Guccifer 2.0 Google Search Result Weirdnesses

How is it possible that a few posts scattered here at Mostly Harmless and on some of my other blogs last night led to their being more easily findable on google than anything Studio Dongo has posted on Guccifer 2.0 over the last several weeks?  Anyone who understands google search algorithms better than me, please feel free to respond!

My Favorite Shots from The Blizzard of 2014

I've been tweeting some blizzard photos over @mlyhlssgolf (featuring such immortal hashtags as #futilitymeetexercise, #moveoverSisyphus, and #blizzardhacks), but that doesn't allow me to arrange related shots.  So here's a little tour of The Constructivist Family's neighborhood from Tuesday to Friday.

Let's start with the view from right near the end of my driveway on Wednesday morning.

Compare it to the view from my neighbor's flat roof looking in the opposite direction from a few houses to the right of mine relative to the previous picture.  This one was taken Friday morning.

Next up are a couple of shots of our front entryway (which fortunately we never use anyway), first from Wednesday morning (in the aftermath of round 1) and next from Thursday night (in the midst of round 2):

The snow and ice formations on our back roof were strange and beautiful.  The first 2 are from Wednesday morning:

This one's from just about 25 hours later:

Let's go back to some street views, these ones featuring my trusty shovel (which for maybe the 2nd time since we moved to Hamburg actually needed an assist from a neighbor's snowblower)!  First from Thursday morning (this one I did by myself); you can see half of the neighbor's house across the street that kicked off this photoessay:

Next is the same time, opposite point-of-view:

Here's a close-up from Friday morning:

I was excited because I had just reached the edge of my driveway.  Yup, I probably spent about 5 hours just shovelling off the road this week.  The plows just couldn't keep the streets their normal width.

So here are my 3 favorite shots of the week.  The first is from about lunchtime on Wednesday, when I had cleared my flat roof off for the 2nd time of the week and all seemed well with the world:

Next up is an action shot from Tuesday (while onechan and imoto were still excited about playing outside!):

I'm nostalgic for how low those mounds at the end of my driveway were back then!  Didn't realize my shovel photobombed that shot until just now, either!

Here's the Full Metal Archivist wishing everyone a good night yesterday evening:

Here's hoping this turns out to be the worst one we have to deal with in our entire time in Hamburg!

[Update (2:58 pm):  Onechan has other ideas.  After the Full Metal Archivist and I cleared enough snow off our garage roof that the girls could climb up onto and slide down it safely, she exclaimed, "This is the best day ever!!  I can't wait for the next huge storm!"  Here are some photos from this morning:

And to top it off:

Yup, hot chocolate and the FMA's own twist on kimchi jigae!]

Fortunately, the Defrost

So we got over 8" of snow here in Hamburg in what feels like the 1st winter storm since 2010 not to suddenly weaken, veer off, or blow through too fast to do much damage.  And more may be coming.  Yada yada yada.  That's life in western NY.  Or at least life like it oughtta be this time of year.  That's not the weird thing.

The weird thing is that my Versa's defrost went haywire on my way to work this morning and it turned out to be serious enough that I had to get the car towed and will have to pay a boatload of money to get it fixed.  Bad luck, right?  Well, yeah, but at least I was lucky enough to semi-glide my way to a place to park the car until I could sort things out--lucky not to slide off the road or into the oncoming lane when I was navigating via peering out my driver's side window, that is.  But that's not the weirder thing.

The weirder thing is that my Versa's defrost went haywire about a mile before I hit the Thruway entrance on my way to work this morning, at a time that prevented me from renting a car to get down to Fredonia.  Snow day!  And a pretty good day for it, as there were so many accidents between Hamburg and Dunkirk on the Thruway that they shut down that section of it.

The odds were pretty decent that I might have been involved in one of those accidents.  And even better that I would have been stranded in Fredonia overnight--the same night Onechan and Imoto's cousin from Okinawa (whom I'll call Onichan) arrived (safely, if an hour late) for a month-long stay with us.

As it was, I got to experience the utter weirdness of having shovelled the snow out of my driveway into piles up to my chest in places and an hour later driving completely dry roads just 20 miles north on the way to the Buffalo airport.  In fact, there was barely any snow at the Wegmans at which we do most of our grocery shopping just 5 miles north of us.  Even the Erie County Fairgrounds about a mile north of us got a lot less snow than we did in the village.

That was the weirdest thing.  Too bad Onichan was too jet-lagged to really appreciate it.

Signs o' the GNF: Hayao Miyazaki Retires, Futurama Airs Its Last Episode

Just saw on Japanese TV that Hayao Miyazaki held a press conference to announce his retirement.  At the end, the anime legend told reporters this would be his last public appearance.  Miyazaki's films have meant a lot to the Constructivist family and we're sad to see him go.  But when you leave behind Totoro, Spirited Away, Ponyo, Kiki's Delivery Service, Princess Mononoke, Howl's Moving Castle, Nausicaa, and Studio Ghibli, he'll never really be gone.

Which leads me to the end of Futurama.  I love the way the last episode tunnels back to the first episode and makes the entire series into a long time loop.  Pretty meta way to get at the way all fictional characters end up repeating the same words and actions--and a pretty romantic way to convince us that for Frye and Leela, at least, this would lead to happiness and love rather than despair or boredom.  If I weren't so busy, I'd watch every episode in order as a tribute!

OMG! 18-Year-Old "Screen Golf" Champion Qualifies for KLPGA Event!

You have to follow the following comment thread over at Seoul Sisters.com!  It's easy to overlook at first--ho-hum, another teenage future star coming out of South Korea, right?  But wait!  This teenager is famous for being the leading money-winner on the Women's G-Tour, a professional tour in South Korea played entirely on virtual golf machines.

Haeji Choi is the name, "screen golf" is her game:





Paging Mr. Baudrillard! Mr. Baudrillard? Jean Baudrillard? Your golf simulator is ready....

It gets better!  Check out the awards ceremony:





Words fail!

(And, yes, So Yeon Ryu shows up in both videos!)

On the Conservation of Matter and Greed

Just checking in with a little eco-commentary from my favorite philosopher scamps.

Not Golf

But it could be, because there's an over the water driving range just to the right of where we're looking.

RIP Satoshi Kon

Just heard the news of Satoshi Kon's passing. After Hayao Miyazaki, he was probably my favorite anime director. From his contribution to the animated sf anthology Memories (1995) to his first feature film Perfect Blue (1997), to his 2 best movies, Millennium Actress (2001) and Tokyo Godfathers (2003), to the tv series Paranoia Agent (2004) and his last film Paprika (2006), he was nearly always pitch-perfect, mystifying, engrossing. He will be missed.

flora flora flora

William Benzon, 1912-1998: He Went Out Swinging and Smooth Shaven

My father, William Benzon, was born on Jan. 31, 1912 in Baltimore, MD, and died November 21, 1998 in Allentown PA. His parents were Danish immigrants. For about the first sic years of his life he lived with his parents and two older sisters, Karen and Signe, on Curtis Bay in Baltimore in a house which had formerly been a yacht club. The family then moved to Longwood St. He attended Boy's Latin School and, according to his high school year book, was regarded as an intellectual and as the 2nd brightest in his class. He was on the boxing, fencing, and football teams and his favorite expression was "Well blow me down."

He did two years at the University of Virginia, where he managed to run up gambling debts that his father had to satisfy. He completed his college education at Johns Hopkins, graduating in 1934 with a degree in chemical engineering. He then went to work for Bethlehem Steel (initially at Sparrows Point) where he spent his entire career. He entered their "loop" program which was for hotshot college graduates they wanted to nurture. I don't what his initial duties were or how he ended up in the mining division of the company (Bethlehem Mines Corp.). He spent most of his career there and rose to Superintendent of Coal Preparation, a position that was created for him. He stayed in that post until his retirement in 1974. He continued to consult on coal preparation after retirement.

Early in his career he moved to Johnstown Pa. where Bethlehem Mines had its headquarters. There he met my mother, Elizabeth Tredennick, and married her in 1940. I was born in 1947 and my sister in 1951.

What was he like?

He was a brilliant man, attaining an international reputation in his field, coal preparation. He was also a loving father, expressing his love in various ways, including making some very fine things for me and my sister. He made furniture for my sister’s dolls, a high chair, and a very elegant play pen with the letters of the alphabet cut into the slats. He made me a gorgeous Indian headress – feathers of various kinds, ermine tails, abalone shell ornament, a beaded head band – and various swords and knives etc. as appropriate for various Halloween costumes. He encouraged my sister and me in whatever we wanted to do. When I went off to Hopkins and grew long hair, a beard and mustache, that was OK. And so was going to graduate school in something as impractical as English literature. When, as an adult I needed to borrow money from him because I was out of work, he loaned me money (even after he had retired and was obviously living on a fixed income). He never ever suggested that I "face reality" and move into the corporate world, etc. He knew my intellectual work was important and helped me pursue that, as he has helped my sister pursue her interest in poetry.

He was an intellectual and books were important to him; he had many of them, including many he inherited from his father. I remember a number of Christmas seasons where he read Dickens' A Christmas Carol to the family after dinner on a number of evenings. And he certainly read stories to me before bed as a child – I remember him reading me from Mark Twain, Rafael Sabatini, and others. I was particularly struck by his ability to read dialog so naturally, with expression, like people would actually have said it. He spent a great deal of time helping me and my sister with our homework. He never just told me answers or worked problems. He always asked questions designed to lead me to the answers myself.

My father had an excellent sense of humor, which he slyly attributed to his Danish heritage. He loved Mark Twain, Charles Dickens, Lewis Carroll, and one Jerome K. Jerome, and the Marx Brothers. He was also quite fond for Victor Borge. For one thing, Borge was from Denmark, where his parents were born and raised. Borge's humor was often of a linguistic nature, and my father was interested in language (he owned books by Otto Jesperson, the Danish scholar of the English language, and H. L. Mencken). Borge was a musician and much of his humor involved committing mayhem on various pieces of classical and not-so-classical music.

An Athlete - Golf

He was a good and dedicated athlete. Beyond his high-school sports he was also an excellent swimmer and loved the sea. As an adult he was a cyclist (mostly in his youth, in Baltimore and in his early days in Johnstown) and, above all, golf. 

He took up the sport as an adult and pursued it passionately. During his prime – say from 30 though 55 – he had a single digit handicap, even as low as two or three. He kept systematic notes about his game throughout his entire golfing career. One winter he painted golf balls in red nail polish and golfed in the snow. He experimented with putters he either built himself or modified from putters he'd bought. He also had ideas about custom golf shoes which he half-way finished (my sister and I found the half-completed shoes in the basement).

One of the highlights of his life was playing golf at St. Andrews in Scotland (he shot 81 on one round). He read a great deal about the sport, knew its history backwards and forwards, and had a good collection of golf books, including a classic written by a relative of Charles Darwin. It is absolutely clear to me that, as I use music to balance out my intellectuality, so my father used golf to achieve balance in his life.

Stamps

My father was an avid stamp collector, with particular interests in Canada, Liberia, Germany, and China. He loved the look of stamps, their design (line, color, shape, form, etc.), but also what they told about history and society. Stamps were his vehicle for encountering and organizing human history. Stamps commemorate individuals, events, ideas, and so forth, and thus tell the history of the nations that issue them. All of that was important to my father.

As was the craft of collecting itself. Used stamps are, of course, stuck on envelopes. They have to be separated from the envelope before they can be mounted in books. So my rather spend hours doing that. He had special chemicals, magnifying glasses, balances, tweezers, hinges etc. all relevant to the physical preparation of the stamps. He had books about stamps, and catalogues. He engaged in extensive correspondence with various stamp dealers, some he had come to know on an all but personal basis, even though he'd never met them. Over the years he'd developed relationships with them though the simple and cumulative acts of buying stamps.

Professional Life

In his professional life by father was awareded three patents for ideas he came up with about coal preparation. Bethlehem Steel used coal as fuel in smelting the iron out of iron ore. However, coal typically is laced with impurities, generally rock and sulfur compounds. It was my father's job to design the plants that separated coal from these various impurities. He traveled to Holland to learn techniques the Dutch had invented and introduced these techniques into this country.

His job required him to go into coal mines, where he developed sympathy with the coal miners. He came to feel that anyone with responsibility for making decisions about the operation of coal mines needs experience in working in coal mines in some way in order to understand what was at stake. (How many BP managers have worked on off-shore oil rigs?) Though he spent his professional life among managers, he was unsympathetic to managers who didn't understand how brutal manual labor could be.

Politically he was a Democrat when most of his professional colleagues were Republican. I can remember him telling me about how he and his colleagues were under pressure from the company to contribute to the Republican party and how Bethlehem discouraged its employees from buying foreign cars (he bought a Volkswagen in the mid-sixties because it was a good and economical car). I suspect this is why he was sympathetic to my anti-war activities.

Back to his professional life, he spent good deal of time explaining his work to me, which I enjoyed a great deal. I am proud of what he did and feel that he never got the credit he deserved.

He Went Out Swinging

And so we are brought to his death. He died in style.

He had gone into the hospital to have his bladder removed as treatment for cancer. The surgery went well, but he got blood poisoning afterward and that resulted in a badly swollen colon. A gastroenterologist attempted to scope out his colon and to relieve some of the gas that had built up. The colon was so badly inflamed, however, that they couldn't insert the endoscope deeply enough to relieve any gas; there was a threat that attempting to do so would perforate the colon. The gastroenterologist thought there was little chance that even the aggressive antibiotic therapy they were using would be successful; the colon was too badly inflamed. My father’s only hope was to remove the colon. He decided against the surgery.

I don't really know why he decided against the surgery. By that time his lungs were so burdened with water that he could talk only with great difficulty. When asked, for the 3rd, 4th, or 5th time in a period of several hours, whether or not he wanted surgery or whether he wanted to die he said, in a commanding tone, "I want to go." When a young pastoral intern came by to talk he asked her to "pray for my family" – he was clearly thinking of my mother, for he was not himself a religious man. When I asked, with very practical and mundane considerations on my mind, whether there was anyone he wanted to handle the liquidation of his stamp collection he was able to tell me "William Weiss, he's in the phone book." That's all he was able to say, so there was no possibility of extended discussion about why he preferred to die.

When he went in for the bladder surgery he knew that, when it was over, he would have to have a bag attached to his abdomen and empty it on a regular basis. My sister tells me that he had a great deal of difficulty facing up to this prospect but he decided to undergo the surgery. A successful colonoscopy would required at least three months for recovery, a difficult three months, after which he would be able to return to an almost normal life. He wouldn't have been able to lift anything over 20 pounds and, of course, he would have another bag, this one for feces. He decided, somewhat to my sister's surprise, that he didn't want the surgery.

My guess, then, is that he didn’t want the reduced quality of life he would have had, nor did he want to impose a burden on my mother that she could not handle (she had Alzhimer’s). He had lead a rich, full life, and was going to die some day. Why not now?

Given that there was to be no surgery, one more decision had to be made. Dad was on very aggressive medication, perhaps six IV drips of one sort or another. Did it make any sense to continue this therapy in the unlikely hope that a miracle would happen and the infection would clear up? Or would it be better to stop the medication and allow him to die with less fuss and clutter? We discussed this with the surgical resident on duty and decided to stop all the medication except the antibiotics and to allow him a morphine drip to make him more comfortable.

And it was done.

When, later that day, my sister, my mother, and me returned to the hospital, Dad was restless and tossed and turned quite a bit. Both my sister and I asked him whether or not he was uncomfortable and he indicated that he was not. One time when I asked him how he felt he just shrugged his shoulders and looked at me as if to say, "How should I know how I feel, I've never done this before." One thing he did, and it was quite striking, was to clasp his hands together and move them together over his right shoulder and then down to his waist. He seemed to be practicing his golf swing.

By this time the the morphine drip had began to relax him. Figuring we might have to be here all night, my sister, mother, and I went to the waiting room to rest. When we returned the nurse to his room, Gino, a nurse, was shaving him. Gino told us that he'd asked Dad if he wanted a shave and Dad indicated that he did. Dad had enough presence of mind to move his chin and cheeks to cooperate with the shave. Then he simply went to rest. About 10 minutes or so after that he'd died.

He went out swinging and smooth shaven.

Blow Your Nose for Peace

I attended yesterday's (2 May 2010) anti-nuke demonstration in Manhattan, at which the Japanese contingent out-numbered all others by three or four to one. Some of the Japanese were handing out small packets of facial tissue, like this:

I can't read Japanese, but I recognize the number 9 when I see it. In this context that means Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution, the constitution imposed on them after WWII. Article 9 prohibits the state from waging war. Perhaps the Japanese are telling us that the U.S. Constitution needs a similar article? Here's the other side of the pack of tissue:

. . . where you found this insert:

The Hibakusha are the survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Peace Now! - First Mix

Sakaki Rides a Dolphin in the New Savanna

Hey kids! I've set up a new blog, just around the corner. It's called New Savanna. And it's got photos and writing AND, a longish piece about a dolphin ride that I couldn't post at That Other Place. It's got about 10 seconds or so in Azumanga Daioh, one of the cutest anime series ever (for tweeners, I suppose).

Girls Playing Brass

There's a boy or two, but it's mostly girls. And they're fantastic!

Have a Very My Melo QSMS!

OK, OK, the girls would never forgive me if I only did a (belated) Hanukah post this year. So for QSMS 2009 we're going Onegai My Melody!

'Twas the Afternoon Before Honika... Uh, Two Weeks Ago

OK, so I'm a little late with this, but I finally finished grading and it's time to celebrate! Actually, T-Joh is to blame for this departure from my usual anime Hanukah thing:



That's the real Lady Gaga in there, right?

For background on Smooth-E, check out this youtube timeline of Hanukah-themed parody songs:





Merry QSMS, everyone!

[Update 1 (12:24 pm): OMG, I'm such a bad Jew I even got the title and timing of this post wrong! Should have posted it at sundown so I could have called it "'Twas the Sundown Before Honika... Uh, Two Weeks Ago"! Yeesh.]

All Hail 3Tops-san

Ashes to ashes

Paint to paint

Where 3Tops was

Now 3Tops ain't

Move Over, Joe the Plumber!

Bobbio at Average Golfer considers the tax implications for Joe PGA-Tour-Winner of an Obama victory. Who said there'll be no Joe this weekend?

this video rocks!

Flobots - Handlebars

Sparkychan Flix

Sparkychan has authorized me to release the following pictures of her Grandpaland adventure:



Is she looking for a Fill-Oz-of-Her or is she pretending to ride a pony? Or both?

Here she is thinking and contemplating. Maybe's she's wondering when she'll have ice cream and tea with Gojochan and Onechan and Imoto:



And here she's giving reality the Old Test: