Month: February 2013

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Sentential Links

Links. I got ’em.

:: Because I have a theory about rhyme, that we turned away from rhyme at the same time we turned away from dancing as a social and communal recreation, the same time we turned away from gathering around to sing together, the same time we, most of us, more of us than ever before in the history of the world, left our bodies in gray cubicles and began to take up full time residence inside our minds, our best gray thin and sickly approximations of the mind, divorced more and more from our blood, the same time TV came in and our towns began to glow with an eery blue light in summer evenings as the porches emptied and the fireflies and crickets did what nocturnal insects do undisturbed by laughing calling children running through the shadows and the cool dark grass.

:: The question is: How useful or realistic are the ray-guns of yore or the modern revamped directed energy weapons? (Ach, I don’t want ‘realism’ in my SF weapons! I want nifty.)

:: Stephen Donaldson has delivered the third and final draft of The Last Dark, the fourth and concluding novel in The Last Chronicles of Thomas Covenant. This will be the tenth Thomas Covenant novel overall, and is planned to conclude the entire series. (It’s really amazing that this series is still going on….)

:: Don’t feel bad if you don’t remember. You’re not alone. I’m pretty much the forgotten President. This day is always bittersweet for me. On the one hand it’s nice to be honored; on the other I’m the only President who always has to show proof.

:: I am extremely glad to be living in the 21st century right now.

:: Last year was the 100th anniversary of the publication of the first Tarzan story and, frankly, I was disappointed by the lack of celebration overall. Especially by me, but I’ll be happy to point my finger elsewhere as a distraction. Couldn’t we at least have gotten a new Tarzan movie? (Huh…I’m not even sure I noticed our entry into the second Tarzanic Century. Weird….)

:: The astronauts who will live on the Moon in a decade or two are the ones who are playing with Lego now. Seems like a natural extension to me.

More next week!

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Sunday Burst of Weird and Awesome

Oddities and Awesome abound!

:: What Single Girls Do on Valentine’s Day. As you might expect, I love the ending here….


:: GAHHHHH!!!

(seen on Tumblr)

:: In the “Science rules!” department, the other night, a friend commented on Facebook how bright and clear the stars were that night, and I responded with my observation that I like the winter sky in the northern hemisphere a lot more than I like the summer one, because it always seems so much brighter and clearer and it has my favorite constellation in it (Orion the Hunter). He asked if this was because it’s just generally less hazy and humid in winter, and I have figured for years that this was the case, but then I decided to actually look it up. And you know what? The actual reason why the winter sky is clearer than the summer sky turns out, as is so often the case with science, to be even more interesting than the original supposition!

As seen during Northern Hemisphere winter (or Southern Hemisphere summer), the stars seem brighter. Why? It’s partly because – on December, January and February evenings – the part of Earth you’re standing on is facing into the spiral arm of the galaxy to which our sun belongs.

Consider the sky at the opposite time of year. In June, July and August, the evening sky seen from the entire Earth is facing toward the center of the Milky Way galaxy. The galaxy is about 100,000 light-years across, and its center is some 25,000 to 28,000 light-years away. We don’t see into the exact center of the Milky Way, because it’s obscured by galactic dust. But during those Northern Hemisphere summer months (Southern Hemisphere winter months), as we peer edgewise into the galaxy’s disk, we’re gazing across some 75,000 light-years of star-packed space (the distance between us and the center, plus the distance beyond the center to the other side of the galaxy).

Read the whole thing. Amazing! I love science.

More next week!

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Saturday Centus (Lemon Paczki edition)

I know, I’ve missed a few more since my new-found commitment to, well, not missing a few. Sorry! Anyhoo, here’s my take on this week’s prompt.

By way of explanation, it helps for folks not from ’round here to know that these delights are a long-proud tradition in Buffalo on Mardi-gras, owing to this region’s large Polish community.

Lemon paczki! (I may have mangled that spelling...it's pronounced 'Poonch-key').

An East-side Buffalo bakery, just before midnight….

“We’re closed up, Fred…oh no. Not again.”

“I think I got it this time, Joe.”

Fred huddled over an enormous pocket of fried and sugared dough, one foot in diameter, quivering as if alive. A hose ran from its side to the filling machine.

“It’ll never work, Fred!”

“No! Just a bit more filling…there…there! I’ve officially reached critical mass! I’ve DONE IT!”

Cracks formed in the dough….

“Fred! Duck!”

Too late.

KA-BOOM!!!

Joe wiped lemon filling from his eyes. “Ummm…get me a mop?”

“Igor obeys, Doctor Pastrystein,” Fred grumbled.

Mardi-gras in Buffalo.

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This situation is out of control. It is out of control, and we’ll be lucky to live through it.

Meteors in Russia. This is how it starts, folks. Someone’s just drivin’ along, and then, from the sky….


Or, after that thing has zoomed overhead, some other Russian dudes are standing around gawking at the contrail the object left…when, about twenty-seven seconds in, the shock-wave arrives….


The world is ending, people. ENDING!!!

(Hmmm…I should really have coffee before blogging…anyway, for what is likely the best coverage in terms of making sense of the science and sifting out the bullshit, check out Phil Plait’s Bad Astronomy.)

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Lemons: I like them.

So a few weeks ago I saw an article, linked on Facebook by one of my friends, about the wonderful health benefits of lemon water. The idea is that you start your morning with a cup of warm water, into which you squeeze some fresh lemon. Why? Well, there are apparently a lot of health benefits. I think. In all honesty, I tend to be a bit skeptical of every single “OMG, this is healthy in 47 different ways!” thing that comes down the pike, but I decided to try the fresh lemon thing anyway, because I like lemon and it’s a good way to add some fruit to my daily food intake, which is always a good thing.

I’m not doing the warm water thing, though. I take my water bottle, the one that I use at work (it’s around 26oz, I think), and squeeze an entire lemon into it. Yup, the whole thing. Why screw around with half? One entire lemon, and then I fill the rest of the bottle with water. The benefit here is that, well, lemon just makes the water taste awesome, which gives me a way to drink lots of water without really getting sick of water’s not-terribly-exciting flavor. (Not that I dislike water — I’ve always been a water drinker. But if I can drink water and get a bit of extra fruity vitaminny goodness in there, hey, what’s not to like?)

This new fascination with the wonderful lemon (my next project will be to make Moroccan preserved lemons, once I find a jar big enough someplace) has also led me to investigate lemon concentrates and substitutes, simply because I don’t have time at work to be squeezing entire lemons every time I refill the water bottle. The RealLemon juice stuff is OK, but it’s never been my favorite stuff, as it tends to have a metallic hint to it. But I have found this stuff called True Lemon, which is a powder that comes in little packets. One packet is apparently equivalent of one wedge of a cut-up lemon (cut into 6ths or 8ths, I’m not sure). That stuff makes my water taste as freshly lemony as is probably possible, short of using the actual lemon.

My point here is this: Lemons rule.

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Lemon paczki!


Lemon paczki! (I may have mangled that spelling…it’s pronounced ‘Poonch-key’)., originally uploaded by Jaquandor.

I usually indulge myself once a week by allowing the consumption of donuts (never more than two). This week, in honor of Mardi Gras, the donut of choice was the Polish delicacy paczki. I rarely like filled donuts, but I make an exception for these. Lemon filling, yum!!!

The rest of the day I gnawed on a head of lettuce. (No, not really. Too many carbs today, to be quite honest….)

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