flexagon | Mar. 6th, 2005

Strange weekend. I was so zonked by work that I actually suggested a movie both Friday and Saturday nights, which is not my usual behavior by any stretch. We saw Secretary, which HLM picked out for me and briefly aroused a flare of envy for those who live as lifestyle submissives... and then we saw Lost Boys, which was unintentionally hilarious in that 80s-movie kind of way. It's even funnier that I've been listening to the Lost Boys soundtrack for years without ever having seen the movie.

Today I felt much better, did lots of chores, played with Lisp and worked on updating my real website. The only thing from that that hasn't been here already is:

I definitely recommend On Bullshit by Harry Frankfurt to the curious. It's not the only title on bullshit anymore, as an Amazon search reveals, but it may be the first serious one. Here's the point I most liked from it, made a while after bullshit is defined as not necessarily false ( does that sound odd? ):

It is impossible for someone to lie unless he thinks he knows the truth. Producing bullshit requires no such conviction. A person who lies is thereby responding to the truth, and he is to that extent respectful of it.... Someone who lies and someone who tells the truth are playing on opposite sides, so to speak, in the same game. Each responds to the facts as he understands them, although the response of the one is guided by the authority of the truth, while the response of the other defies that authority and refuses to meet its demands. The bullshitter ignores these demands altogether. He does not reject the authority of the truth, as the liar does, and oppose himself to it. He pays no attention to it at all. By virtue of this, bullshit is a greater enemy of the truth than lies are.

Things that make you go hmmmm.

And the final thing I wanted to share: tonight we made this coconut-breaded chicken from allrecipes.com, and it was fabulous. I used whole chicken breasts, and also did the coconut breading as a final step after the spiced flour and the egg so as to get a classic 3-step breading process--I think that ended up getting more coconut on the chicken than it really calls for, but that was fine. Also, we used unsweetened coconut and I think that was a good choice, though it would have been good either way. Very highly recommended.