Two different bloggers have posts that have me feeling a bit glum about the future of reading today.

First is this news item, cited by John Scalzi. It seems that kids just aren’t used to handling books for long periods of time, and thus are getting headaches from the physical effort of reading…Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. That’s all we need: a medical reason not to read. (Yeah, I’m taking this too seriously. Sue me.)

And if that doesn’t make you give up all hope, this missive from one of the Blowhardic Duo might. There’s a lot here, so read the whole thing, but the sad gist of it is Michael’s belief that reading in-and-of-itself, in the form of sitting down with a book and just reading it, is going to continue to regress into its own little niche. Ugh.

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I didn’t learn about the whole Donald Luskin-taking-legal-action-against-Atrios thing until late last night, and I didn’t feel much like posting about it then, so I’ll just chime in with my predictable view here that Luskin is always dumb and a stalker, but now he’s just plain insane.

Anyway, it’s funny how those who continually beat Democrats over the head for having trial lawyers as one of their big constituencies don’t seem all that hesitant when it comes to having their own trial lawyers sue people who insult them.

And by the way folks, how can Luskin have any kind of claim against Paul Krugman for the whole “stalker” thing if Charles Johnson apparently doesn’t have a strong claim against IndyMedia for the whole “child molester” thing? Anyone?

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Yes, I am late in producing new material here today, because we decided to vacate the home for a while. In fact, we vacated the city: we trekked to Rochester, NY and visited the Strong Museum, which is a museum whose main exhibits are designed for children. There’s an antique carousel, a small train, craft tables, and all manner of other stuff. Right now they are housing an exhibit centered around Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, which allowed me to follow up a bit on the strong similarities between that story and Hayao Miyazaki’s great film Spirited Away.

There is also a large Sesame Street exhibit, with walk-throughs designed to actually look like you are walking through Sesame Street. That was pretty cool. One thing I did not expect was a room with profiles of all the major cast members through the years on the walls, along with video monitors which play clips related to each member. I pressed the button for Mr. Hooper, and the video clip that played was the terribly sad scene where the cast has to explain to Big Bird that Mr. Hooper has died. They should have put a warning on that.

Anyway, a good time was had by all. The Strong Museum is a really fun place. Buffalo should have one.

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[This post contains 100% political snarking.]

Digby‘s got the goods on the Bush re-election strategy. Since a period in which we’ve seen two major wars is going to be marketed as “Peace”, I can’t wait to see how a recession, a busted treasury, and two million jobs lost is offered as “Prosperity”.

Yeesh.

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I just read a post by Megan McArdle in which she takes Democrats to task for stonewalling President Bush’s judicial nominees because (and I can’t believe she wrote this in all apparent seriousness) the judges in question, while being minority judges, are not liberal minority candidates.

Now, I’m not entirely sure why Megan would completely disregard the actual reasons stated for why a relative handful of judges are being opposed; nor am I certain shy Megan apparently thinks that Democrats actually expect the President to nominate “the same judges Al Gore would have nominated”; nor am I certain why Megan is of the apparent belief that it’s their minority status that is riling the Democrats (that Charles Pickering fellow — in what minority does he fall?).

And then, one of the commenters on the thread, in just the fifth comment, provides some factual data that pretty much completely disproves Megan’s post. I can only assume that she has the flu and composed this post an hour after drinking half a bottle of NyQuil, because it makes so little sense that I had to check three times to make sure I was even on her blog in the first place. While I don’t find it uncommon to disagree with her, I do find it highly uncommon to actually think she’s being intellectually dishonest.

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In another attempt to jump-start Collaboratory, I posted a couple of items there for discussion.

BTW, last year we tried to get a Collaboratory book club going, but we got a bit too ambitious and ended up getting crushed beneath the weight of The Brothers Karamazov. We’re thinking of taking another crack at a book club, this time with I Claudius, I think. If there’s abiding interest, leave a message there under the appropriate thread.

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SDB thinks he’s safe from the fires, for the most part, and he also provides a handy map that shows where the fires are (or were, at the time of the map).

He also provides a brief explanation of the numbering system for the Interstate Highway system: odd-numbered interstates are mainly north-south routes, while even-numbered interstates are east-west routes. I’d also add that when a relatively short “spur” or “loop” is added, a third digit is added to the front of the number, with the last two remaining the same as the “mainline” highway with which the spur or loop is associated. Thus, by way of example, in Buffalo we have the following:

I-90: This is the mainline Interstate that traverses the Buffalo region.

I-190: This is the spur that branches off I-90 and leads downtown and then to Niagara Falls.

I-290: This is a loop that branches off I-90 and curves around the northern suburbs of the city (Williamsville, Amherst, Tonawanda).

I-990: This is a spur that branches off I-290 and leads to the University at Buffalo’s North Campus and a couple of miles beyond.

So, a “spur” will usually have an odd first digit while a “loop” will have an even first digit. (Strangely, this isn’t the case in Syracuse, where I-690 is, despite its even first digit, a “spur” and not a “loop”. I-490, though, is indeed a “loop”.)

And if you find all this just incredibly fascinating — and why wouldn’t you? — then you’ll just love this page, which has more than you’ll ever want to know about the Interstate Highway System, of which Charles Kuralt once said: “Thanks to the Interstate Highway System, it is now possible to travel across the country from coast to coast without seeing anything.”

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Jessa Crispin points out that there may soon be a very compelling reason to move to Massachusetts.

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Well, not really a “parable”, but a reflection. Or a meditation. Or a thought. Or….[head explodes]

Anyway, yesterday the wife and I had the wonderful occasion to foist the kid off on the grandparents for a few hours, during which we went shopping without the four-year-old in tow — a one-time normal thing that has been elevated to luxury status since the coming of the kid. We went to a couple of consignment shops, to Barnes&Noble, and a few other places. We were early in getting to the restaurant where we were meeting the grandparents for dinner, so we passed a few moments by going into Clayton’s, which is the Buffalo area’s nicest toy store. This is where you go in Buffalo if you’re looking for real toys: dollhouse furniture, the biggest selection of Playmobile stuff I’ve ever seen, kid’s crafts, fine dolls (both porcelain and Russian matryoshkas), fine model railroad supplies, et cetera. In other words, everything you won’t find on the shelves at Toys-R-Us or Wal-Mart.

What was amazing was that we’ve been looking, to no avail, for a couple of things in other toy places. I’ve been looking for wind-up bath toys for the daughter, like boats or whatnot. The wife has been looking for “sewing cards”, apparently cardboard or felt cutouts in different shapes that come with yarn and have holes punched in them to let the kid lace the yarn through the holes, an item which I guess shows kids the concept of sewing. (I’d never seen these before, so if my description is weird, sorry.) We could not find either of these simple items in any big store — not Wal-Mart, not Target, and not even Toys-R-Us. But we found both within five minutes of walking into Clayton’s.

It amazes me that simple things like these have been eclipsed into the realm of “specialty toys”. I walk through toy sections in the big-box stores and my attitude is, “God, let’s find what we want and get the hell out of here”. But I walk through a place like Clayton’s, and I start to actually think back to my own childhood, and I spot the things I used to play with, and a strange mixture of happiness and sadness sets in. I’m happy that I can still find these things and get them for my kid, but I’m sad because I wonder how many parents never even consider going to a place like Clayton’s, and thus have kids who will never play with a single toy that Wal-Mart has decided not to stock?

Folks, if you have kids, don’t do all your Christmas toy shopping at the big places. Find those small toy stores and get them something they’ll never see at those big places. And spread the word.

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Here some science related articles I’ve had sitting in my bookmarks waiting to be unleashed on my unsuspecting readers at just the right time. Tremble, pitiful mortals! Mwwoooo-hoooo-haaa-ha-ha-ha-ha!!

:: Alien hunters get new respect. After years of being seen by many as a “fringe” activity, SETI research is finally emerging as legitimate scientific inquiry. Where is Dr. Sagan when we really need him?

Someday I hope to see the new Allen Telescope Array, once it’s built. When I was in second grade and my family lived in West Virginia, we once drove by the radio observatory at Green Bank (back before they built the new Robert Byrd telescope). I find something beautiful, in a ghostly way, about large radio telescopes — these giant lattices of steel and mesh through which we have deepened our knowledge of the Universe.

:: Archaeologists recently uncovered evidence that the Amazon basin may not have been an unexplored and pristine jungle before the arrival of the Europeans after all. Evidence shows that the natives of that region were far from stone-age savages, working the region into a network of villages and even building roads.

:: If you like whiskey, you’re in pretty good company — no less a personage than George Washington, hero of the Revolutionary War and First President of these United States, drank the hard stuff now and then. In fact, Washington had his own distillery at Mt. Vernon, and a group of whiskey makers recently used the distillery to recreate General Washington’s own whiskey recipe (although, contrary to Washington’s likely practice, they’re going to age the stuff to make it taste better).

:: Here’s a new theory as to why ships disappear at sea without trace or reason: they are swamped, unawares, by giant methane bubbles rising from the ocean floor. What happens is that the pressure at the ocean bottom causes methane to form ice-like structures, like the orange blob in this picture:

But these structures can break off and head for the surface, and as they “thaw”, the methane reverts to gaseous form, making a huge bubble that can swamp an ocean-going vessel on the surface if it breaches at just the right spot relative to the unfortunate ship. If this turns out to be true, I wonder if the Bermuda Triangle is merely a region whose sea-bed produces a lot of methane.

:: If you plan to make an Egyptian-style mummy in the future, you’ll be happy to know that the secret ingredient in mummification that allows preservation on the millennial time frame has at last been identified: an extract from the cedar tree. (To this day, my favorite bit of the mummification process is when they use a really long needle to pull the cadaver’s brain out through the nose. Yeah, I’m warped.)

:: I’m not sure what the environmental implications are, especially for biodiversity, but an ongoing process to take a “census” of the oceans is revealing three new fish species a week, such as this new variety of scorpionfish:

Representatives of Red Lobster could not be reached for comment.

:: Applying Pat Robertson logic, maybe our abandonment of Sun-worship wasn’t such a good idea….

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