Further news in the Canadian Bigfoot invasion includes the information that ex-Runaway Cherie Currie is in on the hunt.
Moving
We are moving at work, which is exciting.
Soon, I will have a desk at work located in a room with a window in it for the first time in about ten years. Tomorrow morning I will be attempting to get to the place via bus.
RIP Jason Sprinkle
The PI’s Buzzworthy notes the death of Jason Sprinkle, who instigated a bookended pair of guerilla art projects here in Seattle. I read the obit in the paper today, and I felt quite sad as I read the news. Sprinkle’s first art prank, a ball-and-chain attached to the foot of SAM’s Hammering Man downtown (to my surprise, over a decade ago) still makes me chuckle. His last, a too-successful work which resulted in a full-blown terror scare, still makes me shake my head in disgust over the irresponsibly paranoiac response of the city and law-enforcement authorities.
Revealingly, I learned much more about the artist in the obituary than in any of the articles I enjoyed concerning his works at the time of their execution.
bloglore
I wrote a 500-word-plus meditation on the changing fortunes of Broadway in my neighborhood today. I was sitting in Cafe Septieme waiting for Viv, watching the street as cloudburst after cloudburst cycled between sun and wet. Alas for me, my Palm-based blog app lacks an autosave and due to a moment of inattention on my part, poof, away it went.
Our old neighbors Shawna and Christian walked in while we were there with their one-year old. I did not recognize them at first – the baby might have had something to do with it. I forgot to ask about Mavis, darn it.
Finally, Greg reminded me that I should be reading Stacey’s blog, having badgered her into it over the past couple of years. He’s right, I need to, but due to insane business at work and in real life, my blog reading has been much curtailed of late.
Update – he’s doubly right, Stacey’s got the makings of a great blogger. Her posts are clearly unfiltered internal narrative; it sounds like her talking on the page. Hm, I probably have an obligation here to do some basic blog-lore education.
Man, how weird is that! Blog-lore! There is clearly such a thing, and I can recall when there wasn’t!
CC WiFi
Diabetes Origin Theory
NYT: New Theory Places Origin of Diabetes in an Age of Icy Hardships
When temperatures plummet, most people bundle up in thick sweaters, stay cozy indoors and stoke up on comfort food. But a provocative new theory suggests that thousands of years ago, juvenile diabetes may have evolved as a way to stay warm.
Hm. Not sure I buy this. Apparently I am not alone:
Most doctors who treat diabetes are extremely skeptical about the idea. In a typical comment, one doctor said, referring to a dangerous complication of diabetes: “Are they kidding? Type 1 diabetes would result in severe ketoacidosis and early death.”
Seems like dying before reproducing might confer some evolutionary limits. The presenter of the theory argues that an Ice Age average lifespan of 25 might have meant that diabetics fared comparably well in the cold climate. The article goes on to note that Nordics are the most prevalently affected by this disease, and moreso in cold climates than in warm ones. I can only note that my wife is Cuban and was affected in sunny California. I will take some salt with this idea, thanks all the same.
Indiana
NYT: New Arrest Adds Unexpected Turn in Child-Killing Case: A little girl was murdered this summer in Southern Indiana, and authorites arrested and charged a methamphetamine user with her death. Mid-week, another arrest in the case has upset the understanding of what happened.
I have a vague memory of seeing the initial coverage of this because of the way the news focused on the problem of meth in southern Indiana, which is where I grew up. The new arrestee is from Seymour, Indiana, one county over from my hometown of Bloomington.
A Wolf is Gone
Matt notes today’s passing of one of his favorite “rock and roll brothers,” Billy (Hideaki Sekiguchi), the bassist for the very kick ass Japanese band Guitar Wolf. Guitar Wolf was in the midst of a US tour, now cancelled, and had recently played both Seattle and New Orleans, where Matt is located.
Matt has posted a great picture, taken this week, of Billy rocking out, and not long ago wrote about his excitement at seeing the band cover one of his songs.
I am not a believer in any form of post-death consciousness, but I do feel free to use the idiom: what will Ms. Schiavo and His Holiness say when they run into this guy on the elevator?
no wifi for you
I went to the Elysian for lunch on my way home from work, hoping to get some work done, and was puzzled by the repeated failure of my computer to connect to the wireless signal, which is clearly visible under the name “Elysian Free Wi-Fi.” The formerly open access point now required a password to join.
Inquiring with my server, I was informed that the network was “down indefinitely,” which seems odd given the visibility of the signal. Seems like this might be worth investigating further.
Pot, meet kettle
On the bus ride home, my AvantGo feed of Wired News presented me with this astonishing information.
Apparently,
TOKYO — Your eyes probably hurt just thinking about it: Tens of thousands of Japanese cell-phone owners are poring over full-length novels on their tiny screens.
In this technology-enamored nation, the mobile phone has become so widespread as an entertainment and communication device that reading e-mail, news headlines and weather forecasts — rather advanced mobile features by global standards — is routine.
Now, Japan’s cell-phone users are turning pages.
Several mobile websites offer hundreds of novels — classics, best sellers and some works written especially for the medium.
Once again, I find myself living in the future of the future. Really, it’s not at all what I had planned. I had a hovel in the country all picked out, replete with peeling lath walls and choked with charcoal dust, tracked with crushed pastels and aromatic with turpentine and linseed oil. Oh well; this only adds to my conviction that personal desire is a thing of absolute irrelevance.
Returning to the topic at hand from such – ah – pastoral reflections, I am becoming aware of the odd limitations that the Palm OS and associated apps enforce upon users. In this case, my immediate reaction to seeing the story, of course, was to blog it.
But how? AvantGo provides no direct URLs in the story feeds. I could copy it to the clipboard, paste it into mo:blog, thumb out a few words, and save it to sync when I got home – or even upload remotely as I did yesterday.
But how in the world could I get a screenshot of the eye-popper that prompted the entry? Anyway, I’m sure I’ll have some longer-form thoughts on the general topic of this rather absurd mountain-climbing I’m engaged in. As I have remarked, I had literally no idea what I was getting in to. I thought this whole thing was a done deal and I was walking down some well-trod path, one that preferably passed though a bucolic countryside and ended in a garden cottage.