I often tell people in Spanish that my usage skills are "muy rusty" ("muy" is "very"). Today I finally decided to look it up and see what I should actually be saying that would help me sound less stupid. The equivalent, according to my best small dictionary, is "casi olvidado por falta de pra'ctica"--"almost forgotten from lack of practice". Not exactly the pith idiom I was hoping for. Fortunately, my big dictionary offers me "oxidado", which seems a bit literal, but hey, who am I to argue.

Ooh! I found another non-gross Tucker Max story! Another one from his law school experience.

Last week I took this picture using the timer on my digital camera. I like it: it's about as flattering as pictures of me get, and it captures a certain look that appears on my face...bemusement, weariness, matter-of-fact-ness. It also neatly demonstrates the left side of my body being higher than my right; maybe it's time to see the chiropractor again.

A man with various hearing problems has written an outstanding article for Wired on his quest to make Ravel's Bolero sound right after he lost his remaining hearing.

Holy crap. In my quest to understand how gears and stuff really work--once I have an internal understanding of them, I can build stuff--I was reminded of HowStuffWorks, because they have a lot of outstanding material. So now I'm learning how a torque converter works (it's the key to automatic transmissions). Who the hell came up with the idea of putting a turbine drive in a car?