The mainstream Athens newspaper has what looks to be a nearly complete listing of Athens-related websites, including those for local businesses and organizations. They’ve put me in there, too, under “People And Society – Personal Web Pages”. Neat-o!

Yesterday the US government banned the import of most European meat and animal products on the heels of Foot and Mouth being confirmed in France. The radio news last night (it must have been NPR) mentioned cheeses and hams being banned as well, but that’s not what CNN is reporting. They claim that soft unpasturized cheeses are banned, but most had been already (sniff… so sad). Hard cheeses, presumably including unpasturized parmesian and similar cheeses, and cured meats such as prosciutto are still allowed. I hope it stays that way, too. I’ve gotten passable at making my own hard cheeses, but I’m still a ways off from making my own prosciutto.

Hey Dad, want to move to Virginia?

Here’s a CNN headline today: Mir spotted in skies over India. The article is full of alarmist hype, though it’d be hard for the average lay person to spot it. “Astronomers spotted Russia’s Mir space station hurtling over the skies of India on Monday and said the aging craft is expected to be visible to the naked eye in New Delhi for the next three nights. " This kind of reporting makes me angry. The paths of all orbiting satellites are well known. REgular readers of this weblog know how to predict when Mir, the International Space Station, and orbiting shuttles, and other major bodies will pass over their heads. Mir orbits the earth several times a day (I don’t remember how many times offhand – twenty?), passing over much of the earth as it does so. Reporting this as news, much less making it a leading headline, is nothing more than an attempt to induce panic, and as much of a champion for freedom of speech as I am, it seems to me this is akin to the old “yelling fire in a crowded theater” bit.

The fine community at Metafilter have jumped all over me when I pointed out the CNN Mir story. This caught me by surprise, so I tried to justify my position further.

Yesderday and the day before (should I be writing this?), I intentionaly TiVO’d and subsequently watched the Teletubbies. I could go on with excuses why I did such a thing (Chris had never seen it, I was hoping to catch the episode where they dance the twist for twenty minutes [I won’t even try to explain how I know about that episode. Yes, I’ve seen it.], the baby sun is strangely soothing, etc.), but I won’t. The truth is, I like it. And not because I’ve got the mind of a small child (though it helps), but because of the production aspects. Everything from the set itself to the movements of the tubbies to the editing of the video strikes me as something done exactly right for the intended target audience (i.e., not me). Many of my lingering questions were answered by Secrets of the Teletubbies, thoughtfully posted on RandomWalks. I didn’t know that the trumpet voice was Trillian (the really good looking American astrophysics student Arthur Dent utterly failed to get along with at a party in a flat in Islington). Incidentally, when I was an astrophysics student, nobody came up to me and said “Hey Doll, why don’t you talk to me. I’m from a different planet.” Though I did have a roommate with the two arms and the one head who called himself Phil. But somehow, i digressed…

Efrem Zimbalist Jr. is reading me Stephen Jay Gould’s Leonardo’s Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms. This, I like. Leonardo is my personal role model. I, of course, have a long way to go.

I spent my lunch break driving around looking for a wine rack for my newly-corked wine bottles. How frustrating! Fighting all the lunch-time traffic, going from store to store. Nobody had what I was looking for, or if they had something similar, it was insanely overpriced. Kitchen supply stores, restaurant supply stores, even the largest wine store in town – nothing. I could have saved me the frustration by just straight away going to wineracks.com. They’ve got what’ll do me.

Contrary to what some have supposed, the Karaoke/Nacho party was not the end of me. I’m still here. But ‘ive been far to busy to read or write. I plan on doing some this evening, though. I feel the need to write some every day, and when I don’t, it’s upsetting. Instead of reading webpages during pauses at work, (since there haven’t been any pauses) I’ve paid audible.com a small amount of money for access to their vast audio collection. I made a beeline for To the Best of Our Knowledge, my favorite NPR show that I never get to hear, and listening to that while coding has made me very happy. Looking at the cheap audible.com pricing, this may be a great way for me to catch up on my reading. It’d be like paying someone a couple bucks to sit at work and read to me. And who wouldn’t want that? Oh, and while I’m here, I’ll mention that Chris and I bottled 25 bottles of our very own Reisling. So now we have plenty of white wine to go with all the fish we’ve been eating.

Here it is, just after eight in the evinging, and I’m only now leaving work. Rather than writing tonight, maybe I’ll just cook dinner and collapse instead. Days like today are really, really rough, but they set the stage for easy (and thus profitable) times ahead. We powered through some important bugs today, and they are gone. There’s nothing stopping us now. Except for the bugs we haven’t found yet.