Heehee

marriedtothesea.com

It's this cold:

Sure, I've seen worse, but not many times since I came back from the States. It hasn't been colder this year, I don't think, which is cause for concern on the climate change front . . .

Thank you, Stanford . . .

. . . for sending me notice of my 10-year reunion with a detachable postcard displaying my name, year of graduation, home phone, and personal e-mail address. Yes, on a postcard, to make life easier for spammers and identity thieves. Thanks also for writing at the bottom that I could stick it in an envelope if I preferred. I could, just not while I was still out checking my mail--I don't carry letter envelopes in my pocket. Seriously, why not just use one of those airmail-type envelopes that don't take much paper?

Perhaps this is a sneaky way to get more alumni donations, resulting in more competent mailings in the future.

OK, on closer examination it looks like I can fold this thing in thirds and tape it shut, protecting my vital statistics from prying eyes (it's about the size of a half sheet of letter paper, cut lengthwise). It's not designed that way, but that leaves their preprinted address unobscured. Maybe it was all a test, upon which the admission status of my progeny will depend.

I bet this never happens at Northwestern, does it Elizabeth?

It's coming down

New Jersey, getting in on a trend that is hopefully sweeping the nation, abolished capital punishment, the first state to do so since the Supreme Court reauthorized the death penalty in 1976. The first since 1965, actually. Although there have been no New Jersey executions in over four decades, it's nice to know that there won't be any more. Very encouraging and politically courageous in an age when most people who win office promise to lock up more people for a longer period of time and our President's most noteworthy achievement as Texas Governor was signing a bunch of death warrants.

It's -1 and sunny, and I'm just back from a great weekend in Wasilla, kind of a late birthday party. The cat never let me hear the end of it when I got home . . .

D'oh!

Terry Pratchett has early-onset Alzheimer's. He made the announcement with his trademark wit. It's sad, though--such a talented writer. Of course, as he says, he is not dead, and I'm glad he's going to keep cranking out books for the time being, especially since I only started reading the Discworld books in the past six months . . .

Oh, come on!

Yesterday's NYT had an article about an increasing number of teenagers taking up squash (the sport, not the very tasty genus of plant native to the Americas). Apparently, with the sport's growth, many Ivy-plus schools are recruiting more varsity players. First of all, call me old fashioned, but I think the only reason a kid should take up squash is that he or she enjoys playing squash. Second of all, if you play squash to make your application stand out, won't it go into a pile with all the other squash players who are trying to make their applications stand out? Finally, everyone knows the best way to get into a good school is to move to a rural state--West Virginia, South Dakota, perhaps even Alaska :)

Of course, the larger issue is an older story--the college admissions industry and the cutthroat competition to get into those few schools that U.S. News puts in its top tiers based on a few numbers that ultimately don't mean very much . . .

One more before bedtime

I couldn't resist. From: http://www.jamphat.com/rap/ (some graphs may be offensive to some). Good old school references, in addition to the 50 Cent.

Fine art imitates art

Wow--Frankenstein the novel has a flashback within a flashback within a flashback within yet another flashback. It's just like that Simpsons . . .

It's warm again. I mean, like the Oregon and California winters I had grown used to. It's been rainy and above freezing. Weird. I'm off to Chicagoland in a week and a half for a splendid long vacation with the family. Oh, and I forgot to mention that STANFORD BEAT CAL last weekend!!! A 4-8 season maybe, but we beat Cal and USC (#2 at the time). Jim Harbaugh has made a believer out of me--hopefully he'll get a few years to really build the program. Keep recruiting brainy jocks (says the geek with delusions of jockdom--props to Robert C. for coining the phrase).

I like to get my learn on.

As usual, I'm a couple of years behind the curve--I just discovered dailylit.com, which sends books to your e-mail address in small chunks that take ~5 minutes to read. The public domain works are free, which is a steal at twice the price. They'll send you a new installment daily, or on weekdays, or on demand--it's pretty awesome. I'm working on Frankenstein right now, which I managed to avoid all these years (although there was a filmstrip version that gave me nightmares in grade school). Maybe I'll read some Shakespeare afterwards, or some Dickens, since those were meant to be serialized. It's nice to read all those works I should have already read without having to put down the other books I'm working on. Oh well, call me easily impressed.

P.S. While it's just good to see knowledge disseminated more effectively, bound books are still better than ebooks. So no, I don't want a Kindle. I can only assume that Amazon named it that because they predicted people would throw them on the fire, which is terrible for the environment, but I can understand the sentiment.

. . .

The Bethel temperature went up 50 degrees in ten days--it was -1 on November 20, and 49 on November 30. Unreal. It's just below freezing now. Hopefully the weather has made up its mind and we won't have a catastrophic warm winter. Also, I need it to be cold so I have an excuse for slacking off on the running, until it's time to train for the next race.

I had a great Thanksgiving weekend in Anchorage and Wasilla. Lions for Lambs was really good, I thought, all the bad reviews notwithstanding.

I made an awesome chicken-garlic stew last night, which yielded a lot of leftovers.

Alaska politics continue to be fun to watch if you aren't a Republican--it's raining indictments, and a sitting state Senator got caught on tape verbally roughing up the wife of a prosecution witness. I still think the Dems have a rough road ahead--we have a popular Republican governor who has managed to distance herself from these other knuckleheads, and guys like Don Young who have clawed their way back from tough spots before. Nevertheless, I remain cautiously optimistic--all of these corruption cases have to have some effect at the ballot box, don't they?

Not much else to report--looking forward to a long vacation in Chicago/Evanston for Christmas and New Year's, then into 2008, but I'm sure I will have more to say before then.