In the event that your horoscope in this morning’s paper was not sufficiently informative, there is a website that will take the URL of your blog and return an analysis of your personality type.
Is it accurate?
Well, here’s what Typealyzer makes of me:
Category Archives: Passing thoughts
What I’ve learned so far at the PSA.
This is not an exhaustive account of my experiences at the PSA so far, but rather what’s at the top of my Day-Quil-addled head:
Dispatch from an airport terminal.
Holy smokes, an airport where the WiFi is actually free! (If only San Jose International were more mass-transit friendly…)
I’m going to be offline for much of the day since I’ll be in transit on my way to PSA 2008. I’m hoping Pittsburgh’s weather will not destroy me. (The temperature ranges predicted as of yesterday don’t seem too frightening, but California can do things to a person.)
Happy Hallo-Meme.
BikeMonkey tagged me ten days ago, but Casa Free-Ride has adopted the just-in-time model of jack-o-lantern production.
Here are the rules:
Carve a pumpkin.
Light’er up.
Snap a foto.
Post it.
Tag some bloggers.
Here are the photos:
Spooky (but not anatomically correct) cookies.
I don’t know why I never thought of making Hallowe’en cookies like this:
Random question for the hive mind.
The other day, my better half and I were discussing scratching. Predictably, in the course of the discussion, I became aware of every itchy square millimeter of skin I might possibly possess.
I wondered whether scratching actually works — that is, whether scratching ever acts to make an itch go away, or even to reduce it.
“Of course it does,” my better half opined. “Why else would we do it?”
“Because we’re poorly adapted?” I ventured.
So, here’s the question*:
My Oxbridge interview.
Drawing on the Guardian article on the sorts of interview questions being deployed by Oxford and Cambridge to “identify intellectual potential” in prospective undergraduates:
How do you organise a successful revolution? And, given the present political climate, why don’t we let the managers of Ikea run the country instead of the politicians?
As a university professor (and one paid by the people of the State of California), I’m pretty sure if I answer the first question my name will go on some list that will make me an unattractive prospect for palling around, at least for those who aspire to elected office.
Neighbor kids, ergot, and zombies.
My better half was clearing plates from the kitchen table as I was cooking something.
Dr. Free-Ride’s better half: Hey, I thought our kids like zucchini bread.
Dr. Free-Ride: They do. That piece was [the kid across the street’s] — always gladly accepts a snack, never has more than a few bites.
Dr. Free-Ride’s better half: Huh.
Dr. Free-Ride: I think that’s why when our kids are over there, there are so many snacks. If you have a kid who only eats a little at a time, you have to feed continuously.
Dr. Free-Ride’s better half: Why don’t our kids eat like birds?
Dr. Free-Ride: I’m going to guess that genetics have something to do with it. But their metabolic reserves will carry them through when zombies have disrupted Trader Joe’s supply chain.
Garden update: day 89.
Nearly three months after we sowed the seeds in our raised garden beds, it feels like we’re on the edge of a change of seasons. The days are still quite warm (with temperatures in the mid-eighties for most of the past week), but the days are definitely cooler, and the hours or sunlight grow shorter every day.
In the garden, this means that we’re starting to look pensively at the slow-growing root vegetables (notably the carrots and the onions).
“Are you gonna be done soon?”
The myth that will not die.
Dear Sarah Gardner and Marketplace producers,
I listened with interest to your story on today’s show about the current prospects for the solar energy sector. While the story was engaging, I have a nit to pick.