tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24242535018043821112024-03-13T09:13:45.083-05:00Call Me LaikaI can bark if I want to.Ashleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01087525094694077687noreply@blogger.comBlogger54125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2424253501804382111.post-45552159924498620922008-08-01T15:34:00.002-05:002008-08-01T15:37:10.951-05:00How Bizarre....That I might post to this blog one year to the day since I last visited it. At that time, my mom was still living. At that time, many things that have since beguiled my waking hours had not yet beguiled me.Just a test post--to get back into the swing of things.Ashleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01087525094694077687noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2424253501804382111.post-77149356922991753492007-08-01T13:12:00.000-05:002007-08-01T13:17:02.038-05:00Goodbye, Banner!The British Army's Operation Banner is finally over in North Ireland. They came for a few weeks and stayed for 38 years.Ashleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01087525094694077687noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2424253501804382111.post-22429767496815753052007-08-01T11:29:00.000-05:002007-08-01T11:40:19.867-05:00Games Even the Buddha Wouldn't PlayIntelligent Artifice recently linked to a wiki article here about the earliest extant list of games, a list of games Gautama Buddha said he would not play.Some of them are interesting: Playing with toy pipes made of leaves Playing with toy windmills Plowing with a toy plow Guessing at letters traced with the finger in the air or on a friend's back Guessing a friends thoughtsFrom thisAshleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01087525094694077687noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2424253501804382111.post-951627464903345262007-07-25T12:07:00.000-05:002007-07-25T12:17:12.337-05:00Finally, An Answer.My best friend is from Kansas. She's had a magnet on her refrigerator of this image for as long as I've known her. Finally Neatorama gives me the lowdown on this book:THE GODS HATE KANSAS by Joseph Millard It began with the landing of nine meteors in Kansas. Then, suddenly, it exploded into a massive catastrophe. First, the meteorite investigating team were turned into automatons, ruled by an Ashleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01087525094694077687noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2424253501804382111.post-14040967470964293792007-07-24T17:28:00.000-05:002007-07-24T17:34:43.821-05:00National Periodicals Table of Story ElementsI'm writing a novel and, for the last few days, I've hated the damned thing and have sunken into a slough of despond. Perhaps sensing, with his god-like powers, that someone, somewhere needs him--Scipio at The Absorbascon has flown in to save the day!Ashleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01087525094694077687noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2424253501804382111.post-63143066600964501892007-07-24T16:33:00.000-05:002007-07-24T16:42:36.979-05:00We Love our BotsGreat Post article about relationship between our soldiers and the robots they're using in combat here. Here's a snippet:The most effective way to find and destroy a land mine is to step on it.This has bad results, of course, if you're a human. But not so much if you're a robot and have as many legs as a centipede sticking out from your body. That's why Mark Tilden, a robotics physicist at the Ashleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01087525094694077687noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2424253501804382111.post-4858890541546115902007-06-13T10:05:00.000-05:002007-06-13T10:11:44.791-05:00Hitchens/ParisChristopher Hitchens cements my respect for him with his new article about the Paris Hilton debacle. The snarky comments from, particularly, Fox News female anchors (as they relentlessly cover the case) are ludicrous, middle-to-high school bitchiness about the prettier girl in the class. And Sarah Silverman's joke was inexcusable, even within the realm of comedy. How hard is it to kick someone Ashleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01087525094694077687noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2424253501804382111.post-48650481285253263202007-04-06T18:57:00.000-05:002007-04-06T19:00:45.522-05:00The Synoptic ProblemIn time for Good Friday, interesting review of Richard Bauckham's Jesus and the Eyewitnesses here:The Synoptic Gospels – Matthew, Mark and Luke – present a conundrum that is probably unique in the annals of literary research. On the one hand they display similarities which are sometimes so close that it has been thought impossible they should have occurred had not the author of one had access to Ashleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01087525094694077687noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2424253501804382111.post-68754654833427821612007-04-05T07:45:00.000-05:002007-04-05T07:55:56.329-05:00Chiang Kai-Shek and ClintonInteresting review of Laura Tyson Li's Madame Chiang Kai-Shek: China's Eternal First Lady:An intelligent and outspoken young woman enrolls at Wellesley College, where she impresses her classmates with her ambition and annoys a few with her outsized sense of entitlement. After graduation, she marries a rising political figure who eventually becomes a national leader. She, too, is soon wielding Ashleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01087525094694077687noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2424253501804382111.post-78933416688939255182007-04-02T14:03:00.000-05:002007-04-05T07:58:25.082-05:00Jesus and Marshall McLuhanTwo nice quotes for the day:"For tribal man, space was the uncontrollable mystery. For technological man, it is time that occupies the same role." Marshall McLuhan, The Mechanical BrideAll I can say to that is word, Mr. McLuhan.From The Apocryphon of John, translated by Stevan Davies:[I said “Master, what does it mean ‘she moved back and forth’?” He laughed, saying, “It’s not as Ashleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01087525094694077687noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2424253501804382111.post-32212893467822135112007-03-31T17:25:00.000-05:002007-03-31T17:38:30.169-05:00Got Maggots?Maggot art. Nice:There is an automatic, visceral revulsion at the slimy, wormy things of the world. It is only natural that we look down the biological hierarchy at something like fly larvae and scornfully call them maggots, or that such a term involuntarily conjures images of rotting meat, smelly trash, and various other unpleasantries. But Rebecca O'Flaherty, a Ph.D. candidate in Entomology at Ashleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01087525094694077687noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2424253501804382111.post-73252020556260574712007-03-23T08:12:00.000-05:002007-03-23T08:17:44.964-05:00Oh, to be in England...Now that April's almost there. Theodore Dalrymple is quite a John the Baptist for the United States. He watches the United Kingdom. He watches--and he sees. And what he sees happening to the pleasantly Socialist UK is coming home to the United States.Ashleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01087525094694077687noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2424253501804382111.post-11296127989958789512007-03-22T19:26:00.000-05:002007-03-22T19:34:56.472-05:00NiceEven if given only a cursory acquaintance with humankind, this should surprise no one:Disabled people hold just the same prejudices towards other disabled people as those who do not have a disability, new health research from The City University, London reveals.Each participant within the sample, comprising 217 disabled people and 114 non-disabled people, was asked to score a series of statementsAshleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01087525094694077687noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2424253501804382111.post-7696779120363697332007-03-11T18:48:00.001-05:002008-12-20T16:37:01.912-05:00My Father, The Super HeroThis was going to be a joke post, because I'd made a superhero character at UGO for my dad.But, since it didn't load, I'd like to go ahead and attest to the fact that my father is a sort of superhero. He's 75 years old and has been a caretaker for my beloved mother for years. He never complains. He never bitches. He just (as folks used to say) keeps on keeping on.I admire and love him for Ashleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01087525094694077687noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2424253501804382111.post-41442497372116680232007-03-09T09:30:00.000-05:002007-03-09T09:39:57.649-05:00Eugenics....I'm feeling all meta this morning, so I thought I'd link to myself linking to Nurse Ratched's Place. You may be wondering if anyone can actually be more solipsistic and/or lazy. Working on it. Daily.Ashleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01087525094694077687noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2424253501804382111.post-60475370086318215572007-03-09T07:26:00.000-05:002007-03-09T09:36:27.654-05:00Doubts Continue: The Google Mood RingI added the mood ring to my Google toolbar last week, on a girlish (cough) whim. It's been wrong non-stop since I added it. I keep it now because I like to check in on what my mood is supposed to be. Right now, for example, my mood is "Dark Blue: Impassioned, delighted, whiff of romance."If my mood ring had looked everywhere, and forever, for a mood that is least like my mood right this minute, Ashleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01087525094694077687noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2424253501804382111.post-327966827637409572007-03-09T06:57:00.000-05:002007-03-09T07:20:01.013-05:00Can't Wait for Hillary Care?I had an interesting discussion about socialized medicine with a friend once. She maintained that the American version couldn't turn into the inferior systems we see in Canada and the U.K. Why, I asked? Because Americans wouldn't run things so badly, she countered. Believe me, this was not a cliched blind faith in the superiority of all things U.S. Further discussion revealed that she had too Ashleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01087525094694077687noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2424253501804382111.post-61230425564478409172007-03-07T08:07:00.000-05:002007-03-07T08:20:24.019-05:00Poseidon Adventure AvertedDid anyone notice that the good ship NYSE righted itself, and enough to keep sailing, not just floating.Everyone knew it would be it gave the 24/7 news folks something to talk about between Anna Nicole's death/subsequent trashy 'where should we plant her' trial and Britney's meltdown. Thank God for us--Hillary Rodham Clinton was on the case and enough to send a scolding letter to Henry Paulson Ashleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01087525094694077687noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2424253501804382111.post-25910273400572688922007-03-06T09:23:00.000-05:002007-03-06T09:34:42.785-05:00Molotov AlvaI posted a few days ago re: the film made in Second life with Molotov Alva as its subject. This is the blurb about the mini-movie from the Submarine Channel, whence it came: 'My Second Life' was shot entirely in the popular online world Second Life. On one of his SL visits, filmmaker Douglas Gayeton comes across a series of seven video dispatches by a character who uses the name Molotov Alva. Ashleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01087525094694077687noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2424253501804382111.post-20164995094294844812007-03-05T18:56:00.001-05:002007-03-06T08:28:05.537-05:00Hillary and Eugene LevyThe junior senator from New York is using her Midwestern pragmatism to express her Southern roots. My father just told me that Ms. Rodham Clinton's speech reminded him of Eugene Levy's character, Dr. Alan Pearl, in Waiting for Guffman.Play her clip, then listen to Dr. Pearl. Separated at birth?Ashleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01087525094694077687noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2424253501804382111.post-31788757976516601432007-03-03T05:19:00.001-05:002007-03-03T05:34:46.003-05:00My Second LifeThis is a stunner. Technically, it's a fantastic job. It also makes me feel slightly over-carbonated, in both senses of the world: light-headed but feeling distinctly carbon-based in a world that's rapidly shifting to silicon.Thanks to New World Notes for the heads-up.Ashleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01087525094694077687noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2424253501804382111.post-10461367805004305852007-03-02T10:44:00.000-05:002007-03-02T10:56:16.423-05:00Barack Obama's AncestorsSo.Barack Obama's white ancestors owned slaves. Interesting commentary from NewsBusters (disclaimer--this is an 'exposing and combating Liberal Media Bias' website):Obama's white ancestors owned slaves. So says the research of William Addams Reitwiesner, "who works at the Library of Congress and practices genealogy in his spare time", and who is featured in this morning's edition of the BaltimoreAshleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01087525094694077687noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2424253501804382111.post-32516349730663551352007-02-28T09:33:00.000-05:002007-02-28T10:08:56.361-05:00Pundits AhoyI can't bear it. It's not bad enough for the stock market to fall--now we have to listen to Henny Penny pundits explain:Why the sky is falling.Why the sky may not be falling as quickly as we had initially thought.What signs might indicate the sky's not finished falling.Why war in Iraq has caused falling sky.Why global warming has caused falling sky.Why scoffing at global warming has caused Ashleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01087525094694077687noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2424253501804382111.post-36148905371810590192007-02-20T13:13:00.001-05:002007-02-20T13:21:55.129-05:00American Idol HorrorThis is horrific:Listening to the Fox network’s competitors describe what “American Idol” has done to the television landscape is not unlike listening to a group of quavering readers offer a synopsis of a Stephen King novel: Once a year an unrelenting monster invades a town, and all the townspeople, cowed by years of being crushed under its massive claws, have to pay it fealty or run off and hideAshleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01087525094694077687noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2424253501804382111.post-45781743362674120872007-02-20T10:49:00.000-05:002007-02-20T10:52:01.802-05:00Global Warming...Remember back when scientists used to be able to discuss things?Yeah. Me neither.Ashleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01087525094694077687noreply@blogger.com0