Although I don’t usually watch the show, it was still interesting to note that The Simpsons has been on TV since 1988.
When The Simpsons first aired (as part of The Tracey Ullman Show), Bart was eight years old and enrolled in the fourth grade at Springfield Elementary.
Today, eighteen years later, Bart is still trying to finish the fourth grade. Sure, he’s 26 and still living at home, but you have to admire his tenacity. Cousin Jethro may have managed to move to Beverly Hills, but Bart seems determined to manage at least one grade higher than Jethro’s third-grade education.
All posts by dividingbyzero
Out of Touch
Our department head quickly walked through the office this evening, talking to nobody in particular, “I lost my blackberry!”
Someone (possibly me) promptly asked, “That’s bad?”
(Although, I use technology to stay in touch, I dislike the idea of being connected 24×7.)
Alternative Transportation
Back in May of 2003 I bought a Honda Civic hybrid. I had several motivations, but mainly it was the geek factor of being able to get 50 miles to a gallon. Three years later, gas prices have nearly doubled, the waiting lines for hybrids are measured in months, and suddenly I’m looking like a genius! 🙂
One of the people who’ve expressed jealousy about the car is my coworker Greg. While I’ve been getting 46-51 miles per gallon for the past three years, he’s been getting 20-35 depending on which car he drove. Back in June, he decided to get a motorcycle, in part because of the gas mileage (he recently calculated it at slightly more than 80 miles per gallon).
On my way to work on Friday, I spotted someone who has both of us beat when it comes to saving gas.
I don’t know where she works, but about half a mile from the office I spotted a woman who was clearly on her way to work. She was dressed in a green skirt with a matching jacket and was wearing heels.
Nothing unusual about that, except that she was riding on a Razor scooter.
As I watched, she zipped across the street, picked up the scooter, walked across the grass (the heels no doubt do a great job of aerating it), put the scooter down in the parking lot on the other side, pushed off, and continued on her way.
I’ve seen plenty of people ride scooters, and if you live near the office, that’s probably a fun way to do it. But she’s the first person I’ve ever seen riding a Razor in heels.
Catching Some Sun
Laura and I went out to the Maryland Seafood Festival today to help the Annapolis Jaycees with their funnelcake booth.
I spent most of five hours in the sun and at the end of the day, my face felt warm. When I pulled my shirt away from my neck, it became clear that I’d overdone it. It’s not a full-blown sunburn, but this evening I decided to put some Solarcaine on it, “just in case.”
I’m generally pretty careful about the sun. Aside from the risks of skin cancer and long term damage, sunburn hurts and the healing process itches like crazy. So I’m careful, and for when I do overdo it, I keep the Solarcaine handy.
This was the first time I’d needed it in a couple years, but when I sprayed it on my hand and rubbed it on my face, it worked just like it always does.
That can of Solarcaine had been in my medicine cabinet for a while. Wondering how long I’d had it, I idly turned it over, looking for any sort of expiration or sell-by date.
I found one. The expiration date stamped on the bottom of the can was sometime in 1991 – fifteen years ago! That means I probably bought it within a year or two of moving to Nevada.
It’s possible I need to clean out the medicine cabinet a little more often.
And So It Begins
It’s not much to look at quite yet, but the new site is started. 🙂
Oh Deer
Wylie and I were about 2/3 of the way through our evening walk, we saw a car turning onto a side street and slowing down. I thought they were slowing down to look for a parking spot, but it turned out that they were watching a group of pedestrians.
There were five of them. As Wylie and I watched, three adult deer and two fawns crossed the street and went into the park on the other side.
For the next half mile, Wylie looked in the backyard of every house we passed, looking for more deer.
Radio Shark Bites
Wow. Lots of comapnies talk about how their employees are their “most valuable assets.” And every so often, you hear about companies demonstrating how they really feel about them.
Radio Shack has taken the idea of treating their staff with respect to new lows. (I’ll bet they also jumped on the bandwagon a while back and started referring to people as “resources”.) For crying out loud, does anyone – except Radio Shack’s senior management – actually think firing people via email shows the least bit of compassion?
That sure doesn’t give me the warm fuzzies about doing business with that company.
Not Quite Poetry
“I am a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar.”
Granted, that’s a very quotable line (and no doubt intentionally so), but when Wash said it, you knew you were about to see him “In the Zone,” flying like nobody else.
I really like that line. To me, it’s all about staying nimble and getting through, no matter what the opposition throws at you. I find it downright inspirational. (Learning from Wash’s example however, I try to avoid declaring victory too soon.)
A co-worker recently asked why that quotation was written on the whiteboard in my cubical. I tried to explain why I found it inspiring, but she got hung up on the literal text.
“Leaves don’t fly!”
“Sure they do. Haven’t you ever seen how the wind can carry them?”
Jing’s next words made it clear that she’d never spent the afternoon raking leaves, only to have the wind deposit a new batch from the neighbors’ yard.
“Leaves just fall down.” And then, brightly, “But I’ve seen plastic grocery store bags fly!”
Somehow “I am a grocery bag on the wind” doesn’t sound nearly as poetic.
From the Earth to the Moon
Tom recently passed along a few notes about a theory that a large body striking the Earth formed the Moon, when a large piece broke off and stayed in orbit.
I’m not sure why there’s any doubt about this. It’s pretty easy to prove that’s what happened.
The moon has a decaying orbit. Over time, the moon’s average distance from the earth is increasing. Eventually, the moon will break away altogether. (Whether this will be accelerated by explosions in the nuclear waste dumps on the far side remains to be seen; that’s nearly seven years overdue at this point.)
Following the trend backward then, you can see that the Moon must have been closer to the Earth at one time. Follow it far enough and you’ll eventually discover that some 65 million years ago, the average distance between the Earth and the Moon was about 10 feet.
This coincidentally is why the dinosaurs are extinct. They got clobbered.
(I’m not sure where that comes from, I don’t think it’s a Blair original.)
Ponch being Ponch, he wondered if it might be the other way around. Why couldn’t it be that the Earth broke off from the Moon?
Well, as Einstein would tell you, it’s all relative. Specifically, it would be his older cousin, the well-known baseball player, Victor Gahverguen. Victor got his start at baseball at the age of six, playing in the streets of Rock Island Illinois. By age 10, Victor had put so many baseballs through so many windows that his father, Paul Phillip Gahverguen decided he’d be better off just opening his own window company (I’m sure many of you are aware of the Paul Phillip Gahverguen, or PPG for short). By the time Victor was eligible to play baseball in High School, his glass shattering record had gone to new heights, making well known throughout Illinois that if something was broken, it was probably something to do with Victor.
So the question of whether the Moon broke away from the Earth or vice versa really is relative. Either way, Victor was probably involved.
One of our planets is missing
It’s pretty much old news at this point. The International Astronomical Union has made up criteria for what it takes for a body to be counted as a planet and Pluto didn’t make the cut.
One impact of this decision is a lot of people wondering how long it’s going to take all the schools to get their textbooks and curricula up to date. It’s a bit of cynicism on my part, after all, it’s been 70 years since Pluto’s discovery, but I can’t help wondering how many schools have text books that have suddenly reverted to being correct.
I suppose there is some scientific merit to having a formal definition for what makes a planet. But there’s also a lot of sentiment for keeping Pluto on the books as a planet. Small wonder then that there are groups protesting.