i prefer pi

Business.  (This one is for Alex.  This is only for Alex.)

Powerpoint centimeters aren’t the same as regular centimeters.  Bring it on, Great Britain!

If you live in Seattle & surrounds and you don’t read the Uptight Seattleite column in the Seattle Weekly, you really should.  It’s full of smug condescension about Seattleites and our smug, condescending condescension.  Or something.  Anyway, it’s good stuff, especially if you like to laugh at yourself.

From this week’s reply about Portland’s Stumptown Coffee’s incursion against our espresso stronghold:

We currently recognize two species of coffee shops. First, there’s the Starbucks family, which includes Starbucks itself and its clones, Tully’s and Peet’s (yes, I know Peet’s was first, but let’s not make this too complicated). We despise them like we despise Microsoft, but will use them in a pinch. Some people even secretly enjoy the reassuring dependability of their employees’ paste-on friendliness. Second, there are the V’s: Vivace (the original V), Vita, and Victrola. They’re known for their microroasts, their funky ambiance, and the rosette thing they do with the foam. (Others in this category include Caffe Ladro, Uptown Espresso, Zeitgeist, and Lighthouse.) We love them, except for the ones that maybe have been slipping a little lately, or maybe were overrated to begin with. It is a mark of the civilized person to be able to discuss which ones these are.

… change in the sea.

When I got out of bed in Dallas this morning at 5 AM, it was warmer than it is in Redmond right now at 5 PM.  You, too, can have lovely, mild, balmy summers like me.  I won’t even mention that it’s twenty degrees hotter and muggier either.

Edit: I found an interesting article from a 1948 issue of Time with the same title as the song to which I linked.

Things that I forgot about Texas* that I miss:

• Real BBQ (and Rudy’s BBQ)
• Big Red (the soda, not the gum)
• Your car feeling like a sauna for the first five minutes
• More than one country radio station on the dial
• Texas A&M T-shirts

Things that I forgot about Texas that I do not miss:

• Mosquitos (seriously, we don’t have ‘em in Seattle)

In other (more interesting and possibly less narcissistic) news, Laura ordered her gown, and I think that we found a photographer today.  Wedding plans are a’coming together!

*Note: there are more things about Texas that I miss that I haven’t forgotten (e.g. my family, Blue Bell ice cream), but they are omitted here for the sake of brevity.

Laura and I are in Dallas until Tuesday to do some wedding errands (secure a photographer and order Laura’s gown) and spend time with the families and families-to-be. 

As usual, stepping off the plane at DFW was like walking into a warm, wet blanket.  It’s good to be home.

In case you were interested in paying money to get a flood of secularist rhetoric and didn’t know where you’d get your fix for tonight, Christopher Hitchens is going to be at Seattle Town Hall tonight at 7:30PM.  He’s the author of god is not Great (sold out all over town) and recently engaged Douglas Wilson in a written debate hosted by ChristianityToday.

I’d like to say that I’ll be there taking notes with my pre-sup boots on, but Thursday nights are Laura’s and my Bible study night.

[via Seattlest]

KCMU KEXP, Seattle’s institutionalized independent radio station, is in the middle of their summer fundraising drive (not just for NPR and PBS!), and they’ve put up a neat stylized tracking map on their website.  If you’ve been dying to know what the difference is between Montlake and Madrona, or if you thought that Mount Baker was just a mountain, you might want to take a look.  Let’s face it — if you’re reading my blog, the odds are 19-to-1 that you don’t know the Seattle area very well, so you should check it out anyway (and while you’re at it, don’t forget to listen to the internet’s first uncompressed radio stream).

Via Seattlest’s Do You Pledge to KEXP? (for the record, no, I don’t).

I don’t have a feline friend, but if I did, I would definitely build one of these.

From “Orphans vs. American Dream” by Anthony Bradley on The Resurgence:

Historically, the early church was known for taking in their culture’s orphans and the needy. This is such an ancient tradition of the church (except for post-1960s American evangelicals) that Pope Benedict XVI even talked about it in his first encyclical “God is Love.” He writes, “the Church cannot neglect the service of charity any more than she can neglect the Sacraments and the Word. . . Justin Martyr in speaking of the Christians’ celebration of Sunday also mentions their charitable activity, linked with the Eucharist as such. Those who are able make offerings in accordance with their means, each as he or she wishes; the Bishop in turn makes use of these to support orphans, widows, the sick and those who for other reasons find themselves in need, such as prisoners and foreigners. The great Christian writer Tertullian relates how the pagans were struck by the Christians’ concern for the needy of every sort.”

Sadly, some of you are now more concerned about the fact that I quoted a Pope than you are about his actual point.

Dang, he got me right on.