Newspaper nominations were due today. The Crimson sent off eight candidates for awards today. Some of them will do very well, I suspect. We’ll find out in a few months.
So that was part of the day. And my fingers are covered in newsprint. If a police officer stopped me today he would suspect I escaped during booking. And he could fingerprint me with ease.
Had a few meetings today. Handed off my grades. Investigated a camera repair issue. And now I’m down to the Big Database Project at the end of the semester.
It is a great feeling. At the end of the night I just sat and enjoyed it for a few minutes. I have an official end of semester song, which I picked up a year or so back. When it is all done, I turn to Van Morrison.
It must work, the nerves can step down from DefCon 3. The shoulders relax just a bit. I almost nodded off listening to that.
Also, it is still ridiculously cold.
Brian and Elizabeth joined me for lunch at Moe’s Barbecue. I’m beginning to like that place. And I discovered last weekend we’ll soon be getting one close to home. They can’t open soon enough.
They don’t have pie, but many will be pleased to learn that they offer banana pudding.
This year’s family ornaments have been made. Took longer than it should, but life is full of little tasks that you think you can complete in 45 minutes that take upwards of three hours of your evening.
First there was going through 11 months of photographs for the ones worth of putting on our tree. And then that list must be cut in half. Agonizing is then done to get it down to the requisite number. I do three a year.
The tree has grown nicely at that rate, there are ornaments from Belize, San Francisco and Louisville. Our graduations from the master’s program we shared together are there, football is there and our engagement and wedding. But there are also regular pictures, days in the park or picnics by a pond.
Anyway. I get these through Cafepress, where I have made money in the past. Remember “Don’t get stuck on stupid?” Made several bucks off that slogan on a bumper sticker a few years back. Occasionally something else sells, but I don’t spend a lot of time there. Except for today.
I had to open the shop, blow out the cobwebs, sweep, put the chairs down and upload the chosen pictures to the slowest servers not involving Julian Assange. Fortunately I didn’t have to re-edit any pictures, making the banal turn boring and flirting with tedious. The assembly process — choosing the product I wish to make, putting the image on the product, ordering and repeating — is somewhat more pleasant than sausage making, gives way to a very nice product, however. I love those ornaments.
And for maybe the first year I’ve smartly ordered the ornaments early enough that they might actually make it on the tree this year. Usually it works like this “Merry Christmas. You can put these on the tree next year!”
Next year we might have to get a small tree for this. I think we’re outgrowing the plastic apartment tree The Yankee bought some years back. One day, I hope, they’ll take over the main tree. Of course we have all of the other ornaments. At some point we’re going to have a tree in every room, I’m afraid.
Links: Just two today, because putting these two together amuses me.
Journalists, says Alan Mutter aren’t objective. Never have been, he says. And we should do away with the pretense.
NASA has discovered a new life form, a bacteria called GFAJ-1 that is unlike anything currently living in planet Earth. It’s capable of using arsenic to build its DNA, RNA, proteins, and cell membranes. This changes everything.
NASA is saying that this is “life as we do not know it”. The reason is that all life on Earth is made of six components: Carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus and sulfur. Every being, from the smallest amoeba to the largest whale, share the same life stream. Our DNA blocks are all the same.
[…]
The implications of this discovery are enormous to our understanding of life itself and the possibility of finding organisms in other planets that don’t have to be like planet Earth.
Once again, that’s (alien-ish) life imitating art:
Back to Mutter on approaching news with a nod to appreciating our objectivity:
For journalists to be able to report effectively on the news and its significance, we have to replace the intellectually indefensible pretense of objectivity with a more authentic standard that journalists actually can live up to.
The way to do that is to treat the public like adults by providing the clearest possible understanding of who is delivering news and commentary – and where they are coming from. Hence, the following proposal:
Let’s take advantage of the openness and inexhaustible space of the Internet to have every journalist publish a detailed statement of political, personal and financial interests at her home website and perhaps even in a well publicized national registry. Full disclosure would enable consumers to make their own informed judgments about the potential biases and believability of any journalist.
No one would read the individual disclosures, but they could be consulted when Spidey-senses started tingling. Blogs and their endless archives, searchable and permanent, would be a good place for this. But who reports on the disclosures? And would my biases inform my disclosure? Or would they stifle it? Perhaps I leave something out, is it a sin of omission, or just a harmless mistake? Or what if a particular detail of my life and my beat didn’t previously intersect, but now do.
Suddenly it sounds like a wiki.
In domestic news, I was instructed to put a lasagna in the oven this evening. Our friends Shane and Brian were here for dinner and they stayed late telling stories. The bigger picture is that I’ll get to have lasagna leftovers for the next three days. This is an excellent development.
As I tried to put the dining room table back in order Allie was jumping on every chair as I tried to move it. In a previous life, she might have been a snow skiing cat. She’s longing for the lifts.
This doesn’t seem right at all, to be in December. But the mind makes perception funny that way. If it isn’t December, smart guy, what is it? July?
Well, no. But I wouldn’t mind a few weeks worth of May. It has just recently turned to a bitter chill (for here) which at least makes it feel like winter is creeping in. Doesn’t mean we have to like it. If I can’t have May I’ll take mid-March, please.
So the monthly video, designed to encapsulate the theme of the next four weeks in 35 seconds, is up. This one was both obvious and hasty. Busy day today. Work, meetings, study. Had a great teaching moment with the newspaper today. We will have to run a correction next week.
Lunch with Brian, he suggested Moe’s, a local barbecue chain that now stretches from North Carolina to Colorado. This particular one is close to Brian’s office, in an old oyster house. The place feels run down, maybe even transient for a restaurant. Yuppies can go there to feel authentic about their barbecue.
And it is good, if a little pricey. This is my compliment: It is like Bob Sykes‘ barbecue, but without having to go to Bessemer.
I love barbecue.
In finding links for this entry I found this BBQ blog. Why didn’t we think of that? They wisely break their entries down by state. Not that they can be everywhere at once, they’re leaving out a lot of Alabama. (They’re looking for contributions, if you’d like to help them out.)
I got to have Thai for dinner with The Yankee. We visited Surin West, where we haven’t been since sometime before our move. We sat at the same table. Had the same disinterested waiter. I may have had the same meal, who knows. The coconut soup was delicious, as always. And actually warmed us up a bit. Have I mentioned it is cold?
Sent her home, shot the movie above, bought some things and ran other errands.
And then Up. It is a touching film about which much has been written. I’ll simply say that it seems to me to be about how the spirit of love changes. First the child, the dream, then the wife who becomes wrapped up in the home, which gives way to the boy and the bird and the dog.
The animation, of course, is brilliant. The montage was full of life and yearning and loss, even before it was about that. And it might be one of the best montages ever recorded. That’s art.
And now a little studying. More tomorrow, happy December!
family / friends / Monday — Comments Off on Things I learned today 22 Nov 10
Two of our best friends lost their little boy last night. Your heart just aches. Certainly unexpected, a baby, a life of potential surrounded by a family full of love. Some things just shouldn’t be so.
But some earthly duties are short. Even as memories and pain and joy can all seem long-lasting.
Our hearts are with our friends Brian, Elizabeth and their daughter. They are a big part of our family, and they could use an extra prayer. I’ve been thinking a great deal about this hymn. Their hymnal and mine both contain it and, today, that’s enough.
