Random Thread 2017.1
Happy New Year, MuseBlog!
Date: January 1, 2017
Categories: At the Top of the Blog, Random craziness
Thursday, 18 April 2024
Life, the universe, pies, hot-pink bunnies, world domination, and everything
Happy New Year, MuseBlog!
Date: January 1, 2017
Categories: At the Top of the Blog, Random craziness
Welcome to 2017! And happy birthday to Jadestone!
Thank you!! I spent last night eating snacks & watching cartoons, and today mostly with internet and videogames But later I’m hopefully going to get together with Ebeth and her husband for a bit (they’re visiting Colorado, where I’m currently staying for a week), which would make two years in a row I see them on New Years! A good tradition.
Please convey our salutations!
Happy New Year!
I didn’t find another skeet-shooting target on the beach today, but I *did* find several clear sea jellies, despite how cold it’s been. We see their species around here all the time in the summer, but I’ve never seen any washed up in the winter before. They don’t sting, though, so I just picked them up and threw them back in anyway.
Happy New Year everyone.
Is/was ever legal to challenge the President of the United States of America to a duel? (asking, *erm*, for a friend)
*researches*
That depends on where both parties are at the time the challenge is made and where you intend to fight. I don’t know about Austria, but dueling with deadly weapons is illegal in many states in the US, including my home state of New York, and in Washington DC. In Rhode Island, you can go to jail just for challenging someone to a duel. It’s also illegal for members of the US military to duel or challenge people to duels, which might include the President as Commander-in-Chief.
There are some places, like the city of Seattle, that allow “mutual combat”, where two consenting adults can fight each other unarmed without being prosecuted for assault or battery as long as it’s not in a public place and no third parties will be hurt, however.
As to when if ever it *was* legal, I don’t know of any laws specifically forbidding challenging the President to a duel but the law against challenging people to duels or accepting challenges in DC was passed in 1839, and since the President spends most of their time in Washington DC, that would be a big wrinkle in one’s plans. At least two 19th-century presidents fought duels before taking office (Andrew Jackson fought several in the early 1800s, Abraham Lincoln accepted a challenge to a duel in the 1840s but they didn’t actually fight because Lincoln’s opponent took one look at the big sword he brought and decided to make peace instead), but I don’t think any did so while serving as President.
So, all in all, I think you friend’s best bet is to dig around in your closet, find those old Yu-Gi-Oh cards, and challenge the President to a d-d-d-DUEL!
*Your
*Their
Does anyone have any New Year’s resolutions? I’ve never been a big “resolutions” guy, but this year I’d like to:
– buy fewer things
– eat less meat and more vegetables
– exercise more
– be more diligent about noticing/avoiding advertisements
– learn more Python
– write more poetry
– do more charitable work
– be more helpful
– Spend more time outside
– Go rock climbing at the gym more
– Go to bed earlier
– Spend my free time working on the things I want to improve at (learning to juggle, studying French, improving my writing and drawing, etc.) instead of doing silly things
– Be more helpful
Happy birthday, Lady Bunniful and J. R. R. Tolkien!
Always happy to share my birthday with such august company. And today I learned we have another birthday matey: Corn Flakes the corn snake, who lives at the local science center. She turned 4 today.
Attention, MBers!
Last month I learned that some MuseBlog veterans were communicating on Slack. So shortly before Christmas, I visited Slack myself and launched a Kokonspiracy site to see if any lost sheep would stop by. Quite a few did and are now chattering merrily away.
I don’t think Slack will entirely replace MuseBlog, but it does offer some technical advantages over WordPress and seems to fill a niche. If you would like to try it, just email me at thegapas [at] gmail dot com, and I’ll send you an invitation. You have to be older than 13, but that isn’t a problem nowadays.
Today my brothers and their girlfriends went to visit one of our other friends and play some video games. I’d never played “Mario Party” before and I wasn’t very good, but I still enjoyed it. We had a lot of fun and got to meet their dog, Nova, who was a puppy when I left for college.
I saw the end of “Zootopia” with P. and his girlfriend. What a powerful movie and a great mystery plot.
Mom and Dad were at a meeting about planning for Dad’s retirement and we didn’t have any leftovers, so I got to cook for the first time in 2017! I made pasta and peeled large carrots, both with olive oil. It tasted great and I didn’t set anything on fire.
I’ve just started reading this essay on history and progress, but it seems very relevant to the current moment and some of the thoughts I’ve expressed here. www . exurbe . com / ?p=4041
Thank you, POSOC. I needed that.
Thank you, POSOC. It’s the most encouraging essay I’ve read for a while.
As it happens, I’m in the middle of reading Too Like the Lightning and will certainly read more of Professor Palmer’s blog.
Isn’t she great? I’m going to be meeting her irl soon /brag
I’m so envious. I need to get my hands on Too Like The Lightning ASAP.
Such a good book.
Tell us about the meeting, ZNZ!
aaaah it’s tomorrow, I’m meeting her and Jo Walton for a reading of a play near the Newberry and we’re all getting lunch after. (My connection is really with Jo rather than with Prof. Palmer; we’ve become lowkey internet friends over the past few months.) I’m terrified about what they’ll think of me, but also excited? But mostly terrified.
You must be over the moon. Have fun, and relax — it will be fine.
I mean, I am over the moon, but I’m also legendarily terrible at accepting that nice things are allowed to happen to me? So I can’t stop thinking about all the ways in which I’m ignorant/ill-read/generally undeserving.
Relax, relax, relax! Enthusiastic young people have magic powers. Play your part, and the Muses will be with you.
I like the image of the dam bursting and many people scurrying in with shovels to dig channels that mitigate the damage. I think that’s where we are right now. A dam has burst, and valuable things will be lost, but there are still things we can do, and it’s our duty to try. Time to pick up our shovels and get to work!
I have joined the army of Americans who have phones.
Oh no.
So, what have you done with your phone so far?
Charged it. And that’s all.
Mom and I made salmon-Gouda-and-spinach crepes, yum!
That sounds good! I’m hoping to make a spinach quiche or something this week.
Our supermarket has been offering a free magazine with recipes since it reopened under new management last year, and the January issue starts with a recipe for rice noodles with spring roll veggies that Mom and I want to try.
We got to make it tonight, with peanut sauce! It tasted really good and my Mom actually ate half of it even though we made enough for four people.
(Yeah, I don’t really do much on break after my brothers go home because my parents don’t really want to drive anywhere. So cooking is the highlight of my day.)
Does anyone know how I could find 50-year-old seismographic records for Barbados?
KaiYves: I’d start by asking the University of the West Indies Seismic Research Center.
Or check with IRIS: www .iris .edu/hq/data_and_software
You know, I think I’m going to find the geology department anyway just because that website is so hard to navigate and someone there will probably be familiar with it.
Happy Friday the Thirteenth!
Knock on wood!
My mantra for the next week: think of sharks, think of sharks,…
I swear, if I manage to get through the whole presentation without calling it Svarovski’s theorem, I’ll buy myself a cookie.
Sharks, not crystals. Shark-shaped jewelry only if noncrystalline. And perhaps Saruman, ca. “Scouring of the Shire.”
Good luck with Comrade Sharkovsky!
A crystal shark would be a cool monster design, though. Maybe its mouth looks like a pointy geode cave, and it has countershading like a real shark with dark rock on top and shiny gemstones on its belly. And glossy black rock eyes.
I think I saw a drawing of a shark with an amethyst geode mouth once.
(By the way, the scientific word for “shark-shaped” is “squaliform.” As Jadestone used to say,
* ~ * ~ * ~ THE MORE YOU KNOW ~ * ~ * ~ *.)
Yo GAPAs, did we ever have an “advice column” thread around November 2008? I want to find something I posted there (maybe under a fake name) for reasons. Thank you!
Also, while digging through old threads trying to find it I remembered we used to have virtual Muse Academy dances. Would anyone be interested in doing that again? Maybe a Spring Fling type event? Possible themes:
– Mystery theme, with secret codes in the music and decorations and everyone knowing different bits of the puzzle and having to put them together. Maybe someone gets fake-murdered or something gets fake-stolen and we have to solve the crime?
– Under the sea theme, with ocean life-inspired outfits and food, big coral reef-looking structures around the walls and projections of sharks and fish swimming overhead on the ceiling in a dim watery light. Johnny B. Goode has to be on the playlist.
– Futuristic theme – neon lasers, shiny spacey outfits, floating antigravity platforms, big metal automatic doors and robots serving the food.
I would love an “under the sea” party. We had an “in-space” party, why not an underwater one?
R*S,
Is this advice thread the one you have in mind?
Yes, that’s it. Thank you!
There’s not enough traffic around here nowadays to keep a party going, I’m afraid. And our Slack group seems like the wrong medium for one. Still, if a groundswell materializes, I’ll happily ride along.
Yeah, since we haven’t had the magazine as a source of neophytes for some time, and the blog can’t be found on Google, it seems to be just a dwindling group of old bloggers now. I’ve thought about telling my friends about it but “Hey would you like to join a family-friendly science magazine forum with around 20 active members that’s completely secluded from all other websites and has a number of impenetrable customs and in-jokes dating back to 2006” doesn’t seem like it would sell them.
I am quite prepared to fight for my right to party.
A right that I would never dream of infringing. Anyone who conjures up a party on MuseBlog has my unconditional support.
We have a Slack group now??
Yes, and it’s wonderful!
How does one join a Slack group?
By invitation, which you have just received.
I know it’s a ways away and our last party was three years ago and it’s because I have the America’s Cup on the brain, but if we have a May Day Ball this year could the theme be “Nautical/Summer in a Seaside Town”?
R. I. P. Eugene Cernan, the astronaut who made the final Apollo moonwalk. Six moonwalkers remain.
.
Since I haven’t been on here lately, there’s a good chance someone has brought this up already, but… suddenly I’m getting emails about people replying to posts I made years ago. There wasn’t any link to stop getting email notifications from MuseBlog, either. It’s annoying & it could be worse than annoying for someone using a parent’s email, so… something should be done about that. I expect this is a general wordpress thing that nobody here chose, but if it can’t be fixed right away I also feel like it’d be good to have some kind of big prominent warning about this.
Bibliophile:
Administrators have a hidden menu option for email notifications, but I thought it applied only to us, not to everybody. I activated it about a week ago but have now unchecked it. Let’s see if that solves the problem. If not, I’ll dig deeper.
Anyway, good to hear from you! How are you doing?
Okay, so I have to finish my summary of what I plan to do in the future before term starts on the 23rd and I’m going to be TAing and writing my Master’s thesis equivalent this semester, but then there’s going to be the summer and the America’s Cup and I’ll get to be Professor Crabtree’s lab assistant and hopefully go to Turkey with her and maybe Israel, and then there’ll be the eclipse in August.
A close friend of mine from community college (who is a year younger than me) left for boot camp today. I feel old all of a sudden, and I just realized how many of my high school friends are now in the military… My friend who left today is joining the Navy, a guy I know from high school is now a Marine, several other high school friends are in the Army, and one in the Air Force as a pilot.
Is this what happens when people graduate high school and grow up? Or is it more of a Southern-states-phenomenon? I feel like a disproportionate amount of people from the South end up in the military for some reason, but that might just be because this is where I am and I don’t know anyone from other regions of the country who are in the military.
I think the Southeast is the region most heavily represented in the military, but don’t quote me on that. I’ve texted my brother to ask his opinion, although the service academies might have different patterns than general enlistment.
Wait, he just wrote back! For West Point, he says:
“Virginia has the highest number of applicants and cadets at the academy, followed by Texas, generally Midwest follows with the least coming from the north eastern portion of the country.”
I think a few people from my graduating High School class (New York) did join the military, but only about a handful and none I knew well.
I’m surprised that nobody here has gone that route. I would have gone to the Naval Academy rather than rack up the kind of student-loan debt that’s considered normal nowadays. A paid education followed by a guaranteed responsible job — it was tempting even then.
Mel doesn’t post here much anymore, but a number of us have kept in touch. She’s in the Navy at present, though she didn’t go in till after undergrad.
With my lack of direction, I’ve been tempted, but I don’t think it’d be a good fit for me even if I wasn’t medically disqualified.
There may be other options you haven’t considered yet. Academia is a tough row to hoe.
I agree, and getting tougher every year. I do have the advantage of graduating with minimal debt, which makes me luckier than a lot of people. I don’t have to pile that anxiety on top of everything else.
I don’t think I could have handled the strictness.
I suspect that a lot of people who would have considered entering the military for the benefits were hesitant to do so while the US was actively engaged in war.
Quite a few people from my high school class are in the military as well. We have an air force base nearby, so there are number of military families. I also suspect that military service is generally more valued in more conservative areas.
Poverty’s also a factor, I think. When you can’t afford college, military service is often the best option for a guaranteed job with health benefits and an opportunity for higher education (through the GI Bill) or better employment afterwards.
Yes, very true. Thanks for pointing that out.
It’s not even two weeks into the term and there’s already been two days of classes cancelled because of the weather. Everything is snow and ice and wind. Tomorrow it’s supposed to warm up and possibly rain, which am really not looking forward to.
Wooo! Armel Le Cleac’h is the winner of the Vendée Globe 2016-2017, circling the world in only 75 days!
Alex Thomson’s impressive second-place finish makes him a rare male holder of a gender-qualified record– he is the first British man to finish second, but the first Brit overall was Dame Ellen MacArthur 15 years ago.
Have people watched A Series of Unfortunate Events on Netflix yet?
I really need to post here more often. My life is busy but it’s not THAT busy…
Yeah, a few people are talking about it on the Geeky TV Shows thread! Really fun, quirky, dark show that’s a very faithful dramatization for fans of the books, but also easy to get into for people who haven’t. I highly recommend people watch it tomorrow, since there won’t be anything else worth watching on TV.
That was meant to be the words “Geeky TV Shows thread” linked, sorry. Link still works though.
Fixed!
In other apocalypse news, Google’s AI software is starting to design AI software. Singularity, here we come!
I wonder whether people at Google have thought that through.
Have they tried not ushering in the apocalypse?
You know, there are quite a few people whom I’d like to ask that question.
There are many of whom it applies far more than Google.
I think I’ll be okay with keeping most of my biological parts but I would like to replace my inner ears with gyroscopes to prevent ever getting travel sick again and tweak my stomach to be able to digest anything easily so nothing I eat can ever disagree with me again.
I’m fine with being half robot or more. I would upload my consciousness into an entirely metal body GLaDOS style if I could.
Of course if I could digest and excrete every food in the same way without having problems, I would probably never eat anything but fruit and end up with various deficiencies.
Hey Kai (and other space-interested ‘bloggers): My boyfriend and I just decided that we’re going to teach high schoolers a ~2 hour class on space exploration. Topics, depending on class interest, may include biological effects and limitations of space travel, current and futuristic propulsion technologies, potential targets for exploration, reasons to explore, and more. He’s in astrophysics and I’m in biology, so we partly know what we’re talking about, but I was wondering if you might suggest any top-notch resources (especially online) for learning more about such topics. Especially resources which have activities that we might be able to do with the students!
I’m a bit overwhelmed by first-day-of-term stuff at the moment but I will make a nice long post on this tonight to help you.
Thank you! Take your time, though! We’ve got almost a month to plan it, so you can focus on first-day-of-term stuff as much as necessary.
How many class sessions are you going to have?
To what extent do you want to include historical information and to what extent is it more a focus on astronomy or physics?
Can I come help you?
Zoomiverse and other citizen science programs are always great for making kids (and adults) feel like they can help out and requires very little training (and in the case of Zooniverse Galaxy identification stuff etc is provided by the website). maybe do a few together with them at the end of your talk and they’ll be inspired to do more in their own time?
If you have any chance to meet with them at night, even as a one-off event outside of regular class hours, you should probably do actual stargazing. Reading books, watching videos, and looking at pictures is great, but seeing the places you talk about as physical objects out there in the sky helps reinforce that they aren’t just science fiction and really do exist.
If you do get that chance, then you should go to https:// spotthestation . nasa . gov/ and see if the International Space Station will pass overhead during your observing time. It’s really cool to see pass over your head– my Dad said it looked like “God shining down a flashlight”.
If you can’t go stargrazing at night, you could try buying eclipse goggles and going outside during the daytime to look at the sun with them on– the goggles make it safe to stare at the sun and you can sometimes see sunspots!
The NASA Education Office is probably the best place to find resources–
https://www . nasa . gov/offices/education/about/index . html
The link for Grades 9-12 is: https://www . nasa . gov/audience/foreducators/9-12/index.html
If you have the chance to make model rockets and launch them outside, that would be a lot of fun, but it can get expensive, so if you don’t have the money available then I guess not.
One activity that I’ve done at a few different places, including Space Camp, is an Egg Drop Challenge, where you have a lesson about the ways probes have been landed on other planets (Spirit and Opportunity’s airbag shell, Curiosity’s Skycrane, etc.), and then split the class up into groups of 2-4 people. Each group gets a raw egg and a set of the same raw materials (cardboard, scissors, string, duct tape, plastic straws, cloth, paper, cotton balls, etc.), and is tasked with designing a capsule that can protect their egg when it’s dropped from a second-story window (do this outside). The winner is the one whose egg is most intact.
(The formula that’s worked best for me is a parachute plus a tetrahedral cardboard “capsule” with soft material inside but don’t tell them that!)
Another activity could be multiplying their weights by the right formulae to determine how much they would weigh on different planets. If you have gym weights, you can illustrate Earth gravity vs. Mars gravity vs. lunar gravity with a 90-pound weight, a 30-pound weight, and a 15-pound weight.
(I’ll add more ideas as I think of them.)
KaiYves,
Interestingly, your egg capsule is very similar to one I designed for the Pumpkin Drop but have never managed to try. The main difference is that I wanted to put the pumpkin inside a couple of nylon stockings (to spread the force) and attach it with springs to an *open* tetrahedral frame. One reason is that the rules disqualify a dropped pumpkin if the ground crew can’t remove it from the capsule within a minute. I wanted them to be able to see exactly what they were dealing with and snip-snip-snip it right out.
Springs sound like a very good idea to distribute the force. Is there any limit for how big the frame can be? We had a size limit for the egg drop.
Yes, the container can be no bigger than 20″x30″x60″, and the pumpkin has to be at least 10″ in diameter. There’s a weight limit, too. The rules are at http :// mae.statler.wvu .edu/student-life/annual-pumpkin-drop
(I think those dimensions are new. When I Dropped, it seems to me that capsules had to fit inside a cube, but I’m not sure how big it was. Maybe 30 or 40 inches.)
Oh, and as it’s the anniversary of the disaster, I’ve realized that I didn’t recommend the Challenger Center as a website to look at for activity ideas.
My first day back and I already have a lot of work and a problem with my financial aid to resolve. There are moments when I love Grad School and moments when it drives me crazy.
I think the financial aid problem is taken care of.
Okay, NOW it went through and I owe just 7,110, which I think I have, but it’s been weeks!
When illusion spin her net,
I’m never where I want to be
And Liberty, she pirouette
When I think that I am free…
Every time I call a congressional office and get a staffer I want to end by asking if they still have the club salad wraps in the Rayburn Building cafeteria even though I know that would be undignified.
They’re getting a lot of calls right now. Better save the pleasantries for a calmer time, if one ever comes. Good for you for calling!
Those were good wraps, they had croutons and pieces of hard-boiled egg in them, and big nuggets of blue cheese.
I wrote an impassioned email to Dianne Feinstein about why I marched in the Women’s March last Saturday and it ended up being nearly 800 words long.
Gosh I hope someone reads it.
I bet someone will. Did you read the relatively recent NYT article about the mailroom in the Obama White House? It was really interesting, especially because Obama made a particular habit of reading 10 selected letters from regular Americans every day.
I did read that article! And yeah, someone probably will. I just learned that she is actively encouraging people to email if the phone lines are full, so looks like I did the right thing.
One of my sister’s friends wrote a letter that made it to that top 10 list just in the last couple months of Obama’s presidency! Pretty cool.
Wow, that’s wonderful! What was it about?
I know that in the office where I worked, things would get passed on to the Chief of Staff and the Congressman– a minority of letters, but some.
I finally bought a new screwdriver to replace the batteries in my solar lamp so it can start charging again. The batteries were a bit corroded, so I was careful taking them out over the trash and then washed my hands twice, but I hope it won’t interfere with the new batteries’ working.
It wouldn’t turn on even after a few days in the sun, so I put on rubber gloves and took the batteries out, then cleaned off the corrosion with cotton swaps dipped in vinegar. It will dry tonight and tomorrow I’ll add another set of batteries.
They were flying for me,
They were flying for everyone
They were trying to see
A better day for each and every one
They gave us their life,
They gave us their spirit
And all they could be
They were flying for me.
They were flying for me.
I finally managed to send away for my Solar Impulse 2 patch. I think having a way of showing my commitment to a Future That’s Clean is even more important now than it was in July.
A moment so close in time and so clear in my memory and yet already 14 years away. Hail Columbia.
Are we getting a February thread?
I don’t think we need monthly threads with traffic so low. I’ve been thinking that we could just them run until they start to feel “full,” then start a new one. (This one just has 120 posts on it, whereas our old limit for starting new ones used to be around 300.)
I see what you mean but It just feels wrong not to have a new thread with a new month.
I made mac and cheese and peas with my roommate! This stove is terrifying.
Hello, MuseBlog! I still exist, and I felt like now is as good a time as any to return to MB.
Although I kind of want to change my screen name. Twelve-year-old me had questionable taste in aliases.
It’s okay, lots of people have changed their names. Do you want us to call you The MuseBlogger Formerly Known As Koppar until you pick a new one?
Yes, that will do until I come up with a suitable replacement.
And TMBFK Koppar for short, like FYROM Macedonia?
That is a much less unwieldy acronym than the one I was coming up with.
Hello, welcome back!
It’s good to be back!
Greetings! Have a scone.
I fixed my lamp!
Today was a good day!
I woke up an hour earlier than unusual, ate some of this new cereal that has pieces covered in blueberry yogurt, and got to class with enough time to read over the paper the professor had said I was supposed to present on in his e-mail that morning. (He promised to give us more notice in future weeks.)
Even though I hadn’t taken notes, he liked my presentation, and because we were talking about Pleistocene Europe, we got to talk about extinct Ice Age mammals and I got to write the sentence “Mammoths had a flap over their butts to prevent heat loss.” in my notebook. I also asked some good questions about the Pleistocene European steppe terrain vs. the modern Central Asian steppe, telling dire wolf fossils from normal wolf fossils, and Ice Age horses. We ended by talking about the Aurochs, and the professor said that they all went extinct in Renaissance times, which means he must not know about Bo.
After class, I went to the student center again to see if the problem with my bill had been fixed yet– they said I had done everything I needed to do and now the other parties were just doing the paperwork, so I didn’t need to worry and could stop coming every day. Phew!
The student center was right by an art supply store and I was looking for black cloth to patch up a hole in one of my shirts, so I went in and got some black felt pretty cheap and then some white felt and fabric markers so that I could make signs for the Climate March in April.
So then I was getting hungry and it was just getting dark, so I went back to my room and warmed up the leftover mac n’ cheese n’ peas and took advantage of the unseasonably warm weather to eat it on the balcony while watching the city lights turn on. My roommate came out to watch, too, and I pointed out Venus to her.
She went to class, and now it was pretty dark, but I turned on my solar lamp and made the signs, and then patched my shirt and fixed up a pair of pants that also needed to be sewn up. Once that was done, I remembered that I needed to buy soap and hand sanitizer, so I went out again and got those things, and then stopped at Forbidden Planet where they’d just gotten the latest issue of “Scooby-Doo Where Are You?”
And then I came back home and found out tomorrow is a snow day.
Eh, the typo suits me, I always aim to be unusual.
20 bucks for two sticks of deodorant is highway robbery.
My roommate and I walked on the High Line in the snow and then bought nuts and dried fruit to keep in our pantry as snacks. Then I made pasta with olive oil.
I think I am getting better at climbing the rock wall at the gym. Today I climbed every green (second-level) route, one without using any holds not on the route and another almost without. I can feel calluses building on my fingers. I just hope I’m not too sore tomorrow.
Yale is renaming one of its colleges for Grace Hopper!
Finally, some good news!
Thoroughly excellent decision.
Happy 208th birthday, Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin!
Sometimes Sundays just get away from you. I was going to do most of my homework and cook dinner; instead, I read one article and made a grocery list.
Same. Still have to read a book so that I can read another one tomorrow and be ready for Thursday. Mobile Internet is the worst thing that ever happened to my productivity.
Sundays sneak up on you and try to get past without you noticing. Except when you’re a gittern maker, and then you have no idea it’s Sunday until you dash out for a plank of walnut and the timber yard is shut.
There’s nothing short of dying quite as lonesome as the sound as homework still unfinished and Monday morning coming down.
We’re having another poetry symposium here this Saturday evening, as we’ve been doing once or twice a semester. After compline, a bunch of us gather in a cozy-ish room with a fireplace to eat snacks, drink beer, and read poetry. One of the professors gives a talk at the beginning–this time, it’s about Dante’s Divine Comedy–and then anyone who wants to can recite a poem and say a few words about it. I haven’t nailed down what I’m going to recite, but I’ve got it narrowed down to a couple of choices.
But between that and rewatching some of Hyouka, I had the idea a couple days ago to compile some sort of anthology of seminarian-made poetry, fiction, nonfiction, drawing, photography, or whatever other types of art that can be printed in a book. I’ve been tinkering around with some typesetting software to do it with, but I’m not quite sure whether I’d find enough people to submit material for it. It wouldn’t be a lengthy collection, of course, but would it be long enough to be worthwhile? I think this would be a purely internal thing, not distributed outside the seminary, and I don’t think there’s many people forging bold new artistic trails here, so I can afford to have low standards.
Does anyone have experience doing something like this–high school litmags or that sort of thing?
I don’t have any direct experience in anything like that at mature levels, but I think it sounds like a good idea and I wish you good luck.
It sounds like a really good idea! I’m sure a lot of people would be interested in submitting to it.
My high school’s writing club put together something similar. It was a rudimentary staple-bound booklet- more in the vein of a zine. All the copies were done on my friend’s printer, so it was a pretty low-scale project.
I also recently made a zine which I distributed to friends IRL and anyone who was comfortable with sending me a mailing address. It was one of those ones that are folded from a single sheet of paper.
For a bigger-scale endeavor you’d probably want to take it to a print shop. I’m trying to get more involved with my college’s student-run art/literary magazine. If I was more successful on that front I’d be able to say more!
A seminary literary magazine sounds like a fine idea. Words printed on paper exert a special magic.
I helped run a weekly arts and culture “magazine” (printed as an insert into the campus daily newspaper) in college, so I scheduled pieces, edited them, etc. We had a couple people who did the layout on InDesign and the newspaper was responsible for printing.
The elliptical trainers at the gym have this cool feature where a video of a hike through a particular landscape plays as you work out, adjusting speed to match your speed and incline as the trail becomes more or less inclined. Today I did almost all of the one filmed on trails in Hawaii.
That’s a really good idea. Hiking is way more interesting than going to the gym, personally.
Agreed. But I guess simulating one at the gym is the best you can do in the city.
I went to the Bronx Zoo today for the first time in several years and finally saw the snow leopards! It’s incredible to be able to see them in person even in a zoo, knowing how elusive they are in the wild.
Is there a set cliched adjective for describing brown hair like “raven”, “copper”, “amber”, and “golden”? I was trying to think of a joking way to describe my hair today and I couldn’t think of one.
Auburn? Chestnut? Mousy-brown?
I guess “mousy” is the closest to my hair color.
You could say “murine” to be fancy.
My murine locks?
Hair the color of random-walk noise?
((sorry))
((I mean, why we take astronomy classes if not to paint with the colors of the noise?))
Russet, if there’s a bit of red in it.
Those of you who were on MB in the summer of 2013 may remember my rant about the submarine NR-1 being scrapped despite its significance to oceanography and underwater archaeology and seeing pieces of it in a lot behind a fence at the Submarine Force Museum in Connecticut. While I am still mad that it was retired and madder that more of it wasn’t preserved (although I know the nuclear reactor added complications to its decommissioning that several other historic ships I’ve seen in museums did not), I am glad to see on the museum website that the pieces that DID go to the Submarine Force Museum (sail and propellors) have been moved out of the lot and into a proper exhibit. I hope to be able to go see it there someday even though I know that my childhood dreams of taking part in a shipwreck excavation onboard it like Robert Ballard will never come true.
I would also like to repeat my statement from 2013 that at whatever point in the distant future DSV Alvin is retired, if it is similarly treated instead of being given to a museum and displayed intact, I will be very angry, and probably organize a riot.
I’ll join you. Alvin is family.
It’s bizarre. It must have a tourist and PR value greater than the bit of space it would need to display it. The British Navy preserves the whole of Portsmouth Historic Dockyard. Nelson’s “Victory” is still a commissioned ship (she’s the flagship of the First Sea Lord), with a permanent crew. With Mary Rose also on site, it’s a huge attraction.
They did remove the reactor and de-contaminate the Nautilus to be the centerpiece of the museum and you can even go onboard, so it’s not like a nuclear submarine can’t be made visit-able. It might be that because the NR-1 was used up until its retirement in 2008, there were security risks in letting people see it’s capabilities– but as far as we know, it was a unique design and has no replacement, so I don’t know what that knowledge would be used against. And even if that’s the case, they could have left it in storage for a few decades and displayed it once all its military activities were declassified.
I apostrophe’d “it” once where I shouldn’t have there. Posessive “it” has no apostrophe.
Someone tell me what genius in the public works office thought 2:30 AM was the right time for jack-hammering outside of an apartment building.
It’s to avoid inconvenience to motorists.
They have the road closed off both day and night, though. At least tonight they did the noisy stuff before midnight.
Road maintenance people have strange ideas.
Oooh, Solar Impulse book coming out soon… not in English, yet, though.
I got to visit the Museum of Natural Histor with my friend Steph today– she was willing to take photos of me in the Hall of Planet Earth dressed like Katia Krafft!
Pics?
I misspelled “history”. HISTORY. Why do I keep making these typos?
I blame small-virtual-keyboard technology and the way software has evolved to compensate for its many failings.
A partial answer is a stylus, but on-one seems to use them.
Except my mate Brian, but he’s weird.
Photos from the visit have been posted at https://musefanpage.com/blog/?p=16414 .
Hey Paul (and others, if anyone else has an opinion), I will be heading to Scotland for the first week of April and I was wondering if you had any suggestions in particular. I will be coming from a trip to Ireland with my family, but they fly back to the States and I will venture forth to Scotland alone (flying into Glasgow from Dublin via Ryanair*).
I was thinking:
Day 1: Arrive in Glasgow 8 AM, night in Glasgow
Day 2: Breakfast in Glasgow, take a bus to Isle of Skye, night in Skye
Day 3: Isle of Skye
Day 4: Breakfast in Skye, head to Edinburgh
Day 5: Edinburgh
Day 6: Edinburgh, head to Dublin in afternoon, evening in Dublin
Day 7: 8:40 AM flight to the States from Dublin
Thoughts? Suggestions would be greatly appreciated! I was considering Inverness, but it seems unfeasible with the travel times involved. Coworkers have suggested to spend not as much time in Glasgow (“really boring”), skip Aberdeen (“dour old oil town”), and stay a night in Glencoe (perhaps night 3).
* – I am well aware of the limitations of Ryanair. I will have a 40L backpack that will be under 22lbs.
Thanks
Alas, my familiarity with Scotland is minimal, it being a very long way North. But that itinerary will keep you occupied for the brief time you have.
In Edinburgh, do the usual tourist things. Castle, Holyrood, Scottish Parliament, which is architecturally interesting. Try a set of bagpipes at the shop on the Royal Mile. Eat haggis.
Dublin is full of bars which feature live music. I found a tiny one – an old music shop – and they just had a pair of blokes crammed up a corner, which was rather lovely.
Skye – you need a week to see it. Consult Jade. She knows all the good bits.
Have fun!
Ah yes… haggis. I’ll definitely be trying that.
I won’t do all of Skye due to time constraints and lack of car — I’ll probably just be staying in Portree.
Kokonilly,
I’m familiar with Scotland, though I haven’t been there recently. Are you planning to fly from Edinburgh to Dublin? How do you plan to get around within Scotland? Buses and trains? Car? Other flights?
The Skye-to-Edinburgh run in particular looks like a long haul. Scotland isn’t huge (about the size of Maine), but travel outside the Glasgow-Edinburgh axis can take a while, especially if ferries are involved.
Thank you for making me think about this. I was going to take a bus or train from Edinburgh to Glasgow (1 hr), so I might head there late at night Day 6 instead so that I won’t miss my flight early morning Day 7.
Yeah, and it looks like Skye-to-Edinburgh actually stops at Inverness, so I’ll probably do that instead of Glencoe. I’m actually looking forward to the buses, though; the views should be nice.
Take me back to Scotland! There’s no topography down here*.
Give Edinburgh a lot of time! Honestly the best city I’ve been to. I strongly recommend Arthur’s Seat (especially if there’s sun) and Calton Hill – the National Monument has a nice view of the ocean.
The main section of the city is theoretically walkable in a day, depending on where you’re staying. My favorite route (exhausting, but worth it) from the backpacker’s hostel was down the Royal Mile to Holyrood, around Arthur’s Seat, up to Calton Hill, down Princes Street/through the gardens toward the castle, up the hill, west to Greyfriars Kirkyard (for Potter-related graves), around the Cowgate, and back along High Street.
I was there during the Fringe festival in August, and I think the city was substantially wilder than normal, but the Cowgate should still be fun – lots of studenty clubs, the university, and some cheap and surprisingly good food** – especially Black Medicine Coffee. JK Rowling also wrote some of HP there.
*The highest point in this town is called “Castle Mound,” and a mound it is.
**for the UK
Thanks! I plan on giving Edinburgh the most time on this trip. Any recommendations for hostels?
I stayed at the Royal Mile Backpackers – it was the cheapest during festival season, but I don’t know about other times of year.
No complaints about the hostel, though! It’s clean, quite cozy, and central, and there’s a good kitchen.
I don’t have a ton of time right now but remind me later and I can talk more–but Skye is REALLY hard to navigate without a car. it says there are buses online but I barely saw one the 4 days I spent there. and a lot of the trails you really want to see (THE FAIRY POOLS!!!!) aren’t really on a handy bus route. if you’re sticking to a single town or two I think a bus would be ok, but if you want to explore more of it, honestly consider renting a car for three days or so and driving yourself if you can afford it. when are you going? if you can pull off car camping instead of b&bs, that could save money you could instead put towards the car (my method, of course, was to bother Paul for 3 weeks by sending him photos of Skye until he agreed to go with me).
however: when I went 4 years ago, Skye wasn’t nearly as popular as a destination as it’s become in the past couple years. the buses and tourist resources might be a lot better now.
also, it rained the entire time I was there. plan on being wet constantly. pack waterproof layers so you can still enjoy your time outside instead of staring at it from behind a window or ending up soaked every day. athletic stores like REI sell rain pants which are a thin waterproof layer you can put over jeans and will do you better than a raincoat alone (but also have a raincoat). if you plan on hiking waterproof hiking boots are good because stepping on wet earth will seep up into your shoes and your feet will get very cold very fast.
Thanks! As I am only 20, renting a car will be expensive, probably out of my budget for this particular trip. I am also not confident enough in my abilities to drive in a different country on the other side of the road. So because of what you’ve said, I’ll just stay in Portree. I’ll probably revisit Skye in the future, so I am not terribly concerned with seeing ALL OF Skye at this point in time.
It seems like there aren’t a ton of resources still, but there are hostels and stuff so I’m not too worried.
Okay, thanks for the tip re: rain! I have a pair of rain pants but they make really annoying swishy noises so I might look into acquiring another pair. I’ll definitely be bringing waterproof hiking shoes. At least there won’t be any midges.
Skye was the only place I saw rain the entire ten days or so I was in Scotland.
Just for balance – it did rain persistently when we visitied, but the people of Skye were all delighted, because it was the first rain they’d seen in weeks, and they were getting worried about drought.
Also – the fairy pools are gorgeous. Especially if you happen to spot a mermaid. They were greatly enhanced when we went by a Japanese couple wearing designer outfits, who clearly assumed that a named tourist attraction would have properly made paths, signposts and a visitor centre. I don’t think they’d ever crossed a stream in the wild.
Fair. I am just so used to being constantly rained on no matter where I go (let’s talk about how it rained on me no less than 3 seperate times in Death Valley) but maybe other people have better luck.
(also, hate to be the bearer of bad news, but All rain pants will make the swishy sound ime)
It’s something to do with you and water. Mutual attraction and all that.
I took part of my geology field course in northwestern Scotland, up near Cape Wrath. It rained a lot. Rain pants swished back then, too.
Also: sheep.
when i spent my semester abroad in Ireland, I tried to keep track, and of the 5.5 months I was there I think it didn’t precipitate on me for a grand total of 16 days. those British isles in spring…
What the paper I just read took nine pages to say: According to math, Neanderthals had to have been good foragers or they would have gone extinct sooner than they did.
One hopes it’s a promising mathematical model that may deliver less obvious results in other studies.
Well, it was useful in pointing out that the prevailing theory that Neanderthals were bad foragers and were outcompeted by modern humans who were better at foraging was flawed.
The dryers in my building seem to be broken. I put my clothes in for two cycles, and they still came out so wet I had to hang them up overnight–and some things still aren’t dry!
if you haven’t already, make sure the lint traps are clean.
I always do, but that doesn’t seem to help.
It sounds like a mechanical problem. Do the clothes come out warm?
A lot of people over here (including me) don’t have driers. It’s partly being ecologically responsible, partly not liking the electricity bill.
Provided you have somewhere dry, and with a good airflow (that can be a problem), clothes will dry perfectly well on their own. Put them on hangers, make sure they have airspace between them, and leave them. They may engage in seditious conversations behind your back, but they’ll be perfectly happy.
If they’re on a clothes line, outdoors on a sunny day with a brisk breeze, they’ll take a few hours. Indoors, in less favourable conditions, allow at least two days. That’s not a problem once it becomes part of the mindset.
Oh, I’m familiar with drying clothes in the open air– it’s what I did in Spain and in Greece– in both cases the summer days were so hot that almost anything dried out after a day or night. I don’t think it would be too much trouble to do the same on my balcony here once it gets warmer, especially if I can find a rack. It’s just that at the moment it’s still quite cold and windy outside and there isn’t very much space in this appartment that’s entirely mine. They’re very strict about throwing or having stuff fall off the balcony (you can get expelled for it), and I worry anything I put out on the chairs would be in danger of blowing away.
I tried a different set of dryers yesterday and everything came out dry and warm– even my blankets and sheets!
Yay! Tech wins!
Yes, modern buildings aren’t really designed around old ways of doing things. But if the Powers That Be want you to use modern tech, they should make sure it works.
There is a KOMODO DRAGON GOOGLE DOODLE today, you guys!
I scored 3 on the Komodo Quiz. I wasn’t paying attention.
Hey peeps. Been a few months since I checked in. How goes it? (Also, holy cake, it’s been almost 11 years since I first posted?!?!)
Traffic is intermittent, but we’re still here. How’s adulthood?
You’ve got some unclosed html going on there, it looks like.
Adulthood is…weird. All these responsibilities (and bills. Constant, constant bills.) mixed with a heady amount of freedom. Want to lounge around in pajamas all day on your day off and do absolutely nothing? No one to tell you differently. Want to eat junk food, or fry up a cheeseburger and dip your french fries (chips to you lol) in the burger grease or drink several cans of soda in a day? No one to stop you (I concede in this instance having someone to dissuade you might actually be in your better interest).
I definitely miss the fact that while school came with homework, there were fewer hours (usually) spent actually at school, compared to spent at a job. I don’t miss the homework though.
I’m not all that good at adulting. All the cooking, and cleaning, and all of that stuff tends to fall by the wayside. Even keeping my driveway cleared of snow I put off as long as possible. Can I drive through it? Is my poor little car scraping bottom? No? Okay, shoveling not required.
Adulting is hard work.
Luna: I’d say you’re handling adulthood as well as most people do, and a lot better than some.
(I’ve taken the liberty of repairing Paul’s mangled HTML code.)
Ta, Robert. It was late.
It sounds as if you’re doing fine. You’re adulting exactly the way most people do.
Hello, Luna! Things here are much of a muchness, thank you. Many old-timers are doing most of their posting on the new Kokonspiracy team on Slack. Would you like an invitation?
Robert, that would be lovely. I don’t know that I’ll be terribly active but it would be nice to have that option.
Hey, Luna! Good to see you again!
Happy International Women’s Day!
I’m going home for Spring Break tomorrow. I’ll still have to write some essays for the 22nd, but at least I’ll be at home.