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What do you think your dancing adds to the band's dynamic and live presence?
It takes away the pressure of Dicky having to jump around. Nobody else has to jump around, really, I'm jumping around for them. They can all concentrate on their instruments and I take that pressure off. It sort of gives the audience something to feed on, you know? How many times have you been at a show where you're like, "No one else is jumping around, nobody is dancing, the band is kind of just staring at their shoes, I guess I will." You know, my dancing is kind of like saying, "It's ok to dance, it's ok to move around. We're doing it, you guys do it!"

You can see him at his craft when they were doing "The Impression That I Get" live on Conan.

I really wish JP Honk had someone in that role! Leftist Marching Band has something similar with a classic-form majorette/twirler.

(Also, I really wish I liked the sound of Ska more; I love bringing in brass instruments to modern forms, and I've heard the community and culture is really good. But the rhythm is such a steady floor, those trombone offbeats... no funk mixing it up.) ("The Impression That I Get" makes up for it with a killer hook, that KNOCK ON WOOD invites the dance gesture)

May I say that I have not thoroughly enjoyed serving with humans? I find their illogic and foolish emotions a constant irritant.

I've been thinking alot about Star Trek Vulcans in general; like how they strive to be ruled by logic but that actually represents a lot of internal struggles. (There's probably a lot more there then the "Vulcans Have No Emotions" thinking I took at face value as a kid.)

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The psychologist David Myers has said that the essence of monotheistic belief is: (1) There is a God and (2) it's not me (and it's also not you). The secular equivalent is: (1) There is objective truth and (2) I don't know it (and neither do you). The same epistemic humility applies to the rationality that leads to truth. Perfect rationality and objective truth are aspirations that no mortal can ever claim to have attained. But the conviction that they are out there licenses us to develop rules we can all abide by that allow us to approach the truth collectively in ways that are impossible for any of us individually.

Pretty succinct summary of some of my own feelings. Though one note... kind of interesting to implicity tie-in immortality with omniscience...

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Some people hope to vest morality in a higher power. That's what religion is for, they say--even many scientists, like Stephen Jay Gould. But Plato made short work of this argument 2,400 years ago in Euthyphro. Is something moral because God commands it, or does God command some things because they are moral? If the former is true, and God had no reason for his commandments, why should we take his whims seriously? If God commanded you to torture and kill a child, would that make it right? "He would never do that!" you might object. But that flicks us onto the second horn of the dilemma. If God does have good reasons for his commandments, why don't we appeal to those reasons directly and skip the middleman? (As it happens, the God of the Old Testament did command people to slaughter children quite often.)

I'm no Plato, but the idea that there is a shared higher moral framework that transcends individual beliefs that we appeal to when trying to persuade others just raise the question, why don't we focus on that potentially universal framework.

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[Formal Logic] is *formal*, blinkered from seeing anything but the symbols and their arrangement as they are laid out in front of the reasoner. It is blind to the *content* of the proposition--what those symbols mean, and the context and background knowledge that might be mixed into the deliberation.

You know I probably grabbed this quote because I thought it said "it is blind to the context" not content... because I am increasingly exasperated with reductionist methods that ignore context. I mean you can't swing entirely the other way, and turn everything into an endless sea of "it depends" but nothing can be truly understood in isolation.

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Mindfulness of base rates can be a gift of equanimity as we reflect on our lives. Now and again we long for some rare outcome--a job, a prize, admission to an exclusive school, winning the heart of a dreamboat. We ponder our eminent qualifications and may be crushed and resentful when we are not rewarded with our just deserts. But of course other people are in the running, too, and however superior we think we may be, there are more of them. The judges, falling short of omniscience, cannot be guaranteed to appreciate our virtues. Remembering the base rates--the sheer number of competitors--can take some of the sting out of a rejection. However deserving we think we may be, the base rate--one in five? one in ten? one in a hundred?--should ground our expectations, and we can calibrate our hopes to the degree to which our specialness could reasonably be expected to budge the probability upward.

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Any theory that can account for all the facts is wrong, because some of the facts are wrong.

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The cat that sits down on a hot stove-lid . . . will never sit down on a hot stove-lid again, and that is well; but also she will never sit down on a cold one any more.

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No logical argument can establish a moral claim. But an argument *can* establish that a claim under debate is inconsistent with another claim a person holds dear, or with values like life and happiness that most people claim for themselves and would agree are legitimate desires of everyone else.

(Again, this goes back to the appeal of a kind of Plato and the hope for a universally agreeable set of moral priorities.)

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Vincent and his mini-sousaphone, newest member of JP Honk...


Yesterday, in between sessions doing voter support with my tuba and some musician friends, I was on The McGST podcast - affiliated with McGST, formerly "Lost in Mobile", a website and corresponding WhatsApp group that is one of my higher quality and most consistent forms of online socializing these days.

Hopefully I acquitted myself well. I took some chances expressing my views on topics that are contentious. As someone who tries to see where the other side is coming from, I worry there are times when I will seem to wishy-washy to fellow lefties.

And all of us - right and left are all on tenterhooks seeing how the election played out. In the group, Shaun said "Kirk said something in the podcast that stuck with me. How much of [the political fight] actually affects your life day by day?"

Of course, the answer is, we don't quite know. Almost all of us enjoy the fruits of a technologically advanced society and culture and there's a suspicion that it would not be so pleasant were it not for this kind of struggle... or at least, some kind of struggle. We benefit from a history of people working on projects bigger than they were, and so it behooves us to keep our roles on the struggles that are happening today.

And wondering about the actual day to day impact probably implies a lot of protective layers of privilege. And maybe the recent waves of Trump/Brexit populism are an angry rebuttal for people who feel poorly treated by the system. (If I hadn't chanced on a well paying tech career path compatible with my natural inclinations, where would I be?) But do they think their lots are greatly improved by these guys? Or is it enough to infuriate the libs, and have the sense of "life still sucks but at least our team won". Or perhaps they think these kind of go by the gut leaders would make things actually, locally better were it not for the meddling of the darn other side? (Republicans have controlled all 3 parts of the US government for years. What have they done good with that? Or is that a stupid thing to ask given for decades they've run on "government is the problem" and then they are compelled to make that true?)

These questions get philosophical quick. A lot of greek lines of philosophical "how to live a good life" ended up looking for equanimity: that we should learn how to emotionally carry on and not be overwhelmed with delight or despair in things that happen to us, especially when we have little say in them. Other times, things get existential, in the loose sense of the word. What's it all about? Is there a goal we can agree on for society and for ourselves, regardless of our religion or lack thereof?

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F***, who was against Ranked Choice Voting??? So few people are enamored of the Republican/Democratic Duopoly that utterly, utterly dominates our politics. If we ever want to get out of that without splitting crucial votes we need options like this.

Like, I can see there's an argument against prolonging elections and needing more time / rounds to get to a better result, but is that what people were thinking of who voted no, or just that it seemed weird and different? What a wasted opportunity.

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There's a line from the movie "The Commitments" (about an aspiring Irish Soul/R+B band:)

What you were playing was not Soul! Soul solos are part of the song - they have corners. You were spiraling – that's jazz!"

In general, I really prefer music with corners, and historically don't have much a gut feel appreciation for jazz. But right now this Johnny Hodges album "Lover Come Back to Me" feels like a balm.

I think the times are emotionally grinding and grating enough that I have a new appreciation for stuff without corners.

Whatever you may have thought about Hillary Clinton, my daughter watched as a highly experienced and qualified woman lost a job to a neophyte dilettante cartoon character of a white man who openly bragged of molesting women. My daughter isn't dumb. She got the message.

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via. But I do get my friend point out this inter-generational conflict is not great, and may be a semi-manufactured way of reducing class solidarity.

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You don't have to wait for the end of the world. It ends a little every day.

So from 2003-2013 or so this site had a comments section - it acted as a bit of a social hub, with a medium-small group of folks I knew from real life or just online commenting on the entry or just having little dialogs there.

But then comment spammers figured out how to post, and it got overwhelmed with the crap. I tried a few restrictions to block it (disallowing links, even) but still, the bots would post post post-- mostly just to gauge if they could, I guess.

Two decades in, and this blog's archive is increasingly important to me -
(skimming the On This Day page is a frequent mid-workday getaway) and I was getting frustrated with the bogus comment counts, so I made a tool to help me zip through and ditch all the damn spam.

I had already purged some of the most egregious days of spam (hey if one spam comment is good, 138 nearly identical comments must be better right?) but there was plenty remaining- At the start, I had 24035 comments in all (over 4048 different days), but only 7507 did I figure were human or close enough (covering 2072 different days).

It was interesting skimming so much old conversation... sympathy through a divorce, advice on dieting, appreciation of vacation photos, and just general rambling. I forgot how much I used to hear from folks like Jesse Lex and LAN3.

But, probably independent of the spam, the site had a rise and fall as a social nexus, I decided to graph it out:

This is very similar to a chart plotting the rise and fall of poems sent to my loveblender.com site:



It's not an apples to apples comparison, in part because the comment section had such a later start.

Overall I think the decline in interactions on my blog-ish sites corresponds to the the rise of Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, Instagram, etc - I've written about that on my devblog. Basically, it's super tough for an individual site or writer (especially ones who aren't trying to do it for a living) to compete with the ability to grab a lot of people's stuff and put it into a single stream.

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Onion: Explanation Of Board Game Rules Peppered With Reassurances That It Will Be Fun - I am the friends, not the "Area Man" in this scenario. Thinking about this more, and at the risk of sounding a bit facile - I think there's a lesson for both Conservatives and LIberals:
Conservatives, Superman is right. The USA is not just a nation of whiteness. Even taking into account the UK roots of of governance and our deep roots in Western traditions, it is our multicultural aspect that makes us what we are. E pluribus unum.
Liberals: the subtext of the footer is right. "American" is a special concept - we are a unique experiment in the world, and a special blend, and we need to foster a kind of patriotism. We need to be clear about our unifying concepts of liberty and freedom and justice and opportunities and concepts that unite us as a nation. E pluribus unum.

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Guns -n- Prayers will be the Right Wingnuts "Lisa Simpson Anti-Tiger rock" for the Nov 4 "Antifa Revolution Day" or whatever the hell it is. Did it work? See any tigers around here? Welcome to the Right's "Facts Don't Matter" World.

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Two random thoughts:
1. I am appalled at how bad my brain can be at lateral thinking. For months I knew about a level in the new Mario game called "New Donk City" but it wasn't until I played it and caught a few visual references that I realized the Donk comes from Donkey Kong, and not some weird onomatopoeia.
2. Saw Dresden Dolls last night and realize now I probably saw Amanda Palmer's "Eight Foot Bride" living statue around Harvard Square back in the day. Who knew? Not me!

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RIP Laika

Wheels sigh with longing for the horizon.
Hunger moans in the spoon's hollow belly.
Tools recount the needs from which they arose
and so comprise a history of human desire.

The match recalls fear in the fireless night,
the saw's oiled teeth plead for perfect order,
the pen cannot imagine life without ink.

Even that technology employed by the soul
in its perilous escape from the prison of the body
is exhibited here, in these letters, in words.

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UNSATISFYING from PARALLEL STUDIO on Vimeo.

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Odd Dream bit, Richard Feynman was a band leader at some kind of street festival. He was showing off some topological principle by a surprisingly sparse net that was keeping a bunch of foam balls around his body. (Not unlike one of the Fruit of the Loom "grapes" guy, not that that had much to do with the dream) The soloist was Kurt Vonnegut on Clarinet. (I think my subconscious may have been oddly merging Woody Allen's side instrument with R. Crumb's musical look and feel.)

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Don't take life so serious, son, it ain't nohow permanent.

Not to underplay the importance of presidential election, especially viz a viz the supreme court and also the message about, well, anyone who ain't a straight white male, but I think people are forgetting our ability to muddle through. (That said, I'm finding a weird comfort in having ordered "Scatter, Adapt, and Remember: How Humans Will Survive a Mass Extinction"... ) The thing about the consoling grace of "continuous improvement" and "we don't have to be perfect, we just have to keep getting better" is, you know, sometimes skills degrade, or rivals figure things out better.

I think I'm getting better at playing my tuba by ear, though, especially playing along in the concert-C and/or sharp-ish keys that strings players tend to prefer, vs all the flats we enjoy in brassland. (Gee, imagine if I actually made time to sit and practice!)

Still, being aware of the details of an improving skill set feels novel to me, because I've been so deeply in fixed mindset. So, Republicans can make hay for their congressional candidates by saying "this Democrat is like Obama", even though Obama's approval rating is above 40% and Congress' is below 15%.

I love Politics.

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I just voted. I think I should get involved in local politics, to the extent that I can work to get the Town of Arlington to start giving out little smug "I voted" stickers. Remember: think stupidly, act locally! Saturday Miller and I hosted a late Halloween party Saturday w/ mutual friends. Costume wise, clockwise from left it's Swedish Chef, Vyvyan from "The Young Ones", Boston Sox Fan / Hypnotoad Minion, Carlos Danger, Two Hoodeh Figures from the podcast "Welcome to Night Vale", a Mormon, a Steampunk Researcher and his feline companion, and Space Sex Cop Kirk.

Jack O' Lantern wise, it's a spider, alien bill, cyclopsian monster, Jason Voorhees, Big Grin, Picasso-ish (people get really concerned when you slice your pumpkin all the way around so the two halves separate like a cocount), kitty.

Most important lesson learned: the special Halloween Kit Kats (orange tinged white chocolate, really) are the most divisive candy: people love 'em or hate 'em.

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Chess 2: The Sequel - How a street fightin' man fixed the world's most famous game Even if you dislike Sirlin, you have to admit Chess 2 is pretty interesting...

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Ever since Ronald Reagan, in his first inaugural, pronounced government to be the problem, elected Republicans have been doing everything possible to make it true.

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Raising a child is like taking care of someone who's on way too many shrooms, while you yourself are on a moderate amount of shrooms. I am not confident in my decisions, but I know you should not be eating a mousepad.

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november blender of love
--Interesting quote and not without some truth, but sometimes I'm not sure which side in the Unholy Alliance of religion and business is scarier.

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http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2010/10/ideas-spread-when.html -- I spread your idea because...

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--via mightygodking who swear it's not a photoshop. It is a suspiciously middle-aged-looking kid though.

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"The best argument against democracy is a five minute conversation with the average anti-gay-marriage voter." FFS, Maine!!

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Also: newly elected Republican governors: a rebuke against Obama, or a rebuke against Obama with an obstructionist GOP not able to undo 8 years of Bush damage in 10 months?

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Q: How many IBM cpu's does it take to do a logical right shift? A: 33. 1 to hold the bits and 32 to push the register.

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We all live every day with the victory of [Ayn Rand,] this fifth-rate Nietzsche of the mini-malls.
--Johann Hari, http://www.slate.com/id/2233966/

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Decluttering is so tough, convincing myself that life without 2 pairs of (unused) Nintendo DK Bongo Drums is just about as good as with.

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I'm kind of morally opposed to "Guess What I Mean" UI, but being able to just type "amazon mp3" in Firefox and get there is kinda nice.

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SNL is giving me that weird "I'm not sure if this is a parody or a real ad" vibe. I was hoping the Rev. Wright ad was a joke. Pathetic

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loresjoberg I just Saved the Drama for Obama. Boston's Ward 10 is a bit of a mess though.

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In Boston Ward 10, I could vote for the usual odd lot for prez, a rep. for senator, a socialist for city council, and Any Democrat I Liked.

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SpindleyQ Argh, that's exactly the kind of thing why I'd have doubts if I got rid of them!

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Odd exit poll question: how many of (Gore'00,Bush'04,McCain'08) did I vote for? Guess they're tracking incumbent party, but it seems weird.

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Jeez, how many times have I reloaded CNN.com today just to see a meaningless: 0% for Obama, 0% for McCain graphic? Jimminy crickets! If I didn't have one of those auto-set alarm clocks, I never would have know the clocks were being pushed back today.

My surprise helped spur me into making the following:


UPDATE: Click for Version with Current Day of Year Marked
sunrise/sunset | source/perl/data | via processing

This is probably one of the least interesting java programs that I've posted here, but it's something I've been meaning to make for years, literally. It's a simple graph showing how the sunrise and sunset times shift throughout the year. (As an afterthought, I added "civil twilight", which is the dark curve behind.) The data is for Boson and comes from the US Naval Observatory Data Services page.

The red line indicates where you are in the year, and is the only remotely dynamic part of the program. (I ignore leapyears, so for 2008 it will be off by a pixel.) The yellow lines mark 6am, noon, and 6pm, with the appropriate daylight savings break. UPDATE: for LAN3 I added a dotted line indicating the midway point between sunrise and sunset.

I was kind of hoping the curve would be a bit more like a compressed sine wave, a visual confirmation of how quickly the change from long days to short days seems to happen once it gets going. It looks more linear than I expected, though some of that is a matter of scale, there might not be a single correct answer for how to scale a 365-day year against a 24 hour day. (Which is an interesting philosophical, or psychological, or design point; on the one hand, a year is so much longer than a day that it seems like the y-axis should be much longer. On the other hand, you can experience the length of a single day, and feel the loss of an hour of daylight, in a way that you really can't with an entire year.)

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Sports Fan Trashtalk of the Moment
Big football game today! First time two undefeated-in-7-or-more game teams have faced off. And after, there will be one undefeated team in the NFL. Slate had a high-spirited debate between a Pats fan and a Colts fan. My favorite part:

This isn't the 2006 Patriots receiving corps, which was constructed like a fifth-grade diorama: a Little Tikes figurine holding down the slot, a broken G.I. Joe guy slung out wide, and glitter-soaked cotton balls used to create "atmosphere." The 2007 Pats receivers are a thermonuclear weapon with a seven-second timer. There are three colorful wires coming out of that bomb: Welker, Stallworth, and Moss. It's like an action film: Can the Colts clip all three of those wires or get to the quarterback before the timer runs out? I don't think so.

The diorama bit made me laugh out loud. Of course I'm biased, but I think the New England fan was a much more lively writer than the guy pitching the Colts.

Via This Gone & Forgotten page -- you can get the T-Shirt!

• Rock Paper Scissors ^ 25... I was tempted to make a tool to view all the combos.
• The Unqique Portugese word "Saudade"... nostalgia for a past that has just the faintest hope of repeating.
• PimpThatSnack via FoSO, who dug the ostrich egg.
• 10 Things I Hate About Commandments
• Game Innovation Database
• Early Vietnam, with a dose of the awfulness of WW2
• Mario meets Lenin meets Neo via Nick B... stick around for the end credits music, which is the first thing I've heard that sounds like it could have been in the SMB game, but wasn't....
• I Like Monkeys
• Odd Japanese Write Your Own LCD game on Palm program
• A snapshot of a certain kind of romance by Garrison Keillor that I find strangely compelling.
• For the record, the guy I look like in Raiders of the Lost Ark is "Major Toht".

I'll be joining my mom at a Salvation Army Officers' Family Christmas shindig this weekend. Trivia: Christmas events for Salvation Army Officers (the ministers/leaders) are scheduled fairly early because of the traditional Christmas Red Kettle drives, which can be serious logistical by themselves, not to mentioned the increased amount of special holiday programs.

So, depending on WiFi at the hotel, might be a weak weekend for updates.

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Advice of the Moment

"Make sure to use good grammar. It will cause good feelings too and get you mad hyped. For help, see http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~jlynch/Writing/"

I want to say...and I know this might hurt some people I love, and offend many others, and I'm sorry for that, but this election has made me really, really despise, distrust, and fear organized religion in general. Well, mostly Fundamentalism, but I think the whole exercise is tarred in some ways. Especially because people I'm politically for have no choice but to kiss religion's butt left and right...I don't think any politican can make it without talking about faith in what ends up being the Abrahamaic God, because "doesn't believe in God" (put in terms like "doesn't share the faith that the rest of us do") is just a giant hammer for opponents to wield.

It really makes me want to start a big anti-fundamentalist "YOUR BELIEF IN GOD IS A GUESS" campaign, not that it would help matters anyway...hardly anyone changes their viewpoint thanks to a slogan. (But think about it..."faith" is all well and good, but think of all the other "faiths" your putting aside. Like the old Atheist saw about "so which god aren't you believing in?")

I guess the problem is Fundamentalism as a practice is more self-consistent than a more liberal religous viewpoint. Once you're convinced that your religion is correct, and you've taught yourself to ignore every other religous belief as misguided at best and evil at worst, which is actually a tremendous leap of faith that millions and millions of Christians and Moslems have no problem making, than of course you should act on those principles and work to enact them in your society, and not in a pansy-ass, liberal "can't we all get along" kind of way. I mean, you don't need commonsense and generally humanitarian principles to guide you when you have someone who is willing to give you a very specific and direct singular interpretation of how to to act on your holy book.

In a day where science has done so much for us, where a rational understanding of public health has expanded all of our lifespans and a skeptical, put-everything-to-the-test worldview has let us see the history of our species, planet...universe (and not in a dogmatic way!) people's willingness to accept a literal reading of the Bible kind of floors me. "God Said It..I Believe It...That Settles It" indeed.

I think people of faith are so defensive because of the promise of eternal life. The idea of getting into Heaven and not really having to face their own mortality is their Binky, their safety-blanket, and they'll put aside rational, skeptical thinking so that they can keep being convinced that they and their deceased loved ones will all meet up in Heaven. Fear of the reality of death gets people to shape their entire belief system around some thought like that. Sure, some people come to their faith throgh a thougtful, rationalist process, but I'd be willing to bet that's a minority compared to people who just believe like their parents and friends do.

It's easy to forget that Religion doesn't equal Fundamentalism. I was floored when I heard about some of the liberal Christianity in like, England...there are people there, clergy even, who accept things in the Bible as poetry and myth, but still find it a good general social and cultural construct to base their lives on.

I wish I had a better historical understanding of how religous zeal and fundamentalism waxes and wanes in a culture, because right now right here it's definately on the rise, and it's hard to remember there tends to be a cyclical nature to it, that many generations are less religous-oriented than the previous one, not more. As much as the fundamentalists are shaping the world into a big Christianity vs Islam clash, the world has been a fundamentalists vs. secularists struggle...and the latter group is losing, badly. Except maybe in Eurupe.

I welcome feedback on this, and I hope we can keep it friendly and respectful, despite my obvious emotional view of all this. How does your religous faith influence your politics? Why do you believe what you believe, and not something else? How do you feel about all the other people who have a strong faith in a competing belief system? If you feel that you're a moderate, how do you feel about people who have an extremist view within your system?

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Proposed Redistricting of the Moment

--via Bill the Splut, original here, I think by Dave Ruderman.

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Followup Thought of the Moment
There's something about the rise of puritanical thinking that makes me want to rejoice in all the things they wring their hands over...yay more smut on TV and in movies! Yay violent or sexually-suggestive video games! Yay for recreational drugs! Yay for cussing!

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Sigh
How many votes were discarded in Ohio? How many of those were cast by minorities? Why is it such a big secret?

Of course, it can never come up, because of the public and media backlash against any party who would want to investigate. Maybe it's just liberal wishful thinking. Maybe it's too sinister for words. If Nader really cared about our political system, he would be just the person to spearhead an overhaul of the voting technologies used all over this country.

Jeez. Thinking about it, will the need for anonymous voting always mean the system is subject to abuse?

Sign of the Moment

This is to Certify That Asian Grill is hereby licensed by the License Comission of the City of Waltham as a "COMMON VICTUALER".

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Link of the Moment
I just read Slate's latest Surpreme Court Dispatch by Dahlia Lithwick...summaries of the proceedings and arguments with a lot of snide remarks, very fun reading. I should check out some of the older ones.

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Ramble of the Moment
You know, I think smoking is kinda dumb, but everyone who smokes isn't quite as stupid as nonsmokers assume. There is a valid stress relief thing there. On the other hand, I get kind of sick of smokers' persecution complex--especially people who just throw the damn butts anywhere. That's why we're so annoyed by you! Like the bumper sticker says, or should say, "the world is not your damn ashtray". Cigarette butts are too much of a tiny toxic bit of pollution to just throw around anywhere.

Of course, I love that tobacco industry ad "TOBACCO IS WHACKO if you're a teen". How the hell did they convince anyone to let them stick that "if you're a teen" line in there? "...but if you're a grownup it ROCKS, baby" is the insinuation, I guess. Feh.

Oh, in case you haven't heard, some scientist/simpson fans managed to make the previously fictional Tomacco plant, Tomato plus tobacco. Just plain poisonous instead of incredibly tasty and addictive, but hey, if we were all yellow skinned with enormous eyes and four fingers on each hand, we'd probably handle it no problem. Webtoy of the Moment
What better way to start a week than to select the features of your very own evil clown?

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Product of the Moment
The Army is testing a new electronic self-playing bugle. You know, not only is it probably harder to find good bugle players these days like the article says, but getting Taps just right can be tough because so often the player has to do it without any chance to warmup.

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Cartoon Quote of the Moment

It turns out that the human brain hasn't evolved enough to see a dish that clean.

Slow Wave is a cartoon where Jess Reklaw makes a 4 panel cartoon from the descriptions of dreams that people send in. I've been Slow Wave'd twice, once last May and then again last October, the Yak-Man cartoon that Mo still teases me about. Image of the Moment

A guy named John signed my guestbook and thanked me for sharing the photo of Mo and the fountain at the WTC. I tried to figure out where he might have found a link to it, and realized that the image comes up on the second page of a Google Image search for "WTC". Searching around I found the original of the above photo from this page that lets you see the fountain from above, the way I described it in that blog entry. (Here is another image (from this page) similar to the one I took with Mo in it.)

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Quote of the Moment

When the average American can point out Tajikistan, Pakistan, Russia, China, Afghanistan and Uzbekistan on a map...then the terrorists will have won.