Month: December 2004

Elder Alter Ego

A woman just walked up to me in Susie’s Doughnuts and said that she had to tell me this — that I looked just like her ex-husband, but younger — that I had the same hair color, ponytail, beard, way of sitting, I even sounded like him coughing (I’ve been hacking up a lung for the past couple days because of a cold or something).

Apparently her ex is this guy. I guess I’ve got a phantom older brother roaming around Grand Rapids.

Back when I lived in Chapel Hill people kept telling me I looked like somebody they knew; I eventually uncovered that the phantom me was named “Chip” and that he was described as a “scenester” — a hip afficionado of the Chapel Hill music scene. From those two pieces of information I discerned that he must be the evil twin.

By the way, being able to post to the blog from MarsEdit without opening a browser or anything is freaking addictive. Expect tons of impromptu posts about nothing from me in days to come.

UPDATE: Google Images gives me this and this and this as images I can identify as him. I don’t think the resemblance is that strong, do you?

Caffiene

Steve Dekorte’s Weblog: “The most important long-term problem is the effect that caffeine has on sleep. Adenosine reception is important to sleep, and especially to deep sleep. The half-life of caffeine in your body is about 6 hours. That means that if you consume a big cup of coffee with 200 mg of caffeine in it at 3:00 PM, by 9:00 PM about 100 mg of that caffeine is still in your system. You may be able to fall asleep, but your body probably will miss out on the benefits of deep sleep. That deficit adds up fast. The next day you feel worse, so you need caffeine as soon as you get out of bed. The cycle continues day after day.

This is why 90% of Americans consume caffeine every day. Once you get in the cycle, you have to keep taking the drug. Even worse, if you try to stop taking caffeine, you get very tired and depressed and you get a terrible, splitting headache as blood vessels in the brain dilate. These negative effects force you to run back to caffeine even if you want to stop.”

(Via Steve DeKorte.)

This is a little scary. I drink a lot of caffiene. I sleep very badly, and very little. Wonder how long it takes to detox.

FRONTLINE: nuclear reaction: Why the French Like Nuclear Energy

FRONTLINE: nuclear reaction: Why the French Like Nuclear Energy

Say what you like about nuclear power, at this point it would be a lot safer to invest in than to hope against hope the oil doesn’t run out.

Reading this makes me a bit ashamed of the way America deals with energy issues. Not only that but how it deals with communication with its own people about major infrastructure issues that affect the country. For all the controversy about storage of nuclear waste in France, can you imagine how corrupt and deranged that would be if it happened here?

My physics teacher in high school, Mr. Jipping, was very pro-nuclear power. His reasoning was that it’s the only thing that we’ve currently got the technology for that has any chance of providing anything even a little bit close to the energy we demand of oil. So the question is not whether we go nuclear, it’s when. Right now, with planning and forethought and some time to spare, or when the oil runs out, desperately and quickly and with no time to worry about little things like “safety.”

Sounds like the French will be sitting pretty then.

Don’t worry though. We’ll invade and take all their uranium.

If a Republican is still in power… which seems likely, for the forseeable future.

Ursula K. Le Guin on the Earthsea series

Ursula K. Le Guin: Earthsea:

“I’ve tried very hard to keep from saying anything at all about this production, being well aware that movies must differ in many ways from the books they’re based on, and feeling that I really had no business talking about it, since I was not included in planning it and was given no part in discussions or decisions.

That makes it particularly galling of the director to put words in my mouth.

Mr Lieberman has every right to say what his intentions were in making the film he directed, called “Earthsea.” He has no right at all to state what I intended in writing the Earthsea books.

Had “Miss Le Guin” been honestly asked to be involved in the planning of the film, she might have discussed with the film-makers what the books are about.

When I tried to suggest the unwisdom of making radical changes to characters, events, and relationships which have been familiar to hundreds of thousands of readers all over the world for over thirty years, I was sent a copy of the script and informed that production was already under way.”

Oh man. Note to self: if you decide to make a gigantic epic fantasy movie based on a beloved series of novels, either (a) wait till the author is dead, or (b) do it with her or his approval. Or (c) wait till he or she is too old to make web pages or give interviews.

OUCH.

(Checking out the scifi.com web site, I don’t know how much I’d enjoy the series anyway, because that cheesy-ass hollywood dude does not look like Ged. To start with, he’s all Western European looking.)