Timewaster's Guide Archive

Is this WorldCon? I haven't heard anything about it. It's rather early, isn't it? (And hey, if I went, it would mean we'd have to have a birthday celebration for me on the 7th. )

Was this what Dan was teasing me by not telling me? When you and Dave were in town you were going to tell me and I think the conversation derailed and we forgot to bring it up again. I saw the news first thing when I opened up my email this morning. (Dang keyboard died and it took all morning to replace. This is on my work computer. I think I have bad luck with keyboards.)

At any rate, this is very cool news indeed. Congrats!

Heh. Does that cat belong to anyone we know, or is it just an image you found on the web? It's awesome. And a cute kitty!

One of the commenters on my blog thread on this topic put the books in a perspective that I find I prefer to look at them: This is a fantasy world of parallel worlds. What if, in this world, Lucifer won the War in Heaven and became the "Authority," the being in this world that set itself up as God? (Note that the overall message of this trilogy is that agency is essential, and I think that is a principle few would disagree with.) Then overthrowing this "Authority" would be essential for life to be worth living. To quote the commenter, "If, on the other hand, [my kids] think that the God Pullman describes is the God they learn about at church, then I need to do a much better job at teaching them who God is."

There are ways of looking at Pullman's work that doesn't include deciding that it's the worst kind of literature ever and that no kid should be exposed to it. And then perhaps enforced censorship could be pulled out of the discussion.

Yeah. This is tortoiseshell: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tortoiseshell_cat. It's a form of calicoism, and mostly only prevalent in female cats because it's an X-gene thing (though some rare male cats might express it if they're XXY). Though interestingly enough, it looks like we're both right: this is a dilute torty: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Dilute_tortie_tabby_cat_-_Sophie.jpg.

The gene expression seems to be closely related, though--looking at this image (poor squashed kitten!) tiger cat and tortoiseshell often come in the same families of cats (which matches my experience--we've had calicoes and torties for years growing up, and there was always a tiger cat in the litter).

But the 000000 cat is brown/tortoiseshell...

That's a tiger cat, not tortoiseshell (stripes, not spots). If I had time this morning, I could photoshop a picture of Tildrum into that spot. (Tildrum is my all-black cat.)

Heh, sorry. Haze of sinus infection=not paying all that close attention. And actually, I'm not sure I knew the difference before today anyway!

I think this essay pretty much sums up how I feel about it. I think the power thing in book 7 is the more powerful of the motivations, but adding the homosexuality as an added layer to the character.

(Note that I think that Rowling does, indeed, think that there is no moral issue with homosexuality. However, the depiction of Dumbledore in the books in no way implies an attempt on her part to 'subvert' your children or endorse homosexuality. If I were to depict an LDS person in a book, it would not be an attempt to convert people to my church, it would simply be an attempt at representing my world as I see it.)

The problem is that a lot of LDS people believe that the depiction of an LDS character should become a way to proselyte, which I feel means they really ought to be writing personal essays for the Ensign rather than fiction. Yet there's a whole industry of books built on this premise (not to say there isn't some fine LDS fiction out there, but the ones I consider fine tend to forget the preaching and just tell a good story).