Dave Thomas points out a tremendously ironic goof on the cover of the Barnes and Noble edition of the Autobiography of Charles Darwin.
Note the picture on the cover. Now check out this.
Google Lures
From my September server logs, my favorites among the search engine strings bringing folks to Inkstain:
- teflon pants
- broad street pump
In addition, Planet Fleck, my aggregator, received oddly misdirected Google fallout from Pika’s penis mushroom.
Laramie, Albuquerque
I went to the opening last night of the Albuquerque High theater kids’ performance of The Laramie Project.
It was draining and moving and I’m tremendously proud of what the kids accomplished. It’s a play worth caring about, and they honored it.
Tonight (Fri.) and Saturday this weekend (Oct. 1 and 2) and next Thurs. – Sat. (Oct. 7 – 10), 7 p.m., at the Albuquerque High School theater, 800 Odelia Rd NE. (Odelia is Indian School west of Interstate 25, enter the theater on the school’s east side entrance.)
Doing Docs
In the course of building GNOME 2.8, I happened to see some DocBook errors flying past in the terminal window, and I thought, “Well, there’s something I know how to fix.” So today I sat down and banged out a patch to the Rhythmbox docs so they’re now valid DocBook. I was pretty rusty – the details of DocBook are thankfully not something that I’d committed to memory – there’s only so much room in my brain.
Inspired and with nothing else pressing to do this afternoon (I’d already cleaned the stove), I found a couple of other places where docs fixes were in order in 2.8. The dictionary docs got a necessary tweak, and shaunm pointed me to a new contribution from the Sun team – docs for the vino thingie – that had yet to be integrated. Integrated they now are, at least in CVS.
The Laramie Project
For those of you reading this in Albuquerque, the Albuquerque High School theater kids are doing The Laramie Project over the next two weekends. It is the story of Laramie, Wyoming, in the aftermath of what happened to Matthew Shepard. My daughter, Nora, is in it, and I’m really proud of her and her theater colleagues for doing something important. You should go see it if you happen to live here.
Thurs. – Sat., this weekend (Sept. 30 – Oct. 2) and next (Oct. 7 – 10), 7 p.m., at the Albuquerque High School theater, 800 Odelia Rd NE. (Odelia is Indian School west of Interstate 25, enter the theater on the school’s east side entrance.)
Vuelta
No, the U.S. television network that carries cycling spent all its money on the Giro and Le Tour, and decided not to air the Vuelta. Sucks, as it looks like this was a far better race than Le Tour this year, in terms of suspense and fan excitement offered. I’ve been reduced to reading the daily Velonews coverage.
A.E. Douglass and the Sunspot Cycle
I’ve written before about my interest in A.E. Douglass, a turn-of-the-last-century astronomer and all-around scientist (the disciplines were so less clearly defined a hundred years ago) who almost accidentally developed dendrochronology.
In the process, Douglass revolutionized two sciences – archaeology and paleoclimate studies – but he was after something entirely different. He was studying the sun, and wanted to know whether the 11-year sunspot cycle was a permanent feature. He figured that trees, by putting on fat rings in wet years and thin ones in dry years, might show signs of a periodicity linked to the solar cycle. The archaeology was nowhere near his mind when he got started, and the climate stuff was only a means to his astronomical end.
Continue reading ‘A.E. Douglass and the Sunspot Cycle’ »
Coincidence?
With Jeanne bearing down, Luis sits in Florida and thinks about this.
Dano’s Advice
Climate buddy and cycling enthusiast Dano offered this advice for the off-season: “Never go into your big ring.”
Easier said than done this morning down the hill into the valley with a howling tailwind, but I kept it on the small chain ring all day. The psychological trick was to set my bike computer on “cadence” rather than using it as a speedometer, so I didn’t suffer the angst of riding slow. The trick worked. I’m so dumb.
I took most of the week off, but resting didn’t set well with my newly remodelled metabolism, and by the end of the week I felt all edgy, so a decent ride was in order for this morning. I rode down Candelaria into the valley. (Albuquerque readers will ask why he rode down a light industrial corridor, along a major arterial with poor shoulders and bike lanes most of the way. What can I say? I was on a wander.)
I picked up the river trail at the Rio Grande Nature Center, and followed it south through the new pipeline construction project. (Albuquerque readers will ask why he rode on a lousy temporary bike trail through a construction project. What can I say? I was on a wander.)
Down along the river trail, the asters are in bloom, a delicate spray of purple from each plant that belies their remarkable desert durability.
The howllng tailwind headed out of the heights was, of course, equivalent to a howling headwind climbing back up the hill, but I didn’t mind. I was in my small chain ring, and I had no idea how slow I was going. I was on a wander. I think my training next season should include one wander per week.
Planet Update
Added Rich Burridge to my planet feed. The proximate cause was this this lovely bit about whales, but the ultimate cause is that Rich’s blog reflects an incredibly eclectic mind, which amuses me.