C.I.T.O.K.A.T.E.

Somehow, my desire for sincere work does not rule out performing the occasional wedding.

A young military couple were being sent overseas, and arranged at the last minute to be married by a Justice of the Peace so as to be less likely to be separated by the military. Upon hearing this plan, their families asked to be allowed to put together a real wedding they could attend with all the trappings. The Justice of the Peace would already have done the legal work; the following ceremony would be for show. The families had to work fast. No clergy could be persuaded to perform a ceremony on the Fourth of July with twenty-four hours notice. They went hunting for someone, anyone, who would know how to make the service look and sound traditionally authentic.

Their friend-of-a-friend Tomak thought of me, mostly because I perform the Coffee Ritual at Penguicon. I ritualistically grind, brew, and serve coffee, and parody the High Church singsong cadence, while wearing a Pope costume with a Starbucks logo on the hat.

Tomak: "You're a Bible college dropout, right?"
Me: "I graduated, actually."
Tomak: "Rock on!"
Me: "With an art degree."
Tomak: "Good enough."

When asked what denomination I was, Tomak told them "he was trained Baptist, but now he's more ... Unitarian Universalist." That's one way to put it. I should remember that one.

Jen worked very hard Friday night to put together a setting complete with an altar, unity candles, a humongous Bible with side-by-side English and Greek translations, and a lovely printed manuscript of the ceremony for a memento. She wrote the ceremony, and pasted a printed copy inside a black notebook for me to glance at, since I lacked any time to memorize my lines. I wore a black suit and white turtleneck.

I would like to live in a world in which prayer and encouragement is never a paid acting performance. I didn't want to encourage a young couple that they are doing the right thing, when every evidence available to statistics and brain science tells us they are most certainly not. But it's their lives to live as they choose.

I was worried that I would feel terrible; that it would be the most desperate and grasping thing I've ever done for money. In other words, I felt like one must feel when preparing to appear in one's first porn film. If porn stars can do it, I have no cause to demur. Yes, I said; I will draw from porn stars' strength of determination, learn from their example, and set aside these silly qualms. I will not Hoekstra.

I did not dwell on it while it was happening. I just went with the flow. I kept my mouth shut as much as possible before and after. I was thanked and praised to the skies by clients and their families who were thrilled to tears. Then I hopped in the getaway car and put it out of my mind for several days. The back of my mind is constantly aware that there is video, which might appear on YouTube and come back to haunt me. If I make a habit of presiding over the downfall of beautiful relationships every day, I would experience emotional corrosion quickly. I take comfort that perhaps weary porn stars and reluctant wedding officiants might be the Yin to each other's Yang on some weird karmic scale.

I can no longer find the reference, but I recently read of a study that showed that the brain-chemical rewards of satisfaction from talking about our intention to do a project are the same as the feelings of satisfaction that we receive from completing a project. The lesson was to finish first and then unveil it afterward, so as not to sabotage your drive.

This was consistent with my life experience. When I was a boy, I would get the neighborhood kids involved in projects of vast ambition, such as an RC car racing track, or a circus, or a backyard theme park made of cardboard. A week later I would forget the plan ever existed because I was busy drawing up detailed schematics of my latest life's work, and assigning a role in it to everyone who would listen. I don't think very many of them ever stopped going along with it, because on balance dreaming and planning is fun. However, I eventually remembered some of my abandoned plans with embarrassment, and could no longer muster the sincere belief that is a crucial component of my glowing enthusiasms. I didn't get back in the saddle until my late twenties, when I figured out how to subdue my attention span. I now cajole, distract, and bribe my brain into avoiding shiny distractions. Well, mostly.

The study on announcements is the latest trick I've learned. That is why I have not already blogged about the paying assignment I have been working on for a week. In another week it's scheduled to be done, and I hope I'll be allowed to show it to you. Until then please regard it with skepticism for the sake of my clever mind-trick. In fact, I might be violating the new lesson just by saying this much.

I would just like to say it's satisfying, and I wish I knew how to get more work with projects of this nature. It feels refreshing to get paid to do a project that I like and approve of; to get paid to do something that is easier to start than to stop. I think the last time this happened was six or seven years ago, and I don't remember it ever happening before that.

I have been paid to draw a salesperson deceiving people in exchange for money.

What gender and race should the salesperson be?

On Ask Metafilter, I pose the question: Can a a divorced atheist permanent-bachelor who dislikes the institution of marriage and is bored at weddings run afoul of the law for marrying people who are already married? Read my story on Metafilter, which includes the phrase "the barest superficial veneer of religiosity".

In preparation for moving an apartment into a single room, I have been modeling the room and its proposed contents in Sketchup. As you can see, I modeled the possessions with rather more detail than was strictly required. No doubt I will continue to do so until there is some kind of addiction intervention.

Jen did not expect that I would increase the verisimilitude any farther. But oh, how incorrect that was. I did not like the stock human figure that comes with Sketchup.

From Untitled Album

This virtual reality may have ripped the fabric of space and time, and several other fabrics as well.

The Great Cosby Experiment is now complete, and the results have been tallied. Now that it is over, I can reveal the Bill Cosby that I drew:

From Untitled Album

Maybe some situations would be better without managers, but not necessarily Better Without Bosses. Most of us are better off if we look to "hire" a boss to do things that, frankly, most people are bad at, and don't want to do. A boss exists to reliably transform your work into your money, and take part of it for the service. This is better than doing a lot of work and getting little or nothing in return.

A boss task:	Be your own boss but don't possess boss skills:
Figure out what people would pay for.	Hope against hope that there is a market for your skills by themselves, not incorporated into some larger product.
Figure out who can do that work well and would actually get it done.	Hire a freelancer who never actually completes the job; or squabble over whether the result is worth paying for.
Tell the world your work exists and persuade them to choose it.	Have no clients.
Find out who has both the need and the money.	Get clients who could only pay you a fraction of your rate.
Make the client pay what they owe.	Spend time nagging for your invoices to be fulfilled, time that would be better spent using your skills to earn more money.

From the outside, these tasks look like magic, as if only certain mages can perform the incomprehensible rituals to channel the eldritch forces outside the ken of mortals. If you can do all that for yourself successfully, and not die of boredom, then you're better without bosses. If what you really want to do with your time is to do work and not worry about getting paid for it, "hire" a boss to provide you with that brokering service.

We are probably moving in with Trav in Westland, slowly over the course of July. The downsides are reduced space, and slight increase in distance to the post office, bus stops, and the school that I can't afford to continue anyway. So that's not bad. Well, it's farther from Ann Arbor Gaming Group, but I can still go to that from time to time. Life improvements include:

1. Vastly reduced expense.
2. Half an hour closer to every person who I see with any regularity (except Bill, and that is not a change in distance). Fifteen minutes from Castle Bradaki, a social hub of fandom exceeding even that of Tio's.
3. Regularly scheduled game nights have occurred at this apartment weekly for years.
4. A dishwasher.
5. An actual television. We have been using a computer as a DVD player.
6. Our current apartment complex has speed bumps of doom which probably contravene regulations.
7. A large cement patch out back for spray-gluing things to other things.
8. A ferret!

I have never owned a ferret, but I adore them! Unfortunately I just gave away my book on ferret care through Bookmooch. Yes, I own books on pets that I don't own. The ferret is fat and lethargic, and I intend to provide him with a more active lifestyle. And before you ask, yes, he is de-musked. I have no significant sense of smell in any case.

Who wants to hang out for my birthday? I would like to have people over to my apartment tonight, so call me. If you can't make it to Ypsilanti, if someone else wants to host I could go there, depending. I made hummus.

Do you care about the future of fandom in southeast Michigan? Then you should attend SMOFcamp in Ann Arbor on Saturday, August 22. SMOF stands for "Secret Masters of Fandom". Held in a space provided by the new relaxacon ConStruct, with a grant from the Penguicon board of directors, SMOFcamp is a fandom leadership and recruitment summit. ConFusion, ConClave, U*Con, and all other regional geek-related events are invited to participate.

It is an Open-Spaces meeting: a schedule of breakout sessions which is designed by the attendees when they show up, by affixing large post-its to a bare wall. Anyone may post a topic to the wall. Unlike a business meeting, you don't have to wait while someone has the floor. If you aren't learning or contributing, you are expected to go to a different session.

Just a few suggested sessions:
"Feasibility studies on your proposal for an AASFA cool stuff grant or Penguicon board grant"
"How to incorporate"
"How to become a 501c3 charity: Is it worth the paperwork?"
"New tech tutorial days to precede Penguicon"
"Web applications for convention scheduling"
"Starting a group to do consistent marketing for multiple conventions"
"Enforcing convention etiquette culture: How to tell someone they are misbehaving at a convention, without making an ugly scene which is worse than the problem"
"How to negotiate with hotels"
"Race at conventions: What is the situation really? What causes that? Is there anything we can do? Should we?"

YOU bring the topics and projects.

Food is provided by ConStruct. Admission cost for ConStruct is not yet determined, but will be affordable for anyone $30, with hotel rooms $70 after tax. Limited financial assistance available to promising participants, with shown cause of need. Please RSVP to matt.mattarn@gmail.com.

Famed atheist Christopher Hitchens confronts and rebukes a Christian radio talk show host in this video. They agreed on the justification for the Iraq war, but disagreed on the biblical genocide of Amalekites by the Israelites, ordered by God to kill every last infant, but take some of the virgins for themselves. The host thought the two conflicts were comparable in moral praiseworthiness, which outraged Hitchens and caused the interview to degenerate.

If I had been in Hitchens' position, I would have tried to explain how the radio show host could be more like Paul on Mars Hill. In this story, Paul looked at the various idols on Mars Hill until he saw one that said "To The Unknown God". They were hedging their bets with that one. Paul said, "I have come to represent this one to you." The story is used to encourage evangelists to get to know how someone thinks when trying to reach them.

That's what this radio host needs. The culture of the modern Enlightenment differs from his. That host sincerely had no idea what angered Hitchens. Like many bible-believers in my experience, he probably chalked it up to character flaws on the part of the secular person, and naively left it at that.

On the contrary, a Mars Hill understanding of the culture of the Enlightenment reveals the source of the anger to be values that are shared by religious and secular people. All of our parents in Westernized nations raise us to hate slavery. They raise us to believe that might doesn't make right. They taught us that an authority figure, such as King George, can be wrong and should be opposed. The American story instills a wide variety of values in us that are passed along by Christians and non-Christians alike, at least in the liberal democracies.

The thing is, secularists eventually grow up to not want to make exceptions to those values. That's what must be understood about the anger of secularists. Hitchens should have said, "by endorsing your own slavery to Christ, and by saying God's might makes him right, you are spitting in the face of the fighting men who gave their lives to secure your liberty from the rule of bullying thugs. Exempting your religion from our shared values is transparent hypocrisy, giving a free pass to your an authority structure which advantages you. That is why I react with anger. I don't reject what you're saying because I'm proud. I reject it because of virtues you support, which I also support."

---

In the American multiple-personality disorder, there are two sets of values. There are values which are shared by everyone (harm avoidance, and fairness/reciprocity). Harm and fairness responses are consistent throughout all world cultures. Then there are values that don't get passed along evenly (authority, ingroup loyalty, and purity). Researcher Jonathan Haidt has found this in a neurological divide between American conservatives and liberals. In tests, when shown violations of authority, loyalty and purity, liberals lack emotional gut responses of disgust. Conservatves are more influenced by their disgust instinct, and will struggle to invent justifications with moral reasoning after the fact.

Jonathan Haidt argues from his research that these values can be expressed in ways which are constructive on the level of group psychology. The basic argument of his upcoming latest book, Righteous Mind, is that liberals should realize the way humans are like a hive and not a collection of individuals. His findings are that humans are happier in strongly-bound groups, such as families, congregations, and nations.

A grim picture indeed. For decades, I have seen authority as victimization of the weak by the strong. I've seen loyalty as favoritism, jingoism, and nepotism. I've seen purity as a sort of obsessive-compulsive handicap. I have not seen positive examples of these traits.

Worse, all three of the conservative moral intuitions are in direct competition with fairness and the avoidance of harm, because they prop up structures of injustice. To support any kind of symbiosis, Dr. Haidt has a very challenging road ahead of him. How do you respect someone else's moral system without sharing it?* Can we be happier participating in churches teaching things we don't believe? Will we be happier glued onto a family, when they are people we don't want to spend time with? If liberals take the advice of Dr. Haidt and attempt to give lip service to empty symbols, will swing voters flock to their leadership, or will they see how artificial it is?

The problem is, it will be artificial. The saluting, the flag-waving, the church attendance; progressives see though it. We see how manipulative it is, and we know how manipulative we would be if we use them. We can't just "unsee" when we find out high-level ivory-tower abstractions about the greater good of society through social engineering.

Besides, on a personal level, so much effort with so little reward makes the whole thing a source of resentment. Believe me, I know from personal experience. I don't feel what others feel. And what should motivate me to want to? I don't want to turn a little bit conservative. I was miserable in those structures and only became a happy person when I left them.

* Respect a moral system without sharing it. What does that even mean? If you think x is immoral, and I think x is moral, you think I'm immoral. Differences in moral systems constitute a lack of respect, by definition. If you think it's wrong to get an abortion, but you respect others getting an abortion, then you do not think it's wrong to get an abortion. No, it may be socially cohesive for you to say that, but you are contradicting yourself. No you don't think it's immoral. No! You don't! You don't. Do you? Then you don't respect them. No you don't. What? How can you say that? I... Well yes, there is that, but... will you let me finish? I'm hanging up now.

Replacing auto suspension is not trivial, but easier than I ever anticipated. Some cars can use what are called "quick struts", a shock absorber that is pre-assembled so that you don't have to use a special compression tool. That's what le_bebna_kamni's car uses. Removal and installation are straightforward. We hit some obstacles on the first one, but it was just a matter of time.

blastedbill came over and helped me finish up my car repair so it would start. Nothing worked until he tapped on the starter with his wrench. Now we're going out to a car parts retailer to pick up struts for le_bebna_kamni's car. It has been a rough week, neither of us with working vehicles, but I'm glad to say I have transportation now, and just in time too.

Ferrett Steinmetz deleted his Livejournal because the commenting there got so ugly. Several of you are upset about that. Can we agree it was a needless over-reaction? He could have just screened comments or locked comments.

This is the same guy who, the last time the drama llama came around, decided to stay home from ConFusion and Penguicon. This remedy had the effect of punishing the only people who weren't dicks to him. Nobody who was mad at him went to those events. He is establishing a history of responses to being yelled at on his LJ, in which he punishes and rewards precisely the wrong people.

And that is where we ought to leave it-- no more Ferrett blog. The dicks "win", but you know what they say about winning on the internet. Oh well. There's no shortage of entertainment on the web, and we don't need another emo variety. It is inconceivable that, for instance, John Scalzi would ever do this, because he's classy. Ferrett would, because his relationship to his readers is entirely too personal, like a scorned lover.

Unfortunately, that is not where we're leaving it. The problem is, it's working. He's got you blogging in his favor, because he chose a method that rewarded his enemies but targeted you, those who actually like him, to be the ones who pay.

Not only does this video encapsulate why I don't like working for clients, it also resembles several confrontations over badge rates during the Penguicon weekend.

The board game "Hey! That's My Fish!" is now available as a downloadable Wii Ware. Attention rbradakis and sheryl67. Big B and Little B may be interested to know.

As for me, I prefer the look and feel of the physical version, but at $8, this costs considerably less than the $30 wood and cardboard game.

Relevant gameplay begins in 1:53 of the video.

I'm feeding the pets of a friend for a few days out of town. Only Linux can access the internet at this location! When I boot the laptop into Windows XP, it says it's made a connection to the network, but every browser I use fails to see any websites. My laptop has always had this problem here. I have to boot Windows to play games or use my art software, but boot Linux to use the internet. Any suggestions?

At the party on Saturday, K.T. handed out pudding shots. I normally avoid most alcohol, especially strong kinds, but I ate a pudding shot. I'm not sure what it had in it.

Not long after, I became perceptibly funnier for several minutes. This is the first time I have noticed this effect from alcohol.

Explanation #1: In the past I've braced myself when I sampled a drink. I would say "I just drank alcohol. Here it comes! What's going to happen?" Then I would become de-energized, distant, and withdrawn. This time I just ate the pudding and paid all my attention to the actual social environment.

Explanation #2: Going completely alcohol-free until age 29, and drinking almost none of it since that time, may have protected against the normal effects of alcohol. It is possible that my brain is now becoming acclimated to alcohol so that it will start to have the effects that other people report as a social lubricant.

Explanation #3: It was nothing. Correlation is not always causation. The same thing happens to me without alcohol.

How much is this worth investigation and experimentation? Should I begin to always pack a tin of liquor with me and take a swig of it before every social engagement? Or is that a really bad idea?

Metafilter commenter grumblebee explains why not to assume you have infallible intuition about the thoughts of others. I am copying it here.
( Read more... )
Life is better without the company of those who are adamantly certain they have Superpower Social Skills. We all have valuable hunches, but that's all they are. Hunches. Probabilities. It's healthy to remind them of that from time to time.