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May 29, 2022
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Back from 24 hours in the City; this was somewhere in Chinatown. Transportation in/out via
Megabus affiliate FlixBus. |
| May 26, 2022 |
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Posted the patch from the 79th Space Shuttle mission here recently. Some
collect these (although for me it's the stickers, rather than the embroidered patches), and I built
a huge table of shuttle mission info with these graphics
as the key (and checkboxes which indicate those in my collection). What's their source? According to the first of
Ten
Things You Didn't Know About NASA Patches, a few months before their launch,
Gordo Cooper had a chat with Gemini 5
partner Pete Conrad and said they'd never been in a military unit
that didn’t have patches. They decided to fix it. So is the answer simply, the
military? They've had flags and insignia for centuries, but in this 1961 article by
Colonel Ralph R. Burr, Symbols
Rally the Spirit -- The Beginnings of Heraldry in the Civil War, the original
unit patches were circles of red cloth, the Kearny Patch, sewn
first onto US Army caps in 1862. One other note from the Ten Things,
A-B Emblems
was where Gordon Cooper went to produce the first 100 NASA
mission patches for Gemini 5. Since 1971, all NASA mission patches have been made by
A-B Emblem, which also produces patches for the military, the Boy, and the Girl Scouts.
A-B Emblem also produced the original NASA logo, back in 1962. Note that some entity
has since filled in that NASA void; appropriately crude Mercury and pre-Gemini 5
mission insignia certainly exist today.
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| May 25, 2022 |
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Today, just three YouTubes.
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| May 23, 2022 |
- Messy Nessy compiled a bunch of Fairytale Grotto info and examples into
a
compendium.
- A random Cat and Girl,
The
Incremental Diminshment of Absolutely Everything. Much more available at Dorothy's
Cat and Girl home-page.
- I've raved previously about escapista,
a menu into various random videos: walking, cycling, locomotive engineer's POV, or
driving. Here's a new one, Virtual
Vacation, which lets you specify your destination, via Fly (views from airliner
windows, during launch or landing), Walk, or Drive.
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| May 18, 2022 |
Reading in Slate, about
How
the media botches car crash coverage where pedestrians and bicyclists are involved, we learn
that the Colorado Department of Transportation had a campaign featuring
employees walking along Denver streets wearing giant eyeballs, which naturally makes
one think of the Residents. Did I
really see them perform, in 1986? What a weird show that was. Only three were wearing their
eyeball-helmets then; one had recently been stolen. Another opportunity presents itself
this
very weekend, in the City.
- In which regions of the Fatherland do they call Brötchen Semmeln? Or other
things? An entry in the
Atlas of Everyday German has a handy map. Aber alles auf Deutsch, natürlich.
- The BBC reports on the
revival of a forgotten American fruit, the pawpaw. I'm familiar with the pawpaw-adjacent
cherimoya, but I've never had a pawpaw. Confuse them with May apples, actually (although I
really shouldn't -- the former is a tree, the latter, barely a bush). Both are back East
plants which don't grow out here.
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| May 11, 2022 |
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Orson Welles (1915-1985) really got around. For today, three videos of him,
You'll recall another character from Catch-22, Major Major. According
to Wikipedia the reason a US five-star is called a General of the Army (instead of
Field Marshal, like in other countries) was so George Marshall wouldn't be called
Marshal Marshall.
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| April 27, 2022 |
- "The more gas your SUV uses, the more foreigners
I have to kill." Those great posters, from just after the turn of the
century, where did they go? Ah, here they are, at
Propaganda
Remix.
- Without
the office, how will I pretend to work? From the "Style" section of the Washington
Post (which was known as "For And About Women" back in the day):
The
pandemic was hard on office suck-ups. Now they're back, and ready to schmooze. The
article's authors, Roxanne and Ashley, seem unfamiliar with a 1996 book I found life-changing:
Neanderthals At Work, by Albert J. Bernstein, who divided everyone On-the-job
into three groups: Rebels, Game-Players and Believers. The last group has faith, surely
their hard work will win them raises and promotions, but the Game Players know that's not
true, one advances by learning and following their specific workplace's unwritten
rules. (The Rebels know secrets, so they needn't play the game -- for example Wally,
of Dilbert, is the only one there who understands the financial software.)
(archive link)
- At FiveThirtyEight, Why
Being Anti-Science is now part of many Rural Americans' Identity. Many rural
people disdain anything perceived to be urban -- you know, all that
Latte-Drinking,
Sushi-Eating, and Volvo-Driving, according to linguist Geoffrey Nunberg. I'd lived
such a sheltered life up until I worked as a laborer with a masonry company as a summer
job, in college, when I came up hard against this anti-book-learnin' mind-set, in the
career brick-layers.
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| April 24, 2022 |
 The Grand Bazaar in İstanbul is a vast place;
this
brief, CNN Travel video barely scratches the surface, focusing on a rug seller -
but what I found most intriguing there were the nut-sellers with big open burlap bags of all
sorts of hazelnuts (not so popular here, but among my favorites (note: they've gotta be roasted));
the wide variety of lokum available; and the lamps crafted from shards of tinted
glass. Spotted this one in a shop called Lokum, in San Luis Obispo, apparently a new branch of
the original, in Santa Barbara. So what is
Lokum? More familiarly known as
Turkish Delight, perhaps (but if you're now thinking of that weird Fry's sweet from the
UK, you've been fed a red herring). A domestic source,
from Washington State, celebrating their
100-year anniversary, calls their version Cotlets.
Bonus: Turkish Delight at XKCD
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| April 21, 2022 |
Back from a long weekend driving. I remember the novelty, decades ago now, when
we first heard that the person taking your order at the drive-thru might not
actually be on-site, could possibly be on another continent.
I encountered contact-free check-in at the motel office in San Luis Obispo, where
upon entry I realized, nobody was there. Instead, greeted by a friendly voice from
the terminal on the counter, the clerk actually in the Philippines (although her Zoom
background was a photo of the motel). ID scanning, credit card swiping, authorising
signatures, key-card issuing, all effected through peripherals of the terminal.
And hardly anybody wearing masks, the entire trip -- seems the plague is over. In California.
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| April 14, 2022 |
- Black
Hole visualizations.
- Fifty-two years ago today: President
Nixon Briefed at Goddard on Apollo 13 Explosion. My father was a branch
chief there, at the time, and had no interest in seeing the Tom Hanks film
since he didn't want to re-live one of the most unpleasant weeks of his
NASA career.
- Wikipedia: Westsylvania. First
proposed early in the American Revolution, Westsylvania would have been the fourteenth
state in the newly formed United States, had it been recognized. Kind of like that
old variable for state names, Pennsyltucky. I'll bet a lot of the locals
there wouldn't mind shifting Garrett County (the muzzle of the Maryland
'gun') into West Virginia or Pennsylvania.
- ProRepublica: America's
highest earners and their taxes, revealed. Warning: annoyingly squishy
interface; and if you switch to Reader View, some of the text seems to disappear.
- Bored Panda filters out
Fifty
Examples of Innovative and Awesome Design from an
Instagram Account, 'Design Therapy' -- some duds, but mostly amazing.
- Gizmo
Files Lawsuit Against Disney Over Baby Yoda, Claims Company Stole His Likeness.
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| April 12, 2022 |
-
At Amusing Planet, Twisted
Skyscrapers Around The World, which I reached looking into
the
Evolution Tower in Moscow, noticed (as it reminded me of
certain crafts involving popsicle sticks) in Peter Zeihan's excellent
How Russia Will
Die.
- Religious
web-sites carry more malware than porn sites...according to research
from security firm Symantec.
- Fascinating (if you're of a certain age) -- the
Dave Clark Five at Lost Bands of Yesteryear. I didn't get into
rock&roll until a couple years after the Beatles' first appearance on
Ed Sullivan (which I missed) but later that year, in the waning days
of 4th grade, I remember sitting in class with girls in the un-air-conditioned
June heat who were writing both of those bands' (and their members') names
on their arms, with ball-point pens.
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| April 7, 2022 |
Random panel from an EC
SuspenStory from 1951, "Premium Overdue."
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| April 3, 2022 |
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Note that if you're thwarted, acccessing these (and many other articles
behind paywalls) they can now be seen via
archive.today. Or try copying the URL into
the Internet Archive (they're not the same).
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| March 31, 2022 |
I've always wanted an analog night clock, in its simplest form, two concentric rings
of twelve little light-bulbs, with maybe a central dot for reference. I remember
in middle school drawing up schematics of how such a clock might be wired, using
Christmas lights, after seeing one depicted in a Bedroom of the Future somewhere;
but I never tackled the construction -- until now. A few days ago
the Dot Clock appeared, unearthing all
these old memories, and its unintuitive 24-hour-dial prodded me into action. While
using Processing to realize my dream, modifying somebody's clock sketch example, I
discovered the same thing was possible with HTML5 in a browser (in a completely
different way), using stylesheets and some Javascript, so I've been heads-down focused,
coming up with what you see here. The project really enhanced my CSS skill-set (I
hadn't touched this site's stylesheet in 15 years) but I still don't get how that
structure of nested <div> tags makes it happen. It's also available, all by
itself on a dedicated
Clock page, or just click the dial above. Click
it again, to resize. (Sorry, this probably doesn't work if you're reading this
on your cell.)
Soundtrack for today, from Coldplay.
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| March 17, 2022 |
Here's a good flag -- it's of the
Sámi, the Nordic indigeneous we used to call Laplanders. One of the best of the
'slow videos' is two hours of a sleigh
ride through their snowy world.
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| March 10, 2022 |
- Another new search machine: Marginalia
Search, an independent DIY search engine which focuses on
non-commercial content, and attempts to show you sites you perhaps weren't aware of.
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| March 8, 2022 |
My students would always tell me, March 8th, it's Womens' Day, and
I would explain the holiday is little-known in the US. I would ask, how
to celebrate it? It's my opinon all of the females should get the day
off, with pay. Wouldn't that teach the guys, if it became really widepread?
Reminds me of another extreme holiday, Shut It All Off Night, no electric
power for 24 hours, reboot everything. Never happen, but just imagine.
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| March 6, 2022 |
- Although I don't remember anybody drinking coffee in Middle Earth, a
new
Lord of the Rings-themed coffee shop has opened here
in Sac. It serves 'hand pies' which I don't recall from those books
(unlike Elven Waybread, which doesn't seem to be on the menu). On
Pern, however, those are known as Bubbly Pies, and it's easy to
find recipes for them, online:
1
2
- What's the situation up in LEO? We're currently in the third section of
Expedition 66, and according to
How
Many People are in Space Right Now, that's 4 US astronauts plus
one German, and two cosmonauts. In Vox:Recode, a good overview:
the
ISS isn't above global politics. More info in
this
detailed Reddit comment from beachedwhale45, including conjecture about those
fabulous RD-180
engines the Russians have taken off the table (although I find it hard to
believe their design can't be reverse-engineered). And this just in:
Russia
Releases Bizarre Video of Space Station Breaking Apart.
- Here's
why Ukrainians put styrofoam in their Molotov cocktails.
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