Passed on by someone else's EAJ...

The Bathtub Test

During a visit to the mental asylum, I asked the director how do you determine whether or not a patient should be institutionalized.

"Well," said the director, "we fill up a bathtub, then we offer a teaspoon, a teacup and a bucket to the patient and ask him or her to empty the bathtub."

"Oh, I understand," I said. "A normal person would use the bucket because it's bigger than the spoon or the teacup."

"No." said the director, "A normal person would pull the plug. Do you want a bed near the window?"

ARE YOU GOING TO PASS THIS ON, OR DO YOU WANT THE BED NEXT TO MINE?

I was too busy thinking about how nice it would be to sit in the bath with a cup of tea and a biscuit to worry about how to empty it...

( Just stuff from twitter )
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In The Independent today:


AIDS: THE PANDEMIC OFFICIALLY IN DECLINE
The HIV pandemic which started 28 years ago is officially in decline, two of the world's leading health organisations said yesterday. Health Editor Jeremy Laurence reports.



PATRICK COCKBURN: BRITAIN'S IGNORANCE OF IRAQ IS ALREADY APPARENT
Ever since the invasion of Iraq in 2003 senior British officials have gently hinted that what went wrong was the fault of the Americans and, if there is any blame left over, it belongs to Tony Blair. That's according to Patrick Cockburn who writes on the first day of the Chilcot enquiry. While here our sketchwriter describes the whole first day's event as boring, miasmic and faintly dishonest.


TORIES BELIEVE BROWN WILL GO TO THE COUNTRY IN MARCH
Senior conservatives believe that Gordon Brown may call a general election next March to head off the prospect of bad economic statistics scuppering his claim that he had guided Britain safely out of recession. By Andrew Grice, Political Editor.

Long Walk Home
Time takes it all whether you want it to or not, time takes it all. Time bears it away, and in the end there is only darkness. Sometimes we find others in that darkness, and sometimes we lose them there again. -- Steven King
Rating: PG-13
Words: ~1860
Note: This is the last part (cue maniacal laughter). So much thank you to everyone who encouraged me writing this because, man, I was so quitting around the 30k mark otherwise. And, of course, to all those who've betaed along the way and without whom this would be less fic, more "spot the typo." Anyway, I hope it's enjoyed and I'm sorry it took so long! We'll always have string theory o_0

Out on the Wire List

---

“Jesse?” John tries to follow what’s happening, but the images flicker too fast and then they’re gone completely. He turns on Murch, “Bring them back.”

“We were lucky to get that close; it can be months either way.” Murch shakes his head. “I’m sorry.”

( Kyle steps up beside them, still staring at the place where Sarah was. )

I, too, would like to meet Martin Gore and Winona Ryder, but I don't think filing a lawsuit against Blizzard for making WoW a timesink is the way to go.

Gets better and better as it goes along
(via 7 or 8 people on my FL today)

Amen Break
[Mathematics] is not human and has nothing particular to do with this planet or with the whole accidental universe … like Spinoza's God, it won't love us in return. -- Bertrand Russell.
Rating: PG-13
Words: ~6600

Out on the Wire List

---

They make Bishop just after the sun goes down; Jesse brings the truck to a stop outside a motel without prompting. They haven’t said two words to each other since Ellison and the kid left, Hijo padding behind. Everything seems empty and silent, but Sarah finds that somehow comfortable just the same.

( Two. Not the right two, but two, and that’s a number Sarah knows. )

Say Again (Your Last)
“Every man is born as many men, and dies as a single one.” -- Martin Heidegger
Rating: PG-13
Words: ~7000

Out on the Wire List

---

Click, whir – click, whir - click. Click.

“- didn’t believe it, but the message wasn’t for him. I don’t think it was for me either, I think it was for you - for me to give back to you. Maybe you’ll know what to do with it.

“No fate. Goodbye, John.”

Click, whir - click. Click.

“Goodbye, John.”


( In the end, there are four of them. Lee volunteers, but Lee has a daughter and John isn’t taking anyone’s father away from them before he has to. )

• 07:09 Day 2 of Visual Basic Excel course. Being a Pascal programmer exposed to Basic is like being a Daily Mail reader taken to a strip club. #
• 08:28 One issue with the new RT system is that my iPhone client, Echofon, doesn't yet support it. So I'm missing RTs that people are doing. :( #
• 09:20 Thanks to @redmole_ghost for the RT! #
• 16:04 I can haz do Excel VBA apps! twitpic.com/qrcr3 #
• 16:10 Dragonmeet seminars now up. bit.ly/4A5VWg @mdlachlan and I are on at 12 with "Writers On Roleplaying". #

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Not exactly a fantastic gig, due in part to two less-than-great warm up acts and a numpty working the sound desk. I really like the band - their tunes are catchy, full of energy and especially good played at loud volume - but the gig just felt disappointing. The Borderline is a cosy little venue (sort of reminds me of a smaller version of the Cavern in Exeter, in fact), and at least it was nice to go out for a meal with Sprog and Pink, and spend a while chatting about fairly silly things.

Plan for tomorrow is, most likely, "wake up", followed by "have brekkies", followed by "do stuff", followed by "play games", followed by "fall asleep with dribble coming out the corner of my mouth".

It is the Hutton inquiry all over again. Almost all the reporting of the Chilcot inquiry will be through the anti-war prism of liberal journalists. So, when we get to the end of it and the committee comes to reasonable conclusions based on the evidence, the balloon will go up, because the report will seem to be at odds with the daily reporting of proceedings.

This reporting will be dominated by the idea that there is a big secret that is being concealed from us, a smoking gun that "explains it all". This is a symptom of the anti-war psychology, which so strongly disagrees with the decision made by Tony Blair, the Cabinet and the House of Commons that it seeks constantly for a hidden reason for it. Oil. Poodledom. Some kind of sinister swearing of loyalty in a ceremony probably involving Blair signing in blood (hence the antis' obsession with "when did Blair commit Britain to war?").

This sets the tone for so much of the coverage, from Brian Jones in the Standard to David Blackburn at Coffee House.

The impartial BBC news tonight had Huw Edwards declare "there are still big questions to be answered". No there aren't. Everything important is known, with the kind of disclosure of official documents in the Hutton inquiry that would normally have taken 30 years or longer. And Nicholas Witchell's report of the day's proceedings summed up: in 2001 the British Government concluded that regime change in Iraq lacked a legal basis. This is meaningless: the British view was always that regime change was inadequate legal basis for military intervention; that was why the legal basis was Saddam Hussein's failure to comply with UN disarmament resolutions. Witchell's conclusion may have been meaningless, but it insinuated to the casual viewer that the Iraq invasion was unlawful.

Much of the coverage is not going to be as measured as the BBC's. Paul "Anti" Waugh gives a flavour, with his brilliantly observed but bitterly hostile report of Day One:



Of course, none of those entrenched on either side is going to change, but there are a lot of open-minded people in the middle, who do not pay much attention to politics (as Daniel Finkelstein said the other day, this is not ignorance but efficient use of time), and who form generalised impressions about issues such as this that are shaped by the prevailing wind of media bias.

For that reason, it is worth challenging the myths of the antis, and I shall try to make my small contribution here over the next year.

Plants vs. Zombies is $5 on Steam until Thursday.

Seriously, this is totally worth your while and is usually $20. If you like tower defense, zombies, Pop Cap, and/or just plain lighthearted fun, go for it!

like seriously

Welcome to the Turkey Week edition of lj_releases! (Those of us on the US side of the pond will be thankful for a few days' rest if nothing in this release is seriously broken.) ;-)

Features & Upgrades:

• It is not possible to reset your password unless you have control of the current validated email address. This may or may not be a temporary change; please stay tuned as internal discussion continues.


• Brand new build with many improvements for http://m.livejournal.com/ -- please test with your mobile device and let us know what you think! This will replace /mobile/ in the near future, so please speak up in comments here.


• Facebook Beacon has been replaced by Facebook Connect
• You can now add a subscription to receive new questions by writersblock
• Support staff/admins can now mass-close requests with credit.
• You can now edit your "Notes" while viewing comments (if you're using the site scheme/old comment page layout)
• Removed the BUY100 and BUY250 commands for TxtLJ, and the web interface equivalent
• Creating a new account now allows for autodetection of your location
• Various improvements to our geolocation feature
• Updated the databases we were using for countries and ZIP codes
• Backend improvements for the gift shop
• Preparations for a new feature/game for Cyrillic-language users

Bugfixes:

• Non-validated accounts are now properly blocked from leaving comments to Independent Minds articles. (Good riddance, spammers!)
• When making a bulleted/numbered list in the RTE, <lj user> tags won't break the list.

FAQ-related changes go here.