For much of the year my listening habits have been automagically reported to Last.fm by iTunes. (In fact, I used to list my most recently played tracks on the sidebar of this blog.) Here are, according to Last.fm, my ten top listened-to artists in 2006: Bishop Allen Dave Matthews Band Mike Doughty They Might Be …
Category Archives: General
Ho ho boom.
So apparently beseiged is FedEx with unexpected deliveries of Christmas gift that a package just arrived in an unmarked white panel van with two-day-old temporary tags attached. Then, I haven’t opened the package yet. It could be a bomb.
Virginia tobacco production by year.
Source: United States Department of Agriculture National Agricultural Statistics Service. We’re back down to 1866 levels. With the Tobacco Transition Payment Program (the tobacco buyout) eliminating the quota system, it’s only going down from here. The idea of tobacco as a Virginia crop probably seems a little foreign to anybody from Albemarle County north, but …
5 songs it’s basically always OK to cover.
Take Me to the River Hallelujah Hot-Rod Lincoln anything by Tom Waits Particle Man
Links about renewable energy homes.
I’ve been spending a lot of time researching renewable energy options for our new home. Here are some of the more useful web-based resources that I’ve come across. California Energy Commission’s Clean Power Estimator The Solar Estimator Sun Position Calculator JMU’s Anemometer Loan Program Small Wind in Virginia DOE’s Virginia Wind Resource Map Virginia Incentives …
5 misheard lyrics that are better than the originals.
excuse me / while I kiss this guy hold me closer Tony Danza lay lady lay / lay on my smoky grass bed West Virginia, mount yer mama like a virgin / touched for the 31st time
Quorum sensing and V. harveyi.
I am going to blow your mind. There’s a luminescent bacteria named Vibrio harveyi. It doesn’t glow when it’s off on its own, but they do so collectively when a bunch of them get together. Which makes sense, since one cell glowing all by itself is just wasting energy — its light is too weak …
C&E correction.
My August Campaign & Elections Magazine column, which appears on p. 50, contains the following sentence: This will permit campaigns to map social networks and target alpha members of discreet groups, knowing that the campaign’s message will filter down. Of course, that should be “discrete,” not “discreet.” I don’t advocate charting secret groups, only individual …
Maybelle needs a home.
For the past eight days, Amber and I have been fostering a puppy from the Charlottesville Albemarle SPCA, Maybelle. She’s a hound, more or less, twenty pounds of sprawling legs and tongue. At twelve weeks old she’s playful, energetic, and sweet. Maybelle — we labored over the name — is a sucker for belly rubs, …
5 5ives that I just can’t seem to finish.
5 words I think I’ve decided to hate. 5 things I probably shouldn’t have done. 5 idioms my wife finds unconvincing when I use. 5 bizarre journalists’ turns of phrase. 5 expressions I haven’t used since high school.