Axoplasm / Blog / 2017

nov

Holland, 1945

2017-11-09

“do you know this song Dadda?”

School age girl on a bicycle with a race number, on a cold sunny day

What cyclocross teaches us

2017-11-02

Today on the ride to school, we talked about what cyclocross teaches us: if you can suffer through 45min of a cyclocross race, you can...

jul

Democrats routinely sacrifice their politics, because they want what’s best for America

2017-07-28

Consider: politically, for Democrats, the “best” result last night would have been for Trumpcare to proceed to the House and thence to Trump’s desk. Cue...

Sign near the turtle pond at the Southern Temple in Xiamen, China. English text reads “Observe social ethics and pay attention to public hygiene”

Right and Wrong♥

2017-07-26

Pondering the distinction between being right (correct) and right (moral).

How our unstable president will trash the civilian chain of military command

2017-07-26

“There will be no modifications to the current policy until the President's direction has been received by the Secretary of Defense and the Secretary has...

may

Gosh it’s like having no soul makes everything awful

2017-05-29

Reposted from this tweetstorm Until last year a core tenet of my belief system is that good and evil are transient properties, less tractable than...

Taliesin Myrddin Namkai Meche and Ricky Best

2017-05-28

I went late to the vigil for Taliesin Myrddin Namkai Meche and Ricky Best. The crowd was thinning. The first two people I recognized on...

Roger Moore

2017-05-23

Roger Moore wasn’t the best 007 but he was MY 007. The one on movie posters when I was a kid. FOR YOUR EYES ONLY...

apr

Bismarck wasn’t just a GOOD dog he was the BEST dog.

2017-04-05

For almost as long as it’s been Jenny+Paul it’s been Bismarck+Jenny+Paul. Before we bought a car or got married or moved to China or bought...

mar

Child’s crayon drawing of a collaborative game, with many events labeled, in purple, aqua blue, and several shades of green

Griselda and Liv steal the Emerald Diamond from the Emerald Queen Mab

2017-03-20

Iris has invented a game where she and I create characters who go on an adventure. We collectively invent the game we go along, sort...

Google Street View of ICE facility on SW Macadam

I had no idea this innocuous building was a jail

2017-03-17

Do not mistreat or oppress a foreigner, for you were foreigners in Egypt. Wednesday I joined about fifty other people to stand in solidarity with...

feb

Artist’s rendition of a sunrise on Trappist-1 IV

TRAPPIST-1 and 90s sci-fi RPGs

2017-02-22

A team of astronomers have observed, over the last 18months, a system of seven Earthlike planets orbiting the tiny red dwarf TRAPPIST-1. All of them...

bugs and cannabis

2017-02-13

Elsewhere on FB I got to unleash some entomology knowledge I packed away 24 (23?) years ago, for a class I took as a post-Bacc...

The independent judiciary; guanxi; that new church smell

2017-02-13

While calling the office of a local elected official this morning, I walked through their lengthy phone tree full of boring legal administrivia (“for notary...

Greenscreen hazmat suit

2017-02-10

I’m currently building TWO Drupal 8 sites from the ground up, and migrating a third, so I’m getting really comfy with drush config-export/import . (I...

jan

Donald Trump made me a better person

2017-01-31

I started a spreadsheet last week where I track the things I do every day to keep myself healthy and sane. More accurately: to cultivate...

Despair and Hope

2017-01-25

What exactly does a Ring of Power do, other than make Hobbits invisible? The main power of the Rings is inspiration. It makes its wearer mighty.

The Dad of America

2017-01-19

Sometime in October, while we were riding to school, Iris, Orion and I got to talking about Vice Presidents. What do they do? What is...

Kids building a snow person at Pittock Mansion

Longer tweetstorm

2017-01-09

Before 11/8/2016, Twitter was the place I went to escape daily life. Never for long stretches, but in small doses several times an hour, all...