BillComingToMarfa.mp3
After a Labor Day Weekend in Galveston, shaking a fist in warning at the distant Hurricane Gustav, I will be heading to Marfa and area, and then to El Paso.
I’ll be getting into Marfa on Tuesday, perhaps sitting in with David at the Marfa Public Radio station, 11p - 1a. I don’t currently have any West Texas plans for a few days, so if you have any pointers, let me know!
In El Paso, a dozen college friends are descending on the town for the University of Texas football game against the UTEP Miners, as well as our friend Bret’s birthday.
Bret covers the Miners for the El Paso Times. So, while he may have to spend a couple of hours that weekend being professional, we don’t!
August 28th, 2008
Posted by
bshirley |
friends, travel |
one comment
Friday night I left at 6pm on my bicycle, was out late, and returned home after midnight. The streets were mostly quiet. As I approached, a few houses from mine I smelled gas. It only got stronger as I approached, and when I went inside it was equally strong.
The Roommate was watching television, and I asked him what was up. He looked quizical. I said it reeks of gas in here! He says he doesn’t smell anything.
He does add that the neighbor called someone, and they came out and “couldn’t find anything”? I found out later from her, that she called “the city”. I’m not sure who came out.
I searched about, and could find nothing specific, and the smell started growing fainter, as it had for The Roommate. I showered, was tired, was losing the smell of it, and rationalized someone had already checked, it hadn’t blown up yet, and who was I going to call anyway. I went to bed.
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August 25th, 2008
Posted by
bshirley |
725 |
4 comments
The juxtaposition of two videos I saw today is eerily representative of the current state of American affairs.
The national hero, Buzz Aldrin, speaking on the future of space travel. It all sounds great, unless you listen to more that five contiguous words and try to make a coherent concept out of them.
Obviously Xeni Jardin had a great opportunity to interview such an important man, and couldn’t let the footage go to waste. The inanity is somewhat like a bus wreck. A bus full of parakeets juggling crystal goblets. Shiny.
The other interview was Bill Moyers talking to Andrew J. Bacevich (includes transcript). I actually only heard the audio to this one, though the video snips I did watch made it that much more revealing.
This almost hour of discussion is one that every American should be required to listen to and ruminate on. But we’re much more likely to watch the first one and yell “Go, Buzz!” (Hey, despite the incoherence, I did.)
Such is America’s attention span, and such will be its downfall.
I think I may have to go back and listen to Bacevich again. He did such a good job of relating his points, and the discussion was thick with content.
[Edit: a few days later SciAm had a cogent interview with Buzz. Seems like Xeni just had the bad luck of catching him when he had brain overload – apparently he’s been on a publicity tour of late for several things.]
August 21st, 2008
Posted by
bshirley |
government, politics, presidents, television, web |
one comment
Arrrg!
The WordPress for iPhone buttons are disappearing on me!
I just lost a whole post because of it. I think it may have worked if I tapped the navigation bar where the button was supposed to be, but I didn’t know where that was.
Blogging from bed…
August 20th, 2008
Posted by
bshirley |
Uncategorized |
no comments
I attended the BarCamp Houston 3 on Saturday at the Houston Technology Center.
Most people assumed this meant I was going on some kind of pub crawl, but the term bar is actually a computer science term, and as such you should guess that this “unconference”, as it terms itself, has a high geek factor.
Anyone, who wants to present on a topic (and you are encouraged to do so) can have a 30 minute block of time. Everyone proclaims their intentions on a white board at the beginning of the day, and the lectures, panels, and discussions begin.
I enjoyed the following topics: (more…)
August 10th, 2008
Posted by
bshirley |
Uncategorized |
3 comments
I recently proffered the first quiz from Mr. Heafford’s book.
As I suspected, it scared everyone away. Except for the mathematician that I know reads the blog. He offered up his answers. The 9 of the 20 he answered were all the same answers offered by the author.
Many of the numbers give more of a glimpse of how the world has changed in the last 50 years. Since calculators became widely used in the 60s and 70s, and then computers in the 80s, we rarely “handle” these numbers directly. Number of centimeters in an inch, sure, but the square root of 2? No.
Answers after the jump:
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August 5th, 2008
Posted by
bshirley |
literature, random |
3 comments
