The Windkey and the Lamplighter

I’d been warned about Pu-erh. I’d been told to try samples: not for
everyone, post-fermented, the kimchi of teas. I expected something
vinegary, a sort of pickled tea. That’s not what this is like at
all. Perhaps it’s dwarf tea—a tea for drinking under mountains, or
for drinking like you’re under a mountain. Earthy, rich, but smooth.
Darn good tea.

Looking for another OotS fix? Try DM of the Rings, a hundred strips or so,
fifty of which at least made tea pass through surprising orifices.

This chart shows all the objects in the solar system with a
diameter larger than 200 miles.

Note that the diameter of Mars, everyone’s favorite "next step in exploration" is
less than 1000 miles more than that of Ganymede and just over 1000 miles
more than that of Titan. Both Ganymede and Titan are bigger than
Mercury, and it’s not even a dwarf planet.
Titan even has an atmosphere, mostly nitrogen just like Earth.

I think if I can print this, I just found a new wall decoration for my office.

ed: fixed broken links

The Planetary Society has a great story about methane storms on Titan.
Apparently "severe methane convective storms accompanied by
intense precipitation may occur in Titan under the right environmental
conditions….Raindrops of 1-5 millimeters in radius produce
precipitation rainfalls on the surface as high as 110 kilograms per
square meter and are comparable to flash flood events on Earth."

Meanwhile, in Boston, we’re getting plain ole H2O flooding—not on
the Charles, but certainly street flooding. So why doesn’t the
Charles flood, even in this year of record rainfall? Universal Hub
says it may be because of land the Army Corps of Engineers bought up in the 1970s.

I turned and looked over the globe of the Fourth World from Sol, a
blasted desert that had known life a million years ago, perhaps—or
never. It had been so easy for us to get here. An impromptu
expedition, a bit of skylarking.

I was thinking of those poor humans, trapped on their world. Not
unless they expended their utmost, cleverly used the technology at
their command, could they match what we had accomplished in a
fortnight, and then only with months and years of genius devoted and
treasure expended, and with the toil, sweat, and courage of
multitudes.

They had the ability now. Why hadn’t they come? Why hadn’t someone
planted a flag to defy the grim black banner of Ares?

Were they content to remain trapped? I would not believe that of anyone.

-_Titans of Chaos_, by John C. Wright

I like this definition of hard
fantasy.
I haven’t read most of the authors he names—Martin, obviously, and
some Keyes but not that Keyes. I keep meaning to get to Erikson’s
Malazan Book of the Fallen, but the first one’s out of the
library… again.

I enjoyed the Prydain books as a child, but I didn’t love them. They
didn’t feel like stories. They were confusing and muddled, more like
real things than the things of fantasy. Eilonwy didn’t feel like a
fictional character, but like a girl I’d known a year or so in the
past—always a year or so, just long enough for memories to be muted
and the events of the books remain. Looking back, that’s quite a
compliment. I haven’t read the Prydain books in years, but I remember
the language as challenging a ten-year-old the way Gene Wolfe
challenges me now.

Time Cat, on the other hand, was wonderful. It’s a simple
collection of short stories about a boy and his cat, a half-dozen
history lessons in a few hundred pages. But those depictions of
Leonardo, Sucat/Patrick, and the Manxmen are still the foundation of
my images of them.

Lloyd Alexander passed
away today, surviving his wife of 62 years by only two weeks. He
served in the U.S. Army during the second World War.

Fearfully and reluctantly, he began to read once more. But now his
heart lifted. These pages told not only of death, but of birth as
well; how the earth turns in its own time and in its own way gives
back what is given to it; how things lost may be found again; and
how one day ends for another to begin. He learned that the lives of
men are short and filled with pain, yet each one a priceless
treasure, whether it be that of a prince or a pig-keeper. And, at
the last, the book taught him that while nothing was certain, all
was possible.

"At the end of knowledge, wisdom begins," Dallben murmered. "And at
the end of wisdom there is not grief, but hope."

And as his wisdom passes from the world, Alexander leaves us with hope
for his last
novel,
to be published this fall.

Mr. Alexander, thank you for bringing
color to the facts
that need it so badly.

From Diesel Sweeties by way of Neil Gaiman, a story about why
not to talk about your hobbies at work:

Matt, of the webcomic Three Panel Soul, was interested in learning
to use a rifle. He mentioned this to someone at his workplace,
around the time of the Virginia Tech shootings (but entirely unrelated
to those events). Someone else overheard and "felt unsafe". They
went to management, and he was fired. Then, to add insult to
injury, he (according to Diesel Sweeties, I can’t find this part
elsewhere) was visited by the police for making comics about this
sequence of events!

I can’t figure out what one should do about things like this. Make
people stop being freaked and stupid about guns doesn’t appear to be
an option, since any method I can think of to encourage/require
children to understand what guns are and how they work and why to
respect them without being afraid is going to be shot down (no pun
intended) by the same adults who are terrified of guns themselves.

Okay, so if we can’t enact major cultural change, what can we do? It
irks me that talking about a hobby at work could get you fired, but
given that social interactions in the office are such a big part of
the Normal American Lifestyle, if you never talk about yourself at
work I fear you put yourself at a disadvantage—you look
unfriendly—and that will hurt your chances at promotions.

I went to see the MIT MTG performance of
A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum tonight. The show was very well done, though
I think most of the songs aren’t well-written. The cast was great,
and pointed out to me the thing that I was lacking all through my
theatre experience: acting. I’ve been thinking about this since I
happened to stumble on reviews of my MTG non-chorus roles, Hope in
Anything Goes and Gloria in Return to the Forbidden Planet.
The Tech review of Anything Goes mentions that "although Hope
was fickle and unpredictable, she remained, largely, a one-dimensional
character." The Tech review of Forbidden Planet is more
complentary, mentioning that my "singing voice may be the strongest in
the show" and my performance was "well-rounded and enjoyable", it
still mentions that others’ acting was better.

Combined with the examples last night of fantastic acting and
physical comedy, I think this leaves me with only one conclusion: I
can not act my way out of a paper bag.

I wonder what I do about that? I wonder if I do anything about that.

According to Reuters (by way of the ProMed-mail mailing list),
factory workers who make food flavorings are at risk of " a rare and
life-threatening lung disease called bronchiolitis obliterans, the
U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said on Thursday
[26 Apr 2007]." It "is known to be caused by exposure to
noxious gases in occupational settings and has been described in
workers in the microwave-popcorn industry who were exposed to
artificial butter-flavoring chemicals, including diacetyl," (from the
CDC report.

Eek! That’s pretty scary. I love popcorn—salted by preference,
but butter flavoring is wonderful. The smell of buttered, movie-style
popcorn goes straight to my hindbrain. The CDC report says "Food
flavorings are designated "generally recognized as safe" when approved
by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (6); flavorings are not known
to put consumers at risk for lung disease." but the FDA is not on my
list of supremely trusted individuals… I think I need to do

This part, from the CDC report, really bothered me:
"Bronchiolitis obliterans was first identified in flavor-manufacturing
workers in 1985 (8), although the chemical etiology was not identified
at that time … However, by 2006, many flavoring suppliers still had
not addressed the risk for bronchiolitis obliterans in their material
safety data sheets."

I wish there were a way to set up incentives to encourage
manufacturers to take better care of their employees. Waiting until
someone has gotten hurt isn’t good enough, but I have no idea what
else works…