tommyrot, you might want to see if there's a local tennant's rights group. You can let them know, so at least a complaint gets lodged against the property manager. It might not get the laundry machines replaced any faster, but it's something you can do to let other people know what kind of problems exist.

It's Emmett's favorite weather - foggy and grey.

Yet another reason to love Emmett.

Well crud-- it would appear that I might have a sensitivity to bamboo fibers in fabric. I bought some socks that had the fibers in them and the first time I wore a pair, my ankles, in particular, felt slightly itchy-- I put it down to them being brand new, so I washed all of the pairs. Put a pair on today, my ankles started itching again-- to the point where I stripped off the socks, slathered on cortisone, and popped half a dose of antihistamine.

Now I no longer itch, but I'm sleeeeeeeeeepy. (Yeah, I'm a lightweight.)

This sucks though, since I'd been thinking of buying some bamboo fiber towels for our bathroom.

I didn't realize low entropy resulted in the distinction between past and future! I don't even know what that means, really.

I attended a talk on this last month. You want I should get you an explanation?

I like that weather, too, Hec, but I've always thought it was because we don't have it often.

Physicists have a really hard time with time because, mathematically, there's nothing different about time compared to the other three dimensions. There shouldn't be any reason why we couldn't move around in time like we can move in space, and yet, we can't. And physicists can't say why.

!GFIA won thgir emit ni sdrawkcab gnilevart m'I

I didn't realize low entropy resulted in the distinction between past and future! I don't even know what that means, really.

The thing is that the laws of physics don't really specify a direction of time, the equations work no matter which direction time flows. However, the second law of thermodynamics states that a closed system will move from a state of low entropy to high entropy. This lets us say that lower entropy state is in the past and higher entropy is in the future.

Entropy can be thought of as the number of arrangements of the stuff in a system to look a certain way. A good way to think of that is an egg, there are less ways the stuff in an egg can be arranged if the egg is whole than if the egg is smashed. So the whole egg has lower entropy than a smashed egg.

Now apply this to the Universe. Early in the Universe, everything was in a tight, dense, and uniform state. There aren't a lot of arrangements for that state, so the Universe had low entropy. Now that stuff is all spread out so there are more arrangements and thus there is higher entropy. This lets us point to the early Universe and say that must be past while we can point to an even more spread out Universe and say that must be the future.

I responded to the Amazon seller with this:

I just thought it took a little long to ship for such a small package. I was satisfied with the price and the condition of the item. I'm not prone to inflate ratings if I don't feel the transaction was excellent. I don't think a neutral rating reflects poorly on your company as a seller. I noted that I was satisfied in my notes without disparaging you or your product. I would definitely order from you again but I feel the feedback accurately represents my experience.

Hey, on half.com once, I had a guy practically accuse me of pulling a fast one cause the book got lost in the mail. I didn't ask him to change it.