-
Monday rapid fire
- The best use of graphic thumbnails I’ve seen
- Calculate your Body Mass Index. This seems a tad unrealistic, and if this is what people are using to measure America’s obesity “Epidemic” I’m much less impressed. It seems over broad and crappy. For instance, my ideal weight range is between 137 and 183, a difference of 46 pounds.
- Stirling Engines!
- Kurdistan, the other Iraq, it’s where all of the American troops will be should a full fledged civil war break out. Described my Michael Totten as “a Muslim Utah”. Shoul Iraq break up, this will be the country we subsidize most, besides Israel.
- $10 Panoramic Tripod Head – I need one of these.
- Apex Predators
- How much is inside….
- Cheap Handlebar mounts – something else I need.
- Milton Friedman TV!
-
Annoyances from the New York Times
This time it’s about “Men who never marry“. It was more patronizing than usual.
Choice Quotes
She speaks from experience. She married her high school boyfriend right after graduation, a 2-week-old baby in arms. But her husband, who never graduated, was unemployed for most of their marriage, and the couple broke up after six years.
Determined to find a man who had better prospects, Ms. Rudolph entered a relationship with a basketball player and had three children with him. It ended when she learned he was married to someone else, a revelation that left her badly shaken.
..
Joe Callender, 47, a retired New York City corrections officer and a father of four, has had long-term relationships with two women but has never married. One obstacle, he admits, has been his own infidelity.
…
Mr. Cunningham, 41, a sanitation worker, seems to defy any theory about why he is single. He has, he said, simply not met the right woman.
…
He is a tall, athletic man with cropped, George Clooney-style hair who projects a kind and upbeat persona; surely a catch to some women in Fort Collins.
…
When he walks in the front door after a weekend trip or a run or a bike ride, he often puts a commemorative baseball cap on his coat rack, and now, about three dozen hats cover the rack, with no apparent space for a purse or a diaper bag.It’s an interesting read. They start from the position that marriage is some inevitability that one must exert great effort to avoid (it’s not). They also don’t take into consideration the happy loner theory, nor active misanthropy. They all but call women genetically programmed golddiggers.
-
The Stone Mountain Punisher
My second attempt at GeoTracking turned out much better. I mapped my usual bike route, with a bit more attention to detail. The addition of waypoints helps a lot.
It’s called the Punisher due to the extreme hills on the route.
-
My first try at trackpoints
I’m having problems putting it directly in the blog, but here is the map on a stand alone page. Pretty cool. The missing parts are where I had turned off the gps unit momentarily or put it in a pocket and it lost signal.
-
A horrible dream
Last night I had a dream where I went back to work in corporate America. It was truly horrible, oceans of cubicles, schedules and faceless (literally in the dream) drones. How does anyone stand it? It was much like my time at CMD.
-
Interesting
A very good post on GeoThermal energy by Malcolm Gladwell. For a simple explanation as to what it is
Geothermal heating and cooling is based on one simple fact: that 6 feet down in the ground the temperature is the sameÂbetween 50˚F and 60˚F- the whole year round. This means that it is relatively cool in the summer, and relatively warm in the winter.
…
For geothermal cooling, all one needs to do is to circulate water in a pipe through the ground to cool it, and use this cool water to cool the air pumped through the house in the heating ducts.Heating is done much the same way. The numbers seem quite plausible, I wonder why it’s not more popular.
-
Funny police report
A tale of a daring milk robbery in Ohio.
Choice quote from the police report
“he realized this was no joke when the rotund robbers began pelting him with a flurry of chubby fists”
-
The GPS
-
Thoughts on today
Another terror plot is centered in London and Pakistan, as were the 7/7 plot.
I wonder if the prime focus of radical Islam is not the Arab word but Central Asia. Perhaps Arab culture, for good or ill, is too strongly ingrained to be replaced by a pure (messianic cult) version of Islam. The Central Asian states, might be more pliable due to 70 years of Soviet purges weakening the societies.
Just a thought.
-
A circle of hell appears at Turner field
I came across this somehow
A Guinness World Record-Setting Event for Banjo Players!
…
We plan to bring together the most number of banjo players assembled at one location to play the same song at the same time.
…
All banjo players are welcome to attend. Only those who can demonstrate the ability to play the song Foggy Mountain Breakdown for 5 minutes will be counted toward the Guinness World Record. The tempo will be 120 beats per minute, and we’ll play in the key of G.
…
We’ll stand together on the field in small teams, according to the type of instrument played and the style of play.That’s a whole lot of banjo. I have all the usual bluegrass prejudices against the banjo I suppose.