is less annoying, although it can have many of the aspects of power imbalance which just sucks and drives me nuts. One time, when I was in London, a drunk guy kept asking if he could buy me songs on the juke box and then apologizing because he knew I was probably not interested. The beer seemed to be controlling his brain. Oddly, though, it was kind of charming. He was approaching me on equal footing. Treating somebody as your social equal is way more charming than treating her as lesser than you, as an object, or as something you are empowered over and qualified to judge.
My own flirting technique is so atrocious that I can’t believe I’ve ever had any luck. Generally, I let women chase me. It’s good for the ego. The trick is getting their attention. I find playing music in concerts works well for this. If you’re in a community or whatever where people will see you around and see you play a few times, generally somebody in the audience will be smitten with you and if she keeps seeing you around, eventually, she will let you know somehow that she’s smitten with you. The quality of performance doesn’t matter. If you play music, you will get laid.
During this process, I giggle foolishly a lot. This works for some reason. So therefore, in the future, when men want to flirt with me, I think they should giggle stupidly. They still won’t get anywhere, but I won’t want to kill them and it might be oddly charming.
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Assurance de Voyage

Merci beaucoup pour vos aides de traduction. I thought it was finished, but then I found travel insurance documents.

English

Policy #: XXX
Below is important information regarding your upcoming trip. We recommend that you contact your travel source when making arrangements for your next trip, and of course, purchase TRAVEL GAURD to protect your travel investment. Thank you for your business. If you have any questions, please contact our customer service center at 1800-454-7170. We are available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week to assist you. Again, thank you for your purchase and have a safe and enjoyable trip!

Primary Insured Trip Cost Up To Other Insured Trip Cost Up To
Nicole
Home Phone: XXX		 $0.00 Les $0.00

Selling Company
Travel Gaurd International
Product: 007915 MEDEVAC PER TRIP & ANNUAL PROGRAMS – P4 3/2005

Departure 7/26/2005 Return 7/25/2006
Effective 7/26/2005 Length 365
Total Premium $$
Coverages Maximum Benefits per Person
Accident and sickness medical expenses $25000.00 Per Family
Concierge services — Per Family
Emergency Assistance and Repatriation Trip Cost Per Family
Event Ticketing — Per Family
Flower Ordering — Per Family
LifeTravel Services — Per Family
Restaurant referrals — Per Family
Tee Time reservations — Per Family
Travel Gaurd Assistance — Per Family

French

Nombre de politique: XXX
L’information importante concernant votre voyage prochain est au-dessous. Nous recommandons que vous contactez votre source de voyage en prenant des arrangements pour votre prochain voyage, et naturellement, le TRAVEL GAURD d’achat pour protéger votre investissement de voyage. Merci de vos affaires. Si vous avez n’importe quelles questions, contactez notre centre de service à la clientèle à 1800-454-7170. Nous sommes disponibles toujours pour vous aider. Encore, merci de votre achat et ayez un voyage sûr et agréable!

Assurés Primaires Voyage Coûté Jusqu’à Autre Assurés Voyage Coûté Jusqu’à
Nicole
Tél: XXX		 $0.00 Les $0.00

Vente De la Compagnie:
Travel Guard International
715-345-0505

Produit: 007915 MEDEVAC PER TRIP & ANNUAL PROGRAMS – P4 3/2005

Départ: 26/7/2005 Retour: 25/7/2006
Effectif: 26/7/2005 Durée: 365
Prime Totale: $296.00
Assurances: Allocation maximum par personne:
Dépenses médicales d’accidents et de maladie $25000.00 par famille
Services de Concierge — par famille
Aide et rapatriement de secours Voyage Coûté par famille
Étiquetage D’Événement — par famille
Commande De Fleur — par famille
Services de LIFETRAVEL — par famille
Références de restaurant — par famille
Réservations de golf — par famille
Aide de TRAVEL GAURD — par famille

I am so beyond my abilities right now
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