Ernie's 3D Pancakes

Fambly

One month ago, my great-aunt Una Erickson celebrated her 90th birthday.

A week and a half ago, my nephew John Kallobee Pollack was born.

Pot. Tribble. Black.

Once again, the pseudonymous Ivan Tribble proudly displays his ignorance.

As my original column made clear (and many amid the outcry reiterated) when it comes to blogging, I just don't "get it." That's right, I don't. Many in the tenured generation don't, and they'll be sitting on hiring committees for years to come.

Of course you "get it". These First-Person Chronicle articles you keep writing? That's blogging. That's right, Professor Tribble, like it or not, you're a blogger! And you do it for exactly the same reason that everyone else does—you like to express your opinions in public, in the hope that other people will listen. In short, you like to show off. Hell, that's why most of us went into academia; it really shouldn't surprise anyone that there are so many academic blogs.

And what is this "tenured generation" of which you speak, earthling? Did I miss a memo or something? Am I only supposed to drink Pepsi now? Was I suddenly supposed to become a cranky hypocritical Luddite last year when my "istant" became "ociate"?

Please.

The coffee algorithm

I have a simple algorithm that I use to find good coffee* in places I've never visited before. I've run this algorithm in several dozen places, not all in North America. My success rate is about 80-85%.

1. Find a Starbucks. (Use a phone book if necessary.)
2. Search in a two-block radius. (Usually one block is enough.)

Here are a few places I've used this algorithm successfully, just in the last 3-4 years: New Orleans LA (RIP), Kansas City MO, San Francisco CA, Palo Alto CA, Ithaca NY, Albuquerque NM, Santa Fe NM, Austin TX, Dallas TX, Houston TX, Nashville TN, Columbus OH, Cambridge MA, Somerville MA, Chicago IL, New Brunswick NJ, Chapel Hill NC, Windsor ON, Ottawa ON, Vancouver BC, Paris, Berlin, and Tokyo. In Vienna, there's even a Starbucks across the street from the Hotel Sacher!

I'm sure it's just a coincidence. Really.

Of course, it doesn't always work. In particular, you have to find a real sit-down Starbucks; those new drive-thru joints screw up everything. Sometimes the algorithm leads to another coffee chain, but if the coffee is decent, I don't mind. Much. On rare occassions, I've been led to a locally owned non-chain coffee shop whose product is, unbelievably, even worse than Starbucks' sugar-coated liquid-charcoal crap. Here's a hint, folks: It's not supposed to taste like bleach.

One of the few places where this algorithm fails spectacularly is New York City, where the only cafe within two blocks of any Starbucks is another Starbucks. (The best coffee in New York is in Brooklyn, far far away from any greenly encircled mermaids.)

The algorithm used to fail here in Champaign-Urbana, too, not because we don't have good coffee, but because we didn't have a Starbucks. (We have a different chain.) Now we do. (Yay.) It's one block from Bar Guiliani, formerly (and better) known as Green Street Coffee House.

Now if you'll excuse me, it's time for another dose.

*When I say coffee, I mean espresso, not that weak acidic swill that passes for coffee in most of the US and northern Europe. That stuff gives me indigestion and the shakes. So no, Tim Horton's doesn't count as a "coffee shop". I'd rather go to Starbucks.

delete—no one cares

Lesser-Known Editing and Proofreading Marks

[via Making Light via Crooked Timber via The Little Professor]

Ahem.

"In a sense, Louisiana is the flood plain of the nation," noted a 2002 FEMA report. "Louisiana waterways drain two-thirds of the continental United States. Precipitation in New York, the Dakotas, even Idaho and the Province of Alberta, finds its way to Louisiana's coastline." As a result, flooding is a constant threat, and the state has an estimated 18,000 buildings that have been repeatedly damaged by flood waters--the highest number of any state. And yet, this summer FEMA denied Louisiana communities' pre-disaster mitigation funding requests.

In Jefferson Parish, part of the New Orleans metropolitan area, flood zone manager Tom Rodrigue is baffled by the development. "You would think we would get maximum consideration" for the funds, he says. "This is what the grant program called for. We were more than qualified for it."

— The Independent Weekly, September 22, 2004

[via Daily Kos via The Big Ticket]