Brent Nyitray
Fairlington Blade
Let the mutherfuker burn!
jnc4p
Kevin S. Willis
Michigoose
lmsinca
markinaustin
Arcanaut
novahockey
quarterback
ScottC
yellojktHi all,
First and foremost, I’d like to thank Kevin for getting this going. I’ve scanned over a few posts and it looks promising. I have a little blog of my own that took a summer break. In case anyone is interested, the blog is fairlingtonblade.blogspot.com. My posts tend to be either about cooking or raising kids with autism. I’d thought about politics as I certainly have a bit to say about that. I didn’t go that direction, because there’s plenty of political blogs out there. Mind you, there’s plenty of blogs about autism (autismtwins is a favorite) and cooking. Originally, I was planning to emphasize my work as the secretary of a bowling league, but never got around to it. That might change.
Second. I look forward to discussions with those who hold opposing opinions. Ever since the Post redesigned the comments section, it wasn’t worth starting a thread and I tended towards snark. I rather enjoy chatting politics with conservatives–my best friend from grad school was a die hard Republican. Funny thing is that he’d been a die hard Democrat and then went to a party convention in Minnesota. Anyway, this should be fun.
Finally, who is the Fairlington Blade? For that matter, what is a Fairlington Blade? I picked up the Fairlington bit as that’s the area where I live. It’s a combination of Fairfax and Arlington, though it’s not on the border between the two. Technically, I don’t live in Fairlington, just in a neighboring development in Alexandria that appropriated the name as it’s a bit more shi shi (than Bradlee Towers.
The Blade comes from my favorite football team, Sheffield United. [Note: I grew up in Nebraska so I’m a die hard Huskers fan. Still, it makes sense to me that the game in which a foot strikes the ball has primacy.] For those who have seen The Full Monty, you’ll know that Sheffield is a steel town. The name is famous for cutlery for hundreds of years. So, Sheffield United is the Blades. I also liked the sound of the name Fairlington Blade. It sounded Zorro-esque. It’s also gotten me accused of being a not so closeted gay to my immense amusement. It doesn’t help that the local GLBT newspaper is the Washington Blade.
So, that’s the nickname. What lies behind it? I’m Paul Lane. I’m a research physicist at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory. I’ve been studying organic semiconductors for about 20 years. I went to college at Macalester in Minnesota, grad school at Iowa State and have since bounced around quite a bit. Post-doc at Utah, four years as a “professor” in Sheffield, England, and the last ten years at research labs in Boston or Washington, DC.
The non-political posts should be fun too. My biggest cooking passion is Indian food, though I make decent sushi and killer risotto. I’ll have fun chatting about the kids too. There’s a good saying. If you meet one kid with autism, you’ve met one kid with autism. Mine are five year old twins and different as night and day in their needs. Both would be considered high functioning and just started kindergarten. Parenting a special needs kid isn’t that different in kind from a typical kid. There’s just a lot more meetings.
BB
P.S. Edited for completeness. I did like the accidental “Second. Whatever.” from the draft post.
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All Things in Moderation 
Good morning, FB. We did not have much interaction on PL so I had no idea we had so much in common. Cooking is my hobby, and for years I have worked closely (at my job) with some autism organizations in OK, one in particular. I hope you listed your website in your profile as I would like to check it out.
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Hi Paul,Glad to know you are well. It is 4:20 out here and these are the two kid and work free hours of my day. Just for reading and writing, unless work blows up, they can call anytime. I'm not as big a deal as a shot in the dark, but I'm a big enough deal that I'm always, always on call to The Man, the entity, the state.
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Ha! Not a mere draft any more. Welcome, Paul. Okie, I have sampled Paul's cooking and he is seriously talented.I will not be able to devote as much time to this today as I did yesterday [settled a case and had a "hole" in my day as a result] but I surely could not go without welcoming Fairlington Blade.
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on internet trollshttp://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-14898564
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mark, I guess I shall consider myself jealous. More specifically, I am into healthy cooking and how to make it taste good.BTW Mark, not to brag, but here in OKC our forecast is for a HIGH of 60 today and high chance of rain. Woohoo!!! Are you getting any weather relief yet?
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jerzy, don't know if you saw my comment this morning in your I already can't keep up post. You can view a list of all comments that is reverse chron and not thread specific. I am going to experiment with keeping that open in a separate tab while it's relatively quiet here in the early going.
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Hi Paul and welcome to our little slice of the blogosphere. It's nice to know a little about you and like Okie mentioned, suddenly we have something in common………………….. physics…………..I mean cooking. As a matter of fact I've been secretly hoping that perhaps once a week or maybe just once a month, if everyone could tolerate it, we'd do a cooking thread. But I don't want to scare everyone away.It's interesting to learn a little more about the people here and you have quite the resume, but for me the most poignant is of course raising autistic children. You get serious props from me for that kind of challenge. I am many things and have worn many hats but always the most important of my jobs was raising our children.And just as a footnote, our youngest daughter did her first research fellowship at the U of Minnesota working on organic semiconductors.
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Paul,I think I may have accidentally published this. Ooops! I should probably stay out of the backend with my iPad, there's something weird about the interface where I click on things and they don't work so I mash them or mash them twice and then it happens, or two things happen. So, apologies. I don't think Fairlington Blade mean to publish this, um, prematurely. I'm pretty sure that was me. Feel free to revise.
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Shrink, now you too are an administrator. It's not automatic, so someone has to go make you an admin after you accept the invitation. But, to point, that's not a long-term solution, as we probably don't want to make everyone who might join in the future an admin. But, once we go public, we should be able to add a "recent comments" gadget to the sideboard. Word of advice, don't go mucking around in the backend on an iPad.
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Okie, 106F yesterday, but only 96F today and tomorrow. And no rain, dammit.Kev, I had written Paul that I wanted him to publish b/c I could not welcome his "draft" and then poof he was here! So thanks, if you caused a preemie.I wrote a Perry-Texas post "above" as my contrib for the day, probably. Have a good 'un.
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This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
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We're all administrators now. Kevin did you read the last thread last night? Scott was tinkering and we came up with some good ideas.
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"We're all administrators now."That line should be preserved for posterity somewhere.FB, I am one of those old timers who consider soccer a commie plot at worst and a lame distraction at best, but I'll try to set aside my preconceptions about how anyone raised on good, wholesome Husker football could fall into that trap.
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Now that I have my hands on the tools, I added one of Troll McW's favorites, Ace of Spades, in the spirit of diversity. Pursuant to QB's piece yesterday on how it just might be that we'll never agree, no matter how well we communicate, I once asked Troll for the places he enjoys visiting, to see what makes him tick. So there you go.We are fundamentally different and we do not have to tear each other apart. That sounds like a pretty liberal sentiment and I don't fancy myself as such, but I just can't muster the rage some people can, that they seem to be so proud of, though maybe I'm just getting old.
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Love that sites list; I added Power Line to try it out. I especially like that if everyone uses it we will all have a handy list of what the diverse group thinks is worth reading.
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Have to be off for a while now.
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What I love about Ace of Spades: Ace. He calls it like he sees it, and isn't afraid to question his own side (Christine O'Donnell, the current penchant by some in the political right to call everything they disagree with unconstitutional). What I don't like: the comments section. Also, the cheerleader pics.
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He despises Bachmann and Palin too. Hmmmm.
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See, Shrink? Though politics may divide us, almost all of us can find something to agree upon. BTW, I meant I like the cheerleader pics. Those are good. The comments section, very often, not so much.
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I was wondering what you had against cheerleader pics, had you gone to the PC side? Good. Some of the linkers on the right side are crazy nasty people, I don't imagine he screens them too well. Say how about associate20, mikefromArlington and ashotinthedark? I like their work. We can't approach everybody at once, but I'd hate to leave good folks swinging in the wind
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He had a hilarious Bachman piece yesterday. Really funny. And I tend to think that his animosity towards Palin has more to do with her supporters than with her, though he does have issues with her.
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McWing, funny you should mention her supporters. I think it was Erickson over at RedState who commented he was having problems with her more ardent fans. He said something along the lines of every time he mentions a GOP presidential candidate they jump all over him and he has to constantly remind them "She's not running"!!!!!!!!!
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Well, Erikson deserves what he gets for other reasons. That being said, I think a lot of Palin hatred is fueled by emotion, conversely, a lot of support is emotional as well. We can argue that some or a lot of that emotional support is fueled by the emotional hatred of others, but it does drive extremist.Shorter answer, I read / hear the same thing. And I'm a supporter!
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Hello Paul, we keep meeting in the best places.
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@QB – I grew up with the same preconceptions. How anyone could find a 0-0 game exciting? I'll elucidate in a future post. I love that word. Definitely a 10 dollar word that pretty much means explain.BB
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