Quick Takes (3/1/2013)

Greetings from the couch!

Apparently, telling your wife that you don't believe in this whole "period" thing, and that she's just making it up, doesn't get you any brownie points.

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The Murloc wants to move to Mission Viejo. I want to move to Lake Elsinore. The Murloc has pointed out that Lake Elsinore is far from everything and everyone important (sorry, Blue Fox). This got me thinking:

Median sales price for Mission Viejo (Nov-12 to Jan-13):
$480,000

Median sales price for Lake Elsinore (Nov-12 to Jan-13):
$214,775

Price of a Cessna Skycatcher ≈ $145,000

The choice, it seems, is clear.

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Damien has reached the phase where he is now pretending to be things that he is not. He has previously pretended to exist in other states (such as pretending to be asleep, particularly when we're yelling at him, as if he can't get in trouble if we think he's asleep), but now he is pretending to be other creatures. After showing him the Simon's Cat videos on YouTube, he pretended for the rest of the evening to be a cat, and crawled around and meowed. He plays the act very well, since he will refuse to talk when he's a cat, and only nod or shake his head in answer to questions. After we put him to bed that evening, we would occasionally hear little mews from the bedroom. Just the other night, we gave him a piece of cheese, and while eating it he declared that he was a mouse, and began squeaking.

I'm sure child psychologists would talk about this being an important development milestone and indicates some form of cognitive step towards abstraction and the ability to reason. However, like a physicist explaining the colors of a sunset in terms of the light refraction caused by the interaction of different wavelengths of the electromagnetic spectrum with atmospheric dust, they would simultaneously be entirely correct and entirely missing the point.

You simply can't explain joy through science.

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Speaking of Simon's Cat, you can watch all the films here. They're short and cute:

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Colloquialism of the day/week/month: "As satisfying as bacon on a Saturday morning during Lent."

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Right now:
The Murloc is sewing a dress for a new friend's little girl's birthday. She likes to listen to her Aerosmith station on Pandora whenever she is sewing. It makes me feel like I'm back in college, rooming with Whale Biologist Tom Adams. Perhaps I should ask her to buy me a coke, for old times' sake.

Let's hope AJN and ECN don't get word of this cute little pink dress with pearls and lace, or The Murloc might have to start a home business!

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A spoiler/preview of CPM2DoB:

Schola Concert

Well for those of you not privileged enough to live in shouting distance of my wonderful voice, I recorded our concert and uploaded it to YouTube. Here it is for your viewing pleasure.



So far, no one has said I sounded terrible, so that's a plus.

Also, audio quality is terrible. Any suggestions for a cheap, good audio solution for a large, empty space?

Mobility

Crawling? Not yet. Mobile? Most definitely.

Science Discovers Cure for Too Many Brain Cells

I'll just go ahead and leave this here.




Special guest brain cell killing by Barats and Bereta.

How to Make a Kia Commercial

(With apologies to Shamus Young)

Messe Secunda, by Fr. Michael Haller

For those of you poor saps who were unable to make it to the concert last night, here is the rendition of the Mass that we performed.



I will upload the other parts of the concert as time permits.

**Update**

The Vox Caelestis women's ensemble's set is also up:

Nothingness, I Embrace You!

Best comment on YouTube: "This ideological propaganda for the bourgeois is disgraceful. Gene Roddenberry's collaboration with Camus had fundamental authenticity, subtle but evocative artistry, and phasers."

(H/T Mike Flynn who H/T's Mark Shea)

Great Minds?

From Google: motion-controlled Gmail.



From Blizzard: motion-controlled StarCraft.



Coincidence? I THINK NOT!

April Fools

Schwarzenegger Musicals

Have y'alls seen these?

How 'Bout Some Halloween Music?

Sandbox

How to tell when you've written a flexible game:


Yo dawg, I heard you like computers, so I put a computer in your game so you can compute while you game.

When your game's physics engine supports building an ALU. This means that, theoretically, you could write the game within itself.

Learn more about the Minecraft phenomenon here:
Wikipedia.
Penny Arcade: Mine All Mine, Part 1 and Part 2.
Experienced Points: Mine All Minecraft.
Minecraft developer forming his own studio.
Minecraft allows you to set fire to your house.

Other things built in Minecraft:
A rollercoaster;
A giant waterslide;
Doom E1M1;
Notre Dame cathedral;
The Reichstag;
The Empire State Building;
A 1x1 scale model of the USS Enterprise (NCC-1701-D);
The Earth (not full scale, although theoretically the game's engine would allow it);

I haven't actually played the game yet. I'm kind of scared to try it.

Babby Vs. Death Star.

See, this is what happens when they allow just anyone to have a green screen. Or a video camera. Or a baby. You end up with things like this:

More Babby Videos!

'Cause you don't have anything better to do, right?

Now With Even Less Original Content!

A couple quick things. Firstly, I forgot this in the Friday link dump:

Her California accent sounds almost exactly like The Murloc's cousin.

I used to think that I had a neutral “American” accent, until I recently started doing voice work for my company’s training videos. This involves me recording and listening to my own voice a lot, and I’ve noticed two speech quirks that come through frequently. Firstly, I say “buh-n” instead of “button” and “frinstance” instead of “for instance”. It takes a lot of mental concentration to speak without the accent, and I end up re-recording a lot.

Secondly, go here to listen to the awesome "Gloria" that I heard at a Christmas concert I went to on Sunday. As I told my friend who sang in the choir, I wasn't aware anyone was still writing great sacred music.

Friday LinkDump.

I officially have too many web socializing services. With two blogs, twitter, and fazebōōk (as Fr. Roderick says), I'm never sure where I should post a link that I came across. Do I tweet it? Link it on Facebook? Post it here? All of the above? Then what of those poor people who follow me on Twitter, are friends on Facebook, and subscribe to this blog's RSS? Do I just force them to suffer through the same content 3 times?

My general philosophy is that I created my twitter feed for a) Damien's birth and b) to replace the headlines on this blog. The old system involved me directly editing the page code, and once I deleted a headline, it was forever lost to the mists of time. Twitter was supposed to just be a replacement for that, so I prefer not to put links there.

The Other Blog is supposed to be purely literary issues, so it's not exactly the best forum for funny ThemTubes vids. And I've been trying to get away from the lower forms of blogging on this space, and only most, insightful, informative, or funny (original) things here (which is why I haven't posted anything of late). That sort of leaves Facebook, but since most of you losers who read this aren't FB friends of mine, you're not able to indulge in my fine and high quality links (I said that with a straight face!). And I don't think most of my old friends from college are too terribly interested in the random things I come across on the intertubes.

So what do you think. Should I go ahead and post stupid links to odd things I find here? I have this mental image of people seeing that FU-News has been updated in their RSS then getting here and seeing just a link and thinking "aw, I was expecting an insightful, informative, and funny post about how to apply operations research to create a Cross Sums puzzle for Condo Shopping Space Pirates that speak in Olde Englishe." (Actually, that's not true, I also have this mental image of half my readership not caring less about Space Pirates... hence the Other Blog.)

Well, anyways, I need to post something, lest I forget how, so while I'm writing an informative, insightful, and funny post (I've got one coming, I swear!), here are, in order, the five lowest forms of blogging.

Fifth Lowest Form of Blogging: Link (with comment).

(Also, obligatory John C. Wright reference.)

On the Misery of Modern Women.

QFT: "Feminism is the daydream of a sexual predator come true." (That could never be construed as offensive in any ways, could it? Of course not! (Can anything Mr. Wright says ever not be taken to offend?))

Reminds me of Mom's saying: "feminism is the best thing to happen for men."

John Wright does, of course, clarify that he's not talking about simple equal rights: "Feminism, in its modern form, has little or nothing to do with Suffragettes, or those who sought legal equality between the sexes. It has everything to do with Marxism as it applies to sex. Marx analyzes all human relationships as power struggles between collectives, which always are assumed to enjoy a perfect unity of interests."

And in that quote, he perfectly put into words an idea that had been floating around at the back of my mind, but had never been able to express. In my conversations with my feminist co-worker, there was always something present—if not overtly at least subtly, in the background—in her world view, and the larger feminist world view that always just seemed wrong to me: that feminism is, at its heart, a Marxist power struggle.

After reading Wright's post, it made me note all the other places I'd seen this idea, such as in my Sociology text book in college (which was largely Marxist). It suddenly struck me that there's my problem with modern, third-wave, whatever-the-hell-you-want-to-call-it pseudo-feminism. True Feminism shouldn't be looking for a power struggle. True Feminism shouldn't see taking the power men have as the desirable goal, the final outcome, and that therefore women need to shed the shackles of femininity and become like men. True Feminism ought to be, as Feminists for Life puts it, about seeking dignity and equality for all persons. Femininity is part of women's dignity and casting it to the wayside does not serve their purpose.

So what is the great triumph of the modern feminist movement if they have not even won happiness for women? What does it profit women to gain the entire world, but to be miserable? As Dennis Prager would say, Happiness is a Serious Problem.

Fourth Lowest Form of Blogging: Baby Pictures!

(Baby feet pictures, actually.)

Dino feet!

We've got zee lions, only in Kenya!

Third Lowest Form of Blogging: Un-commented links.

O Come, O Come, Liturgical Blue.

(Be sure to listen to the song.)

QUAERITUR: What rubrics to follow at Mass in case of gunfire?

Key quote: "I believe there is a little known rubric which calls for the deacon and subdeacon (who in any event should be packing) to take out, reverently, their 9mm and return fire. As I read it, they are to recite the Maledictory Psalms while firing. At the change of a clip/magazine, they may bow, or duck."

Second Lowest Form of Blogging: YouTube vids.

(Gotta bunch for you here)

(From Word On Fire)

Fr. Barron has a series on YouTube that I have recently become a follower of, where he comments on all sorts of topics from modern culture. Check it out. Some of his good ones include:

Protestantism and Authority.

The Vatican Investigation of American Nuns.

Comments on District 9.

Senator Edward Kennedy.

Answering the Skeptics (this one's good; relates to John Wright's post).

Comments on Angels and Demons.

Why is there so much disorder in the universe?

On "The Audacity of Hope".

Hallelujah Chorus as sung by monks with a vow of silence.

(H/T Everyone on the Internet. If you had not seen this previously, congratulations, you are officially the last person to the party.)

Lowest Form of Blogging: Lolcats!

see more Lolcats and funny pictures

Left 4 Dead 2... in SCREAM-O-VISION!

Starring Weena Mercator as the screaming baby.

Blah blah abortion, pop culture. Let's talk about something really important.

My baby! (Who is, by the way, cuter than yours.)

Fingers Omnomnomnom

Aaaaaand one more.

Two videos for ya.

(Turn the volume up)

Like father like son.