Bulletin from the Homestead

So here I am at home, visiting my ill grandmother. She's doing better, but I'm glad I came home, thesis be damned. Although I got some decent work done today and expect to get more done tomorrrow. Anyway, my grandmother is enjoying getting cards in the mail, so I thought I'd pull and internet stunt. If any of you would like to send her a card, get in touch with me and I'll get you the snail mail address. I think it'd tickle her.

It was actually good for me to come home, too. I've been able to relax more and sleep better away from the stress. It hadn't been a productive week before that, so hopefully this will be a good kickstart to this week.

Alright. Aqua Teen Hunger Force is coming on. I'm cutting this post off and letting y'all twist in the wind.

Who the heck is voting for Bush, anyway?

This guy took a vacation through the South to find out.

I found this fascinating because I'm in a nice, sheltered academic environment where anyone voting for Bush II is clearly insane. :)

Too Much Information about My Peanut Allergy

Well, I accidentally ingested something peanutty last night. Baaaaad news. As a kid, I usually just suffered nausea and sometimes hurling as a result, but the reactions are getting worse and there's no denying I'm experiencing "mild" anaphylaxis. So far I've ducked the shock going along with it, but it still ain't pretty what else the histamines do.

Mike of goatdogblog saw a bit of the first bad reaction last year, when I swung through his office to get my car from my then-wife who also worked there, to go home after consuming a tainted cookie.

I can be in the same room with peanuts, unlike some people, although the smell makes me queasy. This may be psychosomatic, as I know peanuts make me ill. There are some people who can't even be on the same plane as the peanuts or the same lunchroom where their fellow classmates are eating peanut butter sandwiches. I feel real bad for those kids; choosing between bad allergic reactions and being a collossal dork isn't an easy choice at that age.

Anyway, for illustrative purposes I thought I'd share a rundown of what it's like. However I'm going to put it as the first comment, in order to spare you if you don't want to read the gory details. Click through if you want to see.

That's the same combination I have on my luggage...

The lock code on the Minuteman Nuclear Missles during the 60s and 70s was...00000000.

Link and joke stolen from plastic.

Plot: Bush Approval Rating vs. time/terror

This graph shows Bush's approval rating over time, noting instances when the threat level was increased from Mello Yello to Orange Crush. Note that the graph is a little unfair because it doesn't show all the way down to 0% and thus has the tendency to make the changes look larger than they are if you don't look at the axes.

I am distincly curious why it appears about 1/3 of the country decided Bush was doing a good job because we were attacked on 9/11/2001. Oh, I imagine it was mostly "coming together" and "supporting the president and country," but, if you think about it, a horrible blow was dealt to us and people thought better of our leader after it happened on his watch. By that logic, shouldn't my car insurance rates go down when I get in an accident?

Colorization & DVDs--Ahem, sirs

CNN has an article on the "colorized" versions of Three Stooges classics coming out soon. Contained within is this paragraph:

"Star Wars" creator George Lucas, who testified with Steven Spielberg before Congress in the 1980s against colorization and other forms of alteration, said the process yanks such slapstick performers as the Stooges out of the black-and-white universe they belong in.

Excuse me then, sirs? Could I have Han shooting first and federal agents with guns, please?

To be fair, Lucas's quotes reflect a desire to protect the artist, and he would say it's his right to modify Star Wars, but no one else's:

"Would color distract from their comedy and make it not as funny anymore?" Lucas said. "Maybe just the fact that they're in black and white makes it funny, because their humor is dated. But by putting it in black and white, it puts it in a context where you can appreciate it for what it was.

"But you try to make it in full living color and try to compare it to a Jim Carrey movie, then it's hard for young people to understand. Because you're then thinking you're comparing apples to apples, when you're not. You're comparing apples to oranges. I'm saying it's not fair to the artist."

Of course, I enjoyed Star Wars the way it was, too, outdated effects and all. I guess I really don't have anything to say except "Bite me!"

Hurricane Junkie

Ever since I discovered the wealth of information available at the Tropical Weather page at Weather Underground, I've become a bit of a hurricane junkie. I have fun stopping by twice a day and seeing the state of the art in predicting quite chaotic phenomena. The "discussion" links are relatively informative and rather honest about what the don't know.

I sorta want to see one up close, just once, just to see what 70+ mph winds look like. We may have had a blizzard that bad when I was a kid, I'm not sure. There's some chance of seeing one in D.C. I survived two trips to Disneyworld in September without danger.

There was just a show on the History Channel on the Galveston 1900 hurricane, and the moderate amount of hubris from the US Weather service that made it more deadly then it might have been. The city was on an island only 8 ft. above sea level at its highest, yet their local weather service chief basically declared Galveston safe from storm surge due to the shallow bay behind it. In addition, by Sept. 1900 the US was refusing to allow Cuban storm spotters to wire reports to the mainland, instead trusting the word of less experienced US personell. The Cubans correctly guessed that the storm which passed over western Cuba would turn towards the Gulf, and not across Florida as the US men said. This cost Galveston the chance to watch the skies and be ready, and in fact the hurricane warning flags didn't even fly until after it was far too late to evacuate. The storm intensifed over the heated Gulf and the entire island was underwater at the height of the storm. Death toll: 7000-8000.

I think of all the disasters that plague various areas, I'd have to take the midwest. We get blizzards, but those can be forecast with some lead time, and if you stay inside you're ok. You get tornados, but they generally hit narrow disaster zones. Really disasterous, of course, but of low probability. The west coast has the earthquakes, rare but completely unpredictable and quite devastating. I have similar thoughts on volcanoes, plus add relentlessness of lava flow. And though I do want to see a hurricane, living in the Atlantic or Gulf coast means one is coming sooner or later, and they are overwhelming in power and sheer swamping ability.

Telegraph | News | Eat your heart out, Dracula - scientists turn blood into biscuits and chocolate

I'm never eating in Russia.Ever.

Based on last night's steak, however, Adam is already on a plane by the time you read this.

Random Baseball Posts

ESPN.com: Page 2 - Little incident, big problem: Jim Caple's take on Clemens getting ejected from his own son's under-10 tournament game.

Twins Blogger Batgirl on what might have happened had Kris Benson been traded to the Twins...he of the hot wife who candidly discussed their sex life in Penthouse.

Yankees Find Loophole

It would appear that the rumored new Yankee Stadium, which they offered to pay for themselves, would actually cost the other teams revenue sharing money. Stadium debt has been allowed to be considered a "stadium operating expense" which are deducted from the amount considered for revenue sharing.

Remember: the rich have better lawyers and better accountants.