Moving

I'll be moving to anorak.us as soon as I find time to install Movable Type.

What I'm reading

The Briar King may be methadone for A Song of Ice and Fire junkies. The story can be had for $5 if you don't mind digital.

Anorakish :: Definition

Those choosing to wear that eminently practical cold-weather garment the anorak have suffered much opprobrium in Britain in the past couple of decades. It began with trainspotting, a specialised hobby involving much standing at the end of draughty station platforms noting down the numbers of passing engines. Those choosing this hobby were frequently ridiculed as being obsessive about trivia and as having poor social skills. Since trainspotters often wore anoraks, the word came to be a pejorative term describing such a person. From about the late eighties, it has come to refer to any person (almost always male) with an obsessive or excessively enthusiastic interest, particularly one involving the collection of supposedly trivial information or ephemera, and is often applied to someone immersed in some technological field, particularly computers or the Internet. The adjective anorakish has developed from this, as has the group noun anorakdom, the supposed disease anoraksia and the facetious word for a fear of all things techie, anoraknophobia.
--Michael Quinion

Quote :: Democracy

After his Ignoble Disgrace, Satan was being expelled from Heaven. As he passed through the Gates, he paused a moment in thought, and turned to God and said, "A new creature called Man, I hear, is soon to be created."
"This is true," He replied.
"He will need laws," said the Demon slyly.
"What! You, his appointed Enemy for all Time! You ask for the right to make his laws?"
"Oh, no!" Satan replied, "I ask only that he be allowed to make his own."
It was so granted.
--Ambrose Bierce

Quote :: Standing Alone

The pride of singularity is often exerted in little things, where right and wrong are indeterminable, and where, therefore, vanity is without excuse. But there are occasions on which it is noble to dare to stand alone. To be pious among infidels, to be disinterested in a time of general venality, to lead a life of virtue and reason in the midst of sensualists, is a proof of a mind intent on nobler things than the praise or blame of men, of a soul fixed in the contemplation of the highest good, and superior to the tyranny of custom or example.
--Samuel Johnson
Adventurer #131

Quote :: Patriotism during war

Is a young man bound to serve his country in war? In addition to his legal duty there is perhaps also a moral duty, but it is very obscure. What is called his country is only its government and that government consists merely of professional politicians, a parasitical and anti-social class of men. They never sacrifice themselves for their country. They make all wars, but very few of them ever die in one. If it is the duty of a young man to serve his country under all circumstances then it is equally the duty of an enemy young man to serve his. Thus we come to a moral contradiction and absurdity so obvious that even clergymen and editorial writers sometimes notice it.
--H. L. Mencken
Minority Report (1956)

Blinding the Panoptikon

The FBI is complaining that Voice Over IP is difficult to tap.

I doubt Speak Freely or PGPfone make it any easier.

Quote :: Disputing Reality

They held up a stone.
I said, "Stone."
Smiling, they said, "Stone."

They showed me a tree.
I said, "Tree."
Smiling, they said, "Tree."

They shed a man's blood
I said 'Blood'
Smiling they said 'Paint'
--Amir Gilboa

Recently I drew up a table of atrocities during the period between 1918 and the present; there was never a year when atrocities were not occurring somewhere or other, and there was hardly a single case when the Left and the Right believed in the same stories simultaneously. And stranger yet, at any moment the situation can suddenly reverse itself and yesterday's proved-to-the-hilt atrocity story can become a ridiculous lie, merely because the political landscape has changed.
--George Orwell
Homage to Catalonia (1938)

Habeas Corpus?

People say this doesn't happen in this country, but one of my neighbors has been disappeared. It's not what he might have done that matters to me -- they disappeared him. They need to question him and let him go, or charge him. It's like Alice in Wonderland meets Franz Kafka.
--Steven McGeady

Quote :: Founding Principles

A country preserved at the sacrifice of all the cardinal principles of liberty is not worth the cost of preservation.
--U.S. Supreme Court Justice David Davis
Ex Parte Milligan, 71 U.S. (4 Wall. ) 2, 126 (1866)

ASOIAF News

An interview with George R.R. Martin and a full color map of Westeros will be available in the May issue of Dragon:

The cover art by Donato Giancola sans magazine blurbs here.

America's Other War

While world attention is focused on the conflict in Iraq, the United States is also deeply, and quietly, involved in a battle in the jungles of Colombia. ... In the past seven weeks, four Americans and one Colombian have been killed in the conflict while under contract with the U.S. government. Three others have been taken hostage.

Also check out Fiore's take on the WOD.

FUBAR

Iraq aid rations and bomblets are the same color.

A surgical assistant at a hospital in Nassiriya, told a British reporter Tuesday that U.S. aircraft had dropped three or four cluster bombs on civilian areas in the city, killing 10 and wounding 200.

Reports Wednesday suggested that a large number of civilians had been killed or wounded by such munitions in the town of Al Hilla.

The Chromium Fence by Philip K. Dick

"I'm not a Purist and I'm not a Naturalist. Why do I have to be one or the other? Isn't there any place for a man to have his own opinion?"

Read this short story by Philip K. Dick.

A Combat of Crazes

My friend David Repko writes: "Whatever makes YOU feel smug and self-righteous in your beliefs/faiths/convictions/ opinions, makes ME “mad as hell”! Consequently, even though our thin veneer of civilization compels us to resist the almost universal urge to bash each others’ heads in, the best society can hope for is a grudging tolerance for one another...

Quote :: Insularity

My sympathies are limited. I can only be myself, and partly by nature, partly by the circumstances of my life, it is a partial self. I am not a social person. I cannot get drunk and feel a great love for my fellow-men. Convivial amusement has always somewhat bored me. When people sit in an ale-house or drifting down the river in a boat start singing I am silent. I have never even sung a hymn.

I do not much like being touched, and I have always to make a slight effort over myself not to draw away when someone links his arm in mine. I can never forget myself. The hysteria of the world repels me, and I never feel more aloof than when I am in the midst of a throng surrendered to a violent feeling of mirth or sorrow.

Though I have been love a good many times I have never experienced the bliss of requited love. I know that this is the best thing that life can offer, and it is a thing that almost all men, though perhaps only for a short time, have enjoyed. I have most loved people who cared little or nothing for me, and when people have loved me I have been embarrassed. It has been a predicament that I have not quite known how to deal with.

In order not to hurt their feelings I have often acted a passion that I did not feel. I have tried, with gentleness when possible, and if not, with irritation, to escape from the trammels with which their love bound me. I have been jealous of my independence. I am incapable of complete surrender.

And so, never having felt some of the fundamental emotions of normal men, it is impossible that my work should have the intimacy, the broad human touch, and the animal serenity which the greatest writers alone can give.

--William Somerset Maugham (1874-1965)
The Summing Up (1938) chapter XXII

A Billion Dollar Self-Help Program?

"They don't really advertise that they kill people."
--Stephen Funk, a reservist refusing to serve

BWAHAHA!

Purpose

Before electricity people were writing down their thoughts and pasting quotes into common place books. This blog is my common place book. It will be a nexus between my real and online life. Far away relations will be able to check up on me. It will also prove that I existed when I'm no longer here -- hopefully, many decades from now.

Son of Cthulhu

Rare colossal squid surfaces in Antartic.

There is no spoon

Animated Matrix shorts can be downloaded here. The first one rocks. The second is mediocre.

Is Your Television Watching You?

Could the federal government find out what you're watching on TV? Even if you're not the subject of a criminal investigation?
If you're a satellite TV or TiVo owner, the answer is yes, according to legal experts and industry officials.
Under the USA Patriot Act, passed a month after the 9/11 terrorist attack, the feds can force a noncable TV operator to disclose every show you have watched. The government just has to say that the request is related to a terrorism investigation, said Jay Stanley, a technology expert for the American Civil Liberties Union.
--more

ASOIAF humor

Someone jokingly suggested that Hot Pie was the Prince Who Was Promised. Bronn replied, "Might as well make Hot Pie The Emissary of the Prophets of Bajor, The Uncrowned King of Gondor, The Once and Future King, The One Chosen to Restore Balance to the Force and the Kwisatz Haderach while you are at it.

Front row seats to the war

What would it be like to be Hasham?

The Americans had come to establish a defensive line on Salman Hasham's property, near this city on a branch of the Euphrates River about 100 miles from Baghdad.

Swinging pickaxes, Marines dug trenches and fighting holes outside his front door. Others armed with M-16s asked to search his house. Across the road, a Marine relieved himself in some shrubs.
--Baltimore Sun (3/31/2003)

No global GPS blackout.

Quote :: A Psalm for Our Troops

He that dwelleth in the secret place of the most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty. I will say of the LORD, He is my refuge and my fortress: my God; in him will I trust. Surely he shall deliver thee from the snare of the fowler, and from the noisome pestilence. He shall cover thee with his feathers, and under his wings shalt thou trust: his truth shall be thy shield and buckler. Thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by night; nor for the arrow that flieth by day; Nor for the pestilence that walketh in darkness; nor for the destruction that wasteth at noonday. A thousand shall fall at thy side, and ten thousand at thy right hand; but it shall not come nigh thee. Only with thine eyes shalt thou behold and see the reward of the wicked. Because thou hast made the LORD, which is my refuge, even the most High, thy habitation; There shall no evil befall thee, neither shall any plague come nigh thy dwelling. For he shall give his angels charge over thee, to keep thee in all thy ways. They shall bear thee up in their hands, lest thou dash thy foot against a stone. Thou shalt tread upon the lion and adder: the young lion and the dragon shalt thou trample under feet. Because he hath set his love upon me, therefore will I deliver him: I will set him on high, because he hath known my name. He shall call upon me, and I will answer him: I will be with him in trouble; I will deliver him, and honour him. With long life will I satisfy him, and shew him my salvation.

--Psalm 91

Quote :: Alone in the Dark

Oh, but you are alone! Who knows what you have spoken to the darkness. In bitter watches of the night, when all your life seems to shrink, the walls of your bower closing in about you, like a hutch to trammel some wild thing in.
--Grima Wormtongue
The Two Towers (2002)

...it is utter terror and loneliness that drive a man to address the void as Thou.
--Edna St. Vincent Millay

More radio news

Audio archives for the Nick Digilio show are available in the event one falls asleep before it airs.
update: If the above link isn't working. Archives can also be found here.

Fresh Music

Hungry for war news, I tuned into NPR. After the news, I was surprised to hear them playing something other than jazz. Their World Cafe program plays an excellent selection of alternative music.

Watching the War

Watching the war on television is like gaping at a bad car accident -- it is difficult to look away. What the hell... death is fascinating.

My dvd collection.

The leaflets that U.S. forces are dropping over Iraq.

ASOIAF News

A Storm of Swords is now available in paperback. It is rumored to contain a chapter from A Feast for Crows.

Vacation Plans

My brother and I are planning a road trip to the Coral Castle this summer. The story behind its construction is remarkable. We may also catch a few Civil War re-enactments along the way.

Quote :: Democracy

The state is the coldest of all cold monsters. Coldly it lies, too; and this lie creeps from its mouth: `I, the state, am the people.'... Everything about it is false; it bites with stolen teeth.
--Frederich Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra

ASOIAF News

The prologue to George R. R. Martin's A Feast For Crows is available in the March issue of Dragon:

WHAT IS 'EILEDON'?

A made-up word found in a Stuart Adamson lyric:

First, there is Eildon, a historically notable "beauty spot" whose ancient inhabitants opposed the Roman occupation... Second, there is the word "eidolon" which suggests something which is seen but not quite real. This word can connote something dark and ominous, as in Poe's verse (and in Stuart's warning that "reckoning is drawing near"), but can also mean an ideal, an imaginary thing which is yearned for by the writer. By combining these two distinct words -- Eildon and eidolon -- into "Eiledon", Stuart creates his own ideal "place to call my own". Eiledon is an imaginary place, but it still provides "strength... to see the future through." In the same way that MacDiarmid's old (and slightly inebriated) man reflects on the past and imagines a future Scotland, Stuart elegantly imagines his own. This song is both a tribute to and a comment on MacDiarmid's vision.
--Christian Jennings

updated: I dislike the utopian implications... decided Anorakish was a more suitable title.

VERSE

By a route obscure and lonely,
Haunted by ill angels only,
Where an Eidolon, named NIGHT,
on a black throne reigns upright,
I have reached these lands but newly
From an ultimate dim Thule-
From a weird climate that lieth, sublime,
Out of SPACE - out of TIME.
--Edgar Allan Poe, Dream-land

Coming soon...