Aunt Lowey's Fair and Balanced Handy-Dandy Blog

2003-08-14T03:18:00.000-04:00

Fair and balanced. Well, someone has to be. It sure as heck ain't that "news" network that claims to have trademarked that phrase... And worse, they claim Franken isn't funny. Guess why the book is called Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them? Of course, Faux isn't really lying, not from their POV -- they just don't get the joke. What they refuse to 'fess up to is that the reason why they don't get the joke is that they are the joke.

This flap almost outdoes the California recall election for shallowness and meanspiritedness. Almost.

UPDATE: Yahoo! News and AP report that there are 135 candidates in the California recall/gubernatorial race. The good news is that "nearly half of the 247 applicants were eliminated for filing improper paperwork." The bad news is that there are really 136 candidates counting the guy who's already in there, who was elected last November, and whose term supposedly runs another 3 and a half years. OK, maybe Davis is not a great governor, but part of what he's taking the rap for is Not His Fault, namely the economy. Most if not all of the other 49 states are also having shortfalls. Let's give credit where it's due. Unfortunately we can't recall Dubya.

2003-07-06T03:12:00.000-04:00

In the year 2000:

According to this article that ran in Popular Mechanics the year I was born (actually, the month I was conceived!) within the next fifty years:

-- Electricity is mostly generated by solar power.
-- Average suburban houses are made mostly of concrete, metal and plastic, cost about $5000, and last only about 25 years. They may have pools of water on the roof to help keep the house cool. Housewives use hoses to clean indoors, including furniture and any laundry that's not meant to be disposable.
-- Trans-Atlantic travel is apparently mostly by atomic-powered ocean liners. Rocketships also carry passengers across in about 3 hours, or between New York and San Francisco in about 2 hours, but they are expensive. "Corporation presidents, bankers, ambassadors and rich people in a hurry use the 1000-mile-an-hour rocket planes and think nothing of paying a fare of $5000 between Chicago and Paris." Note that this is the same price as a house.
-- Not only do modern electronic "calculators" forecast the weather, they enable scientists to do something about it -- by spreading oil on the ocean to quell hurricanes.
-- "... sawdust and wood pulp are converted into sugary foods. Discarded paper table 'linen' and rayon underwear are bought by chemical factories to be converted into candy."
-- "Nobody has yet circumnavigated the moon in a rocket space ship, but the idea is not laughed down."
-- "If old Mrs. Underwood, who lives around the corner ... and who was born in 1920 insists on sleeping under an old-fashioned comforter instead of an aerogel blanket of glass puffed with air so that it is as light as thistledown she must expect people to talk about her 'queerness.'"

Actually, there were some things the article got right. Fax machines, for example. Home shopping channels on TV. Microwave ovens. Teleconferencing. And some that were partly right: "Tuberculosis in all of its forms is cured as easily as pneumonia was cured at mid-century.... Wrinkles, sagging cheeks, leathery skins are curiosities or signs of neglect. The span of life has been lengthened to 85.... such virus diseases as influenza, the common cold, poliomyelitis and a dozen others are cured with ease." Computers run machinery at work and predict the weather.

Oil spills don't count, since they aren't on purpose (at least I don't think they are, but I'm naive sometimes) and don't seem to do much to prevent storms.

The idea that computers would do so little, compared to how we actually use them, makes me giggle. What really amused me though is the failure to predict social changes. These are obviously much less predictable than the scientific stuff. The husband goes to work, the wife stays home -- to hose the laundry down, melt the dirty dishes (soluble plastic), order groceries, etc., via the television, and pop the "synthetic" dinner in the microwave, but that's still a full day for her, apparently. And this seems to be a family with no kids. In 1950, already several years into the baby boom, that seems unrealistic to me right there!

Last but perhaps not least: I refuse to comment on "queerness." Changes in the language may be the most unpredictable of all!

2003-06-06T15:38:00.000-04:00

God Bless Senator Byrd and the State He Rode In From!

Once again our Senior Senator from the great (and need I mention beautiful) State of West Virginia takes on Dubya and his gang, this time on the WMDs or lack of same:

"What amazes me is that the president himself is not clamoring for an investigation," Byrd said from the floor of the Senate.

"It is his truthfulness that is being questioned. It is his integrity that is on the line," the West Virginia Democrat said.

"Yet he has raised no question, expressed no curiosity, about the strange turn of events in Iraq -- expressed no anger at the possibility that he might have been misled."

(The spacing comes from the news feed, not from me, nor probably from Sen. Byrd.)

And if you missed it, there was a lovely article about him in Time a couple of weeks ago, which I highly recommend.

I admit when I first moved here, I wasn't sure about him, and didn't vote for him at least once. Not that I voted for the R, mind you (and that's assuming there was one. They don't always bother running someone against him); I just skipped that category altogether once or twice. But he's done a lot of good for the state, so I have voted for him the last time or two that he was on the ballot, even when there wasn't an R running against him. (I think last time there was a Libertarian but no Republican candidate. I didn't vote for the L either.)

And I'm glad I did. Lately I'm very glad and very proud that I did!

I also want to note that every time I've called Senator Byrd's office, or e-mailed him, I got a letter -- an actual snail-mail letter -- in reply, just as if I'd bothered to sit down with pen and paper! That courtesy has always impressed me.

2003-06-06T15:04:00.000-04:00

FCC actually gets one right! Film at eleven!

An appeals court decision agrees with the FCC that cell-phone users should have the right to keep their phone numbers if they switch carriers. The plaintiff: Verizon.

I like my cell-phone plan right now (AT&T prepaid; I don't use it a lot) and am not planning to switch anytime soon, but this is good to know. The "portability" regulation does not go into effect until Labor Day, for any of you who might decide to take advantage of it.

2003-06-03T15:51:00.000-04:00

He's not in Ohio?!?!?

More weirdness from Yahoo!News and AP
Reputed Columbus Remains in Spain Exhumed
By CIARAN GILES, Associated Press Writer

MADRID, Spain - A chest containing the supposed remains of Christopher Columbus was exhumed Monday for DNA and other tests to determine whether the bones are really those of the famed explorer.

[There's also an AP Photo of the tomb in Seville with the "medal [sic] box" that may or may not contain Chris' mortal remains.]

The test aims to settle a long debate over where Colombus is buried: in Spain's Seville Cathedral or in a sprawling monument in the Dominican Republic's capital, Santo Domingo.

In the presence of two descendants of Columbus — Jaime and Anunicada Colon de Carvajal — researchers removed two boxes from an ornate tomb at the cathedral in the southern city of Seville. One box is believed to hold the explorer's bones; the other is known to hold those of his son Hernando.

Another box, thought to contain the bones of Colombus' brother Diego, was exhumed close to Seville. All three were taken across southern Spain, with a police escort, to the University of Granada.

"This is possibly the first time the three ever traveled together," joked Marcial Castro, the researcher who launched the project.

In Granada, experts will conduct an array of tests — including DNA analysis — to find out if the two sets of remains in question are related to those of Hernando, whose identity is certain.

Castro says he believes the true bones are in Santo Domingo but adds, "No historian in the world has conclusive proof of where Columbus is buried. That's what we're trying to find out."

{again, I snipped some more of the article}

Maybe, once they figure it out, they can move CC, or at least some of his relatives, to the capital of Ohio, already conveniently named for them.

2003-06-03T14:24:00.000-04:00

More strangeness from Somerset County:

From Associated Press via Yahoo!News:

Tons of Booze Dumped on Farm
Mon Jun 2,12:19 AM ET
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=817&e=11&u=/ap/dumped_booze

MEYERSDALE, Pa. - State environmental officials are considering levying fines and other penalties against whoever dumped more than 145,000 cases of stagnant rum at a western Pennsylvania farm.

Thousands of cases of discontinued Captain Morgan Gold was found piled on a farm in Elk Lick Township, about 70 miles southeast of Pittsburgh near the Maryland border.

"This was a significant mess," Stan Whitsel, a state Department of Environmental Protection supervisor, told The Tribune-Democrat of Johnstown in Sunday's editions. "It was a bad situation just waiting to get worse."

(I snipped the rest; they did clean it up!)

I'm wondering what sort of weird karma Somerset County has and how it got it. First there was Flight 93, then the Quecreek miners, now this! (Well, and my parents eloping there, but that's a long time ago.) Somerset County is really a very nice and very beautiful place. You'd just never know it from the news.

2003-05-19T02:37:00.000-04:00

Molly Ivins' column on the Texas Legislature's latest weirdness,Putting the Legislature out of our misery, contains this quote which illustrates, even more than the embarrassment to Pennsylvania that is Rick Santorum, the level of -- I was going to say "thinking", but that's definitely not what's happening; I guess "ideology" will have to suffice, especially since "ideo-" bears a resemblance to "idiot" -- that seems to pass for "logic" in the Republican party these days.

This piece of something that can't possibly have involved sentience comes from Debbie Riddle, a state legislator from Houston: "Where did this idea come from that everybody deserves free education, free medical care, free whatever? It comes from Moscow, from Russia. It comes straight out of the pit of hell."

To start with, Debbie apparently flunked American history. Free education has been around since colonial times, at least in some places (the Boston Latin School opened in 1635, and gave rise to such well-known Communists as Benjamin Franklin), and became widespread in the 1800s, when Russia still had Tsars and serfdom.

Debbie's no whiz at geography either. Last time I heard, hell was supposed to be hot, a description that does not fit Moscow, but does fit Texas to a T. It certainly was hotter'n hell the times I've been to Texas, where, by the way, my cousins, nieces, and nephews all went to public schools.

In fact, that kangaroo in Austria probably had a better grasp on reality than Debbie, Rick, and some of their fellow Rs seem to. It just didn't know how to duck cars.

2003-05-15T02:31:00.000-04:00

Proof that kangaroos can't spell (and aren't too good at geography either):

Kangaroo Dies in Hit-and-Run in Austria

Yes, Austria. Not that bigger place with an "ali" in it.

"A police officer in Steyr," a town described as "100 miles west of Vienna", "said that coming across a kangaroo - dead or alive - was 'extremely uncommon around here.'" I would think.

2003-05-11T00:37:00.000-04:00

Yahoo! News - Two Asteroids Collided, Showered Earth with Debris

Note the past tense.

"In ancient marine sediments across a large swath of southern Sweden, researchers found sand-sized grains of the mineral chromite that are low in iron, a sign of extraterrestrial origin. The stuff appears to have fell [sic] from the sky about 480 million years ago."

So you can relax: it wasn't recently! And unlike some other asteroid strikes of note, this one does not seem to be related to any mass extinctions.

2003-05-09T15:31:00.000-04:00

Ranger 2, Yogi 0

Remember how Mr. Ranger always told Yogi Bear to stick to nuts and berries instead of pickle-nick baskets? He was smarter than your average cartoon bear!

This article from Weight Watchers may have a slightly overstated title ("8 super foods your body will thank you for eating") but it contains useful information.

The eight foods are:

Nuts. ... "they’re chock full of the antioxidant vitamin E, artery-unclogging monounsaturated fats and lots of other phytochemicals."

Chile peppers ... "Capsaicin, the substance that gives chiles their heat, acts as a disease-preventing phytochemical"

Tomatoes and tomato products. ... may help prevent prostate and breast cancer.

Berries.

Leafy greens

Quinoa. "Pronounced KEEN-wah, this nutty-tasting food is . . . 'the only grain considered to be a complete protein'" (I don't think I've ever heard of it!)

Yogurt.

And as previously blogged,

Tea!

2003-05-04T02:11:00.000-04:00

I think I may have seen the Bad Human Factors Designs site before, but it was ages ago -- OK, in Internet time that means maybe 2 or three years -- long before I started blogging.
(From Library Juice

2003-05-02T00:34:00.000-04:00

Springsteen to play PNC Park. Last December he played at the Mellon Arena, which leads the Post-Gazette to conjecture that the current tour is "a tour of venues named for banks"!

One thing about Bruce, you can always count on a fantastic night, which sadly is not always true for Pirates (PNC Park) or Penguins (Mellon Arena) games. Especially if you're a Pirates or Penguins fan. (The Bucs have a worse record at home than on the road so far this season.)

When hasn't been announced yet. Unless it conflicts with Torcon, though, I think I'll be planning to go. For various reasons I missed the December show, and I hate missing Bruce!

2003-05-01T01:49:00.000-04:00

This is almost science-fictional -- after almost three months, they've found survivors from Columbia. OK, not humans, nor even vertebrates, but it's something positive for once.

Lab worms survived shuttle crash

"Hundreds found alive amid shuttle debris."

"The worms are from a species known as Caenorhabditis elegans, primitive organisms that share many biological characteristics of humans. ... C. elegans have two sexes: males and hermaphrodites, which are females that produce sperm. A hermaphrodite worm can self-fertilize for the first 300 or so eggs but later usually prefers to accept sperm from males to produce a larger number of offspring."

(I suppose after 300 or so babies, you'd want a little variety in your sex life!)

Also found among the debris was some moss "known as Ceratodon, [that] was used to study how gravity affects cell organization. During Columbia’s flight, shuttle commander Rick Husband sprayed the moss with a chemical that destroyed protein fiber. He also sprayed the moss with formaldehyde to preserve it."

More excerpts:
"Technicians sorting through the debris at Kennedy Space Center in Florida didn’t open the containers of worms and dead moss cells until this week.
. . . Columbia contained almost 60 scientific investigations.
'To my knowledge, these are the only live experiments that have been located and identified,' said Bruce Buckingham, a NASA spokesman at the Kennedy Space Center.
"The worms and moss were in the same 9-pound (4-kilogram) locker located in the middeck of the space shuttle. The worms were placed in six canisters, each holding eight petri dishes.
"The worms, which are about the size of the tip of a pencil, were part of an experiment testing a new synthetic nutrient solution. The worms, which have a life cycle of between seven and 10 days, were four or five generations removed from the original worms placed on Columbia in January. . .
"NASA officials said they don’t know if the worms will still have any scientific value, since they were supposed to have been examined and unloaded from Columbia within hours of landing.
“'It’s pretty astonishing to get the possibility of data after all that has happened,' Sack said. 'We never expected it. We expected a molten mass.'”

2003-05-01T00:31:00.000-04:00

May Day! May Day!

Happy May 1st, Feast of St. Joseph the Worker, Beltane, Labo(u)r Day/International Working Class Holiday (not here, of course), or whatever . . . and the flowers are gorgeous! Even the dandelions are beautiful.

The lilacs are out weeks early. I'm not sure that's wise of them -- we've been known to get snow in May; the last frost is often around Mother's Day -- but they're beautiful, and smell so wonderful!

2003-04-22T15:31:00.000-04:00

This may be why, when I'm not feeling well, I drink a lot of tea. Scientists in Boston have isolated a chemical -- L-theanine -- that boosts the immune system fivefold against disease! L-theanine breaks down in the liver to become ethylamine, which in turn "primes the response" of gamma-delta T cells.

"We know from other studies that these gamma-delta T cells in the blood are the first line of defense against many types of bacteria, viral, fungal and parasitic infections," says Dr. Jack F. Bukowski of Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston and Harvard Medical School . "They even have some anti-tumor activity." The article also says "that five cups of tea a day sharpened the body's defenses against disease."

Just in time for iced tea season too!

While on the subject of things in your food, the U.S. Department of Agriculture ("We're from the government and we're here to help you. No, really.") has released a new database that you can download onto your own computer or PDA that contains data on all sorts of nutrients. If you don't want to download it all, some of the information is here in forms that you can search, or print out (some of them are in PDF format). Already I've printed out from this page some info on potassium and selenium for coworkers who need to add those minerals to their diets. And this one (also in PDF) lists flavonoids in various foods, including tea.

2003-04-21T01:03:00.000-04:00

"A real YES man" --an ESPN columnist suggests a new job suited to the former Iraqi information minister's skills. (Thanks to Avram.)

2003-04-19T02:55:00.000-04:00

Hilarious and educational: Peep Research. In which colorful marshmallow candies learn how to use the library . . and how not to! At least I bet they were quiet: not a peep out of them.

2003-04-18T02:58:00.000-04:00

A man staring at empty display cases. A security guard, with nothing to look out for but those empty glass boxes.
A stack of eleven books, lonely in a nearly empty room. Eleven. The photo implies they're about all that's left in the whole library. I have more than that checked out of our library!
Photos of ancient, priceless works of art, now missing.
The museum's deputy director, his head in his hands in grief. It was one of "the 10 most important museums in the world. . .to Mesopotamian art what the Louvre is to Western painting. "

". . . the books and manuscripts that were burned . . . Among them were extensive antique manuscripts that are not available in print, and thousands of illuminated and handwritten Qurans, now in ashes."

And what were our troops doing? "the U.S. military successfully assigned men to chip away a disrespectful mural of former President George Bush on the floor of the Al Rashid Hotel." ("History major" -- he gives us a bad name! -- Dubya would rather protect the legacy of his daddy than the legacy of our civilization. Can Yale retroactively change his grades to F's?)

And a short (9 pictures), sad slideshow .

Raiders of the Lost Art - Why didn't we protect the National Museum and Library in Baghdad? By Meghan O'Rourke

As I said over in Teresa's blog, Seshat. wept.

2003-04-14T03:07:00.000-04:00

There actually exists a review of this-here blog, from The Talking Dog, who on April 9 was reviewing blogs linked to by The Hillbilly Sophisticate. The Dog says,

Aunt Lowey's Handy Dandy Blog is a proud product of blogging West Virginia, although presumably the part near Pittsburgh, as Aunt Lowey is a big fan of that city's teams. Miscellaneous thoughts, links, rants and cool stuff is the tagline, and Aunt Lowey disappoints not. Come on down for some down home country blogging. The blogroll leans left, and leans FUNNY.
TD Designation: Azawakh

Azawakh -- I looked it up on Google, where else? -- is a breed of dog in the Sahel or Sub-Saharan region of Africa, such as Mali.

Thanks for the review, TD! Yes, I live near Pittsburgh -- about 35 miles due west of the Point. I actually used to live closer; I grew up in the eastern suburbs and went to college and graduate school at Pitt. (This sometimes puts me in an odd situation living in Mountaineer country.) Note, for example, that I say "yinz" rather than y'all for the humorous-regionalism plural of "you". The Northern Panhandle is north -- or, one can make a case, technically west -- of the Mason-Dixon line. And yes, my politics tend to lean toward the left of the bird (where the heart is). Most importantly, I do have a tendency to go for humor when I can. If I ever remove the Fred Rogers (another Pittsburgher!) quote I'm currently using under the tagline, I may replace it with Jimmy Buffett's "If we couldn't laugh we would all go insane." Or maybe the Boss' "Someday we'll look back on this and it will all seem funny."

As far as I know, The Hillbilly Sophisticate -- who is trying to list all bloggers from the Mountain State -- and The Talking Dog are the only blogs linking to this one so far. Welcome!

2003-04-11T01:48:00.000-04:00

Despite chemistry being the family bugaboo -- long story which I won't post here at this time -- it seems to me that these two sites ought to be mentioned together:
This animated "music video" of Tom Lehrer's song about the elements (tune borrowed from Gilbert and Sullivan) -- thanks to Vicki at YAWL for pointing out that one -- and Michael Swanwick's Periodical Table of Science Fiction. I think I've mentioned the latter before. He's up to Actinium now, number 89, a pastiche of G&S's contemporary Sherlock Holmes.

2003-04-08T03:42:00.000-04:00

Food, glorious food! My friend Robin posted this"fresh sound in music". And since food requires drink, and music goes well with it too, there's this beer suggested by Mary Lou, with a very cute label. The beer is from Hurricane, W.Va., but I haven't seen it in the stores up here in the Panhandle.

2003-04-04T12:12:00.000-05:00

Don't know what god(s) you worship, but even if it's just under generic values like mercy and courage, may any and all gods that exist bless this guy and his wife! If they can't go back home, I'm sure they'll be welcome in Wirt County.

2003-04-04T12:09:00.000-05:00

Undefeated, and it feels so good! (Apologies though to my friend Debra who's a Reds fan.) The Pirates swept them three games in their spiffy new ballpark. The Bucs are going all the way, or to Philadelphia (who they play this weekend), whichever comes first.

2003-04-03T00:40:00.000-05:00

Shouldn't they have thought this out before they started the [expletive deleted] war? If we blow the peace (may it come soon), then the whole thing will really have been for naught! (Via The Agonist, which I recommend to people trying to keep up with all the war news and rumors, and which in turn I found out about from Electrolite.)

2003-04-03T00:30:00.000-05:00

Pittsburgh Magazine's April issue has a really lovely set of articles in memory of Fred Rogers, who spent most of his working life there at WQED (which publishes Pittsburgh magazine). The pictures are wonderful too -- some from tapings of the show, some of him and his family, mostly at their summer home on Nantucket (beautiful beach pictures, but only one is on the web site).

2003-04-02T23:42:00.000-05:00

"The sports team from my area is superior to the sports team from your area." No brag, just fact. OK, maybe not the baseball team . .. or the hockey team . . . and the b-ball team got knocked out of the Sweet 16 . . . and the football team hasn't won a Super Bowl in 20 years . . . But they're my teams, darn it! And the slogan is real, and on a T-shirt available from The Onion. I'd be tempted to get one except the colors are wrong. If it's not black and gold, or at least blue and gold, who would know which team(s) I meant?

Then again, the Pirates are still undefeated!

2003-04-01T22:38:00.000-05:00

Woo-Hoo! She's safe! Jessica Lynch, the 19-year-old from Wirt County, W.Va.. who has been "missing in action" for over a week, has been rescued!
The Hillbilly Sophisticate (who is from Wirt County originally, though she now lives in M'town if I read her postings correctly) has lots more on this because it literally hits closer to home for her. And you don't have to be from the Mountain State to be happy at this news. But it helps!

2003-03-31T19:45:00.000-05:00

Enjoy it while it lasts: the Pirates are undefeated! They beat Cincinnati in the season opener, 10 to 1. Beat 'em Bucs!

2003-03-12T01:13:00.000-05:00

This apology has been going around, supposedly from Rick Mercer of the CBC-TV (Canadian public television) comedy program, This Hour Has 22 Minutes. Although I didn't find it on the CBC or THH22M websites when I went to look, and the fourth comment says Mercer didn't write it, I still accept the apology. Well, except about the beer, eh? Since Labatt's bought Rolling Rock it's not a distinction with a real difference anymore.
Oh well, yinz get Rolling Rock, we get Mario Lemieux. 33 for 66. Fair trade!

An update: In the letters section of Altercation for March 13 (scroll down), Tim Renneberg from Prince George, British Columbia notes that

"T’was not Rick Mercer who penned and delivered the little “passive-aggressive” apology, but rather Colin Mochrie, whom your readers no doubt saw regularly on “Whose Line is it Anyway?” I have to point this out because, as brilliantly funny as Rick Mercer was/is, he hasn’t been on This Hour for more than a year.

I'm a fan of Colin M's from Whose Line(both the UK and US versions) so I am glad for this information.

Another update: here is a clip of Colin M. reading this apology, which seems to be proof that it is indeed his. It's 2 and a half minutes in Real Video format so you probably need RealPlayer to see it.

2003-03-11T23:09:00.000-05:00

Avedon Carol has come up with the perfect solution to the current crisis. Too bad it won't ever happen. It should, but it won't. (OK, Universe, I dare you -- prove me wrong! Please!)

2003-03-11T22:51:00.000-05:00

Depressing: a software company called Sybase is plugging a program to help customers comply with the odious and misnamed USA PATRIOT Act. "Intraday and historical transactions, new and existing account holders, employees and agents can be automatically screened against suspect lists. . . . All information related to each case is readily accessible by appropriate personnel. . . . Officials can be automatically notified of suspected matches." George Orwell, we are here. Nineteen years late, but here.

2003-03-11T22:07:00.000-05:00

Smithsonian Magazine's Steve Wilson is having fun with the spate of children's books by famous authors, by "discovering" children's books by famous historical personages. Examples include Girls Are From Isis, Boys Are From Ra, by Cleopatra; Paulette's Adventure Among the Rabble, by Marie Antoinette; and The Voices and I Have a Grand Day Out, by Joan of Arc.

My favorite is Why Daddy Had Mommy Beheaded, by Henry VIII:

. . . Young Princess Jennifer wakes up one day to find Mommy gone. Neither handmaiden nor castle guard can tell Jennifer where her mother went, so she asks Daddy, the king. Gently, Daddy tells Jennifer that Mommy went to the Kingdom of Uxoricide with a friend and won’t be coming back. He says Jennifer is getting a new mommy very soon, and a brother!—that is, if the new mommy knows what’s good for her. . . .

And parts of The Rainy Day Fun Manifesto, by Karl Marx, sound amusing. For example I can visualize the suggested skit "The Proletariat and the Bourgeoisie Discuss Public Ownership of Property" as performed by Michael Palin and John Cleese.

2003-03-11T03:09:00.000-05:00

I meant to post some stuff last night but instead spent almost two hours playing Bookworm. I did get a high score, though, over 120,000, and the rank of "senior librarian." Who knew? (Warning: it is very slow to load up, especially on a phone-line connection.)

More fun stuff: Doo-wop fans should like this one.

Or, if the world is getting too loony for you, try making your own aluminum-foil hat. This site explains, among other things, why the shiny side should be out, good and bad fashion sense for aluminum-hat wearers, and hats for dogs and babies too! (No cats?)

Speaking of loony, Jupiter now has 52 moons! That's 40 more than it did back when I was in school! Not that it's lunar inflation -- that was 40 years ago, give or take a few depending on which level of school.

And the 2003 class of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame has been inducted. They include the Clash (too bad Joe Strummer couldn't have been there), the Police, AC/DC, Elvis Costello and the Attractions, and -- last but certainly not least -- the Righteous Brothers. Not loony, they're all excellent choices, except why in heck did it take so long for the Righteous Brothers to get voted in?!?!?!

2003-03-05T23:16:00.000-05:00

And while I'm alliterating on "p", this is appalling: a man was arrested because he was wearing a pro-peace t-shirt! Of course, this travesty has provoked protests, but those mall cops ought to be fired. And the local (real) police didn't do much better by the First Amendment either! Wearing a t-shirt just purchased at the mall, while in said mall's food court, constitutes trespassing ("knowingly enter(ed) or remain(ed) unlawfully upon premises")? What unusual and rude things to do! (For once, I suppose I should be glad that our mall doesn't have a food court.) And they may regret it -- the guy was not only a lawyer but a state official, "the director of the Albany Office of the [New York] state Commission on Judicial Conduct, which investigates complaints of misconduct against judges and can admonish, censure or remove judges found to have engaged in misconduct." So I bet he knows a few good constitutional lawyers.

UPDATE: The mall wised up and dropped the charges. And the security guard who was apparently responsible for the arrest has been fired. Though he may just be taking the fall for the mall as a whole:
Stephen Downs, the (formerly-) arrested man, "says there was no justification to fire Williams [the guard], who was professional and polite."

2003-03-05T22:47:00.000-05:00

Plugging Patrick's post on palindromes, including what is perhaps the world's longest pure palindrome, i.e. one with no proper nouns. There's also an extremely long but by those lights impure one, literally dripping with name-dropping, apparently the longest impure palindrome yet perpetrated. As for me, I live in a palindrome, but a much smaller one -- 26062, our ZIP code. And yes, I like alliteration a lot.

2003-03-04T13:26:00.000-05:00

Before the day is over I have to mention this.

Many many many moons ago, when we were little, my sisters and I subscribed to a magazine called Children's Digest. In its jokes section once was this riddle:

Q: What day of the year is a military command?

A: March fourth!

2003-03-04T03:17:00.000-05:00

I'm behind in my blogging. But I wanted to note a couple of things.

There's good news on the cancer front -- now there's a war worth fighting! I've lost too many people near and dear to me from cancer -- yesterday was the anniversary of my mom's death. And my dad (whose birthday is next week), and my aunts, and many friends . . . and just last week Mr. Rogers (who didn't smoke, didn't drink, was a vegetarian who exercised daily, and a saint besides -- Fred Rogers should have lived forever!). So it's good to note that "Researchers have identified a gene that promotes the spread of cancer cells through the body, offering a possible new avenue toward cancer treatment." It's metastasis that tends to be the real killer -- the cancer spreading to vital organs like the lungs and liver -- and makes it hard to stop by surgery or radiation. Maybe Death can extend his holiday a while longer!

2003-02-27T02:24:00.000-05:00

Best news I've heard in awhile: Death Takes a Holiday. No, it's not a Terry Pratchett book. It's a real news story -- a company that runs funeral parlors and cemeteries had "cut its earnings estimate for the year, partly because, to put it bluntly, not enough people are dying." Gee, coulda fooled me!

2003-02-27T01:35:00.000-05:00

There was a book, and later movie, IIRC, about submarines, that was called "Run Silent, Run Deep". That seems an appropriate title for this tale of the fate of Pioneer 10, the little satellite that could. It keeps going and going . . . but, unfortunately, it's going silently from now on, no longer able to send messages home.
NASA says they've lost contact with Pioneer. Last they heard from it was January 22nd.

It was launched March 2, 1972, when I was a senior in college, and is the first human-made object to leave the solar system, having gone beyond the orbit of Pluto in 1983. Now it's more than 7 billion miles away, headed toward Aldebaran, the big red star that appears in our sky as the eye of Taurus the Bull. Not that it's going to get there soon -- Aldebaran is 68 light-years away, and NASA says it will take Pioneer 10 about 2 million years to get there! Seven billion miles is a drop in the bucket in comparison, but the little ship's "radioisotope" power source is apparently wearing out, the last signal was very weak, and a scheduled contact February 7 didn't work, so NASA is not planning to try to contact it again.

The following excerpts from the story at Space.com seem like fitting farewells:

"Pioneer 10 was a pioneer in the true sense of the word. After it passed Mars on its long journey into deep space, it was venturing into places where nothing built by humanity had ever gone before," said Dr. Colleen Hartman, director of NASA's Solar System Exploration Division, NASA Headquarters, Washington. "It ranks among the most historic as well as the most scientifically rich exploration missions ever undertaken," she said.

"Originally designed for a 21-month mission, Pioneer 10 lasted more than 30 years. It was a workhorse that far exceeded its warranty, and I guess you could say we got our money's worth," said Pioneer 10 Project Manager, Dr. Larry Lasher.

2003-02-27T00:42:00.000-05:00

This is from Wednesday's Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

It's more proof, I suppose, of why they call it "dope". And it takes place in the same township where I grew up!

[excerpt from story begins here}

A raid at one of the shops, Heads-N-Threads in North Huntingdon, led to additional arrests -- some of the easiest township police have ever made, according to Chief Charles Henaghan.

"While we were there, we kind of got an added bonus," he said. "Customers were coming in to purchase the illegal items."

To do that, they had to walk past two marked police cars outside the shop on U.S. Route 30.

Inside, federal, state and local officers in uniforms were searching for paraphernalia.

One woman walked up to a U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agent who was wearing a marked shirt, pointed to a pot pipe and told him that she wanted to buy a pipe "just like that." The pipe was in a bag marked "evidence."

Some of the shoppers arrived carrying drugs or paraphernalia. Township police confiscated an unknown amount of suspected heroin and marijuana, plus several pot pipes and cash.

"It was almost hard to believe," Henaghan said. "I don't know how to characterize it -- as naivete or stupidity or whatever -- to walk into a store when you have uniformed officers standing there and try to buy something illegal from them. I really don't know what it says about our society."

The customers made no effort to hide contraband they had when they walked in.

"One individual had the bag of marijuana sticking out of his back pocket," Henaghan said.

Another had a large bag of marijuana in his clothing, along with several packets of heroin and more than $1,700 in cash. Others were carrying pot pipes. Police also confiscated a pizza box filled with marijuana.

{end of excerpt}

Gee, if this store is where I think it is, there used to be a really good pizza place near there. But the only green stuff on their pizza was oregano.

2003-02-24T12:13:00.000-05:00

If it's Monday it must be snowing! This time they're only predicting 1-3 inches, or 2-4 depending on which station you listen to. It wasn't bad coming to work, though; I think there was only about an inch in my driveway.

Only 4 and a half days left of February, and I think I will be glad to see March blow in.

2003-02-23T04:37:00.000-05:00

Why I am, or am not, a handy-dandy aunt: I've finally added the picture of my great-niece Jordan to my website. I thought I could also upload the little video-clip of my great-nephew Jericho (his mom and Jordan's mom are sisters to each other), but it didn't work. Aaaaugh! Meanwhile I also added a link from my homepage to this blog.

2003-02-22T23:18:00.000-05:00

Also, now I've decided to play with colors. At http://perso.univ-rennes1.fr/daniel.martin/html/color/RGB2colors2.html is a good page on blue and gray colors, or "bleus, gris et cyans" (it's French). The main page is called "Codes hexadécimaux de couleurs RGB (Html)" There are also pages for other parts of the spectrum. The color names themselves are mostly in English, though, and in color, so even if you don't know French you can probably use it.

2003-02-22T22:51:00.000-05:00

Now that I'm in a good mood, I'll post a couple of humor links.

"ICQ Log Study Shows Americans Have 'Ungood Grammer'" puts the blame squarely where it belongs -- on AOL and "instant messaging":

"Its really scarey how bad these Americans communicate with themself's," said Hunter Echo of SGG during an ICQ interview. "'How r u?' roughly translate means 'How our you?' How difficult is it to type out the entire word porperly. We don't put the balm entirley on Americans, we think AOL (creater of the software) is responsible for installing a grammer UNchecker which purposefully distorts the persons' grammer. All american's can't be that stuipid? Kan they?"

And the other day Vicki mentioned this column by Jon Carroll on the great President whose birthday we celebrated last week, Washington Lincoln. Or something like that. . . .
(Also, while you're at Jon's, do check out his pages on mondegreens.)

2003-02-22T21:35:00.000-05:00

Another post with no meaning whatsoever except to post something: There, let's see if that fixes the comments thing.

This just in! -- it works! Somebody send me a comment!!!!!

2003-02-21T09:47:00.000-05:00

LISNews has an article on librarian pickup lines, one on how libraries handle the Sports Illustrated swimwear issue, and one on Jeb Bush's contempt for librarians and for Florida's history.

Best line: "guys who wouldn't know a Dewey decimal from a Mountain Dew are after the SI swimsuit models and their barely covered, um, reference sections."

2003-02-21T09:43:00.000-05:00

"Funky Lasagna" would be a good name for a band, actually.

So would "Boomerang Nebula".

2003-02-20T17:45:00.000-05:00

Photo fun:

1./ This picture is:

(a) a neon bow tie
(b) an hourglass
(c) from a new opening for "Days of Our Lives"
(d) a wineglass on a mirror
(e) long ago and far away

2./ This one is:
(a) funky lasagna
(b) something that was overpriced before it went on sale
(c) something people that got snowed in at Boskone wished they had
(d) something I wouldn't mind knitting if I had time
(e) something I wouldn't mind knitting in blue (see photo 1 for color) instead of that weird grape color
(f) something I wouldn't mind knitting if my fingers didn't cramp up when I knit

2003-02-19T01:40:00.000-05:00

This was funny, except of course that there really are people like that. Scroll all the way down to the bottom, for the bumper-stickers too. I'd even be tempted to get one except that I still have my Gore/Lieberman sticker from 2000 on the car. (And my other alternative to that would be the running-gag line from some of Lois McMaster Bujold's books, "I didn't vote for him.") The Gore sticker is next to my Pittsburgh Pirates sticker. My guys, losers or not. And Al isn't, of course.

Meanwhile, this is somewhat related.

Baseball and anti-war protests. Hmm. I'm having flashbacks here to the march in October, 1969, which I attended accompanied not only by some of my friends and several thousand other people (and this was just in Pittsburgh), but by my transistor radio, which I was seldom without in those days. That day I was listening to the World Series -- the Mets were winning.

Then too, there was the game I attended with my sister and my best friend the night after I finished graduate school, in August, 1974. Cincinnati vs. Pittsburgh at Three Rivers. All the way to the park we were discussing the speech Pres. Nixon was to give that night. "He'll never resign," I kept saying. "Being President is the only thing he's ever wanted." And again, I had my transistor along to listen. Guess who was wrong that time? :-)

Yes, baseball and peace are a good combination.

2003-02-19T01:22:00.000-05:00

Updates:

First the weather: It stopped snowing! Yay! Then I shoveled the driveway and front steps -- what front steps? You couldn't even see them, the snow had piled and drifted and covered them completely. If it hadn't been for the corners of the retaining wall I'd never have found them! -- and sure enough about the time I got to the top of the steps it started to snow again. (boo!) Only another inch or so, though. .But then it stopped again and seems to be staying stopped. I think the total here at my house for the whole storm was 12 inches, maybe a bit less. I'm going by what I shoveled and by the snow gauge in my backyard, which I can see from my kitchen window.

The library was open but wasn't busy, which was probably just as well: a few of the staff were still unable to come in because their roads weren't plowed, and the director was out all morning helping the janitor shovel the sidewalks and steps. The schools, of course, were closed.

In fact it was warmish today (temp. above freezing, if only slightly) with more warm weather to follow. And rain in the forecast, too, in a couple of days from now, which should melt some of the snow, and probably cause flooding in some of the low areas (river and creek valleys, or "hollows" as they're often called around here), so it's not an unmixed blessing.

Second, Yariv from backBlog e-mailed me a change in the coding to try so I can get the comments up. I haven't tried it yet (tired from snow shoveling, among other things; really, my shoulder's still aching, and I'm hoping to go to bed earlier than usual tonight), but I intend to try it soon.

2003-02-17T01:07:00.000-05:00

The Pittsburgh weather people are real encouraging, she said, dripping sarcasm. They're comparing this snow to the ones in 1950 and 1993, which are the worst in the region's history, about 30 inches each time.

They are also important events in my family's history. The Big Snow of 1950 fell over Thanksgiving weekend, when my mom and I were still in the hospital after I was born, and Dad was snowed in at work for several days. Mom and I spent the next week or two with my aunt and uncle who then lived in Homewood. I don't remember it, of course, but Mom and Aunt Ruth and some of my other older relatives would always tell me about it, so it almost seems like I do. They're almost all dead now, so the memories of them telling me about it are what's really important.

The Blizzard of 1993 happened on Dad's birthday. My sisters and I, the ones of us who live in the Pittsburgh area, were going to have a party for him, with cake and a roasted turkey and all kinds of good stuff, but the snow prevented that. At least he was at my sister's when it snowed (the party was going to be at her house) so he had company and food and we didn't have to worry about him. We had the party a bit late, the next weekend, when the roads were cleared.

These are significant events in my family history. I wonder what will happen this time. At least I hope there's less snow!

2003-02-17T00:50:00.000-05:00

A technical note: I've moved some things around in the template, including eliminating the "tables" on the bottom and right side; most of those links, including the buttons, are in the "Other blogs and links" table now. Once I "publish" this note I can see how it looks.

2003-02-17T00:17:00.000-05:00

I give up, and am e-mailing backBlog to see if they can help me sort this out. There are some other problems too, possibly results of my clumsy attempts to "tweak" the coding for backBlog in order to get my comments feature up and running. I know little HTML and less Java, and may have screwed things up more than I've helped them. In fact the buttons for Blogger and backBlog now seem to have vanished! I've re-entered the coding for them, and hope they'll come back. "Come back, Blogger! Come back!"

At least the counter works, and looks nice. And not all those numbers are my own log-ins. Someone is out there! Hi! (waving)

2003-02-16T23:28:00.000-05:00

It's snowing. And snowing and snowing and . . . we've got quite a bit so far; when it's all over tomorrow we should have close to a foot. Some parts of the country -- heck, some parts of the area, not far south or east of here -- already have more.

2003-02-16T02:32:00.000-05:00

let's tweak again (like we did last summer?) -- Name that tune!

2003-02-16T02:25:00.000-05:00

Oh, good. The button worked. I'm glad something did.

2003-02-16T02:24:00.000-05:00

And a button for backBlog too. Not that it's good advertising for them yet, since I can't get the comments to actually work! There's a ')> in there that doesn't belong somehow, even though I don't see in the coding what the problem is, where those punctuation marks are extraneous.

2003-02-16T02:13:00.000-05:00

I've added a counter so I can tell if anyone else but me is checking in to read my deathless prose :-) and the coding for a comments feature, from a company called BackBlog, but so far when I click on the appropriate part of the post ("Please click here to comment") all I get is a "The page cannot be found" message. Oh well, it's a start for 2 a.m. on a Saturday night/Sunday morning.

If it doesn't work tomorrow and I can't figure out the problem I'll e-mail them. They seem to be in Israel where it's early morning now -- they're what? seven or eight hours ahead of us -- but it's bedtime here in Wild & Wonderful W.Va.

2003-02-14T10:20:00.000-05:00

From LISNews: This cartoon by Doug Marlette about Jeb Bush vs. the Florida State Library.

2003-02-13T15:32:00.000-05:00

True Yahoo!News headline: Bush Tells Troops They Ready if War Comes

Hey, Yahoo! headline writer: You semiliterate, war or no.

2003-02-12T20:19:00.000-05:00

Pam Gotcher from the Bujold list reports on her new toy, a Segway Human transporter, on MSNBC! She's one of only thirty people in the U.S. who owns one of the things. She lives in Florida, and loves it. They do look like fun. Personally, though, I'm not at all sure how they would do in hilly -- and snowy -- West Virginia!

2003-02-12T01:47:00.000-05:00

Update to the note about World War I veterans -- I looked at the Excel files at the VA website and it said there were 610 veterans of WWI. (This was apparently as of 2001.) There were however 1245 veterans over 100 years old! (Are these people who were in the service shortly before or maybe just after the Great War? There are apparently no Spanish-American War vets left; they'd have to be about 120 years old if there were.) The Excel files also had breakdowns for how many veterans there are in each "age cohort" or for each war or between-wars period by state. West Virginia had 4 WWI vets, compared to 23 for Ohio and 28 for Pennsylvania. (When you live in the Northern Panhandle, which is only about five miles wide here, you tend to think in terms of three states, not one like normal people. :-) ) California had 70 and Florida had 59, while Alaska had none, and Vermont, North Dakota and Delaware had one each.

This of course is only counting U.S. veterans. A quick Google search on First World War veterans brought up several links for appropriate agencies in the UK and Canada, and I suppose other countries have them as well, but I wasn't that curious. Call me Americentric, or whatever the word is, but just having an idea of how many U.S. vets there are in that group was enough to satisfy my wondering.

2003-02-12T01:18:00.000-05:00

The Oldest Light in the Universe

Neat picture from NASA's Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe, aka WMAP, which is out at the L2 Lagrange point.. Among other things, this "baby picture of the Universe" -- which apparently represents the background microwave radiation from about 380,000 years after the big bang -- seems to fix the age of said Universe "at 13.7 billion years, with a remarkably small one percent margin of error." Of course 1 percent of nearly 14 billion is still a long time! Puts the baby pictures of my great-nephews in a different perspective. (I have one of my great-niece -- their second cousin -- that I scanned today and need to put online soon, too.)

2003-02-11T02:09:00.000-05:00

GAO drops Cheney energy probe

Excerpt from the article:

GENERAL ACCOUNTING OFFICE chief David Walker said the watchdog agency will not appeal a Dec. 9 court ruling in favor of the Bush White House, which refuses to reveal which industry executives and lobbyists Cheney and his aides met with in the early months of the administration.
“GAO strongly believes the district court’s decision is incorrect,” said Walker, the GAO’s comptroller general.
But “further pursuit of the ... information would require investment of significant time and resources over several years,” Walker said. Several private organizations are pursuing the same information in separate court cases, he noted.
U.S. District Judge John Bates, a Bush appointee, had said the GAO’s lawsuit seeking to find out whom Cheney and his aides met with from the business sector was an unprecedented act that raised serious separation-of-powers issues.

(end of excerpt)

GAO, you see, is an agency created and run by Congress (like the Library of Congress and the Government Printing Office), not by the President.

I guess no one told Judge Bates in law school, or even in high-school civics class, that the separation of powers is the main principle of the Constitution! The Congress is supposed to be a check on the President, and vice-versa.

Good luck to the "private organizations" that are still on the case!

2003-02-11T01:35:00.000-05:00

This Yahoo! News story, "Veteran, 106, Honored by France for WWI Service" makes me wonder just how many combat veterans -- or even regular veterans -- of the "war to end all wars" are still with us? Can't be many. Even the youngest ones -- the ones who were only 14 but lied about their age to get in -- would be 100 now. My grandpa, who was in the Army during the war but never got overseas, would've been about this man's age.

I was unable to find statistics on this though. The Dept. of Veterans Affairs has some Demographic Tables, but I can't read them here; they're in Excel. And they're only in 5-year groups, with projections for future years up to 2030. Won't be any WWI vets by then, I reckon.

2003-02-11T01:17:00.000-05:00

This looks interesting: a live camera view of New York City from one of the Circle Line ships. The site also includes some previously-taken pix of the city and links to other NYC live cams.

OK, at one in the morning the Circle Line cam isn't much (showed the dock) but I bet it's interesting during the day. Meanwhile there's always the Times Square cam!

2003-02-09T05:02:00.000-05:00

The Hillbilly Sophisticate, another blogger from West Virginia, wonders what our state quarter will look like.
I hope it will include the outline of the state, which is distinctive, being very irregular, especially for a state without a seacoast, and not at all like, say, Colorado or Wyoming.

2003-02-09T01:46:00.000-05:00

So that's where they come from!

2003-02-09T01:43:00.000-05:00

There seem to be an awful -- and "awful" is a good term for some of 'em -- lot of these personality tests online lately. But here are two good ones:
Which Poetry Form Are You?
and
Which Greek Goddess Are You?

Unlike some tests, you can get multiple answers from these, so I am a sonnet and blank verse -- I have actually been known to commit both, too! -- and Athena and Hestia.

2003-02-09T01:10:00.000-05:00

Everybody's gettin' into the act!
Dave Barry has a blog now too.
Today's entry is inspired by his visit "to a Secret Undisclosed Location that I will refer to by the Code Name 'Fisney Forld.'"

Dave, that's what you get for (a) having kids and (b) living in Florida.

2003-02-07T00:48:00.000-05:00

Sky and Telescope magazine has a nifty new Interactive Sky Chart feature on their website. This can be personalized to any location and time, and shows the constellations and planets that would be visible in each part of the sky at any hour if you have good seeing conditions. (Which we don't tonight; it's snowing.) This includes daylight hours when the only astronomical objects visible would be the Sun, Moon (depending on phase), and maybe Venus.

I thought it was fun.

Related, perhaps, is this Wired article: "Astronomy: Hobby or Money Pit?"

2003-02-06T23:43:00.000-05:00

Speaking of music questions, one of our patrons wanted a listing of music companies. We thought she meant recording or production companies or music publishers or some such, but what she really wanted, it turns out, was record stores. So Pat looked up "retail record stores" on Google.

The second listing on the results page said:

Retail Record Stores

Below are retail options: Mail Order: Flex Records Phone: 802.862.9055 Fax: 802.865.0301.

Retail Stores: To locate a retail record store near you, email us.

www.musicambassador.com/retail.html - 2k - Cached - Similar pages

But when you click on that, guess what it says!
"We are strictly a wholesale business, we do not sell retail. Below are retail options:" (Italics mine.) The rest of the page is in the Google listing.

2003-02-06T23:32:00.000-05:00

"Query by Humming" is a technology currently being developed by the Fraunhofer Institut, who also invented the MP3 format. They've demonstrated the program at trade shows, including one this week in Cannes, France, but it's not available commercially yet. According to the Wired.com article, it "identifies a song by title and composer based on a person humming a few bars into a microphone." Meanwhile, other companies are working on similar programs.

Musically untalented as I am, I liked this part: "The software displays the recording's structure, identifying the notes by pitch as high and low notes, alerting the tone-deaf to where their melody fell apart."

The fine folks from Fraunhofer "believe the product would interest music retailers, but mainly they see it as a tool for musicians." But they're missing another prime audience: reference librarians. (Patron comes in, or calls on the phone, and asks, "Do you know what this song is?" and hums it.) Probably DJs with call-in request lines, too; I bet they get the same sort of questions.

2003-02-06T03:03:00.000-05:00

Michael Swanwick's Periodic Table of Science Fiction is up to number 80, Hg. That's mercury -- the element, not the planet or the god. But the story is about the planet.

Last summer I was using a line from number 40, Zirconium, as a .sig file: "Real baseball is played on a diamond. Virtual baseball is played on a zirconium."

Pitchers (and catchers; why do people forget the catchers?) report to spring training next week. Spring is on its way, no matter what the (expletive deleted) groundhog said!

2003-02-06T02:36:00.000-05:00

Notes on a trip to Wal*Mart

All I really needed was a thingy of roll-on deodorant, but I wandered around the store with a shopping cart and bought a few other things, including a DVD. Which is weird when you consider that I don't have a DVD player yet! But it's one of my all-time favorite movies (Local Hero), including one of my all-time favorite soundtracks, and it was only $5 and I was afraid that I might not find it when I finally do break down and buy a DVD player, so I bought it anyhow.

And when I went to the checkout counter, I owed them $17.41, so I started fishing around in my wallet for the change. A quarter -- yep -- a dime -- yep -- a penny -- yep, lots of pennies! -- and a nickel -- well, maybe. It was a Canadian nickel, with the Queen on it instead of Tom Jefferson. And the cashier wouldn't take it. I think that's the first time I've ever run across a human cashier who turned down a Canadian coin. (Vending machines are of course designed to recognize the difference. Pop machines and newspaper machines don't save the Queen, they spit her back out. Patriotic robots!) I didn't have any more nickels from either side of the border. But I did have lots more pennies, so that's what I gave her. My six cents worth.

Some people think pennies are useless.

Maybe I should save my Canadian money for Torcon. A whole nickel! (Well, it's a start.)

2003-02-05T12:39:00.000-05:00

Those of you whose libraries use the Library of Congress Classification can skip this, but Middletown Thrall Library -- yes, that's their real name! (they're in Middletown, NY, in the Catskills) -- has a neat site for learning about the Dewey Decimal Classification. It includes a game, "Do the Dewey", a bio of ol' Melvil D., and a guide to DDC. "Dewlearn" it!

Thanks to Blake at LISNews for this.

2003-02-05T03:44:00.000-05:00

This just in . . . spam from Middle Earth!
(a takeoff on the Nigerian spam plague)

2003-02-05T02:01:00.000-05:00

Monkey see, monkey do?

This was posted to a list I'm on.

2003-02-05T01:54:00.000-05:00

Columbia Crew Was of 7 Different Faiths
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/scitech/DailyNews/shuttle_faiths030204.html

Kalpana Chawla - Hindu

William McCool - Roman Catholic

Ilan Ramon - Jewish

Rick Husband - Charismatic

Laurel Clark - Unitarian

David Brown - Episcopalian

Michael Anderson - Baptist

"This is just the way America is right now. Seek the best and the brightest, and you'll invariably scoop up a great assortment of faiths."

Amen.

Also this: "'If I'd been born in space I would desire to visit the beautiful Earth more than I ever yearned to visit space. It's a wonderful planet,' wrote Capt. David Brown to his parents in the last e-mail they'd receive from him. "

May God, whatever He, She, It, or They turn(s) out to be, bless them all, and all who mourn them, even those of us who did not know them in this life.

2003-02-05T01:40:00.000-05:00

Over at Teresa Nielsen Hayden's blog Making Light http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/ is a discussion of possible patron saints for the Internet, computer users, editors, writers, librarians and other such wordy occupations. Don't forget to check out the comments section!

2003-02-04T13:41:00.001-05:00

One of the hats I wear at work is Government Documents Librarian, and one of my favorite Government Documents has always been Spinoff, NASA's annual publication about the good stuff that space technology does in the down-to-earth everyday life of people.

Examples of some of these space-age technologies are listed at http://www.sti.nasa.gov/tto/apollo.htm for the Apollo program and http://www.sti.nasa.gov/tto/shuttle.htm for the Space Shuttle.

If you live in the U.S. of A, you can order a free copyof Spinoff at http://www.sti.nasa.gov/tto/spin_order_form.html
. If you want a back issue it's $13 and if you live outside the U.S. it's $16. But back issues are also online in .pdf format at http://www.sti.nasa.gov/tto/

2003-02-04T13:41:00.000-05:00

Oooh, cool. I've got the linking thing figured out!

2003-02-04T02:49:00.000-05:00

Scientists Uncover How Brain Perceives Color
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20030129/sc_nm/science_color_dc_2
". . .researchers at the University of Texas-Houston Medical School have shown how modules of cells called "thin stripes" in a particular region of the brain are arranged and perceive colors.
"This finding provides the first physiological basis for the perception of the full gamut of color," said Daniel Felleman, a professor of neurobiology and anatomy."

I hadn't realized that so much of this is still not understood.

Another website at http://www.cs.brown.edu/research/graphics/research/illus.old/spectrum/home.html (which Yahoo linked to) is about how the brain perceives light. "Colored light arrives at the eye, and somehow gets to the brain," -- I think the UT-H study above is trying to solve that "somehow" bit -- "and extensive research shows that the brain perceives the color of the light in a 3-dimensional way -- that is to say, there are three independent components to the brain's perception of color. This matches physiological evidence that there are three types of color-receptor cells in the eye."
Nice graphic of the color spectrum too.

2003-02-04T02:35:00.000-05:00

This http://www.defectiveyeti.com/archives/000562.html was posted to a list I'm on. I've sometimes wanted to do this!

Then again, I've sometimes wanted to do it to our local newspaper.

2003-02-04T02:31:00.000-05:00

Welcome.

This is my first post, mostly just for practice and testing. I'll insert real stuff later.