Frabjous Times

Links and commentary

The traditional month-end roundup follows.
  • A Pythonic-flavored treatise on a vexing aeronautical question.style.org > Estimating the Airspeed Velocity of an Unladen Swallow
  • I do love the work of those who craft in wood, from sculpture by the Venetian sculptor Livio De Marchi (including his celebrated wooden Ferrari) to the nicely understated Trappist Caskets.
  • I don't watch much television, but I do watch Joan of Arcadia and read the TWOP recaps. Early on in the season, the Washington Post had a story quoting this list of commandments imposed on the show's writers by the producer, Barbara Hall:
    1. God cannot directly intervene.
    2. Good and evil exist.
    3. God can never identify one religion as being right.
    4. The job of every human being is to fulfill his or her true nature.
    5. Everyone is allowed to say no to God, including Joan.
    6. God is not bound by time — this is a human concept.
    7. God is not a person and does not possess a human personality.
    8. God talks to everyone all the time in different ways.
    9. God's plan is what is good for us, not what is good for Him.
    10. God's purpose for talking to Joan, and to everyone, is to get her (us) to recognize the interconnectedness of all things, i.e. you cannot hurt a person without hurting yourself; all of your actions have consequences; God can be found in the smallest actions; God expects us to learn and grow from all our experiences. However, the exact nature of God is a mystery, and the mystery can never be solved.
  • Time to get cracking on the Travel Channel's list of 101 Things to Do before you die. At least I've got the NY Public Library one crossed off, and I've at least been to the Wiener Staatsoper (though admittedly not to the Opera Ball).
  • My favorite quote about Return of the King movie at sunspot.net
    One of Wood's favorite scenes featured only hobbits; Jackson conceived it after the script was written and shot it after wrapping up the action. This vignette depicts Sam and Frodo and their fellow veterans of the quest, Merry and Pippin, exchanging glances of comradely understanding during a night of merriment at their favorite pub.
    It reminded me of the astronauts at the end of The Right Stuff silently affirming their bond while LBJ fetes them at a mammoth indoor barbecue. To Wood, though, it was more like "Vietnam veterans returning after the war, and realizing that no one else in their town really knew what they had gone through."
    [via TheOneRing.net]
  • As per item #7 on Jakob Nielsen's list of Top Ten Web Design Mistakes of 2003, I hope to have some kind of categorization scheme installed here early in the New Year to impose some order on the archives.
Last modified: Fri Jan 2 08:56:47 EST 2004
Corrected html.