Equal Time for Dogs

A couple of tired dogs after a tough day of Christmas cheer.

More Hippo Holidays

Courtesy of Jody and Garrett...

By child star singer Gayla Peevey.

Beautiful Photo from an Ugly Tower

Take a look at this incredible photo of Prague that you can scroll around and zoom in and out of. When you zoom in, you can see the phenomenal resolution achieved by knitting together many photos. It's supposed to be the world's "largest spherical panorama", taken from the top of the Prague television tower, the picture at left. When we visited Prague, a local there told me how much the residents hated it. It's certainly an eyesore in such a beautiful city and a reminder of the joys of communist-era architecture. I suppose that's the genius of taking a picture of the city from it, though, since you don't have to see the damned thing.

Hippo Holidays

Not to stoke the fires of the war on Christmas, but here is the latest addition to our holiday spirit in California. Tired of those inflatable Santas and manger scenes from Costco? Try out a snowboarding hippo in a tutu! We await the hordes of sightseeing cars coming down our street for a look once the word gets out through the power of the Internet. I say: Oh come all ye faithful.

Millenial Generation Hard at Work

Ok, not really, but we got sent this link at work today which is an article about a woman who's uncle died on the USS Oklahoma (sunk during the bombing of Pearl Harbor), which is a pretty big deal for those of us at AFDIL/JPAC/CIL. Another nice article that shows how much of a difference the work I do does (and makes me love my job). Since most of my coworkers and I qualify as Millenials, I just thought I'd share. (Also nice to know that my generation has an official name, though it seems kinda weird).

Earthquakes 1, Energy 0

I blogged a while back about a Bay Area geothermal project that produced energy by injecting water deep underground into hot rock, causing many small earthquakes in the process. I was surprised there wasn't more local press about the potential hazard, especially considering an identical project in Switzerland definitively caused some serious earthquake damage.

It seems the project has been shut down. Bad news for the VC investors and for hopes of relatively cheap energy. Good news for the shaky locals. Illustrating again why it's one of the papers that will survive in the Internet age, the NYTimes also has a terrific interactive explanation of this geothermal project and how it compares to other techniques if you want to take a look.

Millennial Generation

Speaking as one who brought up the ass end of the baby boomer generation, I'm not so sure I'd be happy being labeled a Millennial. But what can you do about a name, anyway? Pew Research is kicking off a series of surveys on the generation born between 1981 and 2000 - the Millennials - which would encompass a few of the cousins. See how well the shoe fits:

• They are the most ethnically and racially diverse cohort of youth in the nation's history. Among those ages 13 to 29: 18.5% are Hispanic; 14.2% are black; 4.3% are Asian; 3.2% are mixed race or other; and 59.8%, a record low, are white.
• They are starting out as the most politically progressive age group in modern history. In the 2008 election, Millennials voted for Barack Obama over John McCain by 66%-32%, while adults ages 30 and over split their votes 50%-49%. In the four decades since the development of Election Day exit polling, this is the largest gap ever seen in a presidential election between the votes of those under and over age 30.
• They are the first generation in human history who regard behaviors like tweeting and texting, along with websites like Facebook, YouTube, Google and Wikipedia, not as astonishing innovations of the digital era, but as everyday parts of their social lives and their search for understanding.
• They are the least religiously observant youths since survey research began charting religious behavior.
• They are more inclined toward trust in institutions than were either of their two predecessor generations -- Gen Xers (who are now ages 30 to 45) and Baby Boomers (now ages 46 to 64) when they were coming of age.

Oh, and they have a lot of tattoos! Can they cover my Social Security, though?

Dealing with Denialists

Via Hal, here's a helpful visual for all of you involved in stimulating, scientifically grounded, and thoughtful discussions of global warming. Oh, wait... that would be NOBODY. What the hell. Seemed worthwhile pointing at anyway. And it's a great example of effective presentation that beats trying to sort out the realclimate.org wheat from the Wall Street Journal chaff yourself.

Thanksgiving

We packed a lot in to six days in the DC area. It was so much fun to see everyone and hang out with Kyla. The pictures are on Flickr, but here's a sampling. In spite of having the camera in my pocket when we saw Iva and Paige on Wednesday, I forgot to take it out, so we will just have the memories and no pictures for that.

Here we are in the tasting room at Wisteria Vinyard. The mural behind Moussa shows his village in Lebanon and was painted by a local artist from a photo. Very cool!

There seems to be some kind of Thanksgiving tradition among the children of the cousins to gang up on Dan. He does a good act of seeming to enjoy it.

Dara and Kyla pose before touring the vineyard. And what a vineyard it was. Man, what a labor of love.

Loved this picture of Keith and Francesca.

We managed to get 21 people (I think) all jammed into one room for the big Thanksgiving feast. I believe I have a picture of everyone somewhere, although for many it amounts to the back of a head.

Here is Dara with her old school buddy Vicki Binstock (nee Baum). We met for lunch on Friday.

When we went to see the terra cotta soldiers in DC, we ate lunch at Founder Farmers. I ordered what was billed by the waiter as a Virginia tradition. Yes, that is fried chicken and waffles, with a side of macaroni and broccoli. That was gravy next to it, not maple syrup.

Here we are in front of the terra cotta soldiers exhibit at the National Geographic Museum. We rode the Metro down with Keith, Kirsti, Dan, and Kayla on Saturday. It was very well done and interesting.

Creature of Habit

Tonight when I razzed Dara about something (who even remembers what?) and said "I'm just giving you a hard time," she replied, "How many times do you suppose you've said that to me?" Simple math would say a couple of times a week for 32 years, or more than 3,000 times. That's depressing for me, but think how it must make her feel. Tired and bored, I suppose.