“Ah, yes, Everyone. He is surely the wisest of men, since he always knows so much.” – dialog from Requiem for the Sun by Elizabeth Haydon

I have got to have one of these t-shirts! I’ve had a copy of that cartoon on my refrigerator for a couple of years. It still cracks me up. (I promise this is not going to be the weekly Rubes spot.)

I finished reading Requiem For the Sun, the fourth book in Elizabeth Haydon’s Symphony of Ages series and the best one since the first, Rhapsody I got a little impatient with large parts of the second and third books (still good but not as good as the first) so I was not in a big [...]

McCain has picked Alaska governor Sarah Palin as his running mate. I had a feeling he was going to pick a woman but I had no idea it would be the governor of Alaska. To be honest, five minutes ago I didn’t know the governor of Alaska is a woman. I suppose Palin is qualified [...]

There might not be any “Quotes From Here and There” this week. It’s in my drafts and I opened it so I could post it. Normally there would already be at least four quotes in it but, to my surprise, there’s only one. Oops. Well, I could scramble trying to find a few more good [...]

A brief thought on German language and music. Makes sense to me. A short Spanish lesson. How much will your tax cut be? Don’t celebrate yet though. (via Czeltic Girl) An honest automated answering system A microscopic guessing game. I know what #5 is but I won’t tell. Squash casserole A slightly odd quote. Aprons [...]

I don’t do politics very often but once in a while I have to give in to the urge to get down into the mud pit. As we get closer to November the campaign gets harder to ignore and more annoying. I think both of the candidates have been behaving themselves in as civilized a [...]

The Test Card Gallery – TV test patterns from around the world. Do any TV stations still have test patterns? They used to show these things for a few minutes just before coming on the air in the morning and before going off the air at night. Yes boys and girls, there was once a [...]

Dimensions – I might try to get through that. Is it weird to be fascinated with something you’re no good at? (via Bifurcated Rivets) The Stone of Madness – something else to make you glad you were born in the 20th century Juxtapoz.com – an art and culture magazine. Take a look at the reader [...]

At Dark Roasted Blend: Whatever happened to the future? It’s still around, of course, mostly in Europe and Japan, but over the years the Fantastic World of Tomorrow’s gotten … cheaper, simpler, and — most tragically of all — the future’s gotten too damned small. Luckily there are a few visionaries left who aren’t frightened [...]

A very interesting alphabet. The letters are floorplans. A few of them might almost work as real floor plans. The site has some other work by the same artist, Scott Teplin Via Wrong Distance, a wonderful modern art blog I just found at Archipelagoes, a very nice architecture blog linked by David Thompson. Or at [...]

Another benefit of working for Google. Silly but cute. Hmmm… What would I do if I knew the the Street View vehicles were going to be somewhere near my area?

I have made a great discovery. Believe it or not, I have discovered a Kashi brand cereal that is actually edible. I’m not a big fan of cold cereal in general. Those I do like are mostly crunchy-fruity-nutty “natural” type cereals with few if any flakes. I often try new ones on the chance that [...]

I want to believe in the National Weather Service People worried about the high cost of keeping warm this winter will draw little comfort from the Farmers’ Almanac, which predicts below-average temperatures for most of the U.S. [...] The almanac is at odds with the National Weather Service, whose trends-based outlook calls for warmer than [...]

We’ve been having connectivity problems lately. For anyone who’s interested here’s my one sentence review of Wild Blue: Do not sign up with Wild Blue unless you have no other choice for high-speed Internet service in your area! I think it’s okay now but frequent disconnections make me nervous – make me not want to [...]

The right to be let alone is indeed the beginning of all freedom. – William O. Douglas

Sorry for the inconvenience…

Never underestimate the power of mess. — here I am no longer surprised to find petrified wood in the groves of academe. — there I seldom find much of worth in the views of any expert, yet I do find worth in a diverse group of experts. — here Some of you might scoff at [...]

The flaw in AI research. Interesting. (via Bifurcated Rivets) Elect geeks – sounds l ike a good idea to me. Murals, Odessa, Ukraine – I especially like the first one. I have a bit of a thing for ladybugs. Early Visual Media – via Fed By Birds, where you can see some wonderful examples Dalek [...]

5 Tiny private islands. Owning “my own private island” has never really been one of my dreams and even if it was I definitely would not want any of these. (via Neatorama) Since we’re dreaming I’d rather have my own square mile right here in the middle of the continent, mostly wooded, house in the [...]

Here. Well, it made me laugh. Your mileage may vary.

I know at least one person who will probably be excited about this. Oh what the heck; I think it’s cool too but I don’t have much hope for it. Or, actually, I don’t have much hope for hydrogen. Most people won’t buy hydrogen powered cars until there are a lot of hydrogen refueling stations [...]

The news just keeps getting better and better. Go ahead and eat all you can before the experts change their minds. You know they will.

My apologies if I’ve linked to some of these before. It’s quite a collection this time and some have been in my bookmarks for weeks, at least. The Drawn Cutlass – various interesting stuff: news, science, odds and ends Street Anatomy – anatomical art, all sorts of unexpected stuff related to anatomy. It’s All a [...]

An Olympic Rant: I’m getting rather steamed up about the complete silence by the perky staff on the Today Show about the fact that China is an authoritarian government that has a spotty record on human rights and lacks free elections and a free press. Instead, we getting dreamy montages of the Chinese culture and [...]