Rigel

My usual source of caffeine is cola, especially Coke Zero, but I do drink coffee on occasion. I'm terribly inconsistent in how I take my coffee, though--If it's a good strong cup of coffee, I'll take it black. If it's weak, I'll doctor it by adding lots of sugar and cream or milk to give it some kind of flavor. I'm especially fond of Kona coffee, which is expensive stuff, but it does taste better, and I don't drink it so often that it's an unaffordable habit. The other thing I love is the Mysore Coffee at my local Indian restaurant, which is made with spices and condensed milk, and does to coffee what chai does to tea. --Rigel

Coke Zero is my favorite. I like Classic Coke too , but it contains too many calories, so I switched to diet sodas, and Diet Coke tastes funny compared to the real thing. Actually the best stuff is kosher-for-Passover Coca Cola, which is made with cane sugar rather than corn syrup, but you can only find it in the Spring. It comes in specially marked bottles and is only sold in areas where there are a lot of observant Jews. I also love Dr. Browns (Diet) Black Cherry Soda, and ginger beer, which is like a VERY strong ginger ale. And I like Tarkhun, which is a tarragon-flavoured soda from the Caucasus (not that I can ever get it, because you have to find an importer of weird foreign things for specialized tastes). --Rigel

Happy Birthday, Dan. You must be in the prime of your life, because 37 isn't divisible by any integer except one and itself. --Rigel

I think it depends on the specifics involved--religion can involve observances of practices or rituals (e.g., sabbath observances, dietary rules, reverence of shrines), or theologically-based opinions of behaviors (e.g., no drinking, no dancing no war-making, no slavery, forcing people to behave in certain ways or an aversion to forcing people to behave in certain ways), or simply dogmatic beliefs (trinitarianism, consubstantiation versus transubstatiationism, etc.). The extent to which you can choose to either share beliefs and practices, or appreciate your partner;s beliefs and practices without necessarily sharing in them, is part of the negotiation of any ongoing relationship. The extent to which one person requires the other partner to conform to beliefs or practices--to what extent is one prepared to compromise out of desire for the relationship without feeling coerced? I'm involved in a mixed-religious relationship, but each of our religious backgrounds is so complex that t would be difficult for me to go into detail, since we don't fall into neatly compartmentalized labels. Just some random ramblings at a very late hour for me. --Rigel

Yet another birthday wish. May the next year be even better than the previous ones! --Rigel

Add another wish for you to have a happy birthday as you add another year... --Rigel

Happy Birthday, Cap'n! (always something fishy about a Pisces, especially one who purports to spend time on the water) --Rigel

Happy Birthday Nick! Now your age is a random number. In fact, it may be THE random number. Hope your upcoming year is a good one! (Just some random thoughts) --Rigel

Maryland had an ice-storm tonight, so they kept the polls open until 9:30 pm. I'm glad I voted in the morning, because when I came home at about 8:00 pm this evening, the sidewalks in my neighborhood were very icy and slippery. I had to walk on the grass when I could, because the uneven surfaces gave me better traction than the smooth sidewalk with a slick glaze of ice. I live in a Congressional district that has a very exciting challenge going on today. Over the last few days and weeks, we've been barraged with robo-phone auto-calls and mail, almost all of it relating to the Congressional race; it was almost a surprise to walk into the school gym this morning, put the card into the computerized voting machine, and discover that--oh-yeah--you get to vote for a Presidential candidate, too (and, to be fair and complete, a county-wide school board slot and some judges also). --Rigel

"3000 years of the world's great art in 3 minutes", sometimes called the "Classical Gas Video," is 40 years old this year, and it's still mindboggling! It was created by Mason Williams; he tells the story at http://www.classicalgas.com/gasvideo.html A recreation of the original video is at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ig6e68iGU8, though it lacks the original intro panel (the title "3000 years of the world's great art in 3 minutes") and the final panel: "You are now cultured." Each image lasts about 1/12 sec, which is close to the physical limits of human perception, given the persistence of image wired into our neural circuits. And yet, at that speed, you will still recognize some of the art. You might think of it as an art history class on amphetamines. --Rigel

Tarnation is a interesting film by gay documentarian Jonathan Caouette, made for very little money using the standard software that comes with a Mac. If you'd like to see gay films from an earlier era, Boys in the Band from 1970 was one of the early gay movies (pre-AIDS) about a group of guys in Greenwich Village, New York, and Sunday Bloody Sunday (1971) involved a menage a trois in London where one of the pairs is between a gay man and a bisexual man, and is remarkable for a movie of its time because the homosexual character isn't a flaming queen, but rather a dignified doctor and fully drawn sympathetic character. You might also look into the films of gay director Gregg Araki. --Rigel

Happy Birthday! Now when I was but a sprout, the youthful culture used to shout "Don't trust anyone over 30!" But you're probably still trustworthy. Along with all the aged hippies who used to shout that stuff, and who are now on their way to their Medicare appointments. --Rigel

Never having been a smoker, I can't and won't offer advice. However, as someone who lost one smoking parent to lung cancer and the other to emphysema and saw first-hand a couple of ways to die I wouldn't have chosen for myself, I can and will pray for your success in kicking the habit. Best wishes to stay strong when temptation arises--that's not a matter of luck; it's a matter of will-power. "I can resist everything except temptation." --Oscar Wilde. --Rigel

Barbados/Caribbean accents! And you need to be much more specific than just "British" or "American." Back in the days when I lived in the vicinity of Boston, Massachusetts, we could distinguish at least a half-dozen distinctive local accents with the city and its immediate suburbs. Local British accents are even more so. "Simply phonetics. The science of speech. You can spot an Irishman or a Yorkshireman by his brogue. I can place any man within six miles. I can place him within two miles in London. Sometimes within two streets."--Henry Higgins [Pygmalion, by George Bernard Shaw, later adapted into My Fair Lady]. --Rigel

I'm of the age cohort where I had too many friends who died of AIDS--a couple of dozen at least. If hadn't been closeted enough to be celibate, I could well be dead now, too. I did a lot of work in the late 80s and early 90s covering and publicizing the development of drugs for HIV/AIDS, following each promise with great hope and each failure with some despair, though there were lots of dead-ends in the development of what we've got today. While still not curable, at least it's become treatable, not that I'd wish having to be disciplined enough to follow the required regimens on anybody I loved. But I do have friends who are on those regimens, and I'm grateful that they are still alive. Y'all take care, now, y'hear? --Rigel (thinking tonight about Bob, Bill, John, Burr, Jere, ..., ..., too many others to list.)

Wonderful idea, and great singing. One of my Hanukkah presents was a CD called "Cries of London" with street cries of London turned into choral compositions by the likes of Orlando Gibbons (1583-1625) and Thomas Weelkes (1576-1623). These complaints are such natural extensions of those cries thematically that they could have been on the same CD. I enjoyed Helsinki (in Finnish), Jerusalem (in Hebrew), Canada/As It Happens (in Canadian), Gabriola Island (ditto), St. Petersburg (in Russian), and Melbourne (in Australian). Universal complaints mixed with local references. Many of them are well sung, even more are cleverly written. --Rigel

I used it before, and would probably use it again. Chat has an immediacy that forums don't possess, and for shy people like me it's perfect. I'm reticent to post unless I have something useful to say, but a chat room loosens me up and lets me participate with phatic conversation until real ideas kick in. --Rigel

I remember Howdy Doody (and Buffalo Bill), but it may have been the late, great Minnie Pearl of Grand Ole Opry fame who started her performances with a Hoooow-DEE (accent on the second syllable, which was up in tone almost an octave), who popularized the greeting.

Another proposal is to figure out a wonderful, rural tourist destination that's off the beaten track (read: inexpensive) and still fascinating. Some examples: the Laurel Highlands of Pennsylvania (Ohiopyle, Fallingwater), the mountains of West Virginia, a historical settlement like New Harmony, Indiana, or Cripple Creek, Colorado, the volcanic reaches of inland Oregon. Or visit a ski-resort or the beach off season. Affordable, interesting, and we'd have the place mostly to ourselves..

The problem with that is that the logic taught through philosophy is based on the woefully inexact medium of language. Paradoxes don't exist in nature, they don't exist in mathematics. It is only when you apply language to things that a paradox can exist. :king: Dr. Mr. Snow "Snoopy" Dog That's why I studied Wittgenstein, or even better, J.L. Austin, who dealt with the inexactitude of language and the need to be specific, in order to perform logic using plain language. Let me recommend "Three Ways of Spilling Ink," which is a damn fine entertaining read even if you're not a philosophy major. He talks about the differences between doing something deliberately, doing it intentionally, and doing it on purpose--though they seem to be synonyms, he carefully distinguishes the nuances between them, and suggests a similar carefulness is needed everywhere, in order to do "plain language philosophy." And symbolic logic tries to remove the uncertainties of rhetoric by taking the thoughts beyond mere linguistic twists by assigning non-linguistic units to the various parts of the arguments. --Rigel

Philosophy can be some of the best, most practical courses you'll ever take--if you learn the rules of logic, you'll always be able to parse out when crap is being served. Read Plato, and you'll learn that the important thing isn't necessarily to have the right answer as it is to ask good questions. Or you could engage in the storytelling musings of the late James Gamble Rogers IV, troubador of the South, and a mouthpiece for his character, the philosopher Agamemnon Jones. --Rigel

I'd love to go, if my calendar permits and I don't have a conflicting concert or music festival that weekend. New York is a wonderful place, but expensive for tourists. I like Philadephia, and let me toss in the idea of Washington, DC. Actually, let me suggest a DC get-together anytime, even independent of Trebs and DK. Several of us GA regulars live very nearby and a few more within a few hours (like Philadelphia or New Jersey or Virginia tidewater). --Rigel

Congratulations on getting into UWGB. I think that as a college student, it will be okay for you to not live with your parents. It's a good thing to develop yourself as person independent from them. Give yourself permission to become your own self. And the beautiful thing is that since you'll be in the same city, your folks will be close by if you need them. (Of course, the converse is also true--you'll be close by if they need you.) It's okay if you haven't picked your major yet. The great secret of college is that you get to learn how to learn, beyond any specific content, so that in the years to come when what you've studied becomes outdated, you'll know how to update yourself. And another thing--don't let your schooling get in the way of your education. The only thing I'm not excited about is the tatoo--okay, I'm an old fuddy-duddy, but tatoos are so irreversible. You wanna make a permanent commitment to a piece of artwork? First, make a permanent commitment to a sweetie--and you'll see how fraught with tension and emotion and insecurity THAT idea can be...

I thought all the fires in California were quite dramatic, but refrained from commenting, since one shouldn't shout "Theatre!" at a crowded fire.

I can see Brandon making an appointment a few minutes before Charity is to arrive, to have the Senator meet him so he can apologize for his bandmates' wild behaviour at the party, and then when Charity shows up, invite the Senator to chaperone. Take them out for an evening of Haydn string quartets or some such. Or Brandon can simply be the unromantic date from hell. "Hi Charity! Gosh, that outift makes you look fat! Or are you just overweight? That lipstick looks really gauche, or are your lips just that way naturally. Well, lets start out with some entertainment--I've got tickets to a concert of music by Schoenberg and Webern. Let's go have a good time." Or he could discuss it with Chase.