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| Saturday, November 21st, 2009 | | 10:06 pm |
Is There a Hyphen in Anal Compulsive?
( Mad Tea Party ... By the Numbers )What we need is a fresh perspective. Help me out, LJ-Land — just take this simple poll: Poll #1488742 Just How Obsessive-Compulsive Are You, Bud?
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: Friends, participants: 0 Does Measuring My Tea Water Make Me Anal[-]Compulsive? Current Mood: mathematicalCurrent Music: "I'm A Little Tea Pot" (traditional) | | Wednesday, November 18th, 2009 | | 2:01 pm |
| | Sunday, November 8th, 2009 | | 8:50 pm |
Good Joke Feeds? (Use the Net, Luke!)
For reasons too complicated to explain right now, I need a source of good jokes — you know, the kind that admins used to FAX to each other before the invention of the Internet ... the kind of stuff that circulated as a kind of non-profit spam after the invention of email. I suppose some kind of RSS feed would be fine, but I'm hoping to find one that comes recommended rather than just picking one at random. I need to cheer up an old friend who finds these jokes amusing — she's hip, but easily bored, and would rather receive a filtered selection from me (the filtering is synonymous with caring) rather than just strike out onto the Net herself. Naughty, off-color, salacious are all fine — beneath her professional exterior is a savvy girl who's forgotten more about "naughty" than most people ever know — but witty is preferable to crude. She's a doctor and a shrink, and while not a computer geek, her kids are in the trade. All suggestions appreciated! | | Thursday, November 5th, 2009 | | 6:53 pm |
Grumpy Old Man
That's not how we invented the wheel when I was your age. Current Music: "Kids These Days" (Tom Rush) | | Thursday, October 22nd, 2009 | | 10:41 am |
Writer's Block: War and peace
As a conscientious objector during the Vietnam War, I would absolutely oppose this policy and would support anyone refusing to comply on the basis on conscience. The current recruitment system certainly exploits the appalling socioeconomic inequalities that exist in our society — and the solution to that is to correct the socioeconomic inequalities. Mandatory military service is a form of slavery. Current Mood: adamentCurrent Music: "Alice's Restaurant" (Arlo Guthrie) | | Tuesday, October 20th, 2009 | | 11:54 am |
Happy Birthday, ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) aknitwit! Looks like you have a lovely day for celebration! If I haven't said this before, I'm awfully glad you and your guy are local! Current Mood: celebratoryCurrent Music: "Song for Judith" (Judy Collins" | | Tuesday, October 13th, 2009 | | 12:47 pm |
| | Saturday, October 10th, 2009 | | 9:50 pm |
| | Sunday, October 4th, 2009 | | 2:13 am |
Happy Birthday, deirdremoon! Great party! Have a wonderful day! | | Wednesday, September 30th, 2009 | | 12:28 pm |
Amory Lovins on KQED This Morning
Amory Lovins, environmentalist and energy consultant, was interviewed on KQED's "Forum" program this morning. The program will be available by podcast and is well worth listening to. Lovins will be speaking Friday (10/02) at the "Reinventing Fire" conference sponsored by the Rocky Mountain Institute at the Westin Hotel (Market Street) in San Francisco. Lovins is non-partisan, non-ideological, and non-dogmatic. He works from the radical notion that revolutionary changes in the way we create and use energy can be accomplished through free market mechanisms, and that controlling climate change can be good business. Check out his house in Colorado! Current Mood: inspired | | Monday, September 28th, 2009 | | 1:15 pm |
Audio Separated at Birth?
Driving home from some errands, I heard for the first time Blue Öyster Cult's "(Don't Fear) The Reaper" on KFOX (98.5). Until I paid closer attention to the lyrics, I could have sworn I was listening to the Moody Blues . . . Current Mood:  amusedCurrent Music: "Godzilla" (Blue Oyster Cult) | | Sunday, September 27th, 2009 | | 7:41 pm |
Tales of the Kitties — Gogo's New Game
Not a new game, really, more of a variation on a theme, an extension of the escape-to-the-hall game. She escapes out the door (usually when you're coming in with arms laden with grocery bags), races down the hall, and hides in the four-step stairwell between the dwelling floor and the lower floor of the entrance area. Fortunately, there is a fire door between the hall and the foyer (which has the elevators and mail boxes for the unit, as well as a small visiting area for realtors and their clients), and there is the main entrance door between the foyer and the Outside World, so her chances of total escape are minimal — but I'm definitely motivated to chase her when she gets out, on the chance that one of the bozos that lives in LCB's secured condo has propped open one or more doors again so that their visiting friends or clients won't have to go to the trouble to buzz them on the intercom. @#$%&*! Of course, being chased just adds to her fun, but it's not the main object of the game. Once she reaches the stairs, she crouches down, waiting for me to appear, quivering with anticipation. When I show my face, she rolls over on her side and sinks her claws into the carpet on the vertical ascender to the next step up. She wants to be petted and patted, but she also wants me to tug on her, stretching her out while she works her claws deeper into the carpet, a little mock battle. Usually by this point I'm convulsed with laughter, but I'll tug on her for awhile, while she purrs like an Evenrude on low throttle. I realize I'm just reinforcing her naughtiness, but the kitties have very little entertainment in their lives. Eventually I scoop her up into Carrying Position 1 (my right hand on her chest, under her front legs, with her butt on my shoulder), and we return to the condo. You can train cats after a fashion — you can't really stop them from doing anything, but you can increase the likelihood of them doing something that they want to do. I've taught Gogo that she's entitled to a "legitimate trip to the hall" when I take the garbage or cat litter to the trash chute in the hall. Although she seems like a little goofball most of time, she's usually by the front door within seconds of me starting to make knots in the garbage bag, the signal that I'm getting ready to go out. This doesn't, of course, decrease her efforts to escape, but it adds another dimension to her life. I can't help it, I just adore her. Current Mood: besotted | | Saturday, September 26th, 2009 | | 5:28 pm |
Pixar and WALL-E The current issue (Oct. 8, 2009) of the New York Review of Books contains an article titled "Pixar Genius" by Christian Caryl that reviews WALL-E (Pixar Animation Studios), The Pixar Touch: The Making of a Company (David A. Price), To Infinity and Beyond: The Story of Pixar Animation Studios (Karen Paik), and The Art of Pixar Short Films (Amid Amidi). Current Mood:  thoughtfulCurrent Music: "Hello, Dolly" (soundtrack) | | Friday, September 25th, 2009 | | 11:40 am |
Happy Birthday, tronpublic! Hope your celebration is harmonious! Current Music: "Dancing in the Streets" (Grateful Dead version) | | Wednesday, September 16th, 2009 | | 9:36 pm |
Google Books and Engineering Hubris
A friend on another mailing list forwarded an interesting URL to a discussion of the problems with the metadata in the Google Books project: http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=1701I have long maintained that the mechanisms of search engines (all based on the old KWIC strategy whose theoretical inadequacies were well-analyzed in the 1960s) were inferior to the more powerful (but more expensive to implement) cataloguing approach used by librarians. The incorporation of human intelligence into a project is always expensive. Read the article and the comments — it's very educational, not just about books, but about the whole approach to problem solving we've embraced. Current Mood: resignedCurrent Music: "Titanic" (Huddie Ledbetter) | | Tuesday, September 15th, 2009 | | 3:26 pm |
Michael Moore on Jay Leno
Michael Moore will be on Jay Leno's new prime-time show tonight, promoting his latest movie, Capitalism: A Love Story, which recently won two awards at the Venice Film Festival. | | Wednesday, August 26th, 2009 | | 5:02 pm |
| | Monday, August 24th, 2009 | | 11:48 am |
Just Too Happy for Words!
Arrived in Sunnyvale this morning and found email from someone who has been very much on my mind of late (I'm currently transcribing the journal that I kept when we were together). She was very young when we were friends, and though my intentions were honorable and I don't think I did any harm, in hindsight I sometimes have second thoughts about it all. I wasn't sure how she would feel about me surfacing after all these years (thank you, Internet!), but she was delighted to hear from me. She has a husband and a lovely daughter, lives south of Eureka, and continues her work as an artist. I don't know how often we will communicate, but it is nice to know where she is and that she is well — I was always sorry that our paths diverged ... and perhaps will converge again. It is a good day to smile. Current Mood: jubilantCurrent Music: "Chelsea Morning" (Joni Mitchell) | | Tuesday, August 11th, 2009 | | 1:18 pm |
On Rereading Old Journals
For most of my life, I've thought of myself as Lawful Good. So it comes as something of a shock while rereading journals from almost forty years ago to realize that I'm actually Chaotic Good. So odd when your self-image and reality collide to generate a hologram. Current Mood: illuminatedCurrent Music: "Ramble On" (Led Zepplin) | | Sunday, August 9th, 2009 | | 12:12 am |
The Real Ground Zero, II — Nagasaki
I think that the development and use of nuclear weapons is the most significant historical event since the discovery of antibiotics and vaccination. It's been interesting to see what little coverage the news media has given to the anniversary of the bombings of Japan. I don't recall any radio or television mention of the events, although a Google search turns up some coverage of a peace rally in Hiroshima. One might at least have expected something like this from Fox: Fox Anchor Man: And in a footnote to our expanded coverage of the development of nuclear weapons in Iran, we should mention that today marks the sixty-fourth anniversary of the dropping of an atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Nagasaki, which lead to the immediate surrender of Japan and the saving of the lives of not only a million U.S. military personnel but countless Japanese civilians as well. Fox Anchor Woman: Well, let's hope we won't have to do that any time again soon! Returning now to the question of President Obama's birth certificate. . . . Current Music: "Political Science" (Randy Newman) |
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