Meow mix meow mix please deliver

An abstract I am thinking about submitting for the kitty book:

For the most part, people extend unusual treatment to animals that were domesticated as pets, even when they have no personal relationship to those animals. For example, there are an estimated 4,000 to 6,000 animal shelters in the United States, and rescue organizations of all kinds that provide foster homes and veterinary care. In this essay I consider the possibility that humans have special obligations to domesticated animals. In particular, I will evaluate two potential sources of these obligations. Either 1) They simply represent a special case of a more general set of obligations to all animals, and are derivable from these obligations, or 2) They are unique, representing some special interspecies relationship engendered by the process of domestication. Though I do not ultimately decide in favor of one or the other of these possibilities, I assess their relative strengths and weaknesses, as well as their moral implications.

Man, this is just a ridiculous thing to be writing. Feedback? (Bearing in mind that it is hellaf rough, having been written over the span of a few minutes, as may have been apparent from my steadfast refusal to defend any substantive claims or anything)

Go together like a horse and carriage

So, I was just doing some recreational reading about the analytic/synthetic distinction, and WHAT THE HECK (from the SEP):

"A particularly vivid way to feel the force of Quine's challenge is afforded by a recent case that came before the Ontario Supreme Court concerning whether laws that confined marriage to heterosexual couples violated the equal protection clause of the constitution (see Halpern et al 2001). The question was regarded as turning in part on the meaning of the word ‘marriage’, and each party to the dispute solicited affidavits from philosophers, one of whom claimed that there was a sense of the the word that was analytically tied to heterosexuality, the other that there wasn't."

On that note, check out this self-aware robot

and the deer and the antelope play

Quick post:

1. Best wikipedia entry ever.

2. Telephone zork? (I haven't tried it yet)

3. Fourth Clue Ending?!

4. Another pretty good game (mac version still forthcoming :-/ )

We come in come in come in come in peace

So, how about that election, huh.
Things went reasonably well at my end. There wasn't a lot of work, just very very long hours. For the second half of the day people told me their names and I looked them up and asked for their signatures. The first half of the day I spent creating voter cards, which required that I press a button. That was my job: Guy Who Presses The Button. If our polling place had been Galaxy Quest, I would be Sigourney Weaver.
But then all this boredom was made up for by the incredibly complicated procedures at the beginning and end of the day. Aside from having to take care of those silly machines, there were printouts to sign and put in sealed canisters, four rosters, an elaborate provisional ballot coding system, pink pages in pink envelopes, blue pages in blue envelopes...it was as thought the protagonist from Myst had been transplanted to a game of Paranoia.

Anyways. I just now realized that I forgot to explain my most recent blog name change. "Violent Action Ensues" is a reference to Star Control 2, which you should play if you haven't already. I have mentioned this game already, and it is really one of the greatest games of all time.
Though made in 1992, it has aged surprisingly well. Despite the quaintness of its presentation (and even the old-fashioned .mod alien theme songs are still pretty dang catchy), the mechanics of the game are just about perfect, with an excellent combat engine, but also exploration, resource management, puzzles, and diplomacy. The last of these is the most important; your interactions with the exotic aliens who can help you save the galaxy make the game not only epic, but also really really funny. Words fail me. Why are you still reading this, go play it.

I trust I can rely on your vote

So, I tried to post something a few weeks ago, but the blogger thing was acting screwy. Oh well, excuses excuses. As part of my recent campaign to inch my way up off my tuchus, I signed up to work the polls on Tuesday. Yesterday I was trained to be a Touchscreen Inspector (or "Telephone Sanitizer," as I keep thinking of it), and I now have four of the dang things sitting on my floor. Actually, that brings to mind two nice things I have discovered about voting:
1) I find the process to be endearingly populist in various aspects of its organization. The fact that I'll be loading up the machines into my car to set up a polling station with a few random people in someone's garage lends it a sort of folksy grassroots feel, as do the ceremonial elements of what we do...for example, the first voter of the day gets a tour of the facilities, to double-check that the ballot box hasn't (yet) been stuffed, that sort of thing. Apparently there are people who line up for quite some time in advance for the opportunity. I'd say they're crazy, but they're still not waking up as early as I am, so there you go.
2) Reassuringly enough, of all the many possible sources of electoral fraud that I could think of, actually very few of them involve the voting machines. There's a pretty good paper trail and such.

Also I've always says "die-bold," but it turns out it's actually "dee-bold," being German I guess