Monday, August 20, 2007

No Exit

Jean Paul SarteSartre taught the bunnies that hell was the people you had to spend eternity with. He was wrong. Hell is Philadelphia International Airport with the USAIR grim reaper training class canceling flights to every destination. Terminal F being the lowest circle, we are now scheduled to board a bus somewhere in the wee hours that will circle the airport endlessly. Like poor Charlie, Eli may never return.

However, to keep you amused here is an interesting picture of a surface station, the one that Eli knew when he was a SarteSartre fan, walking the streets of the Village, being cool (well he tried) and all that.


Eli recalls walking into Central Park, near the Belvedere Castle to go see Joe Papp's Shakespeare in the Park productions and the huge change in temperature as one left Fifth Avenue, and how the weather station was located in a lovely, leafy grove. See you one air conditioner

UPDATE Those who must be obeyed pointed out that Eli had forfeited any claim to pseudo intellectual appearance by misspelling Sartre. Au contraire mon mice, this only nails the sucker to the wall. For pointing this out the anonymouse wins the hall of hell (Philadelphia International Airport) fun alarm. A 220 dB tooth extractor that used to hang over the baggage carousel that refused to spit up our stuff because it had been sitting out in the rain for four hours and didn't taste good. We've also relinked the picture so that all can see.

31 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hmmmm....you probably need to copy that picture and post it on your server, rather than linking, as apparently not everyone has the authority to view it. And I do so want to view it.

Anonymous said...

Verily important you missed out the "r" in Sartre. You pseudo intellectual status is now in question.

Anonymous said...

The photo can be seen by going to this page.

Anonymous said...

As punishment, he'll have to swallow the "r"s.

Anonymous said...

And what a week you've missed - RC thread with more than 500 comments, ClimateAudit.org being lost and then found, a vocal set of people unable to see the forest for the bark beetles...

The only thing more depressing than being stuck at the Phil. airport is having to stay at a hotel out there while attending a convention in Center City.

Isn't that station too close to the fence? What about the jet exhaust?

CapitalistImperialistPig said...

I can't quite decide if there is actually foiliage between the terminals of the nephelometer. If so, that should pose some foggy existential questions.

Anonymous said...

Isn't that station too close to Rudy Giuliani and Hillary Clinton?

Those two are enough to make anyone's temperature rise.

I have a theory that the upward trend in temperature corresponds directly with the downward spiral of our country.

Call me a conspiracy nut if you will but at least there is more evidence for my theory about The Hillariani Effect than there is for String Theory (which I will be the first to admit, would not be hard. Some think 1 is the loneliest number but next to 0, 1 looks like Mr. Popularity)

Anonymous said...

CIP said "I can't quite decide if there is actually foiliage between the terminals of the nephelometer."

I believe "foiliage" is what is between the terminals of climate auditors.

Anonymous said...

From the original:

"Eli recalls walking into Central Park, near the Belvedere Castle to go see Joe Papp's Shakespeare in the Park productions and the huge change in temperature as one left Fifth Avenue, and how the weather station was located in a lovely, leafy grove. See you one air conditioner"

You mean other than the shade provided by the lovely, leafy grove?

EliRabett said...

Actually, there was also heat generated in the lovely leafy grove. Privacy is at a premium in NYC

Anonymous said...

In NY, heat is generated pretty much everywhere: from City Hall to crack houses.

That's why they call it "Manheatan" (which is also another term for AGW, of course -- and also the title of the top newspaper headline in C.H.U.D "Man heaten alive" [by heathen] -- but that's a different matter entirely (at least I hope so).

Anonymous said...

RE: "Actually, there was also heat generated in the lovely leafy grove. Privacy is at a premium in NYC" Spoken like a true member of them what are reflex ovulators (distaff side).

Anonymous said...

So as I am headed for both a landing and (one hopes) a take-off from the afore-mentioned airport, whom will I encounter in Purgatory?

Anonymous said...

Been there, done that. BTW, I called out against Steve revealing your name...and his tattling on that other dude, can't remember his name, who said nasty things, but worked for someone. I don't like that kjind of pussy ass stuyff.

P.s. You're still a coimmuie sliberal.

Anonymous said...

hard to enter those words, when dringing,. Please leikmntate that, BCL does not do that.

Anonymous said...

"BTW, I called out against Steve revealing your name..."

How mangananimalous of you, TCO.

By the way, Eli, I understand the point of the word verification, but why do I have to do it twice?

Is it that these spam-bots are getting smart so once is not enough or something? (or is it that the blog owner isn't Sartre enough to configure it properly?)

Sometimes i can barely make out some of these letters when I haven't been drinking.

EliRabett said...

The 2x thing is the reason Eli turned it off in the first place. He noticed the same thing on James Annan's blog. It may have something to do with the browser you use

Anonymous said...

Are you saying I should fire the fox guarding my hen house?

Anonymous said...

Hey, that time I just had to do the word verification once -- and I had just had a beer. Maybe after a sixpack, i won't have to do it at all (hopefully not , at any rate)

Anonymous said...

I always assumed it was a timing issue. The word is generated by the server and it compares with what comes back from the session. But it times it out and generates a new one every short while. So if you spend long enough on the comments (reading and/or writing) it's already moved to the next word, so your input is "wrong".

I could be wrong though.

Anonymous said...

I think Adam is right, I've noticed the same pb on other blogs, and it does not happen if you write a quick note.

Anonymous said...

Do ya reckon they've got pictures of all the sites back to the 1880's so we can see what the temps were then?

How about from 1934?

Anonymous said...

"The word is generated by the server.."

Those are words? In what language?

I always assumed it was gibberish.

You learn something new every day.

EliRabett said...

Obviously you need to study server speak. There are classes at the local coffee bar.

Anonymous said...

I've noticed the same pb on other blogs, and it does not happen if you write a quick note.


Not so much a problem any more, but I also copy my comment in case I have to enter another word and the server dumps my comment. Used to happen until they worked out that bug. Old habits die hard.

Best,

D

Anonymous said...

"Those are words?"

Yeah, as in a collection of bytes (or bits). ;)

Anonymous said...

If that is what you meant, your original statement
"The word is generated by the server.." is not accurate.

Since what is generated contains multiple letters and each letter/character requires at least one word (two words for UNICODE), if that's what you really meant, you would have to say

"The words are generated by the server.." :)

But I think you are right about the timing issue, but why they make the timing so short is another matter.

I guess the assumption is that people will keep their comments short and to the point: "yer and idiot", "NO yer are!!!!!!!"

oops, put in one too many !'s and it timed out.

Anonymous said...

"If that is what you meant, your original statement"

Er,...do I look better if I say it was, or it wasn't? ;)

The timing is probably to reduce the amount of time a system has to try and work out what the letters are.

The problem is not just amount of time it takes to write the comment, but also read the comments (esp. if there's quite a few there) as the page is generated when the comments are displayed.

Anonymous said...

> the amount of time

I recall some suggestion that spammers were picking up the captcha code as an image and using it on porn sites -- people had to type it in to get to some image -- then the spammer would relay the keystrokes back to the legitimate blog they wanted to spam.

It's an arms race. Or fingers race.

Anonymous said...

"You think that I don't even mean
A single word I say
It's only words, and words are all I have
To take your comment away" -- The (slightly twisted) Bee Gees

Anonymous said...

Or perhaps this:

"You think that I don't even mean
A single word I say
It's only words, and words are all I have
To take your spam away" -- The (slightly twisted) Bee Gees