Some great ways to be non-productive

Today I got myself addicted to two new games. Well, re-addicted to one, newly addicted to another. The new one is this, a simple but very entertaining game where you can explore variation by mutation in flowers. Or, to put it more simply, where you can breed a flower to look how you want it to. There's a button that says "evolve-o-matic" where it will randomly select which traits get passed on. It's really neat to just let it run, and see what you get. Given that I've been arguing with creationists (and others who merely "doubt" evolution) recently, it amused me. Creationists always seem to make the mistake of thinking that evolution is a random proceess, and that's one of the big hangups they have-- they don't believe that randomness can 'create' the diversity we see in life. But evolution is not random-- there are environmental pressures that determine what traits get selected for. It is, in fact, far LESS of a random process than the whims of a divine creator. Anyway, this simple little simulator-- that IS random. There are no environmental pressures selecting for any particular traits, and so it will come up with different results every time you run it. If, however, you step in, you can play the role of those environmental pressures-- in a dry environment, plants with smaller blossoms do better, because they do not have the resources to sustain larger blooms, so you can select for smaller flowers, and in that way direct the evolution of the result. I thought it was neat, anyway.

The other one is a viciously addictive, not so little, surprisingly complex game called Dwarf Fortress. It's been in development for about a decade, and is coded entirely by I think two people. It has no graphics to speak of-- ASCII characters make up everything in the game, with a lowercase 'c' representing a cat and an uppercase 'E' representing an elephant, and various symbols creating the landscape and structures-- but it has a fascinatingly complicated AI.

The point of the game, in Fortress mode, is to build, defend, maintain, and turn a profit with a fortress. You begin with seven dwarves and a cart full of resources. You have to carve out a fortress, build farms, workshops, living quarters, and defenses. Several times a year merchants will arrive, so you can trade goods you have produced for supplies you need, and several times a year a new batch of migrants will arrive, the number depending on how well your fortress is doing. You will also have an increasing number of attacks, as years go on, from kobold thieves to armies of goblins, from wild animals in the outside world to cave spiders in the depths, and if you delve too deeply you can awake the forces of Hell. Your dwarves can starve or go mad from lack of alcohol, they can drown or burn in lava, they can fall down wells or walk into traps. There are a seemingly infinite number of ways to lose, and there is no way to win. As anyone who plays the game will tell you, "losing is fun!"

But the real fun, for me, is in the dwarves themselves. They each have names, relationships, likes and dislikes, a randomly generated (and surprisingly detailed) physical appearance, things they are good at and things they are not so good at, and they will adopt pets, form new friendships and relationships and, much to the player's frustration, choose which tasks they want to do. You cannot control them. You can toggle the skills that are active-- if, say, your miner won't stop carrying rocks, you can turn off the rock hauling skill, and he will stop doing that. But you cannot tell them what to do. You can create tasks, but they will decide which to do when. The miners will carve out everything you have designated to carve, but they will do so in odd patterns. If you pay attention to what they do, when given options, you can get a surprisingly clear picture of their personalities. I had one who adopted every cat in the fortress. If you set them to engraving, some will have favorite subjects-- I've seen dwarves obsessed with cheese, for example. For a simple little game, these guys are incredibly interesting.

If you're going to play it, however, I would suggest you bookmark the wiki and reference it frequently. Losing may be fun, but it helps to have a headstart. It is, as I said, a surprisingly complex game.

Also:

This picture makes me very happy.

Intolerance for Tolerance

I've been arguing on facebook a lot lately. But I really didn't think that posting this was going to start one:

I mean, really, that doesn't seem like something that would start an argument. I even had a Christian friend weigh in on it:

"If I were truely religious I would look at it from the terms of sacraficing yourself for your child. I would still take the drug regardless of religious beliefs. Take the drug, save the child. Besides in the end if there truely is God (or whomever/whatever is important in your religion) then he or she may understand and save you anyways. Your child will have a life and will be able to live. You will still live but just a different life as far as you're aware. People aren't always smart. One thing the church does teach and that is that we are all flawed in some way. We can do good things but we are also sinners. If taking the drug in order to save the child is a sin then I guess I would be a sinner. Whomever wrote the comment below is not a good person in my mind. There are some good Christians and some bad Christians."

But then a 'friend' of mine steps in, and has this to say: 

"Well to be fair, if you set someone up like that, paint them into a corner KNOWING what they believe in advance..."

I don't see how it's a set up, and thus, we start arguing. My point is that someone stating that they would not only sacrifice their child's life for their beliefs, but that they consider it a moral action to do so, is horrifying. His point seems to be that any criticism of another's beliefs is intolerance, and therefore not okay.

Between this friend and my mom, I seem to be doomed to be forever defending myself against extreme tolerance. Yes, everyone should have the right to believe however they please, and in an ideal world, their beliefs wouldn't have any impact on me. However, some people insist on making decisions for others based on their own personal beliefs-- I do not see how accepting this behavior is in line with the idea that people should be allowed to believe whatever they want. "Believe whatever you want... but it offends my belief if you want to get an abortion." Not okay. 

I'm honestly not sure why I haven't unfriended this guy. He annoys the crap out of me at least 90% of the time. 

You earned it.

So I've been watching Celebrity Apprentice this season, because there were a lot of cool people that were on it-- George Takei, Paul from American Chopper, Lisa Lampanelli, and, of course, Penn Jillette. It's been a really interesting show to watch. Mostly I've hated every person on the women's side except Lisa, and have been annoyed at their cattiness, and mostly I've loved the men, and been pleased at their professionalism. Of course, more of them men have real careers-- many of the women were singers I've never heard of or on TV shows like Real Housewives. I would expect the people who actually work for a living to be a bit more successful in a business-oriented show.

Anyway, last night, they fired Penn. I am annoyed by this, and not only becaue I like the guy and think he was one of the best (if not THE best) contestants.

The task was to create an in-store display for the Macy's flagship store to launch Mr. Trump's new cologne, Success. They had a certain amount of space to work with and about a day to do this, and one of the things they had to do was to come up with a slogan. Slogans are, of course, part of the alchemy that is successful marketing; it's hard to measure exactly what they do, but a good one will help sell more stuff. It should be short, simple, and memorable. And it should ideally both say something positive about the product and invoke positive feelings in the consumer. Marketing, like everything in the nebulous "science" of economics, is a sort of voodoo, and very hard to quantify. So the judging of which slogan (and which display in general) really depended on how the Macy's executives felt about it. However, I think that their feeling about this one was wrong; I think they made the wrong choice, and that if they make decisions like this all the time, it's no wonder they are not a store I prefer to shop at.

One team used a quote from Donald Trump, always a good call, sucking up to the boss-- except that he was not the one making the decision, but whatever. They went with "Always Trust Your Instincts." ... I don't see how that is a particularly good slogan. If I am out at Macy's around Christmas timee, looking for a gift for a man, and I see/remember a display that says "Always Trust Your Instincts", I am more likely to take that as advice, and go get the first thing I thought of, rather than the cologne in question. (I doubt that the majority of people who will be buying the cologne from Macy's are men; men who buy their own cologne shop in better stores.) Also, their display looked like a set piece from a school play-- obviously made by hand.

The team Penn was on put together a much better display, with a beautiful backlit photo and just a lot more professionalism all around. It was the kind of display that I would stop and look at, if I were shopping. And their slogan, I thought, was better: "You earned it." That says to me 'be proud of your success, treat yourself to something nice, buy this cologne.' And I think it is a much better slogan if you are buying a gift-- I got you this nice cologne, because hey, you earned it.

The Macy's executives hated it. They thought it was pompous, and not at all what their clients were looking for. And that tells me that Macy's will always be a low end department store, and will never attract the kind of clientele that spend more money.

Perhaps it is a little "pompous." But to succeed, you have to have a bit of an ego. If you are buying a cologne that has the Trump name on it and is called "Success," you're probably a little pompous yourself. You feel like you DO deserve it. Also? Huge cosmetics company L'Oreal uses the slogan "Because you're worth it." It's been pretty damned successful for them.

So Trump fired Penn, because he came up with the slogan the executives hated-- after admitting that he himself actually like it. And I get that decision, even if I don't like it. But the Macy's executives... all I have to say to them is "You're wrong, and you're stupid for thinking that."

Congratulations, Mr. and Mrs. Iske!

The wedding was today. It went really, really well. In fact, the whole day did.

We got up early, to a freshly cooked pancake breakfast, so that we could go get Jamie's nails done at 9:30. This was a somewhat unpleasant experience, as we had been out drinking last night and had slept on couches, and I woke up with the first hangover headache I've ever had. Fortunately I had water and aspirin and coffee and breakfast, so the effects faded quickly.

The nail place had been recommended by her hair stylist, and I have to say, she was very right to send us there. Jamie got a full set of real acryllic nails (as opposed to the fiberglass ones), french manicured, dried and ready to go... in twenty minutes. That's ridiculous. And they only cost $25. If I ever have an occasion to have fake nails put on, I'm going there. During this process Jamie and I finalized the timeline for the reception so we could give it to the DJ, something that had been stressing Jamie out a lot. I think she really appreciated that we could work on it while she was getting her nails done-- multitasking for the win!

Next up was the hair appointment, at 11:30. Because I was with Jamie and her mother was not, I was deputized to chronicle the event. So naturally I took pictures of every single step of the fairly elaborate hair she had. Her camera died partway through, so I took more than half of them on my phone. Gotta love smartphones-- I have with me at all times a camera good enough to take fairly good pictures, and I can instantly upload them or email them if I so desire. The hair ended up both beautiful and practically immobilized-- which is exactly what you want, in a hair style that needs to last for many hours, through various forms of stress. We had worried a bit about the fact that the dress had to go on over her head, but it ended up being fine.

Then it was back to the house, where I got myself ready while Jamie visited with family she hadn't seen in years. It wasn't long before we had to head to the church, though. We got there very early, before anyone except the pastor (more on him later), so we had a lot of down time. I painted my nails-- all of the bridesmaids had the same nail polish-- and Jamie tried not to stress over the fact that her makeup artist was apparently lost, as she had called to say they were close and then not arrived. She did finally get there, though, and once she had gotten herself dressed, she did an amazing job on Jamie's makeup. I went off to do my own makeup, and got myself all ready to go. By the time Jamie was done with her makeup we were down to half an hour before the ceremony, so I ordered her to go pee before we had to put her in the dress. In the end the timing was almost perfect-- she got into the dress about five minutes before the ceremony was due to start. It took some time because it had a corset back, which made me very grateful I've had practice on real corsets, as I am good at lacing people in fairly quickly.

The ceremony went very well. Jamie's father was able to walk her down the aisle, without even a cane. The music was lovely, and everyone looked wonderful. Brett and Jamie could have spoken louder during the vows, and Jamie got the giggles at one point, but it was good. Except for the pastor.

I hate to break up a report of such a wonderful day with this, but I can't not rant a little. Pastor Thompson is a misogynistic asshat. Jamie likes him, so I didn't say anything to her, but damn, did the man get on my nerves. It began during yesterday's rehearsal. Jamie's sister, Joey, was late. She is often late, so much so that it's become a joke among her friends and family. We were contemplating finding some way to help her get better about it, and Pastor Thompson offered a suggestion: find her a man. He said it as a sort-of joke, and if it had been the only one, I'd have figured that I just didn't like his sense of humor. But he said several other things that made me twitch as well, and I came away feeling like he was incredibly sexist. Also homophobic, which Jamie says is true, but that is neither here nor there.

Then there was today's service. The entirety of his message can be summed up thus: God has a plan for you, God made women to serve men, and marriage is more about Jesus than each other. Each of those three points make me twitch, but the first and the third I had expected. The second one, not so much. He read from Genesis about how woman was made from Adam's rib to give Adam a helper, he talked about how a wife's duty is to serve her husband, and the entire time I had to stand there and smile because the damned ceremony was being videotaped and my face would be visible. I was extremely grateful for the car ride to the reception, where I could rant to my heart's content with George and Bob and not worry about offending any of the family or friends-- this was the main pastor at Jamie's lifeling church, I have a feeling a lot of them love him. FSM only knows why.

Right after the ceremony, of course, we went to sign the marriage certificate. I got to be Jamie's witness; that makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. And then there were the pictures. Jamie had told her mom she could only have twenty minutes for pictures, which was good. Even so it was quite an experience. Between six and twelve people taking pictures in addition to Jamie's mom, so every pose had to last long enough for everyone to get a good shot. And of course there were a lot of poses. Jamie by herself (fix the train of the dress, it must be arranged perfectly!), Jamie with Brett, Jamie with her parents (fix the train, she moved!), Jamie with her grandpa, Jamie with her whole family, Jamie and Brett with her parents, Jamie with her bridesmaids (the train!), Jamie with the groomsmen (here, put your feet under the train), Jamie and Brett with the groomsmen, Jamie and Brett with his parents, Jamie and Brett with his family, Brett with the groomsmen (Jamie, you can go-- wait! We need a picture of the train!)...

Finally we managed to get Jamie back to the library we had turned into a dressing room to attempt to bustle her dress. Holy crap, it needs to come with instructions. There are two layers to bustle, one which has satin ribbons to tie and one which has strips of lace, but you have to match up the champagne colored strings with each other and the white ones with each other, and I felt very silly that I had to turn the task over to her mom because I had no idea. We did get it eventually, which meant it was time for the reception.

Upon arriving at the reception Jamie and Brett were showered with bubbles-- rather than rice or whatever else people like to use-- and then there is a buffet, build your own burritos. Then comes the toast. All of Brett's groomsmen said something, largely because they wanted to embarrass each other by making each other speak. I put a bit more thought into my own toast, saying a few things about and to Brett and Jamie, and offering this blessing:

May your mornings bring joy and your evenings bring peace.
May your troubles grow few as your blessings increase.
May the saddest day of your future
Be no worse than the happiest day of your past.
May your hands be forever clasped in friendship
And your hearts joined forever in love.
Your lives are very special,
God has touched you in many ways.
May his blessings rest upon you
And fill all your coming days.

Yes, I know, it talks about God's blessings, and I'm an atheist. But Jamie is not, nor are many of the people who were there, so it seemed appropriate. It went over very well. And that was the last big thing-- we had to do the first dance, and we had to do the bouquet toss, and the cake, but none of those were stressful. Mostly, it was fun.

I caught the bouquet. I'm not really sure why-- I just saw that it was going to be easy to catch, and so I jumped up and snagged it out of the air, without really thinking about it. There is a fantastic picture of it, where it looks like it was staged because I struck such a dancer pose in the air. And I danced, a lot. I got Bob to do the first couple's dance with me, and then I did the Electric Slide and the Chicken Dance and the Time Warp and the YMCA, and then I dragged Bob back onto the dancefloor for Rascal Flatts's "God Bless the Broke Road" because I was a little tipsy and I love that song.

All in all, it was a really good day. Surprisingly enough, this is the first time I have done a wedding and NOT had it strengthen my desire to not have one myself. In fact, I started thinking about how it could be kind of nice. Even with all the stressing and the sexist pastor and everything else, Jamie was just so happy all day. It was beautiful.

Wedding Blues

So, my best friend is getting married tomorrow. She has been super stressed (about things mostly unrelated to the wedding), and yesterday she sent me a text saying that she didn't want to do it anymore, it just wasn't worth all the stress. I've been saying that for years.

This is one of the things where, in spite of my dislike for feminists, I tend to get a little touchy. As young girls, we are taught to wish we were princesses, wish that our handsome prince will come and rescue us from whatever, wish that we will fall in love and get married and live happily ever after. As a result, most girls grow up thinking that finding a boyfriend is extremely important, sometimes more important than anything else. We're willing to break our parents rules and skip our homework and classes to be with the boy we have decided is The One, even if we're not yet old enough to drive. Happily Ever After is the goal; a handsome, wonderful, loving, doting husband and children.

I cannot think of a time in my life that I have wanted children, and the older I get, the more annoying I find the assumption that I am going to change my mind some day. Mothers are the most irritating. They will complain about how awful pregnancy is, with the aches and pains and cravings and nausea and everything else, they will complain about their little brat misbehaving or not listening or getting up too early in the morning or demanding things they can't afford... and when I ask why it is that women always say pregnancy is magical and motherhood is the best thing ever, they immediately forget everything they were complaining about and say that of course, it's a miracle, they love it! I think there's some sort of evolutionary brainwashing going on; the species would not survive if mothers did not feel this way and want more.

But more than that, the pressure to get married annoys me. At least I can understand the evolutionary reasons for women wanting children. Marriage is a social construct that I think perpetuates mostly because no one bothers to question the assumption that it is the ultimate goal. I had a baffling conversation a couple of years ago, with an ex of mine who was, at the time, still pining for me. I told him that I was perfectly happy being single, that I was content to focus on my schooling and my career. Do you know what his reply was? "Well, you'll change your mind when you meet the right guy." (I told this story to a fabulous woman, Connie Willis, and her reply amuses me to this day. She looked at me very seriously and said "No jury in the world would convict you." Priceless.)

What does that mean, anyway? That when I meet the right guy I'll forget all about the plans I have for my life? Or that I will realize that I was miserable until I met him? Either way, what the fuck?

I have met a guy that I might call the "right" one, by the way. I am not writing this because I am single and bitter about it. I got my life in order, and on a whim I went on a dating site (they're good for my ego; I'm attractive enough that I get a lot of messages), and I got a message from an intelligent, interesting young man. We've been dating for almost a year and a half now. I have not realized that I was miserable before, and I have certainly not abandoned my plans. He loves the fact that I am as ambitious as he is; if or schooling puts us on opposite sides of the country, we'll miss each other, but neither of us would ask the other to put our relationship ahead of our careers. I do intend to be with him for probably the rest of my life. I might even marry him-- largely for the tax benefits and such that come from it.

And then I look at my best friend, the girl who's getting married tomorrow. She is happy. She has spent a lot of her life trying to find a man to marry and she does want to have children. And that's fine-- she is happy. As long as people don't assume that I want that, I have no problem with it. But she is stressed to the point of getting herself sick over the wedding. If I have a wedding, I want it to be fun. Period. Maybe we'll rent out the local museum and get married under the baleful eye sockets of the T. Rex skeleton they have in the lobby. Maybe I'll wear a lab coat with my wedding dress. Maybe we'll have a TARDIS replica in the background and invite guests to come in costume. Maybe I'll have bridesmen instead of bridesmaids. Maybe I'll have bridesmaids but put them in lab coats, too. Maybe we'll serve liquid nitrogen ice cream.

But if I ever feel like planning a wedding is going to stress me out, I'm going to call it off, and just sign the papers at the court house. It's not worth it.

Ask An Atheist Day! (Part 2)

Today was Ask An Atheist day, as I mentioned in yesterday's post. It began, for me, last night, when I posted about it on facebook and invited people to ask me anything. What an interesting experience!

I had a few people ask sincere, curious questions, which are nice, and often lead to good conversations. In fact, most of the questions I was asked led to good conversations, actually. I did have some flippant questions-- my favorite being a fellow atheist asking, grinning from ear to ear, how we explain the banana. If you've not heard it, there's a very silly creationist argument that says the banana is so perfectly designed for human consumption that it must have had a creator. Which it does-- man. The banana, in its original form, is nigh inedible; through careful, directed breeding, it became the sweet, seedless fruit we know today.

But mostly I had some very good conversations, starting in a chatroom last night with a friend asking me sincerely about my beliefs. I don't recall all of the questions, but they were good ones, and it was a good opportunity to hone my answers for the challenges that came later.

When I posted to facebook, I began getting questions almost immediately, but the interesting ones started this morning. It turns out one of my facebook friends, who has a PhD in physics, is a young earth creationist. He believes that evolution would violate the second law of thermodynamics, and thus is impossible. He also believes that the laws of physics do not allow the earth or the universe to be as old as scientists claim. He posted in great detail, and so I took time to address each of his points, doing my best to remain polite (even though I kind of wanted to scream). In the end, he thanked me for my replies, and bowed out of the discussion-- I count that as a win.

Then, of course, there was the table today. I got there at eleven to begin setting up, though we were scheduled to begin at noon. We were already collecting people's contact information and answering questions by 11:45, and while there was some down time, we had a very successful day. Got the word out about the group, had a lot of people thank us for starting it, even had one guy take a picture of us and post it on reddit-- go upvote us!

Then, of course, there were the conversations, many of them with Christians. I was in class when a bible study group came by and offered printed out bible verses, which makes me a little sad, that would have been fun. But I was there when two Catholics came by a little later. The girl began by asking "Who created you?" in a somewhat mocking tone, so I gave her a flippant answer-- my parents. She kept asking "Who created them?" so I kept answering "Their parents" until someone stepped in and started talking with her about the origins of life. At this point her companion had a question of his own, so I stopped paying attention to her for a bit, but she eventually asked about saints whose bodies were supposedly perfectly preserved (we looked them up and found that they were not, and that there were perfectly legitimate reasons for the imperfect preservation that was present), that she claimed had been examined by "atheist scientists" who found no scientific reason, which meant it had to be a miracle.

At this point her companion and I were talking about martyrs. His question was simply "What about all the people who have died for God? Why would they do that if God wasn't real?" I told him that it made perfect sense for them to die for something if they believed in it, to which he replied that they wouldn't believe in it that much if it were fake. So I asked him about people who had died for things he didn't believe in... he didn't have a reply to that, and after that, the conversation was much less confrontational, and we started talking about the meaning of life, and other such philosophical quandaries. By the time he left, he seemed very thoughtful. They were both very friendly-- everyone I spoke to today was.

All in all, it was a very good day, and I am very glad that we did this.