Where's the party?

Denmark got a new government yesterday.

Little more than two weeks after the general election, the leader of a center-left coalition went to the Queen and told that she had a government platform and a parliamentary majority behind it. She was duly appointed prime minister. Then handover ceremonies were held at the various government ministries. Outgoing ministers shook hand with their successors, gave good-natured farewell speeches, and then up and left.

The new government wows to dismantle many of the laws the old one passed. The election campaign has been moderately poisonous. These things are important; they affect the life and dreams of real live people all over the country. And yet, when the old leadership lost their majority, what they did was to smile sadly and step aside, hoping for better luck next time.

There had been no mass protests. No armored vehicles in the streets. No weapons fired or even readied. Power simply changed hands, just like that. Those formerly in power will, for the most part, stay in politics. They will do their best to undermine the new government's policies and popularity. They will not be harassed by the authorities for doing so.

That, my friends, is fucking remarkable. If it sounds banal, it is only because it has been the norm for about a half-dozen decades, in about a score countries mostly clustered in about half a hemisphere. Compared to most of history, or even to most of the world today, it is simply unbelievable.

We are, in general, unaware how lucky we are. We should be out in the streets, waving flags, whooping and cheering for being able to do this. We aren't, because it just feels normal. But that doesn't make it so.

For full disclosure, I'm a member of one of the parties in the new government, so it goes without saying that I'm happy to have it. But I'm even happier that sometimes we're not in power, because otherwise we wouldn't be able to do this. A peaceful, democratic change of government is one of the greatest things one can ever be part of -- and it makes me very proud to be Danish.

(If you're from another country that does this regularly, go ahead and be proud of that too. There's enough to go around.)

Memorable moments lost

I just noticed that the initial digits in some timestamps my code logs out looked familiar.

It turns out that for one glorious second about 38 hours ago, the Unix timestamp value (in decimal) equaled my personal identification number.

And I missed it. Drat.

Danish readers born on on September 13 should be prepared!

How to write product descriptions

I own a grand total of zero modular stage deck elements, which happens to be all I need, and even if I did need more, I would want to buy or rent them closer to home than California. This saddens me a bit because these guys' product descriptions are pure gold – they deserve my custom, but I have none to give them!

It seems they're using a website template that wants to have individual descriptions for each product, even if the product has very little individuality to it, leading to such gems as

4' x 3' stage decks are exactly the same size as a 3' x 4' stage deck.
It's amazing.

or (though excerpts cannot possibly capture the surreal beauty of the whole thing. It's like trying to photograph the horizon. Go read in it context, please!)

4' x 4' plexi stage decks are the not as heavy as the 4' x 8' plexi deck.

For some obscure reason, the quiet exasperation of these lines makes me absurdly happy. I can go to bed satisfied now. (Which, considering what seems to amuse me at this hour, must be high time).

Henning's 82nd maxim for Staying Sane on the Internet

Against random individual opponents I will defend the reasonableness of my opinions, but not my moral right to hold and express them. If the latter cannot be assumed granted, then why are we having a conversation in the first place?

(I will, however, occasionally defend the right of others to hold and express their opinions, when it needs doing and does not appear to be too pointless. That's different.)

Dear Abby

Normally I don't read this kind of thing. But the Evil HR Lady mentioned Dear Abby, with a link that I was feeling bored enough to click.

Today, on her front page Abby is relaying a plea from a group of people who use speech synthesizers. They write:

1. Please be patient. It takes us a little bit longer to get our messages out than it does you.
2. Feel free to ask questions. Don't pretend to understand us if you don't.
3. Do not think we are stupid. Have you ever tried to communicate using one of these things?
4. If it looks like we're having trouble, ask if we need help.
5. Treat us like adults – just as you would want to be treated.

and so forth. Abby's response?

I'm pleased to help spread the word. For people who are vocally challenged, you have written an eloquent letter. [...]

Since when is the bar for written eloquence supposed to be lower because the writer can't speak? Has Abby actually read point 3 in the letter she's reprinting? Mysteries abound.

Dear Abby: Well put. For a woman, you write pretty neat yourself.

Prop 8 has fallen

There are two levels of appeal yet to slog through, but the conclusion of the U.S. District court for the Northen District of California is well quotable:

The considered views and opinions of even the most highly qualified scholars and experts seldom outweigh the determinations of the voters. When challenged, however, the voters’ determinations must find at least some support in evidence. This is especially so when those determinations enact into law classifications of persons. Conjecture, speculation and fears are not enough. Still less will the moral disapprobation of a group or class of citizens suffice, no matter how large the majority that shares that view. The evidence demonstrated beyond serious reckoning that Proposition 8 finds support only in such disapproval. As such, Proposition 8 is beyond the constitutional reach of the voters or their representatives.

I think the best eventual outcome would be to conclude that "marriage", being an emotionally charged word, is not a matter for legislation, but that the state can provide certain well-defined legal benefits to couples of whatever sexes that register themselves as domestic partners, whether or not they (or anyone else) choose to describe themselves as "married".

Somehow, however, I don't think that either side of the Californian debacle would agree with me on that ...

The book of Job

I've neglected to write anything here recently. Perhaps I should save some of the more self-contained comments I write in other places, to give people a better chance to tell me how mistaken I am. Here's my reaction to a recent Slacktivist post:

I've tried several times to read the Book of Job, but always had to give up about a third way in. The prose set-up is readable enough, but then the speeches start, and they make my eyes glaze over. The only content I can get from them is "a really, really verbose shouting match". The speakers assert their position with great eloquence, repetition, and doubtless masterful poetry in the original language. But while there is much asserting going on, essentially no arguments are presented. And I've not found a line where anyone even pretends to address a point their opponent has made.

The friends repeatedly implore Job to step down and make peace with God again and then everything will be alright (despite, as told in the prologue, that everything went bad while Job was behaving examplary), mixed with alternately chiding Job for complaining and hinting that it must all, somehow, be his own fault. Job, in turn, does not attempt to clear up this misunderstanding but prefers to switch between heaping big flowery loquacious abuse on God and heaping big flowery loquacious abuse on his friends for their (admittedly inexpert) attempts to cheer him up.

This goes on at least until about chapter twenty-something, at which time I admit defeat and put down the bible in exasperation.

If it's a play one could at least try to defend it as a magnificently tongue-in-cheek satire on how different religious viewpoints simply cannot communicate in any meaningful way, because they fail to listen to each other. But that somehow sounds a bit too modern of a morale.

I think I even prefer Plato. Yes, everyone Socrates speaks to is a strawman, but at least they're strawmen who pretend to care what Socrates is saying, and vice versa.

[Original comment thread].

Awesomeness not truth

I contributed today's Square Root of Minus Garfield strip:

In which the Garfield cast enact a Dinosaur Comics pastiche, creating a sort of complement to No. 5 "Qwantzfield".

Art clipped from the strips of 1994-02-14, 1994-04-19, 2001-04-10, 2003-03-24, 2005-03-08, 2005-07-10, and 2007-02-15.

Garfield recolored

I contributed today's Square Root of Minus Garfield strip:

I drained the colors from the 1995-02-27 Garfield strip and put new ones in. Does it bother you that Garfield is now a gray/white cat instead of an orange one? Should it bother you? Complex issues arise.

First, the strip already has the "token gray" character Nermal, but his appearances are few and far between, especially considering how many gray cats there are in real life. Surely having Garfield be gray in a single strip is just a (small) step towards breed parity in Square Root of Minus Garfield?

Unfortunately, not unambiguously so. Because Garfield already has an established color scheme, any change it is apt to be taken as implying that the change is for the better. Is gray better than orange for cat fur? In my (unscientific) experience it is certainly more common. Is the recolored strip perhaps an attempt to reinforce/perpetuate the notion that a "default" cat is (or ought to be) be gray and that it is meaningful to think of "orange" as a primary attribute of one cat though we would not consider the greyness of another one similarly distinctive?

On the other hand, we must not forget that Garfield is a stereotypically mean, egotistical (and, yes, squirrel-maiming) jerkass. That does not ordinarily reflect badly on all orange cats, because, well, duh, it's Garfield! But once we change his color, it is no more "just Garfield", and the characterization begins to interact with the coloring. In this context the strip seems to say that gray cats are egotistical squirrel-maimers. Strictly speaking it only asserts that some gray cats sometimes maim squirrels. But that was never in doubt to begin with, so it is inevitable that it will be perceived as a statement about gray cats in general.

Of course, one may also take the position that any attempt to use the coloring to make a point, no matter whether in favor of gray or orange, is an unwelcome abuse of the original strip's artistic vision. The counterpoint to that is if you don't even know what the point is, how can you be sure it's being made in the first place? Perhaps it's all just in your head.

On the other-other-other hand, now that the possibility of a gray Garfield has been aired, the cat is out of the bag, so to say. Even if henceforth Garfield is always orange, that too will be taken as a statement of sorts.

So, should you be offended? You decide. But eventually we'll all just have to come to terms with the fact that there is more than one way to skin a cat.

The Happiest Dog in the World

I contributed today's Square Root of Minus Garfield strip:

With apologies to David Lynch.

Original strip from 1994-03-05, with new art cribbed from the 1991-01-03 and 1992-08-09 strips.

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Earlier I also did No. 124: Krazy minus Kat, but didn't post about it. And a whole slew of Comment on a Postcard reconstructions.