In a discussion of this wonderful cartoon, james_nicoll on flavors of science fiction:

See, that's the difference between hard and soft SF. Soft SF says "the Go Fast Now drive works because I pressed that red button". Hard SF takes the time to explain things in enough detail that the readers can work out for themselves why it is the drive can't possibly work that way.

I use Panix's spamassassin implementation. It catches about 96% of the spam that I get. This means that only around 20 spams per day get through to where I see them.

Jesus, all that wasted electricity.

"Sleeping Is the Only Love" by The Silver Jews has my Favrit Lyric EVAR for today:

You might as well say fuck me cause I'm gonna keep on,
Keep on loving you.

( Music! )

And has there ever been a more cheerful song about existential despair than Bishop Allen's "Little Black Ache"?

Sounding like a Leonard Cohen album played at 45rpm, we start

Sleeping on the subway in my interview tie
Wander through the rain, sit and wonder why
I haven't got a plan, I haven't got a clue
I've only got one lonely thing that's gonna see me through

I've got my little black ache

And then the chorus comes back like the Rayettes:

(What you got?)

Pure win!

( More Music! )

What a world, with such a Celestial Jukebox in it.

This is a pager message, an alert received on a Goldman Sachs server about a potential system problem on a market data feed from another broker:

( Machines and Humans and Tragedy )

Reasons to be cheerful:

A simple joke, beautifully told: The Muppet Habanera

Joke layered on joke: The Muppet "Bohemian Rhapsody"

(via parttimedriver, agrumer, and bugsybanana. Thanks, guys.)

From Friendly Atheist:

There's an article by Jay Lindsay of the Associated Press called "Evangelists target spiritually cold New England" making the rounds. . . . Here's a direct quotation from the piece.

They say a reason for the region's hollowed-out faith is a pervasive theology that departs from traditional Biblical interpretation on issues such as the divinity of Jesus, the exclusivity of Christianity as a path to salvation and homosexuality.

Reader Jon points out:

I'm pretty sure there are other paths to homosexuality besides Christianity.

This post quotes Associated Press content. Suck it, AP.

I can't remember who pointed me at this--I thought it was nancylebov, but I can't find a link on her lj.

Anyway, a surprisingly moving piece in a strange artform, courtesy of sand artist Kseniya Simonova on Ukraine's Got Talent.

( Go through the cut before it is wiped away )

( Kinda long, kinda nasty, and with an embedded (but funny) video. )

From "How We Look at the Sea", the chapter on global warming denial in Idiot America:

And that is how most of us look at the sea-- as an afterthought, a secondary, vestigial presence. Its power seem an ancient myth, almost a superstition, like a dragon or snow beast. We fool ourselves into thinking it's something we've outgrown, when it's really only something we've talked ourselves out of believing in. We have become quite good at mistaking amnesia for wisdom.

I felt noticably better yesterday than the previous couple of days. Infection still obviously present, but perhaps receding? I'm still tired and prone to bursts of anger, though.

Thursday evening, I went to what I thought was my appointment with the vascular specialist at the cardiology department of my local DOCS. (I had made the appointment through DOCS when I was visiting the very nice orthopedist who said this was outside her balliwick.) It turns out that they had made the appointment for *next* Thursday. But maybe, out of the goodness of his heart, the attending cardiologist, who is not a vascular surgeon at all, would take a look at it if I wanted to wait. They made me fill out all of my insurance information again, despite the fact that I had been at DOCS four times in the previous 31 days; I did this on a tablet computer which then tried to make me watch advertisements about bladder control products at the end of the signin. About an hour after I arrived, they asked me for my co-pay; I explained that I wasn't going to pay them anything until I could ask the doctor whether he would actually be able to do anything for me, since I *already knew my diagnosis* and I was simply there for treatment.

They refused. The doctor literally would not come to the door to talk to me about whether he could possibly help me unless I agreed to pay my co-pay--which would in turn allow them to charge my insurance company for the whole visit. I left without being seen.

My haemotologist recommended a vascular specialist in White Plains, and I have an appointment there on Monday. When I called DOCS yesterday to make sure that they canceled my appointment for next Thursday, they couldn't even access their own calendar to check.

God bless the best health care system in the world except for the 37 which are better including Cuba.