programming note
So, I’ll be heading to Austin tomorrow to pick up Amanda for the Texas leg of her All You Can Jet tour. My posting tomorrow and Friday will be less than usual. And probably over the next few days as well.
gravitas
They had just wrapped up a policy briefing, and Bush offered Gonzales a tour of the White House residence, which brought them to the Truman Balcony.
They peered out over the South Lawn, and Gonzales finally broke the silence.
“So what’s it like to be president?” he asked.
Bush smiled. “It’s really cool.”
Unicorn is the sparkling, crunchy, savory meat of today’s elite
“Imperfect, you know, oftentimes shaking in his boots,
but still doing it.”
The Kennedy Center recently announced this year’s honorees: Merle Haggard, Jerry Herman, Paul McCartney, Oprah WInfrey, and choreographer and dancer Bill T. Jones. NY1 News host/reporter Budd Mishkin produced this Bill T. Jones interview/feature, and Mishkin’s delivery can grate, but try and suffer through it in order to listen to what Jones has to say.
“Tonight, somebody could die on this stage. Tonight, somebody could sprout wings and fly on this stage. That is the wonderful promise of live performance.”
A Roadkill Map of California
A map depicting California roadkill for the last 30 days.
Curiously, there sure seems to be a lot of roadkill around Sacramento.
quote out of context
This Statue of Liberty was gifted to us by foreign leaders, really as a warning to us, it was a warning to us to stay unique and to stay exceptional from other countries. Certainly not to go down the path of other countries that adopted socialist policies.
a duck watches
I’m Comic Sans, Asshole
Listen up. I know the shit you’ve been saying behind my back. You think I’m stupid. You think I’m immature. You think I’m a malformed, pathetic excuse for a font. Well think again, nerdhole, because I’m Comic Sans, and I’m the best thing to happen to typography since Johannes fucking Gutenberg.
America’s First Tribal National Park?
Pending the results of management plan vetting currently under way, the National Park Service is primed to turn the South Unit of Badlands National Park over to the Oglala Sioux Tribe (OST) for management as America’s first tribal national park. In other words, it looks like the Oglala Sioux Tribe is going to get their half of the park back.
Wanted: Many things! | Freecycle Theater
Monologue for one actor.
Hey, all –
I’m looking for the following things to add to our home:
Swiffer WetJet or regular Swiffer with wet pads
Full-size dust pan
Artificial Christmas tree and decorations (would prefer pre-lit tree)
Halloween and other holiday decor
Read more
2,000-year-old wall paintings restored in Petra
Conservation experts almost gave up when they first saw the severely damaged wall paintings they had come to rescue in the ancient city of Petra.
Cloaked for centuries in grimy soot from bedouin camp fires, the blackened murals appeared beyond repair.
But three years of restoration revealed intricate and brightly-colored artwork, and some of the very few surviving examples of 2,000-year-old Hellenistic wall painting.
The carved rock Petra is known for was originally painted as well.
Touch, though, is widely acknowledged to be the biggest obstacle
Independent teams have created electronic skin in the lab, sensitive to slight pressure and touch.
Team One:
The “e-skin” made by Javey’s team comprises a matrix of nanowires made of germanium and silicon rolled onto a sticky polyimide film.
The team then laid nano-scale transistors on top, followed by a flexible, pressure-sensitive rubber. The prototype, measuring 49 square centimetres (7.6 square inches), can detect pressure ranging from 0 to 15 kilopascals, comparable to the force used for such daily activities as typing on a keyboard or holding an object.
Team Two:
Their approach was to use a rubber film that changes thickness due to pressure, and employs capacitors, integrated into the material, to measure the difference. It cannot be stretched, though.
“Our response time is comparable with human skin, it’s very, very fast, within milliseconds, or thousandths of a second,” Bao told AFP. “That means in real terms that we can feel the pressure instantaneously.”
the continuous pencil
the world’s blankest stuff
A Dutch history student has unearthed the world’s oldest share, dating back to 1606 and issued by the sea trading firm Dutch East India Company.
The world’s most expensive book:
A rare copy of John James Audubon’s “Birds of America,” billed as the world’s most expensive book, is up for sale alongside a first edition of Shakespeare’s plays.
a vanity shot is circle-cum-navigated lather …
& 19 more from this series: here
Julie Doiron
It’s almost like Belly or The Breeders came back.
Claude Chabrol: Learned of his death this morning,
and have felt bereft all day.
“Squat, bespectacled and rotund, Chabrol played the joker in the pack, resembling nothing so much as a startled owl.”
Gap-Toothed Women | Les Blank (1987)
Filmmaker Les Blank’s love song to us gap-toothed women. By way of riffing on Josh’s gap-toothed post.
getting lost…
The first installment of a series in the New York Times travel section:
The Casbah was also where I began to indulge in my other favorite activity: sitting still. It was there that I found Le Salon Bleu, an open-air rooftop cafe where evening views — from the medina to the beaches on the bay to the hillside houses of the far suburb of Malabata — were unparalleled. Over mint tea or watermelon juice, I’d watch the headlands of Spain grow misty as the sun set and men in robes and kufis gathered on the plaza below to kibitz. One evening, on the patio next door, white-haired Westerners attended a dinner party, catered by waiters in stereotypical Moroccan regalia.
The Rolls-Royce of Sheep
This morning I was at one of our local farmers’ markets, where I bought a few pounds of lamb from a very nice family who operate a so-called micro farm a few miles east of me. They raise Icelandic sheep and sell ewes and rams (to other entrepreneurs), packaged meat (various cuts of lamb), and raw fleece, together with rovings and a small selection of hand-spun yarn.
What tickled me was their advertising slogan.
Icelandics. The Rolls-Royce of Sheep.
Amanda Jets
I took advantage of the JetBlue All You Can Jet pass, and you can follow along here.
Another Rick & Teel Story About an Unforgettable Meal
My friends R & T never run short of stories, and I have posted a few here about unusual meals. Here’s another one.
Two of their friends–a man and his wife–were in El Paso one summer, and they managed to get permission to view some petroglyphs at a restricted site nearby. The rock paintings were on a ranch, and one of the two visitors knew the owner. An open jeep was sent for them, driven by a Mexican man who worked at the ranch. It was very hot and all they had to drink was beer. They all drank several along the way, which didn’t seem like such a good idea when the sandy road started to bounce them around. They made it to the rocky outcrop, took some pictures, and were soon ready to head back. The driver, who had enjoyed the whole outing, begged them to let him take them to lunch at his mother’s house down by the river. The visitors couldn’t decline, and after another bumpy ride they drove down through high weeds and willows to a small mud brick house. A woman who appeared to be in her seventies met them at the door and coaxed them directly to a table near a big stove. She took bowls down from a shelf and filled them with what looked like beans and meat, ladling it out of a huge pot on a back burner of the stove. The son dug in after adding some peppers. The man and his wife tasted the stew–and simultaneously grimaced. Later they would describe the taste as “vile.”
“What kind of meat is this?” the man asked.
Their host got up and went to the stove. She dug down deep with the ladle and inspected various things that surfaced. “Oh,” she said, “there’s some turkey from Thanksgiving.” She churned the mixture again and said, “And there’s a little ham from some Christmas.”
“Doesn’t it go bad after that much time?” the woman asked.
“Oh no,” the driver’s mother said, “it stays hot all the time.”
“How long has it been on the stove?”
The older woman looked out the window and thought for a moment, then turned back. “We moved here in 1951.”
Truck Stop On U.S. Route 67, Comanche, TX 76442
30 NFL Linemen Agree
Little dollops of cardiac arrests known as Texas fried frito pie won the Best Taste Award last Monday at the Texas State Fair’s sixth annual Big Tex Choice Awards.
“The only way these things could be more perfect was if’n they was bigger,” said longtime fairgoer and Ennis resident Ernie Faar. “Sure I’d buy them if’n they was at the H-E-B. These would be great for Monday Night Football.”
anthropos
The name of the head ref of the Texas Wyoming game last night was Cooper Castleberry.
