Many of the journals and weblogs I read have been sharing their pictures of spring, celebrating the warmth and flowers and green, and I thought I'd jump on the bandwagon. There was a particuarly lovely view off my deck this morning, I think. We'd only accumulated three to four inches by this time, but don't worry, it didn't actually stop snowing until early evening.

The sad thing is, I honestly did still think it was really pretty.
[3.30.03]

Wooooooooo! Not that you would know it from watching television, but basketball isn't the only sport with NCAA finals going on, and Cornell just won its way into the NCAA ice hockey Frozen Four, with a beautiful double-overtime goal shot from pratically behind the goal line. The entire post-season has been exciting this year.

My enjoyment of the games, though, hasn't been helped by Time Warner Cable. Cornell's got their first chance to do well in the tournament in decades, and at least Time Warner Cable decided to air it on their local station, but they haven't actually followed through and made sure the games were aired in their entirety, or with watchable video coverage. Yesterday's coverage only started 15 minutes into the second period, the first half of the game being plauged with technical difficulties so bad they recommended people just listen to the game on the radio. Today's game had audio the whole way through, but the video varied between four-frames a second jerkiness, checkerboard interference, and at its best was so over-exposed you could hardly see the lines against the glaring white ice. Yes, Time Warner Cable garnered a great deal of hatred from local hockey fans over the past two days. At least they managed to air all of their commercial breaks successfully....
[3.30.03]

On the one hand, I hate the idea of perfectly good books being destroyed, but on the other hand, I can't help oogling the old books rebound as blank journals being sold at Ex Libris Anonymous. I love the one from The Secret of Skeleton Island, and the bizarre Hair Styling cover featuring a woman aiming a gun. [via not martha]
[3.27.03]

Mantaining my sanity lately has involved a lot of knitting, and I've fallen in love with J&P Coats LusterSheen. It's an acrylic sport-weight yarn, but it looks and acts like crochet thread (and is usually stocked in stores with the crochet thread, next to the Speed-Cro-Sheen and Knit-Cro-Sheen). It's soft and comes in pretty colors and knits up into a beautiful fabric that shows off fancy stiches really nicely. I've been looking for a light-weight yarn that I could substitute for the expensive stuff in all of the knitting magazines, and was almost going to break down and try out Lion Brand's Microspun (this stuff is beautiful and only slightly pricey) but Lustersheen is available everywhere and relatively affordable (Herrschners sells their 1.75 oz/100 yd ball for $1.79 and you can get many of their colors in a 8 oz/680 yd cone for $8.99).
[3.25.03]

I'm not sure how a freelance photographer working in Kuwait manages to maintain a website of photos from the past few days, but its interesting viewing.
[3.25.03]

It's pretty clear that everyone has had their minds made up about this war for a while, and we've now reached the "talking-past-each-other" phase of debate, but we've also reached a point where our options are fairly narrow. I'm upset that events have proceeded such that the only moral thing I think the US has left to do is completely demolish the Iraqi government, but seeing the destruction and chaos, we've pretty much guaranteed misery and suffering for the people there if we don't manage to get our own food and aid into the country. I think that humanitarian concerns were pretty far down on the list of reasons for invading Iraq, but it is now imperative that we follow through with any resources necessary to help the Iraqi people - in the long term as well as the next few weeks. I certainly hope that everyone supporting this war remembers to be equally supportive of large amounts of their tax dollars going overseas in less violent packages over the coming years. Tearing something down is always easier than putting something better up in its place.
[3.25.03]

I spent the past few days on a mini-vacation involving a lot of time in the car listening to music, and I got to listen to TMBG's "Particle Man" for the first time in many years. It's a cute song, but after a few repeats and the general boredom of a long ride, I started wondering what it meant. Being a good liberal-arts alum, I was of course able to come up with a semi-plausible interpretation wherein Particle Man, as the fundamental unit of matter, clearly represents the physical world and Triangle Man alludes to Christianity's trinity and refers to God. This explains why Triangle Man always wins when up against Particle Man or Person Man (obviously representing humanity). To understand Universe Man, it is necessary to look at the lyrics a little more closely. It is striking that Triangle Man hates Particle Man and Person Man - we are reminded of the often vindictive and destructive nature of Christianity's old testament diety. In contrast, we are told that Universe Man is "usually kind to a smaller man" but does not appear to interfere in his existence, and is timeless with his watch with an eon hand. Universe Man is the true underlying power, not God.

Once I got back, a quick surf of the internet indicated what I feared, that the song was never meant to be taken so seriously. This interview with They Might Be Giants says:

We'll be trying to write a real direct song, and people will think that there must be some hidden meaning, because the obvious meaning doesn't make enough sense. [...] I think "Particle Man" is probably the song that people talk about the most, and yet has the least to offer. Basically it's just a song about characters in the most obvious sense. They're not real people; it's not Animal Farm. It's not like they represent other people.

Wow - I was just checking a flight arrival time on the US Airways site and found this press release linked on their front page: US Airways Implements 'Peace of Mind' Flexible Travel Policy.

ARLINGTON, Va., March 18, 2003 -- US Airways announced today that it has implemented the 90-day "Peace of Mind" flexible travel period, effective tomorrow. The "Peace of Mind" flexible travel policy, which is being implemented due to the conflict in Iraq, allows customers to make changes to itineraries for travel originating March 19 through June 17, 2003, without incurring standard change fees. Travel within the U.S. or between the U.S. and Canada may be rescheduled to originate on or before June 17, 2003.

I hid from last weeks parting blast from winter by watching Buffy re-runs and knitting this vest, dubbed the Zipper "See My" Vest due to the spontaneous outbursts from the Simpson's soundtrack that this project seemed to enduce in onlookers. My full project writeup includes a link to the source pattern, which I found online. It's a great basic pattern that I'd encourage any knitter to check out.
[3.19.03]

Here's an example of where students today have some great resources that just weren't available when I was in school. Darthmouth College has put together a site on the hows and whys of citations. It's not the Chicago Manual of Style, but it's easy to use and covers the most common cases, including citation rules for electronic formats. I particularly like that they give examples of correct citations following different style guides across the humanities and science. A must-bookmark for the high school or junior-high kid in your life!
[3.14.03]

Because everyone's a fan of Lilek's Gallery of Regrettable Food, spin-off sites can't hurt and this collection of Weight Watchers recipe cards from 1974 over at Poundy are a great addition to the genre. The food is horrifying and she's got some nice snark going too. Just in time for your Friday websurf...
[3.13.03]

I was slightly bothered by the article Faked Out: Looking for counterfeit goods, sheriff's deputies go bargain hunting [via PCJM] and I'm not sure if it's due to poor writing or poor policework. The article describes the efforts of police to track counterfeiting of brand-name goods, particularly clothes. But there are also many descriptions of ways in which items can be slightly altered to appear to be an original while not quite being trademark infringement. And it is very unclear in the article about what types of items the police are buying and trying to eliminate. Because if you're really a brand-name snob, I don't think a "Tipfany" bracelet or a "Barley-Davidson" belt buckle are going to fool anyone. I was laughing my ass off at Nike's example of a manner in which trademark infringment can degradate brand identity:

Nike, a popular target among counterfeiters, has been copied in everything from fake sneakers to Nike-logo jewelry to Swoosh-embroidered yarmulkes. "We make performance product," Manager says, "but a yarmulke's not necessarily, with all due respect to the religious symbolism, a performance athletic product."

But, to return to the heart of the article, maybe the police are focusing on real trademark infringment instead of the many iff-ier cases they describe, in which case I still wonder at the police spending their time on detecting and preventing this type of action. It seems like it should be covered more like copyright infringement and patent law, and pursued primarily through the courts. The justification of having the police track down counterfeit t-shirt rings?

Some authorities suspect that the trail might lead to organized crime syndicates and terrorist organizations. The International Anti-Counterfeiting Coalition, a Washington, D.C.-based group that combats counterfeiting, reports that criminal groups originating in China, Vietnam and Northern Ireland have all sold counterfeit goods to support their activities. It also claims that the sale of fraudulent merchandise may have financed the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center. Though the Dallas County Sheriff's Department has not focused on counterfeiting until recently, heightened concerns about homeland security prompted it to investigate. As the information came to us that there was the possibility that some of these type of organizations may fund organized crime or terrorist organizations, we became interested," Peritz says. "We have yet to find an affirmative link in any of these [businesses] between organized crime or terrorist organizations."

The Simpsons had a hilarious parody of Fox News, with news-ticker jokes and an election "debate" in which their general biases were reflected by a drawn-in halo over Krusty the Republican candidate and upside-down devil-horned footage of the opposing Democrat. It is unfortunate for Fox News that an hour after that episode aired the front page of their website tag-lined their article on Clinton and Dole's 60 Minutes debate with the label "Bubba vs. Dole, Round One". [via JRE]
[3.9.03]

Who doesn't love a heart-warming story of overzealous mall security guards? Oh, I'm sure the mall will come out with a statement explaining that the men were being disruptive, and malls are certainly private property, but it behooves us all to remember that "fake police" (or the mall/campus/private security guard nature) can in practice get you arrested nice and quick if they like. I know someone who was stopped and had their camera confiscated recently for taking pictures of the outside of the Cornell greenhouses because they contain fertilizer, which has that whole bomb-making connection. Harassment of our citizens is not a good tradeoff for "security". [via genehack]
[3.7.03]

I am slowly building a collection of old home economics and household management guides, and I would love to find a copy of this 1800's book just added to Project Gutenburg: The American Woman's Home, or Principles of Domestic Science, by Catharine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe. And, yes, it is the same Harriet Beecher Stowe. Take a skim over the topics covered in the introduction, as described in the table of contents:

The chief cause of woman's disabilities and sufferings, that women are not trained, as men are, for their peculiar duties--Aim of this volume to elevate the honor and remuneration of domestic employment--Woman's duties, and her utter lack of training for them--Qualifications of the writers of this volume to teach the matters proposed--Experience and study of woman's work--Conviction of the dignity and importance of it--The great social and moral power in her keeping--The principles and teachings of Jesus Christ the true basis of woman's rights and duties.

Since I am already a "bad weblogger", what with the lack of RSS feeds and my distasteful link-and-comment format, I might as well jump on the linking bandwagon and recommend my non-blogger readers read The Horror of Blimps, which had me laughing way too hard for the office. [via Anita's LOL] It reminds me of the bar-none funniest thing I've ever read on the internet: Dogs in Elk.
[3.6.03]

I've been tempted by The Friday Five as a device to inspire entries, but in practice the questions tend to be more personally revealing than I want to answer on a regular basis. Photo Friday, on the other hand, is the same idea but with photographs. This is definitely something I want to do. I'm not thrilled with my submission for this week's theme "Stop Sign" (see right-hand column), but my goal is to at least try to produce something each week. [via Medley]
[3.6.03]

I've been on a knitting and crocheting tear lately, but I discovered a whole new dimension to being the crafty type - making your own tools! Not that I've tried it yet, but this guide to making home-made knitting needles is calling to me. It's so obvious that they're only pointy dowels, and yet I never would have thought of this myself. [via not martha]
[3.6.03]

"Blue" for Photo Friday [full size]

"Garbage" for Photo Friday [full size]

"Stapler" for Photo Friday [full size]

"Stop Sign" for Photo Friday [full size]