Blog Archives 050612 to 050509

Old pointless chatter instead of new pointless chatter.

 

050612 København, Danmark
I was going through the mail and one of my pieces of mail from my bank read "For those with a post office box address - In compliance with the USA Patriot Act, a street address is required...". This just reminded me of how strongly I dislike that over-reaching, invasive, poorly-written piece of legislation. The only thing good about it was that the provisions were set to expire soon. I said "were" because our lovely government is now on a misinformation campaign to get the Patriot Act provisions extended without alteration or debate. If you have not been following the news, the Bush administration is casting any attempt to reign in or rewrite portions of the Patriot Act as an attempt to harm the safety of the US.

Anyway, this reminds me of my old rule of thumb - "If it has it in it's name, then it isn't." For example, for most nations calling themselves something like "The Democratic People's Republic of X", you can bet that it is not very democratic and the republic (if it even qualifies as a republic) is not the people's, but belongs to some subset of autocrats. Another example can be found in the so-called "soft sciences". Many of them cling to the word "science" as a legitimating presence, while the field is developing and is still pretty unscientific. As the theory is put in place and methods become more rigorous, eventually the field develops enough that it can stand on its own merits. One example of that development is the current existance of Sociology departments. Back when the field was in it's infancy and not very scientific, the departments were often called "Social Science". Just one more case where the name was used as a legitimizing fig leaf. These days there is enough science in the field that they don't feel the need to put science in the name.

As you might have guessed, this brings me back to the "Patriot Act". It is anything but the choice of true patriots. The Patriot Act is an exploitation by autocrats, moving to gain more power. Hmm. How about I mention just one of its many provisions that do far more to erode liberty than fight terrorism? One of the provisions allows the government to go before a secret court and get a secret subpoena to access just about any records they want from libraries and bookstores. Yep, the government gave themselves the right to track who's reading what. As part of the provision, everything is kept secret and the librarians and booksellers are under a gag order threatening them with jail time, should they talk about being subpoenaed for the information. This makes it pretty hard to challenge any abuse of power. But you trust your government, don't you? After all, they wouldn't do anything like intern US citizens without trial or evidence of criminal action, would they? Oh, wait. They did that to the Japanese a few years back, tried to do it to suspected communists a few years later, and are doing it to a handful of "persons of interest" right now. Ahrgh. Anyway, if I am ever required to choose between freedom and safety, I know I'll be happy to be free and take my chances.

050605 København, Danmark
At one of the Viking Boat Museaum, I found a newspaper entitled "Viking Today". Ever since finding it, I have had the urge to put on full viking gear, a long braided wig, helm, shield, and sword, and then ride the commuter tram sitting next to the business men in suit and briefcase as they read "Business Today". The mental image is wonderfully Monty-Python-ish. Unfortunately, I left all my medieval gear in storage in the US. Oh well. I guess I'll have to leave it up to someone else to freak the suits.

Oh, since I have finally started formal Danish lessions, I added a link wherein I describe some of the rules of the language... Um, sort of.

050604 København, Danmark
Today is my first free time at home without guests in a while. I am really quite tired now, so I'm being lazy and not doing much of anything today. Tomorrow, I'll clean the place up and take care of all the things I should be doing.

Friends from when I was at Duke University (grad school), Eric and Gwen, came and visited from about Friday 050513 to about Monday 050516. It was really great to see them. The apartment is tiny, so I gave up the bedroom and slept in the living room on a matress stolen from the bed. One thing that was unfortunate for Eric and Gwen, but helped make the visit quite relaxing, was the fact that both Eric and Gwen were feeling a bit tired and sick. Now, that sounds awful to say, but because they were not up for racing all over creation doing the high energy tourist thing, we just sort of sat about and visited. Since we had not seen each other in a really long time, that was ideal. Another nice thing was that Eric and Gwen have different sleep schedules. Normally, when a couple visits with you, you interact with the couple, rather than the individual members of the couple, if you know what I mean. For this visit, I would get up with Gwen and we'd chat for a hour or more before Eric would awake and the day would officially start. Also, in the evening, after Gwen went to bed, Eric and I would stay up for an additional couple of hours and chat into the night. So, I got to visit with them as both a couple and as individuals, but I really didn't get overly much sleep.

After they left, I cleaned up and did laundry, but remained sleeping on the living room floor since my parents were arriving to visit in just a few days and I was again planning on putting them in the bedroom. For my parent's visit, they were staying from 050521 until 050601. I *totally* messed up on the planning of the visit when my parents were verifying when was a good time to visit, since I somehow forgot that my workplace had scheduled an important meeting for 050523-050527. This was R&DInfoWeek, with people from all over the world flying in to attend. D'oh! I had gone and arranged for Ken and Karin to visit during the exact time I was *least* availible. By the time I realized the error, the tickets had been booked and there was not turning back. In the few days of the week ahead of their visit, I put in some serious work hours attempting to get everything at work in order for the R&DInfoWeek meetings and get my experiments to a good pause point.

Anyway, this all turned out for the best. Denmark had a burst of anomalously good weather for almost the entire duration of their visit. Also, a long visit in very close quarters (my small apartment) always has the potential to drive both guests and host nuts. However, since I was attending the workplace meetings all week, we actually just had the weekend, the weekday evenings, and the following long weekend together. This made the visit seem quite short. Also, it has not been since high school about 18 years ago that I have had the experience of coming home to find my parents there. It was kind of amusing. Still, for the whole week, I was getting up quite early to go in to work and take care of a few details before the meetings started and then I would get home in the evening in time to meet Ken and Karin to go out for the evening, staying out or staying up quite late. On saturday, we took a bicycle trip from København up to Helingør. I'd been out until Saturday morning, drinking with coworkers and the End-of-R&DInfoWeek party, and I was nearly left behind for the bike trip. The trip was really pretty and we stayed at a lovely little B&B in Helingør Saturday night before cycling back to København in the morning. All in all, this visit too was really lovely.

The life I have made for myself is interesting and widely traveled, but as interesting as it is to live in so many different states and countries, it means that many of the people I care about, friends and family, are rarely seen. The apartment was quite empty the evening I came home and there were neither visitors nor the need to clean up for soon-to-be arriving visitors.

Anyway, even though we took it quite easy the last few days of my parents' visit, I had built up one heck of a sleep debt by the end of the series of visits and returned to work with several outstanding "must do now" tasks and the start (finally!) of my Danish lessons sucking away even more time. I have resolved to do pretty much nothing this day. I'm sleeping in, ignoring the clutter, the papers I brought home, and planning on going to bed early tonight. My full successes for the day are getting a haircut and slurping a few cup of coffee. I've decided that is good enough.

Page Last Modified: 2006 04 21, 08:25:20

 

 

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