aqua et igni interdictus [translation]

I've been away for a while. An article I came across this morning while researching completely different topics sums up my absence well:

What I came to understand was that [World of Warcraft] was not necessarily an escape, but a surrogate for a community that is harder and harder to find in the real world. I lived further from my parents and siblings than my parents had. I wasn't raised in the church. In my 20s, I built a shocking amount of community around illicit substances and bars. But with age and a child, that was no longer as attractive or even possible. Into that void, I brought WoW, which instantly connected me with the world—not just mine, but others I could never have imagined or found on my own.

— Confessions of a 30-Year-Old Gamer

See also: Alvin Toffler.

Last updated by eric Mon Dec 01 10:18 2008 | deed | link

excudit [translation]

According to Blows Against the Empire: The Return of Philip K. Dick, "it's hard to imagine any circumstances in which [Philip K. Dick] would have ended up as Doctorow, or wanted to."

Do you think he means Cory or E.L.?

Last updated by eric Tue Aug 14 08:25 2007 | word | link

sufficit [translation]

Oh yeah, apparently I forgot to mention: I now work somewhere else. The commute was just too much; now I work about a mile from where I live, which is much nicer than the 90-minute, 35-mile commute I'd been stuck with for the past 2.5 years.

Talking with my new co-workers yesterday about their respective commutes and the horrors of gridlock freeway traffic, I was suddenly struck by the realization that I've never had a commute that could be described as "rush-hour." This intrigues me—though friends and co-workers think Sh and I are a little odd for living car-free (we're the only couple we know who do so, after all), I've recently thought it was more my following H's example in living without an automobile.

But I'd been moving away from the car for a long time. I got my first (and only) car in high school, and drove it around town to work and school, but once I went off to college, I usually would walk or bicycle to work and school. After college, even, my commute was less than a couple miles, then shrunk to a couple blocks. Even when the shop relocated, I usually rode my bike instead of driving, and never drove on freeways.

Once I relocated north and sold the car, there was no more freeway commuting for me. Though my commutes have generally been an hour or longer, it has always been a chance to sleep, read, or stare out the window and ruminate.

It's a pretty good way of doing things. I recommend it to everyone who can—sure, there are environmental benefits to an un-car commute, but I think the personal benefits are the bigger draw.

Shorter distances are nice, too, but then I kinda miss all the chances to read books.

Last updated by eric Sat Aug 11 14:21 2007 | omission | link

oleo tranquillior [translation]

This past week, Kim Stanley Robinson's new book Sixty Days and Counting came out, and I hadn't found a chance yet to visit the good folks at Borderlands Books here in San Francisco. Over the weekend I was at WonderCon, so I wouldn't be able to visit Borderlands yet again.

But they were at WonderCon! Hooray!

But they didn't have any copies yet. Much sadness.

I hope to pick up a copy from them this weekend, but by now I'm almost chewing pencils in my excitement. It doesn't help that Salon.com features a nice write-up on the book, with an amazing, incisive excerpt. The first part of the rant had me bouncing up and down with joy:

"Damage from carbon dioxide emission costs about $35 a ton, but in your model no one pays it. The carbon that British Petroleum burns per year, by sale and operation, runs up a damage bill of fifty billion dollars. BP reported a profit of twenty billion, so actually it's thirty billion in the red, every year. Shell reported a profit of twenty-three billion, but if you added the damage cost it would be eight billion in the red. These companies should be bankrupt. You support their exteriorizing of costs, so your accounting is bullshit. You're helping to bring on the biggest catastrophe in human history. If the oil companies burn the five hundred gigatons of carbon that you are describing as inevitable because of your financial shell games, then two-thirds of the species on the planet will be endangered including humans. But you keep talking about fiscal discipline and competitive edges in profit differentials. It's the stupidest head-in-the-sand response possible."

Last updated by eric Wed Mar 07 08:13 2007 | omission | link

dramatis personae [translation]

[Martin Sheen] came into the room and said, "The only thing that matters is: did you like the people you worked with? Did you like where you were?" And I thought, well, that's not quite right, is it? It's about work, it's about doing a great job, it's about amazing performances. But this is a man who had a heart attack on Apocalypse Now and had found a way to live his life where he's happier. And it occurred to me that he's right. In the big scheme of things that is all that matters.

— Nick Cage in The Guardian

Last updated by eric Tue Feb 20 19:42 2007 | omission | link

exegi monumentum aere perennius [translation]

[Recently-appointed Amtrak CEO Alex] Kummant, who in 2003 left the freight rail business for stints at several equipment manufacturers, said he was happy to be back in the train world.

"There is nothing in my view quite as complex and, in the end, engrossing as a railroad operation," he said. "I tell my manufacturing friends, take a roof off your plant and spread it over 500 miles, and have two guys at a time managing 5 million in capital unsupervised. It's a real management challenge, and it's a fight against the elements."

— Amtrak CEO calls for public money for rail capacity

Last updated by eric Sun Jan 28 09:05 2007 | word | link