Apologies

Sorry for the light posting these couple days.

I haven't had anything to say, for one thing.

For another, I've been pretty pre-occupied with something cooking at work.

No, it has nothing to do with pumpkins.

Hopefully I will be able to say something definitive about it this week.

Stay tuned.

Lost, so lost...

My wife took the boy to visit relatives for the next week. I couldn't go because of work.

This is the first time in at least three years and eight months that I have been home alone for more than a day.

In the run-up to their departure, my mind was full of the things I would do when I finally had time to myself.

I could burn through a couple thick books.

I could finish a couple Xbox games.

I could watch a few DVDs that have been collecting dust.

But did I end up doing? Lying on the couch staring into space. I felt like Morgan Freeman when he finally got out of prison in The Shawshank Redemption.

I figure all my little hobbies and activies are actually like ornaments on the Christmas tree of my wife and kid. You have to have this big tree to start with, then figure out where to best place all the other sparkly little things that give the tree dazzle. Now my tree has been taken away -- really, it walked out the door with a suitcase -- and all my pretty lights and ornaments collapsed into a pile on the floor. And I'm not sure how to start sorting them out again.

Actually my paralysis only lasted a couple hours. I ended up having lunch and dinner out with friends, bashed out tons of e-mails, and drove what seemed like a couple hundred miles in "Forza Motorsport". It ended up being a pretty good day.

No there in "There"?

Steven Bochco, the TV production whiz behind "NYPD Blue", "L.A. Law" and "Hill Street Blues", has a new series out about the Iraq War.

It's billed as an apolitical, ultra-realistic look at the lives of soldiers on the front lines of the conflict.

I thought it sounded interesting.

But too bad actual soldiers don't think so.

"Bogus" was the preferred adjective among the eight soldiers -- most of them Iraq vets -- viewing the series pilot last week at Camp Murray, headquarters of the Washington State National Guard in Tacoma.

"Thank God that's over," said a master sergeant as the credits rolled.

Now, I'm sure some leeway can be allowed given the fact that realism always gives way to drama in Hollywood.

I mean, I thought Saving Private Ryan was a gripping, faithful look at World War Two, but I've read bits and pieces by military historians who point out a lot of flaws even in that masterpiece.

Just a guess, but I'm pretty sure "L.A. Law" wasn't a realistic representation of how the legal business works.

But if you're going to bill a show about an ongoing war as "true to life" and "unflinching", then you'd probably better make sure that it, well, is those things.

The list of the show's sins seems pretty long. Anyone out there see the first episode?

War

I find that whenever I lack for a topic to post on, I can always write a bit on what book I'm reading.

This inevitably makes me look way smart and impresses my more dimwitted readers (not you, the other guy) whose lips are moving as they read this.

So what tome am I presently perusing?

How To Make War by James F. Dunnigan.

Amazon kept recommending it over and over, probably because of my subscriptions to Soldier of Fortune, Guns & Ammo and Ranger Rick.

The book landed with a heavy thunk on my desk. Damn, I didn't realize it was so big, weighing in at more than six hundred pages. Can't I learn the basics of how to kill my fellow humans in large numbers in fewer pages than that? I'm not looking for a Cliffs Notes or anything, but wow, 600 pages is a lot.

But I dug in anyway and it's turning to be really interesting. It's written in a pretty casual style that while not exactly award-winning prose is hardly dry textbook fare either.

I'm learning all kinds of new stuff. I thought I was pretty up on the latest battlefield techniques. I watched "Saving Private Ryan", and I played all the way through "Full Spectrum Warrior" on the Xbox, too.

But did you know that you can't really pull a grenade pin with your teeth? Not unless, as Dunnigan advises, you have handy access to a dental surgeon.

Also, if you're a "pro" soldier, you probably walk around with a condom over your rifle barrel to keep dirt and grit out. That's right. You see a dude with a rubber on his M-16, you better run the hell away because he means business.

Hey, it's 11:48 already. I've used up all my blogging overtime.

Time

Yes, that last post went out at 11:32. I have extended my blogging time by a few minutes to compensate for technical and kid difficulties.

"Booty and the beast"

Well, I didn't have to go far to find some fine blogging material.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer columnist Robert Jamieson Jr. has a piece up about the Enumclaw animal sex farm scandal.

Because bestiality is not against the law in Washington state (wink wink David!), there is now a bill that would make it a crime to roger your rabbits, molest Mr. Ed or bugger your bovines.

Jamieson is opposed to the bill.

I could leave it there and let you think what you will, but his point is that he thinks there are more pressing problems legislators and police could be worrying over.

That's a fine opinion to hold, but he does seem to go a little far in trying to see matters from the other side of the fence, so to speak.

Ingrid Newkirk, the founder and president of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, was quoted in a 2001 New York Times article that touched on "innocent" human-animal sex acts: "If a girl gets sexual pleasure from riding a horse, does the horse suffer? If not, who cares? If you French-kiss your dog and he or she thinks it's great, is it wrong?"

Okay, is it just me or is a chick who has an orgasm from riding a horse light years away from playing tonsil tag with Rover?

But Jamieson did come up with "booty and the beast" line. That was a good one.

30 minutes

I've had a busy couple days so as part of an effort to manage my time with Palm Pilot-like efficiency, I've been budgeting nice round packages of time to different activities.

I got a lucky break when my wife unexpectedly went out to see friends, and my kid crashed two hours earlier than normal thanks to a fever that laid him low tonight.

First item of business was Xbox, from 8:00 to 10:30.

Then I watched half an hour of "Dune", the Sci-Fi Channel miniseries, for 30 minutes.

Then I figured I'd start blogging at 11:00 and go for 30 minutes and see how far I get.

Then it took three minutes just for the Blogger posting page to come up. Then my kid, laid low with a fever today, called out for someone in his sleep. Oh, and it appears I'm not able to access a bunch of sites I would normally scan for blog material.

So, 12 minutes into blogtime and this is what I have.

Sorry.

Woah! Science and tech blog GeekPress has had a total makeover.

I've been reading GeekPress for probably four years now and site owner Paul Hsieh has never tinkered with his Googlish minimalist look.

I noticed two days ago that the page wasn't loading properly, and earlier today it wouldn't come up at all. Now I know why.

If you've never checked out GeekPress, please swing on by and tell 'em LMNOP sent you. GP typically has only half a dozen links per day, but there's always at least one item that is intriguing enough to warrant a click-through.

David must be getting his deltoids vectorized or something because, one again, he is tardy with his "Coffee Monday" column.

What's the point of having a "Coffee Monday" if it comes out Monday night? Who drinks coffee at night, anyway? Maybe it could be "Monday Night Coffee" or something. Or "Coffee Monday Except When I Don't Feel Like It and Maybe I'll Put It Out On Tuesday So There".

Hey David, maybe you should stop preening over your stupendous pecs for long enough to respect your loyal readership, huh? We don't love you for your Adonis-like figure but for your witty insights into the human condition, as seen through the unique perspective of a gibbon-infatuated gaijin trying to make a name for himself on the mean streets of the Tokyo publishing industry, which if nothing else at least has the highest ratio of anime tentacles per printed page going for it.

Dumb smugglers

If you're going to build a sophisticated, 360-foot underground drug smuggling tunnel under the U.S.-Canadian border, try to do it out of sight of Canadian border guards.

Gee, they should give awards for people who do stupid stuff like this.

Stupid awards

The World Stupidity Awards sound pretty dumb.

Of course, they think they are being outrageously clever by -- get this -- poking fun at President Bush!!!

I mean, that is so original! You know, I don't think anyone has ever taken a look at how dumb Dubya really is. I mean, look at that guy. He just looks dumb. And have you ever heard him speak? Total mouthbreather if you ask me. Boy, I'm glad that someone, somewhere finally had the wit and courage -- yes, courage -- to mine this rich vein of comedic ore.

But Prime Minister Paul Martin has already been outshone by President George W. Bush, who is nominated in three categories - stupidest man of the year, stupidest statement of the year, and stupidity award for reckless endangerment of the planet. Martin didn't get nominated for anything.

Bush dominated last year's awards, taking the stupidest man prize and the award for reckless endangerment of the planet. Nerenberg admitted the organizers do limit the number of categories featuring the controversial Texan.

"He would essentially be nominated in every category had we not interfered," Nerenberg said. "We want to give other people a chance. We just feel some of the other great stupidity in the world would go unrecognized if Mr. Bush was allowed to run rampant. But he is doing very well."

In a half-hearted attempt at fairness, they did also nominate John Kerry. But he is distinguished only by his connection to Bush:

Black said Kerry was a natural for nomination.

"He should be. What are the chances of finding someone who could actually lose to Bush? I mean, you almost had to search. The Democratic party should have been nominated too."

And how's this for PC kowtowing:

Stupidest Trend of the Year: Religious Fundamentalism of all kinds

Get it? It's not just Islamic fundamentalism. Christian fundies, Jewish fundies and Buddhist fundies are all equally bad! Really, what's the difference between this and this?

For the record, I favor of abortion rights, though late-term procedures make me squeamish. But the Stupid Awards couldn't just single out, say, the most murderous brand of fundamentalism, could they? That wouldn't be fair, would it? One type of fundamentalism is no worse than another.

Well, at least the award producers had the decency to nominate themselves for Stupidest Award Show of the Year.

Dorkiest. Thing. Ever.

As if D&D For Dummies wasn't bad enough, GameSpy now brings us this gem of unmitigated dorkiness:

Girls of Gaming Issues 1 & 2 Bundle.

"Filled with nearly two hundred images of gaming's hottest and baddest babes

Wow. Where did they find 200 pictures of hot gaming babes? I mean, usually game worlds are populated with ranks of plain-looking, normally proportioned women, right?

"...the bundle pack for play magazine's annual Girls of Gaming is the ultimate collection of video game babe imagery.

That's right. The ultimate collection. Not like all those other, inferior collections that clutter magazine racks around the country.

"$19.90"

'Scuse me? Twenty bucks for a PDF of computer-generated chicks? Who aren't even naked?

Gee, I thought GameSpy would have heard about Google by now.

Mobile games

Greg Costikyan has an interesting look at the future of mobile gaming.

His view in a nutshell is that the current generation of mobile games are essentially the same genres and titles we have now, but dumbed down and ported over to mobile phones with weak screens and processors.

He then goes on to list some unique features of mobile devices: they are primarily used for communication and are therefore social gadgets; they store information like address books and, increasingly with picture cameras, photos; they are highly personalized with ringtones, screen savers and the like.

He doesn't claim to know what the ideal mobile game should look like, but his observations (he delivered them in a presentation to Nokia) are interesting food for thought.

Not that I'm interested in mobile gaming, really. I'm too much of a graphics whore to play anything on my phone, or even the Nintendo DS or Sony PSP. Gimme my Xbox and a 32" TV any day.

Besides, if I do ever get into mobile games, it will completely wipe out the constructive stuff I do while on the go, like reading actual books, printed on paper and everything.

Just might as well lobotomize me now.

WW2 RTS

Ever wonder what world leaders would sound like if they used instant messaging and Internet chat rooms to conduct all their formal diplomatic business?

Yeah, me neither, but you should still check out this piece on StrategyPage that ponders what the chat room conversations would have been like if World War Two had been an online real-time strategy game.

Some excerpts:

Stalin: hey hitler you dont fight me i dont fight u, cool?
Hitler[AoE]; sure whatever
Stalin: cool
deGaulle: **** Hitler rushed some1 help
Hitler[AoE]: lol byebye frenchy
Roosevelt: i dont got **** to help, sry
Churchill: wtf the luftwaffle is attacking me
Roosevelt: get antiair guns
Churchill: i cant afford them
benny-tow: u n00bs know what team talk is?
paTTon: stfu
Roosevelt: o yah hit the navajo button guys

* * * *

Roosevelt: im gonna attack the axis k?
benny-tow: with what? ur wheelchair?
benny-tow: lol did u mess up ur legs AND ur head?
Hitler[AoE]: ROFLMAO
T0J0: lol o no america im comin 4 u
Roosevelt: wtf! thats bullsh1t u fags im gunna kick ur asses
T0JO: not without ur harbors u wont! lol
Roosevelt: u little biotch ill get u

* * * *

benny-tow: hahahh oh sh1t help
Hitler: o man ur focked
paTTon: oh what now biotch
Roosevelt: whos the cripple now lol
*benny-tow has been eliminated.*

I also like the bit near the end where "tru_m4n" enters the game.

Thanks to rock-steady GeekPress for the link.

Red shirts

Some commenters, okay one commenter has suggested that reports of "Star Trek" redshirt deaths are greatly exaggerated.

Sadly, this sort of misguided thinking is spreading throughout society like a malignant fungus.

For the edimification of these hapless folk, I would like to point out that redshirt tragedies are common to the point of having spawned their own slang.

There are plenty of online resources for those interested in exploring this grisly phenomenon, but for the limited purposes of this posting I would like to highlight just one, at Memory Alpha.

To cite just one incident, who can forget the brave sacrifice of the four security guards -- all wearing red shirts -- in who perished at the indefinable hands of the vampiric dikironium cloud creature?

Only the most callous among us are capable of dismissing their deaths so flippantly.

Dodge Challenger

Sweet buttermilk biscuits would I like to see this thing built.

Looks like something Darth Vader would drive. "The torque is strong in this one."

Of course, this is not even the official concept, just a Photoshopped guesstimate. But still.

Interesting that after being absorbed by Daimler, Chrysler is making the most American cars in two generations.

Yeah, Ford has the sweet new Mustang and it had the cojones to go ahead with new GT.

GM has the Corvette, the Corvette Z06, and uh, the possible Corvette Blue Devil. Oh, and the new GTO.

Meanwhile, over the past few years Chrysler/Dodge has put out the Viper, the Prowler, the 300, the Charger, the Magnum, the Crossfire and the SRT-4.

A new Challenger would be right at home in that line-up.

UPDATE: I forgot that GM has been putting out some pretty nice Cadillacs as of late.

Hot mathematicians

I never really watched "The Wonder Years". It really seemed like a "Leave it to Beaver" for the 80s, and Fred Savage always kind of annoyed me. Not annoying in a Pauly Shore kind of way, but in a more subtle, younger-kid-next-door sort of way. The kind who, every time you want to go outside to play and do something cool, there's that kid wanting to tag so earnestly. For a while you couldn't turn on the TV without Savage's cuddly, innocent, annoying little mug smirking out at you.

Anyway, one thing I did like about the show was Winnie, the girl whose exotic yet down-home beauty rather tickled my high-school age libido.

It turns out that the actress who played Winnie, Danica McKellar, has the rare distinction, in Hollywood anyway, of having co-authored a mathematical proof, which she did as an undergrad at UCLA after "The Wonder Years" went off the air.

You can download a PDF of the proof, tantalizingly titled "Percolation and Gibbs states multiplicity for ferromagnetic Ashkin-Teller models on Z^2", on her Web site.

The New York Times has a fuller story.

Thanks to Clive at the always awesome Collision Detection for the link.

Scotty

James "Scotty" Doohan has been beamed up for the last time.

A few things about Doohan that I dinna know:

--He was Canadian

--He participated in the D-Day invasion

--He was hit by six rounds from a German machine gun, including one that took off a finger (though he was able to hide it onscreen) and one that hit his chest but was deflected by a cigarette holder.

--He fathered nine children among three wives, with the last child coming in 2000, when Doohan was 80.

But by far the best remembrance of Scotty can be found at Ace of Spades HQ. It's pretty crude, but by the time I finished reading it I was in tears and attracting funny looks from my coworkers.

My favorite line:

The only man in the history of Star Fleet
to wear a Red Shirt and live tell the tale

Happy trails... of blood and gore!

Holy moly, you think Grand Theft Auto is bad? Then check out this write-up of GUN, an upcoming Western that looks like it takes its cues from "Deadwood", not "The Lone Ranger".

The game developers were not content with the standard gunslinging action we all know and love from the silver screen.

Exploding arrows? Check.

Sticks of dynamite? Check.

Whores? Oh yeah, check the whores.

Opium dens? Like, totally check, dude.

Scalping your slaughtered foes? Checkity check check

As GameSpy says of that last point: "Why? Well, we don't know,
but it sure looks like fun."

A shout out

Holy crap. Garfield Ridge noticed me.

*BLUSH*

That's like the prettiest girl in the class winking at you and saying maybe you could sit at the same lunch table and sharing chocolate milk.

Did I just liken Dave to a cute 12-year-old girl?

Did I just suggest I am excited by the thought of Dave flirting with me?

By golly, I think I did.

D&D for Dummies

Too stupid to be a nerd? Need an edge on being dorkier than your extremely limited circle of friends?

Have no fear, Dungeons & Dragons for Dummies is here to fulfill your wildest dreams.

The book has pretty good reviews, but I love the one guy who trashed it:

I can feel myself cringe in horror and dismay. D&D, once a proud exploration in choice and consequences and heroism and horror and honor and gold, now is a Dummies guide that just makes me want to give up gaming all together. What's next? Vampires for Dummies? GURPS for Dummies? Warhammer for Dummies?

Thanks to Dave 'Fargo' Kosak at GameSpy for the tip. Here's his column on "Dungeons and Dragons for Complete and Utter Idiots"

Best work-out ever?

Man, if I lived in India, I would have the most ripped abs in the world.

Doom

It appears that the upcoming movie based on the "Doom" video games may not completely blow chunks the size of large mammals.

One of the movie dorks experts over at Ain't It Cool News got an early look at some of the footage from the movie, which stars The Rock and, more interestingly, Karl "Orc Slayer" Urban.

Contrary to the early, pissed-off buzz from the game community that the movie would abandon referrences to Mars and Hell, the two key premises of "Doom", it seems that it is sticking quite faithfully to the game's roots.

In what might be the most interesting development, the movie has an FPS sequence in which the audience is pulled into Urban's head and then views the demon-blasting action from the first-person perspective that the original video game popularized so well a decade ago.

I'm actually sort of pumped to see this thing. It won't be out for a few months, which should give me some time to finish the "Doom 3" game. The movie is apparently drawing heavily on that game for its look and feel.

UPDATE: I forgot to include a thought that was one of the original reasons for posting this. The whole FPS-in-a-movie thing may be the clearest example yet of how video games are starting to influence movies.

The movie influence on video games is well-known. There are the prettier and longer expository cut-scenes that help set the scene for the in-game action. There is the growing emphasis on plot. Even "Doom 3", the heir to the original run-and-gun, has a fairly well fleshed-out storyline that was drawn up by a professional sci-fi writer. Another movie influence is the increased use of Hollywood voice talent, from Ray Liotta as low-life Tommy Vercetti in "Grand Theft Auto: Vice City" to Michael Ironsides as Sam Fisher in the "Splinter Cell" series.

But so far, the video game influence on movies has been pretty much limited to just taking broad concepts and characters and grafting on a pro forma story and a bunch of special effects. The inclusion of a FPS action sequence in the upcoming "Doom" movie strikes me as the first significant inclusion of something hithertofore only seen in a video game.

Mediocre sci-fi at its best

I just read Chindi, a science fiction novel by Jack McDevitt. I gave it two stars out of five on Amazon. Here are some excerpts from my review:

Have you ever read one of those books that, once you get about halfway through, you're not quite sure you really want to finish, but you slog through anyway, hoping against hope that there's a big payoff at the end? And when you finally reach the conclusion, you feel about as satisfied as if you'd been served a plate of rice cakes when you were expecting steak? Well, that's what "Chindi" like.

* * * *

The first fifth of the book starts out at a crackling good pace. After a mysterious explosion kills another captain and his alien-seeking passengers, readers are tantalized with the promise of an interstellar archeological mystery.

Sadly, the book devolves into a wild goose chase as [main character] Hutch and her team of amateur xenologists try in vain to track down the alien intelligence thought to be the source of the fatal blast. The crew jumps from planet to planet, stumbling across alien races that are either long dead or living but hostile and of murderous intent.

Apart from Hutch, the characters are as thin as the paper they are written on. The only promising character other than Hutch is the legendary captain Preacher Brawley, who is unfortunately killed in the blast that sets up the plot. The rest of the cast is embarrassingly laughable -- a brash billionaire CEO, his lackey bureaucrat, his movie star wife, a brilliant scientist, an artist. One reviewer aptly said this is "Gilligan's Island" in space.

* * * *

This 500-page novel could easily have been condensed to a 100-page novella. If it was even half its length, I might recommend it as a throwaway summer read. But as it stands I can only advise potential readers to seek sci-fi adventure elsewhere, perhaps in the military action pulp of Richard K. Morgan, or the transhuman punk epics of Alastair Reynolds.

I try to post reviews of books and CDs I don't like because in general, it seems people are motivated to review something on Amazon only when they really love the product.

Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of reviewers who put up thoughtful pieces that are highly critical of the product in question, but there are just far more that put up glowing comments, you know, stating that the latest Linkin Park album is the greatest CD of all time.

But I've seen so many mediocre CDs, movies and books get 4-5 stars that I think the system could really use some balance. Balance that of course I am best placed to provide.

The simple life

The Seattle suburb of Enumclaw is known as a fairly idyllic burg nestled at the foot of Mt. Rainier.

Apparently it's also the place to go if you want to get reamed up the ass by a horse.

SEATTLE -- King County sheriff's detectives are investigating possible animal cruelty at a farm near Enumclaw that apparently has attracted "a significant number of people" to have sex with animals, a sheriff's spokesman said Thursday.

The investigation was launched this month after authorities discovered the July 2 death of a man who suffered internal bleeding after engaging in anal sex with a horse at the farm, Sgt. John Urquhart said.

It turns out they are trying to figure out if they can prosecute these folks for cruelty to animals since screwing farm animals is perfectly legal in Washington state.

I wonder if this will make Best of the Web's "Dispatches from the porn belt"?

GDP

Check out this list of 2004 GDP rankings from the WolfieWorld Bank.

One of the most fascinating tidbits is this:

Canada is No. 9, with a GDP of nearly $980 billion.

Why is that interesting?

Because India is No. 10, at $692 billion.

Think about that.

A country with just 30 million people outproduces a country with 1 billion people.

By almost half.

New Delhi and Bombay alone have 30 million people.

All I can say is that is one hell of a lot of softwood lumber and maple syrup.

Way to go, eh?

Home

Oh yeah, I'm back after a wonderfully haggis-free trip.

Other UK delicacies I avoided: neeps and tatties, bangers and mash, chipped butties and spotted dicks.

I'm also the jet-lagged I've been in years. Apparently I slept like a rock through my son yelling for mom at 3:30 a.m., only to be instantly and irreversibly awakened by the whisper of the sheets as my wife got out of bed to check on the little fella.

Coffee?

Where's my Coffee Monday, dude?

After cranking out dozens of increasingly bizarre and discombobulated coffee reviews, has David finally hit the wall?

Or is some grander, some might say sinister, plan underway?

David will be back next week, Coffee Monday addicts. We apologize for leaving you high and dry once again. But don't worry -- we have great plans for our growing community of canned coffee fans. More on this later.

That's from Chin Music Press, and frankly it sounds like something they would have said about Soylent Green in the early days.

"I know what Coffee Mondays is! It's people! PEEEOOOOPLE!!!"

Meat farming

Researchers may, some day soon, be able to grow meat in a lab.

The article says the process could cut down on pollution produced from industrial livestock operations. But I wonder how they get the cells to grow? Do they have to bathe them in a nutrient soup? How do you produce it and how much does that cost? How do you dispose of it?

I'll be all for meat farming if it can be shown to be cost-effective and have less of an impact than traditional methods.

The Economist

The esteemed British magazine agrees with my off-the-cuff analysis from yesterday that the bombs weren't actually that effective:

What the attacks also show, however, is that well co-ordinated though the four explosions were, they were not terribly effective. Chance plays a big role in such attacks. The bombs in Madrid last year which killed 191 people might have killed many more had the station roof collapsed. The September 11th hijackings might have killed fewer than the eventual 2,752 had the twin towers of the World Trade Centre not melted down and collapsed. As The Economist went to press, the toll in the four London bombs was not clear, but the estimate of at least 33 deaths was thankfully far smaller than in Madrid. By the terrible calculus of terrorism, the attacks should thus be counted as a failure - sign of weakness, not strength.

Thanks to Andrew Sullivan for the link.

Oh lordy

Gastric distress, people.

I think it was deep-fried Mars bar that did it.

Well, it could have been the half pound of beer-batter fried cod I had.

Or maybe it was the pint of rich IPA I used to wash the fish down.

Or maybe it was the Indian food I had last night.

Ooh. That might be it. It did smell like curry.

It was probably a combination of everything, but I'm pretty sure the fried Mars bar put me over the top.

Note: The Scottish Mars bar is what we in the United States of America know as a Milky Way. The Scottish Mars bar has no nuts, whereas the presence of nuts is what, in the United States of America anyway, distinguishes a Mars bar from its close cousin, the Milky Way. Crazy Scots.

Smack my ass and call me Sally

I said that to a friend today and he pointed out that it is the name of a hot sauce.

For real.

It's smart that they let you order over the Web because that would be embarrassing to ask for in a store.

"Excuse me, do you have any Smack My Ass and Call Me Sally?"

Geniuses or idiots?

The bombs in London have killed at 33 people and injured hundreds. It is alarming to think that Al Qaeda still has the resources to coordinate the setting off of at least four bombs in a short timeframe.

Garfield Ridge thinks this is a sign that we could still lose this war.

However, I think there are a couple of causes for hope, if it even makes sense to talk about that so soon after this act of wickedness.

First, they managed to get four bombs to go off, but "only" killed a few tens of people. Believe me, I'm not trying to belittle the tragic human toll. I'm simply thinking that the last major bombings in Madrid and Bali each killed more than 200 people. Given that the London bombers set off four explosions during rush hour in one of the busiest subway systems in the world, I'm thankful the toll wasn't much, much higher.

I don't know what the relatively limited effects of these bombs indicates about AQ's bomb-making abilities. Does it mean that they know they can't get away with a massive car bomb, so they are limited to smaller, more easily constructible and concealable devices?

Also, the bombers may have thought they were clever, pulling this off while world leaders were meeting at the G8 summit in nearby Scotland. Yet all it has done is to ensure their further isolation from the world. Not only have they just royally pissed off the eight most advanced and powerful countries in the world (the U.S., Britain, France, Germany, Japan, Italy and Canada), they have alienated the five biggest developing countries (China, India, Brazil, Mexico and South Africa) as well, countries that are normally happy to wait these things out on the sidelines. Moreover, the bombings occurred just as these above-mentioned countries were hammering out ways to lift Africa out of poverty and make headway against global warming.

I'm not sure that was the smartest game plan.

Just what the world needs

Vegetarian haggis.

From the Wikipedia definition of haggis:

Although there are many recipes, some of which use deer offal, it is normally made with the following ingredients: sheep's heart, liver, and lungs (or "lights"), minced with onion, oatmeal, suet, spices, and salt, mixed with stock and traditionally boiled in the animal's stomach for several hours.

Okay, I'm not here to defend a dish like that, but let's be honest. If I'm going to be brave enough to eat haggis, I want the full compliment of nasty bits. No fucking around here, I want offal, suet, and lights (crap, if sheep lungs are "lights", what the hellare the "heavies"?).

Nothing against vegetarians here, but geez, if you're going to replace all the stuff that makes haggis haggis, have the decency to give the dish a new name. I mean, it makes about as much sense as "vegetarian monkey brains".

UPDATE: A friend suggests vegetarian haggis be known as "vagis". This is awesome marketing, which I guess is why my friend actually works in marketing. Who could resist digging into a nice, hot helping of vagis?

Crap

London's transportation system has been hit by several bombs. Some fatalities, scores injured.

The BBC says there is "a complete absence of panic". Hats off to our unflappable British friends, and let's hope things don't get too bad.

Things I Am Learning About Scotland

In Edinburgh, you can bring your dog into a pub even if you're not blind.

Prices

Wow, Scotland is expensive.

The 20-minute cab ride from the airport to the hote cost almost 20 pounds, which at current exchange rates is almost $40. This was 20 minutes on city streets, too, not a highway, so it couldn't have been very far.

The cheapest room at the Novotel hotel I'm at costs 169 pounds a night.

They charge 13 pounds for a day of high-speed Internet access.

Damn.

Flight

So I'm on the flight to London and I notice this older fellow sitting behind me across the aisle. He's looking pretty eccentric -- stylish brown and black leather shoes with gray slacks and bright red sweater.

He's juggling several bags -- one of which appears to be stuffed with DVDs -- and has an assistant in a fedora and a crumpled pin-striped jacket helping him out.

Immediately he pulls out several large notepads and a dayplanner that is stuffed, and I mean stuffed with pieces of paper. The planner has to be three or four inches thick, and scraps of paper keep squirting out of it on to the floor.

Several times I get a chance to glance at his pads, and they are covered in a spidery script that might as well be shorthand for all I can make of it. For the whole flight, this guy keeps scribbling more notes. Sometimes he switches pads but he's always hunched over, writing and writing.

I fell asleep for a couple hours but as far as I could tell this guy never took a break from his frantic note-taking. His assistant just sat there next to him reading a book.

The one time when the guy got up to do something, he cleared his tray of everything except for two smallish pads with a name printed at the bottom of each sheet:

OLIVER STONE

Holy crap! I'd been sitting next to Oliver Stone for six hours and didn't even realize it. Even after I saw the name on the pad, it was hard to be sure it was him until we landed and I could observe him more fully as everyone was getting ready to disembark.

For the record, he looked perfectly sober.

I do wonder what he was doing in Beijing, though.

Great

Oh this certainly sounds like fun.

The fierce Highland midge begins its attack half way through June (the males of the species hatch from May onwards, but the only harmful thing they do is mate with female midges, helping produce next years midge supply!) The season lasts on average 3 months, terrorising innocent people into early August.

Anyone know if they make Right Guard or Aqua Velva with DDT?

Away

Blogging will be even lighter than usual since I am heading off to Scotland for a week.

I am packing a scary amount of electronic gadgetry. To wit:

--An IBM ThinkPad laptop
--Docking station/DVD drive for said laptop
--Cellphone
--Minidisc recorder
--Microcassette recorder (for backup)
--Rio Karma MP3 player (for the flight/hotel room)
--Rio Cali MP3 player (for the gym)
--Panasonic digital camera
--USB flash drive
--Power cords and chargers for the laptop, cellphone, minidisc player, Karma and camera
--Xbox, power converter, extra controllers and five games.

Just kidding about that last one, though I did think of it briefly.

I would also be taking my HP 4155 Pocket PC, too, if I hadn't lost it a month ago.

I'll see if I can do some blogging from the highlands, if I'm not carrying out spot inspections of Scotch whisky (I'm told spelling it with an "e" is a mortal insult in Scotland) or coping with the after-effects of a large serving of haggis and blood sausage.

Otherwise, see you in a week.

Bioengineering

Hans looks at a recent report on advances in biotech and asks, "Did God intend for his software to be proprietary or open source?

The Big Guy Upstairs strikes Hans as more of the open source type, mainly because God doesn't get hacked.

I'd tend to agree, assuming that Hans means that God doesn't mind if we exploit the holes in his security systems. I mean, humans have been hacking Mother Nature since we planted the first wheat seed, roasted s'mores over the first campfire, and first smashed atoms together to see what the pieces looked like.

The final top five

5. "Burnout 3: Takedown"

4. "Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory"

3. "Ninja Gaiden"

2. "Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic"

1. "Halo 2"

I basically got four of the five titles in there, though only one of my picks ("Halo 2") was in the correct order.

The full list is here.

I am surprised that a couple games did not make the top 25.

"Full Spectrum Warrior" was an inventive, gripping tactical war game that was exclusive to the Xbox.

"Doom 3", from all accounts, was one of the best-looking games on the Xbox and did an excellent job of brining PC-style FPS action to a console. Plus it had a cool co-op mode to play through the campaign. And it was exclusive, too.

I am also surprised that none of the "GTA" titles made the list. Even though those were released for PS2 way earlier than for Xbox, the Xbox versions are regarded as graphically superior while maintaining the same addictive gameplay.