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When the debate lines up with Linus and Lucy Sound On Atlantic Piece on Attachment Styles and their impact on making strong friendships. Secure, avoidant, and anxious. "Secure people assume that they are worthy of love, and that others can be trusted to give it to them." Trying to think how that blends with one of the other big explanatory models, fixed mindset vs growth mindset. Like, I think I'm fairly secure in my attachment outlook (though I can see elements of the other types) and that's rooted in the confidence fixed mindset provides for me - that what I am won't change much, but it's pretty good. (And for me, I think most of this is secondary to how I think Truth is emergent from connections with other people and not rooted in the individual, but that's a whole 'nother long-winded bag of worms.) Some shots from last weekend, and this one.

Menu items are the modern programmer's way -- even that of the Java programmer, who is too pure of heart to use pointers -- of putting an obscene number of unpredictable GOTO statements everywhere in his code.

I snagged that quote (old school tech and gendered language and all) 20 years ago and it recently inspired some musings on UI unit tests in my devblog.

My new favorite analogy: unit tests are like setting up a tiny 2 or 3 ant farm. It's great to check that your ants are indeed healthy but you're not going to predict many of the problems of the ant colony that way.

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Had a dream last night, something about "Yehbébe", Brazil's #1 female pistoleiro / sharpshooter...

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Why Are Conservatives Obsessed with Pedophilia Right Now? Basically, it's kind of a ploy/panic, a warning message that society adaption to a wider variety of people: allowing gay marriage, accepting Trans and non-Binary folk is making some kind of slippery slope, and won't somebody think of the children. (Again: not to be an apologist for abusers, not to discount the need to keep up vigilance, or deny that there are some horrific things happening - it's the timing of it that's odd, along with the way the news lacks a call to action. (as the article puts it 'No "share this number," no "put a sign in your yard" or "don't be a pedophile," "seven steps to protect your kids from getting trafficked," or even "donate to this fund to fight pedophilia." It's just "here's another story about pedophiles engaging in sex trafficking. Isn't it awful?!"')

It also links to a Mother Jones article that talks more about the QAnon/Pizzagate resonance.
Stayin' Alive, played on finally detailed robot piano... it's weird because you can totally hear the lyrics that aren't there.

via Cracked.com's 5 Surprising Ways Your Senses Are Lying To You
sax minus sax. that is an amazing sound:
Aww, RIP Major William Bender. Great minister and overall guy.

Feel bad for me and Beau loving to jump startle him as he exited Cleveland Temple's office restroom! But he made it at 25 years after I left Cleveland, so I guess it wasn't a heart attack from that.

What they say: "You've lost some weight, haven't you. You're looking really good!"

What you're thinking: "Did I not look good before? Just how unattractive did you think I was before my weight loss?"

Unbiased interpretation: This is almost always a sincere compliment. Don't think too much about it; it's not backhanded. When someone says they like your shirt, do you worry they don't like any of your other shirts? Hopefully not, because that'd be crazy. Accept this graciously.

What you say: "Thanks!"

Glanced back at this when Melissa was asking about recipes. The book is not good for recipes (it has five token ones), and is blatantly padded out with "Eat This Not That" reviews of frozen meals and specific restaurant offerings, but it's still the best diet book I know.

Like "The Hacker's Diet", and pretty much any plan I've found effective, the core of "Chubster" is this easily summarized plan: "find a method to hit a daily calorie count without making yourself miserable". *What* you eat only really matters within that guideline, and exercise has other health and how you look benefits, but isn't part of the formula. (In particular, tweaking your daily calorie target to "use up" calories burnt in exercise is a mug's game.)

I'm at the top of the 180s now, from 198 something in April. That's a pretty slow pace! But, unlike previous times of weight loss, I'm looking to make calorie tracking a daily part of my life indefinitely - and anything that I want to extend indefinitely definitely has to have room for days when I'm off plan (most often days with social eating and drinking). In the long run off days won't matter as long as the ratio of those days to days I'm on target stays small.

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Amazing kinetic Stepping Feet illusion. (Click on the "Visual Phenomena & Optical Illusions" link at the top for many more)

Illusions have really come a long way in the last decade or so... growing up we just had that "which line is longer??" junk.

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Not to break my arm patting myself on the back but shared Google Docs for upcoming big trip plans is really the way to go (Melissa and I are planning to couch surf + side trip at my cousins who are working in Malaysia - definitely on the far side of my trip "comfort zone", relative to, say, destinations in Europe or even in Japan)

Atwater ordered food. The waiter said: 'That dish takes twenty- five minutes.' Atwater said: 'I have my life before me.' The waiter went away, shaking his head.

'Americans always have such a lot of misdirected party spirit,' said Gosling. 'One came to a party I gave two years ago and drank so much that he died soon after.'

He laughed and lay in her arms, kissing her. The universe seemed notably absent.

Being a novice is safe. When you are learning how to do something, you do not have to worry about whether or not you are good at it. But when you have done something, have learned how to do it, you are not safe any more. Being an expert opens you up to judgement.

Hunting in Maine is not obviously riven with centuries of class and privilege. There are no vast pheasant shoots here where bankers vie for the largest bags, no elite grouse moors or exclusive salmon rivers. All the land can be hunted over by virtue of common law, and locals are very proud of this egalitarian tradition. Years ago I read an article in a 1942 edition of Outdoor Life that stirred wartime sentiment by appealing to it. 'One of my grandfathers came from northern Europe for the single reason that he wanted to live in a country where he could try to catch a fish without sneaking onto some nobleman's property where the common people were excluded.'

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Jimminy F'in Crickets; somehow my (autoreloading) Dunkies card has been used for $465.29 of NY/NJ charges since 8/23.

I've been seeing more crap like this lately; I cancelled my old number because of mysterio Uber charges.

It's why I only keep one card, and try to watch it like a hawk. Dietzler's Law for Access:

Every Access project will eventually fail because, while 80% of what the user wants is fast and easy to create, and the next 10% is possible with difficulty, ultimately the last 10% is impossible because you can't get far enough underneath the built-in abstractions, and users always want 100% of what they want.

I think this law applies to build systems and javascript frameworks as well, as I outline in my devblog post about it. The book Buckaroo Banzai has a great bit

The principles by which B. Banzai lives are known as the Five Stresses, the Four Beauties and the Three Loves. Things to be stresses are decorum, courtesy, public health, discipline and morals. The Four Beauties are the beauties of mind, language, behavior and environment. The Three Loves are love of others, love of justice and love of freedom.

Turns out that's largely cribbed from the Chinese but I always like how "public health" seems to stand out. (It seems like more of a public policy matter than the others, though come to think of it all five stresses have a think globally, act locally aspect.) Anyway, Slate has a piece about the inventions and changes that let us enjoy the relatively prolonged lifespans that we do.

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Maybe as a counter to "what if I could just live in one room, minimalist style" I should check out http://www.worstroom.com/

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The latest rendition of my mishmash salon of people who are or have been important to me (with the caveat of I have to have a visually interesting photo of them.)

Kind of a nightmare for OCD folk! Thank heavens for Dollar Tree $1 frames... I swear I saw the exact same ones at Walgreens for $8 a pop. Man, I had some of these guys when I was a kid...

But this was the video I first embedded... many many many hermit crabs all at once...

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Funny to think about sound like two pixels running at 44100 frames per second and 16 bits of 'color'.

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Death is the dark backing that a mirror needs if we are to see anything.

Another new season, another overview of the music I added to my regular rotation over the last 3 months...

Starting off with a few four star songs:

• Save A Horse [Ride A Cowboy] Big & Rich. Funny cowboy song, Lynn recommended it when we were trying to think of songs for the intern karaoke night.
• Give It Away Dick Brave & The Backbeats. Fun eurorockabilly cover of the Rot Hot Chili Peppers. Ran into this one in Germany but I had to wait for an import CD to arrive. I also liked their cover of Michael Jackson's Black Or White.
• Run [I'm A Natural Disaster] Gnarls Barkley. An instrumental of this fun retro piece was in the new X-Men film.

My friend Kjersten made me a big mix of music for my birthday called "tilkirke", here were the 4 I thought were 4 stars...

• Like A G6 Far East Movement. I kind of resisted liking this song, 'cause singing in praise of a private jet seemed a bit rich, but it's super-catchy, and kind of cool that they're about the first Asian-American group to get a top 10 hit on the mainstream charts.
• Knockin' Luminescent Orchestrii. This song is a sultry wonder. (This isn't quite the version I have, but closer than the live video.)
• Stay Don't Go Spoon. Dig the mild beat box beat of this.
• Cakewalk Into Town Taj Mahal. I don't always like tuba, but this song is a ton of fun.

Other songs from tilkirke I decided to keep in my regular rotation:

• Rolling In The Deep Adele. Kinda Amy Winehouseian, in a good way.
• Mr. Big Stuff Jean Knight. A classic.
• Letting Go (Dutty Love) Sean Kingston featuring Nicki Minaj. Carribean-tinged theme.
• The Legend Of Zelda Original Mix HD Zedd. I didn't play this game much growing up, but it's still a stirring piece of exploration.
• La Vie Est Belle MC Solaar. I dunno. It's in French!
• I'm Good, I'm Gone Lykke Li. Nice smooth sound.
• Crystalised Xx. Dark.
• Comme Des Enfants (Le Matos Andy Carmichael Remix) Coeur De Pirate. More French!
• Addictive Truth Hurts. Good Middle Eastern groove.

Finally, some more decent songs I picked up various places:

• If Your Gonna Be Dumb, You Gotta Be Tough Roger Alan Wade. Heard this lovely bit of honky tonk outside the "Texas Roadhouse" restaurant. Love the Homer Simpson montage with this.
• Spooky Dusty Springfield. "Lock Stock and 2 Smoking Barrels" had this-- I don't think the gender flipped lyrics make as much sense, but I love Dusty's voice.
• Peace Frog ( LP Version ) The Doors. Quite possibly Amber's favorite Doors song.
• Pac Man Fever Buckner & Garcia. I had this kind of awful novelty album growing up. For some reason I had the lyrics to "Mousetrap" stuck in my head, but I decided to stick with the one that made them (in)famous.
• We Used To Wait Arcade Fire. The song is a little apocalyptic for my taste, but if you haven't played with the AMAZING interactive music video that might literally be able to bring you back to your hometown, you should.
• Dirty Water (Live) Dropkick Murphys. Got to talking about this with Amber's folks... And man, I just love the band name "Dropkick Murphys".
• Remember (Walking In The Sand) The Shangri-Las. Playing at Za, a local restaurant. I had it on a 50s mixtape from McDonalds growing up. I like the emotion in the singer's voice.
• What I Like About You Lillix. I like high energy girlband covers of songs, Amber introduced me to this one.
• Louder Than A Bomb Public Enemy. SOundtrack to "Hot Tub Time Machine".
• No Sex Chris Rock. TV Tropes mentioned the "smudge your puma" line on their Disproportionate Retribution page.
• Johnny Got A Boom Boom Imelda May. Heard this on the soundtrack for "Wild Target", nice gogo sound.
• What Was I Thinkin' Dierks Bentley. Another honky tonk song from outside Texas Roadhouse. Like the line about "little white tank top".
• Muppet Show Theme Song OK Go. SO MUCH FUN.

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The Washington Post on the women pilots willing to sacrifice their lives to knock down any more hijacked planes...

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http://loveblender.com/2011september/ - new Blender of Love Digest, a tribute to an old stalwart Blenderite...

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Man, that commercial with the Budweiser Clydesdale's doing that horse show bowing thing to NYC is just kind of creepy/weird. --via gifanime
young astronauts in love: roughcut edition
In part because I had misfiled it (no way it should have been a toplevel directory) my attention was drawn to the original black and white sketches I had made for young astronauts in love. I've decided to release that as young astronauts in love: roughcut edition.

The images are black and white, and I wasn't sure if I'd have time to go back and color everything, so I worked to make leaner Lydia visually distinct and more feminine than more stocky Jake. (Which is kind of funny, part of the joke of the original 1 panel cartoon is that you have little idea about gender or personalities of astronauts involved.) In some ways, the color limitation let me give the holograms and Anomaly appearance a bit more visual kick, flashes of blue and green when everything else is strictly monochrome, and thus adding to a sense of "beyond normal physics". Also the panels are the size I sketched at, 400x400 instead of the 200x200 I used in the final version, and I find it kind of interesting how it feels more like a storybook.

Two New Bonus Panels at the bottom, too...

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http://www.slate.com/id/2147309/nav/tap1/ - excerpt from the illustrated 9/11 report

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http://www.slate.com/id/2227871/ - I mentioned before: "BigBelly" is the evolutionary ancestor of Wall*E

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http://www.utne.com/Politics/How-911-Should-Be-Remembered-5279.aspx - a leftish reminder of the stoicism and bravery of ordinary people on 9/11. So weird it got co-opted to justify Iraq.

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Boston Sports Radio is generally on AM, except new 98.5. Does iPod nano having FM radio only mean thats the way the tech is going?

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I'm pro-Obama, but it's vaguely odd that his "It is a lie, plain and simple" is fine, but "You lie!" is a firestorm. Decorum uber alles!

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http://www.offworld.com/2009/09/one-shot-3d-tetris.html - mad at your eyes? Punish them with Stereogram Tetris!

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http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=112564382 - habit forming heartburn meds? - remember kids, pick FUN addictions!

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Some friends of mine are experiencing first hand employment problems because of credit checks. What the HELL is the justification for those? It's always a bit dicey to publicly discuss new diets and/or exercise programs, since they can sometimes be short-lived, but I'm kind of digging the new routine I have going with yourself!fitness and Maya, the virtual personal trainer.

It's a daily-or-so half hour routine, kind of aerobic-centric. It's a little more concentrated an approach than Wii Fit... rather than a cool balance board and related games and activities, it can use any heart rate monitor, hand weights, balance ball, or step that you have, if you have them. And the routines are more based on traditional workouts, not just a sense of fun play.

The routine is kind of nice. I like how there's a bit of a moving timeline (a bit like Guitar Hero) that gives an idea of where you are in a specific activity, I hate that feeling of "when the hell is this going to end?" Plus it's kind of nice not to have to deal with a person-person that early in the morning; my routine as of late is up a bit after 7, a bit over half an hour exercise with this program, then in the shower by 8 or so, and out of the house by 8:30.

The software isn't as intelligent as it could be, in terms of evaluating how faithful you've been and adjusting accordingly... for that matter, I think by now I was supposed to unlock stuff, either a new virtual exercise space or music set (the music is pretty humdrum synth stuff, but it gets the job done.)

The space I'm doing this on is kind of small, but with a little angling it works out. There is some good exercise karma in the apartment, Josh lost a lot of weight using an exercise bike every morning for a long stretch.

I think, though, what I really need to do is remind my body of some of the joy of moving... with an office life, you can get some walking in, maybe, but it's easy forget how pleasant it is to own a healthy, mobile body and to appreciate its range of possible activity.

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Quote of the Moment

Simplicity has real value on its own that makes the system more usable. It's the difference between reading a 100-page manual and reading a 500-page manual. It is more than five times the size.

Arnold also came up with that brilliant idea

Every program has at least one bug and can be shortened by at least one instruction — from which, by induction, it is evident that every program can be reduced to one instruction that does not work.

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Huh, I thought Tom Sawyer was an odd match for "League of Extraordinary Gentleman", but "Tom Sawyer Abroad" was a Twaine Jules Verne parody

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I say "Au Bon Pain" w/ an exaggerated Clouseau accent or as "The Good Pain" depending on whether I'm feeling more goth or emo that morning.

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Hated UI Paradigm:"gonna guess what you meant" from wikis autolinking camelCase to OSes that juggle windows when I try + park the mouse

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I'm getting way too much satisfaction from a 5, Insightful and 4, Insightful pair of moderations on slashdot. Probably another day without much of an update.

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Quote of the Moment

[walking by the DVD section at Target]
"Hey look, '300' for eighteen bucks."
"Wow. That's like... six cents per."

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Articles of the Moment
Like Slate points out, Osama bin Laden sounds less batshit insane in his latest video, and maybe that's a ploy to try to recruit Westerners who would that be in a better position to dodge profiling for and perpetrate nefarious deeds. (Though maybe his dyed beard is a sign of war? Though it's not like that would be such a new posture for him.)

In somewhat related thoughts, Slashdot points to an article that says there might be brain differences in how liberals and conservatives think... though one person's "open to new concepts" is another's "will listen to any damn fool idea".

So, 9/11, five years on.

Like I've mentioned, I worked at the WTC towers for a few days in 1998... and while I guess my totally ordinary "where DO the years go?" pondering is a lot less sociopolitically siginificant than what happened in 2001, it is odd to me to think that the gap between my working there (and of course, the weirdness of visiting there (on 9/11/1999) and the tragedy is so much less time then between the tragedy and now.

Hell, those proud towers (arguably a little much for the neighborhood around them, though it sounds disrespectful to mention that controversy now) and their beautiful interplay of shadows were only around about 30 years. (Heh, and this page mentiond 10,000 people worked on them, and 60 people died during the construction--) That's not a great deal of time in the history of the city, even though they had such a huge significance in the skyline, and in how people thought of New York City, and maybe even how NYC thought of itself.

But of course, I'm just alternating between my subjective concerns, and thoughts on architecture, when its the human tragedy that makes the day what it is. 3,000 people... less than first feared, but still. 3,000 lives stopped over the course of a few hours. It's deeply disturbing to try and put yourself in their shoes, the doubt and confusion and fear. And of course the uncertainty might be one of the hardest parts to try and duplicate in empathy; we now know that the airplanes are going to be turned into missiles, that those towers are doomed to collapse, and can only really see the tragedy as the biggest event in a series of engagements between the West and Islamic terrorist.

(Ugh, you know, I forgot about the proximity this post would have to yesterday's "Mr Ibis on a Plane" logo, even though I just meant to play on the meme of a few months earlier.) Movie of the Moment
A brief video of a bunny trying to find love with a balloon. Personally, I think having a lover disappear like that would be a most distressing experience.

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Sleepy Talk of the Morning
A bit of early morning conversation between Me and Ksenia...it's just PG-13, and not in a personal way, but Mom filter engaged, highlight text with mouse or hit Ctrl-A to read.
<filter type="mom" tip="highlight text with mouse or hit ctrl-a to read">

"We need to get up."
"Ehhrmmmmm....not yet."
"No we have to get up."
"What time is it?"
"Like 8."
"Guh, you're right."
"Of course. I'm always right."
"No, I'm always right!"
"That's a good point. You are the sun of rightness, and I am merely the moon, just reflecting a bit of your rightness at night."
"Mmmm-hmmm."
"You're right New York City, and I'm merely right New Jersey. You're the Eiffel Tower of rightness, and I'm the Arc de Triomphe."
"..."
"You're a great big garbage dump of right, and I'm only a little toxic stream running off of it."
"I liked the sun and the moon thing better."
"You're the penis of rightness, and I'm just the pubic hair around it. No, better...you're the vagina of rightness, I'm just the bellybutton of rightness."
"..."
"But the clitoris of truth is: we have to get up, like now."
"OK I'm going!"

</filter>

Plant of the Moment
A topic I jotted down in my pilot a LONG time ago, like maybe even before I started kisrael.com: Is Your Fund Manager Smarter than a Yucca? The idea is wiring up a plant with sensors and letting it select stocks. This was kind of big news, though I never heard what the final results finally were. Jeez, LAN3, thanks for picking on me in yesterday's Comments. Sometimes I think I need to hand in the little card they gave me for being an English major in college. (I double majored: English ("to keep me well rounded") and Computer Science ("to keep me well employed"--and frankly, I think it more or less worked, even if I tend to ramble on a bit.))

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Quip of the Moment

It's useless to try to hold some people to anything they say while they're madly in love, drunk, or running for office.

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Articles of the Moment
Slate has some good WTC-reading today, including two on incorrect public perceptions of the day: Wall Street Will Abandon New York - And all the other lousy post-9/11 economic predictions and What You Think You Know About Sept. 11...but don't.

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Quote of the Moment

My father's illness impressed on me from an early age that life was going to be a struggle, and there were a lot of losers.

His father, at the time a rising figure in the Conservative party, had an almost deadly stroke and lost the ability to speak for three years when Blair was 11. I really understand the sentiment, I think I felt something similar during my dad's illness and death when I was 14. This is a bit of a backlog clean out, just joining in today's likely media frenzy (assuming there's (hopefully) no bigger news today.) I grabbed many links and quotes related to WTC but ended up not getting around to using them. (The dates are when I added the entry to the backlog.)

2001.09.18
Voltaire said,

If we believe absurdities we shall commit atrocities.

I still think "faith" can be horribly misused, and that healthy skepticism is better.

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2001.09.21
I was surprised at how detailed Islamic prophecies of the Last Days are, especially the description of their "anti-Christ". They also predict the return of Jesus.

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2001.09.28
Ranjit sent me an English columnist supporting the US going it alone in Afghanistan.

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2001.10.10

I didn't dare look in the bakery for fear of finding red, white, and blue cakes, thereby confirming my suspicions that some people don't know the difference between a war and a birthday party.

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2001.10.17

I don't see what happened in Pennsylvania as depressing or frightening. I see it as encouraging and heroic.
Then again, I'm not afraid of death. What's the point? It's like fearing gravity.

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2001.10.26
Salon Quiz, The Bible, the Quran or "Mein Kampf"? and a Slate piece on Muslims and Modernity.

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2001.12.26
Boston Phoenix on Astrology and 9/11. I also made a note to talk about this being described as Bush's "War Year". (Though now it looks like he's aiming for at least a couple of years...)

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2002.01.19
NY Times' Which Way Did He Run? on a Fireman who was knocked unconscious and doesn't know if he stood or ran.

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2002.08.19
A poem (in a surprisingly effective strict rhyme scheme,) John M. Ford's 110 Stories about the day.

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2002.09.07
More recently, Salon on Forbidden Thoughts about 9/11.

unsupermen

Sunday Peterman and I went to Six Flags New England. After riding Superman Ride of Steel we went over and tried the Skycoaster. Oddly enough, it had much more of a 'soar like superman' effect than the ride that bears his name. It's very elegant in design: a single arch, at the top of which is attached a cable, almost long enough to touch the ground. The other end of the cable is attached to you. You (and a friend, or two friends, all wearing these long apron/skydiver things) are then hoisted to the peak of the nearby tower, about as high as the peak of the arch. You're way up there. Then you pull the ripcord, and come soaring back to earth. In effect, it's a cross between bungee jumping and a playground swingset.

So Peterman and I went, in tandem. (A bit cheaper that way.) He was very struck by the experience: "Skycoaster is as close to religion as I want to get these days." I was slightly less moved, still it was pretty amazing. You have to put in reservations, so after our 5pm ride we signed up for a second ride at 8.

One of the staff there was willing to take pictures and we had him use the movie feature of my digital camera to tape the descent (and ascent, and descent, and...) of Peterman and me. So above is the "small gif cinema" entry of it, (slow on IE, for some unfathomable reason) but what you really should see is the full quicktime video of it... the doppler effect on our screams is rather funny, and by chance it has a perfect musical stinger as well.