Childish Albedo

We really did have the best intentions. We recently finished the Sci Fi novel The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson, and the concept of albedo plays an important part of the plot. (Albedo is the fraction of sunlight that is reflected, rather than absorbed.)

Everything was going fine, and we had even liberated some cool charts…..

By RCraig09 – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=121130309

But then….

UC#1b: Can’t we ever have an adult moment around here?

UC#4: Error 501(c)3: No search results were found for “adult moment” in the WBLOTT blogosphere.

…. and we felt the need to semi-sequitur into this….

Albedo: Not to be confused with

Libido
Alfredo
Libretto

Which led us to this….

which offered some interesting matches for “albedo”:

potato
play-doh
they know
contains no
Trinidad and Tobago
Jane Doe
way no
Winnebago
cabaret show
lumbago
fried dough

As is immediately obvious to any legal scholar, this is clearly entrapment, but we were off to the races.

Albedo => Play dough Connection

There was a cartoonist for the Daily Texas named Sam Hurt. During the late 70’s and 80’s who had a clever series called “Eyebeam“.

In one strip, Eyebeam is chatting with his buddy Ratliff before class.

Eyebeam asks, “Do you want to reminisce about the past?”

There is a long pause, then Ratliff says, “Remember how salty play dough was?”

One of the Eyebeam characters, Hank the Hallucination, actually ran for, and won the office of student president at the University of Texas.

On Oct. 19, Hank T. Hallucination entered the race for student body president against Begala. Hank was a character from the comic strip “Eyebeam,” published in the Texan. A green, dinosaur-ish monster, Hank was exactly what his name suggested: a hallucination. Even in the imaginary world created by the comic’s artist, Sam Hurt, BA ’80, JD ’83, Hank wasn’t real. But that didn’t stop his momentum. At least 1,000 students signed a referendum to ensure that Hank’s write-in votes would be counted and announced. A rally was held—Hankstock—in support of his candidacy. He was described wryly as a “dream candidate” by his campaign manager, a savvy law student named Steve Patterson.

Hank went on to win the election.

Doubly fictional entities cannot serve, of course, and Begala won the runoff.
Texas Exes

Early Eyebeam classics can be found here.

Even though WLBOTT (buy high, sell low) is strictly non-commercial, we can appreciate the finer things in life, such as the Eyebeam merch and the Russian oligarchs’ appreciation of €40,000 bottle of wine.

Some cool Eyebeam merch:

Just for reference, WLBOTT can supply the Oligarchs with as much € 40K wine as they need.

Our secret formula:

Semi-Sequitur: WLBOTT Warning

So, speaking of idiot Russians and vodka….

At first blush, we were offended by the obvious ageism. Why can’t old people pour vodka into their eyeballs?

Although this doesn’t apply to WLBOTT staff, we found the Daily Mail’s photo caption quite interesting:
Even respected, intelligent students from normal, sensible backgrounds are vodka eyeballing. – Daily Mail