Archive for March, 2004
Sail Trek
What happens when Trekkie fandom meets avid sailor? You get Starship Enterprise, a sailing blog in Star Trek narrative format. He even has a Porthos-like dog named “Scotty.”
Museum of Bad Art
The Museum of Bad Art. It’s a real museum, up “Nawth” in Needham, MA. I’m quite amused to see that much of the “bad” art is impressionist in style: Lucy in the Field with Flowers, for example. (My own preference, of course, is for good, solid, representational art of the Old Master variety.) (Found via [...]
Pau and Da Hua
PAU! Or Pao. It’s the snack that bears my name. Last Saturday, after reading Renee Kho’s extensive treatise on pao (found completely at random from here), I realized I had not eaten siopao for over two years, so Amy and I had an early Saturday brunch of dimsum, Yang Chow fried rice, and mini-siopao at [...]
Red Soily Plain
After one failed attempt, the Mars rover Opportunity has defeated a literal slippery slope and left its home crater. Now it is 9 meters from the rim, well and truly out on the red soily plains. NASA is having a press briefing today to announce another significant scientific finding from the rover. Check out the [...]
ESOTSM
Friday night, Amy came to DC, and we hopped over to E Street Theatre to watch Eternal Sunshine, Charlie Kaufman’s latest surrealist offering, directed by Michel Gondry. (The original phrase “eternal sunshine of the spotless mind” is from Alexander Pope’s Eloisa to Abelard.) Beautifully crafted film, with an absurd yet absurdly simple storyline. Classic Kaufman: [...]
Fire Near the Rails
There’s a car on fire in Northeast DC, near the Red Line Metro rails between New York Ave. and Rhode Island Ave. I had thought at first it was an electrical fire that had set the brush alight, when I first smelled smoke at Rhode Island Ave. NE Metro station, and saw the grass on [...]
Bugs and TVs and Sushi and Spots and Um…
On today’s list of interesting things to look at, we have beautiful bugs, vintage television sets, Hello Kitty Bento Boxes, Yayoi Kusama’s Kusamatrix, and Digi Charat Cosplay. Enjoy.
Pyongyang and Ulan Bator Underground
Add to the list of subway systems I had no idea existed: Pyongyang, North Korea, and Ulan Bator, Mongolia. Both systems are legacies of Soviet-era industry. The logo of the Ulan Bator Metro is a letter “M” superimposed over a camel’s humps. Pictures of the stations remind me faintly of the Baltimore Metro. Stations appear [...]
More Ormandy
The Sayings of Eugene Ormandy. (I linked famous Eugene Ormandy quotes previously, but I don’t mind linking to this larger collection. There’s more floating out there, and I have a feeling these quotes are fast gaining urban legend status; how many of those are still actual Ormandy quotes, I wonder?) My current favorite: “You have [...]
Quid est, Christiane?
A bonny Saint Patrick’s Day to ye, lads and lasses. Before you all break out the shamrocks and Guinness tonight, take a few minutes to read up on the history of Patricius, missionary to the Irish. Here’s Patrick in a nutshell from Ireland’s Eye, a more detailed history from the Roman Catholic Encyclopedia at New [...]