Enemy of Entropy
Archive for March 2009
Victory!
Current Mood:
Happy
On with the quotations obsession project. I swear, it’ll be useful for something other than keeping me busy. Someday!
Anybody know php/MySQL well enough to help me do that?
Anyway, one reason that I keep going is little successes like the one I just experienced.
I love research, and I’m attempting to find information on every single author (8,353 at this very moment) and some kind citation, preferably original, for every quotation (34,444 of them). Yes, that will keep me busy for awhile. The fact that many people cut-and-paste bits of text from all manner of sources, then lump them all together with little or no attribution, makes me crazy — especially since it seems that vast numbers of people conflate Oliver Wendell Holmes Junior and Senior, or Alexandre Dumas père et fils.
Anyway, there’s one quotation credited to “Milton Acorda” all over the internet and in many books: “Without freedom, no one really has a name.”
Other than the one sentence, the man doesn’t exist. I’ve looked for him several times, to no avail.
I don’t know if the book I found in Google Books wasn’t there before or what, but tonight I happened to search on the quotation itself again, and voilà ! It’s the last line of a poem, “Proposed Dedication for a Monument to Lount and Matthews,” published in the book More Poems for People by Milton Acorn.
No, my work isn’t going to end world hunger or anything like that, but I find it satisfying. And every little win helps my overall attitude, which isn’t really positive most of the time lately. Now if only someone would pay me to do this sort of thing!
Who is/was Vascavus?
I’m still playing with my quotations database. I have a perfectly lovely item that I’d like to include, but I can’t find any information at all about the author, “Vascavus.” I’ve Googled and searched otherwise. The only place I find that name is in one guy’s quotations file and as a .sig line another guy uses in a web forum. It doesn’t appear in any book digitized by Google or listed by Amazon. It isn’t in anything indexed by Google scholar or any of the other search engines I’ve tried. Wikipedia doesn’t know him.
Oh — the quotation is: “History shows us that when religion and science have a scuffle, religion either is reinterpreted, backs down, or is destroyed.”
Any clues? Pretty please?
Tired Now
I had a pain doctor appointment last week, but wasn’t up to going. So Sam rescheduled it for me, and I headed across town today.
Apparently this was the day for “fitting in” everybody who has canceled an appointment in the last Goddess-knows-how-long, because I arrived to find no parking (even on the street in front of the practice). Patience was rewarded, and I got a spot that opened up as someone left, and was still 20 minutes early for my appointment.
I was seen shortly before the woman who came in after me, after stopping to glare at me from her streetside parking space (hey, it wasn’t as if she had been in the lot waiting or anything!). Her appointment was actually 15 minutes before mine, so I have no idea why they saw me first.
Still, I was very glad to have my a back-up ebook on my PDA, because it took over 2 hours to get out of there. They usually run absolutely on-time, so I only had one “normal” book with me, and I finished it.1 That office is always so overheated, so I was really dozy by the time I left.
Sam and I agreed that I had no business driving very far, so I got some fruit and water and went to his workplace. I had a brief nap, then he was off work and we were off to fill my prescriptions. We committed naughtiness by grabbing pizza for dinner, but it was yummy naughtiness.
This is the man’s “Old Farts” gaming night, when he meets up with some of his buddies and they play whatever they can agree on. The girl is going out with friends to see Watchmen (again), so I think I may be going to bed early.
First, I need to close some tabs in my browser, but I wanted to share the links with you! (You’re SO lucky!)
Elf Detection 101: How to find the hidden folk of Iceland.
Read the stories on the Nebula ballot!
It’s Read An eBook Week! So celebrate by downloading some of the free eBooks listed on their site 
1 And then gifted it to someone who had been waiting before me and was still unseen when I left, who kept moaning about having forgotten to bring a book.
I missed what?
It was National Grammar Day AND Gamemaster’s Day, and I didn’t realize either until the day was almost over!
It was date night, though, and my favorite GM and I did play, so at least there’s that. I’ll have to get him a make-up present, though.
You know all those different click-to-give sites? I very geekily gathered up all the ones that I know about and stuck the links on one page so I don’t have to try to remember them, or install shortcuts or toolbars or what-have-you. It isn’t gorgeous, but it is convenient.
I finally got started on Season 1 of Shadow Unit, now that Season 2 has started. Good stuff!
And finally, just so I can close the tab that’s been open for a couple of days, a new wrinkle in that whole nature/nurture debate: Child Abuse Alters Stress-Fighting Gene.
Mortality and Spring
I’ve had an odd mix of thoughts today.
Mom called last night (Friday), and I learned that Daddy has had several bad falls recently. He was out of town for a business trip most of this week and ended up spending a night in the hospital while there, after a fall in the shower. The week before that, he fell at home and hit his head on the hearth. Both times, he wasn’t wearing his foot brace. After some of his neck and back problems in the last few years, he has a “foot drop” problem. Of course, Mr. Marine doesn’t want to use a cane. That’s worrisome.
Read on…
