| Sun | Mon | Tue | Wed | Thu | Fri | Sat |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | |||
| 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 |
| 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 |
| 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 |
| 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 |
« November 2014 | Main | January 2015 »
Here you go - find out what the President-For-Life and the First-Lady-For-Life did last year.
Not too exciting.
Download Seasons_Greetings_2014
Enjoy!
“The pessimist always finds difficulty in opportunity and the optimist always finds opportunity in difficulty.” - Anonymous
Hasbro's latest Play-Doh accessory, 'The Extruder'. The company has decided to replace it.
Wonder what they'll think of next? I shudder at the thought.
"The incompetent with nothing to do can still make a mess of it."- Laurence J. Peter
Each year about this time I wonder why the news media blow off the last week (or two) of the year. Even before the year ends, we're already bombarded with 'The Best of 2014', 'Notable Deaths of 2014', etc. Whatever happened to actually waiting until the year ends?
Why, TIME even named its '2014 Person of the Year' on 10 December 2014! It was a very worthy selection - the Ebola fighters. No complaints from me. But what if someone had perpetrated a devastating terrorist attack, discovered a cure for AIDS, started a nuclear war, negotiated a lasting Middle East peace, exposed the Kardashians as a bunch of no-talent morons, or performed some other remarkable feat between 10 and 31 December?
What would have been lost by waiting? Would someone else have beaten TIME to the punch?
Below is the cover of the 31 December 2014 issue of The Week, which arrived today, 26 December 2014. The news is already close to a week old. Yet the magazine is chock full of 2014 lists, some of whose items could be obsolete by 1 January 2015.
I suppose much of this is motivated by journalistic one-upmanship. But it seems to me that be that, in this case, one-opmanship would best be illustrated by waiting until the year is actually over. Do something different - do it right.
Interesting to note that today is the 10th anniversary of Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami. If you search old (unedited) 'Notable Events of 2004' I wonder how many have this devastating disaster listed?
Note added on 28 December 2014: the media are bursting with stories about the disappearance of AirAsia Flight 8501. You can bet it's too late to appear on many 2014 lists, even though it might prove worthy of inclusion.
"We cannot make good news out of bad practice." - Edward R. Murrow
Season's greetings!
See what we've been doing!
Word doc (6.8 MB):Download 2014_ACJF_Newsletter_Fall_v1_Read_only
PDF (2.7 MB): Download 2014_ACJF_Newsletter_Fall_v1
Enjoy!
“We have conquered Mother Nature; now we have only to conquer human nature.” - D.R. Knowlton, 1939 (thanks to John Hawley)
Hard to imagine that this is the eighth anniversary of Campanastan's birth (the blog, that is). I originally named it 'Aquablog' but soon changed it to its present moniker: Reason: people might have confused it with my professional persona - that of a dyed-in-the-wool, inveterate WaterWonk. That persona is represented by my WaterWired blog, started just a few weeks later.
My first post:
Okay, here we go. So as to avoid inflicting my ramblings on others without their acquiescence, I've entered the blogosphere and become a blogger along with a few million others. I can now post all my infamous semi-fictional "travel reports" and whatever drivel (funny or bizarre news items, aphorisms, stream-of-consciousness missives) I wish to write, and if folks want to read them, they can do so at their leisure (risk?) without my cluttering up their inboxes. Some might say this is, like Seinfeld, a blog about "nothing".
Welcome to Aquadoc's blog, aka
AQUABLOG!
So come back for more, and remember to....
"Never underestimate the power of very stupid people in large groups." -- John Kenneth Galbraith
I think I've lived up to Seinfeld; this is, in fact, a blog about "nothing". As a matter of fact....
"The whole reason you watch a TV show is because it ends. If I wanted a long, boring story with no point to it, I've got my life." - Jerry Seinfeld
From XKCD. Where else?
"When life gives you lemons, go find a kid with a paper cut and make his life miserable." - Unknown
Hard to believe that 27 years ago tonight Mary Frances and I had our first date. But it was hardly a date; more like two very good friends meeting for perhaps the last time. We dined at Marie Callender's in Reno, then enjoyed The Princess Bride at the movie theater.
Mary Frances had resigned her post as head of the libraries at the Desert Research Institute and was leaving the next morning for a position in San Diego. We had both been in relationships (I, a marriage) that had fallen apart. We just had a real good time for a few hours. After that, who knew?
We drifted apart. I went on sabbatical to UC-Santa Cruz in 1988-89 and left DRI for the University of New Mexico in summer 1989. She stayed in San Diego, building a new life. But five years after that Reno date, I picked up the phone and called her. I was expecting (hoping for?) her answering machine but got 'the real thing'. We had a wonderful conversation, she invited me down in early 1993, and on 3 October 1993 we wed at Lake Tahoe (Nevada side). It's been a sweet ride lo these 21+ years.
And we both still love The Princess Bride.
"Please consider me as an alternative to suicide." - Prince Humperdinck
From the Harvard Business Review.
Here's an Anglo-Dutch translation guide (click on the table to enlarge it):
Glad I don't speak to many Dutch speakers.
“How you look at it is pretty much how you'll see it.” ― Rasheed Ogunlaru
Who could have imagined that this would be the front page of the 14 December 2014 New York Daily News?
Hard to believe that the Newtown massacre is two years old. Still seems like the SOS prevails.
"Where you have the most armed citizens in America, you have the lowest violent crime rate. Where you have the worst gun control, you have the highest crime rate." - Ted Nugent
"Yes, people pull the trigger - but guns are the instrument of death. Gun control is necessary, and delay means more death and horror." - Eliot Spitzer
Then there's this one....
“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” - Martin Luther King, Jr.
Thanks to Joe Dellapenna and EBook Korner Kafé.
“I went to a bookstore and asked the saleswoman, 'Where's the self-help section?' She said if she told me, it would defeat the purpose.” - George Carlin
Probably hasn't been nearly 20 million years but it sounds good.
I still love them. Amazing creatures! Just remember - they'd eat us if they could!
"And as to utility to humans, let us just say cats do not take instruction well." - Stephen J. O'Brien
Great way to begin the last month of the year - a post about the evolution of my favorite mammalian quadrupeds. Elaine Hanford sent me the link to the diagram (click on it to enlarge it) and story from Earth Times.
And here is my favorite feline, Galahad (aka 'G-had'), patiently (???) awaiting lunch.
"Cats are intended to teach us that not everything in nature has a purpose." - Garrison Keillor
Recent Comments