The most recent 20 comments posted to Making Light by alsafi:

ajay @ 107--I'm pretty sure it's not the pink one.

Ah, well, that changes everything. The kai of that website has the meaning of "meeting; society; club"--the name of the group. I'd probably (overly fancifully) translate it as the Crimson Guild.

And I have no idea what the Japanese for murex is. No, strike that--Google is my friend, in many languages. I think I know how to write it, but not how to say it. And it's clearly considered purple rather than crimson in Japanese.

I learn something new every day.

TexAnne: I don't know a whole lot about either embroidery or dye-stuffs (rather more about the latter than the former, though), but I'm arguably kinda fluent-ish in Japanese. My guess on kurenai-kai would be that it probably refers to murex. Kurenai=crimson, and (there are a lot of homophones in Japanese, so I can claim no certainty here without seeing the character) Kai=shellfish. (Though "purple" in classical western sources, murex would probably be rated as closer to crimson than purple in Japanese language, since murasaki(=purple), if I understand correctly, is traditionally a bluer shade than murex produces.)

Gah. Tofurkey is some nasty stuff. As is Wheat Meat, Chicken-Style--worst molé experiment ever. But we had really good luck one year with a Quorn "roast" that I put in the oven per the carton directions, but basted with herbs-in-olive-oil. Since then, I've become really fond of Quorn's stuff. Wish I could find it, rather than Satan's Chicken (aka Morningstar Farms), at my regular supermarket.

My mother is of the "keeping pets is cruel" way of thinking--I'd never encountered the notion until she dropped it on me (she still eats meat, though--clearly I will never understand). I still don't really see it that way; domestication seems to my mind like a contractual thing, between us and plants, as well as us and animals.

Augh. And then I see what everyone posted while I was writing, and all I have to say is: what Lizzy L said.

Carrie S.: Forgive me--it was not meant as a rhetorical exercise. I read your statement of taking responsibility for the death of innocent people (in the context of the current judicial system, too often the willful murder of people pretty generally suspected to be innocent) from a different angle, and was trying to make a point about empathy as opposed to othering. I'm afraid I also conflated some earlier points about repentance and redemption into it.

I still don't really get it, though. I honestly don't see that a clear, bright line can be obviously drawn between being so alien to humanity as to calmly admit to the rape, torture, and murder of other human beings, and being (what I see as) so alien to humanity as to calmly take responsibility for the premeditated, agonizing murder of persons found later to be innocent with something as, to my mind, inadequate as suggestions of remorse and reparations.

But then, I went from supportive to appalled when I learned just how many innocent people I am responsible for having executed, so from my perspective, "taking responsibility" means "opposing the death penalty." To me, that's the only way to truly take responsibility for such a thing--to feel remorse about it and to not do it again.

I don't really trust anyone, myself included, to draw the line of who deserves death, either. Maybe because the Jonesboro case happening just down the road a piece from me while I was in highschool gave me a really raw look at how fast that line moves from "just the ones so sick as to torture/murder/rape/etc..." to "just those too developmentally disabled to mount an effective defense," to "just the ones so sick as to be pagans when all the rest of us are Christians, so we don't feel bad about convicting them" and on down that slippery slope.

This:
I do; the next question is "What do we do till we have this better system?"

And this:
If innocent people are killed, and I know that they are, that is bad. Every possible thing not only should but must be done to prevent that. And then we have to take a deep breath and accept that we're human, that mistakes can be made, and that we have to take responsibility for them.

Seem to be the crux of where we differ, then. I would say that the only responsible thing we can do, while trying to improve the system, is at least make sure we aren't murdering any more innocents. Let me reiterate that, to underscore: the least we can do is not make the mistake in the first place, by abolishing the death penalty until such time as we can be sure that we're able to apply it better. (I happen to think that time will never come, but that's me.)

Because your willingness (or anyone else's, for that matter) to "take responsibility" for the murder of an innocent person functionally makes you no different from the very same murderers you have declared to be other than human. It doesn't bring the innocent person back from the dead--it compensates them in no way for what has been done; it can't. They're dead.

In fact, by this point, you have responsibility for more innocent deaths than the most ambitious and depraved serial killer. And no one but you and your god(s) (if any) know whether your remorse is real or feigned. Should you not yourself be hanged?

As I believe I've said a number of times already, if there's a better alternative I am more than happy to support it; I just don't know of one and am therefore willing to accept the karma of having the state kill such unfortunates on my behalf.

I am reminded of the woman Lynne Truss writes about in Eats, Shoots and Leaves, lamenting her inability to properly punctuate while standing in front of a display rack of books on the subject.

Do you not regard working to fix the (incredibly broken) healthcare and mental-heathcare structures, so that the "rabid" may be treated before we give up all hope and kill them, as a better alternative? And how does any of this fit in with the fact that--as criminal psych people will tell you in a heartbeat--those with the least understanding or those most "gone" into mental illness will often admit to (or finger someone else suggested to them for) almost any heinous crime that is put before them? Can we accept that as strong enough evidence to hang an execution on? (pun blackly intended)

Faren Miller: I can still drink non-fat lattes and Mom loves buttermilk, so evidently it's the fat that gets us now.

Wow! I think you're only other person I've met who's milk-fat intolerant, rather than milk-sugar intolerant. It's been a constant source of curiosuty in my group of friends how it is that regular non-fat milk doesn't bother me at all, but I can't drink more than about half a cup of 2% lactaid without reacting. I wonder if there's a name for that, since "lactose-intolerant" doesn't exactly seem accurate?

I still cook with real butter though, and European butter when I can get it. Margarine, yech.

I thought Dickens' bird-of-holiday in _A Christmas Carol_ was a goose, though, not a turkey. Am I just confused?

I was born on the thirteenth anniversary of JFK's assassination, and my first thought on reading the very beginning of the post was "Oh, cool--Jim Macdonald and I have the same birthd-errr, nevermind."

Oh, how sad--I'm so sorry. No wonder you're a bit shocky; powerful reminders of mortality always do that to me, and so I assume to others as well.

(Vanilla Silk soymilk makes perfectly good hot chocolate, by the by, just as though it were the real deal.)

I've had good success recently making my own apricot brandy (the stuff they sell as "*flavor* brandy" tastes too harsh and chemical for me), and I do that as a dried-fruit-and-sugar syrup, add the brandy, tuck it away and forget about it for a month or so, then decant it. The leftover apricot slices are very good on vanilla ice cream. My partner expanded on that to make strawberry brandy back in May, and it's some good stuff. I don't usually much care for brandy, but with good, real fruit flavoring, I find I'll drink more of it than anyone ever should.

I just finished chapter 28 of Atlanta Nights, and must say I felt gypped at the end of it. Ignoring the formatting errors, ...creative spelling and punctuation, nonstandard grammar bits, and gratuitous POV shifts (along with the fact that it, like all the rest of the book, seems to be a chapter from some entirely different book), chapter 28 isn't half bad. I'm even kinda interested in the rest of whatever non-existent novel it's part of, somewhere in the great library of unwritten books.

I don't think there's anything wrong with either the font size or the colors, myself. I will admit to having a liking for small type that is probably unhealthy, given my terrible eyesight. That said, I actually find the black on grey to be easier on my eyes than white backgrounds at other sites (like Electrolite, not that it would stop me from reading either one).

I'm fond of "Jesus-thumpers," myself, with the explanation (when people ask, as they often do) that I think true Christians thought he got thumped plenty while he was here, but these other folks seem to be determined to keep on flogging.

:munches popcorn and opens a beer:

And here I was wondering what I was going to do tonight to procrastinate. I've never managed to catch a live disemvowelling before!

More seriously, though, I now find myself no longer so concerned about the pitiable Mr. Rice as I am about the wife and children he mentions. That is, if they aren't the products of his... active imagination.

I wonder--how often do aspiring writers move up the slushkiller list, from say, 5) basic sentences, but not paragraphs, to 3) serious neurochemical disorder?

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