Los ocupas

I told you about the squatters who moved in next door. Well, it turns out they're Spanish. And to call them squatters doesn't really do them justice - they're more like urban homesteaders. They've already cleared the garden, turned over the soil, dug in some compost and are now ready to start planting vegetables.

They're also musicians: most days we're treated to some very accomplished Flamenco guitar. Yesterday, along with the guitars (and the biggest ibo drum I have ever seen) they put on a display of traditional Spanish dancing - it was quite a performance.

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Sick note

So, the computer is fixed but my health has taken a turn for the worse and I'm now pretty much housebound and bedridden. I'm slated for exploratory surgery but, in the meantime, I'm a bit of a mess.

Somehow, I don't think I'll be blogging for a while.

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Repaired

So, I'm back. I've had computer problems - I got through three machines in five days. The first one went bang, the second went phrzzt and the third one just went dead.

Still, I'm back. And life is getting interesting: squatters have just moved in next door. It's a rundown old house that's been empty for a while, so they can't do much damage. Maybe they'll do the place some good. The neighbors will be up in arms about it, of course. They'll probably get up a petition or something. I'll let you know how it all turns out.

Anyway, like I said, I'm back.

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Here be trolls

There's a troll the size of a house over at Ophelia Benson's Notes and Comment - they've been feeding it for days. I couldn't resist getting involved - if only to try and shoo it away.

In my zeal, I misaprostophized Rawls. Oh the shame!

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Getting old

Today is my birthday, I am 49.

God, I hate birthdays: they age me.

Thursday roundabout

Dave Rich at Harry's Place on the allegation that Israel is in some way analogous to Nazi Germany.

Black Triangle covers the latest vaccine scare story.

Watts Up With That has a short primer on the greenhouse effect.

Baroque in Hackney on the news that researchers have discovered the oldest English words.

And finally,

Science Punk challenges readers to redesign the cover of Ben Goldacre's "Bad Science".

Madness unconfined

Has Brian Micklethwait completely lost his mind?

One of the most important memes that the internet has circulated during the last decade has been the extermination option, when it comes to Islam. Extermination of all muslims. Not now, you understand. Just if there continue to be serious muslim-perpetrated terrorist incidents

WTF?

Images of the Depression

Destitute pea pickers in California. Mother of seven children. Age thirty-two. Nipomo, California. Photographer: Dorothea Lange.

From the Library of Congress Digital Collections.

Health and safety

I grew up in a high threat environment where street violence was a regular occurrence and you could get beaten up (or worse) for simply looking the wrong way at people or, indeed, for nothing at all - except for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Growing up like that you learn a number of survival techniques - street smarts, if you will. You don't make eye-contact with strangers, you go out of your way to avoid groups of young men on street corners, eschew a range of behaviours that might mark you out as a victim and, most importantly, you don't hang around with dickheads. In this context, "dickhead" is a technical term for someone whose behavior is likely to result in them (and anyone who's with them) getting the crap beaten out of them.

Example: It's just past closing time outside a fish and chip shop in a rough area of Liverpool. One of the guys I've been out drinking with starts staring down a group of seven or eight lads who are waiting in line to buy chips. The inevitable challenge: "What the fuck are you looking at?" is met by my companion with: "I don't know. They don't label shit round here." At which point, the fighting kicks off. My companion was a dickhead.

Christopher Hitchens on the other hand...

One of the greatest

Seeing as how the State Tour arrived in Oregon last week, I would normally be wandering around the local blogs catching up with some of the things the tour didn't cover - like beer and environmentalism. But first I need to make a virtual visit to Willamette National Cemetery and pay my respects to my dad.


George Senior: Sergeant First Class, US Army Rangers - 06/21/1921 to 04/11/1992.

Wednesday roundabout

David Adesnik at Oxblog: From Gitmo to suicide bomber.

At Normblog: the FKATWOT count hits 13.

Mark Liberman at Language Log on "Miss Thistlebottom’s hobgoblins”.

Collision debris: Zoe Brain on space junk.

And finally,

At Faith in Honest Doubt: Bigots or Pepsi?

Modern times

Simon Heffer in the Telegraph provides the context.

The worst possible hour

Didn't get to bed til four in the morning. What was I doing up? I was listening to Rives.

Friday roundabout

Edmund Standing at Harry's Place on Muslim schools and social cohesion.

Michael Totten looks at the possibility of a third Lebanon war.

Eric Rall at Dean's World: Whence and Whither the Depression?

Dale at Faith in Honest Doubt features CBS's Adam Carolla on atheism.

And finally,

Via PooterGeek, there's Яolcats.

My morning

Wake early in some discomfort, discomfort becomes severe abdominal pain, pain turns to agony: ambulance, hospital, morphine.

Home now but still feeling a little woozy from the drugs. Boy, my guts are screwed!

And I'm back on the dihydrocodeine, again.

Thursday roundabout

The new taboo: Ophelia Benson on criticism of Islam.

Dan Jones defends evolutionary psychology at The Proper Study of Mankind.

Savage Minds: Learning an Endangered Language (Part 3).

At Sense of Events: It's the end of the world as we know it (again).

And finally,

At Language Log: The worst pun of all time?

Undecided

I'm in two minds about a number of things at the moment:

1. The wisdom of the stimulus package

2. The purported charms of the "lovly Olga" (via unsolicited e-mail)

3. The Bat Segundo Show

Blogging Buddhists

I came across a blogger recently who described himself as "mostly Buddhist". I struggle to think what that might mean. Does he imagine there are fewer than four noble truths? Which of the five precepts doesn't he hold with? Maybe he follows a twofold path. Who knows?

In any case, I got to wondering what it would mean to be a Buddhist blogger. Or, more specifically, what if anything Gautama had to say that might be relevant to blogs.

Right Speech (the third element of the Eightfold Path) seems apt:-

The importance of speech in the context of Buddhist ethics is obvious: words can break or save lives, make enemies or friends, start war or create peace. Buddha explained right speech as follows: 1. to abstain from false speech, especially not to tell deliberate lies and not to speak deceitfully, 2. to abstain from slanderous speech and not to use words maliciously against others, 3. to abstain from harsh words that offend or hurt others, and 4. to abstain from idle chatter that lacks purpose or depth. Positively phrased, this means to tell the truth, to speak friendly, warm, and gently and to talk only when necessary.

Hmm. Do you know many bloggers like that?

(I do. But they're all dreadfully earnest.)

Domestic de-cluttering

We're in the middle of some early spring cleaning - we have way too much stuff.


[Thanks to Norm for the video link]

Well well well

I'm reminded that I haven't posted about my health since I mentioned I was being treated for post-operative ulcers.

Well, I've finished the course of tablets and the consultant reckons I've made a full recovery. I'm not going to argue with that - I've been sick so long I'm ready to believe anything. And besides, I really admired his jaunty optimism.

So, all I need to do now is get fit again. Of course, that could take some time. Before I got ill I used to be fairly active: kept goal for a local football team, played tennis two or three times a week and even managed (occasionally) to do some serious training.

Since then, I've lost a lot of muscle mass and stamina: it's going to be a long road back. What I need is a program of rigorous goal-oriented self-empowerment.

Ach, maybe tomorrow...

Or "soon, maybe", as my grandmother used to say. "Soon" being the Irish equivalent of "mañana" - though, as the old joke has it, there is no word in Irish that conveys quite the same level of urgency.