Posted 11:43 AM by Angie Schultz

Go Ressurect Yourself

Allegedly, a "little girl" who opened up her Christmas iPod instead got a dimwitted mini-screed which read:

Reclaim your mind from the media's shackles. Read a book and ressurect [sic] yourself. To claim your capitalistic garbage go to your nearest Apple store.

In my experience, people who tell me to read, learn, or think are almost invariably less well-informed than I am. And no one poorer than I has ever suggested that I make do with less (well, except for Grandma).

Not much info at the link, except that the iPod was purchased at a Wal-Mart, whose manager said, Huh, we had one of those the other day.

At Endgadget, several people have pointed out that the note had to have been produced on a capitalistic computer of some sort. Nuh uh! say others, that's a typewriter. (Which were apparently hand-made by dwarves, and therefore not capitalistic at all.)

Kiddies, that's not a typewriter. That's a font designed to badly mimic typewriting for effect. It was produced on a computer. (Although if you said that it was done by impressing individual letter sorts or wooden stamps onto the paper, I could maybe buy that, too.)

Via Hot Air.

Posted 10:11 PM by Angie Schultz

Foto Friday: Think Pink

Well, this isn't the greatest photo for the last FF of the year, but tough.

Royal Hawaiian Hotel, Honolulu, Jan. 2002

This is the famous, romantic Royal Hawaiian hotel on Waikiki Beach. Specifically, it's the back of it. You can see the hotel in the distance in this picture.

As I said at the beginning of the year, this is a posh joint. The other day I saw an episode of Hawaii Five-O in which Slim Pickens and his hick family turn up at the desk of the Royal Hawaiian demanding the room they'd reserved. The clerk hems and haws and tries to make them understand that they are low-life scum who are not fit to tread the sacred ground by saying, "B-b-but" and "Please!", but it's no good. Unable to ban people on the basis of thick southern accents, he must give them their room.

I believe that this is also the episode where they're eating at an outdoor restaurant, and Slim's wife expresses outrage that there's a white woman eating with an Oriental. Slim promises to find them an all-white restaurant next time. Even when that episode was minty fresh that made me go, "Huh??"

Anyhow they turn out to be cold-blooded killers who are very sloppy about leaving clues, and that low cunning baffles McGarrett for an entire hour. (Sadly, I missed the rest of the ep.) (According to IMDB, it was called "One Big Happy Family" and was based on a true story.)

If I ran the Royal Hawaiian, I would've sued.

The big cream-colored building on the right is the RH annex, which probably contains the better rooms. But what would be the point of going if you didn't get to stay in the breathtakingly-expensive pink palace?

Posted 12:15 PM by Angie Schultz

Grinch Watch

That would make a good series, but it's too late this year. Maybe next.

The other day VodkaPundit mentioned that he'd run down to the Starbucks drive-through for some coffee, and when he got to the front of the line he was informed that the person ahead of him had paid for his order. So he paid for the person behind him. With any luck, people are still in line down there, spreading a little Christmas spirit, he said.

The next day I read this in the local paper:

One woman's kindness to a fellow Starbucks patron resulted in more than a thousand others spreading the holiday-season generosity in this northwest Washington town.

...[O]n Wednesday, her good deed set off a chain of 1,013 customers paying for the next person's drink.

Well, how nice! Did this break out spontaneously, or had VodkaPundit's neighbors in Colorado heard about the Washington incident ("Wednesday" would have been the 19th), or what?

Fortunately, we have VodkaPundit commenter Chad to tell us that it was all a PR stunt!

So says the blogger at the oddly-named Story+Welch blog, anyway. He doesn't actually offer any evidence.

What's really amusing (and Grinchy) are the comments there. Fools! You haven't really given anything, because you got something in return! Don't you see that this only plays into the hands of Starbucks?? Er, even though they don't actually make any more money out of it and it's not like anyone is going to dash down to Starbucks just to participate. But they're a corporation, so they're evil! Eeeevillll! It's a good thing we have the perpetually-awakening consumers at that site to keep us from feeling even the smallest charitable glow about something like this. It might be bad for our moral fiber.

Me, I'm staying out of it, just to be on the safe side. Besides, I'm the kind of schlimazel who would get a free regular "large" coffee only to pay for venti triple-whipped skinny half-caff carbonara macchiatos plus poppy-seed scones for a carful of yuppy teenagers.

Merry Christmas, sheep!

Posted 11:08 AM by Angie Schultz

Mele Kalikimaka!

Christmas tree, Honolulu
Dec. 2001

It looks as if Kalikimaka is going to be more Mele than in the past several years. I can say no more! For now.

As I mentioned last year, "Mele Kalikimaka" is Hawaiian for "Merry Christmas". Why "Kalikimaka"? Because Hawaiian only has seven consonants: H,K,L,M,N,P, and W; words containing other consonants have to muddle along the best they can. But how exactly do you get "Kalikimaka" from "Christmas"? Beats me.

Interestingly, there's a consonant shift from other Polynesian languages into Hawaiian. For example, tabu (taboo, duh) in many Polynesian languages is rendered kapu in Hawaiian. There's an interesting little article on it here, which also covers the evolution of the muumuu (the word, at least).

Anyhow, Mele Kalikimaka to all!

Labels: Hawaii

Posted 11:09 AM by Angie Schultz

Job Outsourced to...Mars

Saw this in this morning's paper:

Mars will be unusually bright this Christmas Eve and the moon will be shining full — a development that might make Santa Claus rethink his need for Rudolph's red nose.

That idea, from Miami Space Transit Planetarium director Jack Horkheimer, made us wonder if retooling a certain reindeer song is the best way to explain it to the kids...

Go to the link for the "retooling". Essentially, it's "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" re-written so that Santa uses Mars instead, and Rudolph gets the night off. As Niles said, it sounds like the author, AP Science Writer Seth Borenstein, has been hitting the eggnog a bit hard. But we both liked the ending:

Then all the reindeer teased him.
And they shouted out with glee:
"Rudolph, the red-nosed reindeer
Outsourced to astronomy."

Check out this wicked cool Flash animation of Mars's position relative to the Earth and Sun. Hit the fast forward. Zoooom! Note the box in the upper left where it shows Mars's (relative) appearance in a telescope. In late August of 2003, in the closest approach in 60,000 years, Mars nearly filled the gray circle. The Christmas Eve approach will not be nearly as spectacular.

(Actually, the closest approach was on Dec. 18, but Mars will be brightest on Dec. 24. The increase in brightness between the two dates, however, will not be noticeable.)

Which brings us back to doe. I mean, Rudolph (who is not a doe, as far as we know). Wasn't Santa's point that Rudolph's glowing nose would penetrate the "foggy Christmas Eve", thus allowing Santa to see where he was going? How's Mars going to do that? In fact, if Santa uses Mars as a guide instead of Rudolph, he's going to be heading straight to...Mars.

And then he'll conquer it.

(Horkheimer should know better, even if he is no longer the memorable "Star Hustler" but instead a common "Star Gazer." Turns out that too many little moppets searching for him on the internet wound up at quite a different "Hustler". Now that's educational.)

Posted 10:01 PM by Angie Schultz

Foto Friday: Bay of Rainbows

Rainbow over Hilo Bay, HI, Sep. 1995

This bay is not on the Moon, but in Hilo, Hawaii. Note the double rainbow. This was taken (I'm pretty sure) from the back of the Hilo Bay Hotel, aka Uncle Billy's, a funky, kitschy hotel on Banyan Drive in Hilo. Long may it wave.

The sky between the two rainbows is supposed to be noticeably darker than the sky within the primary and outside the secondary, but you can't really tell that here.

Rainbow over Coconut Island, Hilo, HI, Sep. 1995

Here it is a few minutes later. Note how unusually low it is! Rainbows always occur opposite the sun. It's not unusual for a storm to clear at sunset, say, leaving the sky clear in the west while the eastern sky is still black. Then, the sun is low and the rainbow is high.

But here the sun is high in the sky, shining almost straight down on the little rainstorm. In most cases the clouds would block the sun. You can only get this effect when the rain is very localized -- and then you have to be lucky.

Fred Schaaf's The Starry Room has a good chapter on rainbows, even though it's really a book about astronomy. (If I recall correctly, he has a list of the sorts of conditions under which you might see a rainbow. He left out one I saw in West Texas: a rainbow in virga -- the long tail of precipitation that hangs from a cloud, but evaporates before it hits the ground. I didn't have my camera out at the time, though.)

Another fun book is Rainbows, Halos, and Glories by Robert Greenler, which is apparently totally out of print and goes for ridiculous prices. Huh. Anyhow, many neat pictures of atmospheric phenomena in that bok.

Posted 10:23 AM by Angie Schultz

Say My Name, Say My Name

Via the Flea, who is hopping over The Hobbit, I find that my hobbit name is: Daisy Sackville-Baggins. I assume that would be Daisy Mae of the low-rent branch of the Sackville-Bagginses, who live in that awful caravan park near Rushock Bog. They always have discarded ale casks and broken wheels piled up around their wagons. Disgraceful!

I have an elvish name, too: Idril Ringëril. Much prettier, but it sounds like two drug names ("Ask your doctor if Ringëril is right for you").

Now, see, here I was thinking, Hmmm, did elves have two names? I thought it was just one. And comes the answer, from the FAQ page:

Q: Didn't you know that in the Tolkein-verse Elves don't have two names? I mean sometimes they do, but you've mixed up the Quenya and Sindarin dialects and besides I'm somewhat sure the author specified that a diaresis always occurs in an elven word that ends with the letter 'e'...(trails off)

A: Ah. I see. Yes, yes. I understand. How ...good... of you to catch that. *backs away slowly, dials police*

Oh, no, really. No need. I'm going now.

(And it's Tolkien -- i before e. Barbarian!)

Posted 10:02 PM by Angie Schultz

Foto Friday: Three Weird Sisters

Finally had a chance to scan, but mostly I did my mother's stuff. Got a few of my own in though, like this one:

The Blue Mountains, Australia, July 2002

This is the Three Sisters in the Blue Mountains just west of Sydney. Of course there is a legend.

That was taken on my last full day in Australia. It was a damned shame (and entirely my own stupid fault) that I did not get up to the Blue Mountains earlier. This was especially true since they were doing construction work when we were there, and everything was all in a mess. I believe the observation platform shown in that page was torn up, for example. I should have been up there constantly taking pictures, but I'm a goof.

I think I have some pictures taken a little later in the day that are better. You'll get them one day. Betcha can't wait!

Labels: Australia, Foto Friday

Posted 8:14 PM by Angie Schultz

Foto Friday: Day of Infamy

OK, I'm going to cheat now, and give you a photo that I've published before, but not as a Friday Foto. Appropriate to the day, here are the Arizona and the Missouri:

USS Arizona Memorial from the USS Missouri
Pearl Harbor, HI, Jan. 2002

That's from this post. But, to make up for the repetition, here are some fresh images:

Forward guns of the USS Missouri

If you want to know about those guns, don't ask me -- go to Wikipedia (WARNING! etc) and look at the waaaay cool photo of the Iowa's guns firing.

The main thing I remember about the Missouri was the definite impression that it must have been damned uncomfortable in the tropical heat, considering that the interior walls are all metal and it was cramped and humid and held 3,000 men, each of whom probably sweated out his body weight weekly.

There's a plaque in the deck to mark the spot where the surrender instruments are signed, covered with a layer of thick acrylic(?).

And there is also, bizarrely, a memorial Pepsi machine:

Pepsi Machine, USS Missouri

Yes, that's right on the ship, not on the dock next to the gift shop. I'd have bought a drink if it came in commemorative cans, but that didn't seem to be the case. (The highest-resolution version of the image suggests that it didn't hold cans -- or Pepsi -- at all, but bottles of orange drink and fruit punch and water. $1.75, in case you're wondering.)

That is just the coolest graphic. They should've had it on a postcard; I assume it belongs to Pepsi.

USA Today has an interesting article on the dwindling ranks of the Pearl Harbor survivors who man the museum. When I was there in 1989 I met one of those guys. He had one of those ubiquitous stories of having something in his pocket (a lighter? a quarter? an iPod? -- well, OK, not that) that stopped a bullet that would have otherwise killed him.

He also said that he had to leap from his sinking ship into the water, which was on fire.

Fox has the perspective of the civilian population.

And on that note, I'll close by pointing to this post from five years ago.

Labels: Foto Friday, Hawaii

Posted 9:14 PM by Angie Schultz

The Case of the Missing Blogger

No, not me. Nobody's missing me.

Once upon a time, there was a suburban housewife/secretary/blogger named Michele Catalano who wrote very well and covered politics and pop culture. She wrote a blog called A Small Victory, which you see is now defunct, and then one called Faster Than the World, also now defunct, and she was the co-creator of the influential The Command Post, likewise defunct except for haunting the Library of Congress.

And now, apparently, she's been arrested in Italy. Turns out that she was not a Long Island blogger/secretary/housewife, but an Italian gangster! And a man! And she lied about her age! For shame!

Or it could be that gangster Michele Catalano (who was arrested while watching a TV show about the arrest of a gangster) is someone else entirely, and blogger Michele Catalano is hiding out here.

But just in case, don't tell the Italians, 'K?