Geek in Disguise
[Recent Entries][Archive][Friends][User Info]
Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in the "Jim Kling" journal:[<< Previous 20 entries]
|
02:14 pm
[Link] |
Indeed it has, Dave (redux)
The illustrious ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) jackwilliambell has pointed out that Hulu allows you to create clips to post.
So without further delay, the clip of News Radio wherein Dave confronts Stargate Defender:
Tags: tv videogames
|
12:09 pm
[Link] |
Indeed it has, Dave
So jackwilliambell informed me of the new site Hulu, which lets you watch various television shows and movies. Among the treasures are The Tick, The Land of the Lost, and News Radio (the list is here).
As I was looking, I recalled an episode of News Radio in which the station gets a Stargate Defender video game, which includes some of the funniest scenes I've ever seen, of Dave interacting with the video game. Now, these scenes are funny anyway, but if you are a child of the 80s coin-op video game generation (I'm looking at you terminusest), you absolutely must watch this episode.
Tags: tv videogames
|
|
04:14 pm
[Link] |
article up
An article that I wrote for NASA's astrobiology portal is now up, about a researcher working with ice taken from just above Antarctica's Lake Vostok. Lake Vostok is buried beneath two miles of ice, but remains liquid probably due to hydrothermal vents. The ice accreted to the surface of the lake, where it was retrieved by an expedition in the late 90s. The ice contains trapped bacteria, which scientists would like to study as a window into Lake Vostok's sunless ecosystem.
Tags: article ssp astrobiology
|
|
02:35 pm
[Link] |
FDA articles up
I have a couple of articles up on MSN Health, about FDA reform and recent drug withdrawals.
Tags: ssp articles
|
|
09:56 am
[Link] |
My pithy freelance post
A lot of folks on my friends list have been talking about freelancing, so here's my $.02, adopted from a post that I made in resposnse to ellameena in her journal.
She wonders if saying 'no' to assignments from editors will cause them to stop calling her for future assignments. My experience is that editors don't stop calling if you say no occasionally -- though that probably depends to some extent on how long you've been working for them. Editors understand that they're not your only client, and that sometimes you're just booked.
Think of it this way -- they're opinion of you might just go up if you say no because it means you must be busy. And if you're busy, then other people know how good you are -- so they had better appreciate you!
For me, optimism and leaps of faith are keys to freelancing. If you don't say no once in awhile, or if you don't quit working for clients that you're not happy with, you get stuck in a rut of doing work just to pay the bills and never expanding into new areas that might be more lucrative and satisfying. More than once over the past 12 years, I've quit doing work for a client with no sure thing lined up to replace it, but inevitably something does come up, usually surprisingly quickly. Of course, I only do it when I've got a steady diet of work from other clients to soften the blow.
For every assignment accepted, there's what economists call an 'opportunity cost' -- the time you spend on it and the energy taken up by it cannot be applied to other potential projects, like pitching stories to new clients. And another cost: if you're overbooked, you can't give each project the attention it deserves and the quality of your work could slip. In that case, clients truly might stop calling you.
Tags: freelancing
|
|
10:18 am
[Link] |
for SCIENCE!
Yesterday, mareklamo and I brought lilaboux and ahltis to the vet for a checkup. The vet commented on how healthy lilaboux is for an 18-year old cat, and then asked if we would be willing to enroll her in a clinical trial for a nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug (Robenacoxib), sponsored by Novartis Animal Health. They took some blood samples and X-rays to determine if she has physical signs of osteoarthritis, which the drug is designed to treat, and to be sure that she is sufficiently healthy to participate. If she meets the criteria, we'll be given either the drug or placebo to administer once a day for 30 days. mareklamo will keep a journal recording any changes in her gait or other signs of improvement. mareklamo and I initially marveled at the idea of including a placebo for a study on cats, but then we realized it's for us -- since we'll be the ones monitoring her and recording changes. If we expect the drug to cause improvements, then we might exaggerate improvements or see improvements that aren't really there.
Unsurprisingly, lilaboux disapproves.
|
|
12:12 pm
[Link] | An interesting and amusing youtube video of wildlife captured on remote cameras in the North Cascades. It comes courtesy of the Cascades Citizen Wildlife Monitoring Project.
I'd be interested to know what the deer-like animal is that shows up at about 1:53. It has two horns that are more or less straight but appear to have a slight spiral to them. Person Field Guide to Mammals is no help. Anyone konw what it might be?
|
|
12:04 pm
[Link] |
a travel tale
Yesterday was a long day. We woke up at 6:00 am central time, and left my sister's place in Ames, Iowa to drive to the Kansas City airport, for our 2 pm flight. We flew through Kansas City because it was significantly cheaper than Des Moines. We saved some more money by doing two one-way car rentals -- one from Kansas City to Des Moines on December 18th ($80) and one from Des Moines to Kansas City on December 28th ($105). A car for the full week and a half would have cost over $400.
When we woke up it was snowing, and I wasn't looking forward to the ostensibly 3 1/2 hour drive to Kansas City, but we headed out and drove 40-50 mph most of the way, and arrived without incident. The snow plows were out all morning and the roads were icy, and there were lots of cars in the ditch and in the median.
In Missouri, we passed a double-trailer truck on the median, obviously a recent victim of the ice. As we drove by, I turned to get a better look (I didn't slow down, so mareklamo wouldn't berate me for rubbernecking), and I saw an alarming sight -- the driver was slumped over the steering wheel. It took a few moments for it to sink in, and then I reached for my cell phone to call 911.
"This is 911."
"Hi, I want to report an accident. There is a truck in the median of the highway, and the driver is slumped over the wheel."
"Where did you see it?"
"On Interstate 35, southbound, just before mile marker 67."
The operator laughed. "Is it a double-trailer, in the median?"
The light-hearted tone of the 911 operator took me by surprise. "Yes," I replied.
"He's asleep. He's waiting for the tow truck to arrive."
Clearly, I was not the only alarmed motorist who had been calling 911. I thought, 'you should go wake him up.' Who sleeps slumped over the steering wheel?
When I told the story to jackwilliambell over dinnner last night at Shalimar in Seattle, he answered the above question: "A sleep-deprived truck driver who just drove off the road."
|
11:48 am
[Link] |
major surgery
Happily, performed by me, rather than on me.
Some time in early December, my laptop's fan started making sounds reminiscent of a meat grinder. jackwilliambell suggested that I should replace the fan ASAP because it was probably about to die, and the motherboard would soon follow. So I ordered a replacement fan, but it didn't arrive until after mareklamo and I left for Iowa for the holidays. It was there when we returned last night, so this morning I closed the office door (to keep lilaboux and altis out), then performed the surgery.
It went rather well, as Dell's instructions for taking apart a Latitude D400 were (shockingly) very well written.
The patient is now resting comfortably.
|
|
12:54 pm
[Link] |
In memory of Anita
I've been slow to post because I have been a little unsure what to say.
I've known Anita since I met Jack ten or so years ago. For years, I wondered what she thought of me. She always seemed a bit distant towards me, and for awhile I wondered if she disliked me. I eventually understood that it was nothing of the sort -- probably just the chemistry between us. I came to a deep affection and admiration for her, especially her courage in the face of illness.
Comments by mcjulie and mareklamo really resonated with me:
mcjulie said: "I think maybe the person who received the most from her grace is Riley. As a child, he needed her more than anyone else could, and she seemed to give him exactly what he needed -- a steady presence, gentle discipline, and palpable love. It was a joy to watch them together."
mareklamo said: "It's impossible for me to think of Anita without also thinking of your grandson R. The Jesuits say "Give me a child until he is seven and I will give you the man." R is only five, but I think it is safe to say that Anita's positive influence on him will be lifelong."
I see Riley as one of Anita's most important legacies, and having provided some care for Riley in the past couple of years, I feel very vested in that.
So, I will cajole and pester and support Jack, and mareklamo and I will provide more Riley care as needed. It will be our way of honoring Anita's memory.
|
12:34 pm
[Link] |
Anita Rowland, gone but not forgotten
( Anita Rowland passed away yesterday )
Her husband Jack Bell is inviting anyone who knew Anita to post a memory or other thoughts at his LJ site: http://jackwilliambell.livejournal.com/198715.html?style=mine
|
|
10:39 am
[Link] |
Fall Color
A turning leaf. The red color comes from carotene pigments in the leaf that are masked by chlorophyll until it starts to break down in fall.
Nicked from Molecule of the Day.
|
|
07:59 pm
[Link] |
I predict...
... that kilonazis will be the next great buzzword to hit the internet -- specifically as a quantitation of evil. For the Order-of-the-Stick-uninitiated: Roy, the leader of adventuring party, has died and gone to whatever passes for Lawful Good limbo, where he is explaining to a celestial bureaucrat why he associated with a chaotic evil character. The kilonazi bit is in the second to the last panel.
|
|
11:05 pm
[Link] |
'Kill 'em all, Frankie!"
mareklamo and I watched Million Dollar Baby, featuring Bellingham's own multi-Oscar award winning actress, Hilary Swank. Good movie, over all, but there was a moment of detachment for me...
( Behind a cut, for spoilers )
|
|
11:30 am
[Link] | Happy birthday terminusest!
|
|
11:54 pm
[Link] |
It was only a matter of time...
... before multi-level marketing invaded blogs.http://www.blogrush.com/
|
|
10:31 am
[Link] |
Two words make a post
Those being... "The End."
I wrote those late last night to conclude the first draft of my first novel. anghara, you may now stop pestering me! rdeck, mareklamo, debtaber, and the rest of the Sunday crew will be subjected to it this weekend.
Now, all I need to do is go back and rework the thing so that it makes sense (it evolved significantly as I wrote). Nothing dramatic, but there are major inconsistencies that need to be cleared up before I can send it to beta readers.
|
|
11:21 am
[Link] | Ack! My childhood home is up for sale! After my mother passed away last year, my father decided the house is too big for him and is moving to Ames, Iowa to be nearer to my sister and her family.
|
|
11:57 am
[Link] |
resilience
mareklamo and I just returned from a week and a half in Yellowstone, and it was strange to drive through the sage and grasslands of eastern Washington on the way home. We kept expecting to see bison or elk, but of course all we saw were cows.
Yellowstone has managed to preserve an extraordinary ecosystem, including the successful reintroduction of wolves in the mid-90s. According to The Decade of the Wolf, wolves have had noticeable impacts on the environment: elk that hadn' t had to worry about wolf predation since the last known wolf was seen in the 1920s had taken to dining along streams and riversides, eating willow, cottonwood shoots, and other vegetation. When the wolves arrived, the elk abandoned these feeding spots because they afforded poor visibility, moving back to their more traditional open feeding areas. As a result, the cottonwood, willow, and other plants fluorished, creating an environment that attracted beavers. The beavers created ponds and backchannels that have in turn attracted muskrat, amphibians, fish, waterfowl, and even songbirds.
It's a little depressing to return from Yellowstone and its example of a wild landscape that has long since vanished from most of the United States, only to see miles upon miles of ranchland and agriculture. On the other hand, it's encouraging to hear about nature's resilience. The reintroduction of the wolf is one (30 or so animals were released in 1995-1996 -- there are over 300 of them in the park now).
Today, I read an article about the lower Owens River in Los Angeles, which has apparently been the subject of numerous lawsuits regarding restoration and the release of water to restore the flow into the river basin. In December, in response to court orders, the city released water:
After decades of political bickering, water was directed back into the riverbed in December, and the area has unexpectedly quickly become home again to various fish and other wildlife.
There's a long way to go before it's fully restored, of course, but it's encouraging that the beginning of a recovery can come so swiftly. Maybe it's because there's a dearth of habitats elsewhere, so animals move into the new habitat quickly.
It shows that nature can recover if we'll just let it. Nature is fragile in the short term -- that is, it's easy to destroy an ecosystem through pollution, development, or overuse -- but nature is robust in the long term. Give it a chance, and it will restore itself.
|
|
10:38 am
[Link] |
clones
In doing some research for an article I'm writing about biotechnology as applied to pets (aka companion animals), I'm reading an article about cloned mules. Last year, two clones of the same parent -- Idaho Gem and Idaho Star -- competed with each other and other horses in a race. The two equines were trained separately, so the article claimed it was a test of nature vs nurture, implying that a wide difference in how they finished would be attributable to the difference in training regimens.
But to be a true test, wouldn't they have to be ridden by cloned jockeys?
For what it's worth, Idaho Gem finished 4th and Idaho Star finished 7th.
|
[<< Previous 20 entries] |
