Saturday morning I eschewed the interminable reruns of the "Powerblock" shows and watched The Abominable Dr. Phibes from the beginning, all the way through, for the first time in my life. Now I want to see the sequel.
Saturday was a nice, sunny day, though a bit chilly. I slept through it. The weather report said we had four days of clear weather ahead; now it says Monday will be rainy. *sigh*
I may start on the Escort this week, regardless of the weather report; I'm tired of waiting.
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We may soon be able to make plastic nerves. The biggest impediment to bionic parts that actually come close to replacing all the capability of lost limbs is interfacing them to the human nervous system; we need to find a good way to get electrical signals in and out of the nervous system without having to have openings in the skin (through which infection could occur).
The cochlear implant which restores hearing to the deaf uses an inductive-coupled interface: a magnet holds the outside connector against the skin, under which is the other side of the connector, and the signals are passed via induction through the skin. But that works only because the connector is not subjected to mechanical stress. In the case of a prosthetic hand, the connector will move slightly as the artificial hand won't remain perfectly still against the skin. (No matter how good the harness is there will be some movement.) This means larger connector pads, meaning fewer connectors per square inch; in turn that means either covering a large area with inductive connectors or making do with fewer sensors.
As far as I know, "state of the art" in prosthetic touch means one finger can sense hot or cold and give some force feedback. Plastic nerves might help improve on that.
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The recession is nowhere near over, despite the favorable GDP statistics. I may be misreading the article, but the quoted expert seems to think that you cannot have en economic recovery when you have negative job growth. How interesting.
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Mark Steyn on Valerie Jarrett's "truth to power" nonsense:
The most powerful woman in the inner circle of the most powerful man on earth has decided to speak truth to powerful people standing in the street with handwritten placards saying “THIS GRAN’MA ISN’T SHOVEL READY.” Was it only a week ago that I wrote about this administration’s peculiar need for domestic enemies?Mark Steyn is one of the gems of the conservative movement. Dang that guy is good. And he's originally from Canada!
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My sleep schedule is all fouled up: I go to bed in the morning and wake up at night, and then I'm awake all night until the following morning. I've been trying to correct it, and failing.
Last night I woke up around 4 AM, had breakfast, and played WoW; then I set up the anime playlist and watched that until "Powerblock" came on. I watched one show (Horsepower TV was an ep I hadn't seen before) and otherwise watched anime until The Abominable Dr. Phibes came on.
Here's the revised playlist:
Star Blazers Comet Empire
Telepathy Girl Ran
Suteki Tantei Labyrinth
Revolutionary Girl Utena
Ai Yori Aoshi Enishi
Ichigo Mashimaro
Hana Yori Dango LA
I am waiting on Hayate no Gotoku #20 and 21; also Sora no Manimani #6. Once I've got them, those series will resume their place at the end of the list. (I save the best ones for last.)
Saturday morning I got through the ep of Revolutionary Girl Utena before the car shows came on; after that the computer went to sleep and I switched to Phibes at noon. Once that movie was over, I went to sleep, too.
I was up briefly around 8-ish to eat a couple pieces of lemon-pepper chicken, but afterwards I was falling asleep sitting on the sofa, so I gave up and hit the hay again. When I woke up around 11:15, I knew I was up for good, so after taking care of getting fed and bathed I turned back to the playlist.
Amazingly enough, the episode of Ai Yori Aoshi Enishi I watched centered on Mayu, and I didn't want to force-feed her a couple of 12-gauge shotgun shells. I suppose it's because she wasn't acting like her normal self, ie rich, spoiled, pushy, annoying, etc, etc.
HYD is just awesome. I'm really enjoying it.
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It's 28° outside, according to the weather website.
The weather on Halloween is normally warmer than this. For it to be freezing on Halloween is not unprecedented, but it is unusual for the Chicago area. (It has snowed a couple of times.)
One of the last times I went trick-or-treating--I'm thinking it was 1980 or 1981--as the t-o-t hours were coming to an end it began to sprinkle, so my friends and I headed back to my house...and we were about half a block from the house when the skies opened up and it simply poured rain. In the fifteen or twenty seconds it took us to sprint the rest of the way to my front porch, we got completely and utterly soaked to the skin.
But it wasn't cold that night; and most of the Halloweens that I remember featured weather which was at most pleasantly cool (at least it was for me, when I was a kid who was walking all over town wearing a costume). I can remember one time I had to wear my coat under my costume; only one.
One Halloween, I went out a couple days early with the UNICEF box I'd gotten from Sunday school, and I trick-or-treated for UNICEF until that box was packed with change. Then on Halloween itself I trick-or-treated for me. I never really thought about it until recently: was that wrong of me? Is a kid supposed to give up his free candy for UNICEF too? Did I miss the point?
No one seemed to mind giving me change, as I recall, and I seem to remember saying something like, "Hi! I'm trick-or-treating for UNICEF." A few people told me it wasn't Halloween--and some people remembered giving me change when I met them again on the actual day--but no one seemed to mind, and I did feel good about turning in that jam-packed box of coins.
Of course these days I'm politically sophisticated enough to understand what the UN is about and how well-run their various programs are not; I'd wager that most of the money I collected went to pay UN corrupto-crat salaries and relatively little of it actually helped the people it was meant to help.
These days I wouldn't do anything related to the UN, so I suppose it's a good thing that I'm too old to go trick-or-treating. Heh.