I am doubly sad: Richard Harter has died, and most of the readers here now probably never heard of him. He was a dry wit who frequented talk.origins on usenet with brilliant comments; he ought to have been recognized as one of the early bloggers for his idiosyncratic and engrossing web page, Richard Harter’s World, which has been regularly and frequently updated since 1996.

It’s an eclectic page — Harter just seems to have manually linked in lots and lots of web pages of arbitrary stuff; humor, history, science, correspondence, computer science, science fiction, whatever struck his fancy. Go ahead and get sucked into it — it’s about as dangerous as TVTropes that way.

---

Perhaps even more appropriately, you can read about Harter on talk.origins.

There is no story to this story. I spent a long day driving yesterday, and my mind wandered, and I’m writing it down, because I can. That’s all, don’t expect anything more. It’s totally pointless.
[Read more…]

I’ve been doing the tourist thing this morning, and I bought a hat. I thought it would make me look more like the natives.

Except that it’s warm and sunny, and Icelanders don’t look like madmen. Rats, foiled again.

Every time I visit Australia, the inhabitants proudly tell me how every living thing on the continent wants to kill me in horrible, awful ways. Now that I’ve visited Iceland, I can just laugh at them and tell them I’ve visited a place where the earth rises up and tries to kill you in horrible, awful ways. Here’s the first Icelandic word I’ve learned.

[Read more…]

Hey, gang! I haven’t forgotten the blog! I’m just in all these strange exciting places meeting strange new people and have been too busy to pay much attention to this internet thingie for a bit. I just left Germany — here I am with Taslima, Tanya Smith, and Rebecca Watson — and am now wandering about Iceland.

You’ll have to forgive me if I’m finding the real world a bit more fun than the blog for now. Don’t worry, I’ll be back in Morris next Monday, and everything will be reversed then.

So I found my way to a Bäckerei — not hard, they’re everywhere — and discovered that my server had not a word of English, and my German is decidedly rusty to the point of crumbling. I know some nouns, at least, and I quickly discovered that I could manage with just two words.

“Frühstuck!” I said.

She started rattling off a list of words that included “-brot” and “-fleisch” and “-käse” and a lot of other utterly unrecognizable phrases.

I simply said, “Ja” to each. It was easy.

Thus I ended up with a platter of meat and cheese, and a basket of assorted bread, and a cup of strong dark coffee, und Ich beginnen mit the gut fressen. And it was real bread, with texture and flavor and a wonderful flaky crust, Gott sei dank. Ausgezeichnet!

I may not be able to leave this country, at this rate. Just the thought of the pale bland gooey Minnesota version of “bread” fills me with revulsion.

It was not an easy accomplishment — I’d spent a day waiting in the Minnesota heat before I could board my plane, and I was a burnt out frazzled mess by the time I got wedged into my slot in the flying tin can, and then I spent most of the flight in a sweating, mildly nauseated lump. This was not a good start to the trip. But now I’m in my hotel in Köln, I forked over the exorbitant fee for the internet (which isn’t very reliable), and took a shower…a long hot shower. I’m feeling pretty good now.

At some point, I shall have to emerge from my restful nest and forage. Germans have beer and food, right?

My grades are all in, and I can consider the semester done, done, done. Then what do I discover in my mailbox, to the envy of the staff there, but this lovely sight:

All I know is that the return address is to Jesus in California. Could it be…? Nah.

Praise Jesus, anyway!

Anyone from Iceland reading the blog?