Slideshow
RE last week’s sideshow post:
I edited the photos down to less than 300 and added some music.
Improved Slideshow
Thursday Morning
Rode my bike to Counter Culture for breakfast with Jon. I noticed the above sign and was glad that I was observing the new rule. We discussed some of the issues I brought up in my last entry. We tried to figure out what led to the bottomless coffee cup and unlimited buffet frame of mind in the first place. First of all there had to be a sense of abundance, e.g. we can obtain this food so cheaply, even if customers eat three plates full we WILL make a profit… but it is probably also true that managers recognized that their customers valued quantity over quality and therefore would not care if the bottomless coffee was actually damn weak and horrific. What do you think? Is this a phenomenon or the Seventies or Eighties, or did this start way back after the horrors of the depression. Jon and I managed to eat and talk for 100 minutes. I am always surprised how timeless a good conversation is/feels…
Two Thoughts from Wednesday
The first thought was about how the medium changes the artist’s approach completely:
The nice thing about a digital medium, whether it’s photography or music, is that one can always go back to the last saved version, and there are multiple undo choices… But it can also feel too safe compared to painting – one is maybe not as commited as a painter has to be. Yet it is also true that one may be willing to take great leaps exactly because one is confident that one can return. (((so, what am I really saying?)))
And, unrelated, this came up in conversation:
coffee by the cup versus free refills
all you can eat saladbar versus order from the menu
unlimited mobile calls versus pay for usage
unlimited internet versus pay for usage
hotel room versus basic room + electricity usage + water usage + heat usage
It seems to me that the pay per unit approach is more sustainable. I certainly would prefer to pay per unit. I don’t like buffets, I don’t like all-you-can-eat restaurants. I would rather pay for the electricity and water I use in a hotel room. I don’t take 30 or 60 minute showers. I don’t leave lights and TV on when I leave a hotel room for dinner. I think pay per unit makes more sense than all you can consume – certainly when we look at the big picture. I remember working as a dishwasher in a restaurant in Cambridge in 1979, an all you can eat salad-bar actually. Unbelievable, how much food customers would pile on their plates AND how much they would leave behind to be thrown away. We cannot afford to act like that any longer. Use what you need, pay for what you use.
Back up your data…
June 19, 240 B.C.: The Earth Is Round, and It’s This Big
So how big is 252,000 stades? Depending on which classical source you trust, it’s somewhere between 24,663 and 27,967 miles. The accepted figure for equatorial circumference today is 24,902 miles. Pretty darn good for a guy without modern measurement tools.Eratosthenes went further and computed the tilt of the Earth’s axis to within a degree. He also deduced the length of the year as 365¼ days. He suggested that calendars should have a leap day every fourth year, an idea taken up two centuries later by Julius Caesar.
Great article. Because Eratosthenes did not “back up” his data and the library of Alexandria was destroyed, more than a thousand years passed before people started to accept that the earth is round…
The Slow Burn
The slow burn (((with great photo)))
Mt Wingen Australia underground coal fire first noted by westerners around 01828, but it is predicted that it has been burning for over 6000 years.
“Fossil Reactors†are naturally occurring underground fission reactions in Uranium deposits of Oklo Africa, estimated at around 1.7 billion years old.
“Door to Hell†(pictured above) Near Darvaz in Uzbekistan, burning since ~01972
Coal mine seam fires, some of these have been burning since the Qing dynasty in China, and the Centralia PA fire has been burning since 01961.
Some tire fires have lasted several years
(Via Long Views)
