January 1, 2005 [LINK]

Happy New Year!

¡Feliz Año Nuevo!

Bon Any Nou!

That last greeting is in Catalonian, for you folks in Rio Linda. For more on politics and culture in the non-Spanish part of Spain in the region around Barcelona, see the barcepundit blog. ¡Hola, Montse, Josep, y Laura!

January 12, 2005 [LINK]

Apple aims low

Steve Jobs announced a whole slew of new hardware and software products at the MacWorld Convention in San Francisco yesterday. The Mac Mini sells for $499 but has no monitor, mouse, or keyboard. Obviously, Apple is counting on a lot of potential customers with seldom-used PCs for which the peripheral devices are not worn out. Interesting gamble. The iPod Shuffle, the first in the line that is based on flash memory rather than a hard disk, sells for $99 or $149. Both of these budget items represent Apple's first serious attempt to broaden its customer base into the low end of the market. They made tentative such attempts in the mid and late-1990s, but never followed through. This belated marketing shift stands in contrast to the ironic emergence of the Mac as an elitist platform for hard-core computer geeks, publishing houses, and software developers, not the user-friendly "computer for the rest of us" as it was originally billed in the mid-to-late 1980s. As for programs, iWork is the l-o-n-g awaited successor to AppleWorks, but its only components are word processing and presentation. The latter apparently replaces Keynote, Apple's answer to PowerPoint. What about number crunching??? For more, see washingtonpost.com and Apple.

January 14, 2005 [LINK]

Winter fungus: "Witch's Butter"!

Even in the middle of January one can find some of Mother Nature's colorful beauty if you just look hard enough. While strolling through the nearby woods in a rather unproductive search for birds today (very cold and wet all of a sudden!), I came across this bright yellow-orange fungus with a jelly-like consistency. It is not in my copy of A Field Guide to Southern Mushrooms, but it is similar enough to the "Wood ear" fungus that I was able to narrow down my Google search. I soon determined that it is member of the species Tremella mesenterica, or "Witch's Butter" in the vernacular. Yum!? You can read all about it from "Mushroom Expert" at XXXXXX. What would we do without Google??? [NOTE: On Feb. 11, 2006 I was told by someone viewing this Web site that the link previously included here no longer functions, so I have deleted it.]

UPDATE: Thanks to Lynn Mitchell for pointing out the obvious fact that the wrong year has been displaying in nearly all blog entries since January 4. Fortunately, BBEdit has a superb search-and-replace function that let me fix that very quickly.

January 19, 2005 [LINK]

Jeff Foxworthy on South Dakota

With outside temperatures in the teens or lower for the third straight day, it's beginning to seem a lot like my home state, South Dakota. Out there on the high plains, "where all the kids are above average," strong character is instilled by the harsh elements at an early age, and no one complains about a touch of frostbite here or there. Coincidentally, I just got this from an old friend I saw for the first time in ages last summer, Rich Raab. Some of these jokes may escape folks who hail from milder climes:

• If you consider it a sport to gather your food by drilling through 18 inches of ice and sitting there all day hoping that the food will swim by, you might live in South Dakota.
• If you're proud that your region makes the national news 96 nights each year because Milbank is the coldest spot in the nation, you might live in South Dakota.
• If your local Dairy Queen is closed from November through March, you might live in South Dakota.
• If you instinctively walk like a penguin for five months out of the year, you might live in South Dakota.
• If someone in a store offers you assistance, and they don't work there, you might live in South Dakota.
• If your dad's suntan stops at a line curving around the middle of his forehead, you might live in South Dakota.
• If you have worn shorts and a parka at the same time, you might live in South Dakota.
• If your town has an equal number of bars and churches, you might live in South Dakota.
• If you have had a lengthy telephone conversation with someone who dialed a wrong number, you might live in South Dakota.

YOU KNOW YOU ARE A TRUE South Dakotan WHEN:

• 1. "Vacation" means going east or west on I-90 for the weekend.
• 2. You measure distance in hours.
• 3. You know several people who have hit a deer more than once.
• 4. You often switch from "heat" to "A/C" in the same day and back again.
• 5. You can drive 65 mph through 2 feet of snow during a raging blizzard, without flinching.
• 6. You see people wearing camouflage at social events (including weddings).
• 7. You install security lights on your house and garage and leave both unlocked.
• 8. You carry jumper cables in your car & your girlfriend knows how to use them.
• 9. You design your kid's Halloween costume to fit over a snowsuit.
• 10. Driving is better in the winter because the potholes are filled with snow.
• 11. You know all 4 seasons: almost winter, winter, still winter & road construction.
• 12. Your idea of creative landscaping is a statue of a deer next to your blue spruce.
• 13. You were unaware that there is a legal drinking age.
• 14. Down South to you means Nebraska.
• 15. A brat is something you eat.
• 16. Your neighbor throws a party to celebrate his new pole shed.
• 17. You go out to a tail gate party every Friday.
• 18. Your 4th of July picnic was moved indoors due to frost.
• 19. You have more miles on your snow blower than your car.
• 20. You find 0 degrees "a little chilly."
• 21. You actually understand these jokes, and you forward them to all your South Dakota friends. Sad....but true!!!

January 24, 2005 [LINK]

Johnny Carson

News of the death of Johnny Carson yesterday came to me as an awful shock, almost rivaling the sudden death of John Lennon in 1980. I had no idea Carson was suffering from emphysema, and I always assumed he would come back some day and make us all laugh one more time. Jack Benny, George Burns, Bob Hope ... Can we call them The Greatest Generation of Comedy? He was quite younger than those others, of course. In fact, he was attending the University of Nebraska at the same time my father was, and like Tom Brokaw, his professional devotion and unassuming, pleasant nature made him stand out from the crowd. For more, see johnnycarson.com (link via Donald Sensing). With all those reruns of his greatest moments being played, it's hard to sort out one's own memory from TV-induced "memory," but here are some of the things I think I remember most vividly from The Tonight Show while he was there:

• The Mighty Carson Art Players, with the mustachioed fast-talking salesman; the same routines just got funnier every time
• Chimps and countless other wild animals peeing on his suit
• Tiny Tim's wedding to Miss Vicky in 1969
• Drew Carey's first stand-up comedy act -- I almost split a gut laughing!
• And of course, that classy, poignant farewell episode. Goodnight, Johnny.