This one’s just for me
Friday, June 29th, 2007OK, maybe also for George.
I have a Pavlovian reaction to this music, in almost every variation. My wife has an equally strong, but entirely opposite, reaction.
Archive for June, 2007
A Wednesday Miscellany
Thursday, June 28th, 2007For some reason I’ve been on a things-in-space-with-cool-pictures kick this week, so why stop now?
Here’s a picture of the aurora australis, as seen from Antarctica:
That’s one of two images from a post at Canadian hard-SF author Peter Watts‘ blog. Read the post for a higher resolution version, another picture, and a very disturbing mental [...]
I expected nothing less
Wednesday, June 27th, 2007This tiny blog cliche via the R-rated Justine and just-as-risque-as-me Gwenda.
The words used to determine this rating CRACK ME UP. For the record they are: “dead”, “drugs”, “death”, “sex”, and “dangerous”.
Running the rating routine on various monthly archives of this site generates wildly varying results. Apparently I am remarkably inconsistent in my usage of the [...]
Banjos playing through the broken glass
Tuesday, June 26th, 2007I love Harper’s. I suspect I’ve read every issue published since I was about fourteen. And their online presence is also pretty nice.
So obviously I eventually got around to the piece this week on Justice in Alabama.
It’s worth a read, if only to make you ask Mr. Young’s question “What are you doing Alabama? You [...]
The great paperback giveaway, part 2
Tuesday, June 26th, 2007More boxes of books repacked, with similar results:
Same rules as last time (and some of those are still available for another week as well). Whatever is not claimed by mid-July will go some other way. I’m leaning toward donating them to the hospital library at this point. Post your requests, don’t email me–that way I [...]
Professor Membrane On: A Dead Supernova
Tuesday, June 26th, 2007“It’s time to move on, son! Real science… try it!”
It’d dead. Dead, I tell you.
Bad Astronomy drew my attention to the Eta Carinae stuff at Harvard’s Chandra X-Ray Observatory site.
The Chandra site says this:
Eta Carinae is a mysterious, extremely bright and unstable star located a mere stone’s throw - astronomically speaking - from Earth at [...]
Hanging Around The House: Latest Updates
Sunday, June 24th, 2007I spent a fair bit of time last year trying to document the kinds of stuff I have hanging up around the house. I’ve made a couple of changes recently and I figured I might as well log the update here as well.
The first set of updates is the addition of my recent set [...]
Professor Membrane Spotlight On: The Millennium Simulation
Saturday, June 23rd, 2007“Hooray for science!”
Today we’re talking about the Millennium Simulation. I know this is an old story, dating as it does to 2005, but it’s got three different angles that appeal to my inner science geek plus a little something extra. You could start by reading a summary, or the Guardian article about the project, [...]
The great paperback giveaway, part 1
Thursday, June 21st, 2007So, I have 12 boxes of paperback books in my back room, that I haven’t unpacked in the six years since the move. The primary reason here is that I’ve never built enough shelving to catch up to my hardcover books, and thus have never had shelving for the paperbacks. Well, OK, the primary reason [...]
I never thought I’d see this in the National Post
Wednesday, June 20th, 2007For non-Canadians, here’s just a little bit of context about our “also ran” national newspaper, in the form of a few quotes from from the Wikipedia article on it:
The Post was founded in 1998 by Conrad Black to combat what he believed was an “over-liberalizing” of editorial policy in Canadian newspapers
Its editorial page featured the [...]
Graph says it all
Wednesday, June 20th, 2007Note the time window there: that’s 20 years, not hundreds.
(The information & content at the parent site, the Corporate Accountability Project, has a pretty high sensible-to-crazy ratio1 so you owuld be well served by having a browse around it. In particular I recommend the How to Overthrow Corporate Rule in 5 Not-so-easy Steps page. The [...]
Dadhood
Monday, June 18th, 2007This is the first Father’s Day when my (2-year old) daughter understood the concept of the day. She gave me a present she made herself.
I try to keep most of my “I am the sappy Dad” stuff off this blog, but I’ve got to tell you that having Sarah so excited to give me a [...]
A little miscellany
Thursday, June 14th, 2007This headline made me laugh. I often wonder if headline writers do this on purpose, as McDonald suggests, or not.
I find this face averaging tool fascinating. It’s one thing to pick a few attractive faces, average them, and see that the resulting face is more attractive than the majority of source faces, but it’s a [...]
How much civil disobedience can you buy for $7.63?
Monday, June 11th, 2007The politeness of this letter is in no way commensurate with the amount of swearing that the precipitating incident invoked:
June 11, 2007
RE: Inventory Number LC XXX XXX XXXUS
CBSA Casual Refund Centre
1583 Hollis Street
Halifax NS
B3J 1V4
Dear Madam or Sir:
Today I received a package on which I believe an incorrect value for duty was assigned, and consequently [...]
We are living in the future
Monday, June 11th, 2007OK, first the good bit:
Right now, today, I can order a programmable T-shirt.
(Link from Fred).
Sure, it’s only one-colour, and simple stuff right now, but the step from “no programmable clothes” to “simple programmable clothes” is a lot bigger than the step from “simple programmable clothes” to “tricked out programmable clothes”.
I can’t stop thinking about this. [...]
Neil MacFarlane
Kira