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February 6th, 2010
12:29 pm - OMG, the snow...the snow
I haven't seen snow like this since I was a child in New Hampshire, and back then all I was really aware of was the result -- snow days and snow drifts that towered over me.
The world seems to be disappearing at an alarming rate.
What if even God is so annoyed by Washington politics that he's decided to put a freeze on the region, cover it with snow completely, and leave it that way? Sure, he said he'd never flood the Earth again, but there's nothing in the Bible about not smothering one region with snow.
Maybe Day 2 of a snowfall is too soon for these kinds of musings, but dang, if you're here experiencing it, you have to admit you're looking out the window and wondering.
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January 25th, 2010
08:07 pm - eat nice
I'm not against eating animals, but I am against torturing them first. If you share that concern, here's a site that lets you search your preferred stores for the least cruel options: http://www.wspa-usa.org/pages/2826_find_humane_food.cfm
The highest certifications (see their site for more detail) are the following:
“Certified Humane” (dairy, eggs, chicken, turkey, beef, lamb, pork)
“American Humane Certified” (dairy, eggs, chicken, turkey, beef, lamb, pork)
“Animal Welfare Approved” (dairy, eggs, chicken, turkey, duck, goose, beef, lamb, pork, rabbit)
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November 10th, 2009
04:20 pm - What do they think that word means?
"The investigators have shown they are capable and feasible."
I'm pleased to report that someone caught this little gem before it got to me. But that person was kind enough to pass it along for my amusement.
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October 26th, 2009
02:02 pm - e-mail signoffs
Recently, Savage Chickens suggested "Piss off" as an alternative e-mail sign off. Here are a few more suggestions from FakeAPStylebook on twitter:
Try these email sign offs: I quit/ Can't touch this/ Take it sleazy/ Hail Balgorr the Goatlord/ Up yours/ 10-4 good buddy
A few other helpful tips from them:
Dates should be formated as MM/DD/YY except for the years 1990 through 1992, which should be denoted in 'Hammer Time.'
The noun "Wang Chung" should be capitalized, but not the verb.
"Your" and "you're" may be used interchangeably if you are an idiot.
There's also a real APStylebook on Twitter. It's somewhat less likely to cause offense.
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October 14th, 2009
05:37 pm - Beef is hazardous
My supervisor at work and I were just talking about her damaged ankle, and she mentioned that she once tore a ligament out of her hip. She said (Dave Barry is not making this up), "I was doing neurosurgery, and a cow fell on me."
The story is that she was in grad school, and she and some others were doing neurosurgery on a cow, and the cow came out of anesthesia too soon, and it tried to stand up and then fell on her. Cows are large. She was also once thrown across a barn by a steer that was just trying to be friendly. She landed in a pile of hay, but still ended up with two black eyes.
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June 11th, 2009
12:42 pm - zombies
From the Washington Post: "The World Health Organization today raised its alert level for swine flu to Phase 6, declaring the first influenza pandemic of the 21st century as the virus continued to spread around the globe"
In and of itself, this is no cause for alarm, since all it means is that there's a widespread new flu strain. However, since we now have a black president and are therefore officially in THE FUTURE, as so many have pointed out, it is very likely that this virus will mutate and turn all of us into brain-eating zombies, except for a handful of highly traumatized people who will have to defend themselves from the rest of us while desperately searching for a cure.
Unless aliens attack us first.
Don't say I didn't warn you.
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February 26th, 2009
01:44 am - Fish
If you're not concerned about overfishing of the oceans, you should be. The numbers are scary. If you want to do your part to keep from worsening the situation, one option is being selective about the fish you buy to eat. The Environmental Defense Fund has a convenient list of fish that are good, OK, or bad choices.
EDF offers an electronic version for people with a Blackberry or iPhone, and there's a printable pocket-size list. They even have a sushi list. They also rate fish oil supplements by how well their processing removes contaminants.
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February 24th, 2009
10:17 pm - Big Ol' Lovefest
Great things about Obama's address this evening:
- A president who says things I want to hear and really seems to mean them.
- A president who doesn't speak in a smarmy accent.
- Feeling more patriotic than I have since I was a kid.
- Not having to stare at Sarah Palin's smug face in the background whenever the president addresses the congress.
- Not walking away from the address with a vaguely creepy feeling that Dick Cheney is lurking.
- The fact that the Republican response was given by the son of Indian immigrants who's now a Catholic and speaks with a Louisiana accent -- a one-man melting pot, which is about the only thing that made me interested enough to watch the response, seeing as how the Republicans are pretty much irrelevant right now. Thank goodness -- this guy mocked the idea of spending money to monitor volcanoes. Has he never heard of Pompeii?
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February 13th, 2009
January 18th, 2009
02:00 am - Yes we can
My mom and indecisive_lass and I were downtown Saturday to see a show for my birthday. I'm glad to have gone downtown during the days leading up to the inauguration, to get to see the federal buildings, the barriers around the parade route, the bleachers, and more port-a-potties than I've ever seen in one place before. Being there made it seem so much more real -- in just a few more days, God willing, we'll actually have a President Obama.
Plus, I've been wanting to get a Metro SmarTrip card, and they were selling commemorative ones with Barack Obama's picture on them.
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January 5th, 2009
12:32 pm - Irony
It turns out that most 5-star reviews of grammar books on Amazon.com are written by people who seem never to have read a grammar book.
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11:02 am - People just don't *think*
Today as I drove to work I was behind a car with this plate:
ALE DIE
Jeez. Who the hell picks a plate like that? I'm sure it's just the initials of the people who own the car or something, but I don't care what their rationale is. I can't be the only person with the initials ALE, and it's just wrong to drive around telling people to DIE. If I hadn't had somewhere to be, I'd have been tempted to follow them to their destination and tell them exactly what I thought.
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December 30th, 2008
02:41 pm - Jury Duty
I've been called for jury duty. Normally, I'd be excited about that. However....even though everything else in Fairfax County is shut down January 20, the courts are still in session (I called to confirm), and that's probably the day I'll have to go in. If I'm in court and miss the inauguration, I'm gonna be pissed. So very, very pissed.
I think the courts are open because they're already observing the previous Friday as a holiday, which would mean they'd have a 5-day weekend if they also closed on the 20th. What holiday is Friday the 16th, you ask? Why, it's Lee-Jackson Day. Let's all take a moment to appreciate the irony.
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December 11th, 2008
07:26 pm - Backing slowly away from the review
It makes me uncomfortable to edit research proposal reviews containing sentences such as this one: "It is difficult to obtain human heads, so one seldom has the desired statistical power."
Yes. Yes, it IS difficult to obtain human heads. And that is the way it should be, statistical power be damned.
(The topic of the research is protective headgear for warfighters. Not...you know...how to create an army of Frankenstein's monsters.)
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05:39 pm - two things
Two things that made me smile on my way to work this week:
1. Walking to my car on a cold, dreary, gray, rainy day and seeing an elderly lady walking along whistling "Winter Wonderland."
2. Stopping at a light behind a car with the license plate "Grr Argh."
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November 20th, 2008
12:33 pm - Question
Is there any place, outside of publishing houses, where good writing still matters? Are there any fields of endeavor in which grammatically correct sentences are more than just a luxury? Are there? Are there??
Seriously, I want to know.
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October 29th, 2008
11:35 pm - I call it the "WTF" phase of the project
Yep, the current spate of editing has reached the point where the only subject line I can think of when writing to my co-workers about their work is "What the f*ck??"
But that's not professional, so I'll write an entire e-mail and then spend an inordinate amount of time coming up with an appropriate, non-offensive subject line.
It's stuff like this:
Will “binge” drinkers have different activation patterns than regular alcohol users. Would one expect patterns to change if subjects refrain from drinking.There was no description of the planned statistics. There is no hypothesis regarding treatment. (Details changed to protect the innocent)
There's a whole paragraph like that, with questions marks replaced by periods with no other alterations to the sentences, and changes in tense, and...oh, my head. And that's just the one paragraph in this batch that I've actually looked at.
Times like these, I have to keep reminding myself of things like the sign that showed up this week in the break room: Try the warm cider (in the fridge)
(heat not included)
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October 15th, 2008
07:14 pm - People don't always think...
From one of our current reviews: "This proposal will have a broad impact on the military and on humans."
I'm glad to report that the scientific editor caught this little gem before it got to final edit.
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October 9th, 2008
04:29 pm - Factcheck
If you've been watching the debates and listening to campaign ads and you're wondering what was and wasn't true, this is a good non-partisan site:
http://www.factcheck.org
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01:28 pm - Maybe I shop online too much
The UPS guy who delivers to my office just stopped me in the hall to apologize for having to send back a recent drugstore.com order that spilled geranium-scented dish soap all over his van. Yeah, he knows me by sight and by name. And now by smell.
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