tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-108639172011-11-26T21:59:32.948+03:30Is what is fair what is right?Ted Lemonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16951216043358903560noreply@blogger.comBlogger2071100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10863917.post-73964524545407992512011-04-11T22:09:00.003+04:302011-04-11T22:14:39.679+04:30

I just got some mail from Howard Dean asking me to contribute to the campaign of a candidate in a congressional election in the LA basin. His story is that Debra Bowen is running for Jane Harman's recently-vacated seat. She's a progressive. We should help fund her election. A little research shows that this is not the case. Debra Bowen is not a progressive. She's a status-quo Democrat

Ted Lemonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16951216043358903560noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10863917.post-8377512670587985832011-02-05T07:24:00.002+03:302011-02-05T07:43:32.081+03:30

Andrea and I found ourselves behind a car today, on the way to do some walking and mom-tipping. It had a bumper sticker that said "Don't Steal. The Government Doesn't Like Competition!" What a useless thing to say.If you don't have the power to change something, griping about it is like getting upset at a rock you stub your toe on. A natural reaction, perhaps, but in no way useful. The

Ted Lemonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16951216043358903560noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10863917.post-66844967018159110872011-02-03T18:43:00.002+03:302011-02-03T19:01:58.548+03:30

A good friend of mine recently forwarded me a political cartoon he'd paid someone to draw. The cartoon portrayed Hillary Clinton talking to Egyptian president Mubarak, and made Ms. Clinton out to be a long-time supported of the Mubarak regime, using our taxes to support a repressive dictator.This image seemed like a mistake to me; I wasn't sure why at first. After all, our taxes have been

Ted Lemonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16951216043358903560noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10863917.post-78460778514216256772010-06-22T01:48:00.014+04:302010-06-22T02:17:52.462+04:30

[This is a copy of a letter I just sent to the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility. If you agree with what I have said in this letter, their email address is commission@fc.eop.gov.]MoveOn is calling on me to ask Senator Simpson to resign from the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility. They've put up a video of a pleasantly candid interview that Senator Simpson did on the way

Ted Lemonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16951216043358903560noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10863917.post-39413713721591028742010-02-16T01:14:00.003+03:302010-02-16T01:44:41.435+03:30

So maybe it's time for a few updates. Andrea and I were staying mum about the house sale until it sold, but it's sold, so I can talk about it now. We were really pretty fortunate - we got some good advice from a home staging person on how to use our existing furniture and junk to stage the house. We did that, and it looked very good--so good that we're tempted to hire a home stager to give

Ted Lemonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16951216043358903560noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10863917.post-31381670811001753282010-01-08T19:02:00.006+03:302010-01-08T20:00:53.851+03:30

One of the things I've discovered in writing this blog is that it's actually very difficult to talk about my life in a meaningful way. I don't mean that I have nothing to say. I mean that it's hard to choose what to say, and hard to know if the choices I make are really meaningful and honest.The problem is that I tend to think about my life up to the present moment as narratives, and I tend

Ted Lemonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16951216043358903560noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10863917.post-5968680002384556432009-12-19T19:09:00.004+03:302009-12-19T19:59:55.813+03:30

Andrea and I are on the east coast for the next month or so visiting my parents. It's cold here. I've been trying to get back into bicycling, now that I have a bike again (for those who aren't up on the news, all our bikes were stolen a couple of months ago when, after a day of working on getting the house ready to show, I left the garage door open all night).I was really lucky in my timing on

Ted Lemonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16951216043358903560noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10863917.post-46495190506870116752009-10-09T04:26:00.004+03:302009-10-09T05:15:50.431+03:30

As part of our project to make our house extra-comfortable and nice for its new owner (that is to say, catching up on deferred maintenance), I'm fixing the screen door to our screen porch.The door was installed by a cheapskate who used a lousy door handle/latch and didn't drill it properly. Here's the way the latch hole looks - notice how it's off center. It's also drilled at an angle.The

Ted Lemonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16951216043358903560noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10863917.post-12123125703058524392009-08-19T19:36:00.002+04:302009-08-19T20:49:57.934+04:30

When I was a kid, I had a fairly rocky relationship with my parents, like most kids. My mother was the strict disciplinarian. My father would occasionally get really pissed off at me, but if I let him cool off he'd usually forgive and forget, so it was always better to get in trouble on his watch.In my twenties, I carried a lot of baggage from my childhood - things that bugged me about my

Ted Lemonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16951216043358903560noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10863917.post-37636443665424802972009-06-07T10:34:00.006+04:302009-06-07T10:53:50.677+04:30

The Tikit tricked me again - I went out for a short ride and wound up up on Anklam Road and El Camino de la Oeste.It's wily that way.It knew I would have a good time.It was right.15.4 miles, I have no idea how long.BTW, this is a trend - the other day, the weather was blustery, and the Tikit lured me out for a ride in the flood control area down by the Kino Sports Park (I'd just gone out to

Ted Lemonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16951216043358903560noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10863917.post-69209771657029394242009-05-31T05:01:00.002+04:302009-05-31T05:12:24.705+04:30

We drove out to DM today, and so the Tikit was in the back of the Prius. I didn't have to pack it as tightly as I did last weekend, so it looks pretty relaxed in the trunk, and I though to take some pictures.Of course, the Tikit was just sitting there eyeing me coyly, as if to say "you know you want to go for a ride, big boy." What was I going to do? So I took it out and rode it up to Fort

Ted Lemonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16951216043358903560noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10863917.post-88553500454331538262009-05-29T07:59:00.008+04:302009-05-30T04:59:51.486+04:30

I went up Gates Pass. Again. Today it was partly cloudy, and the clouds were in the west, so I left well before sunset and did most of the ride in sunlight. I did get zapped for about fifteen minutes when the clouds broke briefly, but mostly it worked out. The big plus to going so early is that it's much, much prettier.This is looking east along Kinney from the first place I stopped in the

Ted Lemonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16951216043358903560noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10863917.post-70763855218866547292009-05-22T05:02:00.005+04:302009-05-22T06:02:05.149+04:30

I'm a little bored with Gates Pass for the moment, so last night I decided to try a run down to Mission San Xavier del Bac and back. This is about a third of the famous Shootout ride, and in fact reading about the Shootout is what gave me the idea.The bad news is that the mission is really not very far out of town, so most of the ride is in town, just getting there. I decided to do a straight

Ted Lemonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16951216043358903560noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10863917.post-88407245924944593372009-05-21T02:33:00.003+04:302009-05-21T02:56:54.438+04:30

...it turns out that there is now a place in Tucson where you can get genuinely exquisite coffee. There's this guy with a trailer that's outfitted as a coffee brewing station. Hey, it's Tucson! Much of the best food in Tucson is served out of trailers, or so I suspect. I passed a tamale trailer on the way to Gates Pass the other day that looked like the place to be; I almost stopped, but

Ted Lemonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16951216043358903560noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10863917.post-64381243260804857132009-05-20T03:36:00.003+04:302009-05-20T11:15:47.002+04:30

I went up Gates Pass again last night. My Saturday night ride over the pass took a lot out of me, so this time I decided to use an electrolyte supplement. Back when I was riding in the Bay Area, I used to use a really yummy sweetened sports drink mix when I rode, and it worked pretty well, but I wanted to see how much difference the sugars made in the ride, and so this time I just used a

Ted Lemonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16951216043358903560noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10863917.post-24892547296812031502009-05-17T08:54:00.006+04:302009-05-17T09:41:21.448+04:30

I wasn't going to do it before I scoped it out a bit, but it looked so good on the map. I had to try it. So I did Gates Pass tonight. I left before the sun set, because I had decided to go up Ajo Highway, and I wanted some light for that. This turned out to be a good choice, although I think next time I do this ride I will detour south to Irvington and see if that's any better.The stretch

Ted Lemonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16951216043358903560noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10863917.post-60644341598218841602009-05-17T03:24:00.008+04:302009-05-17T04:50:42.422+04:30

Andrea and I have been living in Tucson since summer of 2004. Our first summer in Tucson was mostly nice - Tucson is a bit of a ghost town in the summer, and so we got to watch a lot of tumbleweeds blow. Everybody has different ways of getting exercise; my two favorite ways turned out to work very badly in Tucson. I tried, really I did, but never got into the swing of either bicycling or

Ted Lemonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16951216043358903560noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10863917.post-64299522796259930582009-03-06T10:17:00.004+03:302009-03-06T10:48:37.987+03:30

Okay, so a couple of weeks ago I was whining about bicycle seats, and about this new bicycle seat I'd gotten called the Spongy Wonder. After I posted that entry, I got some advice from friends of mine who are serious bicyclists. Jym accused me of not getting my science right; I'm not entirely convinced that he has his right either, but be that as it may, I think his basic observation that I

Ted Lemonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16951216043358903560noreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10863917.post-43882401812899313772009-02-24T22:22:00.016+03:302009-02-26T03:02:29.833+03:30

This time it's an article in The Atlantic in which a breast cancer survivor talks about how the drug that she hopes has eliminated her cancer would not have been covered in New Zealand. The basic thrust of the article is that the author—Virginia Postrel—survived as a consequence of spending $60,000 on a drug called Herceptin, which is very effective for certain cancers when taken early; she

Ted Lemonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16951216043358903560noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10863917.post-9182598646616050032009-02-23T23:23:00.002+03:302009-02-23T23:25:44.942+03:30

Charlie Stross blogged a better than average roving questionnaire (please don't call it a "meme") today. I answered on his blog, but the process was interesting enough that I thought I'd share it here. The question is, what technology has changed your life, and when did you first meet it? I didn't have time to really do it justice, but I had a lot of fun answering it anyway.Electronics lab

Ted Lemonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16951216043358903560noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10863917.post-4652758922421297872009-02-14T05:03:00.005+03:302009-02-14T05:17:24.339+03:30

I noticed something going around on Facebook - a questionnaire (I hate to call it a meme, because meme actually means something different that's quite important) that asks you to make up a bunch of names for yourself. It seems like great fun on the surface, but the instructions it gives for making up names actually looks like a con.Here are the questions:YOUR SPY NAME (middle name and current

Ted Lemonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16951216043358903560noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10863917.post-36073834456174971242009-02-13T04:32:00.011+03:302009-02-13T05:24:39.064+03:30

Wow, when I look back at my recent blog entries, it's a weird combination of sensible things and extremist things. I call on people to be reasonable, and in the next sentence I talk about how awful some group of people is, or call our former president a robot. Sigh.But that's not what I'm here to talk about today. Ever since a bit before I broke my wrist, I've been getting worse and worse

Ted Lemonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16951216043358903560noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10863917.post-84102517016292592762009-01-14T22:39:00.004+03:302009-01-14T22:49:38.814+03:30

The New York Times yesterday published an article on the risks children face on the internet. Quoting from the article:A task force created by 49 state attorneys general to look into the problem of sexual solicitation of children online has concluded that there really is not a significant problem.Further:Not everyone was happy with the conclusions. Richard Blumenthal, the Connecticut attorney

Ted Lemonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16951216043358903560noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10863917.post-64978746933273392752009-01-13T02:22:00.007+03:302009-01-13T23:03:27.852+03:30

Now that something like 70% of Americans have decided that they like the idea of universal health care and elected a president and congress that might take steps in that direction, the Christian Science Monitor has come out with a new and pernicious attack on the idea of universal health care. The idea is that because health care costs money, if you put the government in charge of health care,

Ted Lemonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16951216043358903560noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10863917.post-944728412057088182008-12-21T21:38:00.004+03:302008-12-21T22:02:29.413+03:30

Over the years of the Bush presidency, and the Clinton presidency, a certain stridency gained power in our political world. Particularly in the Bush years, people who believe in personal freedom, tolerance, personal responsibility, genuine conservatism, and all those other good American values, despaired. Bush's complete refusal to engage with reality - to do what made sense, what was right -

Ted Lemonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16951216043358903560noreply@blogger.com17tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10863917.post-88908616017298616732008-11-06T22:17:00.006+03:302008-11-06T22:54:50.140+03:30

I've been in a meeting all morning, and I heard something in the meeting that really pissed me off. It's a common meme in our society right now. The meme is that child pornography is a really serious social problem, which justifies extraordinary measures to combat.What are the extraordinary measures? Well, basically, censorship infrastructure on the Internet, plus mandatory sentencing, plus

Ted Lemonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16951216043358903560noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10863917.post-51316502269354788222008-11-05T21:07:00.000+03:302008-11-05T21:11:49.024+03:30

It was really sweet to watch all the happy faces in the airport last night when my flight landed. It seems like there's a lot of joy about Obama's landslide victory in this election. I'm certainly very happy about it. It was also kind of cool to hear Robot George telling us that Obama's election means we have formed a more perfect union.Of course, as Senator Obama reminded us very nicely in

Ted Lemonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16951216043358903560noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10863917.post-26876075237560643712008-10-30T21:17:00.000+03:302008-10-30T21:21:03.261+03:30

...that it's been a week since my dad had his triple bypass. I was reminded just now that I have left a bit of a cliffhanger on my blog. So here's a little update. He came through the surgery fine. The folks at the hospital refer to it as their "big save," which is kind of sobering, but who can argue with outcomes. They say there was no damage to the heart muscle, and he should be

Ted Lemonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16951216043358903560noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10863917.post-14323559967072187732008-10-24T06:23:00.002+03:302008-10-24T06:43:58.006+03:30

This is going to sound really maudlin when my dad reads it in the morning. But that'll be okay, because then he'll make fun of me. I feel like I spend a lot of my life firmly insulated from the truth. What's going on, how I actually feel about what's going on, like that.Right now my dad is in an operating room having a triple bypass. And so the last time I talked to him, earlier today,

Ted Lemonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16951216043358903560noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10863917.post-17119125818946706902008-08-09T06:43:00.000+04:302008-08-09T07:08:53.463+04:30

Andrea and I are out at DM today.   There was a thunderstorm.   I took some fairly decent pictures, considering that the only camera I had with was the iPhone.   This one is looking up toward Fort Bowie - as you can see, the fort is completely inundated.This is looking to the north.   Nice rainbow.   You get a lot of these in the desert in Arizona during monsoon.   Would have liked a longer lens

Ted Lemonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16951216043358903560noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10863917.post-80592014800896122772008-08-03T03:44:00.002+04:302008-08-08T01:33:30.600+04:30

I know. I never call. I never write. You probably didn't even know I was in Ireland in the first place. Sigh. I wish I could promise to change, but I don't want to make a promise and then break it.Anyay, as it turns out, I was in Ireland - the summer IETF was at a golf hotel about 45 minutes outside of Dubin this time. Ireland was really great. Kind of trippy. I stayed at a place

Ted Lemonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16951216043358903560noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10863917.post-15171052722063284952008-06-23T05:10:00.001+04:302008-06-23T05:22:16.159+04:30

When I was a kid, probably ten or so, my parents would take me in to Greenfield, the nearest decent-sized town, to go to the library and check out books. I can remember a lot of books from that time vaguely, very few clearly.One of my favorite authors, whose books I do remember clearly, was Eleanor Cameron. She wrote about a boy my age who constructed a rocket ship and flew to a secret moon

Ted Lemonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16951216043358903560noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10863917.post-47761921148784302792008-06-18T00:57:00.000+04:302008-06-18T01:00:14.219+04:30

The summer solstice sun hits the south wall at a very oblique angle. I don't think it's imparting very much energy to the wall; when I put my hand on the wall just now (1:30pm), it wasn't unpleasantly hot, although I singed my feet on the relatively light stone walkway. Earlier and later in the year we'll get more energy from the sun on the wall. So it seems like the main thing is to keep

Ted Lemonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16951216043358903560noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10863917.post-39601411155772330262008-06-17T00:47:00.001+04:302008-06-17T00:54:51.371+04:30

Okay, the deal is that the sun rises in the northeast, peaks at 8.5 degrees south of vertical at noon, and sets in the southwest, on the summer solstice in Tucson. At the equinoxes, it rises and sets due east and west, and is to the south all day. At the winter solstice it rises in the southeast and sets in the southwest, and peaks at just over 55 degrees south of vertical at solar noon.Some

Ted Lemonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16951216043358903560noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10863917.post-33953844245272085812008-06-16T21:19:00.000+04:302008-06-16T21:22:23.964+04:30

An observation about solar orientation: it's 9:45am in Tucson. The south wall is in sun, but the angle of the sun is very steep - a 2" overhang is casting a 3' shadow. The north wall is completely in shadow right now. I need to check again at noon. This is not what my naive understanding of solar angles would suggest - hardly shocking, but something I need to think about.

Ted Lemonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16951216043358903560noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10863917.post-19306141761904200012008-06-15T01:37:00.001+04:302008-06-15T01:56:27.145+04:30

I'm going to make what I assume is an unoriginal observation, but it came to me in contemplating fairness in the context of libertarianism. Feel free to point out why my thinking here is completely wrong.It's my understanding that the fundamental principle of Libertarianism is that it is wrong to initiate force. If force is used against me, I can respond with force, but when no force is used

Ted Lemonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16951216043358903560noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10863917.post-9894653520809276122008-06-15T00:05:00.000+04:302008-06-15T00:13:39.207+04:30

I changed the name of my blog because I am concerned that the message has been lost. When I started this blog, it was with the intention to rant about the notion of fairness, and how badly it fails at the task of getting us to do what is right (a rather chancy concept in itself, I admit).Here's an illustration of what's wrong with fairness. What does "getting even" mean to you? Generally

Ted Lemonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16951216043358903560noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10863917.post-37472342225112309842008-06-10T21:36:00.002+04:302008-06-10T21:43:34.228+04:30

Andrea's good news page got mentioned on reddit, and then on boingboing, and then on digg. We got about 260,000 hits on it in the 24 hours that followed it appearing on the front page of digg for the first time. The server did poorly at first because I had it configured with too few http daemons, but once I corrected that it chugged along just fine. It helps that the page was a static

Ted Lemonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16951216043358903560noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10863917.post-77727195388113825952008-05-28T23:11:00.002+04:302008-05-28T23:31:54.015+04:30

Andrea and I just did a group retreat in the desert with a bunch of friends. This was at Diamond Mountain, up in the sanctuary area, so there were no buildings in which to stay, including our trailer. I'm a major princess, and not really interested in tent life, so I decided to build a wooden platform up at our site so we'd have a level floor, and then I hauled a mattress and comforter up the

Ted Lemonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16951216043358903560noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10863917.post-32158558821707093922008-05-09T01:23:00.001+04:302008-05-09T01:33:20.900+04:30

Back in the day, I used to be really into hiking, but haven't had a lot of time to do it recently. Which is kind of odd considering that I spend more than half my time these days about a mile from Fort Bowie - an old U.S. Army Fort from the days of the Pony Express.So recently I've gotten my act together and done a few hikes. I brought a camera along for one of them - here are the photos.

Ted Lemonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16951216043358903560noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10863917.post-13911251087716582008-04-16T21:41:00.002+04:302008-04-16T22:41:05.675+04:30

My mom asked where the vault is in relation to the trailer, so I offer you this shot to help illustrate. This picture is shot from the top of the trench looking down, before we finished the trench or put the pipe in it. The vault is just to the left of the trailer (it's not installed in this picture, but you wouldn't be able to see it here anyway). it's actually about ten feet from the

Ted Lemonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16951216043358903560noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10863917.post-29833864174386014422008-04-16T11:18:00.005+04:302008-04-16T12:53:49.198+04:30

Today a lot happened. Fortunately I was able to watch most of it from the window of the trailer, but there was some fun work for me to do too.The big event was that at about 9am, Jeff showed up with his big earth mover. We unplugged the trailer, he drove across, I plugged the trailer back in, and he proceeded to clear a space downhill of the trailer for the septic system. I asked him to

Ted Lemonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16951216043358903560noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10863917.post-2515161603680402432008-04-14T02:50:00.001+04:302008-04-14T03:22:28.338+04:30

On Friday David and I spent some time on the water trench. The trench is quite long, and the pipe we're putting into it is a 2" diameter plastic pipe for potable water from Nu Mex Plastics in Roswell, New Mexico. This is pipe that's intended either for burial or just running overland on the surface - since water sources in Arizona tend to be fairly far apart, long runs for water supplies are

Ted Lemonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16951216043358903560noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10863917.post-49440665188614717632008-04-11T01:11:00.002+04:302008-04-14T03:22:50.127+04:30

Will asked about composting toilets. Composting toilets are something I've been interested in for a long time, and that we've looked into a bit at DM. The executive summary is that when they are the only thing that will work, they're an attractive solution. They are a good alternative in a situation where you can't put in a septic system. They may also work better in situations where you

Ted Lemonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16951216043358903560noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10863917.post-77415663819108945762008-04-10T22:38:00.001+04:302008-04-14T03:23:49.426+04:30

David measured the distance along the trench the other day at 415 feet, of which about 25 hasn't been dug yet, so it looks like I dug about 400 feet in under 20 hours with the Kubota. That's 20 feet an hour, which is either really pathetic or really great - I have no idea which, not being a professional.I haven't blogged about it in a while because it's been mostly routine. But at this point

Ted Lemonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16951216043358903560noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10863917.post-26325938507736338492008-03-29T07:51:00.001+04:302008-04-14T03:24:13.317+04:30

Unexpected prerequisite to cooking dinner: de-icing the tofu. The refrigerator in our RV is great, but temperature stability is not its strong suit, so for some reason the tofu freezes. Oddly, other stuff in the fridge seems fine.I didn't measure distance today - it's pretty clear that I'm making good progress, and in fact I had to stop today because I'd gone far enough that I need to do some

Ted Lemonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16951216043358903560noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10863917.post-7774598085112617842008-03-28T04:40:00.001+04:302008-04-14T03:25:00.609+04:30

60 feet today - I made it almost all the way to the underbrush. At this point the sharp end of the trench is much closer to the trailer than to the well. It really only looks like two more days of digging to get to the level of the trailer, which is pretty cool (if true).However, the ground leading up to the trailer is a lot rockier - the dirt I was digging in today was mostly just dirt - it

Ted Lemonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16951216043358903560noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10863917.post-61440614613823340142008-03-25T08:59:00.001+04:302008-04-14T03:25:21.728+04:30

55 feet today, in about two hours forty-five minutes. This is kind of my production target - if I can keep going at this rate, it makes sense to do the job with the Kubota. Sure, it would get done faster with a full-sized backhoe, but it would cost more for the backhoe and I'd have to pay someone to run it. So I'm pretty happy with how things are going.One thing I noticed toward the end of

Ted Lemonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16951216043358903560noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10863917.post-29810031730012574252008-03-24T03:29:00.002+04:302008-04-14T03:25:40.405+04:30

Today I went about 45 feet in about two and a half hours. Why not three hours, you ask? I learned some important lessons on Kubota maintenance today. First, you can't check the fluid level in the automatic transmission if the thing is on a slope. Pretty obvious, but it took me running down to the temple to read the documentation before I realized what I'd done wrong. It was a panicky

Ted Lemonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16951216043358903560noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10863917.post-68073142103659772572008-03-23T05:00:00.000+04:302008-03-23T05:11:25.494+04:30

Today I drove back out to Bowie (we had to go back to Tucson for my dentist appointment) and did another day of digging. There was a massive backup on I-10, and since I hadn't left any wiggle room (we've been keeping way too late hours), I didn't get to DM until nearly 1:00. Fortunately, the Kubota was right where I left it, so I didn't have to do much to get started - just a quick fluids

Ted Lemonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16951216043358903560noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10863917.post-72654599484855013822008-03-22T02:16:00.002+04:302008-03-22T02:28:28.468+04:30

People often say that religion is unscientific. But one of the primary thrusts of Christianity, Buddhism, Islam, Judiasm and Hinduism is that helping others is the road to happiness. A recent study confirms this. For a quick laugh (or a sobering reality check), read the last paragraph in the article.This doesn't prove any of the other stuff, like Jesus rising from the dead or reincarnation,

Ted Lemonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16951216043358903560noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10863917.post-81914922992019869702008-03-21T08:51:00.001+04:302008-04-14T03:26:00.474+04:30

I started the backhoe work today. I only have a three hour window to do it in, so my day went something like this: get up at 7:30 AM for a conference call with a protocol development team. Read mail, hack, drink coffee. Go get backhoe. Dig trench for two and a half hours.Get suspicious about how recently the Kubota was lubed, and drive it down to the temple where the tools and grease gun

Ted Lemonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16951216043358903560noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10863917.post-65645641687184618382008-03-20T09:10:00.001+03:302008-03-20T21:35:48.658+03:30

Maybe it's time for an update, I don't know.   In the latest news, I went in to see Dr. Butler today, and he told me my arm is doing well, and he doesn't need to see me anymore unless I have some specific complaint (this was my last followup).   He says the bone is about 90% healed at this point.   I'm still not feeling confident enough to do yoga, but soon.   Soon.The OLPC arrived today.   It is

Ted Lemonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16951216043358903560noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10863917.post-46015258608849130152008-02-24T22:31:00.001+03:302008-02-24T23:34:11.999+03:30

Sometimes when you're driving in the country, you might pass by some place where local folks are obviously gathered.   A place that looks like absolutely nothing on the outside, except that there are obviously a lot of people there.   I don't know about you, but I tend to be wary of places like this - everybody in the place knows each other; if I go in, how will they react?So it's kind of funny

Ted Lemonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16951216043358903560noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10863917.post-79716722828108241922008-02-14T00:35:00.001+03:302008-02-14T00:38:30.835+03:30

We really shouldn't think of voting as a way to get what we want - to elect someone about whom we are enthusiastic.   If we are lucky enough to be able to do that, great.   But really, voting is a lot like jailing criminals.   We need to vote because if we don't, criminals--politicians who will treat us particularly badly--will be free to do so.It's a civic duty because we need to protect

Ted Lemonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16951216043358903560noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10863917.post-42580121669182550592008-01-25T22:23:00.000+03:302008-01-25T23:33:36.485+03:30

I finally got the dual-keyboard hack i've been working on working well enough to be useful, so i'm catching up a bit on blogging. Apologies for the chancy capitalization - mac os X doesn't allow cross-keyboard chording, so i'm being somwhat lackadaisical about it. The picture to the right shows my keyboard arrangement - there are actually two apple wireless keyboards arranged in a sort of

Ted Lemonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16951216043358903560noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10863917.post-37576899083269213262007-12-25T06:34:00.000+03:302007-12-25T06:57:59.446+03:30

Kimberly blogged a questionnaire, and in my currently impaired state this seemed easier than a real entry (although it turned out to be pretty hard typing one-handed).1) Where did you begin 2007?I don't remember, but probably on the way home to Tucson.2) What was your status by Valentine's Day?Still married to the Nice Andrea.3) Were you in school (anytime this year)?Yup, three terms at Diamond

Ted Lemonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16951216043358903560noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10863917.post-5659641754906921822007-12-04T00:33:00.000+03:302007-12-04T00:36:03.227+03:30

I got a request from Ted Kennedy to send money to support his organization, Democratic Majority. This is my response to him (I doubt anybody there will actually read it, so I felt like it was necessary to post it somewhere else as well).If you want me to send you money, develop some backbone and stop the war NOW. Stop all the damage to our civil liberties. Stop all the laws to help the

Ted Lemonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16951216043358903560noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10863917.post-9156407654630934262007-11-17T21:45:00.000+03:302007-11-17T22:48:58.700+03:30

After being woken up so early yesterday, I wound up staying up instead of going back to sleep. I had a plan to deal with the packrats, so I decided to put it in effect - I patched all the holes they'd already chewed in the cable, and then wrapped the entire cable in duct tape.The theory here is that duct tape has crossed fibers, so it's relatively difficult to chew, but do-able. The glue

Ted Lemonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16951216043358903560noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10863917.post-26203899574976667332007-11-16T08:46:00.000+03:302007-11-16T09:06:50.486+03:30

I finished leveling the trailer. It was not the work of moments - the light was nearly gone by the time I put the tools away. There were no more really big rocks, but there was a pretty big rock that took quite a bit of effort to undermine to the point where the caliche bar would budge it. But at least this one was light enough that I could pick it up, rather than having to lever it out of

Ted Lemonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16951216043358903560noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10863917.post-33663546704942872232007-11-16T01:10:00.000+03:302007-11-16T01:43:33.393+03:30

A blustery November day up at Diamond Mountain. I'm sitting in the trailer, putting off going outside to do some more digging. When the trailer was delivered, the road that Scott dug for us was pretty close to level, but not close enough for a fusspot like me. The downhill wheels of the trailer are up on boards, which I really don't like. So I've been jacking the trailer up and digging

Ted Lemonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16951216043358903560noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10863917.post-58931024296430898362007-10-29T21:37:00.000+03:302007-10-29T22:19:32.277+03:30

Sitting in LAX, listening to Linkin Park's Hands Held High. The smoke from the LA fires was weirdly beautiful nestling in the dry desert mountain valleys of the San Gabriels, and kissing the clouds like upside-down virga rain. Service on t-mobile's WiFi network is free the next few weeks because of the fires, so I didn't have to log in to use it.I haven't written anything here since September

Ted Lemonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16951216043358903560noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10863917.post-62100477341168336382007-09-03T22:47:00.000+03:302007-09-04T00:31:56.729+03:30

What did I eat yesterday? Let's see:caloriesfood2201.3c whole-milk yogurt320Muesli1603 whole-milk cappuccinos, 1/3c milk each??1 carrot??1/2 medium white onion2101/2 can garbanzo beans451/2 can diced tomatoes3201/2c white rice2002/3 container mango sorbet??2 medium peaches1301c mango/passion-fruit blend, diluted 4:15202 chili-cheese tamales501/2c salsa1902 tbsp peanut butter501 tbsp jam??1

Ted Lemonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16951216043358903560noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10863917.post-23050518881008937892007-09-01T22:22:00.000+03:302007-09-01T22:37:03.325+03:30

Two concepts that are often confused for being the same: information and knowledge. I think the confusion leads to a lot of human suffering.Information is stuff that you hear, or read about, or theories that you come up with. So e.g. when you watch Fox News and hear all about how we're all going to die in terrorist attacks unless we bomb the living shit out of Iran, that's

Ted Lemonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16951216043358903560noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10863917.post-22211641434889819942007-08-29T00:04:00.000+03:302007-08-29T00:11:38.751+03:30

While I was visiting with Perry, he harangued me a bit about free markets. I'm not sure why, but it got me to thinking. One thing he pointed out was an *actual* moral hazard, which is real: it used to be the case that in New York, you could buy catastrophic coverage for health insurance. But then they passed a law saying you couldn't discriminate on the basis of pre-existing conditions, and

Ted Lemonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16951216043358903560noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10863917.post-84796266298276264132007-08-27T22:32:00.001+03:302007-08-28T00:32:11.963+03:30

The Acela train is a big disappointment - the regional train I took from Springfield yesterday was much nicer. I'm in business class, because Acela doesn't have cheap seats. The seats and furnishings are definitely more expensive, but they're less sturdy, less comfortable, more cramped, and I think substantially more dangerous - in a derailment, anyone with a table down is going to get a

Ted Lemonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16951216043358903560noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10863917.post-68236738294688165752007-08-27T00:20:00.000+03:302007-08-27T00:21:32.389+03:30

I'm sitting in an Amtrak train, running through swampland near the Connecticut-Massachusetts border, with a little country road across the forest to the left, listening to Brandi Carlile, which seems like incredibly appropriate music for a swamp train.Amtrak has a serious IT problem. I don't know what the deal is, but it's not working out. Their web site doesn't work in Safari, Firefox or

Ted Lemonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16951216043358903560noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10863917.post-36918770600067056482007-08-20T21:30:00.001+03:302007-08-20T21:31:23.872+03:30

Just read a really good article on the question of "Religion: Threat or Danger?" I think it's worth a look.

Ted Lemonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16951216043358903560noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10863917.post-78087014891289613882007-08-19T23:47:00.000+03:302007-08-19T23:49:36.455+03:30

Would the world be a better or worse place if people didn't work on things that weren't wanted, just to earn money to survive?

Ted Lemonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16951216043358903560noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10863917.post-17855834393633360352007-08-19T12:31:00.001+03:302007-08-19T12:41:45.431+03:30

Suppose there was a computer. And on the computer, you could write a program that, when run, would answer any question you had, and produce any thing you ever wanted. But the computer didn't come with instructions, nor with that program. But it was running some programs. Now, suppose you came up with a complete document describing in detail the physical machinery of the computer - all the

Ted Lemonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16951216043358903560noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10863917.post-40977336110688658902007-08-18T23:39:00.000+03:302007-08-18T23:51:37.194+03:30

What you get when you have too much money and too little brains:Designer desk. Note the second-to-last paragraph in the description. Note the price. Note the theory under which this desk was constructed. Courtesy of Fake Steve Jobs.And when you have too little brains, and want more money:Health aids that can kill. Hint: China has the death penalty for being stupid or just in the wrong

Ted Lemonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16951216043358903560noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10863917.post-25288933927036389802007-08-15T23:10:00.000+03:302007-08-15T23:11:51.073+03:30

If you find things Middle Aged amusing, and you also read SF, you might enjoy this: Old Mannes Werre, by Iohannis Scalzi.

Ted Lemonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16951216043358903560noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10863917.post-22078619282708055512007-08-13T12:31:00.001+03:302007-08-13T12:34:01.712+03:30

Speaking of evolution, Andrea and I have been watching Dr. Who on a DVD set that Elly brought back with her from the wilds of Canada. The latest episode but one involved a weird sort of plague, which turned out to involve nanobots. You hear about nanobots sometimes in U.S. films, but they always get the implications of what a nanobot is horribly wrong. Dr. Who's nanobots actually made sense

Ted Lemonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16951216043358903560noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10863917.post-41529887232061451692007-08-11T22:50:00.001+03:302007-08-11T22:58:59.324+03:30

Okay, a little evolution on the previous idea, thanks to Jym's and Will's prodding. Will and Jym both say pretty much the same thing: sure, you're basically right, but still. There are people who use their entrenched power to keep things the way they are - to keep the poor down, and keep exploiting them.Well, yes, that's true. And I tend to think that implicit in that statement is the

Ted Lemonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16951216043358903560noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10863917.post-67206489862379292012007-08-10T23:49:00.000+03:302007-08-11T00:08:12.322+03:30

I'm putting this in my blog because it got kind of long. It's the continuation of a thread on Will Shetterly's blog. The gist of it is that I said that while I agree with him that when you look at things in terms of racism, you fail to see the underlying problem, I don't agree with him that the underlying problem is "the rich."I reacted pretty strongly to what Will said. He said something

Ted Lemonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16951216043358903560noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10863917.post-9130678575244773602007-08-03T05:09:00.001+03:302007-08-03T05:12:35.883+03:30

I just read a really good article on Islam that I want to recommend around: A False Quest for a True Islam. The author points out, among other things, that reading the Qur'an in hopes of understanding Islam as it is practiced is like reading the Bible in hopes of understanding Christianity as it is practiced, or reading the Bhagavad Gita in hopes of understanding Hinduism as it is practiced

Ted Lemonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16951216043358903560noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10863917.post-89503056854429793832007-07-20T10:04:00.000+03:302007-07-20T10:16:19.466+03:30

I just took off my headphones and stopped listening to Brandi Carlile so that I could hear the gullywasher that's wandering through. It seems like Monsoon is here. Oh, it's a nice sound. I used to really miss thunderstorms when I lived in the San Francisco Bay area - they get a lot of rain in the winter, but hardly ever thunder. You really come to appreciate these storms when you live in

Ted Lemonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16951216043358903560noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10863917.post-58488398822594969982007-07-11T23:51:00.000+03:302007-07-11T23:58:19.069+03:30

Cleaning away those feelings of angst today. Imagine a young Ann Wilson, say from around the time the original Heart album came out, only totally goth, with screaming heavy metal guitars playing a staccato baseline to violins on the Lacrymosa from Mozart's Requiem. I'm a little worried for my Soundsticks.

Ted Lemonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16951216043358903560noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10863917.post-88574346234304268002007-07-11T18:40:00.000+03:302007-07-11T19:12:38.591+03:30

So I've been thinking a bit about issues of trust recently. There was an article that surfaced on Digg recently that I think illustrates a problem very nicely and cluelessly: Government is Violent PornographyThe thesis of this article, despite the weird title, is that governments are a form of bondage, in the sense of b&d sex games with handcuffs. Once you're in the handcuffs, you're in

Ted Lemonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16951216043358903560noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10863917.post-79442183626531396302007-06-23T11:33:00.000+03:302007-06-23T11:34:05.504+03:30

A few more glacier bay photos. Here we're up at the head of Tarr Inlet, looking at the Margerie glacier:This is a meltwater stream that runs underneath the glacier. When it hits the salt water, it's so much less dense, because it's fresh, that it boils to the surface. Due to the miracle of stop-action photography, it just looks like a kind of frizzy sponge to the right where the glacier

Ted Lemonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16951216043358903560noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10863917.post-55780840858821002042007-06-23T03:46:00.000+03:302007-06-23T03:47:04.498+03:30

Today we're in Glacier Bay National Park. It's very pretty. This is the first installment of pictures - there are more. This is the scene on the deck - people are out looking at glaciers, and the nice people from the ship are providing hot chocolate and booze (hope nobody goes over a railing into the 38-degree water!). The lady who's running this cart wanted to get a picture, so she asked

Ted Lemonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16951216043358903560noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10863917.post-46919293159035682562007-06-23T03:43:00.001+03:302007-06-23T03:43:23.945+03:30

Thursday was Skagway. You might have noticed that I haven't been taking pictures of towns. Juneau is a pretty town, but it's not particularly remarkable - there's nothing as cool as the neighborhood by the creek on stilts in Ketchikan. Juneau is big enough that the area around the harbor is ignorable - probably p5% of the residences and businesses in Juneau are nowhere near the

Ted Lemonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16951216043358903560noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10863917.post-82677484476904741632007-06-23T03:35:00.000+03:302007-06-23T03:39:38.791+03:30

On Wednesday we were in Juneau. Juneau was kind of a weird experience for me, because it reminded me so much of the area where I grew up. If it weren't surrounded by glaciers on one side and a channel of the inside passage on the other, it would feel a lot like Greenfield, Massachusetts. No kidding.Here are some example of vegetation from the beginning fo the bike ride I did in Juneau:These

Ted Lemonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16951216043358903560noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10863917.post-45649359483810970032007-06-20T21:41:00.001+03:302007-06-20T21:42:30.187+03:30

Oh, here's one more photo - this one is from Vancouver Harbor. I was particularly pleased with this one for reasons unknown, but didn't upload it yesterday because I was more focused on the Ketchikan pictures.In case it's not obvious, the silos and the boat are separate structures. They just mash up nicely...

Ted Lemonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16951216043358903560noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10863917.post-33309295401360900292007-06-20T21:19:00.000+03:302007-06-20T21:32:34.077+03:30

I'm desperately afraid of getting behind after yesterday...This is a bald eagle that some sharp-eyed people in the lounge spotted while I was hanging out uploading the last batch of images. It's shot through a window - that's why the eagle has the funny halo.Here are some waterfalls coming off the snowfields above Ketchikan:Two different shots off the bow of the ship at about 10:00pm. The

Ted Lemonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16951216043358903560noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10863917.post-87117288034476111082007-06-20T01:24:00.001+03:302007-06-20T01:53:29.605+03:30

We're in Ketchikan right now. I'm sitting in the ship, looking out on this:I'm going to just dump a bunch of images, per my dad's request. I might actually say something later. Here's a closeup of the view from where I'm sitting:Internet on the ship is by satellite, and hideously expensive, so I've been enjoying the high-speed connection here, which is emanating from this lovely

Ted Lemonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16951216043358903560noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10863917.post-89299630340195038572007-06-10T02:56:00.000+03:302007-06-10T03:18:39.117+03:30

Will Shetterly has a new posting on his blog about the disparity in wages between CEOs and workers that I think is interesting, although he leaves out the shareholder problem. I came up with a different take on it earlier when I was gathering wool - see what you think.Remember when we were kids, and all the SF novels (well, not all, but it was one of the popular memes) talked about these

Ted Lemonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16951216043358903560noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10863917.post-1026380518065461062007-05-27T05:07:00.001+03:302007-05-27T05:13:06.705+03:30

...because if you use the wrong means, you never really get the ends you were hoping for anyway. I'm pretty heartbroken that after the way the election went last year, we still don't have a Congress with the balls to stand up to Bush and tell him to take his war and shove it.But I'd like to give a big shout-out (which will be heard by all three people who read this blog) to two congresscritters

Ted Lemonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16951216043358903560noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10863917.post-83119263417363080862007-05-26T00:37:00.000+03:302007-05-26T00:57:41.241+03:30

Will, as usual, asks a very good question:How about if we start with a question: How do you think the middle way applies to what you do with your money?To put it in very simple terms, Buddhism says that you should look for your own actions reflected in the world. So if you see a world full of poverty, and you want to change that, you need to be generous, and you need to avoid stealing.The

Ted Lemonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16951216043358903560noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10863917.post-78171399826937153422007-05-24T00:50:00.000+03:302007-05-24T01:17:29.435+03:30

I was writing this in response to something Will Shetterly said in his blog - the response started to get long enough to feel like a blog entry in its own right. What Will said was this:But I will quibble with one thing: The rich do the dividing by taking the lion's share for themselves. Perhaps my seeing the world in terms of wealth is as invalid as ktempest seeing it in terms of race, but I

Ted Lemonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16951216043358903560noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10863917.post-40190559194900342882007-05-19T12:36:00.000+03:302007-05-19T12:51:57.142+03:30

I'm listening to some music by Michael Hewett right now, and it's bringing back some really fond memories of our trip to India last year, when Andrea and I spent a ton of time with Michael and Nicole, two wonderful people we haven't seen since. I really miss them both. Dunno when we'll see them next.And I was just reading my friend Kimberly's blog. Haven't seen her in a long time.And I had

Ted Lemonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16951216043358903560noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10863917.post-51517251125388529482007-04-17T00:28:00.000+03:302007-04-17T01:16:22.219+03:30

This is a random brainstorm post. It probably won't make sense to you. Don't fret.The reason we need a language whose code is data is so that domain-specific languages don't all have different syntaxes - so that we can have common tools for making running code out of ad hoc languages.UIs are not best expressed either iteratively or visually. UIs are code, but they are more like prolog than

Ted Lemonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16951216043358903560noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10863917.post-58438845418154461002007-04-03T02:21:00.000+03:302007-04-03T02:40:41.660+03:30

A really nice quote from Kim Stanley Robinson's latest paperback:Of course there were all the hysterical operatics of 'history' to distract people from this method and its incremental successes. The wars and politicians, the police state regimes and terrorist insurgencies, the gross injustices and cruelties, the unnecessary ongoing plagues and famines—in short, all the mass violence and rank

Ted Lemonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16951216043358903560noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10863917.post-52887985411327489752007-03-26T16:10:00.000+03:302007-03-26T16:16:18.628+03:30

I just finished Linda Nagata's book Memory. I don't normally blog about books, which is probably a mistake, but anyway, it should be taken as some kind of indication that I felt like mentioning her book here. I won't claim that the book will change your life, but what I found remarkable about it was how nicely it managed to merge the two genres of fantasy fiction and cyberpunk into an organic

Ted Lemonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16951216043358903560noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10863917.post-50851361590493939192007-03-19T12:13:00.000+03:302007-03-19T12:15:45.761+03:30

I don't know if this was an intentional pun or not, but I'm sitting in a V6 operations presentation at IETF right now, and this was the last bullet item on the slide. I like this word much better than wordsmithing, because it tells it like it is - usually too much is said, rather than too little, and so the best wordsmithing probably is wordsmiting. Or maybe I just like delightfully

Ted Lemonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16951216043358903560noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10863917.post-723155103345972762007-03-02T09:41:00.000+03:302007-03-02T10:06:50.819+03:30

There's a rumor going around the internet that the new $1 coin is evil, because it's the first piece of American currency not to bear the words "In God We Trust" somewhere on it. This would be funny if it weren't so sinister. Why?Well, first of all, "In God We Trust" is in fact on the coin, around the edge, where I suspect it will be very noticeable, because it'll be the only U.S. coin in

Ted Lemonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16951216043358903560noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10863917.post-60222830554029820642007-02-27T01:38:00.000+03:302007-02-27T02:09:20.583+03:30

The question came up on a mailing list to which I subscribe, why some people from my generation and social class are dispirited about how the future has unfolded before us. No trips to the moon, no great reduction in the suffering of the world. So I thought I'd explain how it feels from my perspective, and what I think about it, for what it's worth.When I was a kid, science was going to save

Ted Lemonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16951216043358903560noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10863917.post-69092905096214606122007-02-23T22:39:00.000+03:302007-02-23T22:40:19.456+03:30

The only great grandmother that I knew, when I knew her, was a homemaker. She was very kind to me. She made pies, and cinnamon snails. That's about all I remember. Oh, and she had a wonderful voice, even at eighty. She sounded like Stevie Nicks, so much so that every time I hear Stevie Nicks sing I think of her. And she had osteoporosis, and when she was in the nursing home the pain

Ted Lemonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16951216043358903560noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10863917.post-73103925566774284822007-01-29T22:32:00.000+03:302007-01-30T20:01:15.080+03:30

I don't mean to be a complete curmudgeon, but there's this meme going around on Digg these days that says that if Google would just switch to a black background, some huge amount of energy would be saved around the world.In the case of CRT monitors, this is true, but with the prevalence of LCD displays these days, it's nonsense. LCD displays are backlit with a fluorescent tube which is on, at

Ted Lemonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16951216043358903560noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10863917.post-51227853680141256552007-01-29T22:07:00.000+03:302007-02-01T00:31:12.779+03:30

There's an article in the International Herald Tribune today about nutrition, which is pretty cool. I recommend reading it.People talk about the paradox of the French diet - that people in France eat supposedly unhealthy foods and yet they are healthier than Americans. The author is perhaps too polite to come out and say what is obvious, but I will not be so polite.If you have ever been to

Ted Lemonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16951216043358903560noreply@blogger.com1