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Journal archive, May 2007 - March 2010


• Improved the pages "What happened at WTC 7" and "Earth polarity flip." They both need more work, but they're better. — 10 March 2010

• Improved the page "The Irish don't know Carlin." — 1 March 2010

• Made file "Jesus and me" — 6 December 2009

• Improved the page "B and B Complex fire," about a forest fire in Central Oregon that served as a backdrop for a G.W. Bush speech on forest management, and which many considered suspicious.

A few generalizations— probably untrue most of the time; but true often enough that they are worth noting ... — 2 December, 2009

• The only difference between living with men and living with children is that you can't tell a man to clean up his mess.... — 17 November 2009

• Improved the short page about Anglo-Normans, who first entered Ireland in 1169 Wexford. — 15 November 2009

• "La nonstop" — drinking late in smalltown Romania ...
  — 13 November 2009

• Made page "write what you know [rage]," about one of the kids who harrassed me for a couple of years in Kilkenny, Ireland. — 31 January 2010

• Made page "McCarthy's Folly," about an odd monument in Cork City. — 31 January 2010

• Improved the page "aphorisms" — 24 January 2010

• Made the page "to bring on a Romanian train." — 3 January 2010

• Working on a page that is intended to succinctify the Dutch Golden Age. — 7 December 2009

• Improved the page "polders," about the basic unit of Dutch terrain/water-management. — 7 December 2009

• Made file "Jesus and me" — 6 December 2009

• Improved the page "B and B Complex fire," about a forest fire in Central Oregon that served as a backdrop for a G.W. Bush speech on forest management, and which many considered suspicious.

The Irish don't know how to complain. — 4 December 2009

A few generalizations— probably untrue most of the time; but true often enough that they are worth noting ... — 2 December, 2009

• I started the page "good Polish words." — 30 November 2009

• The only difference between living with men and living with children is that you can't tell a man to clean up his mess.... — 17 November 2009

• Improved the short page about Anglo-Normans, who first entered Ireland in 1169 Wexford. — 15 November 2009

La nonstop — drinking late in smalltown Romania ...
  — 13 November 2009

• Improved page "Bombing of Nijmegen"
  — 11 November 2009

Nijmegen, seven hills above delta flatland.... — modified 10 November 2009

• Improved the page "The United States' invasion of Iraq, 2003 — From Osama bin Laden to Saddam Hussein." It's a link page. I placed links into a table format, as opposed to a list that had to be scrolled. It sucked. I think it's better now. I think some of the pages linked are worth a look. — 3 November 2009

• I had wondered why I'd kept reading about the name Bechtel in Romanian newspapers.... — 2 November 2009

• But I find that I cannot keep the iMac 2009 running even for the length of a real serious working session, without having to restart it so as to absolve the confusions and complications within this machine. — 1 November 2009

• Improved page "Saint Patrick's Hospital," about some work that a friend and I did / didn't do in Ireland. — 28 October 2009

• Improved the page "language files." — 27 October 2009

• Made "star pool," a poem-like blip about astrology. — 26 October 2009

• Somebody (or something) at Stanford University has visited my website 49 times. Every time I've checked the log, that person or machine has apparently only visited the home page. The most-recent six visits are spread over three consecutive days.... None go beyond the home page. — 19 October 2009

A new writing mechanism ...

• Improved page "Pool in Ireland." — 16 October 2009

• Created files Chorus NTL at Ballyhooly and Black Pool Bakery, about an ISP and a job, respectively. — Cork city, Ireland, 15 October 2009.

• Improved the page "New Spelling of the Dutch language." — 14 October 2009.

• What is the "maintenance fee" at an Irish bank? — 11 October 2009.

• Improved file "Alice Kyteler." — 30 September, 2009.

• Made the page "Oregon breakfast," about potatoes in the morning and those German housemates' compulsive worry about what I'm eating.... — 28 September, 2009.

• Improved the page "do you understand this," and it's now close to being what I'd intended. — 27 September, 2009.

• "Three YouTubes" — a new way of listening to music together... — 14 September, 2009.

• Added file "Writing and memory " to Por arte. — 8 September, 2009.

• Been working on some pages about John Costelloe, my bedwetting Anglo-Norman ex-landlord. ...

• Improved page Irish-English terms — 7 September, 2009.

Mosquitoes, new to Ireland — 1 September, 2009.

• The "Genius Motor Suit" — 28 August, 2009

I know that I can learn Polish....

— 27 August, 2009

• To do: Start learning Polish; figure out how to do some screenprinting. Not necessarily in that order and both at the same time. — 21 August, 2009. Cork city, Ireland

• A gang — or copycats — in rural Ireland are stealing ATM's with stolen construction equipment. — 21 August, 2009

• "But I'm [also] an immigrant."   "No you're not." ...

— 15 June 2009

• None of you stopped harrassing me because you decided that it was wrong....

• I improved the page "Bible truth in a page."

— 26 March 2009

• Chopped shit out of link page "international," improving it greatly.

— 20 March 2009

• I improved the file "Bleeding heart my ass."...

— 16 March 2009

• I improved the file "Lot's daughters"

— 15 March 2009


• Perfection changes

— To Twitter, 14 March 2009

• "Learn words," a thought on language aquisition...

— 11 March, 2009, adapted from an old file

• I had an argument with a crow....

• Created page "Thanks a million," about a common Irish-English expression and its translation from Gaelic....

— 8 March 2009

• Anybody who enjoys watching a close-up shot of a man's face that shows how much he's enjoying f*cking a woman should probably be watching videos of men f*cking men.

— 7 March 2009

• Improved file "real index," which is an attempt to create a root directory of sorts....

— 7 March 2009

War — at least it's a job. ... Remembering Ronald Reagan, the senile genial fool of a president who started that whole idiot "Republican Revolution."

— 6 March 2009

• Improved the page "twig," about the few Gaelic words extant in Irish English

— 5 March 2009

Liberals tend to have gaps in their logic. Conservatives tend to have lies.

— to twitter 27 February 2009


• Began the agglomeration file "outward links."

— 25 February 2009

• Improved file "exploitation" — most importantly by hacking off almost half of it.

— 23 February, 2009

Consciousness is to matter as magnetism is to electricity — components of a single phenomenon.

— 22 February, 2009.

(Added to my Facebook profile as "religious views," and posted as a "tweet" on Twitter.)


• Improved page "phonetic," a bit of a short poim.

— 22 February 2009

• I improved the page "European- and American-English spelling."

— 22 February 2009

• I made the page "The United Kingdom of the Netherlands, Nederland, The Netherlands, and Holland," about the name of the modern state and anglophone guilt upon mis-stating it.

— 21 February 2009

• It's too bad Bill Gates didn't think of his philanthropy when he was presiding over the software that most of the computerized world uses.

— 6 February 2009

• I'm working on a page called "succinctoids."

— 6 February 2009

• WASHINGTON (AP) — Republican lawmakers opposed to a bill expanding a children's health insurance program argued that Democratic-led efforts would draw about 2.4 million children away from private insurance into government-sponsored insurance.

— In their explanation about how a cruelty-based economy is better than one considerate of human reality.

27 January 2009

__ ___ __

• Made file "Minister for health," from an old file about an Irish sort of corruption ...

— 23 January 2009

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Baarle is a town in the municipalities of Baarle-Hertog and Baarle-Nassau — The Netherlands and Belgium, respectively.

Yes — one town, two municipalities (and, yes — two countries.)

— 12 January, 2009

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Cannibalistic humanoid robber barons — a poem ...

— 11 January, 2009

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• When a bilingual speaker notices that a native-English-speaker is listening to his language, he becomes obsessed with one question: "do you understand this," and cannot help asking it — in English.

— 10 January, 2009

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• Uploaded file "International space-mirror compact."

— 10 January 2009

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• Created the files "terminal morraine" and "SETI, 0."

Linked the latter from home page.

— 9 January 2009

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• The crazy thing is that we're experimenting with our own bodies and minds, fiddling and fucking around with all these "legal-until-otherwise" marijuana substitutes, while in the meantime we have already a perfectly suitable material that people have used for millenia.

But it's not legal.

— 8 January 2009

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• Created files dutch food, high form of art, for a year from old files. — 6 January 2009

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• Stoked by people who have something to gain, supported by those who don't say anything, evil deeds come from those who think that what they're doing is right.

— 6 January 2009

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• Rich Irish farmers, always complaining about something (in popular mythology) ...

— 4 January 2009

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Houses are empty.
People are homeless.

— 4 January, 2009

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Botellón — public drinking in Spain...

__ ___ __

• I finally finished an uploadable version of the page "Blue Moon," which I drafted in March 2005, about an incident in November 2001 in a Kilkenny (Ireland) poolroom.

__ ___ __

• Made file "amphibiguous," about buffalo and language.

— 15 December 2008

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• I'm working on a page about the good Dutch word peperduur, which means "as expensive as pepper." ...

— 13 December 2008

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• Made page "Bertie Ahern wins big on the horses," from a news item of last summer here in Ireland.

— 11 December 2008

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The Irish didn't know George Carlin, a hero of standup comedy and an Irish-American....

— 27 November 2008

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The genetics of skepticism ...

— 22 November 2008

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• Created page "Lost founder effect." ...

— 10 November 2008

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• How can I find out whether or not anybody has counted my vote?

— 22:20 30/10/2008

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• Challenge:
Describe how Sarah Palin is the future of the Republican party without violating Godwin's Law.

— 30 October 2008

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• There are a million people I don't want to see in this little town.

— 17 October 2008

__ ___ __

Important differences in a few Irish-English definitions ...

__ ___ __

• A Roman legion probably arrived in what is now The Netherlands about 55 years B.C. ...

__ ___ __

• Leonardo da Vinci invented a bicycle, but religious oppression kept it in his notebooks.

— 6 October 2008

__ ___ __

• Solar everything.

Any device that uses electricity and has any surface exposable to the sun.

— 5 October 2008

__ ___ __

• What if the Large Hadron Collider provides quickly an answer so explicit that it, the hadron collider itself, becomes mostly obsolete?

— 12 September, 2008

• My memory is not what it used to be, and I'm sure of it. But the question is — how could I know that?

— 8 August 2008

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• "The more you drink, the more you save."

— A Dublin Irish friend of mine, when I told him about the price of a beer in Romania.

— 01 August 2008

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• "He's autistic."

"I don't care if he's Vincent van Gogh, ..."

__   ___   __

When fools encounter greatness...

__   ___   __

• "The question now becomes whether evolution has gone through the trouble of selecting for these particular patterns more than once."

— Doctor Philip Steven Low (at Salk Institute for Biological Studies in San Diego California,) talking with a reporter from The New York Times about sleeping/dreaming patterns of the zebra finch, which are quite like those of mammals.

— Added to file "Media Bites," 1 July 2008

__   ___   __

• Brokering and pillaging ...

— 19 June 2008

__   ___   __

• Why do you need space if you're not punching and kicking?

— 12 June 2008

__   ___   __

• Chainsaws, black markers, and salt: you can always do more, but you can never go do less.

— 3 June 2008

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• Art, science, and religion go into a bar....

— 3 June 2008

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• Whether or not we find a Higgs, the experiments will be a revolution of science.

What ever in this universe the Higgs really is, nobody will ever know.

— 27 May 2008

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• And on her list of desirable characteristics was an asterisk leading to a sublist, a heirarchy of surnames that would be sonorous as appended with "MBA."

— 23 May 2008

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• Nijmegen is the oldest city in The Netherlands.*

With an asterisk. ...

— 23 May 2008

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• They're going to talk. If you don't give them something to talk about, they're going to fill in the gaps — and you won't like what they say.

— 22 May, 2008

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• Pasteurized?

Up to me bollix, please.

— 20 May 2008

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• Why can I not draw upon a text document?

Okay, so they're different file formats; but can't we do an overlay — can we not get some of these idiot programs to work with each other?

— 18 May 2008

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The lingua franca, as we call it in English [from the Italian for "French,"] is English....

— 18 May 2008

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• A relatively small amount of words compose the guts of any language that uses words.

— 14 May 2008

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A.D. 2050A rush on products containing glacier-water and deepsea minerals is driving eco-manic shoppers to destroy the last pristine environments....

— 12 May 2008

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George W. Bush, the executive shit-eating-grin boy

— 9 May 2008

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• the strangest is which that what everybody knows.

— 8 May 2008

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• Flevoland became the twelfth province of The Netherlands in 1986, after three-quarters of a century of work claimed its 1400-square-kilometer area from the former Zuiderzee.

— From the page "The naming of the 'Nieuwe Hollandse Waterlinie'"

__   ___   __

Abkhadefgh

— 8 May 2008

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• I made a page called "Foxy John's," from an old file about a visit to a pub/hardware-store in Dingle, Ireland.

— 4 May 2008

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• Barbie has no ass.

— 3 May 2008

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• I'm working on a page about the history of St. Canice's Cathedral, Kilkenny Ireland

— 3 May 2008

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• It would be naïve to assume that George W. Bush is going to relinquish the office of the presidency in January 2009 in recognition of the November 2008 elections.

— 3 May 2008

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• I'm seeing a lot of doves, in Ireland, for the first time, this spring.

Last summer was the first time I've seen mosquitoes here, since I arrived in 2001.

— 28 April 2008

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• "The Hubble Space Telescope has captured stunning images of colliding galaxies, which have been released to mark the 18th anniversary of the telescope's launch."

— BBC, in a stunning abuse of the language, 26 April 2008

    — Added to file "media bites."

__   ___   __

• I improved the page about the house that was falling down a hill in Berkeley California, 1998.

— 26 April 2008

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• No, no, no — don't become more like America. What, are you blind? Are you stupid? Can you not think; are you under control? Stop; don't do it; please — don't Americanize.

— 16 April 2008

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Anglophonia, Century 21 —

It is okay for a woman to treat a man like a meal ticket, but not for a man to treat a woman like a piece of meat.

— 13 April 2008

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If most people were left-handed, would we consider the South Pole to be "up?"

— 7 April 2008

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Watching a few airplanes — Osdorp, The Netherlands, December 2000.

— page created 28 March 2008

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• ...The definite article, the indefinite article, and the infinite article, the latter of which he said was beyond my understanding and which he did not try to explain to me...

— 26 March 2008

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Conspiracy hypothesis

The phrase "this totally proves" almost categorically disproves the objectivity of an idea.

— 20 March 2008

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• "Mies and Le Corbusier designed pretty uncomfortable miniature manifestos," said Gareth Williams, curator at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London. "That's probably why most photographs of their furniture don't include people."

— International Herald Tribune, 3 March 2008, in yet one more article about revolutionary, unusable furniture.

  — Added to file "media bites."

__   ___   __

• For the first time, more than one in one-hundred Americans are incarcerated.

__   ___   __

• "If Democrats can?t landslide the Republicans this year, they ought to just wrap up, close down, emerge in a different form."

— Ralph Nader, announcing his bid for the United States Presidency as a third-party candidate on the TV show "Meet the Press," 24 February 2008.

  — Added to file "media bites."

__   ___   __

• William F. Buckley Jr. is Dead.

— 27 February 2008

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• I found a Huge topographical map of the Netherlands (3459 x 4893 pixels.)

__   ___   __

• Kosovo declares independence from Serbia

— 18 February 2008

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• But they all cause a problem for me, too, individually — because in each of them I find a vestige of the collective thinking, the "group mind," and it is a deeply conservative way of thinking that was never properly nuanced or accurate anyhow.

— February 2008

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• An Eastern European cannot understand why an American would live in Ireland.

— 10 February 2008

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222232244629420445529739893461909967206666939096499764990979600 divided by 137347080577163115432025771710279131845700275212767467264610201 = 1.61803399

__   ___   __

• Made file "Saint Canice's Psychiatric Hospital," about an imposing structure here in Kilkenny Ireland....

— 8 February 2008

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• I made the old file "handaxe" look like a respectable page, anyhow....

— 6 February 2008

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• Your misconceptions of me are outdated ...

— 6 February 2008

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The phrase "war on terror" is a deception; and whether it's used intentionally or incidentally, it has no honest meaning.

— 3 February 2008

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English for Romanians — a proto-page...

— 3 February 2008

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It's hard to write about a place when you have lived there.

Travelogue is easy; or if not easy at least superficial and incidental.

But when you live somewhere and meet people, it becomes different.
— From and old file

2 February 2008

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• People tend to associate God with religion, and fail to associate God with an unbelievably complex Universe that has a mysterious tendency toward life, the complexity of which appears to violate the second law of thermodynamics.

— 1 February 2008

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One cannot spell in English. One cannot spell in Chinese, either — but English has an alphabet....

— 31 January, 2008

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• And I could see how this beautiful child had become confused, and angry, and disatisfied, and unhappy.

I could understand how I had become lost, for two decades. I could see who I really am, and how the child who knew so much became the adult who had let people make him believe that he did not know so much.

— 24 January 2008

_ ___ _

• The new leu; Romanian currency...

— 21 January 2008

_ ___ _

• If you don't bring proper change into a Romanian shop, you will occasionally have to pay extra....

— 20 January 2008

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• The technology is still primitive, the way we have to wait variable and significant periods for a simple function to perform....

— 20 January 2008

_ ___ _

• Was America ready for an idiot president?

— 8 December 2007

_ ___ _

"Clinton-bashing is the last shared article of faith (and last area of indisputable G.O.P. competence) that could yet unite the fractured and dispirited conservative electorate."

— Frank Rich, New York Times, "Who?s Afraid of Barack Obama?" 2 December 2007

_ ___ _

In the debate about robot soldiers, nobody seems to be asking "who are these robots going to be killing?" Humane, cost-saving, as if they have a mission as simple as sweeping the kitchen floor.

— from an old file (11 March 2006.)

— 02 December 2007

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It's 2007, and Romanians born during the revolution of 1989 are now able to cast a vote in the European Union.

— 30/11/2007

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I try to be patient with Irish pedestrians....

— 30 November 2007

_ ___ _

http://ro-en.ro is an excellent dictionary function, by first appearance. Romanian-English, it gives multiple definitions; provides a running list of recent searches (by oneself and others.)...

This is an online dictionary that one can use to learn a language, and I like it very much.

(I'm trying to learn some Romanian.)

— 29/11/2007

_ ___ _

Customer support hangs up the 'phone

Her first impression was that I was not able to get access to a website that I was creating on their system. But I was in fact trying to find out why, on my Chorus-NTL broadband access account, I can not view my website at geocities.com — or indeed any page hosted by geocities.com.

It took me moment to explain to her. When she got it, she made strange sounds....

— 28 November 2007

_ ___ _

It's easy to discount religion, but impossible to discount it.

— from an old file (14 December 2006.)

— 28/11/2007

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The original Dutch military floodwater region, the Oude Hollandse Waterlinie, did not encompass Utrecht because at that time (1672,) Utrecht was already overtaken by French troops.

The Nieuwe Hollandse Waterline of the 19th century brought Utrecht within the protection of inundative defense.

— 26 November 2007

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The Waaiersluis — A Dutch water-management innovation pertinent to the Nieuwe Hollandse Waterlinie...

— 23 November 2007

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The idea that an automobile can be "zero emissions" can only be valid if the production of its fuel is accounted.

— 20 November 2007

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The Irish mama's boy apparently does not know that his mother has been swabbing up after him for all these years....

— 18/11/2007

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"Although 113 years is not much when you've been dead for 140 thousand millennia, it nevertheless seems remarkable that a new dinosaur genus [Xenoposeidon] could go unnoticed for so long in the museum's* collection."

The Journal Nature, 15 November 2007.

* Natural History Museum in London, UK.

_ ___ _

• Currently my favorite radio program: The Eamon Lowe Show, from "The Spirit Store" in Dundalk, Ireland. Recorded before a live audience, with a panel of guests. [broken link removed]

Not for the easily-offended. Eamon Lowe is irreverent, and plays up a bit on a philistine, emperor-has-no-clothes persona. I think he chooses his panel at least in part based upon their humorlessness, because he almost always (so far) offends at least one guest beyond exasperation and into real anger.

But he's funny, in my opinion — and pertinent. He is certainly more intelligent and in possession of more guile and wits than many of his guests appear to believe.

_ ___ _

Prodictions

— 14 November 2007

_ ___ _
Writer's blast

— from my dreambook ca 8:30 13/11/2007

_ ___ _

Barack Obama's Speech at the Jefferson Jackson Dinner

— 10 November 2007

_ ___ _

Ever since I lived in The Netherlands for a year-and-a-half, I have been unable to tolerate the way that Irish people walk in public.

I get exasperated, flustered, and angry — and then I feel guilty, because I love the Irish....

— 10 November 2007

_ ___ _

"It?s much easier to transport electrons than octane molecules."

— Shai Agassi, a Silicon Valley technologist. New York Times 29 October 2007

__   ___   __

• "The half-life of irregular verbs is proportional to the square root of their frequency."

— The Journal Nature, 10 October 2007
• While I'd prefer to write on my favorite typewriter, it is clear to me that the typewriter is obsolete.... Paper, indeed, is not the medium of first resort....

Even the book begins to seem an antiquated format....

— 7 October 2007
• I was at a disadvantage with the Romanians, from the start, I can see now.

I am an American, here in Ireland.

Romanians love America. No, not all of them — "they" are not "them."

There is a trend, however, in Eastern-European cultures, to enamorize the culture of the United States of America; yes, to love "America."

But an American? Here in Ireland? And what is he doing outside of the United States? And what does he do, anyway? And what is he doing outside of the United States?

— 03/Oct/2007
• 149 page-views in 4 hours 29 mins 59 secs, by a reader in Woodlawn California.... The record number of page-views by an individual visitor to my website (as far as I know.) ... — 27 September 2007
• Updated file
bible.html

— 23 September 2007
• It would not occur to George W. Bush to mention the smoke until the room is full of it — and he would only do so then to assure you that there is no fire.

— 22 September 2007
• "Folks like Blackwater who provide security for the State Department are under rules of engagement," Bush said. " ... (Associated Press)

... Which means that they are not under rules of engagement.

— 21 September 2007
• Improved file "Irish-English terms."

— 20 September 2007
• Formatted the recently-created page "Irish history files" — 18 September 2007
Overheard in Amsterdam:

Somebody had bought a mobile phone on a plan that included insurance in the case of theft or loss of the unit.

She accidentally dropped it into a canal.

She rang the company from which she'd bought the phone and requested a replacement.

They did not give her one. It's not lost, they said — you know where it is.

— from a memory, 17 September 2007
• A couple of paradoxes of aging:

• Sleep. Older people need less sleep. Young people don't know this — young people tend to believe that old people are tired. That's not true.

• "Old eyes." After about the age of 40, the eyes tend to lose their ability to focus upon objects near to the face. It is often necessary for an older person to hold reading material, for example, at a distance nearer to arms-length than underneath one's nose. That's because it's easier for us to read small print when it's not too close to our eyeballs.
• Created file "videos," for posting links to clips online. ...

— 15 September, 2007
A friend who works in the industry told me that in catering (food service,) the standard "plaster" (band-aid) is colored blue because almost no natural food is that color.

— 15 September 2007

This massive computational power, beyond any brute ability NASA used getting people to the Moon; and I have to sit here and wait, sometimes — you never know — for the slightest little simple stupid function ... to ... complete, ... before ... I can get on with my productivity.

— 14 September, 2007

Jesus Christ. You'd think Moore's Law would kick in at some time, and your "Notepad" program would open within one second. That's really not so much to ask, in modern computational terms.

— 14sep07

Ah, writing machines...

• Though both of its names are Gaelic, Dublin is a Viking city by origin.



• I uploaded the file [in progress] "warrantless.html"

— 12 September 2007

• Improved file "Irish-English terms," agglomerating it with contents of the now-retired "Irish-English phrases."

— 9 September 2007

• ...then, you can take everything that you believe that I should feel about what you think of me, and you can....

— 6 September 2007

• Made file "Irish weather talk," about the beginning of most casual talk in the Republic.... — 6 September, 2007



I think that talking about football (or "soccer") is a means for the lads to shut more-intelligent thoughts out of the higher consciousness.

— 4 September 2007

• Vehicles, instruments, devices — "products" of financial engineering, making the compounding of wealth sound almost like real productivity....

— 31 August 2007

• "The real question for Republicans in Washington is how low can you go, because we are approaching a level of ridiculousness." — Republican strategist Scott Reed, in the New York Times, 29 August 2007.

Media bites ....

Which is the more obscene of these two items in today's news?:

• Senator Larry Craig (R-Idaho) denies charges that he tried to have gay sex with an undercover agent he met in a public restroom.

• 47 million Americans are uninsured. The number of children lacking health insurance rose for the second consecutive year.

— 29 August 2007

Politics ....

St Brendan discovered America for Ireland.

I have discovered Ireland for America.

I cannot tell what I have found, because the secrets are holy.

— 24 August 2007

• I may be a solipsist, but I don't know why I invented such an effete word.

— 23 August 2007

• President George W. Bush reaffirms his confidence in the U.S. economy. I hope somebody else can think of an ironic joke about this.

— 21 August 2007

• Made file "The paradox about last Thursday." In a retarded state of awareness, I learned something important....

— Sunday 19 August 2007

.
It's unfortunate that you can't do in front of a computer what you used to be able to do in front of a typewriter -- which is to type at will, on a moment's notice, and without expected or real delays of moments.. it might be seconds; but you have to wait, and you don't know just how long....

No matter how competent you are, you cannot really plan every next move in exact sequence and within an intended space of time; because you may have to wait for some unfamiliar function to complete its process -- and this may create a delay of however many (unknown -- which is the point) moments needed to resolve issues on board the machine....

I don't want to do anything.

I don't want to go anywhere. I don't want to see anybody.

— 6 August 2007

Kilkenny Ireland —

Cuvinte grele

N_ called me at about 11:30. I was sleeping to the strains of the film "El Laberinto del Fauna" (Pan's Labyrinth.) He told me that he was going to Brennan's. Are you sleeping? Yeah; listen, I'll meet you there in thirty minutes. Okay.

I needed some time to wake up, and acquire the taste for a pint of Guinness.

Hip hop adeverat.

I arrived at Brennan's at about midnight. Ani and "Paul" were just in before me. N_ was not there. Ross had seen him in the off-licence, a few minutes before.

I got a pint. I talked briefly with Paul and Ani. I tried several times to ring N_; I left a message on his voicemail. He never showed up.

-

Paul, in the course of our casual interchange out in the beer garden, asked me the inevitable question about why I'm here (or, presumably [and more to the point,] the real meat of the question why I'm anywhere else but in America, being American.)

Eastern Europeans are mostly unable to imagine any but a sinister purpose for not living in the United States, if one is able to do so. That, however artful as an expression of the reality, is indeed an expression of the reality — the Eastern European "why are you here" is almost always a question flavored with morality, with a taste of ethical suspicion. Beyond "what did he do that he has to be outside of the United States" (a question that feeds on the urban-legend-style mythical rumoresque possibilities) is indeed the moral verdict that it's just wrong to be outside of the United States when so many people want inside.

— 05/aug/2007

"
Diesel" — a local rumor (rumour) about an unknown component of hashish in Ireland...

— 4 August 2007

The Russians have "laid claim" to the North Pole, a colonial-era-style flag-posting gesture in modern form -- and have given spurious evidence for their dominion of a large Arctic-Oceanic region (which is purported to be rich in hydrocarbon minerals.)

International convention has long held that a nation's territory extends to 320 kilometers (200 miles) beyond its coastline; and that waterways beyond such an extent is international, the property of nobody.

Russia's contention that the polar seabed belongs to their country is based upon a claim that the Lomonosov Ridge is an extension of the continental shelf -- that is is a part of the continent, and Russian.

Yesterday a submersible vehicle planted the national flag, in a metal container, on the seabed at 0° N latitude.

— 03/08/2007

• Created the file "diary," an attempt at daily (or at least occasional) entries....

— 3 August 2007

A stone thump announces that somebody has reached the top of the stair.

I've learned a subtle cringe when I hear that sound....

8-lane I-35W in Minneapolis, Minnesota collapsed yesterday evening during rush hour.

7 confirmed dead

Bumper-to-bumper traffic one lane each way -- the rest of the road closed for work

A train passing underneath was crushed.

At least 50 vehicles in the river

— 2 August 2007



• Improved "Iraq war files," a chronological set of links to pages about the United States' invasion — Osama bin Laden to Saddam Hussein....

— 27 July 2007

A train loaded with yellow phosphorous derailed in the Ukraine, burning, and sending a toxic plume skyward.

"Bucharest — A poison cloud of yellow phosphorus from Ukraine is unlikely to enter Romania, Environment Minister Atilla Korodi said Wednesday" — Balkan Investigative Reporting Network

Yesterday, A_ was telling me that the Romanian governement has [even before this event] quelled even the disclosure of information about the weather. Record-high temperature of recent years (this year, she said, being the most extreme) are held as quiet as state secrets.

— 19 July 2007

__   ___   __

• Made file "work," an agglomeration of links to pages on the subject ... — 10 July 2007

Paradox is not hypocrisy....

— 8 July 2007

• Made file "Pepper oil teen deterrent," about my latest effort to keep this neighborhood from being ruled by asswipe little shitheads....

— 7 July 2007

• Made file "Dublin Sunday," about an encounter last April with a young one and an aul lad, on a trip out of Kilkenny on "the first bus anywhere."

— 27 June 2007

• Made file "Nijmegen (The Netherlands) timewise" — about my stay there between August 2003 and January 2005 — 25 June 2007

• Made file "alcopop," one of a continuing series of pages forming an attempt at narrative — stories of my neighborhood in Kilkenny, Ireland.

— 18 June 2007

It's like the memories of a million years have scrunched up and spring open in my head.

— from my dreambook, ca. 4 AM, 11 June 2007

"He said a further lodgement of ?8,000 sterling to his daughters' accounts in 1996 was the result of particularly successful horse-racing bets in that year." ? The Irish Times, Thursday, 5 June, on the recently-resigned Taoiseach Bertie Ahern. I found an old page about my brief return to Kilkenny in the Spring of 2004....

— 16:27 22/05/2007

The 82-year-old former-President Jimmy Carter, according to White House spokesman Tony Fratto, is "proving [himself] to be increasingly irrelevant" by making statements about George W. Bush's extremity of failure in the office.

Irrelevant meaning, of course, "relevant."

— 22 May 2007

Created file nordenvizier.html, about the sighting mechanism involved in the accidental bombing of Nijmegen, the Netherlands, in 1944.

— 21 May 2007

I review "The Da Vinci Code" based upon one sentence....

— 20 May 2007

You are now in a place where the station leaves the train.
__________
Working on a file about the accidental Allied bombardment of Nijmegen and other Dutch cities on 22 February 1944....

— 19:32 15/05/2007 Freedom, free enterprise, and bad innocence...

___

America needs a viable inter-city mass transportation system.

___

"Bad innocence" — a term an American friend of mine used to describe the folk politics there.

___

And yet, in a parallel universe, you did.

— from my dream book, May 2007

___

A%

— from my dream book, May 2007

___

Honesty as a foreign language

You must to kiss my ass

___

The file "Cosmic background," from June 2003, was prescient in ways that I still do not want to think about....

— 16:58 13/05/2007

___

At what point is consciousness?

— A file I found on my website...

23:32 09/05/2007

___

Delinked the files "Criminal war" and "Detention centers" from index page.

16:46 06/05/2007

___

Changed the spelling of the word "affects," which I meant as "effects," in the journal entry of 7 December 2006.*

00:54 02/05/2007

___

It doesn't work in theory. This is a big problem, because we cannot explain the phenomenon.

It only works in practice, as the funnymen say.

00:49 02/05/2007

___

I'm working on a page about the other night, when I got ejected from Kyteler's Inn, here in Kilkenny Ireland. Ejected, again.

13:56 01/05/2007

___

A cruelty of history is that, of all the good, phonetic languages, English has become dominant. The spelling of English is difficult, and I wouldn't like to have to learn it.

— 19:43 21/04/2007

• See Journal archive, August 2005 - May 2007...

.