Search Results: times
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11 May 2020: Car Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Trunk
Politics: bicycles, cars, lifestyles of the privileged minority, privilege · 4 comments... to me about other bicyclists they'd seen on the road - sometimes because they'd done something genuinely stupid or jerkfaced, sometimes because they'd done something completely legal - in a way that people ...
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25 Apr 2020: Approaching New Flavors
Food: cookbooks, cooking, Food, foraging · no comments... for dandelion petal bread, sorbet, and jelly so many times - life is short. This is, of course, why they pay the Herbfarm folks ...
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28 Oct 2020: Terminology Request: Graphic Design Fail
Whimsy: fun poll, graphic design · no comments... you're putting together a complicated plot, sometimes you'll start out with a carefully chosen color scheme; other times you'll use the default display from your software of choice. Then you add ...
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26 May 2020: How Gay Marriage Causes Earthquakes
Politics, Whimsy: California ballot propositions, California politics, lgbt, Love waves, marriage · 38 comments... California, and the passage of Proposition 8. The New York Times quotes one man whose marriage is currently in legal limbo: “The ...
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20 Mar 2020: Are the Tonga Earthquake and Eruption Related?
Science: coincidence, earthquakes, volcanoes · 11 comments... earthquake began 270 km away from the volcano. That's many times the size of the structure we call Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha'apai. I can't ...
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17 Mar 2020: “Temblor”
Human Fuzzies, Science: earthquakes, synonyms, temblors · 23 comments... it seems to fulfill a need to (a) limit the number of times a single word is repeated in a short space, and/or (b) use short words in ...
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2 Mar 2020: Recent Results in Seismology
Science: academic journals, earthquakes, liquefaction, nonvolcanic tremor, seismology · 1 comment... quite yet - we know that normal earthquakes can sometimes be triggered by arriving seismic waves, but we don't understand that ...
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24 Feb 2020: “Something Called Volcano Monitoring”: Bobby Jindal Needs a Geology Lesson
Politics, Science: Pinatubo, US party politics, volcano monitoring, volcanoes · 32 comments... to. And we all know that would cost eleventy-squillion times more than the current shoestring ...
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11 Feb 2020: An Open Letter to the Environmental Geologists of the Past
Human Fuzzies, Science: cartography, environmental consulting · 11 comments... likely to remain relevant over 30-50 year urban planning timescales. It is also likely to become separated from its accompanying text, ...
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30 Jan 2020: 2020 Flood Deposits and the Johnson County Conservation Bond
Science: floods, hydrology, Iowa, unfinished drafts · no comments... removing sediment and other crap left by the river (sometimes literally crap, as the beleaguered city of Cedar Rapids was for some time ...
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29 Jan 2020: Breaking Up with the Richter Scale
Science: earthquakes, Gutenberg, magnitude scales, Mercalli Intensity, richter, sesimology, unfinished drafts · 5 comments... about the Richter scale (here it's from the New York Times last November). Don't get me wrong, I love the Richter scale - but I love ... Magnitude is not the same as intensity. People will sometimes say things like yeah, but over at the Dark Tower, that earthquake was ...
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22 Jan 2020: Flood Basalts
Aimless: · 3 comments... left a trace in the geologic record. This event is sometimes big and important, and sometimes seems a little arbitrary. Examples: Reversals of the Earth's magnetic ...
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21 Jan 2020: Delicious Internet Noms
Links: Links · 1 commentThe science of espresso, with a dash of geology -- Darcy's law! Four Stone Hearth (58th Edition) -- Anthropology carnival! Association of American Geographers Anne U. White Fund -- A grant for doing field work with your partner. Would've been nice to kno ...
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20 Jan 2020: What Does it Mean to “Learn Science”?
Meta, Science, Teaching: edutainment, unfinished drafts · 2 comments... that you have to provide an answer to that question on a timescale similar to the attention span of your audience. For blogs, that's at ...
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8 Jan 2020: How to Fight Global Warming at Night with your Fists
Politics, Science: climate change, environmentalism, sustainability, unfinished drafts · 6 comments... at once, baking your own bread will consume as much as 8 times as much energy as a similar commercial loaf. One exception: If your bread ...
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30 Dec 2020: Cell Phones Make You Drive More
Aimless: · 3 comments... everyone involved has a cell phone with them at all times), you don't have the time to sync up with the bus schedule or make sure ... and frequently fail to carry my cell phone; I do sometimes run into people who expect that my lead time for making or changing plans ...
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24 Dec 2020: Happy Twinkletree, Joyous Monkey
Aimless: · 3 commentsIf the sun came out, all the trees would be twinkling with ice. Seattle has the snow chaos. It's like one of those colds that never quite goes away, except that instead of snot, the city's nose is dripping slush and ice. My neighborhood is tucked in behin ...
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18 Dec 2020: California is Safe?
Aimless: · 10 comments... you would rather read the summary version, the Los Angeles Times noticed that California is mostly safe, and ran with that angle. The ...
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15 Dec 2020: Geo-Memeage
Aimless: · 5 comments... up a list of 100 things geologists should see in their lifetimes, and turned it into a meme. Bold items are things I've seen or done; my ... naked-eye comet, an opportunity which occurs only a few times per century 96. See a lunar eclipse 97. View a distant galaxy through a ...
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4 Nov 2020: Evelyn Julia Brumm, Rest in Peace
Aimless: · 8 comments... Catholics, I find that much of it falls flat. I am sometimes agnostic about the promise of America, but I am never so ...
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20 Oct 2020: Coffee Bean Bridging
Aimless: · 11 comments... coffee grinder sometimes pauses in its labors, and makes a high-pitched whining noise that is nigh ...
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8 Oct 2020: Donors Choose Update: Prizes!
Meta: · 4 commentsAs you may or may not be aware, Green Gabbro is one of the smallest blogs on the ScienceBlogs network. But on the challenge leaderboard tonight, I'm just two donors behind a first place tie between Drug Monkey, Science Women, and Uncertain Principles. Thes ...
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14 Sep 2020: The Rusty King of All Metals
Aimless: · 2 commentsSometimes Google Books throws up some interesting results: The knowledge of Geology ...
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20 Aug 2020: The Igneous Petrology of Ice Cream
Aimless: · 26 comments... cream and sorbet is that ice cream contains cream and sometimes eggs or other emulsifying agents, while sorbet is just fruit, water, and ...
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12 Aug 2020: OMG AMNH PONIES!!1!
Aimless: · 9 comments... picture - my camera, a truculent robot even at the best of times and in the best of lighting conditions, has been acting up all weekend - ...
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17 Jul 2020: Delicious Internet Noms
Links: · no commentsEye candy of the week: Zoltan Sylvester (of Hindered Settling fame) has some fantastic photos from the Geopalooza! exhibit at the Houston Museum of Natural Science. Mike Brown on coming up with a name for Make-make (the plutoid formerly known as 2020 FY ...
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14 Jul 2020: Earthquake Prediction Just as Tantalizingly Close as Ever
Aimless: · 6 comments... it does something weird. "Weird" is loosely defined - sometimes the geyser starts picking randomly between two possible wait times instead of one, and other times visitors get consistently more quality ...
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11 Jul 2020: Friday Earthquake Blogging: M7.9 Southeast Alaska
Aimless: · 1 commentWell, technically this is Friday tsunami blogging, but sometimes it's hard to tell the difference. Yesterday was the 50th anniversary of ...
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5 Jul 2020: Delicious Internet Noms
Links: · 6 commentsThis month's Scientiae is out! Hear women's voices... in science! A conversation with Mr. Mister: Should I blog about this? It's got some gender in it. Yeah, it's got a lot of gender. It's kind of awful. Attention, Southern California! On November 13 yo ...
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30 Jun 2020: Tunguskatennial
Aimless: · no commentsOne hundred years ago today, a meteor exploded above Siberia, flattening trees over an area of a couple thousand square kilometers (one-tenth of Wales). This video shows the mostly recovered forest, and a view of the lake that might or might not be an impa ...
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27 Jun 2020: Richard Nixon Tamed the Mole People! A Timeline of Global Seismic Energy Release
Science: · 14 comments... curious fact of seismology that there are always about 10 times as many M4 earthquakes as M5, and 10 times as many M5 earthquakes as M6, and so on. I've never heard a satisfying ...
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20 Jun 2020: Someone Punk’d the CBS Science Desk!
Aimless: · 17 comments... shows that global seismic activity on Earth is now five times more energetic than it was just 20 years ago. The research proves that ...
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17 Jun 2020: Another Lusi Update
Aimless: · 4 comments... for the disaster. In an article in the Financial Times, Lapindo acknowledges that its personnel made mistakes during drilling ...
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3 May 2020: Another Music Meme
Whimsy: · 6 comments... be bound Night has drawn the curtain Remember the good times that we had One day upon a Sunday morning I'm up and I can take what you ...
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3 Apr 2020: Mud Volcano Tofu
Aimless: · 7 comments... anything to the tofu, anyway. Larger hydrocarbons are sometimes present in mud volcanoes, but not usually in very high ...
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25 Mar 2020: The Five Emotions of Thesis-Writing
Aimless: · 13 comments... and bloops whenever I finish a computation. Oh, but sometimes it's more a sort of detached grouchiness mixed in with curmudgeonly ...
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11 Mar 2020: Geo News Bites
Aimless: · 4 comments... pop back up again so quickly? New models suggest that sometimes, when a subduction zone tries to swallow a piece of buoyant material, it ...
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29 Feb 2020: Friday Rock Blogging: Desert Varnish
Aimless: · 5 comments... a dark pebble in the middle of the desert, you will sometimes find that it is light underneath. What this means is that you have ...
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: Focus is a Renewable Resource
Aimless: · 5 comments... symptoms. I think this is a common experience - there are times when even the most attentive of us can't focus as well as we would like, and we all lose our keys sometimes too. Luckily, we don't need a psychiatrist's approval to incorporate ...
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22 Feb 2020: Friday Rock Blogging: Oil Shale
Aimless: · 12 comments... the oil to a handy liquid form. See this 2020 New York Times story for more information, or check out the ginormous bibliography of ...
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14 Feb 2020: The Union Bogeyman
Aimless: · 15 comments... corrupt or too politicized or bad for other reasons. Sometimes, though, I think people who argue against grad student unionization must ...
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1 Feb 2020: We Can Have a New Geological Epoch If We Want
Aimless: · 21 comments... useless. At 11,000 years long, the Holocene would be ten times as short as the next-longest Cenozoic epoch, the Pleistocene - which, at ...
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23 Jan 2020: Accretionary Wedge #5: Geological Misconceptions and Pie
Science: blog carnivals, debunking, geoblogosphere, national pie day, pie charts · 14 comments... You see, each magnitude 4 earthquake releases about 30 times as much energy as a magnitude 3... but an odd fact of seismology is that ...
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18 Jan 2020: Fred Meyer French Onion with Bacon Vegetable Dip
Human Fuzzies, Whimsy: iTunes iChing, reviews of stuff, vegetable dip · 4 comments... exactly like the floor of a hardware store smells. Sometimes I just need to blog about a product to remind myself never, ever to buy ...
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3 Jan 2020: Notes from the Iowa Frontlines
Politics: Bill Richardson, Hillary Clinton, Iowa caucuses, presidential elections · 2 comments... recognize from the caller ID. I didn't count how many times the phone rang - the calls quickly blurred into a timeless haze of ...
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31 Dec 2020: Year in Review
Meta: clip show · no comments... Bids for Darwin Award - Hurricanes, though, happen several times per year and cause serious damage several times per decade, which is well within the 30-year timeframes used by planners ...
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18 Dec 2020: Grading Codes I Want to Give
Teaching: funny, grading, students say the darndest things · 1 comment... comment decoder sheets, I try to be constructive. Sometimes it takes a few drafts to remove all the snark. (Note to any students who might be reading this: sometimes I also put in extra snark, just because it's funny. Most of your papers ...
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17 Dec 2020: Aaand, the rest of AGU
Science: american geophysical union, underwear · 7 comments... their audience. There are always toys on display, and sometimes the posters themselves have a participatory element. One poster asked us ...
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14 Nov 2020: Hiking the Transgondwanan Supermountains
Science: Cambrian, Cambrian Explosion, Gondwana, Neoproterozoic, orogeny, Proterozoic · 4 comments... other intersection between geology and life is that sometimes, various spores and pollens will attempt to fertilize a geologist's nose, ...
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1 Nov 2020: We’re Good Enough, We’re Smart Enough, and Gosh Darn It, We’re the November Scientiae!
Links, Politics, Science: blog carnivals, feminism, gender, impostor syndrome, scientiae, sexism, zombies · 15 comments... other people’s lives. As an aside, I do wonder sometimes whether that is gendered– why am I not as happy and proud about my ... even laster! A late entry from A Natural Scientist: Sometimes the inner snark creeps into the outside voice in full-on Southern. 'Don't ...
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22 Oct 2020: Carnivalling
Links, Politics, Science: blog carnivals, civil liberties, scientiae · 1 commentRemember: Your Scientiae posts are due on Monday! Here, again, are the theme announcement and instructions for submission. You want to write about women in science, you know you do! Need a better concept of your own mortality? The second-ever edition of ...
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20 Oct 2020: The Spinning Dancer and the Brain
Science: debunking, neuroscience, optical illusions · 69 comments... passions are apparent to everyone around you, but sometimes you are indecisive. If you see her spinning counter-clockwise, the right ... interpretations, your brain just picks one. Then, sometimes, it picks the other. We still don't understand why this happens, or what ...
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26 Jul 2020: Galveston Bids for Darwin Award
Politics, Science: idiocy, natural hazards, urban planning · 3 comments... We can't, really. Hurricanes, though, happen several times per year and cause serious damage several times per decade, which is well within the 30-year timeframes used by planners ...
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24 Jul 2020: Summer Doldrum Linky Fun
Links, Politics: blog carnivals, Danish, death penalty, funny, youtube · 5 commentsThis is the funniest thing I've seen in months: Here's your good deed link for the day: Troy Davis faces execution in Georgia for the murder of police officer Mark McPhail, but since the trial, seven of nine key witnesses have recanted or contradicted ...
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21 Jun 2020: Asking for a Pony
Politics: academia, blog carnivals, entitlement, grad school, Phi Delta Qoppa, scientiae · 4 comments... the academic environment as an adult. Because how many times have I caught myself making similar defensive maneuvers, prior to or ... after expressing my wants or needs? A whole bunch of times, that's how many. This habit becomes excruciatingly obvious when I start ...
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3 Apr 2020: How Much NSF Grant Money Can One Bad Apple Control?
Politics, Science: blog carnivals, peer review, scientiae, sexism · 5 comments... but the third review was very negative, which, well... sometimes it happens. But in the section evaluating the "broader impacts", instead ...
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20 Mar 2020: Link Tuesday
Links: anti-racism, blog carnivals, gadgets, scientiae · 1 commentBelated as usual... More women in science goodness at Scientiae #2 Gasoline-powered shoes! Russia is apparently the new Acme. A case study in recruiting - and retaining - minority scientists. ...
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13 Mar 2020: Science as Culture, and Cultural Depictions Thereof
Politics, Science: science in pop culture, white supremacist capitalist patriarchy · 9 comments... has been known to over complicate things at times; but then there are times that it improves our culture! I wanted to show that even parts of ...
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3 Mar 2020: Earthquake Folksonomy
Science, Teaching: earthquakes, lay science · 14 comments... and magnitude based on S wave / surface wave arrival times. My estimates were a little off, though I got the magnitude more or ...
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30 Jan 2020: What’s the Good News of Geology?
Politics, Science: fund my research or San Francisco gets it, lay science, philosophy of science · 16 comments... scientists reaching out to correct an ignorant public. Sometimes when I see people using the word "dialogue" to describe their one-way ...
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26 Nov 2020: Margarita Meringue Pie
Food: citrus, meringue, pie, recipes, thanksgiving · 1 comment... nasty tequila Zest from 6-8 limes - yes, this is many times the amount of zest called for by other recipes (including the New Best). ...
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27 Oct 2020: Psst… Partisan Googlebomb
Politics: anti-endorsements, googlebombs · 2 commentsPass it on! But put in some damn commentary, because otherwise Google will catch on, I think. Having a bajillion links with no other text is pretty spammerly. That's also why I'm only showing you the subset of the Googlebomb most relevant to my blog con ...
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24 Oct 2020: Hawaii, the New York Times, and Triggered Seismicity
Science: earthquakes, Hawaii, lazy journalism · 9 comments... New York Times has an astonishingly confusing article on the idea that one earthquake ... seismic zones hundreds of miles away. So why does it sometimes seem like there's a string of strong quakes throughout a region? That, ... that it was small (a magnitude 6.6 earthquake radiates 31 times less energy than a magnitude 7.6 earthquake) than that it was in the ...
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3 Oct 2020: Well I Never
Links, Politics, Science: feminism, sexism, women in science · 5 commentsYou mean bias against women in science is the product of deep-rooted misogyny going back for millennia, and there are no quick fixes? Gasp! Say it ain't so, Margaret Wertheim! Say it ain't so! ...
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25 Aug 2020: Tidbits
Links, Politics, Science: Caltech, ground water, Mars, Pluto · 15 comments... by now? What right-wingers see when they read the New York Times And for the sciencey: Why the Arctic is like Mars (cold and ...
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10 Aug 2020: James Van Allen, Rest in Peace
Science: Iowa City, James Van Allen, obituaries · no commentsSenior year of high school, my friend and I usually took the stairs up to our after-school astronomy analysis-monkey internships on the top floor of Van Allen hall. One day, he arrived late to lab, crowing, "I just met James Van Allen in the elevator!" - a ...
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3 Aug 2020: Truth, Justice, and the Academic Way
Politics, Science: academia, gender, rhetorical tactics, scientific culture · 32 comments... is not a claim about the nonexistence of biology"; sometimes it says "stop talking about sexism, it's all because of neurology, we do ...
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2 Aug 2020: Shorter Responses to Ben Barres
Politics: academia, gender, sexism, snark, women in science · 12 comments... not to be scientists, and also there's discrimination sometimes too). Ben Barres is a meanie stupidhead ideologue. Peter ...
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3 Jul 2020: How Avis and the University of California are Destroying the Environment
Personal, Politics: capitalism sucks, environmentalism, SUVs · 2 comments... is also not covered.) Much as I mock SUVs, there are times when you need to drive on shitty-ass dirt roads, and it's nice to have a ...
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23 Jun 2020: How I Rescued My Blog from Google’s Cache
Meta: blogtinkery, database backups, database recovery, Google as backup, scripts, WordPress · 2 comments... to contend with, and the WordPress importer can sometimes choke on large files, I split the import job into 5 files. I used the ...
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31 May 2020: Weighted Words
: · 9 comments... $maxfont, $unit, $scaling) $mincount: Minimum number of times a word must have been used before appearing in the list, default is ... have written enough to have used any words more than 25 times. If you can't help me, who can? There's a Weighted Words thread in the ...
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22 Apr 2020: A Game
Human Fuzzies, Whimsy: goofy analogies, Pablo Neruda · 2 commentsInspired by Pablo Neruda. Fill in the blanks: I want to do to you what ______ does to ________. ... children do to politicians ... Midwestern grandmothers do to Jello ... oil does to the American economy ... slumming yuppies do to all the good b ...
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29 Mar 2020: Nerds for the Cause of Justice I: Proof of Concept
Meta: blogtinkery, ideas for plugins, rhetorical tactics · no comments... It's cool that y'all link to a post I make and sometimes, I might even shove it in your face in comments and see if it blows up ...
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13 Mar 2020: Quickies
Aimless, Links, Politics, Science: better living through science, mystery rocks, scientific culture, sexism · 9 comments... like Richard Feynman said about sex and physics: it sometimes has a practical result, but that's not really why we do it. This article ...
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20 Feb 2020: Little History, Big History
Science: Big History, Earth history, socks · 15 comments... actually about chance events that change everything, sometimes by going smashy-smashy (which I like), and finding other good excuses to ...
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10 Feb 2020: Friday Fluffypost
Whimsy: dreams, pirates, racism, search requests · 1 commentLast night I dreamed that I was buying bras. My choices were pea green, and olive green. Am I the only one whose dreams are always this boring? I haven't felt in need of mystic Oracular iTunes advice this week. But it's been a while since I've done sear ...
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31 Jan 2020: Procrastinating Things
Links, Politics: blog carnivals, denmark, offensive humor, patriarchy, psychology, racism, relationships · 3 comments... Denmark's foreign policy may be sympathetic, and they sometimes talk a good talk about tolerance, but in practice many Danes who were ...
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19 Jan 2020: Go Grey Lady Go!
Politics, Science: evolutionary psychology, lazy journalism · 2 comments... Young inhabits a strange alternate universe****, but sometimes manages to make sense anyway! Who'd'a thunk? **Not counting the lead ...
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: Lecture Zero
Personal, Teaching: grad school, time management · no comments... I don't have to climb four flights of stairs two or three times a ...
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22 Dec 2020: All I Haven’t Said
Links, Personal, Politics, Teaching: ambition, Caltech, death penalty, liberty, white studies · 3 comments... it, part of it, whether I like it or not. And sometimes, I do stupid racist things--not in an overt or malicious way, but I do ...
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17 Nov 2020: Marital Rape Criminalized in Mexico, et al.
Links, Politics: games, marital rape, Mexico · 4 commentsMexico finally made it illegal for a husband to rape his wife, hoorah! I was honorably mentioned in the t-shirt slogan contest, w00t! This morning I woke up to a total fucker of a charley horse. My leg still hurts, boo. Newly responsible for the untim ...
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16 Nov 2020: On Co-ops and Community
Human Fuzzies, Politics: co-ops, consensus, intentional community · 4 comments... to create the hippie nerd commune of my dreams. But at times it feels like worrying about the color of the carpeting in a castle in ...
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11 Nov 2020: Friday iTunes iChing: Guantanamo
Politics: Friday random ten, Guantanamo, habeas corpus, iTunes iChing · 4 commentsO great iTunes, if you have not yet withdrawn your sight from Washington D.C. the way God has withdrawn from Dover and Bill O'Reilly has withdrawn from San Francisco, tell me: will Congress really suspend the writ of habeas corpus in Guantanamo Bay? The ...
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8 Nov 2020: Increasingly Tending to Non Sequiturs
Links, Politics, Whimsy: boobies, geomythology, grad school, memes, myth, patriarchy, rape, t-shirt slogans · 7 comments... on the intersection of myth and geology: Myths can sometimes alert researchers to previously unheeded geohazards; in other cases, ...
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1 Nov 2020: Plebiscite Time Is Fun Time
Politics: abortion, California ballot propositions, co-op living, MediCal, teacher tenure · 9 comments... F for plagiarism My vote: No, no, no, a thousand times no! Prop. 74: Fucking with Teacher Tenure There once was a teacher from ...
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14 Oct 2020: Medium Viscosity Fluid Mechanicians Win Ig Nobel
Science: crackpots · 3 comments... ability of brittle materials to behave as fluids over long timescales: The pitch was warmed and poured into a glass funnel, with the ...
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28 Sep 2020: Hump Day a Lump a Dump Day
Human Fuzzies, Links, Politics: Hans Island, idiocy, kugel · no comments... Chronicle's food section is by no means equal to the L.A. Times', but since I get the Chron in paper form for optimal ...
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21 Sep 2020: Balancing Work and Family: Just Use Your Penis
Politics: lazy journalism, lifestyles of the privileged minority, sexism, work vs. family · 2 commentsWell here's a totally insightful analysis of social trends that is not at all merely applauding the reinforcement of gender norms: "My mother's always told me you can't be the best career woman and the best mother at the same time," Ms. Liu said matter- ...
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24 Aug 2020: Items
Personal: co-op living, rush week · 6 comments... seriously ever again. People! They're so different sometimes, what's that all about, ...
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13 Aug 2020: Travelogue! Days 9-12
Personal: photoblog, Scandinavia, travelogue · no comments... stretches across the globe - but those were less simple times. Errors: /images/vacation05/bryggen-1.jpg is not ...
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5 Aug 2020: Friday Miscellany
Human Fuzzies, Politics: Friday random ten, Hans Island, Harry Potter · 2 comments... navy ships have only been able to visit the island three times since 2020 because of the thick Arctic ice around it. I've been ...
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24 Jul 2020: A Distribution of Props
Personal: pie, thanksgiving, travelogue · 4 comments... that I would have been convincingly harassed at least five times on Friday had I been of darker descent. Five and a half quid for luggage ...
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12 Jun 2020: Chronology
Personal, Politics: fashion, feminism, plumbers, sexism · 9 comments... This Week The water heater started leaking. There are times when renting is just ducky, as it's the landlord and not me who gets to ... about how plumbing was a nice daydream career for me sometimes - the topic got on to "women's lib" and women in the trades and oh! How I ...
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3 Jun 2020: Feminist Web Notes
Links, Politics: feminism, rhetorical tactics, the Pussy Oversoul · no comments... by this comment from Samantha: I have a friend who sometimes tries the "you women have all the pussy power" argument. We'll be in a ...
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27 May 2020: Friday Rock Blogging: Keiiti Aki Memorial Edition
Science: basalt, igneous rocks, rock blogging, volcanoes · 1 commentI've been trying this morning to think of a pretty way to illustrate the concept of seismic moment, in tribute to Keiiti Aki, who died last week at the age of 75. Measurements of the energy released by an earthquake are not, as a rule, photogenic. Seismic ...
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13 May 2020: Further Trivialities
Aimless, Links, Personal: blogular wanking, grad school, telephony · 5 comments... living in Berkeley, right? Me: No, no, no, a thousand times no! I.: Your graduate advisor will probably shove one down your throat ...
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4 May 2020: Penis-Talk Redux
Politics: lifestyles of the privileged minority, masculinity · 11 comments... let's face it, that's a pretty fucking weird experience at times, for everyone). But society's expectations of my uterus and my breasts ...
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25 Apr 2020: Feminisms
Politics: feminism, feminisms, ideological boundary police · 4 comments... half-working half-blogging crap in which I am sometimes able to indulge. In one way, it was nice, because I was worried about ...
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18 Apr 2020: For Millennia, Google Has Spoken
Human Fuzzies, Whimsy: essay contests, googlefu · 3 comments... to measure time intervals in microseconds. You can take times during a code run and at the end of the world as we know it. "This is the ...
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30 Mar 2020: New Athletic Allegiances and the Advanced Study of Mud
Meta, Personal: academia, Announcements · 11 comments... civil engineers over the head: Sometimes simplifications are necessary for projects to proceed efficiently. Sometimes they clearly haven't been paying attention ...
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14 Mar 2020: Middle Klass
Personal, Politics: academia, classism, money · 14 comments... does. I can eventually overcome my mistrust, sometimes, but, to me, if you've never had a shit job ever in your life, then ...
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27 Feb 2020: Three Parts
Links, Personal: gender, grad school, memes, nudity, sexual tension · 16 comments... that yami is nice!" Awwww. Part the Second: How many times have I mentioned that I lived in a dorm with a coed naked hot tub? ... but not at the same time. They're well-behaved, but sometimes shift from normal eye contact to a desperate staring contest. You can see ...
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23 Feb 2020: What I’m Reading Tonight
Links, Politics: Caltech, endorsements, feminisms, local elections, Pasadena, political tactics · 7 commentsGreat discussion chez Hugo on PETA's dubious tactics and building uneasy coalitions. In particular, Pip weighs in: What I'm suggesting is that in this case and many others, the absence of "common [ideological] ground" isn't a barrier to co-operation, ...
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15 Feb 2020: How to Ward Off Rapists
Politics, Whimsy: rape, satire · 7 comments... And the things you should keep in your purse at all times - if you're not a slut who's asking for it. Identifying Rapists in a ... of low self-esteem! Just remember, good girls sometimes doubt themselves but those doubts can always be dispelled by a quick pep ...
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14 Feb 2020: Fun with Creationist Plate Tectonics
Science: debunking, plate tectonics, young earthers · 11 comments... to explain how seemingly rigid rock can flow over long timescales.]... at conditions of high pressure and temperature, the mantle ... if you're willing to play fast and loose with the timescale. Predicted by it? Not so much. **A less fun illustration occurs in ...
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7 Feb 2020: Monday Links to Stuff
Links: brain drain, Iowa, nerdy jokes · no comments... LA Times wrote an article about me! Or at least me considered as a demographic ... aren't any earthquakes. (link via the shiny new LA Times Addict, which in turn was off BoingBoing) If Language Log says it, it ... in the humanities call this a "metaphor", or sometimes a ...
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26 Jan 2020: Fantasy Cabinet: Education Edition
Politics, Whimsy: crackpots, fantasy politics, homophobia, time cube · no commentsIn the real world, Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings is busy complaining that PBS teaches children to be nice to gay people. LA LA LA LA LA, I CAN'T HEAR YOU! Fantasy Secretary of Education Gene Ray is working on a new initiative to bring Nat ...
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11 Jan 2020: Mmmm Rocket Fuel
Politics, Science: earthquakes, ground water, perchlorate, pollution · no commentsAh, perchlorate - an issue near and dear to my paycheck! I can't comment on the toxicology... but once again I am reminded of just how silly it is to plumb with a single set of pipes. I don't want to drink diluted rocket fuel, but I'm pretty confident that ...
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17 Dec 2020: Pink
Politics: cars, colors, gender · no comments... at work to pink; and of D., a generally nice guy who sometimes develops a sense-of-entitlement swagger and does something egregiously ...
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20 Nov 2020: Abortion Post Alpha
Politics: abortion, ethics, organ donation · 22 commentsI feel like I've been abnormally serious here lately, what with the politics and the politics and the what-all. I almost had a bit last week on the disgusting way I clear my sinuses, but just couldn't muster the enthusiasm for a good old-fashioned TMI yuck ...
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3 Nov 2020: Back on the Horse
Politics: angst, Internet activism, presidential elections, Ralph Nader, US party politics · 2 comments... of the little bastards crawling aimlessly around at all times. There's a metric fuckton of us, too, and it's good that we're ...
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31 Oct 2020: Sample Ballot II: Initiatives Ahoy!
Politics: · 2 comments... sweet jesus NO NO NO NO NO Yeah, shit happens, and sometimes it happens in the form of lawyers. That's why we have laws against filing ...
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17 Sep 2020: Rhetorical Gatekeeping, Gender, Etc.
Meta, Politics: blogular wanking, feminism, gender, rhetorical tactics · 2 comments... really frustrating, and disruptive (and, one suspects, sometimes deliberately so), to be interrupted all the time and asked, "sorry, I ...
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16 Sep 2020: Ikebana Fails Me
Aimless: dumpster diving, flower arranging, flowers, imperfection, life lessons · no commentsSometimes, you get a few flowers from the dumpster. When they're in the dumpster, they ...
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26 Aug 2020: Broken Pipes and the Electoral College
Politics: · 4 comments... over everyone in flyover country. The hippie in me sometimes thinks of it as a way to give the land itself a voice, by amplifying the ...
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18 Aug 2020: Zucchini Tropes
Human Fuzzies: gardening, zucchini · 6 comments... L.A. Times Food section attempts to turn a well-worn trope on its head by insisting ...
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11 Aug 2020: Burble Tensors on Cross-Disciplinary Manifolds of Love!
Human Fuzzies, Science: · 5 commentsSo I've been asked to elaborate on my rather dim view of Big Scientific Metanarratives in lit-crit circles. Fair 'nuf, but be forewarned that I'm working against my instincts here. Right now, my instincts are telling me to keep snarking about beer. To b ...
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10 Aug 2020: Yeah I Feel Like A Putz
Personal: cars, driving · 2 comments... freeway to discover that my engine was smoking - as sometimes happens. Upon further inspection, I noticed the cap to the oil-goes-here ...
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1 Aug 2020: Pimp Mah Blawg!
Meta: blogtinkery · 1 comment... scripts and crap add-ons is just immense. And sometimes you just gotta fix what ain't broken, but I'm tellin' you, it will be ...
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27 Jul 2020: PSA: Dental Hygiene
Personal: dentistry, saliva · 4 comments... immediately afterwards, and then brush your teeth five times when you get home. If you have neutral spit, just shut up, okay? No, ...
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26 Jul 2020: Bugs Bunny Goes to Washington
Politics: · 2 comments... of Bugs Bunny, who is surely the trickster-god of our times, and the amount of time he spends dressing up like a girl and kissing ...
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17 Jul 2020: Someone’s Been Waiting
Meta: · no comments... of course: gabbro rocks tie dye THE LIFE monkeys Sometimes you people just exhaust my creativity. It's like coming face to face with ...
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13 Jul 2020: Memo to the Guy in the Escalade
Human Fuzzies, Personal: cars, driving, etiquette, SUVs · no comments... usage requires that all three pumps be occupied at all times, with minimal time losses during maneuvers to and from the pump. This can ...
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11 Jul 2020: Stupid Pelicans
Links: bees, birds, environmentalism · no commentsLooks like I was right about the bees - at least if bees are pelicans. ...
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8 Jul 2020: Sunset of the Vegetative Poodles
Links: · 1 commentThe concept of a separate (but assuredly equal!) lazy-blog for links to things that don't quite deserve full entries - like articles on how L.A.'s palm trees are getting old - is growing more enticing. Meanwhile, though, I am obliged to elaborate upon the ...
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2 Jul 2020: Fava vs. Corn
Human Fuzzies: corn, Iowa · 3 comments... L.A. Times today this week: Oh, blah blah blah grills, blah blah blah fava beans! We ... an adequate substitute for corn on the cob! - silly L.A. Times! I'm still deeply suspicious of people who put "corn on the cob" and ...
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25 Jun 2020: Note to the California Legislature: Please Kill More Kitties
Politics: · no comments... Indeed: I read with interest an article in today's L.A. Times about Gov. Schwarzenegger's proposed repeal of the Hayden Act, and I am ...
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11 Jun 2020: Water on Black Mesa
Politics: · 4 comments... lost it once in a browser-closure, and all the other times have had absolutely nothing to do with a certain promising game of Nethack, not at all. At any rate, an article in the L.A. Times last Sunday looked at ground water squabbles between the Navajo, the ...
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30 Apr 2020: Begging the Oxymoron
Human Fuzzies: languages, whorfianism · no comments... against strawmen springing up from its corpse. The L.A. Times needs some funnier commentators, ...
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6 Apr 2020: Watch for Flying Pigs
Politics: · no commentsI agree with Dick Cheney! Or at least, the Dick Cheney of 2020: "Let us rid ourselves of the fiction that low oil prices are somehow good for the United States," Mr. Cheney, who is now vice president, said shortly after introducing the legislation. Yes, ...
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25 Mar 2020: The Neon Leg Warmer of the Caribbean
Politics: Haiti, Somalia, tourism, war · 1 commentRemember Haiti? The one with the coup (which we will not at all suggest was supported by our own Federal Democratic Republic because that would have been undemocratic) that is already retro-chic even though it happened less than a month ago? Haiti is st ...
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18 Mar 2020: Double-Spacing After Periods
Human Fuzzies: fonts, typography · 3 comments... Our corporate house style is incredibly un-stylish. Sometimes I rebel by putting internal documents in Helvetica instead of ...
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11 Feb 2020: Lovey Linky Valentines
Links: chocolate, Valentine's Day · no comments... in the box. It was a convenience, but it meant that sometimes boxes were underweight. I will not post a link to the article on gay ...
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2 Feb 2020: Linky Roundup
Links: · 2 comments... programmer food... The U.S. State Department endorses Times New Roman, claiming that it is "clear, crisp and more modern". Clarity ... are perhaps subjective judgments (I've never been a Times Roman fan m'self) but modernity is not. Courier was developed for IBM ...
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15 Dec 2020: No Demons Without Monkeys
Uncategorized: monkeys · 1 comment... become a demon-rejecting priest." We insist that such times are upon us now! And as an unproven corollary, that all times are times in which monkeys (and the havingness thereof) are the driving ...
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13 Dec 2020: Carda yo mamma
Food: baking, candied yams, cardamom, cooking, food trends, spices · no comments... we believe the L.A. Times food section, cardamom is the new black and can be indiscriminately used ...
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9 Dec 2020: Snekaos i L.A.?
Links, Politics, Whimsy: Local Politics, Los Angeles, snow · 5 commentsIt's time once again to bring the joys of snow to poor inner-city children and city councilpersons: Last time, Reyes and his staff tried to make their own [snowman], but it turned into a disaster because none of the Southern Californians knew how to bui ...
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4 Dec 2020: Foul Putrid News Organization
Politics: · no comments... is only sadness and bile from the L.A. Times today. First, we discover that the sale of glow-in-the-dark zebra fish ... thing was actually two things: phone calls from the L.A. Times trying to interest me in some sort of "offer", spaced about an hour ... once have had concerning a Sunday subscription to the L.A. Times have been ground to dust under the heel of an aggressive marketing ...
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1 Oct 2020: Gubernatorial Goodies
Human Fuzzies, Politics: · 1 comment... L.A. Times Food section gets in on the electoral action with the election-night ...
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3 Sep 2020: More Maps!
Aimless: · 4 commentsA Smell Map of Minneapolis and other quirky cartographies are coming out from the University of Minnesota's Design Institute. I harken back to a guy who made maps of jack-o-lanterns. And so the question becomes, how can maps and communities reinforce one a ...
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25 Aug 2020: Someone’s Been Shitting in My Toilet!
Personal: · 3 comments... times over the past week I've come home to a toilet full of poo. Not really ...
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22 Aug 2020: But You Still Have Two Kidneys, Scott!
Politics: · 2 comments... by Bill Simon's selfless party line toeing. Sometimes, events happen faster than we can demand media coverage for ...
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12 Aug 2020: Read the Kibble Entrails and Weep
Politics: · no commentsWhile I'm posting (I need one more post to fill up gaps in my entry numbers, so my re-entered archives will be in harmony with the universe) I should mention that psychic dogs have said signs point to Arnold this election. ...
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: Erasing Time
Meta, Politics: California politics, elections · 2 comments... one-armed Iraqi teenager fit in his pocket?" jokes. Other times, I think we're moving from bitter angry isolated cynicism, to happy ...
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1 Jul 2020: Playing in Traffic
Personal: traffic, urban ecology · no comments... artery. My window, which must remain open at all times due to lack of air conditioning, is right in front of a traffic light. So ...
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24 Jun 2020: Am I an Ex-Academic?
Personal: · 3 comments... off like pieces of pastry that I'm not allowed to eat. Sometimes I've managed, and other times I've hidden under my pillow. But all these nice sympathetic blog-entries ...
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9 Jun 2020: The End of the Internet??
Aimless: · no commentsSometimes, after wasting too much time on Teh Olde IntarNette, I realize that if I go ...
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2 Jun 2020: Real Ultimate Molluscs!!! (and stuff on my door)
Aimless: · 3 comments... that I want to crap my pants. I can't believe it sometimes, but I feel it inside my heart. These guys are totally awesome and ...
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29 Apr 2020: I bid on fleas and spoons
Links, Teaching: Internet goofiness · no comments... night power-napping in the library bathroom lounge. Sometimes, though, it's hard to tell. Note to future professors: when planning ...
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31 Mar 2020: See My Tanned Blisters!
Personal: Hawaii, hawaiian volcano observatory, kilauea, lava trees, papayas, travelogue, volcanoes · no comments... of moss and the reverse image of bark, it's still five times as exciting as rocks with no holes and no prizes. Monday - Footprints ...
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9 Feb 2020: Theme of Bugs
Personal: · 4 comments... the History of England volume III (from Utrecht to Modern Times), complete with snooty footnotes explaining why Sam Adams was silly, ...
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7 Nov 2020: Drop of Someone
Meta: fan mail · no comments... I'm talking about. I want to chatter too, though sometimes it seems like my chatterings are all the same and I'd rather just go see ...
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24 Sep 2020: O Autumn
Personal: fire, seasons · 1 comment... in grocery stores. But this is just too much (L.A. Times login required, user annoying, password annoying) - it smells far ...
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23 Sep 2020: Signs of the End Times
Links, Whimsy: Astrid Lindgren, literature · 1 commentWe must, as with the literature of any culture, take an intertextual approach to the literature of Sweden. Swedish, being an Indo-European language, shares its vocabulary in one way or another with most Western languages, and all of these languages share ...
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15 Sep 2020: A Beach between the Airport and an Oil Refinery
Personal: · no comments... residential areas slightly too far from the ocean. Sometimes it's good to go driving on a Saturday night. It reminds me of why I don't ...
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2 Sep 2020: Labor Day!
Human Fuzzies, Links: · no comments... Song In that union-busting, free-economy spirit of our times, have a read through the sweatshop files. Or a picnic. Have a picnic. ...
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6 Aug 2020: God Bless Texas
Links: · 1 comment... Texas. The mayor of Lajitas, Texas is a goat. New York Times registration required - try username annoying, password ...
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28 Jul 2020: dry air
Personal: · no comments... curiosity I build up after seeing the same bag circle five times could never, ever be satisfied by the mundande spectacle of underwear and ...
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19 Jun 2020: PE Class Revolution
Links: dance, exercise, guest posts · 2 comments... I've only played Dance Dance Revolution a few times, I really enjoyed it. It felt like I'd finally discovered what I'd been ...
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16 Jun 2020: The Odd Couple
Uncategorized: guest posts · 1 comment... messy enough to be bothersome, that's when you clean. Sometimes this takes a month; sometimes it takes a few days, but in any case, you can live perfectly well in it ...
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31 May 2020: Someone Loves Me
Meta: salad · no comments... makes up for being disappointed with a google-toy: sometimes you are brilliant. I love you. Aww. I love you too, unknown domain! ...
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20 May 2020: Someone’s At It Again
Meta: · 3 comments... that does not require registration with the New York Times is here). *pause* Okay. Now, if you happen to know a woman who will let ...
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13 May 2020: Philosophical Questions
Meta: · 2 comments... be some way out of here ... Sure, but it'll take many lifetimes. But why would you want to leave, anyway? It's so warm and cozy here! i ...
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12 May 2020: Mr. Smith Goes to Fallbrook
Personal: · no commentsFrank Capra, esteemed director of feel-good 50s flicks, was actually an engineer with a degree from Caltech who felt compelled to give his alma mater the deed to his ranch outside San Diego. So that's where I was yesterday and most of today - lounging on F ...
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9 May 2020: Super Someone
Meta, Whimsy: fan mail, Internet doodads · no comments... responds with a jolly old jingle: Sometimes you feel like a nut, sometimes you don't! This is true. To be perfectly fair, though, one would also have to include the fact that sometimes you feel like a banana, and sometimes you don't. Right now I feel like a ...
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17 Apr 2020: surface learning
Teaching: · 8 comments... remember that while you erase a single letter, I sometimes have to scribble out a complicated expression. Before you move on, make ...
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16 Apr 2020: The Postcards Are Spoken For
Whimsy: fan mail, monkeys · no comments...and pamela points out that it's been a while since my last gratuitous monkey reference. So true! You've probably seen the bit about how monkeys are about to conquer Japan - but did you realize it was all part of a conspiracy? (links originally pos ...
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13 Apr 2020: Wizard of Bras
Personal: · 7 comments... padded, or coddled, or given a second satin skin. They sometimes want a piece of soft cloth to protect them from my itchy t-shirts, but ...
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7 Apr 2020: Review Time!
Human Fuzzies: reviews of stuff, writing · 5 comments... kind, and the individual entry pages had merely a plain timestamp at the visually insignificant bottom, so we were soon lost in the ...
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19 Mar 2020: Free Theorems Yum Yum
Personal: · 2 comments... even though we weren't ever lost per se there were many times when the mountains were in the wrong part of the sky. Magical ...
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17 Mar 2020: Kiss Me, I Forgot to Wear Green
Links: · no comments... to garner me free beer or kisses, no matter how many times I make flagrant gestures with a pennywhistle. So in the spirit of a token ...
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15 Mar 2020: War is Art
Aimless: photoblog · 2 commentsI saw the last shreds of the missile defense test from the roof. Also: It's a very humbling thing hanging in the sky tonight... violent death machines aren't supposed to be beautiful. ...
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10 Mar 2020: Much Ado About
Meta: · no comments... standards make for shitty blogs. The flip side is that sometimes, things send me into rant-mode after triggering associations with other ...
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6 Mar 2020: Someone’s a Commercial Whore
Meta: · 4 comments... nouns. The Sapir-Worf hypothesis has fallen on hard times of late, it's true, but we are inescapably drawn in that direction once ...
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12 Feb 2020: Haul, boys, Haul!
Politics: · 1 comment... It's a very productive mode of thought. Luckily, sometimes all it takes is a well-timed bitch session and one person to remind me ...
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11 Feb 2020: Sorry, try again
Personal: · no comments... DARE generation, those of us who've been told countless times that drug dealers are lurking on every street corner, waiting for your ...
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8 Feb 2020: Decisions, decisions…
Links: · no commentsOn the one hand, we have Mother Church: Monsignor Cordes, elaborating on the Pope s remarks, went further and said that the root of much modern illness lay in sinful or immoral behaviour. "Jesus heals sickness and banishes sin," he said. "He therefore t ...
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4 Feb 2020: drool… bid… drool
Links: menstruation, religion, robots · 1 commentThis weekend I've diverted all my wit into simple declarative statements uttered at random or scrawled on the bathroom wall ("The KGB is a subsidiary of Canada") and have none left for blogging. Not sure why. Have some links. Envisioning a society embod ...
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2 Feb 2020: I Vanquish You, Laplace Transform!
Personal: · no comments... it was probably frivolous and they always asked several times if we were sure that's what we wanted. I've internalized this to a huge ...
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17 Dec 2020: Look! It’s the Internet!
Personal: · no comments... me cross and ranty. Today's target is from the New York Times: But it is in everyday social conversation where the Web is having the ...
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20 Nov 2020: the 10-crown store
Personal: search requests, socks · no commentsIn today's referral logs, we have a search for "trendy socks" and another one for "mullet coffee table book". I'm so happy I could just pee. But speaking of socks, I needed a cheap disposable tablecloth today so I went down to the Danish equivalent of the ...
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17 Nov 2020: jeg var…
Personal: diary, words · no comments... in the size of my working vocabulary. There are so many times, now, that I sit racking my skull for a word that I know is out there, ... faster than I write, almost faster than I can think at times, and pen is just too dark and permanent and thick with the greasy odor ...
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9 Nov 2020: frozen hair
Personal: · no comments... me, since the hair dryers were woefully inadequate. Most times, for the last half of the run I would hear light clinking noises ...
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4 Nov 2020: stop de kriminelle udlændinge
Politics: · 2 comments... Party come out, I'm sure they'll be at least three times as much ...
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: two meme things
Whimsy: memes · no comments... means "want to kill things" two books you reread in times of stress the Hitchhiker's Guide trilogy random Mercedes Lackey - ...
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1 Nov 2020: mommy, don’t make me go home!
Personal: · no comments... do them in, and I like it that way. It's an interesting timescale problem. Since I never moved when I was a kid, the only comparison ...
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26 Oct 2020: stealing stories
Meta: plagiarism, storytelling · no comments... anecdotes than I will. As a consequence of this fact, sometimes I feel a bit like a middleman or a sneaky meme-trader, like much of my ... friends have told me and all the neat things they do. At times it turns into a kind of hero worship, and I'm unable to imagine that ...
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25 Oct 2020: image games
Meta: · no comments... complete with the butt-flap, that I wore to class sometimes last year. I always felt bright and happy wandering around inside it. I ...
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15 Oct 2020: I don’t know if you’ve
Politics: · no comments... plus or minus a few centuries. A function of urban erosion times, certainly, and of the fact that "historical importance" is not properly ... bags (2020) seem to occur on a roughly 20 year timescale, with minor changes happening continuously as technology improves. So ...
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10 Sep 2020: Salvaged Item #1
Aimless: · no comments... a deep baritone talking about nothing in particular, sometimes with music underneath, sometimes not. When the station changed its schedule I never heard it again, and ...
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9 Sep 2020: verbal thinker
Personal: · no comments... add word to word, though I know it must happen sometimes). I've also been trying to reconcile my inherent verbosity with the fact ... grade to remember the multiplication tables. There are times when I am hit blunt in the face with how much easier certain aspects of ...
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31 Aug 2020: recovered conversation
Personal: · no comments... on a diskette, which you can lose and rediscover as many times as you want. There's a really gigantic bug fluttering around. I'm going ...
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14 Aug 2020: rødgrød med fløde
Human Fuzzies: Danish, pronunciation · 1 comment... sounds yummy) but I've had to say the name of it several times now, as my pronounciation is apparently rather humorous. It's one of ...
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24 Jul 2020: I’m a Poser
Personal: · 1 comment... I ran into the same rant, twice. Three times, actually, if you count someone quoting the tail end of it. Here is the ... Multiple lessons learned, end of story. The moral: sometimes you just have to try an image on, walk around in it for a while, and see ...
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5 Jul 2020: Here we go again
Meta: · no comments... where outside is actually a palatable option. Sometimes, though, the project survives all my physics sets. We'll ...