Random Acts of Observation

6 décembre, 1989
École polytechnique
Montréal, Quebec


Geneviève Bergeron
Hélène Colgan
Nathalie Croteau
Barbara Daigneault
Anne-Marie Edward
Maud Haviernick
Barbara Maria Klucznik
Maryse Leclair
Annie St.-Arneault
Michèle Richard
Maryse Laganière
Anne-Marie Lemay
Sonia Pelletier
Annie Turcotte

Se souvenir pour agir contre toutes les formes de violence envers les femmes.

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I just had to answer this, especially after viewing other people's responses. A goodly number talked about how they might think there was something to astrology, but they didn't believe in horoscopes.

Now this made me laugh and cry simultaneously, since the horoscope is in fact the prime methodology for preparing an astrological analysis of some sort (personality, present and future trends, horary, and so on - there are many types of analysis that an astrologer can undertake based on a horoscope) and hence is value-neutral, not something one can believe in or not. Whether one can derive insights from a horoscope - the astrological analysis - is another question altogether. But a horoscope is just a method of presenting verifiable facts.

But of course, people have come to believe that the inane and generalised bits of fluff printed in newspapers and the like are "horoscopes," and since they are rarely accurate (although, given the way they are normally developed if the writer of daily newspaper horoscopes really is an astrologer, they will have somewhat more relevance for someoen who was born around sunrise), it is now believed that the horoscope is inaccurate.

So, you may ask, what is a horoscope? Let us examine the word itself. There are twp parts to the word, "horo-" and "-scope."

"-Scope" is a suffix that means viewing or observing. Wikipedia tells us that it "derives from the scientific Latin suffix -scopium, meaning a viewing instrument, which in turn originates from the ancient Greek verb skopein, to examine." This makes sense, we've all heard of telescopes, microscopes, kaleidoscopes, oscilloscopes, stethoscopes, all sorts of scopes. Furthermore, we have likely heard or talked of "scoping" someone or something out. So a horoscope is something that observes or examines, and that may in some sense be thought of as an instrument.

"Horo-" is derived from the Latin "hora," which has the specific meaning of hour, but which can also mean time or season in general. You have horology, the study of timekeeping, and horologe, a (somewhat archaic) word for a clock or timepiece.

So a horoscope can be presumed to be some kind of instrument through which one examines time, or the hour in specific. Once we recall that a horoscope is an astrological instrument, we might make a guess that a horoscope might be a way of examining the planets, sun and moon at a particular time or hour.

Which is exactly what it is. The horoscope is a depiction of where the various planets are in relation to the ecliptic and to the hocal horizon at any given time. If properly calculated and based on accurate measurements, either your own or those published in an ephemeris, there's no belief involved in a horoscope. It just is what it is, a depiction of the planets, the moon and the sun. If I give you a horoscope, and you go to the place it is calculated for, at the time it is calculated for, you will be able to verify (with the aid of telescope) the positions of any planets, the sun, or the moon, that are shown to be above the horizon on the horoscope. To verify the position of anything below the horizon, you will have to be in instantaneous communication with someone exactly opposite you, in terms of longitude and latitude, who is also looking at the sky.

Certainly there is considerable debate as to what the horoscope means. That's the analysis, and some people think it means absolutely nothing, and others think it has anywhere from a limited to an overwhelming meaning. But an astrologer and an astronomer, once they agreed on some technical definitions having to do with terminology for divisions of the ecliptic and the local meridian, would come up with the same diagram.

So do I believe in horoscopes? The question is meaningless.

Do I think that horoscopes can be interpreted using astrological principles to provide useful information about something that may have happened or someone who may have been born at the precise time and place for which a horoscope is calculated? Now that's the question.

I learned to calculate horoscopes and interpret them according to astrological principles at the age of 18, and in fact did this professionally for a good 15 years of my life. While retired from practice, I still do horoscopes and off-the-cuff interpretations for friends. Over 34 years, I've developed my own thoughts on why the interpretation of horoscopes in this fashion has a certain degree of relevance and meaning, and I've refined some of the principles I was taught to fit my personal hypotheses. And after all of that, the answer for me is still yes.

The purchase of the house is complete.

I am a home owner. This does not feel right. Grown-ups own houses. I am not a grown-up. Therefore I really should not own a house.

I suppose I'll get used to it.

There were, of course, all sorts of last minute freak-outs and miscommunications and paperwork kerfluffles, such as the broker forgetting to email the appraiser's report to the mortgage provider, and the lawyer sending the wrong pre-authorised debit form to the mortgage provider, and me having to get a rush-job passport because new mortgage regulations require the purchaser to have photo ID, but as of November 15, the house is mine (ours, really, but it's my name on the deed 'cause I'm the one with the full-time job who was actually eligible for a mortgage).

We also remembered to do all sorts of clever things like get homeowners' insurance, switch over the utilities, find a copy of the original survey, get a draftsperson in to draw up plans so we can start talking about renovations with contractors and also be prepared for getting the various assorted and sundry permits, do an energy audit and otehr strange and arcane things.

glaurung is talking to various contractors to set up appointments so they can give us estimates on the work we need to do, and doing very important things like tearing up the carpets and throwing out the drapes and trying to detoxify the house, which was previously owned by a little old lady, who, as is the wont of little old ladies, just loved air fresheners.

We have very cleverly unplugged the fridge, turned off the hot water heater and set the thermostat down until such time as we move in, which could well be several months yet, becasue there are those renovations to be done, and after that, we will have to detoxify the house to get out the chemicals from the materials used in the renovations.

There are times when I really, really hate having Environmental Illness. This would be one of them.

We are going to have to insist that whatever contractor we hire uses special low-VOC paints and other things, use metal or real wood (which we will have to treat with a special low-VOC sealant first) rather than plastic or chemically-treated composite building materials, and so on, which means that materials will be more expensive and in some cases there will be additional labour costs.

And then there's the accessibility renovations. A rant for another day. Let it suffice to say that we have discovered that due to a very annnoying recemtly-enacted city bylaw, we will likely not be able to afford putting in a ramp/low-rise stair access in the best place for such a thing to be, but will rather have to put it in in a far less desirable place, both functionally and aesthetically, because to do what would work best, we would have to tear down a garage (which makes perfect sense in our livestyle, since neither of us drives and we will never own a car) - and it is illegal to eliminate off-street parking spaces, and we don't have enough money to tear down the garage, put up the accessway and put in another parking space to replace the one we tore down.

Grrrrr.

Oh well. Money is tight and the worklist is long, but so far the evil days have come not.

Seeing as it was the weekend before Hallowe’en, and we had a bunch of coupons for free or half-price movies from our local purveyor of movie rentals that are due to expire end of the month, we had ourselves a horror flick bash.

First thing you have to realise is that I’m a sucker for women who kick ass, especially when they’re kicking zombie ass, vampire ass, or other assorted nasty creepy ghoulie and ghostie ass. Even if they’re doing so in completely inappropriate clothing or high heels. As long as the obligatory sidekick goat-boys* don’t take up too much screen time, I can deal with chainmail/leather/spandex bikinis and non-sensible shoes.

So that mostly explains my choices of Resident Evil, Resident Evil: Apocalypse, in which Mila Jovovich kicks mutant zombie ass and soulless corporate mercenary butt all over the place, assisted by assorted goat-boys and, in the second movie, the equally kick-ass Sienna Guillory. I also enjoyed the implicit criticism of global capitalism.

Rise: Blood Hunter casts Lucy Liu as a reporter whose investigations of strange doings in the Goth scene lead to her gruesome transformation to a vampire and her quest to hunt down and kill the family of vampires responsible for her death. Liu kicks vampire ass superlatively. For the record, Michael Chicklis, who co-stars as an alcoholic cop searching for the same gang of blood-suckers for reasons of his own, may be Liu’s sidekick, but he is more than a goat-boy. This film got mixed reviews, but I enjoyed it a lot. I admit to a particular weakness for watching vampires try to be ethical about blood-sucking while they kick butt. I also admit to a weakness for Lucy Liu.

28 Weeks Later picks up some months after 28 days Later left off. England is almost completely depopulated, and the zombies, er, Rage Virus victims have all died of hunger. The rebuilding of London has commenced, with the assistance of the U.S. Army. Refugees from the continent are being repatriated. The countryside is being scoured for the few survivors. But unbeknownst to the reconstruction teams, the virus is still lurking…

( 'Ware serious spoilers, including how the movie ends )

The last flick of the weekend was 1408. A stylish ghost story about belief and self-delusion, with a bravura performance by John Cusack as a debunker of ghost stories who is writing a book about haunted hotel rooms, and insists on staying the night in Room 1408 at The Dolphin Hotel, where more than 50 people have died over the years from a variety of causes, and it is implied that even more have gone mad. The movie was visually very creepy, emotionally powerful in parts, but faded toward the end. The conclusion, I thought, wasn’t quite “big” enough to justify the intensity and complexity of what had gone before. My favourite part was actually the build-up, in which hotel manager Samuel L. Jackson tries to persuade Cusack’s character not to stay in the room by recounting all of the horrors that have happened there, part of which is a wonderful set-up for Jackson, well-known for playing action heroes with a bit of a twist, to explain why he avoids Room 1408 unless it’s that time of the month. I admit to a weakness for Samuel L. Jackson.

And that, Gentle Reader, was how I spent my weekend.



* I call ‘em goat-boys because they almost always seem to be sporting about a day and a half’s worth of unshaven facial hair, which gives them the appearance of being young goats. Also add puns on goatees, goat’s head soup, devil-may-care attitudes, and goatish behaviour as you wish.

glaurung and I are buying a house.

Gibber.

He looked at the house on Wednesday, we had a house inspection done Thursday morning, offers were due Thursday evening at 7:00pm, and by 8:00pm our real estate broker called to inform us that our offer had been accepted and we were committed to buying a house.

We are terrified.

Neither of us has ever assumed such a massive financial responsibility in our lives (we live in Toronto, where "starter houses" on tiny lots sell for a quarter mil).

We will have to do some remodelling in order to accommodate my mobility issues and there's some other things that have to be upgraded, from insulation to some of the wiring and we want to replace some of the HVAC system with more energy-efficient equipment.

But it's affordable (barely) and it's nice and it's in a decent location for people who do not and never will own a car and best of all, there will be no people using perfume or other chemical crap that makes us sick living in the basement or on the floor above us.

Out of consideration, I will identify all subsequent posts about this becoming a homeowner thing as House posts, so you can skip over them if this kind of thing makes your eyes glaze over.

From wolfinthewood (her post is here):

The British government has refused asylum to Pegah Emambakhsh, an Iranian refugee who fled Iran two years ago following the arrest, torture and sentencing to death of her partner. Ms. Emambakhsh is a lesbian, and under Iranian law, she too could be tortured and killed if she returns to Iran.

British authorities plan to ship her back to meet this fate on Tuesday morning, unless something happens to make them realise just how much of a human rights abuse they are about to commit.

Brits can follow the above link to information on who to contact and how. It probably won't hurt if nationals from other countries make presentations to the British governemnt on her behalf as well.

Anyone living in a country where government persecution of gays and lesbians is considered an abuse of civil rights might consider contacting their government to urge that it protest the British government's treatment of Ms. Emambakhsh through diplomatic channels. For Canadians interested in doing so, here are the contacts I sent email to (for whatever good it will do):
Minister of Foreign Affairs, Maxime Bernier, Bernier.M@parl.gc.ca
Liberal foreign affairs critic, Ujjal Dosanjh, Dosanjh.U@parl.gc.ca

I’ve been thinking a lot about what would be appropriate for me to write about for International Blog Against Racism Week.

I thought about collecting links about Canadian racism – because there’s this comforting little bullshit mantra we white Canadians keep repeating to ourselves, that Canada isn’t nearly so much of a racist country as, say, the U.S. is, which is false, because it’s not better here, it’s just different – but due to some health issues, I haven’t had the time to search for all the links I’d want to include. So I’ve decided to save that for next year, and prepare it in advance, because it needs to be said.

Then I thought about doing some sort of autobiographical piece, on how I noticed that there were people of colour in my world and when I started figuring out that there were differences in treatment, and how being raised by a well-intentioned liberal mother to believe that all people are the same, no matter what their race, religion or ethnicity (the good old colourblind approach to racism) might have made my behaviour different from that of some other people (because, when I was growing up in the 50s and 60s, there wasn’t a lot of colourblindness going around, and I think, it may have been an essential step in the evolution of white recognition of racism and white privilege) but at the same time blinded me to the realisation of how important it is to recognise and respect difference, and to realise that saying “la-la-la, this is how I think it should be in a perfect world” does jackshit about how it is right now. But then I realised that this was that kind of shifting the focus of the issue away from racism and onto me, me, me, the well-meaning white person, that so many well-meaning white persons do so very well. So I’ll do that some other time in some other post when focusing on me is more appropriate.

Instead, I’m going to post an expanded version of some comments I made in response to an IBARW post about anger on oyceter’s journal.

On the Uses of Anger and the Resistance of the Privileged

I’ve been running into a lot of discussions of anger and how it is received when it is part of a protest against social injustice (such as acts or speech grounded in sexism, racism, ablism, heterosexism, transphobia, and other institutionalised systems of Othering, oppression, repression, prejudice, and privilege), especially when it is shown by someone who is a member of the Othered group.

It seems that it’s not nice for women to get angry about sexism, or for people of colour to get angry about racism, or people with disabilities to get angry about ablism, and so on. And when your inferiors aren’t nice to you, what do you do? Well, at first you ignore them, because as a superior person, you’re too nice to pay attention to their loss of proper subservience. Then you try to get rid of them – sometimes you even have to call in the servants to toss them out. You disparage them, talk to all your equally nice and superior friends about how horrible it is that all these inferior people are going around shouting and screaming and using foul language and sometimes even getting physical. You pass laws to keep them from acting up. You refuse to have them anywhere in your nice house, neighbourhood, workplace, playground, school, gentleman’s club, and so on.

It has been argued that this is why oppressed peoples should not allow themselves to be seen as angry, because then no one will listen to them, and nothing will change.

But then, one must ask, just how far does an oppressed group get by being quiet and polite and reasonable, and never, never angry? bellatrys has, I believe, covered this scenario very well. You don’t get far.

And yes, it’s very true that, if you then show your anger, you will encounter a great deal of resistance. But resistance is part of a process. If they are resisting, that means they have been engaged. They are no longer able to ignore, to pretend there is nothing happening. And that, I believe, is vitally important for change.

It is my belief that anger is important, that anger should not be set aside in the struggle for justice and for change. It is my belief that it should be harnessed, used to fire the spirit and support the body while you fight, even while it is controlled and channelled so that it feeds the message rather than rendering it incoherent. It seems to me that anger is how people respond when they are hurt, injured, mistreated, betrayed, belittled, excluded, done an injustice. It’s a healthy response. It means that you know something is wrong, and it has to be fixed. It gives you the energy to resist, to fight, to save yourself. Anger is not something to be denied. And using it effectively does not necessarily mean using it with violence, which is something that many people seem to think is true. Anger is energy – how it is externalised is up to you.

And yes, people who think of themselves as good people may – and probably will – get upset if you tell them by your righteous anger that they have at the very least benefited and been complicit in such injustices. In fact, they will probably go a lot farther than that. They’re going to resist. They’re going to call names, to excuse themselves, to say it happened a long time ago and it wasn’t their fault. They will argue that whatever is hurting you is hurting them too, to point out places and times where you, or your ancestors, or people like you, might have done something bad, or times when bad things happened to them, or their ancestors, or people like them (and all that might well be true, but some truths are not always relevant). And they’re going to be very, very hurt and dismayed at how angry you are, and how that’s just not like you, and they’ll try to persuade you that anger is not a valid approach, that you should be nice and calm and sensible and rational, just like them. They may even talk about how your anger is a sign that you’re not ready for, or perhaps not even capable of, being treated as equals.

But they can’t ignore the anger of the oppressed any longer. They have responded, and that is the beginning of dialogue.

(Time for a shift in POV and a narrowing of focus.)

Speaking as a white person in the face of anger expressed by people of colour, our reactions to anger are our problem. Not the problem of the people who are oppressed by the society we live in and benefit from, the people whom we indirectly and often directly oppress. We’re the ones who have to work though all the bullshit our privilege allows us to think and say and do. The anger of people of colour is what it is – the only honest response to what white colonialism, racism and imperialism has done to them. The fact that it is also a gift to us, if we chose to see it, is for us to understand and use.

Because people in power, people with white privilege - are, for the most part, not going to give up, or share, power and access, or let go of all the apparatus of lies and mystifications and covertly racist policies and all that shit that keeps us comfortable and unaware just because someone makes quiet, calm, logical, rational, nice arguments and appeals to reason. Because we can come up with just as many calm and logical arguments why it shouldn’t be done, why it doesn’t need to be done because the laws of god or history or the free market will do it in the right time and you’ll just have to wait for it, why it can't be done, at least right now, or why it wouldn't be right or fair or proper, or it would harm something important like the economy or national security or making whites feel good about ourselves, and all the other bullshit arguments. We have a million of them.

Most of us will not really be moved until we see and feel the anger of those we have oppressed, and understand it, and its consequences, in our gut. We are not going to change if we are asked nicely. Why should we? We have power, and privilege. It’s comfortable for us to stay that way. We might be poor, or women, or disabled, or queer, but at least we’re not people of colour – no matter how bad it gets for a white person, there’s always that little bit of privilege we can hold onto. (Of course, the intersectionality of oppressions means that many of you out there, regardless of your chromatic status, can say “at least I’m not a woman/disabled/queer/poor” – but this post is about racism, and we don’t need to fight about a hierarchy of oppressions, because there isn’t one.)

We’re not going to give this up without a struggle. We’re not even going to think about trying to give it up until we are forced to feel it. And we can’t feel a rational argument, or a polite observation. But we can feel your anger. And realise that this much anger has to come from something that hurts. That really, really hurts. And if we have any empathy left at all – and many of us do, it just that we don’t often engage it for people who we think aren’t like us – that’s going to eat inside of us, because we get angry when we’ve been hurt, and it will make us realise that you are like us, because you get angry when you’ve been hurt too. And then we, at least some of us, will start thinking about trying to give it up (in fact, some of us already have, and its because injustice makes us angry, pain makes us angry, and your anger made us understand that you are experiencing injustice and feeling pain).

Because it is about pain and empathy. This is why we make up myths about how certain kinds of people “don’t feel pain that way we do” or “don’t care about human life the way we do” or "hate our freedoms.” Because if we let ourselves realise that we're not the only ones who love life and freedom, and feel pain, that we're not special and refined and more evolved than all those other people we think are inferior, then we couldn’t sustain the illusion for ourselves any longer.

And that’s why anger will work, does work, has always worked. Constructive anger, anger that focuses the fire of justice on the pain that the unjust are trying to conceal, until even we can see how much pain you feel and how unjust we are.

I admit it freely, I watch Canadian Idol. I enjoy listening to young singers who might be interesting, some day if not yet. But I don't think I'm going to be watching it any more.

I usually shut out what's being said in between the singing, especially if Ben Mulroney is saying it. And I don't pay much attention to promos. So while I'd sort of gathered that this year's charity project was to build a Ronald McDonald Retreat House - a resort for families of children undergoing treatment for serious illnesses - it wasn't until this week that I actually heard where this retreat is being built. And I cringed.

Bear Mountain.

Well, actually, that's not its real name. That's the name used by the development company that owns the mountain, which is sacred to the Songhees, Esquimalt and Malahat Nations. The people who for centuries have visited this mountain to conduct spiritual rituals and quests and to bury their dead call it Spaet Mountain - which does mean Bear Mountain, but it's their sacred mountain, we could at least call it by the name they use for it.

The developers have already destroyed at least one of the sacred caves on the mountain, and protests against the further development of the mountain, leading to yet more destruction of sacred sites, continue.

And that's where MacDonald's is building a house for sick children, with the help of Canadian Idol. Disputed land. Stolen land. Violated land.

I'm not saying the project, in concept, is a bad one. It's not. It's a great idea. But you'd think there would be lots of places across Canada where you could build a pleasant resort that isn't someone's holy ground. I mean, what would you say if someone decided to tear down your church without your permission and build golf courses and resorts and luxury housing developments on your parents' graves?

So I think I'll pass on Canadian Idol from now on. I'd boycott McDonald's, too, but I never eat there anyway.

Here's some places where you can read more about Spaet Mountain:

What is Going on With Spaet/Skirt/Bear Mountain?

Support Aboriginal Efforts to Protect Spaet Mountain, Victoria

A few days ago, I posted about the wonderful folks at the Institute for Creation Research and their decision to start up a peer-reviewed journal, the International Journal of Creation Research to publish papers all about "Creation Science."

Now for all of you who, like me, have some really strong opinions on the fundamentalist project to re-enshrine conformity to faith as the predominant principle of science, it should be pretty obvious what the creationists are trying to do here, because, as we all know, peer review is an important part of the dissemination of real science. As Wikipedia says (today, anyway), peer review:

...is a process of subjecting an author's scholarly work or ideas to the scrutiny of others who are experts in the field. It is used primarily by editors to select and to screen submitted manuscripts, and by funding agencies, to decide the awarding of grants. The peer review process aims to make authors meet the standards of their discipline, and of science in general. Publications and awards that have not undergone peer review are likely to be regarded with suspicion by scholars and professionals in many fields.

It's that last sentence that tells you what's behind all this. No credible peer-reviewed scientific journal would ever print the kind of crap these folks write. But if they print their own "peer-reviewed" journal, then they can argue that their "research" has indeed passed the scrutiny of their peers in the sciences - the creation sciences, that is, but who's reading the fine print? And while anyone who knows anything about the scientific fields they are violating would still know it's not science, what about the person who doesn't know a lot about it?

More importantly, I suspect, what about government organisations (particularly in the US) that might have a requirement that the science they use in developing policy has passed a peer review - without any specification of how that peer review is conducted?

So this is a call to all those fannish satirists out there. Let's create our own organisation for fake science.

Because what we really have, with these creationists and their Institute for Creation Science and its proposed peer-reviewed journal, is a group of people saying that there is a book - a text, if you will - and everything in it is true, and happens exactly the way it says so in that book. So the job of science is not to uncover the mechanics of how the world really functions, but to explain how the functions specified in the book happened in a manner consistent with what is written in that book, and how they can be reconciled with any observable evidence to the contrary in the real world.

You don't have to take my word for that, by the way - they state clearly on their own website that they have, in their teaching and their research, "a firm commitment to creationism and to full Biblical inerrancy and authority." Here's some selections from the Institute for Creation Research's "research tenets" about what they think science is and how it is to be conducted (all emphases mine):

The Institute for Creation Research Graduate School has a unique statement of faith for its faculty and students, incorporating most of the basic Christian doctrines in a creationist framework, organized in terms of two parallel sets of tenets, related to God's created world and God's inspired Word, respectively.

ICR EDUCATIONAL PHILOSOPHY

The programs and curricula of the Graduate School, as well as the activities of other ICR divisions, while similar in factual content to those of other graduate colleges, are distinctive in one major respect. The Institute for Creation Research bases its educational philosophy on the foundational truth of a personal Creator-God and His authoritative and unique revelation of truth in the Bible, both Old and New Testaments.

More explicitly, the administration and faculty of ICR are committed to the tenets of both scientific creationism and Biblical creationism as formulated below. A clear distinction is drawn between scientific creationism and Biblical creationism but it is the position of the Institute that the two are compatible and that all genuine facts of science support the Bible.

So what can anyone do about this, which I suspect is an attempt to make it possible for religion all wrapped up in the Trojan Horse of peer review to invade American public policy even more fully than it has already done?

Well, I can sure as hell make savage fun of it.

After all, I could publish the same kind of science myself. Science that has a firm commitment to the inerrancy and authority of any fictional text (including visual texts such as graphic novels, film and television) one might choose to substitute for the one that they've singled out as the only definition of how things work.

For example, let's assume that J. K Rowling's works are inerrant and authoritative texts that define the way the world actually functions. What kind of science would one have to create in order to explain how any part of the system of magic in that text works, despite all indications from the observable world that it does not? Star Trek geeks will of course have a head start on this, as we've been thinking about how to explain warp drive, teleporters and at least a dozen different methods of time travel for decades now. ;-)

Just imagine - an International Institute of Created Science that would publish an online peer-reviewed journal - the International Journal of Created Science Research Studies.

Any fictional texts you like could be declared as inerrant and authoritative for the purposes of creating the science that can be used to prove that what the text says about the mechanics of existence is the truth, even if every observable bit of evidence and every known scientific fact says it's not. All papers demonstrating the truth of any chosen inerrant and authoritative text would be peer reviewed. That's how real science operates, right?

Arrrrggggghhhhh. The crazy, it burns.

It seems that all those creation "scientists" are tired of having real scientists explain that unless the science you're reading is published in a peer-reviewed journal, it is of, at best, questionable worth.

They've decided to create their own peer-reviewed journal where other "scientists" with created credentials can review their created data in support of creationism.

International Journal for Creation Research

The Institute for Creation Research is pleased to announce the inaugural Call for Papers for the International Journal of Creation Research (IJCR).

IJCR is a professional peer-reviewed journal of interdisciplinary scientific research that presents evidence for recent creation within a biblical framework.

Addressing the need to disseminate the vast field of research conducted by experts in geology, genetics, astronomy, and other disciplines of science, IJCR provides scientists and students hard data based on cutting-edge research that demonstrates the young earth
model, the global Flood, the non-evolutionary origin of the species, and other evidences that correlate to the biblical accounts.

It is our hope that you will be encouraged in your study of creation science issues that remain at the forefront of education and research.

Andrew A. Snelling
Editor-in-Chief

I think I'll go create a peer-reviewed journal of Vulcan anatomy. Or Developments in Defence Against the Dark Arts. Anyone who can demonstrate to my satisfaction that they have either graduated from the Vulcan Academy of Science or from Hogwarts with their N.E.W.T. levels in that field is welcome to submit and review papers for either or both journals.

I bet I'd get a better level of internal logical consistency, at the very least. ;-)

Today, June 29th, is a National Day of Action in Canada.

It was called for by The Assembly of First Nations, and summons "First Nations, Canadian citizens and corporations, to stand together to insist that the Government of Canada respond to the crisis in First Nations communities."

This is me, a white settler woman, standing. I do not comment on any of the choices that Aboriginal and First Nations people may take today, because I am not qualified to judge their actions. I have not lived their lives.

I am qualified to judge the history of violence, greed, arrogant colonialism, deliberate exploitation, and calculated oppression committed by European settlers in the lands now called the Americas. To judge the way in which people of settler backgrounds came to the Aboriginal and First Nations people of these two continents and killed many of the people, eradicated some nations forever from the face of this earth, stole their lands, tried to destroy their culture, break their spirit, confine them, exploit them, assimilate them, isolate them, reduce them to the least of the least. To judge the history of callousness and inhumanity, dishonesty, deceit and self-serving paternalism behind the relations between the government of Canada and the Aboriginal and First Nations peoples living in Canada. And I condemn this history, and accept my responsibility for working toward negotiation, reparation, reconciliation, and whatever is necessary for the renewal and regeneration of the Aboriginal and First Nations peoples.

I do not know what form this working will take, but I do know that, on the side of settler culture and organisations, it must begin with respect for Aboriginal and First Nations peoples, and an acknowledgment that we have to start listening and taking the actions that are needed, rather than imposing "solutions" from a position of continued racist paternalism, colonialist thought and settler privilege.

I do know that one place for settlers to listen and learn is from the Wasáse movement. I quote here from the Statement of Principles of Wasáse. I hope this may serve as food for thought on this day, and those to come.

Wasáse is an intellectual and political movement whose ideology is rooted in sacred wisdom. It is motivated and guided by indigenous spiritual and ethical teachings, and dedicated to the transformation of indigenous people in the midst of the severe decline of our nations and the crises threatening our existence. It exists to enable indigenous people to live authentic, free and healthy lives in our homelands.

Wasáse promotes the learning and respecting of every aspect of our indigenous heritage, working together to govern ourselves using indigenous knowledge, and unifying to fight for our freedom and the return of our lands. It seeks to liberate indigenous people from euroamerican thoughts, laws and systems.

Wasáse is a resurgence of diverse actions. It works by awakening and reculturing individuals so that indigenous thoughts are restored to their proper place in the people’s minds and their attachment to false identities is broken. Members of the movement are committed to the restoration of indigenous traditions, ceremonies and knowledges; reconnecting to and loving the land; and, revitalizing indigenous languages.

Wasáse challenges indigenous people to reject the authority and legitimacy of the colonial system and to rebel against its institutions. Wasáse is not a political party or governmental organization, and its members do not seek or hold political office. The movement does not use violence to advance its aims. Its political struggle is conducted through intellectual confrontation and mass communication; revealing the corruptions, frauds and abuses of colonizers and collaborators; and, supporting direct action in defense of indigenous communities, their rights, and the land.

Odd, I keep hearing funny sounds out there, as if someone was kind of just walking around bumping into things.

And there's been an odd smell out there tonight, too. I think some poor animal must have crawled under our porch and died. Probably a squirrel.

Other than that's it's really quiet. Hardly any cars at all.

I'll have to ask glaurung if he saw anything unusual once he gets back from the corner store. Except... he's been gone a long time for just a trip to the corner store.




Edit: June 14. Everything seems fine today. The Night of the Living Zombie Blogs is over.

Incest.

Rape.

Child molestation.

Sexual abuse.

The sexuality of children.

Yes, I'm interested in these things.

I'd be interested in them even if I hadn't been sexually molested by my mother's husband when I was eight and raped by a stranger when I was 12.

I'm interested in discussion of the issues that surround these acts that humans engage in. Why do people do commit them? Are they always harmful? If they are, how harmful, compared to what? What are the effects of such actions on victim and perpetrator? How best to reduce the harm of such acts once they have been committed? How best to reduce the likelihood that they will happen? What is the history, the psychology, the sociology, of these acts? What functions have they served in societies now and in the past?

I'm also interested in the portrayal of these acts in cultural products - fiction, films, music. All kinds of cultural products. Yes, that means porn too.

I know, as it seems many people do not, that the word, the image, is not the action. Writing rape porn is not rape. Writing fan-fiction about sex between two underage wizards at Hogwarts or proto-slayers hiding out in Buffy's basement is not child exploitation. Writing a novel about Pharoah Ahkenaten and his daughter-wife Ankhesepaaten is not incest. Writing Lolita or Bastard out of Carolina is not child molestation.

The thought is not the action either. Reading about rape, or child molestation, or incest, is not rape, or child molestation, or incest. In fact, reading about rape, or child molestation, or incest, and getting all hot and excited about it, is not rape, or child molestation, or incest either. It's thought. It's fantasy.

The fantasy action is not even the action. Rape play or age play between two consenting adults is not rape or child molestation either.

Rape is rape.

Child molestation is child molestation.

Believe me, I know the difference.

Why don't you?

I hate spam. I know I am not alone in this, but I just thought I'd mention it anyway.

I bring this up today because I have been getting inordinate numbers of anonymous comments on old posts from people who want to sell me penis enlargement products, all sorts of magical cures for everything from hair loss to erectile dysfunction, and hot stock tips, among other bizarre offerings.

None of these things interest me. But I'm really getting tired of deleting these sales pitches from my journal. So, if there's anyone out there reading this who does not have a LiveJournal account, I have reluctantly disabled anonymous commenting. Sorry. If there's anyone out there in this position who ever does get the hankering to make a comment, you're free to email me (see my user profile) and if you want, I'll post your comment for you so anyone else reading can respond to it in my LJ.

What I hate worse than spam is having to implement anything that smacks of censorship in order to avoid the hassle of deleting spam on top of spam on top of spam.

For many people, found art is primarily tangible, substantial, visual. It is about objects removed from context - and sometimes modified - by the artist, given new context, new significance by being chosen, removed, re-placed, re-visioned as art.

There's always been found poetry out there, too - one of the more well-known mass media examples would be Simon and Garfunkel's "Silent Night/Seven O'Clock News."

I find that my spam filter is a fine source of found poetry, and here is today's poem.

Which too resplendent
At carmela it chysolite
it is unicorn
in a mack.

I support reproductive choice.

I support those who choose to bear a child, without reservation, no matter what their social or economic situation may be, no matter what medical issues may exist for the one who carries or the one who is being born.

I support those who choose not to bear a child, without reservation.

In order to make these choices freely possible for all, I support a full system of social and financial supports for those who choose to bear a child, and for children that have been born, so that no pregnant person need go without food, shelter or medical case, and that no child need live without food, shelter, medical care and education. I support universal daycare so that no caregivers of children need choose between work and knowing that their children are safe and cared for at all times. I support complete and intelligent sex education for all young people so they can make decisions for themselves in full knowledge of the meanings and potential consequences of their actions and in full knowledge of how to protect themselves from risk. I support universal access to contraception, abortion and sterilization products, services and technologies, and increased research into new methods that will continue to make these safer and more accessible. I support full access and increased research into medical services that provide persons who wish to bear a child but cannot do so easily or without intervention with the assistance they need to have their chance to bear a child. And I support strict legal guidelines that make it certain that no person will ever be forced, coerced or pressured into any of these reproductive choices.

I support these things because it is the right of every human being to control their own body, and because it is also the right of every human being to be respected and given access to the necessities of life, and the responsibility of society - which is all of us - to ensure that those rights are in fact respected for all.

I have never had any personal ethical struggles with abortion, as many have, at least in part because my belief system is not a Judeo-Christian one. I don't believe, and never have believed, that conception had anything to do with a providential deity or with granting or denying a spirit's one and only chance to be born into flesh. I believe in the immortality of spirit, both before and after birth and death. I believe that the decision of whether to bear a child is a conversation between the one who bears and the one who would be born, and that it is always possible for the one who bears to say "Not now - come again later if you so deeply want to live a life as my child, or go with my goodwill to choose another parent in another place and time," or "No, I choose not to bear a child in this life. May you find the environment you seek elsewhere."

I have had an abortion. I have never born living children, though I have had several pregnancies that ended in miscarriage. I have no regrets, and I would not change my decision were I to be in that time and place again, knowing all that I know now. I have assisted another woman to conceive outside of heterosexual intercourse and joyfully call both her and the child she bore part of my chosen family. I have fostered a young girl without anyone to parent her, and helped her to find her own path in the world. I have had the great gift of being able to make my own reproductive choices in this life, and I am at peace with them.

I long for the day when every person can say the same.

Ah, Christmas. The day that my partner and I replenish each other’s libraries for the coming year, and we get some other stuff from here and there, too. And now, while he starts making Christmas dinner (bird and fancy dressing and mince-meat pie, oh yum!) I'm going to be shamelessly materialistic about all the lovely books I am the proud new custodian of.

Warning: a post full of shameless materialism follows.

There was much squeeing and whooping as we opened our presents this afternoon. The full tale of books my true love gave to me is as follows (although I am told that there are some books which will be arriving later, when SJ brings them up from the States – buying used books online in the US from Canada works better if you have them sent to a US address):

New books by authors I’ve read before
Bloodchild, Octavia Butler
Stealing Magic, Tanya Huff
The Fall of the Kings, Ellen Kushner and Delia Sherman
Thomas the Rhymer, Ellen Kushner
The Outstretched Shadow, Mercedes Lackey and James Mallory
To Light a Candle, Mercedes Lackey and James Mallory
The Kingdom of the Grail, Judith Tarr
Reluctant Voyagers, Elisabeth Vonarburg
The King’s Name, Jo Walton
The Prize in the Game, Jo Walton
Tooth and Claw, Jo Walton

Books by new authors
Kushiel’s Dart, Jacqueline Carey
Touched by Venom, Janine Cross
Black Sun Rising, C.S. Friedman
Bold as Love, Gweneth Jones
The Aware, Glenda Larke
Warchild, Karin Lowachee
Guardian of the Balance, Irene Radford
In Legend Born, Laura Resnick
Califia’s Daughters, Leigh Richards
City of Pearl, Karen Traviss

Books I’ve read before and wanted to own and read again
Alanna: The First Adventure, Tamora Pierce
In the Hand of the Goddess, Tamora Pierce
The Woman Who Rides Like a Man, Tamora Pierce
Lioness Rampant, Tamora Pierce
Sunrunner's Fire, Melanie Rawn
Stronghold, Melanie Rawn
The Crystal Cave, Mary Stewart
The Hollow Hills, Mary Stewart
The Midwich Cuckoos, John Wyndham

Anthologies
Women of War, (ed. Tanya Huff and Alexander Potter)

Non-fiction
The Clash of Fundamentalisms: Crusades, Jihad and Modernity, Tariq Ali
1491: New Revelations of the Americas before Columbus, Charles C. Mann

I did receive some wonderful non-book items as well:
glaurung also got me some CDs I’ve been after having: The Division Bell and Dark Side of the Moon by Pink Floyd (I once owned these but lost custody during an amicable divorce); Birds of a Feather by Rough Trade; Mermaid Avenue, which is a disc of Woody Guthrie songs performed by Billy Bragg; and Storyville by Robbie Robertson.
glaurung’s sister* sent me the third season of Forever Knight on DVD, which completes my collection and delights me to no end. I’m sure most of you can guess what I’m going to be watching for the next several days.
My good friend Cathy gave me Loreena McKennitt’s new CD, An Ancient Muse, which is just wonderful to listen to.

It’s true that I mostly received fantasy and science fiction books this year, but I also plan to read most of the books I gave to glaurung, which include such anticipated volumes as:

Bait and Switch, Barbara Ehrenreich
Virginity or Death, Katha Pollitt
Reel Bad Arabs Jack G. Shaheen
Demand my Writing: Joanna Russ, Feminism, Science Fiction, Jean Cortiel
The New Utopian Politics of Ursula K. Le Guin's "The Dispossessed", ed. Davis and Stillman
Drag King Dreams, Leslie Feinberg
Muhammad, Karen Armstrong
Boy in the Middle, Patrick Califia
James Tiptree Jr.: The Double Life of Alice B. Sheldon, Julie Phillips
Mommy’s Little Girl: On Sex, Motherhood, Porn and Cherry Pie, Susie Bright

Yes, the days are finally getting longer again, which means more hours of daylight in which to read – which is admittedly irrelevant in this age of electric lighting, but still… there is much dancing and delight in this household, for the books are unwrapped and piled on coffee tables and the special “to be read” shelves and all is right with our little corner of the world.

Tomorrow I’ll be back to my misanthropic self, no doubt, but tonight, there are new books.


*I hate the term “in-law.” Sometimes I use terminology based on idioms I first encountered in Zenna Henderson’s books about the people: sister in love, sister of the heart, etc. Sometimes I just describe the relationship. When necessary, I use the standard terminology. But I really don’t like it much.

Wait until tomorrow, and then we'll see.

Michael Ignatieff
Bob Rae
Gerard Kennedy
Stephane Dion

Sometime tomorrow, the odds are that one of these men will become the next leader of the Liberal Party of Canada, once dubbed "the natural governing party of Canada."

If the Liberal delegates now convened in Montreal pick the right one, then the odds are that the Liberal will also regain governing status, because Canadians are just not comfortable with ideologues (of the left or of the right). We seem to want to be government by a pragmatic, centrist party that will take what it considers to be good ideas from either the right or the left. I may not like that (being an ideologue myself) but I can live with it, much more easily than I can live with what Stephen Harper's Conservatives have, and will continue to give us.

The question is, who is the right man? Damned if I know. Personally I'm leaning toward Bob Rae, and I am deeply concerned about what might happen, both in terms of politics and in terms of policy, if Ignatieff wins. So, of the two front-runners, there's one I want, and one I fear. That seems to be a common situation.

There's a soft spot in my heart for Kennedy, because of his anti-poverty work, but I'm not sure I can live with his stance on the "nation" question. It's a classical liberal (small-l) position, and I give him marks for consistency in political theory (just as I give Justin Trudeau marks for his consistency in supporting Kennedy on this issue), but I do happen to believe in the existence of collective as well as individual rights, and of the necessity to balance the two. The Quebecois people are a nation. (so are the aboriginal peoples, the Metis, and the Acadians, and I can even see a case being made for Newfoundlanders and Cape Bretoners, although I probably wouldn't support it as a matter of official designation.

And there's Stephane Dion. Dion is a man of intelligence and commitment, and could well be the ideal compromise candidate. In fact, he rather reminds me in some ways of Joe Clark, who was the last federal politician to arise out of a convention as the best of the guys that no one hated (except Paul Hellyer, that is). The problem is, Clark was a good man, but he couldn't hold the interest of the electorate. That's also something I worry about with Dion.

Whoever wins tomorrow, I'm just hoping he has the chops to kick Harper out of office.

Today I was introduced to the powerful writing of Emmanuel Ortiz. If you have not yet encountered his work, permit me to indroduce you.


I Wanted to Write an Anti-war Poem, But...


A Moment of Silence

Five years ago today, several thousand people were killed, in New York City, and Washington, and a lonely field in Pennsylvania.

Since that day, tens of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, of people have been killed in Afghanistan and Iraq.

If you choose to remember deaths today, remember all of their deaths.

I'm not sure where he thinks he's going, but George W. Bush clearly has left the world that most of us live in far behind. I had thought he had a limited grasp on reality, but recent reports make it evident that I was being far too generous.

Thom Shanker and Mark Mazzetti of The New York Times reported last week that during a Monday August 14 "lunch at the Pentagon that included the president’s war cabinet and several outside experts," Bush expressed the following sentiments, which strike me as the maunderings of someone totally dissociated from what is happening in the Middle East.

President Bush made clear in a private meeting this week that he was concerned about the lack of progress in Iraq and frustrated that the new Iraqi government — and the Iraqi people — had not shown greater public support for the American mission, participants in the meeting said Tuesday.

...

More generally, the participants said, the president expressed frustration that Iraqis had not come to appreciate the sacrifices the United States had made in Iraq, and was puzzled as to how a recent anti-American rally in support of Hezbollah in Baghdad could draw such a large crowd. “I do think he was frustrated about why 10,000 Shiites would go into the streets and demonstrate against the United States,” said another person who attended. Source

So let me get this straight - Bush doesn't understand why the Iraqi people don't support an occupying army, and he doesn't understand why many people living in the Middle East would rather support Hezbollah than support the U.S.

Now I don't give Hezbollah a pass for killing civilians any more than I give the U.S. or Israel a pass to do the same - a war crime is a war crime no matter who committed it - but doesn't it strike anyone in the White Bubble that just maybe, trying to understand why some people in Iraq, and Lebanon, and the Palestinian territories might prefer Hezbollah or Hamas over America might help them figure out how to try and, in the sad cliche, win some hearts and minds? Or are they just going to keep on killing until everyone who doesn't like them is dead, and they don't have to ask themselves these kinds of questions any more?

Actually, I think this has gone around before, but...

1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of it and the next 3 sentences on your blog along with these instructions.
5. Don’t you dare dig for that "cool" or "intellectual" book in your closet! I know you were thinking about it! Just pick up whatever is closest.
6. Tag three people.


The book:
Hope in the Dark: Untold Histories, Wild Possibilities, Rebecca Solnit

Page 123 is the end of a chapter and there are only four sentences on the page, so I am posting the concluding paragragh of the chapter, which is sentences 3 and 4. In this paragraph, Solnit is quoting from Jonathan Schell's The Unconconquerable World: Power, Nonviolence and the Will of the People, which is another book that I highly recommend.

Schell continues, "Individual hearts and minds change; those who have been changed become aware of one another; still others are emboldened, in a contagion of boldness; the 'impossible' becomes possible; immediately it is done, surprising the actors almost as much as their opponents; and suddenly, almost with the swiftness of thought - whose transformation has in fact set the whole process in motion - the old regime, a moment ago so impressive, vanishes like a mirage." Cancun 2003, where the power of small-scale farmers and other activists proved supreme and the apparently inexorable advance of the WTO was halted and turned back, was one of those carnival moments of hope realized, one of the days of creation.

If you want to play too, consider yourself tagged.

Last night I saw the first part of the award-winning BBC documentary The Power of Nightmares: The Rise of the Politics of Fear on CBC Newsworld's The Passionate Eye.

The documentary explores the rise of fundamentalist Islamist thought in the Middle East and the neo-conservative movement in the west, with particular attention paid to the similarities and interconnections between the two. The starting premise of the documentary is that these two movements are, at the core, both reactions to the failure of liberalism. As it traces the growth of both movements, it also highlights some of the ways in which they have influenced each other, used each other and developed in response to each other.

Because I've done a moderate amount of reading in the last few years on the growth of fundamentalist Islamic thought, much of the historical background addressing this aspect of the film was familiar to me - what really hit me was the recounting of things I had either forgotten about or never known about neocon politics in the US in the 70s and 80s. Though I must admit, I remember sitting with friends - some of whom were ex-pat Americans - on the night Reagan was elected and feeling in the pit of my stomach that this was the beginning of a long nightmare... and finding that everyone agreed with me. I don't think we really could have realised just how much of a nightmare it would be, and just how long it would last.

Some of the material in the film that discusses neocon politics of the Ford and Reagan eras with respect to US policy concerning the Soviet Union seemed eerily and unpleasantly familiar. And why shouldn't it? It is, after all, many of the same men who railed about the threat from the Evil Empire in the 80s who brought us yellowcake, chemical factories on wheels and the Axis of Evil in 2003.

One sequence of a profound deja vu nature outlines the way that neocons Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Pearle et al (as part of the Ford and Reagan governments) set out in the late 70s and 80s to prove that the USSR was secretly building up its armaments to threatening levels and preparing to attack the US. Does this sound at all familiar:

DONALD RUMSFELD, US Secretary of Defense, Speaking in 1976: The Soviet Union has been busy. They’ve been busy in terms of their level of effort; they’ve been busy in terms of the actual weapons they’ve been producing; they’ve been busy in terms of expanding production rates; they’ve been busy in terms of expanding their institutional capability to produce additional weapons at additional rates; they’ve been busy in terms of expanding their capability to increasingly improve the sophistication of those weapons. Year after year after year, they’ve been demonstrating that they have steadiness of purpose. They’re purposeful about what they’re doing. Now, your question is, what ought one to be doing about that? [quoted from transcript available online].

According to the documentary, when informed by the CIA that there was simply no credible intelligence to support this allegation, the neocons argued that the fact that there was no evidence merely proved that the Soviets had to be doing it, but keeping it secret.

While profoundly critical of the neocon movement, the documentary isn't pulling any punches about the Islamist movement either - the leaders of both are shown as, on the one hand, idealists who want to save their people and their worlds from what they believe to be a profound moral and spiritual disease, and on the other hand, cynical manipulators who, believing that their end is so important to the survival of what they cherish that any and all means are justified, start out by creating The Big Lie and end up at least half believing it themselves.


For Canadians and anyone else with access to CBC Newsworld, the documentary concludes tonight - check your local listings for the time.

For anyone else - this documentary is not currently available on DVD due to problems with clearing rights for archival footage, but a transcript - which I skimmed and which appears to be accurate - is available on the Net.

Yes, you.


You're probably reading this.

Just in case you had any doubts, yes I am a socialist, a queer, a radical, a subversive, an activist, an environmentalist, a bleeding-heart tree-hugger, altogether the sort of person you don't want in your country.

I disapprove heartily of almost every piece of foreign policy your governemnt has ever adopted, beginning with the Monroe Doctrine (you maybe thought we hadn't noticed your attempts to annex Canada back in the good old days?) and working up to preemptive strikes and invasions.

I also think you have the worst record of civil rights abuses of any developed country, and I rather suspect you do much worse than a good many developing countries, too. (And that's saying a lot, because most developed countries, including my own, have some pretty serious problems in this regard.)

Your internal social and economic policies look pretty much like a disaster to me, but that's up to your citizens to deal with, I'll just boo and hiss from the sidelines on that one.

But don't worry, I have no intentions of risking my health, life and liberty by visiting your country, at least not while the current dictatorship is in power. Yes, I know that if all your master's plans work out properly, that's going to be a very long time.

So just go fuck yourself, OK?

Thanks, and have a nice day.

Me.

I've been tagged by goodlookinout. The meme is:

Explain your LiveJournal name and its meaning. When you're done, tag as many people as there are letters in your name.

Well, I'll do the explaining but not the tagging, although there are a goodly number of folks with usernames that I am curious about. Just my style, man. (Obscure Neil Young reference.)

Why the name Morgan Dhu? Lot of levels there. To begin with, Morgan is my chosen use name in real life as well. It was one of the names my mother considered as a middle name for me, along with Bronwen and a few other Celtic names. She didn't put any middle name on my birth certificate, but I did know the names she considered and ultimately chose Morgan, because it sounded like who I wanted to be, and hoped I was. My first name, which not many people know, is not and has never been me, and hasn't been used outside of official documentary purposes in about 25 years.

So, I am Morgan, everywhere I go. And yes, my ethnic background is, as far as anyone knows, Welsh, Scots, maybe a hint of Irish and nothing else. I am a Celt, Gael and Cymraig.

Dhu is a variation on the Gaelic word dubh, which means dark and foreboding, mysterious, secret or hidden; it can also mean evil, but I'm not using it in that sense.

In Gaelic culture (as in many others), people are given nicknames based on physical or personality characteristics. So Morgan Dhu is one way of saying Morgan the Black (I have hair that is so dark brown as to be indistinguishable from black except under a strong light), or Morgan the Mysterious (and there's a part of me that likes sounding mysterious, even if I'm not really).

More layers of meaning. There is a book that I love, possibly more than any other book, Margaret Laurence's The Diviners. Its central character is Morag Gunn, who is a Celt born and raised in Canada, who is given at one point the nickname of Morag Dhu. I have always in many ways identified with the character of Morag Gunn.

Still more layers of meaning. I used to do a lot of RPGing back in the days when it was mostly D&D and people used to sit around a kitchen table and figure out their character's attributes on a sheet of paper. One of my most successful and longest-running characters (through many linked campaigns until she grew so powerful I had to retire her) was a chaotic good warrior-cleric named Morgan Dhu.

So when I went onto the net, I wanted a name that was not exactly my real, in daily life name, but was nonetheless a name that was me, and not a persona, because I have chosen not to adopt a net persona that differs from my self in any way other than the absence of physicality. And on mailing lists, in Usenet, in Live Journal, and anywhere else I may have gone or may go in the future, I am either Morgan Dhu or my own full Highlander name.