The Fanstastic Ms. Fox

I just sent this email off to a queer speed-friending/dating site.

.......................................

I would love to know how you solved the combinatoric/organizing problem inherent in queer speed friending/dating. I've filled many a piece of paper trying (and failing) to figure it out and present it in a simple form so that participants could follow instructions.

Hetero speed dating is fairly simple - everyone in group A (i.e. women who like guys) has to meet everyone in B (i.e. guys who like women), but neither A nor B is to meet anyone in their own group - you just form an inner and outer circle and one rotates. There are n people; n/2 in A and n/2 in B and you have n^2/4 meetings with n/2 happening at per turn with n/2 turns.

Same-sex speed dating is a more complicated as it requires n*(n-1)/2 meetings and the double-circle method fails to introduce everyone to everyone else. How did you do it so that everyone meets each-other without making the instructions too complicated for participants to follow? Did you group everyone into groups A and B, do the double-circle for one complete rotation then subdivide A and B and repeat with two double circles, repeating until done?

I could see it work if you had 4, 8, 16, 32 and so on people and could give everyone a slip of paper with who they need to talk to next, or a number slightly below an exponent of two, with a few people sitting out each round

I'd love to know how you did it - and I'd like to attend the next 19+ Rhizome event too,

- Amy

"It's not about god, it's about social control."
I can't remember who said this to me but they were right about religion.

                          Social control is just one form of self control.

Given that this country/humanity/me is, as always, in a bit of a fix.
And, given that we could use some sort of motivator to get out of this trouble.
It occurs to me that we need a religion of some sort. We need a code, a system, a way.

                                        I'm a (insert identity here)

Faith needn't necessitate god though. Many religions get along fine without god: Buddhism, Taoism, some branches of Hinduism, many political movements, many Jews, most Catholics.

Not that a faith (the faiths?) would need to be atheist: one's belief in God could be like one's belief in loop quantum gravity: interesting, but not going to get you laid. Nor would the faith(s) need to have firm guideline on everything. There could be the general guideline of "don't be a fucker," with several branches of belief: you could interpret The Holy Hypertext (the holy comic book?) as saying that this means "be polite" under school A, "don't  torture your food" under school B, "volunteer," whatever.

Part of my motivation is to be able to slap labels on things and call them "of the faith." I got kosher meals when I went to Europe, because I heard they were better. This is not true on Lufthansa where the food is generall good, but most airlines have policies in this regard. Think about it. One can say "I'd really rather be able to get this or that kind of food or clothes" and then there's "it's my faith, bitch: I don't buy or eat anything else." People respect (and market to) the latter for whatever reason.

It's not about god. It's about organization, identity, rules. Snappy clothes. Ideas. Ideals. Priciples. Foundations. Caregiving. Potluck dinners and old buildings that need constant fundrasing. God's just there to give it some oomph. Oomph could be made up for with enough cool shit. I see tapdancing.


An unrelated link: a date movie for sure.

So how to do holidays and weekends?
First of all, if the French Revolution tels us anything, people should have more holidays than before.

Two days off in a seven-day week is 20/70 off or 28.6% off.
Three days off in a ten-day week is 21/70 off or 30% off.

State holidays per year:
7: UK (plus bank holidays which vary by region)
10: Canada, US, Germany, Ireland, NZ,
11: France, Mexico
12: Zimbabwe
13: Argentina
15: Japan (21 for gov’t offices and many businesses)

So we get 10 state holidays per year (New Year's, Easter Sunday, Easter Monday, Canada Day, Province Day, Labour Day, Thanksgiving, Remembrance Day, Christmas and Boxing Day) plus, in theory 52.18 Saturdays and 52.18 Sundays per year for a theoretical total of 114.35 days out of 365.25 or 31.3% time off.

I like having a New Year that coincides with the Winter Solstice, making this Day 0.

Happy Day 0 of year... of year...?

2 006? I dunno. Pegging the calendar to start four years after the supposed birth of a schizophrenic pacifist revolutionary seems a bit arbitrary. Besides, there's no year zero and there's so much great date-specific stuff that happened before then, making somewhat confusing negative dates necessary.

Might as well start the calender back a ways. Perhaps tack on another ten-thousand years to it, making this the year 12 006. That should give us some perspective. So it's been twelve-thousand and six years since what? I'm sure something intresting happened twelve-thousand and six years ago.

This calls for a myth!


Input on appropriate myths, dates for a new year and what year it is are most welcome.