Category: Fun Stuff

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Snoots On the Line

snoot, n., a really extreme usage fanatic 1

Just today, I stumbled upon a site that tickles my English appreciation bone: Language Log (Also found here, I now see). It’ll take some time to work through the archives, but I do know where my “reading breaks” (breaks from reading books and news, that is) will be for a while. A sample:

…snoots are never scholars. At least, their snootish outpourings are never based on scholarly investigation and analysis, even if they have some scholarly credentials in other aspects of their intellectual life. The reason is simple: scholarship subordinates the self, at least temporarily, to an investigation of external fact, while the snootish posture immediately asserts the primacy of the self’s linguistic judgments. Snoots routinely invoke both the authority of tradition and the dictates of logic, but these are ex post facto rhetorical justifications, not the conclusions of a dispassionate analysis.

Oh. *sigh-smile* That excerpt has just about everything to satisfy the anti-post-literate age curmudgeon in me. *heh* I don’t even care that it issues a vague, gentle, completely unintentional indictment of some of my semi-private musings on this blog. This stuff is just really fun reading. (And I intended the amphibolous construction in that sentence. :-))

Oh, to-loo, to-lay! What frabjous fun, my beamish boys n girls!

🙂

Update: one of my very favorite bugaboos, “[just] semantics”, is dealt with briefly here.

“…As a rule of thumb, you should be suspicious whenever someone who’s not professionally involved in the study of semantic variation dismisses some difference as “(just) semantic(s)” or the like; it’s likely to be a dodge, or at least a stretching of the truth… “

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Fun Cell Phone Project

Wanna go retro with your cell phone? Here’s a cool instructable on how to hook up an old telephone handset to your cell phone–and it doesn’t even involve destroying your cell phone to do it! *heh*


Adapting a Telephone Handset to a Cell Phone – More cool how to projects

(This is the kind of blogpost you have to chance getting when you come here: whatever it takes to mollify the voices in my head… And no, I’m not crazy because I have voices in my head, after all, THEY’RE the ones IN MY HEAD!!! 😉 )

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“Scherzo after a ballad by Goethe” *heh*

L’apprenti sorcier, a symphonic poem composed by Paul Dukas in 1897, is the music used for the Sorcerer’s Aprentice section of Disney’s 1943 Fantasia. It’s retasked here in an ingenious setting in the Oberlin College Library as The Resourcerer’s Aprentice:

N.B. Do make sure you play this through a decent set of speakers at a proper volume. 🙂

(Actually, since my Wonder Woman is a librarian, I kinda wondered who cleaned up the mess after the shoot on the “set” at Oberlin… 😉 )

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Just Paintballs? Wusses ;-)

SpeedLimit-400x300

*heh*

A group of Durham (N.C.) residents taking aim at speeders with the threat of a paintball gun said Tuesday that they are “amazed and gratified at the reaction.”

The group, Angry Neighbors With Paintball Guns, posted signs at strategic locations throughout the city, warning motorists to slow down or risk being shot at with a paintball gun.

But, of course, the local cop shop which is apparently NOT ameliorating the problem thinks it’s a bad idea all around. Can’t have citizens doing what they’re unwilling and/or unable to do:

[Kammie] Michael (Durham, N.C. police spokes”person”) said it is a crime to shoot a paintball at a vehicle and that the signs could be a distraction for some drivers and make the problem worse.

Yeh, the sign’s a problem. Could be “a distraction”. *throws the bullshit flag* How will it be any more distracting than the speed limit signs that are being ignored, eh? Now, that’s a stupid cop. *sigh*

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Celebrate Flight!

Today, June 18, is the Women’s Transatlantic Flight Anniversary. In 1928, Amelia Earhart flew from Newfoundland to Wales in 21 hours. In 1932, she became the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean. Now, of course, we have the TSA strip-searching lil old grandmothers. My how times have changed…

For something more on the spirit of flight,

The music is

The Mass

The Mass

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Counting on Fingers

From the preface to Calculus Made Easy, by Silvanus P. Thompson:

clever-fools

*heh*

I frequently rail against stupid people who can’t–or don’t– count who nevertheless listen to even stupider (though often clever in their stupidity) Mass Media Podpeople, politicians *spit* and Academia Nut Fruitcakes who wittingly or not misuse statistics or other fudge numbers to make a phony point. But. I realized the other day when looking at some numbers that I’d forgotten–through long disuse–the reasons why the statistical formulae I mentally referred to in order to argue with the numbers worked the way they did. After all, understanding the “why” of such things rests on some calculus I’ve not used much, if at all, for about 40 years.

So, in my spare time (ha!) methought myself to drag out an old calculus text and have at it. But. *sigh* I am considerably stupider than I was 40 years ago, and so I tracked down Calculus Made Easy, by Silvanus P. Thompson. While I’ll order and read the revised version from Amazon.com, the 1914 version is the one I recall browsing through briefly more than 40 years ago, and reading it on Scribus isn’t terribly limiting. Perhaps, in conjunction with a beer or two a day, a little exercise for what Hercule Poirot called “the little grey cells” will stave off my growing mental decay a wee tad.

Anywho, it ought to be fun.

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Added to My Wish List

Newly added to my “Redneck Geek’s I just GOTTA get me one-a these gizmos!” list:

Mosquito Raygun

A redneck geek’s dream toy…

(Hint, dudes: DDT is easier, cheaper and as safe. Yes, safe, despite Rachel Carson’s lies, as entomologist (that’s “bug scientist”) and mountaineer J. Gordon Edwards demonstrated by eating a teaspoon full–a truly massive amount for one “animal” of human size to ingest at one time–of the stuff weekly for about 30 years with no apparent ill effects. Yeh, he’s dead. Died at age 84… while mountain climbing. You should die so healthy.)

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