A recent post at my friend Marie’s blog made me think about travelling abroad, which of course brought to mind fond memories. Funny how most travel memories involve food, at least for me.
I never got around to writing the all-encompassing narrative that was our trip to Japan. Such a task would be a lot of work to do properly. Perhaps random anecdotes are a better route to go.
Baseball has been slowing growing a following in Europe of the past couple decades. You might have heard the International Olympic Committee voted to remove Baseball from the Olympics. Normally, I wouldn’t care about what the Olympics did, but the baseball programs of some European countries, like Ireland, get much of their funding from their national Olympic Committees.
In an effort to get the IOC to reconsider, the World Baseball Classic in 2009 will be held at various venues across Europe (rather than in Cuba as originally planned). Furthermore, a European wide professional league would expose the sport to more Europeans than the small leagues that currently exist in many of the countries.
An excellent introduction to European baseball can be found in the documentary The Emerald Diamond.
Just in case you were looking for ideas.
Probably. Although, spectrographic analysis would be conclusive.
A Buddhist couple in Arizona has been within 15 feet of each other every minute for the last ten years. These reporters tried it for 24 hours. Part of me is curious to try this. Deb would be pretty bored at my work, but then I could say, “Did you see/hear that? That is what I’m talking about it at night.”
I want to get a t-shirt or something to commerate my presence and participation in the best sf convention panel ever. I’m speaking, of course, about the Build a World panel at Wiscon 32. A full write up can be found here. Ted does an excellent job of recapturing the spirit of the thing.
I claim credit for the following:
Deb came up with the Chocolate Mint.
I laughed so hard at this panel, my eyes started to water.
(Incidentally, I’ve also attended the nadir of con programming, a panel on advice to new writers at (IIRC) Torcon 3 with Robert Silverberg and a wannabe who shall remain nameless. Ask me about that one in private.)
There’s something not right with the world when a squid anthology can be compiled without a story by Greg van Eekhout.
Taken from the International Space Station:
Lilek’s talks about Light Bulb Wars.
When I owned a house in Seattle I replaced all my bulbs with fluorescents. Difference in my energy bill? Nil. Average life of bulb? 18 months (despite 7-year guarantee, wish I’d kept the receipts). Apparently, one is supposed to leave a fluorescent bulb on for a minimum of 15 minutes or the lifetime is shortened. I don’t remember what I paid for the fluorescents, but I’m sure it cost me more to use them than incandescent bulbs. I tend to use lower wattage incandescent bulbs, 15 or 40 rather than the 60 or higher.
Speaking of energy saving measures (or the lack thereof) I also spent $8,000 replacing the aluminum frame, single pane windows with vinyl double pane windows. Impact on heating bill? 5% or $30 a year. Admittedly, in Seattle I didn’t have an air conditioner (not really needed there) and the average winter low is in the 30s. The savings might be more dramatic in less temperate climates. Part of the lack of improvement in efficiency is likely due to more insulation was needed in the attic. Still, from an energy savings perspective, it isn’t likely the windows will “pay for themselves”. I don’t consider the windows a waste of money, however. They added to the value of the house, and I suspect had some influence on the sale of the house. They’re significantly more attractive than aluminum framed windows.
The improvement that made the biggest impact was a programmable thermostat ($100). Dropping the temperature during hours of sleep and work led to a 40% decrease in the heating bill. That figured out to about $80 a winter. The fact that it had a cool hidden panel with lots of light up buttons and a digital readout was just gravy.