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I had a dream that I went back to work at LBL as a contractor in a new research group which was being founded. We had to set up offices in an old shed which hadn't been used since the 1950s. One of the people in the research group was keeping an iguana in a cage in the office, and I ended up having an adventure around cleaning the iguana's cage.

I had another dream that I got a different job and that it didn't pay enough money, and I worried about how I would get more money.

During an afternoon nap, I had another dream which I don't remember.

I went to the chiropractor on Tuesday and then went around the corner to the EFF protest at Macy's (after a quick lunch at VegTime). It was pretty exciting -- a bunch of EFF staff members were dressed up in elegant wedding dresses, and we picketed with signs criticizing Macy's privacy policy for about an hour and a half while playing wedding songs and songs about weddings ("If You Want to Be Happy For the Rest of Your Life", "White Wedding", "Chapel of Love", etc. -- unfortunately not "Love and Marriage"). It was very entertaining, and lots of people took copies of a little information sheet about consumer privacy issues. (Macy's shares bridal registry information with other companies -- hence the bridal theme.)

Stanton McCandlish was the only person to dress up in something other than a wedding dress; he wore an elegant full-dress kilt.

People walking by were most likely to take printed information from men in dresses, but they were most likely to stop and talk to women.

At one point, a little girl started laughing and pointing at Will Doherty, who was in a dress. I can easily believe that it was the first time she'd ever seen a man in a dress. She seemed to be laughing frantically. As soon as she had passed Will, the adult man she was with -- it seemed to be a school field trip -- took her to task and shouted at her "That is so disrespectful! How dare you?". I don't think Will was offended, though, although no doubt he would have liked the girl to have gained the insight that sometimes some men wear dresses. (I remember the Cross-Dressing Dance at NMH sponsored by HBH -- and I remember going to college thinking "Doesn't everybody's high school have an annual Cross-Dressing Dance?". Answer: nope.) But this man was really worked up that the little girl had laughed and pointed at somebody; he really wanted her to show respect and decorum. It's an interesting issue, because Will was wearing that outfit that day specifically in order to attract attention, and indeed he'd just given a long interview to a couple of TV stations, had received marriage proposals from men walking by, and I had been dancing around to "Chapel of Love" waving two big signs saying "Protect Pre-Marital Privacy" and "Honey, I'm sorry I helped Macy's violate your privacy". So it seems that a little girl laughing at him was the least of Will's problems, and indeed that little girl's friends all enthusiastically took flyers from one of the EFF staffers on their way past. It's an education!

After that, I went by the EFF office.

I finally went to the BART ticket exchange window, for the first time in the almost four years I've been accumulating BART tickets. I turned in 30 tickets and got back two tickets with a combined value of $36. The only trouble is that I had various notes to myself written on the backs of some of those tickets, so unless I've copied them down elsewhere or acted on them, I've lost that information.

The postal format formerly known as "Book rate" is now called "Media mail" (which I noticed because my father sent me some books, about which more below).

I was going to write something here today, and I took it out because I remembered another line from Pirke Avot, the one I quoted here on June 1: "A controversy that is for the sake of Heaven will have a constructive outcome, but a controversy that is not for the sake of Heaven will not have a constructive outcome."

My controversy was not for the sake of Heaven.

Steve Robertson pointed out that the Tom Lehrer quotation I mentioned yesterday comes from his song of Alma. (There was such a person and Lehrer didn't just make her up, although I don't think that would have been beneath him, or he above that.)

Speaking of Alma, I'm sad that I didn't graduate from college.

Downtown, I picked up a copy of The Good News: A Magazine of Understanding (ISSN: 1086-9514) http://www.gnmagazine.org/. It's published by the United Church of God.

Contents:

This magazine attacks the separation of church and state and blames social problems on the abandonment of religious belief and religious laws.

I was also handed a pamphlet called "The Only Doorway" published by the Fellowship Tract League in Lebanon, Ohio, and distributed by the Iglesia Roca de Salvacion here in the Mission District.

My father sent me some books, including an interesting book on political philosophy which spends most of its energy dividing value-cognitivists (who think that an ethical statement attempts to express a truth about the world) from value-noncognitivists (who think that making an ethical statement is just expressing an emotion, and doesn't say anything more about the world than laughing or crying would). The book is Moral Principles in Political Philosophy by Felix E. Oppenheim.

In The Name of the Rose I read this description of books:

"True," I said, amazed. Until then I had thought each book spoke of the things, human or divine, that lie outside books. Now I realized that not infrequently books speak of books: it is as if they spoke among themselves. In the light of this reflection, the library seemed all the more disturbing to me. It was then the place of a long, centuries-old murmuring, an imperceptible dialogue between one parchment and another, a living thing, a receptacle of powers not to be ruled by a human mind, a treasure of secrets emanated by many minds, surviving the death of those who had produced them or had been their conveyors.

(p. 286)

I went to dinner with Zack, and he read the beginning of the Aeneid to my in English, which took a long time because I'd interrupt him about every two or three lines to make some comment about the text or its context. Possibly I should be a Latin teacher. I have a whole lot to say about the Aeneid.

My arms felt well in the morning and hurt in the evening.

I'm listening to Loreena McKennitt addressing night:

Oh night thou was my guide,
oh night more loving than the rising sun.
Oh night that joined the lover to the beloved one,
transforming each of them into the other.

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Contact: Seth David Schoen