Friday, March 14, 2008
A Moon at Saturn- NASA/JPL Blog
Did you know NASA has blogs? UPDATE: I don't know of a way to communicate with the scientists, but the JPL website gives tour and lecture dates, as well as a page on how you can submit your ideas for research.
Chronicle of a mission happening right now.
Um, everyone is female? Where are the men?
Scientists don't write in exclamation points. And they don't describe their dinner to a world waiting to see the results of a mission's photographs.
Or has that changed too?
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
Bitstrips.com
Oh, Good. Because there weren't enough interesting things on teh Interwebs before this lil piece of addiction came out.
PS You heard about this, right?
Friday, February 29, 2008
Bringing the Sexy- But How?
Malcolm Gladwell's book, "The Tipping Point" put him on my short list of men who, for me, have got it going on.
He joins fellow members Clive Owen and Stanley Tucci, men whose singular wit, intelligence and charms are also known to many in the world. A recent airing of This American Life included audio from a speaking engagement Gladwell had had in New York.
Wonderful story, wonderfully told by him.
Here's the thing.
He said he'd been hired by a newspaper, but didn't have any real credentials. Sat at a desk for six weeks not knowing what to do. Six weeks? It wasn't an internship, either. My question: What magic bubble do some people live in where life is this easy? I've had temp jobs where he wouldn't have lasted half a day.
I'm awfully tired of the salt mines. The dark and the smell never changes. I'd love some time in the sun, but working hard with the idea I'll then get promoted isn't the ticket out I'd thought they were.
Thursday, February 21, 2008
Arts & Letters Daily
Here's a wonderful site
Challenging, interesting, thrilling. Wish I'd known of it sooner. It's as if I've been drinking toilet water when I could have had champagne.
Defamer: deleted
Social commentary by people who can't compose language? Vapid prattle.
If what's published doesn't merit a spelling or grammar check by the author, why would I bother to read it?
A staff writer/videographer who cannot compose a shot, set an audio level or, while covering the writer's strike, recognize a writer of considerable cultural significance does not merit naming. One could speculate on whom she preformed sex in order to get the job. But one would have to care.
May the next sounds we hear be percussive ones, as your advertisers take their leave.
Feh.
Wednesday, February 20, 2008
The Dumbing of America
Susan Jacoby's article in the Washington Post is linked here. It's a well-researched accounting of facts and numbers illustrating the relationship between Americans and their media in recent history.
She quotes Ralph Waldo Emerson: "The mind of this country, taught to aim at low objects, eats upon itself."
Is our national dullness driving the media, or are we a product of the media pablum we've been fed?
Image credit: http://www.seanlarsen.com/images/dunce.jpg
Sunday, February 17, 2008
Thursday, February 14, 2008
Happy Le Hearts and Le Flowers and Stuff
I meant to have one of these (love) by Christmas, hell; let alone by V Day.
Shoot, by now I was hoping I'd be having to bite down so I didn't accept a Proposal before Daylight Savings Time ends. I don't know what that means. But I moved here to a. Fall in love and b. Fall in love.
In that order.
Instead, I find I'm still mooning over That Man, who is at least one continent's width away, if not the Atlantic as well, and says he doesn't want us and while I don't think he can't walk away any more than I can, I don't have any more time to live alone waiting for him. Hell, whatever. It's only Everything.
Meanwhile, I moved here for the local talent.
I need the job/career thing to get resolved already, so I can focus on the important stuff. Like, love. I'm typing this as Lionel Hampton's vibes thrill to him playing "Tenderly"... you know what I'm sayin.
---
If you've got it, enjoy it, eh?
Meanwhile, Feb 15th an official holiday for single women: chocolate, 50% off.
Wednesday, February 13, 2008
Temping in the Wilderness
I could easily write a book on Temping
It's like being a waitress- a book that would write itself.
Temp jobs are not fabulous opportunities that by some terrible trick of Fate have gone overlooked by the sleek and skilled set. They're jobs no one else wants. In fact, someone else has likely walked off the job. That's why the employer has been caught flat-footed and had to call a temp agency.
However, the employer has learned nothing from the walkout. Whatever factors caused the original person or persons to refuse to stay there- even for money- still exist. Add indignant anger to a backlog of undone work. Cue the hapless temp.
Today, for example. I'm Day Two at a place I'll be at for 14 days, and I'm now counting the remaining days. Yesterday's lunch conversation by two other workers ran a gamut of Mole Surgeries That Had to Be Redone and the Deep Stitches That Had to Be Gone In and Dug Out (both persons able to contribute their own detailed stories) to The High Price of Mac and Cheese In a Supposedly Nice Restaurant, to The Stuff I'm Coughing Up Right Now With This New Flu Bug That's Going Around.
If this fell into a story I was writing, I'd toss it out in the first draft as the very dullest stereotyping. What to do when it's a factual account? I survived by thinking about what an interesting adventure into primitive society I was having. The mind as cultural machete, searching for footholds in a brackish, sucking ooze...
Today I was considered very witty, as they thought I made up the phrase "carbon footprint." Funny as when it came out of my mouth, I wondered if the saying had itself jumped the shark. Not with this crowd. They drive in from Vancouver and hadn't heard it before.
PS Illustration is apparently owned by these guys. A different Web address hops to this site.
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