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Dan Goodman's journal
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Below are the 25 most recent journal entries recorded in the "Dan Goodman" journal:[<< Previous 25 entries]
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01:15 pm
[Link] | Saturday October 31, 2009 Star Tribune article appropriate for Halloween: A psychologist had been encouraging a patient's delusions.
She was barred from accepting new patients, and given various other restrictions. Seems to me she should have been barred from having ANY patients, until she'd successfully undergone treatment herself.
***Mnstf Halloween Party at Sharon Kahn's and Richard Tatge's. Good party.
One attendee thought I might be a distant relative of hers. Same ethnicity, ancestors from Belarus (though her family migrated to Samarkand, and mine to near Kiev before coming to the US), I looked like some of her relatives....
***After leaving the meeting/party, I noticed a nearby storefront. One tattoo parlor was being replaced by another, with the modest name of Tattoo Genius.
Besides adding tattoos, Tattoo Genius will remove them. Reminds me of the John Collier story "The Chaser." (That's the one in which a love potion is extraodinarily cheap.)
In the window was a bottle of tattoo aftercare lotion. I hadn't known there were such products, but it makes sense.
Current Location: Minneapolis, Baja Manitoba
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12:10 am
[Link] | Happy Birthday, ozarque and bibliotrope!!
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04:34 pm
[Link] | Wednesday October 28, 2009 Mail: Guide to health insurance plans for next year. My current plan will go up by -- urk! A bit over forty percent.
Time to switch to a lower-cost HealthPartners Plan.
***Wedge Coop annual meeting, at Co-Op Partners Warehouse in St. Paul (owned by the Wedge.)
[Twin Cities food coops were started in the 1970s by hippie anarchists, taken over for a while by Marxists, and ended up dominated by organic-food enthusiasts. This probably makes them different from older food coops in the US, and definitely makes them different from British food coops.]
Two school buses transported people from the Wedge store to the warehouse.
First, food. Main course: choice of beef lasagna (organic beef, of course), three cheese lasagna for vegetarians, polenta for vegans and those who needed gluten-free food. Gluten-free has been getting more emphasis in organically correct circles lately. (Low salt has not, to my annoyance.)
As usual, there wasn't a quorum. Required: five percent of members, which would be about 700 people. There were 299 attendees; up from 94 last year and probably the largest turnout ever, but not enough. So the minutes of last year's meeting couldn't be approved, and the only business which could be conducted was announcing the voting results.
Current Location: Minneapolis, Alta Iowa
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08:40 pm
[Link] | Tuesday October 27, 2009 Woke up feeling better than before whatever I'd been sick with.
***To the food shelf at Minnehaha United Methodist Church.
Food set out for the taking included Vietnamese fish sauce with eggplant, and fish sauce with visible pieces of fish. Decided I wasn't adventurous enough for either.
***Out again. At Midtown Farmers Market, I used the last of the farmers market checks.
Across Lake Street to Savers thrift store, which didn't have what I wanted.
Bought a few groceries at Target and Cub.
***Public Release: 27-Oct-2009
CyberPsychology & Behavior
Smokers who crushed computer-simulated cigarettes as part of a psychosocial treatment program in a virtual reality environment had significantly reduced nicotine dependence and higher rates of tobacco abstinence than smokers participating in the same program who grasped a computer-simulated ball, according to a study described in the current issue of CyberPsychology and Behavior, a peer-reviewed journal published by Mary Ann Liebert, Inc.
Contact: Vicki Cohn
vcohn@liebertpub.com
914-740-2156
Mary Ann Liebert, Inc./Genetic Engineering News
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-10/mali-cci102709.php
Current Location: Minneapolis, Baja Manitoba
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02:24 pm
[Link] | Monday October 26, 2009 Canned apricots: Deseret brand. "Visit www.providentliving.org for information on self-reliance."
Via the Federal Government, the Mormons have provided me with tasty food.
***"Guten Tag,
"Mein Name ist WILLIAMS PATRICK aus Côte d'Ivoire. Ich bin der einzige Sohn von Herrn und Frau Patrick, ich möchten, dass Sie mir helfen investieren in Ihrem Land. Ich habe meine Mutter im Alter von 10, Mein Vater war vergiftet zu Tode während des Krieges hier in Côte d'Ivoire...."
And in English, a letter suggesting I apply for a hotel job in England. Applicants get free airfare to the interview, and other perks.
***Public Release: 26-Oct-2009
Geology
Researchers here have discovered the pivotal role that volcanoes played in a deadly ice age 450 million years ago. Perhaps ironically, these volcanoes first caused global warming -- by releasing massive amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. When they stopped erupting, Earth's climate was thrown off balance, and the ice age began.
National Science Foundation ( Read more... )
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03:43 pm
[Link] | Happy Birthday, coraa!!
Apologies to those whose birthdays I missed.
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12:15 pm
[Link] | Friday October 23, 2009 Mail: Songwriting payment.
In 1991 I came up with the chorus and a verse of what came to be titled "Gimme Those Old Child Ballads" and posted them on the Usenet group rec.music.filk. Other people added verses.
Margaret Middleton has now used it on a CD: Legends & Literature, M-Cubed Ventures; http://www.mcubedventures.com.
***Reading by Catherine Lundoff at DreamHaven Books. She read from two pieces. First, a lesbian werewolf novel in progress. Second, a Lovecraftian lesbian romance story.
The novel began as a shorter work for an anthology which fell through. The anthology is now on again and Ms. Lundoff will submit a shorter-than-novel version for it. The short story was originally for an anthology which fell through; it will appear in Tales of the Unanticipated.
Current Location: Minneapolis, MN
Current Music: Gimme Those Old Child Ballads
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12:14 pm
[Link] | Happy Birthday, netcrimes!!
Current Location: Minneapolis, MN
Current Music: Gimme Those Old Child Ballads
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02:53 pm
[Link] | Review: Jude I. Parry, The Annoying Cases of Stepmother Gray
Unlike most Americans who call themselves Satanists, Stepmother Gray worships Satan. She founded the Church of Impure Evil, and leads its Minneapolis congregation.
In the tradition of Chesterton's Father Brown and other fictional clerics, she's an amateur detective. But unlike Father Brown, she doesn't want justice to be done. Her goal is to find the criminal, and then frame an innocent person for the crime.
Unfortunately, this never works out. In each story, the person she frames turns out to be guilty.
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02:38 pm
[Link] | Happy Birthday, tabra, fengi, and janni!!
Current Location: Minneapolis, Alta Iowa
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08:26 pm
[Link] | Thursday October 22, 2009 More science fiction becomes obsolete. Minnesota Public Radio had an NPR program on living in the panopticon age; the time when all of our past and present can be known to anyone who wants to make a search. Everything is now in electronic archives, which don't decay or get lost. [Yes, I know this isn't entirely true.]
One person inteviewed has two Facebook pages. The one under his own name has only innocuous material. The other has content which might get him in trouble if tied to him.
I see two problems with this solution. 1) There's software which looks for stylistic similarities in texts. It was developed to spot plagiarism; but it's also been used to find the authors of anonymous writing. 2) What's innocuous today might not be in five, ten, or twenty years.
The earliest science fiction story about this privacy problem I know of: T. L. Sherred's "E for Effort" (1947.) The technology there was a time viewer, and the problem was mostly Real History being revealed. Isaac Asimov's "The Dead Past"(1956), also about a time viewer, concentrated on the problem of individual privacy.
Roger Zelazny's stories collected in _My Name is Legion_ focused on the threat to individual privacy. The series protagonist had written himself out of data bases and set up false identities.
Would it work? I suspect not. My purchases and downloads are idiosyncratic enough that a false identity could probably be spotted (given availability to grocery, bookstore, and thrift store data, sufficient computing power, and a reason to give finding me priority.)
***"Your dog is probably a socialist." Ask Doctor Science.
***Public Release: 22-Oct-2009
More students than ever before have been accepted onto science and engineering related degree courses this autumn, according to the University and Colleges Admissions Service. Science is also now the most popular subject at school according to a new poll of children aged 5 to 18.
Contact: EPSRC Press Office
pressoffice@epsrc.ac.uk
44-179-344-4404
Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-10/eaps-mst102209.php
***Public Release: 22-Oct-2009
New Journal of Physics
A team of researchers from Pompeu Fabra University has developed a system to identify common patterns in versions of songs, which will help to quantify the similarity of musical pieces. The technique, which appears in the New Journal of Physics, could be applied to analyze time series of data in other fields, such as economy, biology or astronomy.
Contact: SINC
info@plataformasinc.es
34-914-251-820
FECYT - Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-10/f-sf-ant102209.php
Current Location: Minneapolis, Alta Iowa
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08:21 pm
[Link] | Happy Birthday, don_fitch!!
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11:54 pm
[Link] | Happy Birthday a bit in advance, lingster1 and rachelmanija!! (A few more minutes to October 29 in my time zone.)
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09:29 pm
[Link] | Happy Birthday, devilwrites!!
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01:28 am
[Link] | Happy Birthday, taelle, mistri, and luke_jaywalker!!
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04:01 pm
[Link] | Tuesday October 20, 2009 To the food shelf at Minnehaha United Methodist.
Among notices on the church's bulletin board: Performance elsewhere of the play Animal Farm, adapted by Nelson Bond from George Orwell's novel. If this is the Nelson Bond who wrote sf, at least one bibliography is incomplete.
***From the BBC News website, Northern Ireland section: "The Guardian covers NI band Ash's decision to criss-cross Britain in alphabetical order, appearing everywhere from Ashford in Kent through Bradford, Carlisle to Ventor, and a bit of a cheat - Exmouth.
"They will end up in the tiny parish of Zennor in Cornwall, where a sell-out crowd of 75 will pack out the village hall."
***Public Release: 20-Oct-2009
Neuroscience 2009
Experimental treatments restore partial vision to blind people
Two experimental treatments, a retinal prosthesis and fetal tissue transplant, restored some vision to people with blinding eye diseases. The findings, presented at Neuroscience 2009, the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience and the world's largest source of emerging news on brain science and health, may lead to new treatments for the blind. Researchers also reported that an engineered protein restored vision in an animal model and identified ways to improve stem cell treatments.
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-10/sfn-etr102009.php
Public Release: 20-Oct-2009
PLoS ONE
Young men who voted for Republican John McCain or Libertarian candidate Robert Barr in the 2008 presidential election suffered an immediate drop in testosterone when the election results were announced, according to a study by researchers at Duke University and the University of Michigan.
"In contrast, men who voted for the winner, Democrat Barack Obama, had stable testosterone levels immediately after the outcome.
"Female study participants showed no significant change in their testosterone levels before and after the returns came in."
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-10/du-peo102009.php ( Read more... )
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02:28 am
[Link] | Monday October 19, 2009 Public Release: 19-Oct-2009
PLoS ONE
Smart rat 'Hobbie-J' produced by over-expressing a gene that helps brain cells communicate
Over-expressing a gene that lets brain cells communicate just a fraction of a second longer makes a smarter rat, report researchers from the Medical College of Georgia and East China Normal University.
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-10/mcog-sr101909.php
***"Taking advantage of data collected as part of a 60-year study of more than 2000 North American women in the Framingham Heart Study, the researchers analyzed a handful of traits important to human health. By measuring the effects of these traits on the number of children the women had over their lifetime, the researchers were able to estimate the strength of selection and make short-term predictions about how each trait might evolve in the future. After adjusting for factors such as education and smoking, their models predict that the descendents of these women will be slightly shorter and heavier, will have lower blood pressure and cholesterol, will have their first child at a younger age, and will reach menopause later in life."
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-10/nesc-ahs101909.php
Current Location: Minneapolis, Baja Manitoba
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01:18 am
[Link] | Happy Birthday, chipuni!!
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03:53 pm
[Link] | Wednesday October 14, 2009 Picked up NAPS food at Waite House. (Nutritional Assistance for Seniors; I suspect P stands for the ghost of "Program.")
***I now have a solid beginning for "Down Among the Sane Men."
***I dreamed passages from _Gone With the Wind_, a book I've never read. I'm not sure how much like the waking-world book this version was. I don't think Margaret Mitchell's male aristocrats had an elaborate whistle language.
If Confederate officers had had a whistle language, some American Civil War battles would probably have gone differently. Which ones, and how, I don't know enough to speculate about.
Thursday October 15, 2009 When Rainbow supermarkets were bought by Roundys (a Wisconsin company), one change was the abolition of Rainbow's rewards cards. A few months ago, Rainbow instituted something new -- rewards cards. At that time, the only reward to be earned was ten cents off on up to 12 gallons of gasoline at BP stations. (Note: American gallons are 4/5 the size of Imperial gallons.) I don't drive, and I'm unlikely to be near a BP station.
There were to be other rewards later, I was told. I got the card. ( Read more... )
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02:07 am
[Link] | Happy Birthday, otterdance and jamestrainor!!
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02:22 pm
[Link] | Thursday October 8, 2009 "The Mopan Maya who settled San Antonio, a hilltop village west of San Pedro Columbia, fled military service and taxes in San Luis, about 30 miles to the west in Guatemala, at the end of the nineteenth century. At first, the crops they planted in forest clearings did poorly, and disease and sickness afflicted the migrants. Analyzing the situation clearly, the Indians marched back to San Luis, raided the church, and carried off the statues of their saints to their new village. Thereafter the people and crops prospered, though the authorities of San Luis pressed unsuccessfully for years for the return of the religious figures." Paul Glassman, _Belize Guide_, Passport Press, Champlain NY, 1989.
***Mostly over whatever I'd been sick with.
Went to ACA meeting.
***From Twitter: Poynter See how journalists are using Kickstarter, a crowdfunding site, to do side projects like documentaries and books. http://bit.ly/RYjHi
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Monday October 12, 2009 Columbus Day.
***Aah! The background I've been developing for future-set fiction jelled today, after I added one element: In this future, I would be able to become a grandmother. By the time I'm in my late 90s, there would be 1) sex change surgery so much advanced over today's that a male-to-female transgender person would be able to bear children and 2) life extension medicine which could keep me alive long enough to raise at least one child to an age where that child could become a parent. (Note that I don't want to get a sex change, or raise children.)
Strictly speaking, this background isn't a future history. The chronology is fuzzy, and will probably remain so.
==
Tuesday October 13, 2009 At Roosevelt Library, I discovered a rather specialized subgenre: Afro-American lesbian romance.
If I recall correctly, there weren't any subgenres in romance at least as late as the 1970s.
***"And speaking of bad for you, let's not forget pork desserts, like the pistachio-bacon ice cream served by my neighborhood ice creamery Humphry Slocombe. Which is right around the corner from the nearby hipster donut shop, Dynamo, whose most popular item is the Maple Glazed Bacon Apple donut, shown on the right."
http://languageoffood.blogspot.com/2009/10/dessert.html
***Thinking out a future version of human history:
Approximately 200,000 BC Earth's first world empire established. Ruled by the White Goddess (whose names include Durga and Ayn) and her consort Yaweh.
20th Century AD First empire overthrown during the Great War. Second empire, the League of Nations or United Nations, established.
Current Location: Minneapolis, Minnesota
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11:41 pm
[Link] | Happy Birthday (in a few minutes), supergee!!
Current Location: Minneapolis, Alta Iowa
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01:51 pm
[Link] | Friday October 2, 2009 Tom has aleph-one socks. He loses aleph-null socks in the wash. How many pairs of socks does Tom have?
Zero. None of the remaining socks match.
***A post on the Synesthesia Mailing List mentioned Alice in Wonderland Syndrome, the first I'd heard of this. I looked it up:
Alice in Wonderland syndrome: A syndrome of distorted space, time and body image. The patient with the Alice in Wonderland syndrome has a feeling that their entire body or parts of it have been altered in shape and size. The syndrome is usually associated with visual hallucinations. The majority of patients with the syndrome have a family history of migraine headache or have overt migraine themselves.
The syndrome was first described in 1955 by the English psychiatrist John Todd (1914-1987). Todd named it, of course, for Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll. Perhaps not coincidentally, Lewis Carroll suffered from severe migraine. Also known as a Lilliputian hallucination.
http://www.medterms.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=24174
***Book claims Ted Williams' frozen head abused
FOXSports.com - 4 hours ago
by foxsports.com Workers at a cryonics facility mutilated the frozen head of Hall of Fame baseball player Ted Williams, the author of a new book alleges.
New book says Ted Williams' frozen head was abused Los Angeles Times
Ted Williams' frozen head used for batting practice, says new book Chicago Sun-Times
New York Daily News - Opposing Views - FWWeekly - Yahoo! Sports
all 310 news articles »
***To the pharmacy at HealthPartners Riverside, to pick up meds.
On to the Target near Lake and Minnehaha, then Rainbow supermarket, then home.
***Thought: Sex changes to something other than the opposite gender.
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07:37 pm
[Link] | Sunday October 11, 2009 http://www.snopes.com/disney/films/drugs.asp
Do the personalities of Disney's seven dwarfs represent the seven stages of cocaine addiction?
***Seen from the bus: a sign for the New Dignity Party. A new minor party isn't that unusual; but it's not a usual kind of party name.
On a bus bench, ad for "Alamo Driving School." Considering the battle of the Alamo is a famous defeat, that might not be the best name.
Downtown Minneapolis Hennepin Avenue near 4th St): several men on skates, propelling themselves with poles. (The ski-pole-like ones which some walkers use.)
On to Live The Solution Clutterers Anonymous. The group meets at the pavilion in Como Park, in St. Paul.
Current Location: Minneapolis, MN
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04:24 pm
[Link] | Happy Birthday, susie4uk2009!!
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