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“Not Quite Jaundice”
[This is the first of three brief posts on the experience of being sick, sorta-kinda-like, for four (sorta) days.] From Catch-22: Yossarian was in the hospital with a pain in his liver that fell just short of being jaundice. The doctors were puzzled by the fact that it wasn’t quite jaundice. If it became jaundice [...]
Riding the Now
[Today's image is of the literal-minded "Now Watch," widely believed to be the most accurate timepiece ever. Found it at Wired's Gadget Lab blog.] From whiskey river: And if there is not any such thing as a long time, nor the rest of your lives, nor from now on, but there is only now, why [...]
The Sound of Two Words… uh… Doing Something
Above image is Figure 1-1 from the Chinese-language edition of Just XSL, one of my tech books. For the translation, see this page. Recently, I received an email from a friend and distant relative, a trained hypnotherapist, counsellor, and general all-round wellness therapist. (The Missus and I once ordered a couple of self-help CDs from [...]
SheePong, Inter Alia
Just when you thought your dog is just, like, the smartest little thing ever because she’s learning not to pee on the carpet… (Hat tip to rm preston. In a comment at the Seven Impossible Things… blog’s weekly “7-Kicks” extravaganza yesterday, rm listed this as one of the highlights of her previous seven days. It [...]
Drafting a Beer
Every now and then The Missus and I look at each other over a meal or while rambling through cable TV’s Food Network and wonder, Who first thought to do X with this recipe? Okay, reasonably, I know we’re beneficiaries of tens of thousands of years of trial-and-error. Somebody in a grass or furry loincloth [...]
Choose Your Own Poisons
From whiskey river: We’re fools whether we dance or not, So we might as well dance. (Japanese proverb) …and: The first principle is that you must not fool yourself — and you are the easiest person to fool. (Richard Feynman [in his 1974 CalTech commencement address]) Not from whiskey river: Fool’s Money Bags Outside the [...]
Fiction Writers*: Discuss
Said noir/mystery author Jim Thompson: There are thirty-two ways to write a story, and I have used every one of them. But there is only one plot: things are not what they seem. (Cited on the Facebook page for Neko Case.) So tell me: We could go around and around forever regarding what he meant [...]
