But it’s not, I swear! As far as I recall, the number of products or services that I have actually gotten excited about is, maybe, a dozen. I suppose that’s a side-effect of living in the past, where if someone comes up and wants to show me a new Tactical(r) self-defense cane, I’m going to be comparing it to long-established products like the Henschel VK4501 (aka “King Tiger”) which is almost certainly superior unless you are going on a plane.
I can’t remember where and when I wrote about it; I think it was here – but since I forget, it does not count. The point, I recall (because I keep discovering a’fresh) is that there is a certain basic recipe for cake and once you understand it, everything is a matter of proportion of flour to milk and how you cook it. For example, a pan cake is a cake cooked in a pan. A waffle is a cake cooked in a waffle iron. A popover is a cake cooked in a cup. Now, we can argue whether lard or tallow or butter makes a popover a Yorkshire pudding, but the basics are: a quantity of flour, a quantity of eggs (for structure) some salt, some melted butter (or lard or tallow or even vegetable oil, and then something to make it foam a bit, maybe. If there is absolutely nothing to make it foam, I think maybe you have shortbread. If there’s baking powder, it’s a pancake or a waffle. If air is lofted into it with a whisk, it’s a popover or Yorkshire pudding. But once you understand how runny it should be, how fatty it should be, and how airy it should be, you can produce a tremendous amount of Europe’s greatest cuisine. Unless you get into millefeuille which is basically butter/bread damascus with no air in it… Anyhow.
I really feel stupid, saying this, or really, having to say it.
I can get behind this:
Who’d have thought that the Canadians would stop apologizing for being stuck in this confusing situation, and would start bossing around the face-eating leopards? Wow. Que les etrange temps roulent.
After way too many years (4, 5 or so) the Hot Shed is officially “done.” That means that the list of changes I want to make is pretty close to zero. Obviously, there will always be a few things but when you’re down to figuring out the lighting arrangement, you’re done.
I’m going to offer that as a postulate. The attempt to eradicate history requires so much effort and energy that the attempt, itself, leaves a mark – no matter what, there are going to be traces, left by the traces, and the traces before, and even the attempt to right a wrong will be see as a wrong by those who were happy with the status quo.
Actually, I used to hang out at Affinity [aff] because sometimes there was interesting far-ranging discussions and art, and creativity. I started here at Pharyngula, when it was still under ScienceBlogs (I still have the mug!) and came to enjoy the rough-and-tumble crotch-kicking and religion-bashing. I still track there, but I have found that, in the last year, my ability to stay awake is seriously compromised, and the wars of religion are just a waste of time. In fact, I often catch myself thinking that the right-thinking people of the world were too busy pounding on theists to deconstruct the burgeoning fascist dictatorship that was growing in the wings.
Warning: Potentially Embarrassing References To 1980s Music
Of course, the autocrats are assuming that the AIs will be nietzschean ubermenschen, but …
I used to be a highly creative person. I’m not bragging but one idea I threw out over a sushi dinner at Higashi West got turned into a start-up which netted the founder about $200mn. I’ve had a bunch to drink and topped it off with a Zoloft, so forgive me if I wander a bit. It’s snowing out and the shop is too cold and I’m not sure if I want to play computer games, tonight, or try to write.