Driving west on I-10 Sunday, I saw again why California has a desert. The moisture from the coast rarely makes it very far inland. This is at the San Gorgonio pass, about 100 miles E of Los Angeles. See the windmills? They’re there because there is usually an east wind (i.e., westbound). When there’s weather in the Inland Empire and it wants to go east, it can only get this far.
That’s the conclusion of a Minnesota school system. They reference a number of studies, but, let’s be honest: who cares? The shocking thing about the Edina school district is that they let kids’ needs trump things like bus-utilization and parent/teacher preferences.
I finished watching The Lives of Others. That makes two subtitled foreign films this century! Awesome. It’s the story of a secret policeman with the East German Stasi and a couple he is assigned to investigate.
I’m no good at movie reviews, so I won’t try. I think the story and the characters were both excellent. There is almost no “action” — and yet at moments your heart is pounding because of the intensity. (More like a thriller or old-school horror movie, in that way.) No special effects, no CGI.
The main character is Gerd Wiesler, played by the late Ulrich Mühe. His life story is interesting in its own right.
I’m glad I saw this movie. It’s an excellent critique of the totalitarian state — the best I can remember; perhaps as good as Animal Farm. But it’s also an enjoyable movie to watch.
This makes me sick:
Argentines Francisco Lotero, 56, and Miriam Coletti, 23, shot their children before killing themselves after making an apparent suicide pact over fears about global warming.
(There was, incredibly, a survivor.)
I like this, from Mark Batterson:
The longer I preach the more I realize that people don’t need to hear what I have to say but they do need a word from the Lord.
(Interesting permalink for that article, by the way.)
This was interesting, in the NY Times science blog:
Dr. McCarron and his colleagues analyzed surveys from 33 countries around the world and reported that, despite wide differences in diet and culture, people generally consumed about the same amount of salt. … The results were so similar in so many places that Dr. McCarron hypothesized that networks in the brain regulate sodium appetite so that people consume a set daily level of salt.
The rest of the article is about efforts to regulate salt in foods. What if that finding were correct? Imagine trying to set up a regulatory environment to achieve “safe” salt levels if there was a neurological trigger in the brain to get a different amount. When we prohibit alcohol and drugs, it doesn’t work, but at least it fails differently for different people.
(RT Instapundit.)
The Evil-Tron is an electronic gadget not much bigger than a quarter. It’s got a strong magnet, so you can attach it just about anywhere, like under someone’s desk, or in framework rigging for the suspended ceiling.
What it does is make sounds — “unidentifiable scratching sounds,” or “eerie whispering ‘hey, can you hear me?” — at random intervals, and so mess with someone’s mind. Just the thing to get your coworkers.
I have got to get me one of these. Or … perhaps … the economy pack: get three for just $18. Hmmm….
That’s not news: it’s called space. But the news is that the space near us is especially empty. You can see a map of what’s called the “Local Cavity,” a region about 260 light years across that’s more empty than average. Scientists believe that this void is a sort of crater blasted empty by a supernova 5-10 million years ago.
One of my frustrations as a casual Rubyist is trying to use some of these wonderful CPAN-like things that have appeared since I began playing with Ruby after the Hunt and Thomas article in Dr. Dobb’s. For example, gems.
The problem with Ruby (and especially rubygems) is that they don’t play nicely with the other package management tools on your system. (Ubuntu/Debian’s .deb‘s and MacPorts‘ ports). And I’m too stupid and lazy to bypass all that and go back to using tarballs and stashing everything in /usr/local.
Enter RVM, the Ruby Version Manager. It bypasses your system’s package management system. It creates a hidden folder ($HOME/.rvm) and puts whatever Ruby versions (and gems, etc.) there. But it does it all so cleverly you don’t realize what’s going on in the background. I like it.
I keep finding fun things to do with my iPhone besides making phone calls. We’ve had a lot of rain lately, but I went out last night and held my phone up to the sky and this is pretty much what I saw.
