Owlish Mutterings

Sword Weights

Wondering what historical swords actually weighed? The answer is, probably much less than you think.

H/T: Antigravitas again.

Enneagram 2 question quiz

Via Antigravitas:

the Observer Test finished!

you chose BZ - your Enneagram type is FIVE. "I need to understand the world" Observers have a need for knowledge and are introverted, curious, analytical, and insightful. How to Get Along with Me Be independent, not clingy. Speak in a straightforward and brief manner. I need time alone to process my feelings and thoughts. Remember that If I seem aloof, distant, or arrogant, it may be that I am feeling uncomfortable. Make me feel welcome, but not too intensely, or I might doubt your sincerity. If I become irritated when I have to repeat things, it may be because it was such an effort to get my thoughts out in the first place. don't come on like a bulldozer. Help me to avoid my pet peeves: big parties, other people's loud music, overdone emotions, and intrusions on my privacy. What I Like About Being a Five standing back and viewing life objectively coming to a thorough understanding; perceiving causes and effects my sense of integrity: doing what I think is right and not being influenced by social pressure not being caught up in material possessions and status being calm in a crisis What's Hard About Being a Five being slow to put my knowledge and insights out in the world feeling bad when I act defensive or like a know-it-all being pressured to be with people when I don't want to be watching others with better social skills, but less intelligence or technical skill, do better professionally Fives as Children Often spend a lot of time alone reading, making collections, and so on have a few special friends rather than many are very bright and curious and do well in school have independent minds and often question their parents and teachers watch events from a detached point of view, gathering information assume a poker face in order not to look afraid are sensitive; avoid interpersonal conflict feel intruded upon and controlled and/or ignored and neglected Fives as Parents are often kind, perceptive, and devoted are sometimes authoritarian and demanding may expect more intellectual achievement than is developmentally appropriate may be intolerant of their children expressing strong emotions Renee Baron & Elizabeth Wagele The Enneagram Made Easy Discover the 9 Types of People HarperSanFrancisco, 1994, 161 pages You liked the test? so please RATE it... but remember! it had only two questions!!! ;-) You are not completely happy with the result?! You chose BZ Would you rather have chosen: AZ (THREE) CZ (ONE) BX (NINE) BY (FOUR)

Heinlein Book Quiz

Via Antigravitas:

Which Heinlein Book Should You Have Been A Character In?

You belong in the Cat Who Walks Through Walls. You are creative and cunning. Your works often feel empty to you, though others love them. You suspect that the universe and everyone in it are just characters in someone else's story.
Take this quiz!

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Exalted

So, the gaming group seems to have dropped from 8-9 people playing at the same time, to 3-4. Maybe. Personality conflicts, real life problems [nearly everyone seems to be living day-to-day; one person has been working at IHOP for three years while she goes to school- the store's had 3 owners, 20 managers over that time], maybe a past history of sexual abuse affecting things.

Real life is messy.

Last week, the GM didn't show up until about 30 minutes after the usual starting time, at his own apartment. This week, the turnout was low enough that we didn't end up playing at all, just shooting the shit, discussing what had been going on, doing some planning for a future LARP. It wasn't bad actually, although I will get pissed if it happens again next week- the St. Arnold's pup crawl is happening this coming Friday.

We'll see.

The Deaquisition of Illusion

Sgt. Mom has an interesting post.

Whatever the Islamic outrage du jour is, we are tired of it. We are tired of easily-set off mobs, burning and murdering, of hatred preached in mosques and middle-eastern newspapers, of vile insults and lies, of beheadings and bombs, of bullying and threats, of rapes and mutilations and the oppression of women, and the usual slickly-suited creatures oozing justifications for it on the TV and radio afterwards. We are tired of the same old whine about persecution by the same creatures whose co-religionists practice persecution with vigor and keen enjoyment. We are tired to exhaustion of the Islamic worlds’ tattered woobie of the Palestinian people... We are tired of being told we have to understand, to respect and to tolerate… and yet to see that that understanding, respect and toleration is not reciprocated in any meaningful way, in most of those places where Islam meets the other.

As they say, go read the whole thing.

Ninja Pest Control

And you thought you had pest problems.

H/T: SobekPundit.

Juggling and The Beatles

Two different amazing jugglers:

One over at TexasBestGrok, performing a moderately difficult routine in front of a live audience.

One performing an extremely difficult routine. But it's taped, and making the tape probably involved dropping some number of balls. [H/T: JP]

I'm not sure which I think is more impressive, but they both are.

Life

Ok, so postings have shrunk to nearly nothing, over the last 3-4 weeks.

Reasons:
1) A stupid cold at the beginning of March.
2) I came close to telling some friends about the blog during Mardi Gras- one of the guys was wanting the recipe for Scorpion Bowls, and I really wanted to tell him exactly how to search for it. Which makes me think I'm going to discuss it at some point, which makes me not want to write about anything emotionally sensitive.
3) I bought Age of Wonders 2 about a week and a half ago, and have been playing that to excess.
4) Pressure to do something different, internal and external, is increasing. And, damn it, I keep wanting validation from my parents, and I'm never going to get it. My mother seems to think the reason I'm acting the way I am is because I've got some serious illness, most likely AIDS.
5) I've got Idontgiveashititis. It seems clear that Islam, as a worldwide religion, has been completely hijacked by certain elements who want to change the world in a particular way. While there are moderate Muslims [I know there are, I've worked with some] they seem unable to modify the message getting out, and the meme has spread in the most fanatical sections.

I have to wonder what will happen if a major city gets nuked. Which seems more and more likely.

Carnival of Ennui

The Politburo Diktat is doing a Carnival of Ennui. :)

Let's see. I've got several different posts writen in my head that I haven't bothered to write out, including some that are more or less time limited [I'm not going to review Mardi Gras bands in the middle of summer]. Quite a few days in March with no posts at all.

I blame the Mind Control Lasers.

H/T: JohnL

Spring Break

Yup, it's spring break. Crazy tourists are driving around, and I swear the ones with two small children in the back of the SUV are the worst. And people are yelling incomprehensible phrases in the bar next door.

Whee.

At least my cold is going away.

Brokeback Mountain and The Oscar

I didn't watch the Oscars, I don't really care. But this paragraph makes it clear why Brokeback Mountain not winning is such a big deal:

None of the press coverage I have seen reflects how much precedent has been broken. It is substantial. No film in history that has won the best picture award from both the Los Angeles and New York Film Critics Association has ever lost the best picture Oscar, until Brokeback Mountain. No film that has won the producers’, directors’ and writers’ guild awards has ever lost the best picture Oscar, until Brokeback Mountain. No film that has won the Golden Globe, the directors’ guild award and led in Oscar nominations, has ever lost the best picture Oscar, until Brokeback Mountain.

H/T: Right Side of the Rainbow

History of the Gay Cowboy

Wondering about the history of gay cowboys? This article at OutSports does a good job of covering past and present, in context of Brokeback Mountain.

H/T: Towleroad.

Kingdom of Loathing: Gay and Lesbian Village

3 fairly random things happened in the last 24 hours that were interesting to me.

Background first. I've been playing Kingdoms of Loathing for a couple of months, after seeing some friends play it. KoL is a MMRPG, free although contributions are encouraged in an interesting way. Extremely simple graphics with a wicked sense of humor, and a fair number of nods to older games.

I've got 2 characters, one doing PvP and one not. My friends have formed a clan, and they are doing no PvP, so one character joined that clan. The other joined the largest gay focused clan, which eventually morphed into the Gay and Lesbian Village. Around 25 people, all relatively actively playing, although there are no broad goals for the clan itself.

Each clan has it's own private chat channel, by the way.

So.

Incident #1: My usual sleep pattern has been somewhat screwed up recently, so last night I logged on around 1:30 AM. I sign on, see that there are 2 other guys chatting, and instantly appears some text describing in quite graphic detail the "massage with a happy ending" one guy is writing to the other. I'm not quite sure what to do, so I don't type anything, and a little later the other guys writes something like *X blushes as Y walks in*. I say "Sorry, didn't mean to interrupt," and bail.

Incident #2: Randomly chatting with 2 guys this morning. Reasonable for the conversation, one says his parents have disowned him, he's dropped out of school, and is moving in with his boyfriend.

Incident #3: The other guy ends up donating an item to the clan worth 1.5 million meat, roughly 5 times what my characters have after playing for a while, and after getting quite a bit of money from my friends' clan. As we're explaining to the guy that yeah, this was a big deal, [I don't think he really realized what a big thing he had done] he said "I'm a communist, use it for the good of the clan." I avoided any snarky remarks.

I don't know if there's a moral to this story, but let's try this one: Gay Geeks have issues that affect Gay America as a whole.

Carnival of Liberty XXXV

Welcome to the Carnival of Liberty, a showcase of posts [the way I see it anyway] about the interaction of government and diminishing freedom. Administrative stuff first: the carnival is largely the work of the Life, Liberty, Property Group, although anyone with topical posts is welcome to join the carnival. Thanks go to Doug Mataconis of Below the Beltway for providing administrative oversight to the carnival. The Hosting Schedule of future carnivals is here; next week's carnival is at The Unrepentant Individual. The Carnival of Liberty is a proud part of the Truth Laid Bear UberCarnival.

TKC at The Pubcrawler presents Maryland's Road to Serfdom , discussing Maryland's incremental moves to socialized medicine, and why that's a really bad idea.

Gullyborg at Resistance is futile! presents Land Use , specifically The State of Oregon's look at it's land use.

Mark A. Rayner at The Skwib presents Alternate History Friday: Dr. Tundra, international infidel of mystery , envisioning some of the possible consequences of an Islamist takeover of Europe.

Spank That Donkey at Spank That Donkey presents Rusting Hulk Symbolizes France, describing an old, worn out aircraft carrier, presumably to draw a parallel to an aging socialist nation.

Dan Melson at Searchlight Crusade presents Home Loans For Illegal Immigrants , describing a intersection of various government policies, leading to a seemingly crazy outcome.

mensa barbie at Mensa Barbie Welcomes You presents Breaking the Loop: Op-EF , describes the consequences of the USSR's pullout from Afganistan, and hopes that history won't repeat.

Doug Mataconis at Below The Beltway presents The Price of Government Intervention , points out a clear case of Good Intentions leading to Bad Outcomes, in a local housing market.

Hogarth at Forward Biased asks What Is Freedom?, with regard to Freedom of Speech, and argues it isn't the same thing as Freedom to Never Be Offended.

Stephen Littau at Fearless Philosophy for Free Minds presents Are Teacher’s Unions a Greater Threat to Liberty than Terrorism? , examines some arguments made elsewhere, and answers "Yes."

Adam Graham, at Adam's View, presents If National Health Care's So Great..., and shows evidence that Canada's Nationalized Health Care is breaking down.

FMIL at Teapot Tantrums presents Green Is the New Red describes some interactions between environmental groups and socialist or communist groups, and recommends a book.

Perry Eidelbus at Eidelblog presents The storm after the storm: "public" and "private" property , with some thoughts that snowball into a long post about property rights [sorry, couldn't resist the pun]

tom wright at The Wrightwing presents Anonymous Welcome , points out a bill proposed in New Jersey that would have consequences on free speech on the internet.

Mr. Ogre at Ogre's Politics and Views presents School Board Sues State pointing out the absurdity of a taxpayer funded institution suing another.

That's it for this week. If I've made a mistake or missed a post please either comment or email me at owlishmutterings at yahoo.com. Thanks.

UPDATE: I seem to have missed a post: From Radical Libertarians, Debunking Statist Concepts. Unfortunately, I think blogspot is down currently, as I can't get to his site or several other blogspot site. I'll check again later, and make sure I've got the links right.

Brokeback Mountain Parodies

Looking for the motherlode of parodies? It's here.

I particularly liked Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Point Blank- Lord of the Rings was just too easy.

H/T: Joel.

Carnival of Liberty

Is up at Committee of Correspondence.

New World Man has an interesting post in it called First, do no stupid stuff, comparing docs refusing to execute a person to pharmacists refusing to prescribe birth control [usually, the problem comes in the form of the "Morning After" pill]

Also, Combs Spots off with a post dicussing reporters in Iraq carrying guns.

Interesting stuff, lots of other posts.

By the way, I'm hosting next week, so send your entries to owlishmutterings@yahoo.com. I'll set a semi-firm deadline of 8 PM central time, anything sent to me after then may get into my carnival, or if it's too late I'll forward it to the next one.

Why?

I suspect that even if I spoke Japanese, I would have no clue what is going on.

Amusing in a completely random sort of way.