This is one of the entries in the seed art competition at the MN state fair. There is no escape from the power of this folk medium. Your legacy will stand as it stands here.
P8280018
Originally uploaded by jcarwash31
I’ve been sneaking off to the library to crouch in the children’s department reading the “stays in library” copy of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Great book. The real achievement of the books is the world JKR created for her stories. Richly rendered, with every description hinting at more just beyond the current scene, the world populates itself for the reader. I feel like I can glance sideways down mysterious streets or browse the indexes of books described.
I enjoyed it so much that I went searching for “Fan Fiction” to see if anyone could make that world continue a little for me.
Gertrude was in a back room when Voldemort came to kill Harry and her parents.
Bad, bad idea.
I’ve been 0wnzored by many a false etymology. The most memorable was the idea that Pumpernickel bread was so named because of Napoleon’s horse, Nicole. I believed that for a couple of days. This french-literature studyin’ jerk told me that and I’ve come to believe it was his idea of a joke.
But, this one seems valid to me. I never knew that 4 on dice or cards is referred to as “cater”. I’m going to have to drop that one in conversation some time.
Funniest web comic? Has to be Wondermark.
Tip:
“But isn’t that a classic ‘Straw Man argument’”?
or
” Don’t go setting up a ‘Straw-man argument on me!”
Use of this phrase can trip up some of the best conversationalists. This is because, even if you use it spuriously, even if you don’t fully know what it means, most intelligent people will be forced to backtrack over their words to see if they did, in fact, use a straw-man argument. Most of us suck at arguing. So, unless someone has been formally trained in debate, they naturally make straw man arguments all the time. So, after putting even the most intelligent opponent back on his or her heels with this accusation, you can launch into your own mystical mangling of the rules of logic. You will look like you took some kick-ass logic courses in college. Your opponent, in their hesitation, will look guilty to onlookers, even if their hesitation is pausing to wonder if you even know what you just said.
Only conversational weaklings allow others to pull straw-mans on them. Dropping this bomb a few times will establish you as someone who can’t be pushed around in conversation.
Also, like any phrase of this type, as you use it more and more, you will eventually figure out what it means and be much wiser for it. So a few people have to suffer while you hone this skill. Its worth it!
read about the straw-man fallacy at the
Fallacy Files.
When your opponent sets up a straw man, set it on fire and kick the cinders around the stage. Don’t worry about losing the Strawperson-American community vote.
-James Lileks
If you follow my tip, you run the risk of actually kicking around a valid argument, but I’m betting you can get away with it. At worst, someone weeks later will be lying awake in bed realizing that you pulled a fast one. By then, it will be too late!
University of New Hampshire gets gas
Waste Management, Inc. is fitting over 100 landfills with gas collection ability for various energy projects.
Some people tend to confuse landfill gas with methane gas or even natural gas. However, they are three separate things.
Methane is actually one of the greenhouse gases and contains a lot of carbon. Natural gas itself is 80-98% methane mixed with several other hydrocarbons.
Landfill gas is approximately 40-60% methane, with the rest of the emissions made up mostly of carbon dioxide but also of over 100 other non-methane organic compounds and gases including water vapor, nitrogen, and oxygen.
Municipal solid waste landfills are the largest man-made source of methane emissions in the United States. With all landfills generating methane, researchers have been developing methods of capturing and then distributing the gas in order to generate electricity instead of letting it be emitted into the atmosphere.
Atmospheric methane (CH4) is second only to CO2 as an anthropogenic source of the greenhouse effect. Methane’s overall contribution to global warming is large because it is 22 times more effective at trapping heat in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide over a 1OO-year time horizon when both the direct and indirect effects are accounted for. Furthermore, methane’s concentration in the atmosphere has more than doubled over the last two centuries. Scientists have concluded that these atmospheric increases are largely due to increasing emissions from anthropogenic sources, such as landfills, agricultural activities, coal mining, fossil fuel combustion, the production and processing of natural gas and oil, and wastewater treatment.
wow. 22 times more effective than CO2. I never knew that landfills let out more Methane than agriculture. What is the chief source of methane from landfills? I bet it is food waste, but I really don’t know.
That is a worrisome post.
When President Dwight D. Eisenhower learned in 1956 that Britain, in collusion with France and Israel, had invaded Egypt without U.S. knowledge, he was infuriated. “Many people remember Suez,” notes Jeffrey Frankel, Harpel professor of capital formation and growth at the Kennedy School of Government (KSG), but few recall “the specific way that Eisenhower forced the British to back down.” At the time, there was a run on the pound sterling and he blocked the International Monetary Fund (IMF) from stabilizing the currency. With sterling on the verge of collapse, says Frankel, “Eisenhower told them, ‘We are not going to bail out the pound unless you pull out of Suez.’” Facing bankruptcy, the British withdrew. This incident, notes Frankel, “marked the end of Great Britain’s ability to conduct an independent foreign policy.”
From: Debtor Nation
In “The Three Stigmata,” for instance, immigrants have been forced off an overheated Earth for colonies on Mars and elsewhere, and live in cheap communal hovels. For recreation and escape, the Martian colonists build “Perky Pat” dioramas: little doll houses inhabited by the Barbie-like Perky Pat and her Ken-ish boyfriend, Walt. Fanatical about the details of the miniaturized worlds—a whole industry flourishes to supply Lilliputian furniture and appliances—the colonists take a powerful, illegal hallucinogen called Can-D, which lets them “translate” the bodies and lives of Pat and Walt: for a brief, intoxicated moment they are Pat, or Walt, living in sixties-style San Francisco, and happy.
At one level, the Perky Pat cult is obviously a satire of middle-class escapism, and, particularly, of American television—if we are prepared to stare stoned at that box for blank escape, why not at a more convincing one? But if it was Dick’s gift to find, again and again, these extended hyperbolic parallels, it was his genius to take them to a level of earnest madness that makes satire touch the edge of the sublime. He saw that his Perky Pat devotees would begin to grant their sad entertainment the force of divine revelation. They argue violently about whether the Perky Pat visions are just “trips” or, as the Perky Pat fundamentalists insist, real experiences of supernatural incarnation. Industrialized entertainment becomes the entering wedge of religion.
About 10 years ago, Kate bought be a book about WWII. It was short fiction centered around Naples. On the cover was a statue of two naked babies sharing a soldiers helmet. The statue has many chunks shot out of it. Some of the stories were of people in combat, some were about Americans in relationships with Neapolitan women, One line I remember was something like, “Dear Mother, you will be surprised to be informed that I am writing to you from the syphilis ward…”
The writing was excellent, but I remember at the time not finding any other books by this author. I can’t remember the title or author nor can I find any hint of it in searches online. I mailed it off to Josh several years ago and was reminded of it when he listed a few of his favorite books from the last 15 years.
If this rings a bell, let me know.
Uncle Ted, not to be confused with cousin Ted or egghead Ted, is a guy in our office building who prints out articles for bathroom reading and leaves them there for the benefit of all who come after him. It is the most banal garbage imaginable, most often about some kind of gambling strategy, though once he left the entire wikipedia entry about Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
Recently, I’ve come to see it as a cry for help. So, today, I left this article about the brain’s response to gambling for him. If it helps him, then great. If it just annoys him, then even better, because it is small revenge for leaving me with nothing to read in the crapper but gambling information.
My co-worker recently told me he was going to a movie theater to see a documentary about Helvetica. I couldn’t believe there could be an entire film about a font, but talking to him and reading about it more, I see that it is indeed a complex subject worthy of a documentary and, of course, a Wikipedia entry. And it presents another opportunity to feel superior to Microsoft and their sad Arial font. I’ve always thought Arial was good enough. Not anymore!
So now I have this extra font sense where I notice the special attributes of the font in question.
Take a quiz to see if you can tell the difference.
This led me to remember a classmate of mine, Chank, who has made a living developing fonts, was the subject of a feature article in the Wall St. Journal and even has a blog in which he describes encountering his fonts in the world.
Saturday morning at about 3:30 we all woke up to a violent thunderstorm. The power went out and during lightning flashes, the patio table umbrella and Kate’s bloomers could be glimpsed in-flight. We sat there in the dark wondering why, at the home of the coming global shitstorm doom-clanger, there were no flashlights or transistor radios. We speculated that our neighbor would show up at our door with our underpants on his head.
The next morning, we found our flagpole holder ripped off the front of our house and most of the clothes from our clothes line in our bushes. Our porch door no longer closes, apparently because the porch frame shifted in the wind.
Our neighborhood was trashed. Middle aged trees were snapped off mid-section. An enormous tree blocked Como avenue. Chainsaws buzzed into the night. Nearby College Park has trees crashed into the tennis courts. I took a late evening bike ride over to Como Park and by the site where we’ve had several birthday parties. The fire-pit area is a jungle gym of crashed trees and branches.
Some Flickr people have pix up:
http://flickr.com/photos/amanjo/
http://flickr.com/photos/84853337@N00/
Frank asked, ” Is this a not normal day?” We told him yes. He said, ” I like not-normal days better than normal days.”
Bike the Barns! MACSAC’S First Annual Tour de CSA - Sept 29 2007
This is in the Madison, WI area.
I find this hard to believe. I notice that it assumes a beef-based diet and a fridge full of “chilled dinners”.
Walking to the shops ‘damages planet more than going by car’ - Times Online
Food production is now so energy-intensive that more carbon is emitted providing a person with enough calories to walk to the shops than a car would emit over the same distance. The climate could benefit if people avoided exercise, ate less and became couch potatoes. Provided, of course, they remembered to switch off the TV rather than leaving it on standby.
Just to be safe, I drove to work today.
Blanked Out » Blog Archive » 35W just came down right in front of my house
I live the closest to the 35W Bridge than anyone in Minneapolis and I watched it come down from my roof.
three of us rode our bikes to work today. We have a special hanger room for them:
A major highway just collapsed into the Mississippi river here. Looking out my office window, I can see the police have closed the highway near my office. There are big emergency rigs rushing by from communities to the east of us.
Kare 11 has some live video
I drive across there all the time and bike on the trail that goes under it. Some co-workers drive home that way, but they left hours ago. this was the end of rush hour, with the added traffic from a Twins game. Those cars fell 60 - 70 feet.