Praise then darkness, and creation unfinished

There's an article in today's NY Times Magazine arguing that we shouldn't worry about languages dying out. I disagree with the author, in part because we disagree over the accuracy of translation. The odd thing is that I think an editor there agree with me: the headline is "If all languages are equal, why does it matter when one of them dies?" and my immediate reaction was to substitute "men" for "languages" in that question.

"We didn't do it" is a denial, not an incontrovertible fact.

I called this morning, and they already had the recording up--though it started "good evening, jurors"--informing us that everyone called for jury duty this coming Monday should, in fact, report to the locations printed on our summonses.

I had fun filling out the form, because I'd put in the company I'm working at, then called the temp agency to check on something and was reminded that, technically, the agency is my employer. (They will pay me $40/day for the first three days, as required by law; the person I spoke to thinks that the procedure is for me to send a copy of the form certifying that I was on jury duty. After the three days, if I'm on jury duty that long, the state pays me $40/day.)

Marvin does not believe that I'm going to dye my hair purple. He said this often enough that, if asked why I did this, I may say "my supervisor dared me."

I am feeling enough better that I took advantage of very pleasant weather and walked for about half an hour at lunchtime: uphill, around a bit, and back down. (This made it the only day this week that I took a full hour's lunch.)

And after work, with cattitude's encouragement, I went to the gym. Having missed about three weeks, I've lost a little ground with the weights, but not too bad. I also hadn't been doing a lot of walking--the same series of feeling under the weather that had me not at the gym wasn't conducive to long walks.

[1] Yes, I know that this is technically a rhetorical flaw, and one with a name. Tough.

( gym numbers )

(This is from the same discussion roadnotes alluded to this morning.) Someone on the polyamory community was objecting because people were using the word in what zie thinks is the "wrong" way, or because people are seeking sex and love to make them feel better about themselves and life. Ohh-kay. But then they started talking about being "more evolved". This led, some comments later, to my posting the following:

---

On evolution: The course of evolution, as I understand it, has run from the simpler to the more complex in structure. Only because there's no meaningful way to get less complex than no structure at all. And even then, do we know when viruses evolved? (They're simpler than any other life--if you call them "life" at all.) Evolution finds and fills niches. Sometimes that means birds learning not to fly, or a complex lung turning into a swim bladder.

And it still has nothing to do with learning to handle relationships in a more mature fashion.

"Evolution" is a much better defined term than polyamory--which means I get annoyed at people who abuse it, especially when those people are trying to build other definitions on it, or attacking other people for using "polyamory" differently than the speaker does.

the net result of this misuse is I hear from idiots in IMs all the time who think I want to hop into bed with them because since my profile says I'm interested in poly, I must be a slut (negative connotation) or a swinger. I. Don't. Think. So.


Any mention of anything related to sex seems to get that result in IM, from what I've heard. I have *no* profile on ICQ and I get random messages from strangers, some of them clearly pushing porn pages and some possible wannafucks. That's not about poly any more than the guy who tried to pick me up at the gym is about tattoos.

And yes, "unicorn" means one-horned. A rhino is not a unicorn. A rock band consisting of two guitarists, a bass player, a drummer, and a saxophonist is not a unicorn.