A color digital photograph is composed of pixels. A pixel is the smallest picture element that contains color. The Unicorn tapestries are themselves made up of the medieval equivalent of pixels—a single crossing of warp and weft is the smallest unit of color in the image. The woven pixels were maddening because they moved constantly. The brothers understood, at last, that it would be necessary to perform vast seas of calculations upon each individual pixel in order to make a complete image of a tapestry. Each pixel had to be calculated in its relationship to every other nearby pixel, a mathematical problem, known as an N-problem, big enough to practically choke It. They decided to concentrate on just one of the tapestries, “The Unicorn in Captivity.” Gregory said, “This was a math problem similar to the analysis of DNA or speech recognition—”This story made both my inner math geek and my nascent art loving side bliss out, simultaneously.
“Look, my dear fellow, it was a real nightmare,” David said.
What's maddening about this pope's signature gay-bashing is this: When the pope—the dead one, the next one, the one after that—says something stupid about homosexuality, straight Americans take it to heart. The church's efforts have helped defeat gay-rights bills, led to the omission of gays and lesbians from hate-crime statutes, and helped to pass anti-gay-marriage amendments. But when a pope says something stupid about heterosexuality, straight Americans go deaf. And this pope had plenty to say about heterosexual sex—no contraceptives, no premarital sex, no blowjobs, no jerkin' off, no divorce, no remarriage, no artificial insemination, no blowjobs, no three-ways, no swinging, no blowjobs, no anal. Did I mention no blowjobs? John Paul II had a longer list of "no's" for straight people than he did for gay people. But when he tried to meddle in the private lives of straights, the same people who deferred to his delicate sensibilities where my rights were concerned suddenly blew the old asshole off. Gay blowjobs are expendable, it seems; straight ones are sacred.
Somewhere about two-thirds of the way up the ladder to complete geekdom lies the step where you attend your very first MetaFilter meetup. I crossed that line myself last weekend for what turned out to be a micro-meetup in beautiful downtown Asheville, North Carolina. The entire group consisted of myself, moonbird, and mygothlaundry.
What a great couple of people they were! Without spilling too many of the beans, suffice it to say that we consumed much beer, and that I was mezmerized by mygothlaundry's legs and moonbird's magic marker. And then, we danced with wanton abandon to the rhythm of an open-air bongo drum circle surrounded by the downtown skyline. It was a perfect evening with perfect company.
Oh yeah: pictures here and here.