Voice 0'Reason

Should the Theory of Relativity be taught in schools?

... out on the back porch, feet and legs wrapped in a blanket ('cause it's only in the upper 50s out there), with a book (John Thorne's Outlaw Cook, which I picked off the shelf on impulse and am very much enjoying rereading 15 years or so later), a cup of coffee (Italian roast) and a couple of cats. Ivy, after her usual round of bouncing off the walls, finally settled down on my lap. Then Schroeder—who used to climb on top of me whenever he possibly could, but has only rarely sought out my attention since being forced to live among a horde of other cats—recalled the good old days when he and Stosh used to vie for position, and squeezed into the prime spot, with his body stretched up along my torso. The beast stayed put there for at least an hour, even after Ivy had given up because I kept having to move my legs lest they atrophy. Add to all that the sound of rain, and you've got a nice, relaxing Sunday morning.

The Department of Health and Human Services asked users to comment on what they think of the pandemicflu.gov site. Here are some of the responses:

• I think many people have been lulled to complacency on the likelihood of a pandemic by the term "bird flu". That sounds as innocuous as...well, birds. If it were called "Tiger flu" or "Cobra flu" people might be more concerned.
• In all honesty, you need to be honest with the folks and tell them that they are going to be on there own for the most part when it comes to self protection and defense. It is beyond criminal NOT bring it to the attention of your readers that roving gangs of robbers and worse will be on the loose.
• less side things
• I hate this website.
• Hi webmaster! egr
• deep thinking
• Way too much information, and it's choppy. I just heard that a pandemic is expected in the next two years, and 40% of the world's population will be affected. And half of those will die. Is this true?
• Avian flu,pandemic flu, bird flu has been around for 100's of years. Killing a small poursion of the population. Those who was killed live with the birds, and did not get the killer flu from other poeple. So don't by in to the hype. Do prepare for the Coming times. It will be a pandemic, the one world order is coming. You have a choice, to pretisapate or go off the grid. Either pardemic you will react the same way
• I think the govt. is full of lies. So why would I want a flu shot???????
• I think there is a bad viral infection in South Carolina....Some people are being diagnosed with flu, others bronchitis, and others pnemonia.....But there is a larger than average number of people sick....Sore Throat, Hoarse, Congestion, Mucos, Slight Temperature....
• You just want to scare us with Pandemics!! This is a tool for the NWO in order to give us a shot that will make us vulerable. FEMA camps and trains in effect. Stop being part of that conspiracy, wake up and save people lives, do not aid NWO to capitalice their plans.
• What was the cause of the initial avian flu? Was it the aftermath of the comet tail back in the day?
• Could you maybe make some kind of drug? Are people thinking of some?
• Do you really think it would happen some time some?
• You people, and others, have created a great deal of concern by allowing the resistance issue message to be broadcast widely.. without any news on new antivirals in development to balance the message. No need for this situation to exist other than what appears to be.. subterfuge.
• may be every thing is perfect!! if u think that it is not..... so ur wrong!! dont criticise ur self!! b proud to have such information!! never ever worry if some one even writes some thing bad or worse please ignore may b they dint read the information properly!! rite??

We went to visit the boys yesterday, and took them out for a walk. They behaved pretty well, and what stubbornness they displayed pales in comparison to dealing with a stubborn camel according to Ms. ±Reason. For naturally skittish critters, they were also pretty good about having their heads and necks scratched.

(And did I mention how damn cute they are?)

The two alpaca boys are now officially ours.

We're still trying to think up names for them (hmmm, I don't suppose my wife would go for "Hops" and "Barley"...?). A bit of browsing through some alpaca-related magazine shows that some folks give their alpacas truly ridiculous names. I mean... "Peruvian Navajo Gold"!?!?—that sounds like something you'd buy in a dime bag. That one or one of the equally silly ones inspired me to suggest "Corinthian Leather," to which my wife's response was "Naugahyde." But we wouldn't actually inflict such names on the boys...

The quadruped family grows a bit more:

For the time being, they'll keep right on living where they are, among their pals. And we'll work on names...

Camels are pretty cool, though it's hard to get over the concern about being spat upon. (I haven't yet been spat upon, but I have it on good authority that camel spit smells nasty.)

Fergie is particularly cool, and much cuter than I would have thought possible for a camel. When she goes back to her home at Southwick's Zoo, I guess we'll have to go visit her occasionally.

Alpacas are pretty cool too, and I expect that someday we'll have a couple of them... I will, however, draw the line at having them sleep on the bed.
Oops, those are llamas in that picture, not alpacas. I sometimes get the two mixed up.

Cougars have a very big purr. (Tiny little voice, though.)

When they think no one is watching, ponies walk on their hind legs...
Oops, those are probably miniature horses in that picture, not ponies. Damned if I know the difference.

A variation on an Internet meme. Only in this version, you can make stuff up if you want to, and you don't need to tag anyone...

1. I have ten toes.
2. Some of my best friends are human.
3. My real name is not Priscilla Ebenezer Xthrop III.
4. I confess that I invented the QWERTY keyboard. I swear it was intended as a joke -- I didn't think anyone would actually use it!
5. If my mother had had her way, my middle name might have been "Zeelstra" (double-e pronounced as a long "a").
6. My vision is 20/20 (for some values of "20").
7. I am more than the sum of my parts (because I keep some spare parts around just in case).
8. I am the Messiah, but I like to keep a low profile.
9. I would be perfectly happy never to use the VMS operating system again. (It appears to have been developed by people who thought that Unix was too user-friendly, and I have it on good authority that the the manuals are written in Klingon.)
10. I am not the lowest common denominator.
11. I do not enjoy bathing in molten lead.
12. I hardly ever have nightmares about working in the bookstore anymore.
13. I think that potential parents should be required to take a written exam before being permitted to breed.
14. There are several Unix in our household.
15. I do not wish to halve children.
16. I do not live to work. By a strange coincidence, I'm not dying to go to work.
17. I consider coffee to be a food group.
18. I may or may not be The Decider.
19. I think spammers should be exiled to a remote island, and forced to subsist only on Ch3ap !nterne7 M3ds!!!.
20. I'm Brian, and so's my wife.
21. I do not like green eggs and ham.
22. I think that gigabytes make a dandy breakfast cereal.
23. But I don't think teraflops would make a very good breakfast cereal. Nor "male enhancement" remedy.
24. I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together... And yet:
25. I am not the Walrus.

Bowing to pressure from family members who have finally noticed that I have a bunch of photographs online (after the many times I've sent them links to my Flickr pages), I've set up a store to sell prints, cards, etc. Currently the storefront says that I have no items for sale (hrmph), but I'm adding links from various Flickr images to the individual order pages at Qoop (it looks like those are working OK).

Found in an email from a few months ago was this headline:

Companies and Utilities to Launch Algae Farm in Hawaii

The image of workin' away the long days down at the algae farm seemed like it deserved its own blues song:

Well, my daddy was an algae farmer
Farmed that algae dawn to dusk
I say my daddy was an algae farmer
Farmed that Maui algae dawn to dusk
Mama brewed up that biodiesel
That gave our li'l ol' car its thrust...

Or something.

tears of joy flow down

SOPs make the heart smile

damn i'm so happy

• I shall not drink turpentine.
• I shall omit broken glass from my diet.
• I shall extract oxygen from the air by means of respiration.
• I shall endeavor not to join a cult that makes burnt offerings to Sid & Marty Krofft.
• I shall continue to mutilate images.
• I shall decline to become ruler of the universe.
• I shall play with cats.
• I shall not juggle rabid weasels while assorted rodents nibble at my toes.
• I shall try not to go to work dressed in a clown suit, with pickled herrings stapled to my earlobes.
• I shall drink coffee in the morning and beer in the evening, rather than the reverse.
• I shall not submerge pianos in bodies of water.
• I shall try not to display nipples on Facebook, where they are considered obscene.
• I shall upgrade my damn computer.
• I shall not make resolutions that I don't have a reasonable expectation of sticking to.
• I shall put prepositions at the end of phrases and/or sentences if I wish to, thank you very much.

Last night, because the roads were in horrible shape, we bundled up, slipped on our snow boots, and walked over to the People's Pint. On the way over there, we only saw one person wearing shorts and sneakers.

It's officially winter.

I've been drawn into the time-sucking realm of Facebook. Been nice knowing y——

<F/X: whooshing sound accompanies the sight of V0R being sucked into the vortex>

Snow Farm

We made our annual pilgrimage to the Snow Farm seconds sale (i.e., arts and crafts that have slight—or occasionally not-so-slight—flaws) last weekend. It's a favorite place to do some Christmas shopping. But this year we ended up only getting things for us (mainly because the things that were tempting to get for other folks were too much like presents we've given in the past). For anyone in this area, it's probably worth checking out (I think this coming weekend is the last weekend of the sale).

Barn Chores

There's nothing quite as romantic as shoveling alpaca dung together*, so I volunteered to help my wife with her barn chores at school. At least she told me I had volunteered. Who am I to argue? Darn, those alpacas are cute.

Capsule Review: New Keyboard and Mouse

I'm not sure exactly what inspired me to get a wireless keyboard and mouse, but this Logitech set just looked quite suitable for my needs, and quite reasonably priced. So far I think they're mostly excellent. The keyboard has extra buttons for launching various applications (email program, Web browser, iTunes, iPhoto and Spotlight though it looks like you could assign them to any apps), as well as buttons for controlling essential functions in iTunes (play/pause, next track, previous track). The layout of the home/end/page up/page down/delete keys is a bit peculiar, with end to the right of home, rather than under it, and a big delete key right under the home key. Luckily, the help key is up at the top of the keyboard, next to the function keys; on Apple keyboards, I'm always launching help by mistake because that key is so close to the backspace key. Meanwhile, the mouse not only has to buttons and a good scroll-wheel, but also a couple of assignable buttons on one side (for, e.g., page up/page down) and volume and mute controls. The scroll wheel also tilts from side to side for horizontal scrolling, which is very handy.

Forty Four

Hmmm, I've entered my 44th year shortly before the 44th president takes office. Coincidence!? (Well, OK, it is a coincidence.)

For the first time in my life, I have an actual, brand-new chair in my study (courtesy of my mother-in-law), rather than a cast-off chair from work that's got all sorts of interesting problems. Yeah, I know, it's just a chair, big deal. But it's a big, comfy chair. And it's new. I almost feel like a real adult, rather than an overgrown college student.

Meanwhile, there's reportedly an iPod Touch on its way here (courtesy of my lovely wife), which should be great fun. Given the connection costs, I figure an iPhone would be way overkill, but the Touch can connect to the Web via WiFi. Hence, though I can't use it just anywhere, at least I can use it anywhere there's Wifi (which covers plenty of territory). It should function nicely as a combination music player/PDA, with a bunch of intriguing music apps available to keep me entertained...

Picture Books

I've been playing with creating custom books of my photographs. Qoop (which has a partnership with Flickr) does a decent job, but there's not much flexibility in layout options.

I put together a bigger book within iPhoto. That offers more flexibility (e.g., selecting the number of images per page for each page, rather than a fixed number of images on every page, which seems to be the best Qoop has to offer). It sometimes seems to have a mind of its own when it comes to sizing the images on a multi-image page, though. It would be nice to have more control over the sizes and placement of individual images, but the available options are pretty good. It also allows you to set the background colors for pages individually, and even use a photograph for a page background. And of course, because it's all done within iPhoto, there are various options for adjusting the images. It'll probably be at least a week before I get to see the end result. (If anyone knows of other places that offer more flexible photo-book creation, give me a holler.)

And to all a...

Happy Thanksgiving!

* OK, that's a bit of an exaggeration.

My credit card company seems to be losing it. I had a couple of online purchases rejected (just what I need when I'm doing Christmas shopping), and eventually got a phone message from [Name of Evil Bank Withheld] saying that they wanted me to confirm some recent charges on my card. Grumble grumble, saith I, but at least I'm glad that they're watching out for signs of fraud.

So I finally had a chance to call them (and at least they didn't refuse to accept my SSN, like they did last time, which had led to an intensely frustrating discussion with one of their customer "service" reps). The computerized voice read off the three most recent transactions for me to confirm. Two of them were the transactions that were rejected. Not sure why either of those would have seemed suspicious. ("Hmmm... he's trying to spend $61.95. That's not nearly enough!") And the third was a charge from—naturally—Amazon.com.

A charge for $0.99. Ninety-nine goddamn fucking cents.

Now really, does anyone at [Name of Evil Bank Withheld] think that someone is going to steal my credit card and use it to but a single MP3 from Amazon? Really!?

Poor old Tinker died today. (She's the one on the right.) She wasn't really one of our cats, but she joined our family for a few months while her human recovered from a bad accident. Most of our cats were wary of this harmless intruder (c'mon, she was 23 years old! she wasn't a threat to anyone!), but Ivy adored her, and loved to curl up with her old aunty. And of course we got very attached to her, especially because she sometimes reminded us of a couple of other cats we'd lost in recent years.

Tinker finally went home to her human about a week and a half ago. (Other than that, they'd only had a few brief visits together since mid-summer.) It's very sad that they didn't have more time together at the end, but at least they were reunited for a little while...

Does this mean that our government will become a Barackcracy?...