Mega Meta Meme

[kate_nepveu]

Ask me a question. Tell me my daemon. Ask me to ask you a question. Make up a memory of us. Ask me about my icons. Tell me something you think I should know. Start a conversation in icons or lyrics. Ask me to do some other meme.

I don't promise to do the same thing in response—I suck at people's daemons, for instance—but I'll do something.

Comments

[lbmango.livejournal.com]

How, exactly, does this meme differ from an open thread?

Umm, I guess that means I asked you a question.

[kate_nepveu]

Because it's not "talk among yourselves," it's "dance for my entertainment!"

And it's mildly more directed.

Also, dude, I can't believe I spaced out on the whole you-moving thing! International travel is bad for my brain, but that doesn't excuse it. I hope the move went well, anyway.

[kate_nepveu]

The wooden cat is a souvenir Chad brought back from Nikkô in 1998, a souvenir model of the famous sleeping on at Tôshô-gû, which you can see here : http://www.nikko-jp.org/english/toshogu/neko.html or in a bigger picture here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:SleepingCatNikko.jpg

I don't know why it doesn't look much like the original.

Fast forward to October 2004, when I needed to familiarize myself with my work's digital camera, and so finally got around to taking pictures of knick-knacks and turning them into icons. (I posted them here: http://kate-nepveu.livejournal.com/73147.html , but took down a bunch since because I never used them.) I use the cat as a default because I thought if I were an animal, I'd be a small neat brown cat, and because using a picture of myself as a default seemed weird for reasons I can't really articulate.

(On our trip this year, we didn't bother seeing the cat, because they wanted you to pay extra. Trip report: http://kate-nepveu.livejournal.com/251887.html )

Tell me about--was it small and large infinities?

[dsgood.livejournal.com]

Who killed Jack the Ripper?

Why is a mouse when it spins?

[kate_nepveu]

No-one killed Jack the Ripper. Every time there is a full moon on Halloween, he and his faithful dog Snuff attempt to keep the Elder Gods from entering the world, as they did near London in the late 19th century, as they did for ages before, and as they have done since.

The Big Bang.

What's your favorite household or everyday living shortcut, tip, trick, or useful thing?

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

1. Ask me a question.

2. Have you heard of a) the Crippen poisoning case, b) latest developments in it? It's in jonquil's latest post, if not. If so, what do you think?

[kate_nepveu]

1. How did you keep the tone of your memoir so non-judgmental? I found that really striking, especially since my reactions were . . . not so much.

2. I saw it, but hadn't dug into it until now. Fun!

So, about the reliability of the tests, first. I saw the suggestions that the tested grandnieces might not actually have been biological relatives.

The sound clip "geneology" linked on this page says that the relatives who were tested were descendants of Cora's youngest sister, and that was the line that was brought forward. Three grandnieces were tested, but I haven't seen anything that says whether they were all children of the same niece. So there are at least two places for an unacknowledged adoption: Cora's youngest sister, or her daughter (add more if the grandnieces are from different daughters). That's a pretty short chain, but other than that I can't really evaluate the probability of any link in the chain being broken, in terms of genetic descent.

(The other question, of course, is chain of custody of the trial evidence, which again I can't evaluate.)

This article said, "Researchers found other evidence to suggest the body could only have made its way to Crippen's house when he and his wife were living there," and the enormous PDF casebook linked from the MSU page [*] says that's based on the shirt the remains were wrapped in.

[*] Which is undated but must date from sometime after 1988 (see page 315), and the tone of which strikes me as a lot earlier, especially in its comments about Cora.

I can think of two reasons for Cora to voluntarily leave the way she reportedly did, because even taking the descriptions of her personality with a grain of salt, she doesn't sound like the type to chuck her friends and activities for a silent overnight departure for America, letting her despised husband do all the notifying.

1) She committed the murder and fled in a panic. Which would be stupid, but murderers often are.

2) She was deliberately trying to frame him for her murder--either for a murder he committed (in which case it would seem simpler just to turn him in for it), or one she or someone she knew did (in which case it seems like a lousy frame, to hope that her friends would kick up a fuss and get the police to search the house).

I don't think I'd convict Hawley on this evidence, but I don't think the DNA evidence is perfectly exculpatory, either.

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

2. Great Crippen analysis. Someone else suggested maybe the body was of a woman who had died of a botched abortion he performed; however, I don't know if there was any evidence that he did abortions.

1. Interesting question. I didn't set out to make it that way. (And I do make quite a few judgments. Just not as many as I could have!) I did try not to be maudlin or self-pitying. But the tone, I think, comes as a side effect of two questions that I asked myself frequently, during rewrites (first drafts, I was just trying to get it all down):

Is this honest?

Is this fair?

By fair, I don't mean that news reporting "the truth is somewhere in the middle" bullshit. I mean that I tried not to leave any relevant information out, nor put any irrelevant information in, for the purpose of making me look better, or someone else look worse.

Also, to tell the whole story, I had to try to find out or guess at what the hell other people had thought they were doing. I think there's a line in the book that goes something like, "No one was deliberately trying to drive me insane. It just worked out that way."

So even though I think that pretty much every adult who had anything to do with me was at least partly crazy, selfish, turning a blind eye, willfully ignorant, or (in some cases) outright malicious and sadistic, and I don't forgive a lot of they're actions, I can also see where they were coming from. The non-malicious ones, anyway. Because of that, I think the book ended up with a fair amount of righteous anger, but not a lot of condemnation.

[kate_nepveu]

2. Yeah, I have no idea where the abortion idea came from. That "casebook" said that he did patent medicines and dental work. Perhaps it was to account for some of the nature of the mutilations? It can't have been to account for the scar that was thought to be Cora's, since that was (a) old and (b) from removal of an ovary. Regardless, it hardly seems necessary to specify "abortion."

1. Thanks! My booklog entry has been massively delayed because I sent the book to my mom (who liked it a lot), and at the moment it's sitting next to me waiting for me to find the time for choice quotes; so it was something I was thinking about. I certainly think it's a better book for your efforts, both in the sense of more complete and in the sense of easier to read.

[prk.livejournal.com]

What have you been up to since the days of RASFWRJ?

[kate_nepveu]

Since I recall organizing a couple New Haven Socials, I will decree those to be within the time frame and start there:

* Graduated Yale Law School Monday, May 27, 2002. Married Chad Saturday, June 1, 2002. Started studying for the bar Monday, June 3, 2002. Said OMG WHAT WAS I THINKING a lot.
* Starting working for the Office of the New York State Attorney General.
* Passed the bar.
* Bought a house.
* Started writing here regularly.
* Acquired a dog.
* Switched jobs within the office.
* Cheered Chad on when he got tenure.
* Went to Japan. (Came back, too. => )

And you?

[prk.livejournal.com]

Wow, congrats.

Looking back, I've:

* Bought a condo
* Got pet rats (unfair to have a dog in a condo)
* Met a girl
* Bought a house so we could have a dog
* Adopted a dog (Rhodesian Ridgeback x German Shepherd)
* Gotten engaged
* Started an MBA

I'm almost 2/3rds through the MBA (major assignments and study atm, hence the delay in replying) and getting married in March next year.

I'm also chair for Swancon (http://www.swancon.com/) the local SF Con, for 2009, so I've got plenty to keep me busy in the coming years!.

prk.

[kate_nepveu]

Congratulations on all of that!

And, gosh, that must be a big, protective dog, huh?

[prk.livejournal.com]

Danke.

Yeah, if you don't know him, he's a big protective guard dog, defending the house from all intruders (except Thor).

After someone's met him for, oh about five minutes, he's still big, but turns into a complete sook who'll roll over for belly scratches.

He's also terrified of thunder - there's nothing quite like a 100 pound dog quivering in terror against your legs and drooling all over the floor in the midst of a thunder storm to remind you why Thor is a god of war.

[kate_nepveu]

Poor doggie. Fortunately Emmy is not particularly bothered by thunder, just other dogs . . .

[ex-greythist387.livejournal.com]

1 What's the relation of this post's usericon to the post's content?

2 Ask me a question, please.

[kate_nepveu]

1. The turtle was at Konchi-in Temple in East Kyoto. I waited near its pond for several minutes, and it stared at me like that the entire time. I imagined it trying to do the Jedi mind trick: "you want to give the turtle food. Give the turtle food." Only slow and polite.

So, it's the expectant turtle, and I was feeling silly and weird and hoping people would play.

2. Is there an IF game you'd recommend for a newbie? Bonus if it can be run on a Palm TX?

[ex-greythist387.livejournal.com]

1. Nice!

2. Re: TX, can you run Cellar Door (http://cellardoor.sourceforge.net/), or has the TX no card? (Or have you no SD card in your TX?) Cellar Door has a more pleasant interface than Frobnitz, I find, and it runs games in blorb format (as well as the usual .z5), which means access to, e.g., City of Secrets (http://emshort.home.mindspring.com/CSUpcoming2.htm) and the final version of Pytho's Mask (http://home.mindspring.com/~emshort/pytho.htm). CoS is more character-oriented and somewhat less poke-the-object oriented than the average IF; it requires some time but not prohibitive amounts of headdesking. P's Mask is shorter and very conversational, almost to a fault.

Otherwise, have you played yhlee's The Moonlit Tower (http://pegasus.cityofveils.com/moonlit.phtml)? Shortest of the three listed here, and neatly evocative of ambience.

I had forgotten, but I played P's Mask and Tower at around the same time (http://greythistle.livejournal.com/94568.html).

[kate_nepveu]

I have an SD card in my TX and should therefore be able to run Cellar Door.

So I shall try all three, and report back!

[ex-greythist387.livejournal.com]

I clicked Post Comment too quickly--Tower should run via Frobnitz, which really ought to run on a TX because it ran on stupider/older Palm machines. Link (http://frobnitz.sourceforge.net/).

[papersky.livejournal.com]

Your daimon is an ocelot.

[kate_nepveu]

Oooooh. Thank you. (And, pretty! http://del.icio.us/katenepveu/ocelot )

(Is that your thinking hat? => )

My default (actual) memory of you is sitting and talking into the night in your downstairs in Swansea, all cozy and surrounded by bookcases.

[redrose3125.livejournal.com]

We met at Boskone in 2008, and hit it off right away. You were amused by my period perfect Renaissance outfit with purple hair and a knapsack full of books. You caught my eye with your rapier and complicated hand knit lace socks.

You now drive to Buffalo every few months to have dinner at my house.

[kate_nepveu]

Tell me about your star icon:

Why Sirius?

[redrose3125.livejournal.com]

I lifted it from a Hubble website, and chose it because I like the picture, not because it is Sirius.

I like symmetry, and four-pointed-ness, and the colors are cool.

I've seen you around Making Light, so I friended you.