Wait, I'm confused. Isn't confessing to murder better than not confessing to murder?
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(6)
04:24:38 PM,
Monday 20 November 2006
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I need to find and reread Interstellar PIG.
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(2)
07:30:08 PM,
Saturday 18 November 2006
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Arlington Cafe
Hi, do you deliver?
Yes we do.
Great, I'd like to order a pizza
Where do you live
blahblah, Arlington
Burlington?
No, Arlington
Where's that?
Isn't this the Arlington Cafe?
Yes
Arlington. Same town you're in.
Oh, Arlington
I give up.
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05:11:21 PM,
Friday 17 November 2006
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I find NPR sanctimonious. I'm telling you this because it is the right word, and I don't want to lose it.
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07:01:18 PM,
Thursday 16 November 2006
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Cycling to work, I was passed by a Jetta with the same hubcaps I have, also missing one. I wanted to ride up to her and offer to sell her 3 used hubcaps for $20, but you just don't approach women you don't know in parking lots. Do I put a note on her windshield with an email address? I haven't bought new hubcaps yet, because it hurts me to have 3 useless hubcaps, and I'm too lazy to sell them on ebay. Maybe I just turn into a 2001 Golf/Jetta hubcap fairy, and put them on cars that are missing them, without a note or anything. I can't put them in the basement, I can't throw them away, it's dreadful.
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(3)
09:52:14 AM,
Thursday 16 November 2006
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Meme:
This is a list of the 50 most significant science fiction/fantasy novels, 1953-2002, according to the Science Fiction Book Club. Bold the ones you've read, strike-out the ones you hated, italicize those you started but never finished and put an asterisk beside the ones you loved. (added: underline the ones you haven't read but really want to.)
Some of them aren't novels, some were written earlier, but who am I to quibble?
1. The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien
2. The Foundation Trilogy, Isaac Asimov*
3. Dune, Frank Herbert*
4. Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert A. Heinlein
5. A Wizard of Earthsea, Ursula K. Le Guin*
6. Neuromancer, William Gibson
7. Childhood's End, Arthur C. Clarke
8. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Philip K. Dick
9. The Mists of Avalon, Marion Zimmer Bradley
10. Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury
11. The Book of the New Sun, Gene Wolfe
12. A Canticle for Leibowitz, Walter M. Miller, Jr.
13. The Caves of Steel, Isaac Asimov
14. Children of the Atom, Wilmar Shiras
15. Cities in Flight, James Blish
16. The Colour of Magic, Terry Pratchett --wrong Pratchett for the list
17. Dangerous Visions, edited by Harlan Ellison
18. Deathbird Stories, Harlan Ellison
19. The Demolished Man, Alfred Bester
20. Dhalgren, Samuel R. Delany
21. Dragonflight, Anne McCaffrey*
22. Ender's Game, Orson Scott Card*
23. The First Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever, Stephen R. Donaldson
24. The Forever War, Joe Haldeman
25. Gateway, Frederik Pohl*
26. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, J.K. Rowling
27. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams*
28. I Am Legend, Richard Matheson
29. Interview with the Vampire, Anne Rice
30. The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula K. Le Guin*
31. Little, Big, John Crowley
32. Lord of Light, Roger Zelazny*
33. The Man in the High Castle, Philip K. Dick
34. Mission of Gravity, Hal Clement
35. More Than Human, Theodore Sturgeon
36. The Rediscovery of Man, Cordwainer Smith
37. On the Beach, Nevil Shute
38. Rendezvous with Rama, Arthur C. Clarke
39. Ringworld, Larry Niven*
40. Rogue Moon, Algis Budrys
41. The Silmarillion, J.R.R. Tolkien
42. Slaughterhouse-5, Kurt Vonnegut*
43. Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson
44. Stand on Zanzibar, John Brunner
45. The Stars My Destination, Alfred Bester
46. Starship Troopers, Robert A. Heinlein
47. Stormbringer, Michael Moorcock
48. The Sword of Shannara, Terry Brooks
49. Timescape, Gregory Benford
50. To Your Scattered Bodies Go, Philip Jose Farmer
You'll notice I don't want to read any of them. My last attempt to pick up science fiction I missed, I ran into Dhalgren, The Stars my destination and Lord Valentine's Castle, resulting in my abandoning the genre entirely. I'm somewhat conflicted about Ringworld. On the one hand, by any reasonable measure, it's an utterly dreadful book, but on the other, it's a nifty idea. That goes more or less for the whole project of science fiction, really.
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10:39:04 PM,
Wednesday 15 November 2006
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Not to be left out, a few days ago I woke up with a song in my head, that went like this:
So many things
in such a good order
-repeat-
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10:51:14 AM,
Tuesday 14 November 2006
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In a wonderful example of forum entropy, (the tendency of all discussions to devolve into senselessness over time), the Arlington List is currently debating the relative merits of a: roundabouts and b: the war on terror. You see, because both bad intersections and terrorists kill people, but roundabouts are cheaper than military adventures.
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05:13:25 PM,
Monday 13 November 2006
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enrollment time: We know that we're going to blow past our deductable, whatever it is. Bringing the deductable down from $1000 to $250 costs $845, pretax, which is a good deal, when you take taxes into account; basically we're buying $750 worth of medical coverage for $630. So the higher deductable only makes sense if there's a chance you won't meet it. Crazy. Though tax-free medical flexible spending account would change the math. gaah. And then you have to think, how much effort would an FSA require, and if it only saves $100, what's the hassle/reward ratio look like? And this is before I even start worrying about the Rx plan, which is changing for the 4th year running. And I work for a healthcare information company. What hope do the rest of you have of making an informed decision on this stuff? Conclusion: economists, who think people respond rationally to incentives, are nutters. It's the part D 'donut hole' again. People don't respond to incentives that they don't understand, or, better still, were never told about.
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(11)
11:35:42 AM,
Monday 13 November 2006
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double post
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(1)
11:35:38 AM,
Monday 13 November 2006
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Do hubcaps on opposite sides of the car need to match? No one ever sees both at the same time.
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(5)
09:12:57 AM,
Monday 13 November 2006
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anthropomorphic projection: The fish are silently reproaching me.
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04:05:08 PM,
Sunday 12 November 2006
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site & script courtesy of Moss
