Redhead with roses

Okay, so, it was bad enough when my students routinely spelled the phrase as "free reign." I resigned myself to the fact that not only do people not ride horses anymore, little girls don't even play with My Little Pony toys enough to know that reins are something used by a rider to communicate with a horse. I was slightly more irritated when people didn't realize the inherent contradiction between free and reign - but at least they didn't confuse the idea of control with watery precipitation, I consoled myself.

I got more frustrated with the instantly standardized uses of "financial meltdown" and "toxic assets" in the current economic situation. The metaphors aren't bad, it's just that they went from expressive usage to fixed phrases overnight, thus relieving people of any burden of thought regarding either their words or the economy.

The last straw is a columnist in my beloved NYTimes writing that unemployment could move "like a toxic virus" through the economy. Toxic virus? A poisonous disease? Those wires are more than crossed - that's some ugly mental macrame made from what used to be two perfectly good scientific concepts that didn't really want to be used for decoration, thank you very much.

Yes, I know that virus comes from the Latin for poisonous and was adapted to its current usage because of issues with the germ theory of disease and the concept of filtering out bacteria, etc. That doesn't excuse this usage; applying an archaic usage to a confused phrase to produce something merely redundant is hardly an improvement.

There is, however, some good news. I actually saw a sign yesterday that said "Ten items or fewer." That's right, somebody in a grocery store finally made the correct word choice when describing the express lane. (I don't even care that it's a sentence fragment!) Where might this legendary feat have taken place, you ask? It was at Whole Foods. That's right - the English language is going to be saved by hippies.

We saw the first ten minutes of "Quantum of Solace" last night.

Why only the first ten minutes, you ask? Because the Arena Grand theater lost power at about 8pm. Apparently there was a 'series of explosions' in power transformers in that area. No one was hurt, but it took out the grid. Very odd.

So, my first impressions: Daniel Craig is still hot enough to start a fire in the middle of a snowstorm. Judy Dench is still perfect as M. The new theme music is cool. You should, however, take your favorite motion-sickness treatment to the theater with you. Or at least resign yourself to the fact that you're not going to be able to follow logically what's going on in all the fight/driving scenes. Note to filmmakers: just because you _can_ do that with a camera doesn't mean you _should_. Oh, and at some point, more cuts between different perspectives (and more perspectives) doesn't make something cooler. It just makes it obnoxious. There's diminishing returns somewhere around a cut every second or so. And we know that they're not doing it to make it look like Daniel Craig can fight when he can't; there was some lovely camera work in Casino Royale that showed that he can fight like crazy. Bring back the long all-in-one shot!

In an amusing turnabout, anyone who argues for the inherent efficiency of a free market now has economic proof that campaigning is more about image than about ideas: Sarah Palin's makeup artist got paid more than any other campaign staff in the last pay period, including all the policy analysts and advisors. So either the market doesn't work very well or the Republican campaign has totally abandoned its intellectual roots, as alleged by Christopher Buckley. Or maybe both.

In very exaggerated Italian accent: "A pizza is like a woman. It always taste good, but to look good, everythin' must-a be in the right place."

When one lead says to the other: "Jesus was not a zombie!"

I hate sore throats, just in case anyone didn't know that.

Anyway, about the Prius: there's good news and bad news. The bad news is that the fuel gauge lies like a rug. It started blinking at me in the "feed me now" way when the tank should have still had more than a third of its capacity. Actually, I just found out that the fuel tank changes size depending on temperature, and the gauge is designed to deal with that and give you adequate warning of running out. Hmm. Well, it did that at least.

The good news is that we got over 60 mpg on this last tank. *happy dance*

One, I want to find the idiots who repealed Glass-Steagal and do anatomically unpleasant things to them.

Two, this is why the market is not a replacement for pensions, Social Security, or anything else. The market is not the solution to everything. Sorry, it's just not. Especially not an unregulated market. Grr.

( The Constitution is not a suicide pact. )

I could possibly expand on this. Anybody care? Anybody want to have this discussion?

Subtitled: Put down the tinfoil and pick up the ballot - and encourage others to vote, too, and tell them why.

Somewhat alarmist article from Salon

( My long-winded analysis and response )

Sorry that I haven't written in a while - I got sick, but I'm better now.

UPDATE: These changes have been repealed (Wikipedia "Insurrection Act"). Although there was a signing statement issued (also known as the Presidential "nyah nyah, you can't make me"), I'm much less concerned about this than I was. I apologize for not doing my fact-checking first - apparently Salon didn't either.

By the way, in case I didn't mention, #215 was:
The wind almost blew my hat off. I commented, "Okay, I need my hat to act less like an airfoil."
My fiance said, "I knew I loved you for a reason. Anyone else would have said kite."

(anyone want me to add wikipedia entries to airfoil and kite?)

#312:

I said: "You know what the tragedy of men is, right? God gave men brains _and_ penises, but not enough blood to operate both at the same time."
He said: "Actually, there's a club....I think our next meeting is in the highlands of Tibet in 2012."

I love him.
FA

Irish Festival was fantastic! Gaelic Storm in particular was a lot of fun. The dancers are always great. Shopping was lots of fun, of course. :) Tannahill Weavers were fun, and I got Matt interested in Bad Haggis. Aisling was great, although the balance in their area was not great - I'm not sure how much of that was the sound guy's fault and how much was just poor acoustics. Especially interesting was the workshop that the lead from Aisling did on the O'Carolan repetoire.

Flogging Molly on Friday night was absolutely awesome, also. It was a long concert, but worth it. The lead singer for Flogging Molly is pretty amusing sometimes, except when he said that people with long red hair are the devil. He's fascinated with the devil for some reason.

Irish Festival was a perfect celebration of the end of Young Scholars, getting out of my old apartment, and the coming of August in general. Wheeeee!

Ring! I have a ring! It's gorgeous. Pics later possibly, or run into me at the Irish Festival or something. :) The band is a celtic knot pattern, and the diamond is well beyond usual levels of "ooh shiny".

On the downside, minor health issues have cropped up again the last couple weeks. I've got them down below the "drugs are my friend" level. We're more at the "Okay, let's make a long-term plan" level...now if I can just get ten minutes with my cardiologist, I'll be in good shape.

The Young Scholars Program is...interesting. Teaching is always a bit of a roller-coaster, but it's been moreso this summer. I feel like I've done good work, but I'm also very, very ready for the term to be over, because it's been much harder on me than I imagined.

I'm going to take up an alternate career in animal rescue. The latest save is a cat who was suffering from heat exhaustion in a local parking lot. After some shenanigans, cat is returned to owners.

On the obnoxious front, someone tried to steal the rear wheels off of my bike and Matt's. Given more time, he might have tried to take the front wheels, too. After a quick trip to the Trek store to have the rear wheels properly reinstalled, we've moved them and enhanced their security. Broad daylight in Clintonville, though - demand for bikes is really going up.

On the YAY! front, Matt and I are getting a Prius soon. Apparently, Toyota is selling out of reasonably-sized used cars in good condition that get decent gas mileage. (Same reason bike demand is going up, probably.) So, they made us a decent deal for trading in our two cars, and it's definitely a net win for us. We'll be one-car family, but we can handle that - in fact, I'd been thinking about moving in that direction anyway. We'll end up financing about what Matt has financed on his car right now, and the savings in gas will pay for the car over its lifetime. Pretty cool. In fact, our Prius should be on the water right now - yay!!!

I have to finish up moving out of and cleaning my old apartment today. As of now, I'm officially cohabiting with Matt full-time. (It's been unofficial for a while.) Anybody who needs an updated address, email me. Phone number is unchanged.

Kiki is cuddling me, and it makes me happy.

Everybody and their Chihuahua should go see Wall-E. Possibly twice.

Ok, not the Chihuahuas.

There are about a half-dozen really really excellent grown-up references in the movie that will make it great fun, especially for anyone with a slightly geeky background. (See also the music that I'm "listening" to. And look out for anything with a single red eye.)

For those of you who may not recognize it immediately, the noise that Wall-E makes on rebooting is the Mac startup noise. The one character who starts out innately friendly and essentially "human" is running on a Mac framework. (That means it's Linux underneath with Mac UI on top.)

Thanks to Spot for pointing out to me that there were mixed-media shots combining live action (the one "real person," ie, from our time, seen in the film) with rendered. The rendering was good enough that I had already completely accepted the rendered people as "real", if a bit cartoonish, and completely didn't notice the changes as disconnects between different media.

So, I have some stuff that I'm not going to need anymore as I complete the process of moving in with Matt. I have a partial list below. Please help me figure out what to do with all this stuff!

Come get it and I'll thank you for taking it off my hands - or make a suggestion about where I can take/donate it to do the most good:

• A bunch of Bath & Body Works products


• Stuffed animals in need of a new loving home


• Old sheets


• An old but very sturdy couch

Make me an offer:

• Duplicate copies of movies (list uncertain, and I think I'm too lazy to ebay them all individually) and possibly some duplicate books


• Stereo: tape player, CD player, radio, built-in pretty good speakers, great condition


• Television with built-in DVD player (medium-sized screen)


• Possibly my full size mattress, box spring, mattress cover, and frame - about three years old, in excellent shape


• Probably a microwave

For everyone who knows Grafton (gmkieran)....

Graf is in the hospital with diabetes. This is a new development. He was in the ICU for a day while they got the worst of it under control. He is now in room 323 of Mt. Carmel East. He can be reached on his cell phone.

He's doing well; he's much better than just a few days ago, and he will probably get to go home on Monday or Tuesday. He'll have to manage his diabetes from now on, so some changes in eating, medications, and exercise will be involved, but he should be fine.

I'm sure he'd appreciate phone calls to stave off the boredom. :)

EDIT: Graf is home as of 9:30pm tonight, 30 June.

moar funny pictures

Girls are as competitive as boys, just more subtle

Duh. I mean, I'm glad somebody wrote this up in a citable article, but really, I've been saying this forever.

I've been working like crazy on my syllabus for the calculus course I'm teaching this summer. I've got the first two weeks done, the third week sketched in, and won't be able to set up the fourth week until I know more about the students and how far we get. Yay me!

I read two good books recently that I want to recommend to everybody (not just history geeks like me). A.D. 500: A Journey through the Dark Isles of Britain and Ireland by Simon Young is quite good. It's told in an interesting format that should keep the reader engaged, especially if you enjoyed Crichton's Beowulf, I mean, Eaters of the Dead. For SCA types who are interested in anything before 1200, this is valuable information about anything other than Italy and Byzantium.

Throwing Fire by Crosby is also very enjoyable, especially for amateur military historians. Crosby makes an engaging argument that what distinguishes the human species is its ability to throw (developed after the switch to bipedalism) and its control of fire. It's intriguing and well supported. This is also one of the few history books I've seen that talks about human development on a comprehensive scale that makes sense. Crosby concentrates on the differentiation of humans from other primates, discusses prehistorical developments, and continues up to the modern period. You get a sense of how little time spent being human has been since we invented writing, among other things, let alone ICBMs with MIRVs. Good catch for science geeks as well, if you want to look at science and tech in a change-across-time kind of context.