Man, that’s one hell of an obituary: Count Gottfried von Bismarck Count Gottfried von Bismarck, who was found dead on Monday aged 44, was a louche German aristocrat with a multi-faceted history as a pleasure-seeking heroin addict, hell-raising alcoholic, flamboyant waster and a reckless and extravagant host of homosexual orgies. The great-great-grandson of Prince Otto, Germany’s Iron Chancellor and architect… Read more →
Author: Mr. McLaren
The Supremes (US Version)
So, I’ve been reading a lot of “only sixteen months to go” talk about Bush, and a lot of conversation about the Democrats playing a “long game” by letting him have enough rope to hang himself and the Republicans with him, etc. However, I think that this notion that however bad it gets, it will all be over by November… Read more →
Taxes and The Rich
When someone who is at the poor end of the wealth spectrum (i.e. the vast majority of people in the world) make statements about income disparity, class inequality, or the basic unfairness of a nation’s infrastructure, even if those statements are objectively and factually true, they can easily be at least somewhat deflected by observing that those statements line up… Read more →
Scooter
Like everyone who’s even vaguely awake in the “Western” world I’ve seen dozens of stories already about Bush’s commuting of Libby’s sentence. Like everyone who’s even vaguely awake, I see this for what it is. As I read in the NYT: “in this case, Mr. Bush did not sound like a leader making tough decisions about justice. He sounded like… Read more →
Separation of Church And State
Well, we already knew there was no such thing as Rule of Law anymore, so why not toss that whole No State Religion thing out as well? Man, I already mocked Alabama this week–I’m out of punchlines. Here: State of Alabama – Office of the Governor Bob Riley – Press Releases MONTGOMERY – Governor Bob Riley is encouraging Alabamians to… Read more →
How I Welcomed Canada Day
Shortly after the clock ticked over into Canada Day last night, I was the proud recipient of this: In addition to that lovely chunk of acrylicCourtesy of the new laser engraver at R & M Rubber Stamp, a.k.a “the business Tiger owns”. and the first place finish prizeWhich, were we playing for cash would have been 50% of the tournament… Read more →
This one’s just for me
OK, maybe also for George. I have a Pavlovian reaction to this music, in almost every variation. My wife has an equally strong, but entirely opposite, reaction. Read more →
A Wednesday Miscellany
For some reason I’ve been on a things-in-space-with-cool-pictures kick this week, so why stop now? Here’s a picture of the aurora australis, as seen from Antarctica: That’s one of two images from a post at Canadian hard-SF author Peter Watts‘ blog. Read the post for a higher resolution version, another picture, and a very disturbing mental image. Of course there… Read more →
I expected nothing less
This tiny blog cliche via the R-rated Justine and just-as-risque-as-me Gwenda. The words used to determine this rating CRACK ME UP. For the record they are: “dead”, “drugs”, “death”, “sex”, and “dangerous”. Running the rating routine on various monthly archives of this site generates wildly varying results. Apparently I am remarkably inconsistent in my usage of the “adult” keywords. Heh. Read more →
Banjos playing through the broken glass
I love Harper’s. I suspect I’ve read every issue published since I was about fourteen. And their online presence is also pretty nice. So obviously I eventually got around to the piece this week on Justice in Alabama. It’s worth a read, if only to make you ask Mr. Young’s question “What are you doing Alabama? You got the rest… Read more →
The great paperback giveaway, part 2
More boxes of books repacked, with similar results: Same rules as last time (and some of those are still available for another week as well). Whatever is not claimed by mid-July will go some other way. I’m leaning toward donating them to the hospital library at this point. Post your requests, don’t email me–that way I won’t forget what you… Read more →
Professor Membrane On: A Dead Supernova
“It’s time to move on, son! Real science… try it!” It’d dead. Dead, I tell you. Bad Astronomy drew my attention to the Eta Carinae stuff at Harvard’s Chandra X-Ray Observatory site. The Chandra site says this: Eta Carinae is a mysterious, extremely bright and unstable star located a mere stone’s throw – astronomically speaking – from Earth at a… Read more →
Hanging Around The House: Latest Updates
I spent a fair bit of time last year trying to document the kinds of stuff I have hanging up around the house. I’ve made a couple of changes recently and I figured I might as well log the update here as well. The first set of updates is the addition of my recent set of Michel Gagné prints. I… Read more →
Professor Membrane Spotlight On: The Millennium Simulation
“Hooray for science!” Today we’re talking about the Millennium Simulation. I know this is an old story, dating as it does to 2005, but it’s got three different angles that appeal to my inner science geek plus a little something extra. You could start by reading a summary, or the Guardian article about the project, to get an idea of… Read more →
The great paperback giveaway, part 1
So, I have 12 boxes of paperback books in my back room, that I haven’t unpacked in the six years since the move. The primary reason here is that I’ve never built enough shelving to catch up to my hardcover books, and thus have never had shelving for the paperbacks. Well, OK, the primary reason is that I am World… Read more →
