…Shelly and I will be in Boston the last few days of April and first few days of May, to visit the lovely ladytabitha.

I know a few people on my friends list are in that part of the world; we’re going to spend some time with roaming, which I’m looking forward to. So, anyone else? ectropy? starkaudio?

As certain politicians work diligently to prevent marriage between two people of the same sex, others of us have been busy drafting a Constitutional Amendment codifying all marriages entirely on Biblical principles. After all, God wouldn’t want us to “pick and choose” which of the Scriptures we elevate to civil law and which we choose to ignore:

Draft of a Constitutional Amendment to Defend Biblical Marriage:

* Marriage in the United States of America shall consist of a union between one man and one or more women. (Gen 29:17-28; II Sam 3:2-5.)

* Marriage shall not impede a man’s right to take concubines in addition to his wife or wives. (II Sam 5:13; I Kings 11:3; II Chron 11:21)

* A marriage shall be considered valid only if the wife is a virgin. If the wife is not a virgin, she shall be executed. (Deut 22:13-21)

* Marriage of a believer and a non-believer shall be forbidden. (Gen 24:3; Num 25:1-9; Ezra 9:12; Neh 10:30, 2Cor 6:14)

* If a married man dies without children, his brother must marry the widow. If the brother refuses to marry the widow, or deliberately does not give her children, he shall pay a fine of one shoe and be otherwise punished in a manner to be determined by law. (Gen.38:6-10; Deut 25:5-10)

* In lieu of marriage (if there are no acceptable men to be found), a woman shall get her father drunk and have sex with him. (Gen 19:31-36)

I hope this helps to clarify the finer details of the Government’s righteous struggle against the infidels and heathens among us.

Paul R. Ehrlich
Bing Professor of Population Studies
President, Center for Conservation Biology
Department of Biological Sciences
Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305

I am drunk.

Birthday floggings.

That is all.

Robot gun emplacements: check
Biometric scanners: check
Webcam: check
Cake: in progress
St. Andrew’s cross: check

Still remaining to be done:
Power supplies
Door prizes

For those of you unable to attend, you’ll be able to see the Webcam images here.

I got userpics like the day is long…I got userpics like the day is long…

Almost forgot, i still have to finish lightgatherer‘s cybernetics before the party, too.

Aargh!

No, wait, scratch that, reverse it.

The party is now officially only five days away, and I’m still not ready. The robot gun emplacements are not finished yet, I haven’t even started on the biometric sensors, the cake still needs to be made, I have to find better speakers for the music system, I can’t find the power supply for the gene sequencer anywhere, the nanoassembly tank isn’t even close to being finished, and I don’t have a blasted thing to wear.

Aaaaarrrggghhhh! Planning a birthday party is a lot of work.

I think I can get the robot guns installed this evening, and the power supply’s got to be in the closet somewhere, but there’s still a lot to do.

I was rather surprised by the number of people answering my last poll who thought that replacement mechanical bodies are sucky rather than cool. Perhaps it’s my perception of the Void, or perhaps it’s my attitude about change, but I’ve always thought that was a gimmee–a better, immortal, mechanical version of my body? Yes, please…where do I sign?

Then again, there’s almost nothing I would not do for immortality. This is not necessarily because I do not believe in an afterlife (I don’t, really, though I won’t say I know for sure one way or the other)–but there is little doubt in my mind that if there’s an afterlife, it’s nothing like this one, and I’m not done with this one yet. There are still way too many things to see, do, learn, and experience. The afterlife can wait, preferrably until the heat death of the universe.

Which, on a scale of eternity, isn’t really all that far away.

So, out of curiousity, two polls. The first: What would you do for immortality? The second: How attached are you to your body?

Ready, kids? Here we go:

And, somewhat but not entirely related:

There are times when one is tempted to throw up one’s hands in disgust, grab the gun, and head for the clock tower.

A couple days ago, Shelly and I set out to install three new computers for a client–two in the office and one at home. The job was supposed to be simple–set up the new machines, copy the data from the old machines tothe new machines (which a handy program called PC Relocator makes simple), and we’re done.

The office went fine. But at home…

The client’s home machine is used for Limewire and Kaaza. It had over 105,000 files on it–including over 10,000 files in various temporary folders. It also had a total of 36 Trojans and worms on it, including variants on 6 different virus families, and a total of 115 pieces of spyware.

Ye gods.

We were working on the machine until midnight just cleaning it up to make the move.

I’ve installed a hardware firewall between the new machine and the Net, and cautioned the client about the perils of downloading anything from email.

I’d love to meet these virus authors in person some day. Just five minutes and a baseball bat, oh Lord, just five minutes and a baseball bat…

Had a dream last night that I was sitting on a park bench in some vaguely Disney-esque theme park, cuddling with ladytabitha.

Geez. I hope I’m not developing a crush on someone who lives a thousand miles away.