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Spring Is Right On Time

2006-04-29T16:10:00.000-04:00

Well Maura and I are about to head out to Yuma for a week and two weeks, respectively. I was pretty upset because I had a feeling that my lemon tree was going to bloom while I was gone, covered as it is with wierd white and purple boils.

The two tiny green tomatoes and the giant strawberry flower that revealed themselves in the past two days were a small comfort, but not enough. As I watered all of the plants this morning, I thought I could even see the lines on one of the buds where the lemon tree would bloom. Sigh.

Well then I go to pick up Maura from her class, and when we get back, what does she see? In the hour it took to go there and get back, ol' Stonewall (the tree's name) had bloomed! He must have known I was going away.

They are right about the smell, it's like honeysuckle, only better. There are some more pictures of plants mentioned here on this blog at my flickr feed. I know you are all dying to see them.

See you all in two weeks!

Liberalism Link

2006-04-16T21:23:00.000-04:00

Here is a pretty interesting article about Liberalism. Not liberalism like Democrats or PETA or whatever, but Liberalism like what you learn about in philosophy classes.

I remember being very confused when I started paying attention to politics near the end of college and hearing people saying that liberals were bad, because, well, it has a lot of different definitions, depending on where you are, who you are, and when you are, and the one that I knew (from reading J.S.Mill and John Rawls) was a very different one from what was the commonly understood definition in the ol' US of A.

Anyways, this article looks back on the last century and asks the question: since classical liberalism won just about every one of its battles over the last century, why aren't we all atheistic communists? Also, why are there still conservatives? It's very interesting and fairly apolitical, though written from the perspective of a liberal (but, again, not an American-style liberal).

Here is an interesting quote:

Nonetheless, [anti-democrats] are some of the few people we've met in our survey who can mount a substantial and consistent, if unattractive, case against liberalism. The usual [conservative] has to argue against liberal solutions on liberal grounds: e.g. affirmative action is bad because it doesn't treat all races equally; gays are really demanding "special rights". The antidemocrat can argue more directly: he doesn't believe in equality.

It's less interesting out of context, but it's near the end of a very long article, so just in case you don't make it through to the end, there it is. :)

Enjoy!

Leeeeeemon

2006-04-09T21:38:00.000-04:00

Today Maura and I went out and bought a lemon tree! I can't even say how excited I am, because if I did then you would be so depressed to not be that excited lol omg ttyl hags.

We had to drive to 3 different home improvement warehouses to find one, but along the way we actually stumbled across a geocache by accident, which was kind of cool and (obviously) unexpected. There's this crazy old concrete bridge nestled between the new Chickfila and the old KFC, only the bridge stops halfway across the creek. It's been christened the bridge to nowhere by me Maura, and by countless others before us, and no one knows why it is there or where it is going. (When will it get there?). It seems very lonely there.

Back to the lemon - after being sprayed with a hose by a Lowe's employee while looking for the elusive lemon trees, the culprit was kind enough to point me in the right direction. At the checkout, I had a charming conversation with a fellow owner about the merits of indoor citrus (they make your house smell like it is clean - we reveled in the fact that both of our houses are filthy and no one is the wiser).

I received wishes of good luck and returned them in kind.

So now I am living the dream. It's everything I hoped for and more. The tree is easily the most visually appealing plant in the house, with shiny dark green leaves and a branch configuration that is quite interesting to view. The thought that it will (hopefully) one day bristle with succulent lemons is just the sour, sour icing on the cake.

Last Chance...

2006-04-04T23:03:00.000-04:00

Last Chance To See is probably one of the best books I have ever read. It's by Douglas Adams, who is famous amoung nerds for having written The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and for dying well before the disappointing movie of the same name was released. I'll say right now that I'm not a huge fan of his. The Hitchhiker books are pretty alright, but they never really got me going. But this book is utterly fantastic.

It's a travelog (which of course I love a priori) about Adams and a zoologist friend named Mark, as they travel around the world, visiting species on the verge of extinction (hence, the name of the book). Now we're not talking about bald eagle endangered here, we're talking 3 aging females left alive, quarantined on a tiny island, guarded over 24/7 to protect them from hungry weasels and Dutch sailors with clubs and too much free time.

The great thing about this book, and the thing that distinguishes it from just about every other book, article, or telegraph about endangered species or conservation, is that there is absolutely no preaching involved. There's no emotional exaggerations or evangelisms, and there's no guilt-tripping - there's just a crazy old british guy leaving airplane aftershave under bus seats in China, on the way to see the blind Yangztee River Dolphins.

Split into a series of stories (it was originally a BBC radio series), each chapter focuses on the travel to find the animal (most of the animals are in difficult to reach locations, like mountain gorillas in Zaire), the current state of the animal (almost gone forever), its history (killed by people and/or rats brought by people), and what people are (or aren't) doing to save it (creating island sanctuaries, or eating it for dinner on special occasions). That sounds terribly boring, but in practice it is awesome, due to Adams being British, hilarious, and completely out of place no matter where he goes.

The stories are always interesting, usually lol-worthy, and very frequently touching. Yes, touching, despite what I said earlier about the emotions thing. Believe it or not, it's possible to get someone to care about animals (and plants!) and the environment without being anti-humanity or calling for the destruction of mankind by way of an airborne ebola virus, like this guy. The lengths that people are going to to save some of these animals is amazing and heart-warming - on the other hand, the negligence toward and humiliation of some of the others is sobering and more than a bit sad.

I've always felt bad when species are extinctized. I think it stems from reading Lord of the Rings as a kid. I could never get over it when the elves and dwarves and hobbits had to leave Middle-Earth for the lame-ass "Age of Men." It always seemed so much more boring than the Age of Crazy Fantasy Adventures. It's the same sort of feeling here, when giant friendly flightless parrots, whose mating call sounds like a thunderous heartbeat in the night, half heard and half felt in your chest - when they are replaced by rats and common house cats. It's just kind of like: don't we have enough of those already?

Some additional links - here is Another Chance To See, which is a blog that gives updates on the status of the animals visited in the book (written in the 80s, so a lot has changed since then). And here is an NPR piece on the wild coffee plant mentioned briefly in the book.

Briefly, it was thought extinct, until a teacher was doing a lesson and mentioned it, and a student claimed to have one in his backyard. Turns out, that was the last one in existence, the others having been eaten by goats. Well this one was in pretty bad shape too, so they built a fence around it to keep the goats away. Which of course made the neighbors think it was special, or else why build a fence? So they started breaking branches off to cure hangovers and gonorrhea (yes, that's right). Well, 3 more barbed wire fences, a roof (people were scaling the fences), and a security guard later, and, well, you can listen and find out (about 8 minutes long and fairly lively).

Read this book!

Futurama ?!

2006-03-19T19:32:00.000-05:00

Futurama is back! Well, soon anyways. Not straight to DVD movies, but new episodes, on TV!?

According to Billy West (Fry, Zoidberg, Professor, Zapp, and others).

?!?!?!?!?

"I've had it with these snakes."

2006-03-17T20:28:00.000-05:00

Official teaser trailer for the upcoming blockbuster Snakes on a Plane dropped today.

This is CHURCH?!

2006-03-15T19:43:00.000-05:00

"this is church?!"
By mbschn.

This is a ridiculous (christian?) church flier I got in the mail today. You know a church is fun when they have a big crosshair on their flier. When I first saw it, I thought it we were under attack and that we lived before radio so the government had to tell us by mail. This ended up being incorrect.

The subtext says "SURVIVING THE ATTACKS FACING MARRIAGE."

The back has a schedule for a lecture series of some kind, including a session that sounds like it is about how to prove that your spouse is cuckolding you ("Affair Proof: Do You Have A Strategy?").

Outside the screaming red and yellow, there is a tiny picture of a smiling family, apparently enjoying the "great music and video" offered at their new church. The little girl is clearly one of the many delighted children who will soon be exclaiming, half with joy and half with disbelief: "this is CHURCH?!"

George Lucas Likes Dune

2006-02-26T22:34:00.000-05:00

So here is Dune, by Frank Herbert. It's a verifiable classic of Science Fiction writing, it spawned a movie which is a classic of Science Fiction filmmaking, and I found a battered old copy of it at the by now famous Fredericksburg Library Booksale.

It has a picture of Monument Valley on the spine. Don't know why.

For those of you not familiar, Dune is about a desert planet, named Dune. You may be familiar with a place called "Tatooine." Well Dune is like Tatooine, only not shamelessly stolen from another story. Dune is the only source in the universe of melange, or "spice." Those of you familiar with the Star Wars extended universe will recognize that this idea was also shamelessly stolen for use in a fairly pedestrian plot starring Han Solo. Melange is highly addictive, but it extends lifespans by hundreds of years, tastes great, and is required for interstellar travel. So Dune is an important place, even though it sucks to live there.

The deserts of Dune are inhabited by gigantic sandworms (you may remember them from a movie named Tremors) and by a hardy race of religious fanatics called Fremen (think thinly vieled Muslims - don't worry, it's okay to say that, because they are the good guys - well, sort of).

The main character is a boy named Paul, who has the ability (sometimes) to see the future, is able to control people with the sound of his voice, and is able to defeat anyone in a knife fight, using the special (magical?) knives of the Fremen. Sound familar? Think of him as a slightly toned-down Jedi. Or maybe like a Jedi before the prequels came out, before they could fly and breathe underwater and stuff.

George Lucas liked this book.

We've got a mix of action - mostly knifefights - lots of religious mumbo-jumbo, and what most reviews describe as politics, but which really more resembles tedious 16th century court intrigues. The religious overtones are extremely prevalent - one might consider them a theme, if one were writing a schoolpaper. Unfortunately for ease of use, Herbert saw fit to invent his own religion, which is all well and good, except try reading Augustine's Confessions without having read the Bible or without ever having heard about Christianity.

Any points Herbert might have been trying to make flew right over my head on the tiny wings of a thousand made up words, like "Kwisatz Haderach." Yep. Something about "watch out for jihads."

Anyways, after wading through the terminology, for which there is, mercifully, a dictionary in the back (note, however, that the dictionary contains spoilers!), you're presented with a pretty entertaining universe. The back of the book describes it as "a world more awesome than any in literature," which might be a bit of an exaggeration, but it is close enough not to be completely laughable. The sandworms are fun, the desert is fun, the spice is fun, and when the pseudo-Jedi main character uses his superpowers, it's pretty entertaining, until you realize he is pretty much invincible.

Speaking of the back of the book, the publishers seem to have had an inferiority complex of some kind against Tolkien. No less than three times is the Dune series compared to Lord of the Rings - it's sold more copies, it was voted "Best Series" by the readers of some magazine I've never heard of (they note that LotR ranked lower), and Arthur C. Clarke apparently said Lord of the Rings is the only thing that can hope to compare with the raw majesty that is Dune.

And the similarities are there, I suppose. Both Tolkien and Herbert created crazy worlds with their own full-fledged mythologies and their own languages. They're both epics. But here is the main difference, and it can be either a good or a bad thing, depending on your point of view: LotR is about a normal guy thrust into a situation where he is responsible for saving the world - the world turns on the decisions of a puny little guy from the country who just wants to go home. Dune, on the other hand, is about a superhero who is thrust into a situation where he is responsible for revenge and for saving himself and his family - without destroying the world in the process.

Both are entertaining in their own way, but they are very different stories, despite what the pundits might say.

If you are at all interested in Science Fiction, in Hydraulic Despotism (I don't know why you would be), in coming-of-age adventure stories, or in giant sandworms, and you think you can wade through the sometimes labored prose, you should check this one out. After all, if George Lucas liked it (various spoilers, mostly in the chart), how bad could it be?

Escape Velocity

2006-02-22T21:19:00.000-05:00

Maura and I took a trip to Sunny Charlottesville last weekend, in an attempt to rehabilitate me from the tender mercies of Sunny Tampa. After a solid month of late hours and flabbergasting timesheet totals, I had racked up enough overtime to kill a horse (by buying another horse and hiring a tae-kwon-do instructor to teach it how to roundhouse kick the other horse to death). Except I don't get overtime, due to some nefarious (and nebulous!) loophole in the labour laws. But I still had enough extra money to burn it on calculated frivolity.

And I certainly had enough mental health issues by that point to justify a vacation. So off we went.

Why Charlottesville? Many people ask this question, and many of them live in Charlottesville and are perhaps most confused by the decision. Most people on earth find it difficult to believe that anyone would want to visit *their* town, out of all of the places in the world that are ~(*their* town). In this case, frequent readers understand that I am a fan of Thomas Jefferson, who was in turn a fan of the town in question. "What is all the fuss about?" we wondered.

The city also lives in the mountains, requires a pleasantly lengthy trip through the wild countryside of Virginia, and amounts to "the big city," when compared to Fredericksburg, or "the big suburbs," to those with colloquial leanings familiar with the area.

We stayed here, despite their flash-based website. I wanted to go to the one that had their entire navigation menu ensconced in the BLINK tag, but we couldn't find the phone number what with all the seizures. Anyways, the South Street Inn is right there in the middle of a million restaurants and movie theatres, the hostess bakes astounding cookies, and they have a giant painting of an orangoutang on the wall. What's not to love?

Our itinerary included a trip to Monticello, which you can see evidence of on my Flickr page. It was freezing cold and the line was surprisingly long and surprisingly not full of middle schoolers, and the tour was everything I had hoped it would be. The library and the giant maps of Africa and South America (!!!) being the highlights for me.

And the LEMON TREE. They had a lemon tree growing in the greenhouse. I have always wanted to grow citrus fruit, but have been discouraged from doing so by my latitude. Was it real? Was it fake? Is it possible? The questions!

Dinner and a movie, charming and wonderful, even though the food wasn't great and the movie (Wallace and Gromit) was absolutely forgettable. Why must they put carrots on everything?

Monday was filled with lunch with Jesse and then a hike through Ragged Mountain, which is an awesome forest right outside Charlottesville. I discovered it last time I was there through the services of a friendly geocacher. They have since outlawed geocaching in the park. Now no one will ever be able to find it again (unless they already know where it is), past the winding and intimidating gravel path that provides the only access. Good job guys.

Apparently this place inspired this story, by Edgar Allen Poe, which I have not read and therefore cannot endorse, except perhaps as a more professional description of the area than I can hope to provide.

Pictures of this adventure may follow in due time.

All in all, a great trip. Something that should be done by everyone (EVERYONE) more often. The whole Bed and Breakfast experience, while slightly more expensive than the Sleep Inn, is infinitely more rewarding. Even when you are trapped in a conversation in the lounge with the proud parents of a UVA student who describe his "girlfriends" as "Bitch number 1 and Bitch number 2" in an entirely serious and unironic way. Even then.

Status Update

2006-02-12T20:30:00.000-05:00

Well everyone should sleep a little easier tonite (except for my Enemies!), because I am fully recovered from my terrible illness. I once again know the joys of solid faeces, which are simple but quite joyous nonetheless.

In other news, we seem to be missing two (2) Karaoke Revolution headsets. If anyone out there finds some hanging around with nothing to sing along to, please let me know - we miss them dearly and would love to see them again.

Also, it snowed like a mother down here! Today we took a little hike around the neighborhood. Took some pictures. They are on Flickr if you're interested.

Thought I should throw in that Maura is great. She is right now wondering if I am writing about her, which is a question that comes up fairly frequently. Today I was reading a book (another enjoyable activity, my ability to perform having been severly curtailed during the past month) and what do I see but Maura walking in the room with hot chocolate and two cookies, just for me.

Usually when she walks into the room with things like that, it is because she wants to consume them herself and generate envy in my heart. So it was a pleasant suprise!

Sicko

2006-02-01T19:41:00.000-05:00

So on Monday I threw up like 5 times. Absolute stomach-emptying, body-contorting, cathartic experiences. I came home from work early, because I could not quite walk straight. I got home just in time to have a giant diarrhea (that's right! I said it!), and had throwup number one as the water in the flushing toilet swirled and swirled around the bowl. Yes! It's true, and yes I did appreciate the absurdity of it at the time, giggling to myself as I wondered at what I would do if my entire body became one giant muscle cramp, as it was threatening to do. I swear that at one point my knees left the ground and I floated above the bowl, emptying risotto and granola into the waiting depths. Afterwards, I hopped back on to repeat step one.

Later that night it happened again and again, although these times were slightly less eventful, being as they were mostly composed of water and saltine crumbs. The dry heaves were a new experience for me, though.

The great thing about throwing up is that afterwards you get to feel perfectly normal and healthy. If you are lucky, that is the end of it, the raw shellfish are gone, back to their home, perhaps, if you live near the ocean, and you can go on with your life. If you are like me, however, you get a 15 minute reprieve and then it's back to the fever and the hydrophobia - it's somehow more disturbing when your barf is perfectly clear, like Crystal Pepsi. Drinking more water will only dilute what little coloration you might have remaining. Conserve!

So I've now taken my first sick day from work, which is a pretty good record I think. Mother Nature taunted me for using a vacation day, offering a bright, crisp day with a fine breeze while sending her bacterial minions inside to poke and prod my guts. I almost got to go to the hospital and I had trouble regulating my body temperature due to dehydration, but hey - at least I got to stay at work late today!

I am feeling a bit better, but I continue to walk like an old man. Sometimes I like to stop and just stare into the distance, like a crazy person might. Hopefully this will pass upon consuming some non-liquid food.

Cheers!

Ad Astra Per Aspera

2006-01-27T17:37:00.000-05:00

You'll be hearing a lot this week about the Challenger disater, which hits its 20th anniversary tomorrow. But today is also the anniversary of another space disaster, that of Apollo 1. Three people (Command Pilot Virgil I. Grissom, Senior Pilot Ed White, and Pilot Roger B. Chaffee) died when a spark turned the 100% oxygen environment of the test capsule into a blazing inferno.

Grissom is one of the lesser remembered heroes of the early Space Age. He is probably best remembered as the guy who said:

If we die, we want people to accept it. We are in a risky business and we hope that if anything happens to us it will not delay the program. The conquest of space is worth the risk of life.

He died shortly thereafter. But first, he wrote a book about his experiences in the Gemini Program, called Gemini.

I found this book at the Friends of the Library Booksale 2 years ago. It is pretty beat up, with many pages falling out and with a frayed binding. There is no cover image or dustjacket. I would link to it, but I think it is long since out of print.

The style is very simple and straightforward. Grissom was an Indiana man who grew up to be an Air Force test pilot who was tapped to populate the emerging human space flight program. He puts on no airs as he describes his beginnings and his suprise at being named for what was at that time a very low profile endeavor. Grissom goes out of his way to give credit to the hundreds of engineers and scientists on the ground that made his flights possible.

While in part an autobiography, the main focus of the book is to explain why the space program is important. While much of his argument is based on Cold War politics - namely, we need to beat the Soviets up there - there is also the triumph of the human spirit argument which is made infinitely more poignant with the knowledge one gets from reading this man's thoughts and knowing the price he would pay for following his ideals.

A large portion is also dedicated to arguing a version of that quote up above - an argument against the opponents of the space program, who claimed (and still claim) that it was too dangerous, that someone was going to die. Here Grissom simply states that he knows the risks, and that he trusts the engineers and support staff implicitly.

If Grissom had not died on Apollo 1, he would have been at the top of the list for being the first man to walk on the moon. He never made it that far, but his life and his death allowed the men who followed him to take his place. His book, which was sent to his editor shortly before his death and was published posthumously, is charming and touching and fascinating and down-to-earth (forgive the pun).

It's also all but forgotten by everyone except the Library of Congress. Let's hope Grissom doesn't suffer the same fate.

From the plaque honoring him and his crew:

IN MEMORY OF THOSE WHO MADE THE ULTIMATE SACRIFICE SO OTHERS COULD REACH FOR THE STARS

AD ASTRA PER ASPERA
(A ROUGH ROAD LEADS TO THE STARS)

GOD SPEED TO THE CREW OF APOLLO 1

Space heroes make me gush. Godspeed Gus!

Tampa, FL

2006-01-24T18:06:00.000-05:00

tampa bay w/ bird
By mbschn.

I have been in Tampa for the past few days. It was to have been the culmination of 2 weeks of backbreaking labour, the last resulting in 70 hours of billable time. A demo for a Congressman. Cancelled, of course, at the last minute.

Anyways, I will be back again in two weeks, with a new camera this time, and with Electroplankton. In the meantime, there are a few pictures up on Flickr.

Two Mediocre Books

2006-01-14T23:55:00.000-05:00

Well, I just finished two pretty unsatisfying books. One was The Trial, by Franz Kafka, and the other was The Supernaturalist, by this guy named "Eoin Colfer." I could not wait for either of them to be over.

Kafka's book is, obviously, about a trial. Its prose has that charming cadence that only comes when translating German into English, but it's at about that point where its entertainment value ended for me. I'm aware that this is an important piece of literature and all that, and that "Kafkaesque" has entered our common lexicon (according to the back of the book), but it was just kind of boring.

Any sympathy one might have for the main character as he is persecuted by a faceless bureaucracy is insensibly siphoned away as he does stupid thing after stupid thing and worries and wrings his hands over bits of manners and protocol. I know I'm supposed to be shocked and horrified by Kafka's image of the world here, but I dunno, yawn, I guess.

One part of note is the appendices. There's an afterword by the fellow who published this book after Kafka's death. It largely has to do with how Kafka wanted all his papers burnt upon his death and how this guy found Kafka's will and then, instead of burning his papers, he published them in book form. This part, though, okay, it's forgivable, because of Literature and Posterity or whatever. We have this great book now because he ignored Kafka's dying wish. But then the guy proceeds to publish Kafka's diary there in the back of the book, Appendix F or something. It's the poor man's innermost thoughts about him feeling lonely and scared and all that jazz. Anyways, it was kind of sickening to me.

Next we have The Supernaturalist. This one my mom gave to me from the high school library book fair. It's a young adult novel, which is usually a recipe for success in my book. This one though, uninspired. 4 kids band together to save the world from little glowing alien things that only they can see. Sounds pretty good, but it never really goes anywhere.

The universe is sort of like a kid's version of Bladerunner, with that Future of the 80's feel to it. Giant polluted city, no ozone layer, giant corporations that control everything, conspiracies, all that standard stuff. The plot twists are either uninspired or predictable, and the manuscript has more than its fair share of glaring typos that I was kind of surprised made it through the editing process (or the spell checker).

I think this book might actually be pretty fun and good to the age group for which it is intended, but where Harry Potter is also fun for adults to read, this one isn't so much. Even if you are a kid in the right age range, I would skip it - there are plenty of better options out there. Like Dragonlance.

Let's hope the third time's the charm here. I might have to go back to The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire pretty soon.

House of Leaves

2006-01-02T10:10:00.000-05:00

Whoa. So I just finished House of Leaves, by one Mark Z. Danielewski. It was craaazy and pretty awesome.

It's a (postmodern) horror book, mostly, and that's where you'd find it in the bookstore. To give you a brief synopsis: it's about a guy who discovers that the interior of his house is 3/4 of an inch bigger than the exterior. As he is trying to figure out what's wrong with his tape measure, a door appears in his living room which should lead out into his front yard, but which instead leads into a dark hallway and structure that seems to go on forever. I won't give too much away, but the cover of the book has a giant spiral staircase on it; you can go from there. Here's a hint: it doesn't go up.

This story though, is framed in another story which takes place mostly in the copious footnotes. The narrative structure is as follows: the house story, as told by a documentary film, as described by an academic paper on the film, written by a crazy old man who recently died, as edited by another man who is slowly going nuts, as further edited by the (fictional) publishing company. None of the narrators are particularly reliable, something which is made explicit early on. Each different narrator uses a different font, which spares you from the Faulkerian agony often associated with books with this structure.

The main body of the story, the story of the house, is, like I said, presented as an academic paper written on the (nonexistant) documentary film about it. This is interesting, because it allows the author to make explicit a lot of the symbolism and to delve a lot more deeply into the characters and their motiviations than would ordinarily be possible. It also, as Wikipedia notes, provides a satire on academic criticism. There is a whole chapter, for instance, about why the guy decided to return to the house, after XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX. Another whole chapter on the entymology of the word "echo," as well as the scientific and mythological background of the concept.

This is both good and bad. It is good in that it forces you to think a little more about the story then you ordinarily would outside of an English class, and it is good in that it provides an effective way to raise the suspense (by being written under the assumption that everyone has already seen the movie and knows what will happen), but it is also bad in that sometimes it gets a bit dull. There's a lot of overanalysis in there, which I think is intentional, but is also kind of tedious at points.

The other half of the story, carried out in the footnotes, is about the editor of the book as he takes lots of drugs, has lots of sex, and slowly decends into madness. This part is, much of the time, similarly tedious, but it is (arguably) the most important part of the story, depending on your interpretation. It is cut up into small chunks and spaced out enough that it is bearable. Most of my dislike for these sections I think stems from the fact that they kept me away from exploring the house. Lots of sex, drugs, and rock and roll in these parts, though, so buyer beware.

Then, there's the actual physical structure of the book. It is crazy. As I mentioned, each narrator is in a different font. The long and numerous footnotes have footnotes which have footnotes. Sometimes there are only 5 words on a page, sometimes there are a gajillion. Sometimes the words are upside down, sometimes they are written backwards, sometimes entire pages have the strikethru tag applied to them. Other parts are missing entirely, sometime words or parts of words are missing (the original manuscript has been burned, or scratched out). Sometimes all of these things happen at the same time. And then there's the fact that "house" is always in blue.

The formatting is usually done with a purpose, not just to be annoying. At one point the characters are lost in the neverending tunnels and as they become more and more panicked and disoriented, the text becomes more dense and convuluted until you are as lost as the characters. It sounds kind of stupid, but in practice it was really effective.

There's a lot to this book; apparently it took the author 10 years to write it. You can read the book and think you got most everything out of it, and then read the Wikipedia article on it and realize that you missed like half of the stuff (including secret messages encoded in the text). (PS: like me).

It has an interesting and creepy story that keeps you going, and it also makes you think without being too dense to be an enjoyable bedside read. I would recommend this to anybody that thinks they can persevere through it; it's not an easy book to read, but it's easy enough, and it is pretty interesting. Also it makes you feel smart. Who can argue with that?

(House of Leaves)

25

2006-01-01T17:11:00.000-05:00

So my 25th birthday has come and gone, and now I'm officially almost in my mid-twenties. This is older than I ever thought I would make it to, so this is a pretty solid achievment. A life lived looking both ways and only mostly ignoring safety labels has paid off, thus far. Or maybe I'm just lucky. Who knows. The point is: look at this sweet present Maura got for me:

That right there is the definitive biography on one of my two heroes, the ol' TJ. It's on the mantle because it is extra special. The series is called Jefferson and his Times, by Dumas, and I have read the last one, which you can see in the photo is entitled The Sage of Monticello. It was excellent (as you may have heard), and I look forward to reading the rest of the series as soon as I finish the other million books I have in my queue. I'm going to need a new bookshelf soon.

Anyways, I'm excited.

Winter Blues

2005-12-20T21:31:00.000-05:00

I've always felt like I have a mild case of Seasonal Affective Disorder, ingeniously acronymed "SAD," but which in my case would probably be more aptly labelled "ANTSY." I don't know what the words for that one would be, though.

I'm dying lately to go outside and consume some Nature, but it's cold as a tomb out and dark as that same tomb anytime that I'm not working (and sometimes when I am), which puts a bit of a damper on things, especially since I don't own a winter coat. Being inside all the time is certainly something I am accustomed to, but being forced to be inside all the time is another matter altogether. It's always wintertime that I think about buying a sailboat again, and it's always wintertime that I wish I was doing other crazy things, like rockclimbing, or hanggliding, that sort of thing.

The ironicish part is that during the summer, I forget all of these things and, well, procrastinate, sitting inside, most of the time. Such is life. I'm just kind of bored and cooped up I guess, with that sneaking suspicion that outside the world is entertaining wild adventures without me - while in reality it's really just being really, really, cold. And somewhat dark.

Bleh. Back to Mario Kart.

You Have Nothing To Lose But Your Chains!

2005-12-12T21:50:00.000-05:00

Selected pictures from the recent birthday and unofficial music game party are up on my Flickr page (link on the sidebar). Some of them are kind of dark, but I was too lazy to post-process them right yet.

Also I have like 4 gigabytes of video, including the time a certain lady spilled red wine on my couch and the time a *different* lady cleaned it up. ;-) The Injustice! The first denies it, but who can know the truth? Let's go to the video tape!

Well, I can anyways. If I can figure out iMovie, maybe you can too. I'll just say this: everything is more awesome with "Le Internationale" as the soundtrack.

Freezing Rain

2005-12-09T08:12:00.000-05:00

Woooooooo 2 hour delay snow day!!!!!!

Maya is Like a Member of the Family

2005-12-02T22:08:00.000-05:00

If I've been lax in my posting of late, you'll please forgive me. I've been seeing my personal trainer, Maya; it's amazing how much 30 minutes of exercise a night will make you never want to spend your time posting your thoughts on the internet. Well, I just finished my first "physical challenge," and I am feeling pretty good about myself, so I thought I would give everyone a heads up.

Yourself! Fitness is an Xbox, PS2, PC "game" that Maura bought a couple weeks ago. It's not really a game so much as it is an interactive, dynamic workout video. The only interaction with the controller is to select menu items and type your name in (which is good, because the programmers managed to introduce some bugs into the control nonetheless).

Basically it works like this. You create an account, and Maya, the 3D animated personal trainer, guides you through an evaluation, where you measure your pulse, do jumping jacks, do squats, pushups, and crunches, you enter your weight, height, etc. Then you choose a focus for your workouts, from amoung upper, core, or lower body strength, cardio, flexibility, or weight loss. Then you pick which days and for how long you want to work out. Maya makes suggestions for all of these things, but you can override her if you want.

Then the fun begins. You show up the day of your workout, and Maya greets you, usually with some reference to the time of day, how you felt last time, how she's glad that you keep showing up on time, and that sort of thing. While all of her lines are canned and repeated often, the integration with the internal system clock really makes her seem real, with good mornings and good evenings as appropriate. She praises you when you show up for your workouts (i.e., me), and she expresses disappointment when you skip them (i.e., if you are Maura).

squats
By mbschn.

If you do really well, you can unlock new music and new workout environments. (I'm currently a gold medal holder with access to the alpine lodge). I know it sounds really stupid, and it is, but it really does help when you are feeling like quitting, and then Maya gives you a heartfelt speech about how proud she is of you. And grants you access to the wild west town ("I hear this is where all the celebrities come to work out!").

Each workout has a focus, chosen from the above list. You still concentrate, though, on your long term goal - I can testify to this, because Maya always makes me do crunches. The actual workout works just like an aerobics video - Maya does her thing on screen, shouts encouragement and instructions at you, and you are on your honor to follow suit. A nice touch is the time remaining clock and, more importantly, the bar at the bottom that tells you what you are doing now and how much longer you have to do it.

Maya asks for feedback throughout the workout, and adjusts the difficulty based on how you respond. This is a nice feature, as it keeps you from getting bored or discouraged as the case may be, and it also allows her to gauge your progress and what she needs to have you focus on.

Also, if you have workout equipment, including hand weights, giant rubber ball thing, or a step doohicky, you can tell Maya and she will include these things in your workouts. I always lie and say I don't own hand weights, cuz I just know she will make me do horrible horrible curls with them.

I've got to say, I am very impressed with this game. It is extremely simple and obvious and has more than its share of bugs - but it works really well to get you to exercise if you don't mind feeling stupid for prancing around your living room and screaming obscenities at a computer for assigning you another goddamn round of crunches. I know you guys don't want to hear about my BODY, but I can totally tell a difference, and I don't really recognize myself in the mirror anymore (I'm too tall and it cuts off my head), you know, because of all the muscles (this is hyperbole). I think Maura bought it used for like 7$, I would check it out if you want to save on a gym membership, or if you are like me and know you would never go even if you bought one.

Full Wine Rack

2005-11-28T21:34:00.000-05:00

full wine rack
By mbschn.

I love having a full - no an overflowing - wine rack, it makes me feel so Bohemian. Thanks go out to Kybecca for having a (hopefully) awesome deal where you get six bottles of wine for 60$. I know, it sounds pricey, but this is enough wine to last us for several months.

Each month is a different location - November is / was California. It's all discounted, plus you get the benefits of having someone pick out your wine based on something other than which label is prettiest, which is nice. It comes with a printout with descriptions and what to serve with what, etc etc. Hopefully the wine doesn't suck; we're still working on a bottle of Fat Bastard, so it is a mystery thus far.
It's very colorful, though.

Manly Banister Does It Again

2005-11-26T15:22:00.000-05:00

Burdened with a preponderance of Incomprehensibly capitalized Nouns, non-sensical dialog, and an aimless, desultory plot, Conquest of Earth, by the amazingly, and, I'm sure, accurately named SciFi author "Manly Banister," is a torturous trek through a future where the empty, desert surface of Earth is just about as fun as it sounds. It's also proof that you can't judge a book by its awesome, awesome cover.

Spoilers within, not that it matters. Even if you don't listen to me and you try to read this, the book is out of print anyways. As if that weren't enough, the copy that I have is quickly disintegrating.

We begin at the final examination of one "Kor Danay," Scarlet Sage. We quickly learn that he is pretty much Neo from the Matrix sequels. He can fly, explode things with his mind, harness the power of the sun, that sort of thing. He can sense the presence of other humans by listening for their "vibrating electrons." He can stop time by performing a specialized technique which basically boils down to "thinking really, really, really fast."

A member of The Scarlet Order of Men, his Divisible Mind allows him to harness the powers of the Third Order of Logic. The Men are based in the city of Den-Ver, where they, along with the Blue Brotherhood, plot the destruction and eventual defeat of the invaders and rulers of Earth, the Trisz, with their followers, the Triszmen.

The Trisz, you see, are energy beings who rule the Earth with an iron fist. In the beginning and the back of the book, they are described as "the Trisz... the benevolent Trisz" (Manly is very fond of ellipses), but why they might be described as benevolent is never really explained, as all they ever seem to do is execute people randomly and rule through fear and overwhelming technological superiority.

In any case, they have been stealing all of the water from Earth for centuries, also for reasons that are never really explained. What an entity of pure energy could need water for is beyond me, and, judging from the lack of explanation, beyond Manly himself.

The first section of the book is reminiscent of A Wizard of Earthsea, as Kor is appointed to a priesthood type position in a town on the Mis-Zou River. He has amazing but seldom used powers, and his position is primarily one of guidance and help for the townspeople. Then, he pays homage to the Trisz rulers and falls in love for no reason with the daughter of the human Lord of the town after evading several assassination attempts from the Triszmen.

Manly fools you into thinking that this will be a book about undermining the all-powerful Trisz, working against them in the shadows while evading discovery and capture. A few chapters later, though, Manly gets bored and introduces the quickly discarded gigantic computer that predicts the future. There are some rhyming prophecies involved; I won't bore you with the details, but I'll just say that the phrase "pots and pans" makes an appearance and Kor escapes from the vaporization chamber by teleporting himself back to the underground city of Sub-Den, under Den-Ver. Using his mind.

Kor lives here for a while with his girlfriend Soma, the personalityless love interest mentioned above. The Men perform some experiments on him, and Kor grows bored, much like the reader. He dreams of being a Searcher, like his father. Maybe you are confused, because I sure was at this point. The Searchers are Men who fly around outer space looking for places to put human colonies (since Earth is dying from lack of water). His father is someone who has never been mentioned up until this point. Finally Kor gets the job, and sets off in a spaceship propelled by the power of his mind to a tropical paradise where he honeymoons with his new wife.

It isn't long before she is eaten by a Trisz (who are here too, apparently). Kor goes crazy and the third section of the book begins. This section is about how Kor has amnesia and becomes the "Great One" for a tribe of cavemen. He uses his powers to bring deer and rain to the cavemen, and they worship him and give him cavewomen to have sex with. This continues for several agonizing chapters until Kor kills a bunch of Trisz with volcanoes after his cavewoman dies in labor.

Thus begins the fourth and final section of the epic struggle. Kor is swept away to a space station where he is nursed back to health by his friends from Sub-Den. Here, Kor develops a non-sensical plan to stop the Trisz, who now apparently are from another universe where they ate all the stars. They are now in our universe, stealing all the water from Earth, because, well, maybe they are tired of the taste of stars or something? I dunno, it's not important. The Men start a giant construction project, building giant towers on burnt-out stars, and they fight off a fleet of Trisz starships using Kor's sun controlling powers. Then he goes into the Trisz universe and sucks them all up into his mind. The End.

All of this takes place in a scant 125 pages. The entire book seems rushed and disjointed - it's as if Mr. Banister had four or five great ideas for SciFi books, then, instead of fleshing each of them out and making four or five decent books, he lumped them all together into a single really bad one.

In the end, it comes off as one of those stories that really give SciFi and Fantasy a bad name. It's a mediocre plot, with mediocre characters, dressed up with future of the 50s names (like Kor Danay) and future of the 50s concepts (like "vibrating electrons," "divisible minds," and building-sized computers that can tell the future, but in riddles). Skip it, unless you're doing a research project on early SciFi novels or if you want to punish yourself for something. This could probably make up for kicking a small puppy, or robbing a bank.

Quasar, Shmasar; Flat Earth, Shmflat Earth

2005-11-21T21:42:00.000-05:00

Well, after a long and thouroughly enjoyable detour into Final Fantasy X, I finally finished Isaac Asimov's The Universe. I'm sorry to say, it was not a page-turner. Also, fair warning: equal time is not given for Pastafarianism (or Flat Earthism).

You might know Issac Asmiov from the recent Will Smith movie about robots, which stole the name from one of his books in an ironic fashion, or from watching the Star Wars movies, which stole their entire universe from his Foundation series, only in a shameless fashion. Well, now he is back, with a popular science book about astronomy, subtitled with "from flat earth to quasar." No one, to date, has stolen this book to make a movie (email me if this is wrong).

It starts out well enough, with a section on the Ancient Greeks and all their crazy ideas about the universe. This is pretty interesting, and reading about how these guys measured the circumference of the earth using 2 pointy sticks is like watching someone build a computer out of Legos (WARNING: link is not as interesting as it sounds). The book then moves on through the years and on through the cosmos as mankind discovered more and more of the universe and all the crazy stuff that resides therein.

Unfortunately for the narrative, something like 95% of the history of astronomy as a hard science has happened in the last 50 or so years (from the publishing of the book, 1960 or so). So it is heavily weighted away from high-minded men struggling to overcome the limitations of their time, and heavily weighted toward high-minded men completing tasks successfully and meeting deadlines. It's not snobby, those are my words, but it just gets a bit dry after a while.

One thing that is more interesting than those boring things that I just spoke to is the crazy links of observations and extrapolations that allowed us to divine all that we know about our universe. For instance, have you ever wondered how in the world we know that the Milky Way is a spiral galaxy? You know, we are in it, and it's not like there is a giant mirror out there for us to look at ourselves in. Well, if you read this book, you will find out (if you care to know).

This book would be an excellent book to read if you are a science teacher, wanting to bone up on your material before the one week where you teach the kids astronomy - it covers just about everything you learn in school about the universe, and it explains everything in an adequately acessible fashion. Likewise, if you are a person who wants to remember how galaxies are formed, or if you are a person who wants to know why they are called "galaxies" in the first place, this might be a good book for you.

If, however, you are looking for an entertaining bedside read, or a book where you will learn lots of new and interesting things (assuming you paid attention in science class the first time around), you can probably skip this one and never regret it for the rest of your life.

Anyways, the best part about the book for me, was that it reminded me of this picture:

So there, I just saved you 300 pages. You're welcome.

"Well, what are we protecting you from, a wrong cheeseburger?"

2005-11-18T22:15:00.000-05:00

This is just great - I ran across it while browsing the poe-news forums. It is a 911 call from a lady upset because Burger King keeps making her cheeseburger wrong for her hungry kids returning from Tae Kwon Do lessons.

Snopes labels it as "undetermined," but they did confirm that the call is real - they speculate that it might be a prank call. It sounds pretty authentic to me, though. Yes, there is an audio recording (as well as a transcript). It is pretty funny.

Dispatcher: Okay, what exactly is it you want us to do for you?

Woman: I . . . send an officer down here. I . . . I want them to make me . . .

Dispatcher: Ma'am, we're not gonna go down there and enforce your Western Bacon Cheeseburger.

Freelancestar Goes High-Tech

2005-11-16T20:09:00.000-05:00

Wow, Fredericksburg's very own newspaper, the Freelancestar, finally added RSS feeds. They even have it split up by subject. There's so rarely something eventful happening in this town that it will be nice to not have to load the whole page just to find out that High School Team A won Sports Challenge Z.

Now that they are so tech savvy, hopefully they will be able to figure out that taking a picture, shrinking it down to thumbnail size, and then blowing it back up again to post on their articles leaves, well, something to be desired in the final result. Here's a great example, where they have used their unique method on an expenditures chart (look for it on the right below the ad). Very helpful.

The high school sports article (above) has another gem. I love how the "zoom" actually makes the picture smaller.

It's Never the Pretty Ones

2005-11-16T18:54:00.000-05:00

It's just... too horrible for words.

It's not often that Fredericksburg makes the "news," but... good god. Make sure you scroll down for the picture. I'd post it here, but frankly I don't want to look at it anymore.

Extra!: Freelancestar article.

Virginia Reels From Lack of Attorney General

2005-11-15T19:24:00.000-05:00

Wow, I didn't realize that this was still going on. Still counting the Attorney General votes, and can I just say that 446 votes is not very many? What drama!

When they get around to doing a recount... well, I voted for Deeds (after much agonizing) and I think I put my ballot into the machine upside down - so if that turns into 445 then you know it was me. Crazy newfangled technology.

me @ crim dell

2005-11-14T22:04:00.000-05:00

me @ crim dell
By mbschn.

Posted a couple of pictures from W+M Homecoming on the Flickr page.

Come On and Pierce My Heart With Your Love!!

2005-11-12T23:52:00.000-05:00

Just watched Disc 4 of Full Metal Alchemist. It continues to be an awesome show. I was a bit dissapointed with Mustang in the highly-anticipated (by me) duel episode, cuz he kind of turned into a loser. But then he redeemed himself to me by doing his little snapping fingers thing and exploding the world. But man, I still can't believe that guy exploded that other guy's brains. Nuts!

Also, what's up with the new theme song? It sucks!

Smart People Are Stupid

2005-11-11T14:40:00.000-05:00

Here is an article.

It is about anti-intellectualism. I've only so far read the first section, but it is pretty entertaining and punchy, but only I suspect if you are sympathetic to the point of view presented.

Articles like this are fun, because they let you get Outraged!, but then when it's done, you have to remember the whole non-black-and-whiteness of the world type thing. It's like watching action movies.

An enjoyable quote:

And in Dover, Pennsylvania, during one of these many controversies, a pastor named Ray Mummert delivers the line that both ends our tour and,in every real sense, sums it up:

"We've been attacked," he says, "by the intelligent, educated segment of the culture."

And there it is.

From Esquire, I think, originally.

Karaoke Revolution Partaaay

2005-11-11T13:02:00.000-05:00

Well, it has been a busy week for Harmonix. In addition to the apparently excellent Guitar Hero, they've come out with the also pretty good Karaoke Revolution Party. As you may have heard, ihd went out and bought this the other day. It is pretty good.

There is nothing revolutionary about this, the 4th Karaoke Revolution. Rather, it's sort of a streamlined, polished roundup of the previous three games. All the menus have been redone and they are a lot cleaner and easier to navigate. Instead of playing that annoying song with the camera shutter noises, it plays a random song from the song list over the menus. This is more refreshing than you might expect. It's got an astounding 40-some songs to choose from, with a few returning from previous installments.

I think that the people at Harmonix finally realized that nobody sits at home by theirselves and plays Karaoke Revolution. Thus, they have removed the Arcade / Career mode. This mode was retarded, because in previous games, it was the only way to unlock new songs, etc. Now, there is a handy list available in game of what you have unlocked, what you have to do to unlock new things, and all that jazzy stuff.

There is much ado about the Dance Pad support. Basically now you can play DDR and Karaoke Revolution at the same time! This is a really crappy mode and is about as lame as you are probably imagining it to be.

The game also supports the EyeToy, which is where the fun comes in. First, there's "EyeToy Theatre," which is a venue in the game which basically just puts the output of the EyeToy on the TV screen. Now you are looking in the mirror while making a fool out of yourself. Also, your audience can see you, and you can see them, which is one of the main drawbacks of the normal game, since the singer is normally facing the TV screen to see the notes. So you know, that's cool.

But you can also map your own face onto a polygon body! There's some crappy 3rd party software that takes your picture, then builds a 3D model of your face. Then you can decorate your freakish horror movie character with things like cat suits, parachute pants, and, yes, tophats:

There's me. But you really don't get the magic of it until you see your little avatar "getting busy" at the beach party. I giggled in delight, I will say that much. It's amazing the difference it makes watching yourself being cheered by adoring fans versus watching that robot guy get cheered by adoring fans. It's emotional. Here's me dancing after earning a Platinum record on "Fame (I'm gonna live forever)."

Anyways, if you like Karaoke Revolution, this is a game to pick up. Even if you don't have a dance mat, it is still worth it, since you will prolly never use it anyways. The EyeToy... well it is an awesome addition, but the game is still extremely playable without it; it's a great gimmick, but it's still a gimmick.

It is heads and tails better than the previous editions, except for the lack of "Under Pressure." Don't worry though, it's got "Take on Me."

technorati tags: karaoke, review

Pinch Me

2005-11-10T22:54:00.000-05:00

Here is why my life is great. Come home from a long day at work, expecting an empty house and a dinner of poor man's tacos (tortillas with shredded cheddar cheese, not heated up), and what do I find but this:

That's right, instructions on how to heat up the leftover homeade French Onion Soup from last night, lovingly written down by my fabulous domestic partner, along with fresh made homeade crutons made from homeade bread. Just for me! Anyways, I was touched and pleased.

And to think, today I come home and she's got Karaoke Revolution Party waiting for me / us! Jeez, pinch me.

technorati tags: mushy, soup, gf, karaoke

Speak of the Devil, and the Devil Doth Show Up In a Giant Spaceship

2005-11-02T18:16:00.000-05:00

Latest off the skillet is Childhood's End, by the eminent Arthur C. Clarke (entertaining picture alert). As part of the spoils of the Friends of the Library Booksale, it began with the twin desirable qualities of being virtually free and having a campy 1970s SciFi cover, pictured below:

Additionally, this was a book that I had been wanting to read for some time, after stumbling upon it while reading Wikipedia, probably rooted from this article about "The End of History." That's a tiny little spoiler right there, and before we go any further, let me just warn you that many more will follow forthwith.

This book is pretty amazing. There's two kinds of SciFi in the world: one is Star Wars style, where a bunch of cowboys and Indians shoot lasers at each other In Space, and the other kind is this. It's about imagination, the future, and, yes, the human condition. This book makes you think, which, while cliche, is absolutely true - you will be thinking throughout the duration of this book.

The beginning is about this question: if you could have world peace, end world poverty, and world hunger, and make everyone happy, but it was all imposed at the point of a gun, would you take it? It's about the end of all sovereignty, the end of democracy, and the end of all say over your own government. But you and everyone else gets to be completely happy.

When the UN rules the world and the new "World Constitution" goes into effect, you're sympathizing with the resistance groups, but then you start to think - maybe everyone really is better off this way. The only negative aspect is one of principle; humanity isn't free du jure, but it is free de facto - and with all the problems of the world solved anyways, what is the point of principle? Clarke keeps you teetering right on the knife edge here; it's really difficult to decide who to root for. In the end, it doesn't really matter - the outcome is inevitable, when faced with The Overlords.

The second part is about a Utopia, and all the philosophical questions that are standard for the idea. Humanity is faced with a world where no one has to work unless they want to, where the average American watches (gasp!) three or more hours of TV a day (circa 1950, this was a big deal), and no one has really done much of anything in the realm of science, art, or just about anything else for quite some time. There just doesn't seem to be any point anymore. Again, you sit right on the edge of this section - you feel pity and envy for the people of this time. Life is wonderful, but they have nothing to live for.

I won't spoil the end, because it is fantastic and partially dependent on suspense, but it deals with the end of childhood (as you might guess from the title), for humanity. Much is gained and much is left behind and lost forever - again you are left wondering if it was all worth it, if it wouldn't have been better to stay the way it was... but, as with the rest of the book, the change is inevitable. You still can't help but feel a little sad, though.

If you're not interested in the thinking stuff or the mushy stuff, the core story is still probably enough to pull you through the whole book. Clarke keeps you going, gradually revealing secrets about The Overlords, their motives, their plans, and their nature. The characters are interesting enough and less stuffy than typical 50's SciFi people. Since humanity is still in "modern" times and all of the technology is alien and intentionally kept behind a veil, it doesn't suffer from the quaintness that a lot of old SciFi does.

Yes, that's right - this book has everything. It's a recognized classic of SciFi, and with good reason. The proselytizing blurb on the back of the book is spot on when it says:

In the literature of our time, CHILDHOOD'S END will surely stand as a landmark. And it is not any accident that it is science fiction. For science fiction, more than any other literary form, truly expresses the ambiance of the 20th century. The authors of [a bunch of scifi books], and many more brilliantly perceptive novel, write from an awareness and sensitivity that illuminate the human condition.

Okay, maybe that guy went a little overboard there, but seriously, read this book.

Thomas Jefferson Redux

2005-10-30T15:19:00.000-05:00

So I just finished The Sage of Monticello, which is Part 6 of Dumas Malone's Jefferson and His Times series (itself a six-parter). Now I don't know enough about biographies in general or about Jefferson biographies specifically to label the series as "definitive," but looking at the whole collection sitting there on the bookshelf in the excellent used bookstore in downtown Fredericksburg, it's easy to see that Mr. Malone put an inordinate amount of effort into the thing. If volume six is anything like the first five, it definitely shows. Also, the back of the book claims that it won the 1975 Pulitzer Prize in history, but they give those things out like candy, so that doesn't mean a whole lot. Seriously though, it takes up like half a shelf.

I started with the last one in the series after my experience with R.E. Lee in Lee: The Last Years by Charles Flood, which infused me with a perhaps unhealthy interest in what old men did with their "autumn years." As luck would have it, Jefferson spent most of his building a university, trying to get out of debt, and writing letters to John Adams, his onetime nemesis.

The book is really very excellent, but you probably will have to love Jefferson or history in general to be able to get through it enjoyably. The UVA parts get really old really fast, as they mostly deal with administrative mumbo-jumbo and the (suprise!) underfunded Virginia education system. These chapters though are easily identifiable and quite modular, so you can skip them and not miss much of the rest of the narrative.

Probably the most contraversial aspect of Jefferson, the fact that he championed the "eternal rights of man" and yet owned hundreds and hundreds of slaves, gets its own chapter, which contains a good quote by the man himself outlining his views. Strangely enough, he manages to come off rather well and nominally non-self-contradictory in the process. As with everyone who has ever lived, he was a victim of his times.

Also of note to Confederate sympathisers are several chapters dealing with Jefferson's rabid support of state's rights. Not these kinds of state's rights, but the kind where local governments have more power over their citizens than federal governments. An interesting idea on this subject was his advocation of splitting each county into 100 "wards," each of which would work on a direct democracy level and would have considerable say over their own affairs. It's an issue that is still relevant today, and Jefferson tells it like it is, even from hundreds of years in the past.

Of course, then there's the famous-ish Jefferson-Adams reconciliation letters, which are pretty interesting and revealing of both of their characters.

Malone is suprisingly even-handed with Jefferson, moreso than in the typical biography one might read. You can tell that he likes the guy (after all, he made him his life's-work), but he does a good job of showing both sides of his character. It makes it easier to understand why Jefferson was such a contraversial (and, yes, hated) figure in his day. You can't help but coming out of it loving him, though - he is endearing even in his faults.

I would give the book 5 out of 5 stars, with the caveat that you will probably only want to read it if you are interested in one or more of the following things: Jefferson, early american history, state's rights, the state of Virginia, UVA, or being a huge nerd. If, on the other hand, you are interested in any of those things, then this books should be a requirement.

Latest From Stafford County

2005-10-28T18:54:00.000-04:00

Living in Fredericksburg is awesome, because this is news. I feel like I live in the 1800s.

"Fly Her Apart Then!!!"

2005-10-27T22:24:00.000-04:00

My mind is blown. George Takei is gay.

Also, and I sort of already knew this, he was in a Japanese internment camp in the US during WW2. That's when we rounded up all the Japanese-Americans we could find and rolled them into concentration camps after Pearl Harbour. You know, just in case.

Sulu is one of the cooler characters in TOS. In The Undiscovered Country he gets his own ship (the Excelsior) which he uses to help out his old crewmates when they get into trouble with that dirty old Klingon guy who is basically Khan from the second movie with an eyepatch and some bumps on his head. Sulu and the Excelsior show up just in time (after speaking the titular line of this post) to take a few hits ("Let's give them something else to shoot at") while Kirk and the boys... well, I won't ruin it for you.

I always thought that he made an excellent captain. Anyways, good for you, man!

Friends Of The Library Booksale

2005-10-25T19:25:00.000-04:00

The Friends of the Library's booksale is pretty much my favorite time of the year. It's held at the Central Library, which is the one in this awesome old building on the river in downtown Fredericksburg. It serves all of these places, so it is reasonably big.

Anyways, they have this amazing thing called "box day," which is where they are trying to get rid of all the leftover books on the last day, so you pay either 5$ or 1$ (depending on the day) and you fill up a cardboard box with as many books as you can carry. It's like heaven.

The great thing about it is twofold: 1) all of the crazy-ass random books that get donated to a library booksale. You can find some really wierd stuff there if you look hard enough. 2), which builds off of 1, is that all of the books are basically free, and then you pay a 5$ cover charge to get in. This lets you pick up stuff that you would never spend money on otherwise, and sometimes those things end up being really cool. Like I picked up a Clive Cussler book that I already own because, get this: it is written in Norweigan, or something, I don't know.

Does this book have an unintentionally funny title? Maybe it has a funny looking man on the cover. Perhaps this book was written by a gentleman named "Manly Banister" (see below). Well guess what: it's free!

Last year I found this really neat book called Let The People Know. It was written by a British guy during WW2, as a sort of open letter to America, trying to convince it to join the war against Germany. It was a really interesting book and it gave a lot of insight into what people were thinking about back then, and also (a big part of the book was devoted to this) why we needed to form a better League of Nations (later to become the UN). Anyways, I never would have known it existed, let alone bought it, without the glorious box day.

So this year Maura and I went and we shared a box together, which was very romantic. Below is a list of my new books. Hers are not listed, but she probably got around 15 more. Long live Box Day!

PS: For some reason that I don't understand, my table is showing up way down the page, even though it is right under this text in the editor. Oh well, just scroll down a ways to find it. Table was generated by Booxter, by the way.

Title	Authors	ISBN
The physics and chemistry of life.	Popular Mechanics
Automatic control.	Popular Mechanics
Galactic Cluster	James Blish
Het Goud der Inka's	Clive Cussler	9044927132
The Dictionary of Cultural Literacy	E.D., Jr. Hirsch, Joseph F. Kett, James Trefil	0395437482
The Joy of Indoor Plants	Consumer Guide
The universe; from flat earth to quasar.	Isaac Asimov
Ogre, Ogre	Piers Anthony	0345335090
The Cat Who Walks Through Walls	Robert A. Heinlein	0425093328
Childhood's end.	Arthur Charles Clarke
Existentialism and human emotions	Jean Paul Sartre
The new astronomy.	Popular Mechanics
Crewel Lye (Magic of Xanth)	Piers Anthony	0345345991
Treasure	Clive Cussler	0671671138
First book of animals	Popular Mechanics
Travels in Arabia Deserta	Charles Montagu Doughty, Edy Legrand, T. E Lawrence, Irvin Silvers, Edward Garnett
The Peace-Makers	Curtis W. Casewit
War and Peace	Leo Tolstoy	0451516613
German for beginners	Curtis C. D Vail, Dieter Cunz, Ulrich Groenke
Conversational German: A Complete Course in Everyday German	Genevieve A. Martin, Crown, Kathy Mintz	0517557819
Atomic power.	Popular Mechanics
Conquest of earth.	Manly Miles Banister
Dune	Frank Herbert	0425080021
How-to-do-it encyclopedia.
Great Books Collection: Readings for Discussions	Thoreau, Plato, Sophocles, Thomas Jefferson
I, Claudius : from the autobiography of Tiberius Claudius, Emperor of the Romans, born 10 B.C., murdered and deified A.D. 54	Robert Graves	0140003185

Where Do You Go From Associate Justice of the The Supreme Court?

2005-10-21T22:25:00.000-04:00

The College of William and Mary in Virginia, of course.

Well this weekend is Homecoming for WM, so here is some WM news to celebrate. Apparently Sandra Day O'Connor is the new Chancellor of William and Mary, replacing crazy old Henry Kissinger. He was a bit, well, contraversial. Ahh the memories.

I don't think anyone ever accepted Kissinger as Chancellor, which is a position that no one is really sure what it is for, except to make speeches on Charter Day and to give WM something to brag about. The position has been filled with this list of ridiculously important people, especially for such a tiny little school. Thatcher was still the favorite when I graduated, where she gave a rousing speech that really got the crowd going, while Kissinger wasn't even given a speaking role. No one could really understand him anyways.

So I am happy to hear this news. Sandra Day has a special place in my heart, as I would always write her name down when I didn't know the answer in history classes. Maybe in some years we'll be honored enough to have her replacement to the SCOTUS as Chancellor. Then again... maybe not.

Bikes!

2005-10-17T21:38:00.000-04:00

Here's this. I wish I had known about this, I totally would have gone.

Fredericksburg is extremely crappy for riding bikes around. I guess because the actual city part is so small and most of the population (including me) is in suburbs, each one with a single outlet and connected by narrow little roads with no shoulders. I guess we are still too close to the time when all of this area was farms.

Anyways, it is my dream to be able to ride my bike to work in the morning (it is only 4 miles), but the only exit from my neighborhood is onto one of those aforementioned roads. It's crazy swervy and crazy hilly to the point of just being dangerous to ride on. So I am all in favor of these guy's idea, even though they don't really say what it is exactly.

Also why I will be voting YES for this guy, which happens to include improvements for that very road outside my house. Too bad I will be long gone by the time they get around to actually doing anything. Yay for more taxes!

Virginia Pwns!

2005-10-16T21:43:00.000-04:00

Enjoyable article in this month's Front Porch Fredericksburg, the free monthly newspaper for the Fredericksburg area. I know everyone out there already reads this cover to cover, so stop me if you've heard this one, but for those of you who couldn't find one this month (they tend to be rather elusive), here is the article.

In the paper version (which I have cut out and placed on my desk), there is a picture of the Virginia Flag.

It's about how Virginia is great (meatspeak for "pwn"), which is something everyone can agree with. We'll all have to please forgive the typos.

Sic Semper Tyrannis!

Hurricane... Shoot, I Dunno, "Vince"?

2005-10-11T19:57:00.000-04:00

Here's an article.

Hurricane Vince has the distinction of being the first tropical storm to hit Spain, ever in recorded history. Now that's pretty neat. Also, and just as important, as this article rightly points out, it is the first hurricane whose name starts with a 'V'! What a day!

Apparently there is only one name remaining on the list; hopefully we will be able to make it through the rest of the season. Cross your fingers, people.

Long Live The Confederacy!

2005-10-10T21:48:00.000-04:00

So I finished the book. It was meh. I don't know if this is really a spoiler or not, but the South wins (duh). It kind of had to, cuz there are like 10 other books in the series, and it wouldn't really be an alternate history if the North won (albeit 20 years later) and they (the USA) all became one happy family again.

But the book was alright. Kind of dry. The universe is pretty fun though, which leads me to the conumdrum of should I read the other books to find out what happens, or should I just read the wikipedia article?

Decisions, decisions...

...And By "Rise," What I Mean Is...

2005-09-30T23:21:00.000-04:00

So I'm reading this book, and you know, it's pretty good or whatever. Stonewall is kicking some butt, Abraham Lincoln is being a crazy Commie, and General Custer is having gross sex with a redheaded barmaid. Ahhhh whaaaaaa.

It's pretty much an adventure/war/historical fiction book, but every 100 pages or so, Harry (it is absolutely necessary to click on that link) launches into a two page sex scene featuring your favorite historical figures. So far, Mark Twain has had timid sex with his wife, the details of which are omitted here because they are totally grossout country. Then there's General Custer. Who's into some freaky S&M stuff, I tell you what. *Shudder*. Didn't really need to know that Custer takes pride in his markmanship with things other than his rifle (paraphrased).

We learn about the things you might touch or hold during intercourse, and the state of certain hidden spaces on the human anatomy. For instance, whether they are "damp" or not.

I'll never look at this picture the same way again.

All I can say is please God, not Lincoln.

No Need To Rise Again, South

2005-09-24T12:20:00.000-04:00

Amazon.com delivered today, with How Few Remain, by Harry Turtledove. ihd is convinced that that is a fake name, I don't know why. She also thinks Clive Cussler sounds fake, which of course is ridiculous.

How Few Remain is, according to the subtitle, about the second war between the states. Turtledove is supposedly the "master" of alternate histories, and this one is about how the CSA won the Civil War after winning the Battle of Antietam (bloodiest battle in the history of the USA). Apparently in real life, the Yanks found Lee's battle plans wrapped around a bundle of cigars, which allowed them to prepare themselves for the suprise invasion into Maryland. In the book, this doesn't happen.

This book should not be confused with Turtledove's other book about how the South won the Civil War (Guns of the South), where time travellers from aparteid South Africa travel back in time to give Lee AK-47s. I dunno, I haven't read that one either. That one is a standalone, while this one is supposed to be the first in a long series that goes all the way through the 1950's, with WWI and WWII in a world with the CSA.

Anyways, hopefully it will be good. We'll see. Also I got a bike helmet! It's blue.

The Postman Always Something Something

2005-09-22T19:25:00.000-04:00

So my mom sent me a letter, full of cutouts of newspaper articles, as is her wont.

Anyways, she didn't put enough postage on it (she had stuffed so many articles in there that I guess it weighed too much), so while I got the letter, I also got a bill from the postlady for 23 cents. Who ever heard of such a thing?

So two dimes and three pennies go in the mailbox. I guess it's like a collect call?

More FMA, More FF, More Nerdliness

2005-09-20T22:16:00.001-04:00

Whoa, I just watched the next 4 episodes of Full Metal Alchemist, and let me just say: intense. I am getting into this show I tell you what.

It kind of reminds me of Final Fantasy IV for some reason. Maybe it's the emotionally conflicted badass warrior with a dark past on a journey for redemption angle, or something. Still waiting for FuSoYa.

"In some areas, Phở King is a name of an actual restaurant."

2005-09-19T18:23:00.000-04:00

So iheartdorks and I decided to branch out a little bit this weekend and went to a Vietnamese resturaunt out here in Spotsylvania called "Pho Saigon." They've got two locations, one of which is only about a mile from the house, and the other of which is only about 1.5 miles from the house. They also have a sparkling review over at the Free-Lance Star, which may mean something, I don't really know. It certainly made me feel a little safer, although since resturaunt reviewers usually love food, and since I generally hate it, that probably wasn't a wise feeling.

Anyways, if you read that review, you'll learn all about the friendly waitress (the daughter of the owners, I believe). Reading the review though doesn't really do her justice, and as we walked into the place, we were greeted with a loud "HELLO! How's it going!" before I could even see past the jungle of plants in the little airlock vestibule thing.

Usually I am put off by overly friendly people, but this lady had a, dare I say, genuine-ness that made my suspicions that it was all just an act grumble quitely to themselves like an old man that no one listens to instead of barking like a chihuahua that no one listens to, but everyone hears anyways. She even made me try to pronounce Vietnamese words, which, under normal circumstances, would be a Fatality, right there in the lobby.

Anyways, I guess pho is a kind of traditional Vietnamese noodle soup. I got the chicken kind, and it was pretty much just chicken soup with rice noodles instead of rice or whatever. I dunno, I don't really eat chicken soup. But it was pretty good. They give you basil leaves, a bit of lime, and some "bean sprouts," which look like roots or something. I didn't eat those. ihd ordered some vegetarian thing, you'll have to ask her about it.

The great thing is a medium bowl of soup is like a whole meal. I mean these things are intimidating they are so big. The reason this is great is they cost only 5$. So it was a 20$ meal with two entrees, appetizers, and drinks. w00t.

Also, their menu has like 5,000 things on it. Actually, it has 136 things on it. That's entrees and appetizers. The dessert menu is seperate. It's kind of ridiculous. They use a lot of exclamation points and are evidently very excited about soup and rice dishes. So excited that they invented 136 of them. I'm not complaining.

Anyways, pretty good experience. Nice to know there is a great, friendly resturaunt in the suburban wilderness of Spotsylvania. (Also right next to the office!).

Advent Means Christmas Is Coming

2005-09-18T16:04:00.000-04:00

So I downloaded and watched Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children. For those of you who don't religiously follow the ins and outs of the Final Fantasy series - no, lifestyle, FF7AC is the movie sequel to the video game Final Fantasy VII, which itself was almost but not really the sequel to Final Fantasies 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6, and almost but not really the precursor to Final Fantasies 8, 9, 10, and 11 (all of these are here). Maybe more, not quite sure.

Each Final Fantasy game happens in its own universe and holds in common with its bretheren only incidental, but dogmatically adhered to, details. For instance, [most] every game has some guy named Cid in it. This tradition was broken recently with the appearence of Final Fantasy X-2, which was the sequel to Final Fantasy X, and which featured a J-Pop girl band as the main characters.

Adding to the wrinkles is the first Final Fantasy movie, called Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within. Intoxicated by the forbidden beauty of their full motion videos, and perhaps wishing to thumb their noses at the reviewers who dismissed the more recent games as dressed up movies (too many cutscenes), Squaresoft founded their own motion picture studio in Hawaii, with the idea of becoming I guess the Pixar for adults. Or the Pixar for teenage boys who wish they were adults.

So they came out with FFtSW. It was widely regarded as a piece of crap, despite the presence of Alec Baldwin as the male lead and the unprecedented number of individual hairs rendered on the female lead's head (this was a major selling point of the movie at the time). The motion picture part of Squaresoft went bankrupt soon after, but not before making one of the Animatrix shorts, called Final Flight of the Osiris, which was pretty good, and was helpful in understanding the two Matrix sequels (which still didn't make much sense regardless).

So that's the background. I'm here to tell you that FF7AC is what FFtSW was supposed to be. It's what I and every other Final Fantasy fan was drooling over when FFtSW was first announced. In a fun coincidence, it's also what the Matrix sequels were supposed to be. It's what (not I) and every other Matrix fan was drooling over when the sequels were first announced. This movie is awesome. It also happens to make little to no sense. It is still awesome.

The action in this movie is absolutely breathtaking. The characters all seem to have Neo-like powers when fighting, but it's done right, where they can't just fly around wherever they want or explode things by looking at them. You still get a sense that this is a real battle happening, maybe because everybody else can dodge bullets too. There are crazy motorcycle chases, there are crazy gunfights, there are crazy swordfights. People will be jumping through the air, running up the sides of buildings, flipping motorcycles around and throwing them at each other, and just generally defying the laws of physics... and the whole time you will be thinking: this is great.

The story is thin. I'm not sure who translated (the movie was subtitled) this version, but it is pretty rough, so I could be wrong. You don't really need to know what happened in the game (they give you a quick synopsis), but it would probably help. Frankly, when I played the game, I had pretty much no idea what was happening back then either. If you're interested though, here is a plot synopsis, which explains everything that happens, and, if you are feeling really interested, here is the game script. But again, not really necessary, as the movie doesn't really revolve around anything except killing the crazy guys. The best solution is probably to read about it on wikipedia.

All things considered, this movie is definitely worth watching. It's pretty much a 1 hour, 30 minute long cutscene, but really, that's exactly what it should be. And what it should have been the first time. But Tycho (as usual) said it best:

This film contains scenes that may be totally fucking awesome. Your favorite characters may be rendered in extreme detail as they take part in mind-blowing battles set in familiar locales. Futuristic scabbard/motorcycles might be depicted in a way that makes them appear sweet.

I'm looking forward to the US release so I can buy it, and I'm really looking forward to some more sequels... maybe to Final Fantasy VIII? Please?

Alchemy, Alchemy and More Alchemy

2005-09-05T17:02:00.000-04:00

Lots of Alchemy going around lately. For those of you who don't know, and who can perform analogies, alchemy is to chemistry as astrology is to astromomy. Or, to pick a more timely comparison, as intelligent design is to evolution, or as Miss Cleo is to the Weather Channel. That sort of thing.

Apparently alchemey used to be all the rage, back in the 1700's and before that unto the mists of time. The most well known part of it was the quest to turn lead into gold. Harry Potter is familiar with this, what with the Philosopher's [Sorcerer's] Stone. Anyways, it used to be a very respectible pursuit, with none other than Isaac Newton devoting quite a bit of time to it - according to a random internet source, more time than he spent sitting under apple trees and revolutionizing physics. In fact, he was probably thinking about alchemy while sitting under the apple tree.

Which brings us to a book called Newton's Cannon, by J. Gregory Keyes. I read this at the beach after stumbling across it reading Wikipedia about alternate histories. It's about What If Newton discovered Alchemy and turned it into a science. It features Louis XIV, The Sun King, who has taken an immortality potion, waging war against England. Both sides use all kinds of crazy Alchemy weapons, like a gun that shoots lightning bolts, and cannons that make water (including the stuff inside your body) boil, etc. etc. And, just for kicks, a 14 year old Benjamin Franklin, who becomes sort of an action hero / scientist part.

Ben Franklin was a famous lady's man in Paris (seriously)

The book is alright; it's part of a long series, but I don't know if I'll be reading the other ones. The alchemy in it, which really is the main selling point, unless you like French Royal Court intruiges, sort of stumbles, as it either takes the form of mundane things like Alchemy-powered light bulbs or telegraphs, or the form of just outright magic. The bad guys, for instance, are kind of like ghost body snatcher clouds of mist things.

The problem with the first kind is that although light bulbs would probably be amazing to Benjamin Franklin, they arent really that amazing to, well, me. Maybe they are powered by Alchemy or whatever, but in the end, they're just light bulbs. The problem with the second kind is: why not just write a ghost story? Or a fantasy book? The book I think tries to be a steampunk type thing, but it turns out to be a book about magic.

That said, it's sort of fun. You get to see Ben Franklin have sex with a prostitute in London, and you get to see Isaac Newton play a Doc Brown from Back to the Future part. And since ***SPOILERS*** the world kind of gets exploded at the end, maybe the later books in the series will focus more on cool stuff instead of what's happening at Versailles. ***SPOILERS OVER***

The other bit of Alchemy I've been seeing lately is the Ross-recommended Full Metal Alchemist. This is an Adult Swim anime about (again) a world where Alchemy works. It's got a couple of brothers (one of whom is a suit of armor and the other of whom has a metal arm and leg) who travel the world looking for the Philosopher's Stone. It is pretty excellent and switches between cutesy anime and kind of shocking.

Anyway, the alchemy in this show is more magicy than that in Newton's Cannon. You basically draw little Wicca circles on the ground and then you can do crazy stuff like turn water to ice, or create spears out of thin air, that sort of thing. They keep reminding you that "alchemy is a science," but so far the show could be completely identical if they just called it magic.

Which isn't to say it is bad. While Newton's Cannon spends a lot of time going into "scientific" explanations of how things work, but then just makes it magic anyways, Full Metal Alchemist just lets it go, and it's a lot easier to engage your willful suspension of disbelief drives as a result. There's a good amount of action, and some nice touching scenes between the brothers, who have bitten off a little more than they can chew in the world, and are trying to set things right again.

So in the end, I'd give the book a C+, with the reservation that the later books in the series are likely to be very different and (we would hope) better. The show gets an A; it's a whole lot of fun.

The reason any of this is interesting to me at all is that I've always been fascinated by failed scientific theories. Something about the fact that there was a time when there was a real contraversy about how fire worked, or about how light worked is just really interesting to me. So those two links are some fun reading, and of course there's the old Obsolete scientific theory page to keep you busy. Enjoy!

You Will Go To The Moon

2005-09-02T22:53:00.000-04:00

This is cool. NASA today released a gigantic (27 megs for the full-res) panoramic view from the Mars Rover Spirit. Apparently it has been climbing this foothill over there (on Mars) for the past few months and it has finally made it to the top. I think they said it is about the height of the Statue of Liberty, which is pretty good for a little go-cart the size of a cat.

Anyways, the picture is kind of breathtaking, for me anyways. This is another planet and here we have pictures of it like somebody went there on vacation. Course, I get goosebumps when I see Apollo pictures from the Moon. It's just awesome (as in, full of awe) to see these places out in space, on another planet, and they are just like Earth. Or, in this case, Arizona (which is a wonderful place, don't get me wrong). People argue about what the benefits of the space program are, but for me - it's worth it for its own sake. I think in another life I would have been an explorer. Unfortunately, we're at a time in history when everything within reach is already explored, unless you have billions of dollars. Oh well.

Here's a QT movie of the shot, sort of neat to watch. If you go here, and click on "view top 10 images" over there on the right, you can see some really neat stuff. I would call it "beautiful," but it's a bunch of rocks, and I don't want to sound too sentimental. Of course, here's the one I've been blabbing on about.

It's also worthy of note that these two rovers are now on day 591 of their 90 day mission. So we can remember them next time NASA forgets to convert meters into feet. They're making it up with these guys.

Garfunkel Lives!

2005-08-31T20:31:00.000-04:00

It's nice of ol' Art to keep reminding us that he is still plugging away.

Singer Art Garfunkel, who pleaded guilty last year to pot possession in upstate New York, was charged again Sunday after a marijuana cigarette was allegedly found in the ashtray of his car, state police said.

What I want to know is: do they even make cars anymore with ashtrays?

Finders Keepers!

2005-08-31T18:43:00.000-04:00

How do you know if it counts as looting or not? Easy!

Heh.

Yeah, Copernicus Was Alright, But Have You Heard Of Anaximander?

2005-08-30T19:12:00.000-04:00

Yeah, that's right: 20% of adult americans think the Sun revolves around the Earth. This article, courtesy of boingboing, is pretty nutsy. It's about this guy who does science surveys and all the sorts of depressing things people don't know about science. I suppose it doesn't really matter to most people what molecules are, or that there's something called "DNA" that affects "heredity" (more than 2/3 of Americans). So I guess, you know, go about your business, people. It's just kind of shocking.

But, and the article makes this point too, these people get to vote! And they get to vote on issues like "should we allow stem cell research." If you don't know what a molecule is, or what DNA is, how the plup are you going to know what a stem cell is or whether it is good or bad? Saints preserve us.

Forgive me, this is ranting - yes, I do believe in "democracy"; I'm not trying to be elitist, I guess I just wish the education system in this country could at least pass out a card that says "the Earth (here) revolves around the Sun (shiny flying thing)," maybe at graduation or something. Print it on the back of the diploma, I dunno. Either that or we're going to have to really start thinking about Plato's Republic again. Get us some philosopher kings up in "he-ah."

This article is also good, about how Creationism - ahem, Intelligent Design - sux0rz. Apparently it is by a "philosopher," which you don't see too much of these days. Very refreshing.

Copernicus Is Not Amused.

Anaximander, for those of you who didn't take Pre-Socratic Philosophy in college (I can't imagine why not), had this to say about the whole contraversy (kindly paraphrased by wikipedia):

Out of the vague and limitless body there sprung a central mass — this earth of ours, cylindrical in shape, poised equidistant from surrounding orbs of fire, which had originally clung to it like the bark round a tree, until their continuity was severed, and they parted into several wheel-shaped and fire-filled bubbles of air.

Sounds about right. Of course, he had an excuse - he was born in 610 BC.

My Computer Used To Be Named "TJ"

2005-08-28T22:29:00.000-04:00

This past weekend, the lady and I took a trip to that most Holy Of Shrines, the Jefferson Memorial. Enclosed are some pictures.

As you may or may not know, I have an unabashed love affair with Jefferson, or as I like to call him, "The Sage of Monticello." (Not really). He and Robert E. Lee are probably my two favorite dead people in the world. They are certainly the only two people who lived lives so sweet and buttery that I literally cried while reading their biographies.

But I had never been to the Jefferson Memorial before, mainly because there is a giant stinking cesspool of water in between it and the rest of the monument collection in DC. Little did I know that some industrious fellow had invented bridges, and then had the good sense to put one across the tidal basin (as I understand it is called). So the lady and I took a trip, and she took lots of pictures of me grinning stupidly in front of ol' TJ.

Before TJ, we went to Teddy Roosevelt Island. Now I have never been a big fan of Teddy, but mostly because that time period is kind of boring for me, and also because I feel like if I had met him in real life, he would beat me up. But Maura took this picture because "it sounds like something you would say." I dunno.

On the thrilling approach. My heart is in my mouth, and if you look closely, you can see where I have wet myself, just a little bit in anticipation and out of respect.

The Statue.

A little bust in the basement. The basement museum is actually pretty nice, although the gift shop kind of sucks. They have all kind of biographies about how Jefferson owned and had sex with SLAVES. I wonder if they have books like those about George Washington in his monument?

In conclusion, I got goosebumps, but I didnt cry. A+.