( A bookish poll )

Previous Saturday Book Discussions.

I feel the roller coaster.
I choose the track.
A dirty sock.
A lovely kiss.
Big turds on your window shield.
A phrase that you simply cannot believe.
Your baby murdered.
Friendship in a moment chosen.
A puzzle unable to be solved by you in your life.
Never ending goals ending in never ending quests.
Smiles to the sun for no other reason.
Sharing with a person you do not know.
Death of a loved one.
Putting someone before yourself.
Having a friend say precisely the most unexpected thing at exactly the right moment.
Jokes that went right.
Teaching someone and knowing that they get it.
Fate that you cannot change.
Believing with question.
Believing without.
Truth expressed in a reproducible usable way.
Valuing something for what it is rather than what it is not.
Valuing a thing for where it is rather than where it is not.
Caring about something that does not care about you.
Birds collapsed and dying with out the ability to intercede no matter how much you wish you could.
Sudden shifts in state.
Never being able to say good by.
Wanting a thing that you cannot have.
Wanting a thing that you have worked for your whole life and finding that after the journey you have finally found it.
Separation from something you care about that you will be reunited with.
Aha!

These moments and so many more painted with a brush of emotion and expression.
How the palette of emotions have as much variance as all of the wavelength in all possible universes.
So in the moment we brush and we do paint ourselves in the strokes of the choices of our life.
To creating the image that we finally share only in the completion and exhaustion of what it is we are.

I don't contend to the life or death of a thing or even to existence.
Only it's possible implications and the effect on the world that we visualize interests me.
Only the question that frustrates us that makes us angry that pushes us to exhaustion as to why it would be asked, and what would one do to approach it. The experiment a game, the world a game, the universe a game. Whether played as a king or a pauper all ends are the same and although some may be burned and some may be shortly remembered. In the grave we are all equally accepted and while our lives may have been unequal or deaths will not be. We will die equivalently for as long as we die. So be a beautiful body to be eaten by the universe to be consumed and transformed, only folding this way or that. For the paper takes it's life in the folds ever emerging into new creations of an exalted imagination. In this we live most fully in our minds but the thisness of us exists where ever we may lay it where ever it is placed. Even in this do I find the thisness of me.

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap120518.html

A mere 2.5 million light-years away, the Andromeda Galaxy really is

http://kottke.org/12/05/ridley-scott-is-doing-a-blade-runner-sequel

In this interview with The Daily Beast, Ridley Scott reveals that he's currently working on a sequel to Blade Runner.

Funny enough, I started my first meetings on the Blade Runner sequel last week. We have a very good take on it. And we'll definitely be featuring a female protagonist.

Tags: Blade Runner   Ridley Scott   movies

http://kottke.org/12/05/ridley-scott-is-doing-a-blade-runner-sequel

In this interview with The Daily Beast, Ridley Scott reveals that he's currently working on a sequel to Blade Runner.

Funny enough, I started my first meetings on the Blade Runner sequel last week. We have a very good take on it. And we'll definitely be featuring a female protagonist.

Tags: Blade Runner   Ridley Scott   movies

http://kottke.org/12/05/alien-still-hasnt-listened-to-all-of-voyagers-golden-record

Eighteen months on, the alien who discovered Voyager's Golden Record still hasn't gotten around to listening to the whole thing.

"The wind, rain, and surf sounds are pretty cool, but I usually sort of zone out when it gets to the crickets chirping, and then I just end up turning it off," said Ellinger, adding that he will sometimes put the record on as background noise when he's cleaning his electro-biological habitat.

Current status of The Onion: still really pretty good.

Tags: audio   space   Voyager

That LIGHTS video where she brushes her hand along the wall of Dufferin station?

Gives me the MUST WASH HANDS NOW feeling, every time.

http://kottke.org/12/05/alien-still-hasnt-listened-to-all-of-voyagers-golden-record

Eighteen months on, the alien who discovered Voyager's Golden Record still hasn't gotten around to listening to the whole thing.

"The wind, rain, and surf sounds are pretty cool, but I usually sort of zone out when it gets to the crickets chirping, and then I just end up turning it off," said Ellinger, adding that he will sometimes put the record on as background noise when he's cleaning his electro-biological habitat.

Current status of The Onion: still really pretty good.

Tags: audio   space   Voyager

http://kottke.org/12/05/opening-a-beer-bottle-with-a-chainsaw

If you're attempting to enjoy beer and are without your bottle opener but you have your chainsaw, this will come in handy:

Didn't spill a drop! See also opening a beer bottle with a piece of paper, opening a beer bottle with a cigarette lighter, and opening a beer bottle with an iPad power brick.

Tags: video

http://kottke.org/12/05/the-ny-times-first-restaurant-critic

Craig Claiborne was the NY Times' first dedicated restaurant critic, providing an example that was soon followed by newspapers everywhere in the US.

Some American writers had nibbled at the idea of professional restaurant criticism before this, including Claiborne, who had written one-off reviews of major new restaurants for The Times. But his first "Directory to Dining," 50 years ago this month, marks the day when the country pulled up a chair and began to chow down. Within a few years, nearly every major newspaper had to have a Craig Claiborne of its own. Reading the critics, eating what they had recommended, and then bragging or complaining about it would become a national pastime.

As the current caretaker of the house that Claiborne built, I lack objectivity on this subject. Still, I believe that without professional critics like him and others to point out what was new and delicious, chefs would not be smiling at us from magazine covers, subway ads and billboards. They would not be invited to the White House, except perhaps for job interviews. Claiborne and his successors told Americans that restaurants mattered. That was an eccentric opinion a half-century ago. It's not anymore.

A few years ago, I wrote about the first restaurant review to appear in the Times in 1859...it's still one of my favorite posts.

Tags: Craig Claiborne   food   NY Times   restaurants

http://kottke.org/12/05/opening-a-beer-bottle-with-a-chainsaw

If you're attempting to enjoy beer and are without your bottle opener but you have your chainsaw, this will come in handy:

Didn't spill a drop! See also opening a beer bottle with a piece of paper, opening a beer bottle with a cigarette lighter, and opening a beer bottle with an iPad power brick.

Tags: video

http://kottke.org/12/05/the-ny-times-first-restaurant-critic

Craig Claiborne was the NY Times' first dedicated restaurant critic, providing an example that was soon followed by newspapers everywhere in the US.

Some American writers had nibbled at the idea of professional restaurant criticism before this, including Claiborne, who had written one-off reviews of major new restaurants for The Times. But his first "Directory to Dining," 50 years ago this month, marks the day when the country pulled up a chair and began to chow down. Within a few years, nearly every major newspaper had to have a Craig Claiborne of its own. Reading the critics, eating what they had recommended, and then bragging or complaining about it would become a national pastime.

As the current caretaker of the house that Claiborne built, I lack objectivity on this subject. Still, I believe that without professional critics like him and others to point out what was new and delicious, chefs would not be smiling at us from magazine covers, subway ads and billboards. They would not be invited to the White House, except perhaps for job interviews. Claiborne and his successors told Americans that restaurants mattered. That was an eccentric opinion a half-century ago. It's not anymore.

A few years ago, I wrote about the first restaurant review to appear in the Times in 1859...it's still one of my favorite posts.

Tags: Craig Claiborne   food   NY Times   restaurants

I have a track I should be on but baaaaaaagh. Flail.

My website is getting hits from tumblr. Which made me go look at Tumblr. I don't understand Tumblr. Maybe it's the audience: teenaged girls. There's lots of photos of (I assume) celebrities of some kind that I don't know. And I just don't know. But I also don't "get" Pinterest, and that's entirely because I've deliberately not tried.

Rode Faran last night in the Legend. First real ride in that saddle. Interesting. I don't hate it after all. Actually, I kind of really like it on her. It's surprisingly secure, the thigh rolls are in the perfect spot, really held my leg (in a good way) at the canter. Can't fix my stupid swinging right-lower-leg, but it isn't a miracle-worker. :P I have a better chance of working on that when it's the only thing that's swinging, though. HOWEVER. Does it fit the horse? Well, that's less clear. There's hair movement by the wither, so it did slide forward a bit, and that's despite the sheepskin. There was actually a sweat mark (!) and it revealed bridging. There weren't any hoppy-invert-y moments, and she seemed able to carry on her gait without excessive urging. And her canter was surprisingly smooth, particularly going to the right. There were hoppy random lead changes and invert-y moments to the left, though, which could be rider error, or could be horse issue, or both.

The Boy got some video, but he was sitting on Tucson at the time, and so it's a touch wobbly. I can still make out a few things: first and foremost, that there is a subtle, but real, shortening to her hind stride on the right, in the canter only. Second, but almost foremost anyways, that I need to sit up, look up, and get my heels down, for pete's sake. Third, that there may (?) might, maybe, just a bit, be a catch to her foreleg extension that might correlate with her shoulder hitting the points of the tree, but I don't see how? (But, when riding, I looked down at one point and I swear I could see her having issues rotating her shoulder under that saddle, still.)
(Oh who am I kidding, I'm always looking down...)

OTOH, and this is the fourth point, she seems much more able to get off her forehand, even as compared to the reiner, though this may also be because of where the saddle puts me.

Well, we'll see. It's closer, anyways.

Barn "Strangles vaccine" day today, went out early and had them done, since we have to and everyone else is. Bugs me a bit because I don't believe in this particular vaccine, but it's required so we got 'er done. Faran was a dear for it, Tucson was offended, and so was River.

We then had this vet look at River again. This vet is part of the same practice group, but is the one we've come to prefer for our horse stuff here. Last time we lunged her, she seemed to be dragging right hind. So he watched her, and very shortly said, "Right front," got out his hooftesters, and confirmed it. Right front heel pain. Sigh. Her heels had been getting rapidly "sheared" for some reason, and the farrier was doing his best to keep up with her lengthening toe, but he says it happened so fast with the way the weather's been (and, fair enough, at the same time Faran was flaring very rapidly). But he could only change so much at a time and still keep her barefoot. It's just her right; her left is fine. But she does have a slight toed-in angle to her right leg, nothing noticeable unless you stare at it long enough, and apparently also some thrush damage that's worse on that side. Guess she just declared herself for shoes. Arggggh I need a jobs. At least now we know what it is.

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap120517.html

The Herschel Space Observatory's