can you fix a cfl?

this site suggests (in slightly-broken english) it is sometimes possible to fix a compact fluorescent lightbulb (via makezine)

Libyan No-Fly / Police Action / War / Airshow / ...?

so is this a bad time to bring up the phrases:

"warmongering cowboy"
"no blood for oil"
"dissent is patriotic"

?

at least when bush mobilized the armed forces, he had a goal in mind...

common ground

it's not often i agree with a leftist-socialist-labor site, but this is one: stop rfid.

and this post brings up problems surrounding "who owns science".

things to remember

two quotes from many via the jakarta globe:

"The timing is not right for political decisions and the spreading of panic," Slovenia's President Danilo Turk told reporters while on a visit to the Czech capital Prague.

"Please don't forget that there are people who are working to protect everyone's lives in exchange for their own lives," said one post on Japanese social networking site Mixi.

Japan Earthquake

Here's the "one-page" of information from USGS, more information on tabs, and a preliminary cross-section.

Here's graphics of the tsunami waves fom NOAA, and one high resolution map of the wave heights.

just raised that way

Viewpoint:

"Most people... agree that the behavior and views of Mr. Phelps and his Westboro Baptist Church are contemptible and not deserving of the respect of decent people. Many commentators and cartoonists have reviled and mocked them in print, not just for their awful behavior at funerals, but for the beliefs they hold about homosexuality and American decadence.

But here's an interesting thing. The Westboro baptists are on the fringe of American Christianity, but they're roundly condemned for holding views that are actually in the mainstream of American Islam.

Whether it's their conviction that God hates homosexuals, or that God rejoices in the deaths of American soldiers, or that America is a fundamentally decadent society which deserves to be destroyed, there are a lot of devout Muslims in this country who would fervently assent to all of these."

just born that way*

There's a popular claim that homosexuals should not be ridiculed because they were "just made that way" and had no choice of their sexual preference. So why aren't homophobes accorded the same courtesy, since they were also "just made that way" and had no choice of their sexual aversions?

(*according to the world. some of us were taught better.)

the fall of civilization

maybe:

"The Unanswered Question remains "Why did this cultural collapse happen?" We know that it did, we know that the leaders of Western countries completely lacked foresight, insight, patriotism and concern for their national identities. We know they were willing to open wide the borders of their countries to allow in the hordes. We know all of this, and much more. But we don't know WHY. If the West hates itself, where did this self-hatred come from, what is its source? Was it the shattering events of '68 that brought about an irreversible rupture with the past? Yes it was, but we still don't know why the leaders and the people let it happen. We went to bed one night with our traditions still strong, our values seemingly imperishable. And we woke up in a totally transformed world, the world upside down as some call it."

or maybe not...

another video

...and the winner of the "best use of stock photos in support of environmentalism" category is...

fred vs paul

love vs hate

3/4 time in a bottle

at a chinese buffet today which i do not frequently... um... frequent, the background music was in a style i call "mantovani strings". that may be an incorrect name, but i associate those lush orchestrations of the soundtracks of the fifties through seventies with dad's easy-listening am-fm stations and eight-track tapes back when i was young. of the few oldies i recognized were "tammy's in love", "sound of music", something like "those magnificent men in their flying machines" and some french-sounding filler music that could have been from the 1956 "around the world in eighty days".

there were a few new additions though. in that same easy style were "the rose", "for your eyes only", some nondescript sitcom theme from the seventies, and chicago's "glory of love". but then there was the beatle's "hey jude" and berlin's "take my breath away" - both of which lost a lot in translation.

those reminded me of an ongoing expectation of mine: to someday hear ozzy ozbourne's "no more tears" in a commercial for johnson's baby shampoo, soundgarden's "i awake" for some motel chain's commercial, and nin's "down in it" in a department store elevator.

The Thin Chalk Line

One of the polite quotes from this article is:

"Instead of chanting slogans in Madison, maybe it's time for Wisconsin teachers to take refresher lessons from their non-union counterparts in the Lone Star State."

A less-polite question is: "Why do union teachers in Wisconsin hate black students?"

March 2nd

Happy 175th Birthday Republic of Texas!

i also declared independence exactly ten years ago, and that had mixed results too...

the downward spiral

in which i ask two questions that are answered at zomblog:

1) when will we realize that the militant left has no sense of decency?

2) where's all the people who shout "separation of church and state"?

driving me crazy

this is funnier than this

remind me...

why are we supposed to care more about lindsay lohan's and charlies sheen's... misadventures... than about the problems of some guy that lives downtown in an abandoned entryway behind a bus stop?