Not a surprise, but the validation is nice, especially considering how I was just complaining this weekend that I sometimes feel like I’m losing my intellectual edge:
Your Vocabulary Score: A+ |
 Congratulations on your multifarious vocabulary! You must be quite an erudite person. |
Without preamble, the items that have distracted me from work this afternoon:
Morning, kids — I’m back in the blogosphere after a few days offline. Hope my absence wasn’t too traumatic for you. I’ve been hosting my good friend (and Simple Tricks regular) from the City of Angels, Cranky Robert. I showed him some of the winter-time sights of the SLC and introduced him to the wonder that is the Star Burger (not to mention the stuffed head of Buck the dog, a.k.a. Newfy); we also toured the galleries of the local aerospace museum, drank a lot of coffee beverages, and talked ourselves hoarse about every subject imaginable, from politics to Lord of the Rings, Spider-Man, and Homer, to how hot the tatooed quasi-Goth chicks in the Sugarhouse neighborhood are. It was a good weekend, and I wish weekends like it came more frequently.
I have a number of topics I’m itching to write about, but the way my day is shaping up, I probably won’t get to them today. In the meantime, here are the results an interesting little quiz that I picked up from Brian Greenberg:
| What American accent do you have?
Your Result: The West
Your accent is the lowest common denominator of American speech. Unless you’re a SoCal surfer, no one thinks you have an accent. And really, you may not even be from the West at all, you could easily be from Florida or one of those big Southern cities like Dallas or Atlanta. |
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| The Midland | |
| Boston | |
| North Central | |
| The Inland North | |
| Philadelphia | |
| The South | |
| The Northeast | |
| What American accent do you have? Take More Quizzes |
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What I find interesting about this isn’t so much the specific result — I know I’m from the West, after all — as the accuracy of the result coming from the method used. Brian has several comments on his blog from people who all say the quiz correctly nailed their accents based on only 13 textual questions. Very impressive, I think…
In the high thirties art, technology and design are so intertwined it is sometimes hard to pry them apart. …Since 1939 art and technology have broken apart, for many reasons. Architects still design skyscrapers, but they are rarely technological showpieces. we have stopped building bridges. Locomotives nowadays are not candidates for design competitions. Airplanes never were. Artists no longer paint heroic murals. Even if they did, one suspects that technology might not be a favorite subject. (Unless it were the villain?)
The art-and-technology divorce has been a disaster for both parties, and it has profoundly alienated us from the future. “The story of the relcamation of the site and the building of the [New York World’s] Fair on it,” says the 1939 Guide [to the Fair], “is a romantic saga of modern engineering.” Yes, once upon a time, engineering was romantic. …Today we respect technology, spend heavily on it and can’t live without it. But the spiritual glow is long gone. Art has lost its grip on technology, we have lost our grip on the future; and the American religion, in which skyscrapers and steam engines were beautiful and inspiring and numinous sacred objects, is dead.
–David Gelernter, 1939: The Lost World of the Fair
I’ve been saying for years that one of the most disheartening things about the modern-day world is that, aside from a handful of rare exceptions, nothing has any style anymore. Looks like this author agrees with me.
Quickly, because of the advancing hour, here are a couple of items that caught my attention this afternoon:
You may recall that earlier this year, a private company called Bigelow Aerospace orbitted a prototype for an inflatable space habitat. That test module, the so-called Genesis 1, has proven to be so successful that Bigelow is claiming to be far ahead of its own schedule to develop an orbital hotel. The second, larger test module — Genesis 2 — is on track to launch early next year, and plans are for a human-rated module — the Sundancer — to be up in the black by 2009 or 2010. The company is also looking into possible vehicles to get guests up to and back from the hotel. Details on this exciting, fascinating venture are here.
Meanwhile, back here on Earth, one of those “extreme” young gazillionaire types, who made a fortune from one of those new-fangled energy drinks that the kids love (I find them revolting, myself) and who is fascinated by the classic Bell rocket belt of the 1960s, has had a lighter, more up-to-date version designed and built for himself. These things are undoubtedly dangerous as hell, and not quite as useful or slick as The Rocketeer‘s streamlined engine, but I’d still love to take a spin in one. Maybe one day… when I get back from my weekend in the space hotel. Ah, the future…
Uh-oh, it’s another blog post commenting on somebody else’s arbitrary list of movies that share a particular subjective designation. Specifically, we’re talking about Premiere magazine’s 20 Most Overrated Movies of All Time. Naturally, I disagree with a number of the selections. I’ll save you the discomfort of exeriencing the interface at the end of that Premiere link — it’s one of those sucky click-through-one-at-a-time pop-up dealies, rather than a straightforward page of text — by running down the the list here:
‘Tis the season when neighbors “drop by” unexpectedly and out-of-town friends plan to visit for the weekend. You’d better be prepared for their arrival. Make sure your speakers are on before you click the link…
(Props to Brian Greenberg, who e-mailed this amusing little tidbit and provided me with a good laugh following a really lousy morning commute.)
Here are a few things that have been amusing me as I’ve waited for this afternoon’s forecasted snow to arrive:
I should’ve known better than to publicly state that I was going to do lots of blogging over the holiday weekend, because everytime I do that, I end up getting busy with other things and not writing a word. This weekend was no different — I found time to watch Magnum Force (the best of the four sequels to Clint Eastwood’s iconic Dirty Harry), participate in a buddy’s film-related experiment (I think he’d prefer that I say no more about that subject right now), and do some cleaning and maintenance work around the house, but no blogging to speak of. Obviously. Which is probably why I could do no better than this on the Bloglebrity front:
So, let’s see, D-List… that would put me about on par with who? The Coreys? Or one of the “stars” of television’s Big Brother? Oy… which would be worse, to be has-been or a never-was?
Another Turkey Day is past, the trytophan slept off with nary a trace of hangover, and I’ve just had a slice of apple pie for breakfast. Yummy. I’m now ready to set off on our next blogging adventure, a journey that will take us deep, deep into the very heart of blackest geekdom. Don’t be afraid, though. I’ve got a flashlight, and a good blaster at my side. And it’s definitely not set for stun.
(Hm. Here’s a random thought: do all blaster-type weapons in the Star Wars universe have a stun setting? Or do Imperial troops have some kind of special crowd-control blasters? Inquiring minds want to know, Uncle George!)
Anyway, I saw earlier this week that a web site called FilmCritic.com had posted a list of the Top 10 Movie Spaceships as determined by the site’s editorial staff. The criteria used to determine “topness” were vague, consisting mostly of which examples struck the editors as “awesome.” However, awesomeness is in the eye of the beholder, so naturally I have a few quibbles with their selections. To begin, here is their list: