Sundry Ruminations: December 2005 Archives

In a truly just universe, dogs would live as long as people do...
--Thomas Jay Peckish II

Doctor Dobb’s Journal stalwart Michael Swaine has some recollections of his last time in New Orleans that resonate with mine...

Indeed, Swaine’s post triggered a number of memories. One was a tale I related during our OOPSLA XX retrospective, but forgot to post here of an epic OOPSLA IV paper airplane contest at the New Orleans Hyatt. The Hyatt chain used to like to distinguish its hotels with daring feats of architectural legerdemain in their central atria, and the building in New Orleans provided the ideal setting for this contest. This contest was ultimately won with a breathtaking twenty-nine story corkscrew spiral into a ground-floor fountain by a entry crafted by Bjorn Freeman-Benson. An audacious display of atrial flutter. Memories of this site came back to me during the Katrina coverage.

In the spirit of free association, that Freeman-Benson recollection also triggered another Proustian recollection of good food, Bjorn's Bacchanalian gout-fest at OOPSLA '98.

Ironically, I became aware of Swaine's piece through an utterly unwarranted pot shot taken by some unctuous coprophagic who evidently treats the internet as his personal scratching post. This sort of puerile ad hominem invective is the kind of thing that give 'blogging, and yes, even sarcasm itself, a bad name. A side effect of totally disposable email addresses and weblog accounts is that they offer malcontents like this one anonymous access to single-use sniper’s nests…