Pharyngula | Porn causes tsunamis and earthquakes

It’s Friday…  The day after Thanksgiving…  Black Friday.

I’ll be spending the day safe at home, away from the crowds of rabid shoppers.

I’ve never been a big fan of shopping…  And I’ve always hated big crowds…  So I’ve never really felt the need to go out on Black Friday, regardless of how wonderful the sales might be.

Then I worked retail for a couple years…  Which really ruins the whole holiday experience.  People are real assholes when they’re out Christmas shopping.

These days, however, it’s the crass commercialism that really keeps me away.  In fact, I’d go so far as to say that I actively dislike Black Friday.  Loathe it with a kind of cold passion.

All year long you hear various financial reporting about how one retailer or another intends to make up its lagging sales over the holidays.  All year long.

Then you’ve got Hallmark and a few others doing some kind of “Christmas in July” type sale, because the few months of holiday shopping just aren’t enough for them.

And you’ve got all the aggressive holiday advertising…  Scenes of winter wonderlands and happily families getting together…  But underneath it all is the throbbing heartbeat of pointless consumption – buy, buy, buy!

Then the conservative Christians and pundits start whining about people are saying Happy Holidays instead of Merry Christmas…  And there’s a war on Christmas…  And people are trying to take away Jesus…

Honestly, when was the last time you saw somebody decorate their house for Christmas with a nativity scene?  How many of those cards at Hallmark have anything at all to do with Jesus?  How many kids care at all where the holiday came from, as long as they get good presents?

The folks waging war on Christmas aren’t the inclusive people who want to wish everyone a happy holiday…  It’s the big corporations who want to wring every last penny out of you.

Thanksgiving has always been one of my favorite holidays…

We will traditionally go around the table and each state what we are thankful for.  Folks normally express thankfulness for a loving family, a reliable job, helpful neighbors, a compassionate friend…  Things like that.

Which, for me, expresses what is truly important in this world.  Not material goods, or some intangible ever-after…  But the people we share our lives with.  The folks who help us through the hard times, and share in the good times.

It is the people that make life worth living.

So, here we are at another Thanksgiving…  The snow hasn’t really shown up yet, but it is certainly on the way.  The days are getting shorter, the nights are getting colder.  The leaves are gone, the grass is dead.  Time to huddle together as a family – us against the elements.

I’ve really got quite a bit to be thankful for, despite all the muttering and complaining I do.

I’ve got a truly wonderful wife who makes every day more joyous.  She listens to my whining and complaining…  Holds me close when things become truly overwhelming…  Offers a smile in even the most dire straits…  She’s smart, funny, witty…  All I ever hoped for and much, much more.

I’ve got a step son who, despite his distance and disinterest, is really a very good kid.  He’s bright and has a terrific work ethic, and is doing very well in his first year of college.  I’m really very proud of him.

I’ve got terrific parents.  They’re a little intimidating to be honest…  An optometrist who owns his own practice and a lawyer who’s always excelled in everything she does…  It’s a little hard living in their shadow sometimes.  But they’re really great folks.  Always there when I need them, always understanding, usually helpful.  I couldn’t ask for better parents.

I’ve got a fun and interesting sister that I don’t hear from nearly enough.  It’s funny…  Growing up I couldn’t stand her – always fighting over something.  But these days it’d be nice to hear from her more often, maybe actually visit her once in a while.

And then there’s my job…  It’s mind-numbingly frustrating more often than not.  Largely because of the folks I work with, and not the work that I do.  But it’s been a very reliable source of income for the last several years…  And the work is something that I’m interested in and fairly good at…  Any my boss really does try to be flexible and understanding when I need time off…  Frankly, I’m pretty thankful for this job.

This year is kind of weird…

Normally the dates that are significant to me fall in a more enjoyable manner.  Halloween, my anniversary, normally falls on a week day – so I take a day off to celebrate it.  My birthday normally falls during Thanksgiving weekend, so I automatically have a day off.

But, not this year.

This year Halloween fell on the weekend, and my birthday during the week.

I didn’t take any time off for my birthday…  I had a half day scheduled yesterday, but that wound up being canceled and then turned into an extra-long day.  I didn’t dare re-schedule that half-day because my boss is out of town and things are hectic enough as-is.  Oh well…

So, I ordered a nook.  It’ll serve as half-birthday present and half-Christmas present.  But I won’t actually get it until early in January.

And tonight we’ll have something special for dinner, and some cake, though it’ll be a fairly subdued celebration.  It’s hard having an involved birthday party just days before Thanksgiving.  You wind up feasted- and sugared-out before you even begin.

Slashdot | Telcos Want Big Subsidies, Not Line-Sharing

Harvard’sBerkman Centerstudy of global broadband practices, produced at the FCC’s request, is an ‘embarrassingly slanted econometric analysis that violates professional statistical standards and is insufficiently reliable to provide meaningful guidance,’ declares AT&T. The study does does nothing but promote the lead author’s ‘own extreme views,’ warns a response from Verizon Wireless. Most importantly, it ‘should not be relied upon by the FCC in formulating a National Broadband Plan,’ concludes the United States Telecom Association. Reviewing the slew of criticisms, Berkman’s blog wryly notes that the report seems to have been ‘a mini stimulus act for telecommunications lawyers and consultants.’

This is just plain ridiculous.

The only way we’re going to get widespread broadband with decent pricing is by allowing competition.  The reason the telcos aren’t rolling this stuff out is because they don’t have to.  If you’ve got a stranglehold on the local area…  A mini-monopoly…  What incentive do you have to offer better services or lower prices?  You can do whatever the hell you want!

As long as the telcos have a stranglehold on the local infrastructure, there’ll be no change.

The only way to force change is to force the telcos to share their local infrastructure.

What makes it all the more infuriating is the fact that much of this local infrastructure was originally paid for with tax dollars.  So, technically, it doesn’t even belong to the telcos – it belongs to the people!  The local governments should be charging the telcos – any and all of them – rent.  Not handing those lines over to a single company and giving them a mini-monopoly!

And now the telcos want more money…

We tried that once already.  We gave them a big pile of cash.  But there were no penalties for not delivering…  So they just grabbed the cash, paid out some nice dividends to their shareholders, and called it a day.  They didn’t deliver anything they were supposed to.

And now they want to do that again?

I’ve long enjoyed dystopian settings like those in Blade Runner, Snow Crash, Hardware, and Neuromancer.  It’s a fun setting.  Run-away technology, oppressive governments and corporations, inequality everywhere…  Plenty of room for a story to roam around.

But I stumbled across a quote from William Gibson today that made me think a bit…

“I think my world looks dystopian if you’re a middle class white guy doing reasonably well in 1993. But if you’re crouching in a basement in Sarejevo being shelled by ethnic separatists you can read Neuromancer as a real escape. There are so many places in the world today that are so much crappier than anything I’m writing about. I think my work is hardly dystopian… I don’t worry about the dystopian label too much because I think the world we now live in is already sufficiently dire and chaotic that really straight people can’t enjoy themselves anymore…. I get the postmodern sublime in the worst possible way… mingled ecstasy and dread.”

It seems to me that maybe “dystopian” isn’t a very good label for much of the sci-fi I like.

Sure there’s usually poverty, oppression, war, violence, disease, pollution, nuclear fallout and/or the abridgment of human rights, resulting in widespread unhappiness, suffering, and other kinds of pain – all hallmarks of a dystopian setting – but it seems to me that there’s also a kernel of hope or possibility in there as well.

Looking at Neuromancer, for example…  Things look pretty rough for a lot of people.  Widespread violence, anarchy, a breakdown of law and order…  Sounds like a lot of people would be pretty unhappy.

But you’ve also got a kind of digital Wild West…  A new frontier to explore, new opportunities to make money, new kinds of freedom.  And you see these little colonies and cultures springing up around the edges…  Some tied to the new technology, some of it tied to very old traditions.

And the same can be said of Blade Runner, or Snow Crash, or just about any of the other sci-fi I’ve read that’s labeled as dystopian.

There’s a lot of suffering and hardship.  A general collapse of social structures as we know them.  A shuffling around of priorities.  But the world itself, taken as a whole, doesn’t seem to be any worse-off than it is today.

…won’t be getting a nook for Christmas!

I’ve pretty much made up my mind to order a nook.  The idea was to get it as a combination birthday/Christmas present.  But I was waiting to see if I could come up with the money for the 2-year replacement plan on it.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like I’ll be getting a nook for Christmas.

All customers ordering a nook beginning today, November 20 should expect their devices to ship beginning the week of January 4, 2010.

Oh well…  I’m sure it’ll be worth the wait.