Obsidian Wings

Misguesstimating

Via Crooked Timber

I got a pitiful 18% on this, but have to admit I raced through it. I did learn something* from my scores that would have helped me score higher had I known it before I took this quiz (don't read below the jump line if you want to take it without this hint [and let's face it, it would be really sad if anyone cheated on this one] ):

Chris Lightfoot's Estimation Quiz

The Sagrada Familia is finished, sort of

Continuing with Moe's excellent choice of lazy-Sunday-suited subjects...

Visiting the great cathedrals of Europe you can't help but marvel at the dedication represented by a construction project that would not see completion for possibly hundreds of years after the architect and original engineers and financiers were long dead. Off-and-on construction on my very favorite European cathedral, the Duomo in Milan, lasted from 1386 to 1813, for example.

My "second favorite" cathedral has always been somewhat of a dodgy choice because it's still not complete and most likely won't be for at least another 30 years. Who knows if I'll actually like the end result (or if I'll be here to see it)? But having visited the "in-progress" Sagrada Familia in Barcelona, I can say no other building in the world has so powerfully fired my imagination or captured what I feel 20th Century Christian spirituality had achieved and/or aspired to than this particular vision. "Masterpiece" seems an understatement for something that seems so otherwordly.

Architect Antonio Gaudí died* when his greatest work was only 15% complete, and his notes and designs were destroyed during the Spanish Civil War. It's still only about 40% complete (and finishing it is not uncontroversial) but thanks to technology, some contemporary imagination, and an impatient advertising executive and film producer named Toni Meca, we can now see how it will/might look when finished:

Virtual Sagrada Familia

The technology it took to accomplish this---The degree of detail in computer models is measured in units called polygons; the finished Sagrada Familia model required 35 million polygons, more than 10 times the number used to create the model of the ship in the film "Titanic."---is described in more detail on the website http://www.tmdreams.com/.

A-Ha!

So this is why I saw a kid wearing a black T-shirt with the words "Neutral Evil" written across the front when I stepped out to lunch. It's not just geek chic -- the D&D people are in town! Having once been one of them, I'll raise my First Edition Player's Handbook and say: Happy 30th Birthday, D&D!

(Via Swordstyle.)

UPDATE: Bjurk helpfully provides a link to the Alignment Calculator, so that we all may continue to wallow in the depths of geekdom. Thanks a whole friggin' lot, Bjurk.

"MORTIMER! Prepare the orichalcum electrocannon!"

Err, just practicing. Turns out that apparently Ireland was just that locale's secret identity:

DUBLIN (Reuters) - Atlantis, the legendary island nation over whose existence controversy has raged for thousands of years, was actually Ireland, according to a new theory by a Swedish scientist.

(snip of paragraph: everybody here bloody well knows what Atlantis was, thanks)

Geographer Ulf Erlingsson, whose book explaining his theory will be published next month, says the measurements, geography, and landscape of Atlantis as described by Plato match Ireland almost exactly.

"I am amazed no one has come up with this before, it's incredible," he told Reuters.

Indeed. In fact, one would say that it's almost as incredible as the notion that the ancient Greeks and pre-Celts had access to surveying equipment that would allow them to accurately map out an island out past the back end of beyond... but fie on the doubters! Fie, fie, I say! Obviously this Erlingsson fellow is correct, which means that I am Atlantean myself (15/16th Irish descent, you understand), which means that soon, soon my Admantine Sky Legions will spread out to bring the surface world under the benevolent and enlightened rule of the Crystalline Throne! My Crystalline Throne! MY DESTINY AWAITS! MWHAHH-BAH-HAHH-AH-HAHHHH-HAH!!!!!

And to think that I thought that I'd have to wait on world conquest until my girlfriend got around to building me a proper robot army.

Moe

PS: Reuters and I have our little disagreements, but I have to say: this

Previous theories about Atlantis have suggested it may have been around the Azores islands 900 miles west of the Portuguese coast, or in the Aegean sea. Others locate it solely in the long-decayed brain of Plato.

- was pretty good.

100K Hit Pre-emptive Memorial Thread

...because I have to be up in six hours and counting to drive the girlfriend to the airport - oh, yes, honey, me finally getting a driver's license is turning out to be such a convenience* - so watch the SiteMeter tick, tick, tick. We've already informally passed 100,000 - but what the heck, a milestone's a milestone.

Moe

*Worked in NYC, lived two blocks from a train station. What did I need a car for?

(pause)

Yes, yes, it's a necessary thing to have.

Let's see...

...I'm back from a tour of the American History Museum, the Washington Monument, the World War II Memorial, the Lincoln Memorial, the Vietnam War Memorial and the Albert Einstein Memorial, the lingering endorphins from the unexpected walk are in full Old Star Trek combat music mode with the fever engaged by my mild sunburn, I'm draining a pitcher of homemade lemonade that's been carefully fortified with Skyy Vodka (hey, I didn't buy it) and I've just sat down and read the entire print run of Warren Ellis' Transmetropolitan.

Fear me.

Moe

PS: God, I love Saturdays.

UPDATE: In comments, Dave Schuler of the Glittering Eye completely wrecks my naive suppostions with a post explaining the Lincoln hands. Curse you, Dave Schuler! Curse you!

Well, not really.

The Universe has retained its Equilibrium.

Primarily A Cappella has finally deigned to send to me the Da Vinci's Notebook CD (The Life and Times pf Mike Fanning*) that I had ordered, like, weeks ago. I was starting to think that I might have gotten stiffed, but it arrived. Guess that I had better call off the ninjas, huh?

I mention this because I have come to the conclusion that if you do not listen to Kingdom in the Sky at least once in your life, well, your life hasn't been precisely wasted, but I'd hate to have to have that failure to be the tiebreaking vote on your Final Kharmic Score. Just saying, that's all.

Moe

*A band first introduced to me by Rivka's Significant Otter, apparently for the sole purpose of seeing me cackle madly.

Which I did.

Arrr.

I've been meaning to link to this site - Safety Sign Builder - as it's a great way to while away rainy afternoons. Like this one, tanjit. The site requires registration, but it's free, so why not?

Wi' a curse. Remember, the next International Talk Like a Pirate Day is September 19th, sink and scupper me otherwise...

(Via Jeff G)

This is funny?

I mean, it sounds pretty normal, all things considered*. Can't understand what all the fuss is about.

(Via Pejman)

I'm back...

...at 12:50 PM this afternoon, just after we found out that the one remaining RPG session left that a) we were interested in and b) wasn't sold out was a game that required us to be at a prior session in order for us to play (a piddling little detail that should have been on the description), I slump down and start to massage my aching feet. My girlfriend looks at me, I look at her, she pulls out her cell phone and cancels the last night of our stay and we head for our hotel. One fifteen minute walk later (normally five, but there was a gay pride parade going on in Columbus that was paralleling our route*), we're going through our hotel room like a NSA sanitation squad covering up that unfortunate complication for the Senator; by 2 PM we're on the road, having discovered the way out of Columbus, City of the Shifting Streets, with only a minimum of SAN loss. Eight hours and three states later, we have arrived and I can begin to decompress from my blipping vacation.

Loopy? Disjointed? Rambling? Who, moi?

Anyway, I'm sure that the news I've read so far will seem far less surreal tomorrow. Well, no, I'm not, but a man can dream.

Moe

UPDATE: Got some sleep and cleaned up some of the babbling, but the news is still all surreal. Alas, alack.