occasional

Five and a half hours at the flower and garden show, walking around for probably four hours of it means probably eight miles of walking (2mph is a very slow walk), but I'm not counting that since there's no possible good way to measure it.

I bought super anti-blackberry gloves (I tested them; they work; the war has now escalated, thorny motherfuckers!) and took far too many pictures, which I'll post to a link to maybe tomorrow in some sort of slideshow presentation or something.

The big displays weren't really as interesting as they were the last couple of years, and more of them were roped off, which is too bad. But it's not that big a deal; there were still some interesting ideas to shoot, and the larger part of the show - the booths, the panels they call seminars - were better, so that balances it out.

Sunday's miles: 2.0
Monday's miles: I forget. ;_;
Tuesday's token: 0.2
Wednesday's miles: 2.8 (really 10.8, but not counting the extrapolated ^_^ )
Miles out of Hobbiton: 597.3
Miles out of Rivendell: 137.4
Miles to Lothlórien: 328.9

Today I lifted out, modified, and re-leveled the ineptly-installed-and-built previous raised bed. The lot slips about 17" in six feet where it is, and it wasn't built to reflect that, and in fact only took it from about a 16-plus degree slope (about 1:3.53) to about a 10 degree slope (about 1:6.67) inside the bed. (I think? My geometry is rusty.) Now it's mostly flat. I had some issues with one side, which is about 1/4" off of true across 6", which I can live with; it doesn't affect the soil inside at all. The others are as close as I'm going to get without digging up the whole thing, building sort of a leveling foundation, and really starting completely over, which I don't have time to do. Now I just have to get some compost and probably a bit more topsoil and I'll be ready to plant some stuff. Yay!

(Edited to convert intermediate-figure percentages to degrees. I don't know why I left it in percentages. That was strange.)

I also found a few sprouting horsetail, several inches below the surface, again. ;_; I hope I dug up enough of it. I dug out a lot of root. Still, it's much better than last year, when it totally pwned the bed.

I definitely want to build a little retention of some sort around this pre-existing treed berm that divides the creek from the bed, retaining wall, and path. I don't know what yet, though. But something. It won't have to be anything serious; a rockery would probably be plenty. But it'd be nice if I could make enough semi-flat between it and the raised/sunken bed that I'd have room for a path.

Oh, by the way, this could but should not be your pet:


Some day, Photoshop will pay for the crimes committed in its name. Some day.

oh, and also, two photographs

This photo is too large to embed. But click through, I like it so much that I made a thumbnail. It's of berries. I did arty things to it. It came out nice.


Painted Berries
I'm also pleased with this photo, one of the City Series, taken from the Space Needle:


Puget Sound in Winter

waiting for word from the graduate school

Here are last week's papers, or more accurately, papers I read last week and bits of the week before:

"Neural Models of Bayesian Belief Propagation" (very hard, but interesting; I learned some probability while chasing down terms, yay)
"Real-Time Classification fo Electromyographic Signals for Robotic Control" (much easier to get through; very interesting work; one of the authors is nr. 1 on my list of who I'd like to talk to if I get to interview)
"Mechanisms of Human Motion Perception Revealed by a New Cyclopean Illusion" (quite an old paper, compared to most, but still new to me. Presumably it's held up, since it's still on the primary author's web page XD )
"The Analysis of Visual Motion: A Comparison of Neuronal and Psychophysical Performance" (another older paper, but I learned some things about data analysis figuring out terms)

Here are this week's papers:

"On Space, Time and Language: for the Next Century, Timing is (Almost) Everything" (very short paper, very easy reading)
"Competitive Learning with Floating-Gate Circuits" (read this one once a few weeks ago, didn't get much from it; going at it again and getting a lot more. I don't have enough EE to understand a lot of the details, but, well, I'm getting more this time than last. Also, I'm understanding some of the references that I didn't before.)
"Adaptive CMOS: From Biological Inspiration to Systems-on-a-Chip" (similar comments to the previous paper, really, tho' I got more from this one the first read than the previous)
"Neural Correlates of Second-Language Word Learning: Minimal Instruction Produces Rapid Change" (this one's next in the queue)

I've read a bunch of other papers as well queued up next, and I read some other papers before last week, but I don't have them printed out and in front of me. La!

Today, some other people are in interviews. Also tomorrow. There are two rounds; you get invited to one or the other but not both. Hopefully I'll be in the March round, and the February around is all the people they're already pretty sure they want as long as they interview well. Emotionally, of course, I'm trying not to be convinced that they've already written me off. AGH.

[ETA: I am reminded of a non-graduate-school related lecture presentation I read late last week or early this, I forget which. 90 pages on a new cosmology model. It's keen. However, these are only neurobio papers co-authored by people at the grad school to which I'm applying. La.]

Today's Cultural Warfare Update

CANADIANS TAKE NOTE OF THE STARRED ITEM BELOW - Focus on the Family is launching an Ottawa think-tank, the entire job of which will be to churn out fundamentalist propaganda "studies." It won't be pretty and the only guide for whether something is true will be whether it fits the fundamentalist agenda, assuming the American experience is any example. You guys have a wholesale invasion of American fundamentalist organisations going on now. Don't ignore it!

Andrew Sullivan on a Christianist response to the cartoons - there should be press bans on blasphemy;

Muslim Al-Jinnah Foundation in Norway to post charges against a Norwegian newspaper who reprinted the cartoons - the charges are endangerment and blasphemy, which is illegal under Norwegian law, tho' the law has not been enforced in over 70 years - thanks for the pointer, ravyng_yngvar;

Philosopher Daniel Dennett says science needs to study the evolutionary origins of religion; also touches on the Denmark cartoons issue: "We cannot let any group, however devout, blackmail us into silence by their expressions of hurt feelings whenever they feel that we are getting close to the truth. That is what con artists do when their marks begin to get suspicious, and that is what children do when they can't have their way, and it should be beneath the dignity of any religious group to play that card";

The Stranger, Seattle's alternative weekly, says that cartoons aren't the only thing fundamentalist Islam has problems with; again, everybody, repeat after me: rising fundamentalism is a global problem;

Focus on the Family's report on states passing anti-abortion laws to test Roe v. Wade;

FotF article on lawsuits against the Air Force Academy's new guidelines following their religious-harassment issues;

FotF hates the idea of the .xxx designation - they've got an article on Democratic support for it;

Georgia's special tax exemption for Christian Bibles (but not other religious or spiritual books) struck down;

South Dakota legislature pushes abstinence-only education; Rep. Roger Hunt (R-Brandon) says all other forms are "for the purpose of increasing sexual activity";

Air Force revises guidelines; Focus on the Family is happy with the new set;

FotF: "Community Marriage Policies Reach a Milestone";

FotF reports: don't worry, fag marriage in Massachusetts won't get any support from Bush's $100M "marriage promotion" programme; DOMA prevents it; (Another source says it's $750M in total spending);

Republican delegates re-introduce anti-marriage bill in Maryland;

"Family Institute of Connecticut" asks for permission to intervene in marriage-rights case; they feel the state Attourney General isn't being anti-gay enough in his defense of the current law;

Fundamentalists take credit for stopping stem-cell research bill in Delaware;

Concerned Women for America very upset that Colombia may legalise abortion via court challenge;

Christian Broadcasting Network story pushing the "Biblical Literacy Project" as a way to get Bible instruction back into public schools - as a literary course;

Jan LaRue of Concerned Women for America believes that John Paul Stevens will retire from the Supreme Court this summer;

National Review congratulates Phyllis Schlafly for helping defeat the ERA back in the 70s and help prevent national same-sex marriage now;

Traditional Values Coalition ACTION ITEM against anti-discrimination in California schools, calling it "pro-homosexual" - in fundamentalist rhetoric, anything not explicitly condemnational is "promoting homosexuality"; I have no idea what AB606 actually does - they're billing it as a PLOT by "homosexual groups and their liberal allies to force schools to promote homosexuality";

TVC: "New Report Exposes Collusion Among Mental Health Groups And Homosexuals";

Alabama rejects Bible Literacy Project bill;

Father who complained about Governor's School of North Carolina programme on GBLT students now says his son was "damaged" by "homosexual indoctrination" at the Governor's School;

Canada Family Action Coalition's David Gray says NO to free vote in Parliament, because he can count votes and marriage rights would be sustained; now demands a referendum; says equal treatment for marriage is not a right at all; calls same-sex marriage a "lie";

CFAC links to National Review's Stanley Kurtz decrying same-sex marriage rights; says marriage rights for same-sex couples is part of a PLOT to destroy all marriage everywhere;

CFAC follows lead of US fundamentalist evangelical groups, starts "prayer network"; intent will generally be political; riffs on "America the Beautiful" and invokes Dominionist language - did they not even bother rewriting this from American sources, except to change "America" to "Canada"?

*** Focus on the Family Canada, a division of the US-based fundamentalist Focus on the Family, opens a "think-tank" in Ottawa called "Institute of Marriage and Family Canada"; WATCH THIS ORGANISATION, CANADIANS: It's purpose will be to generate the sort of lie-filled fraud-laden fake "studies" to push the fundamentalist agenda in Ottawa that are seen down here; this is a very effective method of attack on the fundamentalist side of things and they will show no regard whatsoever for truth;

Family Research Council takes Republicans to task for not bringing up more fundamentalist issues in Congress;

FRC applauds Mississippi for it's new ban on "human cloning;" according to the story, it bans somatic cell nuclear transfer(!!), which, if true, pretty much shuts down their genetics research efforts entirely, and also outlaws some fertility treatments; if you do bioscience in Mississippi, I'd suggest moving.

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