Monthly Archives: October 2017

A couple hours ago I came across this bumper sticker, presumably owned by a disgruntled liberal:

I’ll treat your President with the same respect that you treated mine.

You hear this sort of thing fairly often. It always strikes me as dumb and kind of depressing.

Don’t get me wrong — I’m also a liberal, also dismayed by how Obama was treated, also unhappy that we’ve elected a man who is childish, self-centered, incompetent, ignorant, crude, petty, dangerous, and frequently vile. But here’s the thing. This bumper sticker is supposed to be anti-Trump, yet it’s embracing the very core of Trump’s philosophy: You hurt me, I hurt you back.

So you think your opponents acted childishly. Fine. But if you think the solution is to be childish right back, then I hope you’re not a kindergarten teacher. We’ve gotta have some adults in the room, because if we’re all children, well … we know how that one ends.

Even the language is silly. “Your President,” as opposed to my President. Every time I hear someone say “Not my President,” I want to bop them on the chin with a rolled-up copy of the Twelfth Amendment. He was elected legitimately — even if he didn’t get a majority, even if Russia interfered. (Collusion is a somewhat different matter, but we’ll wait and see what Mueller finds.) The point is, the biggest thing holding Trump’s chaos in check — apart from his own remarkable incompetence — is the counterbalance of the legislative and judicial branches (enshrined in Articles I and III), plus the voice of the American people, which is protected by the Bill of Rights. If Trump’s not your President, then you don’t respect the Constitution, and the Constitution is exactly what will carry us through this gargantuan quagmire. Even saying “Not my President” in a nonliteral way is, I think, somewhat harmful.

Besides — if he’s not your President, then what the hell are you so upset about?

One final thought. It occurred to me that the bumper sticker might just as easily be a few years old, owned by a conservative who was bitter about how W was treated, and angry about Obama. There’s no year on the sticker, nothing to indicate age. Which side of the aisle is this person really on? There’s no way to tell.

That, in itself, should say something about this cycle of political venom we’re in.

• Still reading that Superintelligence book. It’s still good, although he occasionally strays into some territory that seems oddly speculative, even by AI standards. Right now I think the biggest struggle is simply getting people to have this conversation. It’s like a bus with seven billion people is driving full-throttle toward a cliff and nobody knows it, and whenever you bring it up, everyone’s like “What are you talking about? We’ve never gone over a cliff before so I’m sure it won’t happen now.” (To be fair, there are like eighteen other cliffs on the horizon besides this one, parts of the bus are already on fire, and nobody’s quite sure where the steering wheel is.)
• I’m collaborating with Esteemed Herr Author Benjamin Trube on a project he came up with, a Babylon 5 podcast. My prior podcast experience has been limited to, um, not listening to them, so this is something quite different for me. Basically, we watch a new B5 episode every two weeks or so, then record ourselves talking about it for an hour. We’ve recorded two episodes so far but haven’t inflicted anything on the interwebs yet. More as it develops.
• I’ve started working on a Buffy webcomic. As with the B5 podcast, nothing is online yet, but I’ve created seven strips so far, and a “library” of files to make a bunch more. I need another project like I need a black hole in my head, so I’m not going to self-impose any deadlines right now. If and when I get a decent-sized backlog, I may start posting them once a week. If I lose interest, I’ll just post the ones I’ve created already. So far, though, it’s been a lot of fun to work on.
• Evan is crawling, crawling, crawling everywhere. We babyproofed our kitchen so hard last weekend. Babies can be a pain sometimes, but man, that little guy is friggin’ amazing.
• Betsy, if you’re reading this, I love you! 😀 (If you’re not reading this, I still love you, but you’ll have to hear about it some other way. That can probably be arranged.)
• A lot of stuff in the news — hurricanes, the Las Vegas shooting, Trump’s assorted stupidities, twelve million other things. I follow it all pretty closely and I think about it a lot, but I typically don’t have much to say that hasn’t been said in twelve million other places already. If you’re interested in my take on a particular topic, though, you’re welcome to leave a comment. In the meantime, I support the ACLU, try to figure it all out, and hope for the best.
• Haven’t seen Star Trek: Discovery yet. Kinda burned out on Trek, but who knows?
• New movie called Annihilation coming out next year. Trailer looks pretty sweet. Even sweeter: It stars Natalie Portman (one my favorite actors), and is written and directed by Alex Garland, who also wrote and directed Ex Machina (one of my favorite movies).
• I’m planning to return to Crane Girl once I finish a smaller, family project, which should be done by Christmas.
• A bit of a lull in the editing at the moment. Freelance work tends to be feast-and-famine. Lately the famines have been shorter, which is nice. I’ve been using the break to get some other things done.
• Betsy and I have been going to church more regularly over the past couple months. Although I’m agnostic, attending church is enlightening and useful in a number of ways. I tend to think that nonbelievers should spend at least a little time in church, for the same reason that believers should spend at least a little time listening to atheists.
• We switched to a cheaper trash service, which allowed us to add the savings to our monthly Doctors Without Borders donation. Calling them to increase our auto-payment amount makes me a special kind of happy.
• I have a ton of ideas for other blog posts floating around in my cerebrum, but time always seems to be tight. I’m not sure that time actually is tight, but it always seems that way. I do want to write at some point about what “logical thinking” really means, and why it’s so hard, and what its limits are. Although logic and science are two of humanity’s supreme achievements, I think we “rational” types often get an inflated idea of what logic is capable of, and we sometimes undervalue intuition. But more on that later (hopefully).
• Happy Thursday!

rock & stone

These refer to basically the same physical thing, but they have different connotations.

A rock tends to be rough or unrefined, while a stone tends to be smooth or polished; you throw rocks but skip stones. Rock is in its natural state, while stone has been worked in some way; you visit rock cliffs and the Rocky Mountains, but stone temples and the Rosetta Stone. A cut and polished diamond is a (gem)stone, never a rock (except sometimes in slang). And if it’s really big, it tends to be a rock; think of the Rock of Gibraltar or Ayers Rock or the third rock from the sun. If it’s small, it tends to be a stone; think of kidney stones (or maybe don’t).

Side note: Be careful. “We will rock you” and “We will stone you” mean two very different things.

sermon & homily

These two are often used interchangeably. The Catholic Church and some other Christian churches do seem to make a distinction: A homily is a commentary on Scripture, typically short, while a sermon can be on any topic, and is typically longer, perhaps more formal. Protestants tend to just use sermon for everything.

blond & blonde

Sometimes subtle distinctions help us convey precise meaning. And sometimes, they just piss you off. Blond vs. blonde is firmly in the latter camp, for two reasons. First of all, there’s simply no reason to make a distinction (in spoken language they sound identical and nobody gets confused). And second, nobody can agree on what the distinction should be.

Some people say that, when used as an adjective (e.g., blond hair), it should be blond for men and blonde for women. Others say the adjective should be blond for both men and women. The situation is similar for use as a noun (he’s a blond, she’s a blonde) except that many readers interpret the noun as a woman regardless of spelling.

The upshot is that you’re screwed no matter what, so don’t worry about it too much. (Except for copyeditors, of course, who worry about everything; they should consult their style guides.)

ignite & combust & burn

Ignite means to set something on fire. Once it’s on fire, it’s burning. Typically burn and combust are used to mean the same thing. Some sources say that burning implies a flame, whereas combustion may or may not produce flame, but I’d say that burn is often used in non-fiery situations as well (e.g., chemical burns, radiation burns, burning calories). So I’d say that the biggest difference between combust and burn is that combust sounds more science-y. If anyone knows of a clearer distinction, you’re welcome to leave a comment.

erotica & pornography

Erotica is art that tries, among other aims, to excite sexual arousal. Pornography tries to excite sexual arousal as its sole aim, and it is rarely artistic.

film & movie

Pretty much the same, except that film is 30% fancier.

America & the United States

America comes from Amerigo Vespucci, an early European explorer who wrote about his travels in the “New World.” In its broadest sense, the term refers to the Americas, that is, the continents of North and South America. Anyone living anywhere from Argentina to Canada can rightfully call themselves American.

The United States of America is just that: a nation comprising many states, all of which are in the Americas (specifically, North America). But “the United States of America” is a mouthful, so it gets shortened in a number of ways: the United States, the US, the USA, or simply America.

It’s that last one that’s problematic, because now we have some ambiguity. A bigger problem arises when we ask what to call the residents of the United States of America. Nobody’s going to say we’re “United States of Americans,” and “United Statesians” just sounds dumb. Other alternatives exist, but they all seem odd because nobody uses them, and nobody uses them because they seem odd. Americans we remain.

web & internet

The internet is the global network of computers that’s been around since about the 1970s. The web (short for World Wide Web, which is what “www” stands for) is the subset of the internet that comprises websites and web pages like this one. The web has been around since 1991, when it was created by Tim Berners-Lee.

What else does the internet do besides host websites? Email, filesharing, VoIP, Usenet newsgroups, and a zillion other things.

dentist & orthodontist

An orthodontist is a special type of dentist who has done additional intensive study in, well, orthodontics. Orthodontics deals with problems of alignment in the teeth and jaw. One example of orthodontics would be getting braces. General dentists can do some orthodontic work as well, but it’s not their specialty.

Life without baby: Uggh I have to do laundry again.

Life with baby: Oh thank goodness, he’s asleep, I can finally do some laundry in peace.