Still a little behind on Colbert, but this from earlier in the week was full of nerdy goodness.

I tweeted yesterday that this having a day job thing is really interfering with my me time. It was kind of a joke. But kind of not. I still haven't found time to put together the post I was contemplating around the State of the Union, nor the one about the Challenger anniversary (though I will here link to this audio bit from NPR about astronaut Ron McNair; it's keen), nor anything about what's keeping me busy of late. Because it's keeping me busy. And really, how interesting is it anyway?

I haven't read through all of the January box o' comics yet and the February box is due any day. I'm behind on Colberts. I hear my favorite coffee house is closed for some reason and has been for weeks. Many calls I intended to make a month ago are still unmade. Stupid work.

And it's going to get worse from here — Constellation gigs are still active and will create some real time management issues in another month or so.

So, while I have a minute here, during my interval of lunch-eating, a few links:

• Here is an awesome Battlestar Galactica map of the 12 Colonies. Genius interpretation of how twelve human-habitable worlds can be situated in close proximity (astronomically speaking). Brilliant.
• Ain't it Cool News reports on a potential HBO series by Aaron Sorkin about cable news. I want to see this.
• Darrin Bell is the cartoonist I always wanted to be, and here are a couple of Candorvilles that could have come out of my head in slightly different form if I'd gotten a syndication gig. Lemont explains the limists of Facebook and also voices concerns about side-effects that I totally relate to.
• And then there's this piece from HuffPo about climate change and the stark evidence we see of it today. The author sums up my frustrations about how climate change legislation and policy debates get bogged down thusly: “Physics and chemistry don't care what John Boehner thinks, they're unmoved by what will make Barack Obama's reelection easier. More carbon means more heat means more trouble — and the trouble has barely begun.”

There's more, but I really need to get back to work. Stupid work.

This post is a note to self. I have been intending to comment on a number of things this week — State of the Union address, the Challenger anniversary, National League rules at Safeco Field, my fast-approaching Jackie Robinson/Douglas Adams birthday (it's always sort of a Jackie Robinson birthday, as he and I share the date), and some nerdly goodness on BSG and Colbert's hilarious analysis of Taco Bell meat — but it's been a busy week at work and a tired time at home (and, as described earlier, pretty damned cranky the first few days of the week). A couple of things are in the draft folder, but those are easy to ignore. Putting a note on the live site might prompt some actual posts over the weekend.

Also going to Mariners FanFest tomorrow to get a little offseason ballpark fix. Don't know if that will prompt anything postable.

Iron Man was a terrifically fun movie (whereas the sequel was kind of lame), and it has now gotten the HISHE treatment, building on the brilliant “How Superman: The Movie Should Have Ended.” Enjoy.

I know this fellow who has been living in Vietnam for a while now, and his blog about the various experiences of Expat Andy in Asia is usually interesting to peruse. Today's installment confronts the issue of meat-eating. Specifically, the types of meat our culture is OK with eating and the types it's not, and is there in fact any logic to our meat comfort? Check it out here, and say hi to Andy from wherever you are in the world.

I don't have anything in particular to post about today, but I am in the midst of Killing Some Time™ while I await some stuff to come down the pipe here at work, so here I am.

People are starting to ask me what I'm going to do for my birthday at the end of the month. Answer: I don't know. I'll probably have a gathering of sorts, either at home or elsewhere, and it probably will be delayed by a week or two. I just haven't given it any thought and there's some football game or other on during the weekend following, just like every damn year, that people seem to plan their lives around.

Went to a meeting today for work that used at least 15 or 20 acronyms that make no sense to me. I'm still the New Guy.

Earlier in the week I went with this guy to see The Green Hornet. It was fun, and whether I am helped or hindered by not knowing much about the character in advance is debatable. If you go see it, be prepared to check your understanding of physics and automotive construction and electrical architecture at the door and enjoy the ride. Also, best if you don't think too much about the fatality rate of car crashes. That said, it's a hoot. The 3D isn't necessary, if you have the option. Here's what Erik had to say about it, and here's another take from a different Writer of Stuff.

This could be cool, or at least look cool from here: “Betelgeuse, one of the night sky's brightest stars, is losing mass, indicating it is collapsing. It could run out of fuel and go super-nova at any time. When that happens, for at least a few weeks, we'd see a second sun. There may also be no night during that timeframe.” Although, if I may nitpick with the technicalities of the language here, if we do see the supernova it will be because Betelgeuse has already exhausted its fuel and has already blown up some five to seven centuries ago or more (Betelgeuse is 500-700+ light-years away). If that has happened, and the explosive light reaches us soon, my Orion-based logo for Constellation will become obsolete....

I'm helping KMA out tonight at the Ron Reagan event, and tomorrow plan on going to see Wally Shawn, aka Grand Nagus Zek aka Vezzini aka much more interesting and multifaceted guy than those two characters he played, at Town Hall. Tickets $5. Could be fun!

Building on the TED Talks video I posted the other day, here's one of my favorite Science Nerds™, Michio Kaku, giving us an advance look at the world of the relatively near future. You think the cell phone is a technological marvel? How about the diagnostic toilet? (Skip to the 5 minute mark or so if you don't want to see the introductions.)

Last Saturday's carnage in my old hometown had the interesting side-effect of jarring my brain into reflection on my time living in Tucson and the reasons I left and the nature of “home.”

Before this happened, I didn't consider Tucson to be my “hometown.” I interpret words literally, for the most part, and thus my hometown is the town in which I make my home, which is Seattle. I rather rejected the town in which I grew up; it used to be home, but no longer, and I was quite glad to no longer live there. I still am glad not to live there, but having the national spotlight on places of my childhood and teenage years, even for such abhorrent and disturbing reasons, has prompted a change in attitude about the old stomping grounds. Not necessarily a change in opinion; I thought Arizona as a whole if not Tucson in particular was a social backwater and politically retarded when I left and if anything it's much worse in that respect today.

But I found I have some interesting sensory memory of things when looking at photos or watching video feeds surrounding this incident. The dry heat, the scent of the palo verdes and so on, the abstract “feel” of the environment. It kind of is actually home. It's ingrained.

Which isn't to say I want to go back. I can't think of a good reason to do that, or even a bad one. There's not even Spring Training there anymore (boy, did Pima County ever drop the ball on that one, so to speak). But I wouldn't mind a visit. And that's new; I haven't been back there in 10 years and have never missed it. But I'm curious now. How much has the city changed, how much empty desert has the sprawl eaten, is eegee's still awesome?

I chose a place to live that is in some ways 180 degrees opposite from the place I grew up in. Seattle is wet and green and urban, liberal and hi-tech. Tucson is arid and brown, aspires to be suburban, and many people walk around armed and macho in a university town whose non-academic economy is based on road construction, convenience stores, and strip clubs. Opposite right down to the area code, as my dad said once. I traded up.

But seeing the president speak from a few feet away from the clothespin sculpture on my old campus, watching interviews with people on the hospital grounds on Campbell Avenue (halfway between my old house and the comics shop I frequented), seeing photos of the landscaping of barrel cacti and ocotillo... I'm a little nostalgic, in a bizarre way.

Though I'm sure a couple of days back there would drive me back north in no time at all.

I really, really wanted this guy to be President.

Hmm. OK, the video isn't embeddable, it seems. See it/read the full transcript via Ezra Klein at the Washington Post.

We are the Borg.

Let's take a break from assassination outrage and enjoy some good old-fashioned religious debate. Colbert, O'Reilly, and the stylishly-razored Neil deGrasse Tyson on whether tides are proof of God or proof of gravity...

I don't know what to say, really, about what happened yesterday in my former hometown; it's shocking, it's horrific, and it's infuriating. Yet, despite the shock it is, in retrospect, not really a surprise.

Gabby Giffords is roughly my age, representing the district I grew up in. The attempt on her life occurred about a mile from where I went to school, not far from where we used to go for lunch in high school to confound the kids from CDO high with our motley bunch of punks, preppies, metalheads, and nerds hanging together. She is being treated at the hospital where my parents worked, where I have spent many an hour wandering halls and otherwise waiting around for them to be done with work for the day. It has a great feeling of familiarity...except the shooting part.

I suppose I was lucky not to have encountered any gun violence during my formative years in Tucson. Arizona's gun laws are a joke, several of my friends lived in homes with multiple guns in them, there were signs outside Hi Corbett Field and Tucson Electric Park imploring those attending ball games not to bring their guns inside the stadium. How is it I spent 18 years there and never saw a gunshot that wasn't staged? I'd like to think the place just wasn't as completely batshit crazy then as it is now. Bruce Babbitt was governor then, sanity seemed to prevail more often than not; if the political climate was as charged with violence and vitriol then, I wasn't aware of it.

But even if it's gotten more batshit recently, it's long been a state and a region that refuses to outgrow its Old West history. It's been 130 years since the Earps and Clantons had their gunfight at O.K., but there's still a segment of the Arizona populace that revels in that heritage, that would prefer everyone go around town armed and ready to settle their differences with bullets. (A larger segment that exists in the country at large, I mean; gun nuts are everywhere, I know.) This is also the state that continues to elect hardass mean-spirited John McCain, that has so much citizen apathy that mean-spirited bigot-baiting Jan Brewer got elected governor, that lives under oppressive temperatures half the year, and enjoys tourist attractions featuring “sheriffs” and “outlaws” firing off their six-shooters and sending each other plummeting off of rooftops. Hell, even Tucson's ABC TV affiliate uses the call letters K-GUN (I guess it's not ABC anymore but Fox; figures).

Which is all to say, given the violent metaphors and language used by (predominantly) the right wing of late — Sarah Palin's hit list with gunsights on congressional districts including Gabby Giffords', GOP candidates advertising meet-and-greet events that include firing semi-automatic weapons, presidential rallies where conservatives are encouraged to show up armed, and countless remarks about “taking out” opponents and “targeting” them for removal — it's not at all surprising that an actual political assassination attempt was made in the state of Arizona.

Or, in the words of Pima County sheriff Clarence Dupnik (glad to see he's still around), “The anger, the hatred, the bigotry that goes on in this country is getting to be outrageous. And unfortunately, Arizona I think has become sort of the capitol. We have become the mecca for prejudice and bigotry.”

I'm curious to know what, if anything, has been/is being determined about the shooter's motives. To see what, if anything, this incident will prompt in terms of reexamining gun control in general and in Arizona in particular. To see what, if anything, will change in the way politicians and pundits talk about issues and races. And I fervently hope to see Gabby Giffords recover and retake her place in Congress.

The “wheel keyboard.” Interesting.

All the talk about raising the debt ceiling, and how certain Republicans are making noise about how they won't vote for such a heinous thing, had me going, yeah, yeah, we've heard it before. Then I realized that at least one place I'd heard it before was from Toby Ziegler. Behold life imitating art imitating life.