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Saturday, October 29th, 2005
I bought a used copy of The Evolution Man by Roy Lewis, through Amazon. I remember it from my childhood as being a laugh riot -- it came yesterday and I read some of it tonight, and it does not disappoint. The idea of the book is to show some of the milestones of human evolution and social development, as seen through the eyes of a young early hominid named Ernie, his Luddite uncle and his forward-looking father. It's a little bit the same effect as Kipling's "Just-So Stories", but more clever and insightful.
posted evening of October 29th, 2005: Respond
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Thursday, October 27th, 2005
Sylvia and Ellen were at Scandinavia House (on Park Ave. and 37th) yesterday, and found to their great surprise that the gift shop there is just full of Moomin merchandise. Gee, why didn't I think of that? Seems pretty obvious now -- they have stuffed animals, pottery and a bunch of other stuff. They did not get any of that, but did pick up the CD of "Muumilauluja" -- lovely but hard to understand, being in Finnish er, Swedish and all. We listened to it last night and played "try to guess the character who's speaking" based on the voice characteristics, which was pretty fun. This morning I did a search and found that the CD is translated into English as Moomin Voices, available from CDBaby. Update: Er, I'm confused here. Looks like "Muumilauluja" is, as I at first thought, in Finnish; and "Moomin Voices" is in Swedish. No English translation, I think.
posted morning of October 27th, 2005: Respond
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Wednesday, October 26th, 2005
At the beginning of last night's dream, I was reading an article in a history journal, regarding the discovery of a bag or box lunch which Martha Washington had prepared for her husband. It was believed to have been from early in their married years. The central idea of the article concerned the discovery that George or Martha (I forget which) had not deigned to smell the lunch; or maybe that George had requested that Martha not smell it, or prevented her from smelling it. This was presented as evidence of a lousy marriage, specifically of George denying Martha's full humanity. I remember thinking both, Wow, how would you discover something like that in the historical record, and That seems like a pretty wild extrapolation from the data point. Maybe they just didn't have good smellers. Or something. I was reading the article on the train going in to work and as it arrived in Hoboken, I climbed out the porthole onto the platform -- this train was equipped with portholes next to each seat. I was sitting in the front of the second car, as is my wont. Apparently I did not wait until the train came to a complete stop, because a conductor (a black woman) yelled at me from the first car to please return to my seat until it did. As I made my way back to the second car so did she, more quickly than I, and when she got to my seat she found the bag lunch which I had forgotten to take with me, and handed it to me through the porthole. Not sure what the relationship is between the two parts of this dream.
posted morning of October 26th, 2005: Respond
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Friday, October 21st, 2005
A comments thread well worth your perusal, is under Kieran Healy's Ye Ladies of Easy Leisure post at Crooked Timber. I am of course modestly proud of my own contributions but the whole thing is pretty well at the acme of the form. People are talking past each other, personalizing, crying in their beer, and the whole thing just magically hangs together. Plus Belle called me a pervert. Also, this Michael Berube post on classic rock FM radio has lots of good stuff.
posted afternoon of October 21st, 2005: Respond
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Thursday, October 20th, 2005
Sylvia's birthday present from her grandparents was a bicycle accessory we've been thinking about getting for a while now. It is a tandem trailer, which converts my bike (or Ellen's) into a bicycle built for two, with the rear seat being low enough for Sylvia to ride on it. She loves it! Here are some shots of us riding around.
posted evening of October 20th, 2005: Respond
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Friday, October 14th, 2005
... I broke my router. But it's all fixed, now, at least enough for my web site to be online. Enjoy!
posted morning of October 14th, 2005: Respond
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Monday, October third, 2005
Tonight we finished Moominpappa At Sea -- Sylvia surprised me by telling me, "Dad -- maybe the lighthouse-keeper is the fisherman" about two pages before that identity is revealed -- she's been paying closer and more subtle attention to the story line than I had thought she was. Then she said, "I've been thinking about the moomins all day." And how cool is this -- the events of the last chapter take place on October 3rd, which is the date we're reading the last chapter on!
posted evening of October third, 2005: Respond
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Friday, September 23rd, 2005
Via Pharyngula: Rules: - Go into your archive.
- Find your 23rd post (or closest to).
(Way back on May Day, 2003.) - Find the fifth sentence (or closest to).
- Post the text of the sentence in your blog along with these instructions.
"I ended up cutting a rabbet in the end of that piece of siding so it would fit over the end of the piece around the corner from it -- that seemed to work ok but now I need to seal it."
And, ack, I believe the end of the siding remains unsealed 2 years later...
posted afternoon of September 23rd, 2005: Respond
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Sylvia and I watched the first two episodes of Moomin-Mania last night. She was crazy about it, which strangely created a bit more distance for me, than when I watched the first episode before. I am thinking the changes in the story-line make for a less interesting story than the book. But, the visuals are fantastic. And the voices are generally really good too, although there are spots where they are not quite properly synchronized with the action.
posted morning of September 23rd, 2005: Respond
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Tuesday, September 20th, 2005
Last week I discovered, browsing around the internet, that an animated Moomin TV series was produced in Japan in the early 90's, and is now available on DVD! Excited, I tried ordering it (from Britain; it is not available in the US) and got a warning that it might not work with an American DVD player. Browsed around a bit and learned that DVD's have a region code printed on them, and DVD players are programmed to reject discs from the wrong region; and furthermore, that DVD players in computers generally don't have this limitation. So, I went ahead and ordered it, hoping it would work on the computer. It arrived in the mail today and indeed, I was able to watch on my computer. This is an excellent thing. (Based on the first episode, which is all I've watched so far.) The animation is beautiful, the voices range from very good to excellent. The story is slightly modified from Finn Family Moomintroll. A movie of "Comet in Moominland" was produced in 1993; but it does not appear to be available on DVD yet.
posted evening of September 20th, 2005: Respond
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