Secret Pastafarian Recruitment Video

Utilikilts

I'm going to file this under WANT!, but I'm not sure I actually want it. In theory I want it. But, I'm pretty sure it's more statement than I can carry off. I have trouble enough with the snappy hats. Sadly, I think the underlying truth here is that I am neither punk nor nerd enough to wear something like this. Although I probably do have the legs for it.

Another drawback to these kilts is that they're damned pricey. I don't pay that much for my pants, and there's about a yard more material than that. If I keep enumerating the downsides, I will eventually convince myself that I don't want one of these. I need more courage, damn it! Or perhaps less common sense. The kilt is at least one thing that the wacky eccentricity-hogging guy at work hasn't gone for yet. But no!

Last.fm Goes Free

This is awesome news. You can now play supported tracks and albums on-demand at Last.fm. I've really admired their service for a while now, and I really enjoy looking at my own stats and news. The only irritation I've had is that I can't play playlists in any order I desire. Problem solved now. Cool.

clipped from blog.last.fm Something we’ve wanted for years—for people who visit Last.fm to be able to play any track for free—is now possible. With the support of the folks behind EMI, Sony BMG, Universal and Warner—and the artists they work with—plus thousands of independent artists and labels, we’ve made the biggest legal collection of music available to play online for free, the way we believe it should be.

A Disposal Solution

Certain acquaintances who shall remain nameless have requested that in the event of their demise they would like to have their remains tossed into the woods for nature to do with as it wills. I have on multiple occasions questioned the legality of doing that, but now I think I might have a compromise: The Body Farm

clipped from www.damninteresting.com The students knelt alongside the slumped form, seemingly untroubled by the acrid, syrupy tang of human decay which hung in the air. They remarked on the amount of decomposition that had become evident since their last visit, such as the sloughed skin and distended midsection. The insects which feasted upon the decommissioned man were of specific interest, prompting a number of photographs and note-jottings. After surveying the scene to their satisfaction, the students strolled across the glade to examine a considerably more decayed corpse in the trunk of an abandoned car. Their lack of alarm wasn't altogether surprising, for they were part of the organization responsible for dumping these corpses– along with dozens more– throughout the otherwise serene forest. They were forensic anthropology students from the University of Tennessee.

Unenforced Optimism

I'm still going through my backlog of interesting articles, and I read a couple of unrelated-but-not articles today.

The first is an article on Japan's manga industry and, in particular, the dojinshii [sic] markets, a thriving completely-illegal-but-tolerated public marketplace for the sale of fan fiction. The manga industry is tolerating the infringement of its copyrights both for market research and talent spotting purposes.

The second is an article about unenforced laws in the U.S. and both why and how they fell out of enforcement.

The confluence of the two articles is probably pretty predictable based on the sources that I pull from, but it makes me think that, despite the moral bickering that we get up to in this country, everything's going to be OK in the end. I can wish that people would have a little more perspective in the here and now but will settle for being right in the long run. I am the king of complacency.

• Wired on Manga
• Slate on Unenforced Laws
  

Compressed Air Energy Storage

I hadn't heard about this before. The idea is to use surplus wind farm energy to pressurize a sealed underground vault. Then, when the energy is needed, the pressure is slowly released to help power an energy-generating turbine. Kind of brilliant. I wonder if the idea could be miniaturized to use on a small scale, say on a private farm with one or two turbines or on a set of solar panels attached to a house. Seems like it would be a pretty location-oriented solution.

clipped from ecotality.com “The group is building a system that will steer surplus electricity generated by a nearby wind farm to a big air compressor (diagram). Connected to a deep well, the compressor pumps air into layers of sandstone. Some 3,000 feet down and sealed from above by dense shale, the porous sandstone acts like a giant balloon. Later, when demand for power rises, this flow is reversed. As the chamber empties, a whoosh of air flows back up the pipe into a natural-gas-fired turbine, boosting its efficiency by upwards of 60%.”

Tweet, tweet.

The Wind-up Bird Chronicle is a zen book. Believe me, I know how stupid that sounds. But, bear with me; that's the best word I could think of to describe the experience.

It's by no means an easy book to get through, both for the flaying and the mystical reasoning that leads the protagonist from one set of events to another. But, if you can suspend the critical, solidly-logical bits of your mind for a while, then there's a lot of beauty here, in both phrasing and imagery. I actually marked pages that have particularly beautiful passages on them; I never do that.

I found the ending more satisfying than any book I've read in recent memory. I want to describe it as meaty for some reason. It may have been because I'd been awake for something like 32 hours at the time, but I teared up when the well was revived.

I want to go on about what I think Murakami was trying to say about contemporary Japan, but I'm not Japanese. I know very little about the culture, and I'm fairly certain I'd come off sounding a bit like a stupid American. But, it's a lovely, lovely book that was well worth the time it took me to read it, which was around six months. I'm slow.