Weird Referrer - When someone visits my blog, I can see the link they used. Sometimes they get here via search engine. Sometimes the search is weird.

One such link came from someone who searched Yahoo for 'the news shose france'. Somehow, that led to my blog. I must have typed "shows" or "chose" incorrectly somewhere.

I've Fallen And I Can't Get Up - Many of us were surprised and perhaps a little bit sad to hear that New Hampshire's Old Man of the Mountain had collapsed. (credit due to Ed King for the title of this entry)

State landmark falls from mountain - May. 4, 2003

I was wondering, what's to stop New Hampshire from constructing a replacement out of some long-lasting, light and authentic-looking polymer? They used healthy amounts of epoxy to hold the original in place, and even steel cables, so they are not above messing with nature. The new one would be a lot cheaper to maintain. They have plenty of pictures of the thing. A computer could probably model it.

OK - I don't really think it would be the same.

Maybe this says something about the youth of our nation. No, not the kids - I mean how youthful our nation is. One of our states has as its symbol a rock formation that only lasted just over a couple of centuries into the life of the country. Very adolescent to think a symbol like that is going to last forever. Maybe we ought to choose things that indicate we have some staying power.

On a related note, the American Eagle became endangered, and it took serious effort to get it some help. It would have been quite embarrassing had our national bird become extinct. But should embarrassment be our motivating factor in trying to preserve our environment?

Epoxy and steel cables can keep the form of our world in place for a limited time. Isn't a vibrant, healthy, thriving environment more important than appearances?

From Pravda: Drunken Moose - First, check out this brief story: Pravda.RU Dangerous Drunken Moose

Okay, now you have to absorb that Pravda has a "fun" section of its website, kinda like the Reuters Oddly Enough.

Pravda's fun is indeed fun.

Mind Blank - Must... type... blog... entry...

Heh. Noticed the blog had been silent since Tuesday, so I figured it was time to force myself to post something. So this will be pretty random.

Patti recently was shaking her head at my comments that I read the news to relax. Well, she's right that the news simply does not relax, so that is a stupid idea. I really should have said that it was one of the things I did with my time when I should be relaxing. Some of the stories that come to my attention are nearly worth posting, but I don't have anything intelligent to say about them. Maybe my brain is shrinking.

That brain comment... I'm not kidding. I used to feel like a genius, and now I feel like an idiot. My kids seem awfully smart, and they amaze me daily. How did I get so stupid? Is my brain just hardening? Did it start out like a fresh mozzarella and is now a great, big, hard chunk of parmesan? It certainly feels that way.

I'm too young for it to be Alzheimer's.

Take "Alzheimer's" for example. At first I typed it "alzheimers" and when the spell-checker snagged it, I capitalized it. But that didn't fix the problem. Instead of figuring it out, I had to learn from the spell-checker suggestion that it was possessive. Maybe I'm just lazy.

Mattie's response when asked if she wanted to eat breakfast: "I just want to dance." That's cool with me.

I'm listening to Joseph Arthur. Specifically, his latest album Redemption's Son. I caught it thanks to my coworker Ed and his listening to WMVY.

It was the album of the week on WMVY last week. It turns out they have a cool website, and you can get their live feed from there with Windows Media Player.

Joseph Arthur's stuff is somewhat moody, somewhat peppy in places. It's relaxing to work to. I hear Peter Gabriel discovered him, and although he has a quite distinct style, I can hear why Gabriel got interested. There's a kind of lingering in his music. The lyrics are decent and sparse - not too dense. It lets the music come through. I don't have the musical experience to give it a decent review, but I'm enjoying it.

[UPDATE: By the way - I knew "Alzheimer's" was possessive. The spell-checker merely reminded me.]

We adjust - I wandered into a conversation recently regarding the advances in creating fertilizable eggs from male cells.

Quite often lately I am hearing people disturbed by where technology and research are taking us.

I'll be frank. We haven't mastered fire yet, and that never stopped us, so why be upset at these further advances? Seriously - technology has been moving forward and changing our lives ever since the human race can remember. And we adjust. Life is not the same as it was 3K years ago, but we have adjusted.

Yes, we can argue about the social impact of science and technology. We ought to, and we ought to contemplate what upcoming changes mean to us and our descendants. But the tenor of these discussions is usually more like "I'm afraid of where we're going." and "we're deviating from the plan when we mess with these things."

Me? I'm afraid of where we are now. Let's deal with that a little bit. Or, let's learn to accept that, as a species, we change ourselves, our society, and our environment through the accumulation of knowledge and the creation of technology. Deal with it - and don't take that in a mean-spirited way.

As for "the plan" - if I believe there is a plan, then I believe this is all part of it. If I believe in a universe with no plan, then that particular problem goes away. So, no worries!

Asian Market Found! - Before I forget, I have to mention that I finally found a decent asian foods market!

Asiana
Food Market
92 Warren Ave
East Providence, RI 02914
401.438.9992

(Found this article about the place after the fact.)

The kids and I found this place while searching for "Pocky." We went into Whole Foods Market in Providence and asked about Asian foods there. The nice folks at that place directed us to Asiana, which was not far away at all.

Asiana has a wide variety of foods. We found roe, many snacks, dried fish, tea, nori, soups and soup stock, candy, rice, noodles... the whole shebang. It's a small place, but it's positively packed.

Obscure, Incorrect Reference - Ah. My previous reference to Wilde may, in fact, belong to Churchill. See:Drinking Quotes

Lady Astor, aghast at a party. "Mr. Churchill your drunk!"
Mr. Churchill: "And you, Lady Astor, are ugly. As for my condition, it will pass by the morning.
You, however, will still be ugly."

"Sir, if you were my husband, I would poison your drink."
Lady Astor to Winston Churchill

"Madam, if you were my wife, I would drink it."
--Churchill's reply

I'll have to look into this further. Soon.

Sushi Overload - I almost typed "Sushi Overlord" for a second there.

So, for the first time I made sushi for more than just Margaret and myself. Lessons learned: it takes a while to make sushi for 6 adults. The maki pictured to the left represent a fraction of the food that was served, though I did not keep track of the final amount. Sake has a calming effect, but it makes it tough to keep track of exectly what is going on. I knocked over a botle of sushi-su (vinegar) which luckily didn't spill. For this I was accused of having enjoyed too much fermented and distilled beverage, however this was not the case. I had consumed just enough, and the motor function I lack can not easily be explained by alcohol consumption. In other words, Oscar Wilde might say to me "I'll be sober in the morning and you'll still be clumsey." Or something like that.

Sushi derives it's name from the Japanese word for vinegar (su) and "shi" meaning skillfulness of hand. I think I proved that you don't need too much skill to prepare rudimentary sushi. The guests appeared satisfied. There was the customary mess in the kitchen from having prepared something for guests for the first time.

I'll have to remember to tell you about the Asian market I found. Later - now it is time to rest.