Indiana
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Toothday
Death to #2 Dentistry numbers your teeth. Number one is the top right back tooth. If you’ve got one, that’s a wisdom tooth, one of the four that erupted last through your gums. Your other top wisdom tooth is number sixteen. Below it, your bottom left wisdom tooth is number seventeen. The numbers continue around… Continue reading
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Four-legged pedestrians
Here in Bloomington, Indiana, we have a lot of these large-eyed, big-eared roaming free-range cattle that seem not to care much about the two-legged kind and are mindful of traffic. For example, I was headed east on Howe the other day, approaching Euclid, and spotted these two girls on the sidewalk: After walking to the… Continue reading
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Numb Day
Clobbering tourism, sports, higher ed, and all tech conferences Privacy International says “The U.S. Government intends to force visitors to submit their digital history and DNA as the price of entry.” The proposed changes are here. Particulars from the piece: The changes include: All visitors must submit ‘their social media from the last 5 years’… Continue reading
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Whoosiers!
The last thing David Hodskins emailed to me was “Don’t become a Hoosiers fan.” It was David who made me a Duke Blue Devils Basketball fan. David was an Iron Duke—an alumnus who contributed to the program and bought season tickets. He made me a fan by bringing me often to fill the other of his two… Continue reading
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Saturday Quarterbacking
Team! Teams change. They have to. Players get injured, age out, or stop fitting. Other players come and go for various reasons. The big one lately is salary caps. Oddly, a “good salary” underpays a valuable player. And the draft brings in rookies every year. Some work out, some don’t. Some only work out when… Continue reading
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Look Up!
Surf’s up. North. Here is the auroral oval, right now: And here is the K Index, also via NOAA: Remember that the aurora’s curtains of light stand up to 800 miles above their base, about 100 miles up. So they are visible hundreds of miles away. Such as here, in Southern Indiana. So go find… Continue reading
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One reason I love Indiana
My car’s dashboard has been telling me we have a slow leak in the right front tire. So I drove up to Tieman Tire here in Bloomington. It was busy, but they took me as a walk/drive-in, and then took an hour to remove the tire, find the leak in a tub of water (which… Continue reading
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Gnaws
And, not to be outdone, Bloomington. Here in Indiana, not far west of Columbus, is a stretch of highway 46 called Gnaw Bone. Says at that link that the origin of the name is “obscure.” By the way, Columbus isn’t the only Indiana location sharing its name with a bigger place elsewhere. • U.S. Cities:… Continue reading
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Tools
And just one for New Jersey! iLoveFood says the best pizza in Indiana is Mother Bear’s here in Bloomington. Problem: it isn’t. Osteria Rago’s is better. Not that MB’s is bad. It’s good. Just not better than Osteria’s. I’m also betting there must be a better pizza than both somewhere in Indianapolis. iLoveFood also names top… Continue reading
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Items
Death sells. So far today, this blog post has had 13 visits. Meanwhile, Radio’s Death Knells has had 356. Since I need to go out, I’ll call it a day and put a picture on top. See what happens. What was Indiana thinking? These days sunrise in Bloomington is about four hours before noon, and sunset… Continue reading
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The Future, Present, and Past of News
Eleventh in the News Commons series. all experience is an arch wherethro’ Gleams that untravell’d world whose margin fades For ever and forever when I move. —Alfred, Lord Tennyson, in Ulysses News flows. It starts with what’s coming up, goes through what’s happening, and ends up as what’s kept—if it’s lucky. Facts take the same route.… Continue reading
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A very local storm
It was a derecho, or something like one. The gust front you see in the third image here — —looks a lot like the storm front in the top image above (via Weatherbug, storm tracker view). I’d experienced one twelve years ago, in Arlington, Mass. It felt like a two minute hurricane, and when it… Continue reading
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The Biggest Wow in Indiana
In the summer of ’22 we were still new to Indiana and in an exploring mood. Out of nowhere one afternoon my wife said, “Let’s go check out French Lick.” She just liked the name of the town, plus the idea of taking a half-day road trip under a sweet blue sky and big puffy… Continue reading
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A Supply Problem
A while back, my gastroenterologist insisted that I get accustomed to eating high-fiber cereal in the morning. And so I have. It does work. He recommended Fiber One. I didn’t like it, but I put up with it until I found Trader Joe’s version, which tasted much better. Since Bloomington is more than an hour… Continue reading
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Getting Us Wrong
Several thousand years ago, when I was on leave from journalism and working as a marketing dweeb, my small North Carolina firm learned about PRIZM (Potential Rating Index for Zip Markets), a techy new service that told me that my rural zip code was “Hardscrabble,” while the next one over was a suburb PRIZM called… Continue reading
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We Need Wide News
Second in the News Commons series. How do people get news where you live? How do they remember it? For most of the industrial age, which is still with us, newspapers answered both those questions—and did so better than any other medium or civic institution. Newspapers were required reading, delivered daily to doorsteps, and sold… Continue reading