dsgood

"Synesthesia is the general name for a related set (a 'complex') of various cognitive states. Synesthesia may be divided into two general, somewhat overlapping types. The first, which I sometimes call "synesthesia proper', is as described above, in which stimuli to a sensory input will also trigger sensations in one or more other sensory modes. The second form of synesthesia, called "cognitive" or "category synesthesia", involves synesthetic additions to culture-bound cognitive categorizational systems. In simpler words, with this kind of synesthesia, certain sets of things which our individual cultures teach us to put together and categorize in some specific way – like letters, numbers, or people's names – also get some kind of sensory addition, such as a smell, color or flavor. The most common forms of cognitive synesthesia involve such things as colored written letter characters (graphemes), numbers, time units, and musical notes or keys. For example, the synesthete might see, about a foot or two before her, different colors for different spoken vowel and consonant sounds, or perceive numbers and letters, whether conceptualized or before her in print, as colored....

"Synesthesia is additive; that is, it adds to the initial (primary) sensory perception, rather than replacing one perceptual mode for another...." Sean A. Day
http://www.daysyn.com/Definition.html

"The new political coalition which now controls much of the Republican party is one of Americans who simply want to be left alone by the government. They are not asking the government for others' money, time, or attention. Rather, they want to be free to own a gun, homeschool their children, pray, invest their own money, and control their own destiny." Jacket copy: Grover Norquist, Leave Us Alone; HarperCollins, 2008.

There are several problems with this. First, they don't want the government to leave OTHER people alone. They want the government to keep people from doing things they disagree with; for some, this includes practicing religions they disapprove of.

Second, some do ask the government for others' money. And I haven't heard of any refusing to accept money or services paid for by taxes on other kinds of people.

This kind of disconnect isn't unique, of course. There are progressives who want a return to the past; libertarians who demand stricter laws; etc.

"We are as gods, and might as well get good at it."

Saturday September 24, 2011. EXCO (Experimental College) had an open house to kick off their Fall class schedule. EXCO's mission is free classes to empower the people. It was being held at the Minnehaha Free Space.

I'd been meaning to check out both EXCO and the Free Space; and it wasn't too far from me. Besides, contact with anarchists restores my faith in government.

There were only a few people. Except for a couple of tweens/early teens, they all seemed to be in their early to middle twenties.

The Minnehaha Free Space has a respectable lending library, which includes several shelves of sf and fantasy. It also has a computer available for public use. And much anarchist and generic-radical-left literature.

I found myself thinking about what radical-left ideologies of the future (a century or more from now) might be like.

[Link]
Culturomics 2.0: Forecasting large-scale human behavior using global news media tone in time and spa
http://www.uic.edu/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/3663/3040 (via shareaholic)
Culturomics 2.0' forecasts human behavior by supercomputing global news

CHAMPAIGN, ILLINOIS, September 6 – A paper published yesterday in the peer-reviewed journal First Monday combines advanced supercomputing with a quarter-century of worldwide news to forecast and visualize human behavior, from civil unrest to the movement of individuals. The paper, titled "Culturomics 2.0: Forecasting Large-Scale Human Behavior Using Global News Media Tone in Time and Space," uses the tone and location of news coverage from across the world to forecast country stability (including retroactively predicting the recent Arab Spring), estimate Osama Bin Laden's final location as a 200-kilometer radius around Abbottabad, and uncover the six world civilizations of the global news media. The research also demonstrates that the news is indeed becoming more negative and even visualizes global human societal conflict and cooperation over the last quarter century.

Saturday August 27, 2011. Morning thought: writing system based on sign language, rather than spoken language. (In a world where spoken language is only used by the blind.)

***A neighbor had put out free stuff on the curb. I got an office chair, better than what I'd been using.

***To Midtown Farmers Market.

Decided to look around Savers thrift store. On the way, saw a kid with this tshirt slogan: "Parents for sale Buy one, get one free."

Leaving, I saw birds eating pizza. (Sparrows, I think. I don't know what flavor pizza.)

***I'm now on Diaspora as dsgood@diasp.org.

Tuesday August 23, 2011. Getting over whatever I'd been down with for the last few days.

***To the food shelf at Minnehaha United Methodist Church.

***"We’re offering a $15 discount on our Working Naked webinar because we want to make sure you learn how to be more productive while working out of a coffee shop, your home office, or wherever you set up shop."

I don't know of any clothing-optional coffee shops in my area.

Wednesday July 13, 2011 Idea: US House of Representatives elected from equal-population (one million) districts, with no regard for state boundaries. Unlikely to ever happen.

Sparked by: In Leigh Brackett's novel _The Long Tomorrow, the United States has become the United Counties. Considering how many counties there are in the US, the national legislature would be unwieldy.

***Toddler teeshirt "Troublemakers Union."

***To Waite House, to pick up NAPS commodities. (Nutritional Assistance for Seniors; I suspect the P stood for "Program" at one time.)

First, I got food from the twice-monthly produce distribution. The amount of food available varies; one time, Waite House had nothing. This time, there was a good deal.

***I'd seen a poster offering info on "libertarian socialism" at http://www.anarchistfact.org. Looked it up.

Short summary: there are two essential components to anarchism: abolition of government, and abolition of capitalism. Anarcho-capitalism is a contradiction in terms. And the Pope of capitalism is the Antichrist -- err, the people who've hijacked the term "libertarianism" are evil, or at best misguided.

It seems to me that the state preceded capitalism by several thousand years. And government preceded the state by at least a few tens of millenia.

***"I don't want to be normal. I want to be healthy."

***Met with my ACA sponsor.

Happy Birthday, theferrett!

Some time between 19 and 30, you'll realize that today's high school kids have ghastly taste in music.

Around 40: Women's fashion magazines will feature nostalgia; clothing allegedly recreating that ancient historical period when you were growing up.

Around 50: There will be historical romances set in the kinder, simpler time when you were growing up.

And there will be political nostalgia for that time. A time when American politics was more civil; an era of bipartisanship.

Happy Birthday, twistedchick!

Saturday June 11, 2011 Neighborhood sale. Two yard sales on my block, less than last year.

***To the Uptown Lunds for MnSpec (Minnesota Speculative Fiction Writers Meetup.) Lunds is an upscale supermarket, so it has a good selection of food samples. I snacked on samples, then bought food for the Meetup.

The Meetup was smaller than usual; five people. I suspect being on Saturday rather than the usual Sunday had much to do with this.

Scheduled topic: Open reading. Two people read. Some discussion of their stories, and then conversation.

I worked out background and other stuff for "Down Among the Sane Men." Listening to writers read their work stimulates me.

(Note: I'm not going to work out the complete background. There are two planets, several hundred years of future history, intelligent nonhumans.... And it's a short story.)

***Afterwards, shopped at CVS pharmacy.

On to Pilgrim Lutheran School's bag sale. I found enough things I needed/wanted to fill a bag.

And then home.

***The fireworks season is starting.

***Divinity placed under arrest

MILITANT atheists will be delighted by a Google news alert about a "dangerous god seized by police in Gipsy Hill". This was Google's headline on a story credited to the Streatham Guardian, which covers the neighbourhood of that name in south London.

A few more operations of that kind could save all sorts of trouble in various parts of the world, some might think... if only the story had not been downgraded to mere canine custody in the Streatham Guardian's own coverage of it.
New Scientist http://is.gd/7mtZ5L

Tuesday May 31, 2011 Montreal, May 30, 2011 — Misconceptions about the Church of Satan abound. For many people, anything with the word Satan is synonymous with evil, conjuring up images of gory offerings and babies bred for sacrifice. Nothing could be further from the truth, says Cimminnee Holt, a graduate student from Concordia University's Department of Religion, who has published a new study "Death and Dying in the Satanic Worldview," in the Journal of Religion & Culture.

Her unraveling of the myths and distortions surrounding the Church of Satan shows it to be a law-abiding, atheistic new religious movement, thriving on the margins of society....

Upsetting people's expectations was, no doubt, what founder Anton Szandor LaVey intended when he first announced the existence of the Church of Satan in 1966. A showman with an aggressive public persona, LaVey liked to shake up the status quo. And how best to trump convention than to adopt a name that suggests devil-worship but really means adversary in Hebrew?
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2011-05/cu-sft053011.php

***Prison Vouchers Sasha Volokh May 31, 2011 12:33 pm

In this Article, I invite the reader to indulge in a thought experiment. What would the world look like if, instead of assigning prisoners to particular prisons bureaucratically, we gave them vouchers, good for one incarceration, that they were required to redeem at a participating prison?
http://volokh.com/2011/05/31/prison-vouchers/#more-46731

***To the food shelf at Minnehaha United Methodist Church.

As always, there were unusual optional items. I passed up the canned squid pieces.