All this needs is a book...

All this needs is a book to combine all my favourite hobbies:

http://www.evilmadscientist.com/article.php/circuitsnacks

-=Eric

Bujold, and Zen Christianity

Having been a fan of Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan books for some time now (read: Since I found "The Vor Game" on clearance in a used bookstore in the late '90s or so), I was a bit nervous about her fantasy books. It's been my experience that generally a good SF author doesn't do fantasy well, and vice-versa, but then Bujold's strength has always been her characters, and a good novel of any genre (or no genre at all) needs those. But who wants to read Miles-in-some-vaguely-medieval-land? But maybe she can write more than just Miles...

Anyway, last night, wanting something to read with my dinner (at Pho Duy... if you're ever in Fort Collins, CO, check it out, it's cheap and fantastic), I dropped into the library and checked out The Curse of Chalion, and as usual, I was being an ass. Although Miles still has first claim on my reading attention, I think the land of Chalion will be chomping very strongly at the bit behind him, to mix a metaphor or twelve.

I was struck mightily by the protagonist's discovery that his sainthood (one of the nice aspects of a fantasy world is you can define a saint to your liking-- and incidentally, remove all doubt as to whom the word applies) is dependent not on action, but emptiness, of telling the gods, "Here I am, use me as you will." Cazaril says, when trying to explain sainthood to an ex-saint,

It has to do with the shape of your soul, not its worthiness. You have to make a cup of yourself, to receive that pouring out. You are a sword. You were always a sword. Like your mother and your daughter, too-- steel spines run in the women of your family. I realize now why I never saw saints, before. The world does not crash upon their wills like waves upon a rock, or part around them like the wake of a ship. Instead they are supple, and swim through the world as silently as fishes.

.

This is a very Daoist idea right there. And if Bujold weren't clear that gods were involved, I might let it go at that, but it strikes me that this very thing is also a very historically Christian idea as well-- Empty Bell gives several examples. One Monk of St. Benedict tells us, "Prayer unveils its own emptiness before God." If I were less lazy (see below), I'd find more quotes, but you get the idea.

More thoughts ought to come later.

(p.s., I said "Zen Christanity" rather than "Daoist Christianity" mostly because I'm lazy, and I thought it sounded better.)

Steampunk Star Wars

I can't find it now, but there was a very funny blogpost about how you can invent your own genre by taking a generic noun, and adding the word "punk" to the end. Mostly, it was a complaint about how ubiquitous "steampunk" is. That said, here's a great re-imagining of Star Wars in a steampunk style:

http://ericpoulton.blogspot.com/search/label/steampunk%20star%20warsmp

Go cry, emo bird.

The title, of course, refers to this picture.

Apparently, there is now a breed of moth that lives on the tears of birds. Wow.

Supergirl on the Web

Because StumbleUpon rocks, I found this awesome Internet art meme from early February 2007. The discussion started with a few rants about Supergirl in her latest incarnation, and ended up with a challenge (as well as the first, and extremely worthwhile entry in what ended up being a pretty huge drawing meme). I'm a sucker for things comic-book-y (which is why I read Chris' Invincible Super Blog), so I looked through all of them to find the ones I liked the best. I present the list here, with commentary.

• http://dryponder.livejournal.com/105356.html - The first entry in the meme, and my current desktop background. Simple, clean lines, with a coloring technique I don't know the right name of, but it reminds me of '60s issues of Highlights For Kids.


• http://everyueveryme.livejournal.com/59918.html -- Supergirl as Little Red Riding Hood. The eyes remind me a bit of Tintin.


• http://lesmcclaine.livejournal.com/19418.html -- Supergirl as hipster. This Supergirl will save your life, and then make a snarky comment about how come she needed to, but you won't mind because she's pretty cute.


• http://aimo.livejournal.com/123746.html -- Do Not Piss Off Supergirl. She will kick your ass.


• http://uminthecoil.livejournal.com/276124.html -- Supergirl taking a break. The coloring reminds me, in style at least, of the first entry. This Supergirl looks, not innocent exactly, but like she hasn't had all of it squashed out of her by the daily grind of saving the world.


• http://whirringblender.livejournal.com/83309.html -- Supergirl is Not In The Mood. Okay?


• http://psychotronik.livejournal.com/2720.html -- Supergirl and her cat, Streaky, just blissing out. There's something very appealing about this Supergirl. Looking at her, I get the sense she still really believes that people are good inside, and that the world is a beautiful place.


• http://adora-spintriae.livejournal.com/321254.html -- This Supergirl looks a lot like Utena Tenjou, for some reason. I don't exactly like it, but I think it's a pretty cool look for Supergirl, at least.


• http://deconcentrate.livejournal.com/317438.html -- Nice action shot. Supergirl from above, as she's apparently rising and spinning in the air at the same time. A little rough sketch, but this only accentuates its dynamic tension.


• http://mr-cow.livejournal.com/32136.html -- Supergirl if she was an extra in Sabrina, the Teenage Witch.


• http://chad-thomas.livejournal.com/855.html -- I'm not sure why I picked this one. The face is good, but the torso seems a bit too elongated somehow.


• http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/48582460/ -- Supergirl looking very grown up, sexy, maybe a little butch, but what I want to know is-- what did they use to tattoo Kryptonian skin?


• http://dryponder.livejournal.com/104315.html -- Wow. Just... wow. Young, strong, determined, maybe even a touch of wistfulness in her eyes (I'm probably imagining that bit). The art reminds me of... geez, I'm not sure what, but it's very familiar. Derek Kirk Kim cross with Genndy Tartakovsky maybe?


• http://little-teacup.livejournal.com/441670.html -- Whee! Supergirl, maybe 10 years old, having the time of her life! Looks like she's just about to jump into a puddle or something.


• http://ryclaude.livejournal.com/52344.html -- Her ears are a bit weird-looking, but Supergirl is, like, up, up and away already. Seriously. I mean, GOD, boys are SO dumb.


• http://dichiara.blogspot.com/2007/02/um-para-o-feriado.html -- I think the artist is Portugese, so I can't tell what he meant to do with it, but his Supergirl looks kind of like a very powerful and yet somehow still very cheerful flight attendant. Maybe she's a robot, I don't know.


• http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/49108393/ -- Kinda punk, kinda preppy. I think the barrettes make this picture.


• http://conga-chili.livejournal.com/113615.html -- If Supergirl dropped into Riverdale one day and had lunch with Archie, she'd probably look like this. Betty and Veronica would be itching to claw her eyes out, but they couldn't, because she's Supergirl. And they're not.


• http://starline.livejournal.com/262923.html -- I can't put my finger on why I like this one, but I really do. She looks a little spacy, but kind and thoughtful a bit as well.


• http://capitan-kozmo.livejournal.com/23485.html -- Supergirl as a blonde bombshell. She was probably just at a fancy ball, dancing with all the guys and drawing looks from the other women there that would have flayed any lesser mortal alive. Also, rereading that previous sentence, I am apparently totally a girl.


• http://www.zitaspacegirl.com/art/supergirl2.jpg -- looks like a Supergirl from a 1920s or 1930s illustrated girl's magazine, I think. Don't quote me on that, but it's a very cool retro look of a kind you don't see much of these days.


• http://thechrishaley.livejournal.com/379893.html -- Kind of a Kim Possible look, maybe? Crossed with Nancy Drew? Any way you slice it, stylized, but wearing clothes a teenager might well wear today-- including a super hoodie!


• http://pikakao.livejournal.com/494672.html#cutid1 -- She's a little embarrassed, I think, but this Supergirl has no reason to be. Proportioned in a way that resembles an actual a teenage girl, dressed like a hipster scooter vigilante.


• http://inkboy.livejournal.com/18231.html -- Supergirl has no time for nasty-ass skanky costumes. Get out of the way, so she can get back to kicking butt!


• ttp://anydoppelganger.livejournal.com/18240.html -- This looks like a scene from a Disney movie about Supergirl, about 5 seconds before she starts singing a sad, yet still optimistic song about how hard it is to be Supergirl, but she really likes helping people anyway, and someday she'll be just like every other girl. Except she can fly, shoot heat rays out of her eyes, travel through space without a spacesuit.... yeah, okay, maybe it won't work out. But don't tell her that. She looks so innocent.


• http://superrobotmonster.blogspot.com/2007/02/supergirls.html -- two looks for Supergirl, in a very Genndy Tartakovsky style. If he ever did a Supergirl cartoon, Tartakovsky should hire this guy to do character designs.


• http://carrot-rope.livejournal.com/132115.html -- Can something be subtle and radical at the same time? If so, this Supergirl's boots certainly qualify. I also really dig her pose-- just chilling out after a long hard day of keeping the world safe from supervillains.


• http://rudeboyzach.livejournal.com/305874.html -- Look at me, I'm Supergirl!


• http://www.flickr.com/photos/luclatulippe/406269787/ -- Again with the wow. This Supergirl probably works in a library, and is all business in her private life. (You can tell, because she wears glasses.) She looks a bit weary; maybe too many teenagers were asking her where the National Geographic back issues are, or maybe she had to foil the same bank robber for, like, the 43rd time in a row. Is he ever going to figure it out? She's Supergirl. He's not. Do the math.


• http://alienspermanentrecord.blogspot.com/2007/03/darkseid-vs-supergirl.html -- Darkseid might be a New God, but he's definitely a jerk. Give Supergirl back her lolly, or I'm telling Mom!


• http://mooncalfe.livejournal.com/26981.html?view=175461 -- There were a lot of punk Supergirls, and for some reason, they all had black hair. This one was the best of the lot, I think.

Blogs I like

These are blogs I follow on a regular or semi-regular basis:

* Chris' Invincible Super Blog -- because every day that you can start with a kick to the face (or, for variety, punching out a bear) is a good day. Also, because I'm a geek.

* Contrary Brin I'll never be as much of a fan of David Brin as David Brin is, but i do like to make sure I expose myself to views I don't always agree with.

* Naked Villany -- this guy writes about politics from a more or less conservative viewpoint, but has strong libertarian tendencies, which I can sympathize with. Also, he writes well.

* The Hatemonger''s Quarterly -- these guys are so completely over the top it's usually entertaining to figure out what godawful synonym they'll use for a perfectly normal word. This blog is solely responsible for the fact that I know the word "animadversion".

* The Corner at NRO. These guys are way more hardcore than I'll ever be, but most of them write fairly well, and it's a decent source of commentary.

* University Diaries -- an English professor at GWU commenting on sports in higher education, plagiarism, and mail-order degree mills. Very funny, usually spot-on even when I disagree with her, and of course, very well-written.

* Easily Distracted -- a very low-volume blog by a history prof at Swarthmore; He'll comment on everything from comic books and movies to posting a syllabus for his fall class on postcolonial sub-saharan Africa. A polymath of sorts; you never know what sort of post he'll make next.

* Andrew Sullivan's blog, of course.

* Boing Boing -- because they have their pulse on the psyche of the average geek in a way hardly anyone else manages. Very cool links, and a regular podcast that will rock your geek socks off.

* Slacktivist -- this guy is a liberal Protestant evangelical (I know, I didn't believe they existed either) who writes a weekly column on Fridays basically ripping the Left Behind books to complete and tattered shreds, both literarily and theologically. His politics and mine couldn't be more different, but I try to read his other posts as well, just to remind myself that my perspective on religion and Jesus isn't the only one, or even necessarily the best one.

* Amy Wellborn's blog. Her commenters frankly scare me at times-- I posted once about a thing my parish does during the collection, which is really lovely: Father and the deacon (if there is one, and there usually is) stand in front of the main aisle and all the children who want to walk up to them and get a hug and sometimes a blessing. The commenters went absolute batshit on me for some reason; maybe it's because they're mostly east-coast Catholics, and you guys have had a harder time than we have out West about the abuse issue, but they acted like he was a complete nutjob for doing what I think is a sweet and wonderful thing that can only help kids feel better about the Church and more open to talking to a priest about whatever. Still, Amy posts a lot of links that help me keep up on what's going on, and I think she even pointed me at your blog.

* Whispers in the Loggia-- because, well, this guy writes well, speaks well, and knows more about the Church hierarchy than most priests, and probably several bishops. Also, he's a U2 fan, so he can't be all bad.

* What Does the Prayer Really Say? Fr Z is way more hardcore than I am about a great many things, but then again, he's a priest-- it's his job. I'll say this for him-- he's definitely expanded my knowledge of what Catholicism has been and what it could be. I wasn't even remotely interested in a Latin Mass before I found his blog, and now I am looking into whether or not there's an indult parish relatively nearby.... turns out there is, but it's about 30 minutes away. Still, given that some people on Fr Z's site post about driving 2-3 hours for an indult Mass, I shouldn't complain, I guess. Fr Z also posts some absolutely gorgeous pictures of Rome and the Vatican from time to time that just blow me away and make me want to visit Italy now. :)

* ruhlman.com, because Michael Ruhlman writes about food the way I dream about it. He's an excellent chef and food writer, and his friend Anthony Bourdain-- of Kitchen Confidential, No Reservations, and A Cook's Tour fame-- has begun posting there.

If Glen Campbell reinvented himself...

In a recent discussion about county employees, and how they got that way, I came up with the following titles for country songs about database administrators:

"You Broke Up With Me, And I Made You A Felon"
"The Ballad of the Poorly Optimized Query Engine That Could"
"She Wasn't Normal, But I Normalized Her"
"I Told the Truth, So Help Me Codd"
"SELECT wife FROM people WHERE upper(sex) = 'F' AND looks='beautiful' AND heart='kind'"

I'm sorry.

Funniest Legal Document Ever!

Iggy Pop has the funniest concert rider in history. No joke.

You gotta like this guy

Fr. Z has been reading St. John Chrysostom, and came to this conclusion after reading one of his homilies:

CONCLUSIONS: If anyone tries to give you bad wine or, worse, no wine, or says anything bad about the wine you have (or don’t have) then punch him in the face right away! Moreover, make sure that Father always has very good wine at hand, so that he can give greater glory to God and have the wherewithal to serve the flock properly.

Who can argue with logic like that?

Boing Boing gets a bit silly

I love BoingBoing; they often have some interesting articles, and usually make fun of people and things I think ought to be made fun of. In particular, in this article, they mock the police in Santa Fe for blowing up two CD players that were spewing profanity in a church during Ash Wednesday, but kept the third to check for fingerprints and the like. I mean, how stupid is that-- they'd no way of knowing they picked the only one that didn't have a bomb in it, and if they knew none of them did, then why blow them up? Did they have some explosives that were too close to their use-by date? Wouldn't more evidence against the people who did this juvenile stunt be a good thing?

"Nah," thought the police, "let's just blow stuff up."

But then BB just gets downright stupid. They cite a new story about a tape dispenser found outside a railway station in Northern Ireland that was blown up:

The Army carried out a controlled explosion on the object which was declared safe. Traffic in the town was severely disrupted for several hours while the operation took place. A police spokesperson said: "As with any object that cannot readily be accounted for, we have a duty to be wary in order to ensure the safety of all in the vicinity," they added.

For some reason, BB editor Mark Frauenfelder apparently thought this was silly. I mean, really! Who would expect an unknown object left in public-- in Northern Ireland, no less-- to contain a bomb?

Who, indeed.

Nifty papercraft Link from Zelda

I found this papercraft link elsewhere, but the one I found didn't have the assembly instructions you can find here:

http://hylianhd.rpgplanet.gamespy.com/papercraft.php

It's extremely cool! Here's a couple of pictures of the one I made:

Longest alphabetical word in English

Inspired by a list of 50 bogus "facts everbody should know" I found on what turned out to be a spammer's site, I decided to find the longest word in the English language where all the letters are in alphabetical order (the site claimed it was 'almost'). I whipped up a quick Ruby program:

#!/usr/bin/ruby

File.open('/usr/share/dict/words') { |f|
        f.each do |word|
                word.chomp!
                word.downcase!
                ordered = true

                last = ''
                word.split(//).each do |letter|
                        last = letter unless last.length
                        if letter > last
                                ordered = false
                        end
                        last = letter
                end
                puts word if ordered and word.length > 6
        end
}

It's been a while since I wrote Ruby, so originally I had "ordered = 1" and set it to 0, instead of false, in the if statement in the middle. This is wrong, because Ruby distinguishes between the number 0 and false, unlike C and many other derived languages (Perl distinguishes between them, but allows 0 to mean false in a conditional).

Anyway, as it turns out, the answer is 'billowy', at least according to /usr/share/dict/words. In case you were curious.

3 Types of Virgins

There are three types of virgins:

• Virgins by choice


• Virgins by way of poor social skills


• People who should be in group B, but claim otherwise, for reasons of prestige

Le Grand Content

An Open Letter to Jay Nordlinger

(This is in response to Jay Nordlinger's column, in which he complains that if Democrats win, problems with voting machines will not be followed up.))

Though I don't doubt you're correct that the media won't pay attention to voting machine irregularities if Democrats win, that doesn't mean they're not worth paying attention to even if Republicans win. The right to a fair vote is fundamental to our democracy, and if it's abrogated, it will most probably encourage even more people to not vote. I fear that too many people, after reading your column, will dismiss any reports of voting problems as partisan bickering instead of evidence of a real problem with electronic voting machines. Here are a few problems that have already been uncovered with electronic voting machines so far this election season:

• In Cuyahoga County, Ohio, the county Board of Elections commissioned two separate investigations into problems they had during the May 2nd primary. They
  found that the voting machines weren't even internally consistent-- the voter-verified paper audit trail reported one set of votes, the summary printed at the end reported a different set, the memory cards used by the machines reported a third, and the election archive reported a fourth! That's four different totals, from one machine! How can we possibly trust our democratic process to voting machines that can't even agree with themselves?


• Also from Cuyahoga County: most people aren't aware of this, but it's crucially important that the voter-verified paper trails mentioned above must be marked so that they can be checked against the machine they were drawn from. Otherwise, they're not a meaningful check. But poll worker were either poorly trained or provided with the wrong equipment, because many paper trails were stuffed in random, unlabeled canisters, rendering their crucial use as a check on unauditable databases (see above) meaningless.


• Again from Cuyahoga (this is the last one, I promise!): after the primary election, 29 machines just vanished. *poof* A few officials took them home with them, but most simply dissapeared. You are likely not aware of this, but a team at Princeton was able to develop a vote-stealing computer virus based on having *one* machine at their disposal-- no source code, no manuals, no documentation of any kind, just the machine. Somebody has enough machines to run an entire precinct election; maybe they don't intend fraud, but there simply aren't any controls in place to prevent that.


• In Texas and Florida, people have already reported that although they pushed the button on the screen to vote Democrat, the screen showed a Republican being elected. Even though poll workers were called over to help, nobody could figure out how to stop this from happening, so the person in question had to go ahead and vote for the wrong people-- or did she? (See Cuyahoga County, above.)


• Although Diebold gets a lot of grief over their machines, other vendors are not immune from problems. A voter can vote an arbitrary number of times on a Sequoia voting machine using only a Post-It note. This is not a theoretical vulnerability, this is something easy to do with a pen and a Post-It. I don't know about you, but this scares the pants off me-- imagine what the old Mayor Daley could have done with technology like this!

There are even more examples at Ars Technica if you're at all interested, and I pray and hope that somebody out there is. The root of all these problems is that electronic voting machines are, at bottom, networked computers, and most election boards don't understand this. This is not to their discredit-- they weren't sold a bunch of networked voting computers, they were sold independent machines. They were also under the gun of the Help Americans Vote Act, which encouraged them to buy what was not even beta-tested software, and after they discovered this (and most of them have by now), they had spent so much time and money training volunteers that there was no way they could go back to a non-electronic solution.

As a computer scientist, if somebody asks me if I voted, all I can tell them, at this point is, "I think so." I don't consider it a nice thing if I can say "yes" after the next election; I consider it essential.

Getting more music

I love to confusing people building consumer profiles. I just signed up with BMG in my periodical quest to get more music, and got the following CDs:

1 Queensr�che Operation: Mindcrime II
2 Neville Marriner Mozart, Requiem
3 Iron Maiden Dance Of Death
4 Rush Roll The Bones (Remastered)
5 The Benedictine Monks of Santo Domingo de Silos Noel: Chants for the Holiday Season
6 David Bowie Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust (Remastered)
7 Original Broadway Cast Avenue Q

Okay, I can kinda see Queensryche, Maiden, and Rush, but musicals? Mozart? Chant? WTF?

I'm torn...

On the one hand, I don't agree with a lot of Rick Santorum's positions. His opposition to gay marriage, for instance, is one I have a hard time with. However, it's hard *not* to like a guy who is so geeky:

Embattled U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum said America has avoided a second terrorist attack for five years because the “Eye of Mordor” has been drawn to Iraq instead.

Santorum used the analogy from one of his favorite books, J.R.R. Tolkien's 1950s fantasy classic “Lord of the Rings,” to put an increasingly unpopular war in Iraq into terms any school kid could easily understand.

...

In an interview with the editorial board of the Bucks County Courier Times, sister paper of The Intelligencer, the 12-year Republican senator from Pennsylvania said he's “a big "Lord of the Rings' fan.” He's read the first of the series, “The Hobbit” to his six children.

("Santorum and Mordor", from The National Review Online)

Okay, so clearly at least some of his priorities are in order.

SF must be getting better

So, I was thinking; I've read a few really good SF books in the last couple of months. More good SF than I've read in a very long time. Here's my top 3 of the last five years, easy:

1) Old Man's War by John Scalzi -- Sort of like "Starship Troopers", except you get eternal youth, not citizenship, and the volunteers are all senior citizens.
2) Red Thunder by John Varley -- "Rocket Ship Galileo", only they're going to the Moon, instead of Mars. And the NazisChinese are reasonably friendly.
3) Survival by Julie E. Czerneda -- A scientist just wants to be left alone to study genetic diversity in salmon, but is drawn into a galactic mystery as entire planets are stripped bare of all organic life.

I'm not sure it's a coincidence that two of the three are obvious Heinlein homages (to be fair, there's more sex in "Red Thunder" than "Galileo", but the analogies are obvious). Still, they're all fantastic. Heck, I'll even add in another one:

4) Kevin J. Anderson's Saga of the Seven Suns. Definitely fluffy space opera, but Anderson has an extremely sneaky ending to the first book that, while not totally unexpected (to me; a friend was pleasantly surprised), was nicely evil.

Which army should you have fought in?

What can I say; I'm easily amused.

You scored as United States. Your army is the American army. You want your home front to support the G.I.'s in their pursuit to liberate world from more or less evil tyrants. Italy 69% Finland 69% Poland 69% United States 69% British and the Commonwealth 56% France, Free French and the Resistance 56% Japan 50% Germany 44% Soviet Union 31% In which World War 2 army you should have fought? created with QuizFarm.com

Traveling Wilburys

Er, I meant Traveling Mercies, a very funny and touching book by Anne Lamott, who no doubt has written other good stuff-- I haven't read anything else by her, but this is well-written enough, I find it hard to believe her other stuff sucks.

I'm much less than halfway through the book, but I had to blog this because of the very funny exchange she has with herself when trying to decide whether or not to let her seven-year-old son go paragliding for his birthday:

So what I needed to know up there in that beautiful valley was would a normal person—if there is such a thing as a normal person—feel that it was a good idea for a seven-year-old to paraglide in a harness with a tandem expert off a mountain fifteen hundred feet up.

Needless to say, there was no one around remotely fitting the description of a normal person; I was at a writing conference.

Lamott, p. 81

While she does write of her experience of converting to Christianity, it's handled carefully and thoughtfully, much more so than many others I've read. Fred Clark says, about writing about conversion experiences,

Stories of religious conversion -- or "testimonies," as we evangelical types call them* -- can be tricky. The convert wants to tell this story because she is convinced that it is important. Very important. But also deeply personal and, at some level, ineffable. Attempts to convey the ineffable often come across as kind of effed up.

He goes on to quote Lamott's description, a very quiet and almost resigned one, of her decision to become a Christian:

I hung my head and said, "Fuck it: I quit." I took a long deep breath and said out loud, "All right. You can come in."

Lamott, p. 50

It was this that made me want to read her book (this scene comes relatively early on in it). As in all effable descriptions of ineffable events, it either grabs you or it doesn't; somehow, for reasons I can't articulate, these two sentences said more to me than C.S. Lewis' Mere Christianity or Augustine's Confessions. It's a moment of surrender, of giving in, that touches my heart in places I hoped I still had. Lamott says about her life prior to this moment:

I'd been like one of the people Ezekiel comes upon in the valley of dry bones—people who had really given up, who were lifeless and without hope. But because of Ezekiel's presence, breath comes upon them; spirit and kindness revive them.

Lamott, p.44

This process happens slowly; she doesn't immediately become "saved". I suspect she might claim she still isn't-- she describes continuing her alcoholism and drug use for a while afterwards, and even when she does become sober, she continues having affairs with married and unmarried men, and has a child outside marriage. Nowhere does she claim these are good things, though she doesn't explicitly condemn them as evil; they appear simply as steps along the path she's dimly beginning to see open before her.

I could probably recommend this book highly enough, but I don't think I could maintain my life whilst doing so. Lamott is an excellent writer, able to lay herself bare before her reader, with just enough humor and attention to detail to prevent that reader from feeling uncomfortably intimate with her. She also provides a great counterpoint to a lot of right-wing conversion stories, showing that it is possible to be a liberal Christian-- although she herself says several times that she doesn't consider herself a very good one-- which is something I, as someone who sympathizes more with the right wing than the left, am glad to see out there. Please read it.

We DO need some education

I wonder, what did they call the classes where you were supposed to do physical activities? Mine were often called "physical education", but I can't think of one time I ever was educated in them. The first time I ever played flag football, the other kids told me to play "safety" (the 'teacher' just said, "you're playing flag footabll today"), but nobody would explain to me what that was; the most advice I got was, "Stay in the back and try to grab somebody's flag if they have a ball." I was 26 before I learned the offsides rule in soccer (known everywhere else as football). Nowhere did anyone ever teach a sport; it was always assumed that everybody knew how to play it already, even a "weird" one like field hockey (at least, to a kid growing up in rural Appalachia, field hockey is a weird sport).

I hated gym class, by whatever name it was called, as a kid, but I think I might have liked it better if someone had actually tried to teach something, instead of having everybody run around and just do something.