This is Fermi 2
Sounds like a Muppet name, doesn’t it?
Last week I drove to Michigan on business south of Detroit and saw these cooling towers in the near distance. I’ve seen them from I-75 before, but they always seemed so far off the highway. I was mesmerized, couldn’t get close enough. I asked the nice man at the gate if I could drive closer to take pictures and he said, “you can drive to those pylons up ahead and make a u-turn and get on outta here.” He didn’t say it, but “little Missy” was implied by his tone of voice.
The first Fermi reactor (Fermi 1) suffered a partial meltdown and a release of radiation in 1966 during a test run. Engineers were able to intervene and contain the radiation, but the accident caused quite a scare and even prompted some officials to initially consider evacuating portions of southeastern Michigan, including the city of Detroit. Fermi 1 finally began operating again in 1970, but shut down for good in 1972.
But everything’s okay now!
Rewriting History
The NYT piece on the Texas curriculum rewrite is chock-full of little treasures:
Dr. McLeroy, a dentist by training, pushed through a change to the teaching of the civil rights movement to ensure that students study the violent philosophy of the Black Panthers in addition to the nonviolent approach of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. He also made sure that textbooks would mention the votes in Congress on civil rights legislation, which Republicans supported.
“Republicans need a little credit for that,” he said. “I think it’s going to surprise some students.”
Mr. [David] Bradley won approval for an amendment saying students should study “the unintended consequences” of the Great Society legislation, affirmative action and Title IX legislation. He also won approval for an amendment stressing that Germans and Italians as well as Japanese were interned in the United States during World War II, to counter the idea that the internment of Japanese was motivated by racism.
I assume there’s no required civics test for board members?
Our Corrupted Blog-Language
Anal grammarians are taking bloggers to task. Take this email sent to Ezra Klein at the Washington Post as an example:
We at Masked Grammarian (a loosely-knit small group of grammar snobs) send corrections to sites on the web when we notice something that bugs us. Almost always, we do this only when it seems worthwhile — a site that we like with a significant error.
In this case, you used the word “impacted” to mean “affected”. Until just a few years ago, “impacted” was used only in a medical sense: unless otherwise stated, it was assumed to refer to fecal impaction. Of course, it could also refer to wisdom teeth, etc.
Due to the rise of MBA-speak, many nouns have become verbified, and we’ve all slipped into using words, such as “impacted”, which were formerly the domain of people who talk of synergy, best practices, 10,000-foot views, and the like.
We just wanted to point out your incorrect (albeit unfortunately well-accepted) use of “impacted” in your 1:08 PM post today. We also hope that we will not be impacted, in the traditional sense, by your light posting schedule, though it will negatively affect our day.
Consider it noted.
homemade flying hovercraft
Only $13,000!
we were just gaga over it
NASA finds life beneath an antarctic ice-shelf.
Six hundred feet below the ice where no light shines, scientists had figured nothing much more than a few microbes could exist.
That’s why a NASA team was surprised when they lowered a video camera to get the first long look at the underbelly of an ice sheet in Antarctica. A curious shrimp-like creature came swimming by and then parked itself on the camera’s cable. Scientists also pulled up a tentacle they believe came from a foot-long jellyfish.
Musical Stairs
A creative way to promote exercise.
from the spam
mothers pussy
boneless leg of lamb
Dear Clusterflock
When did you realize what you wanted to do?
endurance training and cardiovascular health
“Our data suggest that exercise may have an inverted U-shape relation with arterial stiffness. In other words, when you do not exercise you have higher risk of cardiovascular events, but the same also happens when you exercise too much,” study lead investigator Dr. Despina Kardara, of Athens Medical School, Hippokration Hospital, said in a news release. “Regular long-term endurance training is generally beneficial for heart health, but it seems that the cardiovascular system is like a sports car engine. If you do not use it, it will decay, but if you run it too fast for too long, you might burn it out.”
On the coast
The tide was out, leaving all these rocks visible
pop culture number
I was thinking the other night about common culture and the people we know who overlap. I mean this in the most superficial sense; not people we know who are close to us, or mean something tangible in our lives. Rather, the constant bombardment of celebrity figures — sports, television, movies, music — and the infinite swirl of sub-sections. My question was, how many people do we know this way? What is the number? The people who when I say Beyoncé, you know what I’m talking about? There must be thousands.
dynamo
Independent filmmakers will soon have a new option for renting their films to viewers online: Dynamo, a start-up set to be announced at South by Southwest on Saturday evening, which will allow video producers to set their own prices and embed their videos wherever they want.
quote out of context
Thus, there is a little evidence that popes experience saint-making fatigue as their tenure in office lengthens.
I’m going back
to Texas tomorrow, y’all. For a week, anyways.
Big party on Dutton Drive. The last waltz. The final hurrah.
“Hey, my mom’s not at home. You wanna come over?”
For the Newbies
As I approach my third anniversary with y’all (still a little more than a month away), I thought I might offer the newer members a trip down my memory lane. Deron has many times queried Sheila for helps and hints on fashion. I’m not sure, but my comment, buried here, may have been my first appearance.
Sheila?
I want to hear Smooth Criminal
incorrect Bob Dylan
Lay, Lady, Lay.
Lay across my big ass bed.
another novel
Or a subplot in the last one:
Jamie Paulin-Ramirez was a straight-A nursing student when she abruptly left Colorado last fall with her 6-year-old son and turned up in Ireland, where her parents say she was arrested this week in an alleged plot to assassinate a Swedish cartoonist.
spam name
Mrs. Fatima Alghanim.
I Should Kick Myself
The entry into the garage. We had new siding put on the house three…four? years ago. At the time, they also put in new garage doors with openers, new windows in the media room (a 10′x25′ room on the south side of the house). Why I didn’t include this door in the deal is a mystery to me. I remember thinking, “Ooo, this is too much money.” But, honestly, what would another three or four hundred dollars have done to the loan, lien on the house over the course of fifteen years?
Nevermind the decaying concrete ruined by ten years of throwing “snow-melt” on top of it, that now needs to be ripped out and replaced. “All in good time,” I keep thinking. “All in good time.” And then there’s the landscaping. Oh, fuck it. The shoemaker’s kids go without shoes.
Back in the Golden Age
Built a scaffolding, scraped the side of the house, replaced the tails at the top. I don’t think I could climb up there now. Cindy got tired of how long it was all taking me and hired some people to paint the rest of the house.
Before and After: a Professional Job
AAA Restaurant, US 287, Palestine, TX 75803
It was empty and insecure. The temptation was too much.
dear clusterflock
What color socks should I be wearing?
