1370°C

Obama!

2008-06-04T03:02:15Z

The Times and the BBC have called it. In your face!

Let's just hope Clinton concedes with dignity and doesn't string this out.

If you haven't seen this, you should

2008-03-27T00:49:49Z

MN science blogger gets expelled from creationist film screening at the Maul, but guess who they let in?

ferrousoxide @ 2008-03-23T02:02:00

2008-03-23T07:00:39Z

Happy Zombie Jesus Day!

And here i thought Stephen King created the Library Police

2008-03-04T01:12:46Z

Beloit, WI woman

Jailed for overdue library books

{snerk}

ferrousoxide @ 2008-02-28T12:17:00

2008-02-28T18:16:33Z

Haiku² for ferrousoxide
clearly not to fool the audience of the film i laughed out loud
@

Created by Grahame

ferrousoxide @ 2007-12-27T22:05:00

2007-12-28T04:07:46Z

I was going to make this exact post, but pinksheya has said it best:

"For those who might be interested, Lush (my other job) is having a sale. Seriously! I would have told my lovelys about this earlier but I didn't even really know about it. However since some of you love the stuff I thought I would let you know. All bath products are buy 1 get 2 Free (of equal or lesser value of course) - which includes bath bombs, bath melts, bubble bars, and all sliced soaps. You can mix and match too. EVERYTHING ELSE IN THE ENTIRE STORE is buy 1 get 1 free! This includes the gift sets, shampoo stuff, face care, all of it. Again, you can mix in match, so long as you spend $20 you get $20 free. There are only a couple exceptions, this sale is called Clean Slate '08 - so we are getting rid of stuff that was made before December 2007. Which means everything made in December is not part of the sale. So, the sooner you get to the store (macy's mall of america first floor) the more stuff is on sale."

I add that the worst discount is equivalent to the normal employee discount and the "buy one, get two free" is much better. If you've ever loved Lush stuff or were curious and wanted to try them out, now's the time.

Hey all--missing person alert--read please

2007-12-14T03:46:05Z

The 15 year-old daughter of a friend of my sister has gone missing. Evidently, Julianne Baggett's 19 year-old boyfriend convinced her to run away with him after she was grounded for poor grades and drinking. She's from the Tacoma, WA area, but they've been gone for about 7 days and could be in Seattle or Portland or California or pretty much anywhere at this point. The info on her and her photo is here

The reason i ask you to keep your ears and eyes open is that there's a good chance they're hanging out in a goth or spooky-kid scene somewhere. If you have any PacNW communities you could pass this along to, i'd be grateful. Julianne used to be a very close friend of my niece when they lived in the same town.

--FeO

From a web writeup of a tourist's visit to Dublin:

2007-12-13T07:48:39Z

"Everything is feckin' and bleedin' in Dublin. Or else it's grand!"

Query--library stuff

2007-11-20T01:19:21Z

Today, one of my cohort and i discovered that our wonderful Centre for Medieval Studies library contains a) books that the U's library owns but live on our bank of the river--a full 15 minutes closer walk than the proper library for those of us farthest away and b) books that the U library system doesn't contain at all. Sadly, CMSL's collection is poorly organised and not at all catalogued.

I hatched a plan.

With volunteer help, i reckon we can shelf-mark and database all of the books in the library so that medievalists can make much better use of them. We'd like CMS to be the bustling hub of activity it once was, and it would be dead helpful.

Now, i can probably roll my own database, but it would be hacked together, unprofessional, and likely full of the craptastic. Have any of you come across a free (preferably Free) database system that would allow us to input full bibliographic details for books, including LC call numbers, in a format searchable by author, title, call number, and perhaps keyword? We'd want the database to be locally hosted but able to be set loose on the Internet. It's a strangely specialised request, but i'm guessing if anyone knows of such a thing, you lot would be the first defence.

ferrousoxide @ 2007-10-10T19:23:00

2007-10-11T00:26:45Z

So, we have a chain of sandwich shops here called Jimmy John's who pride themselves on the quickness of their delivery service.

Today, a bus that pulled up to my stop was plastered with a JJ's ad that said "Our special sauce is speed!"

Erm, really? Do they not test market these things? And are their advertising execs mad, or is this meant to be deliberate?

***edit***
Well, their other adverts do seem to be funny, but i'm still not sure that this is exactly as deliberate as the Mr. Happy Crack campaign.

That book meme

2007-10-02T02:51:33Z

Amusingly enough, this meme has been posted at least once as LibraryThing's list of books least read. I think that's clearly bunk considering the number of both classics and pop culture staples on it. I'd honestly rather see a list of what you've read off of the Modern Library's 100 best books list. Still, here's my offering. If you choose to play, bold those you've read, strike those you hated, italicise those you started and didn't finish.

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (149)
Anna Karenina (132)
Crime and Punishment (121)
Catch-22 (117)
One Hundred Years of Solitude (115)
Wuthering Heights (110)
The Silmarillion (104)
Life of Pi: a Novel (94)
The Name of the Rose (91)
Don Quixote (91)
Moby Dick (86)
Ulysses (84)
Madame Bovary (83)
The Odyssey (83)
Pride and Prejudice (83)
Jane Eyre (80)
A Tale of Two Cities (80)
The Brothers Karamazov (80)
Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies (79)
War and Peace (78)
Vanity Fair (74)
The Time Traveler's Wife
The Iliad (73)
Emma (73)
The Blind Assassin (73)
The Kite Runner (71)
Mrs. Dalloway (70)
Great Expectations (70)
American Gods (68)
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius (67)
Atlas Shrugged (67)
Reading Lolita in Tehran: a Memoir in Books (66)
Memoirs of a Geisha (66)
Middlesex (66)
Quicksilver (66)
Wicked: the Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West (65)
The Canterbury Tales (64)
The Historian: a Novel (63)
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (63)
Love in the Time of Cholera (62)
Brave New World (61)
The Fountainhead (61)
Foucault's Pendulum (61)
Middlemarch (61)
Frankenstein (59)
The Count of Monte Cristo (59)
Dracula (59)
A Clockwork Orange (59)
Anansi Boys (58)
The Once and Future King (57)
The Grapes of Wrath (57)
The Poisonwood Bible: a Novel (57)
1984 (57)
Angels & Demons (56)
The Inferno (56)
The Satanic Verses (55)
Sense and sensibility (55)
The Picture of Dorian Gray (55)
Mansfield Park (55)
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (54)
To the Lighthouse (54)
Tess of the D'Urbervilles (54)
Oliver Twist (54)
Gulliver's Travels (53)
Les Misérables (53)
The Corrections (53)
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay (52)
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time (52)
Dune (51)
The Prince (51)
The Sound and the Fury (51)
Angela's Ashes: a Memoir (51)
The God of Small Things (51)
A People's History of the United States: 1492-Present (51)
Cryptonomicon (50)
Neverwhere (50)
A Confederacy of Dunces (50)
A Short History of Nearly Everything (50)
Dubliners (50)
The Unbearable Lightness of Being (49)
Beloved (49)
Slaughterhouse-Five (49)
The Scarlet Letter (48)
Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation (48)
The Mists of Avalon (47)
Oryx and Crake: a Novel (47)
Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed (47)
Cloud Atlas (47)
The Confusion (46)
Lolita (46)
Persuasion (46)
Northanger Abbey (46)
The Catcher in the Rye (46)
On the Road (46)
The Hunchback of Notre Dame (45)
Freakonomics : a Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything (45)
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: an Inquiry into Values (45)
The Aeneid (45)
Watership Down (44)
Gravity's Rainbow (44)
The Hobbit (44)
In Cold Blood: a True Account of a Multiple Murder and its Consequences (44)
White Teeth (44)
Treasure Island (44)
David Copperfield (44)
The Three Musketeers (44)

Political Squoor

2007-09-19T03:25:53Z

Ages back, i wrote my Representative in opposition to the annoying royalty payments for internet radio stations debacle. It took months, but today i got an email from Keith Ellison:

Dear Ms. [FeO],

Thank you for contacting me to express your concerns about the recent changes to internet performance royalty payments made by the Copyright Royalty Board (CRB). I am honored to hear from you, and proud to represent you. Since coming to Congress, I have been working very hard to advance my policy agenda based on four key priorities - peace, prosperity for working families, environmental sustainability, and support for human and civil rights.

Recent changes made by the CRB have unfairly increased the royalties paid by law-abiding members of the internet broadcasting community. These changes have not only made it difficult for not-for-profit public broadcasters to provide quality programming to a broad audience by streaming their content over the internet but it could also put many of these independent media voices out of business.

To address this issue I have co-sponsored H.R. 2060, The Internet Radio Equality Act, introduced by Congressmen Jay Inslee (Washington) and Don Manzullo (Illinois). H.R. 2060 reduces the rates for internet broadcasters to the equivalent rate paid by satellite broadcasters. It also creates a new royalty standard designed for public broadcasters. H.R. 2060 has been referred to the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Courts, the Internet, and Intellectual Property, where it awaits further action.

As always, please don't hesitate to contact me regarding this or any other matter of concern. Please sign up for my e-newsletter by visiting my website at www.house.gov/ellison.

Sincerely,

Keith Ellison
United States House of Representatives

This is by far the best email i've gotten after writing any of my Reps or Senators. Too bad it took him so long, but props to him for not only addressing the issue i wrote about (rather than providing an "I'm deeply concerned about whatever issue you wrote about, here's a form letter detailing my stump speech issues") and in a way in which i totally approve.

Ellison has yet another notch on my "i might vote for you" stick.

Question for the Free Speech advocates on my friendslist

2007-09-14T00:51:48Z

So, it's Autumn at the U, which means the God Squad are out in full force. Here, this takes the form of Brother Jed and his minions standing on the Mall at our campus espousing their (way over the top) beliefs in soap-box fashion. Fine, they have a right. Typically, a crowd of rubberneckers gather, some snickering and enjoying the entertainment value of it and some actively arguing with the evangelists (a few of whom in every crowd seem to know more about the Bible than the thumpers do). Usually, it's a fairly entertaining, if irksome, way to spend a few minutes between classes.

However. Last week, i was wandering by and stopped to hear Brother Jed and his 3 ~~fiends~~ friends, because i'm bizarrely fascinated by train wrecks. As i stood there, a member of a queer group on campus walked quietly up with a sign that had a simple hand-written message about tolerance for all and the web site of his group. Nothing inflammatory, or even particularly queer-centric other than the mention of the name of the group in question.

After some bog-standard religious gay-bashing comments, Brother Jed and then the guy who followed him proceeded to attack this quiet fellow personally. Among the comments directed at him were "You didn't have to suck that penis, you had a choice," "this fag here thinks..," "do you bend over?," (this to one of the other audience members), "homo," and a range of other very graphic attacks on this guy's sexual habits (mind you, no clue whether this guy was actually homosexual or was simply a member of the organisation). Some of the comments were so bad that i've plum blocked them out. This poor kid was polite as punch and said nothing back; he just stood there with his sign, while some of us congratulated him on his composure.

To me, and mind i'm pretty rabidly pro free speech, Brother Jed and his toadies should have been summarily booted off campus by the U cops standing nearby. I know that things like personal attacks are murky ground when it comes to free speech, and i'm not saying the government ought to intervene, but it seems fairly clear to me that this sort of thing violates the U's hate speech policies. I'm not trying to start a debate necessarily over whether they had the "right" to be saying those things under US law, but i guess i wonder if anyone else thinks that perhaps the U ought to be informed and take measures.

Time change for Dublin people

2007-08-08T15:09:24Z

synthpop_girl posting as ferrousoxide here.

The time for the longstone has changed to 7.30 tonight. Hope to see you all there

TCians!

2007-08-02T00:04:38Z

The bridge on I-35 that crosses the Mississippi collapsed into the river about half an hour ago or so. Dumped at least 8 cars into the river and set some on fire when the debris hit them.

Don't try to drive that way, and i hope you're all ok.

The current thing in the Woot-off

2007-07-20T18:26:36Z

Is This item (link from buy.com and not Woot, since that one won't be remotely permanent).

NB: While the buy.com listing doesn't say this, Woot tells me that it's a regular electronic dictionary which provides the option to spell words phonetically and learns words as well, an mp3 player, a crossword dictionary, it has interactive word learning exercises, and 5 games.

Ok, my phone is a camera, fine, i can use it to send pictures over the phone or set wallpaper of my cat. Ok, my phone is also an mp3 player, but i can use its song capabilities to play nice ringtones and it's a device inherently meant for listening. I don't really need my phone to do any of those things and didn't choose it for that purpose, but at least the features make some sort of sense together.

But a *dictionary* that's also an mp3 player and gaming machine? I suppose i should look forward to our new all-in-one gadget overlords. Maybe next they'll make me a GPS system that's also a portable toilet and will send out birthday cards and thank you notes for me.

ferrousoxide @ 2007-07-17T01:42:00

2007-07-17T06:47:23Z

The last several days have been spent frantically (and sometimes lackadaisically) helping alisgray so things for her and saracura's shop.

Today, we ran errands, made fliers about the grand opening party to distribute in the Saloon (we gave out or left around about 100 of them), bought various things and chatted about others. We also managed to make time to eat and play board games with eeediver, who's back early from West Virginia. I think i won Scrabble, but i was royally trounced at Parcheesi.

I find these days that i feel very busy (and occasionally accomplished), but when i write out what i've actually done, it doesn't sound like much. You'll just have to trust me that it was.

For those who are in the Twin Cities and haven't been inundated with spam about this already, SaraCura will be having its official Grand Opening shindig this Saturday, 21 July. There will be music, food, belly dancing, henna tattooing and the like. Plus, i promise, the shop will have something you will find desirable and/or entertaining. Come down and poke the ladies with sticks!

ferrousoxide @ 2007-06-25T16:48:00

2007-06-25T21:50:34Z

My sister sent me the link to this; it has to be one of the strangest ad campaigns ever.

Shave Everywhere

***edit***

Probably not entirely WS

***edit***

My phone

2007-06-21T00:47:24Z

Last week, i opened my flip phone and one of the screen hinges snapped off. Since i'll be eligible for a new Verizon phone in a month, i figured i could limp it along until i could get a replacement. However, it dropped to the floor on Monday evening, and the whole screen snapped off. Funny thing is that it still seems to work, i just can't *see* it ;)

So, i reverted to my old phone, which i had wiped of contact list ages back. The nice Verizon phone guy tells me that if i go to the Verizon shop, they *might* be able to fetch my contacts list from the broken one, since it still appears somewhat operational. However, in the mean time, and in the event they can't retrieve them, i don't have any of your phone numbers, because why on earth would i memorize such things anymore? ;P Why can't Verizon work on sim cards like a sensible service?

So, if i ought to have your number, it would be great if you could either zap me a txt or post a comment here (they're screened).

Random introductions

2007-06-19T02:16:13Z

solo_beckett, you should meet gorey_ballerina, you both share a passion for really fancy dolls of (what, as an untrained observer i think are) the same type.

alisgray, who i've made sick as a dog (sorry...damned immune system), meet those crazy Dublin-dwelling folk you will soon know in person:
alan_ie. aurniam. blackberry_roan. blaquewraith, dequath, endon_neu. solo_beckett. nodis. synthpop_girl, and tearsofzorro. In addition to the two you know already, ickle_tayto and nephster13.

Review: The Milagro Beanfield War

2007-06-14T04:58:35Z

Before the film out at my local park, there was some recorded music on and my neighbors were having a hot-pepper eating contest. They ate two each of jalapeños and serrano peppers and then tried to see how many habaneros they could eat. The guy who won ate 9. This is a pretty big deal for Minnesotans, who have notoriously bland palates, and most of the contestants gave up after the serranos.

The Milagro Beanfield War is set in 1980s New Mexico in an impoverished, northern, fictional town called Milagro. The government has taken away the town's right to use their local stream for irrigation purposes, and has made a back-room deal with a developer to turn the entire town and surrounding area into a fancy-schmancy resort. As a result, all of the crops have dried up, most of the farmers have sold their land to the government, nearly everyone's out of work, and the town is dying.

When one of these out-of-work residents, Jose, accidentally breaks a valve blocking the water to his father's old bean field, he decides to ignore the laws and replant the beans. Chaos ensues as the townfolk decide whether they support Jose's efforts and the Forest Service police force tries to figure out how to stop him while keeping the matter out of the public eye. In the end, the beans survive to be harvested, and the mayor pulls his support for the deal with the developers.

Complete with heartfelt ending, The Milagro Beanfield War delivers on its opening implications that David will, yet again, best Goliath while managing to maintain a tense and interesting atmosphere. It addresses very serious and pertinent issues about water rights, racial strife, development problems, and bureaucratic interference while maintaining a good sense of humour and a fairly accurate portrayal of small-village New Mexican life. Thoroughly enjoyable was the appearance of Christopher Walken as the Big Bad, the veritable menagerie of quirky older native New Mexican as mostly comic relief (one of them buys bullets with food stamps), and a reliance on magical realism to move the plot along. To its immense credit, the film had not even a shred of love-story to distract from the actual plot. It's also a gold-mine for quotes: "this posse couldn't find itself!," "those guys vote six, seven times a piece," and one that went along the lines of "the scorpions will nest in your shoes if they leave them there, and be sure not to lean back too far on the seat in the outhouse, or let your testicles dangle up under the wooden seat...black widows" among them.

It was a bit too heavy handed on the racial front--literally all of the evil developers, government employees, and forest service folk were of the "fat cat whitey" variety while the locals often came off as ignorant and intolerant--but this was somewhat mitigated by the white Sociology grad student and the estranged Lawyer who help Milagro's people in their cause and the spunky, bright, activist native New Mexican woman who rallies her people at the end. We are also left to wonder what exactly the town's victory will bring it; the beanfield is likely too small to yield anything but a symbolic crop, but the movie clearly ends on an upbeat note.

All-in-all, the film was cute and well-done. As one who almost always positively loathes happy "everything worked out" endings, I very much enjoyed The Milagro Beanfield War. I especially recommend it to the New Mexico-dwellers among you; you'll feel happily at home in the film's setting as well as recognise issues that are still relevant in the state today.

I can't wait until next Wednesday (Waiting for Guffman!!). My neighborhood association and the local artist co-op (in the sense of work-space and community, not in the sense of housing or food buying) are putting these films on, and they promise silly activities and decent music as well as the films. Perhaps i'll even meet one of my neighbors.

Snort!

2007-05-06T03:57:41Z

SNL is doing a best of show, and they're showing Dick in a Box, which was evidently voted best short.

I don't think that bit will ever get old.

Looking for books online?

2007-05-05T20:23:28Z

I just found BetterWorld Books, who use their profits to fund literacy programs. They have a ton of stuff, both new and second-hand, ship for free anywhere in the US (and for 3$ internationally), and support a number of other socially responsible practices.

This week in science

2007-04-30T02:31:36Z

This week, James Doohan's ashes were launched into space and Stephen Hawking got to experience weightlessness. I can't think of two people more deserving of such honours.

ferrousoxide @ 2007-04-19T20:19:00

2007-04-20T01:20:52Z

For imbrium8 and elijahprophet and other fans of Caketown, i give you this courtesy of bel_canto's journal.