Over at Making Light it appears to be Zombie day, and people have been writing songs and poems to celebrate.  I just thought y’all ought to know.

The new puppy has arrived. Click the pic for the full Flickr set.

Pablo Defendini pointed me at this:

I’ve been thinking a lot about internet snarkiness lately, and what I keep coming back to is that snark was a defense mechanism that evolved perfectly in the truth-deficient, cynicism-rich compost heap of the Bush era. [emphasis Steve's] When most of everything that’s told to you is bullshit, it’s easier to treat everything with suspicion. Genuineness is met with skepticism. Enthusiasm with ridicule. Optimism with derision. It’s easier to keep things at arm’s distance that way – keep them where they can’t hurt you.

A Post-Snark Era?  From Enter the Octopus

NOBODY MESSES WITH THE CONSTITUTION!

You should also go see the picture of him fighting Darth Vader.

On a less satirical note, click the pic below to see an incredible interactive panorama of the swearing in.

Do try it the full screen option.

(Action figure seen at BoingBoing.  LDA sent me the link for the Obama-rama.)

And finally, seen from Janice Gelb, but we’re not sure who wrote it:

Dear World:

We, the United States of America , your top quality
supplier of the ideals of liberty and democracy,
would like to apologize for our 2001-2008 interruption
in service. The technical fault that led to this eight-
year service outage has been located, and the software
responsible was replaced November 4. Early tests of
the newly installed program indicate that we are now
operating correctly, and we expect it to be fully
functional on January 20. We apologize for any
inconvenience caused by the outage. We look forward
to resuming full service and hope to improve in
years to come. We thank you for your patience and
understanding.

Sincerely,
The United States of America

And I don’t even drink beer (though I cook with it.)

I think I’ve mentioned that I’m into cake decorating in a big way.  It’s an expensive hobby, but not as expensive as cocaine or skiing, so I indulge myself within the limits of reason and my budget.  But I’m not yet good enough to do something like, well, this:

That’s right.  Courtesy of cakewrecks.com, my favorite morning giggle, it’s–wait for it–a cake brain.

Cakewrecks also shows a kidney (rather squarish to reflect my understanding of anatomy, but hey…) and a seriously gorgeous, gory heart with all the wiring and veins and stuff.  Also a set of intestines.  But you’ll understand why the brain is my fave.

Now, where’d I leave my spork?

We live in a semi-rural area. Well, mostly rural. We have houses and running water, but no streetlights, fireplugs, police officers, or Britney Spears sightings. (One good ol’ boy at the local hardware store actually swears that “Britney Spears” is something a spaniel does during a duck hunt.)

Another thing we don’t have is zoning restrictions. So even though we may look like a residential neighborhood from some angles, other angles will reveal that various folks have stocked their back yards with chickens, geese, sheep, goats, and donkeys. And they’re perfectly welcome to do so – ‘cause here along the Travis-Hays county line, a man’s home is not only his castle, but his Little Reata. (Just hit Netflix and rent “Giant.”)

Here at Casa Ramrod, all we have in the back yard are dogs. Or at least, that’s all we intend to have. In practice, at one time or another, we’ve also had squirrels, opossums, and armadillos (visually confirmed) as well as raccoons, bobcats, and skunks (otherwise confirmed). The occasional family of deer hops the fence. Plus, our veterinarian’s bulletin board sports a few too-curious-for-their-own-good doggie photos that provide direct evidence of porcupines in the vicinity.

But all of that’s not enough animal life for one of our nearest neighbors, who has gone the aforementioned chickens-geese-sheep-goats-donkeys route. He has even expanded his own Little Reata by fencing off some of the utility-easement alley behind our properties. All of which is cool with us, by the way. The more fur and feathers, the merrier. (Or at least the furrier and featherier.)

Our dogs Lucy, Linus, and Tillie were cool with it too . . .

. . . until the day the emus showed up.

Read More »

While these aren’t going to work to replace my tri-focals, three pairs of them would.

These are water filled lenses that individuals can adjust to their own needs, then freeze the correction.

Silver has devised a pair of glasses which rely on the principle that the fatter a lens the more powerful it becomes. Inside the device’s tough plastic lenses are two clear circular sacs filled with fluid, each of which is connected to a small syringe attached to either arm of the spectacles.

The wearer adjusts a dial on the syringe to add or reduce amount of fluid in the membrane, thus changing the power of the lens. When the wearer is happy with the strength of each lens the membrane is sealed by twisting a small screw, and the syringes removed. The principle is so simple, the team has discovered, that with very little guidance people are perfectly capable of creating glasses to their own prescription.

– The Guardian

While there are definitely vision correction issues that aren’t solved by this (like astigmatism), in places like sub-Saharan Africa, the ratio of opticians to general population is approximately one to a million.  This would change the quality of life of millions of people.

link at Core77   Pointed to by Rebecca Watson Tweet.

My first dog was Fiorello LaGuardia Robins of blessed memory.  My father had a swell, deeply neurotic German Shorthaired Pointer named Nellie (as in “Wait Till The Sun Shines”).  We currently rejoice in the company of Emily the leaping hound.  I love, or have loved, all three.  But I wouldn’t want to clone them.

What I find fascinating is the human story (of course).  Lou Hawthorne, whose company cloned his mother’s dogs (after his stepfather invested heavily in the procedure) is awed by how similar MissyToo and Mira are to Missy, the dog from which they were cloned.  He owns Mira, about whom he waxes rhapsodic.  But Hawthorne’s mother, to whom he gave the other cloned dog, MissyToo, doesn’t like the new dog at all, and sent it off, like an unloved Victorian orphan, to live with “handlers.”  She had already adopted a puppy after Missy died, and says “I already have a dog — a real dog.”  Evidently she doesn’t understand the Velveteen Rabbit theory that one becomes real only by being loved into it.

Poor MissyToo.