h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Hi,

Just wanted to say thanks for your kind comments in re my bio page. But I didn't want to blur the Victorian thread. Won't Courtesy be surprised when he gets back after the weekend and finds a bunch of grown women have drunk all his tea?

If you really like all the good conversation you can get, ffMike has founded an offsite, sort of, h2g2 list, at http://www.onelist.com.

You know some other researchers personally? I thought that was only the case in London.

That's a lovely photo. I live in central Florida which is polluted, crowded and flat, but I am making plans to move to the southwest, to Kid country....

Lil

So, I dropped by to say "hi" after reading the courtesy talk, and what do I find but that Lil beat me here? I trust neither of you will mind if I tag on to this message rather than starting another thread. Just one big happy & courteous family.

You other Vonnegut lovers might want to check out http://web.math-cs.uni.edu/~wallingf/personal/bokonon.html .

And you can get directly to the proper signup page for the mailing list at http://www.onelist.com/community/H2G2 . We'd love to have you. It will warn you that signup requires approval, but everyone gets approved.

Love that photo. Yellowstone? Nice bit of country. Somewhere I've got a shot of the headwaters of the Colorado River (near Rocky Mountain National Park) that I use for wallpaper when I want to make myself regret settling down.

Well, first about the photo.... I believe it IS Yellowstone, but I'm not sure. Shawn's the one who found it on-line (after announcing that I needed a photo to go with my text). I know about as much about HTML as I know about nuclear physics. In other words, not much at all.

And I'd say that I never thought of it that way, but I suppose it IS a Karass, of sorts. I must admit I don't remember what a Granfalloon is, except that it was part of the title of a collection of essays. "Wampeters, Foma, and Granfalloons" I think it was.

So sit down, make yourselves comfortable and have some tea. Pardon the mess; I've just gotten in from Christmas shopping and haven't had time to straighten up.

And to answer Lil, about knowing other researchers personally: I only know one. That would be Shawn, and he lives in England. And I don't. But I do know him personally, which is a rather involved tale.

(Pulls up a chair, pours a cup of tea)

As I recall (from Cat's Cradle), a Karass is a true assemblage of people that actually means something, and a Granfalloon is a phony one, like the Elks club, that substitutes for finding your Karass.

I hold it as possible that there might be members of my Karass on H2G2, though there isn't anyone I would definitely put in that group yet (one is pretty close).

Anyhow, we certainly have time for an involved tale, whenever you get done with those presents...

Mike defines karass and granfalloon correctly. In Cat's Cradle, Vonnegut limns an elderly couple who find being a Hoosier (someone from Kansas) sufficient grounds for demanding intimacy. Mensa is a granfalloon, as are all nation states. imho.

Can I help wrap? I can hold while you tape.

Lil

(turns on stereo).

Frank Sinatra, Johnny Mathis, Charlie Brown, or "The Coolest Christmas"?

(takes out wrapping paper and scissors, starts cutting).

It's been a while since I've read Vonnegut (although I did read "Timequake" about a year ago), and since I've read all of them, they sort of blend together. But yes, now I remember.

A karass is something we can't intentionally join; it sort of falls upon us unexpectedly. (more tape over on that corner please, Lil. Thanks ). I don't know if I really have one now. But I DO know that I'm not much of a chat-room sort of person, and it's only within the last 2 weeks that I ventured away from the people I already knew here on H2G2 and started talking to strangers. And already I've met one person who reminded me of a thing or two I'd forgotten about my views of the nature of the universe (that would be bluDragon), and two people who gave up the 9-5 grind to pursue their dreams.

And I only even wandered on here to make a smart come-back to something that a friend of Shawn's said. It was never my intention to stay.

And so it goes...

(sips tea thoughtfully)

Seems to me that one of the philosophical points of the Karass is that you _always_ have one, whether you know it or not. Some of us are destined to figure out who the members of our Karass are; some are not. Or as Bokonon describes the Karass in the 53rd Calypso:

Oh, a sleeping drunkard
Up in Central Park,
And a lion-hunter
In the jungle dark,
And a Chinese dentist,
And a British queen--
All fit together
In the same machine.
Nice, nice, very nice;
Nice, nice, very nice;
Nice, nice, very nice--
So many different people
In the same device.

I think I've found some of my Karass, but then again, I could just be deluding myself. (Jump sideways to another classic SF novel: there area group of us who have declared ourselves as water brothers to one another).

(throws another log on the fire and checks to see if anyone needs more tea)

One of the nice things about H2G2 is that perfect strangers don't stay strange for long, and some of them can even be welcoming. Oh, sure, there are corners of H2G2 out there that are nothing but chattering teens trading insults. Fortunately, this isn't one of those corners. But then, that would be our conversation on courtesy, wouldn't it?

(Which is not to condemn teens out of hand; I'm having a delightful conversation with a 14-year-old on another forum somewhere around here).

The universe is always trying to tell you something. It's your job to figure out what.

Got any Lee Ritenour?

Now talking to strangers is absolutely the coolest thing I have learned to do here at h2g2. In reality I am rather hermit-like, with a small circle of time-tested friends and an extended group of people who are like relatives. Here, as Lil, I'll stick my finger in anywhere that looks interesting. It's been a mind-opener. I even troll the who's-on popup and check out interesting handles. Lil is a complete smart aleck and fearless about expressing her opinions, unlike me.

And somehow, some people stick and make friends with the entity behind Lil. Doubtless, this phenomenon is happening all over the site, where the like-meets-like model is transcended by something more ... open minded.
(that is such cool paper. Is it mylar?)

Somebody like ffMike could chart it, I bet. Have you seen his pie chart of nationalities?

Lil

Thanks for the tea, Mike. I was running out.

(sips cup of Sleepytime tea).

Well, as far as meeting people here. I've so far encountered the two of you (who lead lives that are not quite ordinary), a witch, an aspiring playwrite, and a whole bunch of "Christians on H2G2" who are quite happy to discuss and debate the ins and outs of their religion with my non-Christian self.

I would agree with Lil that it's fascinating to meet so many people so easily. I have found that the rules on-line are not so different from the rules in the real world. Some people you click with, some you don't, and some you warm up to more slowly.

But may I suggest something, Lil? You say that on-line you are fearless in expressing your opinions, but in "real life" you are not. Just remember that every personality trait you explore on-line already exists inside of you, and you have all the tools necessary to be that same person in real life. You have found, no doubt, that most people are receptive to someone who is unafraid to be who they are. You will find that in real life, some people will love you for being opinionated, and some will hate you, but at least they are loving or hating you for who you really are.

And the paper IS lovely, isn't it? I love the way it catches the light...

I'm getting a bit sleepy myself...and I'm well west of Lil (bp, I don't think I caught your home state...but perhaps I wasn't paying attention). I'll probably be chucking in comments for a while yet tonight. I'm trying to finish a chapter (on using ADO 2.5 with SQL Server 2000, whoopee) and only frequent breaks to check in here and other net spots are keeping me sane. Yep, it's 9:30 on a Saturday night and I'm still "working". But on the other hand I'm also listening to the stereo, snacking, and ducking into H2G2, and I just recently was outside checking on the farmyard. As ways of making a living go, it's not bad.

(I think I'll have a cup of cocoa now, I need to relax a bit).

Thank you -- I take "not quite ordinary" as a compliment. I have a real horror of being ordinary. Fortunately I think there's little danger of that. Of course, you and Lil also fall into the extraordinary classification just by being able to carry on a conversation in writing. Not everyone can manage this.

I dunno if I'm all that different in "real life" from the way I am online -- but I do know that almost all of my socializing gets done online. Here it's easy to find people to talk to. IRL, I'm a couple miles from the nearest neighbor, and seldom have any need to go into town. Fortunately, I survive quite well with really minimal human contact in person.

OK, back to work.

I will say that I'm in the Eastern Time Zone, so it's nearly 1am here. Past bedtime, but I've always been a bit of a nightowl.

I am social enough in real life, but I've found H2G2 a good place to meet people from other countries and other backgrounds. I've also found it a good place to have the sorts of conversations that my coworkers give me odd looks for. My interests just are not the same as the average person's, I suppose. For example, a favorite topic of conversation at work is televisions. How many, how big, which satellite dish to get. I occasionally interject with something like "I haven't even turned my tv on in 3 days." Which generally causes a slight pause in the conversation, followed by a return to the original path as if I had never spoken. Ho-hum.

My real-life friends, on the other hand, are used to my odd ramblings, and have grown rather friendly with my High Horse. He's right over there in his stall now, waiting for me to get on him. I can at any time, if you'd like.

We own three TVs. One of them is in the RV that I used to live in, and which now serves as our guest house, and probably hasn't been turned on in six months.

The second has been dead for about the same length of time. It's got a tablecloth on it and is used as an end table, since it's a big ol' honkin' floor model.

The third does get some use. We might watch an hour of history or discovery during dinner. Other than that, Dana keeps it turned on for background noise while she quilts (we do get satellite, so she uses it as an expensive country music radio station).

So I guess we're not average either. I used to be convinced that even the most average of people had SOMETHING interesting to talk about, but then I tried talking to some of my neigbors out here in the Palouse. Once you get off the subject of wheat farming you've pretty much exhausted their repertoire. No doubt I'm getting a reputation as that crazy guy with all the computers who doesn't grow wheat. Oh well.

High horsiness is entirely up to you

I've been not-watching more TV since I got this laptop. Now I sit cross-legged on the floor at the coffee table, keyboarding away while CD's play or Discovery channel (Courtesy38 calls it "Mammals & Missiles") runs in bg mode.

As for fearlessness of opinion in the real world, unfortunately it was something I had to un-learn when I came here to central Florida after 15 years in Secular Olde England. My first job was as a COBOL programmer at W S Badcocks in Mulberry. I forget the circumstance under which the subject came up, but everybody was in the cafeteria at the time. I responded to something I had heard, "But that's creationism! Surely nobody actually believes in that!"

Such a silence, until my two female fellow-programmers spoke up and told me that they both believed in the literal truth of the Bible. After that, I was labelled, incorrectly, as an atheist and correctly as being very different.

Through such errors -- inadvertently outraging or offending the Bible-Beltians around me -- I learned to temper my mien, to keep my opinions to myself, to stay out of the middle. As it was, the blind programming manager took a lot of time out to try and correct my errant and irreligious ways.

So now that you have me thinking things through, I would say that here on h2g2, Lil can freely express the things that I can't in real life because of social backlash.

What a compliment it is be be thought non-normal, really. The sobriquet has had such dire consequences in the real world of Lakeland that I feel relieved to be here among friends at last.

Lil

Some time between 1986 (when I was hanging out with other rioting anarchists in Chicago) and 1999 (when I met my wife's maternal grandparents), I came to the conclusion that my personal sense of ethics did not require getting in people's faces when I disagre with them. My grandparents-in-law are nice people but very devout Christian (which I am not). We had a nice afternoon talking mainly about farming, but when they brought up the Bible, I was polite and noncommittal. Sure, I could have told them I thought much of what they were saying was a load of bollocks, but why?

I can't say that I'm growing increasingly tolerant of other points of view, because I've always been a hardcore free speech advocate. Perhaps it's that I don't require others to tolerate my point of view.

I don't think I could survive living in the Bible Belt, but I could still visit (though I doubt I'll travel that far from home again).

Somehow it seems different here. I feel like people actually _want_ to know what my point of view is. Or perhaps it's just that it's difficult to throw things at me via modem.

Well, the nice thing about H2G2 is that we only need talk to the people we choose to talk to.

As for Lil's experiences with religion, I know that I DO consider myself an atheist as far as Western religions are concerned. But I choose not to use that term too often, as it has a negative connotation that leads people to think that I don't believe in anything, which isn't at all the case. My faith, however, lies more with Eastern philosophy than Western religion. So I generally stay mum when the topic of God comes up, although I occasionally put my two cents in.

Still, I've found the people here at H2G2 to be generally open-minded and willing to discuss just about anything.

And if I lived in the Bible Belt, I'd probably have people burning crosses on my front lawn...

My faith is, at best, muddled. Some people no doubt would consider me an atheist, solely from my non-involvement with any traditional religion. That's their lookout, not mine. Often I am a sort of pantheist, convinced that there is something out there, but not convinced that it has any particular interest in either the human race as a whole or me in particular.

I have had direct contact with the divine. However, as I had recently ingested LSD at the time, I don't take this as serious proof, only an interesting data point. At the time, of course, I had complete faith.

There are plenty of bits of eastern philosophy I appreciate, but more as a system of optimizing one's own self than as an explanation of the ultimate everything.

And yes, this is a nice open-minded community. I'm glad to have found it.

I've come to the conclusion that the universe just IS. It's a life-force of its own, with its own purpose and direction. And all the stories we tell of gods and prophets are simply analogies to try to explain the unexplainable, to explain that we are all part of something larger, all a part of some incredible force. And basically, that if you do evil, evil will befall you, because while humans don't create the positive and negative energies in the universe, they do direct it. Negative energy attracts more of the same. Which is why so many "successful" people die at a young age, miserable and unfulfilled by their material wealth.

I just can't add anything to that!

Lil

Well, there are certainly times that I feel like we all get the universe that we deserve. I noted quite some time ago that there was a correlation between how good a job I can do of treating the universe as a nice place that I really wanted to live, and how fun and rewarding life is.

In my more mystical moments, I see this as proof of the wheel of karma (and wonder whether it's possible to get off the wheel).

In my more scientific moments, I see this as just a matter of mindset; it's not the universe that gets affected, it's my perception of the universe.

Either way, it's easier to keep this view of the world living in Endicott than it was in New York City.

I can't keep track of everywhere I've been, and the holiday has left me little time to write....

In looking at your last posting, I would have to say that the two possibilities are really just two ways of looking at the same thing. Whether the universe changes, or just your way of looking at it changes, it's the same in the end, as we can't view anything objectively. Is the grass really green, or do we just call it green because we've been told that particular perception is "green"?

Reality is what we see of it. The power in Eastern philosophy is it's ability to teach us to see that the gift of happiness is, ultimately, our own to give ourselves, and not in the hands of the gods.