June 30, 2005
What to do if you encounter a UFO
Ten important steps. Print it out and save it for handy reference.
Make tens of thousands of dollar threatening to kill a bunny rabbit?
It used to have a June 30th, 2005 deadline. Looks semi-successful, doesn't it?
June 29, 2005
If you weren't sure that Halliburton was just a scheme to move federal money into private hands...
Double-billing, massive cost inflation, pulling the shrapnel and bullets out of food, ghost employees... They do it all.
Ethanol takes six times as much energy to produce as it yields
According to a recent study. Sounds plausible, Brazil gets by with ethanol fueling by using traditional, labor-intensive farming of the sugarcane to make the ethanol.
Voice of Tigger
Paul Winchell has passed away. He was also an inventor of an early artificial heart.
The wonderful things about Tiggers
is Tiggers are wonderful things.
Their tops are made out of rubber,
their bottoms are made out of springs.
They're bouncy, trouncy, flouncy, pouncy
Fun! Fun! Fun! Fun! Fun!
But the most wonderful thing about Tiggers,
is I'm the only one!
The wonderful thing about Tiggers
Is Tiggers are wonderful chaps
They're loaded with vim and vigor
They love to leap in your laps
They're jumpy, bumpy, clumpy, thumpy
Fun, fun, fun, fun, fun
But the most wonderful thing about Tiggers is
I'm the only one
Tiggers are cuddly fellows
Tiggers are awfully sweet
Everyone else is jealous
That's why I repeat
The wonderful thing about Tiggers
Is Tiggers are wonderful things
Their tops are made out of rubber
Their bottoms are made out of springs
They're bouncy, trouncy, flouncy, pouncy
Fun, fun, fun, fun, fun
But the most wonderful thing about Tiggers is
I'm the only one
IIIIIII'mmmmmm the only one!
June 28, 2005
Speech word count
Iraq/Iraqis: 91
Terror/Terrorists: 33
America/Americans: 19
war: 10
Cynical mentions of September 11th: 5
lose/losing: 4
Afghanistan: 2
bin Laden: 2
win/winning: 0
June 26, 2005
Google maps
Although we always knew they were cool, the available satellite imagery has dramatically increased lately. Check out some of the following:
The Pentagon.
The White House, note the censored roof of the White House so you can't count the surface to air missiles.
The Abu Ghurayb torture center.
A flock of geese.
Lots more collected here.
June 25, 2005
The world is running out of fine single malts
They sold them before their time. Though the article also blames the Chinese oddly enough.
Visions of Iraq
From Another Year of Living Misery in Iraw.
Nearby, a scruffy young man in dirty pants and an unbuttoned shirt stood staring at vegetables scattered on the ground by one of the explosions. Bending over and picking up an onion spattered with blood, he began to cry.
"Every one of you in Karrada calls me Crazy Ali," he said to no one in particular. "But I would never do such a thing. I am better than you sane people. At least I do not hurt you."
Continuing armor problems in Iraq
Rumsfeld doesn't ride in armored Humvees, he takes a better-armored private vehicle. Looks like a good business to get into though, armoring vehicles...
June 24, 2005
Glastonbury is wet again
Looks even worse than the last few years. People swimming to their tents. Yuck!
Language difficulties at universities
There's a good, balanced, article in the NYT on problems students have with foreign professors and teaching assistants. Though the largest number of language complaints that I ever had for one of my TAs was for a person who spoke better English than I do (accented differently than my midwestern students were used to I think).
June 23, 2005
Two additional loss of rights, just in the news today
The SCOTUS ruled that it's just fine for local authorities to sieze your property for commercial development. That's right, if your town or county wants to demolish your house for a shopping mall, it's within their rights. Remember, corporations are more important than people.
And those state's rights loving congress-slugs decided that states (say environmentally friendly ones?) have no right to have a say on where liquified natural gas facilities go. The biggest conventional bombs in the world can be sited by the federal government, read that as wherever the industry wants them since we do know who writes legislation these days...
The disconnect
Rumsfeld says that the US is winning in Iraq.
The UN says that the US is blocking human rights investigations at Gitmo.
Meanwhile, bombings across Baghdad, rebuilding efforts have failed, looting continues, politicians are assasinated, and Iraq is the training ground for a new generation of international terrorists. Oh yeah, and they continue to try to take away our freedoms at home.
Zimbabwe. More bad news.
Children pulled out of school after house demolitions and the remains of a demolished mosque.
June 22, 2005
Let's do the math...
Norm Coleman gets $45,000+ in campaign contributions. The citizens of St. Paul lose $50M. And the contributor nets $30M. Looks like politics as usual. The taxpayers send their money to multimillionaires who own the politicos. It's a beautiful little self-contained scam repeated many times.
Meanwhile, publically-funded "town-hall" meetings are open only to political supporters of the Dubya and the House thinks the biggest issue is protecting the physical flag of the US. Yup, New Zealand is looking better all of the time.
Being a superhero
"Until a man is twenty-five, he still thinks, every so often, that under the right circumstances he could be the baddest motherfucker in the world. If I moved to a martial-arts monastery in China and studied real hard for ten years. If my family was wiped out by Colombian drug dealers and I swore myself to revenge. If I got a fatal disease, had one year to live, and devoted it to wiping out street crime. If I just dropped out and devoted my life to being bad." - Neal Stephenson, Snow Crash
June 21, 2005
Party update/invites II
Invite:
Readers of this blog are welcomed to attend parts of the party. RSVP is requested though!
Updates:
- Paul & Kathleen will be coming in from southern Illinois
- Keith & Debra? will be coming from San Francisco
- Billy Corgan is now officially invited since he wants to reform the Smashing Pumpkins (hmmm...as in form again)
- No birth in NJ (Mike & Val) as far as I know
- Michael Jackson will not be in attendance
Schedule:
Friday, 1 July 2005 - Happy Canada Day to all! We'll celebrate with Canadian Bacon, watching Canadian Bacon, and practicing our evacuation-from-the-US plans. Dinner at my place (3520 1st Ave South) around 6:30pm.
Saturday, 2 July 2005 - Happy 183rd day of the year! We'll celebrate the middle of the year with a big middle-of-the-day lunch (call it 11:30-3:30ish). Potluck for Twin Cities folks. We'll provide the drinks though. Evening festivities are weather-dependent, but a walk to the lakes and some general hanging-out seems most likely.
Sunday, 3 July 2005 - Brunch at the Loring Pasta Bar. Join us around eleven? Pre-fireworks we're planning a wine tasting. Bordeaux and Beyond. Or some silly catch phrase like that. At my place again. We'll make that approximately 3pm. Late night beer and bowling too!
Monday, 4 July 2005 - Happy Independence Day. We'll get up early and shoot at the British. No, no, we'll have a continental breakfast instead. (Same thing at some level.) We will prepare lunch on the gas grill (call it noon at my place). What's more all-American than that? Maybe there will be more fireworks too?
Tuesday, 5 July 2005 - Happy 7/5/5, two months after the predicted apocalypse. Anyone who is still at the party will be forced to watch the Director's Cut of Apocalypse Now followed by Hearts of Darkness. I should probably head to work as well.
100% complication rate?
That's not good for a doctor. The ongoing tale of Dr. Jayant Patel---87 deaths in Australia after being removed from medicine in Oregon and New York states, with an unknown death toll there.
Who pays for military gear?
In this case at least, the father of the marine sent to Iraq. A professional, well-equiped army? We do pay more in taxes for our military than all the rest of the world combined... Oh, that's right, that money goes to Boeing, Hughes, and Halliburton, not to equiping the poor kids who volunteer to defend big business from all enemies, foreign and domestic.
June 20, 2005
Hagel's comments on Bush and the war
"It's like they're just making it up as they go along. The reality is that we're losing in Iraq."
Saddam misses Ronald Reagan
Who sent him guns. He also relates an amusing episode of Uday and three hookers...
June 19, 2005
Learning a little from Slate
The true blindness of the right's view of Terri Schiavo.
June 18, 2005
Read the memos yourself
On the Net:
http://hosted.ap.org/specials/dowdoc/fcolegal020308.pdf
http://hosted.ap.org/specials/dowdoc/manning020314.pdf
http://hosted.ap.org/specials/dowdoc/meyer020318.pdf
http://hosted.ap.org/specials/dowdoc/ods020308.pdf
http://hosted.ap.org/specials/dowdoc/ricketts020322.pdf
http://hosted.ap.org/specials/dowdoc/straw020325.pdf
June 17, 2005
The new Doctor Who!
Bad Wolf! Since it's being compared to Pynchon, this is looking like more than a show for old Dr. Who fans.
And a great Clive James quote: "Good schlock is always better than bad art."
The pro-lynching senators
Here are the Senators who have refused to take part in this historic apology:
Lamar Alexander (R-TN)
(202) 224-4944 | Write
Thad Cochran (R-MS)
(202) 224-5054 | Write
John Cornyn (R-TX)
(202) 224-2934 | Write
Michael Enzi (R-WY)
(202) 224-3424 | Write
Judd Gregg (R-NH)
(202) 224-3324 | Write
Orrin Hatch (R-UT)
(202) 224-5251 | Write
Trent Lott (R-MS)
(202) 224-6253 | Write
John Sununu (R-NH)
(202) 224-2841 | Write
Craig Thomas (R-WY)
(202) 224-6441 | Write
Though this is an evolving list...
And the US blocks a probe of the killings in Uzbekistan
Note also that $18 million in military aid was cut off. Just to be followed by a "different" $21 million in aid. Nothing to see here. No one will notice. It was only a few hundred protesters.
June 16, 2005
Airbus and Boeing at the Paris Air Show
Ah, Paris in June. The smell of avgas. The article focuses on the competing orders for future Boeing and Airbus planes.
Mila Vocal Ensemble on Praire Home Companion again this weekend
(Taken from Mila's webpages.)
Saturday, June 18, 5 p.m. Central Time, NPR affiliates worldwide
A Prairie Home Companion Broadcast live from Ravinia Festival, Highland Park, IL
Mila is honored to once again join Garrison Keillor and the cast and crew of A Prairie Home Companion for a live broadcast from the 2005 Ravinia Festival. Listen in for some new songs: a sneak preview of our upcoming fall CD. Visit prairiehome.publicradio.org for details. Click here to find your NPR affiliate station.
June 15, 2005
Documentary on the BBC Radiophonic Workshop
"The Alchemists of Sound" tells the tale of how a bunch of geeks brought musique concrete from the (French) theorists to the television screen. Wikipedia entry. Catch it if you can...
June 14, 2005
Mugabe's big party
While his loyal subjects are starving. A million dollar 10th anniversary party preceeded by a trip to "a friendly Middle Eastern country," likely Libya. We'll see if Mandela attends.
June 13, 2005
June 12, 2005
The Tulsa Zoo, Science, and the Bible
They seem to be having some problems. Hard to imagine that here we are in the 21st century CE, with universal education, and some folks still are unable to distinguish between fairy tales and reality.
How one video changed many (Serbian) minds
Documentary footage of some of the atrocities. Leading pretty much directly to the current active manhunt for Mladic.
Balloon launch makes news
Nice to see some coverage of NSBF's good work. We'll be launching ANITA (test flight), CREST (test flight), and CREAM-2 (science flight) this year from Fort Sumner, NM, Palestine, TX, and McMurdo, Antarctica respectively. Whew!
June 11, 2005
And the pope vetoes condoms for AIDS prevention
What a surprise. Medieval theocrats.
And the Vatican is angling to return Italy to the dark ages again. What's next, shilling for Hitler, Franco, and Mussolini? Ooops, wrong decade!
Zimbabwe general strike...
...doesn't seem to be accomplishing anything. The authorities have announced that they will "deal ruthlessly" with any street protests. Oddly enough, the state-controlled media didn't report on the general strike. Funny that.
The Beeb has the best coverage that I know of. Click on the link above and follow links there to quite a bit more coverage, including video and some photos. Including the one to the right.
A cobbler from Harare, and many web visitors, comment on the news.
June 10, 2005
Zimbabwe's "cleanup" continues...
...with no real resistance. It looks like some sort of enforced ruralization to eliminate the urban poor pockets of opposition to Mugabe. Not quite Pol Pot, but we'll see how those people make up.
I keep being saddened by the Zimbabwe disasters. A country I didn't quite fall in love with when traveling there, but one that I appreciated and hoped the best for.
More crazy coffins
From a daily blog of web items as picked by Der Spiegel.
From Beijing's first ever chocolate fashion show...Be all you can be!
The army lowers the qualifications to be an officer.
June 9, 2005
No love like geek love!
If the NY Daily News says so, how can we argue?
While the emperor fiddles
We get our climate change. Conservative bastions like the Financial Times see the problem as clearly as the "crazed environmentalists." They identified the main obstacle to action: the White House. And the details of how the Petroleum Institutes editted the US government statements on greenhouse gases.
And sadly, Mugabe's rampage continues
Possibly leaving as many as 200,000 person homeless after burning shantytowns, destroying informal businesses, and continuing to silence opposition. This time there is even CNN coverage.
June 8, 2005
The continuing crisis
The tobacco industry clearly has a friend in the Justice Department... Gay and lesbian veterans don't have friends in Texas's capital. And biologists must hate freedom, they can make gay flies. And now, for right-wing hate-mongers, your own phone company.
June 7, 2005
Planes, trains, and automobiles
After spotting an Amphicar at the gas station on the corner of 47th and Nicollet, I got to thinking about web sites and blogs devoted to spotting interesting transportation objects.
Planes. This site is very clear on plane spotting, and the post-9/11 risks of it.
Trains. I couldn't find one special site, so just chose a representative sample site. Train spotting (distinct from the movie) is worldwide, but does seem to have a particularly European resonance to it.
Cars. Well, the web site is named just right, but it's a little different than just a "spotted" listing.
Let me mention some odd car spottings of mine then...
- That red Amphicar at the gas station in Minneapolis. It was gone yesterday when I drove by though. It was up on blocks, maybe having a tire change or two?
- LA. What more do I have to say? A Diablo in traffic in Pasadena. Parallel parking behind a Ferrari F40. Parking my rental car next to a Roadrunner (which was taking up two spots) in the Getty parking lot.
- A cream-colored Rolls Royce (darn it, I'm not remembering how old it was? Silver Spur maybe?) parked in Chicago on Broadway with IL license plate "Snob."
- Getting a ride from Tegernsee (Ringberg Castle>) to downtown Munchen in an M5 Touring (wagon). At a good clip. (Similar car here and here.)
- Seeing and getting to drive a Le Mans-style 1928 (hmmm...maybe plus or minus a year) Bentley Blower at a Minneapolis car show. (See artwork here for similar car.)
- Seeing a Cord 812 (Photo here) drive by on Route 66 in New Mexico.
- A British Racing Green Lotus Seven, or Caterham Super Seven, shrieking away from a traffic light in Milwaukee. (Recent link and their British home.)
Posted by duver001 at 8:58 AM - A British Racing Green Lotus Seven, or Caterham Super Seven, shrieking away from a traffic light in Milwaukee. (Recent link and their British home.)
June 6, 2005
Diesel test
Interesting little test run of the new Mercedes diesels. In Texas of all places, 100,000 miles at speed.
I've had a long-term soft spot for diesel automobiles, back to the old VW Rabbit diesels and the Mercedes 220D and 240Ds. Never have owned one though. Maybe if Audi brings their V6 TDIs to the states after September 2006 (when we get the low sulfur diesel fuel at long last)...
Olympic options
Paris, London, or New York City. The European options seem to be the leaders.
June 5, 2005
Clogging rather than blogging
Mila is playing Tuesday evening, June 7th, in Forest Lake (just up I-35 from the Twin Cities. They're going on after The Lake Country Clog Dancers. See you there...
Also, they'll be on Praire Home Companion on the weekend of June 18th.
Too painful to consider for long
I scream. You will scream. We all scream at conservative ice cream. Warning, it plays music at you.
"One buttcheek out in the breeze"
Ask the George Bush simulator a question!
Or see if any of these quotes of his make sense to you.
June 4, 2005
June 2, 2005
Advertisement for a Disney cruise
Iggy Pop's Lust for Life
Here comes johnny yen again
With the liquor and drugs
And the flesh machine
He's gonna do another strip tease.
Hey man, where'd ya get that lotion?
I've been hurting since I've bought the gimmick
About something called love
Yeah, something called love.
Well, that's like hypnotizing chickens.
Well, I'm just a modern guy
Of course, I've had it in the ear before.
I have a lust for life
'cause of a lust for life.
I'm worth a million in prizes
With my torture film
Drive a gto
Wear a uniform
All on a government loan.
I'm worth a million in prizes
Yeah, I'm through with sleeping on the sidewalk
No more beating my brains
No more beating my brains
With liquor and drugs
With liquor and drugs.
Well, I'm just a modern guy
Of course, I've had it in my ear before
Well, I've a lust for life (lust for life)
'cause of a lust for life (lust for life, oooo)
I got a lust for life (oooo)
Got a lust for life (oooo)
Oh, a lust for life (oooo)
Oh, a lust for life (oooo)
A lust for life (oooo)
I got a lust for life (oooo)
Got a lust for life.
Though they only used the chorus... Also, here I'll have to mention that Jaguar (the car company) uses The Clash London Calling. Some other favorites?
June 1, 2005
Battle plans sold to fund canned fruit?
According to the son of Pakistani President A. Khan, the 1965 Indian battle plans were sold for about $450 so that the officer could buy canning equipment for his wife. So weird it might be true.
Solve violence by banning kitchen knives?
Just plain weird. Here's the editorial in the British Medical Journal.