antongarou | Reading

Meg Davis, Sandra Kleinschmitt, Tera Mitchel, Dominic Bridwell, Molly Bennett & Catherine Mock, Erica Neely, ? Dobson, Clif Flynt, Mary Ellen Wessels, Cynthia McQuillin & Kathy Mar, ? Trimble, Gary Anderson, Paul Macdonald, Vinnie Bartilucci, Frank Hayes, Murder Ballads, Crwydryn

Available on iTunes, Google Play and most other places you can get podcasts. We can be heard Wednesday at 6am and 9pm Central on scifi.radio.

filkcast.blogspot.com

starandrea

Astronomy Picture of the Day (

apod_feed) is delightful for many reasons, one being their lovely astronomy pictures and another being their brief explanations of those pictures.

The explanations include a bunch of links for people who want to learn more, and often a random funny link to make people like me click all of them in order to find it. (A little practice can make you very good at guessing which one is the funny link.)

For example, yesterday's picture was Eye on the Milky Way by Miguel Claro. The explanation acknowledged the "unusual vertical horizon," and unusual vertical was a clickable link. I clicked it and laughed out loud.

Another great one from last year was Little Red Dots in the Early Universe, which concluded: "...searches are underway in our nearby universe to try to find whatever previous LRDs might have become today." The phrase searches are underway linked to a paper in The Astrophysical Journal, but the phrase become today was the one I was looking for.

mcgathblog_feed

Posted by Gary McGath

https://garymcgath.com/how-jesus-became-god/

https://garymcgath.com/?p=6659

Christianity is a big part of our culture, and even non-Christians have to make some sense of it. I like Bart Ehrman’s treatments of Biblical research. He’s skeptical but not belligerent. I’ve previously read his Misquoting Jesus and enjoyed it. How Jesus Became God addresses questions I’ve been curious about: Why do Christians think he was God incarnate? What exactly do they mean by it? The average Christian isn’t sure, and the more you dig into the questions, the weirder it gets.

Ehrman accepts the existence of the historical Jesus but says he never claimed to be divine. His status gradually grew after his death. Jesus’s followers believed he had risen from the dead, so he was the “Son of God” in some sense, at least after his resurrection. By steps which Ehrman traces, the idea expanded. First he gained special status after the resurrection; then he was anointed of God through his ministry, then from his birth, and at last from the beginning of time. Many variations of these views existed side by side, with their advocates calling each other heretics. The Nicean Council tried to standardize the belief, but it wasn’t till years later that Christianity mostly settled down to the currently standard view.

Cover of How Jesus Became God This view is that Jesus is God but isn’t God the Father; that God is one but also three; that the Son was begotten of the Father but always existed from the beginning of time. Make sense of that if you can. For most Christians, these details don’t matter, but early Christians thought that if they didn’t get Jesus’s nature exactly right, they might go to Hell for blasphemy. Apparently God is full of mercy but will torture believers forever if they don’t pass a theology quiz.

Ehrman notes that the only Gospel in which Jesus claims to be a divine being is John, which scholars think was written later than the others. If he really made such claims, he notes, it’s strange that Matthew, Mark, and Luke don’t mention them.

In Ehrman’s view, Jesus was an apocalyptic preacher, expecting the world to end soon and be replaced by the Kingdom of God under his leadership. He thought he was a Messiah but not a divine being. There were many others like him. Ehrman thinks the reason Christianity was so successful was that Jesus’s followers had “visions” of him as a resurrected person. He uses the term as a neutral one, not taking a position on whether they were real or not. There comes one of the problems with the book: it promotes a compartmentalized way of thinking. Ehrman refuses to take a stand as a historian on whether the resurrection happened or not.

He writes: “Religious faith and historical knowledge are two different ways of ‘knowing.’ This effectively grants equal validity to both. Elsewhere he claims, “University intellectuals almost never speak of ‘objectivity’ any more, unless they happen to live on the margins of intellectual life.” If objectivity is impossible, if research and bald assertion have equal epistemological status, then anything goes.

Ehrman’s description of the official Christian (or at least Catholic) position on Jesus’s nature makes it sound even crazier than I had thought. He argues convincingly that Jesus probably didn’t have a proper burial but was just thrown on a pile of bodies; that was what the Romans did with crucified people. But if Jesus wasn’t buried in a tomb, there couldn’t have been an empty tomb to find. The whole account unravels, yet Ehrman won’t say that the claims of Jesus’s recognition are groundless fantasy.

These notions aren’t harmless stories. As Ehrman notes, Christian authorities have had many people tortured and executed for heresy. The Jewish people were persecuted for centuries for killing the immortal God. Nonsense should be called out as nonsense when it affects people’s lives.

Even so, How Jesus Became God is very readable, and Ehrman’s explanation of the development of Christian beliefs is fascinating. If that’s a subject that interests you, I think you’ll like the book.

https://garymcgath.com/how-jesus-became-god/

https://garymcgath.com/?p=6659

starandrea

We have a lot of dogs around here and they're all great and also sometimes they like to run through the gardens so I fence some of them off. (The gardens, not the dogs.) My neighbor told me about some inexpensive fencing at a big discount store I'd never been to, and that's how I ended up with a backpack to carry my dog in and some new railing planters. Also the reason I was potting bare root blueberries at one in the morning (do those grow? they were in a plastic bag on a shelf and I was like, ima find out) which meant I had everything I needed out so I started my nasturtium seeds too.

This is what happens when I have space for more plants. And also when I don't.

starandrea

Took today off and worked on the patio. The grass is down, the greenhouses are up, and lights have been strung.

I took before and after pictures but it took all day, so the after picture is literally the patio in the dark.

subversivegrrl posting in

little_details

So, my character gets shot running away and catches several pellets of birdshot in his calf. Post-apocalyse setting, he doesn't have a chance to tend to it right away - can anyone give me a rough estimate of how long it would take before he would develop an infection that could disable him? (Fever, altered mental state.)

Thanks in advance for any feedback. I may need to revamp my idea about what kind of injury is going to put him out of commission for several days (he will have access to someone who can remove the pellets and provide reasonable, situation-appropriate medical care.)

Current Mood: curious

starandrea

Chihuahua! ♥

Daphne's DNA test results came back just a day shy of two weeks after the swab went in the mail. Embark was able to identify DNA from 8 specific breeds (very auspicious), with five of them being at least 10% and the greatest being 40%.

(The remaining three were grouped into "15% supermutt" and included GERMAN SHEPHERD, so fair, the only thing funnier would have been husky.)

So according to Embark, Daphne is about 40% chihuahua. No cairn genes detected, nor border terrier nor brussels griffon. In fact the single terrier-type gene they identified was 15% yorkie (second largest gene contribution after chihuahua), although the distinction seems to be partly one of size. (Her genes are almost entirely from toy breeds, even though her size tips her out of the toy category.)

40% chihuahua
15% yorkie
15% supermutt (mini poodle, german shepherd, lhasa apso)
10% pomeranian
10% pekingese
10% shih tzu

Plausible ♥

starandrea

You know what we need, are some flower pictures.

( spring bulbs and treathounds )

So I was going to do some stuff for the plants today, and I did move the dahlias and receive the greenhouses, which are in boxes on the living room floor. I even put together my new rake and opened the box that has the replacement tire for the garden cart in it. And I watered. Some things. But mostly I was tired and decided, maybe tomorrow.

There's a reason I have flowers instead of children.

ericcoleman posting in

filk

We're just a little over two months away from this craziness that we have decided to commit.

Our room block is moving along nicely, as are registrations. I'm sitting here and listening to EuroFilk while working on the first draft of the program book. I have an idea for the cover but I need someone to do a bit of artwork for it. Simple semi-realistic person with a guitar in a specific pose, one color. If this is something that interests you, send me an email and we can talk. ericcoleman @ gmail.

We have our evil plans for the gathering after opening ceremonies.

Staff has come together, and we have several people who are willing to help on sound.

Sound gear is close to being put together.

It's all falling into place.

mcgathblog_feed

Posted by Gary McGath

https://garymcgath.com/dont-inoculate-against-reason/

https://garymcgath.com/?p=6653

I’ve been reading about a psychological notion called “inoculation theory.” The idea is that just as people can gain immunity to a disease by being exposed to a weakened pathogen, they may develop resistance to a point of view as a result of hearing weak arguments for it. Most discussions of the idea that I’ve seen focus on doing this intentionally, but it also works when people hear bad attempts to convince them.

Suppose there’s some position for which you’ve heard only ridiculous arguments. After a while, you’ll stop paying attention to any arguments for it, even if one of them actually presents a good case. If someone claims to have solid evidence that 9/11 was an inside job, Trump won the 2020 election, or the Moon landings were faked, are you going to spend much time listening? Probably not. Usually that’s a rational response; if there were good arguments for these claims, you’d have heard them before. But if you get all your information from your social media bubble, genuinely good arguments can be drowned out by the ridiculous ones. People love to repost bad arguments to expose them to ridicule. Others repost whatever favors their cause without verifying it, and readers stop paying attention.

A bad argument can be worse than silence. In a well-known story, the townspeople are “inoculated” against the boy’s cries of “Wolf!” When you offer weak or invalid claims to a skeptical audience, they’ll assume you have nothing better to offer.

Returning, inevitably, to Donald Trump, I’d like to give two examples I’ve often seen. One is the claim that he’s a “pedophile.” While there have been accusations, he hasn’t been charged with a crime, and I haven’t seen strong supporting evidence. If that’s the worst you can say about him, you’ll only convince his supporters that you don’t have a good case against him.

A second example is the statement that’s he’s a “felon.” He has been convicted of a felony, but it’s not one that gets most people excited. He didn’t report hush money as a campaign expense. It isn’t obvious to non-lawyers and non-accountants that he was required to, and some lawyers without an axe to grind have called the case dubious. These two claims are far weaker than the undisputed facts that he ordered civilian boats sunk without a legal process, started a war, pardoned everyone who broke into the Capitol to support his election claim, and threatened to destroy a civilization.

It’s also possible to inoculate people against words and concepts. Some people toss “Communist!” around as an all-purpose comeback; others use “Racist!” After a while, listeners treat the words as noise, whether they apply or not.

Some people say that more arguments are always better. They aren’t, if the arguments are weak. People have limits on their attention span and patience. If you strain both, you lose your audience, and you’ll have a hard time getting it back.

Update: I just found another good article on this issue: “The paradox of argument strength” in Nature.

https://garymcgath.com/dont-inoculate-against-reason/

https://garymcgath.com/?p=6653

starandrea

Found the scilla; it's under the pine tree, like right under it, in a little huddle of dark blue bells. V cute.

It's a bit warm and only flirting with freezing next Sunday and Monday nights, so I kicked out the two least fragile plants (agapanthus and some kind of dracaena, I forget but it's definitely survived being snowed on before) plus the two biggest geraniums and lo, there is space again.

So then Marci was like why don't you move the dahlias there, and I was all, oh and put them on a tray so they could be carried in and out to harden off ahead off frost free?? I love it. But the schefflera trees by the back door have scale, which doesn't kill them but could do in tender dahlia babies, so I pushed the littler trees outside too even though I'm pretty sure they're the ones I accused of being overly dramatic about temps below 50F last fall. We'll see in the morning, because even though I ordered them their own mini greenhouse for tomorrow I didn't bring them back in tonight.

And Marci was like what if you got a popup canopy, would that keep things warm, and I was like I don't know but I could put the big tree in it and attack the scale with mint while also keeping the dahlias away from it. But I don't want to move the big tree out until I put the fake grass on the patio for the summer, and that means moving everything already on the patio, plus sweeping, and also hauling rolls of artificial turf from the garage. Sounds hard.

So maybe that will be tomorrow's project, or not. Meanwhile there's a big empty space near the back door with a dahlia table built out of partially assembled wire crates and a boot tray. The dahlias are still in the utility closet.

But the lungwort is blooming in the front garden next to the bridge and its little pink and purple flowers are delightful.

starandrea

♥ Mom Cat Shows Her Kittens The German Shepherd Is Safe, youtube vid from Laffey and Amy

just an adorable german shepherd befriending some kittens with a little help from mom

lea_hazel

I'm exhausted today, mostly because of things that I don't want to talk about, but also because this morning, for the first time in literally years, I woke up with a stiff right knee and mild, twinging pain. Nothing like the pain that I used to have (circa 2007 or thereabouts), but I've been limping most of the day, and seriously restricted in Pilates, this morning.

Still watching endless Blue Prince VODs on YouTube, both from Cracking the Cryptic and now also Dr Gluon. Also slowly rewatching all of The Mentalist over the past month or so, in lieu of watching anything new that I need to focus on. And lately, also, reading the novel version of The Perks of Being an S-Class Heroine, since the manhwa's new season i getting translated, too. I felt like I'd forgotten a lot and wanted more background material + a refresher.

It's an intriguing case study in something that's technically a romantic fantasy, but with heavy action fantasy elements, an overpowered female protagonist, and some intriguing supporting characters. If I was less worn out, I'd try to write something sensible about it.

Current Mood: exhausted

mcgathblog_feed

Posted by Gary McGath

https://garymcgath.com/credit-the-songwriter/

https://garymcgath.com/?p=6642

The idea for this post started when I tried to find out if the resemblance of the 1979 song “Gloria” to the “Gloria” of Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis was intentional. (It was.) While doing the usual Internet searches, I found it repeatedly referred to as Laura Branigan’s song, even on lyrics sites, although she didn’t write it. Not to take away from her excellent performance, but she wrote neither the music, the original lyrics, nor the English-language version. Wikipedia credits Giancarlo Bigazzi and Umberto Tozzi as the creators of the original song and Jonathan King as the author of the English-language lyrics. Tozzi performed the Italian song before Branigan. Yet somehow Branigan gets all the credit.

(I’m not counting Beethoven as a creator. The song uses only nine notes of his. They give the song its backbone but not its content.)

I cited another example of failure to credit the song writer in a book discussion a couple of months ago.

It’s routine to give performers the credit for songs they didn’t write. The reason is laziness. People hear someone perform a song and assume that person must have written it. If you believe the lyrics sites, Frank Sinatra wrote over a hundred songs, but Wikipedia lists him as the creator or co-creator of only a handful. An exceptional performance makes the difference between a hit and a flop, but the performance wouldn’t exist if no one had written the song. Before recordings became the most common way to hear music, writers got more attention. William Billings, Stephen Foster, George Root, and Irving Berlin were famous names in their time. Today, it’s rare for songwriters to be well known unless they write musicals or perform their own songs.

When you’re writing about a song, especially if the lyrics or the musical content is important, please mention the writer’s or writers’ names.

This post was partially inspired by Debbie Ridpath Ohi’s campaign to get acknowledgement for the illustrators of children’s books. That’s important, too.

https://garymcgath.com/credit-the-songwriter/

https://garymcgath.com/?p=6642

starandrea

gardening journal updates~

♥ compost added to the rock garden, fence replaced to keep dogs from trampling my crocuses, many minutes spent sitting in the sunshine admiring the spring bulbs and bleeding hearts; gently cleared the side and patio gardens again to make sure that everything that needs sun is getting it

♥ dahlias watered, remaining cannas into holding pots, refrigerator bulbs into porch planters

♥ circle garden ~~shoveled~~ raked out from under its snowplow-induced burial mound: lilies coming through strong of course, vinca growing under the dirt of course, but also hosta, irises, and bleeding hearts are all there; accidentally pulled out the thread-leaf coreopsis with my vigorous raking but it was a late arrival last year and seemed to have good roots despite everything, so I just put it back, patted it down, and hoped for the best; dug up and reset some of the stones to make the border more clear

♥ pansies installed in the roadside planter, sedum soldiers on, new lilies coming in next to the old

♥ got out the first outdoor watering can of the season; ordered a new rake (the head on my metal one keeps falling off) and replacement wheel for the garden cart (allegedly a no-flat tire, totally true as long as I put air in it three times a day)

♥ dog accompanied me on compost mission that ended at the library where we learned two important things: there is now a "doggie stick library" out back where you can take a stick for your pup (no need to return), and also solar lights on the trail between the library and the church which are rainbow-colored

starandrea

hallelujah the dahlias are moved. it is 2 in the morning but they are on the new taller shelf AND miracle of miracles, this shelf is basically at floor level. which means overflow dahlias can go on the floor and still get light! which means some of the things that were on the floor can go back on the shelves!

I am not a neat or particularly organized person but it gets to a point where even I'm like: the next pile of stuff I trip over is getting thrown away.

they still need more light, they've definitely outgrown the two they were barely crowding under to begin with, but I ordered another one of those super-powered sansi floor lamps. it won't improve the walking situation, but here we are.

denise posting in

dw_maintenance

I keep forgetting to post about this: we've been troubleshooting the "missing notifications" problem for the past few days. (Well, I say "we", really I mean Mark and Robby; I'm just the amanuensis.) It's been one of those annoying loops of "find a logical explanation for what could be causing the problem, fix that thing, observe that the problem gets better for some people but doesn't go away completely, go back to step one and start again", sigh.

Mark is hauling out the heavy debugging ordinance to try to find the root cause. Once he's done building all the extra logging tools he needs, he'll comment to this entry. After he does, if you find a comment that should have gone to your inbox and sent an email notification but didn't, leave him a link to the comment that should have sent the notification, as long as the comment itself was made after Mark says he's collecting them. (I'd wait and post this after he gets the debug code in but I need to go to sleep and he's not sure how long it will take!)

We're sorry about the hassle! Irregular/sporadic issues like this are really hard to troubleshoot because it's impossible to know if they're fixed or if they're just not happening while you're looking. With luck, this will give us enough information to figure out the root cause for real this time.

starandrea

Gardening is such exercise; I had forgotten a bit. I took water and snacks with me to the big garden this morning and cut back 20 spirea bushes to the ground. This afternoon I put maybe half the remaining cannas into 10 half-full holding pots on the patio, and after exhausting the two cubic feet of soil I had ready I went to the hardware store for four more.

I also dragged the bags of compost Marci helped me acquire from a local farm out back, even though I haven't decided where to put it yet (everywhere could benefit, really, I might drive by again tomorrow and see if they have more), packed all of the outdoor Christmas greens off to the garage in preparation for the dahlia* move, and got some pansies for the road garden.

*I lifted the lights again on Friday, but they're growing through the shelf now and that's not good for them. Also not gonna lie, when I said there'd be space on the shelf below I forgot that they get wider as well as taller. Marci and I brainstormed ways to get some of them outside early, but I think it's going to come down to more shelves and another light.

...In my defense, I genuinely did not expect them to sprout A WEEK AFTER PLANTING.

Anyway, my point is, I mixed some yogurt with blueberries for my evening snack (don't worry it'll be chocolate and cookies later, this is just the pre-snack where I get some nutrients before loading up on sugar and caffeine to keep myself awake long enough to study) and left it in the kitchen, so every bite I have to get up from the sofa and walk around to make sure all my muscles still work.

Also, today was one of those Productive Days.** I'm not saying every day should be a day where lots of Tasks Get Checked Off, but occasionally such a day comes along and I always wonder, is this just part of the cycle or did I do something to facilitate it? Some combination of sleep (ha ha not today) or herbs, that brain supplement

marcicat recommended, or maybe that magical euphoria blanket

green is studying??

(I got the white one (amazon link), which makes me feel like I have one of those Gusu Lan winter cloaks that appear in all the Tencent winter art for MDZS. It's delightful. Also suprisingly stain resistant: I didn't even try to keep Daphne's snacks off of it (life is short, let the dog have a bone... although I will admit I didn't realize how lucky I was that my last two dogs preferred chewing on clean chirpy cat toys) and so far the white fluffiness prevails.)

**Wrote stuff, paid stuff, updated stuff, did laundry and research?! Moved the garden bridge out of winter storage. It does make me slightly less anxious on days when I'm like, "no thank you I can not," because I know days where I'm all, "let me do a dozen things real quick" will come around, but think how useful it would be if it were predictable.

marina

Things in no particular order

( things )

*

Things are still hard, and they suck, but it's warmer and there are no missiles flying at my house and I'm cautiously optimistic about coming back to work tomorrow and well. I hope your days are good, friends.

starandrea

As soon as I said, "I think the dahlias are going to be fine," this happens.

That is, I had largely written off the remaining seven containers of unsprouted dahlias, since by now even the latest starter is six inches tall, and I knew going in that three of the containers had likely duds. I figured four more were unexpectedly the same.

NOPE. What am I going to do with this one? It's in the "spa room" with the ivies for now, as there is no more room on the dahlia shelf in the closet.

( picture )

(Good work, little dahlia. I'm very happy to see you.)

Also, the Solomon's Seal is back in the patio garden! I planted it under the porch (with some ferns) the year after we moved in, so it knows it has to get an early start if it wants any sun before the other plants show up.

(The picture isn't tilted. The Solomon's Seal grows at an angle to lean into the light.)

Plus some crocuses (yay!) and Daphne helping out in the garden like she does.

( sprouts, blooms, and paws )

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October 2023

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Page Summary

ericcoleman in filk - This week on FilkCast
starandrea - relatable explanations
mcgathblog_feed - Book discussion: How Jesus Became God
starandrea - like you do
starandrea - tomorrow, compost for the fence gardens. or groceries. both would be good.
subversivegrrl in little_details - Infection from birdshot?
starandrea - "when I think about angels, I think about you" (jamie o'neal)
starandrea - "keep your face to the sunshine and you'll never see the shadows"
ericcoleman in filk - FilkCONbobulated Update
mcgathblog_feed - Don’t inoculate people against reason
starandrea - "if you give a mouse a cookie, he's going to want a glass of milk"
starandrea - "no matter what, her smile came shining through" (meredith edwards)
lea_hazel - Just tired.
mcgathblog_feed - Credit the songwriter!
starandrea - "a little sunlight and room to grow was all she needed" (meredith edwards)
starandrea - 32 days to frost free
denise in dw_maintenance - The case of the missing notifications
starandrea - "gay marriage, or as I call it, marriage" / the chiondoxa are blooming
marina - nails sparkly, ready for journey
starandrea - "seeing her face in town was like springtime coming around" (meredith edwards)

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Page generated Apr. 22nd, 2026 01:42 pm

This is not the house that pain built

Reading

This week on FilkCast

relatable explanations

Book discussion: How Jesus Became God

like you do

tomorrow, compost for the fence gardens. or groceries. both would be good.

Infection from birdshot?

"when I think about angels, I think about you" (jamie o'neal)

"keep your face to the sunshine and you'll never see the shadows"

FilkCONbobulated Update

Don’t inoculate people against reason

"if you give a mouse a cookie, he's going to want a glass of milk"

"no matter what, her smile came shining through" (meredith edwards)

Just tired.

Credit the songwriter!

"a little sunlight and room to grow was all she needed" (meredith edwards)

32 days to frost free

The case of the missing notifications

"gay marriage, or as I call it, marriage" / the chiondoxa are blooming

nails sparkly, ready for journey

"seeing her face in town was like springtime coming around" (meredith edwards)

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October 2023

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