A hundred years ago today, the most powerful volcanic eruption of the 20th century took place on the Alaskan peninsula. Actually, it was probably the biggest eruption for a hundred years either side of June 6th, 1912. And what did it leave?
Photo: Pavel Izbekov, Alaska Volcano Observatory / University of Alaska Fairbanks, Geophysical Institute
A molehill instead of a mountain. … Read more
…and you can order it here.
This has been a long process, to say the least. I set out to write this book in 2008, and quickly discovered that it wouldn’t be as easy as “putting the web site on paper.” Nor should it have been – that would’ve been incalculably lazy. What resulted was something far better than that, something that took a hell of a lot more work than that, something that looks pretty decent as an actual book, and something that hopefully everyone will like reading and referring to as much as I liked putting it together.
WARP!1 is coming along nicely; I did a little bit of work on it this morning. There’s no time to pause and reflect. This is merely the next step on the road.… Read more
Dinner (by very specific request from Little E):
…apples, raisins, carrots, bananas. Thanks to his recent repeated reading of “The Berenstain Bears Eat Too Much Junk Food,” Little E is convinced that everything is junk food. I’ve assured him that this stuff is not, and so he loads up on it. C’mon, kid. It’s summer vacation. You’re a preschooler. These flavor blasted Goldfish ain’t gonna eat themselves. … Read more
…my book coming out this week, or this soundtrack coming out this week.
I suppose the good news is, if the book sells well enough, I could probably afford the soundtrack. 😆 We’re going on and on about it in the forums if you’re into that sorta thing.… Read more
They tell me my invite was lost in the mail. Not buyin’ that story.… Read more
Sonic screwdriver shown to give you a little bit of scale. … Read more
Little E didn’t believe I could just stick some blobs of cookie dough on a pan on my dashboard and actually have them turn into cookies.
So on Wednesday, which was almost the hottest day of the year so far, we tried it. … Read more
“…I really like it here, I’m quite attached to it, I hope I’m wrong.” – Ben Folds, “Don’t Change Your Plans For Me”
Part of me wants to laugh this one off. Part of me knows better. I’m sure nearly everyone here has heard of the NSA’s enormous Utah data center, though the details are necessarily vague. According to Wired:
…it is the final piece in a complex puzzle assembled over the past decade. Its purpose: to intercept, decipher, analyze, and store vast swaths of the world’s communications as they zap down from satellites and zip through the underground and undersea cables of international, foreign, and domestic networks. The heavily fortified $2 billion center should be up and running in September 2013. Flowing through its servers and routers and stored in near-bottomless databases will be all forms of communication, including the complete contents of private emails, cell phone calls, and Google searches, as well as all sorts of personal data trails—parking receipts, travel itineraries, bookstore purchases, and other digital “pocket litter.” It is, in some measure, the realization of the “total information awareness” program created during the first term of the Bush administration—an effort that was killed by Congress in 2003 after it caused an outcry over its potential for invading Americans’ privacy.
Obviously no mere body of representatives elected by the people was going to stop this, right? 😆 But now we have a better idea of what they’ll be looking for and listening to. … Read more
