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November 8th, 2008
02:23 am - Richard Berman - You, Me, and Bobby McGee
Go listen to this song by Richard Berman.
I discovered it on my local public radio station as I was driving home from work this evening, and I sat in my driveway listening until it ended. Somehow it was just the right set of thoughts for right now.
So much about this time of year makes me wistful... A time of wondering, remembering, wishing. Giving thanks, too.
There are songs I've heard
I may not know all the words
Still, when I hear them, they're old friends.
Some awaken memories
Like the song 'bout Bobby McGee
It brings you back to me again.
If I close my eyes
I can still see that ride
Midnight past the shore of Coeur d'Alene.
The moon was on the lake
I could glimpse its silver face
And yours in shades of grey.
Feeling good was easy then, so easy to be fooled;
I was sure: love endures.
There's no trading my tomorrows for those yesterdays with you
If I could, I surely would.
You'd rolled my sweater in a ball
Your pillow against the door
Sleeping as we climbed the bitter routes.
I had switched the radio on
It softly offered up its songs
I hummed on some I knew.
Then came this song I didn't know
About a lover and her beau
Thumbing down a diesel in Baton Rouge.
I especially liked that line
About the wipers slapping time
As those lovers sang every song that driver knew.
"Freedom's just a word," she sang, "for nothing left to lose"
I didn't know if that was so.
Never crossed my mind, back then, that one day I'd lose you
And there I'd be: alone and free.
We sang songs, you and I
For a good part of our ride;
Seemed to me we were singing right on key.
But what did I know of love?
I thought we had enough
What we had was only good enough for me.
No big goodbye;
Our hug was gentle that last time.
I said I hoped you'd find the love you sought.
You never did look back;
I watched you fade into my past,
That sweater on your shoulders like a shawl.
I wonder, have you ever driven late into the night with the radio on,
And you hear this song,
And you find that you are smiling as you're drawn back to our ride
For a moment in time, you have regrets like mine.
There are songs I've heard
I may not know all the words
Still, when I hear them, they're old friends.
Some awaken memories
Like this one 'bout Bobby McGee
It brings you back to me again.
Current Mood: wistful
Current Music: Richard Berman - You, Me, and Bobby McGee
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November 5th, 2008
11:56 am - Yes we did.
I cried twice yesterday. Once during McCain's speech; once during Obama's. That seems about right, really.
We did this. In ways large and small, we did this. For the first time in a long time, I feel proud to say I'm a U.S. citizen.
When I moved to Scotland in 2003, we had just invaded Iraq, and we had begun our long slide into governmental mediocrity. The day I moved into my flat, our building's cleaning lady introduced herself to me; when she found out I was American, her first words were "Your president's a fuckin' dumbass!" I couldn't say much, since bashing one's president while living abroad is sometimes a risky choice, but I agreed.
Throughout my time there, our reputation as Americans slid. I knew I'd become really accepted by my friends when they started inviting me to do things with THEIR friends... but there was another piece. They started introducing me as a Canadian.
Why? Because even in Scotland, part of our closest international ally, people knew that Americans were bigoted warmongers. My friends knew I wasn't that, and they didn't want their friends to judge me, so they called me a Canadian. I always corrected them, of course.
But some of it was true. I was more Canadian than U.S. at that point, at least in terms of prevailing ideology. It was a difficult time. I was, frankly, ashamed of us.
And today I am so very proud.
We did this. And even if nothing else changes, even if so many of our fears come true and someone assassinates him, even if the economy continues to worsen (as it doubtless will, for a while), even if all of that, nothing can erase this.
And finally, perhaps, I can watch The American President, Dave, and The West Wing without wishing for the opportunity to believe in a President like that. I've got one.
Current Mood: elated
Current Music: Martin Sexton - Diner
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March 14th, 2008
02:17 am - LiveJournal is being sneaky and backwards
http://news.livejournal.com/106731.html?thread=68484587
This might be relevant to some of you. It's interesting to me because it showcases some issues we've been discussing in my leadership class. Specifically, it does a terrible job of enlisting support of others and of behaving with honesty and integrity.
LJ is getting rid of Basic (formerly called Free) accounts. For the moment, they're just making it so you can't make a new one, but there's orthography on the wall suggesting that those of us who have Basic accounts now will, eventually, lose them. It seems as though this is a move to raise revenue through increased ad impressions.
My own feelings on it are: I understand that they don't earn anything from Basic LJs, at least not directly. People with better Economics degrees than mine can talk about network effects, the concept of lots of free content leading to more paid users, etc., but I don't know for sure. I can see truth in the idea that they need to charge money to maintain the servers and the net connections.
But the fact that they created an Advisory Board for this sort of issue, then summarily ignored its inputs and tried to pass of the (rather major) change as a mere streamlining and simplification pisses me off. That's called lying. And the concept of loudly saying one thing while quietly doing another resonates especially well in the Week of Eliot Spitzer.
Grar.
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February 20th, 2008
02:13 am - seven quirky facts
(tagged by ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) kazulrw)
A. List seven habits/quirks/facts about yourself.
B. Tag seven people to do the same.
C. Do not tag the person who tagged you or say that you tag "whoever wants to do it."
1. Sometimes, when really bad things are happening, I find myself believing that it's all a fantasy, and that someone will soon hit "reset" and give us a chance to act differently. This is problematic during arguments, because I'll feel that we should stop, having explained the important bits, and then restart with the understanding but without the argument. I guess it's sometimes hard to take life seriously, because I feel like it will come around again.
2. I have cyclical attention-deficit disorder for hobbies. I'll get really interested in something, then put it down for a while, and eventually return to it. Often, this cycle spans years or even decades. It's a bit unusual how often some old interest reappears in my life as a current fixation. (vis. my current love of fountain pens and ink.)
3. I am scared of heights. Despite this, I have learned to rock climb, and have also earned a pilot's license. I actually started rock climbing to see if I could temper my acrophobia at all.
4. From a very early age--as early as I can remember thinking--I struggled with a philosophical problem I later learned to call the Chinese Room. For me, it always manifested with colors. I went through my childhood wondering whether the color I saw as "green" actually looked "green" to other people, or whether they simply saw it as "blue" or "asfsaf" but were otherwise consistent, or whether the other people were just acting normally to confuse me.
5. I have strong visual memory for navigation, such that if I've driven somewhere, even on a trip years ago spanning hundreds of miles, I can remember the sequence of turns to be made. Often these come to me as snapshots or short movies when thinking about a person or reason for travel; one of my "trips from Swarthmore" movies involves helping Rabi put her CD collection into her family's car when she lived in ML. I haven't been to runnerchild's house in a long time, but I could drive it without consulting a map or a road sign.
6. I get migraines from many sources, including fluorescent lights. It's the low-grade strobing effect of them. My peripheral vision picks up their flicker, and it unhinges my brain in some interesting ways.
7. I am a secret master of the Alpine Filing System. Much of my life is organized into piles, and I don't use "organized" mockingly. I can tell you what's in my piles, and I remember things years after they've been stashed somewhere. I am training myself to use more conventional filing systems, but good ol' AFS remains a trusted standby.
I was surprised by how many of my quirky things concerned memory. I guess that's good, and it remains a constant joy to have access to memory at all. I lost a lot of it during the time when I was really sick with mono, and a lot of things that happened during that period are still fuzzy, with names and faces gone. From the original prognosis, I'm halfway there: back to normal in 2.5 more years. Even this, though, is such an improvement. Here's to memory, and quirks.
I'll tag allypopsicle, invisibleowl, runnerchild, stepleton, wannabeartist, katietunning, and withunderscores, since it's clearly important to follow the rules and nominate exactly seven. For the rest of you, please feel free to contribute as well.
Current Music: Sara Bareilles
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February 16th, 2008
07:39 am - conversational nukes
Can I just say how tired I am of people using "well you wouldn't have those freedoms if it weren't for our soldiers defending your liberty" as a rebuttal for every. single. possible. complaint people have against the current administration?
Like, guess what, we had soldiers when Clinton was President, too. How come he got impeached, but if someone wants to say "it wasn't really necessary for Bush to say 'Bring It On' to the terrorists," it's unpatriotic to disrespect the soldiers?
I mean, which one has a higher likelihood of getting soldiers killed? Blowjob or bring it on?
Conversational nuke! It's like the new form of Godwin's Law.
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February 7th, 2008
02:56 am - metanalysis
Experience has shown us that virtually everything in the world can be seen as a metaphor for something else.
Discuss.
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January 19th, 2008
05:07 pm - Enterprise Rent-A-Car, you suck.
So, last Thursday (1/10/2008), I flew a friend to Burlington, VT, for some medical treatment. We landed at around 11:20, rented a car, and headed to the hospital. We returned the car at about 2:00 and flew home. It was a great day for it!
Skilled mathematicians will note that I had the car for approximately 2 hours and 40 minutes, which corresponds to $39 at their hourly rate of $15/hour.
Needless to say, I was quite surprised to discover a charge for $303.15 on my credit card today. With their daily rate of $49.99/day, that means I was charged for 6.1 days of car time. Pretty good return on investment!
To say that I am unimpressed is to understate the case somewhat. I'm currently being allowed to leave voice mail messages for people in the Enterprise hierarchy.
Good times.
Current Mood: ![[mood icon]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/classic/angry.gif) irritated
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January 17th, 2008
12:24 am - On finding ways to see people
So, I intended to go to Alumni Weekend this coming summer, but it turned out that I had booked a gig for that weekend before I'd know that it was That Weekend. This bums me out, because I was really hoping to go and see people.
I just got really excited about English-Scottish Ball, thinking that I'd drive down to see people then. So I go look it up, and I discover that, lo, E-S Ball is on the same weekend as Reachout's three-day-long Training Weekend that I run. So no dice there.
O friends, do you have any suggestions? Other than figuring out the whole Time Turner thing, which would be neat-if-impractical at this juncture?
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January 12th, 2008
04:23 pm - The usefulness of uselessness
O friends,
In the course of cleaning old papers, I ran across my printed copy of Professor Kitao's essay entitled "The Usefulness of Uselessness". I remember that Swat had many pamphlets printed in that same garnet and ivory, covering all sorts of topics. Somehow, this one made it into my "take home" pile.
You can read it online if you'd like. I just re-read it, and found some balm for an old ache there.
You see, I've been beating myself up about not being what I consider a good academic anymore. Sure, I've been doing lots of things, earned a pilot's license, am an officer of the national organization in my profession, and learned lots of things. But I'm not a good scholar of music or computer science anymore, and certainly not of theatre or religion or anything else I studied in college.
And yet I'm still a smart person, I guess. Lately I've heard more and more people remarking on how quickly I seem to pick up new things, and how it seems like information goes in and stays. (Those of you who remember what mononucleosis did to my mind and memory will understand how profoundly grateful I am to be hearing these things again).
And I've spent a while thinking about why those things happens. As so often occurs, a perfect reference appears once you're far along the thought path. Kitao writes:
Years after graduation, students may forget the subject--the facts and details they studied so hard for their exams--unless they continue refreshing them by having gone into that field. But the way of thinking they assimilated stays. . . . Learning how to learn by learning how to think makes a well-educated person. If that is all it does, it still is of value. But learning how to learn not only expands the mind. It also gives you a lifelong asset. Once you have it, like it or not, it stays with you for the rest of your life. That's the true value and reward that college courses have to offer, even though sometimes, perhaps most of the time, they may appear to be lacking in usefulness.
And as I read, I think, "yes". Thank you, Swarthmore.
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December 10th, 2007
02:15 am - on yearbooks and life
I've spent a lot of time cleaning lately, working on getting things into a better order. Not spring, but I feel this instinctive need for it lately. At the bottom of a long-present pile, I found an unopened box from Swarthmore. Inside it, the 2003 Halcyon.
I saw many old friends, lots of whom I've come to miss more than I'd thought possible, but I always see a change in myself. All the pictures of me show a serious person without much of a smile. I wonder if that's how people knew me in college.
And I wonder why it took so long to learn how to laugh at the world, how to smile at it, and how to disengage a bit. There's further still to go, of course, but the journey begins with a few steps, right?
I miss you, friends. How are you?
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October 29th, 2007
09:23 pm - AIM sucks
Anyone have tips on how to deal with the fact that someone has AGAIN hacked my AIM screen name and changed my password? There's apparently no way to get a human through AIM.
ETA: Apparently if you still have an AOL account, you can override it from there. Yay.
Current Mood: angry
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August 8th, 2007
April 24th, 2007
12:19 am - Dr. Zweig rules
Stolen from iconoclam, a letter to the editor from today's New York Times:
To the Editor:
Re “A Sharp Turn for the Supreme Court on Abortion” (letters, April 20):
I am a rheumatologist caring for a patient whose lupus nephritis is flaring. Her creatinine is rising as her platelet count falls, and she has failed to improve with pulse methylprednisolone and intravenous cyclophosphamide. I am contemplating using rituximab. I would like to refer this case to the United States Supreme Court for its guidance.
Richard Zweig, M.D.
Santa Rosa, Calif., April 20, 2007
Current Music: Grada - Swallow
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April 5th, 2007
10:06 pm - glam rock
I need a glam rocker costume for tomorrow night's climbing competition. And I have no ideas.
Scratch that. I have one idea: David Bowie-esque WTPs ("World's Tightest Pants") à la Labyrinth, with a contact juggling ball or something stuffed down the crotch. I've actually got some Polartec tights that I use as a winter baselayer... they're pretty tight.
However, given that my intent is to amuse rather than horrify everyone, I think I'll keep my tights to myself.
Other ideas? Anyone?
Current Music: Simon & Garfunkel - Save The Life Of My Child
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March 31st, 2007
11:04 pm - dear LJ friends
Dear LJ friends (and this one, uncharacteristically, isn't friendslocked),
I miss you. How are you doing? What are you up to? Come say hi!
Love,
me
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March 8th, 2007
01:27 am - iPhone
http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/?id=20070225 .
Current Music: Simon and Garfunkel - Blues Run The Game
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February 16th, 2007
February 1st, 2007
January 21st, 2007
10:51 am - Evolution of the lexicon
Velcro became velcro.
Generic Velcro hit the market, and was known as "hook and loop fastener".
I wonder if someone has now trademarked "hook and loop fastener", because the name I'm seeing most often lately is "rip and stick fastener".
Rip and stick? That sounds like the description and cause of damage to my clothing, or something.
Current Mood: ![[mood icon]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/classic/smile.gif) amused
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January 18th, 2007
02:28 am - Stove efficiency
Oh dear lord. Someone has created an efficiency calculator for alcohol-fueled hiking stoves, with an obvious emphasis on homemade stoves. A new toy to play with!
Ahahaha... I am having so much fun! I wish I knew more (or could find someone who does know more) about flame physics, though. It's all trial and error at this point.
I've only tested two of the four stoves I've built so far, but
Stove one: 39.0° F–107.1° F: 39.6% efficiency.
Stove two: 39.0° F–122.3° F: 48.4% efficiency
So far the closed jet pressurized burner wins handily, although it did get a little bit of extra priming fuel. I will retest tomorrow without it.
New toolset pieces will arrive in the mail soon: - a better pin vise with a set of #61-80 bits (at the moment, I have even numbers 60-70 and 73,75,79)
- a threaded insert tool, for placing threaded rivets, which will allow a more gastight seal on the filling valves
Things I'm wondering about today:
- Closed construction almost certainly yields a higher jet velocity, which would seem to contribute to turbulent flow at the jet. This promotes mixing, which keeps the flame closer to the jet. An open nonpressurized nonjetted burner is working on laminar flow principles. This may be more efficient if you can keep enough oxygen supply to the flame. However, we're not working in a vacuum (otherwise nothing would burn). Jet construction contributes to reliability, since jets can relight each other, and also spreads the flame front across a larger area. Discuss.
- What effect will smaller or larger jets have on the efficiency?
- What effect does number of jets have?
- Would a partially-open pressure burner work well, with a smaller central well? It might allow greater pressurization of the burner while retaining the simplicity and ease of priming that comes with an open burner.
- What flame color, as measured when a pot is in place, denotes optimal heating? Blue, I would tend to think, as blue is the color of the most efficient flame. Where, though, should the pot go? I'm currently using a pot stand I made from aluminum gutter strainer. Should it be higher/lower? How much effect does that have on efficiency?
- One of my more recent designs featured fiberglass cloth stuffed inside a sealed pressure burner. It was my theory that the cloth, which offers the alcohol a far greater evaporation surface, would allow the stove to light quicker and with less priming. That seems to be true; however, the cloth also seems to slow the alcohol's release rate, meaning that there's a Long Slow Decline in flame volume with that stove--far greater than that with the other stoves. Does the fiberglass offer tangible benefits that outweigh the loss of efficiency late in the burn cycle?
- I believe that double-walled construction offers benefits even in a closed pressure burner, because the added aluminum seems to conduct heat more effectively from the burner area down into the fuel, vaporizing it faster. Are there better ways to do this? Does it have advantages in terms of efficiency?
- Stove two has fiberglass cloth attached to its outside, in order to serve as a wick for priming purposes. Is this effective?
- Some of my later efforts have placed the jets closer to the center of the burner, on the theory that it will concentrate the heat better underneath the pot, improving efficiency. Since this type of stove is only used for boiling water (and possibly for simmering), scorching is not an issue. What effect does jet position and direction have?
- Stove two has an adjustment I added later: a small lip of aluminum around the outside top of the burner, which I added to help it vaporize its fuel better. This leads toward the recurrent question: how much fuel vaporization is needed? How much is good?
- I keep wondering whether there's any meaningful way to do a self-heating mixer tube like pressurized petroleum stoves use. It can fairly be argued that the entire stove is a mixer tube with these, but I wonder what would happen with a physical tube.
- Is epoxied construction (J-B Weld) better than taped (Reflectix) construction in anything other than purity?
- Is there a way to build a top-burning pressurized burner that can function as its own pot stand?
Notes:
These tests were performed in the absence of a windscreen, which hurts their efficiency somewhat. They were also performed in the absence of wind, which improves their efficiency somewhat.
Stove one is an open pressurized jet burner. It has an open central well, with double-walled construction, and 32 thumbtack jets.
Stove two is a closed pressurized jet burner. It has a closed system, filling port sealed with a #10 flange head machine screw, and has 20 #70 AWG (0.000097 in/.0024 mm) jets in Photon configuration.
Also, for those of you who care about such things: Gander Mountain stores are having a ridiculous sale right now. They've discontinued carrying the MSR Titan Kettle / Pocket Rocket combination set (retail $80), and are clearing it at $34.97. That's $5 less than the price of either the titanium kettle or the canister stove separately.
Current Mood: fun
Current Music: fire
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