Sam from explodingdog has finished his first book. I bought one.

I still want to buy him lunch someday.

At lunch the other day, a woman waiting on take out sushi was wearing a button-down blouse backwards. This is not the sort of thing which happens by accident. While I respect the presumed intention of pushing personal fashion into new places, I came away with one conclusion:

Wearing button down shirts backwards makes you look insane.

Then I remembered when I taught at the Irvine Fine Arts Center’s Arts Camp (1987-1990?) and some of the kids would wear their father’s old button down shirts backwards to keep paint off their clothes. No one thought the kids were crazy, but no one really thinks kids are crazy until they get to high school. I started at Arts Camp as a summer camp counselor, then went on to teach the afternoon open studio. Most of the kids were between the ages of 5 and 10. Teaching there was a great experience for me although it freaks me out to think that most of those “kids” are now in their twenties.

Anyway, that woman with the backwards shirt at the sushi place; still nuts.

For the past several weeks I’ve been trying to understand how Final Cut Pro works with aspect ratios vs. standard D1 video. Tonight I think I found a document which might contain the answers I’ve been looking for. When I finally understand all of this, I’m switching to pottery.

I’m getting really tired of talking about terrorists and Anthrax. I think I’m as scared of Donald Rumsfeld as I am of Usama Bin Laden. All my childhood fears about nuclear wars and terrorism turn out to have nothing to do with childhood.

I’m going make an effort to post about some other stuff, then everyone will find out how boring I really am.

(but before I go too far, this new article at The Onion is more true than funny.)

An excellent article on Guardian Unlimited: ‘Brutality smeared in peanut butter’ by Arundhati Roy. Worth reading.

Saying it’s impossible for an individual to produce weapons-grade Anthrax is the same kind of flawed thinking which allowed hijacked passenger planes to be used as bombs. It’s possible, we’re likely seeing it right now.

People have been turning all sorts of thing into potentially aerosolized dust throughout history. The tools? A mortar and pestle. I’m not a biochemist, but how mechanically different can it really be to grind a clump of organic particles (spores) into dust? Harder than grinding a charred tree into dust?

In 1995, then 17 year old David Hahn built a small nuclear breeder reactor in a backyard shed. If a determined kid working fast food jobs can build a nuclear reactor with duct tape and smoke alarms, why shouldn’t a determined person be able to produce “weapons grade” anthrax without a huge factory?

The previous posting seemed pretty good so I decided to put it on MetaFilter.