HELL YES.

That's all. Have a nice day.

Okay, I give in:


Get your own valentinr

Okay, wow: the student paper at PSU, which normally is, well, a student paper - it publishes boring editorials on budget issues, and the other day misspelled "restructure" as "resturcte", causing me to tear out the offending headline and tape it on their door - just got a pretty juicy story.

No, let's rephrase that: a completely fucking crazy, over-the-top incident.

Since their website isn't working right, I found it cached in Google-land (complete with bickering in the comments) and repost here for your reading pleasure:

Professor banned from teaching following verbal confrontation
PSU econ professor accused student of trying to incite violence and of spying

By Virginia Vickery and Theodora Karatzas

A tenured Portland State economics professor is currently suspended from teaching after he publicly accused a student during a class lecture of being an FBI informant and of trying to sell guns to students.

Professor John Hall, during his 2 p.m. “Economics 445/545: Comparative Economic Systems” class on Jan. 14th, verbally harangued student Zachary Bucharest for nearly half an hour, according to students in the class.

Hall, who has taught at PSU for 24 years, began the class with a lecture relevant to the course material but about halfway through the two-hour long class, he began to describe his experiences with law enforcement in places including Eastern Europe, according to a student who wished to remain anonymous.

Hall claimed to have been surveilled at times throughout his life and then told the class that an FBI informant and agent provocateur was in their midst. Hall said this person served as a sniper in the Israeli army and called him a killer with access to a personal arsenal.

He then pointed at Bucharest and identified him as the informant in question, according to the unnamed student.

Bucharest, a student at PSU since the fall of 2006 and the current chief of staff for ASPSU, sat silently throughout the ordeal, according to students in the class.

( There's more... )

Summary of the pertinent points from the rest of the article, in which the plot thickens: the student really WAS in the Israeli Army (which drafts everyone in the country, so that's not much information) and the comments have some controversy about whether or not this dude has a concealed carry permit. The instructor is banned from campus and everyone in his class gets a refund. The student has got a lawyer.

Don't have any more solid information, or know either party, etc, but... whoa, dude.

For one week, gothic designer Kambriel (who's done stuff for Amanda Palmer!) will be donating 30% of proceeds from her one-of-a-kind item sales (including some absolutely awesome shawls, chokers and cravats and a few unique coats) to assist with the medical expenses of Phoenix Marie Paris, aka lacy_b_timeless, who has been going through some harrowing problems and needs life-saving treatment. Click links to find out more. You can also donate straightaway.

...to the T.S. Eliot quote "Looking into the heart of light, the silence." (The one I've been saying I want to get tattooed but only once I have something about speaking or writing to tattoo against it.)

It's another quote, from Four Quartets:
"Words, after speech, reach
Into the silence. Only by the form, the pattern
Can words or music reach
The stillness"...

It's hard to separate from the rest of the stanza, but I am loving this stanza so hard right now.

So I've been musing on this quote and the concepts it references. I have decided I am more or less OK with the fact that it's a reference to a particular part of a monotheistic tradition that isn't mine, because the "In the beginning, there was the Word" part is something I'm totally willing to keep. It plays well with my own interpretations of the Cosmos.

And accordingly I've been looking up the quote and seeing what other people have made of it, which led me to this article on the metaphysical significance of voice, which is full of win:

"Sound, wrote Aristotle, is a kind of pathos, a suffering. The air is battered, stretched, percussed when there is sound. The voice never simply appears, but is expressed, its shape formed out of resistance. What resists the voice? The heaviness, the reluctant inertia of things, the world’s weary wish to hold its peace. The voice must overcome this lethargy deep down things. It is a striving, and a disturbance: it subjects the world to strain."

And there's more, and it's really fascinating.

"If it is true of human beings that language enables us to be where we are not, and prevents us from ever being anywhere but beside ourselves, then it is the voice that stretches us out between here and elsewhere. One cannot be fully 'here' unless one is silent; one cannot vocalise without being 'there' as well as here, without being drawn out into the ambivalence of being here and there at once."

*incoherent squeeing*
THIS ARTICLE, IT IS PORN FOR MY BRAIN.

And

"...the action of voice seems to be signalled in words that testify to the magically soliciting reach of language: invocation; evocation; provocation; revocation."

(Another quote I am considering is Laurie Anderson:

This long thin line. This song line. This shout. This tightrope made of sound.)

You know you want to:

The Doctor Who Kinkmeme lives. Go write porn in it!

This has been a public service announcement. Have a nice day.

I've had the eerie Bat for Lashes cover of I'm On Fire playing in my head most of the day, and am at the moment itching to converse with someone who is, at the moment, on the other coast and asleep.

In short, highly splibby.

But I have ice cream. And hilarious chemistry anecdotes. The war stories in the comments are the best part.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nYMSXV8eT0w

Now bed.

... the device. You know, the one that I haven't ever bought, because nothing I've seen is exactly right.

E-ink is close: I can actually see myself reading books on such a thing. But I decided that rather than buy a Kindle, I'd wait for something which has the following functionalities:

* allows me to read books
* allows me to write them

That, and just that - but I'm really particular. Touchscreens are no good for writing, and normal displays are no good for reading. The Spring Design Alex is a near-miss: it looks like I could effectively run word-processing software of some sort on it, but... there doesn't seem to be a way to connect a full-size keyboard; it doesn't claim to have either bluetooth or USB receiver capability (although one can connect it to a normal computer via USB, I'm talking about connecting peripherals to the device itself.) I have pretty large hands and need a real keyboard.

So here's the Notion Ink Adam, and it seems to actually not suck! They'll be out in June. I haven't seen one in person yet, but it looks like it's worth waiting for. The projected ticket price is quite low, and it has a nicely readable display and a touchscreen. I don't know whether its USB capabilities include connecting peripherals, but it has bluetooth capability - meaning that I could connect a bluetooth keyboard.

It also slices and dices and plays movies and does the dishes, but I don't bloody care. I've been waiting years for something that allows me to comfortably read and write, all in one piece. If it can give me both of those things in a way that cooperates with my idiosyncrasies, I am willing to shell out for it.

They are *claiming* to be releasing this guy in June for $325. Beats me whether they actually will, but if it's as good as it looks, it's worth easily up to one and a half times that to me. My only concern is that it's also claiming that it's going to be a phone. I already have a phone and don't need a new one, and I certainly don't want to change service providers for some bullshit contract requirement. Let's hope I can get it without the clunky ankle bracelet.

Thanks to heron61 for link-digging on this one.

From a Chinese blogger, Jenny Zhu, on Google's response to China - and China's response to Google. I'm quoting about half the post here, because it sent shivers down my spine:

"In my humble observation, this might pan out to be an crucial event that could shape China’s history by awakening its young, fledgling civil society.

(...) We want to believe that our government would one day realize its strategies have to change in the 21st century even when it has repeatedly made authoritarian and outdated decisions with regards to the web and many other issues. We might even have fervently defended our government when it is criticized or ‘attacked’.

(...) Many of us are ambivalent at best about issues like free/speech, human/rights and censorship, because we don’t know going against the establishment would be the best way to bring about change in China. And frankly, many of us are disengaged from politics because we don’t have the courage to pay the price.

But today, a company who has brought us a fresh way of thinking and outstanding services is forced to pull out from China. Unlike, to be honest, the detachment and ‘how we go again’ sentiment we feel when people are shouting ‘free XXX’, we actually feel a personal stake in it... Google is on the right side of history. I am bringing flowers to them."

This. This is a voice like the real voices I have heard. Hot damn.

Really bad medical decisions made by family for a trans woman in a coma. An angering story; very scary stuff. I have no idea what to say about this except inarticulate rage, but I am posting it to boost the signal.

( Cut for End of Time spoilers. )

Okay, this is a nice one:

If I were a summonable monster, how would you summon me? (Include items to lure monster-me and method for said fell ritual.)

... I cannot wait until enough people have seen the ep to allow me to make/use a bunch of Timothy Dalton icons without fear of spoiling anyone.

Here's a generally non-spoilery one that I guess I'll stick with until a certain degree of common knowledge is achieved.

(Comments open for spoilers, speculations, and remarks on the awesome; if you don't want them, don't click.)

Well. I liked it. I even loved some large percentage of it. Not least because it was very kind - not what I was expecting from RTD at all. Mostly, under the cut, I will speculate more than I opine.

( cut for spoilers and theories )

Most of the links in this post are adult-rated in one way or another.

I wrote: Side Bets and Selfishness, a fun little piece of Merle/Luke slash from the second Amber novels, synopsis of: If you can't get into your best frenemy's head, maybe it's best to try getting into his pants.

I got: Signal to Noise, by kenaz, based on the Thomas Dolby song "Airwaves", an incredibly well-written, poignant dystopian piece... The author got my request by pure chance: there must have been some tiny amount of time after Madness opened and before the other gift story written for me was up, somehow. I mean, I really don't know how my request got kicked there, but both of us are really glad it did: both the author and I really, really wanted this to happen and had a long fascination with the song and its Cold War atmosphere. Storygasm. Read this thing; you don't need any background for it, though it's good to hear the song.

Then there was Such a Pretty Pair, by the_rck, a story about Prince Brand of Amber pre-series... I love it, and it gets something very right about the Amberites and what they are. I love little slices of life about this character. Yay.

I read: Several others, but the most memorable was this - Just The Way it Works, an exquisite (and explicit) piece of slash for the Gentleman Bastard Sequence (Lies of Locke Lamora etc) that gets the voices just right.

Okay, next post will have Doctor Who babbling.

( Just a quick note. )

More details later. But: I got not one but TWO Yuletide fics. One about Brand of Amber, and the other an elaboration on the Thomas Dolby song Airwaves. Both really fantastic.

AND the third fandom pairing I'd requested was written in for other recipients, so I got ALL THE FAN FICTION I WANTED FOR CHRISTMAS. Squee!

Now, I really need to be going to bed. Breakfast in less than seven hours. But OMG! Yay!

But I got A's (straight-up A's, no minuses) in everything except organic chemistry, in which I got a B. (A's include the lab for said class, by the way - due to an excellent TA, who I think I've enthused about here before.)

Via paradox_puree: SSRIs work not because they flood the brain with serotonin, but by causing the growth of new neurons. I already knew the majority of the stuff in here, but the article goes fairly into depth - and on page 3 there's something I don't think I knew: they've got a drug in testing that may reverse Parkinson's disease. (This is something I've been worried about ever since I found out ADD and Parkinson's are both connected to defects in a particular dopamine transporter gene; my paternal grandmother had Parkinson's, which tells me I may be at risk, a few decades down the line. So it's great to know that someone out there is already cracking that problem.)