signalnoise

I promise all the chuckings of chocolate are very somber affairs...

I'm still processing the 'rents thing. We don't spend a lot of the minor holidays together, even birthdays are sort of secondary to just hanging out every month (at least for me). These big holidays were always there, for almost thirty years, so it will take a long time until I ever feel anything will have the permanence of that. But, as you wrote, you get on.

I have no idea. I just find it amusing. I probably posted a sentence rather than one word. Who knows?

I like to think it was because I posted something about a model being voluptuous and not scrawny, but again, who knows? Nothing about this place makes any sense.

haha, so i'm just gonna rub it in and let you know i also spent the afternoon watching a project runway mini marathon

I have been doing that for so long, one more just doesn't make a difference.

I don't have a particular person in mind - just whoever is in need and matches.


Wow, there's a lot to talk about in this journal; unfortunately, I'll have to do it later.

That seems logical. At some point most things seem to become boring or too much work for most old folks. Why wouldn't politics be a part of that too?

Mhm. I suspect that the rot set in in April 2005 (?), when they reorganised the boards.

I don't read a lot of the newswire stuff, but I never did. I'm not pining for the good old days like a lot of folks have been for a while. Ever since they started making changes to the newswire, people have been complaining. I guess it's sort of the nature of the place, innit?

I just like the guy himself on Survirorman. If I'm thinking about the same show, the Man vs. Wild guy sort of freaks me out a bit...

LA Ink is the first of these shows I've really watched. The biggest reason I started is because the tattoo shop is right down the street from my apartment. I'm literally blocks away from the place, so I find it interesting. How they shoot the neighborhood, the sort of people they choose to come in for tattoos, etc. I've heard the staff is pretty nice there, but I've yet to go in.

you a Jonathan Richman guy?

I agree about that first record, and that's about as far as I go. (Mind you, 'Roadrunner' would ensure his place among the immortals on its own.) I was just curious about loving the Old World.

Wait, what?

Well, it was yesterday (Friday) but yeah.

Human drama abounds!

Oh absolutely. No argument from me. SLORC are worthless and the world will be better off without them, as and when.

I'm feeling we should be more adjusted to the idea that outside forces (whatever the hell they may be) are out there, and do not care whatever we think of them, and will do their thing whether we like it or not. It worries me that Americans (first), and others (later), think any other way.

No, but I should catch it later today.

"Each step is better in a way, but also annoying in its own special manner."

True that, and can tell you some stories about being faculty -- especially this year, as I've unexpectedly been made chair...

But that part where they stop testing you and start paying you? Oh, it's ALL it's cracked up to be.

Wow, you really have a way of romanticizing the schooling process, don't you?

I think I know what you mean. Towards the end, especially, it started sounding like a policy paper.

Good luck to your mom.

good luck with your mother. Don't feel the guilt, either.

I'm a little fuzzy on it myself these days. But the original issue would have been poor experimental technique, rather than fraud - impure materials, that sort of thing. That's what happens in most of the science screwups of this sort; science is a community where your standing is based on your reputation. Not many people will risk their entire professional standing on something which (by definition) everyone else is going to try to repeat.
(And I apologise if you know all this already )

My argument that "something interesting" was happening in the Pons/Fleischmann experiments is based partly on the buzz at work at the time (I worked in the nuclear industry for a long time), partly on a report I read (in New Scientist, I think) that quite a lot of quiet research funding had been provided to labs in various places by two Japanese corporations, the Japanese government, a European government (Italian, I think) and the US Navy.

I might l tell you I order in from the Medici at least once a week...
I cry and would rather take a beating when i have to order from Maravallies (sp??)
the phone call to order never takes less than 30 minutes, with me repeating, them repeating, me confirming, them confirming... *sigh*