Today is Oak Apple Day, marking the restoration of King Charles II to the throne of Great Britain and Ireland and the elimination of the abominable Puritan tyranny in 1660. That was, for those not keeping count, 53 years after the founding of my home state—and thus it’s as Virginian a holiday as Jackson Lee Day.
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I’m thirty-one years old now…oddly enough, I don’t feel the slightest bit different. Heh:-)
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One of the things that annoys me is folks who have dogs instead of children. A dog will last maybe 14 years or so, and when he dies that’s it; in the normal course of things, a child lasts longer than his parents, and produces children of his own, and perhaps even affects the course of history. There’s nothing wrong with dogs, of course, but they’re not people.
Well, it turns out that this over-affection for beasts isn’t a new thing after all. In Geoffroy IV de la Tour Landry’s Book of the Knight of the Tower (written for the instruction of his daughters) we find the following story:
Of The Woman That Gaf The Flesshe To Her Honndes
I SHAL save to yow an Ensample of a lady that yaf the flesshe and good morsels to her lytell houdes. Ther was a lady whiche hadde two small houndes, whome she moche loued and had soo derworthe that she took in them greete playsaunce. She made for them dayly dysshes of sowpes, and after gaf to them flesshe and other fryandyses delycyous. And on a tyme there was a frere mendycaunt that said to her that it was euyll done to gyue suche metes to the houndes, that were grete & fatte, where as there were moche poure peple lene and drye for hogre. Thus he prechyd, vnto the lady, but for al that she wold not leue it. Soo thenne a lytel afterward this lady bycam seke vnto the deth, and ther happed a wonder thyng whiche was sene al apertely. For ther cam vpon her bed two lytel black dogges, and whan she drewe on and was in a traunce they were about her mouthe and lycked her lyppes. And where as they lycied her on the mouthe it bycam as black as a Cole. This I haue herd of a damoyselle that said that she had sene al this, and named to me the lady. This is a good ensample to euery good lady and woman, how they ought not to haue ouer grete plaisyre in suche thynges, ne to geue flesshe ne lychorous metes to the houdes, for lack of whiche the poure peple of god dye for honger, the whiche ben the creatures of god made to his semblaunce and lykenes, and be his seruauntes. Suche wymmen vnderstande not the word of god in the gospel, where as god sayth,
He that dot wel to the poure doth to me seruyce.These wymmen resemble not vnto the good quene blache, that was moder of sayni lowys, whiche dyd do gyue in hir syght the mete to the moost nedy and meseased. And after saynt lowys dyd in lyke wyse, for he vysyted the poure peple and fedde them with his own honde. The Plaisire of euery good woman is to see the faderles and moderles children and lytel poure children and them norysshe and clothe, as dide the holy lady that was Countesse of Mauns, whiche norysshed wel thyrtty orphanes and the lytel poure children for pyte, and therin was al hir disporte. And therfor she was louyd of god and had an holy lyf and a goode ende. And ther was, sene at her deth a grete clercnes and lyght alle full of lytel children. These were not the smale houndes that were black whiche were sene with the other, as ye haue herd to fore.
Here’s my rendering, for those who don’t wish to dig through early modern English:
Of the woman who gave meat to her dogs
I shall give to you an example of a lady that gave meat and treats to her little dogs.
There was a lady who had two small dogs whom she loved so much and dearly that she took great pleasure in them. She made them nice meals every day, and gave them meats and other delicious food. One time a mendicant friar said to her that it was an evil deed to give such food to fat dogs when there were many skinny poor people dying of hunger. Thus he preached unto the lady, but she would not listen. So a little later this lady took deathly ill and there occurred a wonder which was seen by all. When she was in her final minutes and had fallen unconscious two little black dogs walked onto her bed and licked her lips, and where they licked her mouth it became as black as coal. I was told this by a girl who had seen it herself, and gave me the name of the lady in question.
This is a good example to every good lady and woman of how they shouldn’t take over-large pleasure in such things, not to give meat or luxurious food to dog when poor people—made in the image and likeness of God, His servants—die from hunger. Such women don’t understand God’s words in the Gospel that
He that does good unto the poor does me service.These women are unlike good Queen Blanche, the mother of St. Louis, who fed the poor and abused. And St. Louis did likewise, visiting the poor and feeding them with his own hands. The pleasure of every good woman is to feed and clothe orphans and poor children, like the holy Countess of Mauns, whose only past-time was to feed thirty orphans and poor children out of pity. And therefor she was beloved by God and had a holy life and a good end. When she died there was seen a vision of light surrounding little children, not black hounds as were seen with the other lady.
So you see, you really shouldn’t treat dogs like people. Unless you have a really good mortician I guess.
Due to recently discovered vulnerabilities in the SHA-1 hashing algorithm, I am transitioning from my old PGP key to a new one. My old key was:
pub 1024D/47740A63 2001-06-26
Key fingerprint = 347A 5D07 607B 6D88
6882 5F64 4361 EBDA 4774 0A63
My new key is:
pub 4096R/A65E2454 2009-05-16
Key fingerprint = 0113 A3F5 598B 51C2
4D24 950B EC98 693D A65E 2454
An easy way to import the new key is to run gpg
–fetch-keys
http://www.octopodial-chrome.com/~ruhl/A65E2454.asc to fetch it
from my webserver; alternatively you could fetch it from MIT’s
public keyserver with gpg –keyserver pgp.mit.edu
–recv-key A65E2454
.
If you already know my old key, you can verify that the new key is
signed by the old one with gpg –check-sigs
A65E2454. If you don’t already know my old key, you can
check the fingerprint against the one above with gpg
–fingerprint A65E2454.
If you’re satisfied that you have the correct key and that you
trust it and me, you can sign my key with gpg –sign-key
A65E2454
If you _do_ choose to sign my key, it would be very useful if you
would upload the signatures, either by emailing to me with gpg
–armour –export A65E2454 | mail -s ’OpenPGP signatures
for A65E2454’ eadmund42@gmail.com
or by sending them to a key server with gpg –keyserver
pgp.mit.edu –send-key A65E2454
.
Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions. Sorry for the inconvenience, but it’s the price we must pay in order to have security.
Many thanks to Daniel Gillmor for his quick guide to making the transition.
Jeremy Beer has an intriguing piece on how our meritocratic world has led to the downfall of small towns. I’m not certain yet what my thoughts are; it requires some mulling-over.
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Sally Pipes
makes some
excellent points about health care. The most important one IMHO is
that health care is a necessity but not a natural right. Here’s
another good one: A little known fact is that of all of life’s
necessities, save clothing, health care is by far the least costly. It’s
not until Americans become senior citizens that the average household
spends more out of pocket on heath care than entertainment and dining
out. Yet we don’t decry the crisis in restaurant bills, football games,
and rock concerts.
(de | fr | it | ru) [/philosophy/politics] permanent link
Apparently there’s some knitting blog meme going around wherein one describes what one has knit, plans to knit and doesn’t plan to do. Well, here’s mine. Strong means that I’ve done it; emphasis means I plan to do it; normal text means I’m not planning on it.
Oh, and if you hadn’t figured it out: I knit.
It turns out that speed bumps are deadly: while they save lives by slowing traffic, they also end lives by slowing ambulances. Apparently for every life saved up to 85 are lost. Whoops.
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There was a good reason for all the exercise I’ve been doing: I attended Direct Commission Officer Indoctrination from 19 Apr–1 May. For almost all of my adult life I’ve been overweight & out of shape; I believed that my greatest challenge at school would be to keep up physically, so I developed a plan to address the issue, I executed it—and I ended up not having any problems whatsoever. On the contrary, I actually got the highest sit-up score in the class and didn’t do too poorly overall (I got an Excellent-Medium score).
Of course, now that I’m back I need to keep at it. My new goal is to complete 100 miles of running and walking by the 26th of June. I had 29 miles before I went to school, and with over 6 miles of running and 10 of marching (these are bare minima, since I wasn’t keeping track—I’m pretty sure we did more than a mile a day of marching) that puts me at 45 miles. This week I ran 2½ miles and walked 1; ran 1½ and walked 1; and finally today I ran 2½, bringing me up to 53½. Over the upcoming week I plan to knock out another nine miles at least.
A birthday party was invaded by two men—fortunately one of the students at the party had a handgun in his backpack. He drove off the assailants, mortally wounding one of them.
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Bob Martin proposes that software development teams model themselves after craft guilds, with a master programmer supervising journeymen programmers who supervise apprentices. Not only that, but computer science degrees would be replaced by apprenticeship in most cases. He demonstrates that such a team would be fairly inexpensive and could be highly productive. It’s an intriguing idea.
My big concern with eliminating college is simply that higher education expands the mind. But is it really necessary to spend $200,000 between the ages of 18 and 22 in order to expand one’s mind? Perhaps that’s really just a luxury for the rich.
Oregon plans to raise the beer tax nineteen-fold, from $2.60 per barrel to $52.21. Crazy stuff.
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United States,
Colorado, Englewood, Centennial, English, , Robert, Male, 21–25, Free
Software, Society for Creative Anachronism.