Frogs and Ravens

Peeps!

Not having gone into a mainstream grocery in some time, I'd forgotten that it is almost Peep season. I love these little marshmallow chickens! Not so much as food (how many sugary marshmallows can one person eat, really?) but as weird little fun things that just happen to be food. I'm a purist -- I only like the chicks, and yellow ones at that.

Here are some links to recent Peep-a-tude:

Crooked Timber talks about Peeps (c/o Amanda at Household Opera).

The classics "Peep Research: A Study of Small Fluffy Creatures and Library Research" and "Peep Research." (The latter has lots of links, including to other sites dealing with odd foods like the Spam Haiku site.)

The mothership.

Go, Peeps!

Button, Button

Aren't these cool? Which one do y'all like best?

1)

2)

Here's where they came from.

Edited because I realized that colors vary from computer to computer.

Agh. Here's ONE more.

3)

Note to self: finish playing with the button thingie before posting about it!

Survey of Blogging Habits

Here's an interesting survey on blogging habits, done by MIT. (c/o Gregory at (Southern) Cross Words)

The things I find most interesting are the questions and answers regarding how bloggers handle personal information (theirs and others') and how they view their audiences. I don't know what to _make_ of the distributions, but find them fascinating nonetheless.

Another Reason to Miss IA

Sometimes I should just keep my (virtual) mouth shut. HNN long ago decided to increase it's user-unfriendliness by making registration before commenting mandatory. Okay, now that makes some sense, if they were getting the kind of flames that they claim they were. But, on top of that, it is not enough to provide a live email and go through the registration process -- you have to provide your actual in-real-life name, too, and allow it to show up in your posts.

Me not knowing this, I dutifully registered, using my Rana Ravens alias. While there, I was polite, civilized and (I thought) made some useful comments. Then I made the mistake in responding to a post about anonymity of admitting that my pseudonym was, well, a pseudonym. Whoosh -- away go all my polite, thoughtful posts, and I am now banned from posting.

THIS was among one of many reasons why IA's site was so good. We could have lively, impassioned, deeply argumentative discussions there, and so long as we did so with a modicum of politeness and intelligence, we could call ourselves whatever we damn well pleased. I only recall about 5 or 6 people in the entire time I visited the blog being told to behave by IA, and they either did, had their ISPs banned, or left. Other forums and blogs I visit have similar policies -- you get warned, the bad post is deleted or "disemvoweled," repeat offenders get banned, and life continues on. Even the Chronicle's clunky "submit first, then we'll vet it before posting" format works better than the system in place at HNN.

Such a delightful way to be welcoming to those who wish to participate in discussions about academia and history but (often with good reason) fear the retribution that might follow if they posted openly, eh? No wonder the comment threads are so empty and bland.

Such an irony: should IA wish to comment in response to any of the posts at Cliopatria about her departure and good works, she would have to forgo the very thing that made her valuable as a sort of academic everywoman: her anonymity.

Cheesy

Via Ms Frizzle:

Cheese Test: What type of cheese are you?

Golf Ball Vendetta

So I walk out to my car this morning. I put my stuff on the passenger seat, pull the door closed, and BAM!

I hear this loud crackling noise, look over, and discover that my passenger side window is completely shattered. There was a round hole at the top, so I'm 99.9% certain the culprit was a golf ball. I open the door, more glass falls, I call my employer, I call the insurance company and wait on hold, the insurance company makes arrangements with a mobile glass-repair company, I go to work (dripping small chunks of glass the whole way), I talk with the company on my phone on the way (!) -- I hate getting calls in-car that I can't ignore -- we hang up, then I call back after I get to work and know where I'm parked...

What a way to start the day. At this moment the glass guy is out working on the car, putting in a new window after vacuuming up the glass spread all around the seat, footwell, door pocket... It's very nice to not have to go to a repair place -- but it'd be even nicer not to have to learn about the existence of things like mobile glass repairmen.

By the way... does anyone else remember an old Donald Duck comic book that featured Donald as the Master Glass Craftsman? That's what that last sentence suddenly reminded me of.

Sweater Marathon

It looks like I am finally nearing completion of Dad's cable-til-you-puke sweater (also known as Inishmaan, by Alice Starmore).

Here are the pieces laid out for finishing: Here's what the inside seams look like: Here are close-ups of the back and front cables: And here it is with everything but the collar finished: ˇ

How Many Data Points Make a Trend?

tz at Heart of Canada nicely articulates something I'd been noticing on a subconscious level -- an exodus of academia among many of the authors of blogs I frequent. Any thoughts on why?

Vroom Vroom

I am so pathetic. This link takes you to a site where you can make a little man move about a two-story house, vaccuming things. I am finding it embarassingly compelling. (c/o Tish)

Edited to spell Tish's name correctly. Thanks, Elayne!

Quizzy Whizzy

I took this quiz a while ago. It seems I'm lightening up.

you are paleturquoise #AFEEEE

Your dominant hues are green and blue. You're smart and you know it, and want to use your power to help people and relate to others. Even though you tend to battle with yourself, you solve other people's conflicts well. Your saturation level is low - You stay out of stressful situations and advise others to do the same. You may not be the go-to person when something really needs to be done, but you know never to blow things out of proportion. Your outlook on life is bright. You see good things in situations where others may not be able to, and it frustrates you to see them get down on everything.

the spacefem.com html color quiz

Then there was this, which just seems too, too appropriate: Yes, I am having a slow day at work. Why do you ask?