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From Slacktivist: "Only a crazy person would take what we say seriously."

Every few years, tragically, some poor confused bastard fails to realize that it's all a big game, a pretense, a lie. He takes them seriously and he takes their words seriously and he behaves as someone who believes what they say. So Paul Hill murders a doctor in Florida. Eric Rudolph bombs the Atlanta Olympics. Scott Roeder guns down a doctor in church.

And each time this happens all of the people who have, for years, been suggesting that such violent resistance is obligatory recoil in horror at the sight of someone treating their words as anything other than the disingenuous lies they were always meant to be.

You know, I was thinking when I woke up this morning that with all the news coverage about Saturday's shooting, Julian Assange must be feeling terribly left out. So when the first thing I heard after turning on the news radio station was that Julian Assange had compared himself to Gabrielle Giffords, I greeted the news with a certain lack of surprise. Then again, given what Sarah Palin and other rightwing superstars have said about the Wikileaks crew, the statement may have a point. It's a point hidden underneath a gigantic, bloated ego, but that doesn't mean it isn't there.

News, Updates, and Miscellany

Leaked: US government strategy to prevent leaks.

Also in U.S. news: We have snow in 49 states including Hawaii. Today, Florida is feeling left out. (Link via yasminke.)

In more serious weather news: You can donate to the flood relief appeal here.

Unrelated to current news: After I'd finished reading Why We Read What We Read, I looked around on the net for what other people had to say and was amused to find that someone back in 2009 read the book as part of a Dewey Decimal Challenge--a challenge that isn't much different from my little New Year's resolution. Anyway, unlike me, the blogger actually interviewed the authors, Lisa Adams and John Heath.

Speaking of books I've read recently, have a quote from Jedediah Berry's Manual of Detection: "To glide with sock-swaddled feet over a world of glossy planes: that would be a wondrous thing! But Unwin's apartment was smallish at best, and the world is unkind to the shoeless and frolicsome."

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You know how you can look at a word and look at a word and after a while it stops looking like a word? It doesn't take long to get to that stage when the word is "miscellany."

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Saturday: Spent afternoon and evening with Mad Science folks. Entertaining conversations and tasty food as usual, occasionally accompanied by the shoeless and frolicsome antics of cats. It was good to spend time with friends & friendly people. We were saddened by the news from Arizona.

Sunday: Not much happened that I recall, though I did go out walking far enough to buy some groceries. Spent most of the day resting so I'd have the energy to get up early for an appointment on Monday. Shortly after I went to bed, I saw, heard, and felt an explosion which part of me knew was the product of my sleeping brain while another, smaller part of me thought it could be an actual emergency. Stupid brain.

Monday: For a change of pace, I actually would have made it to my morning appointment on time if my lungs hadn't decided that they didn't want to work properly. I still don't know what the blazes was going on there. Spent most of the day resting. Also spent a good part of the day crying, as I'd made the mistake of contemplating my probable future on a day when my body was seriously misbehaving itself. I went to bed early and got ten hours of sleep, which seems to have helped.

Tuesday: Much better day than Monday. I walked tuna half miles, picked up a prescription, did some light grocery shopping, came home and took out the trash, did a load of laundry, and spent entirely too much time on the internet. The sky spat sleet at me while I was walking home, but that only made me laugh. I feel like I could use more sleep now, so I'll probably be going to bed early again. Let's see what tomorrow brings.