In my role as consort to the council person,
I’ll be meeting up with Al Franken. Sally, the council member with whom I consort, is way ahead of me and has been asking for topics and suggestions about what to say to Franken — even borrowing comments from Orange Politics
I need your help. Although I will probably emulate Prince Phillip and stand there deferring, I may need a topic or question or news bit for Al riff upon. If you have one, lemme know.
Category: Amusements (Page 25 of 31)
Things that are amusing
Bloggy hasn’t been able to get to her blog lately which is extremely odd for a blogging robot. But she has a good excuse. Bloggy may be cute, but Bloggy is also a young robot. Bloggy has been in a cute snit. Bloggy wants her own iLog. She calls it her Loggy. She would be cute with her Loggy, but she has no ears that I can find. How can she use her Loggy?
We woke up this morning ready to turn our violet infusion into jelly. Unlike the examples and the recipes that we found our infusion was not blue-green, but a deep purple.
We strained out the flowers, mushing them to get out every last drop of infused water. We measured the results and found we have a little over 3 1/4 cups. We topped that off with water to get the required 3.5 cups as instructed.
Then we turned on the heat. As the waters were heating, we added 1/2 cup of fresh lemon juice and the contents of one 1.75 oz package of pectin (aka Sur-Gel or other brand).
At this point the mixture was supposed to change from blue-green to violet. Ours stayed deep purple.
We brought the mixture to a roiling boil and added 4 cups of sugar. Stirring the whole time.
We brought the mixture back up to a roiling boil and kept it there for about 1 minute.
Then we ladled the liquid into five jars and began to let them cool.
In a double boiler, we melted house wax and poured it onto each jar. A film of about 1/8 inch of wax on each jar.
It took a long time to cool and to gel. We were getting a little nervous and were thinking that we would have a warm violet drink instead of jelly in the end.
Our nervousness was unfounded. The mess gelled just fine. We added another layer of house wax to be sure that we had sealed the jars well.
Now we’re ready to eat this and to make more.
We have a yard full of violets. This might be a sign of some PH imbalance, but the effect is quite lovely. It also allows for an opportunity to try out an old time recipe for violet jelly, which may be indeed violet in color when we finish.
In the spirit of Miles Efron, let me keep you in touch with the process:
First, Tucker and I went out and picked 8 cups of violet flowers — no stems. This went much more quickly than we anticipated and feared. We thought we’d only make half our recipe and stop of 4 cups of flowers, but the yard had plenty of flowers and we were not too long in filling the full recipe.
Next we rinsed off the flowers and drained them, fluffing a little to shake out any insects. We found none.
At the same time, we set water to boil.
The rinsed flowers were put in a glass bowl then covered with 3.5 cups of boiling water.
Almost immediately the water turned dark blue. We stirred the water occasionly. then let the mixture settle for the evening. The recipe called for only 2 hours of infusion, but other recipes recommend overnight or as long as 24 hours. The consensus is as little as 2 hours or as long as 24.
We assembled the ingredients that we’ll need in the morning.
- Sur-Gel or any pectin jelling product. This comes in a 1.75 oz package and we’ll need it all.
- Lemons for their juice. We’ll need 1/2 cup.
- Sugar. We’ll want to use 4 cups.
[more in the morning when we get underway.]
Side posting: Many years ago there was a band in Chapel Hill called the Blazers. On their one LP “Store Bought” was a song called “Violent Jelly” writen by on J. Earth. J. Earth is rumored to be the father of Ruby Sinreich.
The musical based on our friend Elizabeth Spencer’s novella, The Light in the Piazza, is coming to Broadway. Sally and her mother will be there at the preview next weekend.
As the show has traveled from Seattle to Chicago to New York, there’ve been a lot of stories about it. The most recent is a piece on All Things Considered last night. NPR includes some pictures and some songs from the show on the archive pages.
The novella was made into a movie in 1962.
A couple of years back, I was named Best Geek in the Triangle by the Independent Weekly. Not Bermuda Triangle, but Research Triangle, NC.
This year, the Indy has extended the definition of Geek to include scholars, a Jazz DJ, and a contributor to Wikipedia. Eight in all. Many folks who I know and admire and several who I’m glad to learn about. Imagine being a specialist in hog waste! That’s one skill that is easily transferable to other fields I’m sure.
So Larry Thomas (the coolest Jazz dj), Seth Ilys (Wikipedia contributor), Jim Johnson (Urban Investments Strategist and economic geographer), Sarah Shields (historian of the Middle East), Mike Williams (scholar of Hog Waste), Rich Superfine (physicist and great teacher), JoAnn Burkholder (Pfiesteria specialist), and Henry Petroski (poet and historian of engineering and design) welcome to Geekdom!
Interpid photographer and diehard UNC fan, Fred Stutzman, posts great pics of the fires and frenzy on Franklin Street after the NCAA Final on Monday.
Last night Sally and Tucker and I went to hear E. O. Wilson speak at the Morehead Science Center. His talk was co-sponsored by the National Humanities Center which gave the talk an interesting direction toward Wilson’s Consilience : the unity of knowledge (1998) book and his Promethean Fire: Reflections on the Origin of the Mind (with Charles Lumsden).
A few not exactly random notes:
Environmental Science | Ethics
———————————————-
Social Science | Biology
the quad above represents a flow of interactions as we try to get at big problems usually going clockwise say from Biology to social science to environmental science to ethics.
Studying languages that add colors or that are impoverished in their names for colors we see:
only 2 terms = Black and white
3 terms = Black, white and Red
(note that these are the colors attractive to new borns – pj)
4 terms = Black, white, red and Green OR Yellow
5 terms = Black, white, red, and Green AND Yellow
6 terms = Black, white, red, green, yellow and Blue
7 terms = Black, white, red, green, yellow, blue and Brown
Then purple, gray, orange, in no particular order
A bit about the incest taboo being strong in primates and recognized by very primative societies. If children are raised together at a very early age, they will not be physicially attracted to each other. Children raised together in a kibbutz rarely if ever marry within that kibbutz. All of this a description of the work of Edvard Westermarck.
Small joking observation in response to a question of what traits other than language are unique to humans:
Man has Paleolithic emotions, Medieval institutions, and God-like powers of catastrophic destruction through his technologies.
As an extra treat, we sat behind Larry Earley, author of Looking for Longleaf: The Rise and Fall of an American Forest, one of Sally’s favorite recent books to have read.
Jeff cites official sources at Duke saying that the iPod for new Dukies will continue at least through the academic year 05 – 06.
The Blue Devils are also looking for new and innovative ideas on how to use iPods in education. You can help them out (I think you are supposed to be a Duke faculty member, but they might take good ideas from others). Here’s the form.
UPDATE: Jeff just posted a link to the official Duke Press Release.
Chief Bloggy developer, Fred Stutzman, writes to say that Bloggy is now a Daily Link at BBspot!

Bloggy is cute. Bloggy likes to cuddle. Bloggy likes music. Bloggy is blogtastic (after coffee).
Should Bloggy be nominated for next year’s Computerworld Heroes Awards?
Like a few thousand other Tar Heel fans, Tucker and I went down to great the returning National Champions this afternoon.
We were right in front of the Press Row on the floor which meant that we were stretching a lot to see, but the basketball team is mostly really tall people, so we could see them better than the pictures here show.
Sean May was video taping the whole thing from on stage from the moment he walked out until he left. He’s going to have some great tape to show his kids. Remember that he had his father’s tape of his National Championship from the 70s with him while in Saint Louis.
I’m trying to recall which player led the team in a song. If you were there and know, leave me a comment.
The whole place was the right shade of blue and the feelings were high and proud. GO HEELS!


Carolina won the National Basketball Championship! Sally has the police report posted on isthatlegal.org – over 45,000 people were downtown in Chapel Hill celebrating last night and into the morning. [picture by Ruby]
UNC has made changes to the campus home page to celebrate the victory.
Bloggy, the creative product of Fred Stutzman, has grown a lot in the past few days. Originally Bloggy was to be in action only for one day, but the power of Bloggy’s love and its cuddliness and the subtle artificial intelligence of Bloggy have attracted a large following over at its blog which is well worth the read.
Cheryl sent me a link to the art of El Rey; he has things you need to buy. He should not be confused with L. Ron or El Vis.
I’m be in the air most of the day heading east and wondering how an airplane food salad box can be offered for sale for $10 without the seller being overwhelmed by irony and guilt. No mid-air blogging expected.
During the CW Tux event last night, I got to meet and talk with Susan Best and Jim Buckmaster. Jim is CEO of Craig’s List which has within the last year or so appeared in the Triangle area. Susan does PR for several folks that I know but cannot list here for various reasons (the main one being my faculty memory).
Pictures included at the links on this post. First I decided to walk to City Hall. It’s not far from the Drake a little over a mile all told. I left the Drake and the well-dressed doorman. Then I walked past Macy’s smoke-breathing dragon.
A nice walk really, but the folks at the hotel said a block or two were “bad” meaning a couple of blocks of homeless folks nodding out in front of closed strip clubs. “Like New York” the guy at the hotel told me. I was reminded by myself that I had spent part of Friday night listening to Chris Moran and Sally and several folks from Campus Y and Intervarsity talk about homelessness in the Pit back in Chapel Hill. Easy to make the decision to walk after that.
There was a wonderful green market going on at the UN Plaza on the way to City Hall. It was almost entirely Asian run and Asian patronized.
There was a little park nearby with an interesting restriction to access.
The park in front of City Hall was filling up for a festival (more of which later). The festival appeared to be almost all Latino based on the food and music and t-shirts.
I had some time to kill since the walk was much shorter than advertized so I went to the Asian Art Museum. Great ancient art of which no pictures may be taken, but some interesting contemporary Asian art too, including this Chinese dino outside the entrance (echoing Macy’s).
The City Hall is magnificent. The Awards ceremony took place in the rotunda. The crowd of awardees were as different from the crowd at, say, the O’Reilly Emerging Tech Conference, as Computerworld is from Wired. That is to say that hair there, to mention one thing was business friendly as was the dress. It was a serious occassion and folks were awarded for project with names like “Centralization and Optimization of Performance Metrics, Data Sources, and Analysis Activities” and “Bridging the Communications Gap Between Business and IT” or the least modest title “University of Pittsburgh Maximizes Its Information.” That is to say that this is working IT in the old sense and that the awards with all their formality are really about recognizing labor and creativity in labor. I’m not sure the folks at the awards would recognize the occassion as such, but folks were awarded for things that improved their businesses sometimes for making new products. “Innovative integration of multi-party applications to provide services to security and wellness industry” read one. U of Pittsburgh immodestly nominated no less than 7 projects by far the most of any organization.
Dan Morrow begin the ceremony and Don Tennant, editor-in-chief of Computerworld, gave a talk in which he described his father’s battle with ALS touchingly and then begin quoting at length from ‘Abdull-Baha, son of the founder of Bahi World Faith. Great quotes about work and service and faith confirming that these awards are a labor celebration.
We were announced and walked forward and were duely recorded — this recording being a major part of the project, to record the labor for future research in the form of our case studies and to record the event. I will have a medal picture later along with my penguin suit. We were medaled and recorded and then took our places on the impressive stone stairway.
There was more photography, videography and general congratulations. Then we left to relax and then slip into less comfortable clothes for the evening.
Outside several limos awaited Laureates, but I went into the festival to walk home. There another kind of labor celebration was underway.
At the far end of the park, a parade appeared with banners announcing “The Ceasar Chavez Holiday Parade.” Dignitaries appeared in quite different cars from the limos. With drivers wearing very different uniforms.
At this event, there were marching Aztecs in extravagant costumes dancing to compelling drums. Many local union and syndicates were represented. The crowd was addressed by the Police Chief Ms Fong, the Fire Chief (didn’t catch her name) and others. Here the talk about labor was very direct. The crowd was dressed in a more relaxed and more confrontational manner.
The music at the Laureate ceremony was provided by an Air Force Band which played a patriotic program for the most part.
Across the street at the Chavez celebration, a rap/hip-hop station blasted songs at the booth of a new Spanish station which was equal to the challenge. The drums of the Aztecs were unavoidably in the mix.
Labor having been so widely celebrated and honored on the day of rest, I walked back to the Drake.
Except for careful observervation of games that give us Bojangles specials, I usually don’t do sports reporting. I leave that to the pros at ACC Hoops or to the enthusiastic Irondog. So last night here I was in San Francisco looking for a sports bar so I could watch the Tar Heels dispatch Michigan State. I am not a guy with sports-bar-radar, so I had to ask Cheryl to look for one on her way to Union Square.
As someone who thinks about sports bars might expect, we found one in the Marriott. It was like Cheers, but with uglier people. But then a life is a lot like Cheers, but with uglier people. Part of the ugliness of these people was that many of them were in dark green and were cheering at the wrong times.
The crowd changed at the second half though. The greens got much quieter. And the room looked much prettier even for a sports bar where prettiness is not anything like the object.
Nothing like a 87 -71 final four victory to brighten up the night.
I’m off today for medal gettin and medal wearin. Luckily the final game against Illinois isn’t til Monday night at 9:20. My plane puts me back in RDU at 8:30.
Only old squares call this town Frisco, so it’s my place to do so. I even ate at the squarest restaraunt, Sears Fine Foods, which is right across the street from the extremely elegant yet tacky Sir Francis Drake where I am staying. What I like about Sears is that dispite (or perhaps because) that the ownership has changed, the place seems like a place where Damon Runyon would eat had he come to Frisco. Since it’s historic, it’s also tourist filled and overpriced — but I still end up there each trip out.
Union Square is a major shopping area. Macy’s takes up one side of the square. On the front of Macy’s is a giant smoke breathing dragon advertising their new Gardens of the Dragon restaraunt. A very elaborate front to say the least.
I’m off to the Square to meet up with former Metalabist, Cheryl Friedman, who now lives here. Here in her case is not Union Square, but greater San Francisco.
First sign of being in San Francisco. In the airport, a guy was standing there with a sign for his pick up “Ms Easy Rider.” He was wearing a white biker doo-rag, black steel toed boots, denim, and colors for a riding group that I couldn’t quite identify. No sign of Ms Easy tho only her sign.
UPDATE Okay it’s not a restaraunt. The Gardens of the Dragon is an in store flower show with an asian theme. some giant statues of buddhas and saints throughout the store resulting in some interesting scenes. a giant saint stands in the midst of some slightly larger than life manekins in the new summer dress section. the manekins all have a comic but distracted look. couples pass the manekins to have their small child picture taken with the saint (in Macy’s).
Some time in the next few hours, at least before tomorrow noon, the ibiblio team will be revealing a special top secret project that will make the Makers at MIT insanely jealous, that will help Dave Winer in his quest to lose weight, that will compete with Doc Searls for having the best collective knowledge of net.goingson, that will help NC State and Duke forget their NCAA loses, that will put shine on Howard Rheingold’s shoes, that will double the value of Tim O’Reilly’s backlist, that will make a preacher lay his Bible down, that will make a coon dog hung a hound, that will complete Brewster Kahle’s Internet Archive, that will be of course under Creative Commons license, that will help Jessamyn West tolerate overdue books, that will combine the Cathedral AND the Bazaar and the Bizarre, that will allow Larry Lessig to wear a color other than black, that will allow Jamie Boyle to speak with a Southern Drawl, that will give Eben Moglen a close shave, that will make John Hood approve of public transportation, that will allow Douglas Rushkoff to drink a can of Sprite without irony, that will turn Boing Boing into something serious and Cory Doctorow into a long haired poet, that will allow Pamela Jones to see the upsides of the SCO claims, that will fill in the large blank spots in Roblimo’s blog, that will make the perfect SlashDot post, that will get the attention.xml of Steve Gillmor, what will get down to the grassroots with Dan Gillmor, that will help Jeff Pomerantz find the next highest prime number, that will reveal Glenn Otis Brown‘s biggest secret, that will put hair back on Bob Young‘s head (so he can quit wearing so many hats, [more later]
UPDATE Bloggy is here! or see the post above. After April 1, find Bloggy here.
Laurie Racine, President of the Full Frame Documentary Festival which is upcoming April 7 – 10, writes to alert us and to invite us to several panels of interest at the Festival.
Some information is on the Festival site, but more specifically there are three flyers (decribed and linked below), grouping the panels by area of interest:
- IP and first amendment [PDF poster]
- Friday 10 am – Intellectual Property: New Rules
- Saturday 11 am – Speak Out: Risky Business
- distribution and the film industry [PDF poster]
- Sat 9 am – 3 Billion Films: A workshop onf subtitling technology
- Fri 2:15 pm – Film Distributors: Finding the one that’s right for you
- Fri 12 pm – TV Broadcasters: Finding the one that’s right for you
- filmmaking [PDF poster]
- Fri 4:40 pm – Heyday: The reality of theatrical success
- Sat 1:45 pm – Soul of the Story: filmmakers and their personal journeys
- Sun 9:30 am – Kultur/Culture: The Turkish American Exchange Project
Doc writes that he is amazed to see Tony Pierce win over Instapundit in a GoogleFight. But Tony and Instapundit have nothing on Paul Jones. We collectively chalk up from 10 million to over 12.2 million GoogleFight points depending on when you search (in fact our score could be higher). As a big winner, I’m not whining, but a difference of 20% is great.
I just got that difference in two searches back to back. Paul Jones v. ibiblio yields 10 million v. 1.5 million. Paul Jones v. George Bush yields 12.2 million v. 17 million.
Note that ibiblio bests Doc Searls and Instapundit but not Tony Pierce. Interestingly enough, ibiblio scores 1,570,000 when fighting Tony Pierce and 1,640,000 when against Instapundit.
One further note: A regular Google search for Paul Jones yields about 15,200,000 entries (March 31 at 8 am EST) and a search for ibiblio yields about 1,700,000.
No consistancy here.
UPDATE: Tony Pierce admits defeat to Paul Jones in GoogleFights even as he praises Motley Crue (which explains something about why he loses GoogleFights; Paul Joneses are all better musicians!).
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