During spring I am sometimes uncomfortably aware that I live south of Hesston, east of Greensburg, west of Andover and not far at all from Udall.
Category: Whatever
Just wondering
Is there anyone who thinks that daylight “savings” time is a good idea?
(yawn)
(Via Dustbury.)
Words to live by
Art or vandalism?
Whoever was working on the project across the street either finished the job or got bored, and it looks like this is its final state. It’s too ugly to be graffiti, so it must be art.
David Hilbert, plumbing contractor
Back when I sewed regularly, I seldom used printed fabrics. Partly it was because I mostly made outfits for the SCA, where prints were rarely appropriate, but mainly because most of the designs available then were dull and uninteresting.
That is no longer the case. I recently visited Spoonflower.com and found all kinds of interesting things there, such as the plumbing nightmare above, based on the space-filling Hilbert curve.
Other designs include:
Naphthene aromatics and more
What do you get in a $450 bottle of wine?
This is breathtaking stuff, incredibly complex on the nose, where it features hints of vanilla, clove, cinnamon, cassis, pepper and asphalt.
Memo
Ten years ago Sitemeter was a useful tool for seeing who links to you. Nowadays it’s a liability. A month ago, and again yesterday, sites I regularly visit were hijacked with domain redirects most likely piggybacking on Sitemeter code. If you use Sitemeter, please find an alternative as soon as possible.
Memo to the hijackers: Kirika would like to see you.
Update: The Bayou Renaissance Man recommends StatCounter.
Art or vandalism?
This recently appeared across the street. I suppose it’s preferable to gang symbols, but a blank wall would look better.
Quote of the day
If only Hamilton had said: “No citizen of the United States should refrain from grilled trout on Thanksgiving Day.”
Apropos of something or other
“Pirate” beats “ninja” easily, and “samurai,” too.
(Illustration from Amagi Brilliant Park, episode seven. Chart from Google Ngram Viewer.)
Shakin’ All Over
So the Brickmuppet is suspicious?
Update: Possibly of relevance:
Or perhaps not.
Advisory
If you have Sitemeter on your site, get rid of it. Now.
Boo, boo, etc.
It’s Halloween today, right? Time to get the bag of chocolate out of the freezer.
There’s a fine line between spooky and silly, as Frëd illustrates in this footnote to American history.
*****
There’s a lot of anime suitable for Halloween, from the many iterations of Ge Ge Ge no Kitaro (including in particular Hakaba Kitaro) to Soul Eater and Hozuki no Reitetsu. If I had to pick just one, though, it would be Kenji Nakamura’s Mononoke. Here’s one of the two-episode stories:
The entire show is on YouTube, but it’s available for such a reasonable price that there’s no excuse not to buy your own copy of this probable classic. ((I don’t declare anything a “classic” until it’s at least ten years old, and Mononoke is from anime’s year of wonder, 2007.))
*****
*****
If you’re looking for a proper Halloween post, Isegoria has a bunch of them.
1941-2014
Msgr. Lorenzo Albacete, a colleague of my father’s years ago on Triumph magazine, passed away this week. Lorenzo was an interesting guy, charming, intelligent, funny and a pleasure to talk with and be around. He lead an interesting life. Trained as a physicist, he was ordained a priest and obtained a doctorate in theology. One of his friends was a certain Karol Wojtyla, better known these days as Pope John Paul II. He wrote for a surprising range of publications, such as The New Yorker and The New York Times, and often appeared on television, once debating Christopher Hitchens. He was deeply involved with the Communion and Liberation lay ecclesial movement.
I snapped the above picture when Lorenzo visited Wichita not quite ten years ago.
Quote of the day
I’m not great with children – I’m ideologically in favor of them, but they can be kind of hard to talk to.
— Eve Tushnet, via Josh