What is complete
The valley spirit never dies.
Call it the mystery, the woman.
The mystery,
the Door of the Woman,
is the root
of earth and heaven.
Forever this endures, forever.
And all its uses are easy.
Back in 1992, I was on a project in New Jersey, and had some free time, so I took my camera-bag and my rental car and just … wandered in … to one of the big powerplants on the New Jersey side of the Hudson. There was no security at the gate, no security at the building, and the place was gigantic.
The most dramatic moment in making a Japanese sword is the quenching. In part, that’s because if you have failures in your welds, the blade may suddenly delaminate, turn into a pretzel, or crack.
Where are my boxcutter blades? Get me some cardboard! [Read more…]
When you’re a rabbit, self-protection is not some airy intellectual exercise.
Which is good, because rabbits aren’t much smarter than the commander-in-chief.
My subconscious is a horrible nag and pretty much never shuts down unless I’m on opiates. Last night, I was dealing with some “issues” from an afternoon of mess (more on that later, once the problem is resolved) and my subconscious was clearly thinking about metallurgy – specifically creative ideas for layering blade steels.
Given the news of harrassment in the media, this game was probably not as thoughtfully named as it could have been. It deserves to be winning more attention than it has, and I suspect the name may have something to do with it.
A decade or so ago, I was stuck at an airport, hungry and looking for something sugary. I believe it was San Francisco Airport, which has the little See’s Candy booth in the United departure area; they had bags of caramel corn and it wasn’t bad.
The New York Public Library’s podcast is excellent and has some really odd, interesting stuff. Yesterday, they dropped a real beauty.
We all love stories about AI supplanting humans. Or face-planting, while trying to outdo humans.