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Edit Sept 30, 10:49 PM
Fixed some sentences that don’t make sense, and talked about ‘gators because Alicia told me I had to.

New Orleans
I’ve really been enjoying New Orleans. Something about this place just really feels cozy and comfortable to me, and I love being surrounded by music and street arts. The mix of cultures here is really impressive, and the food and drinks are pretty good. The only disappointment I had was with Emeril’s NOLA, which simply didn’t meet my expectations — maybe my expectations were too high, or maybe I’ve been spoiled by Alicia, but the food there just didn’t meet the hype.

We’ve been staying at a hotel about a block off the French Quarter in a part of town called “Faubourg Marigny”. Just walking up the street we’re on, we can catch some good live music all night, every night. By walking to the end of our block and turning left, we are immediately heading down one of the largest, nicest streets in the French Quarter. It’s a great location, and if anyone wants to know more, please ask.

The post-Katrina disaster area is ways away from where we are staying, so most of everything is prety much up and running. What’s down in the French Quarter and Marigny is largely still open, but a few places are closed down because the tourism industry hasn’t picked up again yet. We did go down and see where the temporary levees have been put up and saw some of the remaining devestation. It’s amazing to see how thoroughly this place had been wrecked, and how much water just sat in the city for so long. Note that I said post-Katrina up there: as the locals are fond of reminding people, New Orleans weathered Katrina just fine — the flooding of the city was a man-made disaster caused by the failure of the levees after Katrina had largely passed, and the situation was made worse by the failure of the government to respond.

(Edit) We went on some tours, too, which were pretty good. The tours we went on were Cajun Encounters. The city tour and the swamp tour were definitely worth it — we saw some live wild aligators on the swamp tour (which was pretty cool), and the city tour provided an excellent overview of New Orleans.

Wedding
Going back a bit in time, the wedding was really nice. Although I wished I could have invited everyone and had the same night, the combination of budget, locales, and a desire to actually talk to all our guests forced us to keep the guest list short. The Harrington Mansion was a beautiful location, and Sophia did an excellent job of hosting the reception. Surprisingly, some of the most entertaining parts of the day came from the photographers, who did a nice job keeping spirits up throughout the evening, and even got Alicia and I to cut the wedding cake for fun. The other greatly entertaining part of the evening came from Alicia’s family mixing with mine — a friend of her family convinced my aunt that my family had to sing a song or two, so while a national-calibre jazz singer was crooning out in the main entryway, there’s my family lined up against the wall singing whatever happened to come into our collective head. Grandpa Fischer must be proud.

Intuitive Counselor
Still further back in time, I went to see an “Intuitive Counselor”. Now, I’m not one for consulting psychics — I’ve known too many hucksters, players, and self-aggrandizing wannabes to really give it much credit. I’ve also done Tarot readings and been called “psychic” or whatever by other people, which really drove home just how eager some people are to be taken advantage of. And since I’ve entered the work force, I’ve become far too cynnical to be duped by name changes: an initial impression service executive is still a receptionist, and an “intuitive counselor” is still a psychic. However, Alicia and her father had both gone to see this woman, and both came back with some interesting thoughts and changes of viewpoint. So I figured I’d give it a shot: what harm could there be?

The meeting was pretty interesting, and while it was worth doing once, I don’t see a lot of value in going back any time soon. When I first showed up, I wasn’t sure what to talk about, but she immediately remarked about my “Jewish energy”. Apparently she picks up a strong Jewish vibe from me for whatever reason. I’m not entirely sure what that means, or what I should do with it, and although we talked about my connections (predominantly genetic and scholarly) to Judaism and the ancient Israelites for some time, I’m not sure if anything really came out of that conversation.

We then talked about my career, and my sense of call. Well, I call it “sense of call“. She called it other stuff — life direction, spiritual destination, etc., etc. I had been having a lot of self-doubt on the matter, but there was this crisis I was having because I still had the sense of call, but I couldn’t tell if it was something artificial or genuine, and whether I was even the kind of person cut out to do ministry. I’m not exactly a lovey-dovey person, and caretaking isn’t my specialty. However, I still have this drive to the ministry…that might not be a drive to pastoral ministry, but it’s a drive ministry none the less. In discussing it with her, she validated that call, although with this weird, vaguely ominous “you’re not really going to have a choice at 30″ comment. Whatever that means.

The rest of the conversation was pretty much a wash — some stuff was vaguely interesting, but nothing as profound or significant as those conversations. Mainly re-affirming a lot of “No, duh” kinda statements about me: things like the fact that I’m deeply focused on the here-and-now, and simply not wired to address the afterlife, which anyone who has talked the least bit of theology with me knows well.

She gave me a tape of our meeting, and I haven’t listened to it yet — everything on here is just from memory. I’ll post some more thoughts after I listen to the tape on the train ride home. I’ve been thinking a lot about this stuff, along with the very varied viewpoints that surround me these days. Still not one for psychics and mysticism, but I’m not exactly able to ignore people who really are exicted about it these days.

One thing I’m extremely curious about is the Meet-Up community set up by some friends of mine. Christian discussion of psychic issues fly quickly into the New Age-y and often from there to the patently ridiculous — they often attempt to assert a kind of Christology which is smoke-and-mirrors theology, which really frustrates me. I have some hope that they’ll keep it more positive.

C.S. Lewis
I read The Great Divorce back when I was an angsty goth, and (I think) mostly missed the point. I came away from CSL with an impression that he was some kind of Christian mystic, and a general quack. Since I had a lot of time on the train, and since both the smarties over at The Thinklings and Hamline’s Religion Department seem to be deeply impressed with the guy, and since “The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe” movie seemed pretty good, I figured I’d give him another shot.

Well, first things first, “Christian Mystic” and “General Quack” are totally inappropriate for Mr. C.S. Lewis. I see how I got there, though, since I was busy hating on Christianity as my form of rebelion. Now that I’ve got somewhat clearer eyes, his writing is amazing. Anyone who has an opinion about Christianity — good or bad — should read Mere Christianity, which is an excellent (if somewhat dated) description of Christianity as laid out by an ex-Athiest. And The Screwtape Letters are some very entertaining and thought-provoking satire — a nice follow-up to Mere Christianity. I’m now settling into The Chronicles of Narnia with Alicia, and I’ll let you know how that goes.

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There’s an old joke that goes: Woman: “What kind of lady do you think I am?” Man: “I thought we had settled that and were just dickering over the price.” Well, we settled what sort of Senator McCain was when he voted for Abramoff, knowing that Abramoff condoned torture- and now we see that Bush has met McCain’s price.

I comment, for those of you who might still be thinking that this might not be exactly what it looks like- a bill to permit torture and violations of the Geneva Convention, I’d like to point out that Bush doesn’t need a new law to follow the Geneva Convention. It’s been signed by the President and passed by Congress, the Geneva Convention is (was) the law of the land already. A new law is needed to violate the Geneva Convention, legally. At least here in the US- in Nuremburg it’s a different question.

But it doesn’t matter, anyways. We settled what sort of country we were when we saw graphic depictions of torture being done in Gitmo and in Iraq, and we didn’t care. When we invaded another soverign country that hadn’t attacked us. We’ve declared ourselves an outlaw nation. The only reason no one has called us on it yet is that we posses the world’s largest military (and one almost as expensive as all the other militaries combined) as well as probably the worlds largest stockpile of weapons of mass destruction of all stripes- certainly in the top two. That doesn’t mean we won’t face a reckoning, as Nazi Germany did before us. It just means the reckoning won’t be military.

My bet is that the reckoning, when it comes, will be economic in nature. We’re the first country to try for world domination on credit. The deal, ever since Korea, has been simple: the goverment could go and attack anything, so long as the American people didn’t have to pay the price. In World War Two, the nation sacrificed much. Gasoline rationing, meatless, wheatless, and sweetless days, a draft, tens of thousands dead, vastly increased taxes (the top tax bracket hit 90%- today it’s more like 27%). “Sacrifice” for the war in Iraq has been somewhat higher gas prices (but not even exceptionally high- adjusted for inflation, gas was more expensive in 1981).

So we do our wars of empire and conquest on credit. But that way is doomed to fail- because it means we can not, ever, attack our creditors. Because if you do, the first thing they do is yank their credit. At which point we will sacrifice more than our grandparents ever feared. There won’t be any Marshall Plan to look forward to after we’ve taken our lumps, pumping money into the country to rebuild. We’ve already used that up- this time the Marshall Plan came before the war, not after. Heck, even a FDR-like New New Deal would be much more difficult. With FDR, we still had the factories, they just weren’t running. We’ve packed our factories up and shipped them to China, India, Mexico, etc. Say hello to America: third world country.

I don’t know if it’s too late to prevent this. I think not- but the thing about windows of opportunity is that they close. And you generally don’t notice that they’ve closed until much too late. A warning sign that this window of opportunity is closing is that minor nations like Venezuela lose all fear of your military and stand before the UN calling your leader “the devil”. Why? Because we already failed to overthrow him once already, and we would be seriously hurt the Venezuela taking it’s oil off the market. The American people might actually have to sacrifice, and that breaks the deal.

But what I do know is that McCain is standing with Bush now- which means that if Bush ever stands trial in Nuremburg for his crime, McCain will be standing with him still. McCain could have stopped this, could have spoken up. The fact that doing so would cost him his presidential ambitions will matter not one whit to that tribunal. Nor to me, for that matter.

Popularity: 2% [?]

Okay, I keep track of the high water mark for geek humor on my whiteboard at work. The reigning champion is:

chown -r us ./base

However, I just found this in code after an assignment statement:

Reclaimer, spare that tree!
Take not a single bit!
It used to point to me,
Now I’m protecting it.
It was the reader’s CONS
That made it, paired by dot;
Now, GC, for the nonce,
Thou shalt reclaim it not.

Someone said they stole it from somewhere, but it’s pretty good all the same… Do I have a new winner? I can’t decide!

Popularity: 2% [?]

Socialized Title Insurance in Canada hurts victims of fraud

Here’s a classic story of the government overstepping its bounds, and the dangers that result when it gets into the wrong business. While socialization may be a wonderful academic exercise, the fact that the government is more interested in protecting its own ass and the ass of its most major contributors really results in the government screwing over the very people who it is supposed to be serving.

(Edit: Apparently Schneier already got at this.)

Popularity: 2% [?]

I’ve changed some of the rules on the blog — you no longer have to be logged in to comment. I’ve also implemented some smart spam filtering, so I’m moderating pretty much everything until things get configured.

Popularity: 1% [?]