The Good Reverend

Meanwhile, in Montrose . . .

2007-09-10T10:17:00.001-04:00

There's nothing wrong with the county jail: first in a series of stories on town buildings that are completely adequate.

Indexed by tag Montrose.

If Anyone Is Missing Two Size-Twelve Right Feet

2007-09-02T11:52:00.000-04:00

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police may have something for you.

Indexed by tags weird, feet, sea, Canada.

Saturday Morning Cartoon

2007-09-01T11:51:00.000-04:00

Indexed by tags cartoon, Disney, Donald Duck, Chip and Dale.

A Lot Can Happen in Three Weeks

2007-08-31T16:51:00.000-04:00

Completely paralyzed people can learn ways to communicate.
A bacterium can celebrate its 600,000th birthday.
Bigfoot can get the Lindsay Lohan treatment.
Ants can teach us how not to panic.
We can all vote for the Seven Fortean Wonders of the World.
Those fearful of the word moist can have their day in the sun.
A German teen can take that Cuarto de Tula song from the Buena Vista Social Club a little too seriously.
A group of clowns can stymie a white-power hate group.
The soviets can get a bit uncomfortably freaky with their commemorative art.
Driving while talking on the cell phone can actually be, maybe, not so bad.
Airports can build some very strange runways.
We can all now search Wikipedia for incriminating anonymous edits from corporate IP addresses.
A new coinage can rival spam for inbox domination.
Fifties housewives can wax the linoleum.
China can regulate reincarnation.
Science musicians can create a glissando that is an aural illusion.
A Massachusetts behavior-modification school can convince parents to electroshock their kids.
You can make yogurt by adding milk to the little bit of yogurt you have left over.
Uniformed back-up dancers can make anything rock.
The universe can encompass a billion-light-year void.
Spiders can turn on you if you keep them as pets.
Picture-based instructional pamphlets can explain anything.
One can flip a misspelled eBay collectible for hefty profits.
Keywords in a country's official name can correlate with its democracy quotient.
Stars can have huge tails, like comets.
Vampire bats can pick cows over tapirs.
Burning Man can suffer an early incineration.
New vodkas can spring up like dandelions while rums and gins stay traditional.
Caffeine can boost grandma's memory.

Feedreader, you and I had a lot of catching up to do.

Gone Fishing

2007-08-10T09:47:00.001-04:00

I'll be out of town for a couple weeks and probably won't be able to blog. In the meantime, The Gravedigger will keep you entertained here. (The over-under on number of posts she'll probably write is one; I'm taking bets.) Also, be sure to check out some of the nifty sites in the blogroll down in the right corner.

Indexed by tag blog.

Maybe 'Around the World in 80 Days' Was Just that Bad

2007-08-07T19:36:00.000-04:00

Chan/Tucker, then Chan/Tucker, and now Tucker/Chan? What did Jackie Chan do to get bumped to second billing? It's not like Chris Tucker has been in anything since 2001.

Bonus: note the increasing seriousness of their expressions.

Indexed by tags movies, Rush Hour, posters, Jackie Chan, Chris Tucker.

And Now We Pause for Kobayashi Versus Bear

2007-08-07T17:56:00.000-04:00

Indexed by tags sports, food and drink, competitive eating, Kobayashi, bear, nature.

Colors, Defined

2007-08-06T16:43:00.000-04:00

Webster's definitions of primary colors verge on poetic:

Red—a color whose hue resembles that of blood or of the ruby or is that of the long-wave extreme of the visible spectrum
Blue—a color whose hue is that of the clear sky or that of the portion of the color spectrum lying between green and violet
Yellow—a color whose hue resembles that of ripe lemons or sunflowers or is that of the portion of the spectrum lying between green and orange
Green—a color whose hue is somewhat less yellow than that of growing fresh grass or of the emerald or is that of the part of the spectrum lying between blue and yellow

As do its definitions of basic tastes:

Salt—being or inducing the one of the four basic taste sensations that is suggestive of seawater
Sweet—being or inducing the one of the four basic taste sensations that is typically induced by disaccharides and is mediated especially by receptors in taste buds at the front of the tongue
Sour—causing or characterized by the one of the four basic taste sensations that is produced chiefly by acids
Bitter—being or inducing the one of the four basic taste sensations that is peculiarly acrid, astringent, or disagreeable and suggestive of an infusion of hops

Indexed by tags language, color, taste, definition, dictionary, Webster's.

Richard The's Subway-Grate Shopping-Bag Sculpture

2007-08-06T14:15:00.000-04:00

German artist Richard The tied shopping bags to the subway grate along Broadway in New York:

1. Walk along the Green Line in Manhattan (going from the 1st to the 125th street, from the Financial Disctrict [sic], through China Town, Midtown, Spanish Harlem, Harlem).
2. Collect bags from the stores, which are situated in the street above the subway tracks. These should be representative of their specific neighbourhood.
3. Install 7 shopping bags, representative of the Neighbourhoods which are crossed by the line, above the subway's air shaft (ideally the combinations of these bags should tell a story already).
4. Once the train passes by the bags are pushed into the air by the air flowing through the tunnel and the air shafts, forming an ephemeral sculpture, making the existing forces visible and at the same time visualizing the Green Line in a regional social economic way.

This concept was realized by 90% as I was too optimistic about the weight of the plastic bags - it was impossible to have a readable installation even though many bags had been collected.

Link (via Rocketboom). The result is whimsical, if a bit depressing. Is there a word that conveys both feelings at the same time? I think if anyone had such a word it would be the Germans.

Indexed by tags art, New York, Richard The, subway, shopping bag, sculpture.

Newspaper Nickname Quiz

2007-08-06T10:53:00.000-04:00

The New York Times has long been known as the Gray Lady because of, as Wikipedia puts it, "its staid appearance and style." Something about American newspapers lends itself to nicknaming, but many local papers are not graced with as elegant a moniker as the Times. Readers, out of sense of local camaraderie, and staff, out of self-deprecation, often carve their paper's good name into a disparaging statement about its content. With colorful plays on official names, cities across the U.S. pithily criticize their papers' perceived boringness, fluff, political slant, or tabloidism. Can you figure out which nickname fits which newspaper?

Match the city or state to its disparaging nickname. Feel free to guess in the comments, but no posting URLs.

1. Arizona
2. Arkansas
3. Atlanta
4. Austin
5. Charlotte
6. Dallas
7. Fort Worth
8. Honolulu
9. Omaha
10. Orlando
11. Philadelphia
12. San Francisco
13. Seattle
14. St. Louis
15. Virginian
16. Washington

A. American-Realestatesman
B. Comical
C. Compost
D. Demagogue
E. Dirty News
F. Disturber
G. Morning Snooze
H. Pile-it-on
I. Post-Disgrace
J. Repugnant
K. Slantinel
L. Startlegram
M. Starts-Bulls***tin'
N. Timid
O. Urinal-Constipation
P. Weird-Harold

Indexed by tags newspapers, quiz, nicknames.
Image credits: Reading the newspaper, courtesy Dummy Fat Doctor, borrowed for news-reporting and comment purposes.

The United Countries of Baseball

2007-08-03T07:06:00.000-04:00

This map, caught by Flickr user littlebudapest (via Strange Maps), apparently adorns a wall at the Niketown store in San Francisco's Union Square (or at least did during the All-Star Game last month). It divides the United States (and part of Canada) into thirty "countries" (and a large swath of unincorporated mountains and desert) defined by the fan base for each of the thirty Major League Baseball teams. The boundaries seem fairly accurate, at least from my experience (I haven't spoken with that many people in the South, for instance, but I gather from country music that much of it is Braves Country, as reflected here).

As the Flickr photo commenters point out, one glaring omission are the diasporic fans who inhabit the West: some territories, according to anecdotal evidence, follow a specific team from the East Coast or Midwest, even though not everyone in the territory ventured from that team's country. If the commenters are to be believed, much of Idaho prefers the Mets, for whatever reason, and I recall that in the days before expansion delivered the Diamondbacks Arizona was Cubs territory (and remains so for contrarians).

(Cross-posted at Neatorama.)

Indexed by tags sports, maps, baseball, countries.

Random Movie Quote Thursday

2007-08-02T10:33:00.000-04:00

Alright, listen closely.
I'm not going to beat around the bush.
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!
Your little body's changing;
it's all good, believe me.
Problem now is,
every time we jerk the gherkin,
we get a lot of unwanted sticky white stuff everywhere,
right? Right.
So, first order of business:
no more socks.
They're expensive,
gumming up the works plumbing-wise.
Now you might be thinking to yourself,
"But, Uncle Andy,
what do I do with all that pearl jam if I can't spew it into Mr. Sock?"
Glad you asked.
You can have a lovely time tugging the tiger in the shower each morning—
that eliminates the need for a goo glove.
But, the day is long,
masturbation's fun,
so unless we want to take four or five showers every day,
we're gonna need some other options here.
So let's start with the basics:
Tissues.
Perfectly acceptable backstop for all that creamy Italian.
They can be rough and dry on such soft,
sensitive skin,
not to mention it can stick to your dick head like a f**kin' Band Aid—
ouch.
From there we move on to more lubricated flack-catchers,
specifically, bananas.
Step one: Peel the banana.
Step two: Slip the peel over your Randy Johnson and start pitching.
Now for extra credit,
warm up the peel in the microwave.
Not too hot!
Serious yowza.
Also, olive oil,
moisturizer,
honey,
spit,
butter,
hair conditioner,
and Vaseline can all be used for lube.
In my opinion,
the best lube—is lube.
So save your allowance and invest in some soon.
Alright, moving on:
When you tug your Thomas on the toilet—
pft—
shoot right into the bowl.
In bed,
soft t-shirt,
perhaps a downy hand towel of your very own
that you don't mind tossing after tossing.
There's no such thing as polishing the raised scepter of love too much.
It reduces stress;
it enhances immune function.
Also, practice makes perfect.
So work on your control now,
while you're a solo artist—
you'll be playing some long, happy duets in the future.
Okay,
class dismissed.

Indexed by tags movies, quotes.

Misheard-Lyrics Video Interpretations

2007-08-01T13:15:00.000-04:00

This would make for some exciting karaoke. And there are many more at YesButNoButYes.

Who knew this was an entire genre?

Indexed by tags music, video, misheard lyrics, interpretation, AFI, "Silver and Cold".

Vegansexuals: Withholding Sex from Meat-Eaters

2007-07-31T15:12:00.000-04:00

According to a recent survey of attitudes about vegetarianism in New Zealand, a subgroup of vegetarians and vegans reject carnivores as intimate partners because the kissing and sex is icky or immoral:

F3: My boyfriend is a vegetarian. I don’t think I could live with a significant other who isn’t . . . It would disgust me to see my boy tucking into a chicken. I probably couldn’t kiss him! [31, pescetarian (ovo), Wellington]

F91: I could not be in an intimate relationship with anyone who was eating animals. Our worlds would just be too far apart and the likelihood of the relationship succeeding would be very low . . . I couldn’t think of kissing lips that allow dead animal pieces to pass between them. [49, vegan, Auckland]

F50: I believe we are what we consume so I really struggle with bodily fluids, especially sexually. [34, vegan, Christchurch]

F100: I have tried a relationship with someone who was not a vegetarian and found that although he was attractive sexually, sex alone was not enough to combat the revulsion created by the smell of dead bodies being cooked, and the associated lack of concern about the welfare of animals. For me, an intimate relationship needs to be based on shared values and moral codes as well as sexual chemistry. [55, ovo-vegetarian, Auckland]

F78: I would not want to be intimate with someone whose body is literally made up from the bodies of others who have died for their sustenance. Non-vegetarian bodies smell different to me—they are, after all, literally sustained through carcasses—the murdered flesh of others. Even though I might find someone really attractive, I wouldn’t want to get close to them in a physical sense if their body was derived from meat. For me, this constitutes my very personal form of ethical sexuality. [41, vegan, Christchurch]

. . . .

M16: If a partner has been eating meat or fish, they would have to clean their teeth before I’d kiss them. [28, ovo-lacto vegetarian, Auckland]

Link (PDF; via Language Log). According to a news report about the study, its codirector coined the term vegansexual—naturally—to describe these feelings:

Many female respondents described being attracted to people who ate meat, but said they did not want to have sex with meat-eaters because their bodies were made up of animal carcasses.

. . . .

Christchurch vegan Nichola Kriek has been married to her vegan husband, Hans, for nine years.

She would not describe herself as vegansexual, but said it would definitely be a preference.

She could understand people not wanting to get too close to non-vegan or non-vegetarians.

"When you are vegan or vegetarian, you are very aware that when people eat a meaty diet, they are kind of a graveyard for animals," she said.

Link. So of course, even though there's no one who actually describes themselves as a vegansexual, and there were only a handful of people who even expressed the applicable sentiments, it's the latest trend.

It seems like those who avoid carnivore partners, be it out of an ethical stance or the ick factor, are doing it for personal reasons and not trying to coerce anybody to act in a certain way, which has historically been the raison d'être of withholding-sex movements. But I'm sure it will graduate to compulsion soon: forcing someone into the Hobson's choice between your lover and your bacon, with only one allowed to cross your lips—what an ultimatum.

Indexed by tags food and drink, vegetarianism, vegan, vegansexual, sex, withholding.
Image credits: Iconismus IX Ponatur è regione, P. Gasparis Schotti, 1667, courtesy The Fantastic in Art and Fiction.

Profane TV Station Call Letters

2007-07-31T13:15:00.000-04:00

A soon-to-operate Maui television station has petitioned the FCC for and received station-identifying call letters that misspell a four letter word I won't print. The call sign starts with the same letter as almost all stations West of the Mississippi, rhymes with affront, reminds me of Georgia O'Keefe paintings, and sounds like the word voted most obscene in Britain (PDF).

From Skokie, Ill., comes a sincere apology "to anyone that was offended," said Kevin Bae, vice president of KM Communications Inc., who requested and received [the call letters that sound like the word that is synonymous with berk in cockney rhyming slang] and KWTF. It is "extremely embarrassing for me and my company and we will file to change those call letters immediately."

. . . .

The call letter snafu was a source of great mirth for Bae's attorney.

"I can't tell you how long he laughed at me when he learned of my gaffe," Bae said.

Broadcasters for generations have joked among themselves about call letters resembling off-color words or acronyms knowing the FCC would never approve their assignment—but that was before computerization.

. . . .

However, assignment of call letters actually is an automated process, according to Mary Diamond of the FCC's Office of Media Relations. Broadcasters use the FCC Web site to request and receive call letters with no oversight from Beavis, his partner, or any FCC regulator.

Link (via News of the Weird Daily). Assuming the station keeps the call letters granted to it by the FCC, what will the regulators do if its on-air personalities utter them in a "fleeting and isolated" way?

Indexed by tags television, FCC, obscenity, profanity, call letters, station.
Image credits: Waterfall-No. III—Iao Valley, Georgia O'Keefe, American, 1939, courtesy the Honolulu Academy of Arts, borrowed for news-reporting and comment purposes.

The Mancatcher Voodoo Kit

2007-07-30T15:53:00.001-04:00

Attention ladies:
Are you having trouble catching a man? Why resort to smarts, good looks, and a winning personality when you could just use African-Caribbean religion? In fact, why resort to the religion at all when you could with less effort employ a watered-down, novelty-shop approximation thereof?

California toy makers may not know much about catching men or voodoo, but they do have the vague sense that when you put them together it involves effigies and sticking pins through things.

In the spirit of red-blooded American ingenuity and the drive to always take the easy way out, here's the Mancatcher Voodoo Kit (via the Presurfer).

Indexed by tags religion, women, love, relationships, voodoo.

Meanwhile, in Montrose . . .

2007-07-30T14:33:00.000-04:00

Your aluminum cans will be sorted and crushed by prisoners working for two dollars an hour.

Indexed by tag Montrose.

Nursing Home Kills Off Cat's Favorite Patients

2007-07-28T07:49:00.000-04:00

Oscar, a hospice cat at a Providence nursing home, has become an omen of impending death. Oscar seems to know when a patient is in her final hours, curling up next to her out of what optimistic doctors and nurses assume is genuine companionship:

"He doesn't make too many mistakes. He seems to understand when patients are about to die," said Dr. David Dosa in an interview. He describes the phenomenon in a poignant essay in Thursday's issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.

"Many family members take some solace from it. They appreciate the companionship that the cat provides for their dying loved one," said Dosa, a geriatrician and assistant professor of medicine at Brown University.

Link (thanks, Melissa). Oscar the Death Cat has even inspired an episode of purported lolcat-meme ur-comic Laugh-Out-Loud Cats (a bit disconcerting since the strip was written in 1912).

In that essay in the New England Journal of Medicine, Dr. Dosa passes off Oscar's behavior as old-fashioned, good-spirited death prediction, but years of absorbing the works of Stephen King tell us there is something much more sinister afoot. After all, Providence is only two-hundred miles from King's stomping grounds in Maine.

Indexed by tags weird, science, medicine, nature, cat, death, nursing home.

Let's Talk About Safe Sex

2007-07-27T12:32:00.000-04:00

A survey of 1000 UK Girl Guides revealed What (young) Women Want: to be prepared for the 21st century.

Girls under the age of 15 want instruction in a broad spectrum of activities, from the more traditional cooking healthy meals and pitching tent, to standing up to boys and safely surfing the web. Girls over 15 requested instructions on assembling flat pack furniture, managing their budget, and safe sex.

The demands emerged in survey ... by Girlguiding UK, which is striving to keep itself relevant to the lives of young women. A spokeswoman said that the movement would act on the findings and make sure that the appeal for more information on sex and money was met.

Link (via BoingBoing*.) While the badge may be new to the Girl Guides, it seems that the demand for basic information about sex has been around for quite some time. Just ask Spiderman (BoingBoing again).

* I'd like to point out that last part of this url reads 'girls_want_bad' (short for girls want badges) which I had misread as girls_want_it_bad which is a completely different take on this story, and not an entirely fair one either.

Indexed by tags Girlguide, UK, sex, safety, internet, badge, Spiderman Planned Parenthood.

What American Pie Means

2007-07-21T08:37:00.000-04:00

The song, not the movie. I wrote a report on "American Pie" freshman year of high school, and as I recall it came to conclusions pretty similar to those in this video.

(Via the Presurfer.)
Indexed by tags music, America, American Pie, Don McLean.

Saturday Morning Cartoon

2007-07-21T08:34:00.000-04:00

Indexed by tags cartoon, Simpsons, Bumblebee Man.

Chimps Hate You Because of What You Do, Not What You Have

2007-07-19T13:35:00.000-04:00

A group of evolutionary biologists at the Max Planck Institute have demonstrated that chimpanzees are capable of taking revenge when they feel personally wronged but, unlike humans, won't act out of spite if they merely see that another chimp is better off:

The researchers explored how chimpanzees responded to loss and theft by putting them one at a time in a small room with access to food on a sliding table in a booth outside.

Each animal held a rope allowing it to collapse the table and send the food out of reach. Unsurprisingly, the chimpanzees chose not to collapse the table while eating, researchers said.

When the researchers made the food on the table viewable but out of reach to the first chimpanzee or when a second animal could eat in plain view of the first, the chimpanzees did not seem to care.

When the second animal was able to take the food away from the first, the chimpanzee without food often collapsed the table to take revenge, the researchers said.

"The final situation was punishment where theft was involved," [lead researcher Keith] Jensen said in a telephone interview. "The only option for the victim in this situation was to collapse the table and nobody eats."

Link (via Freakonomics Blog). So we probably can breathe a little easier knowing this chimp isn't motivated by spite for human global domination. And we finally have a major, scientifically demonstrable hole in the plausibility of this vision of the future.

Indexed by tags science, nature, evolution, psychology, behavior, chimpanzee, revenge, spite.
Image credits: "Project X," courtesy Reel Film, borrowed for news-reporting and comment purposes.

Advice Column Mashup

2007-07-18T15:39:00.000-04:00

Dear Ann Savage,
Our daughter is 10 years old, and very big for her age. "Evangeline" is 5 feet 5 inches tall and weighs 150 pounds. She still plays with dolls, and her interests are the same as any other 10-year-old girl.

Last Halloween, Evangeline came home in tears after 15 minutes of trick-or-treating. She had been told she was too old to be "doing that." When we would go to the movies or to a sports event and ask for a child's ticket, they invariably questioned her age. We solved that problem by bringing along a copy of her birth certificate.

I have never seen this situation addressed in your column, so I hope you will publish my letter. Surely other parents are experiencing this same challenging situation and are at a loss as to how to deal with it.

–A New Orleans Reader

Dear Reader,
First off, you were born five foot two, 450 pounds? Did your mother burst like a seedpod?

Second, enough already! I am thoroughly annoyed at having my tame statements of fact—being heavy is a health risk; rolls of exposed flesh are unsightly—characterized as "hate speech." (Particularly by people who, like LARDASS, fill their letters complaining about my hate speech with juvenile taunts about my hunger for c**k.) Perhaps the problem here is that LARDASS and BW lack perspective. My comments only seem hateful to people who haven't read anything truly hateful about fat.

–Ann

Dear Ann Savage,
I am 38 years old and still don't know what I want to be when I grow up. I am stuck in a job I hate and don't know what to do with my life. When I was in high school, I never gave my future a second thought. I didn't want to join the family business, so I went into the military. That was OK for a while, but I didn't want to make a career of it.

I married a great girl and we have two kids, but I lost my job, and now we are in rocky financial shape. My father offered me a job and I took it out of desperation, but it was not a good fit so I quit. I returned to college and got a degree after 10 years of evening classes, but it didn't train me to do anything worthwhile.

I went back to work for my father, but I am bored out of my mind. I know I am capable of more. I took some job-placement tests, but it seems I have no aptitude for what interests me, and no interest in what I am qualified for. How can I get out of this trap?

–Totally Stuck in Minnesota

Dear Totally,
If you're serious about your motto—"the older the better"—then the club you should join is AARP, the American Association of Retired Persons. "AARP has 33 million members," said Tom Otwell, AARP's national spokesman, "with the median age being 67. We have members from age 50 to well over 100." Is AARP a good way for single people to meet mature partners? "We have 4,000 chapters, some are more social than others, some more politically active than others. But being active in a chapter certainly creates opportunities to mingle with like-minded folks." As almost 60 percent of AARP's members are female, and many of these women are widowed, odds and early male mortality rates would seem to favor you, Spike.

But, alas, at 38 you're too young to join AARP. "Fifty is the age of membership eligibility," Tom told me, "but if someone is married to another person who is 50 or older, then that person automatically becomes a member when their spouse joins." Did Tom have any advice for someone not yet old enough for AARP who wanted to meet, oh, women old enough to be long-time AARP members? "Um, I guess I would give the standard advice: Get involved in social activities, take some classes, do some volunteer work. A lot of volunteer organizations rely heavily on older folks to fill their ranks, and someone could meet any number of older people that way."

To join AARP, send $8 to The American Association of Retired Persons Membership Center, P.O. Box 199, Long Beach, CA 90848. Along with your membership card you'll receive a subscription to—are you sitting down?—Modern Maturity, AARP's membership magazine, and probably some good one-handed reading for you, Spike. You don't have to provide proof of age to join—just check the "I'm 50!" box—and Tom tells me the September/October issue of Modern Maturity had a cover story on "Great Sex: What's Age Got to Do with It?"

Anything in that issue about the pros and cons of younger men worshiping older women like Egyptian love slaves? "I don't think I'm going to comment on that," said Tom, who suddenly had to take another call.

–Ann

Indexed by tags advice, mashup.

Missing Honeybee Update: Have You Checked Johnstown?

2007-07-18T14:54:00.000-04:00

Those missing honeybees are at it again, this time swarming in the tens of thousands inside a Johnstown, Pennsylvania, house. But the owner won't exterminate them, because they are charismatic megafauna.

Indexed by tags nature, honeybees, disappear, swarm, house, Pennsylvania, Johnstown.
Image credits: "Swarm1," Sillydog, courtesy Flickr, acquired via Creative Commons license.

Thrill-Ride Chess

2007-07-18T12:31:00.001-04:00

Fans of webcomic xkcd were inspired to act out one famous strip in real life. Bonus points for doing it at Dollywood. There are many more such tributes here.

Indexed by tags games, photography, souvenir, chess, roller-coaster, theme park, thrill ride.

Philadelphia Gas Works Is Optimistic in Amount Enclosed on Bill

2007-07-16T14:18:00.001-04:00

This is what the monthly residential gas bills in Philadelphia look like. In particular, this is the portion Philadelphia Gas Works asks you to detach and return with your payment. Like most utility companies, they'd like you to fill out on the form how much money you are enclosing. But look at that Amount Enclosed field: they provide individual boxes for each digit in the number, including eight boxes to the left of the decimal point. This leads to a series of conclusions:

PGW thinks you might need eight boxes to fill in all the digits of the number of dollars you are sending them.
PGW thinks you might send them at least ten million dollars.
PGW thinks you might be using, if my calculations are correct, about 54 million cubic feet of gas each month, which is the amount of gas that all of Chevron's wells in China pumped out each day in 2006, and which is enough to fill all twelve of the warehouses of Nordic, a major regional cold-storage company.

I'm not saying there aren't customers that don't ring up ten-million-dollar gas bills each month in Philadelphia. I'm just wondering how many that do have to fill in the boxes on the little form before they mail in a check.

Indexed by tags business, money, Philadelphia, natual gas, bill, PGW.

Meanwhile, in Montrose . . .

2007-07-16T13:59:00.000-04:00

The Garden Club is canvassing all ten gardens in the county.

Indexed by tag Montrose.

Why the Geek Squad Scandal Is Worse than Stealing Porn

2007-07-12T13:14:00.001-04:00

Consumerist created a lot of buzz recently by setting up a sting operation to confirm reports that Geek Squad, the computer repair company, was taking the opportunity of temporarily possessing customers' computers to surreptitiously swipe media files. To catch a technician in the act, the watchdog blog "loaded a computer with porn and rigged it to make a video of itself." In the video, we see the cursor, representing where the technician is moving his mouse, open folders and copy files to a standard-issue Geek Squad thumb drive. According to Consumerist, this unauthorized copying is a pervasive problem throughout Geek Squad and at other computer repair places. Consumerist billed the problem as "Geek Squad Stealing Porn," and this same framing was used by blogs and the mainstream media as they picked up on the story.

Maybe that Geek Squad tech was copying porn that had been downloaded from the net. At one point in the video Consumerist posted documenting the sting, we see the tech looking over his spoils, and he appears to have copied what the narrator calls "pornographic videos." But what's much more disturbing is that he appears to copy personal photographs in the same way.

Look how Consumerist baited the tech. This is a screenshot of the desktop on the laptop the website set up specifically to attract an unauthorized porn grab. (In computing parlance, this type of computer trap is called a honeypot.) Here the desktop wallpaper is an image of three young, attractive women, wearing lots of makeup and dressed in a sexy but not entirely scandalous way. It's the kind of wallpaper the stereotypical sorority girl might have, and that's exactly the point. It's designed to show the tech in one quick glance that the owner of this computer is a sexy party girl, that she has sexy party girl friends, that they get dressed up sexy and go out to parties, and that they take pictures of themselves when they go.

Even the order form the store required its customer to fill out must have suggested that this computer would be a perfect target, loaded with personal photographs: Consumerist answered the standard survey, indicating the computer was personal (circled and underlined), that it would be used to burn music and movies and to print photographs, and that photography is the most desired capability, ranked with the highest score, followed by video and music ranked in the middle. This customer, the form implies, is going to load her computer with personal photos.

And photos are exactly what the tech looks for. He immediately scans the desktop folders whose names include the words pics or pictures and determines that they are the first quarry worth copying to his USB drive. In particular, he picks out folders with suggestive names—that is, names that suggest not pornography but personal, sexy pictures. Here the screenshot catches the Geek Squad tech copying a picture folder named "out clubbin!!!" It's a folder name that, directly and implicitly through style and punctuation, says, "Here's where I store pictures of myself and my hot friends wearing skimpy clothes, getting drunk, and doing stupid things."

The tech is presumably satisfied when he actually finds sexy personal photos. In one scene from Consumerist's video, when the tech is looking over what he found, he does find some porn. But before he even looks for porn itself, he opens a photo file. From eight planted photos depicting a beach vacation, the tech chooses one to open for a closer look: the one that depicts a woman, presumably the laptop's owner or a friend, standing in the surf wearing a bikini. This isn't porn, but to a horny male computer user (or a group thereof, if this file's destination is a communal server) it serves a similar purpose.

That's the darker side to what Geek Squad is doing here. This isn't just an image the customer looks at—it's an image of herself. If you own pornography, either on your hard drive or under your mattress, of course you want to keep it private. Whatever else pornography is, for most people its role in life is a private one. But how much more private are pictures of yourself wearing skimpy clothes, doing generally naughty things, or even appearing naked? We keep the sexy pictures we look at close, but we keep the sexy pictures we're in even closer.

The horror of what Geek Squad did isn't the idea that a stranger knows what you've been getting off to. It's that the stranger is getting off to you.

Indexed by tags pornography, crime, Internet, Geek Squad, Consumerist, photography, women.

Harnessing Nature to Fight Back against Minefields

2007-07-12T10:03:00.000-04:00

One of the classic narrative conflicts is man versus nature. But how do you classify a story of man using nature to combat his own worst exploits? Throughout the twentieth century humans rendered landscapes throughout the world impassible through the use of land mines. Now, the always-fantastic Pruned reports, scientists are developing schemes to reclaim these areas by modifying living creatures.

In Denmark, a biotech company has developed a modified form of thale-cress, a common weed, that will turn red when in proximity to an old mine:

[I]ts leaves turn red when the plant comes in contact with nitrogen dioxide — a compound that naturally leaches into the soil from unexploded land mines made from plastic and held together by leaky rubber seals. Aresa is growing large patches of the stuff on old army shooting ranges that have been seeded with land mines.

. . . .

[Developer Jarne] Elleholm says Aresa's technique can cover five times as much ground in the same amount of time as other detection techniques.

Aresa uses a seeding hose known as a "hydroseeder" — groundskeepers use such a hose to grow green grass on golf courses — to cover about a football field of territory in a day. After four to five weeks the thale-cress will have sprouted and turned red if it encounters nitrogen dioxide. Normally, plants neutralize nitrogen dioxide, which they recognize as harmful. But Aresa scientists, led by founder [Carsten] Meier, have genetically engineered thale-cress, fusing its nitrogen dioxide neutralizer with an enzyme that creates red pigment (plants naturally produce red pigment, which isn't visible until the green disappears in autumn).

Link. Meanwhile, in Croatia, Professor Nikola Kezic is training honeybees to find the mines other detection methods cannot:

Training the bees to find mines takes place in a large net tent pitched on a lawn at the university's Faculty of Agriculture.

A hive of bees sits at one end, with several feeding points for the bees set up around the tent.

But only a few of the feeding points contain food, and the soil immediately around them has been impregnated with explosive chemicals.

The idea is that the bees' keen sense of smell soon associates the smell of explosives with food. So far this has proved successful.

Prof Kezic says that training the bees takes only three or four days.

Link. Of course, Kezic's method depends on there being any honeybees left. And what to do when you actually find the explosives still embedded in the ground? The answer might lie with yet a third kingdom of life:

When explosives are used for mining or demolition, some may fail to detonate and get lost in the rubble. [Robert] Riggs reckons the remedy could be to mix pellets of dormant fungal spores in with the explosive charge before inserting the wick into the explosive package.

The dry spores lie dormant while the explosives are in storage and, if the charge detonates as intended, will get blown to smithereens.

But if the explosive fails to detonate, water from the air should migrate down the wick and into the charge. The spores should then germinate and devour the charge, rendering it harmless.

Link. Why stop with fungi? Perhaps mold could be used to migrate beneath the mine casing, cutting off the detonator from the charge or the trigger. Perhaps archaea, which thrive in extreme environments like geysers and deep-sea vents, could feed off a mine's nitrogen compounds and eat the explosive from the inside out.

Or perhaps no living thing will be able to outmaneuver the destructive capacity of society itself.

UPDATE

Perhaps even higher-order animals can locate and avoid land mines. Biologist Michael Chase of Elephants Without Borders believes elephants migrating back into war-torn regions of Africa quickly learned to avoid, if not the land mines themselves, then at least the minefields:

Chase said that when the initial migration began a number of elephants had their trunks and legs blown off by mines, condemning the animals to agonizing deaths. But the elephants that followed since have avoided those areas.

. . . .

"Once I overlay the movements of our five satellite-collared elephants with the location of [the known] mine fields, it would appear that they were avoiding these areas."

. . . .

"We have not seen any evidence of elephants being blown up or injured by land mine explosions in the three years we have been working in this area," he said.

Link (via Zooillogix).

Indexed by tags science, nature, biotech, warfare, land mine thale-cress, honeybees, fungus.
Image credits: "The Gods Were Kind . . . perhaps," JFA-japan, courtesy Flickr, borrowed for news-reporting and comment purposes.

The Churches of Philadelphia's 38th Street

2007-07-10T13:06:00.000-04:00

Philadelphia has 2393 miles of streets and 2169 churches, which means you would expect, in this city of one and a half million people, to drive, on average, 1.1 miles between churches on any given street. On 38th Street, you would drive 672 feet.

Running north-south through the University City, Powelton Village, and Mantua neighborhoods of West Philly, 38th Street covers a distance of 1.4 miles, but in that span is home to ten functioning places of worship and one former church. The churches range from Catholic to Episcopal to Baptist to A.M.E., from huge cathedrals to modest houses, from former synagogues to current apartment buildings. The earliest was built in the 1870s, the newest 2005. These are a sampling, of which more can be found at Flickr (and on this Google map).

St. Agatha–St. James Roman Catholic Church, at the corner of 38th and Chestnut in University City, is the southernmost of the group, and one of the oldest and largest. It was built in the Gothic style in 1887 by E.F. Durang, who designed many prominent, nineteenth-century Catholic churches in Philadelphia. Originally the Church of St. James, the building took on a new name when the St. Agatha parish merged in the 1980s, abandoning the sister church several blocks north. It now serves both the neighborhood and the community of the University of Pennsylvania, to which it is adjacent.

The Philadelphia Episcopal Cathedral is just across Chestnut from St. Agatha–St. James. It was built by C.W. Burns in 1898 in the Italianate style, reflecting an architectural trend in the neighborhood during the period. It contains the seat of the Bishop of Pennsylvania. The original edifice was destroyed by fire and rebuilt in 1906. The interior was extensively renovated in the late 1990s and early years of the millennium to create an impressive but minimalist space. From the sidewalk, its most distinctive features are an imposing bell tower and doors with whimsical hinges.

North of Lancaster Avenue, 38th Street transforms from an arterial thoroughfare to a relatively quiet residential street, cutting across a corner of Powelton Village, the oldest neighborhood along the route. Powelton is correspondingly home to the oldest churches and the densest concentration thereof—it has four within a span of about five hundred feet. This church at the corner of Hamilton was built in a sort of medieval style in the early 1870s; its northern addition, shown here, was completed in 1885. It is now home to the Tyree African Methodist Episcopal congregation. Much of the building's original features are preserved with the addition of some necessary modern retrofits. The A.M.E. denomination, which began in Philadelphia, incorporates the roots of its founders, who were of African descent, Methodist theology, and an Episcopal government structure.

Originally St. Agatha's Roman Catholic Church, the building at the corner of Spring Garden is now part of an apartment complex called The Cloisters. Durang built St. Agatha's between 1874 and 1878, but a century later Powelton could no longer support it. The parish merged with St. James's to the south, and the building was abandoned for a decade. Between 1991 and 1993, Pennrose Properties gutted the church and adjacent parish buildings to build affordable apartments, managing to preserve much of the exterior. The renovations included new additions to the roof line, seen here.

Besides Tyree and The Cloisters, Bethel Community Baptist Church, which stands as a neighborhood landmark at the bend in 38th, and Mount Pleasant Primitive Baptist Church, which is possibly the oldest of the 38th Street churches, also serve Powelton.

North of Powelton, 38th Street crosses into Mantua, a working-class neighborhood served by four smaller churches, three of which are Baptist (as are nearly a quarter of the churches in the city). St. Jude Baptist Church stands at practically the dead center of Mantua, where Wallace crosses 38th. According to its cornerstone, this newest church building on 38th was constructed in 2005 under the leadership of its pastor, Cleveland M. Edwards Jr., the son of the man who founded the church in 1948. The younger Edwards is an active leader in the NAACP. First United Baptist Church, Transfiguration Baptist Church, and Church of Faith, Inc., (in a former synagogue building) also call Mantua home.

Indexed by tags Philadelphia, architecture, religion, church, West Philly, 38th Street.

Advice Column Mashup

2007-07-09T18:52:00.000-04:00

Dear Prudence,
One day at school I wore my light wash jeans. I went through the day like normal, but something felt weird on the back of my jeans, although I hadn't bothered to check it out. Finally, when I was getting off the bus at my stop, some people started laughing, and it got worse as I walked down the aisle. I had no idea why they were, I figured someone probably tripped or something, so I just kept walking.

Imagine my horror, then, when I got home and my mom began to laugh at me, too! I realized, way too late, that I had gotten my period and had a big red spot on the back of my jeans! I spent the whole afternoon walking around like that and had no clue. I was humiliated enough, but then later that night my friend (who was sitting next to me on the bus) called me, and he was really angry. When I got him to calm down he told me that people were laughing at him when he was getting off the bus, and when he got home he discovered he had a red spot on the back of his pants, too.

Let's just say he always checks the bus seat before he sits next to me, and I have vowed never to wear light jeans again!

—Adrina, 15, West Palm Beach, FL

Dear Adrina,
These commentators are strangers? What's up with that? Prudie thinks a proper response would be nonverbal communication. Something along the lines of knitting your eyebrows together, narrowing your eyes, and making the slightest sneer, all while cocking your head to a 45 degree angle.

—Prudie, huffily

Dear Prudence,
I have P.E. right after lunch and one day we were doing the presidential fitness test. My P.E. teacher just happened to pair me with my crush for the pushup section. My crush was going to be right behind me, counting. I was psyched, until I passed gas super loudly, right in his face! It was from the bean burrito I'd eaten right beforehand. It was horrible. Whenever he sees me in the hall, he holds his nose, and says "watch out, the stink bomb is coming!" Now I can't even look him in the eye.

—Amanda, 15, Kentucky

Dear Amanda,
What should he call you, Stepmommy Dearest? It's good that you're trying to treat your stepson like family, because he is family. He may be a troubled, unpleasant part of your family, and it may be understandably difficult for you to have him underfoot, but it must also be painful for him to be treated with such obvious aversion. You can hardly prohibit one member of the household from addressing you with the pet name others are allowed to use. Maybe your stepson is ready to leave his rocky teenage years behind; think of how beneficial it would be for him to feel accepted by you. So, when he calls you calls you Mimsy or Bipsy or whatever it is, just cringe and bear it.

—Prudie

Indexed by tags advice, mashup.

Maybe He Was Too Intense. Maybe He Came On Too Strong.

2007-07-09T18:39:00.000-04:00

(Via YesButNoButYes.)

Indexed by tags advertising, commercials, YouTube.

2007-07-09T17:38:00.001-04:00

International Patent Office Rejects Quomma

2007-07-08T13:21:00.000-04:00

If you were wondering, whatever happened to that new punctuation mark, the quomma, that The Good Reverend's college roommate invented?, there have been new developments. Or rather, old ones: a US company filed an international patent application for the quomma (and exclamomma) back in 1992. The organization has failed to issue the patent, though, so for now we are all free to use them, I guess.

Indexed by tags language, punctuation, law, patent, quomma.

Some Things Are Certain

2007-07-08T12:39:00.000-04:00

Okay, I can follow the Raelians' belief that man is descended from extraterrestrials. It's when they claim a swastika intertwined with the Star of David won't be offensive that they lose me.

Indexed by tags weird, religion, symbols, Raelians, swastika.

And Now We Pause for Gnarls Barkley's 'Crazy' on the Theremin

2007-07-08T12:06:00.000-04:00

Indexed by tags music, theremin, Gnarls Barkley, "Crazy".

Boots Randolph Dies, "Yakety Sax" Lives On

2007-07-06T14:33:00.000-04:00

When American country and jazz legend Boots Randolph passed away Tuesday a week after suffering a cerebral hemorrhage, the Fark headline declared, "Funeral procession will take place at a comically rapid pace with scantily clad women and an English bobby." Randolph was a longtime Nashville headliner and session man, and he had played sax behind Elvis Presley on "Return to Sender," Roy Orbison on "Oh, Pretty Woman," and Brenda Lee on "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree." But it was clear long before his death that the 1961 instrumental "Yakety Sax" would be his legacy.

"Yakety Sax" charted in 1963 on a Monument Records rerelease, but it wasn't until The Benny Hill Show started airing in 1969 that the song truly took off. During the BBC sketch comedy's closing credits, star Hill would typically get into some kind of trouble and be chased by sexy birds and a policeman in an "undercranked," or fast-motion, video sequence. All the action was, of course, set to "Yakety Sax." In this 1988 edition, Hill spends much of the sequence alone on camera, but the near-stop-motion shots with a pursuing mob are representative.

It's a successful formula: cyclical, jaunty instrumental + slapstick humor + fast-motion video. It's been around in one form or another since the Keystone Kops, which is to say since basically the dawn of film. Benny Hill's use of "Yakety Sax" tweaked this recipe and made it iconic, yielding a sort of shorthand: set something to "Yakety Sax" and you're telling the audience that the action is comical in a slapstick kind of way and maybe even, on another level, winking and nodding to British comedy for those in the know.

The proliferation of YouTube has lead to countless imitations—some better than others. "Yakety Sax" is a fairly effective soundtrack for videos of fast-moving animals, especially ones that would be otherwise a little bit funny on their own, like these battling pets and this treadmill-running shrimp. It also works rather well reedited into classic movie scenes like the Darth Maul sword fight, the Shining climax, or any part of Jurassic Park. Clips importing "Yakety Sax" into sports, perhaps because they are stripped of their drama, or perhaps because blooper-reel comedy stands best on its own, are somewhat less successful. It might be that directors who attempt to bennyhillify sports don't quite have a grasp on the undercranking technique.

By far the most controversial use of "Yakety Sax" for attempted comic effect is as a soundtrack to real-life tragic events. Testing the theory that the song, properly deployed, can make anything funny, more than one YouTube user has set news footage from 9/11 to the tune. Woody Allen famously wrote that comedy is tragedy plus time. I'm not convinced that speeding up the tape makes up for that last element.

Boots Randolph was right when he called "Yakety Sax" "my trademark." For better or worse, it's what he'll be remembered for. That's what makes YouTube user JasonEdge's stripped-down tribute so moving. Have you ever seen "Yakety Sax" set to less action?

Indexed by tags music, television, "Yakety Sax", Benny Hill, YouTube, Boots Randolph.

The Revolution Encoded in Poetry

2007-07-06T12:42:00.000-04:00

The following poem appeared in a revolutionary-era Philadelphia newspaper. Read straightforward, it condemns the brewing political sentiment against the crown:

Hark! Hark! the trumpet sounds, the din of war's alarms,
O'er seas and solid grounds, doth call us all to arms;
Who for King George doth stand, their honors soon shall shine;
Their ruin is at hand, who with the Congress join.
The acts of Parliament, in them I much delight,
I hate their cursed intent, who for the Congress fight;
The Tories of the day, they are my daily toast,
They soon will sneak away, who independence boast;
Who non-resistance hold, they have my hand and heart,
May they for slaves be sold, who act a Whiggish part;
On Mansfied, North and Bute, may daily blessings pour,
Confusion and dispute, on Congress evermore;
To North and British lord, may honors still be done,
I wish a block or cord, to General Washington.

Read another way, it is pro-Revolution. Can you find the code? Futility Closet has the answer.

Indexed by tags language, poetry, history, American Revolution.

Yaphet Kotto for President

2007-07-05T14:12:00.000-04:00

Yaphet Kotto, the actor best known for being the first post-chest-explosion victim of the alien in Alien, and whom you might also remember from Midnight Run, Running Man, and 1996's Two If by Sea, is running for president as an independent candidate.

It could be a Homicide versus Law and Order match-up. Or maybe they could do one of those old crossover promotions like NBC did back in the day.

Bonus factoids: Kotto is the son of a Cameroonian Crown Prince. He would also be the first African American and first Jewish president.

Indexed by tags politics, 2008, president, Yaphet Kotto.

I Have It on Reliable Intelligence that This Scene Appears in the New Transformers Movie

2007-07-05T14:07:00.000-04:00

The Perry Bible Fellowship.

Indexed by tags comics, Transformers, Perry Bible Fellowship.

Hot Dogs and Independence

2007-07-04T10:02:00.000-04:00

This Fourth, if you're not enjoying hot dogs, remember the men who gave America its freedom for their hotness.

Indexed by tags independence, hot dogs.

Cooking Terms and What They Mean (for Gender Roles)

2007-07-03T14:11:00.000-04:00

Here's an instructional video from 1949. It teaches you how to cook, provided you are a young wife. Culinary arts and the proper place of a woman—two lessons in one! Thank you, Professor Edna A. Hill of the Department of Home Economics at the University of Kansas. (And note that, even though the advice comes from an educated woman and is directed at a young woman, it's narrated by an austere man.)

Favorite quotes:

"To stir is to mix food materials with a circular motion to secure a uniform consistency."
"Yes, the honeymoon is over for Tim now that he starts back to work. And it's over for Margie, too, as she enters her bright new kitchen to cook her first meal."
"But wait a minute! There's still time to bake another cake before Tim comes home to lunch."

Unbelievable.

Indexed by tags women, food and drink, cooking, feminism, 1940s.

Tracking Down the Speedo Man: Epilogue

2007-07-03T13:15:00.000-04:00

Part 9 in a series (previously)
Originally published in the Tucson Citizen, September 2000

In Memory of Bicycle Bob
Born ? – September 2000

He was the most well-known stranger in Tucson. Most of us knew him only as Bob. No last name, no other information. In fact, I'm sure you all knew him well. He was the tan, physically fit, bald man who rode his old bike in a Speedo all over town.

His death saddened me so much that I felt a need to write this little something for him. My way of saying goodbye to Bob. Acknowledging his life and his death and letting him known we'll miss him.

Your friend,
April

Indexed by tags Tucson, homeless, Bikeman, cycling.

Five Best American Boardwalks

2007-07-03T09:45:00.000-04:00

Wednesday is the cruelest of all days for Independence Day to fall on, because it is hard to justify taking off Thursday and Friday (or Monday and Tuesday) and leave only a two-day work week. If you can finagle it, however, a Wednesday Fourth makes for the longest of long weekends. This gives you the perfect opportunity to head out of town for a few days.

If you are looking for a destination—a place to go to when all you really want to do is get away from home—may we suggest the coast? And more specifically, may we suggest a beach town with restaurants, shops, and amusements pressed right up against the ocean with a wooden walkway in between?

A boardwalk is perfect for Independence Day because it is fun, summery, and American to a fault. Here are five boardwalks within a day's drive of home for most Americans (sorry, Kansas).

5. Ocean City, Maryland

History: Not to be confused with the other boardwalked Ocean City eighty miles up the coast and across Delaware Bay, Maryland's OC has had a boardwalk in one form or another since 1902. The current incarnation, a replacement for a storm-leveled earlier version, dates to the early 1960s.

Carousel: The one at Trimper's Amusements has been continuously run since 1912, so Ocean City claims it as the nation's oldest carousel in continuous operation. The best part is that it has two floors.

People watching: Ocean City's boardwalk is about as far away from a major urban area as you will find, which inevitably leads to a high mullet quotient.

Food: Pizza, ice cream, typical boardwalk fare.

Live Boardwalk Cam: Yes.

Why it makes the list: Warm water, great sand, and that carousel.

See the top four . . .

4. Atlantic City, New Jersey

History: The nation's first boardwalk was built here in 1870 when hotel owners decided it would be a good way to keep guests from tracking in sand. It grew to seven miles long before being wiped out in a 1944 hurricane. The current boardwalk, which merges with the Ventnor boardwalk, is the longest in the world at 5.75 miles.

Carousel: I couldn't find one, but let me know if you do. It's too darn big to search everywhere.

People watching: The fading casino glory yields a lot of desperate individuals and blue-haired ladies who come in by the bus load, but they tend to stay behind the slot machines and out of the sun. There are plenty of Jersey girls to go around, and something about the combination of young guys still wearing muscle shirts and that scent of ocean mixed with garbage reminds you that this is the city the mob built.

Food: Typical of other boardwalks, plus soft pretzels, because you are, after all, only an hour's drive from Philly.

Live Boardwalk Cam: Apparently not.

Why it makes the list: Sure, it's the oldest and the biggest, but it's really Monopoly that takes it over the top. If someone lands on Boardwalk with a hotel, it's all over. Plus, the Boss says so.

3. Rehoboth Beach, Delaware

History: The boardwalk was originally rolled out in 1873 as part of a summer retreat for the Methodist Church. God destroyed it in 1914, then again in 1962, and finally in 1992. The Rehobothite Methodists don't know how to take a hint.

Carousel: There's a smallish one indoors.

People watching: Tourists regularly pour in from Washington, Baltimore, and smaller towns as far away as Pennsylvania. Rehoboth has become the Mid Atlantic's gay capital, which probably has something to do with the crowd being more urbane and interesting than most.

Food: World famous saltwater taffy.

Live Boardwalk Cam: You bet.

Why it makes the list: Come for the people and the weather, stay for the taffy.

2. Coney Island, New York

History: The Riegelmann Boardwalk, built in 1923, sprang up because of the influx from the recently completed subway line. Amusement parks, which had come and gone in the area since the middle of the nineteenth century, took off thanks to the boardwalk.

Carousel: Sure, but wouldn't you rather ride the Cyclone?

People Watching: The location at the end of a subway line in a city of eight million interesting people makes for a fascinating boardwalk. As American boardwalks go, Coney Island feels both proto- and atypical. Every July 4 Coney Island hosts the Super Bowl of competitive eating.

Food: It's pretty much the same stuff you could get in 1940, and that's fine with me. The hot dogs are the clincher.

Live Boardwalk Cam: Nope.

Why it makes the list: It's as storied a beach resort as you are going to find, and it's the crowd that makes it so. Plus, the Drifters say so.

1. Santa Cruz, California

History: Dating to 1907, the boardwalk was inspired by the amusements of Coney Island but predates Coney's actual boardwalk. And unlike some other boardwalks, it hasn't had any storms (or even the occasional earthquake) knock it down since.

Carousel: The 1911 Looff Carousel is a national historic landmark, and it features the old brass ring game.

People Watching: It's California. People are just different here. Andby different I mean hotter.

Food: Gilroy garlic fries. And can you say Dippin' Dots?

Live Boardwalk Cam: Sort of.

Why it's number one: It's got all the history, rides, and arcade games of the East Coast boardwalks, along with a laid-back California feel and the nicest of all boardwalk beaches. Plus Kiefer Sutherland says so.

Indexed by tags travel, boardwalk, Ocean City, Atlantic City, Rehoboth Beach, Coney Island, Santa Cruz.
Image credits: (a) "Dusk," wastrel; (b) "On the Boardwalk in Atlantic City," eqqman; (c) "The Boardwalk," Zsaj; (d) "47830001," dogseat; (e) "round up," astrocruzan. All images courtesy Flickr. B and D are licensed through Creative Commons. A, C, and E are borrowed for news-reporting and comment purposes.

Tracking Down the Speedo Man: Close Encounter of the Third Kind

2007-07-02T17:17:00.000-04:00

Part 8 in a series (previously, next)
Originally published in Unfiltered Magazine, Spring 2000, by Paul Schramski

A few days later, while driving home from school, I saw him. The Bikeman road his bicycle in irregular strides, passing the dangerous construction on Speedway. I pulled over and attempted to interview him, although I feared what type of person he might be. I introduced myself and began to ask him a few unprepared questions.

What is a typical day for you?
I generally get up and ride my bike all dy long. I ride eight thousand miles a year, a hundred and fifty miles a week, and sometimes fifty-five miles a day. I've lived in Tucson for more than twenty-five years, and this is what I like to do.

Do you worry about skin cancer?
I haven't died yet, have I? I'd rather ride around and get cancer than be a smelly old diaper-wearing senior citizen living in a home. It's a lot better than sitting down watching TV all day, anyway.

Why do you like riding your bike?
I am what you might call independently poverty stricken. I live in a shack and eat out of a trashcan. All I really have in this world is riding my bike.

So it's sort of spiritual for you then? Do you have any words of advice for teens who would be reading this magazine?
When I was your age, I wish I had driven a lot faster and paid less attention to authority. Regret nothing too wild! The only regret I have was that I was too conservative.

He rode off when he had finished this last sentence. I wondered if perhaps he was making up for his lack of wildness early in life by living loudly in the present. Before I had a chance to even has his real name, he disappeared. I didn't bother to chase him; he had served his purpose. Ambiguous and entertaining, the Bikeman remains a Tucson treasure.

Indexed by tags Tucson, homeless, Bikeman, cycling.

Lieutenant's Deathbed Confession: Roswell Wreckage Was a Flying Saucer, and There Were Bodies

2007-07-02T16:50:00.000-04:00

The first week of July 1947, something fell out of the sky at Roswell, New Mexico. Initial reports from the military recoverers called it a flying disc, but the Army later officially declared it a downed weather balloon. Now a just-opened, signed and notarized statement from the late Lt. Walter Haut, a member of the team that recovered the wreckage, claims that the latter story was a cover and that it was truly a mysterious flying saucer the Army recovered—along with bodies:

(10) At approximately 9:30 a.m. Col. Blanchard phoned my office and dictated the press release of having in our possession a flying disc, coming from a ranch northwest of Roswell, and Marcel flying the material to higher headquarters. I was to deliver the news release to radio stations KGFL and KSWS, and newspapers the Daily Record and the Morning Dispatch.

(11) By the time the news release hit the wire services, my office was inundated with phone calls from around the world. Messages stacked up on my desk, and rather than deal with the media concern, Col Blanchard suggested that I go home and "hide out."

(12) Before leaving the base, Col. Blanchard took me personally to Building 84 [AKA Hangar P-3], a B-29 hangar located on the east side of the tarmac. Upon first approaching the building, I observed that it was under heavy guard both outside and inside. Once inside, I was permitted from a safe distance to first observe the object just recovered north of town. It was approx. 12 to 15 feet in length, not quite as wide, about 6 feet high, and more of an egg shape. Lighting was poor, but its surface did appear metallic. No windows, portholes, wings, tail section, or landing gear were visible.

(13) Also from a distance, I was able to see a couple of bodies under a canvas tarpaulin. Only the heads extended beyond the covering, and I was not able to make out any features. The heads did appear larger than normal and the contour of the canvas suggested the size of a 10 year old child. At a later date in Blanchard's office, he would extend his arm about 4 feet above the floor to indicate the height.

Link.

Indexed by tags weird, military, aliens, ufos, Roswell, confession, Walter Haut.

Bizarre Model Poses

2007-07-02T14:52:00.001-04:00

Threadbared has a field guide (via dérive).

This one's "the Menstrual Cramp."

Indexed by tags fashion, photography, pose, art, bizarre.

This Naked Mole Rat Wants to Lower Your Sex Drive

2007-07-02T13:40:00.000-04:00

Stress can lower your libido and maybe even make you infertile. And nobody knows how to wield stress to that effect like the Queen of the African Naked Mole Rats (QANMR):

“The queen exerts her dominance over the colony by, literally, pushing the other members of the colony around. She shoves them to show who’s boss,” said Chris Faulkes, a zoologist at the University of London.

Faulkes explained that the stressful domination reduces fertility hormone levels—effectively suppressing puberty in young mole-rats, lowering sperm counts in males and even turning off the female ovulatory cycle.

“The queen also seems to exert control over the breeding males, so that concentrations of their testosterone are suppressed except when she is ready to mate,” he said.

Link. But could the QANMR tactic have an effect on non-mole-rat species? Indeed, what if it could affect other rodents?

Indexed by tags science, nature, biology, psychology, stress, sexuality, libido, naked, mole rat.

Streetcars: Terrible Investment for Transport, Great Investment for Development

2007-07-02T12:39:00.000-04:00

Here in Philadelphia, the metropolitan transit company, the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority (Septa), is extensive and fairly popular, but it's not the nicest system in America. For starters, the buses and trains come less frequently than is probably optimal, and even those times at which they do come are not entirely predictable, despite published timetables. It's also quite dirty, both on trains and in stations, compared to newer systems like Washington's or the Bay Area's and also older systems like the New York subway. But perhaps the biggest problem is that, if you leave out buses, which are not very speedy, and the regional trains, which are only good for going to suburban areas, and scrape beneath the surface to look at the heart of the system—the subway—it's not very extensive at all.

Septa has only two proper subway lines, each following a straight shot down the city's east-west and north-south divider streets (the Market Street route also continues as an elevated train into the more suburban, near northeastern part of the city, while the Broad Street line has one short spur that provides some variation to get to another part of Center City). There is a third line, operated by the port authority, that provides a few central stops and heads across the Delaware into New Jersey. And there are five trolley routes that run on above-ground tracks through West Philly before diving into a tunnel and running as small subways under Center City. But that's it: if you're going through the center of town in one of the cardinal directions, or if you are going to New Jersey or West Philly, you are set. If you are going anywhere else, it's going to be a schlep.

It would be nice to have more nonbus public transit routes. Tourist or occasional ridership—coveted because it alleviates the effect of inefficient peak rush-hour periods—would probably increase if visitors and consumers could get on the subway in Old City and get off at, say, the Art Museum, South Street, or the Italian Market. But it's hard to find the money for such projects in part because, evaluated in and of themselves, they are not cost effective at all.

No transit system in the country makes money. Even the New York system, which transports about half of the entire nation's journey-to-work riders, makes between seventy and eighty cents for every dollar it spends in operation. And that's not even counting capital outlays. It's expensive to build, say, a street-level trolley line, and fares alone will never make up for the cost. Fares won't even cover the cost of running the trolley that day.

So why do cities continue to invest in public vehicles that run on rails? The Wall Street Journal argues that their benefits to commercial landowners in dense urban centers, in particular those from streetcars, might justify the expense:

Like stadiums, convention centers and aquariums, streetcars have emerged as a popular tool in the effort to revitalize downtowns in the U.S. About a dozen cities, from Madison, Wis., to Miami, are planning lines. But while research shows that big-ticket projects such as ballparks largely fail to spawn economic development, evidence is mounting that streetcars are indeed a magnet.

Streetcar systems are slower, less expensive and smaller than light rail, with cars that carry a maximum of 125 people and the average line 2-3 miles long. The cars are powered by electricity and run on tracks, which developers tend to favor because they suggest a sense of permanence, unlike bus routes, which can be changed overnight.

In Kenosha, Wis., city officials say a two-mile line helped generate 400 new residential units and the redevelopment of a 69-acre industrial site into a waterfront park. The streetcar line in Little Rock, Ark., has sparked revitalization of the city's River Market and warehouse district. In Seattle, a new $52 million streetcar line is scheduled to open in December that will shuttle riders between downtown and South Lake Union, a formerly industrial area that is being redeveloped by Microsoft Corp. billionaire Paul Allen.

And in Portland, Ore., the poster child for such development, officials say the streetcar system has helped bring $2.7 billion in investment within two blocks of its 3.6 mile line, much of it in the 24-hour hub known as the Pearl District. "It's one of the most vibrant neighborhoods in the city," says Richard Brandman, deputy planning director for Metro, the Portland area's regional government.

Link. Philadelphia has considered plans to expand the New Jersey line further into the city and to build a light rail down Market Street. But Market is already the corridor most served by nonbus transit. If the city's willing to pay $350 million for a stadium surrounded by parking lots and other stadiums—in other words, with approximately zero chance of effect on neighborhood development—it should be willing to shoot a trolley line down one of the numbered streets into eastern South Philly or down the Ben Franklin Parkway to the Art Museum for a fifth of that price. Even if it never pays for itself at the fare box.

Indexed by tags transportation, development, Philadelphia, Septa, trolley, subway, streetcar, economics, urban.
Image credits: "Decay6," photosapience, courtesy Flickr, borrowed for news-reporting and comment purposes.

Tracking Down the Speedo Man: Success

2007-07-01T17:24:00.000-04:00

Part 7 in a series (previously, next)
Originally published in Unfiltered Magazine, Spring 2000, by Paul Schramski

3:40 – Success at Grant and Campbell! He rode fast, but I was able to pass him and to take a few pictures. He passed us at Alvernon before we had a chance to pause for an interview. The only word we heard before we lost him was "yes." What did this yes mean? Was this some code or an answer to an ageless question? I rode up Alvernon in hopes of seeing him again and drove down the labyrinth of adjoining streets while Brian trailed on foot. He was gone. Displeased with ourselves for losing the Bikeman, we sat in silence on our trip home.

Indexed by tags Tucson, homeless, Bikeman, cycling.

Stallone's Upcoming, Bloody Sequels

2007-07-01T09:12:00.000-04:00

Indexed by tags movies, Stallone, sequels.

Saturday Morning Cartoon

2007-06-30T07:58:00.000-04:00

Indexed by tags cartoon, Pixar, "For the Birds".

Tracking Down the Speedo Man: Yo-Yo History

2007-06-29T17:38:00.000-04:00

Part 6 in a series (previously, next)
Originally published in Unfiltered Magazine, Spring 2000, by Paul Schramski

3:35 – The last possible place we could imagine seeing him was the International Museum of Yo-Yo History. I peered in through the colored panes, but he was nowhere to be found. He must have been taunting us from some higher vantage point. He had led us on a wild goose chase over and under every crack of the city. what fools we had been to think we could find such an elusive man.

Indexed by tags Tucson, homeless, Bikeman, cycling.

Recipe Friday

2007-06-29T17:11:00.000-04:00

It is summer in the northern hemisphere, which means, if where you are is anywhere like where I am, it is quite hot. And what better way to cool off on a hot day than with a cold drink? And who knows cold drinks better than the residents of tropical island nations like Cuba? Exactly. Which is why today's recipe is for

El Mojito Perfecto

A mojito is a Cuban rum-based drink with flavors of lime and mint. It was famously enjoyed by Hemingway when he was working on The Old Man and the Sea, but authorities have yet to conclusively link it to his suicide. The mojito is so tasty that you'll forget that there is alcohol in it, but there is, so don't drive, operate heavy machinery, or be underage when you drink it. The safety valve for mojitos is that, even though they are tasty enough that you could get drunk without realizing you are drinking, they are complicated enough to make that you'll become incapable of making any more before long.

For each glass you're going to make, acquire the following:

1 lime
5 mint leaves
1 teaspoon powdered sugar
1.5 ounces simple syrup (sugar and water, which we'll cover below)
Several cubes of ice
2 ounces white rum
Enough club soda to top off the glass, maybe an ounce

You'll also have to have these handy:

1 sharp knife
1 tall, thin (highball) glass
1 wooden spoon with a wooden handle (or special muddling instrument)
1 small sauce pan
1 juicer, if you've got it

To make simple syrup (and my version of simple syrup is as simple as it's going to get), combine equal parts water and granulated sugar (let's say 1.5 tablespoons of each) in your sauce pan. Heat this over medium on your stove, stirring constantly, until the sugar is dissolved in the water. Don't let it boil.

Squeeze all the juice you can out of the lime. You should be able to get about an ounce from it. If you can't, start a new lime.

Add the mint leaves, powdered sugar, and ounce of lime juice to the bottom of your glass. Shove the handle-end of your wooden spoon into the glass and muddle the mint. Muddling means mixing up the mint with the sugar and lime juice in a mildly violent fashion. The goal is to tear apart the mint to a certain degree in order to release its flavors. When you can smell minty freshness coming from the glass, you know you've done it right.

Add 1.5 ounces of the simple syrup to the glass, then fill it with cubes of ice. Now pour in the two ounces of rum and add a splash of club soda—just enough to top off the drink, not more than an ounce.

Enjoy with friends (although I just told you how to make one mojito, you should probably make enough for everybody). And remember, as Cuban Spider-Man says, with great mojito comes great responsibility.

Indexed by tags food and drink, recipes, beverages, mojito.

Tracking Down the Speedo Man: Far Horizons Mobile Home Estates

2007-06-28T22:09:00.000-04:00

Part 5 in a series (previously, next)
Originally published in Unfiltered Magazine, Spring 2000, by Paul Schramski

3:30 – Intrigued by his mobile lifestyle, I concluded that he would not be opposed to living in a Far Horizons Mobile Home Estates, which proved a bizarre land. White picket fences and petite green lawns characterized every square plot. Nutcracker mailboxes and elderly ladies glared at us on every corner. Brian chanted, "Lions, tigers, and bears, oh my!" in hope that by clicking his red slippers he could return home. The tension lessened when out of the corner of my eye I noticed a bare male chest. It was pale and wrinkled. It could not be the Bikeman, only a half-naked man gathering his mail and smiling at his exposure. We fled, writhing in laughter and fear.

Indexed by tags Tucson, homeless, Bikeman, cycling.

Self-Mummification in Japan

2007-06-28T16:22:00.000-04:00

During the Edo period, some Buddhist priests in northern Japan engaged in sokushinbutsu, a form of prolonged suicide by self-mummification that existed long before people began consuming the food from McDonald's:

The first step is a change of diet. The priest was only allowed to eat nuts and seeds that could be found in the forests surrounding his temple; this diet had to be stuck to for a 1000 day period, a little under three years. During this time, the priest was to continue to subject himself to all sorts of physical hardship in his daily training. The results were that the body fat of the priest was reduced to nearly nothing, thus removing a section of the body that easily decomposes after death.

In the second stage, the diet became more restrictive. The priest was now only allowed to eat a small amount of bark and roots from pine trees (mokujiki). This had to be endured for another 1000 day period, by the end of which the priest looked like a living skeleton. This also decreased the overall moisture contained in the body; and the less fluid left in the body, the easier to preserve it.

Towards the end of this 1000 day period, the priest also had to start to drink a special tea made from the sap of the urushi tree. This sap is used to make laquer [sic] for bowls and furniture; but it is also very poisonous for most people. Drinking this tea induced vomenting [sic], sweating, and urination, further reducing the fluid content of the priest's body. But even more importantly, the build up of the poison in the priest's body would kill any maggots or insects that tried to eat the priest's remains after death, thus protecting it from yet another source of decay.

The third and last step of the process was to be entombed alive in a stone room just big enough for a man to sit lotus style in for a final 1000 day period. As long as the priest could ring a bell each day a tube remained in place to supply air; but when the bell finally stopped, the tube was removed and the tomb was sealed.

Link (via the Proceedings of the Athanasius Kircher Society). Similar practices were apparently observed elsewhere in the Buddhist ascetic world. No word yet on why the corpse in the picture appears to not really have any preserved flesh. Looks less like a mummy than an ordinary skeleton to me. Time to find some new poison lacquer sap.

Indexed by tags history, religion, Japan, Buddhism, monks, mummies, sokushinbutsu.

Tracking Down the Speedo Man: The Cemetery

2007-06-27T20:06:00.000-04:00

Part 4 in a series (previously, next)
Originally published in Unfiltered Magazine, Spring 2000, by Paul Schramski

3:10 – Worried that our quarry had been gone for far too long, Brian and I left Speedway for the East Lawn Palms Mortuary and Cemetery on Grant Road. On our way, we passed two people on bicycles who rejected our questioning. We searched the cemetery grounds for any trace of our fugitive, but to no avail. He had to be alive somewhere.

Indexed by tags Tucson, homeless, Bikeman, cycling.

The Digestione at Coney

2007-06-27T16:02:00.000-04:00

The ninety-second annual Nathan's Famous Hot Dog Eating Contest, to be held next Wednesday, July 4, at Coney Island in Brooklyn, is shaping up to be the most epic duel in the history of the "sport." American upstart Joey Chestnut, who recently broke the hot-dog-eating record, will take on Takeru Kobayashi, the six-time champion who is ranked number one in the world by people who rank such things. To complicate the matter, Kobayashi recently announced that he is suffering from arthritis of the jaw at a most inopportune time. The jaw, as I understand it, is an important organ for competitive eating. But Kobayashi won't let that set him back—he's going to participate anyway.

The Great White Bloat isn't sure he's buying the champ's claims of injury:

“I don’t know if it’s true or not,” said Mr. Chestnut, an undergraduate studying civil engineering. “All my friends and family they’re all saying don’t pay any attention to it. But it doesn’t make sense. Why would anybody say, ‘Oh I’m going to compete, but I’m hurt’? You could easily compete and if something went bad, then you could say something later.”

All this high drama has the New York Times' Sewell Chan comparing the run-up to this pan-Pacific bout to the hype for the Rumble in the Jungle or the Thrilla in Manila. Will an injured Kobayashi make it seven in a row? Is the arthritis a ruse, meant to stymie an adversary or lower expectations? Will the record be devoured once again? Will the mustard belt come home?

It's coming—the day America and Japan settle their score, the day thousands of children vow to devote their lives to competitive eating, the day two men consume over a hundred wieners between them in twelve minutes: July 4, 2007.

Get yer hot dogs.

Indexed by tags food and drink, sports, competitive eating, hot dogs, Coney Island, Kobayashi, Joey Chestnut.

Knowing Which Way the Wind Blows in California Courts

2007-06-27T13:02:00.000-04:00

A new law review article by Alex B. Long (PDF, via the Volokh Conspiracy) explores the instances in which courts rely on lyrics from popular music to elucidate a legal issue. He declares Bob Dylan the paradigmatic authority, in particular pointing to a California case seeking to understand when expert testimony is and is not required:

The correct rule on the necessity of expert testimony has been summarized by Bob Dylan: "You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows." The California courts, although in harmony, express the rule somewhat less colorfully and hold expert testimony is not required where a question is "resolvable by common knowledge."

Jorgensen v. Beach 'n' Bay Realty, Inc., 177 Cal. Rptr. 882, 894 (Cal Ct. App. 1981) (internal citations omitted). "Subterranean Homesick Blues" is apparently the leading learned treatise on the subject in California courts, which frequently cite both Dylan and Jorgensen's use thereof (although they have yet to recognize "Weird Al" Yankovic's "Bob"). But as you learn early on in law, every rule—especially an evidentiary one—has an exception.

Indexed by tags law, music, Bob Dylan, Subterranean Homesick Blues, California, evidence, expert, weatherman.
Image credits: Still from "Subterranean Homesick Blues," courtesy Meme Huffer, borrowed for news-reporting and comment purposes.

Tracking Down the Speedo Man: McDonald's

2007-06-26T16:29:00.000-04:00

Part 3 in a series (previously, next)
Originally published in Unfiltered Magazine, Spring 2000, by Paul Schramski

2:55 – Brian and I ducked into a nearby McDonald's. The gentleman in the first window stared at me in a puppy-like fashion as I asked him if he'd seen the Bikeman. He shouted, "Oh, yeah," as he threw change into my outstretched hand and slammed the window. At the following window, Susie cut me off with the arrival of hamburgers and giggled while she closed the window. Awestruck by the impoliteness and secrecy of McDonald's, I took off to gather more clues.

Indexed by tags Tucson, homeless, Bikeman, cycling.

Pedestrian Crossing

2007-06-26T16:23:00.001-04:00

As a frequent Philadelphia pedestrian and occasional Philadelphia driver, I feel a profound hope that those who, like me, move about our fair city can learn a thing or two from this 1948 British public informational short about how to cross the street and how not to run over someone doing so. Except, you know, pretend the cars are driving on the right side of the road.

Indexed by tags transportation, cars, city, pedestrian, crosswalk, safety.

Real Estate Scam: Unauthorized "Open House" at Your Own House Listed on Craigslist

2007-06-25T16:38:00.000-04:00

A woman in Los Angeles was browsing Craigslist when she was surprised to find a listing for an unauthorized open house the following Sunday at the vacant fixer-upper she had recently purchased:

Around 12:30 pm Sunday, Jessica's real estate agent calls, reporting he is at the house and nothing is happening. He can't stay -- he's got an Open House of his own to go to. All is well. But then, at 1:30 pm, the agent calls Jessica back. "A neighbor had called him and told him, 'The Open House is happening right now! There's a woman inside the house, she's got signs outside, and she's showing the house!'"

So Jessica, still in Rancho Mirage, calls the LAPD again with this update. Soon the agent calls her with another update: "Neighbors had been to the Open House, and they told him the woman is taking cash deposits from people! Multiple cash deposits!"

. . . .

She waits by the phone for a while, and then gets a call from an LAPD officer. "He says, 'I'm inside the house with the woman and she's claiming she's legit. She says she works for a realty company and she's showing the house.' Then the cop asks me, 'How can you prove you're the owner?'"

"My Dad says, 'You have the title! Tell him you have the title!' So I say, 'I have the title, I'll fax it to you!'"

The police officer tells Jessica he's going to have to call his supervisor and ask for guidance -- he's never been in this situation before, and he'll call her back.

Link. The mysterious agent managed to get away before police were able to gather evidence of her breaking into the house. The detail about the open house being slated for Sunday makes me wonder whose house this woman was showing on Saturday.

Indexed by tags crime, scam, Los Angeles, real estate, open house, Craigslist.
Image credits: "House for sale, too," Transguyjay, courtesy Flickr, acquired via Creative Commons license.

Tracking Down the Speedo Man: The Fire

2007-06-25T15:06:00.000-04:00

Part 2 in a series (previously, next)
Originally published in Unfiltered Magazine, Spring 2000, by Paul Schramski

2:15 – These men gave us little information to go on, so we followed our instincts. Signs in front of a collapsing strip mall read, "Honk if you like low prices." I honked quite a few times, and then circled back around to honk for emphasis. This act did very little to scare the Bikeman out of hiding. We kept driving until we caught sight of some smoke. Like pack rats drawn to metal, we dodged down alleys and cut across avenues until we found the source. Several firefighters attempted to put out an old wooden fence near the Wildcat House. The entire neighborhood watched the spectacle. Unless the Bikeman was a pyromaniac, he had very little to do with the fire. Disappointed by the lack of the Bikeman's presence thus far, we retraced our steps down Speedway.

Indexed by tags Tucson, homeless, Bikeman, cycling.

Chimpanzee Martial-Arts Army Prepares for Domination

2007-06-25T14:28:00.000-04:00

While you've been watching So You Think You Can Dance, this chimp has been preparing to kick the ever-loving crud out of you:

(Via This Just In.)

Indexed by tags martial arts, karate, chimpanzee, ape, monkey, animals.

When Diplomatic Parking Immunity Attacks

2007-06-25T13:58:00.000-04:00

A study (PDF) last year by American economists demonstrated a significant correlation between the degree of a country's corruption (as measured by surveys) and its diplomats' willingness to park illegally in New York City. Since diplomats enjoy diplomatic immunity, they need not pay parking fines, but some of them have proven more interested in taking advantage of this immunity than others. While the representatives from twenty-two nations, including the United Kingdom, Japan, and Canada had no violations over a five-year period, Kuwait averaged 246.2 violations per diplomat, followed by Egypt, Chad, Sudan, and Bulgaria.

A new report by the BBC displays a similar trend in London, where diplomats seek to avoid fines imposed for shirking the city's congestion charge. Japan, which had been dutiful in New York, breaks into the top four in London, joined by corruption all-stars Nigeria and Sudan. But the worst offender of all? The United States:

The US embassy - along with many others - has refused to pay the congestion fee on the grounds that it is tax; and therefore diplomats are exempt from paying it.

It has led to stinging criticism from London mayor Ken Livingstone, who branded US ambassador Robert Tuttle a "venal little crook" for his refusal to pay.

Link (via Freakonomics Blog). Shall we judge ourselves by the company we keep?

Indexed by tags crime, parking, violation, London, congestion, foreign, diplomat, corruption.
Image credits: "DSCF4939," se5 Forum for Camberwell, courtesy Flickr, borrowed for news-reporting and comment purposes.

Meanwhile, in Montrose . . .

2007-06-25T13:54:00.001-04:00

A historically racist organization inducts a dozen new young women.

Indexed by tag Montrose.

Tracking Down the Speedo Man

2007-06-24T20:44:00.000-04:00

Part 1 in a series (next)
Originally published in Unfiltered Magazine, Spring 2000, by Paul Schramski

I had seen him weeks before, riding down Speedway Boulevard. His leathery skin glistened in the midday sun as he pedaled, half naked, up a paved incline. Called the "Bikeman" by some, he has become one of the most recognized faces in Tucson, but who is he?

1:45 – My friend Brian and I took off after this very question. Driving eastward we met homeless men at many lights and gave them donations or bought newspapers in exchange for information. Many remarked that they had seen him, though none could remember when. These men seemed shocked at our inquisitiveness, but were pleasant in their remarks. The Bikeman was an apparition they saw daily causing them to question their sanity and sobriety. He mocked them like some Saharan mirage.

Indexed by tags Tucson, homeless, Bikeman, cycling.

May We Suggest . . .

2007-06-21T13:21:00.000-04:00

The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. This John Ford film has John Wayne as a cowboy and Jimmy Stewart as a Philadelphia lawyer, not to mention Lee Marvin as the title's ironically named villain. Yet it gets no love these days. It seems every Western has to tear down the myth of the West and reinvent the genre, and this is no exception, but it at least it excels at what it sets out to do. Plus it comes equipped with a complex message. Watch it as a truly insightful allegory of the tension between law in a democratic society and man in a state of nature. Or, you know, for John Wayne shooting at people.

Using literally literally. I've grown a lot in the past few years when it comes to relaxing my English usage sticklerness, but I'm sticking to my guns about literally. It's got such a good original meaning: "Despite what I'm saying being a cliché, I mean that you should take it in its nonidomatic, plain-meaning sense." Instead, it's used all the time (and yes, has been for some time) to signify "I understand that what I'm saying is a cliché, and I do mean it figuratively, but I want to generically intensify it so that you don't dismiss it as a mere cliché." If you've got to adverb it up, please use actually or really, which are perfectly suitable in their generic senses, instead. If we don't preserve literally, how are we going to know when somebody truly does explode with emotion?

Key lime pie. Mrs. Good Reverend made this twice recently, and I must say it clearly deserves a comeback. It's fruity, it's pudding, it's pie—it's got everything you could want in a dessert. Except chocolate. But you can't have chocolate every time, can you? I'm so hungry right now.

Indexed by tags suggestions, movies, Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, John Wayne, Jimmy Stewart, John Ford, Westerns, language, usage, English, literally, food and drink, dessert, key lime pie.
Image credits: "Cock and Pussy," matty!, courtesy Flickr, borrowed for news-reporting and comment purposes; "Key Lime Pie," Mrs. Maddog, courtesy Flickr, borrowed for news-reporting and comment purposes.

An Older 'Whole Nine Yards'

2007-06-21T07:53:00.000-04:00

Those devoted to projects like the Oxford English Dictionary are obsessed with antedating—searching out and pinning down printed uses of words and terms that appeared earlier than the earliest known uses. Now one of the most elusive turns of phrase, "the whole nine yards," just leapt back by three years to a 1964 article in the Tucson Citizen about the peculiar lingo of the Gemini space program:

"'Give 'em the whole nine yards' means an item-by-item report on any project."

Link. This lends credence to the military-origin theory, but it doesn't definitively explain what the nine yards refer to literally. We may never learn in our lifetimes how the phrase originated . . . or will we?

Indexed by tags language, NASA, whole nine yards.
Image credits: "Polaroid Transfer Yardsticks," Ms. Flower Legs, courtesy Flickr, borrowed for news-reporting and comment purposes.

How to Chat in a Chatless Disney Online Game

2007-06-20T15:20:00.000-04:00

When Disney launched its own massively multiplayer online role-playing game for kids, Toontown Online, one of the features it was most concerned about was chat. As long as there as the potential for tweens, teens, and anyone pretending to be them to sent instant messages to one another, there was the potential for strangers to harass kids. So they limited the ability to communicate in the online world:

[Y]ou select a subject and then from a submenu of sentences, each automatically customized to the correct context. Selecting "I need to find ...", would magically insert the names of the items you have quests for. For all walk-up users, all interactions would be via SpeedChat.

They added a method to allow direct chat between users that involves the exchange of secret codes that are generated for each user (with parental permission). The idea is that kids would print them out and give them to each other on the playground. This was a great way for Disney to end-run the standard - since Speed Chat was an effective method of preventing the exchange of these codes, and theoretically the codes had to be given "in-person", making the recipient not-a-stranger. Sure, some folks post them on message boards, but presumably those are folks who 1) are adults, or 2) know each other, right? In any case, as long as no one could pass secret codes within Toontown itself, Disney feels safe.

Link (via Schneier on Security). But on a medium that is all about interactive communication between friends and strangers alike, blocked chat won't stay blocked for long. Savvy juveniles soon developed a system of signs and codewords to pass along their secret code within the game so that they could chat with anyone they wanted to:

Around you may see toons who have alot of picture frames at their toon estates, they are usually looking for secret friends. This is how to do it! So, lets say you wanted to make secret friends with a toon named Lily. Your "pretend" secret friend code is 4yt 56s.
You: *Move frames around in house to form a 4.* "Okay."

Her: "Okay." She has now written the first letter down on a piece of paper.

You: *Move Frames around to form a y.* "Okay."

Her: "Okay." She has now written the second number down on paper.

You: *Move Frames around in house to form a t* "Okay."

Her: "Okay." She has now written the third letter down on paper. "Okay."

You: *Do nothing* "Okay" This shows that you have made a space.

Repeat process

Link. The Toontown kids aren't quite as ingenious as the inventors of Nicaraguan Sign Language, but they sure are resourceful.

Indexed by tags children, teens, Internet, Toontown, Disney, code, language, communication.

Tennessee Crop-Circles Were "Not Man-Made"

2007-06-20T14:03:00.001-04:00

Crop-circle researcher Jeff Wilson, whose job sounds fun, has concluded that the crop circles that appeared in a wheat field outside Knoxville last month were not of human origin:

The nodes of the wheat were analyzed and found to show unnatural elongation, Wilson said. Furthermore, the stems of the wheat showed evidence of "expulsion cavities" usually not created by natural means but reproducible through the application of heat such as might be produced by microwaves.

The area within the circle also showed higher-than-average levels of radiation and electromagnetic activity. These characteristics have been noted in other plants where crop circles have been found, he added.

Link (via the Anomalist). Of course, by "not man-made," Wilson really means "not just made with wire and wooden planks" a la the Bower and Chorley hoaxes. It still could have been hoaxers armed with lots and lots of these.

Indexed by tags bizarre, crop circles, Tennessee.

The Purple Planet

2007-06-20T13:01:00.000-04:00

To make a red planet purple, you'd have to add blue, which is what Mars would have looked like when a third of its surface was covered with one huge ocean:

Researchers have long thought they saw the remnant of an ancient seabed on its surface, but they had a hard time explaining what happened to the oceanfront property. There were features that looked like remnants of shorelines, but they varied so much in elevation that it was hard to explain how they could have bordered the same sea.

Now a team of U.S. and Canadian researchers have explained these variations and drawn the outlines of the ocean that existed more than 2 billion years ago. They report in Nature that these features look like shorelines that were warped when the planet’s spin axis shifted.

. . . .

“What we don’t know is what caused the poles to shift on Mars and what happened to the water,” says the lead author, Taylor Perron of Harvard, who worked with colleagues from the University of California, Berkeley, the Carnegie Institution and the University of Toronto. “The ocean may have been gradually converted into water vapor, moved to higher elevations, and flowed beneath the surface. There could be a large mass of water deep within Mars.”

Link.

Indexed by tags science, astronomy, geology, Mars, ocean.

In with the New

2007-06-20T12:50:00.000-04:00

I just updated the ol' Blogroll down there in the right sidebar. Check out the new kids in my neighborhood:

Indexed by tags Internet, blogs.

And Now We Pause for Will Smith Solving a Rubik's Cube in Under a Minute

2007-06-20T09:01:00.000-04:00

On French TV no less.

(Via Neatorama.)

Indexed by tags puzzles, Rubik's Cube, Will Smith.

Sit-Down Urination Will Be a Thing of the Past

2007-06-19T15:33:00.001-04:00

"As a frequent traveler, I often worry about the conditions I'll face along the way. I was almost reduced to tears at an airport in a third world country when I saw that the toilet facilities for women were nothing more than holes on the floor. And unfortunately, conditions at our own airports and on airplanes aren't always as pristine as they should be. With My SweetPee, I now know I'll be able to face whatever challenges lie ahead with ease and dignity. Thanks for thinking of the special needs of the female 'road warrior.'"
- Marie

"I was getting ready for my very first hiking trip, and something started to bother me; how and where would I go to the bathroom on the trails? The guide said, 'Don't worry, you will go behind the tree and sometimes your pants or shoes will get dirty or wet.' Then a friend of mine told me that she never travels without 'My SweetPee' so she gave me some to try. How wonderful! It was so simple and made my trip 'worry free.' Now I always have 'My SweetPee' in my pocket or purse. I don't leave home without one!"
- Annie

I want one (thanks, Ian).

Indexed by tags women, biology, travel, pee, urination, products.

Kontraception Komics

2007-06-19T15:19:00.001-04:00

Read the whole story from those wacky sixties here (via BoingBoing).

Indexed by tags comics, birth control, contraception, sixties.

Grace Weston's Surreal Photography

2007-06-19T13:19:00.000-04:00

Oregon photographer Grace Weston arranges toys to form scenes that can be funny and haunting, sometimes both at once (via Neatorama). Her work is like a photographic version of Magritte.

Indexed by tags art, photography, surreal, toys, Grace Weston.

Meanwhile, in Montrose . . .

2007-06-18T11:14:00.001-04:00

Borough Council "discussed liability issues the borough might face if people formed a line in the street while waiting for their weiner [sic]."

Indexed by tag Montrose.

Name Britney's New Album

2007-06-17T21:14:00.000-04:00

Britney Spears wants you, her devoted fans (Oh, that's not you? Sorry, my mistake), to name her upcoming album. Anastasia suggests Shorn, Pantiless, or Rock Bottom. How about MILF? Or, rather, MINLWLF, or MISWFETSHGD. Or, since we all know the real reason behind this new project, let's just call it IOU.

Indexed by tags music, celebrity, gossip, Britney Spears.

Happy Father's Day

2007-06-17T21:08:00.001-04:00

Indexed by tags father, Father's Day, photo, dad.
Images credits: "Dad Trike," capnpitz, courtesy Flickr.

Awesome

2007-06-17T17:06:00.000-04:00

First half: kind of awesome.
Second half: the awesomest thing to come out of Japan since mochi ice cream.

Indexed by tags music, dance, television, Japan, Pythagoras Switch, Algorithm March.

Pluto Isn't Even the Largest Dwarf Anymore

2007-06-14T20:55:00.000-04:00

It seems like only yesterday Pluto was bumped from a planet to a dwarf planet. But back then it was still considered the largest dwarf planet! Which is kind of like being the youngest octogenarian. Now astronomers bump Pluto down even further with news that Eris nee Xena is a hair bigger:

The key to finding Eris' mass was its tiny moon, Dysnomia. Brown and Schaller used Keck and Hubble to capture images of the moon's position over time.

. . . .

The researchers also calculated the total mass of the pair—about 1.27 times that of Pluto—and revealed that the objects are made of around 70 percent rock, making them as dense as Pluto and Triton, a moon of Neptune.

. . . .

"And since the mass of Dysnomia is insignificant compared to Eris ... we really are just calculating the mass of Eris."

. . . .

[Caltech's Michael E.] Brown's work on the region helped spur the International Astronomical Union to make the decision to distinguish between planets and dwarf planets.

With that, Pluto became the ambassador for all of its neighbors in the Kuiper Belt: planetary science's next frontier. But ambassador is a step down from Pluto's planet status and even its more recent conciliatory title, "King of the Kuiper Belt."

Link (via Fark). So what will Pluto's new title be? I vote for god of the underworld.

Indexed by tags science, astronomy, Pluto, dwarf, largest, Eris.
Image credits: The Dwarf Sebastián de Morra, Diego Velásquez, 1644, Spain.

Borat Will Rend Your Soul

2007-06-14T15:42:00.000-04:00

(Via Neatorama.)

Indexed by tags movies, Borat.

JMOL Cats

2007-06-14T14:55:00.001-04:00

Yes, it's only a couple posts old, but what a couple posts they are. If you are a lawyer or student of the law and you think the LOLcats phenomenon is the cat's pajamas, you've love JMOL Cats.

Indexed by tags law, language, Internet, LOLcats.

Match the Nickname to the Poker Hand

2007-06-14T14:11:00.000-04:00

In Texas hold 'em, each player is dealt two "pocket" cards at the start of a hand. This means there are 169 possible combinations of cards a player could be dealt—many more than that taking the various suit permutations into account. Some of these hands have earned nicknames over the years. Can you figure out which nickname fits which hand?

Hands are listed high card first, which isn't necessarily the order that gives life to the nickname. Feel free to guess in the comments, but no posting URLs.

1. Darth Vader
2. Dolly Parton
3. Elvis Presley
4. Flat Tire
5. German Virgin
6. Jack Bauer
7. Jack Daniel's
8. Jackson Five
9. Jesse James
10. Kid Dyn-o-mite
11. Luke Skywalker
12. Prom Night
13. Rin Tin Tin
14. Roger That
15. San Francisco Busboy
16. Sigfried and Roy
17. Union Oil

A. KK
B. K9
C. QQ
D. Q3
E. JJ
F. J7
G. J5
H. J4
I. T4
J. 99
K. 96 suited
L. 95
M. 76
N. 54
O. 44 black cards
P. 44 otherwise
Q. 42

Indexed by tags games, gambling, poker, Texas hold 'em, nicknames.

We Should Be Playing 'Six Degrees of Rod Steiger'

2007-06-13T15:13:00.000-04:00

At least, he's an easier network center than Kevin Bacon.

Let's see, off the top of my head: Steiger was in In the Heat of the Night with Sidney Poitier, who was in Sneakers with David Strathairn, who was in The River Wild with Kevin Bacon.

Beat me in the comments.

Indexed by tags movies, Kevin Bacon, six degrees, game, Rod Steiger.

Readymade Hebrew Script

2007-06-13T14:56:00.000-04:00

Oded Ezer's Tybrid: Hebrew typography springing forth from lobsters, forks, and office chairs (via Neatorama).

Indexed by tags art, typography, Hebrew, Oded Ezer.

Whale Caught in Alaska Had Survived a Shooting in the Late 1800s

2007-06-13T14:24:00.000-04:00

A bowhead whale killed by hunters off Barrow, Alaska, last month had survived over a century with an antique weapon lodged in its neck:

The bomb lance fragment, [on the far left in the photo,] lodged a bone between the whale's neck and shoulder blade, was likely manufactured in New Bedford, on the southeast coast of Massachusetts, a major whaling center at that time, Bockstoce said.

It was probably shot at the whale from a heavy shoulder gun around 1890. The small metal cylinder was filled with explosives fitted with a time-delay fuse so it would explode seconds after it was shot into the whale. The bomb lance was meant to kill the whale immediately and prevent it from escaping.

. . . .

The whale harkens back to far different era. If 130 years old, it would have been born in 1877, the year Rutherford B. Hayes was sworn in as president, when federal Reconstruction troops withdrew from the South and when Thomas Edison unveiled his newest invention, the phonograph.

Link (via BoingBoing). Almost as cool as finding an atlatl lodged in Darwin's tortoise.

Indexed by tags nature, hunting, whale, bowhead, weapon, Alaska, bomb lance.

And Now We Pause for Bob Dylan, Harry Dean Stanton, and Peter Himmelman Singing Hava Nagila on a Telethon

2007-06-13T13:33:00.000-04:00

(Via growabrain.)

Indexed by tags music, television, hava nagila, Bob Dylan.

RIP Mr. Wizard

2007-06-13T12:35:00.000-04:00

Children of an earlier generation will remember Don Herbert, the legendary televised science teacher, from Watch Mr. Wizard, but to me Nickelodeon's Mr. Wizard's World will always be the standard. To this day I can't see Rodin's Thinker without hearing "hmm—ah ha!"

The experiments I most vividly recall are the one where he stacks the books overlapping in a staircase fashion until the top book's inside edge is past the bottom one's outside edge, the vacuum pump that sucked liquid up the side of a building, and, of course, the enduring celery-in-the-food-coloring trick:

You can see water go up the stem to the leaves of a plant by trying this experiment. Cut off an inch of the bottom of a celery stalk with leaves. Put the celery into water colored with ink. In about an hour the leaves and stem are streaked with color.

Cut off another small piece from the bottom. Notice the colored spots along the cut end. These are the ends of little tubes through which the water rises in the stalk. Cut the stalk lengthwise and follow the tubes up to the top.

Link (PDF). To mark the passing of the great Don Herbert, let's all stick a stalk of celery (with leaves) in a glass of inky water today.

Indexed by tags science, television, education, Mr. Wizard, Don Herbert.

Hiccupping Jennifer Mee Runs Away from Home

2007-06-12T16:05:00.000-04:00

Florida teenager Jennifer Mee, who had consistent hiccups for five weeks earlier this year, and whose hiccups then mysteriously went away and then mysteriously reappeared, ran away from home this past weekend but was found less than a day later:

The hiccups that forced her out of school have only been sporadic recently, [Mee's mother Rachel] Robidoux said.

Mee had been upset after a disagreement with her stepfather over a Myspace.com account they didn't know about. They disconnected her cell phone service as punishment.

Link. So she sounds like a typical Gen Y teenager with typical teenager-parent issues, and it's kind of unfair to make fun of her. But she has the hiccups a lot! Which is interesting and funny. You can run away from a disconnected cell phone, Jennifer, but you can't run away from your diaphragm.

Indexed by tags teen, hiccups, medicine, Florida, Jennifer Mee, runaway.

Did You Know . . .

2007-06-12T08:49:00.000-04:00

If you were a general, like in the army, a good name for your blog would be "Generalizations?"

Indexed by tags blogs, generalizations.

Kutztown University Cracks Down on Robot Supporters

2007-06-11T14:08:00.000-04:00

A student at Pennsylvania's Kutztown University claims to have been arrested in April by campus police for carrying an "Equal Rights for Robots" sign:

I decided to try to liven the mood after the Life and Liberty Ministries began to upset students. They came on campus with signs that featured aborted fetuses, lists of people who will be going to hell, and catchy phrases such as “JESUS OR HELL”. . . . .

I decided not to simply let them upset people, so I went to the bookstore and purchased a posterboard and sharpie marker and made my own sign. It said “Equal Rights for Robots”, a saying I thought no one would be able to take the wrong way. The protesters had been on campus for about two hours at this time, and the whole time the police were protecting them from the students. . . . .

[W]ithin about two or three minutes a police officer came over to me and told me to come with him. I was dropped off at the police area, searched and taken to the local precinct where I was held for an hour and a half. One of the protesters was held there with me, but I do not know why he was arrested.

I was charged with Disorderly Conduct with intent to “alarm or annoy” and in the citation it says I was “warned repeatedly” to stop. Neither is true, and when I pointed this out to the officer who wrote it out for me he said something along the lines of I don’t care and made a comment along the lines of tell it to the judge. I plead not guilty and face a three hundred dollar fine or up to 90 days in jail if found guilty.

. . . .

[A]ccording to one student who spoke to school officials right after my arrest, the school had me arrested because “We didn’t want any jokers.”

Link (via Rocketboom). This strikes me as a pretty clear case of content-based discrimination. Don't arrest the Jesus-hates-abortions-and-homosexuals protesters, but do arrest the equal-rights-for-robots protester across the way? Clearly the antirobot lobby has gotten to the Kutztown campus police department.

Indexed by tags law, free speech, First Amendment, protest, campus, Kutztown, equal rights, robots.

Meanwhile, in Montrose . . .

2007-06-11T08:51:00.000-04:00

The state Emergency Management Agency urges North-Central Pennsylvania to brace for impending hurricanes. Elsewhere in the country, the feds are trying to catch a weather-report hoaxer. Coincidence?

Indexed by tag Montrose.

Air Force Abandons Plans to Drop the Literal 'Gay Bomb' . . . or Does It?

2007-06-10T08:49:00.000-04:00

Berkeley's Sunshine Project and San Francisco's CBS affiliate have discovered a military report outlining mid-nineties plans to build an aphrodisiac-laden chemical bomb that, when dropped on the enemy, would cause them to get all queer and freaky:

Pentagon officials on Friday confirmed to CBS 5 that military leaders had considered, and then subs[e]quently rejected, building the so-called "Gay Bomb."

. . . .

As part of a military effort to develop non-lethal weapons, the proposal suggested, "One distasteful but completely non-lethal example would be strong aphrodisiacs, especially if the chemical also caused homosexual behavior."

The documents show the Air Force lab asked for $7.5 million to develop such a chemical weapon.

"The Ohio Air Force lab proposed that a bomb be developed that contained a chemical that would cause enemy [soldiers] to become gay, and to have their units break down because all their soldiers became irresist[i]bly attractive to one another," [the Sunshine Project's Edward] Hammond said after revi[e]wing the documents.

Link (via MetaFilter). KPIX's story, though riddled with spelling errors, is verified by this military report (PDF, also curiously riddled with spelling errors; scroll to the top of page 2) on the Sunshine Project's site. Some top-notch reporting here at the Good Reverend has uncovered a lost George Bush–Tony Blair press conference detailing the political and tactical motivations behind the plan to develop the gay bomb:

Indexed by tags politics, military, sex, gay, bomb, Air Force, warfare.

And All It Wants Is for You to Love It

2007-06-08T20:06:00.001-04:00

Attention, citizens of Philadelphia: this creature is apparently loose and naked in our fair city.

Egad. Nightmares for me tonight.

Indexed by tags crime, art, composite, Philadelphia, naked.

Mini Recipe Friday

2007-06-08T16:38:00.000-04:00

This is not a full Recipe Friday today because (1) I don't have the time or inclination to write out a whole recipe and (2) I've been wanting to revisit one of my old recipes anyway.

A year and a half (!) ago I posted the recipe to a good marinara sauce. Since then I've tweaked it a little to make it a great marinara sauce. So next time you want to make a sauce, follow that recipe, but with the following revisions:

Don't even bother with green onions. Use a real onion. And use a whole one, not just a half.
Add the sugar earlier: pour it over the onions when they are sautéeing in the oil. The idea is that it will bring out their sugars and sort of half-caramelize them (although you are not using that much sugar, and no butter).
Rather than cutting up the whole tomatoes, squeeze them in your hands until they are mashed up. This will require pouring the contents of the can into a bowl, because you probably can't fit your fists into the can. Remember to wash up first.
When you add the tomatoes, also add a six-ounce can of tomato paste. This will make the sauce thicker.

I'm really hungry right now. I want this sauce to spring spontaneously from the computer screen and feed me. But that would never happen. Darn reality.

Indexed by tags food and drink, recipe, marinara, sauce.

Random Movie Quote Thursday

2007-06-07T14:17:00.000-04:00

I've been coming to this circle for about five years
and measuring it.
The diameter and the circumference are constantly changing,
but the radius stays the same.
Which brings me to the number five.
There are five letters in the word Blaine.
Now,
if you mix up the letters in the word Blaine,
mix 'em around,
eventually you'll come up with Nebali.
Nebali—
the name of a planet in a galaxy way, way,
way,
way far away.
And another thing.
Once you go into that circle,
the weather never changes:
it is always 67 degrees
with a 40 percent chance of rain.

Indexed by tags movies, quotes.

Sneak Peek at Lost's Script-Flipping Season-Four Format Change

2007-06-07T13:47:00.000-04:00

The final scene of last month's season finale revealed that everything we thought we knew about Lost was only the beginning and turned us on our head and all that. Luckily the good guys at This Just In (via YesButNoButYes) have a preview of what the radically reformatted Lost will look like:

Indexed by tags television, Lost, season four, sitcom.

What Relationship Does Deborah Tannen Have with Scooter Libby?

2007-06-05T17:51:00.000-04:00

Scooter Libby was sentenced today to two and a half years in prison for perjury and obstruction of justice, but just as significant a development in the case—for the media, but not really for Libby—was the release of dozens of letters from high-profile figures inside and outside the administration in support of Libby's character. As Swampland's Ana Marie Cox points out, one of the most interesting released letters comes from Deborah Tannen. The letter is noteworthy not so much for who Tannen is (she's a professor of linguistics and gender issues at Georgetown) or even for what we can read in it as much as for what we can't read in it, namely, the partial line of text that is blacked out:

In sum, my experience as his XXXXXXXXXXXX has left me with an unalloyed sense of Scooter as a person of unusually large complements of generosity and kindness toward acquaintances and devotion to family . . . .

What could their relationship be, and why must it be hidden? Luckily, the letter was typed in a monospace font, which yields a significant clue: everything blacked out, including any internal spaces, is eighteen letters long.

My guesses so far:

personal therapist
sometime concubine
pilates instructor

I'd be happy to hear any other ideas, wildly speculative or otherwise.

UPDATE

Georgetown grad Maggie suggests a much more plausible alternative: next-door neighbor.

Indexed by tags politics, law, Scooter Libby, Deborah Tannen, letter.