I eagerly await the first major metropolitan area brave enough to institute a Futurama-style public transit by pneumatic tube system.

NY did that about 15 years or so before they started building the subway system. The one-block length that was constructed was only partly successful, and ended up being abandoned after only being a curiosity. When they were expanding the subway system some 40 years later, they discovered the pneumatic-tube prototype, still with the beautiful waiting area and first-class car. You can read about it here.

I heard on NPR this morning how Facebook communities are being set up.

Yeah. This was kind of about how online friends do provide comfort and support even without ever having met. It's pretty much the exact opposite of what this person says in the DMN Blog.

Please don't indulge in godless modern paganism and set up homely, self-indulgent makeshift memorials with cheap flowers and teddy bears. Don't hold hands and sing bad pop songs.

I'm not sure how makeshift memorials are any more self-indulgant than any other kind of expression of grief. And I'd prefer we didn't hold hands and sing bad pop songs, but that has more to do with my dislike of public displays of affection and (most) bad pop songs than what I think is an appropriate response to a tragedy like this. Also, shut up Kathy Shaidle! Who are you to tell people how to grieve.

Go to church. That's what it's for. For centuries, people smarter than you and with more finely honed aesthetics worked on rituals that actually do what they're supposed to do.

Ah. I see. Greiving is only appropriate for the religious, expressed in religious ways.

Asshole.

I eagerly await the first major metropolitan area brave enough to institute a Futurama-style public transit by pneumatic tube system.

[link]

In 1869, Alfred Ely Beach and his Beach Pneumatic Transit Company of New York secretly began constructing a pneumatic subway line beneath Broadway. Its single tunnel, 312 feet long, 8 feet in diameter, was completed in 1870 and ran under Broadway from Warren Street to Murray Street.[1] The line was built as a demonstration of a pneumatic transit system, open to the public with fares donated to charity. It remained little more than a curiosity, running only a single car on its one-block-long track to a dead-end at its terminus.

Have we discussed Amber Benson's upcoming movie that seems to be about keeping cabana boys?

I know one of the leads and saw a test screening. I think the final cut is much like what I saw (which means the director ignored my very perceptive feedback). I did enjoy it, although Tara has been wiped from my mind and replaced with something more...different.

Subway restaurants often have wallpaper depicting the pneumatic tube subway on its demonstration to the public.

Before birth or after? Cause I have a binder that I was given post birth. I used to have a maternity belt but that got given away.

I think it's an after thing that supports some of the weight of the baby.

Can there be any more beautiful sight than a Buffista pneumatic tube subway crosspost? Not this minute, anyway. None more beautiful.

Blood puddle pillows

With cool pictures of them being used....

eta: one comment to the blog entry suggested that this is "beyond tasteless" at this moment. Huh. That didn't cross my mind.

I so want some of those. But yeah, unfortunate timing.

I want a pneumatic tube!

I have a student who is about 53, married, with kids, etc. She has had ups and downs in her life. She wants to give me a car she has sitting in her driveay that she is trying to get rid of, and I don't know what to do. I mean, it is nice, and I really need a car. She has said she will take $500 or $1000, or not (I could give Her $500 this week, and $500 in two weeks). But-- I am sort of liking the carlessness (even though I can see how it will get old real fast!), and the whole point of not having a car is to save money to have a more reliable car. This is the same kind of car I had before-- old.

I feel like it would be nice to take the bus on weekdays and keep the car for weekends and emergencies, but then I still have to have insurance, etc, which eats away at the savings of not having a car. I also feel that other people deserve to have the car more, if she is trying to help people out. I mean, it isn't going to drastically alter my life circumstances or anything, it is just going to make things more convenient.

She does all this talk about "living angels", and she really, really believes in helping people, but I don't have a car because a) I don't have and am not ambitious enough to want a job that makes more money and b) I prefer to spend my money on DVD's and books-- it isn't like I just dragged myself up out of the gutter-- it is completely my fault that I am financially unable to buy a car.