ignis_glaciesque's New Writeups

Sulphur Springs Water Tower (place)

2009-10-25T16:52:52Z

Tampa is a funny little city. Driving down Nebraska Avenue is like going back in time: you start with all the shops and convenience stores of the University, and gradually, the buildings start to take on that classic 'Florida ramshackle' look and the houses start to look a little more stately, boarded-up windows and all. 'Charming', you think, and wonder if now's a good time to buy in this depressed housing market (hint: yes it is). Then you reach the intersection of Nebraska and Bird, and you lay eyes on... a lighthouse?

You've just discovered one of our fair city's legends, a lighthouse for lost motorists and legendary pirates only: the Sulphur Springs Water Tower. Built in 1927 by one Grover Poole to provide fresh water to the hotels and shops of the historical heart of Tampa, it ceased to fulfill its acquatic function well before the demolition of the Sulphur Springs Hotel in 1976, and these days, it stands like a sentinel on the western…

September 30, 2009 (personal)

2009-09-30T20:25:40Z

Two days without a cigarette. I've had some time to crankily ponder why I'm quitting.

I'm quitting out of spite.

I think I'm the last man alive who actually buys his own goddamned smokes. Fuck this healthy lifestyle bullshit, fuck white teeth, fuck aerobic capacity, fuck the ability to go through my day without feeding a dependency, fuck fucking over the tobacco companies, fuck all that, because that all is just icing on the cake compared to being able to tell someone to fuck off, I don't have any cigarettes and never will again. Who needs nicotine when you got schadenfreude?

I'm quitting out of self-respect.

It's the cigarette bums who are compelling me to quit. I live in a neighborhood with people that drop by our house just to bum a cigarette. A couple of the more socially-inept among them ask for a cigarette before saying 'hello'. I've even had someone call me up once around midnight to ask me if I had any cigarettes.…

September 27, 2009 (personal)

2009-09-27T07:18:34Z

I am quitting smoking out of spite. That is all.

ansible (thing)

2009-09-17T06:04:21Z

The ansible is a device in a number of works of science fiction, the first of which was Ursula K. Le Guin's Rocannon's World, and the most famous of which is Orson Scott Card's Ender series. In the Ender series, the official name of the device is the 'Philotic Parallax Instantaneous Communicator', and it is further explained that the term 'ansible' was "dredged out of an old book somewhere," a definite shout-out to LeGuin.

The Card ansible enables faster-than-light transfer of information in a universe where faster-than-light movement of matter and energy is impossible. The way that the ansible works is somewhat analogous to quantum entanglement: two quarks in a pi meson are separated and contained within the ansible. The two quarks, despite being physically separated, remain connected to one another through what Card calls a 'philotic ray'. Transmission of…

Tapetum lucidum (thing)

2009-08-29T18:56:18Z

When you really get down to it, Homo sapiens really sucks in the great cage match that is natural selection, and the only lucky break we've got is the three or so pounds of axon and myelin encased in our laughably fragile cranial vaults. I mean, we can't fly, and even if we could, we don't have the turbocharged cardiopulmonary system that is the jewel in the crown of the order Aves. We can't swim very well, no matter what Elaine Morgan and Michael Phelps may think about between bong hits. We can run really slowly for really long periods of time in the midday heat, but any decent ambush predator needs only a second or two to catch up with you, noonday sun be damned.

We're the gangly, sniffling Jerry Lewises of the animal kingdom; we're weak, slow, have no natural weapons and pretty fragile.…

Keyhole garden (thing)

2009-08-27T14:15:00Z

Lesotho is that country you always wondered about. Punched into South Africa like a hanging chad, it lies nestled between the Drakensberg and Maloti mountains and no part of the country lies below 1,400m (that's 4,600ft) above sea level. Apart from its status as an enclave, shared only by San Marino and the Vatican, that's about the only cheerful fact about the country.

Some more sobering facts about the Kingdom of Lesotho, courtesy of the CIA World Factbook:

Arable land: 10.87%
Arable land: 3,299.59km2 (1286.84mi2)
Irrigated land: 30km2 (11.7mi2)
HIV adult prevalence rate: 23.2%
Life expectancy (male): 41.18 years
Life expectancy (female): 39.54 years
Infant mortality (male): 81.75 deaths/1,000 live births
Infant mortality (female): 72.92 deaths/1,000 live

…