My state of things. ATTN: equilugubrium is defunct. Stephen Fraser now maintains Tenebris (www.salutor.com), a blog about independent publishing.
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Wednesday
Off tomorrow to London, with a side trip to Venice. With the help of my handy new Nikon digital camera, I hope to be able to upload a few photos at some point next week to a Zing album, which any interested parties can observe at the following URL:Kim & Stephen Go to Europe.
Tuesday
Matt passes along a little satire from SatireWire.com: New Economy Deserves "New Recession".
Sunday
Updated tour schedule for Andrew Bird's Bowl of Fire. They'll be in Athens on May 22, and Atlanta on May 23.
Saturday
While not particularly profound as meditations go, this column tackles a terrifically provocative subject: Blurring the Lines: What, Exactly, Is Parenthood?
It appears to me that the state of Utah may have too much money on its hands: First State Porn Czar, in Utah, Is Set to Draw a Fine Line. This "Porn Czar" will be paid $75,000 a year to shield the fragile people of the state from the corrosive effects of nekkid pictures. I once observed another employee of the great state of Utah staying in the Ritz Carlton in Atlanta on a business trip. Now my mother works for the great state of Georgia and she stays in the Days Inn and buys her own office supplies. Utah is just prosperous, I guess.
Thursday
To Store Data, a Hologram 'Picture' Is Worth a Million Bits. I recently met a fellow who has been hired by Duke to start a $25 million center for research on this sort of thing. He's a runner.
Is it too late for me to become a paleontologist? Skull May Alter Experts' View of Human Descent's Branches.
My friend Matt has been busy making sure Moab, Utah doesn't become the next Aspen: Thunder over Cloudrock.
Wednesday
An excellent contribution from a colleague in Oakland, who advises me to "collect them all": Jesus Christ Superstore. Gracias, Morgan.
Tuesday
Weird news from Atlanta: After Fatal Ambush of New Sheriff, a Second Fatal Driveway Shooting
CNET's Notes on the demise of satellite phones:
Why satellite phones failed
When Iridium and Globalstar were first being conceived in the late 1980s and early '90s, worldwide cellular phone coverage was sparse. But gaining the necessary international government approvals to launch dozens of satellites in space and to establish on-ground base stations in hundreds of nations took years.
Wednesday
If every crazy tree in the world wide web jungle withered, the original item would still be awe-inspiring: Usenet users up in arms after Deja sale Shutdown sheds new light on obscure corner of the Internet.
| The latest on Ginger |
I didn't blog the NYT special section on James Merrill last week because I found a scarcity of actual poetry link to, but he is a poet whose work I generally liked because of the grace and beauty of its language. But there is still more to read, if you have a volume of poetry at hand to peruse: An Anthology and Conferences Celebrate James Merrill's Work
Sanders passes along a NYT survey of Irish whiskeys (heresy!): Tastings: Irish Whiskey Tries Its Luck.
Short, and well worth reading: EFFORTS to record the ethnic composition of America have dragged the US Census Bureau into an ancestral dispute 1,570 years old. Thanks to Sanders.
Nice fodder for a weekend's worth of discussion:should a man have to pay child support for children he did not biologically father?
For anyone who, like me, occasionally finds himself casting a curious eye on the flotsam at the backs of newspapers, an interesting story on the economics of sex advertising: Racy Ads Expose Inconsistency in Publishers' Stance.
Saturday
More on the secret spy tunnel under the Russian embassy. I am sympathetic to the CIA, having very much wanted a tunnel like this one when I was a little boy. All I had by way of funding, however, was a shovel.
Studies of the brains of autistic 'savants' have yielded the discovery that their talents may arise from damage to a particular part of the brain. There is speculation that this part of the brain could be shut off temporarily and produce the same result in normal people. (thanks to Sanders)
littleredridinghood, an interactive story from Donna Leishman. Make sure your sound is turned on.
Switzerland - haven for ultra-rich fugitives and low-budget pot smokers alike. There's something endearing about that.
Friday
Another incisive story on Durham real estate: Small investors return to downtown. Maybe it's a blessing that the newspaper didn't hire me. In my new job I am making twice as much doing work that requires only a fraction of the mental effort. Unless abandoning your pride counts as mental effort.
Sanders passed this along, and I thought it noteworthy because even in the lives of non-policemen, one can observe stark differences in individuals' abilities to detect falsehood in others. I always thought that cops must, through practice, get to be pretty good at it, but I suppose it's the sort of thing that is set pretty early on.
Shown videotapes of an interrogation of a murder suspect speaking a language they didn't understand, some British police officers consistently knew when the man was lying and when he was telling the truth. Other officers detected lies and truths about as well as if they had guessed, and some detected lies less often than if they had guessed, report Aldert Vrij and Samantha Mann, both psychologists at the University of Portsmouth in England.
People who have the memory loss, confusion, and disorientation of Alzheimer's disease in old age were generally less active physically and intellectually between the ages of 20 and 60 than were people who don't have the disease, according to study coauthor Robert P. Friedland, a neurologist at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine in Cleveland, and his colleagues. (from Science News
Not too surprising, I guess. As the study's author points out, we weren't really designed for inactivity.
Thursday
Today's blog brought to you by Sanders. I am too busy to surf at the moment, but hope to catch up over the weekend:
Former Soviet biological warfare plants still pose threat, despite transfer to peaceful research, Cornell researcher says
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - The meditation masters are right. Overload your mind with too many stray thoughts and you won't be able to focus on the task at hand.
Talking to the animals has long been the stuff of fairytales and great works of fiction. It's doubtful that they'd have many nice things to say to us anyway, but it would be interesting to know how they tick.
Firm measures by world governments to limit carbon emissions would send the oil and coal industries into a decline, says a UN draft report. But other sectors -- and the entire planet -- would benefit immensely from the move.
Wednesday
An NC film writer takes a crack at Ten Scary Movies You've Never Seen!!! (the part about never having seen them is certainly true . . . well, maybe you've seen one or two)
Uh-oh. Scots 'at greater skin cancer risk'. Nothing I didn't already know, I suppose. Thanks, as usual, to Sanders the Vigilant.
Monday
You know, I should probably turn this blog over to Sanders, who digs up far, far more interesting reading material on the net (and everywhere else) than I could even while (virtually) unemployed. Now that I am (gasp) employed again in the conventional sense (don't ask), I am going to have a hard time making this thing worth anyone's time. Sanders forwarded a poetry page to me today that I used to visit frequently but had forgotten (no doubt the bookmark failed to make the transisiton from one machine to another). I'm pretty sure it's the same site, anyway. Funny how that happens on the web. Anyway, what I really wanted to do was to urge you, once again, to visit Follow Me Here, which I consider to be a truly outstanding blog. And one that will continue to be quite active even if I fall off the radar screen now and again.
The Nerve (of all places!) gives space to a pheremone-skeptic.
M-m-m-m-mmmore Monica! NYT: Lewinsky Agrees to an HBO Documentary.
Perhaps now we will finally learn once and for all whether or not, in the Lewinsky affair, there was in fact a quid pro blow.
Or the details about the $400,000 paid to Hugh Rodham in the presidential pardon scandal and whether or not it constituted quid pro bro'.
Or even, in the only vaguely related scandal regarding the payment of Rainbow Coalition funds to Jesse Jackson's mistress, if there might have been kid pro quo (with a 'fro).
Any way you cut it, though, there's always quid pro dough, no?
Hey, don't let me offend you. Ask Clinton to tell you the lesbian joke he has twice been overheard sharing with former senator Bob Kerry, as reported in last week's New Yorker (which I can no longer link to this week, sadly, so you'll have to look it up. . . they don't share the actual joke, though, sadly).
Perhaps now we will finally learn once and for all whether or not, in the Lewinsky affair, there was in fact a quid pro blow.
Or the details about the $400,000 paid to Hugh Rodham in the presidential pardon scandal and whether or not it constituted quid pro bro'.
Or even, in the only vaguely related scandal regarding the payment of Rainbow Coalition funds to Jesse Jackson's mistress, if there might have been kid pro quo (with a 'fro).
Any way you cut it, though, there's always quid pro dough, no?
Hey, don't let me offend you. Ask Clinton to tell you the lesbian joke he has twice been overheard sharing with former senator Bob Kerry, as reported in last week's New Yorker (which I can no longer link to this week, sadly, so you'll have to look it up. . . they don't share the actual joke, though, sadly).
This sounds fun: Hide-and-seek by satellite (BBC via Sanders)
Sunday
A NYT columnist takes on the notion that genetically-modified rice is the best solution for malnourished children. I have no idea whether or not this argument is valid, or what the counter argument might look like. Worth reading.
Yet the more one learns about biotechnology's Great Yellow Hope, the more uncertain seems its promise -- and the industry's command of the moral high ground. Indeed, it remains to be seen whether golden rice will ever offer as much to malnourished children as it does to beleaguered biotech companies. Its real achievement may be to win an argument rather than solve a public-health problem. Which means we may be witnessing the advent of the world's first purely rhetorical technology.
From the NYT, more on an item I blogged a couple of weeks ago: 2 Endocrinology Groups Raise Doubt on Earlier Onset of Girls' Puberty.
Saturday
For the amusement of my amigos in London, who by this time may have become wry observors of the Brits, and in blatant violation of applicable copyright laws (because I could not find a link), I here reprint without any sort of permission a poem by Charles Wright taken from an the results of an exercise published in the Spring 2000 Issue of the Paris Review (thanks again to Sanders).
THE ENGLISH ARE SO NICE!
They like their poetry bumpity-bump,
They like their tea just so,
They like their fucking rump to rump,
They like their horses slow.
They like their speech events rotund,
They like their women thin,
They like to drink till they are stunned,
They like to parse a sin.
They like to think the Yank's a knob.
They like to see him wither,
They like to give his hand a job,
They like to lead him thither.
They like to wank and woof and toss,
They like to get it off,
They like to show you who is boss,
They like at us to scoff.
They like their champers and their gin,
They like their history,
They like to think begat's begin,
They like their sophistry.
They English are so nice, is one,
Another's clear to see,
Mother, father, sister, son,
And him and her and me.
Letters from a young James Dickey, via the Paris Review archives.
Provence is the most beautiful place I have ever seen. Everything there: the olive-trees, the vineyards, the red and white mountains, is in a gentle and sustained state of crumbling, so that everything you see is soft-edged and half-luminous, and yet there is strictness of form: the grids of the vineyards laid subtly up the uneven hills, the poplars lining the roads, the Rhone leaning furiously on its banks, straight for miles.
The Smithsonian Museum's 1001 Days and Nights of American Art calendar. An art factoid a day keeps the androids away.
Gossipy, I know, but I am fascinated by descriptions of Bill Gates' house:
The rustic, high-tech home - visible only from the lake - is frequently compared with William Randolph Hearst's mountain-top Xanudu. Built of stainless steel, flawless wood, concrete, 800lb solid doors and stainless steel bolts that all face the same way throughout the property, it is claimed to be earthquake proof.
Melinda Gates has 42ft of clothes-hanging space, operated like a dry cleaner's rack, and the master bathtub can be filled to the right temperature and depth by Mr Gates as he drives home from work. (thanks to Sanders)
Friday
The vast majority of emails that bounce from office to office and friend to friend are stupid, granted. But occasionally they are very funny. Thanks for passing this one along.
If you yelled for 8 years, 7 months and 6 days, you would have produced enough sound energy to heat one cup of coffee. (Hardly seems worth it)
If you fart consistently for 6 years and 9 months, enough gas is produced to create the energy of an atomic bomb. (Now that's more like it)
A pig's orgasm lasts for 30 minutes. (In my next life I want to be a pig. How'd they figure this out, and why?)
Banging your head against a wall uses 150 calories an hour. (Still can't I get over that pig thing. Don't try this at home...maybe at work?)
Humans and dolphins are the only species that have sex for pleasure. (Is that why Flipper was always smiling? And pigs get 30-minute orgasms? Doesn't seem fair)
The strongest muscle in the body is the tongue. (Hmmmmmmmmm........)
Right-handed people live, on average, nine years longer than left- handed people do. (If you're ambidextrous do you split the difference?)
The ant can lift 50 times its own weight, can pull 30 times its own weight and always falls over on its right side when intoxicated. (From drinking little bottles of what? Did taxpayers pay for this research??)
Polar bears are left handed. (Who knew....? Who cares? How'd they find out, ask them? And, will they live 9 years less than other bears?)
The catfish has over 27,000 taste buds. (What can be so tasty on the bottom of the pond?)
The flea can jump 350 times its body length. It's like a human jumping the length of a football field. (30 minutes...can you imagine?? And why pigs?)
A cockroach will live nine days without it's head, before it starves to death. (Creepy)
The male praying mantis cannot copulate while its head is attached to its body. The female initiates sex by ripping the male's head off. (Honey, I'm home. What the....? Well, at least pigs get a break there...)
Some lions mate over 50 times a day. (In my next life I still want to be a big...quality over quantity)
Butterflies taste with their feet. (Oh, geez that's almost as bad as catfish)
An ostrich's eye is bigger than it's brain. (I know some people like that.)
Starfish don't have brains. (I know some people like that too.)
After reading all these, all I can say is............. Lucky damn pig.
Story from the NYT (via Sanders) about a battle over a dam in Belize. It's an interesting article partly because it provides a classic example of the condescension of first-world environmentalists toward underdeveloped societies like Belize's, a condescension not limited to environmental issues but which is characteristic of a sort of paternalistic liberalism (a better term might even be maternalistic condescension if such a thing could be considered to be equivalently pejorative) that I observed a great deal of when I spent time in Guatemala a few years ago. Anyway, that's not to say I'm not on the side of the condescenders in this case. Also interesting because, of course, mi padre is from Belize.
Thursday
This blog is effectively defunct. But thank you for visiting. Perhaps it will revive one day.