Monica

SCA friends, both serious researchers, just got back from their month-long honeymoon in Scandinavia. One of them works at my company, so yesterday he was chatting with folks about the trip. When I joined the conversation, another coworker said to me "ask him how many pictures he took".

Wait, I said, let me try to guess first. I asked the coworker how many museums he went to, and he said "one or sometimes two a day", but they lost a couple days to travel. So, I said, average of one museum a day for 30 days? He said that was about right, and volunteered that almost all of them allowed photography. We had already established that he was using a digital camera, not film.

Ok, I said. I'm going to estimate that you took between 250 and 500 pictures per museum, probably closer to the former. (The other coworker's eyes get big.) So, I continued, if I take the conservative number for now, that's 7500. I'm guessing you took a few picturs of scenery and stuff but not a lot (other coworker looks startled), and I did start with a conservative estimate. So, let's say between 9000 and 10,000 pictures total (other coworker's jaw drops). How'd I do?

He's not sure, but he knows it's at least 9000 and he thinks not as many as 10,000. :-) The other coworker asked "how did you do that?!". I said "you just have to know him". (Besides, I showed my work.)

A few days ago the SCA corporate office announced a new (forthcoming) policy: because there have been problems, officers working with children and anyone running children's activities at an event must first pass a background check (details not yet provided). They're trying to weed out convicted sex offenders; I'm not sure what else they're trying to screen for.

Predictably, this has spawned a few threads on SCA discussion lists. One is about the concern that this will drive away prospective volunteers; it's an imposition (and who exactly is paying for it anyway?). Some people already complain that we don't do enough age-appropriate stuff for kids; I agree that this will make things worse in that regard. My suggestion, since the policy is about "children's activities", is to say we have no such thing: anyone is welcome to join us for coloring and nap time. That most adults won't be interested does not make it a children's activity on the books. (And why become an officer when you could just informally work with parents? There are no perks to being an officer.)

Another thread concerns parents and how if they were responsible and attentive and involved in their kids' lives, they wouldn't need to worry that the guy telling stories or teaching games is going to molest anyone. There are valid arguments on both sides (parents can't be everywhere all the time), and most SCA parents I know are reasonable, but I do wonder whether the requirement for background checks will make the irresponsible parents even more likely to dump their kids while they go off and party. Now the SCA has offered a promise that it's safe to do so. (I am very glad that a particularly problematic family has moved out of our group.)

But the thread that really gets under my skin is the "but think of the poor children!" one. A post tonight started off with this: If these background checks protect even _one_ child in Aethelmearc from sexual molestion or rape, it is worth it. It then went on with emotional appeals about the badness of molestation and abuse. Um, no one is arguing that molestation and abuse are good.

To that person I say (and said): Try this logically-equivalent statement: "If outlawing all motor vehicles saves even _one_ innocent victim from being killed by a reckless driver, it is worth it." Of course you wouldn't agree to that; while we want to minimize deaths due to reckless drivers, we recognize that there are other relevant factors, like the needs for commerce, transport to employment, and so on.

The world is not 100% safe. Any society (small "s") has to balance all of the legitimate needs of all of its members in trying to figure out where the best balance point is. Even if background checks were a silver bullet, you aren't done until you also address the problems they would impose.

(Aside: just this past week we had a local kidnapping case (adult and infant) that happened in front of a large grocery store in a well-trafficked area. Today's paper quoted a resident as saying that Giant Eagle needs to beef up its security so this can't happen again. Are you really ready to pay higher grocery costs to provide a guard stationed in front of the store? (Israelis, I don't mean you; yours is a different problem.))

I am not personally affected by the background-check rule. I'm not a parent (nor a kid :-) ), nor do I have any intention of being an officer in the SCA, nor am I inclined to run child-specific activities. But I think we're all harmed when bad "logic" drives policy. Proponents of more-restrictive policies need to support them with sound arguments, not appeals to emotion.

The following from the corporate seneschal's report of the latest SCA board meeting left me scratching my head:

Motion by Gabrielle Underwood to revoke and deny the membership of Clarence Womble (Eoin Mac Lochlainn) effective January 26, 2007. Seconded by Jeff Brown. In favor: None. Opposed: Jeff Brown, Heather English, Tom Hughes, Hal Simon, Gabrielle Underwood. Recused: Shawn Reed. Motion failed.

Motion by Gabrielle Underwood to revoke and deny the membership of Clarence Womble (Eoin Mac Lochlainn) effective January 27, 2007. Seconded by Jeff Brown. In favor: Jeff Brown, Heather English, Tom Hughes, Hal Simon, Gabrielle Underwood, Opposed: None. Recused: Shawn Reed. Chairman Williams exercised his option to vote and did so in favor of the motion. Motion carried.

I had to read it a couple times to spot the difference. They changed the effective date. That's all. There has to have been a better way to do that, no? Doesn't standard parliamentary procedure permit both amending and withdrawing a motion on the table?

When I read the first one my reaction was "wow, the case for this was so weak that even the person making the motion recanted". But (and noting that we do not have access to the actual discussion), that appears not to have been the case.

The interview meme is making the rounds again. kitanzi asked me some questions:

( Read more... )

Here's the rules:

1. Leave me a comment saying "interview me".
2. I will respond by asking you five personal questions so I can get to know you better.
3. You will update your LJ with the answers to the questions.
4. You will include this explanation and an offer to interview others in the post.
5. When others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five questions.

Not only am I going to Israel (yay!), but it happens to work out that I'll be in Jerusalem the same night as the local SCA group's next event, and it's a 20-minute walk from my hotel, and the travel itinerary says "evening on your own". Well, that's an easy decision. When the Shire of Ma'ale Giborim formed and the founders invited me to be an honorary member of the group, I never imagined that I'd have the chance to actually show up at something. :-)

(We will have other nights in Jerusalem, so I'm not missing out on my only chance to see the city or anything like that.)

"The NSA would like to remind everyone to call their mothers this Sunday. They need to calibrate their system." (Seen here and passed on by sui66iy.)

That poll I posted on Friday got 15 responses in the first 20 minutes, three of them from people who don't openly subscribe to my journal. *boggle*

SCA: Woo hoo! A local clue-enabled couple won Crown Tourney yesterday. Nice folks; I'm really happy for them. The next 11 months should be lots of fun. (As ariannawyn pointed out, this might be the first queen who's won one of Yama Kaminari's fundoshi oil-wrestling contests, which, yes, is as strange as it sounds.)

Quoth some recent spam: "your woman wants a replica". Really? I have a woman? Please give her two messages, then: (1) she's late with her share of the mortgage, and (2) she can buy her own damn replica.

Around 6:00 tonight I got a phone solicitation from someone claiming to be calling from Jerusalem. So that would have been, what, 1:00 AM? That seems like a lot of effort to catch people at dinner time -- and that's just eastern time. (Though I'm told that Californians eat late compared to midwesterners, so maybe they just call them first thing in the caller's morning.)

Trope geekery: the torah portion I'm currently learning (fourth aliya of Bamidbar) has four munachs in a row (followed by pazeir, which itself is pretty unusual). I occasionally see two munachs in a row; I think I've seen three. Four? Weird. I had to look up what to do with that. (Munach is one of those symbols that has different melodies depending on local context.)

For the bar mitzvah I'm conducting in July, I've decided to read rather than chant the portion up to where the student takes over. I figure that this way I won't be upstaging the kid; while in many congregations it wouldn't be perceived that way, I'm not sure about ours and that family is already having to deal with deviation from the norm because they won't get a rabbi. I asked my rabbi if this seemed appropriate to him (and explained my reasoning) and he concurred. Reading without chanting is going to take some getting used to, though!

Hebrew class tomorrow night. I'm considering asking the teacher to move me to the next section for the ulpan (that is, one ahead of where the group I'm now with will be going). It's possible that this will also get me a different teacher, which is not a change I'd frown on. But mainly, I figure that if it's too advanced we can fix it on the first night, but if the class is too basic I'll never be able to jump up.

Big fluffy snow! I wonder how long that will last. (It also seems to be somewhat slippery, at least for cars. Maintaining traction is mostly fine; acquiring it while turning (e.g. making a turn from a stop) requires a bit more attention. Or did a few hours ago, anyway, and the multiple noisy near-misses at the intersection in front of our house seem to confirm.)

Dani's company's holiday party was this afternoon. They held it at the children's museum, which seemed an unusual venue for small gatherings (I don't think of museums as having party rooms), but on the way in we passed a sign directing people to a birthday party. Ok, that makes sense -- a child's birthday party at a children's museum makes sense, and they won't turn down adults. :-) (There are about a dozen people at the company, and we and one other couple are the only ones without children.) To clarify: it's a museum filled with stuff interesting to children, not a museum displaying children. I suppose the latter would be, properly speaking, the "child(ren) museum". :-)

Yesterday morning, alas, instead of enjoying Shabbat services, I was at the vet clinic with Erik. (Why yes, I do think health of a pet trumps Shabbat. For myself, for anything short of Major Injury or Impending Death, I'd wait.) Fortunately, the problem was only a pulled dressing and not, as I had feared, pulled stitches. They fixed him up with a bigger dressing with more adhesive, which seems to be holding up well so far. But not the most calming way to spend (part of) Shabbat.

Yesterday afternoon and evening we played another game of 7 Ages. This time we ran from the first age through the beginning of the fourth, but it took a long time. At 9:00, in the middle of the third age, it seemed reasonable to set that boundary. At midnight it was less obvious that it was correct. So, still some calibration to do, but it's a fun game (though I got thoroughly whumped this time).

Short takes:

Ah, that's why there were a bazillion messages waiting in the moderation queue for an SCA mailing list today. Someone posted a query about sewing machines. That's kind of like posting a query about editing tools to a software-developers' list. :-)

Interesting if true, but entertaining either way: legal complications of a bizarre death (link from Dani).

My sister has never read the Narnia books and would like a copy. Does anyone know if the ones currently in print have been altered (from the ones we read in childhood) other than to change the order? (I can solve the ordering problem if I buy individual volumes or a boxed set rather than one of the compedia that's out there.)

I was discussing my decreased involvement in the SCA (over the last decade or so) with a friend who suggested that I've shifted my social allegiance from the SCA to my synagogue. This is something I've thought about before and I want to record a comment I made in that discussion.

Certainly the degradation of the SCA over the last decade [1] has made it easier for me to find time for my synagogue. The SCA began its descent for me in 1994; it wasn't until 1998 that I even started showing up at my synagogue. I've thought a lot about how these are related, actually, and I think that had the SCA not gone the way it did I would still be involved in my synagogue but I would not be in a leadership position and I'd probably be a less-regular attendee. (Not infrequent, mind, but that I wouldn't have had a problem skipping Shabbat services to go to an event.) My synagogue has replaced the SCA in providing leadership opportunities, which have accompanying time commitments -- but, interestingly, I don't actually socialize a lot with the synagogue people outside of the synagogue context. I'm much more likely to go out to dinner and a movie (or whatever) with my SCA friends.

[1] We were talking about increasingly-obstructionist policies at the corporate level and their effects on the rank-and-file participants. The modern incarnation of these problems began with a major policy change, founded on false premises, in 1993. I spent a chunk of 1994 investigating those false premises, along with several other members, lawyers, and a judge.

Hey lookie -- daylight savings time. More time before Shabbat means time to finish this. (I've been gradually ansering these questions over the past couple days.)

1) What's the least-interesting section of the Torah to you, the one that would be most improved if you read it in the original Klingon. ( Read more... )

2) Nature or nurture? ( Read more... )

3) Have you ever worn SCA garb as your street clothes (i.e, not on the way too/from an event, just because you felt like it). ( Read more... )

4) You have been granted a wish to meet one of the great Jewish sages (and commensurate ability to understand and be understood). Who do you meet and why? ( Read more... )

5) Some say the world will end in fire, others say in ice. Which do you choose? ( Read more... )