2020 Hindsight

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noisy (jubilant) neighbors

I've been hearing shouts of a crowd... sounds like a sports event. The biggest whoop just now. Someone yelled, Lakers won, Lakers won, Lakers won! Oh good. Were they playing a game or something? ; )

FAQs about FAQ

Among other things, the FAQ FAQ asks (and answers) What was the first FAQ?

Eugene Miya is usually credited with being the author of the first

FAQ. Although, in his words, "I didn't do the very first FAQ, but I

probably did the first one of an informational nature." [...] In 1982, while acting as an official NASA presence on the gatewayed

ARPAnet mailing list SPACE[-Digest]/net.space news groups, he tired

of seeing "dumb answers" to recurring questions. The situation as

Eugene saw it was that the answers to these questions were are often

poorly thought out, inconsistent, and uninformed. Furthermore, the

posters of the questions often weren't trying to find the answers

from books, magazines, or other references. They also weren't paying

attention to previous answers to these same questions. Rather, they

were just taking the easy way out - email the question and wait for

the answer.

Eugene therefore decided to start a series of monthly posts in 1983

to rectify this sorry state of affairs. The mechanism of periodic

postings was also a way to provide information to those who didn't

have access to the archives.

Feb 23: Sometimes Management Just Doesn't Get It Day

A friend suggests that today should be known as Sometimes Management Just Doesn't Get It Day.

BTW I have often joked that February 23 should be a holiday

which I call "sometimes management just doesn't get it day".

The first attack on the U.S. mainland since the War of 1812

came Feb. 23, 1942, in the midst of one of President Roosevelt's

fireside chats. A Japanese submarine rose out of the sea at

Goleta, 12 miles north of Santa Barbara, fired 13 shells at

the Ellwood oil field and caused $500 in damage. Oil field

supervisors handed out pitchforks and told workers to defend

the beach. [Source: LA Times article, Nov 2002]

2004 list of Banished Words

SAULT STE. MARIE, Mich. - Hardly looking 'metrosexual,' a 'shocked and awed' Lake Superior State University Word Banishment selection committee emerged from its spider hole with its annual List of Words Banished from the Queen's English for Mis-Use, Over-Use and General Uselessness.

[via Jeffrey Veen]

Fortunate

Just had Chinese food. The fortune was worth remembering.

The old believe everything; the middle aged suspect everything; the young know everything.

Jury duty tomorrow....

Each day since last week I've been calling a number, entering my Jury ID code and being told to call back the next business day after 5pm. Tonight I find that I gotta report for jury duty tomorrow. At 8am. (yawn. I am *not* a morning person) It's my first time doing jury duty. If there's anything worth reporting about the experience (and even stuff not worth reporting) it may find its way here.

Have carrybag for my stuff? check. Checked that there's no sharp object? check (hey, this is serious; I do graphic stuff and took exacto knife to meeting earlier today) Have writing notebook? Check. Have bills that need paying? Check. Letter opener? oops, sharp edge. Opened all bills? check. Stamps? Check. Sufficient checks in checkbook? Check. (heh.) Munchables for either breakfast or lunch? check.

Clothes laid out? er... hmmmm... should I wear my tee shirt from my friend's election campaign--when she was a D.A. and ran for the office of the local municipal judge? If I get assigned to a trial, I'm going to ask to go from the main Pasadena court to the local courthouse (walking distance). The judge presiding at the nearby courthouse was my friend's election opponent. Should I wear her campaign tee shirt? Naaaaah. (tho it'd be a good way to get *out* of jury duty if I wanted...) All rightie then. Clothes laid out? Check.

hurdle?

I don't know how it happens. One busy day I wake up and say, "naaaah, I don't wanna blog today." Same thing happens the next day, and the next. Pretty soon, a whole week has passed. Now it's getting to feel like some big thing, a hurdle to overcome, in order to post again.

No matter who wins, I'm happy

Dodgers vs. Angels, Dodger stadium. This afternoon in misty misty June. (Dodgers won, 4-2) Heard booing as various Angels were introduced at the beginning. Hey, I followed those guys for 7 important games last fall! (Grew up in Orange County, so they're my team, I suppose). Know them better'n I know the Dodgers, that's for sure. Went to the game as part of the JPL Dodger Day contingent.

I guess now's as good a time as any for the announcer to say "Welcome to the CalTech JPL group" -- several stands in the outfield cheer and wave their ballcaps. After all, this group's between one successful Mars-bound launch, with another one on the pad to go in a few days. Go, go, go!

Most somber baseball cap: Columbia Recovery Team.

Kudos to the two girls who got us started on the wave. They started one that propogated throughout the entire stadium multiple times.

Sacred Plentitude....on housing dead people

Dave W. comments on the amount of real estate used to house dead people, pointing to this article which I will read presently.

I think that the amount of space we currently assign for burial results from the abundance of land our ancestors had. The Land of Plenty was shared with the dead, too. I'm thinking of some pictures of the old buildings in the early days of Pasadena: great ornate building, surrounded by lots and lots of open land. ("lots" as in "abundance" not "lots" as in "parcels" of land. Perhaps I'm doing etymology on the fly here. I'm tempted to use the word alotted in my edits, too. No doubt it's related.) Obviously a different time, those "olden days." Space was plentiful, so the dead were given a good share of it.

But not every place and culture starts out with abundance. What do they do?

[Macro error: Can't call the script because the name "pictureRef" hasn't been defined.]
In the summer of 1980, I visited a place that's been around for more than the 100+ years of Pasadena's history. Its history dates back thousands and thousands of years: Halstatt, Austria. (go ahead, click and see the very pretty picture there. I'll wait.) In fact, Halstatt's a place that gives its name to an era in history. (Salt mines nearby, and ancient archaeological findings, hence the name, Halstatt era). Halstatt is in the Austrian Alps, on a tiny spit of land on the shore of a lake. The surrounding mountains are so high and the cliffs so steep that Halstatt doesn't get any direct sunlight in wintertime. There is only that little spit of land; no place to spread out. Forget suburbs. It's this tiny hamlet or nuthin'.

The people adapt to their limited land with different burial customs. When people die, they are buried in the little church graveyard. After about 300 years, the bones of the elder dead are exhumed, cleaned, and painted. There's a crypt with the hallowed bones of Halstatters from centuries past. (I've pictures, but those were taken in the pre-computer digital camera days of slide film. Alas for you, my dear blog-reader. On slides they will stay.)

A people faced with scarcity manage to honor their dead in ways consistent with the land they have. The problem in the Land of Plenty is re-assessing whether the land is plentiful and scarce, and then adjusting our burial customs accordingly. It won't happen in one generation.