{"id":191,"date":"2009-12-10T08:23:50","date_gmt":"2009-12-10T14:23:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/gazette\/2009\/12\/10\/091210_randomthursday\/"},"modified":"2022-11-24T18:26:19","modified_gmt":"2022-11-25T00:26:19","slug":"091210_randomthursday","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/2009\/12\/10\/091210_randomthursday\/","title":{"rendered":"Random Thursday"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Doing my part to ensure that you get your full <a href=\"http:\/\/www.engadget.com\/2009\/12\/09\/study-finds-americans-consume-34-gigabytes-of-information-per-da\/\">daily 34-gigabyte serving of &#8220;information&#8221;<\/a> (and in the process, setting a record for the loosest use of that term):<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><b>Good Luck With This, Guys<\/b> &#8211; The Wall Street Journal reports that two book publishers are <a href=\"https:\/\/online.wsj.com\/article\/SB10001424052748704825504574584372263227740.html\">planning to withhold digital versions<\/a> of some of their upcoming titles for four months so as not to &#8220;cannibalize&#8221; sales of the [vastly more expensive] hardcover editions. This is yet another example of dinosaurs railing against the impending meteor strike\/ice age\/mammalian ascendance. There are many reasons this strategy is doomed to failure, but the one question I&#8217;d like to pose is this: who decided in the first place (and on what basis) that a hard cover book is <i>worth<\/i> $27 or more?<\/li>\n<li style=\"margin-top: 1.25em;\">Stumped for Christmas shopping hints for the family geek? Look no further than <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thinkgeek.com\/geektoys\/japanfan\/c50f\/images\/4529\/\">the Star Wars\u00ae Light Saber chop sticks<\/a> from ThinkGeek.<\/li>\n<li style=\"margin-top: 1.25em;\">While they don&#8217;t disclose this, I&#8217;m pretty sure that by using the aforementioned chop sticks, you will be able &#8211; with the resulting channeling of The Force\u2122 &#8211; to negate the alleged ill effects of <a href=\"http:\/\/shine.yahoo.com\/channel\/health\/the-7-foods-experts-wont-eat-547963\/\"><i>The 7 foods experts won&#8217;t eat<\/i><\/a>.<\/li>\n<li style=\"margin-top: 1.25em;\">Here&#8217;s the next bicycle I&#8217;d like to have: the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.surlybikes.com\/frames\/pugsley_frame\/\">Surly Pugsley<\/a>. I&#8217;d own one simply for the name, but it also has the most excellent feature of accommodating 4&#8243; wide tires.\n<div style=\"text-align: center; margin-top: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em;\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/images\/miscphotos\/surlypugsley.jpg\" alt=\"Photo of a Surly Pugsley\"><\/div>\n<p>According to the review in the current issue of <i>Mountain Bike Magazine<\/i> (said review not available online), the tires &#8211; which, incidentally, cost more than $100 each &#8211; can be run at pressures as low as 6 <acronym title=\"Pounds per Square Inch\">psi<\/acronym>, which makes them ideal for floating over the sandy conditions we have around here. The report doesn&#8217;t say, however, how they&#8217;ll stand up against mesquite thorns. The bike is described as being surprisingly nimble, despite its hefty appearance (think Warren Sapp on <i>Dancing With The Stars<\/i>).<\/li>\n<li style=\"margin-top: 1.25em;\">We&#8217;re all about the marriage of science and culture here at the Gazette, and in this regard we present you with the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.pastemagazine.com\/articles\/2009\/12\/the-evolution-of-the-hipster-2000-2009.html\">Evolution of the Hipster (2000-2009)<\/a>. This will be helpful to social scientists working in the field (think Audubon&#8217;s field guide for a birder&#8217;s Big Day).<\/li>\n<li style=\"margin-top: 1.25em;\">Finally, I have a bone to pick with the City of Midland&#8217;s Transportation Department. Sure, the traffic light synchronization project has finally &#8211; <i>finally<\/i> &#8211; started to effect some improvements in traffic flow, notably along Big Spring Street (Garfield continues to be a mess, though). But it&#8217;s now causing a new problem for me: I tend to arrive <i>too early<\/i> for appointments. After years of making schedule adjustments to account for the inevitable delays from stopping at multiple consecutive traffic lights, it&#8217;s not easy to take that allowance out of my driving plans. I really think the City should be doing more to help drivers with this transition.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Doing my part to ensure that you get your full daily 34-gigabyte serving of \u201cinformation\u201d (and in the process, setting a record for the loosest use of that term).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-191","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-random-thursday","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=191"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11379,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191\/revisions\/11379"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=191"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=191"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=191"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}