Apropos of nothing in particular, does anybody have any idea what the oldest continuously maintained system on Earth is?
I’m thinking Chinese canals, Roman waterworks or bridges, and so forth; but the answer could be some more social or political, I suppose. The hierarchy of Judaism, for example.
Heck, does anyone want to take a shot at refining the question?
Posted: 5:43 am Wed December 03 2008 | Comments(1) |
The Fix reviews The Best of Abyss & Apex
Amazon Aims at Content Delivery — Interesting future state stuff.
APOD with a photo of the smiling heavens
Polar opposites — Some coverage of the possibly imminent (in geological terms) flipping of the Earth’s magnetic field. (Thanks to lt260.)
And for LJ readers, because flist display of my posts continues intermittently borked, something which I’m told wasn’t visible to everyone the first time:
If you’ve missed recent link salads, believe me, they’ve been there. Try this.
?otD: I want to know, have you ever seen the rain?
12/03/08
Body movement: 30 minutes on stationary bike
This morning’s weigh-in: 223.2
Currently reading: The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade by Herman Melville
Posted: 5:40 am Wed December 03 2008 | Comments(0) |
Holiday weekend reacharound, for those of you who weren’t online much:
Here at this blog, we read Herman Melville so you don’t have to. [ jlake.com | LiveJournal ]
A writerly career meme: [ jlake.com | LiveJournal ]
More wit and wisdom of the_child: [ jlake.com | LiveJournal ]
Wisdom of Fred: [ jlake.com | LiveJournal ]
Plus the usual assorted bill of fare:
Lego safe — Um… (Thanks to willyumtx.)
Next Year In Birobidzhan? Stalin’s Siberian Zion — Strange Maps with a very odd bit of Jewish history.
Climate change juggernaut on the horizon, UN talks told — More liberal balderdash from the world scientific community and the pinko climate itself. Thank God we have the Republican party and its talk radio surrogates to keep us politically insulated from the inconvenience of reality.
A Handpicked Team for a Foreign Policy Shift — The New York Times on Obama’s foreign policy and national security team. …the United States has more members of military marching bands than foreign service officers. Because that’s what the War on Terror demands! The GOP, keeping you safer with clarinets.
The GOP’s McCarthy gene — Think Goldwater is the father of conservatism? Think again. A fairly cogent explanation of the profound cognitive dissonance between the GOP’s idealistic self-image and the party’s vicious behaviors. (Hat tip to Talking Points Memo.)
Juan Cole on Pakistani Reaganism — A very illuminating precis on the history of radical Islam in South Asia, and how much the current issues with the Taliban owe their roots to Reagan’s anti-Communist policies. Not news to most reality-based readers, but very well-explained. (Facts not valid for FOX News viewers.)
?otD: Who let the dogs out?
12/01/08
Body movement: 30 minutes on stationary bike
This morning’s weigh-in: 221.4
Currently reading: The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade by Herman Melville
Posted: 6:12 am Mon December 01 2008 | Comments(0) |
An Apollo 15 Panorama from APOD — In case you had moonscapes on the brain today.
Fluegar — A car from car heaven. :: wants :: (Thanks to danjite.)
Rockets help build bridge higher than the Empire State Building — Um, wow. (Thanks to lt260.)
Poodles — Wrong. Just wrong. (Thanks to willyumtx.)
?otD: Why are you fixing a hole for the rain to come in?
11/30/08
Body movement: 85 minute suburban walk
This morning’s weigh-in: 221.6
Currently reading: The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade by Herman Melville
Posted: 8:09 am Sun November 30 2008 | Comments(1) |
Atomic Tarantula — Some very cool sf-themed wear.
Autoportraits — Finding expression in unlikely places. This is fairly amusing.
Honeywell’s Kitchen Computer remembered — A idea whose time never came, apparently. Still, there’s something wistful about this. (Thanks to danjite.)
Baconed yams — One of my favorite recipes in quite a while, courtesy of cthulhie, whom I don’t actually know, AFAIK. Worth the read just for the cooking instructions. Mmmm, bacon.
20 things to do with a haggis — Unintentional (I think) multicultural humor from the online archives of The Times. (Thanks to Scrivener’s Error.)
Poll riots erupt in Nigerian city — I spent my freshman year of high school (1978-1979) at a missionary boarding school in this city. (Thanks to my brother.)
?otD: Do you have Prince Albert in a can?
11/29/08
Body movement: 2 hour, 35 minute suburban walk
[Important safety tip: do not wear reading glasses for extended trail walking in the dark]
This morning’s weigh-in: 222.4
Currently reading: The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade by Herman Melville
Posted: 10:58 am Sat November 29 2008 | Comments(0) |
Becoming Screen Literate — Visual constructive and the creative process. (Thanks to willyumtx.)
How genes evolve — Some fairly cool stuff, albeit thick reading. Hang on to your ribosomes. (Thanks to lt260.)
Parastic DNA — It’s life, but not as we know it.
Building for the long haul — Centauri Dreams with a cool post about the survival of materials in outer space. With nifty photos!
Plumes from Saturn moon may come from liquid water — Mmm. Fountains of paradise. This is an exciting moment in science, between the work on the outer moons and the exoplanetary stuff.
Sweet molecule could lead us to alien life — Sugars in galactic space. For serious. Wow. Bring the Kool-Aid!
How the media talks about torture and the rule of law — (Thanks to chriswjohnson.)
The Extreme and Imaginary Pro-Obama Bias — Your liberal media at work.
Freakonomics asks its readers to explain how mortgages get securitized — Worth reading the comments section pretty carefully, if you’re interested in the root causes of the real estate component of the Bush Depression.
?otD: Why didn’t Bob Marley shoot the deputy?
11/27/08
Body movement: 30 minutes on stationary bike
This morning’s weigh-in: 222.8
Currently reading: The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade by Herman Melville
Posted: 7:54 am Thu November 27 2008 | Comments(0) |
jeffsoesbe on the OryCon cheese party — Mmm, cheese.
First detection of carbon dioxide in an exoplanet — Oooooh. What you can learn from the light of a single pixel.
Bad Astronomy blog with some (retroactively) obvious logic about UFOs — Never thought of this angle before, myself.
Pirates protected from EU task force by human rights —
Eight Is Enough — Comment from The New Yorker with more on the Mormon Church and Proposition 8.
The Edge of the American West reminds us of the Iran-Contra scandal — Look! Over there! Whitewater!
?otD: How many tribbles can fit in a Volkswagen?
11/26/08
Body movement: 30 minutes on stationary bike
This morning’s weigh-in: n/a [forgot to weigh]
Currently reading: The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade by Herman Melville
Posted: 6:44 am Wed November 26 2008 | Comments(2) |
Top Ten Reasons Books Are Better Than Sex — (Snurched from Scrivener’s Error.)
musingaloud talks about the 12/08 issue of Realms of Fantasy — Including my story, “Achilles, Sulking in His Buick.”
Ancient eyes head for the light — Poetic and fascinating, a piece about precursors to eyes. IDiots will of course decline to note the dreaded transitional forms under discussion.
Brain reorganizes to make room for math — Some cool stuff on training the human mind and its meat machine. (Thanks to lt260.)
$450,000 Watch Features Real Moon Dust — Houston, do you read me? :: wants :: (Thanks to therinth.)
Astronomers Select Top Ten Most Amazing Pictures Taken by Hubble Space Telescope in Last 16 Years — (Thanks to danjite.)
Neil Armstrong’s parents on “I’ve Got a Secret” — Heh. (Thanks to sdn.)
It’s Like Taking Candy From a Multi-Billion Dollar Corporation — This is hilarious. Freelance culture jamming. (Thanks to willyumtx.)
Shorpy with online shopping, ca. 1950
Fareed Zakaria on living through history, and the hard realities of economics
Enter Hawks, Stage Right (Part 2) — A rather distressing piece on Obama’s rapid shift to the right on military policy, post-election. (Thanks to dirkcjelli.)
?otD: Houston, can you read me, or have I lost my mind?
11/25/08
Body movement: 30 minutes on stationary bike
This morning’s weigh-in: 222.4
Currently reading: The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade by Herman Melville
Posted: 6:38 am Tue November 25 2008 | Comments(0) |
sheelangig points out lovely airship art here and here
What Would Happen if You Bought 25 Bottles of Nyquil? — A blogger after my own heart. (Thanks to willyumtx.)
A Clearer Picture of Cancer — A new, high-resolution imaging system captures “early” photons. This is cool on a number of levels, though I love this bit: “We’re preferentially choosing photons with more spatial information”
APOD with Martian glaciers — Ooooh.
?otD: Who was the building inspector on the house that Jack built?
11/24/08
Body movement: 30 minutes on stationary bike
This morning’s weigh-in: 224.8
Currently reading: The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade by Herman Melville
Posted: 7:03 am Mon November 24 2008 | Comments(0) |
A few more OryCon reports here and here
One model, fifty years — Aging through lighting and makeup. (Thanks to willyumtx.)
Juan Cole on Red Sea piracy and Bush military policy
5 Myths About Our Ailing Health-Care System — Food for thought on healthcare finance reform.
Question of the day: Princess Leia or Barbarella? Discuss.
11/23/08
Body movement: 60 minute suburban walk
This morning’s weigh-in: n/a
Currently reading: The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade by Herman Melville
Posted: 11:42 am Sun November 23 2008 | Comments(0) |
|