Lori - No, the dream ticket would be Pelosi/Obama. But, the red states ("uppity wimmin and n*****s"), and the media (at the behest of their corporate masters) would HATE them, and it'd be Al Gore all over again.
But, as Xopher said, today's not a day to gripe - it's a day to celebrate small steps in the right direction and to turn them into strides of (secular) righteousness.
Clark E Myers: The Pope has just over 100 Swiss Guards who are of course fully combat trained and equipped but who are not particularly capable of independent operations... they have mess kits but not field kitchens.
Ja, but zey are eqvipped to kill vis a veel of chees und are pre-forgiffen by ze Holy Fater himzelf.
All that food timeline stuff, including cookbooks, but no mention of Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking, The French Chef TV series, or of Julia herself.
Considering that Julia more or less redefined how we cook and eat as a nation, this seems like a glaring oversight to an otherwise really interesting timeline.
JDM - That MD story - I think it'll be used not to point out FEMA (and GOP) incompetence. Instead, it'll be used to drive for still more tort reform. After all, we're all afraid of the big bad lawyer.
In a just society, the FEMA official would face some sort of criminal charge because his actions were the proximate cause of at least one death.
Josh Jasper: In a fight between Smoot-Hawley and Sarbanes-Oxley, who'd win?
Well, last time I checked, Sarbanes & Oxley are still alive, so that gives them an edge.
If you string the four names together, it sounds like a WASPy law firm.
Jules: But then: if nobody notices that you're evil, are you still evil? Even if there's nobody around?
I didn't spend six frickin' years in evil medical school for people to not know that I'm evil!
OK, I'm down for True Sun time. Now, what's the best way to stick a sundial and compass to my PDA? And is there an extension for Outlook and Exchange Server?
Charlie Stross quotes Bruce Schneier: One reason is that it's the "movie plot threat" of the moment... The terrorists bombed a subway in London, so we need to defend our subways.
Which of course means that we need to be dealing with the threat posed by Snakes on a Plane! They're not just in business class anymore.
PiscusFiche - Not the Sutro Tower (a.k.a. the ginormous antenna)! I love taking off from SFO on a foggy day, punching through the clouds and there, gleaming orange and white like a K'nex creamsicle is the Sutro Tower having a fine old time in the glorious sunshine denied the flatlanders below.
j h woodyat - The country is dotted with anonymous telecom hubs, ranging from large regional centers like the grey blob under the bridge to closed off top-floors of in-town department stores set up as telecom hotels.
Replacing what's in a key hub would be expensive, but I suspect it would happen pretty quickly.
FWIW, it might be possible to pull a lot of that transbay traffic through the BART tubes, or even down the Peninsula and around the South Bay.
There's a good argument for even more decentralization of our telecom infrastructure in here somewhere. Along with a pony. :-)
---
Debra Doyle: Actually, I think what I said was, "Face it, nobody outside of the USA gives a damn about Oklahoma City."
What do you expect of a place that used to put "Oklahoma is OK" on its license plates. Faint praise, indeed. Or perhaps just misplaced modesty.
As far as targets go, I'm still surprised that we haven't had a rash of nail bombs go off in shopping malls during peak holiday shopping season. That would mess with the economy. Especially if someone took out that hub in SF and cut us off from most of our web vendors, too.
Personally, I'd stay off the Staten Island Ferry. I used to work in 1 Battery Park Plaza, which always shows up in those "Ferry POV" shots, and therefore shows up in a lot of movies.
In SF, Coit Tower may be a goner, too.
More locally (for me, anyway) the Pike Place Public Market (home of airborne fish) and the Space Needle are typically used to say "Seattle".
I think Vancouver and Toronto may both draw fire that was pointed at New York. (Remember Rumble in the Bronx?)
Re: the dolphin story, All I can hear is Dr. Evil complaining about how he wants sharks with frickin' laser beams when all he can get is irritated, mutated sea bass.
Seriously, I just can't believe this one. Unless it's connected with all the news stories about the "lost dolphins." Hmmm. [scratches chin]
Thank you for this. One of my personal points of paranoia is that I'll be walking down the street one day and just keel over dead from a heart attack.
There's some history of heart problems in men on my mother's side of the family, but not usually appearing until their 70s or 80s. My mom had frequent CHF and died young (62) of a stroke, but she also had Type II diabetes which she neglected, led a very sedentary lifstyle and smoked heavily. The only thing she didn't do was drink. My father's side is a total blank.
When they put AEDs on airplanes, it really reduced my anxiety about flying. The mid-air heart attack used to be something I was really afraid of.
FWIW, I have no indicators of heart disease, but still, the presence of AEDs and people who can use them really does make me feel more secure.
Juli - What I do is keep at least one full case of 24-oz water bottles in my trunk, and rotate them. It also makes the supply more modular - I can carry it more easily than gallon bottles if I need to be on foot.
Not ideal, but it's a good compromise and probably the best that someone as forgetful as I am can do.
Arrr! Thar be Talk Like a Pirate Day photos at Flickr, maties.
I am missing my beer, but I'm enjoying talking about it.
FWIW, the only home-movie footage of my childhood that exists is a short sequence as follows:
1 - My grandfather is in our above ground swimming pool.
2 - I (at approx 3 years of age) run up to the outside pool wall and reach up towards my grandfather.
3 - He reaches down and hands me his can of Bud (old-style can with churchkey holes).
4 - I take a sip of the beer.
5 - He reaches down to reclaim the can.
6 - I run away, drinking his beer.
Serge's X-Men Badge: The background showed Wolverine running past a sign pointing to Canada while, in the foreground, a perplexed Nightcrawler tells Cyclops that Wolverine went out to get some "...real beer..."
This is probably correct for mass-market beer (Molson or Labatt's is far better than Bud or Coors) but I'd take issue on the microbrew front. On the small scale, the US has gotten pretty good at making excellent beer in virtually all styles. (Still haven't had a decent US-made Lambic, though.)
Even our mass-microbrews (think Sam Adams, Sierra Nevada, Pyramid, etc.) are world class. It's just the $6.99 for a 12-pack of cans stuff that reeks.
FWIW, even the Belgians, who are otherwise the great masters of beer-making, make Stella Artois, which IMHO tastes like fermented armpits. Unshaven armpits at that.
Jimcat - I've never found an imported Kölsch that didn't taste old. FWIW, the few canned/bottled Kölsches I tried in Germany weren't so great either, which is why the Hale's was such a pleasant surprise. I'll look for the Saranac version once I can have beer again.
---
Jimcat & John Farrell - I suspect that I could fit the occasional beer or glass of wine into my diet without detriment, but I'm disinclined to do so. This really for two reasons, first that the program has a good success rate (almost 50% retention after 1 year off program) and has a good sample size. ReallyBigCorp pays for the lion's share of the program, but I'm kicking in a substantial chunk of change as well (it's a great benefit), so I figure I should follow the program as written.
It's kind of like having a part-time job. 5 days a week in the gym (3 with trainers), meetings with dietitians, MDs, psychologists, and a group session. Since I'm making all this effort, not having a beer seems like the least bit of additional burden.
I do think that some of their scientific claims are a bit dodgy though. In addition to the ban on alcohol, they're down on artificial sweeteners and caffeine too. I wonder where the science ends and the moralism begins.
Kate Nepveu, sometimes the cat really *needs* to be vacuumed. I catalogued my books once, but never kept it up to date, i.e. the data sits on an Atari 5.25" floppy. (Still have machine & drives, don't know if it all works since it hasn't been plugged in since about 1991.
***
Mmmm, Beer.
Too bad I can't have any right now. I'm on a diet and exercise program (medically supervised) that claims that alcohol blocks the pathway used to metabolize fat, so it's banned. I don't know how true this is or isn't, but the program is otherwise reasonable, so I'm in it for the duration.
That said, I'd love a Schneider Hefeweitzen right about now. Or a Paulaner. Schneider is harder to find, which makes it more the prize.
Right before I started the diet, I discovered that Hale's Ales (right here in Seattle) actually makes an excellent Kölsch - first I've ever had that wasn't served in line of sight of the Cologne cathedral. The bar didn't have the little cylindrical glasses, though.
| Year | Number of comments posted |
|---|---|
| 2005 | 220 |
| 2004 | 357 |
Total: 577 comments. View all these comments on a single page. (May take some time to load.)
The most recent 20 comments posted to Making Light by Larry Brennan:
Show all comments by Larry Brennan.