Avogadro's Number

Just about anything

Recent Posts

Above Politics?

by

I don’t want politicians who are ‘above politics,’ any more then I want a plumber who’s ‘above toilets’.’
— Ta-Nahesi Coates

Escher Hilton

by

I was at an sf convention a couple of weeks ago at one of the more…architecturally interesting hotels. The official name is the Westchester Hilton but we call it the Escher Hilton. The room floors on the south side are numbered 1 to 4. The room floors on the north side used to be numbered 5 to 8, now 2 to 5. The Transdimensional Portal is a very long corridor with several jogs in it, no stairs but does have a very small incline in the middle. It runs behind the ballroom/meeting space, goes from the 4th floor on the south side to what is now the 4th floor on the north side. Due to the way the floors were numbered, itt used to go from the 4th floor to the 7th floor. Hence why we call it the Transdimensional Portal.

There is a lovely square staircase, mirrored on one wall, with a gorgeous intricate chandelier. It starts in a corner of one of the jogs in the Transdimensional Portal, near no meeting space at all, and comes out in a narrow hallway downstairs, behind the ballrooms.

There is some function space/ballrooms on the north side, accessible by its own lobby and a grand staircase. If you are at all mobility impaired, the only way to get up there is to use the elevator in the south wing and hobble/wheel yourself over by way of the Transdimensional Portal. Or go around the tennis courts and in thru the north side door to get to the elevator in that wing.

To get from the upstairs ballroom space to the downstairs ballroom space, you go down the outer wings of the grand staircase, then reverse direction to go down the center staircase, turn left to go thru an unobtrusive hallway under the left wing of the grand staircase and into the lobby of the other ballroom. Reversing that path, you go thru an unobtrusive door at the far end of the ballroom lobby, into a narrow hallway that looks to deadend. Only after you go thru it do you realize there are stairs to the right. The grand staircase is five people wide. The hallway under the stairs is only two people wide.

And depending on where your room is and what the weather is like, the shortest route to many of the rooms is outside thru the gardens.

It’s strange but we like it.

James Monroe, first inaugural address, 1817

by

“It is only when the people become ignorant and corrupt, when they degenerate into a populace, that they are incapable of exercising the sovereignty. Usurpation is then an easy attainment, and an usurper soon found. The people themselves become the willing instruments of their own debasement and ruin. Let us, then, look to the great cause, and endeavor to preserve it in full force. Let us by all wise and constitutional measures promote intelligence among the people as the best means of preserving our liberties.”
~James Monroe, First Inaugural Address, March 4, 1817

Our Elected Officials

by

Ninety-eight percent of the adults in this country are decent, hard-working, honest Americans. It’s the other lousy two percent that get all the publicity. But then – we elected them.
—Lily Tomlin

It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly American criminal class except Congress.
—Mark Twain

If we ever pass out as a great nation we ought to put on our tombstone, ‘America died from a delusion that she has moral leadership.’
—Will Rogers

I have come to the conclusion that one useless man is called a disgrace; that two are called a law firm, and that three or more become a Congress!
—From 1776, the musical

Tools of Conquest

by

“The tools of conquest do not necessarily come with bombs and explosions and fallout. There are weapons that are simply thoughts… attitudes… prejudices. To be found only in the minds of men. For the record, prejudices can kill, and suspicion can destroy, and the thoughtless, frightened search for a scapegoat has a fallout all its own for the children, and the children yet unborn. And the pity of it is that these things cannot be confined to The Twilight Zone.”

Closing narration by Rod Serling from The Monsters Are Due On Maple Street. Read it again, and hear Rod Serling’s voice and delivery. [Read more…]