My mind is a raging torrent, flooded with rivulets of thought cascading into a waterfall of creative alternatives. –
HedyHedley Lamarr
Between self–publishing, ubiquitous computing
Four days
I’m anticipating the campaign/PAC/issue group/push poll phone calls will be absolutely out of control for the next four days. I can’t decide between unplugging the land line or just turning the ringers off.
Word of the day: Huckenfreude. It’s the enjoyment one feels watching the Republican establishment squirm as the theocons assert themselves. It would be a little more enjoyable if Huckabee wasn’t as fake as the Mittster, but without Willard’s thin veneer of competence.
Paleocon watch – will Fox allow Ron Paul to debate? If not, will they throw Rudy! 9/11! out too? I’m a little surprised that Paul is not polling better here in NH – his brand of libertarian-inflected conservatism seems like a good match.
Media watch – it’s very apparent this go-round how wedded traditional media is to certain narratives. I don’t think it’s a new thing; what is new is that there are other voices willing to pull the curtain back. The narrative rolling at us here in NH is that of a resurgent John McCain. He’s been on the rise here, no doubt about it – but apparently a 4th place finish in the IA caucuses is a mandate.
The guy I was very close to voting for – telecom retroactive-immunity filibustering Chris Dodd – dropped out. Heavy sigh – back to the drawing board. I heard An American Tune on the radio this morning and it actually brought tears to my eyes.
And I don’t know a soul who’s not been battered
I don’t have a friend who feels at ease
I don’t know a dream that’s not been shattered
or driven to its knees
but it’s all right, it’s all right
for we lived so well so long
Still, when I think of the
road we’re traveling on
I wonder what’s gone wrong
I can’t help it, I wonder what’s gone wrong
Time for the antidote – Anarchy in the UK or The Guns of Brixton as loud as it’ll go.
Update – great media/McCain snark:
I think Kansas will beat Virginia Tech, but the real winner of the Orange Bowl will be John McCain as the merest thought of football reminds voters of his toughness. *
Loose end, tidied up
After reading Pluvialis’ post on drowned cities (and other things) last summer, I spent a week or so racking my brain trying to remember where I’d read a description of a drowned Thames estuary, complete with underwater buildings being reinhabited. Courtesy of BLDGBLOG’s excellent interview with Kim Stanley Robinson, I’ve been whacked over the head with it – Blue Mars
The concrete cylinder ended some three meters down, but the ladder continued, down into a big chamber, warm, humid, fishy, and humming withe the noise of several generators in another room or building. The building’s wall, the floor, the ceilings and windows were all covered by what appeared to be a sheet of clear plastic. They were inside a bubble of some kind of clear material; outside the windows was water, murky and brown, bubbling like dishwater in a sink.
Nirgal’s face no doubt revealed his surprise; Bly, smiling briefly at the sight, said, “It was a good strong building. The what-you-might-call sheetrock is something like the tent fabrics you use on Mars, only it hardens. People have been reoccupying quite a few buildings like this, if they’re the right size and depth. Set a tube and poof, it’s like blowing glass. So a lot of Sheerness folks are moving back out here, and sailing off the dock or their roof. Tide people we call them. They figure it’s better than begging for charity in England, eh?”
Seasonal bits
- Less than a week until the NH primary. It can’t come soon enough for me – the steady diet of the same political commercials over and over and over is the least of it; more intrusive are the phone calls. I’m getting (order of magnitude) a dozen calls a day from campaigns, unidentified 800 numbers and “out of area” caller IDs. I’ve stopped even looking at the caller ID to see if I should answer…
- It has been snowing like mad here. If we hadn’t gotten some rain a week or so back, the snowbanks would be overhead. It was the snowiest December on record and we started the new year with six inches or so of wet snow yesterday afternoon/evening.
Snowfall on Monday [12/31/07] helped set a new record for snow in December, with 44.5 inches falling in Concord. That broke the record of 43 inches set in 1876. *
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Taken at dawn this morning.
Poikilotherms
All the outdoor reptiles and amphibians around here settled in for a long winter nap some time ago. There are still plenty of reasons to get excited about cold-blooded critters – here’s one:
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Via Peculiar.
A side note – one of my Crimmus prezzints was a set of Planet Earth DVDs – narrated by David Attenborough. Wonderful!
While we’re on the subject – a combination motorcycle and turtle center in Clerkenwell:
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The etymology of cooter (as a name for turtles) is in dispute. The most common explanation is that it comes from kuta – a West African word, but another ties it back to an obsolete verb.
Wait a minute – you were thinking of another definition of cooter?!? For shame!
It’s the happiest day of the year
There will be more daylight tomorrow and more the day after, and so on. Hooray!
Some Phrags
Follow-up on some posts
I channel-surfed my way to a teevee program on the history of Soviet helicopters the other evening. There was footage of the Mi-12; it’s tough to envision just how big it is until you see it swallowing trucks whole. I did a YouTube search and came up with the following clip – it’s in French and interestingly enough what parts of the narration I understand match perfectly with the English version I saw. Mi-12 fun fact – there’s a shaft connecting both powertrains together. Both engines on one side could fail, but both rotors will continue to turn.
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Minor spoiler alert! I’ve posted on Alan Moore and Gerry Anderson recently and wasn’t surprised at all to find that Moore knows his Anderson. In The Black Dossier Mina and Allan arrive at a spaceport where they steal a rocket – a Pancake Extra-Large 4. They had been told that the Extra-Large models are named after how the previous models met their end (thus Shrapnel XL2). One guess as to how the Pancake meets it’s end (with a not-too-bright Perspex robot pilot at the controls).
Thirty Five Year Old Ancient History
Somewhere/sometime in an office move I grabbed a Southwest Technical Products Corp. Computer Products Catalogue out of a trash pile. Yes, I am a pack rat. I’ve been meaning to scan it and put it on line for some time now and finally did so. You can see the results by clicking here or on the image below. There’s more SWTPC doco here (I didn’t see my catalog, so I don’t think I’m duping info that Mr. Holley has already made available).
Now this is a printer! (and in keeping with the era, “!” is pronounced bang):
Dogblogging
I commented elsewhere that there seem to be two things that one does not need to teach a puppy: the play bow and what a wood stove is for. Dinah is right in the mix – participating in the slow-motion roil of boiling shorthairs.
Potential outage
A storm is supposed to arrive here sometime late tonight. It’s making the local weather forecasters slightly frantic; depending on the precise track it takes, things might get a bit interesting. If we experience one of the possibilities – freezing rain followed by high winds – power failure is likely. No power means no DoaMNH – rest assured, we’ll be back as soon as electrons are once again available.
Geminids
A skywatching note, courtesy of New Scientist:
The Earth is expected to pass through the thickest part of the cloud of debris at 1745 GMT on Friday 14 December. Observers in Europe will see the best display on Friday evening.
For observers in North and South America, the peak occurs during daylight hours. For them, the display will be best before dawn on Friday morning, when a few dozen meteors per hour should be visible from a dark site at mid-northern latitudes.
The weather doesn’t look like it’s going to cooperate here in NH but I’ll probably get up extra-early Friday morning, just in case.
Update – Well, that was a bust. Wall-to-wall clouds at about 1000 feet – I did get most of the driveway shoveled, though. We got six inches of snow yesterday afternoon and evening. Heavier snow to the south made last night’s commute nightmarish for those poor folk going in and out of Boston. One nice bit – on the way to work this AM, I saw a southbound freight train. Each boxcar had an identical little vortex of spindrift coming off the trailing edge of the roof – really pretty under the slate gray dawn.