Graveyards and bridges and such

Recent activities in no order.

* Walking through the Old Burying Ground, by the UU Church in Harvard Square. It's not new to me, but still weird, how walking a windy path among some plants (mostly grass, even) behind a fence can make me feel separated from the busy world only 10 feet away. Gravestones there are mostly uniform and old: uniform as in vertical slabs of weathered slated, old as in Revolutionary War.

* Reading on Cambridge Common, a biggish park-traffic island across the street.

* Walking across the Charles River to Allston. Some background here: I've never lived in a city dominated by a big river. Chicago has the Chicago River but nowhere near me, and if what I'm thinking of is it and not another canal, it's not that big or dominating. I grew up half a block away from a stream or canal, actually, but it was fairly narrow and I took it for granted. (Lots of greenery, though.) You'd occasionally see a rowboat or canoe down it, but access to it was mostly Another World for me. Pasadena has the Arroyo to the far west, which I think is a dry gorge; anyway, not important. San Francisco has jack -- though it does have the bays, and I walked across the Golden Gate Bridge once. (Well, twice, to get back.) Bloomington is a small town with some creeks.

So, nothing like Buda-Pest, or Ankh-Morpork, or the Thames, or any other city where there was a Big River. Until now, of course. The bridge I took wasn't even that long, down JFK from Harvard Square into Allston (a neighborhood of Boston), but it still had a funky feeling. "I'm crossing a RIVER into ANOTHER CITY. Just like ANKH-MORPORK." You might be wondering about my travels in London and Paris. I did walk on the London Bridge; I don't recall if I went all the away across, or turned back due to other travel plans. Similarly, I was on a bridge over the Seine, and back again. Also, I simply wasn't thinking about this at the time, maybe because it's all one city nominally (except I'm not sure that's even true of London, but do tourists care?) whereas this was I'M ENTERING BOSTON.

Pretty boring part of Boston, BTW; Allston's a wasteland there. Harvard U campus extensions, a long winding road, and little of interesting.

Context for lyceum: this was right after we talked the other night. Oh, so Sunday. Earlier I had rum for the first time, or at least the first time not mixed with ginger ale, Captain Morgan's. Medicinal on the tongue, very smooth going down the throat.

* Free eye exam! The optometrist said my right eye is 20/40 with glasses. I think it used to be 20/40 without. :(

* I've bike-explored Union and Inman Squares. Lots of Peruvian and Portuguese restaurants to check out. There's a "raw bar" that has Sunday "world whole pig"

* Japanese novel reading: Spice and Wolf 2 and 3; Vampire Hunter D 1 and 3.

* The Heat has come, 30+ degree weather, but cooler nights. More recently it has left, down to 22. Wednesday storm was pretty crazy, with lightning flashes 5x a second and those tornadoes to the west. I thought I LEFT the Midwest.

Return of Son of Links

* Most Americans don't expect the economy to recover. Which has some effect in making the economy not recover. Can the US imitate Japan's 20 years of stagnation? Yes we can!
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/More-Americans-Think-Economy-cnbc-3492482385.html?x=0&sec=topStories&pos=main&asset=&ccode=

* Why airships suck. Starts with some history, like the 1783 "balloon race" in Paris, won by people who knew a guy who made illegal condoms.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=helium-hokum-why-airships-will-neve-2011-05-27
http://www.ingenia.org.uk/ingenia/issues/issue22/imperial.pdf



The vertical axis has confusing units; they simplify to energy/(distance*weight). If you assume a fixed distance, it's just energy/cargo weight. So moving down is more energy efficient for moving a cargo, at the same speed; moving to the right is faster, for the same efficiency for the whole trip. (By usual standards of energy efficiency, including speed, much more efficient.) Trains are nearly as efficient as boats, and much faster, which is why we don't use canals. Planes are as efficient as airships, and much faster. Helicopters are probably in roughly the same space as airships, but have other advantages like flexibility. Airships might have a niches as luxury liners, forfeiting speed but embracing the advantage of being able to not move at all, or slowly. But there seems little call for cargo airships: planes are as efficient but faster, trains can be nearly as fast but more efficient. Large classical airships are more efficient than planes, so if fuel costs went up a lot there might be a use for them in transoceanic travel, but it looks like a delicate balancing act to not be pushed to planes (only 2x more cost, much faster) or boats (1/10th the cost, though slower.)

* cuttlefish can mimic pictures
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2011/06/pictures/110601-cuttlefish-camouflage-science-gestures-arms-mimic-nature/

* About 1 in 3 US Presidents died in office. We were killing one every 20 years until the Secret Service got a job. http://www.filibustercartoons.com/prezidents.htm
Bush didn't veto many bills. Here's what he did: http://www.filibustercartoons.com/bushvetoes.htm
Female leaders around the world. South America is way ahead of North. http://www.filibustercartoons.com/charts_rest_female-leaders.php

Female characters meme

So in Jan 2010 (!!) I did this vague meme
http://mindstalk.livejournal.com/214293.html
I figured I'd do a retake, noting that some recently-seen characters will have faded over time. Also, I'm going to pin it down to "favorite characters, or those who made a personal impression", without worrying about awesomeness vs. woobieness. This may change as I do the list...

...okay, yeah, it's a mix of favorites, and those who made enough of an impression that I remember their name but don't think they're lame, or don't remember their name but still think the character left a deep impression. E.g. I wasn't sure of Anri's name from Durarara, or Nice's, or the Alchemical Exalt in Keychain, but I remember *them*. I remember Mikuru from Suzumiya, but she's a moe-blob by design, so not listed. Cleppety isn't huge on my brain, but she's an important part of the book, she's a good person, and I remember her name without effort. Diziet Sma is kind of lame in my memory, but actually remembering the name of a Culture character is kind of impressive for me. The main character of Roswell should be here... but I've forgotten her name, and looking up feels like cheating... okay, I got her first name on my own, good enough. There's various webcomic characters I could name, but when I'm actively reading the comic I veto a lot of them.

A somewhat arbitrary criterion overall, but more focused for my purposes. Sort of "how many non-lame female characters can you recall without trying too hard?" Of course, I started with my old list, so kind of cheating, but I took out a few whom I feel I might not have thought to include.


( cut? duh )

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