Category: Misc

Via Deadspin, the Yo-Yo World Champion:

It’s actually hard to even make out what exactly he’s doing. Mostly, it seems to be wrapping the yo-you around one arm or the other while keeping the other going in around-the-world-fashion.

But here’s the thing, I’m decent with a yo-yo. Restated: I can throw and catch the thing and even walk-the-dog. But watching this, I have no desire to become that good, half-that-good, or a quarter-that-good; let alone try what he’s doing.

And thinking about the time he must have put in to be capable of that, my mind boggles. I wonder if he puts them down to eat.

The endorsement deals must be pretty sweet.

I hadn’t read a Stephen King novel in a great while. There was a time when that was exceedingly unusual for me. I’d read all of his novels starting from Carrie up through It, including the first 3 installments of his The Dark Tower epic. I’ve also read a bunch of his Richard Bachman books. I think I just got burnt out on his storytelling. I remember starting The Tommyknockers, but I was never able to finish it; possibly the only time I’d ever started and not finished any book. That was many years ago and the last time I’d picked up one of his books.

The Wife got me Under the Dome for Father’s Day. At over 1000 pages long, it was a heckuva way to jump back into King’s world. I finished it up last night and I have to say, it was a story on par with his stuff I’d read and enjoyed so much.

The pacing is fast. King has a way for breathing life into a character all in the name of setup. He’ll spend 10 pages telling the life story of a woman taking flying lessons on a beautiful fall day in Maine, and then destroy her in 2 pages of gory detail. King used this technique throughout the book and I was almost always able to recognize what he was about to do. In fact, the entire book does that for King’s town of Chester’s Mill. Even so, I couldn’t look away because he had brought his good stuff to the story.

The story itself is about what happens to a town that is cut off from the world by a force shield, the Dome. It’s a simple concept that’s been done before. And in the mind of Stephen King, it takes about the shape his readership would expect. He quickly sets up his main antagonist, whom spends most of the book manipulating events to his benefit. The good guys aren’t so much set against him as they are simply trying to survive him. Being a King novel, I don’t think I’m giving much away when I say that most of them do not succeed.

Ostensibly, the book is about the cruelty people can visit on one another. Chester’s Mill is a small town and King does not spare it a dark and seedy underbelly (not that we’d expect him too). The Dome serves to amplify and draw out that cruelty as the story moves along. Atrocities both large and small are committed and King spares the reader little in terms of the depravity that such a situation can draw out.

However, I’d be careful to conclude that King’s story is a definitive narrative on what happens “under the dome.” King has a story to tell, and anyone familiar with his work should know that there are givens to where his mind will take the reader. But to read his story and try to generalize it to the point of saying “Yep, he nails exactly what would happen under these circumstances” is to go too far. The blend of characters and circumstances King weaves are believable enough, but are clearly contrived towards telling a certain kind of story. From the ego maniacal 2nd selectman and his enablers to the Iraqi vet and his cadre of like minded citizens to the drug maker addicted to his own product, the story is laced with characters so King can tell the story he wants. To think that every small town in the country has the same basic makeup gives King too much credit.

Under the Dome is a story, and an immensely enjoyable one at that. As far as Stephen King stories are concerned, I’d say it’s an example of his work at its best, though I’d rank any one of a number of his other stories as superior (The Shining, The Stand, Pet Semetary, Salem’s Lot– to name a few). It is as fast a read as can be for a 1000 page story. I’d recommend it to anyone interested.

But that said, don’t look to Under the Dome for larger messages on humanity or ideas about people. Ultimately, it’s just a story.

Here are 2 pieces of useless trivia that can be used for whatever purpose. Though most likely, deploying either of them will just demonstrate geekness. I came across both of them as a result of fact-checking something that came up at camp.

1. The ‘BB’ in “BB Gun” is not short for “ball-bearing.” It is in fact a reference to the shot-size used when BB guns were first made. The original manufacturer tried to call it “air rifle shot” but “BB” was what stuck.

2. I thought I’d come across one of the coolest pieces of trivia ever when I heard that the Daddy Long Legs was actually a venomous insect that could kill a human; but, it’s fangs are to small to pierce a person’s skin. So imagine how much cooler it was when I found out that it’s a total myth! It’s easily searchable and somewhat long, but highly interesting. It turns out there are a number of ambiguities, including what insect people are actually referring to by “Daddy Long Legs.” The bottom line is that the actual Daddy Long Legs is neither poisonous nor venomous.

I go forth into the world, wiser.

We’re taking the kids fishing tonight. But rather than head to the local bait shop, I took the kids out to our compost pile in the back. There’s a load there that’s been cooking for about 2 years now and I had a feeling it was ripe with worms. Plus, with all the rain last night, if they were there they’d be that much easier to find.

Well, I literally could have just grabbed handfuls of compost and thrown them in a bucket. Never mind the rain, the compost was literally crawling with worms.

The kids were squealing with delight and marveling at nightcrawlers the size of my fingers. It was probably there most fun 10 minutes of the day so far. Or at least their second most fun 10 minutes- the Wife gave them bubblegum bubble blowing lessons earlier today.

We threw a couple of big ol’ grubs in the bucket for good measure. The fish will eat well tonight.

In case you don’t have a parade of your own to go to or watch on TV, here’s a link where you can find streaming video of Bristol, RI’s 4th of July parade. It’s the oldest consecutively running Independence Day parade in the country.

Happy Independence Day!

Perusing Engadget’s home page, I come across this article with a picture of a guy that looks eerily familiar. The first 2 words of the article offered all the explanation I needed. Durk’ was a teammate back in the day. He was also the reigning crown holder of a certain, er, less-than-flattering team award. I was nominated for the award as well when I joined the varsity squad, but lost in the semi’s. Since he had to choose his successor, my being bigger than him might have had something to do with it.

Unfortunately, this puts me in something of a bind since I’m not the biggest MS fan. Actually, I’m not a fan at all. But still, glad to see he’s doing so well.

I wonder if he kicks as well on the Kinect as he did back then?

Engadget has a brief on a new alloy that becomes magnetized when it’s heated up. The magnetic field can be used to generate electricity as the article notes. The article talks about using it in electric cars to charge the batteries, but I wonder if it could be used in laptops for the same purpose? Or even smartphones, though I don’t know if smartphones generate enough heat. The battery cell count could potentially be reduced without sacrificing battery life, or the battery pack could be left alone and the “battery life” could be increased without adding extra cells.

The article doesn’t detail if it’s the change in temperature, or if the alloy just needs to be heated up, or how much it needs to be heated up. Also, no idea how strong a field is generated. The video makes it look somewhat impressive, but then that piece of metal is pretty small.

Still, definitely looks like something worthy of note.

In response to the post about the fish the boy caught at the fishing derby, my Mom suggested it might be a bluegill. I didn’t think it was, as there is no blue on the fish whatsoever. But what struck me was how similar the body and fins of the bluegill are to the fish the boy caught.

Well, the bluegill is a member of the sun fish family. That led me to this Wikipedia entry. I was hoping for a list of all the members of the family so I could go through it and compare pictures with the picture of the boy’s fish. A potentially annoying prospect, but I was, (Ahem!), hooked on figuring it out. As it happens, at the bottom of the page is a picture of a fish that looked an awful lot like the boy’s.

After clicking through the link under the picture, I have no doubt that I found the boy’s fish: the black crappie. No snickering out there.

So consider that mystery solved.

Here’s some video of a spectacular explosion on the Sun. The article calls is a “prominence” eruption. According to this definition, that’s just a fancy way of saying “big damn explosion on the Sun’s surface.”

The video is worth checking out. (Hattip Instapundit)

The turtle wasn’t our only visitor this past weekend:

Naturally, we’ve named him Bruce. I had a hard time getting a decent picture of him because he’s roosting about 30 feet up on the chimney under the eave.

Hope he gets lots of mosquitoes.

Alright. 3 days of 1000% humidity and I’ve had my fill. I’ve fully reabsorbed Summer weather. Time to move on. Suddenly the lack of Sun for awhile doesn’t seem so bad.

Just June, July and August to make it through. Yay.

The sky is this funny blue color this morning… and there’s this big yellow ball in the sky that I can’t look at because it’s so bright! And everything is glowing! And it’s warm!

What the !@#$%^ is going on!?

Armstrong’s PR department is using the “character assassination” tactic to dispel the latest claims of his PED usage. He’s done this in the past, like with regards to Floyd Landis. It got me to thinking about just what required to believe Armstrong’s assertion that apparently he won the race clean. I think it also points out a plausible defense of his (assumed) usage.