Two Dishes But To One Table

Erased deKooning -- er, Caesar

When you vote out the old leader sometimes the new leader feels the need to erase memory of the previous leader.   The Roman senate was so glad to get rid of Domitian that after they assassinated him, an official act of damnatio memoriae was passed.  Not only were his images decapitated, but written references  on public buildings were erased.  From the stone.   Here my sister examines a plaque at UPenn Museum of Archaeology. 

The original plaque said:

"to the imperator caesar
son of the deified vespasian,
domitian augustus
victor in germany, pontifex maximus
holding the power of tribune for the fifteenth year, imperator for the twenty second time
consul for the seventeenth time, perpetual censor, father of the country
the flavian augustan colony
of puteoli
by thee indulgence of the great
and divine princeps
having been moved closer to his city"

I didn't take a close up to show how the plaque looks "post-damnation" but it resembles the cream cheese plate after a brunch: just grooved, dragged furrows where the sentences were.  I was a little stingy with the camera that day so you'll have to use your imagination.  In fact, the picture above was taken with the built-in web cam on my little Asus Eee Netbook.

Respect for the Lightest Metal. And Best Battery.

If Wikipedia is trustable on lithium batteries I learned three things today:
1 - They mostly degrade just from shelf life, no matter what you do to them: up to 20% loss per year at room temperature, much more if hotter.
2 -  Letting them go below their lower limit voltage is bad.  Overcharging probably not dangerous, not even possible anymore with internal safeguards.  The voltage monitoring circuitry is right inside the battery pack, not in the computer.  So almost a bigger hazard is putting them away on the shelf long enough for them to dip below that 8 v threshold or whatever.  I let that happen to laptop #1.  (I'm on #3 now, just bought a netbook last week).
3 - M.I.T. demonstrated a full sized battery with smaller internal atomic structure thanks to -- how cool is this, virus-grown fiber structure inside.  They engineered the viral DNA to contain/attract iron, and so have achieved the smallest iron phosphate wires ever (iron phosphate is one option for the cathode material and the smaller the better)

Which President Did Jiu-Jitsu on the South Lawn?

Theodore Roosevelt.  And 1906 was probably before Asian martial arts were 'cool'.
Article here.   And the graphic that the article doesn't include online (do they ever?) is below (click larger).
    

For some reason the Wall Street Journal has been kind to the president so far.  The way I see it, this article, running in the sports section, answers the tacit question "Is the Prez someone you'd like to have a beer with?" with a firm "Yes.".  Even the WSJ editorial page uses respectful language about him.  

Throwing Rupert Murdoch into the mix may have confused the Journal's Conservative zeal.  Murdoch is dating some sort of young liberal last time I heard.