Remember, remember the Fifth of November, The Gunpowder Treason and Plot, I know of no reason Why the Gunpowder Treason Should ever be forgot.
Guy Fawkes, Guy Fawkes, ’twas his intent To blow up the King and Parli’ment. Three-score barrels of powder below To prove old England’s overthrow;
By God’s providence he was catch’d With a dark lantern and burning match. Hulloa boys, Hulloa boys, let the bells ring. Hulloa boys, hulloa boys, God save the King!
A penny loaf to feed the Pope. A farthing o’ cheese to choke him. A pint of beer to rinse it down. A faggot of sticks to burn him.
Burn him in a tub of tar. Burn him like a blazing star. Burn his body from his head. Then we’ll say ol’ Pope is dead.
Popping in quickly to post the newly-released video of “Raise Your Glass,” which is, as expected, awesome. Also, did you know Westinghouse created Rosie the Riveter? And that she was based on my grandmother?
Okay, that second part isn’t true, but we like to think it is.
“Raise Your Glass” will be making an appearance in my novel this month, which is titled “Hear Your Voices Sing Back Louder.” Off to a write-in tomorrow! Hopefully I’ll get my word count up to where it should be!
NaNoWriMo begins at midnight, once again I’ll be taking 30 days to write a novel. New this year, we’re collecting used books for charity, so if you have any gently used books, and would like to help support creative writing projects in schools, let me know.
The widget below is also over on the sidebar, so feel free to follow along as I try to reach 50,000 words.
Hey everybody, couple big updates on the way, starting with this one. I’m going through a whole bunch of stuff, so some will be a bit old, but all still really cool! Hope you enjoy!
Did you know that you can use bacon to track the economy? Yeah, we might use bacon for too much at this point.
Are you concerned about genetically modified food? You shouldn’t be, we have blenders that will hep us test them! Slate explains.
Want to make your own laundry detergent really cheap? Here’s a recipe. I’ve heard good things about this, but have yet to try it.
I’ve always says that the internet can (and usually is) a force for good. And 4chan proves me right once again:
This is old news, but good nonetheless, now it’s legal to “jailbreak” your phone. You know, the one that you own!
Once tablets get more and more popular, we’ll see this more often, which I’m sure would make it easier to keep menus updated, as well as save a lot of paper:
Need a primer on the whole Glen Beck is trying to swindle his viewers out of money out of greed and stupidity? Check it out here.
Anne Rice isn’t a Christian anymore! I guess I would care if I ever read any of her stuff. But her reasoning is sound I suppose, but I would always say find a church that fits you. They’re out there.
I finally got the tote bag I was waiting for (I saw them, but they weren’t for sale yet), and it is a Leave No Trace bag (how fitting). Here’s a fun mockumentary about why plastic bags aren’t exactly great for us:
Overdressed for the occasion, a man who not only lacked the mandatory skanky hoodie but was all spiffed up in a white dress shirt and slacks made an extremely literal beer run at an Alliance Road stop ’n’ rob. That is, he snabbed an 18-pack of The King of Bland Beers and scurried out the door.
But then we find that sometimes they are written as limericks!
A car parked ’twixt striping of blue Had nothing whatever to do With handicapped access Cops thought what it lacks is A ticket, and also a clue.
That’s it for now, but I’ll try to be back later in the week with some more. Have a great one!
Today is blog action day! Blogs around the world (sorry, blogosphere) are writing about one topic, in hopes of starting a conversation, making people think and challenging what we think. This year’s topic is familiar, we all use water, more than we think, probably more than we realize if we were ever to sit down and try to calculate it.
The amount of water used is staggering. Think about just energy production alone. Power plants rely on a steady stream of water to cool parts, move wheels, even to heat or boil to move turbines, giving us power:
Plug your iPhone into the wall, and about half a liter of water must flow through kilometers of pipes, pumps, and the heat exchangers of a power plant. That’s a lot of money and machinery just so you can get a 6–watt-hour charge for your flashy little phone. Now, add up all the half-liters of water used to generate the roughly 17 billion megawatt-hours that the world will burn through this year. Trust us, it’s a lot of water. In the United States alone, on just one average day, more than 500 billion liters of freshwater travel through the country’s power plants—more than twice what flows through the Nile.
And water has an amazing affect on politics, much more than I ever realized.
Imagine for just a moment not having access to water. Not being able to drink, wash, brush your teeth, use a clean restroom. For many though, this is the reality. Potable water is scarce, much more so than I ever realized:
Recently, Slate ran an awesome article about the water cycle. The above graphic, as well as it opened my eyes a little bit. I was always saying the line “how is it possible to waste water when it’s constantly being recycled through evaporation and rain?” in my head, not realizing that there is more to it than that. Much, much more, as is explained. I think the analogy they use explains it very well:
Water shortages are really a problem of distribution. We may have enough freshwater on Earth to meet the global population’s current needs, but we can’t always make it available where it’s needed, when it’s needed, and in the quality in which it’s needed.
You can think of a community’s water supply as a bank balance: If the community takes out more than can be returned in a timely fashion, it may reach a point at which it doesn’t have enough water to grow crops, wash clothes, or flush toilets. Communities withdraw water from local surface waters (such as rivers, lakes, or reservoirs), groundwater aquifers, or both. Those sources do eventually get replenished by precipitation, but that can be a very long, slow process—with groundwater, for example, it can take hundreds or even thousands of years.
So what can we do? Well obviously conserve water. And for the love of everything, stop buying bottled water; tap water, or even filtered tap water is just great. Get a nice water bottle and fill it with some ice cubes and tap water. You won’t be able to tell the difference (unless of course you live in Highland Park). While conserving water here won’t necessarily fix it a world away, it certainly isn’t going to hurt. And that bottled water you’re not buying? That’s great for developing nations without reliable access to clean water. Anything we can do to help stop the 4,500 children that die each day from unsafe drinking water is good.
As always, more information is available at Blog Action Day. Thanks for reading, I hope you learned something, and I hope you started your own conversation, even if it’s just with yourself.
This is a test post from my new phone. We will see if this works. And if it does, good gravy watch out!
Update: it worked! I’ll be adding a way to differentiating when I’m posting from my phone and I still have to play with photos, but this will be a lot of fun!
Blog Action Day is coming up! Check out the video on the front page to learn more about it, and don’t worry, I’ll have a regular post up soon. But in the meantime, think about signing the petition and think about what you life would be like without access to clean water.
Hello there everybody, another clearinghouse type article here for you, so enjoy the wonderousness that the Internet has to offer:
This apartment must have been so, freaking expensive:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lg9qnWg9kak
Craigmod takes a look at the current state of eReaders and how we need to move forward. I really like the idea of collaboration between eReader and their documents.
This was passed around before, and I can’t embed it, but check out how these athletes entertained the crowd during a rain delay at a baseball game.
Looking for Halloween costumes? Or just a little something for your alter ego? Look no further than the Brooklyn Superhero Supply Co.
Would you like to see stories from The Bible acted out by Legos? Really, who wouldn’t? Check it out here.
T-shirt war:
I kind of love this Lost alarm clock! However, I think it would get really annoying every morning. Also, it only takes batteries, no plug, which is just strange.
Scientists can use giant magnets to make humans ‘less moral.’ So if someone comes up to you and asks for a shady favor, while holding giant magnets near your ears, just say no!
This is a little sad and a little frightening. Watch out Stephen Colbert:
IGN has an awesome article refuting the claim that video games can’t be art. I generally like Ebert and love reading his writing, but this is one thing he’s wrong about. Make sure to check it out.
Today is blog action day! Blogs around the world (sorry, blogosphere) are writing about one topic, in hopes of starting a conversation, making people think and challenging what we think. This year’s topic is familiar, we all use water, more than we think, probably more than we realize if we were ever to sit down and try to calculate it.
Just another test post, this time with a picture…
