Binocular vision

Technical question

Please tell me why the smoke detectors have started going off while I am taking a shower.

Seriously.

What’s up with that? I assume there is some electrical short somewhere triggered by the damp, but I could be completely wrong. And it isn’t like I am taking a shower and simultaneously leaving broiling food unattended in the oven or firing up an indoor grill or starting a bonfire in the den.

So what’s going on?

Metal

Context.

Thangs, in list form

1. My company has an official anti-glitter policy. Ponder that for a while.
2. I am sitting on a draft post about the parallel issues regarding the gay marriage laws and gun laws but I have to post it because of the jackassery that will ensue. Let me sum it up thusly: You can burn up a lot of energy obsessing about how you believe things “should” be but you aren’t helping yourself or anyone else unless you understand how they actually are and act accordingly.
3. Marigoldie sent me a box of wonderful stuff that she thought I would like. She was right, and I like it so much I cried. If you do not understand that, I cannot help you. Eventually it will all be documented but this is all I have photographed thus far.
4. I just mailed a housewarming gift box to Marigoldie. I was originally hoping it would just make her laugh but now I am going to require tears as well just to even things out. I’m willing to pay SSB to poke her with a sharp stick if need be.
5. My birthday is coming up. I mention this because it is obligatory if one has a weblog. I’ll be 38 on July 6, so there you go. Obligation met.
6. Eighties fashion ‘violates laws of nature’ (and many other things). What a wretched decade to be a teenager. I guess whatever decade you’re a teenager during is bad though.
7. This strikes me as fairly superficial but it may be watered down for the format in which it is presented. I’m going to read the book and see. For now, I still recommend Desmond Morris.
8. “I don’t mean no disrespect…” continues to be the best Flickr comment ever.
9. I think I am going to the Baltimore Zoo this weekend with the Trasheratis. If you see 4,000 photos of hippos and gorillas show up on Flickr Sunday night, you’ll know this came to pass.

The absence of drought

He wanted citizens to get angry enough to remake the system.

“They don’t want a population of citizens capable of critical thinking. They don’t want well-informed, well-educated people capable of critical thinking. They’re not interested in that. That doesn’t help them. That’s against their interests. They don’t want people who are smart enough to sit around the kitchen table and figure out how badly they’re getting fucked by a system that threw them overboard 30 fucking years ago. You know what they want? Obedient workers – people who are just smart enough to run the machines and do the paperwork but just dumb enough to passively accept all these increasingly shittier jobs with the lower pay, the longer hours, reduced benefits, the end of overtime and the vanishing pension that disappears the minute you go to collect it.”

-From a terrific article about George Carlin. Thanks, Trasherati.

I’m a big fan of systemic reform wherever it is needed. To quote my friend Ogre, systems are perfectly designed and built to produce the results they get. Want a different result? Get a different system.

Another article about the startling number of southpaws running for president.

“Both major party candidates are southpaws, contributing to a largely unexplained phenomenon that has vexed researchers and historians — and drawn notice from a federal judge destined for the Supreme Court.”

Yawn.

“Researchers who have studied handedness have found links to genetics and to brain function, but there is no prevailing theory to explain the plethora of left-handed commanders in chief in recent decades. Yet the trend is more than a statistical anomaly, a professor of neurology and psychiatry at the University of California Los Angeles School of Medicine, Daniel Geschwind, said. ‘It’s definitely not an accident. The chance is less than one in a thousand,’ he said.”

Right. There is no prevailing theory but there is this one that I’ve heard before:

“One theory to explain the success of left-handers in politics is that, at an early age, they recognize that they are different in a fundamental way from most of their peers, said Melissa Roth, the author of The Left Stuff: How the Left-Handed Have Survived and Thrived in a Right Handed World. ‘Their difference might be treated as a positive or a negative, a creative asset or a failure to adapt, but either way they are aware that they are special, and that’s a trait psychologists find in many leaders,’ Ms. Roth said.”

Uh-huh. Which is why I am currently General Manager of the Universe.

God. This bores me and I’m left-handed.

[via]

People like photos of tiny mushrooms

Who knew?

Click on the image to see a set of tiny mushroom photos if you are one of those people.

Crystalline fuel

The tiny, ancient man stood at the condiment counter in quiet contemplation. Or maybe he was just moving really slowly. His festive and bright yellow baseball cap offset his sedate khaki shorts and blue, short-sleeved, oxford cloth shirt very nicely. Eventually his hands started working on something small and flat. Slowly he brought the object up to his mouth, tipped his head back, and poured the contents directly onto his tongue. This seemed to kick start his system, and with a subtle but unmistakable burst of energy, he tossed the empty sugar packet, smiled in satisfaction, and shuffled out into the sunshine.

Slides

Wow. This set of slides is one of the most interesting, amusing, and poignant things I have ever seen.