First, the Squee! book is not a graphic novel, it is just a collection of previous Squee! books all in one place for convenience, plus some other things.

Second, it is probably the most bizarre thing I have seen, with the possible exception of FLCL. Wait, no, FLCL is definitely weirder. Squee! has the notable advantage of being understandable by Americans. It is also much funnier, with a safe amount of self-awareness. There were also lots of miniature interludes in the first half of the book which had me laughing harder than the comic itself.

The second half of the book are random comics, comprising a few short collections. I would say that they were trumped pretty soundly by the Squee! comics, although, “And that, kids, is how I met your mother,” ranks high on the list of best punchlines.

Moving on to Douglas Adams’ posthumous work next. Josh, thanks for the diversion.

Just finished Michener’s Space. It’s a good piece of historical fiction, and I enjoyed reading it. Michener brings together so many disparate characters, from the German engineers to American politicians to astronauts to a man who sells outrageous stories of Martian invasions and calls them truth. While lacking something in tension—the story is a very detached, matter-of-fact narrative for the most part—it is made up for in the rendition of the characters. Well worth reading, though I am not sure if I would care as much for other Michener novels.

My reading list currently stands as follows:

1. The graphic novel Squee!, (edit) Jhonen Vasquez
2. The Salmon of Doubt, Douglas Adams
3. Gone for Soldiers, Jeff Shaara

And books not in my possession that sit nebulously at the end of the queue:

• Whichever Clancy novel follows Debt of Honor
• Rise to Rebellion, Jeff Shaara
• The Glorious Cause, Jeff Shaara
• A Canticle for Liebowitz, Walter M. Miller

“In the brief silence that followed, Mott reflected that this good woman had seen space and been repelled by it. As the wonder-machines leaped into the air at Canaveral, probing ever outward, extending the dimensions of the comprehensible universe, she had intentionally contracted the perimiters of her world, making it ever smaller and easier to control. And he concluded that all persons are obligated to wrestle with the universe as they perceive it, and those who are terrified by the prospect retreat to little corners from which they seek to destroy the machines doing the outward probing and the men who manage them.”
—James A. Michener, Space

Though this amply explains the Total Perspective Vortex, it also strikes me as a remarkably powerful sentiment. We are obligated to wrestle with the universe as we perceive it, and more importantly, we must not be scared. That fear leads us only into a denial of truth, which endangers the future of humanity itself.

About (9): Welcome to humanity, good to see you. It’s not just political beliefs. All people, somewhere in their belief system, hold two fundamentally incompatible ideas to be true simultaneously. In my quest to explain everything in terms of Gödel, I would say that given the choice that humans must make between an incomplete worldview and an inconsistent worldview, we have a tendency to take the inconsistent worldview. I’m not sure why, but it may be some inability to comprehend a world in which something is unknown. The development in human history of religion and science both seem to lend evidence to this theory, since they are attempts to reduce the amount of “unknown” to a minimum. An inability to cope with incompleteness would explain that.

If we were unable to hold an inconsistent worldview (=axiomatic system), then what? We would be thoroughly rational, yes, but how would we deal with new situations? I would think that we might very well be unable to handle them, due to a lack of adaptivity. Computers make a good example here. What does a computer faced with a new situation do? Nothing. An inconsistent worldview gives us some closure to our system. We are able to operate under new conditions, often only thinking we understood them, when in fact we are wrong. But we got by, didn’t we?

About (10): What’s wrong with the Man? Some the Men are good. Others, granted, are bad. I don’t think there’s been an extensive survey of the Men to tell us which predominates.

39-3, final score. Not cool. Obviously John Ashcroft’s fault, I’m sure he was using the roving wiretap (see (11)(b)(iv)) privelege on Chan Gailey’s headset so that Clemson knew what he was planning. There’s no other explanation for that score.

My roommate is listening to subliminal motivational tapes. Should I be concerned? I’d hate to accidentally get motivated. Thankfully, the notable lack of evidence that these sorts of things work is encouraging.

Let us assume the current legal system, with a restrictive interpretation of the Establishment Clause of the U.S. Constitution that holds absolutely that religious documents cannot be displayed in such public places as courthouses and schools. Note that this is not exactly the same as current jurisprudence, but we could very easily be there.

Now, let us examine an (admittedly unlikely) hypothetical scenario. At some point in time, one Vernon Chiles decides he loves America. No, more than that. He worships the US, literally. He founds the Americist religion, which tithes by overpaying taxes, believes that President of the Untied States is a god, and whose sacred documents are the Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution, and the canon of US law.

This creates a bit of a pickle for the government. Now, sacred religious documents are displayed publicly in a courthouse, and in schools, and in many other places. Clearly, the original copies of the Declaration, Constitution, and Bill of Rights displayed in a place of honor in the rotunda of the National Archives is wrongfully discriminating against non-Americist religions.

The government is powerless to kill Americism, since Mr. Chiles has the right to his religion by the Free Exercise Clause. However, the government are violating the Establishment Clause as interpreted. What are the other options for the government? I haven’t thought of any, but if you do, let me know, and I’ll post it here. Because my comments are broken.

OK, so yeah. I’m a bastard, and haven’t posted in, say, 11 days.

Since the creation of my to-do list, I’ve completed the first three items, and I’m fairly certain I have in some part invalidated my thesis for number 5. I’ve also done enough of number 6 to qualify crossing it off. Therefore, I revise my to-do list:

4. Photos of the Lexington Model Airplane Club Festival of Giants, including the model airplane I won in a raffle.
5. Short essay on predestination, precognition, and the power of differential equations with the right inital conditions (i.e., chaos). Note how Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem fits in to all of this.
7. Triumphant return to E2.
8. Rework the E2 Trillian Plugin to work with Trillian SDK 2.0, once it is released.
9. How does Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem fit in with systems of law? Are legal systems “formal axiomatic systems,” or close enough to still imply the results of the theorem? I think so, but I need to develop this further.

But first, something completely different, which I will post shortly.

Tried to play Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory with my friends, and it wasn’t working well. After a call to eVGA.com tech support, RMA’d my video card. I seem to be having awful luck with the things. One DOA, and one died 7 months after acquisition. On the other hand, eVGA.com has awesome tech support. After a quick description of the problem, and a question or two, they just said, “your card is probably bad. Send it back.” I like honesty much better than a CYA. No supervisor to talk to, just a tech who knows the card is bad. Excellent.