Skeletal systems of cartoon characters
(via Making Light)

I Need This On a T-Shirt:
“Impaired by Wordiness”

verbose \ver-BOHSS\ adjective
1 : containing more words than necessary : wordy; also : impaired by wordiness
2 : given to wordiness

From Merriam Webster

We finally watched Buffy Season 7 this weekend (and I do mean we watched it all between Saturday afternoon and Sunday evening–I felt slightly motion sick by the time we were done) and I have to admit that I came away feeling a little disappointed. Although I was pleased with the ending, I just didn’t feel that Season 7 was anywhere near as good as previous seasons, and I also had a problem with some of the things that happened–they just seemed inconsistent. (i.e. Buffy continually protects Spike, but has to kill Anya without giving her a chance.)

But besides that, we enjoyed it, and now we have Angel, seasons 1 through 3 to watch over Christmas break. (I’m hoping that it is, at least for most of it, episodic, so we don’t have those fits where we HAVE to watch six straight episodes to find out what happend. And it’s not just Buffy that did that: Deep Space Nine did the same thing at the start of Season 6 and the end of Season 7. Once you start watching you can’t quit until it’s resolved.

Unless of course you’re one of those freaks that likes suspense and waiting.

And I was really bothered by one thing: Why would you have to get your driver’s license renewed in California every year after losing an eye? There’s no such regulation here in West (by God) Virginia. At least for people who are blind in one eye, and I don’t see why there would be a difference between the two. Some I’m rather curious as to whether that is a real rule, or just something they made up. Because I can’t see any reason for that to be a rule. (And I do have a reason for saying this–I have a family member who is blind in one eye, so I really don’t understand why there would be such a regulation. But then I suppose California is weird like that.)

I highly recommend the Q & A with Stephen Hawking in the NY Times.

Do you feel that scientists correct themselves as often as they should?
More often than politicians, but not as often as they should.

What is your I.Q.?
I have no idea. People who boast about their I.Q. are losers

I like Stephen Hawking!

Michael wants to make more bourbon balls. Apparently the fact that our kitchen cart is groaning under the weight of their alcoholic goodness isn’t enough. He needs MORE!

So I needed to pick up corn syrup. I walked up and down the baking aisle three time, and couldn’t find it. I found honey and white sugar and brown sugar and artificial sweetener, but no corn syrup. And I couldn’t come up with a plausible alternative. I don’t think honey would work very well, and I don’t feel like cooking down sugar water into a syrup, because I don’t think standing over a stove stirring sugar water sounds like a lot of fun.

So I walked back to the fruit and juice aisle. Nothing. Nor was it in the cookie and milk aisle.

So I walked back to the only aisle I hadn’t traversed, the bread and cereal aisle. There it was, next to pancake syrup, which confused me until I realized that there must be people out there who eat corn syrup on pancakes and such.

(shudder)

It was then that I realized that I’m becoming a food snob.

If I’m going to have pancakes, I’m going to make them from scratch, and if I’m going to go to all that trouble, I want maple syrup. If I’m going to bake something then I want fresh ingredients, good chocolate, and Madagascar Bourbon vanilla.

Now if only I felt the same way about making dinner…

http://ww12.e-tractions.com/snowglobe/globe.htm

I ran across two very interesting articles this morning while sitting at the Dr’s office.

‘GM cocaine grown in Colombia’
I found this fascinating since I just recently read about Round-Up resistant coca.

I can’t say I’m surprised about either story. It would seem to me that coca growers have as much money as any company doing transgenic research, so why should they be any different?

Once again, I have to wonder how different things would be if drugs were legalized, which would then legalize coca production. What might that do for countries like Columbia?

Second article I also came across in the DA, and also heard something about this last night on The World:
Troops grill Rumsfeld over Iraq
What bothered me most about the bit I heard on the world, was the statement that troops weren’t having to travel in unarmored vehicles. This is, to the best of my knowledge, completely false. A woman who works in this building was very upset last month, because he son told her that he had just travelled through Iraq in an unarmored convoy. Neither had any reason to make this up, and it squares with everything else I’ve read and heard: That are troops are just not being given the armor they need.

Mr Rumsfeld added that vehicle armour might not provide total protection from the perils faced by soldiers in Iraq – such as roadside bombs.

Of course not. Nothing can provide total protection. But an armored vehicle has to be a hell of a lot more protection than an unarmored one!

How (HOW?!) can we send out soldiers into harms way without appropriate equipment? I’ve complained about this before, and it still makes no sense to me.

It also makes me very angry at the fools who sport “yellow ribbons” to “support the troops” but could care less beyond that what happens. I don’t see them saying anything about cuts in combat pay, or cuts in veterans’ benefits.

But they’re all for tax cuts.

(Thanks Erin!)

We’ve got tickets to see Ani Defranco tonight at the CAC.

Which explains why I’m tired and just want to go home and lie on the couch reading.

I’ve actually been reading. At least after we get our daily dose of DS9. (We’re holding off on starting Season 7 of Buffy and any of the Angel, but that may start this weekend.) But I’ve read some good anthologies, which I’ve been meaning to write more about, but have not yet managed to do so. But for now, I highly recommend ‘Firebirds’ edited by Sharyn November as well as Ellen Kushner’s ‘Thomas the Rhymer’. And despite my earlier protestations, I picked up Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Sword And Sorceress XXI. Mostly because Diana L. Paxson has taken over as editor, although partially because I have a hard time finding anthologies that I really like, and I’ve always enjoyed the Sword And Sorceress series. The other book I’m reading is ‘Year’s Best Fantasy I’ edited by David Hartwell.

And I’m not quite sure what I’m going to read after that. I’ve got several mystery series that look good, as well as (ahem) some new fantasy series that I haven’t read before. Although the temptation is to go back and reread ‘Thieves World’… HEY! VOLUME II IS OUT! MUST BUY! (runs off)

It’s the week of pictures and paintings with very strange eyes. The 2004 WVU basketball poster I find eerie, because from far away it looks like there’s something wrong with the player’s right eye–it’s just a little too black.

And outside the Dentistry area in Health Sciences there are paintings of what I presume are former Deans and such, going back years. And for most of them they eyes aren’t quite right. It’s as if one eye was looking in one direction and one eye in another, which might be understandable in one person, but for the school of dentistry to have six or eight Deans (or whoever) all with lazy eye seems slightly improbable.

And I asked other people to look, just to make sure it wasn’t just me. It wasn’t. (Either that or everyone is afraid of me and agreeing in the hopes I’ll go away.)

So now I need to look at all the pictures and posters I go by, to see if tthis is something I’ve been missing all these years.

Today is Pearl Harbor Day.

In 1941, Japanese planes made a surprise attack on the US Navy at Pearl Harbor, killing 2,403 and wounding 1,178. Twenty-one ships were sunk or damaged, including the USS Arizona, which remains on the harbor floor, and the USS West Virginia, which was eventually refloated, repaired, and rejoined the fleet towards the end of the war.

The following websites may be of interest:

For information about the Pearl Harbor Attack, including ships lost and damaged and casualties, as well as other resources.
Pearl Harbor Remembered, including survivor’s remembrances.
The official US Navy Pearl Harbor website.

Information about the attack at Pearl Harbor, including images of the dispatch sent by Commander in Chief Pacific (CINCPAC).
A site about the USS West Virginia, including pictures of the ship from the 20s through the “mothballing” of the ship in the 1950s (She was later broken up and sold for scrap).
Website for the USS Arizona, from the University of Arizona, including a brief hisotry and online exhibits.
Here you can find the text and excerpts of the audio of President Roosevelt’s speech in response to Pearl Harbor, and the other attacks that day, calling for war.

Here’s something for Morgantownies.

Go to this Health Sciences page.

Click on the link that says Photo Tour.

Scroll through the pictures and look for the picture “Medical Center 1960”

Figure out what’s wrong?

You’d think they’d have been able to find a picture from the 1960s instead of using one that is pretty obviously from the late 70s early 80s.

Happy Birthday Andy!

Turned in my paper yesterday. Either I did a fine job, or I flubbed everything and should have written it in a completely different way. We’ll see.

We saw Fiddler on the Roof last night at the CAC. Believe it or not, I’d never seen it before, so it wasn’t just good, it was also something new to me. Next week we see Ani Defranco. Then nothing until January, when we see Cirque Dreams, Bring in ‘Da Noise, and Branford Marsalis. I’m actually impressed with the University Arts Series this year. There’s some good stuff.

I have to say that it’s really nice to have money to do things like that. All those years of watching the account balance hover dangerously near zero, it’s lovely to realize that we can afford to do fun things every once in awhile. Of course part of it comes from the fact that our vacations are things like visiting museums in DC or driving to Cincinnati to hang out with friends.

Of course if we curbed my book buying and gardening impulses, we’d have even more money, but I’m not willing to go that far.

The word of the year.