Bluejay's Journal

12:37AM - In Austin for New Year's

I'll be in Austin from the 29th around noon to early on the fifth, with a break from the 1st to 3rd for Pallas Yule. I hope to see many of you there. Let me know when you're free.

11:36PM - Tasty pumpkin pie

• 8oz cream cheese, softened
• 1 (15oz) can pumpkin
• 1 cup sugar
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 2 eggs, slightly beaten
• 1 cup half-and-half
• 1/4 cup (1/2 stick) melted butter
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/4 teaspoon ground ginger, optional
• Probably other spices would work too.
• 2 frozen pie crusts (the recipe called for 1, but the above made too much.)

Mix ingredients in roughly the above order, then pour into pie crusts. Preheat oven to 425, cook for 15 minutes, lower temperature to 350, bake for 40-50 minutes or until knife comes out clean (which for us was around an hour and a half...). Let cool to room temperature. Apparently freezing the pie will make it separate, but you'll want to finish it in 1 sitting anyway. Top with whipped cream if you want; we forgot. The top comes out caramelized, and not looking like any pumpkin pie I've seen, but it was delicious. Sorry, I forgot to take pictures.


I also had no idea cranberry sauce was so easy to make: 1 cup water; 1 cup sugar, 4 cups == 12 oz cranberries, spices like cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, etc. Boil to dissolve the sugar, then add cranberries and simmer until the cranberries burst and the sauce gels, then let cool. Remember to save some for when the guests arrive.

9:48AM - The Passover Election

In celebrating Passover, there's a tradition of mixing sweet charoset and bitter horseradish to commemorate the sweetness of freedom combined with the bitterness of either slavery or the plagues that hurt innocent Egyptians in the process of escaping from Egypt. Last week, we had the incredible sweetness of Barack Obama's election and the awful bitterness of three more states passing anti-gay marriage legislation, especially after California's 5-month tease. We still don't know whether marriages performed during those 5 months will remain valid.

I'm also reminded of the song Dayenu, "It would have been enough". Some of the verses are:

Had he brought us out of Egypt, and not divided the sea for us, Dayenu!
Had he divided the sea, and not permitted us to cross on dry land, Dayenu!
Had he permitted us to cross the sea on dry land, and not sustained us for forty years in the desert, Dayenu!
Had he sustained us for forty years in the desert, and not fed us with manna, Dayenu!
Had he fed us with manna, and not ordained the Sabbath, Dayenu!
etc.

I've always questioned this song, since if God had brought the Israelites out of Egypt and not divided the sea, the army would have brought them right back into Egypt. But it still seems remarkably appropriate for this election. We got Obama but not gay marriage. Was it enough?

4:04PM - Barack Obama's family watching the election results

http://flickr.com/photos/barackobamadotcom/sets/72157608716313371/

9:48AM - Obama's original acceptance speech

NOBODY expects Barack Obama! Our chief strength is liberty...liberty and democracy...democracy and liberty.... Our two strengths are democracy and liberty...and opportunity.... Our *three* strengths are democracy, liberty, and opportunity...and unyielding hope.... Our *four*...no... *Amongst* our strengths.... Amongst our strengths...are such elements as democracy, liberty.... I'll come in again.

7:50PM - Election!

I voted this morning. A couple elections ago (probably still this year; we're on our third...), I signed up to be a permanent absentee voter, which means they always mail me an absentee ballot, even if I don't wind up using it. So I filled it out last night (12 state-wide propositions, 22 city propositions, 1 speaker of the house, 2 statewide offices, school board and college board, and city supervisor), and dropped it off at city hall this morning at 8:05, 5 minutes after the early voting opened today. The front people in line had been waiting 20 minutes, and the line was already to the corner. Not as bad, of course, as 3.5 hours of waiting. Cool that people are voting!

Tomorrow (and the reason I voted early), I'm waking up around 5:00am to get to the East Bay by 6:15 to talk to people standing in their lines to go vote starting at 7:00. I'll be there all day until 8:30pm; wish me luck!

I'm pessimistic about our chances; the Obama turnout surge seems likely to be concentrated in the black and hispanic ethnic groups, which tend to be more religious and so vote 'yes' more often. But I'll do what I can.

10:34PM - Successful dinner

I've got a cold, so I stayed home from work today, after which I was presented with the problem of what to make for dinner. I've recently decided that the way to learn how to cook is to do it a bunch, and finding a real recipe dissuades me from doing it, so I've given up on real recipes. So:

1. Buy an onion, a bell pepper, a carrot, a tomato, a bunch of spinach, some eggs, and some cheese.
2. Cut up the above, except for the spinach and eggs. Scramble 2 eggs; wash the spinach.
   
3. In a bit of olive oil, cook the onion and carrot until they are nearly dead. (Where by "dead", I mean soft and sweet.)
4. Add the bell pepper and cook until everything's dead. Hopefully the bell pepper, onion, and carrot arrive at deadness at the same time, although the great thing about these vegetables is that you can be off by quite a bit and it's still good. After this step, none of them will cook much more.
5. Add the tomato. Tomatoes are very wet. I didn't let all the juice boil off, but that's something to vary next time.
   
6. I added spices (black pepper, salt, basil, crushed red pepper) here. No idea if that's the right time.
7. Add the spinach. Let it do the scrunchy spinach thing.
8. Pour over the eggs. I have no idea what the right thing to do here is. I tend to stir, and scrape the cooked egg off the pan, but I wind up with very small chunks of cooked eggs, that don't really resemble what other people have cooked when they did similar things. Another thing to try differently next time.
9. Add the cheese at the very end so it just melts.
10. Pour onto a plate.
11. Eat.

It doesn't wind up looking pretty, but it tastes good.

10:09PM

W00t! They demonstrated macro-evolution in the lab: http://www.newscientist.com/channel/life/dn14094-bacteria-make-major-evolutionary-shift-in-the-lab.html

Not that this'll convince the more die-hard creationists, but it's another lever we can use.

10:55PM - Good election day

• Obama finished winning the nomination.
  
• Prop 98 (which would kill rent control) lost. http://vote.sos.ca.gov/Returns/props/59.htm
  
• Prop 99 (which prevents cities from taking your house and giving it to WalMart) won. It's not perfect—if you're a small business they can still give your land to WalMart—but it's something and will hopefully kill the other eminent-domain-reform-plus-conservative-nastiness propositions that have been floating around since Kelo vs. New London.
• SF's Prop G won, so redevelopment may finally start in the Bayview. http://www.sfgov.org/site/elections_index.asp?id=70719
  
• SF's Prop F (which would require 50% of the Bayview development to be "affordable", with no subsidy) lost, so development won't be killed off the bat. We really should have more affordable housing, but it deserves to be subsidized by the city. Prop F looked like just an attempt to prevent anything from being built.

12:00AM - New Blog

I’ve started a new blog to replace this one. Several of my old posts have migrated over there. The new blog runs on WordPress, a free blogging platform, and, more importantly, a server I control.

I had two requests, but one has been filled:

• I’m looking for a good title as Jeffrey Yasskin’s blog is a little boring. Suggestions in the comments please.
• rakksi was kind enough to make a feed at jyasskin. But please don't remove blue_jay from your friends list unless you really want to stop me from seeing your friends-only posts.

This will almost certainly be the last post from this journal. See y'all over on the new blog.

Edit: Apparently, if you comment on the syndicated blog (jyasskin), it only shows up there and not on the real blog. On the other hand, the number of comments on the real blog don't show up here. :-P I'd prefer you comment on the real blog, since that's the only place I'll see them. The link to there shows up at the top of each post.

The comments link ought to go to the real comments page when there's one available, and then LJ should subscribe to the comments feed to collect comments from there. It's not really a hard fix for LiveJournal to make, but it probably won't happen for a while.

More Edits: Since this turned out not to be the last post on this journal, I've changed its date to keep it at the top. It appears that this journal will hold more things of interest only to friends, and the other will hold more worldly topics.

1:20PM - Burning man

Well, I haven't posted here in a long while, but I figured I'd let y'all know that I'm going to Burning Man. For anyone else going, I'll be camping with the Scorpions
See y'all there.

8:30PM

12:02PM - Two Parties

Posting here as well as here (subscribe to jyasskin) so more people see it. I'm having two parties celebrating my departure to accommodate both people who work on weekends and people who work on weekdays. Both will be at Aphrodite’s. The first will be Monday, July 11, starting some time in the afternoon, and continuing until around 1:00. The second will be Saturday, July 16, after the priest salon. If you only want to come to the party, I estimate it'll start around 8-9, and again continue until around 1-2.

2:30PM

The Priest Salon will be on Saturday, July 16 at Aphrodite's, starting at 3:00 in the afternoon and continuing until people get bored some time in the evening, at which point we will begin a party to celebrate/mourn me leaving. We will order dinner, and people are welcome to bring snack-type foods.

Doc and Bran are scheduled to speak. Some possible topics are:

• Becoming a priest
• What priests do
• How priests are the same and different from priestesses
• Any other questions you can think of. If you'd like people to think about them ahead of time, you can post them in the comments.

Please invite anyone, male or female, who you think might get something out of the salon or have something to contribute. See you guys there.

12:28AM - Trying out a beard

Downside: can no longer itch my hands on my stubble.

Upside (maybe): look like a hippie. (Now where's that digital camera?)

12:40AM - Warrior isn't in the female progression

The traditional female life cycle is Maiden, Mother, Crone. Some wymyn want to add a fourth "Warrior" stage. This is silly. According to the CMA Beltaine ritual, the stages of the male life cycle are Warrior, Chieftain, and Sage. I've heard some disagreement about Chieftain, but Warrior seems pretty standard. Now, take Artemis — the "virgin huntress" — as the archetypal female Warrior. What's wrong with saying that she's acting in a male life-cycle stage? It doesn't make her any less a woman; she's just acting outside her gender's "natural" roles.

Women can be Warriors and Chieftains just as men can be Maidens and Fathers. All of these roles are worthy, whatever the gender of the person playing them. But if you're going to say that some things are inherently female, then some things must also be inherently male.

1:32PM - Ave Hermes

Last night, we went over to gypsydragon's to make banners for CMA. I noticed something on her altar and asked what the "neat magnifying glass with ears" was. She replied that it was Hermes' symbol, a mirror with wings, and that it was there to try to avoid trouble from the current Mercury retrograde. Oops.

Later that night, it fell to me to pick up opheliasavalon and funny_lil_loser and bring them over to the movie night Aphrodite's was hosting. So I started driving over to their place. I noticed that I was hitting all green lights, which never happens on that drive. Hermes is a trickster god who rules travel and communication, among other things, so at this point I started getting nervous.

When I got close to their apartment, I called to have them come down and meet me in the parking lot. "We're at Hyde Park Grill and just ordered. You were supposed to call us from Aphrodite's." Of course, I was in the car when those arrangements were made, just not listening. Things worked out in the end: they were able to get their food to go and come to the movie anyway. Hermes isn't a malicious god, but he plays excellent practical jokes.

4:05PM

From Neil Gaiman's blog: http://www.theliteracysite.com/. Go give books to poor children.

1:50PM

"Yet the shills are more welcome than ever in the nation's television newsrooms. That's because the big networks have chosen to be fair instead of objective. The reason for their choice? Being fair is easier. Rather than digging up facts and seeking out expert analysis, the newshounds can call in a couple of shills from either side of an issue to shout at each other. Doing it that way saves a whole lot of time and hard work. What's more, the anchors don't ever need to think about the issues for themselves."-- Daniel Altman on October 13th

Daniel Altman (incidentally, the author of Neoconomy: George Bush's Revolutionary Gamble With America's Future) agrees with Jon Stewart's point on Crossfire and has given it a name: "fair" versus "objective". This lets us see that Fox's tagline, "Fair and Balanced," is actually correct. They are fair and balanced, presenting someone from each side of an issue to respond to issues framed in a clearly non-objective manner.

11:27AM - My response to Microsoft

Recently, Microsoft asked me if I would be "interested in considering [them] for Full Time opportunities." This is the reply I sent back:

I probably ought to say that I am interested in Microsoft for a full time job and that I'd love to fly up to Seattle on your expense account and then string you along for weeks, using your offer to bargain with other potential employers. But I'm not that dishonest. Instead, I'll simply admit that, while Microsoft may be a very nice place to work, it's simply on the wrong side of too many issues I care about (patents, open source, competition), and until Microsoft becomes a better participant in the software ecosystem, I can't work there.

I'm putting this text in the Public Domain. That means you can copy it, modify it, or do anything else you like with it.

I realize that not everyone feels as strongly as I do about Microsoft. But if you do, when Microsoft comes asking to hire you, I'd appreciate it if you also sent them a response in this spirit. Maybe if enough of us do it, they'll finally change their ways.