Culinary Adventures

Tried out a new Italian place on Thursday which claims to offer “geniune Roman cuisine”. It was pretty good, apart from that I ordered a side of peas and they bought me a bowl of ice cream.

And not cold ice cream, melted ice-cream. Warm, melted ice cream.

Apparently in Rome they bake a dessert and call it peas.

On the Superiority of Cylindrical Equal-Area Projections

An ignorant American cartography professor and Apple-Maps developer was teaching a class on Gerardus Mercator, known DST advocate. “Before the class begins, you must get on your knees and worship Mercator and accept that he was the most highly-evolved cartographer the world has ever known, even greater than James Gall and Arno Peters!” At this moment, a brave, logical European Redditor who was a long-time contributor to sporcle.com and understood the superiority of cylindrical equal-area projections stood up and held up a globe. “What is the largest continent, pinhead?” The arrogant professor smirked quite Euro-centrically and smugly replied “Greenland, you stupid pleb! Can’t you see how much larger it is than Africa?” “Wrong,” said the student, and drew a perfect circle encompassing Greenland (which isn’t even green smh), “if Greenland is so big, how come there are more people outside this circle than inside?” The professor was visibly shaken, and dropped his chalk and copy of Nova et Aucta Orbis Terrae Descriptio ad Usum Navigantium Emendate Accommodata. He stormed out of the room crying those distorted conformal Mercator tears, his world collapsing around him. There is no doubt that at this point our professor, Alphons J. Van der Grinten, wished he had received a European education and become more than yet another distributor of lies in our flawed education system, and was kicking himself for never noticing that India has a greater north-south extent than Finland. The students applauded and all subscribed to /r/mapporn that day and accepted the Peirce Quincuncial projection as the coolest projection ever. There was a school-wide renouncement of outdated colonialist maps, and south-up maps (like the ones they definitely 100% use in Australia) were hung up across the northern hemisphere. God himself showed up and enforced geography as a mandatory subject in schools nationwide. The professor lost his tenure and was fired the next day. He committed suicide and his body was tossed into the Mariana trench. And that student’s name? Harry Beck, creator of the London Tube map.

(Not mine, but so good I had to share!)

You mean it’s not me gullet, it’s me noggin?

Well, did another sleep study last week while hooked up to a CPAP machine. Good news is the machine did a good job at keeping my airways open so I could breathe unobstructed. Bad news is I still stopped breathing, which means I have Central Sleep Apnea – which is where the brain periodically decides that this “breathing” thing is so last season, and it’s not going to do it any more. This isn’t completely disastrous, as the rest of the body soon notices and start slapping the brain around until it gets its act together, but it’s still not the kind of thing that’s conducive to restful sleep or cardiovascular health, so it has to be dealt with. With a different, much more expensive type of machine that I’m probably going to have to end up buying, or at least renting, damnit!

In any case, I don’t like to end on a down note. Here’s a song.

Oh, they’re apparently re-burying Richard III in Leicester. Good! Glad to hear it. Leicester’s a lovely city but it needs some more tourist attractions after the railway viaduct got pulled down, and that Liberty statue sure isn’t pulling in the big bucks.

Noli Timere Messorem

We’ve lost one of the greatest authors, philosophers and human beings of our time.

Sir Terry Pratchett, renowned fantasy author, dies aged 66

When I heard the news this morning I felt like I wanted to make some grand gesture as a tribute. But then I realised that the core message of Terry’s work is that we should all do our utmost to be decent human beings. So be particularly decent to each other today people.

Automusic

Ad hoc, ad loc and quid pro quod,
So little time, so much to blog!

So much indeed! But instead of blogging about any of it I thought I’d just hop in to mention that I was recently reminded of how Tonight She Comes and You Might Think by the Cars are two of the best songs ever written.

I mean, that keytar riff – particularly when backed up by the guitar – is just glorious! Of course from a modern perspective the video clip has something of a stalky vibe about it, but it was the 80’s when people didn’t know any better, and the computer effects were groundbreaking for the period (go Quantel Paintbox!).

That’s all I have to say right now. Stay tuned!

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