Replace “Coil” with “Compound Microscope”
If there was a Robert Hooke version of this comic about scientific celibacy, I would buy 15. Or more!
Actually, I’m going to learn to draw and make my own comic, called Sexy Robert Hooke’s Sexy Adventures in Science!
Chik-fil-A Care Packages Sent Upon Request
- McDonald’s “southern style” chicken (on a biscuit or a bun!) goes national.
- People outside Dixie confront idea of fried chicken for breakfast, find it sinister and unappealing.
- Southerners alert rest of world: Chik-fil-a is better, both chicken and sweet tea wise.
- Rest of world still vaguely grossed out, slightly curious.
- Chik-fil-a fixes itself a sweet tea and laughs all the way to the bank.
- Southerners wonder when McDonald’s will begin offering grits, fried okra.
Talked to two people now and none of us realized that “southern style” chicken and sweet tea weren’t already national McDonald’s products. The idea that every McDonald’s on every street corner in every city in this great nation doesn’t have the exact same menu fractures the foundations of my world. Then I think about Chik-fil-A slaw and feel better again.
Quiet
I think my supply of Irrationally Happy may be running out. This is probably not a bad thing; I felt like I was bogarting it.
What do you all want to talk about?
Hidden Rebel Base or Notice Me Not Charm?
Did you all know that the LEGO Harry Potter Hogwarts Castle comes with a free Darth Vader? It does. Check this out:
See!
The trailer for Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is supposed to be showing first out front of Prince Caspian. I’m already feeling an anxious sort of dread. They have to get it right. Just this once, they have to get it right.
Meanwhile, and before I hyperventilate, what would Voldemort think of mitichlorians?
Demand and Supply
Reading this morning, from various sources, mostly Skillzy and The Evangelical Outpost, is economically oriented.
Yuppies forced to live like people. Money quote:
Poli Marinova, a Bethesda marketing communications manager, said she has cut her grocery bills by almost 30 percent without switching to conventional foods. Instead, she skips “luxury items” like sushi and prepared sandwiches and soups. “We’re buying a lot less overall at Whole Foods. We used to buy juice, biscuits and baby food from there,” she said. “Now, we get a lot of that stuff at Costco or the Giant so we can afford to keep buying organic.”
I know I’m not like the other kids, but it flabbergasts me that anyone purchases staples at Whole Foods. I’m to the point where I won’t consider shopping there, just on principle. If it’s not at Target, we don’t need to eat it.
This, however, should be the real focus:
Members of Congress and even Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice are starting to question whether ethanol mandates, which have been linked to rising prices, are the best answer to America’s reliance on imported oil.
The government forced the ethanol issue, which the market would not have naturally supported, and now that it’s messing everything up, they consider that it might be a problem. Swell, y’all. I think it could be broken down like so:
- End farm subsidies
- Drill ANWR
- Profit
On the human side of things: Marriage distilled down to opportunity costs. Like so:
The good news is that since everyone settles in one way or another, there’s no logical reason to allow the nonsensical stigma of being perceived to do so to interfere with your decision making, whatever it might be. And never forget that love is much more a choice than an emotion; the first kind grows with time while the latter tends to fade over the years.
I married an economist, and so have been peripherally aware of this for years now. And, interestingly enough, almost fall into Day’s 21-25 demographic. I technically “met” Christopher when I was 12. It didn’t occur to me that he was spouse material until age 20. He gave me his copy of Atlas Shrugged to read. So, if you like, here’s a link to Francisco d’Aconia’s Money Speech from said novel. Good stuff, there; very passionate:
To the glory of mankind, there was, for the first and only time in history, a country of money – and I have no higher, more reverent tribute to pay to America, for this means: a country of reason, justice, freedom, production, achievement. For the first time, man’s mind and money were set free, and there were no fortunes-by-conquest, but only fortunes-by-work, and instead of swordsmen and slaves, there appeared the real maker of wealth, the greatest worker, the highest type of human being – the self-made man – the American industrialist.
And, on a lighter note but still standing athwart history, another person finds Firefly years after cancellation, blames Fox. Again, for those who need it, Doc can provide you with a PDF document detailing exactly how Nobody Watched It.
Metaverse and Meatspace
I had a big Snow Crash day yesterday. Had lots of reasons to talk about it and think about it. And in some of the same conversations, people threw some ideas at me that I wanted to consider more deeply, but I didn’t have the time at that point. One of the conversations jumped all over the place, but during part of it, I made the statement that for me, there is no “IRL.” My real life and my internet life are the same thing.
This didn’t go over well. So I used the term “meatspace,” which worked slightly better, but got laughs that weren’t entirely with me. And if “meatspace” is an accurate term– the realm where you could, say, punch me if you really didn’t like what I had to say, what’s its opposite? “Internet” (or any variant) just doesn’t seem to cover it. “The internet” or “the web” seems like a really fast acting reference library. To me, it doesn’t encompass the life and identities of the people who create and inhabit it. The only thing I could come up with was “metaverse,” but that’s not necessarily as intuitively understandable as the word meatspace.
What are the words you go to, if you have these sorts of conversations? Do you think of yourself as a person in meatspace but an avatar in the metaverse? Which you is the real you? Can there ever really be a difference?
And if you’d like more traditional lexpionage and aren’t following Honu Girl on Twitter: 10 Insulting Words You Should Know. Cacafuego is exciting. It’s no “alligator fuckhouse” but it’s exciting.
I Still Love the Whole World
It’s Thursday and I have a full morning. And I’m still no closer to deciding on the previous question, jaguars vs cheetahs. Skillzy added polar bears to the mix and my gut reaction was to find a picture of a smiling hedgehog.
In the same vein, Cats What Look Like Wilford Brimley.
I think… jaguar! Baby jaguar vs smiley hedgie?!
Serious Questions are Serious
Y’all, it is time to weigh-in, because I just can’t make up my mind. Which is cuter: Baby jaguar or baby cheetah?
The Slope Seems Slipperier
Yesterday, I found the article Losing Our Spines to Save Our Necks, written by Sam Harris, via David Thompson’s blog. Thompson’s entry, Priorties, said:
If unflattering statements and facts are excised in the name of respect and sensitivity - or quite often, fear - a realistic and honest discussion is unlikely even to begin. …. It is, for instance, difficult to take any meaningful kind of stand against the barbarities of Islam without challenging the specific religious beliefs that justify and perpetuate that barbarism.
Harris’s article is so straightforward it’s surprising. Consider his lead:
Controversial or not, one surely would expect politicians and journalists in every free society to strenuously defend Wilders’ right to make such a film. But then one would be living on another planet, a planet where people do not happily repudiate their most basic freedoms in the name of “religious sensitivity.”
The rest follows in a snowball of did-he-just-say-what-I-think-he-said? And that’s not even his point. His point is something Salman Rushie crystallized years ago, which I will now butcher: do you really think giving the bully your lunch money will make him bully you less? Harris wants to know if voluntarily ceding the right to criticize something that wants to kill you somehow makes you less dead or in fear.
What I keep coming back to is how stunned I am to hear anyone outright criticizing a religion other than Christianity for its practices. And really, I just added that “other than Christianity” for completion’s sake– I don’t hear a lot of people criticizing Christianity, just a few people who are nevertheless very vocal. And that probably speaks more to the scope of my reading than anything else– I’m eyeball deep in relativism and political correctness all day.
Harris ends with a call to criticize and to spread the responsibility for the criticism over as many people as possible (again, echoing Rushdie):
It is time we recognized that those who claim the “right not to be offended” have also announced their hatred of civil society.
Sometimes Idealists are Right; Sometimes They’re Just High
You’ve maybe heard this by now. The Swiss government’s committee on bioethics is reviewing guidelines for researchers on how to maintain plant dignity. If a project offended plant dignity, its funding could be cut. So no more playing fast and loose with hybrids or seedless-fruit bearing plants. And presumably, taking steps toward ameliorating the damage caused by years of unthinking experimentation.
We’ve turned such crops as corn, wheat, oats, potatoes, and tomatoes into photosynthetic slaves. Finally, what could be more outrageously disrespectful to chlorophyll-kind than being eaten by people? The horror, the horror!