Heresy, blasphemy, lies, and other pointless jokes

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I'm considering a t-shirt...
"Perseverate on marksmanship"

Anyone else think this sounds like fun?

poly intimacy
Someone on another list recently asked for a description of how someone "who actively and openly participates in the Poly lifestyle" experiences intimacy.

My reply follows. ( Read more... )

Damn. I'm apparently pretty "normal" in this case.

http://www.freemosquitoringtone.org

I didn't listen to it for long enough to determine whether there are any out-of-consciousness effects.

PDT vs PST
This week I got an interview schedule from an automated system our HR department is apparently using. It lists times that each of us will be interviewing a candidate and states explicitly that "All Times Scheduled in Pacific Standard Time".

Local time is currently Pacific Daylight Time. So they're using an irrelevant and nonexistent time zone.

I never know whether to take people like this literally, ask for clarification, (which seems to upset people), or what. This crap bugs me. I got an email a couple days ago talking about a meeting scheduled for 12pm. 12hrs "post meridiem" would be 12hrs after mid day would be midnight, right? Except that neither midnight nor noon are A.M. or P.M.

(It doesn't help that I've been spending time recently working with ISO-8601 date format and the question of how many minutes there are in a week, depending on leap seconds, and whether the interval is the time between two particular points of just a random week.)

I took my bike in for service last week. Among other things, it needs new tires.

A set of cheap tires cost around $500. And they expect them to last around 4000 miles. Even at 5000 miles, that's still $.10/mile.

My bike gets around 34mpg. Gas would have to be $3.40/gallon in order for my gas costs to be equal to or more than my tire rubber costs.

I'm paying more for tire rubber than for fuel for my bike.

Second leading cause of death in children worldwide...
...dehydration due to diarrhea.

"Between 1980 and 2000, ORT decreased the number of children under five dying of diarrhea from 4.6 million worldwide to 1.8 million — a 60% reduction. According to The Lancet (1978), ORT is "potentially the most important medical discovery of the 20th century".

ORT = Oral Rehydration Therapy = drinking something like gatorade, basically.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oral_rehydration_therapy

Fascinating. I was led on this journey because the can of coconut juice I'm drinking claims to be a natural "isotonic" beverage and I wondered what "isotonic" meant.

I remember from biology, (maybe chemistry), the concept of Ringers' solution, which is water and salt in concentrations comparable to a healthy body. At the time, it was mentioned as being a way to protect open wounds as with burn victims. Ringers' solution is considered a perfect buffer because the salt water has a tendency to equalize Ph values, regardless of whether they are acidic of alkaline. And that fact alone gives it a slight antiseptic quality. Any time a medical tv show talks about hanging a saline drip or Ringers IV they're talking about essentially the same concept used for generic fluid replacement.

"Isotonic" apparently suggests oral intake, and for that to work successfully, they've found it requires both sugar, (usually glucose), as well as salt and potassium. Hence, the sugar in sports drinks is actually a chemical requirement rather than a superfluous luxury.

I wonder if they're bathing burn victims in gatorade these days.

New Palm announcement
Today at CES in Las Vegas, Palm announced their latest operating system and device.

More info on palm's site: http://palm.com

(For anyone who doesn't know, I"m indirectly involved in the development of these things.)

Black Tuesday
C'mon and say it with me! It's fun!

Black Tuesday

No on almost everything
I finally read through my voter info for the propositions this year. And I'm thinking that I'm probably voting "no" on everything except 4 & 8... ( Read more... )

11/8 Introduction to Skydancing Tantra

Introduction to Skydancing Tantra
with Chris English

Saturday, Nov 8, 2008 at Edges in
Santa Clara, CA

Ever Wondered About Tantra?
( Read more... )

I'm sad
It's the end of an era. No more public sex. :(.

http://california.neighborcity.com/San_Francisco/SoMa_(South_of_Market)/detail/347563/74_Otis_St/

For anyone who doesn't know, I have enjoyed Power Exchange since they originally opened back on Harrison Street as a private club. At the time, they were about the only place one could rent to hold a party which included both men and women. When they bought out the old Playground and opened the Otis street site, they became a public sex club - one of the few remaining in the city. And one of the only public sex clubs I've heard of which welcome both SM play and mixed gender couples. For a number of years, they were free admission to women, couples with a toy bag, small groups, and anyone they recognized as a player. This essentially meant that despite it being a somewhat raucous atmosphere, and by comparison to paying $50 to play for an evening for other alternatives, (when they were available), they were still an attractive option.

I don't know how many people are aware, but there used to be a number of public sex clubs in the city. All were gay. And in the panic of the aids epidemic, the city closed almost all of them and stopped issuing public sex club licenses. The rumor is that there are only two or three licenses still extant and, like NYC taxi medallions, the only way to get one is to buy out someone else's.

I don't know anywhere else in the Bay Area, nor anywhere else in the world, honestly, which could host public sex clubs. And now we've lost ours, which is a shame. I don't know the story behind the loss, although I've heard rumors of tax evasion and the above ad mentions bankruptcy.

Periodically, I hear this idea around hypnosis. Here's an example statement from another forum.

The first rule of hypnosis is that one can not be hypnotized in to doing anything one is not already willing to do.

This isn't a rule. it's more of an arbitrary belief. And I would posit that it is an abusive belief and one to which I do not subscribe.

The truth is that it is indeed possible to hypnotize people into doing things that they will later regret or blame the hypnotist for. For a hypnotist to claim that "well, you must have really wanted it or you wouldn't have done it" is not only disingenuous, it's abusive. In abuse circles, this is called "blaming the victim".

I submit that a more elegant operator would be capable of fielding a complaint about them in a much more graceful manner without ever needing to resort to blaming the victim. And aside from validating the strategy of blaming the victim, I don't see any other use for the above stated belief.

Short Change
I've been fighting a cold for a little over a week now. Last weekend I stayed home and tried to rest. Fever ate me for a few days and then I got bored - which is dangerous. ( Read more... )

It had to happen...
I detest reality shows. They're corny and boring. Way. Boring. No plot, no brains, no soul.

So of course someone would have to make one I like.

I think it's on showtime but since I don't get cable, I bought them for under $2 an episode from Amazon "unbox", which means they download to my tivo, which is kinda cool.

Anyway, the series is called "Sexual Healing", (I bought it on title alone). They take a few couples, put them up somewhere, and give them a week of sex therapy, tantra, toys, touching exercises, etc. The doctor on the show seems reasonably apt and knowledgeable and they show us enough to actually track what's going on for each person. This shit's even better than reading case studies.

Episode two include a couple where the woman is super controlling, (kinda hot, actually), and in trying to get her to let go... the couple gets into an auto accident. I was astonished for two reasons. First, I saw it coming - you start letting go of control like that and strange things happen. And second, they showed it to us. They were on camera when they got hit and they included both the impact and the followup.

Way cool.

gender legality
Aside from the traditional methods of dna contribution towards procreation, is there really any reason why the government needs to know my gender? I mean, does it really show up in the law to speak of?

What's the difference between a pillow case and a pillow sham?

Saturday...
Saturday, both of the bay area's private bdsm clubs have events which are inappropriate for me and many of my friends. So I'm thinking that it's time for an outing to...

Power Exchange!

Who's up for Power Exchange this Saturday?

For anyone who hasn't been - http://www.powerexchange.com - Power Exchange is a long running _public_ sex club in the bay area that is open to any gender, any orientation, and supports bdsm play. It's one of the few places in the world that such a public sex club occurs and I'm tremendously proud that the bay area can support it. I've been playing there off and on since it's opening, I haven't been in too long, and I'd like to play there this weekend.

Who's up for it?