I’m told that our temperatures remain below average, but frankly I don’t care. It’s warmer than it was a week ago, and the snow is melting away. The sun shines in the windows, warming the house without recourse to natural gas. This is good.

Sherry at Semicolon has tagged Phil and me with a meme. This is a meme of eight, but it seems pretty much identical to the meme of six I did just a short while ago. Except that, you know, it’s got eight instead of six.

I can’t account for anyone’s desire to know more stuff about me. It seems to me I purvey that commodity pretty indiscriminately around here, and the supply exceeds the demand.

However, I don’t have any bright ideas of my own tonight, so here it is.

The Rules:

Each player lists 8 facts/habits about themselves. The rules of the game are posted at the beginning before those facts/habits are listed. At the end of the post, the player then tags 8 people and posts their names, then goes to their blogs and leaves them a comment, letting them know that they have been tagged and asking them to read your blog.

My List:

1. I’m right-handed, but I generally mouse with my left hand. This is because I thought I was developing a repetitive motion problem a while back. Turns out it wasn’t the fault of the mouse, but of my sword exercises. Nevertheless, I figure it doesn’t hurt to cultivate ambidexterity. I understand it helps with rehab if you ever have a stroke, and judging by my family history, there’s a clot in there somewhere with my name on it.

2. I can wiggle my ears.

3. Contrary to the traditional mystique of the Suffering Artist, I find I’m far more creative when I’m happy.

4. Unfortunately, I’m almost never happy.

5. I’ve never gotten an ice cream headache.

6. I once voted for Al Gore in a primary, back when I was a Democrat.

7. My blood type is A Pos. The only place in the world where A Pos. blood is in the majority is Scandinavia.

8. I never tag other bloggers with memes. That would be too outgoing.

Good news: That snowstorm they promised us today failed to materialize. Instead, the snow continued to melt, and with time the sun even came out.

I’m devastated by this development, as you’ve no doubt guessed. Almost as devastated as I was by the news that “The Golden Compass” tanked at the box office.

I’m not sure if this has really been one of the worst winters in my experience or not. But the weather’s certainly been tough, and my health has spent most of the time (as the saying goes) under it. I’ve bounced from one cold to a worse cold to a cold even worse than that, finally topped off by the flu.

A couple links. In the wake of David Mamet’s coming out of the closet as a conservative, we now have an article from playwright Tom Stoppard in which, if he doesn’t actually espouse conservatism, he at least has the courage to admit that the activism of the ’60s and ’70s was mostly about partying, rather than any kind of moral principle.

I’m still bitter about that part of my life. Not because of the difficulty I had in fighting the idols of that age, but because I’m embarrassed about the extent to which I in fact pandered to those idols. Oh, I didn’t actually participate in the fun stuff. I never got high, never took advantage of the sexual opportunities. But I took seriously, and spoke respectfully about, ideas that I now recognize as total codswallop. The memory of the clothes embarrasses me, I’ll admit, but the memory of the ideas is what really makes me blush. (Hat tip: Ed Veith at Cranach.)

Via Cronaca (not to be confused with Cranach): I think this is really cool. See, back in 1860, some scientists in France figured out a way to record sound waves graphically, and they “recorded” an image of the voice of a singer performing a folk song. Today, thanks to modern technology, scientists are able to turn that graphic image into sound waves, and we can hear the singer’s voice.

I remember one time my friends and I were in Chicago, back in the early ’70s. I said I’d like to visit the Museum of Science and Industry. My friends weren’t keen, but we had an afternoon off, and finally we all went. Everyone was very cool about it afterwards, talking about how boring and stifling all this technology stuff was.

We were idiots. Technology’s cool.

Tags: snowstorm, Tom Stoppard, cool, technology