Carl's Maundering Blog

An interesting language study: http://testyourvocab.com/?r=590660

Apparently I know over 25,000 words...

Still haven't recovered completely from the theft of my wallet last week.

The bus pass ("EcoPass") has turned out to be quite a benefit.

I gave a neighbor a LiveCD distribution of Ubuntu Desktop Edition, and it turns out that it's all he uses anymore for Internet-connected computing. He hasn't installed it on the hard-drive, because he still needs a couple of Win32 applications for non-Internet-connected work, but it's telling that he's happier using the computer when he's using the LiveCD, despite the device lag incurred by running from the CD.

Today I discovered the Sloganizer:

After I took the quiz, I got this result:

You are The Joker

The Joker 68% Apocalypse 65% Magneto 61% Mystique 54% Green Goblin 54% Juggernaut 54% Dr. Doom 54% Mr. Freeze 53% Lex Luthor 52% Venom 50% Dark Phoenix 48% Two-Face 46% Riddler 44% Poison Ivy 42% Catwoman 33% Kingpin 33%

The Clown Prince of Crime. You are a brilliant mastermind but are criminally insane. You love to joke around while accomplishing the task at hand.

Click here to take the Supervillain Personality Quiz

Honey Bun by Rogers and Hammerstein, from South Pacific:

A hundred and one pounds of fun,
That's my little honey bun.
Get a load of honey bun tonight!

We'll see how long it takes for some other song to get stuck in my head.

Found this one today, by Cathy Seipp:

The answer, of course, is that "racist," like "fascist," is one of those useful word-bombs that can be tossed at people when you cant think of an intellectual argument.

Ever since my in-laws introduced me to Emo philips about ten years ago, he has been one of my favorite comedians. Today I found this somewhat serious article written by Emo, which was published at the website of the British newspaper The Guardian last September.

It's an excellent persuasive essay urging Britons to defeat their government's "intention to outlaw 'offensive' religious jokes." I don't know much about that misguided effort (I haven't looked for a weblink or any other reference about it), but I thought the sentiment was rather poignant, especially given the disagreements and even violence over the Mohammed political cartoons in Denmark in February. On that subject, Emo demonstrated an astounding four months of prescience:

Such a law would be a bad idea, for the simple reason that jokes are how we humans avoid violence. Jokes are our safety-release mechanism. Sure they can sometimes be offensive. So can burps. But if you ban them even worse results happen. And believe me, if someone tells a joke that truly offends, he or she will be punished for it. That's one area for sure where the government can take it easy and relax.

Actually, I always thought burping is considered polite in most middle-eastern cultures. But the furor over the Danish cartoons made me wonder if Emo underestimated the punishments the "truly offended" might imagine. Governments and publishers certainly weren't very relaxed about it. I think those taking offense might have been wiser to regard the Danish drawings merely as smelly belches dissipating in the breeze.

Anyway, Emo even used the article to repeat a joke about my relgion, a good joke about coffee that I hadn't heard before. Maybe I should have found it offensive (there are in fact a few of his jokes that I do find offensive), but no, this one made me laugh.

I finally hired a contractor to replace the old shingles on the roof of my home. The crew used something called "Tamko," which are some kind of a laminated or fiberglass version of a traditional asphalt shingle. We were given a choice of color; I asked for one of the brighter or warmer brown colors, because I reasoned that a lighter color would reflect more heat than a dark or black colored shingle. But that was a gut reaction; I wonder if somebody has conducted a study measuring the heat conductivity of different colored roof materials.

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