Did I say that out loud?

On a rail

2010-05-20T08:00:00.003-04:00

Kenny Rogers

Yet another morning finds me on the train to NYC. Anyone who knows me knows I love trains. It probably seems silly to some, but I still get excited when I get to ride the new NJT double-deck cars. Today I scored the singe seat with the baggage bin next to it. Ahh, luxury.

This week I've been working in Flushing, which means the E train from Penn Station to Queens. That's fun too, because I love the new NYC subway cars.

(BTW, right now I am side-by-side with a Metroliner, keeping almost perfect pace. Wait... taking the lead... and first into Newark Penn!)

Anyway, where was I? The new Subway cars (more information than you could imagine here). They have the clear automated voice and best of all, this electronic diagram of the line showing you what stops are ahead of you. Of course, you need to check the board and listen to the automated voice. The other day I didn't and ended up on the F which takes an entirely different route to Manhattan, crossing the E's line on the way.

That's happens a lot with the NYC subways. Other subway systems, the Boston T, for example, look much more organized. There is an organic quality to the NYC subway map which is annoying or cool, depending on how you look at it.

So, running out of power and no outlet nearby. A useful project would be mapping NJT rolling stock to show where outlets are....

Note to self

2010-02-08T20:44:00.002-05:00

on CNN's American Morning

Thinking about the crib notes on Sarah Palin's palm, I suspect some are pointing out that a few scribbles are not the same as an entire teleprompted speech. Which is true, except that Obama doesn't hide the teleprompter.

But whatever, put aside the hypocrisy point. It's the notes themselves that kill me: "Energy," "tax cuts" and "lift American spirits." That is what she needed to write down. Really. No joke.

That is pure Palin.

2010-01-06T16:45:00.002-05:00

Supreme Court Justice Anthony M. Kennedy

(Romer v. Evans)

It's time I dusted off this blog, and what better reason than tommorow's State Senate vote on Marraige Equality in New Jersey.

Everyone deserves to marry the person they love. It's that simple. I stole the following action list from Sharon:

Call your State Senators and tell them to do what's right. (When following that link, click the "state" tab.) If you already know who your Senator is, go here for contact information.
Email your Senator. It can't hurt to do both.
Go to Trenton tomorrow. Garden State Equality has info here.

This is our best opportunity. Let's not squander it.

Goodbye Green-eyed Lady

2008-12-24T09:39:00.003-05:00

Green-eyed Lady

We lost Gypsy last night. Her back legs weren't working and she was in pain, so we took her to the vet. It was likely a clot blocking the flow of blood to her back legs, but that didn't really matter. She was sixteen and in a lot of pain. They administer a strong sedative first, so nothing after will be felt. Almost immediately she stopped howling and slowly drifted off. That's when we knew we'd made the right choice.

We'll miss you lady-cat.

Space

2008-12-24T09:36:00.004-05:00

Kirk

Let's put some space between here and election news.

That's better.

"Belched into the right-wing echo-chamber"

2008-10-02T14:59:00.003-04:00

Greta Van Susteren

Keith Olbermann

The right-wing noise machine is in full bluster mode because they "just learned" that Vice Presidential moderator Gwen Ifill is writing a book titled titled Breakthough: Politics and Race in the Age of Obama News of the book appeared in print as early as July 23, weeks before the debate moderators were even chosen and agreed upon by both campaigns.

But I digress. Here is Keith Olbermann telling us what he really thinks about Ifill's so-call conflict of interest, among other things....

"If the McCain campaign, which could have found out about it at any time over the last two months and nine days by simply googling her name, if that campaign really didn't know anything about this book until Greta Van Susteren emailed them last night...

They're morons!"

Rick Wright 1943-2008

2008-09-15T15:34:00.003-04:00

Pink Floyd keyboardist Rick Wright died today. Damn. At least they had this one last gig together:

And way back when...

The Soup covers Kathy Hilton's response to McCain

2008-09-08T15:28:00.005-04:00

Joel McHale

I wish I'd found this when the McCain's Britney/Paris add was still running, but this clip still cracks me up...

Cellist Zoë Keating

2008-09-01T10:18:00.007-04:00

Zoë Keating

Another Radio Lab podcast highlight: Quantum Cello. Last season's War of the Worlds episode was live and cellist Zoë Keating provided the music. In this podcast, Jad Abumrad visits Keating to learn more about her music and listen to her perform a few pieces. Her music is really cool. There are certainly better adjectives than those, but that's all I can muster right now. Trust me, though, it's really cool.

As she plays, she digitally captures segments of her music which she loops back. As the loops are playing back, she plays additional layers over them. The result is sounds more like an orchestrated work than a solo one. What I though was especially neat is that she does this live. The loop capture is controled with foot pedals. In the podcast she performs three pieces live that sound more like studio recordings.

It's great stuff. Check it out if you get a chance.

Update: Here's a video of her performing live, so you can really get the idea:

You know what ol' Jack Burton always says at a time like this?

2008-08-29T10:43:00.005-04:00

Big Trouble in Little China

Last night Sharon and I stayed up and watched a movie. We could have watched There Will be Blood, which we have from the library and haven't seen yet. We didn't. We watched John Carpenter's Big Trouble in Little China.

I love this movie. It is not a good movie. It's a bad movie, but it is so deliciously bad. It is corny and cheesey and makes no attempt to be otherwise. If it did, it would not be half as much fun. At no point does this movie take itself seriously, and that is what makes it so much fun.

You canna change the laws of physics

2008-08-28T14:46:00.006-04:00

Brian Greene

Assume the universe is infinite, but the number of possible configurations of particles in the universe, while tremendously huge, is finite. That means that at some point somewhere in the universe, a particular configuration of particles must repeat. Somewhere, an almost incomprehensible distance from here, there is another version of me writing this exact same blog post in an identical office when he should be coding. In fact, there's not just copy, there are countless copies.

That is just one of the concepts explored in this episode of the Radio Lab podcast. Brian Greene, physics and mathematics professor and director of the Institute of Strings, Cosmology, and Astroparticle Physics at Columbia University, sits down with Robert Krulwich to talk about the nature of the universe.

Two other tidbits from the conversation:

The universe is actually a lot like a block of Swiss cheese.
If you think about it, it is actually more likely we exist in a huge computer simluation than in the actual universe.

Krulwich keeps the science content accessible and the conversation tone fun and interesting. Take a listen if you have a chance.

Games' most ridiculous getups

2008-08-13T10:37:00.003-04:00

Winda Benedetti

A regular feature in the MSNBC gaming section is the Top 5 list. Many are what you'd expect: action games, strategy games, game villians, etc. This week's was a good one: Top 5 most preposterous getups in games. Reviewer Winda Benedetti channels Nina Garcia in choosing her top 5 examples of an "Absurd Outfit Obviously Dreamed Up By A Man."

Reading big

2008-07-09T12:49:00.007-04:00

Dr. Seuss

Appearing on various blogs is a list of books that is published by, derived from, or inspired by the NEA's The Big Read or similar lists from the BBC. I got my copy of the list from Sharon, and I'm using her rules:

Look at the list and bold those you have read.
Italicize those you intend to read.
Asterisk (*) the books you LOVE.
Bang (!) the books you I left unfinished becuase you either hated it, lost interest, or (in my case) were in high school.

Here is my report:

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
*2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
*5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
!6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
*16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
!18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
*25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
!28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
*(?)33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
*(?)36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 Robinson Crusoe - Daniel Defoe
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
*52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
*61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince- Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
*94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
*99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

So, 29 books in all. Not bad. #18 and #28 I did not finish only because I was slacking off in high school. I've read many pieces of #6, but nowhere near all of it, and how many people ever do? As for #33 and #36, the (?) is because I love them less now than when I first read them. As for #75, that's definitely in the someday of my life.

And here are a some great (IMHO) books not on this list:

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer or Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen
Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke
In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury (on the NEA's Big Read list)

That's off the top of my head. I'm sure there's more.

In stunning 3-D!

2008-06-19T23:08:00.004-04:00

Flatland:
A Romance of Many Dimensions

A friend of mine is seriously into stereo photography, and he has begun posting his work online. You can see it for yourself here. His galleries utilize a Java stereo viewer that offers several different viewing options, and he has some viewing instructions on his site. I ended up using using the "cross-eyed" method that requires no special glasses and, if you can do it, offeres the clearest viewing options. His viewing instructions have a link to a really good explanation of the "cross-eyed" method.

His site doesn't tell you how he takes the pictures, but I got to see it first hand. He built his own stereo camera array out of a pair of fairly low-end Canon point-and-shoot cameras. Apparently these cameras offer a wide array of undocumented features if you know how to enable them. Luckily there are plenty of camera hackers online to show you how. I my friend's case, he was able to rig a custom remote that connects the the USB port on each camera, allowing him to trigger both cameras in unison.

The results are really cool. Check them out!

Ice on Mars!

2008-06-19T22:15:00.002-04:00

It's official. There is ice on Mars! Little chunks of material dug up by the lander have since disappeared. The only explanation is that the chunks are water ice that sublimated when exposed to the thin Martian atmosphere. That's cool.

Of course, other possible explanations were considered:

Back in NY

2008-05-22T19:34:00.006-04:00

Deborah Harry and Moby

Right now I am under the Hudson river. Literally. On on the NJ Transit 7:30 New Brunswick express out of NY Penn Station... wait... yup, back in NJ.

I'm back working in the city, though not much fun in it I have to say. Fixing someone else's "Heart of Darkness" code. It's scary stuff - 1200 excruciating lines of SQL that could make your eyes bleed. It took me a day just to figure out what the hell it was trying to do, then a day just to figure out what I might be able to do with it.

One little positive is that I get to ride in one of these:

The new (for me) NJ Transit Bi-Level cars. I admit it - train geek am I. As evidence, I will note that having ridden twice now, I've made a point of trying both the upper and lower level. There is actually something of a difference. The upper level feels a little smoother. Being up that high makes things a little more scenic. In contrast, the lower level feels faster. I think it feels faster because you're closer to the ground. When you're at a platform, you eye-level with people's feet, it's cool watching the edge of the platform speed by when moving. The new seats are nice, also. With the low ceiling, there's almost this airplane vibe going on. Definitely the way to commute to the city.

Anyway, we're going through Edison, so my stop's coming up. Time to publish and pack up.

Buyer's remorse for the obsessive

2008-05-02T10:20:00.003-04:00

Gnarls Barkley

Okay, I admit it, this is just a little obsessive on my part. We just got the new Gnarls Barkley album, The Odd Couple. It's great, a worthy follow-up to St. Elsewhere, and lives up to my expectations. Except....

You see, on the album, "Run" just fades in from silence. It doesn't have that "kick-off" beginning that you hear on the radio and in the video. This kept bugging me throughout the rest of the track, sort of like Roger Rabbit with the unfinished shave-and-a-haircut. (TWO BITS!).

I went a-googling and found out "Run [Radio Edit]" is what I was missing. A little more googling and I found it online for £0.79. Yep, it's only available in the U.K. But hey, they take PayPal, and PayPal handles the exchange rate (currently $.50 = £1.00). That's a little more than the iTunes $0.99 songs, but it's also a 256K MP3 I can use anywhere. I figured what the heck and embraced our global economy.

The radio edit is playing right now. I have no regrets.

Bad gas holiday

2008-05-01T10:42:00.000-04:00

Barack Obama

It turns out that economists think the so-called gas tax holiday is a really bad idea.

I think it's crap. It's the kind of shameless pandering I expect from McCain, and now Clinton gave me one more reason to be glad I voted for Obama. Regarding the gas tax holiday, Obama had this to say:

It would last for three months and it would save you on average half a tank of gas, $25 to $30. That’s what Senator Clinton and Senator McCain are proposing to deal with the gas crisis. This isn’t an idea designed to get you through the summer, it’s an idea designed to get them through an election.

Spot on, as usual.

Better yet, many economists don't think we'll even see that half-tank of gas. Suspending the gas tax won't have any effect on the gasoline supply. However, demand will increase and with it, the price at the pump. We will end up spending just as much money on gasoline, except now more of that money goes to oil producers.

As Paul Krugman said on this issue, "It’s Econ 101: the tax cut really goes to the oil companies."

Hmmmmm

2008-04-30T14:33:00.003-04:00

Robert Krulwich

According to his NPR bio, Robert Krulwich is "a correspondent for NPR's Science Desk, reporting on the intersections of science and technology with culture, politics and religion. His specialty is explaining complex news — economics, technology, science — in a style that is clear, compelling and entertaining." He also teams up with with Jad Abumrad on one of my favorite NPR shows, Radio Lab.

I was psyched to find out he has his own podcast. Hmmm.... Krulwich on Science is basically a podcast of all his segments that show up on various NPR shows. He says in his bio that he likes "talking about 'invisible ideas' and trying to find a way to explain what you've learned so people can grasp it," and that's exactly what you'll find in this podcast.

If you get a chance, check it out. I think my favorite so far is the segment about yawning, and what triggers a yawn. (Hint: 55% of you might be yawning right now.)

The old McCain, he ain't what he used to be.

2008-04-25T11:29:00.008-04:00

John McCain

Keith Olbermann

Gone is the John McCain of 2000, that's for damn sure.

This is what I was thinking as I read this Washington Post story about McCain's recent tax policy reversals. It is not really surprising. He became a cheerleader for Bush's failed foreign policy, so why not do the same with fiscal policies?

It is just one more sign of his last-chance, stop-at-nothing bid for the presidency. Clearly he wants it badly, and he'll do whatever he thinks it takes. Hell, he has even welcomed the masterminds of the 2000 smear campaign against him.

None of this surprises me, not anymore. I knew McCain had no shame whatsoever since February. That's when he voted against a bill that would require American interrogators (including those in the CIA) to follow the Amry Field Manual. Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow discussed this at the time:

As late as November 2007 McCain argued that torture is a "defining issue" for America and that the Army Field Manual should be standard. So much for that.

McCain has abandoned so many "defining issues" that one wonders if anything is sacred. I seems like the maverick image is nothing more than a convenient facade, cast aside once it outlived its usefulness.

What I'm listenning to (and reading)

2008-04-24T10:06:00.004-04:00

The War of the Worlds

I had been anticipating the new season of Radio Lab for months, and I am loving it now that it's here. An early standout is the War of the Worlds episode, which was performed live. I've heard the Orsen Wells story many times, but I had never heard what happened when a radio station in the Equadorian city of Quito decided to do their own production in 1949.

I'm also catching up on episodes of This American Life that have been accumulating on my iPod. The episode "Nice Work If You Can Get It" includes an excellent piece with John Hodgman telling the story of his rise to fame.

As for audiobooks, I've just finished the third in Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events, and I'm really starting to enjoy them. The first two were read by Tim Curry, but the rest are read by the author. Sometimes an author isn't the best person to read their own work, but in this case I think it's an improvement.

Also read well by the author is Neil Gaiman's Fragile Things: Short Fictions and Wonders, his second short fiction collection. I expect people will have varying opinitons about each of the stories and poems, but I you'll find it hard to dislike "A Study in Emerald." If you don't have time to pick up the whole book, this story is available online here. In fact, if you've only listened to it, you should check out the PDF just for the illustrations and format.

Knowing little beforehand, I listened to Lauren Groff's The Monsters of Templeton. If you've read Everything is Illuminated, you would be inclined to classify Groff as a female Jonathan Safran Foer. That's not really accurate, but comparisons are difficult to escape completely. I'm also pretty sure that if I'd read more James Fenimore Cooper, I would have caught several references and in-jokes in the book. That said, I enjoyed the story, especially the final chapters.

An actual book that I'm actually reading is Tolkein's The Children if Hurin. I've been reading a chapter here an there, and I'm almost done. The chapters stand somewhat on their own, being true chapters in the lives of the characters. Each chapter mostly resolves it's own smaller story arc, so it lends fairly well to this casual style of reading. It's certainly not a pager-turner, nor is is inteded to be. At the same time, I am reading the Lord of the Rings with my oldest. Every now and then I come accross a name from The Children if Hurin, which takes place thousands of years before LotR, so it is sort of like reading ancient history.

By the way, reading LotR again is great fun for me. I really look forward to each night when we read. Having read it so many times already, and reading it aloud, I am noticing many subtlies and tidbits I'd either missed or forgotten. It's nice to know you still find new things in even the most familiar old favorites.

Topic for future therapy sessions

2008-04-23T17:26:00.004-04:00

There's a little thing we do at home, mostly after dinner and especially when the kids are antsy. We tell them to run in circles around our house. Our floor pattern is one of those where you can go in a circle from kitchen to foyer to living room to dining room and back to kitchen again. (If it were a Kill Doctor Lucky board, this would be where you pile up cards, but this isn't a post about board games.)

This week we are pet-sitting, so we have extra dogs. One dog is named Tawney, a pleasant small mutt of 11-12 years whose visits we always enjoy. The other Angie, a young energetic Border Collie. She likes to chase things and would prefer to be active 23 hours of a given day. This is not the kind of energy level we expect from our own dogs. We now have to fight with Darkman for space on the couch, and I'm pretty sure Shadow's activity won't change much even after she recovers from ankle surgery.

So, as I was saying, we tell the children to run in circles and burn off some excess energy. We did this a couple nights ago, but now we had Angie to join the chase. As might have been predicted, this did not go over well with our youngest. There was whining and fussing. How did we respond, good parents that we are? We told her to run faster, of course.

"But Angie's chasing me me," we were told.

"Run faster so she doesn't catch you," we responded.

Now let me be clear, this is not a snarling, one step away from mauling, Kujo wannabee dog. Angie wanted to play, which to be honest is what she wants to do all the time (even, say 4 AM). My children have played with her often, and they were certainly in no danger at this point. Yet even so, I could already picture my therapist's office somewhere in my child's future, where she would be recalling this incident....

"...And I'll never forget it. They kept telling me to run... run faster... run, run, run! I don't know why they wanted me to run. The dog was chased me and all they did was tell me to run. And the were laughing. Laughing! How could they be laughing?" At this point my now grown child breaks down. The therapist offers the tissue box, and she circles the word "laughing" in her notes.

Of course, the dogs were sent outside to chase one another or (more likely) bark under the fence at the neighbor's dogs. We explained everything was fine, there was nothing to be afraid of, Angie was just playing, yadda yadda yadda, and all was right with the world again.

Except for the screaming night terrors.

*Yeah, that is two GB quotes in a row, from the same song no less. It's just stuck in my brain....

Yeah, still the same

2008-04-22T16:07:00.002-04:00

Gnarls Barkley

I have no specific reasons for not blogging - just haven't. Maybe I just needed to overcome the inertia. If this doesn't get you going, I'm not sure what will. The first single from the new Gnarls Barkley album:

P.S. To ivorybillchick, don, and rob s.: Thanks. It's nice to know you're missed.

Damn.

2008-03-04T14:53:00.003-05:00

Gary Gygax

Gary Gygax, creator of Dungeons and Dragons, has died.

Until today I did not know we shared a birthday.

Reel 13 Shorts

2008-02-28T13:02:00.003-05:00

Marcus Tullius Cicero

Last Saturday Sharon and I ended up watching A Letter to Three Wives, which we thouroughly enjoyed. It was on the NYC public television channel, WNET/Thirteen. Their program Reel 13 presents a classic film, a short film, and an indie film each Saturday night. We stayed up to watch the short film, Thirsty, and we weren't disappointed. It was clever with a nice little surprise at the end.

The neat thing about the short films is that you get vote for your favorite. They post three films online each week, then broadcast the top pick. They're still there, so check them out. The three shorts were titled Wrigley, Little Pumkin, and Thirsty, which won. Little Pumkin was fine, but I thought Thirsty was definitely better. But I really like Wrigley, too, and it would have been hard to hard to decide which I like more.

P.S. Fans of Homicide: Life on the Street will notice a familiar face in Wrigley.

Fourteen

2008-02-26T18:25:00.005-05:00

Led Zeppelin

For those who don't know, I met Sharon at a party she was hosting. (Yeah, she was throwing a party - no surprise there.) Anyway, I remember at some point leaning against the dining room hutch only to discover it wasn't secured to the base. The china laden cabinet slid several inches but did not fall. A few more inches and it's a good bet I would not be writing about our fourteenth wedding anniversary.

When I look back on that moment, I still shudder to think how close I came to missing the best thing that ever happened to me. Here's to fourteen great years and many more than that yet to come.

Nexus revisited

2008-02-22T10:21:00.002-05:00

Emma Bull

It's been a couple years since Keith Olbermann first presented the Nexus of Politics and Terror. Yesterday he delivered an updated version:

Ugh.

Radio Lab tackles The Ring

2008-02-05T11:49:00.001-05:00

Bugs Bunny

Catching up on some of my podcasts, I listened to a really interesting Radio Lab/WNYC special about The Ring Cycle, a series of four epic Wagner operas. That there are four operas by Wagner collectively called "The Ring Cycle" was something I did not know, nor did I know of the near fanatic devotees, nor its influences on more current music and literature, including Tolkein's own tale of a Ring and Bugs Bunny. It features commentary from a diverse cast, including Howard Shore, composer of the Lord of the Rings film scores I love so much. It's definitely worth a listen.

Which way is the trend really going?

2008-01-19T20:31:00.001-05:00

their

A popular theme of the radical right is the so-call secularization of America. The standard argument is that left-wing atheists are systematically removing God from its traditional and historical place in the laws and governance United States. So let us examine the historical trend, shall we?

1776 - The Declaration of Independence is adopted. It includes mention of the "laws of Nature," "Nature's God," and a "Creator" that is the source of our unalienable rights.
1782 - The motto E pluribus unum (from many, one) is adopted the motto written on the scroll held by the eagle on the Great Seal of the United States. This is the original motto used on U.S. coinage, beginning in 1795.
1787 - The U.S. Constitution is ratified. Drafters rejected religious language and any religious qualification to hold office, and as ratified it contained no mention of a deity whatsoever.
1791 - The First Amendment becomes law when Virginia becomes the 10th state to ratify the Bill of Rights. It guarantees the free practice or religion and forbid laws that favor or forbid specific religious beliefs.
1796 - Article 11 of the Treaty of Tripoli states that the "government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion...."
1802 - Jefferson's writes the now famous letter to the Danbury Baptists describing the separation of church and state as guaranteed by the First Amendment
1861 - Rev. M. R. Watkinson petitions then Secretary of the Treasury Samuel P. Chase for "recognition of the Almighty God in some form on our coins." The motto "In God We Trust" is ultimately chosen and begins appearing on U.S. currency in 1864.
1863 - Several protestant Christian organizations, most notably the National Reform Association, begin attempts to amend to U.S. Constitution. The goal is to re-word the preamble to say, "We, the People of the United States [recognizing the being and attributes of Almighty God, the Divine Authority of the Holy Scriptures, the law of God as the paramount rule, and Jesus, the Messiah, the Savior and Lord of all], in order to form a more perfect union...."
1892 - The original pledge of allegiance is written by Baptist minister Francis Bellamy. It is undergoes slight modifications until the 1925. None of these versions mention God at all. The final version in 1925 was as follows: "I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands: one Nation indivisible, with Liberty and Justice for all."
1954 - Congress votes to add the phrase "under God" to the pledge, in part as a response to the threat of atheistic Communism. The family of Fancis Bellamy lobbied Congress against the change. The same year, Congress also moves to officially include the motto "In God we Trust" on all U.S. currency.
2001 - The White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives is established by executive order by George W. Bush. By 2004 religious organizations are receiving billions of federal dollars without a strict separation between their religious activities and social service programs, and despite discriminatory hiring on religious grounds.
2008 - Republican Presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee speaks in favor of amending the Constitution to reflect "God's standards."

As adopted, the supreme law of the land, the U.S. Constitution was completely secular. Yet since that time, there has been a slow march toward adding religious, and in particular Christian, language to our laws. That's the real trend, and it definitely concerns me.

Do you speak it?

2008-01-17T11:56:00.000-05:00

My Fair Lady

I got a real kick out of this.

See www.insureyourgunrights.com

This is a real recruiting site owned and maintained by the NRA. Those of you proficient in English may wonder if “insure” is the proper word.

If so, check: www.ensureyourgunrights.com

Your branches green delight us!

2007-12-29T13:42:00.000-05:00

O Tannenbaum (English Translation)

Friend sent me one more Christmas tree:

Now that's delightful.

Tannenbaum

2007-12-26T17:08:00.000-05:00

Ernst Anschütz

I haven't posted for awhile, but in the spirit of the season, here are a few Christmas trees:

Longwood Gardens (one of many)

Grandma and Grandpa's

Ours (two views)

The Christmas ball tree that Sharon loves

My wife on Dave Barry

2007-12-17T20:57:00.000-05:00

Dave Barry

There is nothing quite like listening to my wife read Dave Barry. I wish you could hear the non-stop fits of laughter. I have no idea what exactly she's laughing at, but I'm giggling just listening to her. Oh, she's just woken the children....

New Jersey to Abolish the Death Penalty

2007-12-14T15:54:00.000-05:00

The Fellowship of the Ring

I have just begun reading The Lord of the Rings with my oldest. In a coincidence of timing, I read aloud these words a day after the State Senate voted to abolish the death penalty and a day before the Assembly followed suit. This is the most eloquent yet succinct argument against the death penalty I can think of.

One to talk

2007-12-14T11:03:00.000-05:00

Luke 6:41 (NIV)

Today President Bush declared of baseball that "steroids have sullied the game." Honestly! He's one to one to talk! As a former baseball owner, he was a direct involved. Does he expect us to believe that the use of performance enhancing drugs began when he was no longer owner of the Texas Rangers? Now, in imitation of Captain Renault, he tells us he is shocked, shocked to learn there is steroid use in baseball. Please.

What's more, he has the gall to make such statements amid a flurry of scandals wherein his administration used lies, deception, and worse to further their personal and political agendas. What steroids has done to the reputation of baseball is nothing to what he has done to the reputation of the United States.

Clean dishes and no bare bulbs

2007-12-12T10:24:00.000-05:00

Proverb

It is certainly true of people that separation makes you appreciate them all the more when together again. Sometimes it's like that inanimate objects. If you're without something for awhile, it almost feels new when you get it back. Two recent examples follow.

For several months, our dishwasher has been doing a progressively worse job of cleaning the dishes. What began with specks on glasses turned into routinely dirty bowls and pots. A couple weeks ago, I took apart and cleaned everything that did not require tools. Unfortunately there was no improvement. This past weekend I finally undertook a deeper examination and started taking everything apart. It's good to have a advance knowledge, though, and for that I am indebted to Samurai Appliance Repair Man and this illustrative slide show. In no time had exposed the mascerator assembly (pictured), which was clogged. I removed a ton of crud, mostly cardboard and toothpicks. Now we take extra pleasure when the dishwasher cleans dishes, even though that's what it's supposed to do all the time.

A similar nagging item was a broken glass lampshade to the lamp on the left. We didn't want to replace the whole lamp just because the shade broke, but I wasn't finding anywhere I could get it. After much googling of part numbers, I finally found a company selling replacement shades. However, it too forever for them to get it from their distributor and sent it to us. I placed the order in September and it arrived yesterday. With it back, though, there is no longer the harsh glare of bare bulbs illuminating our family room. Normally this is nothing special, but in this case it is.

Spook Country

2007-12-10T12:02:00.000-05:00

popular idiom

I really like author William Gibson, and I was excited when Amazon told me about his latest novel. (Amazon knows how much I like Gibson.) Titled Spook Country, it follows in the footsteps of his previous novel, Pattern Recognition. Unlike Gibson's earlier work, which is set in the future, these novels are set in the present. Spook Country is not really a sequel, although some characters do recur. Rather it is more like a second story occurring in the same universe. I finished it just last week, and I was not disappointed.

My wife Sharon observed that Gibson is not out to write page-turners. Reading one of his novels is less like watching a movie and more like watching someone paint a picture. His plots are often devoid of the cliffhangers and surprise twists you often find. He takes his time with the narrative. Instead of propelling you forward, he reveals the story carefully. There is no problem stopping along the way to admire the view or smell the flowers. It is as much, if not more, about the journey than about the destination.

In recalling another Gibson novel, All Tomorrow's Parties, Sharon noted she might not remember exactly how the action unfolded, but she will never forget the cardboard box in a Tokyo train station that one of the characters lived in. Gibson's settings have always been memorable, and Spook Country continues that trend. Recalling it now, I cannot think of a location that was in any way mundane. He creates exotic places, like an impossibly priced flat in Vancouver with a magnetic levitation bed. Yet even locations as unexceptional as a Best Western motel room become noteworthy through the eyes of his characters.

And characters come to life in equal measure. The story is told from three points of view. First is Hollis Henry, an indie-rock star turned journalist (a little reminiscent of Cayce Pollard, the main character in Pattern Recognition, but only a little). Next is Tito, the young member of an underground family of spies-for-hire, and one of the more inventive characters I've encountered. Finally there is Milgrim, a drug addict held captive by a quasi-government operative; his observations and musings throughout the book made him my favorite. Like the book itself, each character is a portrait that reveals itself carefully as the story progresses. I don't want to say much more about them, lest I spoil the experience.

Gibson's stories always delve into new and intriguing concepts. A common theme is the impact of technology on our culture. This book explores the confluence of technology and art in the form of locative art. It also contains astute commentary on the Bush administration's policies and execution of the Iraq war. However, these insights are never presented overtly; they lurk below the surface and quietly filter up through the story. Thus it never feels like Gibson is preaching. I found this to be one of the most impressive aspects of this novel.

Suffice it to say, I really enjoyed this book. It was a pleasure from start to finish, and I was disappointed when I was done. If you get a chance, I recommend it highly.

What's in the box?

2007-12-05T12:57:00.000-05:00

Forrest Gump

There's a box in my office. It's been left on my chair. I can see it from my web cam. It looks like it's from HP. I have no idea what it is.

I wonder what it could be. I won't be in the office until Friday or next week. In my mine I'm accumulating book and movie references with boxes....

Forrest Gump - as quoted above.
Se7en - you knew what was in that box.
Pulp Fiction - Briefcase instead of a box, but close.
Spook Country (by William Gibson) - just finished that, and it has a box.

There's got to be more....

Update: Turns out the box wasn't addressed to me! I'll never know what's in it!

Meat Locker

2007-12-05T10:16:00.000-05:00

David Letterman

I'm in a meeting in a hotel conference room. It is freezing. The room was 58° when we came in. Man my toes are cold. I am warming my fingers over the cooling vent on my laptop. The thermostat has one of those plexi-glass covers locked over it. The best part is the sign on the cover. It reads*:

The Temperature is Permanently set for your comfort and convenience.

Wow, thanks!

* The capitalization is theirs, not mine.

A seasonal dilemma

2007-11-30T17:21:00.000-05:00

Irving Berlin

Spinal Tap

I posted a few days ago about a guy who won't donate to the Salvation Army because they didn't put the word "Christmas" on their sign. If it doesn't say "Christmas," he wants nothing to do with it. That made me wonder....

If forced to choose, which would this guy pick:

"Happy Holiday"		"Christmas with the Devil"
	or
The classic Irving Berlin song made famous by Bing Crosby.		The classic Spinal Tap song about Hell's Yuletide celebrations.

It's a toughie.

Book to the future

2007-11-29T17:39:00.000-05:00

Fahrenheit 451

It occurs to me just now that Kindle is a pretty ironic name. You normally don't want to evoke fire imagery when dealing with books. Nonetheless, that's what Amazon.com is calling its new electronic book reader. Maybe somewhere deep in their product design offices, someone really does see the death of paper books.

Last week I read Newsweek's article on the Kindle, and I've been trading long argumentative comments with Rob on his post about the Kindle. You should read his post, but I'll go so far as to say he thinks the Kindle is not the right product for reading books electronically. I'm not certain that it is the device, but I think it's a lot closer to the mark than Rob. I find the whole prospect interesting on several levels.

First, I think the E-ink or digital ink technology is really cool. It's very efficient, requires no back lighting, and once the image is rendered, it no longer needs power. That last feature is particularly intriguing. Currently graphics processors everywhere spend countless cycles painting and repainting a screen thousands of times each second. A digital ink display opens whole new windows of possibility.

Second, I like the some of the ideas brought forth in the Newsweek article about the paradigm shift that can occur with eBooks (regardless of what device they're on). Possibilities like the automatic distribution of corrections and additions is cool. Imagine a new appendix suddenly appearing in your book. Also, books are never truly out of print. Bits take up a lot less space than books in a warehouse. I also imagine stuff like the newspaper you see in Minority Report, the one that changes on the fly with breaking news.

Finally, it will be interesting to watch the continuing evolution of our everyday electronic devices. I remember when a phone was not a ubiquitous handheld device. I remember when a personal music player held one and only one album at a time. I remember when calling up satellite imagery in the palm of my hand in the middle of New Hampshire was the stuff of science fiction. I wonder if I can even imagine what will be commonplace to my children.

Anyway, I'm interested in what other people think of this latest attempt to digitize one of the last mechanical mediums left....

A little '80s romance

2007-11-28T14:14:00.000-05:00

Romancing the Stone

Last night after dinner I spent a couple hours bringing our aging home computer back to life. (I suspect the iTunes upgrade trashed the Winsock registry keys, but I can't be sure.) At the same time, Sharon was watching that classic of '80s action/adventure, Romancing the Stone.

Most of us probably have movies that can be classified as "cable overkill" (a term I learned from my wife). These are the movies that were constantly on cable, particularly right after you first got cable and watched everything. Romancing the Stone is one of my cable overkill movies, though I do remember seeing it in the theater when it came out. I found myself reciting lines often.

I thought it was great then, and it mostly stands up to the test of time. Kathleen Turner and Michael Douglas played well off each other, and Danny DeVito stole every scene he was in. The soundtrack suffers the most over time. It probably sounded fresh and cool in 1984, but it sounds really cheesy now. A contemporary pop film score just doesn't age well.

I cannot mention the music of Romancing the Stone without mentioning Eddy Grant's song of the same name. The song was commissioned for the film, but they decided not to use it. Apparently you can hear the guitar solo in one scene (in villa of Juan, the fan of Joans novels), but that's it. Luckily for all of us, Grant released it on its own, along with a video.

Not that's classic '80s romance.

Local Turkey

2007-11-26T17:52:00.000-05:00

Adam Sandler

Almost forgot to throw up a post about this. For the first time we got our turkey locally at Lee Turkey Farm in East Windsor, NJ. It was dee-lish. Picking up the turkey was kind of fun. The sixth-generation owner Ronny Lee was greeting people as he ran back and forth getting pies from the freezer. There were fresh stalks of brussel sprouts also, two of which supplied our vegetables. We will definitely getting our Turkey there next year!

Happy happy

2007-11-26T16:07:00.000-05:00

Rob tagged me a while back with the Happiness Meme. Jeri didn't tag me specifically, rather she employed the tagging equivalent of Explosive Runes. The rules are:

The rules are simple. Just create a post about any number of things that have
made you happy recently. Then tag any number of people and have them post this
meme on their blogs.

Easy enough. Here's my list:

Sharon. She makes me happy all the time, so it's a fair bet she's done so in the last week.
Our children. It was great being home from work over the Thanksgiving break. Watching my oldest stand up for my youngest was something special.
Thanksgiving. Mmmmmmm. In particular the locally raised turkey and Sharon's sausage stuffing. Oh, and the bourbon sweet potato mash. Mmmmmm.
The annual day-after-Thanksgiving parade when Santa arrives on a fire truck. We always follow it into town where they turn on all the lights.
The end of a really frustrating and annoying project at work. Got a monkey off my back! Got a m-m-m-monkey off my back back back!
The bubbling of beer in the fermenter and enjoying it later when it's ready. We've recently started really digging into the A-Steam, and it's awesome.
A truly kick-ass D&D game and the promise of another one this Friday. I am having a blast playing this game.
Comments from people reading my blog.

That's what I could come up with. I'll tag Brenda because I know I'll enjoy reading her list.

'Tis the season

2007-11-24T11:39:00.000-05:00

Colossians 2:16

Now that Thanksgiving is over, it's time once again for "The War on Christmas," when the evil secularists seek to destroy Christmas by using any other word to refer to the events that occur between Thanksgiving and New Years Day. The most sinister example is the term "holiday." To suggest that any other celebration occurs in the month of December is to spit in the face of Christians everywhere. Luckliy there is no shortage of right-wing pundits and nut-job letter writers to expose this evil.

A letter on page A10 of the Saturday, November 24 edition of The Times of Trenton is a perfect example. Titled "'Christmas' ought to right a bell," the letter decries the Salvation Army succumbing to the "scourge of political correctness with this year's 'Sharing is Caring' holiday campaign." At issue is a picture on page A3 of the Thanksgiving Day edition. The author's complaint? It's not Santa ringing the bell, but an "everyday person" wearing a red apron. Titled "A familiar red kettle," this picture "shows what is an insult to all of us who continue to believe in the true meaning of the Christmas season."

I wish you could see this picture. It's a picture of a Salvation Army worker in the red apron next to the kettle. Above the kettle is a sign that says "Sharing is Caring." It bears the Salvation Army logo, and says at the bottom, "Need Knows no Season." Oh yeah, almost forgot this. Right across the top is says, "God Bless You." Sadly, this just isn't enough for our letter writer. He goes on to say that he will not be donating to the Red Kettle Campaign this year. Instead he'll donate his time to "those charitable causes that continue to celebrate the true meaning of the Christmas season."

His complaint is so absurd, I don't know where to begin. He said standing in a mall all day collecting money for the needy does not celebrate the true meaning of Christmas. He's withholding his money because of no Santa Suit and a sign reading "God Bless You" not "Merry Christmas." I suspect he's been itching to find something, anything, to write a "war on Christmas" letter about, and this was the best he could do.

I think he needs to think long and hard about what the true meaning of Christmas is. Maybe he should watch A Charlie Brown Christmas when Linus explains the true meaning of Christmas:

And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people.

All people. How 'bout that.

Happy Thanksgiving

2007-11-24T11:15:00.000-05:00

Hindu proverb

I hope everyone has a wonderful Thanksgiving. I know we did.

I didn't get to post anything earlier about the The Crisis Ministry of Princeton and Trenton. My fourth grade religious education class joined the class from the late service to deliver enough groceries to fill four wagons and two minivans that were collected that morning. They did an awesome job sorting and stocking, and it was great to see them work so well and so hard.

Thanksgiving is a big week for the Crisis Ministry, but they need food all year round!

Rollin', rollin', rollin'

2007-11-19T15:39:00.000-05:00

Trout Fishing in America

Last night found me at a Girl Scout sing-a-long. One of the songs that went on for quite awhile was "18 Wheels on a Big Rig." The song is written by Heywood Banks, though I'm more familiar with the version by Trout Fishing In America. For those unfamiliar, the song is different ways of counting the big rig's wheels:

Oh there's 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18 wheels on a big rig,
And they're rollin' rollin' rollin', rollin' rollin' rollin'.

And so on, counting backwards (18, 17, 16, ...), the even wheels (2, 4, 6, ...), etc. TFIA has a funny bit where he counts in Roman numerals with impressive speed. The Girl Scouts couldn't quite match that, but they got through it. They also sang Spanish, then opened the microphone to audience members who could count in other languages. We heard French, German, Dutch, Japanese, Italian, Hebrew, and Gaelic. An impressive list that left me thinking of more ~~geeky~~ obscure options....

Binary:
Oh there's 1, 10, 11, 100, 101, 110, 111, 1000, 1001, 1010, 1011, 1100, 1101, 1110, 1111, 10000, 10001, 10010 wheels on a big rig.
Klingon:
Oh there's wa', cha', wej, loS, vagh, jav, Soch, chorgh, Hut, wa'maH, wa'maH wa', wa'maH cha', wa'maH wej, wa'maH loS, wa'maH vagh, wa'maH jav, wa'maH Soch, wa'maH chorgh wheels on the big rig.
Hexadecimal:
Oh there's 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, A, B, C, D, E, F, 10, 11, 12 wheels on the big rig.
Prime numbers:
Oh there's 2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13, 17 wheels on the big rig.
Wheels divided by zero:
Oh there's infinity, infinity, infinity, infinity, infinity, infinity, infinity, infinity, infinity, infinity, infinity, infinity, infinity, infinity, infinity, infinity, infinity, infinity wheels on the big rig.
And they're rollin' rollin' rollin', rollin' rollin' rollin'.

Pasta is serious religion.

2007-11-16T16:03:00.000-05:00

Ragu on Pastafarianism

My Pastafarian friend (no, saying that does not make me prejudiced) doesn't have a blog, so I wanted to share this story about the Flying Spaghetti Monster's appearance on the agenda of the American Academy of Religion's annual meeting.

P.S. A week ago Sharon got a $20 bill on which someone scratch out "God" and replaced it with "FSM" so that it said "In FSM We Trust." We sure do.

Atari, Adventure, and when to ignore your boss

2007-11-15T15:18:00.000-05:00

Strong Bad

Last week Brenda Tremblay reported that the Atari 2600 game console was inducted into the National Toy Hall of Fame. As a "Nationally Ranked Kaboom Champion," she was pulling for the Atari. It was my first choice as well, but not because of Kaboom. My preferred game is Adventure.

I love Adventure. I played it constantly, searching for and recovering the Chalice too many times to count. To this day I know my way around the various castles, rooms, mazes, and catacombs. I never cared that the dragons looked more like ducks and the sword was just an arrow. It was fun and addictive.

The game was created by Warren Robinett, and it is groundbreaking in many ways. Game elements we take for granted now, like a multi-screen world and objects you can pick up, were unprecedented back then. It is also the first example of truly autonomous entities moving throughout the game on their own, regardless of what you are doing. Left unattended, the bat will fly through the game moving stuff around forever. That Robinett could fit this on 4096 bytes of ROM and run it with only 128 bytes of RAM is a programming achievement in and of itself. (To put it in perspective, that's about 0.0004% of what the cheapest Dell comes with by default.)

There is great story behind its inception. Here's how Robinett tells it in one of several interviews:

I started in May 1978 and worked like a madman for a month. My boss, George Simcock, heard what I was working on and didn't think I could do it within the 2600 resources and told me not to do it. However I ignored him and had a prototype with screen to screen movement and dragons chasing you after a month of hacking.

There is another great story that lead to what is considered the first "easter egg." Although each game was typically written by one person, Atari did not give the creator any credit. Robinett decided he wanted to sign his work, so he found a way to sneak his signature in. He added a hidden object to the game, a 1x1 pixel dot that gives the player access to a secret room. In the room is the following text: "Created by Warren Robinett." This remained a secret long after the game's release. By the time Atari found out what he did, it was too late to change the game and he had already quit.

I have an original Atari 2600 "heavy sixer" with the six switches on the front, but the last time I tried it didn't work. Maybe I should get it out and see if I can get it working again. Then I'll be back searching once more for the elusive Chalice.

Piping hot!

2007-11-13T11:21:00.000-05:00

Mike Myers

They're the Red Hot Chilli Pipers. No, that's not a typo, and yes, they're Scots. Check them out:

They gave an impromptu performance in the crowd on the Today Show this morning. I just had to google them.

You can bet on it

2007-11-12T18:28:00.000-05:00

Phil Gordon

When you're in a place like Vegas with a group, you go out and do stuff. You gamble, go drinking, go to clubs, etc. When you're by yourself, well, not so much. Getting drunk with a bunch of friends in a bar is a blast. Doing it by yourself is sad and somewhat pathetic. So, when I was in Vegas, I mostly just walked around. I might end up chatting with a fellow conference attendee who happened to be eating at the same restaurant, but that was it. I spent the rest of my time walking around the casinos and hotels sightseeing.

One thing I was amazed by was the volume and variety of gambling options. I knew Vegas offers almost limitless gambling options, but I was still unprepared for the scope and scale as seen firsthand. I was once in the AT&T Global Network Operations Center. It had a huge wall lined with screens showing the status of networks and servers all over the globe. It had nothing on the sports betting room in every casino I saw. They were bigger, had more screens, and were more impressive. I stood looking at those walls unable to comprehend all the numbers and stats, each of which represented a bet someone could place. People will bet on anything.

Which brings me to an episode of This American Life I heard back in September, though it was originally broadcast in 2001. Meet the Pros does just that, including professional gamblers in Act Two, where Phil Gordon explains how Rock Scissors Paper is in essence the same as Texas Hold 'Em. Check it out, it's a good one.

Scary scarcity

2007-11-12T17:13:00.000-05:00

perfect storm

(noun)

Merriam-Webster

As friends and family have reported, there is a shortage of beer ingredients.

This report has been re-posted around the web, and details the causes of the hop shortage. Here's the bottom line:

Certain varieties are getting a lot more expensive. A few varieties will run out faster than ever. Brewers have to be willing to try other varieties. Brewmasters, brewery owners, and marketing and sales managers must prepare for the potential need to substitute different hops, to replace varieties that currently give your beers their "signature" flavor. That's what we'll have to get used to, the fact that there may be slight flavor variations over the next several years, as the hop industry works to correct this situation.

As if that is not bad enough, this article notes that hops are not the only ingredient that is in short supply:

Barley prices, and those of wheat, also used in some beer, have hit all-time highs, said Mary Palmer Sullivan, program director for the Washington Grain Alliance in Spokane.

The barley shortage is due in part to drought, and also to the rise in demand for corn-based biofuels, as this NPR story notes. We may have seen the high water mark for barley, though, as prices seem to be declining somewhat.

No such luck for hops, however. As the hop supply report notes:

It's not going to get better soon, but will be likely just as bad, or worse, for the crops from 2008 and 2009, in other words, for beers brewed from now through 2010.

This was confirmed at our local homebrew supply shop, where hop prices jumped and availabilty is limited. So drink those hoppy beers while there's still time.

Adios Vegas

2007-11-09T03:06:00.000-05:00

I just finished stuffing all my stuff into my bags. I fly out tomorrow at 12:15.

Tonight was the Latin Grammy Awards at the Mandalay Bay. When the conference let out, it basically dumped this mass of geeks into the crowds watching the stars arrive. We departed to cheers, but not for us. It was kind of funny.

I had some time so I took the monorail around to see what there was to see. I finished up a the Bellagio fountains, which are truly cool. I came in late to the first show, which had ballet music, so I waited for the next one. The next show's music was "Viva Las Vegas." There's my send-off.

Here two quick parting photos: me in the mirror of the Bally's escalator, and the best slot machine name I've seen all week.

Out damned Carrot Top!

2007-11-08T17:07:00.001-05:00

Neo Pseudo

I am staying at Luxor, and Carrot Top is everywhere! He's on signs by the elevator. He's on walls in the casino. He's on the little TV screen in the tram. He's on the big TV screen in the lobby. He's on my Do Not Disturb sign. He's on my room key! Everywhere I look I see that face.

Sometimes, I see him with my eyes closed....

Vegas

2007-11-07T01:05:00.000-05:00

Sheryl Crow

So I'm in Vegas, defying Luxor their $13 a night by using my phone for internet access. I'm here for a the DevConnections conference at Mandalay Bay. I'm not staying at the Mandalay Bay, I'm next door in Luxor because the Mandalay Bay was booked. (How many times can I type Mandalay bay?) Many people are even further away in MGM Grand.

I've been sending photo dispatches home. Here are some highlights:

The Sphinx at Luxor and a headless Lenin statue in Mandalay Bay:

The roller coaster at New York New York and some guy sitting with live lions at MGM Grand:

By the way, the coaster is way cool. I had some time to took around on Monday and see all this. Today was more conference stuff - all day in fact. But I did get free food that should offset the awesome sushi at Jpop Sushi at (one more time) Mandalay Bay.

Oh yeah, here is the really big tub in my room:

For some reason my youngest wondered if I sing in it.

No, not yet. But there's still time.

Nice work

2007-11-02T14:34:00.000-04:00

Sheryl Crow

This is funny:

You may notice a familiar face....

You've still got mail

2007-11-02T11:32:00.000-04:00

Johnny Carson

It would seem I haven't been checking my office mailbox as often as I should. I learned this yesterday when its contents were brought to my office. Amongst the junk mail was this:

Yes, the date in the picture is accurate. No, the card did not arrive extra early. I haven't checked my mailbox in almost a year.

On the passing of Richard Jewell

2007-11-01T10:52:00.000-04:00

Ten years later, Richard Jewell remained reluctant to take credit for the lives he undoubtedly saved when he spotted an unattended backpack that contained a bomb. He was more worried about how the ensuing investigation affected his mother than himself. His complaint about the intense media focus on him was that it detracted from coverage athletes who dedicated their lives to competing for their homeland in the Olympics. His only regret was there were not five more minutes in which the life of victim Alice Hawthorne might have been saved.

In the months and years that followed the Atlanta Olympics bombing, Richard Jewell wasn't in in the news very much. I thought we might hear about him when Eric Rudolf was identified as the the bomber in 2005. I posted what little I found in these two posts. In July 2006, the ten year anniversary of the bombing did prompt several stories and the AP interview I've linked to. Finally, in August 2006, Georgia Governor Sonny Perdue presented Jewell with a commendation for his actions that day. "He didn't seek this today," the Governor said, "we sought him out because I think it’s the right thing to do." It was, and it was ten years overdue.

Richard Jewell died in August. I was on vacation, and I missed the stories in the news. I first heard about it from a comment on one of my 2005 posts. News reports of his passing came with headlines like: Vindicated Olympic Park bombing suspect Richard Jewell dies (CNN) and Olympics bombing figure Richard Jewell dies (AP). Jewell said in the AP interview, "I dare say more people know I was called a suspect than know I was the one who found the package," and headlines like these bear that out. They speak more to his status as suspect, and not the lives he saved that day.

Only one headline I saw, (New York Times) got it right:

Richard Jewell, 44, Hero of Atlanta Attack, Dies

When he died, Richard Jewell was Meriwether County sheriff’s deputy, and is survived by his wife and by his mother.

Comet Holmes!

2007-10-30T23:56:00.000-04:00

William Shakespeare

Comet Holmes unexpectedly brightened last week, but I've only just heard about it. Thanks to Heavens Above, I was able to locate it. To the naked eye, it appears as a slightly fuzzy star in the constellation Perseus.

Cosmic messages

2007-10-30T11:40:00.000-04:00

Dr. Carl Sagan

This week's Radio Lab episode was a rebroadcast of a 2006 episode. The topic is space.

It includes a segment about the famous Golden Records placed aboard the Voyager spacecraft. I features an interview with Ann Druyan, who helped create the record and married Carl Sagan soon after the Voyager probes launched. Their love story alone is worth hearing.

The episode uses the record to ask the question, "What would you send into space?" Composer Phillip Glass gives his answer in the episode, but they also asked chef Alice Waters, author Neil Gaiman, comedian Margaret Cho, and author Michael Cunningham. You can listen to these online via links on the Space episode page. (Unfortunately, you Real Player for the clips.)

If I had to construct a message for extraterrestrials that explains the human race, I'm not sure what I would send. These days we can probably send a Gold DVD with a lot more information on it.

I would likely choose some of the same sounds on the record: children laughing, babies, voices in different languages. They couldn't manage motion pictures on Voyager, but if I could, there would be time-lapse movies flower growing, trees budding, and something decomposing. 360-degree panoramas would be nice, from places like NYC, the Sahara desert, and the Amazon rain forest. As for books an poetry, I'm at a loss to choose authors. Shakespeare, Homer, and Steinbeck come to mind. Seeing Homer makes me think the Simpsons should be on there. And there should be Pink Floyd music on there somewhere....

What would you send?

Do you like corn?

2007-10-29T13:44:00.000-04:00

Children of the Corn

Outlanders are welcome to "walk behind the rows" at Howell Living History Farm's 11th annual Corn Maze, but you'll need to get there soon. The final three days are 11/3, 11/4, and 11/10.

I went looking for an aerial shot of a past maze. Google and MapQuest imagery is from the wrong time of year, but Microsoft Virtual Earth has a great shot of last year's windmill maze.

We were there two weeks ago, and we had a great time. We also set a new family record of 1 1/2 hours! Beat that!

Update: I was wrong. Our maze time was 1:05, not 1:30. Sorry to have sold my family short!

The Lord of the Rings Soundtracks

2007-10-26T11:37:00.000-04:00

Rohan

The Return of the King

I've been saying for years that I wanted to get the soundtracks to the Lord of the Rings films. I finally borrowed the first two from the library. I'm not an expert on classical music or film scores, but I think Howard Shores compositions stand as great works in their own right. I haven't stopped listening to them.

The soundtrack to The Fellowship of the Ring won the Original Score Oscar. I remember a 2002 NPR segment calling Shore the "dark horse" nominee, in part because he was up against not one but two works of Oscar juggernaut John Williams (Jaws, Star Wars), including the Harry Potter score. The Two Towers was overlooked entirely, robbed if you ask me, but The Return of the King won both Original Score and Original Song.

I don't know what I like about this music. I love films, that's definitely part of it, but not all of it. It certainly has great themes stick in your head. The Rohan theme, usually played on a violin, and the Hobbit theme, often on recorder, are examples. There is also the main theme you hear during those sweeping panoramic shots of the Fellowship heading south. There are also haunting elements that capture mystery of the elves and the melancholy of Frodo's self-sacrifice so well.

I guess what I'm saying is that the music conveys the emotions of the story so well, even on its own. That is what has me hooked on them. I don't know where you stand on film scores, but you should give these a listen (if you haven't already).

Seven clues that Dumbledore was gay

2007-10-24T10:29:00.000-04:00

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

From the L.A. Times comes the best analysis of the Dumbledore revelation. Apparently all the clues were there.

I like #2 best.

Radio Lab

2007-10-23T12:26:00.001-04:00

Marie Curie

That's not a bad description of the approach taken by the WNYC show Radio Lab. Each show explores a broad topic like morality, time, music, or even zoos by interviewing exports and telling stories. They're really interesting, informative, and fun.

All shows are available online and podcasted. Check it out!

Celery and all!

2007-10-22T17:31:00.000-04:00

The Doctor

Rob reports that one of my favorite Doctors (and his celery) will be back!

Advertising Unitarian Universalism

2007-10-22T16:22:00.000-04:00

Stephen Colbert:

Bobby (a Unitarian):

The Colbert Report

A Unitarian Universalist "elevator pitch" was subject of recent thread on my church's e-mail list. It speaks to the difficulty UUs have in explaining their religion, as illustrated about halfway through this segment of The Colbert Report. But a new national ad campaign could change that:

Not bad for a 30 second pitch. It's part of an ad campaign that includes these ads in Time and a 10 minute video available on DVD and online.

Slacker

2007-10-22T11:07:00.000-04:00

(Source: You know who you are)

Yes, it's been twenty-one days since I've posted anything. I will try to remedy this.

In the future

2007-10-02T16:36:00.000-04:00

Dalek

In the future, advances in nanotechnology will create tiny robots that fly around my house and kill all those frickin' moths.

We will be unprepared for the long term consequences of this technology.

Eventually they will become a threat to humankind.

It will still be worth it.

Is Net Radio the Future?

2007-09-28T09:26:00.000-04:00

Talking Heads

Awhile ago I mentioned that I've been listening to YRock on XPN. I still am, and recently I found something pretty cool. I have a Windows Mobile phone with Internet access. Out of curiosity I the listening YRock, and I was able to play the high speed stream reliably. What's more, it sounded great on the little ear buds that come with the phone. It's like a little Net Radio walkman I can use almost anywhere. This gets me thinking, is Net Radio the real future of radio?

The obvious alternatives are satellite and HD. However neither format's future seems secure. Broadcasters are really pushing HD as the successor to FM. Despite the big push, I think the jury is still way out. As for satellite radio, clearly people are buying it, but Sirius and XM are still losing money. They justify their proposed merger, in part, with the assertion that a satellite radio monopoly is the only way to keep the format alive. That's not a ringing endorsement of the technology.

Net Radio has a lot of pluses. It doesn't lock the consumer into a single provider like satellite does. It's more like traditional FM and HD in that respect, which is would seem to be a plus for broadcasters - they don't need to negotiate with provider holding a monopoly. Unlike FM/HD, they have virtually unlimited range. If you have broadband Internet, you can receive their signal. Therein lies the rub. Net Radio requires broadband access, and most of us need to pay for broadband. It will cost you even more if you want it on a mobile device like a phone.

Nonetheless, the broadband market penetration continues to rise even as the price of bandwidth decreases. Even the price of mobile broadband has gone down, and coverage steadily improves. At this rate, it won't be long before incremental cost mobile broadband will be less than the monthly cost of satellite radio (if not already). Other services like telephone and video are also moving online. There has to be a tipping point where broadband will be like cable TV or even telephone, and everyone will have it. At that point, what chance to other formats have against Net Radio?

No Internet media discussion is complete without mentioning podcasts. Personally, I don't see podcasts as a threat to the live radio format. Podcasting is great for downloading new/talk shows (e.g. Fresh Air, This American Life, Marketplace, etc.) and music shows (e.g. World Cafe or Echoes). It's not a great format to replace on-air or satellite radio, because most people don't want to pre-download that material for later playback and the recording industry would be too fearful. Assuming you can access the online stream, Net Radio is a much better fit.

Satellite radio scares broadcasters because it threatens to render local stations obsolete. Net Radio, however, does the opposite. Radio stations will no longer be bound by the size of their transmitter or the geography of their location. Local stations can reach their listeners even when they're travelling. Of course some stations will probably fail when faced with so many competitors. Still, a wider audience means you can find success by specializing. Niche market stations would become more viable because they can find enough subscribers among a worldwide audience.

This should bode well for broadcasters and listeners alike.

Update: I mistakenly typed XD instead of HD. I've fixed it. Thanks to Rob for spotting my mistake.

Remembrance

2007-09-11T16:22:00.000-04:00

I't funny the things you remember. I was on my way to work. I had to redial my cell phone because the lines were tied up. Every news site was down from traffic overload. There was road work, and I wondered if the flagman knew yet. A co-worker was reporting every rumor he heard in some chat room. All these little snippets of time so insignificant in comparison to the events that unfolded.

One of the more vivid memories I have is a co-worker's reaction when the first tower fell. He's a firefighter and EMT, and he was visibly stunned. He said something about the number of rescue personel in that building. I don't remember what I said, if anything, nor how long I stood there.

I didn't know if I should even put up post for 9/11. There is little I can say that has not been said, and few if any who will take note. Still, I think it's important to remember that day for what it really was, not the hollow catch-phrase our leaders have made of it. To that end, I guess there is value in even the smallest story, so here it is.

Shortest DMV Visit Ever

2007-09-10T17:00:00.000-04:00

Dave Barry

I guess that means the Somerville office must be the DMV* equivalent of broadband, because I renewed my registration in minutes. I waited barely a minute in the receptionist line and was given the necessary form highlighted to show exactly what I should fill in. There was no line at the counter where I handed in the form, and it was processed in less time than it took me to fill it out. I could not believe how fast it was. Somerville rules!

*In the interest of accuracy, it's not actually the DMV. It's the MVC (Motor Vehicle Comission).

Bourdainalyzing Top Chef

2007-09-05T15:48:00.000-04:00

Anthony Bourdain

I think I've blogged about all of Bourdain's blog posts on Bravo. It's hard not to, and this week's was the perfect analysis of an untimely departure. One of the top contenders crashed and burned in a really big way. No doubt there is plenty of viewer anger, but Bourdain provides a compelling defense of the decision. He also serves up his usual scathing critiques of the various cheftestents.

So this is the level I've descended to: blogging about reality TV. Actually, blogging about reality TV bloggers. Top Chef and astronomy. Is that all I'm good for? We'll see....

Close to Mars

2007-08-23T09:56:00.000-04:00

Stephen Wright

In the time it took to read that quote, we all moved about 25 miles closer to Mars. That's according to NASA calculations and this article from Space.com. Mars and Earth are closing the gap between them at a rate of 22,000 mph.

By December, Mars will outshine every star in the sky. It will not, of course, be anywhere near the size of the moon, regardless of chain mail that suggests otherwise. Even at its brightest Mars is still a dot of light to the naked eye.

However, it will be very accessible to backyard astronomers. A good pair of binoculars or an amateur telescope will let you see it's disk shape and maybe even some surface details. During its last approach, I was able to spot one of the polar ice caps. I'll be out again this time around.

If you have a telescope you haven't used yet (you know who you are), this is a great time to try it out.

Sky coming Google Earth

2007-08-22T11:39:00.000-04:00

Carl Sagan

Google Earth is adding a new feature that will allow users to see the heavens. If this new feature, called Sky, is any bit as cool as Google Earth, it will be awesome. I can't wait. The story here.

Who let the Macarena in the house?

2007-08-15T11:09:00.000-04:00

Cyndi Lauper

I was making dinner last night, and the children put on some music. Not only was it Cyndi Lauper, but my oldest was singing along. She knew all the words. This was a surprise for me, since I didn't know we even owned anything by Cyndi Lauper*.

Turns out this was a mix-CD someone gave us, a collection of "slumber party songs," or something like that. Mostly it's what you'd expect. Glora Estefan's "Conga" and "The Rhythm is Gonna Get You," for example, and "Walkin' on Sunshine" (not the Katrina and the Waves version, unfortunately**). There were some hip selections, like REM's "Stand," and a few unexpected choices, most notably the Frankie Goes to Hollywood standard, "Relax" (maybe it's the song's inclusion in Body Double, but I just never saw this a slumber party material).

Then there was the song I knew must be coming but hoped against. Even with the tell-tale opening riff, there was the faint hope that this would be a parody version or maybe the one from Sesame Street. Alas, no, it was Los del Río's original "Macarena." Luckily it was not the Bayside Boys remix with added English lyrics. My kids don't need to sing along with her cheating on her boyfriend because he was "out of town and his two friends were sooo fine." No thanks.

Wow, don't I sound like the grumpy parent? "Don't want my child listening to that music! Stuff kids listen to these days!" Oh well. Some things can't be helped.

For the record, I didn't make them turn it off or even down. Even when the Rednex dance remix of "Cotton Eyed Joe" came on, though an ice pick in the forehead was sounding pretty good right about then....

*For the record, I don't have anything against her. "True Colors" and "Time After Time" are great songs that I enjoy listening to - just not enough to go out and buy them.

**I always liked this song. There, I've said it.

Lies and really big fonts

2007-08-14T10:59:00.000-04:00

Mark Twain

I got one of those e-mails today. You know the ones. The text of the message indented several levels due to incessant forwarding. "FW:" prefaces the subject which, in this instance, is "9/11." You can tell where this is going immediately. It starts out subtly:

It was 1987! At a lecture the other day they were playing an old news video of Lt.Col. Oliver North testifying at the Iran-Contra hearings during the Reagan Administration.
There was Ollie in front of God and country getting the third degree, but what he said was stunning.

DUN DUUNN!! Prepare to awestruck! I'm surprised it didn't say "There was poor Ollie...," but score points for getting "Got and country" in their early. It's important to set the tone. I am reproducing most of the original format of centered italics, but I'll skip the 18 pt. Arial. I think they showed admirable restraint in avoiding bold and underlined. It continues:

He was being drilled by a senator; "Did you not recently spend close to $60,000 for a home security system?"
Ollie replied, "Yes, I did, Sir."
The senator continued, trying to get a laugh out of the audience, "Isn't that just a little excessive?"
"No, sir," continued Ollie.
"No? And why not?" the senator asked.
"Because the lives of my family and I were threatened, sir."
"Threatened? By whom?" the senator questioned.
"By a terrorist, sir" Ollie answered.
"Terrorist? What terrorist could possibly scare you that much?"

Chuckle. What terrorist, indeed? Okay, you know what the answer is going to be. Hung's trained monkey knows what the answer is going to be. The sender, however, wants to make sure you understand that this is big revelation, so they pull out all the stops and reveal in 27 pt.:

"His name is Osama bin Laden, sir" Ollie replied.

Oh. My. God. Are you dumbstruck? Well wait, there's more. After such an earth shattering revelation, you need a little comic relief:

At this point the senator tried to repeat the name, but couldn't pronounce it, which most people back then probably couldn't. A couple of people laughed at the attempt. Then the senator continued. Why are you so afraid of this man?" the senator asked.
"Because, sir, he is the most evil person alive that I know of", Ollie answered.

Hehe. That dumb senator couldn't even pronounce the name. Funny stuff. Heck, most people couldn't pronounce it back then. It's such a tongue twister. Say it three times fast. See how hard that is? But now, the tone becomes grave again. In an interesting stylistic departure, the author chooses this moment to switch Comic Sans MS, but those trusty italics are not abandoned.

"And what do you recommend we do about him?" asked the senator.
"Well, sir, if it was up to me, I would recommend that an assassin team be formed to eliminate him and his men from the face of the earth."
The senator disagreed with this approach, and that was all that was shown of the clip.

Okay, did you get that? Oliver North wanted to assassinate Osama bin Laden in 1987, and was ridiculed for it by the senator questioning him at the time. Hmmm. I wonder if the senator was a democrat or republican.... Well, have no fear, that question will be answered:

By the way, that senator was Al Gore!

Al Gore, ladies and gentlemen! To drive this point home, the color changes to maroon. (I use maroon Comic Sans MS for e-mail - don't know that says about me.) For good measure, Al Gore's name is in 27 pt. I guess that's because it's also hard to pronounce. So there it is: Gore laughed away the threat of bin Laden back in 1987.

I probably don't have to tell you that this is all a load of crap, and Snopes explains in detail how completely false it is. Still, one fabrication just isn't enough for our sender. Hot on the heals of the Al Gore bombshell, we get more:

Terrorist pilot Mohammad Atta blew up a bus in Israel in 1986. The Israelis captured, tried and imprisoned him. As part of the Oslo agreement with the Palestinians in 1993, Israel had to agree to release so-called "political prisoners."
However, the Israelis would not release any with blood on their
hands. The American President at the time, Bill Clinton, and his Secretary of State, Warren Christopher, "insisted" that all prisoners be released.
Thus Mohammad Atta was freed and eventually thanked the US by flying an airplane into Tower One of the World Trade Center.

Here we go. More centered italics. More 18 and 27 pt. fonts. More democrats turning a blind eye to terrorists. I like the little, "Thus..." part at the end. Almost biblical. One would wonder why such a bombshell would go unnoticed. Don't you worry. All the answers are right here:

This was reported by many of the American TV networks at the time that the terrorists were first identified.
It was censored in the US from all later reports.
If you agree that the American public should be made aware of this fact, pass this on.

There it is. The cover-up. The conspiracy. The information you were not meant to know. It's 27 pt. It's maroon. It's italicised. It's bold. It's underlined.

And it's still bullshit. No matter which font you use.

Why the big post? It's not like this is the first e-mail like this I've seen. It's clearly fake, and Snopes is full of similar fabrications. Yet as laughable as it is to me, it wasn't forwarded as a joke. It was forwarded by someone who thinks it's true and sought to tell others. It's bad enough when someone cooks up this garbage, but it's even worse when people receive it with no critical scrutiny whatsoever.

And there's one more thing. Besides scaling down the fonts, I left off the pictures. We've all seen photos of the planes striking and the towers collapsing. I didn't need them here. But I will include this one, from the end of the message:

There's the final insult. The memory of those lost with symbols of peace and love invoked in service of some little jerk's political slimefest.

Bravo Bourdain

2007-08-09T16:47:00.000-04:00

Keckler

Bravo decided Bourdain's stand-in blogging for Colicchio was so good, he needed a blog of his own. The combination of his blog and Keckler's TVwoP recaps might be better than the show itself.

No party

2007-08-09T11:29:00.000-04:00

Sebelia

Project Runway

Comments to my last Top Chef post included Rob's opinion that Top Chef is more civilized than Hell's Kitchen. That may be, but last night they were pretty damned evil. The cheftestants are told they'll be getting a night out at a hot Miami club. They spend time getting dressed up, then hop in the awaiting limo that takes them to... an elimination challenge. Cook outside in catering wagons, and serve food to clubgoers after closing time.

Had they Jeffrey Sebelia's wisdom, they'd have known this was coming. As it is, they are stunned. What's worse, in a move reminiscent of POW camp mind games, the Quickfire winner is whisked away in the limo for a one-on-one dinner with guest judge Govind Armstrong at one of his restaurants. Even the nicest of those remaining confess hatred of their fellow cheftestant for this lucky break.

Ah well, what did they expect? After all, it's reality TV. It's never a party.

Senate caves to Bush. Again.

2007-08-04T12:47:00.000-04:00

Sen. Frank Lautenberg*

What the hell? Recent Senate hearings sought to determine whether the Bush administration strong-armed then Attorney General Ashcroft into authorizing illegal domestic surveilance. One would think they didn't like Bush/Cheney spying on Americans.

So, when Bush demands they vote to expand his powers before going on vacation, what do they do? They give him exactly what he demanded. Wow. That's showing them. You really dealt a decisive blow with that one. Geez!

* Because the vote was last night, it looks like we won't know the roll-call until Monday. I've heard that Lautenberg and Menendez both voted against, but nothing official.
UPDATE: Lautenberg and Menendez both voted Nay.

On the White Stripes bandwagon

2007-08-02T17:24:00.000-04:00

The White Stripes

Okay, I know I'm arriving late for this party. The White Stripes grammy-winning album Elephant came out in 2003, and I've only just gotten it. Unfortunately, most music I purchase these days is new material by artists already in my collection. That can get kind of stale, so I do try to branch out.

I told Sharon a while back that I've thought about getting something by the White Stripes - I always the songs I hear by them. She oblidged by giving me Elephant and Get Behind Me Satan for my birthday. I totally dig both of them. It's a good thing I have them at work because Sharon would be getting sick of them right about now. That's how much I've been playing them. I am bopping my head at this moment to the "My Doorbell." I see more White Stripes purchases in my future.

Oh yeah, I looked up the video for "The Hardest Button to Button" and now I get the reference in this Simpsons clip:

Bourdain in for Colicchio

2007-07-26T17:48:00.000-04:00

Anthony Bourdain

Anthony Bourdain is guest blogging for on Tom Colicchio's "Top Chef" blog. There are two posts so far. Classic Bourdain, but you'll probably need to have seen the show for context.

P.S. I have to admit, I didn't know what a Negroni was before I looked it up.

Impromptu summer sky tour

2007-07-21T09:46:00.000-04:00

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Yesterday evening was absolutely perfect night for observing the sky. It was cool, dry, and, but for a few wisps of cloud, crystal clear. The sun was barely below the horizen when Venus was out, low in the western sky. The moon was higher in the west, half full. Jupiter was high in southern sky.

I got out the telescope and the whole family spent the next hour looking at everything. We started with Venus, now down to a thin crecent. Normally one associates that shape with the moon, and we had to remind my youngest that this was a crescent Venus.

Next we turn to Jupiter. I wasn't sure the bright object was Jupiter until I looked in the eyepiece. There is no mistaking Jupiter. You can see the stripes if the cloud bands, and the four pinpricks of light that are the Galilean moons.

We moved on to our own moon. This brought wows form the children. The moon more than filled the eyepiece, and we scanned the edge of the shadow where the surface features were in strongest relief.

Finally, so as not to limit our sky tour to the solar system, we aimed the telescope at Mizar, the second star from the end in the Big Dipper's handle. Mizar is actually a binary star - through the telescope you can clearly see that is made up of two stars very close to one another. It is probably the easiest binary star to observe.

It's been too long since we had the telescope out. We need to do this more often.

To catch Bill O'Reilly

2007-07-19T17:25:00.000-04:00

Keith Olbermann

When Bill O'Reilly interviewed Miss New Jersey Amy Polumbo, he really wanted to know what the blackmail photos were like. Joel McHale's The Soup on E! first featured this clip, but here is Keith Olbermann's take (with obligatory shout-out to McHale).

One more Olbermann quote, from his "Worst Person in the World" for July 19:

His stupidity is effervescent. It glows. It fairly undulates and
vibrates. I'll stop now. I'm getting Bill-O exited.

Guess who won.

Venus making an exit

2007-07-16T13:11:00.000-04:00

Batman

This past Friday, my youngest daughter and I sat on the deck watching the stars come out. The first thing we saw, of course, was Venus. The "Evening Star" is shining its brightest right now, with a magnitude of -4.5. My daughter's eyes are better than mine, so she spotted the first actual star - Sirius. The "Dog Star" is the brightest star in the sky, but it couldn't compete with Venus. We looked at Venus through binoculars, and spotted Regulus just above it.

Venus is about to make a dramatic exit from the evening sky. Tonight it will be close to the moon and Saturn. I hope it's clear. Then each day, as it lowers in the western sky, it will become an upturned crescent. It will leave with a smile.

P.S. This was a welcome bright spot in an otherwise awful weekend. Here's why....

Eastern Organic - One year later

2007-07-12T17:57:00.000-04:00

Lynyrd Skynyrd

Over a year ago I began following the story of Eastern Organic Resources' Woodhue facility in Wrightstown. The company seeking regulatory permission a composting facility that recycled organic waste to produce soil and fuel a methane powered generation plan. To me, this sounded like a great idea. How could you not love a company whose business combined recycling and renewable energy?

If you've read the lead-in quote, you can guess the answer: that smell. Composting smells bad, and Eastern Organic found themselves in constant struggle with the local government and NJ DEP over air quality. Ironically, the project they sought approval for (the methane generation) could have alleviated the air quality. To collect the methane, they needed to enclose the composter, which would have eliminated most of the odor problem. (I covered most of this my first post).

Unfortunately, they couldn't work things out. Last July I posted that the DEP had begun proceedings to shut down the facility. I didn't hear much after that. Every now and then I'll google Eastern Organic Resources, finding nothing new.

Looks like I missed this story in June, though. The full article isn't available for free, but the snippet suggests someone may be interested in buying the company. I guess that means they're still operating. They still have a web site, but it's not clear how current it is. I'll have to keep an eye out and see.

Blenderific!

2007-07-11T14:28:00.000-04:00

A friend sent a link to this:

There is a "Will it Blend" website with many more videos, including one with a can of EZ Cheese. The site was created by Blendtec to show off their blender. Now that's advertising!

More lies

2007-07-10T14:12:00.000-04:00

Six days after receiving a report that FBI agents obtained personal information they were not entitled to have, Alberto Gonzales assured the Senate intelligence committee that the FBI had not abused its Patriot act powers. It wasn't the first report either - it was one of maybe half a dozen such he received in the three months preceding his testimony. I predict neither shock nor outrage at this revelation because no one will be the least bit surprised.

Check out the full story.

Net radio in danger

2007-07-07T11:25:00.000-04:00

Rage Against the Machine

I've started listenning to YRock on XPN at work. Whenever you first launch the stream, you get a message encouraging you to visit SaveNetRadio.org. Here's the deal: the Copyright Royalty Board (CRB), which oversees sound recording royalties paid by Internet radio services, increased Internet radio's royalty burden by 300 to 1200. Most Internet radio stations won't be able to afford this and will either go offline, or be forced into deals with record companies giving them control of programming content. Particularly unfair is that Internet radio royalties are already twice that of sattelite radio.

I have to admit, I was totally oblivious to this issue until now. I even missed the day of silence when all Internet radio stations went intentionally dark. *Rob did put up a post about this issue as it pertains to podsafe music. Check it out.

Also, check out SaveNetRadio to learn more.

Shivved

2007-07-06T16:24:00.000-04:00

Olbermann

Sharon and Rob both posted this. Still, I wanted to highlight this quote that so accurately and succinctly illustrates what this administration has done to the American people.

Meat Cake!

2007-07-06T13:56:00.000-04:00

Eric Cartman

Sharon's Food Blog posted a link to the Television Without Pity recaps of Top Chef.^* Yesterday I was there reading the recap of Season 3 Episode 3. Meatloaf played an important role in the episode, and Keckler included a most wonderful link in her recap. What link?

Two words: MEAT CAKE. Check it out.

* BTW, I take credit (or responsibility) for sending her there.

Advair has some competition

2007-07-03T16:52:00.000-04:00

Tony Zook, president and chief executive of AstraZeneca

It's been over a year since I've wrote this post about Advair and a sensationalist article about it in Forbes magazine, and I am still getting comments. It's possibly my most visited post ever. Most comments are from people like me, who found Advair to be almost life-changing, our Asthma under control for the first time ever. Some comments focused on issues with the Serevent component of Advair, and there are some good points to consider there. Read the post and comments for the details.

Anyway, I decided today to see what came up in Google News about Advair, and it looks like AstraZeneca's bringing in some competition. They are about to release Symbicort which, like Advair, contains corticosteroid and a long-acting beta agonist. It will be tough to compete with Advair, though, especially since Symbicort is only approved for adults with asthma, while Advair is also approved for children with asthma and adults with CPOD.

Judging by the quote I've included at top, AstraZeneca may try to highlight the speed with which their beta agonist takes effect. This is a concern, since neither Advair nor Symbicort is meant for acute asthma attacks. That's what rescue inhalers like albuterol are for. This type of marketing could lead to a lot of confusion and health risks.

Anyway, we'll see how it goes. Here's the WSJ article about Symbicort. Happy breathing.

Do you have what it takes to become a citizen?

2007-07-03T13:02:00.000-04:00

MSNBC has a July 4th Special Quiz with selected questions from the civics test given to prospective citizens. The quiz is supposed to have some of the more difficult questions, but the multiple choice format makes it easier, especially given some of the incorrect choices they offer.

See how you do. I scored 95%, as I didn't know the INS form is used to apply for citizenship.

What fore?

2007-06-08T11:24:00.000-04:00

It's over a week ago now, as I was on vacation in New Hampshire (more on that, maybe later). Still, I figured I throw out my this little story of a rare event that happens now and then: me playing golf. My company has an annual customer shmooze-fest of a golf outing at an exclusive golf club in northwest NJ. Every now and then I get to go, usually because there's a customer I've been working with who's playing.

So this year I was out again, on a beautiful day in June, golfing. Or, at least something that remotely resembles golfing. I am not good. When I signed up for the outing, I was asked for my handicap. I have no idea what it is, but I'll bet it's a big number.

I do own clubs (the cheapest used clubs eBay had to offer), and a pair golf shoes, so I was marginally equipped. I managed to run afoul of the country club dress code because my shorts have pockets on the sides (e.g. cargo shorts). Mind you even shorts are a recent concession of the country club's owners. Luckily I ran into someone with a company card in the pro-shop, so I was able to score a free pair of compliant shorts.

I have to admit I had a lot of fun. Maybe it's the Scot in me. It helped that the game was low-key. The format of the tournament was a "scramble" where the foursome plays as one and uses the best shot from the team on each leg. I played with an easy-going group willing to offer helpful tips that actually improved my game. By the end, I managed to contribute a few good shots.

I'd prefer a course less saturated with lawn chemicals (after all, they didn't need them when the game was created). And is denim really so awful? I guess a private club means lots Judge Smails types (and there were plenty). You probably see less of that on public courses. However, I probably won't be playing again until the next company freebie. That, in itself, is a good thing, as golf balls aren't cheap (even the bottom-of-the-barrel ones I bought at Target), and I lost plenty of them....

Gotta post something...

2007-06-06T19:02:00.000-04:00

Keith Olbermann

Okay, if I want to stay out of Rob's crypt, I better post something. You can't go wrong with Olmermann's Worst Person in the World, and yesterday's was no exception, with runner-up Dick Cheney still, still beating the Iraq - al-Qaida link.

And yes, I got the 8 thinge meme going around, and yes, I'll get to it at some point.

Rediscovered: Black Crowes - Shake Your Money Maker

2007-05-18T11:31:00.000-04:00

Over a year ago I posted the first of what was to be a series of posts titled "Rediscovered!" These posts would be to highlight music I neglected for a long time that I've recently listened to again, recalling why I liked them so much. So today I am rediscovering the "Rediscovered!" series on my blog. A recent post on Jeri Smith-Ready's blog mentioned The Black Crowes' Shake Your Money Maker, an album I hadn't played in a year or more until last week. What a great album this is.

The first track is "Twice as Hard," whose openning guitar chords you cannot help but play loud. They set the tone for the entire albumn, informing the listenner that there will be no fancy effects, overdubbing, or digital magic. The guitar and drums are clean and tight, the vocals raw, and the only sound effect you'll find is a car crash at the beginning of "Thick and Thin."

The heart and soul of Shake Your Money Maker are the guitar/vocal combination of brothers Rich and Chris Robinson. The percussion is firm and precise - never over the top - and really comes through on songs like "Jealous Again" and their cover of the Otis Redding's "Hard to Handle." Piano and organ riffs add some extra depth on tracks like "Sister Luck" and the stand-out "She Talks to Angels."

My last rediscovered album was a collection of b-sides and outtakes, and it maybe wasn't such a surprise that it sank below my RADAR and gathered some dust. Shake Your Money Maker is none of that, and I don't know why I left it alone so long.

The sin of time-out

2007-05-17T15:57:00.000-04:00

Pink Floyd

I heard about this from a friend of mine. It's a news story about a church California instructing parents that spanking is God's will. Here are the actual instructions on the church's web site.

Basically, spanking is the only child discipline method created God. Not just any spanking will do, either. You need to use the rod, "flexible stick like a switch." The instructions note that you should never use your hand, a belt, a brush, a cord, or 2x4 (yes, that's on the list of "don't spank with" items). If you "withhold the rod" by, say, putting your child in time-out or speaking to them, you've sinned.

This bothers me on so many levels that it's hard to decide what to say. Here are a few thoughts:

It tells me I'm wrong or sinful because I don't beat my kids, and that I'm ruining them by withholding this punishment. Quotes from the Churh's paster take the rhetoric one step further. "We disagree with time-outs as a family," he says. "That's an attack on spanking." Here he's taking a page from the same-sex marriage debate. Not only is time-out wrong, but it's an attack. By framing the discussion in these terms, he suggests that we are out to get him and the other true believers.

Then there's there's the all to familiar tenant that the bible is the literal and infallible word of God. That's a popular sentiment, and it works great in these instructions. But I'm left wondering how he handles some of the stuff in Leviticus. I'll wager he's on board with killing men who sleep together, but what about eating pork and shellfish? I'll bet those passages don't come up much in these little discussions. Much better to go with the crowd favorites like denying evolution and climate change. In essence, it's simply cherry-picking pasages with little context. It's not just what you think any more, now you can say it's the word of God.

One final thought: in the face of literal interpretation of the Bible, I Googled "bible contradictions" and got plenty of results. I only checked out the first few results, all similar lists of verses that contradict one another in varying degrees. These lists reinforce my opinion that the bible is a mixed bag of ideas with varying degrees of merit. It strikes me that one can find within its pages justification for all manner acts both good and evil.

Click click click...

2007-04-24T14:22:00.000-04:00

Veruca

Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory

So, are you a multiple clicker? If you're on a web page, do you start clicking a link over and over if it doesn't come up immediately on the first click? Do you engage in the online equivalent of pressing the elevator call button over and over, even though it's already lit? Just curious....

I encounter users like this now and then, usually when there is a problem in a program I wrote. I'm with the user trying to figure it out, and they just start clicking over and over. It's surprisingly frustrating. Here's my poor little program, struggling to do what's asked of it. Each click just adds to the load. I'm watching what's going on, maybe starting to see clues, tracing the path of the bullet if you will. Then "click click click click click" comes the virtual shotgun blast. Everything collapses and all clues are long gone.

Of course, my program should be able to handle it, and I've certainly done something wrong that needs to be fixed. That's probably why all those clicks infuriate me. They serve to further highlight the inadequacies of my creation. It's not like I don't do it, either. I've clicked away in frustration, fully aware that it does no good.

Anyway, I'm not sure where I'm going with this. I was on a WebEx the other day, and the person driving the mouse kept doing it. I was reminded how much it bugs me, and figured it was something I could post. So there it is.

Priorities

2007-04-19T17:39:00.000-04:00

Theodore Roosevelt

When I look at some people's priorities, I really start to wonder if we're not all just doomed.

The Center of NJ Life reported today on the abysmal turnout for school budget elections yesterday. Unfortunately, this is par for the course. As for the results, where do I start?

In 2005 I voiced my support of every person who votes, regardless of how they voted. I still hold to that sentiment. I applaud everyone who voted, really I do, but, they're not making it easy.

Yesterday voters in Hightstown and East Windsor voted down a budget item that would have hired some additional teachers for educational programs that would go beyond the core curriculum mandated by law. However, they voted to keep funding courtesy transportation - busing that goes beyond what is mandated by law.

More transportation. Less education. That's our priority.

What was that?

2007-04-18T18:00:00.000-04:00

Sultan:

Horatio Jackson:

The Adventures of Baron Munchausen

What made me think of this was a conference call I was on today, where I said the following:

So the first thing we need to do is solve the virgin entry problem.

I'll let y'all know when we figure that one out....

This is my wife...

2007-03-18T21:13:00.000-04:00

Sharon

This is my wife on Zoo Tycoon.

I guess I know which animal spirit she's not.