The Windkey and the Lamplighter

I just hit C-x C-s by habit, while in a TextEdit.app window. The
document was promptly saved to disk. I’m in shock. I don’t remember
ever setting this up, but this implies something pretty weird about
the people working on TextEdit.

I’d known about single-key commands like C-a and C-e, but this means
they implemented an entire prefix-key system just to handle Emacs-like
keybindings in text widgets.

It always seems interesting to me that, among my friends, there are so
many deeply religious individuals, from very different religions. The
differences are obvious—Jewish, Catholic, Lutheran, Pagan—but the
similarities are what I think is fascinating.

Now, don’t get me wrong—I certainly have a number of friends who
have deep reservations about the religious traditions in which they
grew up, more who distrust all organized faith groups, and yet more
who do not particularly think or care about what (non-human, sentient)
powers may or may not organize the world. I live in a community of
engineers, scientists, and academics, so the presence of skeptics and
secularists is expected. It is mostly because of this that the
(much smaller) group of deeply faithful intellectuals is so remarkable.

Tolerance seems to be an important component of this
society—religious bigots would, I suspect, feel unwelcome among both
the faithful and the secular. (Secular bigots are somewhat more
tolerated—perhaps because they are “in” the majority group? I’m not
sure.)

Reasoned, thoughtful faith also seems important. Interfaith
interactions are so much more common than intrafaith interactions that
a successful member of the society will constantly encounter religious
practices they do not share. A new member of the society will
frequently encounter practices they do not understand—and the
response to inquiry will almost always be a friendly
explanation. (Often, with hundreds or thousands of years of the
history behind the practice, if the listener appears willing.
Answering friendly questions is by far my favorite kind of evangelism,
and I suspect the most effective on the kind of people with which I
surround myself.)

Bearing in mind that constancy is always comforting, this is a society
of which I am happy to be part. I wonder what it says about me that I
am happier to be surrounded by faithful people with whom I can discuss
and disagree, even if they do not carry my label, than to be
surrounded by similarly-labelled people who don’t care to question or discuss?
Does this endanger my own faith? I know there are those who would argue it does.

Which brings me to the question: Are the paths of my friends as valid as my own?
If so, why do I choose mine rather than another?
If not, how can I claim to treat them as friends if I let them be in what must be a very dangerous error?

I’m really not sure. Furthermore, given the previously-mentioned
distaste of the community for fanatics, I’m really not sure what I
could do to correct them, were they in error, that would be more effective
than the quiet demonstration of how my faith affects my life.

This was a lot of fun. I love Judith Martin’s style, so reading this
is like reading Ettiquette
Hell with more answers and more super-polite snarkyness.

Mostly from this I reinforced things I think I already knew (like
never include registry cards—just throw them away) although I
learned a couple things (Don’t invite “and guest”—ask who their
guest will be if you think they might want to bring one!) that I wasn’t sure about.

Anyway, super-short-review, but I enjoyed this and am happy to lend it out.

Books Read in 2006: 15.5

This was recommended to me by a recently-married friend, so we picked
it up off Amazon. Mostly, I liked its tone, but didn’t get a lot out
of its suggestions that I had not gotten out of the other 20 tons of
wedding-related advice I’ve read recently. I got much more from the
Miss Manners book, since at least it was funnier.
(That review will be coming soon.)

In general, this is a nice couple hundred pages of feel-good stories
about other people who had situations that may or may not sound
familiar (some did, some did not), with some commom-sense suggestions
for how to address them without anyone killing anyone else. Sadly, I
think I picked it up too late to be helpful with the initial “Ack, I’m
throwing a party!” stress, and the more specific conflicts we had with
our families were either already resolved or really not addressed by the advice in the book.

(For some reason, nobody has advice on whether people will be insulted
by the lack of meat or alcohol at the wedding, or on how to deal with
passive-aggressive attempts to claim that someone not-the-speaker will
be insulted. I can’t imagine why not. The book did have a bit about
a vegetarian couple whose family was surprised, but not a lot about
how she dealt with it.)

Books Read in 2006: 14.5

Zephyr? email? on livejournal? Or maybe not at all, and wait for
someone to find it?

So many unanswered questions.

I’m not sure what to do with it yet, but we’ll see.
I have to share it with some href="http://www.evenmere.org/~bts/">weirdo but I think he’s okay.