blivet 2.0

garret waxes re: the cusp of 2001-2002 too.

Me? No great (or lesser) thoughts. I never thought I’d make it this far (to the 21st century, I mean). Life is pretty darn good.

“Seven Days to MacWorld San Francisco. This One is Big. Even By Our Standards.” Hopefully the G5 will be announced. I’m not sure that speed bumps or flat-panel iMacs woould measure up to that hype. But we are talking about Steve after all…

I think Dave Rogers says it well.

How Islam Lost Its Way by Pervez Amir Ali Hoodbhoy
[Washington Post]. Worth a read. This article is getting linked to from all over… I think I saw it first at Rafé’s

Later: Rafé has links to several other articles about the Afgan situation.

I’m listening to a story about Klesmer music on NPR while I’m waiting for my mind to condense from the ethers of sleep. Klesmer seems very appropriate somehow.

We didn’t cut much of a economic swath yesterday, but we did come home with a lot of diapers. I also ended up with a pocketful of dollar coins from getting vending machine stamps at the Post Office. The, um, New Year’s cards will finally go out.

Dr. ‘Liz is coming over tonight for more board games, probably some form of Texas Chainsaw Death-Match Trivial Pursuit. There will likely be blood on the dice. It should be fun. We are not going to go near the Las Vegas Strip on New Year’s Eve, we will leave that to more adventurous souls.

It seems, personally, like 2001 lasted a long time. I guess that is because many things occurred that left a strong memory. I hope 2002 is a fantastic, record year for you and yours.

Let’s all make it to 2002. Please don’t drink and drive.
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This is one of my favorite Isaac Asimov quotes from Jeff at Jeff’s Radio Weblog:

"The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not ‘Eureka!’ (I found it!) but ‘That’s funny …’" from [Quotes of the Day]

Got to do a bit of Momma and baby wranglin’ and git this show on the road. There’s commerce to partic-I-pate in. Have to wield our economic clout like a D-11 Cat, carving a consumptive swath that will be sung about around campfires for generations. Translation: Diapers are on sale at Target and there are year-end close-outs elsewhere on stuff!

While looking for a link to a big Cat ‘dozer, I typed in catepillar dot com thinking that the Yellow Giant in Peoria would have that domain. Wrong. That domain is some sort of psuedo-portal that takes over your browser with both X10 ads and those explitives deleted popunder ads. This one was a particularly feral beast. I was on the 17th popup ad that appeared when I closed the previous window when I realized there was a tiny window behind everything else. I couldn’t keep it as the front window. Every time I tried to bring it to the front it spawned another window with an ad and then jumped to the back. I finally had to force quit the browser. Time for the web-designer garrote. Bastards!
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So you want to be a marine biologist? daviddlewis at slashdot wrote, “[t]he “shoulds” apply to all geek professions”. Here I would include Archaeology and I suspect Entomology too. Not that Archaeologists always dress that way mind you…

I keep thinking I’ll end up with a Handspring or a Palm one of these days. What I should look for is a Newton. Was the 2100 the final model?

We had a splendid short evening out at Bruce’s house. It was kind of a “Beethoven’s
Birthday, office party, end of school party, John and Annette homecoming, Christmas cheer carry over, New Year warm up, just because party, take your pick” sort of thing. A lot of familiar folks were there besides Bruce, John and Annette. Tony, Rick, Delynn, Marylin, and of course, SirDeath. It was also Ian’s first social time out. Luckily, his motorboat had ran out of, erm, gas.

I would blink at John’s site, fuzzdog, but it has been a victim of @Home’s demise and is still unavailable.

garret has posted a ‘moonrise, just before sunset photo’ at dangerousmeta! that, for me at least, distills the Southwest to its elementals. Not the rocks of Sedona or Monument Valley˜which are very nice btw˜but this scene. I recommend having a look. excellent picture g!

We have a motorboat at the house tonight. It’s a little Ian-rude I think. putt-putt-putt-putt-putt-putt

Happy second blogday, Martin!
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garret found some snow.

I miss recreating in snow, I don’t especially miss living in it …

wood s lot is worth checking out today.

Ugh. Dr. ‘Liz came by last night and the three of us played Trival Pursuit (Genus 5) until 2am. mumble…
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Fast, Wide, Wireless - Pick Three.
Apple has developed a 5 Ghz wireless networking technology. via CamWorld

Happy Second Birthday to Christopher Ryan!

Roaring Rockets. Early Sci-Fi TV. via slashdot

If your 10th birthday fell between the years 1949 to 1955, and your family (or the family of your best friend!) was lucky enough to have a TV set, and your fantasies were fuelled by planets, rockets and dinosaurs, then you watched and loved the three great live Golden-Age television programs aimed squarely at you: CAPTAIN VIDEO AND HIS VIDEO RANGERS, TOM CORBETT SPACE CADET, and SPACE PATROL.

The fact that the shows were done live, with Captain Video on 5 or 6 days per week, Tom Corbett on 3, and Space Patrol on Saturdays only, meant that kids could watch sometimes 10 programs per week! Being live meant that special effects and sets were primitive, camera angles were straightforward, and Space Heros were often hampered by space hatches that refused to open on cue, space helmets that fell off, or guest stars who forgot all their lines or recited the lines for another part. This only added to the charm of the broadcasts. Each show, apart from the thrills that were scripted, was a breathless race to end on time while overcoming all technical or human obstacles that cropped up. Over the years I have managed to collect and preserve some photos that bring these programs back to me vividly in memory, and I would like to share them with you here. (more)

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[NY Times] Archaeologists Find Celts in Unlikely Spot: Galatian Gordion in Turkey. via garret

We had a great Christmas holiday, I hope you did to. My favorite gift was a cordless DeWalt drill. (fade to Tim Allen Tool Time sounds)

Not much to note, this is perhaps just to keep the string of updates going…
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Merry Christmas!

thanks to garret for his happy holiday greeting from dangerousmeta! (g has some nice pictures from last night too)

Today is also the birthday of that famous alchemist Sir Isaac Newton. from Dori at Backup Brain

But pardon me if I have seemed

To take the tone of judgement

For I’ve no wish to come between

This day and your enjoyment

In this life of hardship and of earthly toil

We have need for anything that frees us

So I bid you pleasure and I bid you cheer

From a heathen and a pagan

On the side of the rebel Jesus…

– “The Rebel Jesus” from The Next Voice You Hear by Jackson Browne
thanks to Al for the lyrics…

See you on Wednesday.
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And with that, we shall retire from the digital world to bask in the glow of family.

National Geographic Beyond the Movie: Lord of the Rings. via daypop top 40

Year in review stuff
Coolest Space Science Images of 2001 from Space.com, The World Technology Awards 2001: For Technology Innovation from Nature.com, and Weird Science, the weird and wonderful in the world of international scholarly research during the past year from The Guardian. all via wired

Today is Christmas Eve. I’m at work for a short day, but it is not a bad thing. Jake and I are the only people here in the Preserve modular. I expect we can knock some nagging things out today.

For those that celebrate the season, which I imagine is almost everyone reading this, I hope the next couple of days (and all days for that matter) are filled with friends and family, good food, good company, laughter, joy, and peace. Deep, profound peace, both external and internal, that suffuses your life and renders you utterly content.

Dave’s posting yseterday inspired yesterday’s last (at the top) piece.
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In the darkest of Winter, hope glimmers in an overlooked corner. Reinforced in the following weeks as the daylight lengthens, the hope that the land and our spirits will renew grows though the ground remains hard and barren. Frame it to your preference and carry it within you where that hope can grow and flourish. This time is forgotten in the extravagance of Spring, but it is always there. The renewal is as well if we will only see it. Every moment is the Dark Night just as the flower is always blooming. Look past those forms to the stillness that feeds both the light and the dark. Visit, then dwell there, behind the currents of change and appearance. Call it what you wish; love, God, spirit, “the light”, the Atman, dharma, the name doesn’t matter. What matters is whether you seek it after you glimpse it. If you don’t, don’t worry. It will be there when you return. It’s there right now, seemingly behind the background noise of everything else. All you need do is seek. When you do, you will find other seekers. You probably are already in some sort of group of seekers, but that is not necessary. It is close and real and personal. Things look different around the edges, but in the center, …, it is all the same. Love, everything else is just filling in details

Audrey is going to spend some time at work today, so it will just be Ian and me around here. We should probably go work on the car, or hammer nails into boards and hang out in the garage.

blogday
Along with several other blogs, blivet is two today.

John’s View from an Iowa Homestead and Dave’s Time’s Shadow rounded the corner yesterday.

I’m sure I have missed folks, rest assured I have not meant to.
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If you’re a cat, few things are better than a big pile of warm clothes from the dryer.

Scott, Frauke, and Christopher are in Germany, but have traveled to Minnesota for the holidays. The Norwegians do not have a monopoly on lutefisk. I grew up in a community with a lot of people who came to eastern Kansas (Osage City) from Sweden. An aside, of interest to few, if any: My maternal grandmother’s maiden name was Aldreen and her mother’s name was Stonequist. In my great-aunt’s old age she refused to speak English anymore and returned to speaking only Swedish, I’ve forgotten what little I learned to communicate with her. That accounts for half of my heritage from my Mother.

Anyway, when I was seven, the last of the Swedish immigrants were quite elderly and put on the last Swedish Festival. From that festival comes my only memory of lutefisk, which was presented as a great delicacy summoned from an idylic, near mythic past. I have fond memories of several other dishes I first encountered there, along with dances and songs. My memory of lutefisk is filed in a different category, though perhaps those memories are the most vivid, along with the smell of some of the houses in my neighborhood for the several weeks preceding the festival as the lutefisk was prepared.

If those people were somehow sitting here at the table with us, I would ask for more lutefisk, just because it would make them so happy. I hope they would not notice that I followed each lutefisk morsel with more potato pancakes (patascorf ?) and strong coffee, to cleanse my palate so I could … appreciate the lutefisk.

00:36 Yep, still up…

[Two from UniSci (which won’t update until next year)]

Rewriting The Timeline Of The Bronze And Iron Ages
Using information gleaned from the sun’s solar cycles and from tree rings, archaeologists are rewriting the timeline of the Bronze and Iron Ages.

Continental History Seen In 35 Million-Year-Old Lava
The formation and evolution of the African Rift Valley are shaded in mystery, but geoscientists at Penn State are mapping the history of the Rift through space and time by analyzing the chemistry of ancient lava from Lake Turkana, northern Kenya.

Trying out Mac IE 5.1. Yeah, I know its M$, but nothing else seems to work very well on a PB3400 running 8.6.

I added a bunch of stuff late and out of order yesterday to keep Ian on top, so scroll on down if you came by before 23:30…

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