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The Ferrett's latest rant about attraction is pretty decent. He's both more socially acceptable and more basically conservative about this stuff than I am, and has rather less of a chip on his shoulder about it, so I should probably read him and quote him more often.

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You know the 'donor' dot that you can put on your driver's license? And how they used to say that you needed to discuss it with your family or it wouldn't mean anything?

Now it turns out that you can sign up with an online registry to donate your organs postmortem. Not only does it mean that you don't have to worry about the little pink dot so much, it also means that you can do it without necessarily needing the permission of any other human being. My family was fine with it, but I figure it was worth pointing out in any case, since not everybody may have known that.

Anyway, yeah, I approve. This is the kind of thing that ubiquitous online access should do for us as a civilization - rather like the national "do not call" registry.

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On Sunday, meowlzebub and I went to the Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum in San Jose. I can now say with authority that it is simply more Egypt than I can absorb in a single day :-)

They have a really excellent collection of artifacts and information, including a full-sized reproduction Egyptian tomb that they give tours of several times a day.

They've also got a planetarium where they do various fun shows. The one we saw was on the Mithraic Mysteries, an old Roman mystery cult. There have been many theories about what all of the weird murals in the Mythraic temples meant, but there's finally a good one that seems to make basic sense by a fellow named Dr. David Ulansey. He could still be wrong, obviously, but his theory makes a noticeable amount of sense, which is apparently an improvement over previous attempts.

So yeah, definitely an educational weekend between the Egyptian Museum and MBARI. And thanks to sarahh for posting the information about the MBARI open house!

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This week, Rob tells me:

Gemini actress Angelina Jolie has a tattoo on her belly. It reads "Quod me nutruit me destruit," which is Latin for "What feeds me destroys me." I'm not sure I understand all of its implications, but here's what I think are the two main messages: (1) If you grow too comfortable from soaking up nourishing experiences, you'll blunt your lust for the kind of adventures that make you feel fully alive. (2) If you become addicted to what you enjoy, what you enjoy will mess you up. What do you think? In my dream last night, Jolie told me it's the perfect astrological moment for her fellow Geminis to meditate on the meaning of her tattoo.

Didn't realize she was my sign. Good to know.

I'm certainly on top of number one, there. That's a little meditation with which I'm very familiar. I had an experience where I got distinctly too complacent and everything fell apart, and some how I just haven't gotten as complacent in the years since then.

It's not a perfect approach to the problem.

As for the second one - yeah, but I don't think that one's my problem.

[Edit: the Latin quote is apparently from a portrait of Marlowe. Not clear where he got it.]