Is Clownhall losing its touch?

Bizarre. Is ClownHall losing its touch? I was tooling around the radio and landed on AM 1590, "Freedom Radio," a wholly-owned outlet of Clownhall and its blowhards. In a brief bumper right after the Mark Levin (!) show, one of those practiced, learned voices comes on and starts talking about how "our Earth is situated in a place that's just right, it's not too hot, it's not too cold, so what does this mean?" and I rolled my eyes briefly. It's Clownhall, so it had to be an Intelligent Design pitch

But no! Instead, he went through the investigatory possibilities: the Rare Earth phenomenon (in a universe this big, the probability that there are such lovely worlds is low but possible-- has to be possible, we're here, aren't we-- but rare enough we're not likely to spot one with a telescope ever again), or are planets like ours commonplace and we're just now developing the tools necessary to see them, or could it be that life can live in places that don't match the Terrestrial habitable zone? "And this is why we advocate for the exploration of space!"

I was boggled. Someone at Clownhall remembered their meds that evening, I guess.

I have a content-filled life.

Stormy Poses

What a lovely weekend.

Saturday was not beautiful. It was cold, and drizzled, and a little too cool. But my little home town of Burien was having its annual Strawberry Festival, to celebrate that once upon a time the now kitschy "Olde Burien" was the supply center for a community of strawberry farmers.

The Festival is what you'd expect from a small town with poor focus; a lot of kitschy folks selling folksy wares that they can obviously afford to indulge in their high-tech society, a lot of well-meaning government types encouraging people to exercise more, eat better. The cops encourage people to not do drugs; I'd respect their cheesy poster if they had alcohol on it more, and marijuana on it less. "Heroine, Cocaine, Ecstasy and Marijuana KILL YOUR BRAIN!" Phaugh.

The city allocate a quarter of the festival to bicycling. I approve, but really, you're not going to get more riding until gas prices are ridiculous, and Burien is a bit too spread out to be a successful bicycling community. It takes time for most people to "nip out to the grocer's" around here. Still, given how overweight Burien is (one of the heavier suburbs in the Puget Sound region), I cannot complain.

I can complain about pseudoscientific scammers promising shills insane promises. Look at the list in the photo at that link: his magic bracelet will help you manage Attention Deficit Disorder, Multiple Sclerosis, back pain, and migranes. Grief, don't these people realize that the manufacturer was forced to admit, "We admit that there is no credible scientific evidence that supports our claims"?

Stormy had a dance demonstration at the festival, which was our reason for attending. She was lovely and talented, as always, although there was some scrambling as the demo space was far smaller than their rehearsal space.

The rest of the day, I spent in my man-cave, working on software. Kouryou-chan had a dance practice of her own.

Sunday was Father's Day here in the US. The kids were adorable, and made me a necktie out of duct tape, since they know I don't wear neckties.

We went to see Thor a second time, having cleared that it was probably safe for both of them. They'll be quoting lines from it for a week.

I ran up to downtown Seattle to visit Ada's Books and bought myself Couch DB: The Definitive Guide. I'm trying an experiment. My very first programming experience, outside of some Basic tinkering on a TRS-80, was when I got my hands on a PDP11-38 back in 1981. We were getting a brand new Pascal compiler. It was two weeks out, so I bought the book and read it all the way through before the compiler arrived. Then I sat down and before anyone else had figured out how to compile something I was already writing video games. I'm trying that route again: I'm going to read the entire book all the way through before I start writing Couch apps and, gods forbid, long-poll Node.js parasites.

When I got home, I mowed the lawn, did a 6x6 plot of weeding, and generally spent time outdoors in the not-quite-sun.

For dinner, we went to the Keg, a decent steakhouse, and I had a decent steak. All in all, a wonderful father's day.