![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Hurricane update -
going into work early to make sure everything is backed up, easily tarped over and stowed for the long weekend. The gang at work, while needy, is very good about pulling together and getting stuff lined up.
( tracking map )
Let's just hope it keeps on going North. The storm is plenty wide enough to get us all wet and blown. Heck, The thing is taller and wider than the whole state. I don't want floods or evac.
Handy-dandy sun-sentinel hurricane tracking map
I'm hoping it leaves Broward the heck alone. I don't want to relocate. I'm ready to, if I have to, but I'd really rather not. Especially for some storm named "Frances". Reminds me of the guy in the movie Stripes. "Call me Psycho!"
The supermarket was crazy yesterday, people snatching up water as fast as the pallets were laid out.
The gals at work were very giving and expressed the desire to help me get stuff for the coming storm, but I was already prepared. It was a lot of nice gestures.
Evacuation orders were posted for 300,000 residents in coastal areas of Palm Beach County, and 192,500 were told to leave mobile homes and low-lying areas of Brevard and Martin counties. The evacuation orders were set to take effect Thursday afternoon.
Frances was about 700 miles southeast of Florida on Wednesday afternoon, heading northwest on a course that would take it to the central portion of Florida's eastern coast. Residents of Georgia, North Carolina and South Carolina watched the forecast closely in case Frances took a sharper turn to the north.
All I know is that I have water, some cash, a carrier for Newt and my palmtop.... I can travel light. I talked to the landlord about plywooding the apartment windows tomorrow or Friday morning. I remember how dark it got in my old place with all the shutters drawn, like being sealed in a mine. I rather liked it for the short time it was there, though I expect I'd have gotten a little punchy if I was sealed in for a week.
At this point, it really is still far too early to say *where* it might go. No worries.
Speaking of the mobbed market... whimsy was kind enough to hook me up with the screenie from CoH's test server... everyone and their cape was there.
( most heroes I've seen in one place, since the invasion. )
Researchers at the University of Zurich have shown that revenge is, well, sweet. Their experiment, described in Scientific American, was based on a game where one player was given the opportunity to punish another player for financially screwing him. PET scans revealed that when a player contemplated revenge, his striatum, a "reward center" in the brain, became energized.
This sort of causal relationship may explain why people are willing to discipline a stranger even when there is no immediate gain in it for them. "Emotions play a proactive as well as reactive role," remarks Brian Knutson of Stanford University who penned an accompanying commentary (to a paper about the study in the journal Science). He notes that "passionate" forces may need to be included in economic models because, as this research shows, “people show systematic deviations from rationality."I wonder how long before someone uses this as a defense in court? "I couldn't help it, that behavior is hard-wired into my system!"
Got a decent reply from playNC re: my unsent comics -
( followup letter )
Not bad. They got back to me within 12 hours.
If I was a wise-ass or melodramatic, I'd write something here about we'll all survive after this apocalypse, do a couple of riffs on The Road Warrior, Six-string Samurai, or A Boy and his Dog (though I'd not rename Newt to Blood.)
Or maybe Mutants of 2051 AD...
"Fleshy-headed mutant! Are you friendly?"If I lose power or post-ability, I'll still be keeping a journal and a photographic record of anything that happens, to be uploaded and backdated... as long as I'm not eaten by cannibal zombie-ghouls or shot by gorillas on horseback, mistaking me for one of the sad, mute nomads in the fields.
- Space Cadet R.M. McKenzie
"Now way, eh! Radiation has made me an enemy of civilization!"
- The Fleshy-Headed Mutant
It's the Google Superhero Costume Parade!
Anacondas? Baby Geniuses 2? Didn't the first ones tank? Why Sequels?
And a better question, is Why is the bad guy from Anaconda (Jon Voight) the bad guy in Baby Geniuses 2? Does that Mean Kathleen Turner and Christopher Lloys be the Bad guys in Anacondas? (I'd rather see then return to Roger Rabbit.) I'm guessing all of the babies sin that movie are twins, like Mary Kate and Ashley? Is that still a rule in Hollywood?
Whatever happened to Angela Anaconda?
A moment of Voodoo - Syncretism:
Syncretism may occur wherever two different cultures come into contact. It is an attempt to reconcile and mix together several different religious beliefs. Voodoo is one such attempt, combining Christian and African beliefs with a small dose of native American animism. It is far from the only one. Most religions in the ancient world never claimed to be the “only” or the “true” way (Judaism, Christianity and Islam are the three notable exceptions), and thinkers and mystics often tried to mix and match elements of religions to get the best of all possible worlds.
Even the rise of Christianity did not stop syncretism. Faced with the might of Christianity (which at first was backed by the Roman Empire), many pagans adopted it as their religion — but added a few pieces of their own for good measure. Many pre-Christian altars and shrines became churches. The cult of the saints that is part and parcel of Catholicism was the perfect vehicle of syncretism: many of the old gods were thinly disguised as saints, with their attributes (and mystical powers) remaining unchanged. “Saint Bridget” of Ireland, for example, used to be the fire goddess Brigit, until she was syncretized into the Christian canon as the saint of fire.
The same thing happened to the religions African slaves brought to America. They saw the Catholic priests praying to a complex “pantheon” of saints, each representing different attributes or elements — in a way, not very different from their beliefs. While the Europeans punished any slave who clung to the old ways, they accepted acts of devotion to Christian symbols. African sorcerer-priests decided that there was power in these saints; the statues that the Christians prayed to seemed no different from their own idols. Christian prayers became powerful spells, cast under the unsuspecting eyes of colonial slave masters.
Random Scotto/Dan factoid: When I told Danny that my beliefs are basically Agnostic (a person who believes that, at my present level of knowledge, that I cannot know whether or not a God exists - I can get feelings one way or the other, but really have no proof on the matter), he thought I said Gnostic (A person whose world view embraces Gnosticism, the thought and practice of various cults of late pre-Christian and early Christian centuries distinguished by the conviction that matter is evil and that emancipation comes through gnosis [passing down of knowledge, perhaps secret knowledge].), and ran with it for quite a while, until he confronted me with something that he thought was conflict with my belief. Two pretty different stances, all told.
Now, I do believe that there is great power in knowledge, and that the flesh undriven by the mind is by necessity basically a selfish thing.
It would probably please and frighten me a great deal to *know* definitively that a deity exists. This may sound like it conflicts with faith, but I feel that faith is the substance of things hoped for... you can be an agnostic and still have faith. Faith is a tether between you and your belief... stronger than hope. Belief and knowledge don't always go hand in hand.
Until later, dear journal! I'll be back before the storm hits.
![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif){kind=small}