Axoplasm / Web-log / 2017

November

2017-11-09

Holland, 1945

“do you know this song Dadda?”

School age girl on a bicycle with a race number, on a cold sunny day

2017-11-02

What cyclocross teaches us

Today on the ride to school, we talked about what cyclocross teaches us: if you can suffer through 45min of a cyclocross race, you can...

July

2017-07-28

Democrats routinely sacrifice their politics, because they want what’s best for America

Consider: politically, for Democrats, the “best” result last night would have been for Trumpcare to proceed to the House and thence to Trump’s desk. Cue...

Sign near the turtle pond at the Southern Temple in Xiamen, China. English text reads “Observe social ethics and pay attention to public hygiene”

2017-07-26

♥ Right and Wrong

Pondering the distinction between being right (correct) and right (moral).

2017-07-26

How our unstable president will trash the civilian chain of military command

“There will be no modifications to the current policy until the President's direction has been received by the Secretary of Defense and the Secretary has...

May

2017-05-29

Gosh it’s like having no soul makes everything awful

Reposted from this tweetstorm Until last year a core tenet of my belief system is that good and evil are transient properties, less tractable than...

2017-05-28

Taliesin Myrddin Namkai Meche and Ricky Best

I went late to the vigil for Taliesin Myrddin Namkai Meche and Ricky Best. The crowd was thinning. The first two people I recognized on...

2017-05-23

Roger Moore

Roger Moore wasn’t the best 007 but he was MY 007. The one on movie posters when I was a kid. FOR YOUR EYES ONLY...

April

2017-04-05

Bismarck wasn’t just a GOOD dog he was the BEST dog.

For almost as long as it’s been Jenny+Paul it’s been Bismarck+Jenny+Paul. Before we bought a car or got married or moved to China or bought...

March

Child’s crayon drawing of a collaborative game, with many events labeled, in purple, aqua blue, and several shades of green

2017-03-20

Griselda and Liv steal the Emerald Diamond from the Emerald Queen Mab

Iris has invented a game where she and I create characters who go on an adventure. We collectively invent the game we go along, sort...

Google Street View of ICE facility on SW Macadam

2017-03-17

I had no idea this innocuous building was a jail

Do not mistreat or oppress a foreigner, for you were foreigners in Egypt. Wednesday I joined about fifty other people to stand in solidarity with...

February

Artist’s rendition of a sunrise on Trappist-1 IV

2017-02-22

TRAPPIST-1 and 90s sci-fi RPGs

A team of astronomers have observed, over the last 18months, a system of seven Earthlike planets orbiting the tiny red dwarf TRAPPIST-1. All of them...

2017-02-13

bugs and cannabis

Elsewhere on FB I got to unleash some entomology knowledge I packed away 24 (23?) years ago, for a class I took as a post-Bacc...

2017-02-13

The independent judiciary; guanxi; that new church smell

While calling the office of a local elected official this morning, I walked through their lengthy phone tree full of boring legal administrivia (“for notary...

2017-02-10

Greenscreen hazmat suit

I’m currently building TWO Drupal 8 sites from the ground up, and migrating a third, so I’m getting really comfy with drush config-export/import . (I...

January

2017-01-31

Donald Trump made me a better person

I started a spreadsheet last week where I track the things I do every day to keep myself healthy and sane. More accurately: to cultivate...

2017-01-25

Despair and Hope

What exactly does a Ring of Power do, other than make Hobbits invisible? The main power of the Rings is inspiration. It makes its wearer mighty.

2017-01-19

The Dad of America

Sometime in October, while we were riding to school, Iris, Orion and I got to talking about Vice Presidents. What do they do? What is...

Kids building a snow person at Pittock Mansion

2017-01-09

Longer tweetstorm

Before 11/8/2016, Twitter was the place I went to escape daily life. Never for long stretches, but in small doses several times an hour, all...