I’m in awe. This man shifts huge blocks of concrete weighing many tons – alone, without fancy tools or machines. He’s reconstructing Stonehenge in his backyard. Get a fun physics lesson from Wally Wallington: (Via Boing Boing.) PS: Can somebody please explain the “two small rocks” method? I’m not clear on either where the pebbles […]
There’s a movie called “Esoteric Agenda” making the rounds. I actually watched the full 126 minutes this movie lasts, and it is, in my opinion, a shining example of how erroneously we can connect the dots and see patterns where there are none, inventing monsters under the bed with no other evidence than an absence […]
I have a habit. It is a habit of never having expectations. I do look forward to things, but I don’t delight in the looking forward. It is rather an intellectual exercise to put me in the right frame of mind, but I never fantasize about the future event, and I never dwell on the […]
The day has arrived! Tonight, in less than two hours, I will be standing with co-workers, holding a glass of champagne, and all because I’ve managed to stay with the same company for 25 years. I can’t believe I actually did that. 25 years. Wow… UPDATE: Drunk as a skunk. But not the drunkest there. […]
All of winter has decided to show up after the vernal equinox, apparently. As I left the grocery store this afternoon, it started to snow. Again. It has been gently snowing since (four hours and counting). I looked out my living room window and got rather fascinated by the snow settling on the street lamp […]
Check out Robert J. Lang’s origami sculptures. That’s the best way I have of describing an entire world of figures each made from a single, folded sheet of paper. A couple samples of Lang’s stunning work – a carp and a wasp:
I have the day off work tomorrow. I have one Wednesday off a month (by choice), and it is usually the first Wednesday of the month. This time, I’m taking my Wednesday off tomorrow, a week ahead of schedule. My boss is very pleased with my decision, which I made after everyone else but him […]
March can’t make up its mind. It spent all of Easter Sunday snowing. Gently, consistently. This morning we woke up to smooth, untouched, beautiful, powdery snow, glittering in the sunshine. Said sunshine has been making the apartment warmer than usual. Feels good. Feels like…the end of winter! Oh, yes! The season where we don’t turn […]
As everyone else says who has past this on, watch till the end, and don’t assume you know what’s coming.
Norwegians make friends the same way porcupines mate: Carefully. In fact, they (the Norwegians, I mean) are so careful about it, I’m still not sure exactly how they do it. That was the short answer to Victoria’s bafflement at Norwegian behavior. Victoria says: “[S]ome people are quite friendly and will smile or even chat a […]
I am one of those people who loves the Chinese symbol for “crisis”: A combination of the symbols for “danger” and “opportuntity”. Except that it doesn’t exist. Via Hanzi Smatter, a blog “dedicated to the misuse of Chinese characters in western culture” – sometimes hilariously – I have come across an essay by Victor H. […]
Remember my telling you what a dream Easter is in Norway? How the perfect Easter is brilliant white snow and brilliant yellow sun? We have that right now. I wore wool underwear and sunglasses for my walk home from the store, carrying a generic automated coffee machine cappuccino which tasted surprisingly good if not cappuccino-y. […]
There are a few photos that make me wish I could trade places with the people in them: (Photo from Tom Dempsey’s Antarctica) Isn’t that the coolest thing? (No pun intended.) Curious Gentoo chicks will approach humans and even lie on them for warmth. Can you imagine being the human? I think that would be […]
Everyone has heard of Norwegians and their skis. How they invented this mode of transportation by basically noting, “Hey, that was good beer! And I’ll bet I can glide down this slope with planks on my feet!” OK, maybe not the beer part. Well, maybe very much the beer part. But the next part was, […]
The last municipality in Norway to get electricity was Røldal, on March 22, 1958. Our local radio station interviewed a number of elderly Røldal residents about what it was like to get “current” (“strøm”), which is the colloquial Norwegian for electricity. One woman described trying to get used to cooking with an electric stove. Baking […]
Not my mood swings, but the weather’s. It is typical of March to not be able to make up its mind about the weather. Storm? Calm? Winter? Spring? About all at the same time? Which is pretty much what we had this past weekend, leaving me to walk home from work Friday on clear paths, […]
I saw my acupuncturist today. I knew I had to give her bad news and make a decision about whether or not to keep trusting her. You have to wonder at the “signs” one can get: I opened the same door as the last time I was there, and walked into a room I didn’t […]
Her expression was always the same. It was always pleasant. It was always smiling. Not a big smile, just a little pull on the corners of the mouth, sometimes a little parting of the lips. The apartment was perfect for a retired couple. Conveniently located near a bus line and a grocery store. Good neighbors, […]
I was amused by the following comment in a Treehugger report on using SMS: “The SMS (short message service) is an institution in Scandinavia[…] You can even file your taxes in Sweden by SMS.” Well, you can do the same in Norway, too. I know. I did it that way for the first time last […]
We finally got a break from the wet, the gloom, the gray, the chilling. Today we got a break from winter, and a sneak peak at spring. So I took a walk, a slow walk around the local pond. Delighting in the fact that I actually needed my sunglasses, and in all the little signs […]
A Roll in the Universe 