Thought for the day #1: it's not so much the hour long wait for the food to arrive (altho that's plenty annoying), it's the weird ability of the waiter to avoid eye contact and then deny that there's any problem when you finally get a chance to ask if there's something wrong. At least the food was good when it finally showed up.
(Somewhat more profound) thought for the day #2: "What is possible would not have been achieved if, in this world, people had not repeatedly reached for the impossible." - Max Weber.
Sorry to disappoint but I don't have a ready supply of pithy Max Weber quips available at my fingertips. Saw this on the internets. So I can't actually confirm that it's an accurate quote. Except it was on Balloon Juice, quoting Charlie Pierce in Esquire and I hopefully assume that Esquire can still afford a fact-checker for the articles it publishes.

Started working on replacing/adding to the insulation in the attic of the house. Boy, is that a delightful job. On the upside, almost all of the crappy, nasty old insulation that has to be pulled out has now been pulled out. On the downside 1, there's still a lot of work to be done. Also there are big rolls of fiberglass insulation stacked up in the study (there wasn't quite enough room to stage them all up in the attic and still be able to work up there). Plus, just to make life that extra little bit o' fun, we're also having some minor contractor work done -- mostly baseboards and stuff. At the same time. So there's hardly any place to sit down any more. I think that we're at maximum disruption this weekend and once the first room gets finished we can stage stuff into there and the overall atmosphere of ambiance will improve a touch.
And a few other things but I don't want this to de-generate into freeform bitching and moaning so on we go...

Faster-than-light neutrinos, you say? Chad Orzel drops some science (two really good links in that post) and then comes back around and REALLY drops some science (that one's got enough science that I only sorta get it after the first reading).

This probably old news to all of y'all (and I'm aware that I'm also headed for "get off my lawn" territory) but I've been seeing the ghastly "TL; DR" show up more often in comment threads I read lately. Maybe it just means that I should return to my earlier policy of just never reading comments. I think what grates most is that it seems whenever I see TL; DR, it's been tossed at someone who aspired to write about a topic in a more thoughtful manner than the usual soundbite, short-attention-span-theater style that owns the internets. Really, I could go on and on about this (quelle surprise, right?) but Ta-Nehisi Coates said it better (and calmer and more rationally) when he noted that you don't have to comment on everything. Even on a site that you read every day, it's okay to skip a post. The world won't end if you're wisdom on Every Goddamn Thing isn't shared with the entire internets. Especially if that wisdom doesn't extend any further than TL; DR.

So I had this post all ready to go last weekend but the Giffords shooting rather knocked out most of my enthusiasm for blogging. I know... imagine that. But I really (really!) don't want to get into discussing *that* online. Like I said on fbook, I don't think I have all that much special or insightful to say. Not, mind you, that a lack of anything sensible to say or anything to add to the conversation is stopping anyone else from running their mouths. I saw several people's fbook walls just blow the hell up. And, in fact, I de-friended someone for saying stupid shit on fbook. Hey, everyone's got the right to say whatever kinda stupid shit they want. But I don't have to listen to it. You wanna call me on "epistemic closure", that's fine. At a certain point, it's just like... hey, I knew you 20 years ago but we don't have, really, anything in common and, no, I don't care to see what else you have to say. If your response to a tragedy like this past weekend is to quote Glenn Reynolds whining about how unfair we're all being to Palin... no, I'm sorry, we're done here.

Okay, enough of that.

Here's a couple of items from ye olde internets that struck me as related. Loved this list of common misconceptions, which was referenced on xkcd. I was pleased that nothing on the list made me go "oh, I didn't know that!" But one of my absolute fave things seen lately was this post on the wonders of monkey milk. Makes me wish I'd actually been in GA and reading the alt.press at that time so I could've seen those ads in real time. (okay, I had a longer paragraph I was planning to write which connected the dots between common misconceptions and monkey milk but I'm kinda fried after a long day... so y'all will have to do the math on your own... or not)

I was reading this article in the NYTimes this morning and it was fairly stupid. Not aggressively stupid but clearly a waste of time. It was supposed to be about the fact that there's a limit of 5000 on the number of friends you can have on Facebook and how some people are dealing with that. And that's about all the story. Repeated the fact from the headline. Told us that Facebook wouldn't say why there was a limit. Included lots of quips from celebrity types who are at or near the friends limit. And allowed the writer to make lots of snarky comments about the sort of people who waste time on Facebook (obviously meant to remind us that she was not the sort of person who wastes time on Facebook "updating" her "status" for her "friends.") Yeah, it was just that good.
Which raises the question: why did I read it? A perfectly reasonable question and one I'm not sure I've got the answer to just yet. I mean, I've spent enough time reading the NYTimes by now that I can spot what's likely to be a pretty stupid article just from the headline and blurb. Sure, you can say that by starting to read, I'm refusing to make a pre-judgement based on limited information. I'm being open to the possibility that something good might happen. Yeah, right. But, no... It might be the triumph of hope over experience. But I suspect it's more likely some sort of literary masochism. I read these things knowing they'll suck so that I can confirm my opinion of the debased state of journalism and newspaper writing in the early 21st century.

Yes, I will get to my actual recap of Kinetic Sculpture Race weekend but first some complaining about cars. I mentioned already that I rented a bloatmobile so there'd be more room in the backseat. Ended up w/ a Mercury Grand Marquis and I gotta say I was pretty unimpressed. It had decent enough backseat space (or at least no sitting back there complained about it so that I could hear) but not much else going for it. No satellite radio. Only 1 extra power outlet/cigarette lighter. Suspension frankly wasn't as good as my 15 year old Camry. I also wasn't knocked out by the acceleration. Oh yeah, also no On-Star. Handled pretty well for a massive bloatmobile. Now I realize that some of these missing features might be because it was a rental. OTOH, I've rented smaller cars that had XM. When I got upgraded to a Caddy, it had On-Star included. I don't think the rental company had the Grand Marquis classed as a luxury vehicle like the Caddys, etc. But it was still a pretty weak attempt at a premium level driving experience. Other than the fun of causing cognitive dissonance in some friends by rolling up in a car that's easily mistaken for a Crown Vic (aka the cop ride of choice), this beast didn't have much to recommend it. I certainly wouldn't ever buy one and I'll go out of my way not to get stuck having to rent one again either.
In other auto hijinks, when I went out to the aforementioned Camry this AM, my turning of the key was greeted only by some clicky-clicky noises. Fortunately I was able to get a jump off the pickup (once I got it thru my not-yet-caffeinated brain that the truck's engine was not going to turn over until I stepped on the clutch) and drive to the Tire King across the street from work. Fortunately it only needed a new battery (everything else checked out) and they got done in time that I still was able to get to the polls and vote on my way home.
Completely unrelated but a definite winner from the "are we SURE this is a good idea" dept: bacon syrup.

Sometimes I feel like the reason I got into DJing at XDU was to gain one more measure of control of the audio environment. I know that in today's webstreaming, iPod world, the notion of radio as a public audio space can seem a bit quaint. But I was reminded today that, quaint thought it may be, it's still a part of life. Had a dose of 80s classics over breakfast. Determined that Hall & Oates are less annoying than "Sussudio" and that it's a toss-up between "Paradise City" and "Who Can It Be Now?" Got another shot of dance hits at work later in the morning and determined that I don't really mind hearing "Like a Prayer" twice in one day, altho I would be just as happy not hearing it. Alas, while I was out of the room control of the audio space changed and when I returned it was no longer dance/pop hits radio but boomer classics. And I was reminded that I hate (hate!hate!!hate!!!) "American Pie." Srsly. It's on a short list of songs that seriously make me think about stabbing a pencil into my ear drum. That list would include "Stairway to Heaven" and anything from THE WALL. Probably other stuff too but those are the ones that come immediately to mind.

Time elapsed in 2010 before I encountered the first asshole of the year: about 9.5 hours. Which ain't so good, esp. seeing as how I was asleep for about 6.5 of those. I had to drive over to XDU to drop off a CD to replace one that was missing from the 2009 top 100 countdown we're doing today on air. Probably just misfiled somewhere -- I love my fellow DJs but I have to acknowledge that some of them seem to have issues with the alphabet; on Thursday AM I found all of the Nanci Griffith CDs filed between JE and JI.
Anyway, I'm driving down Broad St. Probably going the speed limit or maybe just a bit slower to check and see if Joe Van Gogh was open (they were; hooray for good coffee to start the year). In case it isn't obvious, Durham's not known for its busy traffic. So there was hardly anyone out on the roads this morning. But no matter, some car comes roaring up behind me and rides my ass for several blocks. I don't know where the hell they were in such a hurry to get to at 9.30 in the AM on New Year's but I'm glad to have done my part to make sure they got there just a little bit later than they wanted.

Top Chef finale! Yukon Cornelius vs. the Miser Brothers. I was planning to live blog the show but we managed to miracle into tonight's community dinner at Panciuto so I ended up overfull and unable to do any more than watch the show. Spoilers below

Things I do not like (part infinity + 2): Whatever idiot was using a leaf blower earlier this morning. Actually, what really gives it that special flavor of stupid is that they were only using it for about 15 min. tops. Srsly? You've got 15 min. of leaf blowing to do and 8am on a Saturday strikes you as the best time to do that? It's one thing if my dog wakes me up a 7am on a Saturday. She doesn't have a wrist watch. Or a calendar. I hold those with opposable thumbs to a slightly higher standard.

(part infinity +3): Aiya! Cut Xmas trees at the TROSA lot and at Kroger yesterday. And in case you're keeping score at home, that's almost a week before they showed up last year. And the depressing thing is, we apparently have no one to blame but ourselves. According to a story I read in the N&O yesterday, about two local radio stations going to an all Xmas music format this week (which I suppose I should give them credit for restraint, since the cable seasonal music channel has been on it since Nov. 1), both of the stations reported that they'd been getting complaints wondering why they hadn't started playing Xmas music yet.