Midweek pieces

[magid]

marriage license update
According to today's article, the SSA will now accept marriage licenses from the town of New Paltz (NY). However, the article doesn't mention whether the SSA will accept marriage licenses from the village (emphasis mine) of New Paltz, which is where the same-sex licenses were given. Hrm.

Bush monkey business
An artist has made a huge picture of the Shrub... made up of small pictures of monkeys. It was forced out of an art show, but now it's being projected onto a huge billboard in Manhattan, over the entrance to the Holland Tunnel. When it's sold, the money will be used to buy soldiers in Iraq body armor.

holiday gifts
Pinkfish pointed out some interesting numbers about The Swan, which is a show about women (is it all women?) getting improved, with surgery and exercise and such. What I found even more squickish was an article about how plastic surgery is now a hot holiday gift, including the "much more affordable" non-invasive things (injections and suchlike) as stocking stuffers! Well, heck, it's under $1000, that must be a stocking stuffer! Ick. At the very very very end of the article, they include a quote about how people (read: women) should have things done only if they want, not for their partners, but really, the rest of the article is about people giving plastic surgery as a (not necessarily discussed in advance) gift. And there are holiday discounts available, too. It makes me shudder.

yarn
I showed my boss the article about the crocheted Lorenz manifold, and not only had she seen it, she pointed me at other mathematically interesting crochet projects. So now I can think about making a Moebius hat, or a Sierpinski triangle shawl. Hm...
ETA: Above the hat instructions, it says "Knitting is very two-dimensional, but crocheting is basically one-dimensional...". Which gave me more insight into why it might be that crocheting is more intuitive to me than knitting. It's all points, that go together however I wish, rather than planes filled with lines of stitches.

PSA for local yarn users: Woolcott is having a 20% off everything sale Monday. I think I'll go, even if it's just to drool over their lovely yarns.

House of Flying Daggers (possible spoilers, I suppose)
Last night I ended up seeing House of Flying Daggers. It's a very beautiful movie, with gorgeous scenery, and amazing acrobatic fighting. There are crosses and double-crosses, and a couple of unfortunate plot holes that keep the movie from being as wonderful as it could be. Plus a complete lack of resolution of the 'greater issue', even when things have come to some sort of conclusion for the individuals. Still, incredibly pretty to watch (if you don't mind a bit of blood; it's a fight movie, after all). Plus lots of men's headgear that's historically appropriate, but looks incredibly silly to me.

hungry
Today is 10 Tevet, which is a fast commemorating when the armies of Nebuchadnezzar began their siege of Jerusalem. It's a dawn to dusk fast, the easiest one of the year (being in the winter and all), but I'm still hungry. Less than five hours 'til breakfast...

Comments

[mabfan.livejournal.com]

gnomi and I are trying out the new restaurant for our break fast tonight.

[magid.livejournal.com]

Wait, there's a new restaurant? Where? What flavor?
(I hope there'll be a review later, too.)

[mabfan.livejournal.com]

We haven't been yet, but a place called Tiberias Grill & Salad Bar has apparently opened at 417 Harvard St in Brookline, where the old Pastryland was. Their phone number is 617-277-1144, their hechsher is under Rabbi Hamaoui (of course), and supposedly they have a webpage at http://www.tiberias.us, although I haven't been able to get it to load. They opened on Sunday, and their items include falafel, shwarma, kabab, beef shishlik, chicken skewed, grilled chicken, baba ghanouj, hamburgers & hot dogs, houmos, buffalo wings, and side dishes, according to an email forwarded to me by vettecat from a Jewish Boston email list.

[magid.livejournal.com]

Yum!
(I don't feel quite so out of the loop since it only opened on Sunday :-).

The foodie in me wishes it weren't so much of a Rami's clone in menu (What about a nice kosher Italian restaurant? Or Indian? Or Thai? Or...), but I look forward to trying it out.

[queue.livejournal.com]

But hey! Buffalo wings!

[magid.livejournal.com]

Think of all the poor, flight-less buffalo!

[hauntmeister.livejournal.com]

Humm. "House of Flying Daggers" might be a good bet for me to take Ricky to.

[magid.livejournal.com]

I enjoyed it just for the spectacle, though the plot bits that annoyed were what I focused on later.

If it matters, there were some scenes with sex in them, though there was no actual skin shown that might be inappropriate.

[ichur72.livejournal.com]

>> "Knitting is very two-dimensional, but crocheting is basically one-dimensional...". Which gave me more insight into why it might be that crocheting is more intuitive to me than knitting. It's all points, that go together however I wish, rather than planes filled with lines of stitches.

Would you mind explaining this a little further? I am trying to wrap my head around it but can't quite get there. (I admit to being less than 100% awake right now, but ... help!) Part of the reason, I think, is that I just finished one project (making an alien bunny for Walt) that boiled down to using stitches to make an irregular 3D shape.

[magid.livejournal.com]

Knitting has you doing a row at a time. Yeah, there are individual stitches, but they're always in the context of a row. No one wants to pack up their knitting in the middle of a row, for instance. And rows are (mostly) lines, which turn into planes when stacked together (OK, geometrically, that was a gaffe of the first order, since lines have no height. But in crafts they do....). With circular needles, you stack circles to get cylinders.

On the other hand, crocheting is one stitch at a time, each one a separate thing, and I can either continue on the row I was working on (like in knitting), or head off in another direction if I want (chaining off to a new place, or perpendicular to what I had been working on, perhaps. It's all individual points, that I can shape as I will. In other words, one dimensional.

Er, does this help at all?

[ichur72.livejournal.com]

Yes, OK, it does (I think). If I get what you're saying properly, you're talking about how every stitch is interdependent (locked together) in knitting, whereas in crocheting you have a bit more freedom to make each stitch whatever you want it to be.

[magid.livejournal.com]

Yes. Geometrically, lines of knitting vs. points of crocheting, so there's more flexibility in crocheting.

Town vs. village

[jwg.livejournal.com]

I suspect that the licences are issued by the Town (township) of New Paltz. The village is probably unincorporated and doesn't issue stuff like that. It may do zoning etc. but probably doesn't collect taxes. The Mayor of the village can well be elected and authorized to have some part of the process, but the village probably doesn't actually issue licences. My recollection is a bit fuzzy but that is how I think it works in New York.

Re: Town vs. village

[magid.livejournal.com]

It's amazing how much relevant information isn't in the article; when I read it, I made the inference that the mayor of the village issued licenses, and that all those licenses weren't going to be accepted as of the date of the first gay marriage, whether or not the couple in question was mixed or single gender. Which may or may not be correct, when I reread it.

[necturus.livejournal.com]

Villages in New York State are incorporated, but within towns. Thus, the town of Union, NY includes the villages of Endicott and Johnson City, and the unincorporated area of Endwell. The two villages have their own police forces; the unincorporated area has none and depends on the Broome County Sherriff's Department and the state police. It does have a volunteer fire department, though, complete with air-raid siren.

Cities are another matter entirely; the city of Binghamton (immediately adjacent to Johnson City) is not part of the town (and to make things a bit more confusing, there is a town of Binghamton which borders, but is not a part of, the city).

Thus, in New York State, there are at least three levels of administrative subdivsions: county, town, and village. By contrast, here in Massachusetts there is really only one (the town), counties being largely irrelevant.

[magid.livejournal.com]

How confusing it sounds.

So the article was saying that all licenses issued by New Paltz would be accepted, except the ones issued by the village within the town, which has the same name as the town, none of which will be accepted.

Phooey. They're just using a finer mesh, but it's essentially the same thing they'd said before.