malvasia bianca

Now I’m in my second week of flu. I could do without this. From the virus’s point of view, the only point is to spread itself. Which breaks down into two components: reproduction and transmission. I’m not sure exactly where the reproduction is happening in my body; is it all over the place, or are […]

I just watched the first episode of This Spartan Life. I’m pretty sure that my liking it wasn’t solely a byproduct of the fever-ridden state of my brain.

I think (though I’m not completely sure) that we’re done with our lice infestation. But we’ve also had some diseases running through our house recently; the cold wasn’t so bad, but last weekend was Liesl’s turn to get the flu, and this weekend was mine. (Where by “weekend” I mean four or five days for […]

One of the things I realized while reading The Arcades Project: I don’t know squat about French history. There was this revolution at the end of the 18th century; I don’t think I care about French history before then. (1789? Yes, says the wikipedia; I guess I should read that article, shouldn’t I?) It’s supposed […]

Congratulations to Jordan and Tanya on the birth of their son Caleb on September 15!

I’ve been blogging for a year now. If the counters are to be believed, this is my 151st post, though it’s possible that I wrote some drafts that I deleted before posting. And I don’t seem to be done yet, despite the lack of posts this week. (We’ve been laid low by plague, while our […]

This blog is remarkable. Alas, its only feed is in Atom, which Gnus doesn’t understand. Hopefully in half a year or so I’ll know enough to be able to write my own feed reader in Ruby.

In our house, as in apartments that we’ve lived in, sinks periodically get clogged up. If the drain plug gizmo (what is the name for those things?) is removable, we try removing it and seeing if we can get stuff out of there, but in the last few places we’ve lived, they haven’t been. (There […]

The Arcades Project has been sitting on my to-read shelf for a year or so. (I’ve finally started reading it, about which more later.) One thing that’s been bothering me since I heard about the book, though: I’ve been to Paris several times, and I don’t recall ever seeing an arcade there! Have they all […]

One of my coworkers pointed me at The Daily Sudoku. I’ve tried and enjoyed a few; I’m not sure how long I’ll keep it up, but I’m not stopping yet. So far I’ve only tried ones rated easy or medium (and, honestly, I can’t tell the difference between the two levels); apparently the hard rated […]

Just what is the copyright office thinking? I can’t imagine they’re doing this out of bad intentions, but it’s pretty depressing that they’re apparently clueless about this sort of thing…

I’ve thought a bit more about the whole strategy of the weak thing. In some sense, actually, the DoD’s analysis is reasonably on-target. The analogy here is to think of the US as a bully: we’re the biggest, strongest kid in the school, and we have no compunctions about beating up people who are substantially […]

From a DoD policy paper: Our strength as a nation state will continue to be challenged by those who employ a strategy of the weak using international fora, judicial processes, and terrorism. Like Scott Rosenberg, I am appalled. Several years, I came to the conclusion that the term “terrorist” was almost never a helpful one, […]

Whenever I go to Europe, I’m happy that the coins reach higher denominations there than in the US: it seems to work pretty well. The thing is, though, I’m not sure that it would work well in the US: my change purse is always a lot fuller than my wallet, and I’m not sure that […]

When in Paris, I read the International Herald Tribune daily. Which was a change of pace: it’s been years since I regularly read any paper other than the Mercury News regularly. (In particular, it’s been a while since I’ve read the New York Times regularly; I read several news magazines regularly, but just the one […]

Just got back from vacation; I trust that my weeks of silence didn’t cause any distress to my legions of loyal fans. We spent a couple of weeks in Paris; our first vacation since our honeymoon that didn’t involve visiting relatives. (This is what happens when one has a child.) Loads of fun; I will […]

Miranda’s been taking dance lessons for the last year. Actually, for longer than that – they offered dance lessons at her preschool, so she took them there. She liked it enough to want to continue it this year, but it hasn’t been her favorite activity, so we’re not planning to continue it any more. But […]

As threatened earlier, I’ve started to work Dance Dance Revolution (the specific version I have is DDRMAX, just for the record) into my exercise routine. I do it on days when either the weather is such that I’d rather not jog, or when I’m recovering from a cold and don’t feel like jogging but don’t […]

It was pretty weird to read in the paper that the Supreme Count had a 6-3 opinion where the three were Rehnquist, Thomas, and O’Connor (with Scalia in the majority). And even weirder that I agreed with Rehnquist and Thomas. Such are the bedfellows that medicinal pot makes; I guess it’s not all that surprising […]

A coworker of mind just pointed me at the Self-Referential Aptitude Test.