Tuesday, March 24, 2009

It's been a while

Going to iSite's anniversary party on Monday. The people I've met from there have made a great impression on me at cre8 camp and on Twitter, so I'm looking forward to it. They have a handy RSVP form on their website where you not only say that you're coming, but can tell them if there's any expert you'd like to talk to, and then adds the date to your Outlook calendar. Nice!

Also coming up- Science Pub and Interesting PDX.

I'm taking a couple days off in early April and really looking forward to it. It always seems like a person should take vacation when they have somewhere to go, but I never can afford to go anywhere. So I try to remember to take vacation anyway and just relax. I have to admit that I worry a bit about everything when I'm gone, but that's just because I take it seriously and feel a personal commitment to our projects- it's good that I worry, and good that I leave anyway.

Tomorrow we start putting together the baby board for the Portland chapter of Women in Animation- that should be exciting!

Also on Twitter, I'm late to the party, but Christopher Walken is my current favorite tweeter. He's hilarious. Someone really needs to put together an audio set, though, so you can hear him saying this stuff.

Also, shout out to some ex-Laikans who are staying in town and taking a shot at their own studio. I wish them all the best.

Monday, March 9, 2009

James P Carse- The Religious Case Against Belief


If God held all truth in his right hand and in his left hand the everlasting striving after truth, so that I could always and everlastingly be mistaken, and said to me, "Choose," with humility I would pick the left hand and say, "Father, grant me that. Absolute truth is for thee alone." - Gotthold Ephraim Lessing

[Galileo] knew, as any critical thinker would, that knowledge is corrigible, and that belief is rarely so. Open to correction himself, he had no inclination and no reason to take an immovable stand. He could not perform a heroic act like Luther's not because of cowardice but because there was nothing to stand on ... Galileo knew as well as anyone that there is no protecting ourselves from what discoveries the future brings.

We might say that we join the communitas when the questions being asked there becomes our questions.

In fact, never can we make a judgment of another with clean motives--even when such a judgment is appropriate. Evil is real. It is unmistakeably there in the world, and just as unmistakeably in ourselves.

Thursday, March 5, 2009

miscellany

A crucible is a heat-resistant container in which materials can be heated to very high temperatures.

Cre8 Camp on Saturday. To be perfectly honest, I'm feeling a little apprehensive that the event will be something of a forum for the OCI peeps. That makes it feel less organic and participant-driven than the Legion of Tech events, which is precisely what I value about them. However, I am looking forward to it.

Women in Animation stuff is happening- I've been really busy at work so haven't followed up on it as much as I keep intending to.

Still reading James P Carse and listened to his Long Now lecture last night. Really interesting, and surprisingly consistent with some stuff I was thinking way back when I studied philosophy, although, of course, much more cogent. His thinking is an interesting mix of rationality and mysticism that appeals to me.

Tuesday, March 3, 2009

Lincoln's second inaugural speech

Another amazing piece of literature.

At this second appearing to take the oath of the presidential office, there is less occasion for an extended address than there was at the first. Then a statement, somewhat in detail, of a course to be pursued, seemed fitting and proper. Now, at the expiration of four years, during which public declarations have been constantly called forth on every point and phase of the great contest which still absorbs the attention, and engrosses the energies of the nation, little that is new could be presented. The progress of our arms, upon which all else chiefly depends, is as well known to the public as to myself; and it is, I trust, reasonably satisfactory and encouraging to all. With high hope for the future, no prediction in regard to it is ventured.

On the occasion corresponding to this four years ago, all thoughts were anxiously directed to an impending civil war. All dreaded it--all sought to avert it. While the inaugeral [sic] address was being delivered from this place, devoted altogether to saving the Union without war, insurgent agents were in the city seeking to destroy it without war--seeking to dissole [sic] the Union, and divide effects, by negotiation. Both parties deprecated war; but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive; and the other would accept war rather than let it perish. And the war came.

One eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the Southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was, somehow, the cause of the war. To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union, even by war; while the government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it. Neither party expected for the war, the magnitude, or the duration, which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with, or even before, the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible, and pray to the same God; and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces; but let us judge not that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered; that of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has his own purposes. "Woe unto the world because of offences! for it must needs be that offences come; but woe to that man by whom the offence cometh!" If we shall suppose that American Slavery is one of those offences which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South, this terrible war, as the woe due to those by whom the offence came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a Living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope--fervently do we pray--that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue, until all the wealth piled by the bond-man's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash, shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said "the judgments of the Lord, are true and righteous altogether"

With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation's wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan--to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations.