Category: family

Global Warming is Clearly a Hoax


Looks like the Iditerod

 
Still l
ooks like the Iditerod

 
OK, not so much



It appears that they are holding the Iditerod in Arizona

It appears that the Iditarod sled dog race is missing a crucial element, snow:

The Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race is the most popular sporting event in Alaska, and has long been a test of human and animal endurance. Traveling a 1,000-mile path across Arctic tundra from Willow to Nome (with a ceremonial start in Anchorage), mushers and their teams of 16 specially-trained dogs must withstand some of the most extreme winter weather on Earth: blizzards and whiteout conditions, along with freezing temperatures, are commonplace.

The major challenge that mushers had to contend with this year — and that forced many of the more experienced racers out of the event — was not unusual cold and snow. In fact, it was the opposite — a near total lack of snow with ice covering across large stretches of the course. Mushing over snow cover across steep, rugged terrain is difficult enough, but the sleds were not designed for traversing gravel.

I actually saw the opening of the Iditerod in 1968, and the idea that there would be no snow was completely incomprehensible.

In fact, my enduring memory of that day is to walk into a f%$#ing igloo, and thinking how warm it was in there. (There was a sort of a fair at the beginning of the race.)

It was the first time that I was on a (pretty lame, actually) roller coaster.

The two things that I remember are the roller coaster and the start of the Iditerod.

H/t DC at the Stellar Parthenon BBS.

I Have a Very Strange Son

I have been watching the Dr. Who marathon on BBC America, and this evening, I had an epiphany.

Since I was at home, I shared it with Charlie.

I would have shared it with Natalie at the same time, but seeing as how she is in Hawaii, she will have to read it on Facebook.

My epiphany was that the toys in the Pixar film Toy Story are weeping angels. (See picture the picture with the doctor, I am not the first to come up with this idea.)

Whenever someone looks at Sheriff Woody or Buzz Lightyear they are inanimate, but when unobserved, they move on their own.

They, and Mr. Potato Head, are weeping angels.

I mentioned it to Charlie, and he suffered a bit of a meltdown, and he strongly implied that I had ruined his childhood.

About a half hour later, I talked to him again, and he gave me a high-five.

He told me that after some reflection, he realized that my brief moment of insight actually improved his memories of the whole Toy Story series.

Weird.

FWIW, he’s getting into Dr. Who, though he is still first and foremost a Brony.

In particular, he likes the degree to which the show adheres to the Novikov self-consistency principle, and so does not  create paradoxes.

Natalie Should be in Hilo Now

We got up an ungodly hour this morning to put Natalie on a flight to San Francisco, and then connects to Honolulu and from there to Hilo airport on the big island.

The flight left at 6:00 am, so we set our alarms at 3:00 am.

My daughter is being to Hawaii to be with her Grandparents tomorrow.

It’s a senior year thing.

My little girl is graduating from high school this year, which is unbelievably f%$#ing weird.

I remember holding her in one hand at her naming about a week after her birth.

They grow up so fast.

Win

This is epic. Brad and Dallas Woodhouse are brothers and pundits. One is a Democrat, and the other is a Republican, and while they were on CSPAN, their mom called in to berate them for fighting at family gatherings:

Everybody knows that the best part about CSPAN is the unpredictable nature of the show’s call-in segments, where regular hosts and guests do an admirable job of fielding unusual questions with no advance warning. But brothers Brad and Dallas Woodhouse are now the champions of awkward CSPAN calls, after the politically divided brothers ended up taking a call from their mom.

“Oh God, it’s mom,” Dallas Woodhouse said as soon as “Joy” from North Carolina started to speak.

“You’re right, I’m from down south,” she said. “And I’m your MOTHER.”

She’d called to take issue with something her kids said on air: That the brothers’ political bickering — you see, one is liberal, and the other is conservative — is typical of most families. “I don’t know many families that are fighting at Thanksgiving,” she said. “I’m hoping you’ll have some of this out of your system when you come here for Christmas. I would really like a peaceful Christmas.


Epic

What the Hairy One* Said

My older brother, Sasquatch Stephen, makes a very good point about the tactics of ALEC (American Legislative Exchange Council), which is that while they are a bunch of evil mother f%$#ers who will be first up against the wall when the revolution comes, their tactics viewed in isolation are in fact both laudable and effective:

In the well duh category, the Huffington Post recently posted an article entitled Democrats Create An ALEC-Killer.

Gee, often I have heard the cries about these dark, underhanded, suspicious tactics of this group.

And what are these tactics, why the Republicans have organized a right-wing group to push for its policies at the state level, providing political discipline, they create draft statutes, coordinate activities, and support people who agree with them across the spectrum. And all this has worked for them very well over the last decade.

You know, this is called activism. I once tried to point this out at a MoveOn meeting I was stupid enough to attend. The reception to that comment wasn’t good.

Sure it’s financed by the right’s most fanatical and finanically interested participants, and you expected different?

(emphasis mine)

The reaction at the MoveOn meeting is not surprising.

MoveOn has always been more about giving comfortable people the impression that they are doing something  than it is about actually getting sh%$ done.

*I have it on good authority that he once frightened a Chinese village that described him as a “Hairy Giant.”

20 Years ……… Jeebus

It’s my 20th wedding anniversary tonight.

We will be celebrating it on the Hebrew calendar date, because today is my Mom’s Yartzheit, and so a celebration is not in order tonight. (Yes, I lit a candle)

I am stunned.

Note that I am not stunned that Sharon is still with me, she is not the divorcing kind, but rather that she has not (yet) murdered me, because my little Cutsie Woodles IS the murdering kind.

Thank God for women with poor taste in men.

I’m Back!!!!

I’ve missed something less than 10 days blogging since I started in 2007.

This is the first time that I have taken 2 days off from blogging in a row.

This was a good thing.

My kids were helping with a haunted house with Open Space Arts, and Sharon* and I decided to make the most of it.

We had a couple of romantic evenings, including going to the movies to see The Judge, which has amongst its stars Robert Downey Jr, Robert Duvall, and Billy Bob Thornton, 3 actors for whom I would pay admission to hear them read a phone book.

*Love of my life, light of the cosmos, she who must be obeyed, my wife.

Corrupting My Kids


Be seeing you!

Some years ago, I received a complete DVD set of what is arguably the best show ever put on Television, The Prisoner.

It is certainly the most innovative drama yet to grace the small screen.  (I’m not sure whether the works of Ernie Kovacs are more innovative, hence the “drama” modifier)

I have decided that it’s time for me to introduce my children to the work.

They’ve already seen the first episode, and in re-watching it, it appears to be even more timely than when I saw it first in the late 1970s.

Somehow the concerns about privacy and surveillance seem particularly apropos now.

We Went to Artscape this Today

One of the oldest open air arts festivals in the nation.

We had a lot of fun looking at various arts and crafts, most notably a glass artist who works I borosilicate (Pyrex™) which rather surprised me, as most glass artists I know work with much lower temperature glass.

There was also music and a wide range of carnival-type foods.!

Finally, there are a fair number of booths of for profit companies, including a Geico booth with a very cross gecko.,

You make a couple of jokes about eating insects, and they take it personally.

Go figure.

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