Month: April 2003

The Unexpected party:
I guess it was Thursday J███████ asked me if I wanted to go to a place called Bilbo Baggins for dinner on Friday. So on Friday afternoon, I met up with J███████, K– and S██████to go have dinner in Old Town Alexandria at a place called Bilbo Baggins—Global Wine Cafe and Restaurant. We where invited by S██████’s friend K–, who I have met a few times, she’s kind of like my sister but without the depressive sadistic side. Any way she and a few other friends of hers met us at Bilbo Baggins for dinner around 7:30. J███████, K–, S██████ and I got there a little bit early and had a pint in the pub first—they have a very good selection of beers. The whole first floor of the place has a distinctly British country pub feel, befitting of it’s Tolkienesk name. We had dinner upstairs in a more, provincial France / rural Italy feeling (because of
the paintings on the walls) dinning room. The food was a little bit more they we would normally pay if we where going out, but not overpriced at all. And it was amazing. S██████ and I split a French Country Cheese Platter, which had what was probably the best Brie I have ever tasted on it. And I had the Gnocchi Napolitano—which makes my mouth water just thinking about it! I also had a glass of Bonny Doon, Glaciere Muscat for dessert! It was soooooo good. Anyway, a lot of good conversation, excellent food all made for a great nite we’ll have to do it again.

More food stories:
Saturday afternoon, J███████, K– and S██████were supposed to come over to my place to cook. So I cleaned up a little Saturday afternoon (because I slept in till 1pm like an invalid) and went shopping for a few thinks. We had planned to get together around 6:30 and cook, but at 7:30 I got a call from J███████, that his car had broken down on 66. Seems it overheated—and I can completely sympathize with sitting on the side of the road in NoVa with an over heated car, been there, done that. Twice! So I had kind of written the evening off and planned to work on my laptop when J███████ called me back and asked if I was still up for at very late dinner. Of course I was, so he, K– and S██████ climbed into K–‘s car and meandered their way into the District, this time having to deal with whatever caused half the roads around the White House to be closed, but they made it. We started cooking around 9:00, Jon and Kim did most of the work, S██████ played with my laptop for me and I put the music, Norah Jones (boy suddenly I feel useless… no wait, it was my kitchen and my dishes. OK I feel better!) Well, J███████ and K– made excellent food, as always and we sat around and talked till midnight. Lovely evening, there is not much that is better then good food, good conversation and good friends. (Though someone was missing…)

Geeky!
On Sunday it was my turn to run the d&d campaign. I had like two months to get it set up and still I found myself scribbling notes as late at Saturday night on how I wanted things to work. Now I used to be a fairly good dm but it’s been years since I did really dm, and I don’t read as much fantasy as I did back then. I think that this has caused me to loose some of my d&d plot creation ability… the complex plots of Dostoevsky and Sartre do not lend themselves to player driven role playing. So I agonized over the whole thing, but in the end J███████ and S██████ both said it worked well.

Also on Sunday I returned to the problem of my laptop. Now on Saturday night—as mentioned above—S██████ started looking at what was wrong with my laptop. He took it back with him when he left and apparently spent a significant part of the night sitting on his bed playing with in. With the help of a working computer with witch to connect to the Internet and read the documentation he discovered what he believes is my problem. I won’t go into all the gory geeky details here but, I think he was right because on Sunday night I sat down and in an hour or so had managed to get to computer to load the network card an think it was connected… now things don’t happen in the right order automatically so it all has to be done by hand right now, but it did say I was connected! Then I typed $ startx and BOOM! it blew up… no wait, it just said there was no screen defined, but X never works on the first try. Hopefully I will be able to get it configured tonight and then I will once again be able to connect to the
outside world from home! Yea!

Whig:
Oh yea, funny story. Riding the Metro out to Vienna to get my truck on Sunday and go play d&d I watched a man take his whig off several times and brush it. Now this whig so totally did not fit the man—he was older, but the hair was bright blond and currly, but that’s not the funny part. The funny part was the look of horror on the two girls who got on and sat across from him when they saw him take his hair off and begin to brush it. They got off at the next stop… somehow I don’t think it was their final stop. And dude played with his hair, putting it on, taking it off, brushing it, and looking in a little mirror trying to get it just right for the while 45 minute ride. It’s like seeing the bodies at a bad car accident—you’re horrified but you can’t take your eyes off it.

All in all, it was a very good weekend, one of the best in a long time. Hopefully this week my loptop issues will be resolved and I can stop the weekend reports and write there things as they happen from home.

Form The Economist [economist.com]:

America intends to use Iraqi oil revenues to finance the country’s reconstruction. But France and Russia have a list of oil contracts waiting to go ahead once sanctions are lifted, and both countries are among Iraq’s biggest creditors. America may find it has to promise that the new Iraq will honour those debts and that, even if old oil contracts are not honoured, opponents of the war will not be excluded from new contracts. Failure to give such assurances might tempt the French and Russians to wield their vetoes on the Security Council.

Weather you agree with America or with France/Russia/Germany, with the war or not, I think the above paragraph speaks for itself. It’s a pity that there has been no creditable voice for or against the war—one without political or economic motives. Perhaps they are out there and it is just that they are not interesting enough for the media.

Outside it’s raining. People scurry by the window with umbrellas or hoods puled low over their faces. The clouds deepen the early evening darkness. Street lights create little pools of radiance as their light reflects of the falling rain drops. Cars speed past down Connecticut Avenue. The light from inside illuminates an anti-war poster tapped to an ugly tree just outside.

Inside the air is filled with quiet jazz and conversation. Baristas call out orders, people chat as they drink their coffee, or tea. The window reflects the modern counter, high celling, drop lighting. It reflects the purple chairs. I sit in one of the chairs, my copy of this weeks Economist in my lap, an empty cup on the table next to me. Looking out at the rain.

My thoughts are half a world away in another coffee shop. Standing at the door, ready to head out into the rain. We wait for the light on Goswell Road to change, then dash out and cross the road. It’s only a couple of blocks back, but the rain is cold and the wind drives it around the umbrella no matter how you hold it. The two of us huddle behind the umbrella braced against the wind, she wraps her arm around mine and huddles as close as she can.

Little memories just sneak up on me all the time, vivid images, reminding me of how much I miss that time. Walking past a brick wall reminds me of a pub in Oxford, sitting with J███████ talking about nothing. The pattern in a carpet brings back the hallway of a hotel in Milan, A—– and I exhausted after a long night wondering the city. But most of the memories remind me of how much I miss her. The way she smiles, the way she pushes her hair behind her ear, the sound of her voice, the feel of her hand when she held mine. Nights spent walking around London, days spent sitting in coffee shops. Not a day goes buy that I don’t think of her, that I don’t wish I could find some way to be near her.

I miss you Tati

In an age where the president of America thinks he was chosen by God to defend freedom and an untold number of people are willing to strap dynamite to themselves and kill in the name of the same God, I think it is safe to say that terrorism is not the biggest (or worst) problem facing the world today—that honor goes to all religion’s extremist followers. Be they Jew, Gentile, Muslim, Hindi or followers of any religion, violence in the guise of faith is growing around the world.

Telling people that their faith is more or less violent than someone else’s is pointless as ALL faiths have followers who cloak their hate and aggression in prayer and penitence. No religion can claim to be free of such people, Christianity has it’s Catholic and Protestant para-militarist in Ireland—as well as it’s crusades, Islam has it’s many well documented extremist, Hindu’s are not so innocent either, even Tibetan Buddhist have had blood on their hands in the past. Religion does not fix the problem it only focuses it against people of ‘other’ faiths, and then blesses it.

The best solutions I have come across in my life are from Peter Singer and his camp—grounded in Utilitarian beliefs and in the ideas of Secular Humanism. The radical and extreme utility which Singer writes about arouses harsh, and loud, criticism from many religious camps (and quite a few others!) but secular humanism is an idea which has been mostly quiet. The biggest proponent of I which I have encountered is Salman Rushdie, a man with some experience dealing with religious extremism.

Rushdie is described by Michelle Goldberg, in this article [salon.com], as:

… A defender of an idea even less fashionable, at the moment, than moral relativism—secular humanism. It’s a cause some of our best thinkers, such as Hitchens and Martin Amis, are increasingly taking up. Though hardly politically expedient, the fight against religion’s tyranny makes intellectual and emotional sense right now. It could even replace the struggle against first-world imperialism as the organizing principle of radical thought, encompassing as it does the fight against the lunatics of al-Qaida, the butchers in Gujarat, the hard-line settlers in the West Bank, the rapists in the Catholic Church, the bombers of abortion clinics and, of course, our own attorney general.

That article was the fist time I had heard it called secular humanism, but the ideas permeate Rushdie’s none fiction writings—especially Step Across this Line. Googling on ‘Secular Humanism’ brings up the Council for Secular Humanism who define their idea this way:

• A conviction that dogmas, ideologies and traditions, whether religious, political or social, must be weighed and tested by each individual and not simply accepted on faith.
• Commitment to the use of critical reason, factual evidence, and scientific methods of inquiry, rather than faith and mysticism, in seeking solutions to human problems and answers to important human questions.
• A primary concern with fulfillment, growth, and creativity for both the individual and humankind in general.
• A constant search for objective truth, with the understanding that new knowledge and experience constantly alter our imperfect perception of it.
• A concern for this life and a commitment to making it meaningful through better understanding of ourselves, our history, our intellectual and artistic achievements, and the outlooks of those who differ from us.
• A search for viable individual, social and political principles of ethical conduct, judging them on their ability to enhance human well-being and individual responsibility.
• A conviction that with reason, an open marketplace of ideas, good will, and tolerance, progress can be made in building a better world for ourselves and our children.

Sounds like a good idea… problem is, the rest of the web page for the Council on Secular Humanism reads more like a religion, and has a anti-faith ring to it. Now I consider myself an athiest– mostly I could not care less if there is or is not a god out there, whether is it only one God or many gods. I am here and I value my life, my relationships (with people of many faiths,) and I understand that by doing things to help those around me and those with bigger problems than mine, I can make my world a better place—an inherently selfish idea. If there is/are a/some higher authorit(y|ies) than pure chance and my life does not get me into a good position for any possible afterlife then I guess I am screwed… C’est la vie. I just don’t believe it. I don’t buy into Pascal’s Wager [wikipedia.org].

Anyway, in the end the only real use of any of this would be if all people value others lives, accept others religious beliefs, and learn to take responsibility for their own actions and situations—stop blaming them on fate, others faith, your ancestors, my ancestors or anyone else and fix what you can and accept what you can’t.