January 30, 2007
Not ... the Rensselaer I Know
Headline in NY Times: Rensselaer Playbook.
I had to look ... wondering if it was about RPI vs. Cornell.
Nope ... it's a small town in Indiana that is caught between the two Super Bowl rivals.
Fished in!
Posted by Steven at 11:38 AM | Comments (0)
January 17, 2007
We'll Be a Monopoly Again ... Soon
Tom White made this prediction in 1984 ... and it's finally coming true:
Thanks to Scoop for finding the YouTüb stream.
Posted by Steven at 12:13 PM | Comments (1)
June 22, 2006
Robert Anton Wilson on eBay
Mike "Jones Bear" Jones sent this link to an auction that Robert Anton Wilson is running on eBay. Go see for your fnordy selves what RAW is up to.
Fnord.
Posted by Steven at 10:43 PM | Comments (0)
May 29, 2006
The Dog Police
Back in the distant 80's, my other friend named Mike Jones happened upon a rather peculiar video called The Dog Police. Tom White found it on You Tube:
I cannot remember why we found this video so amusing, but I'll be damned if this isn't the very thing. When will the video made to Philip Glass' Third Act be here?
Posted by Steven at 12:12 AM | Comments (0)
February 26, 2006
Zed!
This weekend my old RPI friend Ed "ZeD" Lopez was in town. We hooked up both Friday and Saturday night, and had a great time despite being in Dallas ;-).
Friday night I took him to Nakamoto's in Plano, where we had dinner with Charles and his girlfriend Megan ("Weasle"). Our loud denouncinations of President Bush and the GOP had me a bit worried about getting out of the Plano restaurant in one piece, but I think we made the Freepers dining there more uncomfortable than angry.
After dinner we went down to the Raddison in Richardson, where ConDFW was in full swing. I brought my game kit, so we played Cosmic Wimpout and Illuminati! (with the Y2K expansion set) in the lobby -- effectively crashing the Con. In a surprise upset, Weasle won (Charles would have won in the next turn). I saw Melanie as well in an evening of good food, talk and gaming.
Saturday I met ZeD at Nerdbooks in Richardson, around the corner from where PSI used to be. This is the best damned computer book store in Dallas, and not just because they have a wall of O'Reilly Books:
After that we went to Chili's in McKinney to meet Anne and Alanna after their day-long UIL Solo and Ensemble Contest (see ... for the story). We ended up back at the house for the evening, where we talked, watched silly video and flash animation, and played with the cat.
Minuet decided that she had to get the pull fob on our living room fan. The problem is, it's seven feet above ground. How to get to it? Why, simple! Trick one of the monkey-boys to stand under it and then use them as a scratching post climb toy:
She actually climbed
Posted by Steven at 03:03 PM | Comments (1)
October 07, 2005
GE Finally Agrees to Clean Hudson River
General Electric (makers of fine polluted rivers) has finally agreed to dredge the PCBs from the Hudson River (from Troy to Hudson Falls), after fighting the case for as long as I can remember.
The agreement appears to end years of resistance by G.E. and initiates a process in which the company could eventually spend hundreds of millions of dollars to remove PCB's from 43 miles of river bottom stretching from Hudson Falls to Troy.Work will start in the spring of 2007 and could be completed in six years, if there are no interruptions.
But there are no guarantees that the $700 million project will go smoothly, because the consent decree splits the cleanup into two phases. While General Electric has agreed to Phase 1, it will not make a decision about the second phase until the first is completed. The company also agreed to pay $78 million to cover government costs associated with the cleanup, on top of $37 million it has already paid.
General Electric used PCB's, or polychlorinated biphenyls, in the manufacture of transformers. PCB's were banned in 1976, but the large amount of the chemicals that G.E. had discharged into the Hudson had settled into the bottom of the river, where they posed a continuing threat to the environment and to people who ate fish caught in the Hudson.
For years the company argued that dredging the river mud would cause more problems than leaving the PCB's undisturbed. Environmental groups and community organizations along the river claimed yesterday that the consent decree did not ensure that the entire river would ever be decontaminated.
Under the terms of the agreement, G.E. will dredge the heaviest deposits of PCB's, at a cost of $100 million to $150 million. That work, which is expected to take about a year, will remove about 10 percent of the 2.65 million cubic yards of PCB-contaminated sediment.
The remaining mud, in which the contamination is lighter but spread over a much larger area, would be dredged in the second phase, a project that would last five years and cost about $500 million.
It would be nice if Troy's river wasn't such a sewer of toxicity. Here's hoping GE will not make it worse.
Posted by Steven at 01:03 AM | Comments (0)
September 22, 2005
20th Anniversary of Sasha
Twenty years ago, Mike Jones and I made a deal we'd both later come to regret. He offered to let me drive his leased RX-7 if I made the payments and kept my existing car insurance. In effect, I was "borrowing" his car -- long term. When I finished RPI, I agreed to assume the lease on the car from GE Leasing.
When I was offered what looked and drove like a new car with no money down, I really didn't see the need to read the fine print. Consequently, I wholeheartedly agreed to the deal, not knowing the first thing about leasing, car finance, or credit ratings (it's very likely my credit rating at the time would have disqualified me from assuming the lease). This was bad on my part, and (frankly) a little bit underhanded on Mike's. I'm sure he rationalized a few things about the arrangement to make it seem like he was doing me a big favor, but the truth is, there was a large upside for him.
The car (nice as it was) had been totally rebuilt by a less-than-stellar chop shop after it had been cleaved in half by a three ton dump truck while Mike had it down in Boca Raton, FL. What neither of us understood was that the lease was wildly "upside down". At the time, I had no idea how a lease worked, especially the fact that a leased car's depreciation was the responsibility of the leasee, and would have to be paid out at the end of the lease. This car was going to have a large balloon payment at the end of the lease, thanks to that wreck (which the lein holder certainly knew about).
The fact that I drove all the remaining lease miles (about 20,000) in the time I had possession of the car only made things worse. Long before the lease was finished, the leaseholder would be acruing a mileage charge of fifteen cents per mile. The car would have to be purchased outright at the end of the lease.
Mike took a long, long time getting the lease paperwork to me (I don't recall seeing it before March of 1986), and when I read it, I realized I had been expecting a very different financial burden than I was facing. As a result, I made a tough (and I admit, self-serving) choice to renige the deal and return possession of the car to Mike. I gave Mike the car keys, and shortly afterward, I moved in with Russ Brenner in Nyack, seeing as how I was now on Mike's shit list (as well as our other roommate in Danbury, CT). I could hardly blame him for being upset and frustrated with me.
Everyone in the Ilk knows how this played out: had I not done that, I would not have ended up with Anne (a long story made short: moving to NY put me in the same building as Barbara Decker).
Things went downhill for Mike and the RX-7, after R. Gary had a wreck in it and then it was repossessed. I did try to make some amends to Mike when I left for England to work at Petroconsultants: I paid Mike for the miles I added to the car (@ 15 ¢ per mile) from Sept. 1985 until May 1986, but by then the car was gone (I didn't know this at the time) so it was a lot more than a "day late". I didn't have to do this, and it certainly didn't mitigate the damage caused to his finances, but I still feel it was an attempt to extend an olive branch. Until I was leaving Matrix for Petroconsultants, I simply didn't have any extra money to give Mike for his car.
Anyway, it's not entirely fair to dwell on the bad here. I really, really enjoyed the car, and it is still my favorite car. I especially enjoyed driving to Albany with my roommate, Tom White, to eat at Spaghetti Express on Lark St. during the week, and the trip I made to Boston with an RPI woman (whose name eludes me to this day -- but I have pictures!) that was magical.
You can see my loving tribute to the RX-7 I called "Sasha" here.
Posted by Steven at 11:21 AM | Comments (0)
June 17, 2005
Jones Tagged Me
This is apparently going around the blogosphere.
Number of books I own ...
Probably several hundred. Most, sadly, are programming books or computer related. The staggering number related to Robert Anton Wilson is a bit, er, disturbing.
Last book bought
Incompleteness, the history of Godel's theorem.
Last book read ...
I'm still digesting Incompleteness along with The System of the World, House of Bush, House of Saud, and O, the Intimate History of the Orgasm. Oh and books on Ruby, Cocoa and QT.
Five books that mean a lot to me
Not in any particular order ...
The Illuminatus Trilogy
The granddaddy of conspiracy novels ... is it fiction? In the age of Bush, who knows? My copy has the microreview by Tom White's dad.
Ringworld
Still my favorite Niven SciFi (hard) novel. I'd love to list a Heinlein or a Clarke, but this one really grabbed me. A runner up would have to be Neutron Star.
The C Programming Langauge
Well, it introduced me to C and that has put food on my table for over twenty years now. Still a good read.
The Whole Earth Catalog
I remember the "hippie family" that first introduced me to this wonder. I had no idea how much this book and Mr. Brand would influence technology and society.
The Sirens of Titan
No one has made me as cynical as Vonnegut has. His novel about the entire history of Earth morphed to deliver a replacement part for a spaceship is a tour de force in cynical speculative fiction.
Next five?
Lets just say all my fellow editors at the Staton Jones Report. You know who you are, Mike, Tom, Lane and Charles.
Posted by Steven at 10:37 PM | Comments (0)
February 11, 2005
Tom and Val's Newborn Son
My friend from RPI, Tom White, is a dad for the second time. He and his wife Valerie Wenner had their second child, a son named Carson, this morning around 11am after eight hours of labor (and only one hour in the actual delivery room). Carson came in around 6 lbs. 6 oz., if I heard Tom correctly, and arrived fifteen days early.
Our best wishes to Tom and Val and Amalie (big sis).
Posted by Steven at 11:39 AM | Comments (1)
January 16, 2005
Chrinitoid in the News
Frank Hurley posted a note on the WRPI Alumni mailing list:
I actually flipped through the latest copy of the Rensselaer alumni mag, and in the back there's an article on the Chrinitoid, with a mention of Steve Staton's WRPI Memoires web page. I recall missing it more than I thought I would when it went away... it gave RPI a less staid, more kooky feel... like WRPI.Apparently, the Chrinitoid lives on at a bank in Zurich.
If you've thrown out your copy of the mag (as I mostly likely would have,)
here's a legible image (2MB) off the scanner Santa got me...
Wow, I got mentioned in the Rensselaer mag! I'm just too much of a media slut for my own good.
Posted by Steven at 04:21 PM | Comments (0)
January 13, 2005
Dude, Where's My Car?
 | Tomorrow around 3am, my old RX-4 Wagon "Huygens" will enter the atmosphere of Titan, and if all goes well (and by that, I do mean "if the fuel pump doesn't stick ... again"), humans will have softlanded the first Wankel Rotary Engine vehicle on another planet. I can barely contain my pride at having contributed to this majestic scientific effort. Why my old car was chosen for this mission, and how it survived seven years in interplanetary space when it could scarcely make it up the Taconic Parkway on a good day, is both a miracle and mystery to me. Godspeed Huygens and Good Riddance! Update: NPR did a story on the Huygens probe and they interviewed Prof. Jim Ferris of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Afterall, only an RPI prof would have first hand experience with my old college car! |
Posted by Steven at 10:55 AM | Comments (0)
December 10, 2004
Rensselaer Prof Spoofs Dow Chemical
An associate professor at RPI had a hand in pranking Dow Chemical with respect to it's involvement with the Bhopal chemical disaster of 1984.
Igor Vamos, a multimedia artist, is part of a two-man satire group known as The Yes Men that makes great sport of pulling the wool over corporate interests. Last Friday, Vamos' partner, claiming to be a spokesman for Dow Chemical named Jude Finisterra, told the BBC that the company would dole out $12 billion to victims of the Bhopal chemical disaster of 20 years ago.Advertisement
Ultimately, just two catches marred the startling revelation: The Yes Men don't work for Dow. And Dow is doing no such thing.Later, "Finisterra" said he was doing the "only reasonable thing for Dow Chemical to do."
It's pretty sad to realize that that even happened long enough ago that the children affected by it are now young adults, and some are living here and willing to protest the event (or at least keep it alive in the public's eye). We forgot about this tragedy in the U.S., but the Indians did not, and they shouldn't have to remind us about it ... we should give it the same solumnity that we do for the Murrah Building attack or even 9/11.
Posted by Steven at 10:27 AM | Comments (1)