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Jan. 26th, 2012

  • 11:20 AM
bismarck
I am starting to converge on a policy of refusing to watch movies that do not have Gary Oldman in them.
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Jan. 6th, 2012

  • 9:45 AM
bismarck
OK, I think you've had long enough. Voting on the Keynesian Malapropism Contest is now closed.

[info]countrycousin and [info]scirocco take the trifecta with "[not the] sharpest brick [in the] teapot" with 28 points in total; their prize is an all-expenses paid trip to wherever they currently are.

At the level of phrases, we had a tie for three points between "not the sanest brick in the teapot" ([info]en_ki, [info]merle_, [info]nightspore) and "not the sharpest tool in the shed" ([info]idonotlikepeas, [info]mrw42, [info]wolfy). Consequently, there will be a runoff:

Poll #1808804
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: None, participants: 16

Pick a number. The winner is the person who guesses the closest to 2/3 of the average of the other guesses.



(The poll is private to prevent cheating, but results will be revealed after the poll is closed.)
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moar caffeinated literature

  • Dec. 25th, 2011 at 2:29 PM
bismarck
You may recall that The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo has a thing about coffee. It really does. (This is the book, mind: I haven't seen either movie yet, though I'd like to.)

Apparently Larsson noticed that it seemed a little affected, so in The Girl Who Played With Fire (which I'm borrowing from the bigger little sister-in-law), coffee is never mentioned: instead, it's always a caffé latte.

I'm looking forward to discovering the beverage theme in ...Hornet's Nest. Turkish? Turkish is nice.
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Sep. 12th, 2011

  • 3:52 PM
bismarck
Has anybody ever received any tracking information for any USPS package ever other than "Package? What package?" and "delivered"?

It drives me a little mad. They don't have to be like UPS or FedEx and tell me where it is at any given time, but I'd like there to be at least one intermediate stage, like maybe "yes, we have it, you'll probably get it eventually".
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fun fact

  • Sep. 11th, 2011 at 11:25 PM
bismarck
You would think that Germany would have a Weierstraßstrasse somewhere, but no, apparently not. There are, however, three Weierstraßwegs.

It is possible I have had too much caffeine tonight.
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bismarck

There is waiting time involved, so start this before the rest of your morning routine.

  1. roast garlic
    1. start the oven preheating at 375
    2. take a whole head of garlic (or a few) and chop the tip(s) off; you should be able to see inside every clove
    3. stick it in an oven-safe dish or bowl (smaller is better)
    4. cover the exposed top with olive oil
    5. let the oil soak in and put some more on
    6. cover the dish (I used foil) and stick it in the oven
    7. go shower, dress, do the dishes, whatever
  2. 45 minutes or so later, your house smells like garlic and you're maybe feeling the hunger a little; take the dish out and uncover it so it can cool off while you do the rest
  3. cut up an onion and fry that shit up
  4. when the onion is about done (translucent to brown, depending on taste),
    1. put some cheddar on and don't be stingy
    2. squeeze all the squishy garlic innards out into the pan. All of them. DO IT.
    3. apply 3 or 4 eggs or equivalent and do the omelet thing

I cannot overemphasize the importance of there being a fuckton of garlic. If you feel a little hazy afterward, like maybe you're not sure if you accidentally used whiskey instead of garlic, and you want to lie down for a while and try to remember if that's what you did, that is about where you want to be.

I'm doing it again for dinner, but with kale.

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May. 27th, 2011

  • 7:12 AM
bismarck
I noticed nobody had sucked Actually Useful Horoscopes into LJ, so I went ahead and did it.

[info]usefulhoroscope
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May. 25th, 2011

  • 11:25 AM
bismarck
Dear prudes: bite me.
bismarck
What I dream of hearing is that the story that he was "shot while resisting arrest" was actually true.

I would like to hear that we are a strong, free country again; that the nation of cowards who, in the face of this man and a tiny gang of thugs like him, threw out the rule of law and begged our secret police to save us, to snoop and grope and torture and murder with impunity, was some other people in some other time.
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he's a cut-up, that guy

  • Apr. 13th, 2011 at 10:16 AM
bismarck
April rain.
Winter tubers.
Summer hour.
Bin deutsch.

What rubbish?
Son water.
Only dust.
Frisch zu.
Mein du?
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Apr. 11th, 2011

  • 10:27 PM
bismarck
Poll #1729168
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 7

?

View Answers
xylem
4 (66.7%)
phloem
2 (33.3%)

What Would Jesus Do?

  • Apr. 11th, 2011 at 6:29 PM
bismarck
In hopes of getting us all closer to God, I am going to start posting daily homilies that illustrate how Jesus would handle an everyday situation.

For example, let's say you go by a restaurant at lunchtime, because you're hungry, but they're not open for lunch. What would Jesus do?

Jesus would torch the fucking place.
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Know anyone who needs a paid account?

  • Apr. 7th, 2011 at 3:04 PM
bismarck

As you've surely heard, LiveJournal has been suffering from a DDoS attack, generally believed to be an attempt by the Russian government to silence its critics.

Some people are switching to other services. Those other services may be lovely places to go or they may be stinking hellholes that exist to serve the enemies of mankind; but either way, fuck that. LJ deserves our support.

I was among those who was unhappy when LJ was sold (and, as a permanent member, unhappy that I didn't have a good way to speak up about that), and I hate the attempts to facebookize this thing, but this is a good and valuable service, and if the forces of evil are spending resources to attack it, it must be making a difference over there. If it were a nonprofit, I'd be donating, but it's not, so:

4 years of paid account time are up for bid, to be distributed midnight Sunday night. In the comments, link to stuff that you or someone else has posted on LJ that serves one of the following purposes:

  • translating a significant volume of the Russian political traffic on LJ into English
  • explaining (with sources) the Russian political situation for American readers: who wants to silence critics, what the critics are saying, and where the truth of the situation lies
  • documenting work with actual effect in the real world to defend LJ from attack
  • documenting work with actual effect in the real world to defend Russian political freedom in general and/or the current set of dissidents in particular

or just recommend to me the best Russian-language bloggers or communities who don't already have paid accounts.

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bismarck
Jews, fix it! Lots of [citations needed] and sloppy conversational style everywhere. How am I supposed to learn about ancient tribes' wacky ideas about the Cosmic Menu with all this clutter in the way?

Though apparently giraffes are all good, which is nice in case I convert and need to live on the...

Hey, South Africans! fix it!
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derka derka Dawkins jihad

  • Mar. 29th, 2011 at 2:42 PM
bismarck
"I have two grandchildren... . I am convinced that if we do not decisively win the struggle over the nature of America, by the time they're my age they will be in a secular atheist country, potentially one dominated by radical Islamists and with no understanding of what it once meant to be an American."
—Newt Gingrich, March 28th
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Mar. 23rd, 2011

  • 7:45 AM
bismarck
Pizza has historically been my favorite food; I am secretly a ninja turtle and/or fat nerd.

Currently I am avoiding bread, and have discovered something I like better than pizza but in the same way:

1. make eggs over medium

- preferably all together as one big egg-sheet
- alternately, egg white omelet

2. sprinkle sharp cheddar over the whole egg surface

3. broil for 1-3 minutes (until melted or brown)

4. apply El Pato
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Feb. 24th, 2011

  • 5:17 PM
bismarck

Feb. 24th, 2011

  • 4:35 PM
bismarck
Oh, this is just delicious: the Buffalo Beast, pretending to be David Koch, called the governor of Wisconsin and gave him lots and lots of rope, with which he proceeded to hang himself.

CSM link in case the Beast is down again
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Feb. 17th, 2011

  • 10:51 AM
bismarck
Every once in a while, it's worth remembering that former United States Senator Richard John "Rick" Santorum is the frothy mix of lube and fecal matter that is sometimes the byproduct of anal sex.

Clean up America: Santorum for President in 2012!
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bismarck
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gastronomy and verbosity

  • Feb. 12th, 2011 at 9:50 AM
bismarck
Damn good coffee. )

In which veggie burgers are found that are worse, nutritionally, than white flour. ) Trader Joe's, seriously: veggie burgers that are worse than white flour? (Fox Broadcasting Company hates it when people show other people clips of the Simpsons, so I can't link to a Youtube video of Homer eating flour out of a bag in despair at the worthlessness of his life; you'll have to imagine it.)

3. Last week, for the first time, I watched a video of myself giving a talk. It was extremely valuable in that I learned:

- My delivery is basically pretty good: I stand up straight, look at people, and speak more or less intelligibly.
- Slow down a bit.
- Oh god, I am, like, the worst um-er in the world. Um, why did nobody ever, ah, tell me this? Uh, what the, uh, fuck?

so that's something to work on. We have a videographer at work who always gives indications that he would rather be busier, so I'm going to ask him to keep recording my talks so I can monitor progress. Eventually, with luck, I will overcome my shame and post the videos on our internal web site so they're actually, ah, useful to somebody.
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Feb. 10th, 2011

  • 3:56 PM
bismarck


cars and guns

  • Jan. 31st, 2011 at 10:34 PM
bismarck
According to the firearm and automobile death rates and total ownership in the US I was able to find tonight, there's one death per ~3000 car ownership years, and one death per ~11000 gun ownership years---i.e., if I trade in my car for 3 guns, the US will be slightly safer on the net.
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Jan. 30th, 2011

  • 7:57 PM
bismarck
Sometimes... people... I don't even.

Jan. 27th, 2011

  • 5:41 PM
bismarck
Today begins a week of ugly anniversaries in the space program. I somehow manage to forget every year how close together these things happened.

44 years ago today, the Apollo 1 capsule caught fire during a test on the ground and killed Gus Grissom, Edward White, Roger Chaffee.

On Grissom's first spaceflight, the escape hatch blew unexpectedly and caused trouble with his rescue; on his second, similar worries kept the astronauts in their capsule for quite a while waiting for pickup. The redesigned hatch in the Apollo capsule avoided this problem, but took 5 minutes to open while the fire seems to have disabled the astronauts within 17 seconds. That wasn't the only problem, but the history of it struck me.

25 years ago tomorrow, Challenger disintegrated on takeoff, killing Ellison Onizuka, Christa McAuliffe, Gregory Jarvis, Judith Resnik, Michael J. Smith, Francis Scobee, and Ronald McNair, after an O-ring failure allowed gases to escape from the booster rocket. Engineers were all over the problem; NASA management didn't listen. There was great wrath in the media and promises from NASA to do better.

8 years ago Tuesday, Columbia disintegrated on reentry, killing David Brown, Laurel Clark, Michael Anderson, Ilan Ramon, Rick Husband, Kalpana Chawla, and William McCool, after a chunk of foam knocked loose on takeoff broke off some of the insulating tiles used to keep heat out on reentry. Engineers were all over the problem; NASA management didn't listen. There was great wrath in the media and promises from NASA to do better.
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Jan. 27th, 2011

  • 12:12 AM
bismarck
As a miser, if I make a bucket of soapy water with which to mop up a spill and I don't use most of the water, I'll often leave the rest out for a while in case I might need it. (I have a two-sided mop bucket with one side for clean water and one side for dirty. Hey, free soapy water.)

Three days ago, I lost my house keys.

Guess which side of the bucket I found them in tonight.

(Hint: they are now soaking in the remains of my solvent-grade vodka so that whatever got on them will die and the light on my bike lock key stands a chance of recovering.)
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Jan. 19th, 2011

  • 2:50 PM

Jan. 17th, 2011

  • 11:29 AM
bismarck
First attempt at [info]which_chick's Hollandaise sauce failed (being lumpy) due to insufficient whisking and/or poorly improvised double boiler. Failed hollandaise sauce is delicious on asparagus and is a very serviceable cheese substitute.
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Jan. 17th, 2011

  • 9:18 AM
bismarck
I... uh. I read this article. I got it from wtf.reddit.com. It's a little McSweeney's-y if they weren't always so self-consciously tryingtobefunny. I don't know. Somebody said it was like a Tom Waits song.

If you liked "how is babby formed" and you think it's about time for another thing just like that, this thing [info]42itous found will satisfy:



Meanwhile, the country that used to look like it could make this happen:



(via [info]elfs), descending into third-world poverty, is the recipient of other nations' charity.
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Pulp Coffee

  • Jan. 12th, 2011 at 11:34 AM
bismarck
        A normal Denny's, Spires-like coffee shop in Los Angeles.
        It's about 9:00 in the morning.  While the place isn't jammed,
        there's a healthy number of people drinking coffee, munching
        on bacon and eating eggs.

        A WAITRESS comes by with a pot of coffee.

                                  WAITRESS
                       Can I get anybody anymore coffee?

        The Waitress pours the Young Woman's coffee.  The Young Man
        lights up another cigarette.

        The Waitress leaves.  The Young Man takes a drag off of his
        smoke.  The Young Woman pours a ton of cream and sugar into
        her coffee.

        English Dave puts Vince's coffee in front of him.

        While Butch waits for his smokes, Vincent just sips his
        coffee, staring at him.  Butch looks over at him.

        Inside the taxi, behind the wheel, is a female cabbie named
        ESMARELDA VILLALOBOS.  A young woman, with Spanish looks, sits
        parked, drinking a steaming hot cup of coffee out of a white
        styrofoam cup.

        She takes a sip of coffee, then hears a NOISE behind her in
        the alley.  She sticks her head out of the car door to see:

                                  FABIAN
                            (referring to his
                              clothes)
                       Oh yes, that looks nice.  To drink,
                       a tall glass or orange juice and a
                       black cup of coffee.  After that,
                       I'm going to have a slice of pie.

        THROUGH THE WINDSHIELD
        the big man himself, Marsellus Wallace, exit Teriyaki Donut,
        carrying a box of a dozen donuts and two large styrofoam cups
        of coffee.  He steps off the curb, crossing the street in
        front of Butch's car.  This is the first time we see Marsellus
        clearly.

        The little Honda SLAMS into Marsellus, sending him, the donuts
        and the coffee HITTING the pavement at thirty miles an hour.

        Three men are standing in Jimmie's kitchen, each with a mug of
        coffee.  Jules, Vincent and JIMMIE DIMMICK, a young man in his
        late-20s dressed in a bathrobe.

                                  JIMMIE
                       I'm not a cobb or corn, so you can
                       stop butterin' me up.  I don't need
                       you to tell me how good my coffee
                       is.  I'm the one who buys it, I
                       know how fuckin' good it is.  When
                       Bonnie goes shoppin;, she buys
                       shit.  I buy the gourmet expensive
                       stuff 'cause when I drink it, I
                       wanna taste it.  But what's on my
                       mind at this moment isn't the
                       coffee in my kitchen, it's the dead
                       nigger in my garage.

                                  THE WOLF
                       Do me a favor, will ya?  Thought I
                       smelled some coffee in there.
                       Would you make me a cup?

        Jimmie hands The Wolf a cup of coffee.

        Jules and Vincent sit at a booth.  In front of Vincent is a
        big stack of pancakes and sausages, which he eats with gusto.
        Jules, on the other hand, just has a cup of coffee and a
        muffin.  He seems far away in thought.  The Waitress pours a
        refill for both men,

                                  VINCENT
                       Thanks a bunch.
                            (to Jules, who's
                              nursing his coffee)
                       Want a sausage?

        Vincent takes a bite of food.  Jules takes a sip of coffee
        In the b.g., we see a PATRON call the Waitress.

                                  JULES
                       Yeah.  I was just sitting here
                       drinking my coffee, eating my
                       muffin, playin' the incident in my
                       head, when I had what alcoholics
                       refer to as a "moment of clarity."

        Jules, who was never risen from his seat the whole time, takes
        a sip of coffee.



The Pulp Fiction script reduced to paragraphs that mention coffee. I blame [info]nightspore and the sensual delight which is finely-ground Dunkin' Donuts coffee run through an Aeropress. Trimmed to include only coffee per se, not "coffee table", "coffee shop", and "coffee can", with which it would be much longer. Can be reproduced with

curl http://www.godamongdirectors.com/scripts/pulp.shtml | sed -e '1,/^<PRE>/d;/^<\/PRE>/,$d' | perl -00ne 'print if /coffee(?!\s*(shop|table|can))/'


except for one paragraph mistakenly included due to stray whitespace.
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Jan. 8th, 2011

  • 8:20 PM
bismarck
As you've surely heard by now, Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ) and several others (reports are still somewhat confused) have been shot. The murderer has been arrested; may his name be forgotten. At least five are dead; Ms. Giffords, as of this writing, is alive but in dire straits.

The Republican Party is shocked, shocked. Who could have imagined that accusing Democrats of "socialism" and betraying the country, declaring that the Democrats were out to take everyone's guns and civil liberties away, holding rallies to which people march armed, putting crosshairs on their districts while listing them by name:



...and having shooting parties in support of their opponents could in any way be construed as an incitement to murder?

Our fine friends in the liberal media, of course, were concerned:



...concerned, of course, that Democrats might try to make political hay from this, falsely claiming that Republicans are a party of violence. (Skip to 3:28 for the money quote.)

(Credit to one Tamerlane for the image and video and to [info]nightspore for pointing me to the story.)

Ms. Giffords, a Blue Dog Democrat of strong enough anti-immigration feelings to be elected in southern Arizona, is extremely civil and conciliatory toward the opposition throughout the video. She exemplified the sort of political moderation and civility that the Stewart/Colbert rally called for.

Now more than ever, I find that notion of moderation difficult to swallow.
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Jan. 7th, 2011

  • 8:02 AM
bismarck

  1. you need me
    like the wind needs the trees
    to blow in
    like the moon needs poetry


  2. Thou great star! What would be thy happiness if thou hadst not those for whom thou shinest!



3...?
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Dec. 30th, 2010

  • 11:17 AM
bismarck
The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences often contain papers worth referring to, but it's a nuisance to carry around a paper copy of everything, and one generally has to be on a work or library network to get subscriber-level access online. It would be nice to have a mobile version where you could use your employer's or university's access to download papers and read them anywhere. They could call it Detachable PNAS.
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Dec. 26th, 2010

  • 11:18 AM
bismarck
oh miznerde

Note: this is a link to IMDB. IMDB doesn't like it when you link to their site for some reason; they replace the page with an image that has instructions for reloading so that your visit is untainted by my filthy Referer (HTTP term of art: means "referrer") header. Follow the instructions and observe:

1. Asterix movie
2. scheduled for 2012
3. Gérard Depardieu as Obélix
4. (rumored)
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Dec. 22nd, 2010

  • 3:44 PM
bismarck
This entry was originally posted at http://adb.dreamwidth.org/2803.html. Please comment there using OpenID.
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books that use the word "had" too much

  • Dec. 22nd, 2010 at 11:59 AM
bismarck
So I picked up a 50-page sample of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo as the first trial of Google books on my phone last night. As a UI test, the reading experience went surprisingly well—surprisingly given that there's about one sentence per page.

[I shouldn't have Googled Stieg Larsson before posting this, because I now know that (1) he's dead and (2) he was a good guy who put a lot on the line for what's important, so I'm reluctant to speak ill of his prose, which is what I came here to do. Nevertheless:]

I would rate his prose-shittiness at about 5 milliBrowns, just short of my "toss aside lightly" threshold—Brown himself, of course, being hurled with great force within a page or two, lest his prose lead to projectile vomiting and severe dehydration. At least in these first 50 pages, the characters spend most of their time speaking in the narrator's voice, either as-you-know-Bobbing or as-you-don't-know-Bobbing, and when the characters aren't talking, there's regular exposition. By 50 pages into a book, if I'm not so in love with your prose that I'm reading just to hear the sound of your voice, there really needs to be something I care about actually actively happening in front of me.

1. Is this just what normal novels are like these days? Have I spoiled myself with Banksian SF and respectable fantasy magical realism and Quentin Tarantino?

2. Can someone who likes good books and dislikes bad books reassure me that this is just setup, and the other 400 pages will be bitchin'? Because if not, I've got some Garcia Marquez to get into.
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the reason for the season

  • Dec. 16th, 2010 at 4:51 PM
bismarck
Apologies in advance: this is a little rambling. It's a bit of emotion and coincidence, not really refined into anything.

First, a post in a local LJ metacommunity draws my attention to Somerville's local right-wing paper doing the usual "call it Christmas, not the holidays!" thing.

The way they explained this to us in the '80s in school and elsewhere was something like this: "It's polite to refer to the holidays, because not everyone is a Christian. For example, some people are Jewish, and they celebrate Hanukkah instead."

They kept it simple back then and didn't usually discuss the other religions, or the possibility of being nonreligious, or go into the fact that it wasn't really an important holiday for Jews per se; but making this specific point, that the holiday season was meant to include Jews as well as Christians, was clearly important and part of the mainstream culture, not some liberal quirk1. Looking back, it's entirely clear that this was a conscious measure against antisemitism, one that nobody would have spent energy on if antisemitism weren't a serious problem in recent memory or current experience.

The current generation of the American right is so thoroughly blind to this I can't take it as anything but willful. The sheer anger at not having absolute dominance of the holiday, despite having (as [info]cos mentions in a comment on the article) the special privilege of a national holiday dedicated to their religious observance, can't come from anywhere other than a bigoted sense of entitlement. The degree to which the mainstream Republican party welcomes this behavior is one of perhaps three factors, each of which in itself would make me doubt the honor of any person who could support that party. But I digress; this is about things connecting, so:

Seeing antisemitism in public always reminds me of Greenspun's essay. I haven't read it in a few years and don't currently state any positions on anything mentioned therein, but that's where I was introduced to the term "Judenhass", or Jew-hatred, as the historical and less mealy-mouthed ancestor of the term "antisemitism". The Somerville News article prompted me to Google for it again, and it turns out that the first hit is what Dave Sim has been doing post-Cerebus, which I hadn't heard of. So now that's in my queue, and maybe in yours too.

Anyway, if you know someone who goes off about "the reason for the season", not in a Charlie-Brownish sort of way but in a Bill-O'Reillyish one, I'm a little curious what they have to say for themselves if they're questioned gently along these lines.

1The liberal quirk, of course, was and still is the open and welcoming acknowledgement of other religions, including those that don't celebrate at all; nonreligious people, and their right to share in our common secular cultural celebration of the season; and the pagan history of the holiday.
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just like it says on the tin

  • Dec. 14th, 2010 at 6:57 PM
bismarck

annals of household chemistry

  • Dec. 12th, 2010 at 6:11 PM
bismarck
(Feel free to apply Bachelor Frog image macros as needed.)

1. Fish tank pump taken out of water for a couple weeks wouldn't run when put back in. Inspection revealed an impeller motor humming but not running: i.e., getting power but likely held in place by corrosion. Being out of rubbing alcohol, we doused it in the solvent-grade vodka from under the sink and tried again; this immediately resolved the problem.

2. We lately ran out of dishwasher detergent and laundry detergent. I am annoyed with schlepping around various mixtures of water with unidentified foaming agents in them, and so decided to Google for the differences between ordinary dish liquid and these other things. It turns out that baking soda + (a wee bit of) dish liquid serves quite well in both the dishwasher and laundry roles.

3. As a bonus, this search yielded a recommendation for white vinegar as a fabric softener. Having put it in the fabric softener tub in the laundry machine and gotten out exceptionally soft and nice-smelling towels, I will testify that this, too, works nicely.

Future steps:

4. replace the dubious blue no-ingredients-listed Dawn we're using for dish liquid with something more soothing to the soul

5. figure out the monetary impact of substituting food-grade chemicals for household cleaners.
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Dec. 7th, 2010

  • 11:40 PM
bismarck
The latest evidence from Wikileaks is sufficient to justify the following standing assumption:

Is someone in authority trying hard to keep you from finding out what they are doing? They're raping children.

If they're not, they'd damn well better release their shit and show you what they were doing instead.
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Nov. 29th, 2010

  • 6:10 PM
bismarck
Oh yeah! I vaguely approximated local math blogger Mark Chu-Carroll's cranberry chutney recipe for Thanksgiving, and it seems to have been a hit: I made a quart of it, and despite the availability of plenty normal cranberry sauce, a variety of food alternatives, and the traditional pie contest being saved room for, it was gone by the end of dinner. If you like that sort of thing, it's worth a try.

Things I did differently (mainly due to rushing around in the morning with the grocery stores closed):

- scaled up by a third to use 2x 8 oz of organic cranberries instead of 1x 12oz regular, which meant a lot of eyeballing ninths in measuring cups marked in quarters
- balsamic vinegar + a little white vinegar in place of red wine vinegar
- Fuji apple instead of Granny Smith
- splash of lemon juice instead of lemon peel
- dried NM green chile instead of Serrano

so it probably came out less tangy and maybe less hot than it was supposed to; certainly I would have enjoyed it hotter. Cardamom came across as the strongest note after cranberries and sweetness; I may ramp up the other spices next time so it's more balanced.
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Today I Learned

  • Nov. 28th, 2010 at 8:57 PM
bismarck
(thanks to the more-or-less-defunct HTML editor Quanta Plus) that

Australia = Hitler's moustache:

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Nov. 23rd, 2010

  • 9:10 AM
bismarck

Nov. 21st, 2010

  • 9:29 AM

Cities and towns

  • Nov. 20th, 2010 at 9:44 PM
bismarck

Having lived in Boston for around 30 years, I've noticed now and then that many people there are confused about what a city is. Since every two-bit hamlet in New England that has outgrown the "town meeting" system of government sees fit to call itself a city, this is understandable.

city, n.: a more-or-less contiguous region served by a 24-hour public transit system and possessing at least one walkable district containing 24-hour restaurants, food markets, bars, and coffee shops

New York, London, Tokyo; Chicago, Seattle, even (as I'm discovering) New Orleans: these are cities; Boston, by contrast, is an agglomeration of college towns. Boston hasn't yet even managed to annex most of its major neighborhoods: if it were a city, Brookline, Cambridge, and Somerville would all be part of it for sure, as probably would Malden, Revere, Arlington, Medford, Dedham, Chelsea, Waltham, and so on. As it is, not a single subway line stays within the "city".

Since Boston has abdicated its seemingly natural leadership role in the region, there is something of a power vacuum crying to be filled. Of the various neighborhoods served by subway lines and calling themselves "city", I continue to believe that Somerville has the strongest natural claim, not least because we are free of major ties to any of the local degree-granting institutions, allowing us to act as a neutral arbiter rather than a captive government like our neighbors to the north and south. Write to your mayor, councillor, or selectbeing today and tell them you want to merge with Somerville.

This entry was originally posted at http://adb.dreamwidth.org/2339.html. Please comment there using OpenID.
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This May Help

  • Nov. 4th, 2010 at 12:44 PM
bismarck

Nov. 3rd, 2010

  • 11:41 AM
bismarck
Poll #1640180
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 17

Jesus ______ Christ

View Answers
Haploid
5 (31.2%)
Hussein
1 (6.2%)
Xavier
2 (12.5%)
Fucking
8 (50.0%)
bismarck
We didn’t know it, but apparently Tuesday was also the launch date for Glenn Beck’s new book, Broke. Our book at #1 ... prevented him from claiming the top spot, and so he called us out on his radio program Wednesday. ...

... here’s the executive summary: (a) His book is supposed to be #1. (b) The fact that it’s not, but ours is, is evidence of a liberal “culture of death” that is threatening to take over America and destroy everything sensible folks hold dear, a menace that can presumably only be stemmed by folks buying his book and making it #1.

Let me contextualize this for you, in the form of a parable in which all of the details are true.

A young entrepreneur, the son of a self-made immigrant small-business owner (a God-fearing Protestant who’d married a girl from a family of missionaries), had a crazy pie-in-the-sky idea. Having learned the rudiments of business by working since he was small in the family store, he struck out after his goal, investing himself into something he really believed in, inspiring both colleagues and strangers to join his cause even as “big business” slammed door after door in his face. For years he toiled long into the night, gradually growing his own small business by being as honest, kind and creative as he could manage. Ultimately, in a tremendous Rudy-like moment, he and his ragtag band of reg’lar folks — for one glorious day — accidentally made the twelfth book by the multimillionaire host of “the third-most-listened-to show in all of America” debut at #3 on one single bookseller’s list, rather than at #1.


On Tuesday, I cast my lot with the liberal culture of death. You can too!
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Oct. 27th, 2010

  • 2:48 PM
bismarck
via [info]siderea's post

You used to need a little bit of technical clue to steal people's logins to insecure sites like LiveJournal, Facebook, etc. There is now a Firefox extension called Firesheep that makes this extremely user-friendly: absolutely any random loser at the coffee shop, the airport, work, or school can take over your accounts if you're using wireless. (For the record: using Firesheep can get you fired, kicked out of school, or sent to jail if you're caught, so don't.)

Some advice follows. Follow it and get your friends to, too. If you have any friends who are unlikely to follow this advice, you will want to drop them from your friends list on any social networks, because it is a near certainty that somebody else is going to be controlling some of their accounts soon.

Use HTTPS Everywhere to mitigate the problem.

HTTPS Everywhere protects Facebook, LiveJournal, and Google accounts by forcing them to use SSL.

Since this is a Firefox-only extension, you'll want to avoid using other browsers. I'd delete or rename them or move them aside.

HTTPS Everywhere isn't enough.

Most services won't work with HTTPS Everywhere (though it's possible that the ones you care about do). For example, I crossed out LiveJournal up above because, contrary to rumor, HTTPS Everywhere doesn't help. You want to use an SSH Proxy.

This is a decent way to get privacy from work/school too. Quick guide for Mac and Linux/Unix users )

Privacy is something you often don't realize you need until it's too late. If you don't understand this, ask for help; if I know you, I will happily spend some time with you to reduce the chance that somebody I know will have their account taken over.

In the long run, I think this is a good thing. Sending personal traffic, much less login information, unencrypted over the internet makes a joke of privacy, but most people just haven't been noticing. The noise about this stands a good chance of closing that particular hole.
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