Trivia that matter
So today is Squawk Like a Parrot day? Meh. If it’s pirates you want, I recommend Marika Kato and company. (The picture above is the wallpaper on one of my computer monitors.)
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Something I found in my archives that might be worth posting again: G.K. Totoro, or Totoro Roosevelt?
(From here.)
Tuesdays are ninja Mondays: just as bad, but you never see them coming.
Neil Gaiman and Gene Wolfe:
… distrust anyone you may meet whose teeth are sharper than your own.
Some items I ordered finally arrived this week. I have no idea when I’ll have a chance to do more than glance at them.
I spotted this on the way home from work last week. Evidently the Kansas DMV doesn’t pay attention to what they stamp on regular license plates.
Comic Sans might be the least-loved of all typefaces, but I think it would be an appropriate font for certain uses. Government documents, for instance.
One of the candidates for greatest album cover of all time. The music is pretty good, too.
More nonsense:
Here’s an old coloring book that might have been lying around Yukari Akiyama‘s house.
(Via Borepatch.)
I was not aware of how severe Wilson’s disabilities were:
If Woodrow Wilson’s brain had suffered no further damage, the history of the following decades could have been very different. For Wilson in 1916 wanted Germany defeated but not crushed; he wanted Germany to be a viable member of the proposed League of Nations. He was convinced that a dictated peace [“… ]would be accepted in humiliation, under duress, at an intolerable sacrifice, and that would leave a sting, a resentment, a bitter memory upon which the terms of peace would rest, not permanently, but only as upon quicksand.” The overthrow of the Kaiser in 1918 and his replacement by a democratic government raised Wilson’s hopes for rehabilitating Germany. At the 1919 peace conference in Paris, he argued against French efforts to try the ex-Kaiser and to exact punitive reparations.
But then President Wilson suddenly took ill during the conference: he had vomiting, high fever, and the other signs of having caught the influenza which was sweeping Europe and later much of the world. It turned out that the virus had affected his respiratory system, heart, brain, and prostate. Indeed, judging from some of the mental symptoms (his top aide noted that, just overnight, Wilson’s personality changed), Wilson may have suffered another stroke at this time or, as Dr. Weinstein suggests, have also caught the frequently associated virus of encephalitis lethargica (this is the virus whose victims often developed Parkinson’s disease years later, Oliver Sacks wrote about them in Awakenings).
Even before the influenza attack, his obsession with secrecy was pronounced: none of the other American peace commissioners were privy to President Wilson’s thinking. Bedridden, Wilson became obsessed with being overheard, with guarding his papers. In addition to the paranoia, he became euphoric and almost manic at times following the bedridden phase of the illness. He even became socially outgoing in ways quite uncharacteristic of the normally reticent Wilson.
But most striking was Wilson’s change in attitude toward the Germans: now he himself proposed that the former Emperor be tried. Whereas he had previously insisted that the German delegates be granted full diplomatic privileges at the conference, now he was contemptuous of them. Herbert Hoover, who was there, noted the change in Wilson’s behavior: before the influenza, Wilson was willing to listen to advice, was incisive, quick to grasp essentials and unhesitating in his conclusions. Afterward, he had lapses in memory, he groped for ideas, he was obsessed with “precedents.”
(Via Classical Values.)
A message from Steven:
For anyone curious, the mu.nu/mee.nu server had a hardware failure. The RAID controller died. Pixy is on the case, so it’s just a matter of how long before SoftLayer can find a spare and swap it in.
(This was stuck in the spam queue of the previous post for no good reason.)
Update: mee.nu is back, though at the moment the only pictures at Chizumatic are the header images.
For those who wonder just who the legendary Pixy Misa is, here’s a recent photo of the magical girl from Down Under:
Update II: While looking up the background of the phrase “Down Under,” I came across yet another damned case of copyright insanity.
Miscellaneous links and nonsense:
David Bentley Hart, from the May 2014 First Things:
Journalism is the art of translating abysmal ignorance into execrable prose.
A look at brilliant, psychotic Joe Meek, who changed the sound of music.
Stereo pictures from WWI. A couple of notes: stereograms made for hand-held viewers use the parallel method of viewing, not the crossed-eye. I.e., the right eye focuses on the right image, the left eye on the left. It is possible to free-fuse the images, though it is easier done than explained. Let your eyes relax and drift apart until the images of a well-defined region in the pictures, such a the bright sky through the roof in the above image pair, start to overlap. Focus on that region until the images snap together, and you should then be able to see the entire scene in perspective. (You’ll need to sit back at least two feet from the monitor if you want to see the full-size images at the link in stereo.)
Does anyone have any experience with Rakuten Global Market? I found a musical toy there I’ve had in mind for a while at a significantly better price than I’ve seen elsewhere, with free shipping. I wonder if it’s too good to be true.
Guys und Panzer:
(Via the Borderline Boy.)
The Sailor Senshi meet the Jetsons. (Via Project Rooftop.)
“I think that when a human engineer lives a good life, he’s reincarnated as a beaver.”
Full disclosure: I am a creature of the sinister right-wing Koch brothers, just like Michael Mann. Both universities I attended, plus the one where I studied and photographed ballet and the one where I took part in the annual Renaissance Faire, have all received money from the Kochtopus.
Don’t expect a Calvin and Hobbes movie.
You probably shouldn’t expect another VEI 8 blast from Yellowstone, either.
I haven’t had a haircut in 20 years. Perhaps that is why I’m still alive despite riding my bike every day on the wild streets of west Wichita.
Notes on growing biochemical weapons.
Pride and Prejudice for academics.
Today’s musical interlude, lunatic bassist edition:
Miscellaneous notes:
• I’m mostly taking pictures these days in my available time. Wichita, perhaps the least interesting place visually in North America — it’s not even ugly — is as photogenic as it ever gets right now. Although it’s already summer (spring lasted most of one morning last week), temperatures haven’t yet hit 100°, and I can ride around town without risking heatstroke.
• My route home from work yesterday was more circuitous than usual, with one intersection closed off by the police. I missed the excitement, but that may be just as well.
• I watched several more episodes of some current series but ended up dropping them all. I probably will eventually watch the rest of Suisei no Gargantia on the Verdurous Planet. The first three episodes showed more thought than any of the other shows I sampled, and the art looked good, too. The Brickmuppet and Steven both praise what they’ve seen so far. Valvrave the Liberator features not just mecha, but vampires, too (and in recent episodes, I gather, boys and girls trading bodies). It might be of interest to Wonderduck when he’s recovered from the horrors of Vividred, but I’ve had enough.
Instead, I’ve been rewatching some older favorites, Jinrui wa Suitai Shimashita, Mouretsu Pirates (for the third time) and Shingu (I’ve lost count).
• You can download the materials to make a paper model of a tank at the Girls und Panzer website here. Also, Brave Combo has worked its magic, or whatever it is, on “Katyusha.”
• It’s been a while since I mentioned ponies. Here’s a list of several with their Civil War general counterparts. (Via Dusty Sage.)
• The title of this post is from Looking for Bobowicz, which I listened to earlier this evening. You can download it here.
It looked like spring would arrive early this year, but that was before 22 inches of global warming fell. The snow is finally gone, but Wichita is still mostly brown. I figure that it will be another week or two before trees leaf out. I went to the botanical garden yesterday and found very little color aside from pansies and daffodils. The lenten rose, above, was the highlight of the trip. The Corylus avellana was in full bloom; look closely to spot the female flowers.
The most colorful item there was the gateway to the children’s garden, below.
Children's garden entrance in Wichita
The okame cherry was showing some pink in its buds. There might be a few flowers opening during the coming week and perhaps more than a few next Saturday. (It’s already cherry blossom season in Japan. Here’s the blooming forecast, should you be planning a trip there soon. (Via J. Greely.))
Update: the panorama works particularly well as a “little planet.”
Presenting the Pulp-O-Mizer.
(Via dotclue)
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While researching jurisimprudence, I came across some additions to The Rules:
Cunningham’s Law – The best way to get the right answer on the Internet is not to ask a question, it’s to post the wrong answer.
Muphry’s Law — The principle that any criticism of the speech or writing of others will itself contain at least one error of usage or spelling
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Chuck Jones’s Law – If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it’s probably a bunny.
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Via the professor, here’s the Monty Python “Happy Valley” skit. which I hadn’t come across before.
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I quit watching teevee decades ago, so I missed this classic commercial. (Via Robbo.)
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When assembling a web page, be sure to close all tags. (How large a monitor would you need to read the final line above the footer?)
(Via Dustbury.)
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Even rapidly-flowing, basaltic lava, such as that which Tolbachik is currently erupting in Kamchatka, is dense stuff, as illustrated by the process of taking a sample, above.
Here’s a spherical panoramic movie of a helicopter touring Tolbachik. You can click and drag to change the direction of view.
Since lava is so dense, is it possible, with the appropriate footwear, to walk across a fresh flow? Sometimes, if conditions are right:
At Etna you can walk on small lava flows with good hiking boots (it might be their last hike, though), because the lava is more viscous than on Hawai’i. However, you won’t try on a larger flow because heat radiation is so huge.
You go first.
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Mt. Rainier erupting the Milky Way.
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Some true rock music, made with volcanic phonolite.
I wonder sometimes how accurate are my memories of the places I lived when I was young. It occurred to me that I might be able to find out through Google maps. I quickly located the house in Brigham City, Utah, where my family lived for seven years. Aside from my current residence, that is the longest I’ve lived at any particular address. The house looks very much as I remember it, only smaller. The mountains are smaller, too. The neighborhood has changed, though. The horse barn down the street at the right is gone, as is the row of magnificently thorny honey locusts to the east.
So less costs more?
(Spotted at the grocery store.)