Category: Everything Else

Well, this piece of news is a shitty way to end an otherwise lovely day:

“Crocodile Hunter” Steve Irwin, dead at age 44.

I know a lot of people thought he was too out there, too “over the top,” but I was a fan. I loved his passion and enthusiasm.

I suppose there is some consolation that he died doing what he loved, but it’s cold comfort when you think about how many more years he might have had and how much more he might have been able to do for animal conservation.

Well fare ye, Steve. I’m sorry you left us so soon.

Three years ago today, Fiat Lux went live.

That was 1095 days and 946 posts ago, which means I’ve managed a posting rate of a bit less than a post a day on average. Not bad for a personal weblog.

Quite a bit has changed in my life in these past three years, and just about all of it for the better. Looking back on my first post, I wrote

What next? Who knows. But I think that I’d like to blog the journey.

That hasn’t changed. So to the 20 or so regular readers of my blog, and to the who knows how many casual guests, thanks for coming along on this journey with me. May it be a good one for all of us.

Way to go, Oslo police!

“The Scream” and another stolen masterpiece by Norwegian artist Edvard Munch were recovered by police on Thursday, two years after gunmen seized the paintings from an Oslo museum.

“‘The Scream’ and ‘Madonna’ are now in police possession,” police chief Iver Stensrud told a news conference. “The damage is much less than we could have feared.”

There’s a lot of blogging going on this week about the one-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina’s taking down New Orleans and the surrounding communities. I haven’t weighed in yet, in large part because I feel like I don’t have all that much new or original to add to the vast pile of emotions, reactions, observations and condemnations swirling through the blogosphere (although Shakespeare’s Sister did a great job of rounding up relevent links here).

There is one thing that I’d like to call a bit of attention to, though. Some bloggers either overtly or covertly pat themselves on the back when it comes to racial issues. “It’s those nasty Republicans who are racists, not us!” the thought goes. Yes, there’s a lot of racist Republicans out there, and many of them are not as obvious about it as George ‘Macaca’ Allen. But you know something? When you point a finger at someone else, three fingers point back at you. Even in the bluest of blue states, racism still rears its ugly head.

Last month, before I left for Barcelona, I met a friend from school for a lunch and some shopping at a high end mall near her new apartment. We had a great time & I got what I needed to get for the trip. But as we rested and sipped lemonade late in the afternoon, she started telling me about how annoying it was for her to shop at times. Clerks would follow her around the store, stop her and ask to see her receipts, or not be willing to help her out. Her mother (a VP at a publicly-traded tech company, by the way) had the same problem, although she’d found that a different mall was overall better than the one we were currently sitting in.

What could I say? I sympathized and agreed that the mall workers were jerks. But inside, I was shocked. I had honestly believed that kind of thing didn’t happen in places like California, and I was wrong. Right here in the deep-blue, massively multi-ethnic SF Bay Area, my friend is being singled out by shop clerks as being more likely to shoplift because she’s black. And I am shamed by that, not only because it happens, but because I had no clue it was going on.

That’s something to think about as we point fingers at racist Republicans this week.

For whatever reason, I’m a little sad to hear this.

I have many fond memories of going to the Hayden Planetarium in NYC when I was growing up. It’s undergone a massive renovation since I was last there, but I vividly remember the old permanent exhibits there and all the information about the planets. Will they will have to renovate again now that Pluto’s been demoted?

Although this did make me smile a bit:

“It could be argued that we are creating an umbrella called ‘planet’ under which the dwarf planets exist,” [astronomer Jocelyn Bell Burnell] said, drawing laughter by waving a stuffed Pluto of Walt Disney fame beneath a real umbrella.

So, Sour Duck tagged me with the following meme:

Go here and look through random quotes until you find 5 that you think reflect who you are or what you believe.

It’s a huge list, especially if you add in some of the auxiliary collections available in the random generator. I found 5 quotes, but for all I know there might be others that are even better; I didn’t have time to page through them all.

So, here we go. Here are five random quotes that resonate with me:

Say not, ‘I have found the truth,’ but rather, ‘I have found a truth.’
Kahlil Gibran

To believe in the heroic makes heroes.
Benjamin Disraeli

Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so.
Douglas Adams

Stupid people always think they are right. Wise people listen to advice.
Proverbs 12:15

There’s a right way and a wrong way to do things. If you make a chair, you want to make a nice chair. You want people to admire it. I think doing something well is a form of respect for humanity in general. I have found that all incompetence comes from not paying attention, which comes from people doing something that they don’t want to do. And doing what you don’t want to do means either you have no choice, or you don’t think that the moments of your life are worth fighting for.
Hal Hartley

I would tag the Flabbergasted Time Lord, but he is on vacation right now. So I’ll tag Seamus instead.