Phlogiston

Author: joe

  • The nervouser I get…

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    joe
    in

    It came on me here on the back porch, not so much in a flash of revelation but more like a shrug of shoulder resignation. No big sigh, just an uncomfortable slip into a slump. I have been struggling lately. The ride home this evening was like a slog through a bitter syrup. Indecisive drivers…

  • QED CSS enhances HTML

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    joe
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    This is not about jargon. Not much anyway. How can you possibly poke good fun about a subject that is by definition and deep in its very own existence both important and ludicrous?I found myself asking the other day, “What was the TD of the superheat on the TXV?” I didn’t even give me pause.…

  • Hey, you, in the corner over there, please lower your hand!

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    joe
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    When I was a kid I used to be accused of spoiling everyone’s fun. Had I been a little more glib, I would have squawked. Had I pondered it a little longer, I would have shrugged my shoulders, realized the truth. Everyone was trying to spoil my fun. I heard an interview with an author…

  • Ontogeny Recapitulates Phylogeny

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    joe
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    “When I heard the learn’d astronomer; The day smelled wet, gray, chilled. Late 1950’s early vernal promise out of the brown compost of layered leaves. My father circled the blacktop in front of Allegheny Observatory then parked in front of a set of concrete steps that lead the entry door. When the proofs, the figures,…

  • Does this mean we need to put an asterisk by your name on the family tree? – Steve Coluccio

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    joe
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    About a month ago I had this great idea. The muse called to me. Assemble a family tree. Come to understand your ancestry. It is time to confront your lineage. -What the hell, I thought. Who am I to fly in the face of the daughters of Zeus? After all wasn’t it Mneme, who in…

  • I yoost go nuts pour le Printemps

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    joe
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    With all respect to the artistic excellence and the depth of emotion shown by Jorgi Jorgenson: When did Holmes return from his deadly tumble over the Reichenbach Falls. The birthplace of meringue, if you can believe In the Springtime, my dear compatriot And Whan was it that Aprille with his shoures soote, bathed every veyne…

  • Checkmate in…uh…the next 13 moves..I think

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    joe
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    Aron Nimzowitch, chess theoretician, author and pretty good player, world champion, a Latvian who settled at the end of his life in Copenhagen Denmark, lost a chess game to one Friedrich Sämisch in Baden Baden in 1925. Yes, the same Sämisch who developed the variation that is considered to be the sharpest way of meeting…