a late night; work; Bab5; car registration

[Kragen Sitaker]

I was up all night working on a client project; I went to bed at 6:15,
then got up a couple of hours later.  I need to get back to work this
afternoon, but I thought I'd write a kragen-journal post first.

Beatrice and I attended Babylon 5 last night.  It was an unusually
large one, with perhaps thirty people.  I'm gaining a new appreciation
for Bab5.  It's not just that it's a loving, supportive group of
friends, where even conservatives can express their political views
without reprisal; it's not just that many Bab5ers are quite cuddly
(although that was pretty important when I'd first come to the Bay
Area and had a severe cuddle deficit, but needed nonsexual cuddles); a
lot of it, I think, is that Bab5 is a group of very playful, very
smart people.

When I was growing up, I had a hard time finding other people as smart
as I was.  Eventually, I grew to accept that most people are just
pretty stupid, but nevertheless inherently good and worthwhile, and I
learned to socialize with stupid people.  But I always enjoyed the
company of really smart people, hard as it often was to come by, and
hard as it sometimes was to take.  (I think nearly everyone who's
grown up with the identity "the smartest one" remembers the horrible,
deflating feeling when they first realized they definitely weren't the
smartest one in the room anymore.)

At Bab5, I have the opportunity to hang out with many people ---
dozens, sometimes --- who are manifestly smarter than I am in one way
or another, and sometimes in many ways.  And they aren't afraid to
argue with me when I'm full of shit.  I LOVE IT!

Spending time at Bab5 makes me think I should spend more time at the
rest of UC Berkeley too.

As I said, last night was an unusually large Bab5; Sarah is going away
forever next week, and so many people showed up who rarely attend.
Watching the people made me realize that, even in a group this small,
cliques tend to form; there are many sub-Bab5 groups that tend to
stick together inside larger gatherings.  They're not as evident in
the more normal-sized Bab5 gatherings.


I've been reading Gibbon a lot lately, and I'm finding that it makes
me increasingly optimistic about human society.  Hitler's aspiration
to create a "thousand-year Reich" might perhaps have been achieved,
but the history of the first Reich (that *is* what Gibbon's on about,
isn't it?) suggests that it would have borne no resemblance to his
intended design shortly after Hitler had died.  {More details in an
upcoming kragen-tol post entitled "self-interest in computer programs
and human organizations".)


I've also been spending a fair bit of time over the last few days
collecting chicken eggs, feeding chickens, giving antibiotics to cats,
and so forth.

-- 
<kragen@pobox.com>       Kragen Sitaker     <http://www.pobox.com/~kragen/>
It frightens the daylights out of me whenever I hear people proclaim that
the less knowledge our children have access to, the better.  
-- Duane Lindstrom, at <URL:http://www.examiner.com/skink/skinkmail.html>