Might as well linkblog–can’t dance. I don’t know whether to be amused or disheartened about the whole “25% of Brits think Winston Churchill is fictional” thing. On the one hand, it’s pretty funny. On the other hand, what does it say about the education system that this result is even possible. On still a third hand, it’s not like North… Read more →
Author: Mr. McLaren
What I’m Chewing On Today
Own only what you can always carry with you; know languages, know countries, know people. Let your memory be your travel bag. —Alexander Solzhenitsyn So I can’t claim not to have stuff… but I can certainly claim to understand that the things that matter are people and stories. It doesn’t hurt to remind myself from time to time, though. There… Read more →
Russell, Gaby, and the H-Bomb
That’s a portrait of Bertrand Russell, taken by the relatively famous quebecois photographer and portrait specialist, Gabriel Desmarais (who usually went by just “Gaby“). The portrait was taken at Russell’s place in Wales (“Plas Penrhyn”) in 1961, which would probably mean Russell is 89 in the photo. It is one of a series of photomontages Gaby prepared with portraits of… Read more →
Not Beautiful, But Made From The Heart
A couple of weeks back when Trish had her birthday, Sarah and I spent an afternoon making her a birthday cake. From scratch. That’s right–no mixes for us. If you’ve ever baked with a 3-year old, you will know that this can be terribly fun, if a bit messy. The cake that we made was pretty damned tasty, although possibly… Read more →
Is There Anything It Can’t Do?
I love garlic. A lot. Like, an unsociable amount. Hell, I stole one of Brust‘s laws of cooking: “If it doesn’t have garlic, it better be dessert!” So I love it every time scientists find another way garlic does amazing things to protect your health. I’d eat it anyway, of course. Here’s this week’s example: from Garlic combats arsenic poisoning… Read more →
Other Impractical Desires
Here are a few other things, of no practical value, that I’d love to get: The Peggy programmable light board kit. I’d like to buy a few of these–one to put in the office in Boston to mock the Mooninite thing from last year, one to put in my office for alternative visualization experiments, and one to make into the… Read more →
No Practical Value
You know what I want, that is ridiculously expensive, and that I can in no way practically justify, but which I still have a serious hankering for? A sword cane. At least twice a week for the last couple of months, I’ve spent some time looking at the photos at the Burger Knives sword cane pages–especially the titanium “Stilletto” model.… Read more →
For Fans of The Wire (and the morbidly curious)
I was fascinated to learn that the real Baltimore Sun has an interactive page/Google Maps application that shows the location of murders, and allows you to filter by age, race, gender, cause of death, and whether or not there was an article about the murder. (It also allows you to filter by district which is helpful for fans of The… Read more →
SF Writers Say Smart Things: Peter Watts
“But going after the Scientologists in a world full of Christians, Muslims, and Trekkies is like surveying a world ravaged by AIDS and devoting yourself to the eradication of the hangnail.” —Peter Watts Read more →
Head Colds Are Annoying
No poker last night. No work today. Sudafed, Robitussin, Benylin, Drixoral, etc: No relief from symptoms. Otrivin right up the nose: actually works. I can breathe. This may mean I can sleep. This may mean I can get rid of this minor annoyance. Read more →
Anticipation
Please allow me to present several things that I am quite looking forward to. First up is the new album from Danny Michel. This should come as no surprise to anyone who reads this blog at all regularly–I hardly hide the fact that I’m pretty much a fanboy for Danny’s stuff. However, reading some of Danny’s announcements about the work… Read more →
CSS is driving me nuts
Aarrgh. My lovely blockquote CSS, with the indent and the nice vertical line works great all the time EXCEPT when I have an inline image on the left. For some (probably arcane) reason, in that case the margins/padding and border seem to “disappear” under the inline image. You can see the problem below. I’ve know about this for years, but… Read more →
Flat out of sight, totally together…
A while back I discovered that my wife somehow managed to grow up without seeing any of the Kurt Russell Disney mad-science-at-college movies from the late Sixties and early Seventies. So, I added the movies to my Zip queue, and while I was in Australia the first one, The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes, arrived. So we watched it earlier this… Read more →
I Live (Kinda)
(This is a bit journal-ish. Skip ahead if that kind of stuff doesn’t interest you.) You know, the last time I can back from Australia, I was hungover and carrying the Aussie death flu bug, and I was wiped out for several weeks. This time I seem to have been wiped out first, and then picked up an illness. I… Read more →
I’m glad it’s not just me
AN EXCUSE FOR NOT RETURNING THE VISIT OF A FRIEND Do not be offended because I am slow to go out. You know Me too well for that. On my lap I hold my little girl. At my Knees stands my handsome little son. One has just begun to talk. The other chatters without Stopping. They hang on my clothes… Read more →
