{"id":"urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:ratatosk","title":"This tardiest explorer","subtitle":"driving hard across the plain","author":{"name":"Rfcnyvrerq Gbzngbrf"},"link":[{"@attributes":{"rel":"alternate","type":"text\/html","href":"https:\/\/ratatosk.livejournal.com\/"}},{"@attributes":{"rel":"self","type":"text\/xml","href":"https:\/\/ratatosk.livejournal.com\/data\/atom"}},{"@attributes":{"rel":"service.feed","type":"application\/x.atom+xml","href":"https:\/\/ratatosk.livejournal.com\/data\/atom","title":"This tardiest explorer"}}],"updated":"2018-02-25T06:16:38Z","entry":[{"id":"urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:ratatosk:330045","link":[{"@attributes":{"rel":"alternate","type":"text\/html","href":"https:\/\/ratatosk.livejournal.com\/330045.html"}},{"@attributes":{"rel":"self","type":"text\/xml","href":"https:\/\/ratatosk.livejournal.com\/data\/atom\/?itemid=330045"}}],"title":"Moving to Dreamwidth","published":"2018-02-25T06:16:38Z","updated":"2018-02-25T06:16:38Z","content":"I have set up an account over at Dreamwidth. I'm using a new username, since someone else has Ratatosk over there. I am thinking I will migrate the LJ ratatosk journal over to a separate account, to give myself a fresh start. I don't think I will crosspost, since I don't think anyone else is left over here.

Am I mistaken about that, or should I turn off the light and shut the door on my way out?"},{"id":"urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:ratatosk:325652","link":[{"@attributes":{"rel":"alternate","type":"text\/html","href":"https:\/\/ratatosk.livejournal.com\/325652.html"}},{"@attributes":{"rel":"self","type":"text\/xml","href":"https:\/\/ratatosk.livejournal.com\/data\/atom\/?itemid=325652"}}],"title":"Random whining","published":"2015-10-07T13:13:12Z","updated":"2015-10-07T13:13:12Z","content":"Do colds count as part of the Sharing Economy?"},{"id":"urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:ratatosk:325260","link":[{"@attributes":{"rel":"alternate","type":"text\/html","href":"https:\/\/ratatosk.livejournal.com\/325260.html"}},{"@attributes":{"rel":"self","type":"text\/xml","href":"https:\/\/ratatosk.livejournal.com\/data\/atom\/?itemid=325260"}}],"title":"Capybara psychology","published":"2015-08-30T18:30:57Z","updated":"2015-08-30T18:32:15Z","category":{"@attributes":{"term":"photos"}},"content":"[Apologies for the phone photos.]

This is a picture of the capybara at the Stone Zoo, standing in its water dish:

\"Capybara\"<\/center>


When <\/a>wispfox<\/b><\/a>
NEFFA<\/a> this weekend \u2014 you should say hi if you see me. I usually split my time between singing and dancing, and don't go to any of the performances. I expect to be in the contra hall all Friday evening, and at most of the shape note events, but beyond that I might have to make choices.

It usually depends on which parts of me are getting sore at what rate. :P"},{"id":"urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:ratatosk:323469","link":[{"@attributes":{"rel":"alternate","type":"text\/html","href":"https:\/\/ratatosk.livejournal.com\/323469.html"}},{"@attributes":{"rel":"self","type":"text\/xml","href":"https:\/\/ratatosk.livejournal.com\/data\/atom\/?itemid=323469"}}],"title":"Housemate search","published":"2015-03-12T00:32:23Z","updated":"2015-03-16T03:49:48Z","content":"[EDIT: Yes, this is public on purpose, so that you can share it should you feel so inclined.]

I have not been very active about pursuing this, but <\/a>mirrored_echo<\/b><\/a><\/span> and I are still looking for a third housemate for our apartment near Davis Sq. Lots of space, light. We're within a 6 minute walk to the T and maybe 10 minutes to Tufts. Dishwasher (portable), laundry in unit.

Per-person, rent is $1000 \/ month (market rate, given the location) and utilities average $100 \/ month (with high seasonal variance). We are willing to negotiate about that a little given that I really, really don't want to have to move come September. Room is available now. We are looking for someone who will be a long-term housemate and stick around for the next year. (<\/a>mirrored_echo<\/b><\/a><\/span> is unlikely to stick around, so I will probably need someone else in September, too.)

We have no pets (although I have a whole lot of houseplants), but a cat is explicitly allowed by the lease and we like animals.


Actual photos of plants in our actual apartment (Facebook just got a goat on a sheep):


\"Oxalis<\/a><\/center>



<\/a><\/center>"},{"id":"urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:ratatosk:321414","link":[{"@attributes":{"rel":"alternate","type":"text\/html","href":"https:\/\/ratatosk.livejournal.com\/321414.html"}},{"@attributes":{"rel":"self","type":"text\/xml","href":"https:\/\/ratatosk.livejournal.com\/data\/atom\/?itemid=321414"}}],"title":"Arisia","published":"2015-01-16T16:04:54Z","updated":"2015-01-16T16:04:54Z","content":"I will be at Arisia from this evening to at least Sunday afternoon. I plan to do as much dancing as possible, and in general try to pick participatory things over passive ones. A million of you are on panels, so there is no way I can make it to more of a tiny fraction of those. Good luck, though!"},{"id":"urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:ratatosk:319682","link":[{"@attributes":{"rel":"alternate","type":"text\/html","href":"https:\/\/ratatosk.livejournal.com\/319682.html"}},{"@attributes":{"rel":"self","type":"text\/xml","href":"https:\/\/ratatosk.livejournal.com\/data\/atom\/?itemid=319682"}}],"title":"Apple tree","published":"2014-11-27T00:21:36Z","updated":"2014-11-27T00:21:36Z","category":{"@attributes":{"term":"photos"}},"content":"

\"Apple<\/a>




\"Apple<\/a>



<\/center>


Posted mostly to find out whether the LJ photo interface works the way I remember. (Answer: not precisely.)<\/i>"},{"id":"urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:ratatosk:318547","link":[{"@attributes":{"rel":"alternate","type":"text\/html","href":"https:\/\/ratatosk.livejournal.com\/318547.html"}},{"@attributes":{"rel":"self","type":"text\/xml","href":"https:\/\/ratatosk.livejournal.com\/data\/atom\/?itemid=318547"}}],"title":"Large corpus Lolcat research","published":"2014-08-30T01:34:39Z","updated":"2014-08-30T14:44:18Z","category":{"@attributes":{"term":"language"}},"content":"A question arose in comments to a previous (friends-locked) post. I'm going to paraphrase it as asking which of these is standard Lolcat:

a. I R SRS [NP1], THIS R SRS [NP2]
b. I IZ SRS [NP1], THIS IZ SRS [NP2]

My instinct was to go for a., and <\/a>diatom<\/b><\/a><\/span> was going for b. I realized this was empirically testable, because we have access to a massive Lolcat dataset (aka \"Google\"). Wondering is not a virtue in this situation! Here's what I found:

\n\n\n\n\n
I R SRS<\/td>\n9550<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
I IZ SRS<\/td>\n6460<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
THIS R SRS<\/td>\n62100<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
THIS IZ SRS<\/td>\n9820<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>

That's an R\/IZ ration of 1.48 for the first pair, and 6.32 for the second.

At first glance, it looks like the 'R' variant is somewhat more common. However, the full Google search might not be a good test, since Google's advanced search doesn't let you restrict results to Lolcat. So some of these hits are probably English speakers borrowing what they think is a catchy Lolcat phrase, regardless of whether an actual L1 Lolcat speaker would ever utter it.

So I decided to not only deliberately restrict it to Lolcat, but to break it out by register. I think we can agree that cheezburger.com is a good source for Standard Lolcat \u2014 the written equivalent to the kind you'd hear on TV.

Here are the results after adding site:cheezburger.com to the search:

\n\n\n\n\n
I R SRS<\/td>\n68<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
I IZ SRS<\/td>\n13<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
THIS R SRS<\/td>\n16<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
THIS IZ SRS<\/td>\n14<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>

Those are dramatic results. Now we see an R\/IZ value of 5.23 for the first pair and 1.14 for the second. Given the low N and small ratio, the \"THIS\" phrases seem like a statistical tie, and the first pair has the lopsided ratio here. The high ratio of \"I R\" to \"THIS R\" might suggest that the original example a. is a colloquial catchphrase or just isn't idiomatic in Standard Lolcat. I'm not sure how to analyze that \u2014 it would be nice to have a larger corpus here.

So, that's standard Lolcat. However, we also have a very nice corpus of Literary Lolcat in the form of the Lolcat Bible. If we restrict the search to lolcatbible.com, however, we get one instance only, in the sentence \"i r srs huzband.\" from 1 Samuel 1:8.

Well, maybe this is unfair, since lot of the Bible is in the past tense. So if we search for the word \"srs\", do we get any other instances at all of the form \"[Pronoun] [DO+TNS] SRS [NP]\"? I would only judge Acts 25:7 to count (\"Paul came n Joos from Jooroosulum were srs cat and charged Paul n sed he wuz bad.\"). Literary Lolcat seems to have much more varied syntax than Standard, and consequently it's harder to find multiple instances of any given n-gram in there. I think we'd need a larger corpus to draw any conclusions about Literary Lolcat.


Anyway, to repeat my disclaimer: THIS R NOT SRS BLOG. THIS R NOT SRS RESIRCH."},{"id":"urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:ratatosk:316563","link":[{"@attributes":{"rel":"alternate","type":"text\/html","href":"https:\/\/ratatosk.livejournal.com\/316563.html"}},{"@attributes":{"rel":"self","type":"text\/xml","href":"https:\/\/ratatosk.livejournal.com\/data\/atom\/?itemid=316563"}}],"title":"NEFFA","published":"2014-04-24T02:25:14Z","updated":"2014-04-24T02:25:14Z","content":"I will be at NEFFA. April is usually a lousy month for me, for no really discernible reason, so I'm looking forward to it.

I usually only go to participatory things and skip all the performances, since I have no attention span. If you see me you should say hi."},{"id":"urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:ratatosk:313875","link":[{"@attributes":{"rel":"alternate","type":"text\/html","href":"https:\/\/ratatosk.livejournal.com\/313875.html"}},{"@attributes":{"rel":"self","type":"text\/xml","href":"https:\/\/ratatosk.livejournal.com\/data\/atom\/?itemid=313875"}}],"title":"Still seeking two housemates","published":"2013-10-05T20:53:38Z","updated":"2013-10-05T21:43:40Z","content":"I am still looking for two housemates, so I'm reposting this. The only change is that my outgoing housemate had his fiance move in for a little while, so not finding anyone for September was fine since it gave her a place to stay. They will be moving once renovations are done at their new place (any time now, maybe, hopefully), but there is some flexibility about move-in dates. I think realistically we can have one room available November or earlier, and the other by December, maybe earlier. If there were a housemate candidate I really liked and time was an issue, we could do something. Anyway, the rest is the same:

I would like help finding people! Here's an unlocked post you can link to! I have a much more detailed version in email that I can send to anyone who's interested.

I'll post separately to Facebook -- please don't link my LJ to Facebook or vice versa.<\/em> This is the LJ version, so I'm not going to bother saying much about myself, since nothing I could write would be as useful as actually stalking me via my public posts.





2 rooms in a 3-bedroom apt., $933 \/ person [had previously stated 950 but was wrong; total rent is 2800]. Five-minute walk from Davis Sq. Lots of space, lots of light, mostly quiet street.

Living and dining room, den-like room that a current tenant is paying to use as a study (this means we can temporarily have four people while everyone is coming and going; paying half the total to also have this room plus the font porch is an option). Hardwood floors. 1 1\/2 bathrooms. Laundry in unit, portable dishwasher might be replaced by built-in one if kitchen gets renovated (ask for details later if it comes to it). (Landlord has been on a spree of being responsible and fixing things lately, so if you've visited, lots of things work now that didn't before.) This is a house built in 1910, and some things haven't been changed since.

Small front deck with access through den, larger back deck. I own a grill and am careful about using it on the deck; it may be shared by people who display common sense.

Both available rooms are in the 14' x 14' range, have okay closets (one is very big), and eaves access. During epic rains the basement gets epically flooded, so storing things down there is not advised.

Gets hot in summer, cold in winter. Steam heat with gas boiler. Electric system can handle ACs, but only with extreme care and creative use of extension cords to distribute load without blowing fuses. Gas plus electric has averaged $100 \/ person \/ month, but with enormous seasonal variance.

I like animals but am not sure yet how I feel about pets moving in. Lease officially allows one cat. A cat once lived here, but probably anything you would need to have happen for removing cat allergens can be arranged.

I have a lot of houseplants, most of which are toxic if eaten, so if pets do move in they would need to be able to tell food from non-food. In my experience many animals can do this just fine, and many can't. I will not get rid of 85% of my houseplants to accommodate a cat who lacks self-preservation instincts.<\/strong>

No smokers. I have food allergies and am not used to having a diet that overlaps with my housemates', so I would not expect to share food, and I might ask you to open the windows if you cook certain things. I don't drink; I expect roommates not to clog the fridge with bottles or make the apartment smell like bad alcohol, but I have no moral objections to it. I'm not very noisy, mostly. I like having parties and have not been able to have them here as often as I would like.

I consider myself average in terms of neatness. I care about common spaces staying usable, and I want to be able to have guests over without having to apologize constantly. I am willing to share the cost of cleaners if they turn out to be necessary. I'm not very judgmental, but I will<\/em> judge you if you consciously refuse to recycle.

The closest thing this apartment currently has to a widely-used name is probably \"The Vale of Angry Squirrels\". I don't know if that tells you anything or not. Sometimes there are actual angry squirrels in the tree next to the house, though. They look in the kitchen window at me while going \"Chrrrr!\", and I squirt them with a spray bottle. I think they secretly like it.

If somebody pointed you at this post without telling you anything about me, just go read random back entries form this LJ and then ask them for gossip. That will be more effective than any summary I could write.




Here is a picture I took of an angry squirrel:

<\/center>"},{"id":"urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:ratatosk:313752","link":[{"@attributes":{"rel":"alternate","type":"text\/html","href":"https:\/\/ratatosk.livejournal.com\/313752.html"}},{"@attributes":{"rel":"self","type":"text\/xml","href":"https:\/\/ratatosk.livejournal.com\/data\/atom\/?itemid=313752"}}],"title":"Tech Squares Fall Class starts tomorrow (Tuesday the 10th)","published":"2013-09-10T00:37:21Z","updated":"2013-09-10T00:41:40Z","content":"The Tech Squares Fall Class<\/a> starts tomorrow night at 8 PM in the MIT student center (see link if you actually need directions). If you are a club member who has been away for a while, it would be a good time to show up and at least pretend to keep your squares from breaking down. If you know actual current MIT students who can be convinced to try it, that would be nice too, since MIT is always bugging its clubs to keep up the percentage of student members.

If you have wanted to try it, this is one of two single points of entry (the other is in February). There's no obligation to come back if you don't feel like it, but you really really shouldn't miss the first class if you want to take the class at all. The full class is 13 weeks (Tuesday nights), but there's no commitment, and it costs $4 a night. Just to be clear, this is completely open to the general public, although we can't advertise it that way. You don't need to be MIT-affiliated at all, and anyway at least some people there will know you, so you'll look like you belong.

Standard disclaimer \/ reassurance: If you think it will be too hard for you, that is probably the wrong reason to not come, especially the first night. If you just don't think it will be fun, or don't have time, those are totally<\/em> legitimate (especially the time, which nobody has). If you are reading this, though, you can get help from friends -- as much as you need -- if you have trouble with the class. Some people are intimidated by Tech Squares' reputation (I talked to several this weekend, actually), so I feel the need to be reassuring."},{"id":"urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:ratatosk:312474","link":[{"@attributes":{"rel":"alternate","type":"text\/html","href":"https:\/\/ratatosk.livejournal.com\/312474.html"}},{"@attributes":{"rel":"self","type":"text\/xml","href":"https:\/\/ratatosk.livejournal.com\/data\/atom\/?itemid=312474"}}],"title":"Seeking two housemates for September","published":"2013-07-20T21:46:29Z","updated":"2013-07-21T19:47:57Z","category":{"@attributes":{"term":"photos"}},"content":"It turns out that I am looking for two housemates come September (there is some flexibility about dates). I would like help finding people! Here's an unlocked post you can link to! I have a much more detailed version in email that I can send to anyone who's interested.

I'll post separately to Facebook -- please don't link my LJ to Facebook or vice versa.<\/em> This is the LJ version, so I'm not going to bother saying much about myself, since nothing I could write would be as useful as actually stalking me via my public posts.





2 rooms in a 3-bedroom apt., $950 \/ person, available September with some flexibility for moving stuff in ahead of time. October move-in potentially also viable. Five-minute walk from Davis Sq. Lots of space, lots of light, mostly quiet street.

Living and dining room, den-like room that a current tenant is paying to use as a study (this means we can temporarily have four people while everyone is coming and going; paying half the total to also have this room is an option). Hardwood floors. 1 1\/2 bathrooms. Laundry in unit, portable dishwasher might be replaced by built-in one if kitchen gets renovated as promised by landlord. Landlord has been on a spree of being responsible and fixing things lately; hopefully this will keep up. This is a house built in 1910, though, and some things haven't been changed since.

Small front deck with access through den, larger back deck. I own a grill.

Both available rooms are in the 14' x 14' range, have okay closets (one is very big), and eaves access. During epic rains the basement gets epically flooded, so storing things down there is not advised.

Gets hot in summer, cold in winter. Steam heat with gas boiler. Electric system can handle ACs, but only with extreme care and creative use of extension cords to distribute load without blowing fuses. Gas plus electric has averaged $100 \/ person \/ month, but with enormous seasonal variance.

I like animals but am not sure yet how I feel about pets moving in. Landlord officially allows one cat. Current cat in residence belongs to an outgoing tenant; apartment can presumably be de-allergened. I have a lot of houseplants, some of which are toxic if eaten, so if pets do move in they would need to be able to tell food from non-food.

No smokers. I have food allergies and am not used to having a diet that overlaps with my housemates', so I would not expect to share food, and I might ask you to open the windows if you eat certain things. I don't drink; I expect roommates not to clog the fridge with bottles or make the apartment smell like bad alcohol, but I have no moral objections to it. I'm not very noisy, mostly.

The closest thing this apartment currently has to a widely-used name is probably \"The Vale of Angry Squirrels\". I don't know if that tells you anything or not. Sometimes there are actual angry squirrels in the tree next to the house, though. They look in the kitchen window at me while going \"Chrrrr!\", and I squirt them with a spray bottle. I think they secretly like it.






Here is a picture I took of an angry squirrel:

<\/center>"},{"id":"urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:ratatosk:310935","link":[{"@attributes":{"rel":"alternate","type":"text\/html","href":"https:\/\/ratatosk.livejournal.com\/310935.html"}},{"@attributes":{"rel":"self","type":"text\/xml","href":"https:\/\/ratatosk.livejournal.com\/data\/atom\/?itemid=310935"}}],"title":"False beliefs about restaurants","published":"2013-03-30T02:28:23Z","updated":"2013-05-19T14:16:42Z","content":"[from a sticky note -- I might post this elsewhere eventually, perhaps with edits]

I wanted to try to make a list of wrong assumptions about restaurants, and food in general, that I have seen people make. This is partly inspired by the famous list of falsehoods programmers believe about names<\/a>. These mostly apply equally to manufacturers and restaurants, but I'm not always going to be precise about which.





- Restaurants actually change customers' behavior by displaying signs, or messages on menus, asking customers to disclose food allergies.

- Restaurants displaying those signs are actually capable of comprehending or accommodating dietary restrictions, and in fact even intend to do so if asked.

- People with dietary restrictions are always comforted by those signs.

- People with dietary restrictions ordinarily reveal these to waitstaff.

- Telling a restaurant something about your dietary restrictions is always helpful.

- Restaurant employees will always behave calmly, rationally, and intelligently when people with dietary restrictions ask them questions.

- All dietary restrictions are equally easy to convey in words.

- All dietary restrictions have equivalent complexity.

- Restaurants will be able to answer all questions about their food.

- Restaurants will answer all questions truthfully.

- Restaurants are motivated to be helpful.

- All restaurant employees speak English.

- Restaurant employees communicate perfectly with one another (e.g. waiters conveying orders to cooks).

- Waitstaff who are nice to you will also be good about dealing with the dietary restrictions of people you bring with you.

- The average person's threshold for calling a restaurant \"nice\" or \"fancy\" corresponds to the threshold where a restaurant can be expected to deal with dietary restrictions competently.

- The same dish will be the same under all circumstances.

- No one ever changes their recipes or cooking processes.

- Restaurants never change their menus.

- Familiar food from your own culture is simple; \"exotic\" food is more complicated.

- Modifying a recipe to accommodate one sort of dietary restriction never makes it worse for any other restriction.

- Coming up with suggested substitutions that are actual improvements is trivial for waitstaff.

- There is a one-to-one correspondence between number of items on an ingredient list and number of distinct ingredients in the food it applies to (e.g. \"mushroom stock\" always contains only mushrooms).

- Words in ingredient lists always mean the same thing, and are never vague or catch-all categories (e.g. \"spices\", \"modified food starch\").

- Government regulation of ingredient disclosure is designed to benefit all people with dietary restrictions equally.

- There are precise, uniform legal standards applying to the disclosure of ingredients of food in restaurants.

- Big businesses have an above average quality of ingredient disclosure compared to small businesses.

- Big businesses are uniformly and positively incentivized to disclose ingredients.

- It is very rare for big businesses to keep ingredient details as trade secrets.

- If ingredient details aren't trade secrets, average customer service people answering phones and email will actually have access to those details.

- People with dietary restrictions ordinarily select food on a basis of absolute certainty of safety, rather than a realistic, best-effort management of risk.

- Even if people with dietary restrictions actually are managing risk, they still maintain the same risk tolerance under all circumstances.

- Talking to waitstaff about dietary restrictions is emotionally neutral.

- Okay, it's at least comparably stressful under all circumstances, and people with dietary restrictions always enter restaurants with the same initial amount of stress tolerance, every time.

- Fine, but at least it always helps to have your friends there. [Not pursuing this further -- too tempting to pick on people.]







Here's a more positive approach -- widely held beliefs that are in fact true:


- Food allergies can be of varying severity.

- Food allergies can be pretty severe, and bad reactions can require hospitalization.

- People can be allergic to more than one thing.

- There are a variety of things people might be allergic to, and you will sometimes meet people with allergies you've never encountered before.

- Some restaurants are better than others about accommodating dietary restrictions."},{"id":"urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:ratatosk:306358","link":[{"@attributes":{"rel":"alternate","type":"text\/html","href":"https:\/\/ratatosk.livejournal.com\/306358.html"}},{"@attributes":{"rel":"self","type":"text\/xml","href":"https:\/\/ratatosk.livejournal.com\/data\/atom\/?itemid=306358"}}],"title":"Things I have learned","published":"2012-07-20T21:04:18Z","updated":"2012-07-20T21:04:18Z","category":{"@attributes":{"term":"language"}},"content":"Specifically, this is \"things I have learned about polyamory from a 'things I have learned about polyamory' article\", which was a sort of review of Showtime's \"Polyamory: Married and Dating\". The article is in the form of a bulleted list, most of which are uninteresting. But these caught my eye:

- If you find yourself in any kind of group that refers to itself as a \"pod\" and isn't made up of whales, you might find yourself suddenly drawn to the \"namaste\" section at Pier 1 Imports. Don't fight it, and while you're there, we're running low on pillar candles and useless shit to tack to the walls.

- While engaging in coitus with your \"pod\" among your pillar candles and exotic sheets and useless wall shit, be sure to frequently verbally reaffirm the sexiness of the situation, lest the audience at home (understandably) get confused.<\/i><\/blockquote>

So, poly people who use the word \"pod\" also tend to shop at Pier 1. I feel like there is some sort of cool sociological discovery lurking in there, but I'm not sure how to get at it.

For maximum points, your comment should include the phrase \"Tchotchke-Industrial Complex\".<\/small>"},{"id":"urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:ratatosk:306021","link":[{"@attributes":{"rel":"alternate","type":"text\/html","href":"https:\/\/ratatosk.livejournal.com\/306021.html"}},{"@attributes":{"rel":"self","type":"text\/xml","href":"https:\/\/ratatosk.livejournal.com\/data\/atom\/?itemid=306021"}}],"title":"Dead issues","published":"2012-07-20T20:40:06Z","updated":"2012-07-20T20:40:06Z","content":"This post is inspired by looking at an issue of Bay Windows, which is our local GLBT-something newspaper. I noticed that nearly all the articles were about problems that I expect to be resolved, for good, in the next few decades (same-sex marriage, other forms of equality under the law). Then I tried to think of similar political issues that have been resolved with finality during my lifetime, and mostly blanked. I'm sure they exist, and it bugs me that I can't come up with more examples than Lawrence v Texas.[1]

So I'm looking for examples of reasonably major political issues that have been resolved during your memory (or lifetime), across the US as a country (not just in particular states, but not all), and with enough finality that they are exceedingly unlikely to come back (imagine a political equivalent of eradicating smallpox). It can be via a Supreme Court case, legislative activity, social change, whatever -- I'm too pragmatic to care. Feel free to be creative about what counts as a political issue (or a major one), if you think of a neat example.


[1] While the specifics of the holding of that are disputed, I'd say that case forbids criminalizing consensual sex outside of situations where consent is declared unobtainable by statute (e.g. age, kinship, mental incapacity, etc., so long as those categories don't vary based on whether something is heterosexual or not). Lawrence v. Texas is a particularly nice example because I'm also old enough to remember Bowers v. Harwdick coming out, holding that states could<\/em> criminalize homosexual sodomy. Bowers wasn't necessarily a popular ruling; I remember that comedians thought it was hilarious<\/em> at the time, and made jokes about how you could \"still commit Gomorrah\". The issue was definitely not a completely dead one at the time Lawrence v. Texas rolled around, despite states picking away at it one by one in cases based on state constitutions, but I think after Lawrence it is genuinely settled (I think most Supreme Court cases have a much higher susceptibility to later reversal, but it's difficult to imagine circumstances under which Lawrence would get reversed)."},{"id":"urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:ratatosk:305635","link":[{"@attributes":{"rel":"alternate","type":"text\/html","href":"https:\/\/ratatosk.livejournal.com\/305635.html"}},{"@attributes":{"rel":"self","type":"text\/xml","href":"https:\/\/ratatosk.livejournal.com\/data\/atom\/?itemid=305635"}}],"title":"Quote you might have missed","published":"2012-06-30T21:29:09Z","updated":"2012-06-30T21:29:09Z","category":{"@attributes":{"term":"quotes"}},"content":"From Ginsburg's opinion in the health care case (citations omitted):

\"The commerce power, hypothetically, would enable Congress to prohibit the purchase and home production of all meat, fish, and dairy goods, effectively compelling Americans to eat only vegetables. . . . Yet no one would offer the \u201chypothetical and unreal possibilit[y],\u201d . . . of a vegetar\u00adian state as a credible reason to deny Congress the author\u00adity ever to ban the possession and sale of goods.\"

I just like the phrase \"vegetarian state\"."},{"id":"urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:ratatosk:305313","link":[{"@attributes":{"rel":"alternate","type":"text\/html","href":"https:\/\/ratatosk.livejournal.com\/305313.html"}},{"@attributes":{"rel":"self","type":"text\/xml","href":"https:\/\/ratatosk.livejournal.com\/data\/atom\/?itemid=305313"}}],"title":"Soda bans and local government","published":"2012-06-22T17:10:47Z","updated":"2012-06-22T17:10:47Z","content":" Cambridge has referred the issue of serving size limits on sugary drinks<\/a> to its Public Health Commission for study. This would parallel a similar rule in NYC which limits serving sizes (the Cambridge order linked to erroneously says \"ban\"; this has since been corrected elsewhere).

An outright ban would probably be politically infeasible, which is presumably why they went with serving size limits.

The serving size limit has some serious practical problems. Quoting Gary Becker:<\/a> \"Suppose that drinks come only in 10 and 16-ounce sizes. If the 16-ounce size were banned, enough consumers might substitute 2 10-ounce drinks for 1 16-ounce drink to increase total consumption of these drinks.\" That sounds plausible to me.

Now, you might ask why the cities wouldn't just tax sugary drinks to a level adequate to offset the health care cost externalities and then just call it a day, instead of bothering to ban anything outright. The answer seems to be that neither New York state nor Massachusetts lets their municipalities levy random taxes without the state legislature approving it (please let me know if this is wrong). They're allowed to levy certain types -- property, etc. Just not completely novel things like a soda tax. But they have a lot more leeway to regulate businesses for health reasons, so we see bans instead of taxes. If all that you have is a hammer . . .

I personally see this as an argument for more home rule, not less, but reasonable people may disagree."},{"id":"urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:ratatosk:304908","link":[{"@attributes":{"rel":"alternate","type":"text\/html","href":"https:\/\/ratatosk.livejournal.com\/304908.html"}},{"@attributes":{"rel":"self","type":"text\/xml","href":"https:\/\/ratatosk.livejournal.com\/data\/atom\/?itemid=304908"}}],"title":"Politics in an alternate reality","published":"2012-05-27T20:16:53Z","updated":"2012-05-27T20:16:53Z","content":"The headline is \"Greens challenged on poly marriage policy<\/a>\", followed by this lede:

The Coalition has challenged the Greens to clarify their position on multiple partner marriage, accusing the party of \"trying to walk both sides of the street\" so as not to lose the votes of the polyamorous community.<\/i><\/blockquote>

This is in the online version of The Australian, which purports to be Australia's only national newspaper. No idea if it will be in the print edition, or how to find that out (also, the International Date Line means it was posted tomorrow).

How did this happen?

The debate is over a same-sex marriage bill in the the Australian senate. The Coalition referred to in the article is made up of four center-right parties. Right now Labor has the government, but only 31 out of 76 seats in the senate (the Coalition has 34, collectively). So, in order to get anything done, Labor needs the support of at least some of the Greens, who have 9 seats. The poly community in Australia is -- by some means completely opaque to me -- able to exert some pressure on the Greens, and thus the issue of poly marriage is propelled to the politics section of The Australian."},{"id":"urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:ratatosk:304879","link":[{"@attributes":{"rel":"alternate","type":"text\/html","href":"https:\/\/ratatosk.livejournal.com\/304879.html"}},{"@attributes":{"rel":"self","type":"text\/xml","href":"https:\/\/ratatosk.livejournal.com\/data\/atom\/?itemid=304879"}}],"title":"Please help resolve a really dumb question","published":"2012-05-24T18:36:29Z","updated":"2012-05-24T18:36:29Z","content":"Today's question is about what counts as a \"nice round number\". Don't ask me what that is supposed to mean -- that's what's in dispute in the first place. I am only asking about the number that came up in conversation, since testing this exhaustively would tax the attention span of most people.

First, answer the general question:

View Poll: Nice Round Numbers<\/a><\/div>




View Poll: Nice Round Numbers In Context<\/a><\/div>"},{"id":"urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:ratatosk:304496","link":[{"@attributes":{"rel":"alternate","type":"text\/html","href":"https:\/\/ratatosk.livejournal.com\/304496.html"}},{"@attributes":{"rel":"self","type":"text\/xml","href":"https:\/\/ratatosk.livejournal.com\/data\/atom\/?itemid=304496"}}],"title":"An exercise in finding common ground: Campaign Finance","published":"2012-03-20T03:12:02Z","updated":"2012-03-20T03:15:12Z","content":"[Note: I started writing this post long before a friend of a friend jokingly suggested \"Positive TV<\/a>\", and I am finishing it long afterwards, but I think it is in the same spirit! Somebody took at least one relevant domain and is trying to do something with it<\/a>, but I can't tell what the inspiration for it was, and I don't feel like checking for anyone trying to do the same thing.]


There was a time back in the Bush era when the Republicans had gone so egregiously over the line on so many things that even pox-on-you-all small-l libertarians like me were willing to say \"okay, through great effort one party has managed to be more evil than the other for a while. Huh.\" And people threw around the word \"liberaltarian\" a lot, referring more or less to an alliance of convenience given the realities of American politics at the time. Now that Obama has had time to disappoint people, it's inevitable that you hear it less often.[1]



The biggest issues I have with Obama tend to be things along the lines of civil rights, which is sometimes an area the left and libertarians can agree on -- things like wiretapping, failure to implement FOIA reforms, failing to close or reform Guantanamo, not prosecuting crimes from the Bush administration, invoking state secrecy left and right, and various military interventions, for example. Some of these things are just difficult to implement (Guantanamo), some are straightforward policy disagreements (level of intervention in foreign policy, decision not to prosecute former administration officials), and some are just unknowns (I have no idea why the Obama administration is so secretive). Some people are disappointed about the structural change in balance of power -- between the executive and the other branches -- not swinging back, or not swinging back far enough, after Bush. You get the idea.

Now, in a sane world, by my (and many other people's) reckoning, politics would involve trying to find areas of agreement and working on them first, rather than cynical, gridlock-promoting exploitation of areas of disagreement.[2] That's a bit much to ask from government nowadays, but whatever. Finding areas of agreement is probably hard for most Americans. Aside from lack of experience in consensus decision-making, one reason for this is probably political ignorance with respect to the beliefs of others.[3] Another is that you don't just need people with consensus-finding skills, but you need them to not react to highly-polarized people with \"OMG why do you even open your mouth, go away.\"


Back just before I started writing this, whenever that was, someone in a private journal entry mentioned campaign finance. That seemed like a good example topic, since I genuinely disagree with a lot of people about it, it involves a lot of conflicting policy goals, it's big enough that areas of agreement must<\/em> exist, and for whatever reason it seems to make people particularly prone to simply inventing the beliefs of others (mostly out of laziness, I think).

So the exercise I've undertaken here is to come up with statements that are more or less about campaign finance, and that almost all of you will agree with<\/em>, even though we actually do disagree about a lot of other things. It would be nice if this were participatory! Please feel free to add more points of common ground, or to let me know if you think I have miscategorized a statement.<\/em> A point of common ground doesn't have to be profound or complicated, nor does it matter why<\/em> anyone agrees with it -- the goal is just to incrementally uncover as much area of agreement as possible. Some of my points are purposefully minor, because I believe incremental progress adds up.


I am starting with some assumptions about who all is reading this: I expect that I'd consider about 2\/3 of you to be left-wing, about 1\/4 to be small-l libertarian, and a handful of you to be \"damn you all, most of my life has nothing to do with government anyway\" types. I also expect most of my left wing readers have some geek-specific breaks with left-wing politics -- e.g. over intellectual property or the moral legitimacy of certain types of censorship. So, I don't think it's worth using a poll to categorize anybody, because I don't think any of you are \"pure\" leftists or progressives (not that I care about your ideological purity; I don't).


Obviously, there are good reasons why I have sat on this for so long. :P

For the purposes of avoiding train wrecks, I tentatively suggest (but will not enforce via moderation) that you restrict comments to the topic of finding common ground about campaign finance, or of finding common ground in general<\/em>, and leave wide-ranging discussion of other things to your own LJs (e.g. arguing about all the nuances of the One True Progressive\/Conservative\/Whatever Ideology).



Here are some things I expect everyone reading this agrees on:<\/u><\/strong>

Making things harder on disfavored or disempowered groups, or simply on everyone other than you, is not a legitimate purpose of campaign finance regulations.

All things being equal, you should avoid structuring campaign finance regulations in ways that make the wealthy and sophisticated better able to comply with them.

All things being equal, campaign finance regulations should not actively deter political involvement, at least by individuals and potential candidates.

An agency should always consider whether its efforts would be better spent making regulations which are difficult to violate, rather than making things difficult for violators.

The question of whether a government regime of speech regulation is or is not user-friendly -- comprehensible, easy to comply with -- is not<\/em> precisely the same question as whether the particular regulations are good or bad ones.

All things being equal, it is<\/em> better to have regulations that are user-friendly, even if they do<\/em> constitute objectionable censorship.

All things being equal, simple regulations are preferable to complex ones.

It is not necessarily the case that a regulation is fairer simply because it makes work for lawyers, accountants, or anybody else.

All things being equal, it is better if regulations related to advertising expenditures are media neutral. That is, you should have a good reason if you have different rules for TV, newspapers, or the internet.

More generally, campaign finance regulations should avoid distorting the market for goods and services (and, perhaps, especially those not inherently related to political campaigning). For example, you should have a good reason for rules that actively create a preference for Joe's bumper sticker company over Mary's yard sign business, or for requiring information to be reported to the government in Microsoft's proprietary formats.

The finances of entities making independent expenditures are at least marginally less worrisome than those of political parties and candidates (ask, if you had regulate one and only one of these, which would you pick).

The campaign expenditures of US citizens (or entities controlled by US citizens) in US elections are at least marginally less worrisome than those of non-citizens.

Same as above, but with state elections and in-state vs. out-of-state money.

The belief that there is nothing special about the corporate form that should lead to special campaign finance regulations for corporations does not imply<\/em> disbelief in more mundane problems of corporate governance which the issue of political contributions incidentally happens to highlight. That is, you can oppose campaign finance laws that target corporations specifically while still supporting massive overhauls of corporate law that might achieve the exact same effects.

All things being equal, avoiding the appearance of corruption is a worthwhile goal.

When the debate over the wisdom of some regulation turns on whether some empirically testable thing is true, having some data about that thing is better than not having data about it, and actually looking at that data is better than ignoring it entirely.

If campaign finance regulations cause information to be reported to the government, that information should not be withheld from the public arbitrarily.

It is best if regulations don't exacerbate a situation in which elected politicians tend to primarily be talented at getting elected.

There are at least some election-related things beyond running the polls which it is okay to spend taxpayer money on. For example, if done well and efficiently, maybe we could all agree it is okay for election officials to make voter guides on flyers or websites with blurbs for and against referenda. So public financing can be seen as a fact-specific line-drawing problem rather than an epic moral struggle.

Some undesirable aspects of political campaigns (e.g. name-calling and other lack of civility) are not appropriate targets for government intervention. (Remember, your reason for agreement doesn't matter in this exercise -- e.g. maybe we don't want to trample on civil rights, or maybe there is nothing helpful government can do). Again, the appropriate scope of government intervention does not have to be an epic, black-or-white issue.

Disagreement over whether or not the government in particular should address a given problem does not imply<\/em> disagreement over the existence or nature of the problem, nor does it imply disagreement that somebody<\/em> ought to do something about the problem.





Now, here are some statements that, so far as I know, libertarians mostly agree with, but that might be more controversial on the American left (and probably also the right). Can they be whittled down or reformulated so that even leftists without the \"geek exceptions\" can find common ground? Am I wrong about them being controversial on the left? Reminder: The fact that I think something might be controversial doesn't mean I think any specific person agrees or disagrees with it, or that you can't claim to be whatever you claim to be just because you agree or disagree with it.


Marginally more controversial items:<\/u><\/strong>


If you have a choice between eliminating the incentives that drive an undesirable amount of money into politics, and simply stopping the flow of money, you should at least consider manipulating the incentives instead of the money.

Reporting requirements that involve disclosing the identities of contributors, petition-signers, membership and contact lists -- or anything of the sort -- should not be enacted with the purpose of facilitating any sort of illegal harassment of anybody.

If you have some reason to believe a disclosure regulation of the sort described above might contribute to illegal reprisals, that evidence should be an actual factor taken into account when contemplating the wisdom of the rule.

More controversially, just because you think only non-criminal reprisals will be taken against those whose identities are disclosed doesn't mean you shouldn't consider the advantages of protecting privacy.

Criminal law should be used as a tool of last resort when trying to regulate campaign finance.

If you must criminalize failure to comply with campaign finance regulations, strict liability is an inappropriate standard for culpability. Campaign finance is not so important that anyone involved in it should be able to commit a felony or misdemeanor purely by accident. (Where strict liability means that the crime isn't defined in terms of your mental state at all. Sometimes this is equivalent to saying that it is relevant whether something happened or not, but not why it happened.)

More controversially, mere negligence should not be enough to implicate criminal law in this domain, either. (Where negligence means, more or less, that a reasonable person should have known better than to do what you did.)

Cripplingly large fines levied against individuals are also unwarranted in campaign finance regulation, especially when levied against anyone who acted in a good faith belief that they were, in fact, complying with the regulations in question.

If campaign finance regulations are set up in such a way that that only wealthy campaigns will never<\/em> commit certain crimes or violations (e.g. because it costs a great deal of money to comply with them, but compliance is trivial if you can hire enough accountants or whatever), those regulations should be considered actively suspicious.[4]

If the federal government is to regulate financing and expenditure in state and local political campaigns, it is preferable that it have some plausibly federally-relevant reason for doing so.

Political campaigning is not inherently evil.

Political advertising is not inherently evil.

Sometimes voters learn true things from political advertising, and this can be beneficial to either the voters or society.

It is often advantageous for someone to not<\/em> interfere with speech they disagree with.

All things being equal, censorship is undesirable. That is, it is a disfavored method for addressing problems which can be addressed multiple ways.

The fact that regulating speech is hard<\/em> for government to do is not relevant to the morality of any actual regulations of speech.

All things being equal, it is good to allow people to be involved in political processes that affect them, even when their involvement cannot change the outcomes of those processes. E.g. the fact that a single vote cannot change a given election does not make the right to vote meaningless, and the fact that a political candidate cannot win does not mean their speech is meaningless (and thus it is not morally acceptable to go out of your way to suppress that vote or that speech merely because the candidate cannot win).






Here are some miscellaneous items where I don't claim to know who agrees with them, but that seem reasonable to me:


Yet more items:<\/u><\/strong>


The fact that the government does something you don't want it to, or fails to do something you want it to, does not inherently mean the sky is falling.

Sometimes the overall extent of government intervention in a given area is more important than fussing over any particular aspect of it.

Political parties are a means to various ends; perpetuating their existence should not become an end in itself.

Other countries have a wide variety of campaign finance regulations, and probably have a wide variety of outcomes. This doesn't have to be a source of desperately important facts that Prove Something in order for us to learn from the ways other places do things.





Notes:


[1] There are things like the \"Bleeding Heart Libertarian blog<\/a>\" that were supposed to push in that direction (it would take a lot of time to see if that blog has lived up to its billing at the time of launch, though). A search for \"liberaltarian\" gets various blog entries, at least (optimistic example\"<\/a>, pessimistic example<\/a>). Further searching will probably only irritate me.


[2] Gridlock is of course attractive if it's gridlock between factions you dislike.


[3] It is trendy for people on the left to have it in for libertarians. Unfortunately, and to my irritation, I don't think sanity can be restored easily -- too many people on all sides of the issue regularly exploit it for their own ends. Reasonable people may disagree in good faith with my analysis here, but this is how I see things:

Consider the case of the more-or-less libertarian (or even just centrist) blogger or other activist who gets called \"conservative\" by someone on the left, (usually completely fairly, relatively speaking, because to someone on the left, they are<\/em>, in fact, less to the left). Those bloggers could<\/em> try to have some sort of nuanced response to this. Or, they could ask themselves \"how can I exploit this so that I appear to have conservative credentials and can then influence conservatives who would not otherwise think of me as one of them?\" The exact same thing works in reverse, I'm sure. I realize that this usually isn't a conscious process, and that taking on expedient political labels isn't unique to libertarians. I just notice it more when a bunch of geeky libertarian blog commenters purport to be conservatives, when in reality not one of them has the foggiest idea what real-life conservatives (or liberals!) actually believe. It's hard to prove whether vague left-wing hostility just exacerbates this effect; I happen to believe it does.

At the end of the day, those on the left benefit enormously from disliking and misrepresenting libertarians, if only because they get to claim they don't just have it in for Republicans -- and, in fact, dislike some groups even more. The right benefits because in the confusion they get to pretend crazy right-wingers like Ron Paul are actually libertarian (it might be either to brush them aside or to try to appeal to independent voters, but in the end everybody's doing it). Opportunistic bloggers and critics benefit from bogus credentials. And, best of all, since everyone can convince themselves now that everyone else is completely irrational, absolutely nobody has to learn how to talk to anybody else! Awesome!

Put briefly, tribalism creates screwy incentives. :P



[4] I've seen this called a \"Baptists and bootleggers\" problem (Baptists and bootleggers both want liquor sales on Sundays to be illegal, but for very different reasons)."},{"id":"urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:ratatosk:304023","link":[{"@attributes":{"rel":"alternate","type":"text\/html","href":"https:\/\/ratatosk.livejournal.com\/304023.html"}},{"@attributes":{"rel":"self","type":"text\/xml","href":"https:\/\/ratatosk.livejournal.com\/data\/atom\/?itemid=304023"}}],"title":"Linear B jewelry","published":"2012-02-22T08:17:45Z","updated":"2012-02-22T08:17:45Z","content":"Someone asked me tonight to explain the comment about about Linear B jewelry in this thread<\/a>. I'm not sure I was at all coherent when explaining it in person, so I hunted down the actual source.

\"Linear B jewelry\" was a reference to this post of mine from many years ago<\/a>. If you read my exchange with <\/a>dilletante<\/b><\/a>to this explanation of Unicode, which you should not look at while eating or drinking<\/a>, reposted here for those who haven't seen it already.



There must be some equivalent to \"unicorn hunting<\/a>\" for confused poly couples with unrealistic expectations who are also obsessed with fonts."},{"id":"urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:ratatosk:303317","link":[{"@attributes":{"rel":"alternate","type":"text\/html","href":"https:\/\/ratatosk.livejournal.com\/303317.html"}},{"@attributes":{"rel":"self","type":"text\/xml","href":"https:\/\/ratatosk.livejournal.com\/data\/atom\/?itemid=303317"}}],"title":"Porn in thirty words or less","published":"2012-02-13T06:51:19Z","updated":"2012-02-13T06:51:19Z","content":"<\/a>kdsorceress<\/b><\/a><\/span> runs a project every year in February that involves people writing porn in thirty words or less<\/a>.

The summary, copied and pasted to intrigue you:

How does this work? You write porn. You make sure it's, at most, thirty words long. You post it in a comment to this post, or you e-mail it to me, or you drop it in my ask-box on tumblr, or whatever. In a few weeks, I collect them all, scramble them, and post them for all the world to enjoy. And it is awesome. You can get a pretty good feel by reading the tag \"Lessthan31words<\/a>\".

The porn you submit may be anonymous. It may be fanfic. It may be silly. It may be sexy. It may be written in languages I don't speak (so far: Spanish, Russian, and Japanese.) It may be simple. It may be elaborate. It may be story based. It may be PWP. It may be kinky. It may be *really* kinky. It may be loving. It may be missionary between married people with the lights off. The only rule is that it must be short, at most thirty words. Thirty-one is too many, and thirty-two is right out.<\/i>


I thought some of you might enjoy trying your hand at that, or at least would be entertained by past years' entries. Maybe if enough people enter, my voice will be less recognizable, and I will feel comfortable writing something in a language other than Chicken.[1<\/a>,2<\/a>]"},{"id":"urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:ratatosk:302634","link":[{"@attributes":{"rel":"alternate","type":"text\/html","href":"https:\/\/ratatosk.livejournal.com\/302634.html"}},{"@attributes":{"rel":"self","type":"text\/xml","href":"https:\/\/ratatosk.livejournal.com\/data\/atom\/?itemid=302634"}}],"title":"Groundhog","published":"2012-02-05T22:00:56Z","updated":"2012-02-05T22:03:07Z","content":"So, as you no doubt read on Thursday, Punxsutawney Phil issued the following proclamation:


\"As I look at the crowd on Gobbler's Knob
Many Shadows do I see
So six more weeks of winter it must be.\"<\/i>


Huh.


Now, the historical record of groundhog predictions<\/a> is full of strange little notes hinting that the doings of the people of Punxsutawney are secretly far more interesting than what is reported in the news.[1] Here is a nice stretch of years from that file:

1934 No Shadow.
1935 Saw Shadow at 9:11 AM.
1936 Saw Shadow at 10:27 AM.
1937 Saw Shadow at 9:09 AM; Unfortunate meeting with a skunk.
1938 Saw Shadow at 9 AM; Blackest shadow in history.
1939 Saw Shadow at 9:10 AM.
1940 Saw Shadow at 9 AM; Pictured with first Groundhog Day Queen, Miss Margaret Hunam.
1941 Saw Shadow at 4:25 PM; Six Groundhog Girls.
1942 Partial Shadow at 7:40 AM; \"War clouds have blacked out parts of the shadow.\" (\"The Spirit,\" Feb. 2, 1942).
1943 Groundhog didn't make an appearance; need to rely on Quarryville's prediction.
1944 Saw Shadow at 9:10 AM.<\/i>


Notice the capitalization of \"Shadow<\/a>\".

The Punxsutawney Groundhog Club are people comfortable with a little weirdness -- they make their living off of it, even. By the time you have taken an old folk belief about burrowing mammals and turned it into a huge affair that requires a dozen men in top hats to pull a marmot out of a stump, and when you have committed to the assertion that there is Only One Groundhog to the extent that you ritualistically feed it a longevity elixir every summer -- at that point it's not such a big leap to all sorts of things.


So we can imagine that eventually we'll see:

2012 Saw several Shadows at 7:26 AM.
2013 No Shadow.
2014 Saw multiple Shadows at 8:12 AM; Unusual weather predicted.
2015 Saw Shadow at 7:50 AM; Not shaped like groundhog.
2016 No Shadow.
2017 Saw Shadow; Looked like Phil, but gestured frantically. Very bad weather predicted.
2018 No Shadow.
2019 No Shadow.
2020 No Shadow; Longest streak of early spring predictions on record.
2021 Saw Shadow at 3:17 PM; Missing shadow had been stolen by Quarryville and recovered through subterfuge from town hall basement. Delay due to last-minute difficulties with reattachment. New locks put on Phil's room in the Punxsutawney library; background checks required for all employees.<\/i>





[1] I love this kind of presentation of information. Note the nice summary at the end:

SAW SHADOW 98
NO SHADOW 15
NO RECORD 10<\/i>

The wikipedia article for Phil<\/a> starts out with the pleasingly Wikipedian sentence \"Punxsutawney Phil is a groundhog resident of Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania.\" Unfortunately it just doesn't rise\/descend to the level of sincere weirdness in presenting information that you get elsewhere. I had been hoping for something like the timeline and statistics in the article on the G\u00e4vle Goat<\/a> (you really should go look at that, especially the wonderful table at the end), since all they would have to do is copy Punxsutawney's own records. But no, they cleaned the weirdness out of it (presumably it was \"not encyclopedic\") and failed to put the summary in a table. Darn. At least we learn that, by one calculation, Phil is correct a stunning 39% of the time. Unless the calculations were overly screwy, after 115 years, that's probably significant, right?"},{"id":"urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:ratatosk:302025","link":[{"@attributes":{"rel":"alternate","type":"text\/html","href":"https:\/\/ratatosk.livejournal.com\/302025.html"}},{"@attributes":{"rel":"self","type":"text\/xml","href":"https:\/\/ratatosk.livejournal.com\/data\/atom\/?itemid=302025"}}],"title":"ratatosk @ 2012-01-03T19:46:00","published":"2012-01-04T00:46:51Z","updated":"2012-01-04T00:46:51Z","content":"The poll in my last post<\/a> produced the results that I expected -- people mostly went with the third option -- but I don't know if that's a result of how I phrased the question.

<\/a>faerieboots<\/b><\/a><\/span> came up with an example that I think neatly encapsulates what I was looking for, and I wish I had had it before posting the poll: I was looking for the difference between asking whether people are safe drivers in general, and whether you treat that car right there as if it were driven by a safe driver. Not as a matter of precaution or defensive driving or what you think you ought to do, but how you would treat random specific people if you weren't thinking too much about it.

So, for example, you might say \"sure, driving is very safe\" but in reality act as if all other drivers are completely crazy (e.g. that car right there has its turn signal on -- how much will you act like you trust that?), and in that case you would trust humanity in general more than identifiable individuals. The important thing there, which I think is something <\/a>faerieboots<\/b><\/a><\/span> said I was unclear about, is that I'm asking about situations where you don't know any special facts about the person in question, but they are a real person you can point to. I was trying to get at how you treat other people by default, not what you come up with by going down your friends list and averaging.

Not sure if that changes anyone's idea of what I was trying to get at -- feel free to go change your answer if you feel compelled to do so (but I totally don't expect you to care that much)."}]}