The official site of Kelly Sedinger: Reader, writer, photographer, and dreamer
If any of my readers are particularly tech-savvy and can give Jayme some advice on his current tale of tech woe, I’m sure he’d be appreciative. It seems that all of his data — all of it — was on an external hard drive that was somehow messed up beyond repair, or so he’s told, but the gentlest of bumps. Ouch.
And now if you’ll excuse me, I need to run my own backups.
UPDATE: For the surprising number of people arriving here today via Google searches for “Scalzi” and “RaceFail”, welcome aboard. I’m not really the least bit interested in Racefail, but I hope some of you will stick around here anyway; I like to think that my blog doesn’t completely suck, and I always love to see new readers.
In the book The Art of STAR WARS, there’s a section devoted to portrayals of Star Wars in comic strips and editorial cartoons of 1977. One of these has Dennis the Menace standing at night with his friend, looking up at the stars, and Dennis says, “Well, if they do have wars, they’re awful quiet about it.”
One thing about the Internet that I never get used to is that there can be these massive conflicts going on in various sectors of Webspace, and yet, because I never go into those sectors or even have contact with those who do, I never know about them. If they do have flamewars, they’re awful quiet about it.
This morning I was going through my Google Reader subscriptions, got to John Scalzi’s, and found this kind-of cryptic post. Near as I can figure, someone decided to go into the comments threads of one of John’s other posts and toss in some content attacking someone else on this giant LiveJournal debate-flamewar that’s going on, for some unknown reason (probably an attempt to get someone memorialized badly on Google or something). John apparently doesn’t like to see his blog used for somebody else’s score-settling. Strange guy, that Scalzi. Musta been raised by wolves.
But I was intrigued, so I started doing a bit of searching, trying to figure out what on Earth is going on, and lo and behold, there really is some kind of scorched-earth thing going on that’s so big it’s got a name: “RaceFail”. According to this person, RaceFail is “a discussion about science fiction, fantasy, fandom, publishing, race, racism, power, and many other things.” Apparently it’s also a giant flamewar involving lots of attacks back and forth, people “outing” one another in various contexts, and…well, there it is.
Why am I posting about this? Mainly because it amuses me that big flamewars can go on without anyone else ever knowing about them. Same way the people involved in RaceFail probably never saw some of the knock-down dragouts we used to have on the FSM boards, back when I bothered hanging out there.
Of course, the Internet is made of people, and people are weird. It pretty much can’t be avoided, you know? So go on, you crazy kids. Have fun with that RaceFail thing!
Every year, it happens: someone forgets that their kid is in the car on a hot day while they go inside and do something, and the kid dies of hyperthermia. And every time it happens, the chorus comes: “How can anyone do this? What kind of awful person does this? How is this even possible?”
Here’s some insight into this phenomenon.
This is, as one might expect, a gut-wrenching story to read. Beware.
This quiz came to me on Facebook, and I’m putting it here as well….
1. Who gave you your first Bible?
No one. I bought a copy of the KJV in 1999 or 2000, for research on a writing project. It was OK, but a bare-bones Bible without much by way of extra stuff, so a few years ago I picked up a better edition of the KJV, with a stronger concordance and more maps. Then, a year or two ago I decided that I needed an actual study bible, so I bought a TNIV one, with lots of maps and extra content that, you know, explains stuff.
I also have a book called “The Other Bible”, which is a collection of pseudo-sacred texts from those times that for various reasons didn’t “make it” into the Bible — the Apocrypha and more. I also own a Koran, the Analects of Confucius, the Tao te Ching, a couple of Tibetan Books of the Dead, and a few other sacred texts from other religions.
2. When and where did you receive your first Communion?
I first took Communion on Easter of 2006, because The Daughter really wanted me to go up with her and The Wife. I’ve taken it ever since, when offered. This is at St John’s Lutheran in Orchard Park.
3. What was the first prayer you were taught?
I was never “taught” any prayers. I learned the Lord’s Prayer, I suppose, through osmosis in college.
4. What was the first church you attended?
The first church that I attended willingly and regularly? I guess that would be St. John’s. I would do the “Christmas and Easter” thing with The Wife before that.
5. What was the first Bible passage/story that became meaningful to you?
Hmmmm. The story of Christ’s birth as told by Luke, I think.
6. What was the first miracle you experienced?
Well, I’m not sure I’ve ever experienced one.
7. Where and when were you baptized?
I haven’t the faintest idea, except that it was somewhere near Pittsburgh, because that’s where we lived when I was born.
Bonus: Is there a story of faith you would like to share that doesn’t fit into one of these categories? If so, share it.
I’m still not sure what my religious beliefs are; I’ve pretty much accepted that I’m never going to figure that out. But I do go to the church because it’s become a very meaningful place for me, after everything that happened with our son. I do feel, when I’m there, that I’m in some kind of presence, for whatever that’s worth. I started going when I was worried, after Little Quinn’s birth, that The Wife was having trouble with church; she was always the “faithful” one of us, so I went in order to help her get through it. And I’ve kept going, ever since. I’m not sold on every tenet therein, and there are still many things from other faiths that I find deeply wise and moving and even true, but I’ve come to love a lot of the rituals — the “official” ones (like Communion) and the ones peculiar to our own congregration (like Pastor’s fascination with clips from “I Love Lucy”).
Interesting, I guess, since my college friends may remember that I was once deeply hostile to the whole idea of religion, no?
I’m now a bit more open on these things, although I’m not sure I’ll ever be comfortable saying “I am XXX”, where XXX is some kind of religious belief (or non-belief). Maybe it’s wishy-washy, but it always seems to me that saying “I am THIS” equally implies “I am NOT THAT”, and that seems exclusionary to me.
I received, a short while ago, a hit on the blog from someone who Googled two phrases together: “chicken wings” and “make you gay”. I suppose we’re to wonder if the consumption of chicken wings encourage men to, shall we say, turn a more receptive eye on their fellow members of the male species.
Well, we can do an experiment here. It turns out that I ate a few chicken wings for lunch today, so I should still be under their spell. Let’s see what happens. Here’s Brad Pitt:
And here’s Kate Winslett:
Yeah…I’m gonna go with Kate. So, in my case, eating chicken wings did not, as it were, make me gay.
(I wrote this post last night, but Blogger was being irritating with uploading images, so it had to wait.)
Because I like pictures of Presidents looking non-Presidential, here’s a slideshow of shirtless Presidents. I had no idea that Reagan had that much of a gut, and while Bill Clinton shirtless isn’t much to look at, Hillary Clinton in a bathing suit looks just fine. That is all.
I want an album of Christmas songs, done in the Cantopop style. I think that would be really cool.
I bookmarked a bunch of things while I wasn’t blogging, and now I figure I’ll just dump ’em all here, either without comment or with short, pithy comment.
:: There’s a gadget called The Typealyzer which analyzes the writing in a blog and spits back — really quickly — the Myers-Briggs personality type of that blogger, based on the writing. They peg me as an ESFP, while when I’ve taken quizzes for my type, I’ve always come up INFP. Hmmmmm. I suspect that I actually am a little more extroverted on the blog than in real life. (via)
:: Back in October, Nettl posted a very nice story about Barack Obama. Because I love me some Barack Obama.
:: There’s a dating site for Objectivists. Read some profiles here. One wonders what the pillowtalk would sound like, from couples formed thusly…. (via
:: Jacob Weisberg on the Death of Libertarianism. It’s a pleasant thought, but nothing will ever kill libertarianism. Just reading the comments over at Alan’s blog on a normal day proves this. For some reason, Alan’s got a bunch of libertarians among his regular commenters, and as always, they are always able to trace the roots of any problem back to the government, somehow, some way. One of them was actually citing something Woodrow Wilson did as a root cause of our current economic troubles. There will always be people who think that the markets can solve any problem (or that the markets are sacrosanct, and screw your problem anyway).
:: The Lost Years and Last Days of David Foster Wallace. Long, sad article about the recently-deceased writer, who committed suicide.
:: Guy Gavriel Kay’s Ysabel won Best Novel at the World Fantasy Awards. I reviewed it way back when.
:: A while back there was a really cute, and obviously very smart, woman on Jeopardy! named Meredith. For some reason I wondered if she had an online presence at all, and turns out, she does. No, I haven’t contacted her or anything (unless linking her journal here constitutes contact). That would be creepy. Or something.
:: George W. Bush: persona non grata. Can’t say I’m surprised.
:: For film music lovers, the big thing of late is probably the release of the Indiana Jones Score Collection, which gathers the expanded scores of all four movies in one place. It’s not a perfect release, unfortunately; for some reason, on Raiders, this set uses the original album edited cut of “The Desert Chase”, instead of the full track as heard in the film (and available on an expanded CD that was briefly available in the 1990s). Worse, the film version of the End Credits to Temple of Doom isn’t heard in its entirety here; instead, the finale is broken over two tracks on two different discs (!), and it omits about thirty seconds of wonderful stuff where John Williams blends the Raiders March with Short Round’s Theme. Oh well. It’s still a very nice set, though.
:: Somebody I know linked this article about women who pattern their lives to ridiculous degrees on decades past, but I don’t remember who. Anyway, I find this incredibly creepy.
:: For Belladonna: a history of pie throwing. Splat!
:: I may have linked this before, but maybe not; I can’t remember when I discovered it or even how, but Marooned is an entertaining sci-fi webcomic with a lot of sardonic humor. I like it. It updates twice a week; check it out. It doesn’t take long to get caught up.
:: My favorite recent xkcd installment. This one seriously cracked me up. I always wondered what would happen if I did that….
:: I’d love to own a copy of this ruttin’ map, but it costs almost twenty-seven goram dollars. Gao yang jong duh goo yang!
OK, that’s it. Consider these links dump’d!
