so very tired. adjusting to daylight savings time, but not yet there. most of my waking thoughts are comfortably obsessed with eating and sleeping.
Mmmm…nuts.
Archive for the ‘General’ Category
Am I a bear?
Tuesday, November 3rd, 2009A brief sampling of the slaughter of adorable things for fuel
Sunday, October 18th, 2009Then: Falkland Islands’ penguins (probably mostly the Rockhoppers) rendered for their oil (eggs also delicious)
censor bars, a musical appreciation
Friday, September 18th, 2009First there was BPA’s Toe Jam (the censor bar as animation medium)
Then, there was Make the Girl Dance’s Baby Baby Baby, the censor bar as karaoke medium
And now (a direct answer to Baby Baby Baby), there is Sexy Sexy which is…something else entirely.
Finland in the age of Heroin
Sunday, August 16th, 2009One interesting point was that, prior to sulpha drugs, let alone penicillin and its cousins, heroin was one of the only effective treatments of tuberculosis. Not a cure at all, but as a palliative and cough suppressant, it was something. They actually make the fleeting argument in this article that due to the epidemic of TB at the time in Finland, virtually the only way the country functioned was through this large scale treatment of symptoms.
Crazy old man style tomato sauce
Sunday, August 16th, 2009Every year I remember this, every year I forget to link it. Here you go, finally:
Mark Zuckerberg is not the Kwisatz Haderach
Sunday, August 2nd, 2009Facebook is the blog-killer.
Facebook is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my Facebook.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where Facebook has gone there will be nothing.
Only I will remain.
In other news…wow, two months? Really? Apparently I just don’t have enough to say, usually. More to come, life is slowing down a little.
Memorial Day: Guy Gabaldon
Monday, May 25th, 2009As I like to do every Memorial day, I would like to talk about past soldiers who did great things by not getting people killed.
In 1944, Private Guy Gabaldon, a skinny 5′4″ kid from East LA set out every night during the brutal three-week battle for Saipan, armed with intermediate Japanese-language skills (and a rifle, he wasn’t stupid) to do what the rest of his 2nd Marine Division couldn’t accomplish with larger artillery: convince a hefty portion of the occupying Japanese forces to surrender. Reports vary from 1000 and 1500, but his successes were far from trivial. It also sounds like he was one of the lucky ones who wasn’t just sort of lost after the war; he ran a successful seafood business (which included, appropriately, a branch in Saipan), and married twice.
A compilation of interviews with Gabaldon from the War Times Journal
2006 obit from the New York Times
A Friendship Like No Other (from the Pacific Citizen)
The current financial crisis explained in the form of the ritual dismemberment of virtual goats
Saturday, May 23rd, 2009The great Hargeisa goat bubble, also to be listenable as a radio-play at the BBC’s site, here
No, Russell, say it ain’t so
Friday, May 22nd, 2009Cat + Box, as you’ve never seen them before.
Friday, May 1st, 2009Enough of content, now back to links of cute things:
Socially acceptable debt
Sunday, April 26th, 2009I’m going to go out on a limb and guesstimate that I have more debt than any of my friends. Even the kids in grad school, unless they got their student loans from the bank of Vinny-behind-the-pool-hall, will probably come out of it owing half to two thirds what I do now.
But, I’m getting a house out of it. Even now, with all the superfun imploding bubble economy crap, I’m still doing okay, in the long run. But getting back to the kids with the student loans…
Increasingly, it’s looking like a lot of people are going to be highly in debt for education which won’t get them into jobs which can even begin to pay for how much they’re in debt. If you can’t pay your student loans, in many cases even bankruptcy won’t get you out from under from student loan debt. If you can’t make house payments, you can just walk away, leaving the house and its attendant debt behind, and increasingly, home ownership is seen as such a goddamn precious and inalienable right that if you can’t make payments, even that might not be enough to really lose it.
Where am I going with this? It just seems interesting that the system seems almost rigged to be going feudal again, with homeowners tied firmly to land that they don’t really have title to (hello, banks), and only a feckless few making it to higher education (rich or determined or both).
I may be reading too much into this, of course…
In other news
Thursday, April 23rd, 2009Owen and I finally poured that all-important new step for the front stairs. Now that it’s all done (setting overnight, if all goes well), I am reflecting on the fact that we shifted 400 pounds of concrete, and it doesn’t add up to much volume at all. I wonder how many tons the foundation of my house is?
On forgetfulness
Thursday, April 23rd, 2009I have this pathological tendency to think of intelligent things to post here, content not consisting entirely of links. I think of these things in the shower, or on the way to work. They’re so vivid that I don’t bother to write them down, since how could I forget?
I had a good one this morning. Gone for good, I think.
Okay, enough of that. I’m going to bed.
Thursday, January 15th, 2009Wasn’t software supposed to make our lives easier, somehow?
I aten’t dead
Sunday, August 17th, 2008Life has been too busy, and I have been too lazy. Since a substantial-for-me amount of time has been spent in the garden, I should really get my camera up-and-running.
Update: apparently batteries help with that. Go figure.
ghost stations of Berlin
Tuesday, August 14th, 2007During the 28-year partition of Berlin into East and West, the train system was never fully separated. Specifically, the U6 and U8 lines, and part of the S-bahn, ran through East Berlin for part of their run.
Some of the stops in East German territory were open for transfers only. Some were valid stops if you had the right papers. Some were ghost stations.
Thursday, August 2nd, 2007
the city of Vancouver “considers scavenging [of recyclables] a gateway crime to other activities (e.g. drugs, identity theft, etc.).” uh, okay guys.
meanwhile, in news concerning the real Vancouver…if it’s still on schedule, British Columbia’s newest recycling program got underway yesterday. If by “recycling” you mean “putting electronics with lots of toxic metals into a smelter”. The link focuses more on the “oh my God, those evil bastards” angle of the story, which I think is kind of missing the point.
Despite how they spun it, though, they did catch what I saw to be the relevant concerns, though: 1) “greenwashing” (playing the ecofriendly card), 2) waste of still-functioning electronics, and 3) emissions. Of “reduce, reuse, recycle”, only the 3rd R ever really gets much play. A couple of existing BC “recyclers” are interviewed, who make part of their living by harvesting working TVs and whatnot for resale; the new program, from the sound of it, would not bother sorting out working machines from the dross, since its funded mostly by electronics manufacturers with a vested interest in people buying new stuff. Unless their smelter is excruciatingly tidy about what goes out its smokestack, I’m seeing them as failing all three Rs pretty spectacularly.
Thursday, August 2nd, 2007
wine making:
the lazy way, taking advantage of naturally occuring yeasts (and relying on some very punk-rock equipment, reminescent of Moldovan style vintnery)
this one’s not as lazy, but just as old-school
a smorgasbord, including some recipes for blueberry wine