Odd Lots

[jeff_duntemann]

• Whew. We're in Phoenix, now permanently, with the Colorado house on MLS. Much remains to be done, but the immense project of getting our house emptied and ready to sell has been nailed. The Smaller But Still Significant Truck Full of Stuff has emptied itself into our living room, and we have a week or two of sorting and sifting and putting away. Overall, we're in good shape.
• Iconic Mad Magazine cartoonist Jack Davis has died, at 91. I'll readily admit that I used to read Mad while I was in high school, though not where my parents could see me. Humor mattered to me, as it does to this day. The only Mad artist who rivaled him in my view was Mort Drucker, who is still with us. ("I don't believe your ears either, Mr. Spook.")
• I'm wondering if it would be possible to write a Windows-like user shell for Windows 10 IOT, which is available for the RPi. (You would be perfectly justified, this time at least, in asking "Why would you want to do that? Answer: Because it would be a cool hack, and it would probably annoy Microsoft, which is always a plus.)
• Do you see the sunspot? I don't see the sunspot.
• We have now gone a record 129 months without a major hurricane making landfall on the US mainland. One of my friends continues to argue that Superstorm Sandy was a major hurricane because of the damage it caused. Ok...except "major hurricane" is a technical term in climate science, with a technical definition: Class 3 or above. Sandy was Class 2 when it hit the Atlantic Coast, and not a hurricane at all when it did the most damage. We're talking about sustained wind speed, which is the only way we have to objectively classify hurricanes and get a handle on hurricane trends over time.
• I got the impression (see above) that I was supposed to bow my head and whisper, "Hurricane Sandy was a horrible tragedy," every time I talked about hurricane physics. Uhhhh...no. That's like requiring me to say, "Nuclear bombs are horrible things," every time I talk about the physics of nuclear fission. Sorry. Not gonna happen. Emotion has no place in science, except to politicize discussion and demonize dissent.
• Where do Americans smoke the most weed? No points for guessing Colorado, though central Maine has a surprising constituency. What else do you do during those interminably miserable winters? (Thanks to Esther Schindler for the link.)
• Speaking of which, Donald Trump supports allowing states to legalize marijuana, a position neither our president nor Hillary Clinton has taken. This is truly the weirdest presidential election in my considerable lifetime.
• To be honest, I'm more interested in nootropics. Here's a light article worth citing because it mentions a nootropic I had not heard of before: L-theanine.
• Which is best used in conjunction with the oldest and probably best nootropic of all. Drinking coffee significantly reduces the risk of suicide. Well, caffeine raises mood, therefore acting against depression, and depressed people are those mostly likely to kill themselves.
• Oh, and coffee acts against prostate cancer, too. I never drank coffee regularly until I was 33. I hope that wasn't too late.
• We had numerous Nash Ramblers when I was a kid. The company just turned 100, even though they became AMC and got devoured by Chrysler years ago. Nash did a lot of good stuff, some of it far earlier than their competition.
• Why do I have to say this so much? Genuine virtue does not need signaling. I've come to the conclusion that all signaled virtue is fake. The rest of us are onto you. Just stop.