Beach

Took the mutt out on Chick's Beach (named not for the cute girls nor the baby birds, but for Chic's, a now-defunct restaurant) and did about five miles of walking, from the Chesapeake Bay bridge almost to Lynnhaven Bay, and back. After a couple hundred yards of plowing through dry sand, I went down by the water and accepted that I was going to get wet feet as the tide came in; walking on packed sand is a lot easier. The mutt started off all bouncy and frisky and running around to investigate everything; by the end, she was dog tired. Nothing much of note on the beach, although there were more cargo ships than usual at anchor in the bay.

Jury Nullification

The Volokh Conspiracy » Suppression of Jury Nullification Advocates’ Speech Outside Courthouse has a good discussion of jury nullification.

Bacon day

The Iowa House of Representative has promulgated a resolution recognizing February 26, 2011, as Iowa  Bacon Day.

WHEREAS, the people of Maine have lobster, the people of Idaho grow great potatoes, and the folks of Texas make great chili, we Iowans have bacon —— nature’s perfect food; and
WHEREAS, whether plain or apple-wood smoked, whether store-bought or artisan-made, bacon is a meat for any meal; and
WHEREAS, as America’s top pork producer, Iowa stands tall as the nation’s source of high-quality bacon; and
WHEREAS, the 4th annual Blue Ribbon Bacon Festival is set for Saturday, February 26, 2011, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., in Des Moines;
NOW THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED BY THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, That the House of Representatives recognizes February 26, 2011, as Iowa Bacon Day and invites all Iowans to take part in the festival and to celebrate bacon.

I don't see why they limit it to Iowans. Mmm, bacon.

Condo board

Our condo association board meeting was tonight, and one of the first items of business was to elect a board member. Two of us were running. Mano a mano. Mark your ballots. The tension grows. And then someone said "Can we only have six board members? Can't we have more?" And the administrator said "You've only had six, for the past three years, but you can have up to ten." So we both got voted in by acclamation.

Three Days to Never

Three Days to Never, by Tim Powers. I occasionally imagine that, if I knew a lot more and researched a lot more, I might be able to write the sort of urban fantasy books that Tim Powers writes. But I'd rather read his.

In Three Days to Never, Einstein worked out a mystical form of time travel. The protagonists don't know what they have; but the Mossad is trying to get hold of it, so is a shadowy group of occultists called the Vespers, and so is the protagonist's long lost father, who turns out to have been murdered.

If you haven't read Powers, this might not be the best one to start with--I enjoyed On Stranger Tide more, although that may simply be due to the historical period it was set in--but it's certainly worth reading. Not a "can't put it down till I'm done", more of a "read till 1am, then put it down."

Powers' works remind me of some of the later Saberhagen Dracula books--not for the subject, but in the general feel.

Another book, which I'm not reading, is Space Captain Smith, by Toby Frost. The omission of an Amazon link is deliberate. Page two has something along the lines of "I intend to take a mettle at them, and show them my crack! Except the other way around." Hilarious. I kept reading, solely because I was stuck in the car for three hours with no other books available. A couple pages later we find an engineer telling Captain Smith that his ship has an android pilot, "female, so of course it can't read a map or use reverse properly." That was about the point where I dug the car's owner manual out of the glove compartment and read that instead. 

Saturday night Zombies

Josh's laptop realized it was a week or two out of warranty, and expired. He needed a computer, I have a spare computer; so we agreed that he and his buddy* Richard would meet me at the halfway point, outside Richmond, and make the exchange. The rendezvous point is 108 miles from my house, and the speed limit is 70mph for most of the way, so it should have taken about an hour and a half. Reality was coinciding with theory pretty well, right up to Mile Marker 214 or so, at which point traffic slowed, then slowed further, and then got down to "I really could walk faster than this." It never came quite to the point of turning off the ignition, but it was close. Eventually we crept up to the Rte 609 exit, where everyone had to get off the Interstate and follow Rt 60 parallel to the Interstate for twelve miles--and watch the eastbound lanes moving just as slowly as our westbound traffic--until we got to I295 and got back up to speed. I'd left the house at 5:48 and got to the rendezvous at 10:02, so roughly 4.25 hours. Coming back, they'd re-opened the highway so it was 1.5 hours.

The interesting question is, why was the Interstate closed? The main newspapers in the area didn't mention it at all. The signs that directed us to the detour said "Accident Ahead" but it would have to be a pretty impressive accident to close both sides of the highway.  One of the tiny local papers said the closure was due to brush fires, and on the trip back, I smelled smoke; but I didn't smell any smoke on the way up, or see flames. And the "highway department" trucks closing off the highway were white, and the workers wore white jump suits; but VDOT's color has always been orange. I don't recall seeing a man in a black suit and black tie and sunglasses at 8:30, but then I wouldn't remember that, would I? I do remember thinking about having seen him, though.

So it appears there was some kind of unusual activity in the area. Zombies? Mutants? Aliens? Killer sheep? I don't know. But it's certain that something happened, that some mysterious agency dealt with it, that "brush fires" destroyed the evidence, and local news didn't report it. I'm getting more shotgun ammo, just in case.

*Possibly "sidekick" or "minion" would be more accurate than "buddy". Josh has read all the Miles Vorkosigan books, and applies them. 

Savion Glover

Savion Glover makes it clear that he thinks of tap dancing as as form of percussion music rather than as a form of dance. I've heard that at one show, he had the lights turned off--the point is to hear, not to watch.
He played at the Sandler Center with another "hoofer" and a flamenco guitarist, a flamenco vocalist, a jazz trumpeter, and a bass player. It was about an hour and three quarters of jazz, with the lead not being guitar or sax or piano, but percussion. Here's a clip from the same show in Philly a few days before we saw him. It would have been pretty repetitive after a while, except for two things. One, we were three rows back from the orchestra pit, so we could see his feet--and it was unbelievable how fast he is. And two was just how happy he was. Sometimes he was concentrating, but most of the time he was just floating there, clearly having a wonderful time, loving what he was doing.