Twistedchick's celestial navigation

last post as a post

2009-04-12T16:07:24Z

As of now, I will be posting only at Dreamwidth, as twistedchick.dreamwidth.org. If someone wants to make a RSS feed of that journal, you're welcome to -- leave a comment with the name of it, please. I suspect Dreamwidth may have its own RSS feeds when it goes out of beta and becomes official on April 30 -- I don't know for sure, as I'm not one of the brains on the development team. You will probably not be missing much between now and then, as I'm importing everything from past journals to Dreamwidth, and will be busy organizing it. I am deleting a lot of the old newsblogs, btw, because they are timely and topical for when they're written and not too relevant now -- so if you think you may want to find some of the links, do your searching here.

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I can has Dreamwidth!

2009-04-12T04:54:27Z

Still getting set up and organized, since finding the code in my email (thank you!) Probably will still be setting up shop tomorrow, arranging the books and putting the dishes away.

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twistedchick @ 2009-04-10T15:03:00

2009-04-10T19:05:13Z

I've longed for the spent sigh, the brush of wind
dancing through high branch-tips, sun-dappled grass,
waves rippling to shore, daytime moon high-pinned
elusive silent spirit making its faint pass
above the whispering world, deaf to song
or cries or jubilant shouts, ancient stone
signpost on the way to beyond, first along
the unseen paths to myriad worlds unknown.
But now the wisdom of shadow, night's gift,
grants far more ease, more comfort in her train
than daybright vistas. The bright cold moon shifts
as if to draw close enough to know pain.
My comfort comes in following the trail
of moonlit snow until my senses fail.

twistedchick @ 2009-04-09T09:29:00

2009-04-09T13:29:55Z

This is a concern.

dreamwidth?

2009-04-08T00:16:44Z

If anyone has an invite code to spare, I'd very much appreciate one.

twistedchick @ 2009-03-21T20:34:00

2009-03-22T00:34:50Z

stupidity

2009-03-18T16:33:42Z

The US government"banning" children's books.

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twistedchick @ 2009-03-12T12:16:00

2009-03-12T16:16:37Z

I am stepping back from writing for a while. Some of it is lack of energy, some is the conviction that what I say will not be heard and will make no difference. There are enough things keeping me busy offline that I think it's time to take a break for a while. I will still try to skim the flists, to keep up with friends and local folk and events, but that's all.

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an answer, maybe not the answer

2009-03-11T20:25:16Z

I've been wondering why Bernard Madoff would so calmly plead guilty to so many counts of securities fraud, wire fraud and money laundering and accept the possibility of several consecutive life sentences.
This Vanity Fair article gives me a lot of ideas why he'd want to be somewhere behind a lot of concrete, where the people he defrauded couldn't get to him. He didn't just lose the money of rich people who could afford it -- he looted and lost *all* the money of people who had trusted him enough to invest everything they had. And he defrauded a huge number of charitable foundations that supported hospitals and a lot of other "good works" organizations. The story is incredible. Read it.

two thoughts that nobody but me cares about

2009-03-11T15:46:29Z

1. In Andre Norton's novel Beastmaster, the main character was Navajo. It's spelled out very clearly in the text. When this was made into a movie, he was played by Marc Singer, who is tall and blond. Andre Norton was not credited in the movie as having created the character [or the story, or the book. Or anything. She wasn't mentioned, either as Andre Norton or as Alice Norton. ::headshake and loud muttering::] The movie is an interesting (for some values of interesting) mixture of typecasting for appearance vs. capable acting by good actors. Tanya Roberts is the female lead (she may have learned acting since this movie but she didn't do any of it here); John Amos is doing a creditable job as an ally and Rip Torn is the villain. The animals include a tiger (wearing black food coloring to hide his stripes as he was supposed to be a black jaguar), two ferrets (playing meercats) and a golden eagle (playing an eagle.) They are awesome.

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twistedchick @ 2009-03-10T10:14:00

2009-03-10T14:14:42Z

Azurelunatic: Things that you are not entitled to on the internet.

2009-03-10T14:13:28Z

The Supreme Court has reinterpreted the Voting Rights Act so that special crossover voting districts can be set up to help elect minority candidates only if there's 50% or more minority voters in a district. This is a far narrower interpretation than was prevalent before; it matters because voting districts will be redrawn after the 2010 Census. This Reuters article wth Attorney General Holder was written before the decision; haven't found a response article.

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books, sf, and more

2009-03-09T16:26:20Z

Some books:

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twistedchick @ 2009-03-08T17:35:00

2009-03-08T21:35:26Z

Re the current Racefail:

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twistedchick @ 2009-03-04T21:27:00

2009-03-05T02:27:24Z

NYTimes: Geography of a recession -- a map of how bad it is and where.

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twistedchick @ 2009-03-03T10:25:00

2009-03-03T15:25:21Z

By all means, Congress, do investigate the CIA, who destroyed 92 tapes of harsh interrogations of Al-Qaeda suspects to hide evidence of their own wrongdoing. Harpers spells it out: CIA in mass destruction of torture evidence. You should know that Attorney General Eric Holder has said waterboarding is not going to be done under Obama.

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consider how many newspapers I've linked here, or quoted...

2009-03-02T16:39:09Z

It's no secret to anyone who's awake that newspapers in the US are in trouble. Too many of them have been treated as cash cows for too long, with the organization run more by the advertising side than the editorial, with the content quality ignored as long as the ads are there. Never mind that people who buy the paper want the news and put up with the majority of the ads; they will want the coupon sections, which are pure cash for the paper, but they also want to know what happened at the city council meeting and whether the zoning on Prospect Street is changing and what that means for kids walking to school.

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Obama's speech

2009-02-25T03:35:56Z

I cannot begin to tell you how delightful it is to have a president who speaks in complete declarative sentences with active verbs -- in everyday English.

FYI

2009-02-24T17:33:04Z

Bankruptcies reported:

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twistedchick @ 2009-02-24T10:38:00

2009-02-24T15:38:30Z

70 students arrested in protests in Tehran.

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twistedchick @ 2009-02-22T14:22:00

2009-02-22T19:22:07Z

Some governors are Just Saying No to the stimulus package, mostly Republicans, mostly in the South where people will be hurting.

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twistedchick @ 2009-02-21T09:55:00

2009-02-21T14:55:25Z

From msbstone, a meme: comment on this post and I'll tell you five subjects/things I associate with you. Then you post them in your lj and elaborate.

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twistedchick @ 2009-02-20T22:12:00

2009-02-21T03:12:37Z

If you live in California, you might want to think about water. A lot. Or, rather, the lack of it. And how the prices of vegetables, fruit, nuts and other things grown by California farmers to go up, while the amount of produce available declines this year. Details here, here and here, as well as from the NYTimes.. And, since California is the number one agricultural area in the country for several kinds of produce (oranges, almonds and strawberries, to start with) everyone should expect to see rising prices in the produce aisle, no matter where you shop.

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twistedchick @ 2009-02-19T18:58:00

2009-02-19T23:58:20Z

Argentina expels Holocaust-denying bishop.

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twistedchick @ 2009-02-18T15:00:00

2009-02-18T20:00:41Z

Anyone got expertise with Brother printers? We have a new one, just arrived yesterday, and it wakes not, neither doth it print. Well, it will print for Steve's computer but it is ignoring mine despite the proper drivers being installed. Where my computer is concerned, it won't wake up from "sleep", and the error code says something about "opening raster file failed".

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