Yes, clogs rock.

One you get over the tentacles and the cat pee smell, they’re alright. Just never, ever mention calamari.

Update: Luke McGuff reminded me that the site’s name is a jape at Margaret Atwood’s comment that Science fiction is rockets, chemicals and talking squids in outer space.

Star Wars memorabilia hunters mulling a bid shouldn’t get their hopes up. An Angels [the costume shop where the robes were found] spokesperson says there are no plans to sell the cloak — though auctioneers have valued it at as much as $45,000.

Cynthia found a pattern for a moebius strip scarf in Cat Bordhi’s book, and finished it tonight while we watched Witch Hunter Robin.

There’s a special cast-on (knitters have buzzwords too) you use to start the pattern, you don’t ‘cheat’ by knitting a rectangle and grafting the ends together with a half twist, so the resulting scarf really does have one edge, and no seams.

Updated: added photo of Cyn’s second moebius scarf in progress.

You can pick up your own supply of this “limited release” product simply by turning in a used Gulp Cap at your local grocery store. How to get a Gulp Cap? Well, if you know someone who’s already been “gulped,” they can give you one. And if you don’t know anyone who can give you one, don’t worry – that just means you aren’t cool. But very, very (very!) soon, you will be.

I’ve taken care of the presents for the name I drew, but don’t want to spoil the surprise.

He creates short-lived pieces, and few permanent works, out in the field, using the materials (leaves, driftwood, ice, pigments made from plant and minerals) at hand.

Some observations about why I think he’s good at it:

1. He embraces Wabi Sabi.

2. He’s not afraid of screwups.

   In one scene in the film, he’s building an elaborate, chaotic latticework out brambles and thorns. He talks about how he likes to build out to the edge of stability. The structure buckles and he tries to keep it together. It fails. Brambles fall, and he facepalms.

   Earlier, we see him building a pine cone shaped monolith out of pieces of slate-like rock on a beach in Novia Scotia. He’s racing to get it done before the tide comes in. By the time he’s done, he will had made five tries to build it.

3. He can find order in what appears to be the chaotic.

   His leaf pieces delight me. He will sort through fallen leaves on the forest floor, and cover a small puddle with a blanket of leaves in a color gradient, shading from purple, back to yellow.

   In another construction, he organized a line of stones along the bottom of a shallow, fast moving stream. He sought out stones contrasting with the uniform grey and created a subtle line of color running below and perpendicular to the current.

So Giblets and Fafnir talk estacology, and how they plan to transcend this whole spacetime thing.

Funny they mention that, as last week, Jeff Bone pointed out a physics paper about closed-space-like causality curves. The authors call these things ‘jinni’, but they sound like the plot to Back to the Future.

Aha!

1. Michael J. Fox played Marty McFly, the kid on the closed-space-like curve.
2. But he also played Alex P. Keaton, the Reganista teenager on Family Ties.
3. The Medium Lobster is a closed-space-like curve, and a conservative.

We can draw one conclusion:

While Brad DeLong and Gary Farber may speculate on the identity of Fafnir, it’s obvious that The Medium Lobster is Michael J. Fox.

Update: Jeff Bone writes in with a clarification, so that the silliness is rigorous:

At the risk of being needlessly pedantic, I thought I might point out that, AFAICT, your use of the term “spacelike” in the Medium Lobster post is in fact subtly incorrect. (Spacelike, timelike, what’s the diff? ;-) While you are correct that the use of “spacelike” usually implies faster-than-light and hence time-retrograde motion when used to describe motion itself, the (geometric) curves in question are indeed called “timelike” curves. This clearly confuses an already confusing situation, but is the common practice (cf. the paper in question.)

The motion of any particle along such a timelike curve is indeed spacelike for parts of its trip; its light cone precesses and the metric tensor takes on a negative value. But the curve itself is said to be timelike, perhaps in order to convey the idea that the overall curvature is indeed “through time.” Motion – spacelike. Curvature – timelike. Apparently.

A closed “spacelike” curve would then presumably be a path which merely closes itself in space, without the tangent of motion ever taking a negative metric tensor value. I.e., my commute to work everyday (at least when seen from my house as a rest frame. ;-)

burrito [-n "name"] [-t <time>] [-p phone#] [-9] [-d] [-x] [FoodSpec [...]]

I got to see this last fall at a Sprocket Ensemble show in Oakland. Mind you, Nik and his ensemble normally create music for animation, so when they let the original soundtrack stand, that’s a big endorsement.

The graffiti artist Banksy has managed to smuggle in his latest work, a dead rat in a glass-fronted box, into the Natural History Museum where it was exhibited on a wall for several hours.

…

The rat was stuffed and clad in wraparound sunglasses, scaled down to fit the top of its head, a rucksack on its back, and with a microphone in one paw.

And Hubble’s getting philosophical about death.

I’m waiting for Mars 3 to slap them upside the head with a dialectical clue.