Schierer Space

I’ve finally decided that I really don’t hate Wil Wheaton^[1]. Perhaps this is because two of the sciency-fictiony-geeky blogs I read, Bad Astronomy and Whatever, continuously talk about what a fully certified geek he really is.

I was put over the top by this text conversation quoted by Scalzi on his blog.

So consider this my public apology for years of loathing. I’ve decided that a guy has to make a buck, and I probably would’ve taken a crap role to hang out on the Star Trek stage too. Besides, I’m sure there are some things I did as a 17 year old that I would rather forget.

1. Although I continue to despise his ST:NG alter ego. [↩]

While we were waiting for our food to come during another disappointing meal at Dave’s Diner (Emma’s had closed early), I banged my head on the table in frustration. Nate saw this and thought he’d try it… only from his angle he got the edge of the table.

Clunk.

He immediately scrunched up his eyes and made the sign for “ouch”. “Yes Nate, hitting your head on the table hurts. You probably shouldn’t do that.”

A few minutes later, apparently after the initial hurt had worn off he did it again. Not hard, mind you, but enough to probably not feel good.

Again… the “ouch” sign. “You know, pain is your body’s way of telling you to not do that again.”

He immediately did it again. Again signing “ouch”. And again. And again. To the point where I put my hands between his forehead and the table. He sat back, moved them out of the way and did it again.

I’m hoping he gets that pain is a bad thing. He’s a little young to be masochistic.

Let me put this in a language that the Christian fundamentalists might understand:

When Jesus sat down with the sinners and tax collectors did he ask for preconditions? Was he naive and irresponsible to do this?

McCain would say “yes”. What do you think?

¹⁰While Jesus was having dinner at Matthew’s house, many tax collectors and “sinners” came and ate with him and his disciples. ¹¹When the Pharisees saw this, they asked his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and ’sinners’?”

¹²On hearing this, Jesus said, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. ¹³But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”^[1]

1. BibleGateway.com, New International Version, Matthew 9 V10:13 [↩]

So I’m in a training class all week, and today during our lunch break, our instructor used the following as an example for why “doing it the way we always have” is sometimes a bad idea. He said “do you know the leading cause of death in beavers?”
-
-
-
-
-
-
-wait for it-
-
-
-
-
-
-
“Falling trees.”

I laughed, and then said “In all seriousness, do you have a reference for that, because that has serious blog potential.”

So needless to say with a room full of engineers on lunch break with high-speed internet connections…

Apparently this is the subject to a reasonable amount of speculation^[1]. See the following links:

• The Snopes Forum: One writer posits that any beavers who died primarily of tree falls would have been eliminated from the gene pool. Pretty good thought experiment, but hardly conclusive.
• Yahoo Answers has the scoop: Random bad speller claiming to teach wildlife biology thinks it’s true. I’m sold!
• Pop culture: “Did you know the leading cause of death for beavers, is falling trees?” -Silvia Broome, The Interpreter
• Sebbylite ponders this also
• This is connected to Green Building… (isn’t everything?)
• Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife: Falling trees IS mentioned, but if it were the primary source you’d think it would get some sort-of special mention.

Here is my conclusion: No conclusive evidence can be found that this is the LEADING cause of death in beavers, but there is fairly strong evidence that it IS a cause of death in beavers (which pretty much makes the point valid for the instructor in any case).
I give you the following short article from Telemark College, Department of Environmental Sciences, N-3800 Bø, Norway which cites multiple documented cases of beaver death and pinning due to their unique occupational hazards.

So there you go.

1. Translation: Given the billions of pages on the internet, there were many which related to this topic. [↩]

Most of you who read this blog probably know that my most famous alter ego is “Lentil McBean”. For some reason today I decided to search for “McBean”. Here’s what I found:

• The official website of the Clan MacBean. Apologies for the quality of the website, but at least the link to the left doesn’t go to their title page, which ought to make Jenn pretty much scream in anguish. Random Clan MacBean fact: Cmdr. Alan Bean (Apollo XII) left a piece of the MacBean tartan on the moon.
• Gladding, McBean is a major manufacturer of ceramic household goods. Random ceramic roofing fact: A single piece of straight barrel mission style ceramic roofing weighs 5.6 pounds. No wonder Ben Hur was arrested.^[1]
• McBean.net is a reserved domain name. This person has a very odd sense of humor which I appreciate. I wish his taste in website style was better though. Random McBean.net quote of a quote: “YES, she knows it’s a multipass!!! Anyways we’re in love.” : Corbin Dallas, The Fifth Element

1. In the movie of the same name, Ben Hur is arrested for supposedly attempting to assassinate the Roman governor when an errant piece of tile startles the Governor’s horse causing the Governor to be thrown. I actually thought the Governor was killed, but IMDB and Wikipedia agree that he was not. [↩]

I saw this bugger traipsing about in the backyard so I hit him with the deer spotter while Martha got this picture. We’re gonna sell it to one of them grocery store magazines!

Seriously though…. Dragon*Con is ON!!!

Yip - yip - yip.

PS: Yes, our house is officially covered in pink fuzz.

K & I spotted these signs on a local walk some time ago. I had forgotten about it until today.

So if you work for National Grid and you’re wondering what to put in the Orange Collection Containers:

Hmm.

I was trying to take a picture of something reflective, but instead ended up with a rather funky self-portrait.

Can you guess what I was taking a picture of?
(more…)

I see in dots. Like a Seurat painting where the points keep moving… or the noise on a badly tuned television set. Turn your camera to the highest ISO setting and take a bunch of pictures in a row, flip between them at a hundred frames per second. Swirling eddies of random colored input.

No loss of clarity… ignoring my long diagnosed near-sightedness… no obvious increase in ‘floaters’ or patterns of any kind, just dots. Noise. Sparkling microscopic lights. and darks. but mostly both.

I can’t recall if they just appeared one day, or if they were always there and I simply started to observe them. You know, in that way you can look at something and it seems perfectly normal, but you never really see it, because you didn’t see the gorilla juggling in the background? Like when you take the perfect portrait and when you look at the image later, suddenly notice the signpost sticking out of their head. It’s perception and that’s trickier than sight.

It’s most obvious in low light, (more…)

Phrase of the day:

That’s about as productive as 4-person tic-tac-toe.

Thanks to Joe and James.