Entropy

[mrissa]

I was on the phone with gaaldine for the first time in 1.73 million years when, about a foot from me, one of the fluorescent light-covering panels in the kitchen came crashing down for no reason we could see. MEEP. It broke the last of the set of tall glasses markgritter's brother Dan gave us for a wedding present (though we still have two tumblers from the set), and it gave me quite a turn.

The sky is, in fact, falling. Reports not exaggerated.

Quick! (Or, y'know, slowly. Whichever.) Tell me something anti-entropic! Conceptually if not literally.

Comments

Hope for the resoration of civil rights in this country

[barondave.livejournal.com]

Alberto Gonzales, an incompetent Attorney General who replaced the evil AG John Ashcroft, may be on his way out. The New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/11/opinion/11sun1.html) is calling him out, and the latest flap about the US attorney's who weren't fired for being GOP toadies is heating up. There may be hope for this country, despite Nehemiah Scudder.

Re: Hope for the resoration of civil rights in this country

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I think one of the things I liked least about Spider Robinson's "collaboration" with Robert Heinlein was his attempt to fit Nehemiah Scudder and 9/11/01 into the same literal timeline. The shoehorn was just not big enough for that!

But figurative timelines, referential/conceptual stuff? Sure, no problem.

[brooksmoses]

Today, I helped tiger_spot fight back the tides of entropy by taking her to Fry's to get a replacement fan for her computer, since the old one had become quite noisy. And we also removed quite a quantity of dust from the insides of the computer.

Also, Maxwell's Demon. :)

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Oooooh. Did you get to wheel it 'round?

It seemed that every time we went to Fry's, we got the same old codger from somewhere down ANZAC way, who was anxious that we know that we could simply wheel it 'round! No trouble at all! We could fetch a cart and wheel it 'round! And then he would get the comission for the sale he'd helped us with! Due to us wheeling it 'round!

So it got to be quite a thing.

[rosefox]

A week or two ago, we moved a bunch of bookcases out into the middle of the living room and moved the couches back against the far wall. It was utter chaos. Yesternight we moved two small stacked bookcases out of the living room (one went into the foyer and the other into sinboy's room) and moved a tall bookcase into the spot they had occupied. All of a sudden the chaos has vanished and our living room, which previously had a U of couches occupying most of it, has huge swaths of open space! We still have some moving-around to do with the remaining bookcases--another one is going into sinboy's room and two others will be stacked in its place, or maybe those two are going into sinboy's room and the one is staying where it is--and coffee tables and so forth, but after that we'll have a gorgeous open space for entertaining and enjoying our library. To top it all off, we're having a book-sorting and -shelving party, which is decidedly anti-entropic.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

That is a very good kind of anti-entropic action indeed!

We need at least one new bookcase. Probably more. But our old source of them may have dried up, so it's on our list of things to find, and other things have taken some priority, since we can double-stack for the time being.

[rosefox]

I'm very tired of double-stacking. One of the things I want to do with this re-org is make better use of the shelves. My anthologies were triple-stacked and that meant I just never read them, which is tragic. We also have some Ikea bookcase pieces that could be turned into bookcases and/or cabinets with minimal effort; that may happen once we see how much room we have after the reorg. At the very least I'd like to replace our glass cabinet, which is a pain to keep clean, with a nice pine one.

Our sources for bookcases are the curb, Freecycle, and family members who are moving house and need to get rid of things. Your versions of those may not be as absurdly productive as ours, though.

[fmsv.livejournal.com]

What was your old source of bookcases?

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Target. But they don't seem to have the same kind as they used to.

[cakmpls.livejournal.com]

Can't. Don't speak physics. Never recovered from high-school physics class taught by a Hungarian priest for whom mine was the first physics class including girls that he had ever taught.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I assume that the coed nature of the situation was relevant to his teaching?

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

I got Pamela's outbound email cleared up. I got her and Lydy's laptops working with the new Wifi router, in a decent security mode even. Also my laptop. And Lydy hasn't seen the Wifi connection drop for no reason yet, and gets blazing speed.

Entropy is outa here!

[mamapduck.livejournal.com]

I made candied ginger. :)

[pameladean]

I wrote four hundred words.

P.

[zwol.livejournal.com]

I wrote an essay on soliciting neighborhood participation in the restoration of a salt marsh. A real, specific salt marsh that may actually be restored according to the plan come up with by me and my classmates.

[pariyal.livejournal.com]

Someone is coming this afternoon to look at our house. And I've called the electrician to do anti-entropic stuff at the new house.

[dichroic.livejournal.com]

In both the Netherlands and around London, there are daffodils abounding everywhere. Despite the billows and billows of them waving in all directions, they still somehow count as anti-entropic to me.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

They certainly try to be!

I used to buy tiny bouquets of them at Trader Joe's for something like $2, when we lived in California. I desperately needed season markers out there. They're so cheerful, I should see if there are cheap little bunches somewhere around here.

[dichroic.livejournal.com]

They're everywhere here, but I don't think mailing you some would work :-/

Bulbs are available to ship, but not until early fall.

[pezwitch.livejournal.com]

Sorry to budge in on your comment thread, but I do know that Cub sells little bunches of daffodils in various stages of openness for something in the range of $1-3.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Budge whenever you like, J.! You're always welcome here.

[pezwitch.livejournal.com]

Thanks! (Now I have to go to Cub and get daffodils, because... daffodils!)

[brooksmoses]

Trader Joe's sells bouquets of daffodils?

I did not know this. I must have some. Season markers are good and needful things, indeed.

[greykev.livejournal.com]

my car continues to run!
there is stew warming in the break room.
my neighbors picked up their trash strewn along the alley.
Um we're preparing for our book sale at work?

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Library book sales strike me as pretty entropic events, but maybe that's just from the other side of things?

[greykev.livejournal.com]

From the chaos of broadly sorted tables (some anti-entropy as we box like things together) the books are chosen and go off to their new homes. Or to the big pulping vat at the papermill, one or the other. Seems orderly to me, in the long run.

Of course, the the heat-death of the universe could be described as ultimately very orderly.