Paralipsis

You have to love this sort of thing. http://macenstein.com/default/archives/1562

Over in the valley there’s a 24-hour pawn shop that makes me a bit nervous. On the one hand I like the notion that if you really, really, really need money you can get it any time at a little bullet-proof window near katella, however on the other hand I can’t imagine a lot […]

I recently had the opportunity to experience the ultimate in vendor stupidity. I placed an order for a new phone and then called to cancel the order 5 hours later. The cancellation call was around 11am the same day I placed the order with the vendor. Instead of simply canceling my order, […]

The Great Southern California ShakeOut
November 12–16, 2008
The Great Southern California ShakeOut is a week of special events featuring the largest earthquake drill in U.S. history, organized to inspire Southern Californians to get ready for big earthquakes, and to prevent disasters from becoming catastrophes.

As someone who must saddle his students with pricey textbooks, I try as much as possible to avoid requiring anything but the barest essentials. However, sometimes there are materials the student needs to have in order to be successful in a class. Frankly making the tradeoff between recommended (i.e. never-bought and never-read) and […]

I shouldn’t be, but I’m amazed that there are still gullible crackpots who are earnestly working every day toward achieving free energy. Not in a tongue-in-cheek, or steampunk-cybergoth manner, but in an actual effort to achieve the impossible of free, perpetual energy. A world filled with alleged friend-of-a-friend witnessing of a running perpetual […]

This just in, eating food makes you fat, exercise makes you hungry.
The one thing that might be said about exercise with certainty is that it tends to makes us hungry. Maybe not immediately, but eventually. Burn more calories and the odds are very good that we’ll consume more as well. And this simple […]

An excellent article, Animals Are Not Things which describes animal welfare from a very pragmatic point of view. My favorite quote:
I am not required to keep a pair of screwdrivers in my toolbox, so that they can socialize with other screwdrivers.
Although, I should point out that I have several dozen screwdrivers in my screwdriver […]

Para Publishing has a fascinating collection of statistics about the book publishing industry.

A successful fiction book sells 5,000 copies.
A successful nonfiction book sells 7,500 copies.
59% of the customers plan to purchase a specific book when entering a bookstore.
40% make impulse purchases.
2002: Of the $23.7 billion spent on books, only $10.7 […]

Working at a university, I can only say that The Freshmen is stunningly true.
On the first day of class he asks them a question. “What would you be doing if you were not in College?” They reply that they would be working in a retail store, construction, or at the paper mill in their […]