The article “Revolting High Rises“, which ran last weekend in the New York Times Magazine, is worth a look.
It presents the thesis that the physical environment in the low-income suburbs of Paris and other French cities may have contributed to the riots that occurred there last month. Unlike American cities, wherein the poorer citizens [...]
Having been summoned to serve jury duty under penalty of delinquency (and possibly community service/fine/jail time as well), I showed up at Suffolk Superior Courthouse this morning.
So now I get to sit in judgment on a civil matter, 6-8 business days of joy listening to lawyers…fun fun…
The really bad part is that I’m sitting [...]
Hotel Universe is back, and badder than ever…
My sister has a bunch of her artwork up, and I recommend taking a look, because it’s wonderful. Direct link is http://www.hoteluniverse.org/art.html.
The scratching post that I built for the cat…
The Raw Materials
The Finished Product
Up close
It’s built around a traffic cone, which appeared on the front lawn one day. The base is covered with part of a very cheap doormat (Home Depot special), and the cone part is wrapped in 3/8″ SasalSisal rope. (All told [...]
Couple of photos of folks from Thanksgiving. Mom and (my sister) Grace and I went down to Provincetown, and had Thanksgiving with Kathy and Kathleen and the boys…
My sister, my mom, and I, on the beach across from the house.
The whole crew on the beach. Except my mom, because someone had to take [...]
Made myself some pork roast today, by adapting a recipie from the Gourmet cookbook to work with a Crock-pot slow cooker.
The basic ingredients:
4 pound pork tenderloin roast cut
juice from 6 limes
8 cloves of garlic
1 Tbsp of ground cumin
1 Tbsp of dried oregano
4 Tbsp kosher salt
several splashes of cider vinegar
several splashes of orange juice
To prepare:
In a [...]
I’ve been reading Tom Friedman’s From Beirut To Jerusalem. It is, basically, a compilation of his experiences and opinions on the Middle East, gathered during his many years there as a correspondent for United Press International and The New York Times.
As Jeff pointed out when he passed it along to me, it’s not written [...]
Good article in the New York Times Magazine today, in the “Lives” section, titled The Unwhole Truth. It’s a very good article, especially for those of the mid-20s, emotionally-distant, bent.
A quick quote:
From now on the task would no longer be seperation and difference, no longer the scultpturing of a self to be [...]
Anna needs some help figuring out why EMT uniforms can be hot.
This came up in a conversation at work, and I figured I’d toss it out here hoping that pgw or someone would actually be able to give me a real answer. Or, even better, could tell me where to find a better answer, since I don’t even know where to start looking.
Some universities have [...]
“The Running of the Congressmen“.
From The Onion. Where else?
This morning’s Today’s Papers piece in Slate highlights a piece in the New York Times, which reports the discovery of a “secret torture chamber” in an Iraqi Ministry of the Interior building in Baghdad. 170 prisoners were confined within, at least some of whom were apparently malnourished, and some of whom showed signs of [...]
Pointed out to me by Jen Bird, one of my favoritest people in the whole wide world…
Slate is doing a series this week examining higher education, and as one part of that they asked a bunch of notable people about their most influential reading from college. The list is, in general, a pretty good [...]
…that makes the unattainable so damn intriguing?
Managed to kill my desktop, trying to get linux to install politely next to Mac OS X.
Should have known better.
I managed to wipe out the partition table of the internal hard drive, so now it’s back to reinstallworld for me. I hate reinstall world. Bleh.
This day has really, really sucked.
S.A.D.
I’ve decided that I have Seasonal Affective Disorder, or some variant thereof. The difference between my SAD and the normal kind, though, is that mine doesn’t seem to actually revolve around the weather. It’s just this time of year. I love fall; I hate the family holidays, I hate that there are [...]
…a toilet bowl that’s clean for the first time in 14 months.
I have no idea where this came from, but this was running through my head on the train this morning.
From “Can’t Be That Bad”, off Jabe’s album “Drama City”:
Another pretty girl at the grocery stand
Another young friend turned businessman
Another young punk with a guitar in his hand
Singing out loud that he don’t understand
And all of [...]
For those who missed it, I suggest taking a look at the entry “Conserve what?” on the blog of Michael Green. It’s a sharp take on this article from Monday’s New York Times.
(I do kind of wish that Professor Green would use a blog system that allowed linking to a specific post — or [...]
Found by Jeff, who clearly has too much time on his hands: http://news.yahoo.com/s/wcvb/20051108/lo_wcvb/3046801.
All this time I’ve been saying that beer is good for you. I knew it. Forget that stupid apple, stick to IPAs.