Work work work.
(Warning: subtle Firefly reference. Dorky banter may follow.)
How Long?
My only comment (for now) about Tim’s post below about the surveillance being conducted by the military is to wonder:
“How long before Hugh Hewitt and the Powerline are demanding the Ny Times be tried for treason for revealing this state secret?”
Meme’d
Mister Furious just hit me up, so here goes:
1. Name a book that you want to share so much that you keep giving away copies: Lady With A Spear by Dr. Eugenie Clark. Dr. Clark (imagine a mix of Indiana Jones and Jacques Cousteau) started her career exploring the remote coral atolls of post-WWII South Pacific and moved on to lab work, world travel and a dazzling stint as the world’s first serious shark researcher. Amazingly enough she hasn’t stopped yet. I found her long out-of-print autobiography in the library when I was twelve, and it left me with the singular goal of following Dr. Clark’s example and studying sharks when I grew up. That lasted until college when I heard that shark researchers have the most miserable grad students on Earth. Oh well. Because of her writing as much as anything I stayed science-bound, and while my field hasn’t fixed itself yet (so far I’ve published six papers on four wildly different topics) the journey has been a blast. I dig up copies on Abebooks for friends’ kids who show the slightest interest in science or the ocean.
2. Name a piece of music that changed the way you listen to music: Hm. At the risk of sounding like a dork, Stephen Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd pulled me out of the classic-rock rut in high school. Now I listen to pretty much anything. Thanks, Sondheim.
3. Name a film you can watch again and again without fatigue: I would say Raiders or Airplane! for pure popcorn fun, Rififi to burnish my cineaste credentials, Contact and Real Genius for capturing of what science feels like. Also Spirited Away by Hiyao Miyazaki. Miyazaki basically makes the same film over and over again, but at least it’s a pretty fun film. IMO he got it best with this one.
4. Name a performer for whom you suspend of all disbelief: Angela Lansbury in Sweeney Todd. I get shivers.
5. Name a work of art you’d like to live with: When it comes to painting, in my view John Singer Sargent stands out among the Americans. Something to do with the way that he straddles the boundary between realism and impressionism. Not sure exactly. As for photography, which is more my thing, out of dozens of excellent artists Galen Rowell (RIP, sadly) consistently leaves me speechless. It almost seemed like he could bend light to his will. Choosing one, a print like this in a living room designed around it would make me a very happy camper. Plan B would be a grand bedroom overlooking a southwest desertscape, adobe walls and Ansel Adams’s Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico.
6. Name a work of fiction which has penetrated your real life: Speaking as a lifelong eco-head who has run several organizations, The Monkey Wrench Gang by Ed Abbey finally helped me realize why I detest a sizable subset of environmentalists. Don’t ask me to put up with self-righteous ideologues who only care about tearing things down which displease them, even if they’re supposedly on my “side.” That sort of attitude is a gift to the other team.
7. Name a punch line that always makes you laugh: More of a subtle guffaw line than a real punchline, I would pick he moment in Firefly when a local mob boss struggles to come up with a word to describe Mal. After a long pause Mal’s sidekick Jayne pipes in, “Pretentious?” Not a big deal but I always chuckle.
***
John also got tagged, so he can update with his own answers when the class burden lightens up a bit.
Who’s next? Don’t know how many I need to choose so I’ll grab the first three who come to mind. Fester (because I owe him a beer), Michael Stickings and Steve Benen.
Open Thread
What else is up?
Open Thread
Divulge your secrets. John and Tom and I pledge total confidentiality.
Also, be nice to John Hinderaker for a while. He’s probably feeling a bit silly about this.
New Year Open Thread
Expect me to be too remote and/or inebriated to blog productively for the next few days, so unless somebody reminds John to write something this will be your primary outlet for expression for awhile. Well, this and the outside world. Also scan the dozens of excellent blogs in our sidebar if things get stir crazy.
Let’s get an early start on my new year’s resolutions. Let’s see, this year I solemnly pledge to…graduate! Hear that, anonymous PhD advisor? I’m out by December. Oy, I’d better have that committee meeting that I’ve put off for a year.
Use this thread for your resolutions, year end fave roundups or whatever.
Random Internet Fun
I have no idea how long it will stay there, but for map-o-philes the ad box for Windows Live that sometimes appears in our ad bar is kind of cool. Yesterday I was curious to see how much of California they had loaded into that little ad so I scrolled the window halfway up Canada’s Pacific coast before I got bored and gave up. I guess they can put the entire planet into one of those.
Today I scrolled it over to Area 51, which feels like kind of an accomplishment to do freehand in that little window. Think you can do it? Post any other map fun, or call me a dork, in the comments.
***Update***
The ad appears to be gone and I can’t get it back by reloading. Oh well, here is the service they were advertising. It isn’t as cool as the ad was because the ad let you seamlessly navigate by moving the mouse to the margin of the box and then it scrolled for as long as you left it there. The service itself is a PDF-style grab-and-drag, which is choppier and kills the feeling of doing a low-orbit flyover. Oh well. When I said ‘random’ I really meant it…