Weingarten instructed Barry to come up with a definition for "sense of humor." Barry disappeared from the office for a few days. He came back with this: "A sense of humor is a measurement of the extent to which we realize that we are trapped in a world almost totally devoid of reason. Laughter is how we express the anxiety we feel at this knowledge."Surprisingly insightful.
Well, the irises are blooming all over the place now, so Dara has also been out with her camera. The set I posted to Flickr contains mostly Pacific Coast irises, with some water irises and some Douglas and Dutch irises mixed in, I think. I tried to just post one picture of each, and I'm sure we'll have more before long.
Scientists in America have engineered a species of mosquito which is resistant to the malaria infection. Its ability to block the infection suggests that it could come to dominate mosquito populations if released into the wild.More interesting, and much more appealing, however, is the competitor's approach:
A different approach has been adopted by a British team, led by Andrea Cristiani, of Imperial College, London. His team has developed a GM mosquito in which the males have fluorescent testicles, allowing them to be easily identified and sterilised.Now there's some technology that might have some crossover potential for sex offender treatment programs.
Shortly before he graduated [in 1950], Mr. Backus wandered by the I.B.M. headquarters on Madison Avenue in New York, where one of its room-size electronic calculators was on display.In spite of all the new languages and techniques developed over the years, Fortran is still going strong. We will now return to our regularly scheduled non-techno-weepy blog postings.
When a tour guide inquired, Mr. Backus mentioned that he was a graduate student in math; he was whisked upstairs and asked a series of questions Mr. Backus described as math “brain teasers.” It was an informal oral exam, with no recorded score.
He was hired on the spot. As what? “As a programmer,” Mr. Backus replied, shrugging. “That was the way it was done in those days.”
Back then, there was no field of computer science, no courses or schools. The first written reference to “software” as a computer term, as something distinct from hardware, did not come until 1958.
The speakers were given strict 5-minute slots to tell their stories, and I for one was glad of the time limit during the first talk, by an energetic Chris MacManus (left). He'd won his Ig Nobel for his seminal paper "Scrotal asymmetry in man and in ancient sculpture".And Dara, longstanding fan of all foods crunchy would have appreciated the talk by...
Oxford University's Charles Spence, on the effect of crunchy-food-sounds on our appreciation of said food. We discovered that if you capture the sound a Pringle potato chip makes when you crunch it, and enhance certain frequencies, you enjoy them even more.Maybe we'll get to see it on the Discovery Channel sometime.
denialism is the use of rhetorical techniques and predictable tactics to erect barriers to debate and consideration of any type of reform, regardless of the facts.It's interesting to compare this compilation of tactics to what you see today on many issues. The most obvious one that comes to mind is global warming. Check out the tactics, map to your observations of what's gone on for the last 10 years. I think we're closing in on the Aces, but maybe we're just into the face cards.
In case you thought we weren't adhering to the federal floral diversity guidelines.
I know our gas is more expensive out here, but I was pretty shocked to find myself charging $52 worth to fill up the van this morning, coming in at $3.15/gallon for regular. It reminded me of the spike a while back when a local Menlo Park gas station owner posted the gas prices in the picture above. I guess it's two arms and a leg now, though, because $2.27/gallon would sure be a relief.
Yep."If Barnes & Noble took out full-page ads every week, there would be more book review sections," said David Cole, publisher of News Inc., a weekly newsletter tracking the industry.
The Chronicle's Bronstein agrees, saying that if book publishers advertised, "it would send a very good signal that they believe in their product."
Paul Bogaards, director of publicity at Alfred A. Knopf book publishers, sees it differently.
"Where are the ads in the sports section?" he asked. "If you put out a great newspaper or a great magazine, the readers will come. Consumers want credible reporting on books in newspapers."
After a nice breakfast Missy, Mom, and I went for a walk on the beach. I found a seahorse but left it for Missy to dry out rather than risk being flagged as a terrorist who uses dead animals to bring down planes. It turned out my car had satellite radio in it, already pre-tuned to the weather channel, so I got to listen to all the ominous reports of the big storm moving across the upper midwest toward the Atlantic seaboard. At my gate, the flight ahead of me was cancelled. It was headed to Dulles, and the word was Dulles was closed. Now that was unfortunate, considering Dara was in the air on the way to Dulles. Hmmm. My flight to Chicago took off close to on time and landed in quite a snowstorm. We then waited almost an hour to get to a gate. The de-icing operations were slowing things down at the gates. When I finally got in, I found a plane leaving for SFO and waited to see if I could get on it. They would not put me on the standby list because they were boarding, and there was just one poor guy doing everything. They put 45 people on who were already on the wait list. I was the last person on the plane. It turned out when Dara did land at Dulles, the pilot said only three planes had landed there since they took off 6 hours earlier. Kyla braved the slushy snow to pick her up.It's buried around here somewhere. It has to be. How else can you explain why so many major freak-show news stories either happen, or end up, in South Florida?Thank goodness we don't have anything like this in California!
O.J. Simpson, for example. Why is he here? Did anybody in South Florida ever say, "Hey O.J.! Why don't you pack up your golf clubs, your one glove and your remaining cutlery, and come be part of our community!"? Of course not! Nobody WANTED him here. He was DRAWN here, by the Giant Underground Weirdness Magnet.
Aesthetically, earthen floors are “really special,” said Frank Meyer, a natural builder who has installed 15 in Austin, Tex. “After a while they look like an old cracked leather couch,” he said. “When people walk in, they don’t say, ‘Oh, nice floor.’ Everyone gets down on their hands and knees to admire it.” Mr. Meyer has used natural pigment to create designs in some floors, and he said some builders add the blood of oxen for maroon coloration.Keith, your designer client (Jimmy, if I remember right) should be all over this trend.
So-called designer dogs became popular a decade ago, beginning with the Labradoodle and other poodle crosses that sought to affix the poodle’s relatively nonshedding coat to other breeds. But the puggle, a designer dog with no clear design objective, seems to have set off an almost unintelligible free-for-all. Pugs alone are now being bred to Yorkshire terriers, Shih Tzus, bichon frisés, Pekingese, rat terriers, Boston terriers, dachshunds, Jack Russell terriers and Chihuahuas to create, respectively, Pugshires, Pug-Zus, Pushons, Puginese, Puggats, Pugstons, Daugs, Jugs and Chugs. Beagles mount Bostons. Chihuhuauas do Yorkies. Beagles and basset hounds are making Bagels; bassets and Shar-Peis are making Sharp Assets — “a more laid-back dog that says, ‘If you don’t feel like taking me for a walk, no big deal,’ ” Havens’s Web site claims. Poodles are being pushed further into a goofy taxonomy of portmanteau labels: Maltipoos, Eskipoos, Doodleman Pinschers.There must be a Grundoonian Yakhound in there somewhere.
It's not there yet, but Dara's little baby red convertible is on its way to Kyla. Getting it shipped was an experience. It seems there is an entire industry of transport gypsies who make a living by moving cars, and you generally get to deal with the brokers who connect you with them. One inquiry on the internet has single-handedly doubled our spam volume. We looked for some recommendations from people who had been through it, and one guy said the car arrived weeks late and had been used by the transport people to tool around town as the truck made its way across country, and arrived smelling like fast food. We went with another recommendation from someone who said his experience went smoothly. Roll the dice, I guess.
Here are Dara, Garrett, Kyla, and Garrett's friend Michael enjoying one of the five beautiful days we had snowboarding. It had snowed 18 inches or so a few days before we got there, and they had just finished clearing the road. Not a cloud in the sky until Wednesday. Dara took the opportunity to brush up on her technique, including a lesson with newcomer and ultra-fast learner Michael. Garrett, who missed the entire season last year, only went briefly the year before (post surgery), and was snowboarding with his continuous 101 degree fever the year before that, jumped back into the action like he had never left it. Kyla and I blazed a few new trails -- literally. We found that by going through some mixed snow and grass and a few trees, we could go down our own private ungroomed trail. Between that and a ravine, we tried to make up for the lost Powder Cat tour opportunity. Plenty of sore muscles and groaning from all parties, but no major injuries to report.
Kirkwood is a pretty laid back place, and it was quite empty once the weekend was past. When Kyla and I were there last year, we spied a group of women posing nude from the waist up. Didn't get a picture of that - sigh. This year we had the golfing ski patrol guy. He was hitting rocks from halfway down a slope. There were quite a few bare spots like this scattered around and generally marked. Also overheard as we got off a lift: "Man, I should be really drunk by the time I make it over there." Nothing like a little liquid courage to improve your snowboarding!
Says Euripedese to Euripedose, "Dese saws is dull and my fingers is froze." "Looks like we's could use a cup-le o'teas," says Euripedose to Euripedese.Whaddya say, Keith, ready to wax poetic? You're such a prolific blogger, I figured poetry would be right up your alley.
A long while back I blogged something about the extreme sport of “Noodling.” This is where some very brave (but not too bright) folks feel their way underwater along the sides of a riverbank until they feel a hole, then shove their arm in that hole in hopes a monster-sized carp (and not a snapping turtle) will bite onto their hand. The WSJ on Wednesday ran a story about the Polish obsession with carp in the town of
Irwin Kula is a rabbi based in Manhattan and author of “Yearnings: Embracing the Sacred Messiness of Life,” which was published by Hyperion in September. “Order can be profane and life-diminishing,” he said the other day. “It’s a flippant remark, but if you’ve never had a messy kitchen, you’ve probably never had a home-cooked meal. Real life is very messy, but we need to have models about how that messiness works.”In our house, the saying goes that being messy isn't the same as being dirty. And given the state of my desk at work, I've been known to say "If a cluttered desk is a sign of a cluttered mind, what is an empty desk the sign of?"
One night earlier this year, Kilcullen sat down with a bottle of single-malt Scotch and wrote out a series of tips for company commanders about to be deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan. He is an energetic writer who avoids military and social-science jargon, and he addressed himself intimately to young captains who have had to become familiar with exotica such as “The Battle of Algiers,” the 1966 film documenting the insurgency against French colonists. “What does all the theory mean, at the company level?” he asked. “How do the principles translate into action—at night, with the G.P.S. down, the media criticizing you, the locals complaining in a language you don’t understand, and an unseen enemy kill-ing your people by ones and twos? How does counterinsurgency actually happen? There are no universal answers, and insurgents are among the most adaptive opponents you will ever face. Countering them will demand every ounce of your intellect.” The first tip is “Know Your Turf”: “Know the people, the topography, economy, history, religion and culture. Know every village, road, field, population group, tribal leader, and ancient grievance. Your task is to become the world expert on your district.” “Twenty-eight Articles: Fundamentals of Company-Level Counterinsurgency”—the title riffs on a T. E. Lawrence insurgency manual from the First World War—was disseminated via e-mail to junior officers in the field, and was avidly read.There are some smart people out there, and they're on our side. Somehow, though, I doubt this new kind of thinking maps to our current, er, notion of "victory." Sigh.
On game day, when Pruitt went to the foul line for the first time, Cal students began chanting: “Victoria! Victoria!” and reciting Pruitt’s phone number. Pruitt, a 79 percent free-throw shooter on the season, missed both shots and had one of his worst games of the year, shooting 3 for 13 from the field. Cal won the game by 11 points and went on to the N.C.A.A. tournament.College students can be so cruel.
Surfers watch their friends for signs of hypothermia, urging them to leave the water when their eyes glaze over and their words slur. Ear infections are a common affliction.The Susquehanna is looking better all the time.
To reach the lake, surfers drag their boards across snowdrifts and beaches littered with used condoms and syringes, Mr. Ditzenberger said. The most popular surf spot is Edgewater State Park. It is nicknamed Sewer Pipe because, after heavy rains, a nearby water treatment plant regularly discharges untreated waste into Lake Erie.
