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Search rbgilbert.com

This is my blogchalk:
United States, Massachusetts, Boston, Brighton, English, Ron, Male, Photography, Nudity.

I'm working backwards through my archives updating links. The biggest part of it is identifying the photos that disappeared when Zing shut down. Things are complete only back to July 2, but progress proceeds.

Greater name recognition in China than Coca-Cola, Mickey Mouse or Nestle; highest per store sales in the world; franchise licenses going for 1 million U.S. dollars where the minimum wage is 37¢ an hour. It's KFC. Yes! In less than 10 years the average Chinese youth will be TOO FAT to operate a tank or fly a military jet and then North Korea will be our little toy! Bwaha-ha-ha-ha!

"Cummingtonite
"This mineral must have the silliest name of them all. Its official name is magnesium iron silicate hydroxide, and it has the formula (Mg,Fe)7Si8O22(OH)2. It got its name from the locality where it was first found, Cummington, Massachusetts, USA."

Many other good chemical/mineral/elemental names here such as uranate, arsole, spermine, dickite, fucitol, vaginatin, anol, urospermal, constipatic acid, george, bi-george, catherine, sonic hedgehog, and many more.

Big list of "Internet Accessible Machines"

Chicago highway congestion map.

Flight tracker

Web cams

• Tommy's List of Live Cam Worldwide
• Live Web Cam Webring
• North American weather cams
• Discovery Channel live cams
• Live cams in Palm Springs
• The I-74 bridge viewed from Moline. That would be Iowa on the other side of the river.
• Other Quad Cities cams including a view of Davenport from Rock Island!

Here's a story about Buffalo's McKinley curse. I've heard of this before and think it's a load of hoo-hah. Dallas doesn't seem to have thrown itself into any terrible depression since JFK's assassination. And Washington, which played host to both Lincoln's and Garfield's assassinations, just won't go away. On the flip side of the coin, there are lots of cities that showed great promise in the late 19th century that have since declined. None of them are able to lay blame on a crazy-ass anarchist.

STILL no Amelia Earhart! Does Atchison, Kansas, blame its long decline on her unexplained absence? Are she and McKinley sharing cocktails in heaven and asking "What the fuck?"

Death row inmate dies and the family of his victim are not satisfied. Maybe some of the more conservative Moslem countries should offer a service. In return for a large cash payment, they would kidnap the convict and spirit him away to their nation where the victim's family would be waiting with stones, knives and other implements which they would use to carry out the death sentence immediately. The more westernized Moslem countries would not require the family to convert to Islam first.

At lunch stopped in at the opening of the Boston H & M store. There were no riots. The store seems to cover the whole Old Navy - Gap - Banana Republic spectrum, but maybe not as fully expensive as Banana Republic. Lot of polyester. Saw some 100% polyester, brown, double-knit slacks that look just as bad now as they did on the rack in J.C. Penney's in 1970.

It's the end for the Des Moines A&W drive-in.

Good article in The Phoenix that sets out to be about the Night Owl service that begins tonight, but goes on to cover most of the MBTA's screw-ups over the last 30 years. I'm convinced the upper management of the MBTA all drive cars to work and are very anti-mass transit.

Madonna in San Luis Obispo wins free speech/property rights battle!

"Paint the Moon"

The Goal: To unite millions of people in an effort to 'paint' a red spot on the dark portion of a first-quarter moon using common laser pointers during a five-minute period this autumn.

The Idea: Inexpensive, yet surprisingly powerful laser pointing devices have become ubiquitous in America. Millions of people own such a device. Laser light stays coherent over vast distances, the beams spreading very little. In theory, even a single laser pointer could reach the Moon. The idea behind Paint the Moon is to organize millions of people in North America to try and shine their laser pointers on one area of the Moon at one time, to see if we can create a temporary visible field of color on our nearest celestial neighbor....

On October 27th at 11:00 P.M. EDT (10:00 P.M. CDT, 9:00 P.M. MDT, 8:00 P.M. PDT) and again on November 24th at 11:00 P.M. EST (10:00 P.M. CST, 9:00 P.M. MST, 8:00 P.M. PST), everyone who has a laser pointer and a clear view of the first-quarter Moon should turn on their pointers and aim them at the moon, just behind (to the upper left) of the terminator (the line where the sunlight stops). Continue to shine your pointer at this spot for five minutes. That's it.

But what I want to object to is the use of the preposition "behind" as in "just behind the terminator." Our English prepositions are best when used in our everyday environment: the surface of Earth. Once you move into the complex, three dimensional, weak gravity environment of space you have to be really careful about your prepositions. Even the best SF authors screw them up occasionally (Larry Niven, Ringworld). Let's start with the obvious:

• down - the direction toward the center of mass of a large, nearby object which exerts gravity on you. If no large object is nearby exerting gravity, then there is no down (or up).
• up - opposite of down.
• front - the side with the face. Or, if there is no face, the direction of movement. If there is no face or movement, then there is no front.
• back - opposite of front.
• behind - the area in back.

The cashiers at Bread & Circus (Whole Foods) have really gone to hell. Quality seems to have started slipping gradually last spring, but has recently accelerated. Can they still blame the economy for their inability to find people who know vegetables? I've seen more than one cashier there roll his or her eyes and sigh upon seeing my stuff, which is three-quarters fresh fruits and veggies. Then it's a slow, item-by-item struggle to correctly identify and weigh it.

Once I picked up 4 oranges, which were $1.49 per pound. The cashier punched in something (probably the organic code) causing the price to be $2.49 per pound. When I pointed this out to him, he insisted it was okay because "See, you have four oranges!" We went back and forth for a bit until he just gave up. I think he still believes that when you buy more of something, the price per pound goes up.

The worst, though, came yesterday when young Igor (his name tag said) was ringing up the person ahead of me. He picked up the customer's totally typical, average, American style, commercial grade cucumber (nothing exotic) and asked "What's this?" That finally outdid the Flanagan's cashier in South Boston almost 20 years ago who could not identify broccolli. When I got to Igor I had to show him the difference between peaches and nectarines.

Green Line drivers…what's up with them? Yes, it's September now, which means lots of new passengers and the full schedule of trains which requires more drivers (or at least more hours); but did somebody tell them there was a 5 MPH speed limit? I've seen two Green Line trains at Washington and Comm Ave just sit there when they had a green light. Nothing to obstruct them. The driver seemed to be totally oblivious. Then when they did roll forward to the passengers they went unnecessarily slow, like 2-3 MPH, literally. Last night at Government Center an empty, outbound "B" train pulled up and sat with doors closed for 3 minutes before finally relenting and allowing passengers on board. I mean, what the hell?!

Remind me to share with you my opinion of bicycle cops.

Meant to mention awhile ago that the very venerable El Phoenix Room is gone. The building, which spent the whole summer being rehabbed, is now open as a pleasantly generic student bar called "The Elbow Room." El Phoenix Room, which was run down and grungy and served extremely bland Mexican food, was the first Mexican food restaurant in Boston. It held a lonely vigil for many years. I guess it says something about its declining popularity that I can't find anything on the web about El Phoenix Room. The Elbow Room is still so new it hasn't even been acknowledged by The Phoenix (which had no connection to El Phoenix Room, nor to the Phoenix Landing in Cambridge). Even Ellis The Rim Man had more web presence than El Phoenix Room.

Signed up and have been approved for Zipcar. Here's how it works: I sign up and pay a one-time $30 application fee and a $300 deposit. They run me by the Commonwealth and their insurance company to check my record. Voila! I am squeaky clean (at least in regards to traffic). I select the $75 per year membership. They send me a key card (I'm waiting for that now). Then I go on the web to reserve a car for a particular time slot. The reservations have a granularity of ½ hour. At my reserved time I prance on down to the parking space (there are several locations within an easy walk of my place - here's a map of Zipcar locations in my neighborhood). I wave the keycard at it and it unlocks. The ignition key is chained inside. I start it up and drive away. There's a gas card in there too. When the tank gets low I stop to fill it up. Zipcar pays the gas. I return it to the parking space before the end of my time. My credit card gets billed $5 or $6 per hour (depending on the location where it was parked) plus 40¢ per mile driven.

Advantages over standard rental:

• Cheaper. When I rent I have to get the personal liability insurance, since I don't already have auto insurance. Renting around Boston costs me $60-$80 a day. Plus, with the Zipcar I don't have to buy gas.
• Closer. Several Zipcar locations are closer than the Budget outlet in Allston (which is very close).
• No lines.
• Better hours. Can return it any time. Can't return a car to the Budget outlet until they open at 7:00 AM.

• Limited time. Zip is set up for rentals less than a day. If I want to rent for more than a day I have to call and talk to a person. In no event can I rent a Zip car for more than 3 days.
• $500 deductible. Zip carries insurance on me and the car, but it works like regular auto insurance. If I crunch it, I've got to cover the first $500 of expenses.
• Possible poor condition of cars or possible unavailability of cars. Experience will tell.

Flexcar in DC is a similar operation. From this article you can see they are seeking government (Metro) subsidies. This will allow their rates to patrons to be much lower. Here in Boston the MBTA doesn't give away parking spaces - yet.

Now that Ron's Log is on a real web server, I am planning to use Blogger. If you have an opinion on that, please let me know. It'll make things a little easier for me, and should not reduce readability for you.

Another astonishing discovery about the endlessly-astonishing human immunodeficiency virus.

The initiative to repeal the Massachusetts income tax.

The new URL for Ron's Log is http://www.rbgilbert.com/log/ronslog.html and the e-mail address is RonsLog@rbgilbert.com, but that's been so for awhile.

I've moved my list of links over to the left and down.

This is not a photograph.

• Nor this,
• this,
• this,
• this,
• this,
• or this.

This, however, is a photograph. It's of a 1500 troy ounce solid gold Mickey Mouse for sale on eBay.

$50,000 deposit required to bid. They claim "Never in the history of art has a work of such enormous size been cast in pure gold."

We're moving, as you see. Not all links work yet, but this is here.

My inbox has been a-clamor with requests for updates to Ron's Log. After a long intimate commune with the wilderness of Pennsylvania, waking to the wistful moo-honking of invisible moose cows in the marsh, stalking fawns through the woods, snoozing to the endless roar of tree frogs, bathing the urbanized brain with an unending supply of boxed wine and dusky smoke, awakening the tongue with delightful lemoncello - after all that, the cynical nastiness of organized society doesn't seem as interesting. But, I will try to get my standards up to snuff right fast.

The September 1 entry seems to have been FTP'ed to an incorrect location. My FTP staff has been punished.

Labor Day weekend, and we who know, know what that means in Boston. For those who don't, here's a good lowdown from yesterday's Globe. The operative number is 250,000. But 250,000 represents only the arrivals. It doesn't count all of those resident students who are moving. Nor does it count all those other thousands whose housing choices have to be made in synchrony with this great, huge, unstoppable gorilla who comes to Boston every fall to sit … with its millions and millions of dollars and thousands and thousands of beautiful young people. We welcome the gorilla, even if it is messy.

MOVING DAY: 'THIS ISN'T FUN'
ALL AROUND BOSTON, A CHANGE OF ADDRESS
Author: By David Abel, GLOBE STAFF
Date: 09/02/2001

Megan Tench of the Globe staff and Globe correspondent Catherine Holahan contributed to this report.

Waiting in a long line around 6:30 yesterday morning at a bustling U-Haul office on Massachusetts Avenue, Christina Forst was in a surprisingly cheery mood for a 22-year-old up before dawn.

Of course, that was before the chaos started.

When the recent graduate of Boston University and her two roommates reached the front of the line nearly an hour later to claim the 17-foot truck they had reserved a month ago, the clerk greeted the young women with these ominous words: "I'm sorry; you're not in our system."

But they are veterans of one of the Boston area's most unloved annual rites - the sudden deluge of about 250,000 college students that arrives at the same time as thousands more leave their apartments on Sept. 1. So it took a little more for Forst and her friends to lose their cool, but not much.

The clerk abruptly brushed them off: "Your only chance to get a truck," she said between talking to another client on the phone, "is if you go to our office in Salem." Then, looking past Forst, she said, "Is there someone else I can help?"

With a flood of large moving trucks clogging major arteries throughout Boston and a surge of traffic from the Fenway to Chestnut Hill - the Yankees were in town playing the Red Sox and Boston College's football team opened its season - exasperation clouded the last holiday weekend of summer.

That was especially true in the blocks along Commonwealth Avenue near Boston University, where 29,000 students are pouring in for classes next week. At 8 a.m. yesterday, triple-parked cars brought traffic to a standstill, horns blared, and tow trucks couldn't squeeze between the roadblocks to do their work.

Yet some yeomen managed to ignore the stress. Slouching in the back of a large truck between a stack of boxes, Herman Bonilla, 21, smiled when asked how things were going. "Very tranquil," said the man hired to lug students' boxes. "Really."

Nearby, in a park next to Northeastern University, 52-year-old Jia Ling Zhao of Shanghai was blissfully practicing tai chi with her husband. "My son is in his third year at Northeastern," she said, "He doesn't need help moving. Everything is good."

But there was little peace for many others. There was, for instance, Rico Montana, who like Forst spent his morning at a U-Haul office waving a useless piece of paper with a reservation number on it, insisting, "I have a reservation!"

Later, the 24-year-old graduate student from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology walked off a line that extended out the door of a Budget truck rental office. "It's just not worth it," he said. "We're going to look on the Internet, or maybe we'll pretend to buy a truck or something."

Students slogging through the moving process were not the only ones complaining. Many of their parents were also irate. Krishna Gulaya, the mother of a Boston University freshman, took one step into her daughter's dorm and declared, "This is a nightmare." Afterward, in a line 15 deep to ride the elevator in Claflin Hall, she said, "You would think for paying $38,000 you might have a little comfort. But the room was filthy, the refrigerator looked like it never had been cleaned, and desks never had been dusted."

Heaving a bunch of bags filled with $800 worth of supplies he bought for his daughter at Bed Bath & Beyond, Bob Herrera said he has managed to avoid any spats with his daughter, a BU freshman, by sticking to a strict motto: "A dad has to have a lot of patience. So, I say, `Where do you want to go? When do you want to go?' And, `How do you want to go?' But never, `Why?' Except if it's for money, of course."

Many of the people who usually profit from moving day weren't smiling, either. Marc Wayne, who for the past 23 years has owned the mattress and futon shop Sleep-a-rama on the corner of Newbury Street and Massachusetts Avenue, said business was definitely hurting this year. "There's no question I'm feeling the pinch of the economic slowdown," he said, as workers piled up scores of futons in front of the store yesterday morning.

There was also a decidedly different pitch in the voice of those in the real estate industry, many of whom have been giddy over the past few years as rents have soared. A leasing coordinator at Copley Management & Development Corp., which rents hundreds of units in the Fenway, said that for the first time in years, the company has apartments still available for rent this time of year, and that they have dropped the price of studios, from $1,150 to $1,075, and one-bedrooms, from $1,500 to $1,375.

"It is a significantly softer market than it was just a half-year ago," said Ed Shanahan, CEO of the Greater Boston Real Estate Board, a private trade association, adding that the Boston-area market has dropped from a 1 percent vacancy level to about 5 percent. "Part of it is apprehension about the economy, and the other is the effect of new housing built in the city."

For Steven Rosenthal, who supervises several properties on Hemenway Street near the Berklee College of Music, it's just "the same crap, different year." Literally. Standing over a pile of garbage, including worn-out sofas, old CDs, and deflated soccer balls left in front of his building by students moving out, he said, "They just dump it. Nobody cares."

The mound of junk certainly didn't bother Georgiana Liptak and her friends. A block away, the 22-year-old Northeastern senior was busy sulking over the long and unexpected wait she had before moving into her new apartment. Like many others, she had to be out of her old apartment by 7 a.m. yesterday. But the tenants in her new one still hadn't left.

"This isn't fun," she said, as friends and her brother rested on lounge chairs they set up on the sidewalk. "At least it's not raining." By late afternoon, a similar kind of buoyant resignation lifted Christina Forst and her friends. After storming out of the U-Haul office, the women arranged by phone to pick up a truck in Cambridge. But that was for a 24-foot truck, too large for them to parallel-park, they said.

So, as they gawked at the 60 steps and narrow corridors they would have to climb to carry their large dressers, desks, couches, and beds, they decided to ask for some help. Professional help.

The three women were last seen negotiating with a group of large men who were already moving other students into their apartment building. "Who wants to get all sweaty anyway?" Forst said.

Here at Ron's Log a glance out the window reveals that we recently had a whole band of 800 pound gorillas leave. At least two apartments-worth of crap furniture is sitting in and around our trash area (it's become something of a metropolitan trash area as it has spread).

The streets are as usual: blocked by vans. The sidewalks: blocked by an infinite number of piles. In one pile I spotted a box for a Krups waffle maker! I think rent needs to be higher. It's somewhat bigger than a blizzard, but smaller than the Big Dig.

Friday at dusk as I biked along the Esplanade heading to the 119 one could not help but notice the increased number of young, healthy men running along. [At 119 I flirted much, much too shamelessly with a nice young man who had arrived via motorcycle. He allowed me to follow him out to watch him start up his 1983 500cc Honda, but he had only one helmet, so no ride.]

But biking is an easy way to avoid the greatest impact from the students. Saturday night, with the full moon, I made the mistake of heading into town on the Green Line ("B"). What should have been a 30-minute trip stretched out to about an hour. At every stop a dozen freshmen had to be tutored in the meaning of "exact change," and what exactly is a coin (as opposed to paper money), and where the secret little slot is where that paper money is actually accepted in defiance of the rules. Then they had to be taught how to move away from the door so the next dozen freshman could get their lessons. Some even had to be taught how to exit the train, as they stood helplessly at the top of the steps waiting for the flood of onrushers (other freshman) to abate.

The freshmen, however, were a happy, sharing bunch. All were talking. If they weren't chatting with their pals around them, then they were on their cell phones (and they were taught how they don't work in the tunnels). It was quite a roar.

No one fell down, but there was a general commotion when the driver applied his track brakes once, even though only lightly. Ah, Newton. I mean the man, not the city.

Many freshman refreshed their abstract visualization skills as they learned that the maps on display don't actually tell you which way the train you are on is headed. I heard one son of wealthy, good-gened parents assert confidently that we were at Haymarket station as we sat at the intersection of Allston Street and Commonwealth Avenue. I believe his logic was that we were on a Government Center car (true enough) and that we had gone one stop since he had boarded, so we must be at Haymarket. One boggles, why not Park Street?

Ellis The Rim Man, who I mentioned here not long ago, has been occupied by a mattress/futon store. They offer lifetime guarantees, but I expect the store to be gone before Halloween after separating the requisite amount of money from the student-horde.

Blended in amongst the students are a scattering of the real engines of this machine: parents. Frazzled, worn, panicking parents. $35,000 for a year of BU, $300,000 for a tiny condo for their darling child, and look at what it gets them. No place to park. Piles of trash. Rude young men everywhere. Cockroaches.

The crowd at 119 was relatively light. Perhaps 119 attracts more men who are parental age rather than student age. But the nice thing about 119 is that as soon as you get tired of it, there are two good brew pubs within a block or so, and an uncounted number of Irish pubs dispensing Guinness along with other fine brews. I strolled past the Commonwealth Brewery which seems to have been hit very hard by competition from the new location of Boston Brew Works on Canal Street. Commonwealth is so comfortable now. It's like it was when it first opened in the 80s. but on this Saturday night at 10:30 Commonwealth was already closed! The crowd at Boston Brew was small. I had a hefeweizen which wasn't nearly as good as Harpoon's UFO. Got rid of that taste with a "Nine-Alarm" lager. The name doesn't refer to any pepper or heat, as it might in more advanced areas (like Texas). Boston Brew is very commercial and just makes up interesting names.

Fortified, I thought I might be up for a trip into the Ramrod. Haven't been there for ages, but I thought this ought to be a pretty busy night for that girly dance club downstairs. I was not wrong, but the rehab work upstairs was more interesting. They ought to stop right about where they are now, after they deal with all the dangling electric wires. I didn't recognize a soul on the staff - which is good! The crowd was pretty good looking too. Or at least not too embarrassing.

Sunday, George and I decided to inspect the student invasion along Massachusetts Avenue, as I had seen quite enough of Commonwealth Avenue. From Huntington to the Charles River the impact was not too heavy, of course. A bit of congestion in front of Berklee, some buzz inside the True Value store. On the Harvard Bridge we were pleasantly interrupted in our perambulation by 3 freshmen who wanted their picture taken with the Charles River Basin, Bunker Hill and the new bridge in the background. They were two little Asian guys (one of them adorned with bright pink lipstick), and one tall willowy black youth. They addressed George as "Sir" about a dozen times, even though he is only 33.

The stretch of Mass. Ave. from Central to Harvard Square was where we saw the greatest impact, even though Harvard is on a different schedule from the rest of the world. Lots of parents. Lots of panic.

We stopped in the Hong Kong for classic libations. The waitress, obviously well-prepared for the fall semester carded George, but not me. I threatened to withhold her tip.

On the way back to Boston we checked out Phoenix Landing, which was called Boston's best techno music club by (who else?) The Phoenix. We got to Paradise just as it opened. I haven't been there in ages either. Hasn't changed sufficiently.

We managed to get back across the river without an interruption and stopped in at The Crossroads where I drank Old Knickerbocker beer more than 20 years ago. Old Knickerbocker doesn't exist anymore, and they don't make Long Island ice teas, but they did have UFO Hefewizen on tap as though to compensate for my disappointment the night before.

After some coffee and a change at George's we headed over to Ramrod, diving right through the worst of the (mostly) Northeastern University student population. The regular old staff at the Ramrod was back on duty and attendance was light (do we see cause and effect?). The twit at the front bar served us Jack Daniel's and Diet Coke when we had ordered Jack Daniel's straight up. Diet Coke?! Oh, retch! The most interesting thing that night was a well-bearded hairy-chested man flagging orange left! George and I had a bit of disagreement on this. He said it was only red, but the studman's boyfriend was flagging red right, so it was easy to compare. I'd never seen orange in Boston before. We trembled admiringly.

But a man like that was clearly not going to be in my ball park (ha ha) and I had a sudden inspiration to head over to Avalon. I go check out Avalon every 2 or 3 years, but the effort is usually preceded by planning, proper dressing, and plenty of sleep. Either times have changed, or I just don't give a fuck anymore, but I would never have expected the same clothes I wore walking Mass Ave to be adequate for both Ramrod and Avalon on the same night. George (who has never been to Avalon) wouldn't come with me. He denied it, but I think he had his eye on that orange hanky. So I skipped over to Avalon. The crowd for a late game at Fenway Park (vs. Yankees) was still trickling away. There was virtually no line at Avalon. They did take my drivers license, but didn't even look at it. Just handed it right back. That and $10 and I was in. We're still not NYC!

Inside there seemed to be a lot higher percentage of female women than I remember from past visits. Maybe it was something to do with all the new boys in town who had yet to find each other. They all seemed to have brought along their favorite female dance partner.

Skipping out of there about 1:30 I thought I might be able to find a taxi, but no such luck, and the new late night bus service hasn't started yet, so I walked all the way home in my comfortable (but not built for hiking) Gallo sandals. The feet were tender, but I made it, viewing along the way the hundreds of drunken students making the reverse pedestrian commute from Allston to Kenmore.

Received in the mail a huge (and expensive) promotional book from Pallotta Teamworks. It lists all of their 2002 events. I was intrigued by the idea of a dusk to dawn walk from Fairfax, Virginia, to the U.S. Capitol building; 26 miles. It requires a minimum of only $1000 which goes to support a national anti-suicide charity. Pallotta's lover killed himself back around the time I was doing the Texas AIDS Ride, so this is part of how he's dealing with it. I don't have much respect for Pallotta anymore, and the idea of the Capitol somehow representing a victory over the darkness of suicide really grates on me; but just the idea of a night-long walk (not in Gallo sandals) was enticing. Fortunately, the walk occurs at the same time as next year's planned voyage back to the Poconos. So that settles that.

More pics of "Helios," NASA's flying wing. Here's a closeup on the ground. And a beautiful shot looking directly down on it during flight!

You might find this interesting. It's a detail I picked up from one of the high-res photos on the NASA site. It's an engineer inspecting equipment for the Helios. In front of him is a sign on the wall that appears to say "Be careful," but in this photo you can see that "careful" has been lined out and "Happy" has been written in. Ah, good ol' NASA! where they know for an actual fact that light travels at 300,000,000 meters per second…or is that 300,000,000 yards??

Yet more info on Helios: Aerovironment, the developer, and Skytower Communications its commercial wing (good overall description of broadband use there).

Aerovironment has also worked on this little device which is described thusly "The award-winning Black Widow, developed with DARPA sponsorship, is a six-inch, electrically powered aircraft with a small camera that flies for 30 minutes at a range up to 1.8 km from the ground station while downlinking live color video."
This seems to be the home page for the Helios itself.

There was a bit more correspondence between me and Bentsen last night after I posted. Here it is. (Go here for the beginning of this exchange).

To: Ron gilbert <ronslog@rbgilbert.com>
Subject: Re: Confederate Veterans
From: Harris Falb <jhbentsenf@yahoo.com>
Date: Tue, 14 Aug 2001 18:28:39 -0700 (PDT)

 Dear Mr Gilbert,
In response to your latest letter, I do believe that Yankees and Northerners were federal government supporters. And under the federal government ways, we had no voice in deciding the fate of our states. We had no other choice but to suceed. So what's wrong with being Confederate and being proud of our heritage. And the slave statements were not from the 1930s, but rather right after the war. Also, the average slave would not survive that long after the war because the "carpet-baggers" took control of the South, and taxed Southerners excessively to keep them down. what gives you the right to critcize and make fun of our forefathers, who are represented by the Sons of Confederate Veterans and the monument in Austin. And also, if you think of our road systems as "trashy", then stay out of the South. PS- Go check out Gone With the Wind and tell me how the slaves were treated.
bentsen

More info about that NASA flying wing. One word: "Broadband."

This is not MY Stein Chiropractic, but I'll let you know as soon as the Brookline version has a website.

Extraordinarily strange bedfellows.
"I hate to admit it, because I think being gay and lesbian is an abomination, but they have the same rights we do," said Ron Edwards, Imperial Wizard of the Imperial Klans of America. South Dakota tries to bar gay and lesbian group from picking up trash on the highways.

Wide-ranging article that discusses the history of seedless grapes, the grape growing industry in California and the search for dark, stronger flavored seedless varieties more like old seeded types.

My good ol' pal Bentsen (you may know him as Harris Falb) writes to share his patriotism with me. We engaged in a little correspondence. Some of what Bentsen writes is so incredibly good, I half suspect it's really some twisted friend of mine putting me on!

From: Harris Falb <jhbentsenf@yahoo.com>
To: ronslog@rbgilbert.com
Subject: Confederate Veterans
Date: Tue, 14 Aug 2001 10:55:42 -0700 (PDT)

Dear Mr Gibert,
I am a loyal texan and southerner my great grand parents fought against the injustices of the Union to form the great nation of the Confederacy and seeing how you are defacing them makes me quite angry. i will have you know that the average texan that is native and southerner still feeel this way. if you are interested in our point of view email me back and i will show you the average african american point of view. by the way i do not support in anyway any gay organization i am a strict conservative christian and believe that this way of life is imoral and wrong. however i would not persecute you as you have persecuted us! sincerely a loyal southerner

Bentsen

To: ronslog@rbgilbert.com Subject: Re: Confederate Veterans
From: Harris Falb <jhbentsenf@yahoo.com>
Date: Tue, 14 Aug 2001 14:11:16 -0700 (PDT)

Dear Mr Gibert,
I have just checked my email and see that you replied to my petition. If you are trully interested in why the Confederates faught go to this website http://www.crownrights.com/caesar/land_of_cotton.htm. It is trully a non-biost view from a Yankee from Southern California a trully liberal area. Also, if you were wondering what I was offended by it was the sign that stated that the Sons of Confederate Veterans adopted a state highway and you stated ". Also, i must tell you that the great armies of General Lee did infact almost beet the Union and won a majority of the battles. Texas infact was so relentless that we infact beet the Yankees in a town outside of Brownsville, TX, in the last battle of the Civil War one month after Lee's surrender! You see my grandparents who probably owned no slaves as only about 10% did in Texas faught for a voice in the nation as we were not represented. In fact, my great grandfather on my Alabama side was hung by his thumbs after the Yankees caught him steeling bread because he was starving. And by the way sir I was tought not to correct another person's mistakes as you did with my writing.
God Bless You!
And God Bless The Former CONFEDERATE STATES OF AMERICA!
Bentsen

To: ronslog@rbgilbert.com
Subject: Re: Confederate Veterans
From: Harris Falb <jhbentsenf@yahoo.com>
Date: Tue, 14 Aug 2001 14:36:46 -0700 (PDT)

 Mr. Gilbert-
I forgot to mention to you that the Southern Party is indorsing African Americans to run for Senate who believe in Southern Independence. By the way I am not a member of this organization in fact I am a Republican/Libertarian otherwise known as a Southern Democrat. I am in no way racist I have blck friends and I greatly support President Bush and his three Cabinet members who are Collin Powell and the Sec of Education and the Sec of transportation all are BLACK!
Bentsen

To: ronslog@rbgilbert.com
Subject: Re: Confederate Veterans
From: Harris Falb <jhbentsenf@yahoo.com>
Date: Tue, 14 Aug 2001 15:39:01 -0700 (PDT)

dear sir,
i was affended by the way you said i could have trampled over that sign that is what i was refering to you and by the way the average black southern view during the time is in the section of that website i gave you!
bentsen

School starts this week(!) in some parts of Texas. Man, that's cruel!

Coltan -> tantalum -> fabulous electronics. But somehow war, prostitution, disease and environmental damage get in there, too.

A surprising story of decency in the face of xenophobia in war-time Los Angeles.

Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam.

I am given to understand that antenna balls are popular in California.

Stinky plants

My mistake! Governor Swift says there was no blackout. I guess it was all just a silly mass hysteria that caused me and all of my neighbors for blocks around to turn off our lights, refrigerators, clocks, TVs, fans, A/C (for some), and computers. And then we just forgot. Wow, coulda been a tragedy if Swift hadn't alerted me to my terrible slip of mind.

"We didn't have any blackouts," Swift said, contradicting information from utility companies, her own Department of Telecommunication and Energy and eastern Massachusetts residents who had to swelter through the heat wave without air conditioners, fans or even cold drinks.

U.S. Navy attacks Massachusetts state police. Navy backs down.

Oakland Military Institute begins classes. I gather that the public schools in Oakland suck. I mean, really, REALLY suck! For example: "Of Oakland's approximately 1,600 high school graduates, only 29 African-American males met the coursework eligibility requirements for the UC or the CSU. Even worse, only 8 male Latino graduates met those requirements."

Oil in Page County, Iowa?!

Made up of Kevlar, Styrofoam, plastic film, 62,000 solar panels and "14 propeller motors not much stronger than hair dryers," NASA's unmanned, ¾ ton, flying wing, 30 feet longer than the wingspan of a 747, breaks the 25-year altitude record of 85,068 feet set in 1976 by the Air Force's "SR-71 spy plane, the world's fastest jet," ultimately ascending to 96,500 feet at a maximum speed of 23 MPH! [How's THAT for a sentence?!] Link to story here. Such an aircraft has great potential for research and telecommunications. Once aloft, the plane can stay up there permanently, acting like an antenna on a 96,000 foot tower, at a much lower cost than launching a satellite. It can be landed for maintenance and doesn't have to follow an orbital pattern, as a satellite would. And if you don't think this has military potential, then you're just dead stupid.

Salvia divinorum! For now, a completely "legal" (that is, uncontrolled) hallucinogen that you can buy via the web. Like here at www.sagewisdom.org where an ounce of top grade leaves will set you back $120. Pure stuff (98%) is $20 per milligram, but you have to be a "scientist." Thank gawd I live in Boston, where a short walk across the river will find me about a thousand "scientists" at lunch. Warnings here. Dosage here. FAQ.

If you are growing marijuana "legally" for medical reasons and the local constables come onto your property and rip it out, can you get reimbursed by your homeowner's insurance? Maybe.

New socialist think tank, the American Socialist Foundation, to be modeled on, of all things, the Cato Institute!

Some info on the LED traffic lights that have appeared over the last few years. It seems L.A. is lagging considerably behind the Boston area, which has been using green LEDs for quite awhile.

Well, look, boys and girls: Netscape 6.1 is available for download! One of you Netscape fans go get it first and tell me if it crashes on Ron's Log. If it doesn't, we'll subject it to the acid test: padding! They don't claim here that they comply with current style sheet standards. However, here they say "Pages that appear to be rendered incorrectly may be due to standards compliance issues" Uh-oh!

Opsimathy (Noun)

Pronunciation: [ahp-'si-mê-thi]

Definition: (Literary) Late learning, learning late in life.

Usage: The word is a rare literary form but we predict an imminent come-back. A person who takes on learning late in life is an "opsimath" ['ahp-si-mæth], as a "polymath" (poly "many" + math) is someone of encyclopedic learning or polymathy [pa-'li-mê-thi]).

Suggested Usage: As the English-speaking population ages and the limits of life expectancy advance, opsimathy promises to become more prominent and the word less literary and more colloquial. Opsimathy was once frowned upon, considered less effective by educators than early learning. However, any university administrator will tell you that the opsimath population is growing in the U.S.

Etymology: Greek opse "late" + math- "learning." "Mathematics" shares the same origin; it derives from the adjective of mathema "science, learning" from manthanein "to learn." The PIE stem *men-dhe- also underlies Russian mudry "wise," Avestan mazda "wise," Sanskrit mantrah "counsel, prayer," and Albanian mund "can." Akin to Latin mens, mentis "mind" in "mental," Greek "mentor," and the Latin suffix -ment. The initial constituent, "opsi-," is also used in the rare word, "opsigamy" [op-'si-gê-mi] which means "marriage late in life."

from www.yourdictionary.com

Bending my own rules a bit, I've just posted the entries for August 10 today. Had the stuff all set up, but the heat led to a manhole fire in Allston that left 6000 of us powerless for more than 24 hours. Fortunately, thunderstorms came through Friday afternoon, so the temperature dropped to a tolerable level…outdoors. But without electricity to operate the fans, it took a long time before the indoor temperature dropped to something livable. It was a surreal night, going to bed early and lying in the hot black stillness not knowing even the time. I was thankful I don't sleep with A/C. But I simultaneously defrosted my freezer.

Atramentous (Adjective)

Pronunciation: [æ-trê-'men-tês]

Definition: Inky, black as ink.

Usage: The noun, atrament "ink, blackening" has a family of 6 adjectives according to the Oxford English Dictionary, of which today's word is the preferred. Atrament itself refers to the ink used for writing as well as that ejected by cuttlefish and octopuses in defense of their liberty.

Suggested Usage: Today's word has positive connotations, "The atramentous soil boded well for his gardening." It also has pejorative connotations: "It was a bright smile that could not quite conceal the atramentous heart beneath it." It can fall somewhere in between: "Her atramentous hair showered her shoulders with suggestions of her origin without revealing it."

Etymology: Late Latin atramentum "black liquid, ink" is the noun from *atr-are "to blacken," in turn from *ater "black." "Ater" and "atrare" are not found in written Latin texts but derivations from them attest to their potential existence, e.g. "atratus" meant "wearing black (in mourning)." Elsewhere among Indo-European languages the root refers to fire, so it may have entered Latin meaning "soot" from which black liquid was made. In Old Persian, for example, atar meant "fire," and "vatra" means "fire" in Serbian and "hearth" in Romanian today. "Atrium" is also a derivative of "atar" though the semantic connection is a mystery.

from www.yourdictionary.com

When I was last in West Hollywood (at the end of the California AIDS Ride in 1997) I discovered there a little FM station calling itself "GrooveRadio." It was one of the sponsors of the AIDS Ride, and I still have one of its key fobs on my Blackburn Hydrapak. It was all totally brainless dance music. Its different "programs" seemed to be distinguished only by the BPM. Well, I've redsicovered it on the web. It seems not to be an over-the-air station at all anymore, which is why I couldn't find it. Mush your braincells by going to www.grooveradio.com.

Even more on the Chicago Real World

Lyrics to "Stairway To Heaven" tattooed on man's back.

Clean cut Columbus, Ohio, youth is actually an incorrigible juvenile delinquent. As a McDonald's employee he spit in police officer's beverage container before serving the man in blue. Worse, he refuses to apologize!

"[Principal] Brown showed the youth his disciplinary file on the computer screen and then left him alone still standing at the computer terminal. When Brown returned 10 minutes later, the boy was gone as were all the boy's disciplinary files. In all, 750 files including all other school disciplinary files, were lost. The school has since had new software installed so the same thing can't happen again, the principal said."

Sounds to me like the school needs a new principal, not new software. The boy got probation, a curfew, community service, counseling and daily supervision. The story does not mention the principal being fired or reprimanded for blatantly violating security. Story here.

Charles Nelson Reilly IS alive!

There is joy in Ron's household tonight as the new Champion juicer has finally arrived. Several fruits and vegetables have already met their masticated death in its hundreds of tiny steely teeth. It juices! But most impressive to anyone who hasn't seen a Champion in operation before is the way it poops out the dry fiber as it runs. "Poop" is definitely the verb for that.

China grows seven times the amount of vegetables and twice as much fruit as the U.S.

I'm tossing out a few old PC Magazines. Travel with me back in time. Back…back…to January 1998, a dark, dank, expensive, slow-moving time.

• Blank CDR discs could be had for as little as $2 each when bought in quantities of 100.
• OTOH, those new very exciting CDRW discs were only $17.55 each.
• The Editor's Choice in OCR software was Textbridge Pro 98 with a street price of $80.
• Editor's Choice for HTML editing software was HomeSite 3.0, list $89. The very site you behold now was edited with HomeSite 4.5.2, and the price is still $89.
• Come up with only $2500 and Gateway would send you a desktop with a 266 Mhz Pentium II, 32 Mb RAM, a 6.4 Gb HD, and a 17 inch monitor.
• But for $2800 NEC could provide a notebook featuring a 166 Mhz Pentium, 16 Mb RAM, 2.1 Gb HD, and a 12.1 inch SVGA active matrix display.
• On the technology horizon ahead we see: Cable Modems.
• Dvorak says: "It's obvious that over the next few years, the gigahertz speed will be the target of all desktop computers." (Whadda ya know, sometimes he's right!)
• Dvorak was way ahead of the curve when he said "I don't like the feeling I'm getting regarding the health of the PC industry…It's a perfect time for collapse as far as I can tell."
• His mind boggles at the news that IBM is coming out with a 16.8 Gb HD
• A nobody wrote a letter to the editor saying Dvorak's prediction that digital VHS (D-VHS) will take the U.S. by storm is wrong! (What the hell was D-VHS??)
• x2 and K56flex were fighting it out in the marketplace and the courtroom.
• "Analysts" predict that a federal injunction against Microsoft's practice of requiring PC makers to include IE with Win 95 has dealt a "severe blow" to the upcoming Windows 98.
• AOL has 10 million subscribers and "handles" 1 million complaint calls each week.
• An external Zip drive cost $200.
• Excitement abounds over this new connection USB!
• That durable question that has been asked by every PC user since the first Microsoft machine to the very latest was asked again by a [presumably] new reader: "Where do .CHK files come from?"

You may think this story of a LaCrosse Burger King employee dealing drugs via the drive-thru is interesting enough, but what really drew my attention was that the cops were able to buy "two bags of marijuana" for $35! Were these leetle teeny weeny bags, or did he offer a discount to the men in blue?

Maybe it's becoming a buyer's market. Here's a story of an ice cream truck driver trying to sell weed to two innocent youths ages 12 and 14. Wish we knew the price.

Tax for light rail fails in Kansas City. No surprise there. The vote against was 56% south of the river, 69% north. Leonard Graham, who was co-chairman of a city steering committee that recommended the light-rail plan said "I personally failed to realize how much of a schism there is, north-south in this town." This is roughly the equivalent of saying "I have a dozen higly paid Harvard graduated assistants on my staff whose job it is to remind me where my asshole is throughout the day!"

How is it that 1500 miles and 25 years away from Kansas City, I still have a better political sense of the city than its "leaders?"

"Kansas Citians made a decision today," Graham continued, "a decision that the status quo is OK, that we can sprawl and the urban cor e can be neglected, and I think that's a very, very big mistake." Yes, Leonard, that is what they have decided and it's what they've been deciding for at least 50 years and there is no indication it will ever change. Those who care enough about it to be really bothered just leave…he said from his Boston home.

This makes four years in a row that voters have rejected light rail plans in Kansas City, but the mayor promises he will give the voters a chance to be the Miguel Indurains of vapid urban sprawl and bring it back for its fifth annual defeat in 2002. I have a suggestion for next year's campaign slogan "Even fucking Dallas has it!"

And, uh, the libertarian solution, if anyone cares: sell the roads to private developers. If they think they can make a profit with LRV, they'll put it in.

While the LRV was being voted down the Assemblies of God have been holding their biennial convention in Kansas City. Get this quote from one conventioneer: "God is about love and not strict standards." Wow! There's hope even in the Assembly of God. The issue being discussed was neither LRVs nor sodomy amongst various kinds of homosexuals and Satanists. It was "remarriage of divorced clergy, shall we stand for it?!"

It's finally happening!
Paying no attention to that man behind the curtain, we didn't notice that some developers have gotten together to create "The Wonderful World of Oz" theme park right there in little ol' Johnson County, Kansas. I hope they include the pig pen for little kids to fall into from the fence. That's my favorite part.

From the FAQ:
Q. Why a theme park in Kansas?
A. The Midwest currently has no entertainment equivalent to The Wonderful World of OZ. Who could disagree?

Scheduled opening is May 2003. There will be "the obligatory tornado simulation ride"

"Q-scores, a standard awareness measurement, for the Oz film rank second only to Mickey Mouse. Mickey Mouse: 49 and Oz film: 47." So there! Somebody in the entertainment industry please contact me and explain that.

Important questions not dealt with in the FAQ: how many full fledged queens are on your board and design staff? Will you be able to get Liza Minneli to sing "Over The Rainbow" at the opening ceremonies? The Pet Shop Boys?

Loft apartments in downtown Kansas City, Missouri. Monthly rents to range from $595 for a one-bedroom to $1600 for a three-bedroom, two-story townhouse. I have a friend who invests in Kansas City real estate and I think I see here why he is still not filthy rich.

On Aug. 12, 1981, IBM Corp. introduced its IBM PC, a $3,005 wonder that came complete with 64 kilobytes of memory, a 4.77 MHz processor and a 5.25-inch floppy disk drive. Birthday party tonight in San Jose.

Governor Vilsack of Iowa had a fundraiser yesterday on Beacon Hill (of all places!) at the home our other Senator. Wow! Not kissin' no Republican butt, eh?

California has felt bullied by [get this!] Iowa, so it is considering buying its ethanol from Brazil! Take that, Vilsac and your power-mongering farmers!

I don't want to be considered a dinosaur, but here's some good points about the differences between film and digital cameras.

"Consider your buddy with his 35mm film point and shoot, perhaps a venerable old Yashica T4. He whips it out of his shirt pocket (typical P&S cameras are 7 ounces with battery; the Nikon 995 weighs 16 ounces). The camera is already prepared with the lens pointing forward, the viewfinder pointing backward, and the shutter release on top; no need to twist. He turns it on and the lens cover retracts automatically. Point and shoot cameras have been excoriated for shutter lag but even the worst will autofocus, compute exposure, and release within less than one second. What about creative control? Your buddy can lock the focus by pointing the camera at an off-center subject and pressing the shutter release halfway down. You can't (unless you're willing to go through a bunch of menus on the 995). Your buddy has central area metering and exposure lock, again accessible via holding the shutter release halfway down. Can you do this with your 995? Sure but be prepared to read the manual. A few times. If your buddy has color negative film loaded in his point and shoot, he has at least 10 bits of dynamic range and maybe more like 12. This means that his film has a chance of capturing detail in both the highlights and shadows of a contrasty scene. The resulting negative may be tough to print but the information is there. With your Nikon 995 you have 8 bits of dynamic range. Unless it is a cloudy day, large parts of your picture will probably end up pure white or pure black."

Man's reputedly gigantic penis is grounds for divorce in Ghana.

The world's largest book club (with 2,896,016 members) kicks off. It calls itself "Chicago." First book: To Kill A Mockingbird.

Friction continues at the location of the Chicago Real World.

Also appearing in the configuration was baby Jesus Christ. Sort of like a supporting actor to the real star of the show: The Virgin Mary! All this at Bolgatanga.

Best T-shirt Sayings. Here are a few:

• Places to Go, People to Annoy
• Damn Straight I'm a College Grad -- Paper or Plastic?
• Army: Be All That You're Told to Be
• Some Days It Just Doesn't Pay to Chew Through the Leather Restraint Straps
• (On the front) "I Cannot be Bought" -- (On the back) "Inquire About Leasing"
• All I Ask Is a Chance to Prove That Money Can't Make Me Happy
• If You Can't Beat Them, Arrange to Have Them Beaten

abulia, also aboulia \uh-BOO-lee-uh; uh-BYOO-\, noun: Loss or impairment of the ability to act or to make decisions.

I was suffering from an aboulia, you know. I couldn't seem to make decisions.
--Anatole Broyard, "Reading and Writing; (Enter Pound and Eliot)," New York Times, May 30, 1982

There's little escape from her black hole of abulia.
--James Saynor, "Woman in the Midst of a Nervous Breakdown," New York Times, June 12, 1994

Abulia derives from Greek a-, "without" + boule, "will." The adjective form is abulic.

from www.dictionary.com

Lead-in of the day: "A pregnant bicyclist who was struck by a pickup truck in Canoga Park later delivered her baby at the hospital, where heroin was found in her system." From the L.A. Times.

Received today from Amazon the RioVolt CD player and I was just charmed by the fact that not only did they include batteries, but the batteries were Duracells, rather than some odd Chinese brand.

I've just upgraded its firmware. I downloaded a little file (300 some odd K), burned it onto a CD, put that CD into the player and pressed play. Voila, we go to version 2. Durn if this 21st century doesn't have some nice touches!

Brooklyn bicycle access to the Manhattan Bridge: "continue north on Jay, down a short steep hill to the traffic light at Sands Street, and stop at a green light as the two lanes of northbound traffic slither by within inches of him on either side. When the light turns red, he can cross in front of the stopped traffic and ride on the sidewalk (illegally) about 80 feet back up the hill to the pathway entrance."

Printable batteries hitting the market now. "Eventually the battery will be used to power electronic components built into smart labels and credit cards, allowing these tiny devices to store, display and transmit data."

Mayor Giuliani's been sleeping with a couple of admitted homosexuals. Not to worry. Separate bedrooms. In the east 50s.

"He didn't know what a Friend of Dorothy was." Christ! And this guy thinks himself mayor of New York City?

Part of the Palm Springs wind farm, from up close.

Click for full size

Click for full size

Petrichor (Noun)

Pronunciation: ['pe-trê-ko(r) or -tri-]

Definition: A pleasant distinctive smell of rain falling on dry ground. The original reference is to an odor produced in certain regions by yellowish, oily globules, rather like perfume, absorbed into the ground from the air.

Usage: Here is a new conceptual opportunity for lexiphiliacs. Although introduced by geologists in 1964 (Nature 993/2) to refer to a specific aroma, we have all experienced the pleasure of the smell of rain on a dry earth.

Suggested Usage: This word certainly fits anywhere aromas are discussed, "I love this chardonnay for the petrichor underlying its complex bouquet." But once we are comfortable with it, we can unleash our metaphoric creativity, "Her entrance into his life was a refreshing petrichor ending a long, stale season of relationships."

Etymology: Greek petros "stone" or petra "rock" + ichor, the mythical rarified fluid that flowed in the veins of the gods. ("Ichor" now refers literally to any watery, perhaps blood-tinged discharge.) Petros also underlies the name "Peter," so Rock Hudson's first name was simply a translation of the Greek "Peter." Petro- has taken a sharp semantic turn of late, resulting from the clipping of "petroleum" (from petro "rock" + oleum "oil"). Neologisms like "petrodollars" and "petropower" refer to the money and power of oil, not of rocks.

from www.yourdictionary.com

Mouse Rugs? Anybody got any experience with one of these? Lovely to behold, and they claim they may actually clean your mouse. But $24.95?!

Environmentally Correct Dance Party Set for Amazon
"The two 'tents' where the parties will be held were built with legally logged timber in the shape of local Indian huts. Only nongenetically modified foods will be served. The land where the event will take place is a recovered mine and will be turned into a state park."

Yeah, and the jets flying them all to Brazil will be powered by alcohol, methane and solar panels. Sorry Palm Springs, but wind power doesn't work on aircraft yet.

How much to tip a pizza guy?

What is the proper amount? (from tipthepizzaguy.com)

• The common courtesy is 15% for normal service
• If 15% is less than $2, please follow the $2 minimum. Remember, it should be a $2 minimum to have someone come to your house.
• 20% or more if the service is excellent.
• 10% or less for poor service. Nothing for very bad service.
• If the order is $50 or more, at least 10%.
• It's considerate to tip slightly more during bad weather
• In rain, snow, extreme cold, or extreme heat, at least $1 more. It's thoughtful. The service is greater.
• It's also considerate to tip slightly more for long distance
• If your location is more than three miles from the store, it's considerate to tip $1 more.
• If more than five miles, increase by another $1.
• Remember that a five-mile drive in a residential area can take 30 minutes for the ten-mile round-trip.

The Sircam virus/worm "is now the all-time number one virus detected" according to MessageLabs. One of its victims was Ukraine's President Leonid Kuchma. The worm grabbed a file containing information about his itinerary later this month. He does not have my sympathy. Myself, I've been getting hammered by strangers saying "I sent you this file in order to have your advice," but so far I've refused to give them advice. My thanks to Norton AntiVirus for making it easy for me.

"The company says the gel is completely safe, bio-degradable, and breaks down in seawater - though they refuse to say exactly what is in it."

How often have we hard something like that? But wait, it gets worse.

The "company…claims it has invented a powder that can be used to remove clouds from the sky and even stop the development of hurricanes."

Read about it here.

Frightening story. Happy ending.

Inspissate (Verb)

Pronunciation: [in-'spi-seyt]

Definition: To thicken or condense (a liquid) through evaporation

Usage: The verb itself is hardly used. The participle "inspissated" appears metaphorically as an adjective in the cliché "(an atmosphere of) inspissated gloom."

Suggested Usage: Most suggestions about usage in Word of the Day involve metaphorical uses of a word whose usual sense is literal. Here there is scope for the reverse innovation: in cookery recipes, the instruction, "Reduce over a low heat," could be abbreviated to the single word "Inspissate." New metaphorical uses also suggest themselves, e.g. to describe retaining the substance of a piece of writing but shortening its expression: "At 3000 words, this article is much too long. Please inspissate it to 1500."

Etymology: Latin inspissare from spissus "thick, dense, tightly packed" (the word from which French épais "thick" and Italian spesso "often" are also derived).

from www.yourdictionary.com

Sunrise at The Bacchanal in Palm Springs.

Click for full size

Genuine Hallmark card from friend Ralph:

The text:
It's hard not feel
happy when you see a
peaceful, bubbling fountain.
It's hard not to pee, too.
Actually, it's hard not to
feel happy when you pee.

Poul Anderson
"He was one of science fiction's giants and handled every conceivable theme in the genre." [Arthur Clarke]

"Considered politically far-right in science fiction circles, Anderson preferred to describe himself as having a libertarian predilection. He placed himself in the Robert Heinlein tradition, often exploring themes of individual liberty and free will."

Anderson bibliography.

Frank A. Willison, editor-in-chief of O'Reilly & Associates

Very good stuff here. Like...
"Anyone who gives private and financial information willingly to Microsoft should just cash out their accounts and play three-card monte instead; it will be more fun, their cash will last longer, and, after all their money is gone, those con artists will leave them alone."

White like me.

Latest pitiful attempt to thwart the copying of CDs has been defeated. Wow! Like, I didn't even have time to get good and huffed-up about it.

"We have got medical morphine. We have got medical heroin. Why not medical marijuana?" That's Allan Rock, Canada's Health Minister, upon his visit to the Oh-fishul government pot farm in Flin Flon, Manitoba. (I don't make this stuff up). I include here a link to a Mapblast map showing Flin Flon so you can begin to plan your shopping/health excursion.

Click to see full size

Current read: Daniel Deronda by George Eliot. Got this from a friend last Christmas. At first I thought it was going to be one of those soapy sort of Brit-dramas that PBS fans love so much. Hardly! I'm not sure what it is, yet, though. I'm just midway.

Over in the links column on the right I've included a link to my Amazon wish list. I have no problem being showered with gifts. Thanks.

Palm tree in Boston Public Garden! Maybe I begin to appreciate how San Franciscans felt when they were installed along Market Street.

Click for bigger pic

A first edition (1859) of Darwin's Origin Of Species returned to Boston Public Library rather seriously overdue. It left the library some time before 1923, but wasn't officially declared "missing" until 1933 (they're patient at the BPL). Before you try to calculate the overdue charge, be aware that our always-benevolent Mayor Menino capped the overdue fine on any book at $1.25, and he said they might waive it altogether in this instance.

Timeline of GUIs here. Go to the site, but I will summarize it very briefly here.

1973-2000

• Xerox PARC Alto
• Perq
• Xerox Star
• Apple Lisa
• Visi On by VisiCorp
• MS Windows announced
• Macintosh
• Digital Research GEM
• "window system X"
• Geos for Commodore 64
• Amiga 1000
• MS Windows released
• DR cripples GEM under threat of suit from Apple
• Macintosh II
• MS Windows 2.03
• "Arthur" for Acorn
• Apple GS/OS
• IBM OS/2
• NeXT
• Amiga Workbench 2
• MS Windows 3.0
• PC-GEOS
• OS/2 version 2.0
• MS Windows 3.1
• Amiga Workbench 3
• MS Windows NT 3.1
• Photon MicroGUI
• MS Windows 95
• BeOS
• New Deal Office 2.5
• OS/2 Warp 4
• MS Windows NT 4.0
• Mac OS 8
• MS Windows 98
• Mac OS X Server
• RISC OS 4
• Aqua
• MS Windows 2000

Toilet junkets.

You know all those stories in the news about the dipshit parents who leave their kids in locked cars? Rosemarie Radovan of San Jose, California, upstages them all!

Well, here's a very hot-blooded anti-Microsoft site:

In the glorious future when we are free of petro-fuels, we will continue to pollute and despoil the earth: "A Blairstown ethanol plant and feedlot are accused of polluting a creek with corn syrup and cow manure."

Peeing Calvin drama.

"I didn’t know it was illegal to grow it (marijuana) in your own garden." Now he does.

Condom found in Wendy's chili.

Decided to fix that Netflix logo.

Recently viewed: Love! Valour! Compassion! [VHS] and it sucked a big one (I don't mean that in a nice way). Those who enjoyed either the stage or film version are invited to write.

Now viewing: Perfect Storm. My first Netflix DVDs showed up, and this was one of 'em. All it needs is Spencer Tracy and it'd be wonderful.

Lexiphanic (Adjective)

Pronunciation: [lex-ê-'fahn-ik]

Definition: Employing pretentious words; using overblown language in speech or writing.

Usage: Lexiphanic has a lot of synonyms: bombastic, pompous, ostentatious, affected, showy and splashy are just a few. With such a wide variety of similar meanings to choose from, we run the risk of sounding lexiphanic ourselves if we use this rare word to talk about somebody else's fustian language.

Suggested Usage: "Lexiphanic" is a word pretty much restricted to describing the way we write and talk. "The content of Richard's paper was simple enough, but the way he put his ideas was lexiphanic." "A lexiphanic choice of words doesn't necessarily impress people, but often confuses them."

Etymology: From Greek lexifanis "a phrase monger." Lexis "speech" comes from the PIE root leg-, which gives us the word lexicon "dictionary," of course. It also lends us dialect, dialogue, allege, delegate, prologue, and syllogism—all of which have to do with language use.

from www.yourdictionary.com

A win-win welfare proposal in an LA TIMES LETTER TO THE EDITOR
Pay Toilets

Re installing 150 pay toilets in Los Angeles: If public restroom facilities are a magnet for crime, what better way to know where the criminals are so they can be apprehended? Let's get those potties in place. Showers and washing machines wouldn't be a bad addition. I say, let's have the cleanest homeless population on Earth. Or at least cleaner streets and alleyways.
The proposed number is way too few, but it's a start.

Chele Graham, Los Angeles

Here's a screen shot of part of yesterday's home page of Outdoor Life Network tv. I don't know what "Today's Poll" usually is, but I bet they don't often ask opinions on who will be racing in the Vuelta e España! Someday I'll walk into an American blue collar bar and the guys will be watching a bike race on the TV. But before we get there, we'll have to eliminate that crap music that the networks think is a requirement for broadcasting cycling events. Are there other sports that have to have a soundtrack for television?

Canada Allows Terminally Ill to Smoke Marijuana

Large, well-organized list of search engines.

Trouble in River City. Well, not that River City.

Petition filed to repeal the Massachusetts income tax.

Lance does it again with 6' 44".

Others who have taken the yellow jersey three consecutive years:

• Miguel Indurain - 1991-1995
• Jacques Anquetil - 1961-1964 (also 1957)
• Eddy Merckx - 1969-1972 (also 1974)
• Louision Bobet - 1953-1955

• Bernard Hinault - 1978, 1979, 1981, 1982, 1985
• Philippe Thijs - 1913, 1914, 1920
• Greg LeMond - 1986, 1989, 1990

Gazump (Verb)

Pronunciation: [gê-'zêmp]

Definition: 'John gazumped Martha' = 'John rejected the price for his house offered by Martha, a would-be buyer, despite having originally accepted her offer, because he decided to accept a subsequent higher offer.'

Usage: Often used in the passive: "I had been looking forward to moving to Kensington, but I was gazumped at the last moment." This word presupposes a legal framework for house purchase, such as obtains in England, where the seller's acceptance of the purchaser's offer price is not binding on the seller until the 'exchange of contracts', usually 30 days before completion of the sale.

Suggested Usage: "I had arranged to help Andrea with her algebra homework, but that nerd Norman, who is always top in math, has gazumped me." "We were in negotiation with a famous pianist to play at to our local musical festival next October, but now we've been gazumped by Carnegie Hall—he's got an engagement there instead."

Etymology: From Yiddish gezumph "overcharge." It was adapted to real estate dealings in London in the 1970s, at a time of rapidly rising house prices.

from www.yourdictionary.com