I wrote a short essay about [...]]]> I write a lot of things on MetaFilter. I’ve sort of settled on it because I like and respect the moderators there and I think that many of the posters/commenters there really have decided, despite differences, to try to discuss things in good faith, civilly and without too much trolling.

I wrote a short essay about why I think atheists should not get hung up on the evils of faith or spirituality there just this morning that I’m pretty proud of.

Read on for the copy/paste.

Here’s my comment:

I think what atheists often miss about many religious people is that there are a lot of rational people in religion who not only do not take the dogma, myths and legends attending their religion(s) literally, but who go a step further and consume the dogma, myths and legends as lesson-filled metaphor and allegory for our time.

Coupled with a sense of irony, satire, humor, silliness and often a disrespect for central religious authority or leadership, a lot of religious people are closer kin to the atheists (especially the really thinky, thoughtful kinds we can get here on MetaFilter) than they are to the whacked out fundamentalists who seem to be our hobby horses here when talking about the evils of religion, faith and spirituality.

In case folks have not been paying attention to my personal continuity with respect to faith, I was raised objectivist empiricist and atheist. Simultaneously, I was exposed (very non-dogmatically) to the interesting traditional Chinese blend of Buddhism, Taoism and Confucianism by my Chinese family. I haven’t said, but will, that I also joined the non-religious society of Friends as a child. Later, in adult life, I joined the Unitarian Universalists as, essentially, an agnostic. Even later still, personal encounters with non-empiricist disciplines, teaching and experiences from Traditional Chinese Medicine seem to have turned me also into a Taoist. I tend to think of Taoists as sort of like empirical Gnostics, but in a system of medicine that is not compatible with Western Science/Medicine. I sense a rather cooperative but still fairly antagonistic relationship between Traditional Chinese Medicine and the Western sort. I personally benefit (I hope) from both simultaneously, but my further interest largely lies with TCM.

Anyhow, as you might imagine, I am pretty thoughtful about how I choose to follow my faith-related spiritual pursuits. And as I am thoughtful, so are my friends. I’m not sure if I know any pure atheists. I might, but mostly I know very spiritual people who are also very intelligent and very personally responsible and responsive to new criticisms or ideas that seem to indicate they may not be being responsible or responsive enough about any particular issue.

I know Episcopalians, Unitarians, Pagans, Jews, Christians, Catholics, Taoists, Buddhists, Muslims, Baptists, Witches, Hoodoo practitioners, Voodoo practitioners, and probably more faiths that I’m not aware of. And I have a lot of friends who are probably atheist or at least agnostic. But what we have in common is a pretty good grounding in comparative religion, a lot of interest in learning more and a personal stake in figuring out a way to work together toward a common good. Some of us have it as a profession, others, a hobby. And we all get along because we keep it civil. And probably also because we like and trust each other and tend to assume good intent. We can have discussions about religion and spirituality without needing moderators to keep it clean.

One of the things we pretty much don’t do is accuse each other of having faiths that command violence or faiths that command endless feuds or faiths that justify the horrors we humans perpetrate upon each other. We also generally don’t cite bullshit dogmatic reasons for doing shitty things to each other, doctrine or no.

I consider that kind of thing trolling. It’s like saying to an atheist that because of their state’s outdated and moralistic anti-sodomy laws, they should inform on their gay (or straight, oral-sex-having or anal-sex-having) neighbors to the local police. There are things that I think decent, sane, rational, intelligent consumers of any outside moral, legal or ethical force don’t do to each other.

I think atheists (here on MetaFilter as well as elsewhere) would do well to consider that there are a lot of folks within religious communities who’d probably love to be good allies with them. There can be a mutual respect, perhaps an agreement to disagree or at least an agreement to let bygones be bygones or maybe an armistice on the conversion attempts (to, from religion or to, from atheism, I don’t care). Atheists and the religious or more spiritually inclined can do a lot of good together in creating social change.

Getting hung up on the evils of faith, spirituality or religion itself and refusing to move forward into more profitable arenas of social change strikes me as short-sighted and possibly self-destructive.

Hanne chuckled about my characterization of Taoists as “empirical Gnostics”.

I’ve been causing trouble on Google Maps. Google recently became their own map data provider (instead of buying it from Navteq or the other one they used more recently – can’t remember the name), which is great except no one seems to be able to figure [...]]]> Lately I’ve been causing trouble for Google. Google Maps specifically.

I’ve been causing trouble on Google Maps. Google recently became their own map data provider (instead of buying it from Navteq or the other one they used more recently – can’t remember the name), which is great except no one seems to be able to figure out my neighborhood. I’ve been iteratively working with them on and off to try to get them to fix the maps of my neighborhood (my conceit is that I’d like emergency vehicles potentially driven by people new to the area to eventually be able to find my house) and they’re probably about 75% there. At this point mostly they’ve got all the right roads and alleys, they’re just not labelled correctly, and I assume the mapping/path-finding data is probably not yet all there.

It was awesome! Only one place was new to us, but we saw improvements or standbys were still solid standbys across the board.

Anyway, let’s talk about the new place. For lunch we stopped by for a first visit for us of Hunan Taste, which is [...]]]> Today we went out and did lots of Asian food-centric shopping.

It was awesome! Only one place was new to us, but we saw improvements or standbys were still solid standbys across the board.

Anyway, let’s talk about the new place. For lunch we stopped by for a first visit for us of Hunan Taste, which is a Hunan Chinese restaurant in the same shopping strip mall area that H-Mart (our favorite supermarket for Asian produce) and Hanoori Town (department store for housewares in the basement and a Korean/Japanese food court – including a new ice cream/tai yaki store) sit. We looked at the menu, which was fantastic looking and had all sorts of non-white-people options in it. We went to shop for non-perishables, then we came back in time to be the first guests this morning (they open at 11).

The restaurant owner/host was very interested and helpful and sympathetic. She was really interested in why we chose to visit, and interested to hear our preferences for food. For those interested, she found it interesting that I identified as Cantonese (who generally eat very strongly flavored and pungent foods but not usually a lot of hot chili spices) and checked with me to see if I liked chili spices, since the restaurant is authentically Hunan.

After appropriate interviewing, she suggested a dish we ended up ordering – a simmered freshwater fish in red chili sauce served as a stew. We also got pig ear salad and a braised cabbage soup. I thought it amusing and sweet that the waitress also made sure we knew the fish was spicy hot, but was fine after we confirmed that we knew and we like spicy food. We both loved all the dishes. The cabbage soup had a bonus thousand year old egg (Hanne’s first – which she enjoyed) and some great punch-it-up-a-notch salt ham slices. The broth was really good and strongly porky. The pig ear was great! Texture was perfect, seasoning great. The fish was also extremely tasty. I loved the flavors, the spiciness and the presentation. Too bad for me that I don’t like dealing with bones so much, which were not overwhelming, but definitely present. We’d been warned when we ordered.

I note that there’s a very unflattering review on the UrbanSpoon site. I cannot imagine, literally, how that was made in good faith. Maybe there was a misunderstanding between waitstaff and a customer predisposed to leave crappy reviews. I don’t think the restaurant deserves it and I fully plan to return and try another set of dishes. Hanne and I also had a pretty involved discussion about who to take with us next time. We both want to try their hot pots too.

Anyhow, on to shopping.

We started the morning going to Asia Supermarket, a Chinese-oriented supermarket that’s relatively new and is on Route 40 inside the Baltimore Beltway. We went to both check up on its progress since last time we visited, pick up some char sui (red bbq pork) for snacking and look at their houswares. We ended up getting another (this time aluminum) steamer, a wok grate for our stove (fits perfectly!), a butane-powered portable gas burner, and the char sui. We also got a bunch of spices from the Hispanic-spice-vendor-sourced spices area.

Then we moved on to the H-Mart shopping center. First to check out Hunan Taste’s menu, then to Hanoori Town’s department store to pick up some steaming dishes for steamed meatballs (though they’re really for kimchee), then we went to H-Mart to get tne non-perishables: dried bonito flakes for cat snacks (1 lb for $22, but it lasts a long, long time) – folks actually use this for things like tofu salad and for other garnishes and sometimes also for the flavors, butane chargers for the portable burner we got at Asia Supermarket, rose syrup, fennel and sugar.

Then we put stuff away in the car and went to have our FABULOUS lunch at Hunan Taste. Then we went back to H-Mart to get perishables: Chinese chives, ginger and glutinous rice crullers (1 each).

Yay!

Then home to put it all away where we are settling and getting geared up to potentially go dog walking (though I may schlub out given how sleepy I am now that I am well fed on happy tingly chilis – we’ll see).

Also I should note (perhaps again, my memory of such things sucks – [...]]]> Changes…
I changed the theme, upgraded to the newest WordPress, am tweaking the theme, brought the images over from my old theme (Cutline 2.0) to the new theme (Atahualpa). I also noodled around fixing or removing old broken links, updating the site structure, etc.

Also I should note (perhaps again, my memory of such things sucks – it’s genetic, Dad can tell the same story 200 times like it was brand new – I told Hanne she can smack me if I do that too much) that my project, Master of the Hidden Cottage, where I was going to do more rigorous footnoted activist essays that demonstrated Taoist principles, has really just fallen flat. (The web site’s still there but the registration’s expired.)

I occasionally have the passion for a good rant (as you know), but really putting it all together and making it rigorous (and perhaps ready for publication in print) is something I just don’t seem to have the enduring passion for.

Still, I learned a lot about affiliation and planning and blog customization and so on from it, so that was fun. Also, it kept me out of the business of ranting on my personal blog, which had an added benefit, I think.

I seem to be changing my attitude about activism. I’ve been less and less inclined to have a public opinion (I don’t see any reason to delete old posts yet, but I do feel like I don’t need to write new ones), less and less inclined to rant about it. I have been doing comments-style activism from time to time, mostly on Metafilter where I find that there’s enough mutual respect for those kinds of comments to not be immediately dismissed even if they dissent. Usually. But anyway, I haven’t written a really good rant in the activist mode on this blog for a great while and I think I may be almost done.

Also the last RaceFail (2009) really didn’t work out well for me personally and while I’m kind of of the opinion that it probably wouldn’t have anyway even if I had self-silenced, I think that I’d like to stay out of those if possible. So I’m putting you all on notice. If you figure I’ll wade right into this year’s Racefail and draw some fire, go looking for that from some other stooge.

In work, I am “being groomed for leadership”, which is pretty effin’ weird if you ask me, but I do think I am cut out for it, and in the long haul it supports our long-range plans to try to emigrate to Canada (or perhaps one of the other commonwealth countries – who can say until we get there?). Canada would prefer that IT geek applicants have advanced leadership experience. Who knows? I may get there.

Finally, it looks like Hanne is making a new career direction too – toward food – event catering, teaching, etc., and if you know her and are interested, by all means check out her blog (or her website as a whole)  as she develops opportunities and ideas. I think I may settle mostly into that sort of thing here too, but my own much less frequent experimentations and acquisitions, or writing about my tasting of Hanne’s experiments and recipe developments. Of course she also has 2 non-food books under contract, so it’ll be a little while before that all settles out, and I can’t imagine her, eventually, NOT writing books about food, but we’ll see, of course.

During my upgrade the Windows 7 installer backed up the old system files and folders for Windows XP and not only that, the first upgrade failed (due to the Bluetooth thing, apparently), so the second upgrade attempt backed [...]]]> Narrative of a little trouble I just had with Windows 7’s clinginess with certain files and file types.

During my upgrade the Windows 7 installer backed up the old system files and folders for Windows XP and not only that, the first upgrade failed (due to the Bluetooth thing, apparently), so the second upgrade attempt backed up the failed attempt’s system files and folders as well. The oldest backup was in a folder named C:\Windows.old.000\, and the newer backup in a folder named C:\Windows.old\.

I’d backed those up (in case the newest install was somehow relying on them) and then attempted to delete them. This was tough for a number of reasons. Attempts at normal deletions failed. Attempts at deletions elevated to Administrator rights also failed.

Digging a little deeper, it looked like I needed to take ownership of the files and grant myself permissions to delete the files and folders. Oddly enough, this required command line commands: takeown and icacls (included in Windows 7) (this link talks about cacls instead – that’s deprecated in Windows 7 and replaced with icacls – run icacls without arguments for the help). With various flags and arguments I was able to take ownership of the top level folder and all subfolders and files recursively.

This was fine for all but two files: an *.exe and *.ocx to do with Adobe Flash. They lived deep in the directory hierarchy. On the theory that these were locked somehow because they were in use, I rebooted into Safe Mode in Windows 7 (core drivers only, no explorer), which didn’t work at all. I recalled using Unlocker (free) for something similar in Windows XP. While Unlocker was unable to find a locking handle for the files it was finally able to delete each of them. After they were deleted, I was able to delete the top level folders (thank god – I hate having huge directory hierarchies lying around on my disk drive.

Later, being unable to determine why I suddenly had 65 GB of data (instead of the 25 or so I was supposed to have utilized on the drive), I went into WinDirStat Portable (free)and tried to figure out where all the space was going. Turned out the Recycler was caching old deletions even though I’d emptied the Recycler. I was able to use WinDirStat to flush out older Recycler folders. I also took the opportunity to clean out some redundant iTunes data and other duplicate data I didn’t need.

Finally, I was back down to a trim 25GB.

And I’ve just kicked off a final baseline backup with my new copy of Acronis True Image Home 2010 (not free), which is my backups product of choice.

I got this laptop on 2/1/2006 from Dell as part of a lemon policy where they replaced my even older Inspiron 8200 laptop on account of too many (13, I think) service calls during its 4 year warranty.

Anyhow, [...]]]> I thought I should deliver thoughts on installing Windows 7 Enterprise on my older Dell Inspiron 6000 laptop.

I got this laptop on 2/1/2006 from Dell as part of a lemon policy where they replaced my even older Inspiron 8200 laptop on account of too many (13, I think) service calls during its 4 year warranty.

Anyhow, this laptop is a 1.86 GHz Pentium M Dothan single core CPU  with 2 GB of RAM (came with 1 GB). It has a non-factory installed 120 GB (116 GiB) hard drive. It has an ATI MOBILITY RADEON X300 graphics card and a 15″ WUXGA 1920×1200 display (the resolution is the only sort of current specification it has – it can even display 1920 x 1200 on the lcd screen and hook up simultaneously to an HDTV at 1080p – or 1920 x 1080). It shipped to me with Windows XP Home and I upgraded it long ago to Windows XP Professional SP3.

All this means the hardware is Not Very Modern.

While installing Windows 7, I did have some driver issues and even had to run some driver installation routines in compatibility mode (Windows XP mode). I’ve finally got everything working in Windows 7 the way I want it with full driver support for everything but my Bluetooth stack. Since I’m not really big on Bluetooth, that’s okay with me. Even though Googling suggested that there’d be no support for the touchpad, the internal wireless card, the sound card and other built-in devices, that turned out not to be the case. More persistent Googling actually gave me answers (the primary one of which was to run the installers in compatibility mode).

It may be that douching out the whole filesystem and installing ANY new operating system would have helped, but it seems like the old laptop is running better and more quickly than it has in a very long time.

I use Windows 7 at work too (at work it’s on a desktop that runs a quad core CPU at 3.5 GHz with 8 GB of RAM). I haven’t noticed huge differences between the two, but then I don’t use either for big-time performance drains. I have noticed that running an audio mixing/sequencing software (Ableton Live Intro) craps out my laptop after a sufficient level of compexity whereas I can’t seem to do that to the desktop at work.

Anyhow, in general I am very pleased, even about using Windows 7 with old hardware. I am using an older hard drive enclosure for data backups and some of the file operations are slow there. A little Googling brought a possible solution there too. Disabling Remote Differential Compression may do it, but I am a little skeptical.

Thanks to my wonderful parents (who had the good grace to give and receive such lovely things with grace and fun), to Hanne and Rob and also to Ushi, Fez and Mrs. Calabash.

Gifts given:

Metafilter post about Transphobic Feminism.

My comment to same:

To remind folks of my background and give some perspective on my own perspective, I am an intersexed, transgender [...]]]> Just a short pointer to a discussion of trans politics with respect to some feminist scholars who in my mind aren’t doing a lot of good for our trans siblings.

Metafilter post about Transphobic Feminism.

My comment to same:

To remind folks of my background and give some perspective on my own perspective, I am an intersexed, transgender identified, masculine presenting, masculine raised (by a strictly 2nd wave feminist mother) person who is in a heterosexual partnership with a partner who considers the relationship (as I do), queer. In Texas, my partner and I cannot be legally married (because my chromosomes are XY/XXY mosaic – meaning that some of my chromosomes are XY and some XXY – I don’t qualify as male in Texas).

In non-work social situations, I have occasionally dressed drag. While my gender identity is usually clear to me, it hasn’t consistently been clear to others. I also have a lot of friends in the trans communities, as do I in straight communities, as do I in communities of people who are not gender normative but have never sought any kind of treatment for it.

To me, policy making is the problem. The trans communities are just too extremely individual, too extremely particular that making any kind of specific, proscriptive blanket statements (which I think is required for making policy people will consistently consume and understand) is likely to hurt at least as many people as it helps.

To be a genuine, supportive, loving friend to each of my friends I HAVE TO (as in, it cannot otherwise work in any way that builds trust, intimacy, companionship) treat each individual as an individual. I have to discover, discuss, and understand their motivations individually and in context with their life’s experiences. I have to understand not only their context but also their intent, their sincerity in order to have even a half a chance of understanding what they want, why they do what they do, why they present their gender the way they choose to.

It should be known I am a complete policy freak and policy wonk. I write policies as a hobby and also as part of my job. Even so, I cannot for the life of me even start to formulate a policy that would be of any help whatsoever to inform my politics about gender identity and feminism.

And I think it’s irresponsible to start trying, especially for feminists to do so. Feminists who have so very recently (in the historical context) taken what progress we’ve made with respect to busting through gender normativity policy and politics for power building for our own sakes and turned around and started being proscriptive, patronizing assholes to folks who are still trying to climb up that ladder, against the tide. It’s hypocritical. It’s nasty. And I think for feminists to do this to the trans community is willfully ignorant and hateful.

<satire>Congratulations, feminist scholars. With the power you’ve finally achieved, it’s GREAT to see you using it against your fellow gender transgressors with such alacrity. Score one for social progress and a lack of historical perspective or compassion.</satire>

First, in July or somesuch I announced plans to break out race/racism essays by me into a [...]]]> I wanted to note here a couple of things about my own relationship to writing about race-oriented power disparities as well as share a portion of a comment I made in a locked LiveJournal community about race and racism.

First, in July or somesuch I announced plans to break out race/racism essays by me into a new web site. Setting up the site (partially) was a great thing and partially writing a bunch of essays helped me vent a lot of frustration about how things went down for me in RaceFail 2009, but I didn’t complete the effort didn’t end up with anything I wanted to publish and really think I’m going to scrap further work on it (I’m just not that passionate about it right now). But it was fun to set up. Maybe I can do more of that work in the future.

Second, I think I will probably not write as much as I had about race and antiracist activism. RaceFail 2009 brought home to me just how much of an outsider to the antiracism community I am. I’m not comfortable in the community and I get the sense that a lot of folks aren’t comfortable considering me part of the community. I will do what writing about it I feel comfortable doing, and if I do so I will most likely do it here on this blog. It is anyone’s guess whether I’ll write about it in restricted posts or out int he open. However I write about it, I may be a lot more self-protective about discussions and responses to my writing. In my opinion the blogspace is varied and nearly infinite. If anyone has a problem with what I write about, they can go blog about it somewhere else. Comments on this journal will be fair and reasonable or the comments will be deleted and the commenters banned.

Third, here’s a part of a comment I wrote this morning about white allies writing about racism and my feelings on whether they should self-silence:

I do think that saying things about race these days (I mean these days as in two years after two incredibly huge flamewars/discussions about race in writing communities in two sequential years and no sign of the same convo not happening again in 2010) is going to bring at least one PoC or strong PoC ally to that discussion and they’re going to say what they’re going to say. It’s usually going to involve upbraiding the original poster for not being sensitive enough in some way.

It’s your choice whether you will respond and your choice how you will respond. As E. Bear learned, after responding initially to some absolutely monumental threads in RaceFail 2009, if you don’t want to be derided for silencing or any other number of unfair tactics, real or imagined, you are obligated to keep responding. There is no “safe” way to stop the discussion once you let it start.

But to me, bowing to the threat of mob dynamics (i.e. paying attention to what is “safe” or not from the point of view of placating the vocal [critics]) is in itself more leeway I’m inclined to give the folks who play that game. So I say what I’m going to say and stop when I’m going to stop.

I didn’t go so far as to change my journal/blog policies after getting involved in RaceFail 2009, but I was tempted. I did go so far as to offend some friends and honestly I don’t know if time will patch that up or not. I’m certainly not inclined to reopen the conversation.

I don’t think you need to remain available nor do you need to stand around and wait for your lumps. If you’re done with the conversation, stop. There are some folks who will never be satisfied. That has always been true of the world, always been true of other people. This Racefail is not a special circumstance where because of the sins of your ancestors you owe it to anyone to stand around and wait for retribution.

If you are going to start trouble by starting to have the conversation, the only person’s rules that you need to follow are your own.

I believe, as a rather blacksheep sort of PoC, that it is possible for white people to be allies without having to have been cowed and broken first. I would in fact prefer that my allies be strong and able and able to run their own show, know when to rush into battle and know when it’s fruitless to continue to pursue the point.