Offer: Blow up nativity for yard
Posted to Dubuque Freecycle group:
Offer: Blow up nativity for yard Clarke area of Dubuque
This works, we just don’t have a spot in our yard here that works, we are all hill! This is in great shape, only one stitch holding up a sheep has come out otherwise good as new. Quick pickup would be a plus, hoping to put it out today. Thanks
Mapping Twitter Traffic
Eric Fischer has been mapping Twitter traffic in major cities, resulting in beautiful cartographic representations of our information flow. It’s all faintly reminiscent of blood vessels or a network of neurons. I think there’s a metaphor in there somewhere.
(via Animal New York)
Where I Live
Karst topography is found throughout the Driftless area. This is characterized by caves and cave systems, disappearing streams, blind valleys, underground streams, sinkholes, springs, and cold streams.
Disappearing streams and blind valleys. Sounds about right.
from the comments
People are always nicer someplace else. The rotten little shits.
Blues in the Night
There’s a twisted thread that leads to my recalling this song, but I will not even try to unravel it, merely to recollect a boy named Danny Stevens, whom I knew when we were age seven or so, who used to sing this song as he loped down the halls of our school.
Except he only kept repeating the one line:
Muh mama done tol’ me
Muh mama done tol’ me
Muh mama done tol’ me
Muh mama done tol’ me
Danny also used to say to his classmates, “Shu-u-t up. Beat-cha brains out.”
At the end of second grade, Danny and his family moved to a state he called Organ.
Whalers, Activists & Drones
Anti-whaling activists intercepted Japan’s harpoon fleet far north of Antarctic waters on Sunday, they said, with the help of a military-style drone.
Sea Shepherd Conservation Society spokesman Paul Watson said the unmanned long-range drone, launched from the anti-whaling ship the Steve Irwin, had located the Japanese fleet and relayed the coordinates back to the activists.
I know I should be shocked at what appears to be the ease of obtaining a long-range drone for non-military use, but really I’m just fascinated that the activists named their boat the Steve Irwin.
Brand new island rises from Red Sea depths
Throw away that shiny new atlas you got for Christmas — it’s already out of date.
Volcanic activity in the Red Sea is causing the formation of a new island in the Zubair archipelago as lava is cooled by the surrounding seawater and solidifies. The underwater volcano responsible is located on the Red Sea Rift, where the African and Arabian tectonic plates are slowly pulling apart.
Wanted: Globe
Posted to Dubuque Freecycle list:
Just a plain old globe. Condition doesn’t really matter.
Wil Freeborn’s Drawings Mapped
Our Wil is working on a new book of drawings that will include a map, and he’s been using Google Maps to create a place for his drawings.
from the spam
This can indicate that a watch has spent some or all of its life in the tropics and was not serviced as regularly as it need to have been.
How It Came to Pass
“Why,” I asked, “is there an Essex, a Wessex, and a Sussex, but no Nessex or Nussex?”
“Well,” he replied, “there’s an interesting story behind that. Edward I was king at the time the regions were all laid out, and he gave them their names. But he suffered from a terrible neurological condition that prevented him from turning to the north. And because he was the king, nobody wanted to say, ‘King, you’re forgetting one of the cardinal directions’.”
Jason Molina – Don’t It Look Like Rain
The wolf outside my door don’t need
Anymore of my blood
Of my bood
She don’t wait for nothing
nothing anymore
She’s watching for nothing anymore
Moon above my light
Starts fading out
I live for nothing anymore
I live for nothing
(Im)possible Chicagos is a series of hallucinatory joyrides through one hundred and twenty five asynchronous Chicagos.
Alexander Trevi‘s first joyride through (Im)possible Chicago traversed Acer Necropolis.
Trevi recently completed his nineteenth, wherein:
At night when you’re out driving, you can tell which neighborhood you’re in by the light of the streetlamps, because each ward basks in its own different hue. For instance, if the streets are all aglow in azurite, you’re definitely joy riding around Marquette Park.
Zoning codes require that windows are tinted according to the neighborhood’s chromatic identity, so no matter how the interiors are lighted, houses, skyscrapers and 7-Elevens do not give off wayward wavelengths.
Even your car lights beam out the same color. But when you cross over into another ward, they instantaneously switch filter to match that ward’s assigned spectrum.
tweet of the day
from the comments
And I hate to admit this, being a southernist. But Midwesterners are sexy beasts. They are not flamboyant about it. But they’ve found a simple solution to all that endless cold weather. My mother-in-law and her friends did not mourn endlessly when their spouses passed away. A respectful time would pass and they were going out again, socializing, traveling with a new sweetheart. Life goes on. I admired it.
This is just my notion, anyway.
from the comments
This is hard.
The Somerton Beach Mystery (or the enigma of the “Unknown Man”)
Let’s start by sketching out the little that is known for certain. At 7 o’clock on the warm evening of Tuesday, November 30, 1948, jeweler John Bain Lyons and his wife went for a stroll on Somerton Beach, a seaside resort a few miles south of Adelaide. As they walked toward Glenelg, they noticed a smartly dressed man lying on the sand, his head propped against a sea wall. He was lolling about 20 yards from them, legs outstretched, feet crossed. As the couple watched, the man extended his right arm upward, then let it fall back to the ground. Lyons thought he might be making a drunken attempt to smoke a cigarette.
Half an hour later, another couple noticed the same man lying in the same position. Looking on him from above, the woman could see that he was immaculately dressed in a suit, with smart new shoes polished to a mirror shine—odd clothing for the beach. He was motionless, his left arm splayed out on the sand. The couple decided that he was simply asleep, his face surrounded by mosquitoes. “He must be dead to the world not to notice them,” the boyfriend joked.
The journalistic equivalent of The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World.
(via the browser)
headline of the day
Silicon Valley billionaire funding creation of artificial libertarian islands
dear clusterflock
The part of the country you understand the least.
Iowa State Fair Update
Gigantor: A one-pound hamburger served between two grilled cheese sandwiches and topped with macaroni and cheese will make its debut at the Bird’s Nest at the top of the hill at 3000 East Grand Ave., by the AE Dairy Stage.
from the comments
I am falling in love with these heat- and drought-resistant little tepary beans, just as I fell in love with the Sonoran desert. They are so damn tasty pretty much as they are. And they are high in protein and fiber and release sugar very very slowly.
And Tohono O’odham (Papago) legend has it that the Milky Way is made of tepary beans scattered across the sky.
I’m a believer.
R.I.P. Sir Patrick Leigh Fermor (1915-2011)
‘A dangerous mixture of sophistication and recklessness’: Patrick Leigh Fermor in Saint Malo, France, in 1992. Photograph: Ulf Andersen/Getty Images
Not unexpected. And he led a long and wonderful life. But I am tearing up. This is someone I never met who meant a lot to me in ways that are hard to explain just now. So here is the Guardian obituary. And I hope you will read at least one of his books.
Patrick Leigh Fermor, who has died aged 96, was an intrepid traveller, a heroic soldier and a writer with a unique prose style. His books, most of which were autobiographical, made surprisingly scant mention of his military exploits, drawing instead on remarkable geographical and scholarly explorations. To Paddy, as he was universally known, an acre of land in almost any corner of Europe was fertile ground for the study of language, history, song, dress, heraldry, military custom – anything to stimulate his momentous urge to speculate and extrapolate. If there is ever room for a patron saint of autodidacts, it has to be Paddy Leigh Fermor.
R. Luke Dubois: “A More Perfect Union”
The Web Urbanist on A More Perfect Union, a project by R. Luke Dubois:
Touching and, at times, hilarious, these keyword maps by R. Luke Dubois associate each town with the terms most often used by locals to describe themselves and their desired partners on their online dating profiles. Dubois joined 21 dating websites and analyzed the language used in 21 million profiles to come up with the data, which was then displayed on maps. Chicagoans say things like “prankster”, “pizza”, “smoker” and “synagogue” while Central Texans are all about “churches”, “boundaries”, “barbecue” and “Madonna” – the latter presumably referring to the Virgin, not the pop star.
“it’s like a nutshell towing a mountain”
Since he was hired in the ’70s by Saudi prince Mohammad al-Faisal, French engineer Georges Mougin has tried to figure out a way to tow freshwater icebergs across the Arctic. Now, with 3-D tech, declassified satellite data, and tugboats, he might have cracked the way to quench the world’s thirst.
Siam vs. Mexico
From The Saddest Music in the World. Guy Maddin (2003).
“The singers are giving us a sad peek into child burial customs ‘down Mexico way’.”
“The Mexican mama is being very firm with her dead infant.
“Now go away, she wails
You are dead
Don’t sneak in at night
to nurse from my breast
That milk
is only for the living
“To Canadian ears, that may sound harsh.”
