9.29.2006

Unbloggable

This has been occupying me today... I've not got all that much to say. Have been trying to force myself to blog, but can't seem to work up the momentum.

9.20.2006

Hey! Drunk Chinese guy!

Dude, don't bite panda bears. Instead, you should be nice to them. Give them quarters.

9.13.2006

Slate's "Bushism of the Day" from Yesterday

"You know, one of the hardest parts of my job is to connect Iraq to the war on terror."
—Interview with CBS News, Washington D.C., Sept. 6, 2006
Ya think?!

9.12.2006

Ultimate Showdown

This is weird and stupid and hilarious. Watch it (flash animation, worth downloading flash, if you don't have it).

Soda 'splosion

So after seeing it on mythbusters, I had to try it. I dropped 3 mentos into a two liter of diet Pepsi. However, instead of the ten foot geiser that I was expecting, it was merely a syrupy overflow. I should have dropped like a million in, but I didn't have that many mentos.

9.09.2006

MSHS - Home of the Fighting...Windows?

I'll be interested to see how this turns out. Apparently, Microsoft helped design a high school in Philadelphia. Seems like there are quite a few good ideas incorporated into the design, but I wonder how it will all work in practice. It'll be very cool if it succeeds.

9.06.2006

A Nice Piece About Quantum Mechanics

This lays things out rather nicely.

Uh oh...

See link from last week.
Then see this.

At least it was just the primary. But still...I am ill at ease.

9.05.2006

Kids' TV ain't what it used to be

Yet another ringing endorsement of Blue's Clues and its ilk. I'm pretty sure watching these shows must organically manufacture crack in the viewer's brain.

9.04.2006

Crikey

Poor Steve Irwin. He's gone to hunt the big crocodile in the sky.

9.02.2006

Sentimental

I miss autumn...

My favorite season, back home--where there is one--falls (ahem) like a curtain. Cool, even chill evenings mark a welcome contrast to the sometimes hot days. There're foggy mornings, the occasional rain. Trees prepare to winter, shedding their leafy vulnerabilities. In many a place, the fallen leaves form a thick carpet that will last until spring, or until the alternating freezes and rains of winter dissolve them; oftentimes there are too many to manage with a rake.

I also miss the rituals that are associated with the fall. Going "back" to school. Football games on Friday nights, where your instrument is so cold that it burns your lips or fingers. Soccer practice in the pouring rain, winning or losing games--and waking up on the ride home with the foul taste of stale McDonald's and an hour of mouthbreathing pasted to your tongue... the condensation from 15 tired teens' breaths on the bus windows.

Strangely, given my prolonged stay in the halls of academe, I miss the rhythms of the school year. That I grew up responding to them, resonating to them, possibly explains how I can miss their absence from even so short a distance. There was always a certain promise for me in those places, even when I ached to be gone from them.

Today's the first of September, and the beginning of the long weekend that tradition marks as the last of the summer. I've very often let these things go unmarked since I grew up, to the extent that you might think I've forgotten, or was somehow unaware. You'd be wrong. I've known.