Wade's Beef Jerky
2-1/2 C water
15 Beef bouillon cubes
1 tbs black pepper
1 tbs garlic salt
1 small bottle liquid smoke
3 lbs round steak approx 1 to 1 1/2 inch thick
Slice meat into thin slices.
Mix water, bouillon cubes, pepper and garlic salt in sauce pan and heat until cubes dissolve. Remove from stove, add liquid smoke, then marinate for 20 hours.
Remove from marinade and place in food dehydrator.
Baked Macaroni and Cheese
Mom's Baked Macaroni and Cheese
Sauce: (can be made a day ahead)
Melt 4 tbs butter over med heat. Whisk in 4 tbs flour. Remove from heat, add 2 c milk while whisking to mix in. Return to heat, bring to simmer whisking instantly. Simmer for 1-2 minutes.
Add 1 bay leaf, 1 small onion minced, and 1/4 tsp paprika. Simmer gentle 15 minutes, stirring often.
Remove from heat. Discard bay leaf. Stir in 1 1/2 c shredded cheddar. Season to taste with salt and white pepper and 1/4 tsp nutmeg.
Boil just under tender 2 c of noodles in salted water. Drain. Stir in sauce. Pour 1/2 into greased baking dish. Spring with 1/3 cup cheddar. Layer remaining noodle mixture over and top with 1/3 c more cheese. Sprinkle top with 1/2 c buttered bread crumbs. Bake at 350* for about 30 minutes until top is browned. Let stand at least 5 minutes before serving.
Sauce: (can be made a day ahead)
Melt 4 tbs butter over med heat. Whisk in 4 tbs flour. Remove from heat, add 2 c milk while whisking to mix in. Return to heat, bring to simmer whisking instantly. Simmer for 1-2 minutes.
Add 1 bay leaf, 1 small onion minced, and 1/4 tsp paprika. Simmer gentle 15 minutes, stirring often.
Remove from heat. Discard bay leaf. Stir in 1 1/2 c shredded cheddar. Season to taste with salt and white pepper and 1/4 tsp nutmeg.
Boil just under tender 2 c of noodles in salted water. Drain. Stir in sauce. Pour 1/2 into greased baking dish. Spring with 1/3 cup cheddar. Layer remaining noodle mixture over and top with 1/3 c more cheese. Sprinkle top with 1/2 c buttered bread crumbs. Bake at 350* for about 30 minutes until top is browned. Let stand at least 5 minutes before serving.
Amazon.com: meat animals food Cooking Food & Wine Books, Page 2
Did some searching online (Amazon.com: meat animals food Cooking Food & Wine Books, Page 2) and still didn't find anything like the book I want to write.
Andrew Zimmern looks like he might have something though. This could be a mammal-only meat eating guide. I'm sure he skipped human, the Most Dangerous Game! Since it's only 24 pages long for readers 9-12, I don't think it's the same thing either though. :)
Andrew Zimmern looks like he might have something though. This could be a mammal-only meat eating guide. I'm sure he skipped human, the Most Dangerous Game! Since it's only 24 pages long for readers 9-12, I don't think it's the same thing either though. :)
Angel A vs Girl on the Bridge
It's a French foreign movie shot in black and white. The story centers around a man and a woman who meet on the same bridge, both about to commit suicide. The woman jumps, the man jumps in after her and saves her. The woman is a nympho and the man is penniless, failing at his trade. They realize that they are each missing a piece of themselves and that their new companion is that missing piece. Together, they succeed as the man's ambitions are filled and the woman's emotional needs are met. They part ways, but realize they were meant to be together. They search for each other and find themselves again on a bridge, where they come together and live happily ever after.
That is TWO DIFFERENT MOVIES.
In Angel-A, the man is an indebted olive oil manufacturer and the woman is his guardian angel.
In The Girl On The Bridge, the man is a failing knife thrower and the woman is a depressed nymphomaniac.
So anyway, the Girl on the Bridge sounds better, but isn't. It's a two star. Angel-A on the other hand gets bonus for the little sci-fi/fantasy angel. Three out of four for Angel-A (which is supposed to be Angela, the girl's name).
That is TWO DIFFERENT MOVIES.
In Angel-A, the man is an indebted olive oil manufacturer and the woman is his guardian angel.
In The Girl On The Bridge, the man is a failing knife thrower and the woman is a depressed nymphomaniac.
So anyway, the Girl on the Bridge sounds better, but isn't. It's a two star. Angel-A on the other hand gets bonus for the little sci-fi/fantasy angel. Three out of four for Angel-A (which is supposed to be Angela, the girl's name).
Remains of the day
Advertising Agency: JWT Kuwait
Creative Directors: Alessandro Antonini, Mark Makhoul
Photographer: Tommy Morris
Retoucher: Nabil Kamara
Published: August 2009
I want to use both photos in my Meat book. First one has crap for credits though.
This is awesome.
http://www.twoyoutubevideosandamotherfuckingcrossfader.com/
Digital Tattoo Interface Turns Your Skin Into A Display
Well then, let's go shopping!
Want to price compare and see if humans really are needed anymore. I needed humans to help me find exactly what I needed, but it wasn't 100% and what cost did it come at?
Office Depot
Binder $1
Protective Sheets $5
Dividing Pockets $2.50
2 DuoTang Folders $1
Home Depot
6 Hook Screws $2
Sandpaper $1.50
1/2" 90* PVC Elbow $1
Shower Arm to Hose Adapter $3
Hose to Kitchen Faucet Adapter $4
7/16" Nut $0.16
AutoZone
4 Valve Caps $2
Sports Authority
Stopwatch (refused to buy as cheapest was $16)
Real World Bill: $23.16 and 1 hour
Amazon.com
Binder $3
Protective Sheets $13
Dividing Pockets $7
2 DuoTang Folders (not available)
200 Hook Screws $7
Sandpaper $4
1/2" 90* PVC Elbow $3
Shower Arm to Hose Adapter $20
Hose to Kitchen Faucet Adapter $20
Let's just stop the experiment now. For the single pieces of specific tools that you need, it's worth it to do the footwork.
Office Depot
Binder $1
Protective Sheets $5
Dividing Pockets $2.50
2 DuoTang Folders $1
Home Depot
6 Hook Screws $2
Sandpaper $1.50
1/2" 90* PVC Elbow $1
Shower Arm to Hose Adapter $3
Hose to Kitchen Faucet Adapter $4
7/16" Nut $0.16
AutoZone
4 Valve Caps $2
Sports Authority
Stopwatch (refused to buy as cheapest was $16)
Real World Bill: $23.16 and 1 hour
Amazon.com
Binder $3
Protective Sheets $13
Dividing Pockets $7
2 DuoTang Folders (not available)
200 Hook Screws $7
Sandpaper $4
1/2" 90* PVC Elbow $3
Shower Arm to Hose Adapter $20
Hose to Kitchen Faucet Adapter $20
Let's just stop the experiment now. For the single pieces of specific tools that you need, it's worth it to do the footwork.
Short Batman story: The Kneecapper
The Kneecapper
Detectives gathered around a poker table to investigate a murder. A man sat in his chair, bludgeoned to death from behind. In front of him, a stack of chips, all the chips at the table. The other four people wear gone.
“Odd that the other gamblers killed him and left the chips,” said Gordon.
“I don't think the other gamblers did kill him,” said Batman, walking past Gordon from the shadows. Gordon had long since stopped being surprised by his mysterious entrances, “And the leftover chips indicate that the other gamblers didn't want to win whatever they were playing for.”
Batman knelt down and removed tweezers from his belt then removed a hair from between the floorboards. It had little white pieces stuck to it.
“Bone and hair from the victim?” asked Gordon.
“Maybe. I'll take a look back at the lab,” said Batman as he pocketed the evidence. Gordon had also long since stopped protesting his removal of evidence.
Under a microscope it became clear that while the fiber was indeed hair, the specks were teeth not bone. They were very small chips of teeth with very small holes drilled in them for the hair.
“Voodoo, sir?” inquired Alfred.
“Looks that way. To force evil spirits to attack a victim you need a piece of them. The more you have, the more powerful the spirit. Or so they say. The sample isn't from the victim, but shares partial DNA with him. It's pieces of immediate family. Probably a brother,” Batman said, leaving the sample on the slide under the microscope. He tapped his earpiece in his cowl, “Oracle?”
“Online,” replied Barbara Gordon.
“Send the files of known murderers with connections to voodoo to the Batmobile. There was a murder tonight in the backroom of Dumas Pub. I'm going to the police station to talk to Gordon about the victim's family.”
“Dumas Pub? Harley Quinn just turned herself in for stealing the money at a poker game there.”
Batman jumped into the Batmobile, “Turned herself in?”
“Yeah, I'm watching the feed from Arkham. She looks terrified. My dad's there, too.”
“I'll head to Arkham. Keep me posted,” Batman said as he hung up on Oracle.
At Arkham Asylum, Harley Quinn beat her fists against the plexiglass. The side of her face was pressed against it, smearing makeup as she yelled down the hall to guards, “You gotta protect my puddin'! Call the police! Call the national guard! Call the...”
Lightning flashed and thunder cracked and in front of the plexiglass stood the Dark Knight.
“Batman,” finished Harley Quinn with a whimper as she backed up. She then took a step forward and addressed him with urgency, “You gotta go check on Mistah J, Bats! The Kneecapper's gonna get him cause of me.”
“Tell me about the Kneecapper,” said Batman. He knew from studying psychology how to ask questions to manic individuals to get the most information.
“Kneecapper goes after whoever makes you who you are. He takes them away from you. He kills them to cripple you. You mess with his scroll and that's all it takes. Then he tracks down your special somebody and whacks them to pieces!”
Batman stood for a second to see if she was finished, “What makes you think he's real?”
“Look, I admit it! I robbed the Dumas Pub,” she trailed off talking to herself, “I thought it was a funny name. DUMas, duMAS, get it? It's misspelled, but I still think it's funny.”
“And you found the scroll,” Batman said to bring her back to the story.
“Well yeah. I went for the cash, but mixed in with the cash was some watches, some jewelry, some IOUs, some deeds, and another piece of paper that I figured was just another deed or something, but it was the scroll! I didn't even think it existed! But I touched it and now my puddin's gonna die for it!”
She banged her fists against the plexiglass to emphasize the final statement. Batman stood still and emotionless and then turned to leave, his cape sweeping around him.
“You gotta protect him! You gotta protect Mistah J, Batman!” she screamed as he walked down the hall.
Gordon thanked the Arkham guards for the company. It was his way of asking them to leave so he could take the evidence back to the precinct.
Gordon smirked, “You won't surprise me this time. We heard Harley yelling at you from the other side of the building.”
Gordon turned to his right and lost his smirk. No one there. As he turned back, he was startled to see Batman looking over the table of evidence.
Batman started in, “If you heard her, you heard about some scroll or piece of paper. I want to see if that's what our victim was killed for.”
Gordon lifted a stack of papers and put them in the center of the pile of loot. He leafed through them quickly until he found one older than the rest in a language he didn't understand.
“This what you want?” he asked as he handed it to Batman.
“It's in Langaj, the language of voodoo,” said Batman.
“What does it say?”
“The bearer be crippled,” responded Batman as he exited the room bearing the scroll.
Harley Quinn finally had to be sedated for the night, but awoke early the next morning, gripping the side of her cheek
“Ob, my toob!” she complained.
After being restrained, she was taken to the medical center of Arkham Asylum and a cursory examination revealed a large cavity in one of her teeth. She was returned to her cell with some Darvocet and a dentist was scheduled to visit the Asylum later in the week.
The night following the poker room murder, Joker lay in his bed, completely unaware of Harley Quinn's concerns, capture, or caper. Alone in his padded cell with no windows and bolted down furniture, he entertained himself by staging a production of A Midsummer Night's Dream with his toenails as the principal players.
A soft skritching noise interrupted the play, however.
“Hey, no heckling from the cheap seats!” yelled the Joker. The two guards outside his cell had long learned not to listen to anything he said. In fact, they only opened his meal slot to push in his food and take back his plate. The last person to look in the slot at the Joker's request lost both his eyes, his septum and his ability to whistle.
Still the skritch skritch skritch continued, audible only to the Joker.
He got down on his hands and knees off his bed and tried to locate the sound of the noise. If it was an escape, he wanted in. Eventually a corner of the cell was located as the source of the sound. Joker scratched back at the surface and the skritching stopped. He scratched twice and received two skritches in response. There was someone on the other side scratching through. He checked the door, then began to work at the padding in the corner of his cell, removing the protective layers until finally a small hole, about 2 inches in diameter was revealed.
“Come out, come out, whoever you are!” sang the Joker
At first nothing moved. Then a small pink nose came into the light, followed by white whiskers, brown beady eyes, and brown fur. Joker reached quickly and snatched up the rat.
“So you're the peanut gallery that's been interrupting my play,” chided the Joker, “Naughty naughty. Now what's this you have?”
Joker took his finger and pulled from out of the rat's fur a small rat necklace. It was a blonde hair with small hard white bits looped around the rat's neck.
The rat bit the Joker's finger, forcing him to drop the rodent, “Ah! You diseased infectious exile! I thought we were sympatico!”
The rat fell and as he straightened himself up began to grow, up onto its hindlegs and into a large man with dark skin and tattoos across his body.
“Oooo,” the Joker smile childlike, “a magic show!”
The large man grabbed the Joker by the shoulders and slammed him into the bolted down bed, then threw him against the wall. The Joker straightened himself, then kicked him in the groin and stuck a thumb in his eye. The large man stood there, emotionless and not registering pain, with an eye that turned bloodshot.
The door to the cell flung open as one of the guards lept on the back of the large man and cut off the blood supply to the carotid arteries. The large man swung around, and slammed the guard against the wall, but was unable to dislodge his attacker. He finally fell to his knees and Joker kicked him in the face. Looking Joker in the eyes, with blood trickling down his nose, he fell to his hands and knees and quickly shrank back into a rat and scurried out the hole as the Joker lept after him and missed, slamming face first into the wall.
“OoooOOoooh...” moaned Joker as he turned to see the guard gone and the door relocked. Joker crawled up to the meal slot and pulled it open. Outside his door he saw one unconscious guard and one guard's uniform. Next to the uniform was a mask made to look like the guard that saved his life.
“Oh, Batman, honey. You just can't stay away from me, can you?” he mused, grinning evilly through the meal slot.
Gordon woke up with a sore tooth.
Detectives gathered around a poker table to investigate a murder. A man sat in his chair, bludgeoned to death from behind. In front of him, a stack of chips, all the chips at the table. The other four people wear gone.
“Odd that the other gamblers killed him and left the chips,” said Gordon.
“I don't think the other gamblers did kill him,” said Batman, walking past Gordon from the shadows. Gordon had long since stopped being surprised by his mysterious entrances, “And the leftover chips indicate that the other gamblers didn't want to win whatever they were playing for.”
Batman knelt down and removed tweezers from his belt then removed a hair from between the floorboards. It had little white pieces stuck to it.
“Bone and hair from the victim?” asked Gordon.
“Maybe. I'll take a look back at the lab,” said Batman as he pocketed the evidence. Gordon had also long since stopped protesting his removal of evidence.
Under a microscope it became clear that while the fiber was indeed hair, the specks were teeth not bone. They were very small chips of teeth with very small holes drilled in them for the hair.
“Voodoo, sir?” inquired Alfred.
“Looks that way. To force evil spirits to attack a victim you need a piece of them. The more you have, the more powerful the spirit. Or so they say. The sample isn't from the victim, but shares partial DNA with him. It's pieces of immediate family. Probably a brother,” Batman said, leaving the sample on the slide under the microscope. He tapped his earpiece in his cowl, “Oracle?”
“Online,” replied Barbara Gordon.
“Send the files of known murderers with connections to voodoo to the Batmobile. There was a murder tonight in the backroom of Dumas Pub. I'm going to the police station to talk to Gordon about the victim's family.”
“Dumas Pub? Harley Quinn just turned herself in for stealing the money at a poker game there.”
Batman jumped into the Batmobile, “Turned herself in?”
“Yeah, I'm watching the feed from Arkham. She looks terrified. My dad's there, too.”
“I'll head to Arkham. Keep me posted,” Batman said as he hung up on Oracle.
At Arkham Asylum, Harley Quinn beat her fists against the plexiglass. The side of her face was pressed against it, smearing makeup as she yelled down the hall to guards, “You gotta protect my puddin'! Call the police! Call the national guard! Call the...”
Lightning flashed and thunder cracked and in front of the plexiglass stood the Dark Knight.
“Batman,” finished Harley Quinn with a whimper as she backed up. She then took a step forward and addressed him with urgency, “You gotta go check on Mistah J, Bats! The Kneecapper's gonna get him cause of me.”
“Tell me about the Kneecapper,” said Batman. He knew from studying psychology how to ask questions to manic individuals to get the most information.
“Kneecapper goes after whoever makes you who you are. He takes them away from you. He kills them to cripple you. You mess with his scroll and that's all it takes. Then he tracks down your special somebody and whacks them to pieces!”
Batman stood for a second to see if she was finished, “What makes you think he's real?”
“Look, I admit it! I robbed the Dumas Pub,” she trailed off talking to herself, “I thought it was a funny name. DUMas, duMAS, get it? It's misspelled, but I still think it's funny.”
“And you found the scroll,” Batman said to bring her back to the story.
“Well yeah. I went for the cash, but mixed in with the cash was some watches, some jewelry, some IOUs, some deeds, and another piece of paper that I figured was just another deed or something, but it was the scroll! I didn't even think it existed! But I touched it and now my puddin's gonna die for it!”
She banged her fists against the plexiglass to emphasize the final statement. Batman stood still and emotionless and then turned to leave, his cape sweeping around him.
“You gotta protect him! You gotta protect Mistah J, Batman!” she screamed as he walked down the hall.
Gordon thanked the Arkham guards for the company. It was his way of asking them to leave so he could take the evidence back to the precinct.
Gordon smirked, “You won't surprise me this time. We heard Harley yelling at you from the other side of the building.”
Gordon turned to his right and lost his smirk. No one there. As he turned back, he was startled to see Batman looking over the table of evidence.
Batman started in, “If you heard her, you heard about some scroll or piece of paper. I want to see if that's what our victim was killed for.”
Gordon lifted a stack of papers and put them in the center of the pile of loot. He leafed through them quickly until he found one older than the rest in a language he didn't understand.
“This what you want?” he asked as he handed it to Batman.
“It's in Langaj, the language of voodoo,” said Batman.
“What does it say?”
“The bearer be crippled,” responded Batman as he exited the room bearing the scroll.
Harley Quinn finally had to be sedated for the night, but awoke early the next morning, gripping the side of her cheek
“Ob, my toob!” she complained.
After being restrained, she was taken to the medical center of Arkham Asylum and a cursory examination revealed a large cavity in one of her teeth. She was returned to her cell with some Darvocet and a dentist was scheduled to visit the Asylum later in the week.
The night following the poker room murder, Joker lay in his bed, completely unaware of Harley Quinn's concerns, capture, or caper. Alone in his padded cell with no windows and bolted down furniture, he entertained himself by staging a production of A Midsummer Night's Dream with his toenails as the principal players.
A soft skritching noise interrupted the play, however.
“Hey, no heckling from the cheap seats!” yelled the Joker. The two guards outside his cell had long learned not to listen to anything he said. In fact, they only opened his meal slot to push in his food and take back his plate. The last person to look in the slot at the Joker's request lost both his eyes, his septum and his ability to whistle.
Still the skritch skritch skritch continued, audible only to the Joker.
He got down on his hands and knees off his bed and tried to locate the sound of the noise. If it was an escape, he wanted in. Eventually a corner of the cell was located as the source of the sound. Joker scratched back at the surface and the skritching stopped. He scratched twice and received two skritches in response. There was someone on the other side scratching through. He checked the door, then began to work at the padding in the corner of his cell, removing the protective layers until finally a small hole, about 2 inches in diameter was revealed.
“Come out, come out, whoever you are!” sang the Joker
At first nothing moved. Then a small pink nose came into the light, followed by white whiskers, brown beady eyes, and brown fur. Joker reached quickly and snatched up the rat.
“So you're the peanut gallery that's been interrupting my play,” chided the Joker, “Naughty naughty. Now what's this you have?”
Joker took his finger and pulled from out of the rat's fur a small rat necklace. It was a blonde hair with small hard white bits looped around the rat's neck.
The rat bit the Joker's finger, forcing him to drop the rodent, “Ah! You diseased infectious exile! I thought we were sympatico!”
The rat fell and as he straightened himself up began to grow, up onto its hindlegs and into a large man with dark skin and tattoos across his body.
“Oooo,” the Joker smile childlike, “a magic show!”
The large man grabbed the Joker by the shoulders and slammed him into the bolted down bed, then threw him against the wall. The Joker straightened himself, then kicked him in the groin and stuck a thumb in his eye. The large man stood there, emotionless and not registering pain, with an eye that turned bloodshot.
The door to the cell flung open as one of the guards lept on the back of the large man and cut off the blood supply to the carotid arteries. The large man swung around, and slammed the guard against the wall, but was unable to dislodge his attacker. He finally fell to his knees and Joker kicked him in the face. Looking Joker in the eyes, with blood trickling down his nose, he fell to his hands and knees and quickly shrank back into a rat and scurried out the hole as the Joker lept after him and missed, slamming face first into the wall.
“OoooOOoooh...” moaned Joker as he turned to see the guard gone and the door relocked. Joker crawled up to the meal slot and pulled it open. Outside his door he saw one unconscious guard and one guard's uniform. Next to the uniform was a mask made to look like the guard that saved his life.
“Oh, Batman, honey. You just can't stay away from me, can you?” he mused, grinning evilly through the meal slot.
Gordon woke up with a sore tooth.
Pills, pills, pills
Mirtazapine 15mg – 1 at bedtime (anti-depressant)
Citalopram 20mg - 1 at breakfast (anti-depressant)
Diazepam 10mg – 1 at bedtime (sedative)
Lithium Carbonate 300mg – 1 at breakfast and 1 at bedtime (anti-mania)
Risperidone 1mg - half at breakfast and half at bedtime (anti-psychotic and anti-bipolar)
Lovaza 1000mg – 1 at breakfast and 1 at bedtime (cholesterol)
Niaspan 500mg – 1 at bedtime (cholesterol)
Omeprazole 40mg – 1 at breakfast (ulcer)
That's what I take every day, in addition to vitamins and supplements. I'm a crazy insomniac with an ulcer and elevated cholesterol.
I decided to do my due diligence and shop around for my prescriptions. I told the pharmacies that I had no insurance to get the raw prices they charged. I figure that would be the best way to find who was charging the least overall.
The Walmart Experience
Wally World was first on my list and there were lines at the pick-up counter and at the drop off counter, but not the consultation counter. I walked up to the counter and looked in expectantly. In the next ten minutes, I fiddled around with everything, including other people's prescription bags and diabetic syringes. I wasn't helped until I yelled, “Hey! I can reach the syringes!” Then someone scooted over and took my list of medications.
Out of the eight prescriptions on the list, three were incorrectly quoted back to me.
Total: $366*
*Cost lowered by mistakes made and recommendation of Niacin over Niaspan.
The Publix Experience
I like going to Publix for prescriptions. The pharmacists are on a raised platform. It's like walking up to the judge's seat in court. And since they hand down pills, it's like getting ambrosia from the gods. Friendly and helpful, they got all the prescriptions right.
Total: $305
Walgreens
Walgreens was the least fun pharmacy to go to. There was one window and two windows were blocked off with boxes. So uninviting. They did have a special card that if you pay $20 a year, you get a special PSC price on your pills.
Total: $579
With PSC: $471
CVS
CVS had the friendliest, most helpful pharmacists who answered the most questions and seemed genuinely interested in my concerns. This is the only pharmacy where my pharmacist introduced himself by his first name, Naresh. Naresh pointed me in all the right directions to get the best prices. CVS had good prices, but they got even better with a Health Savings Pass, a $10 card that got me a bunch of pills for free.
Total: $394
With HSP: $316
Of course, I do have some insurance and even though there's an ungodly deductible before the benefits “kick in,” pharmacutical companies give a benefit even if you have insurance. So I ended up going with CVS with the HSP card and my insurance kickbacks.
Total: $60
A Self Centered Man at the Gateway Center Massacre Reports
Victims dead and wounded. Terrified office workers barricading themselves inside offices. So traffic is backed up. Why does this always happen to me?
Seriously, a white male former consultant in a blue polo shirt and jeans had to go and start firing at former co-workers during my drive back from Chipotle? He couldn't have waited 10 minutes before walking from floor to floor.
Sgt Barbara Jones may say, “Security is paramount because the shooter is on the loose or in the building” but to me it just sounds like “You're going to catch hell from your boss because you're going to be late coming back from lunch.”
Sure, the majority of the building is cleared. At least that's better than when they were finding shooting victims on every floor they checked. No official ID on the shooter, though he was identified by a witness.
Man, I wish my A/C was working.
I ignored my RSS feeds for a couple days and this is the most interesting stuff I missed.
Are You a Cognitive Miser?
Jack is looking at Anne, but Anne is looking at George. Jack is married, but George is not. Is a married person looking at an unmarried person?
A) Yes.
B) No.
C) Cannot be determined.
This is from this month’s Scientific American — article unfortunately costs money. It’s about “dysrationalia,” which is what happens when people with nominally high IQ’s end up thinking irrationally. A phenomenon I’m sure we’ve all encountered, especially in certain corners of the blogosphere.
And the answer is the first option. But over 80 percent of people choose the third option. Here’s the solution: the puzzle doesn’t say whether Anne is married or not, but she either is or she isn’t. If Anne is married, she’s looking at George, so the answer is “yes”; if she’s unmarried, Jack is looking at her, so the answer is still “yes.” The underlying reason why smart people get the wrong answer is (according to the article) that they simply don’t take the time to go carefully through all of the possibilities, instead taking the easiest inference. The patience required to go through all the possibilities doesn’t correlate very well with intelligence.
REVIEW OF AN ANTI-MEAT BOOK: http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2009/11/09/091109crbo_books_kolbert
LOOK! A Bald Bear.
(513): You tried to wear your Jesus costume into Family Christian stores and say it was a book signing.
"Five Myths About Our Land of Opportunity"
Five myths about social mobility from Isabel V. Sawhill and Ron Haskins of Brookings:
Five Myths About Our Land of Opportunity, by Isabel V. Sawhill and Ron Haskins, Brookings: Americans have always believed that their country is unique in providing the opportunity to get ahead. ... But rising unemployment and financial turmoil are puncturing that self-image. The reality of this "land of opportunity" is considerably more complex than the myths would suggest:
1. Americans enjoy more economic opportunity than people in other countries.
Actually, some other advanced economies offer more opportunity than ours does. For example, recent research shows that in the Nordic countries and in the United Kingdom, children born into a lower-income family have a greater chance than those in the United States of forming a substantially higher-income family by the time they're adults.
If you are born into a middle-class family in the United States, you have a roughly even chance of moving up or down the ladder by the time you are an adult. But the story for low-income Americans is quite different; going from rags to riches in a generation is rare. ...
2. In the United States, each generation does better than the past one.
As a result of economic growth, each generation can usually count on having a higher income, in inflation-adjusted dollars, than the previous one. ... But that kind of steady progress appears to have stalled. Today, men in their 30s earn 12 percent less than the previous generation did at the same age.
The main reason today's families have modestly higher overall income than prior generations is simple:... Women have joined the labor force in a big way, and their earnings have increased as well. But with so many families now having two earners, continued progress along this path will be difficult unless wages for both men and women rise more quickly.
3. Immigrant workers and the offshoring of jobs drive poverty and inequality in the United States.
Although immigration and trade are often blamed, a more important reason for our lack of progress against poverty and our growing inequality is a dramatic change in American family life. Almost 30 percent of children now live in single-parent families, up from 12 percent in 1968. Since poverty rates in single-parent households are roughly five times as high as in two-parent households, this shift has helped keep the poverty rate up... Among women under age 30, more than half of all births now occur outside marriage...
In addition, we have seen a growing tendency among well-educated men and women to marry each other, exacerbating income disparities. If we add to these family changes the fact that wages for low-skilled workers have stagnated or declined in recent decades, we can explain most of the increase in poverty and much of the increase in the income gap as well.
4. If we want to increase opportunities for children, we should give their families more income.
Of course money is a factor in upward mobility, but it isn't the only one; it may not even be the most important. Our research shows that if you want to avoid poverty and join the middle class in the United States, you need to complete high school (at a minimum), work full time and marry before you have children. If you do all three, your chances of being poor fall from 12 percent to 2 percent, and your chances of joining the middle class or above rise from 56 to 74 percent. ...
Many American families need supplements to their incomes in the form of food stamps, affordable housing and welfare payments. But such aid should not be given unconditionally. First, the public is concerned that unconditional assistance will end up supporting those who are not trying to help themselves. Second, new research ... has shown that individuals frequently behave in ways that undermine their long-term welfare and can benefit from a government nudge in the right direction.
And third, policies with strings attached have had considerable success. ...[S]ocial policies will be more successful if they encourage people to do things that bring longer-term success.
5. We can fund new programs to boost opportunity by cutting waste and abuse in the federal budget.
Can we cut enough ineffective programs or impose enough new taxes to put better teachers in classrooms, expand child-care assistance for working families and provide more financial aid to disadvantaged students while reducing projected deficits? The answer is a resounding no. ... Just three rapidly growing programs - Medicare, Social Security and Medicaid - along with interest on the debt threaten to crowd out all other spending in a few decades.
So we also need to revise the contract between the generations in a way that gradually reallocates resources from the more affluent elderly to struggling younger families and their children. Such a shift would not only help create more opportunity, it would improve the productivity of the next generation, making its members better able to contribute to the costs of retirement - including their own.
The idea that the poverty problem would be much smaller if people would get married seems to me to avoid the important question of what factors are driving the change in the marriage trend. To the extent that these factors are economic and hence that poverty is also a cause of the falling marriage rate (if it is), then it's more complicated than suggested above.
Also, with respect to the last sentence, retirement funds -- Social Security funding -- is not the long-run budget problem we should be worried about, this can be handled relatively easily with a few minor changes. It's health care costs that are the problem. The argument that we should help people in poverty so that they can help pay for Social Security is far down the list of reasons I'd put forth for helping.
Update: See Mathew Yglesias on single parents and poverty.
Don't know how to use the three sea shells?
"I still want to know how to use the three seashells" - room mate and everyone who sees this stupid scene.
Let me spell it out for you, so that you, too, can be smarter than Slyvester Stallone playing a caveman. (So easy a Sly Caveman can do it)
The Japanese and other countries have three buttons on their toilet instead of toilet paper. It's likely that this movie simply decorates the buttons as seashells (like how some toilet paper holders or flushers are ornate). The three buttons are:
1. Bidet - a jet of water shoots at your ass
2. Blow Dry - a jet of air dries your ass
3. Flush - this one is easy
Now since he didn't say he had trouble flushing, maybe they changed the third and made it perfume or something.
There. The three sea shells. Now stop asking.
Larfleeze is on Peyote
I can't be the only one noticing that the symbol for the Orange Lantern aka Agent Orange aka Larfleeze bears a striking resemblance (in stick figure form) to the famous "Gonzo fist", a symbol for Hunter S Thompson and the entire Gonzo journalism movement. The two thumbed fist is gripping a peyote button, the bud of a cactus plant that has hallucinogenic properties. While I'm not going as far as to say that Larfleeze is on peyote, it's worth noting that Gonzo journalism is participating and giving up neutrality in the subject. Larfleeze literally makes his entire Orange Lantern Corp out of himself, participating in everything and taking a self-absorbed stand on every issue.
Left: Orange Lantern symbol
Right: Gonzo Journalism symbol
Left: Orange Lantern symbol
Right: Gonzo Journalism symbol
Sketch3D
Sketch3D: "
"
Sketch-3D is a system that enable uses to draw in three dimensions using three dials and two-color e..(more...)
JetBlue offers all-you-can-fly for $599
JetBlue offers all-you-can-fly for $599: "JetBlue Airways will offer an 'all-you-can-jet' pass for $599 in which passengers can book an unlimited amount of flights within a one-month span, the airline said Wednesday.
"
The Lists
Updating and editing the bucket list:
3.Publish a comic book
x4.Become a Jew
5.High dive head first
8.Wear a superhero costume
9.Play tennis
10.Play golf
11.Learn to change my own oil
13.Adopt a mutt
14.Throw a surprise party
15.Drive a Mini
16.Have a child
17.Deliver pizzas
x18.Create family history and traditions
21.Build a secret bookcase door
x22.Build a privacy sanctuary
23.Own a parrot
x25.Go bowling
26.Play strip poker
x27.Play mini-golf
28.Hit a baseball pitch
29.See Sistene Chapel
x30.Roast a friend
31.Be roasted
x32.Invent a cocktail
33.Take a vow of silence
34.Ride a bull
35.Own a tiny rowboat
x36.Explore Frankenstein Place
37.Get plastic surgery
40.Go to Cuba
41.Read "Catcher in the Rye"
43.Solve a mystery
45.Visit Death Valley
46.Fight a criminal
47.Give a gallon of blood
48.Mop 'n' Glo my hair
50.Get thrown out of a buffet
51.Eat nutria
52.Swim with sharks
x53.Support my family
55.Ride a horse
56.Live in a studio
57.Hang glide
58.Smoke out in Amsterdam
54.Like my body / 60.Proudly wear my spandex shirt
62.Fence
63.Bribe a maitre'd
65.Sky dive
x66.Play at high roller tables
x67.Get a passport
69.Walk on fire
x70.Try absinthe
x73.See hot strippers
79.Escape a straitjacket
81.Own a motorcycle
82.Renew my vows
84.Send Kiri flowers at work
x86.Pay off credit cards
87.Buy a house
x88.Make a cool toy
89.Teach in Japan
x96.Recreate pirate costume
x100.Re-read "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory"
102.Eat at Le Coq Au Vin
106.Sleep upside down
107.Go under a false name on vacation
x109.Compete in an eating competition
110.Risk my life
111.Fight
116.Learn to play an instrument
x118.Visit the Coke Museum
x122.Teach someone the value of "excitement and adventure"
x123.Join Mensa
124.Join the Masons
24.Re-film a Three Stooges short / 125.Direct a movie
126.Own a print of "Son of Man"
127.Send my Dad a print of "Creation of Adam"
x129.Have great sex
x130.Fulfill someone's sexual fantasy
x132.Make sure Danielle is doing well
133.Get Ms Hilley a really good gift
+134. Go to Burning Man
x135. Hang out of the Sears Tower
x136. Eat the original Pizzeria Uno
137. Feed someone else Scrapple.
The list of animals I haven't eaten:
Carabao
Yak
Dog
Fox
Wolf
Domestic Cat
Tiger
Lion
Horse
Donkey
Zebra
Pika
Koala
Opossum
Wallaby
Bighorn sheep
Peccary (Javelina)
Red River Hog
Bushpig
Moose
Antelope
Giraffe
Red deer
Gorilla
Orangutan
Chimpanzee
Bonobo
Human (cannibalism)
Monkey
Beaver
Guinea pig
Capybara
Muskrat
Rat
Greater Cane Rat ("Grasscutter")
Paca (Agouti or tepezcuintle)
Nutria
Groundhog
Whale
Dolphin
Walrus
Earless seal
Eared seal
Bear
Elephant
Raccoon
Rhinoceros
Weasel
Camel
Dove
Grouse
Guineafowl
Partridge
Crow
Pigeon
Woodcock
Ptarmigan
Lizard
Iguana
Crocodile
Salamander
Toad
Fugu (Tetraodontidae, Blow fish, Puffer fish)
Kingfish
Orange Roughy
Walleye
Chilean sea urchin
Grasshoppers
Ants
Bees
Cockroaches
Beetles
Jumiles
Grubs
Caterpillars
Spiders
Scorpions
Abalone
Loco
Cuttlefish
3.Publish a comic book
x4.Become a Jew
5.High dive head first
8.Wear a superhero costume
9.Play tennis
10.Play golf
11.Learn to change my own oil
13.Adopt a mutt
14.Throw a surprise party
15.Drive a Mini
16.Have a child
17.Deliver pizzas
x18.Create family history and traditions
21.Build a secret bookcase door
x22.Build a privacy sanctuary
23.Own a parrot
x25.Go bowling
26.Play strip poker
x27.Play mini-golf
28.Hit a baseball pitch
29.See Sistene Chapel
x30.Roast a friend
31.Be roasted
x32.Invent a cocktail
33.Take a vow of silence
34.Ride a bull
35.Own a tiny rowboat
x36.Explore Frankenstein Place
37.Get plastic surgery
40.Go to Cuba
41.Read "Catcher in the Rye"
43.Solve a mystery
45.Visit Death Valley
46.Fight a criminal
47.Give a gallon of blood
48.Mop 'n' Glo my hair
50.Get thrown out of a buffet
51.Eat nutria
52.Swim with sharks
x53.Support my family
55.Ride a horse
56.Live in a studio
57.Hang glide
58.Smoke out in Amsterdam
54.Like my body / 60.Proudly wear my spandex shirt
62.Fence
63.Bribe a maitre'd
65.Sky dive
x66.Play at high roller tables
x67.Get a passport
69.Walk on fire
x70.Try absinthe
x73.See hot strippers
79.Escape a straitjacket
81.Own a motorcycle
82.Renew my vows
84.Send Kiri flowers at work
x86.Pay off credit cards
87.Buy a house
x88.Make a cool toy
89.Teach in Japan
x96.Recreate pirate costume
x100.Re-read "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory"
102.Eat at Le Coq Au Vin
106.Sleep upside down
107.Go under a false name on vacation
x109.Compete in an eating competition
110.Risk my life
111.Fight
116.Learn to play an instrument
x118.Visit the Coke Museum
x122.Teach someone the value of "excitement and adventure"
x123.Join Mensa
124.Join the Masons
24.Re-film a Three Stooges short / 125.Direct a movie
126.Own a print of "Son of Man"
127.Send my Dad a print of "Creation of Adam"
x129.Have great sex
x130.Fulfill someone's sexual fantasy
x132.Make sure Danielle is doing well
133.Get Ms Hilley a really good gift
+134. Go to Burning Man
x135. Hang out of the Sears Tower
x136. Eat the original Pizzeria Uno
137. Feed someone else Scrapple.
The list of animals I haven't eaten:
Carabao
Yak
Dog
Fox
Wolf
Domestic Cat
Tiger
Lion
Horse
Donkey
Zebra
Pika
Koala
Opossum
Wallaby
Bighorn sheep
Peccary (Javelina)
Red River Hog
Bushpig
Moose
Antelope
Giraffe
Red deer
Gorilla
Orangutan
Chimpanzee
Bonobo
Human (cannibalism)
Monkey
Beaver
Guinea pig
Capybara
Muskrat
Rat
Greater Cane Rat ("Grasscutter")
Paca (Agouti or tepezcuintle)
Nutria
Groundhog
Whale
Dolphin
Walrus
Earless seal
Eared seal
Bear
Elephant
Raccoon
Rhinoceros
Weasel
Camel
Dove
Grouse
Guineafowl
Partridge
Crow
Pigeon
Woodcock
Ptarmigan
Lizard
Iguana
Crocodile
Salamander
Toad
Fugu (Tetraodontidae, Blow fish, Puffer fish)
Kingfish
Orange Roughy
Walleye
Chilean sea urchin
Grasshoppers
Ants
Bees
Cockroaches
Beetles
Jumiles
Grubs
Caterpillars
Spiders
Scorpions
Abalone
Loco
Cuttlefish
What good is a gun if you don't keep ...
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Adam's RCP Journal
Adam's RCP Journal
Quick preface: This is a journal detailing my trip to the RCP and my completion of it. I went to Jacksonville and had certain instructors. Your mileage may vary.
I stayed at the Knights Inn in Jacksonville. In the end, I was happy with it. It was next door to the range as in I could look out my window and see the range and tell you who was on it and talk with them. It had a fridge and a microwave besides the usual amenities. It was a bad part of town, however. Police visited the motel and the Days Inn across the street four times in the week I was there. And it was still a drive to the classroom, which was located on a small airport in a hangar's office. Still, the cost was $42 a night from the Knights Inn website and the microwave/fridge meant I didn't have to eat out every day.
We first met in the host school's classroom where we had a little introduction game and we met our instructors. Our class had four instructors. While one taught us, the others would surf the net or watch Hancock on DVD. There were four large parts to the RCP that stretched over the week.
1. Direct instruction
This is where we were specifically told what to do, what we did right, what we did wrong, etc. There is a written test at the end of this segment. No one in our class scored below a 90%. There were two odd questions. One is the msf website URL (www.msf-usa.org) and the other was something equally trivial.
2. Pretending we're students
This is where the RCP Coaches run us through the BRC, showing us how it's meant to be done. This includes the normal BRC Skills Evaluation in which you can only score 10 points and still pass. We all passed, but I have heard of some people failing it due to mishaps that result in 15 points.
3. Peer Teaching
This is where we are assigned certain classroom portions and exercises. While one person (or two on the range) is teaching, the others pretend they're students. After each segment we review ourselves, our peers review us, and the instructors review us. This consists of talking about how and what we did openly.
4. The Real BRC
We get a class of real students and trade off in the same order as in Peer Teaching. We are evaluated on cards by the instructors. The peers are given cards to evaluate as well, but it's just to keep everyone paying attention. We were told that receiving a certain amount of Unsatisfactory marks on your exercises can result in failing the course, but someone in our class scored five "Unsats" on the range and did fine.
The best tool I was given for the RCP was the modified Rider Handbook with all the answers and questions and highlighted bits in it. Everyone was jealous of that and it helped immensely in the classroom teaching portions. Other things that helped in the classroom was to understand what the instructors wanted to see. They wanted each "training aide" (not video) to be "hooked" and "unhooked". This means that before the video, you say something intriguing about it to make the student pay attention. (Example: Surfaces and Cargo, "We've seen some training aides on the motorcycle itself, but this next one is going to talk about everything below and above it.") You will then be expected to "unhook" the training aide with something like "Did any of you see any conditions we experience often here?" Assigning of questions should be written on the board so that other peers can reference them easy. And when you are getting answers for questions, the very best style is to remain totally quiet as they keep shouting off answers and discussing amongst themselves. That won't happen, but it's the direction you want to steer the class towards.
On the range, the most important step is to pre-brief, both with your partner and an instructor. This means that you talk with your partner and talk yourselves through every step of your exercise. Where will the bikes be staged at? Who's doing the demo? Where will the talker be? Will he remember to be behind the students? Does the demo rider need hand signals from the talker or will a "1-2-3 next part" timing be enough? How will the demo be ridden? Where will the demo end? Where will the demo rider park his bike? What reversal will you use (and demo)? What staging pattern will you use (and demo)? What hand signals will you need to communicate with each other? What will you do if you can't get the attention of each other? Who will be there to catch them at staging? After you have a plan for all of this, you pre-brief with an instructor, going over your plan with them.
During the range exercises, safety will be observed closely. During Peer Teaching, fun will be had at your expense by trying to sneak in purposeful screw ups both with instructors and your peers. Examples would be a helmet being worn incorrectly or unfastened, lack of safety gear, choke left on, etc. They have a character called "Billy Bob" they threaten to use which is one of the instructors acting like an idiot. Watch what you say to "Billy Bob" as the instructor is looking for anything to screw up on. If you tell him to "go faster" on the quick stop, he'll fly at you at 40mph, so tell him "between 12 and 18mph" instead of faster. If you don't make a motion to shift down to first gear, he'll just rev the bike in neutral.
The best advice for the entire class is "Choose your words few and wisely." They are so against over-coaching and so in favor of making things learner-centered that opening your mouth unless totally necessary is going to result in advice to talk less.
A panoramic of the classroom, taken with spy cam
The TV/DVD set up for Training Aides, and some of the introduction activities on the wall
Our instructors watching Hancock
Pieces of my notebook
assholes that say "not for me"
------
only there can you hear the phrase "key plot point on Muppet Babies."
------
of mismatched libidoes and failed sexual encounters
------
rocking fortress
------
"Have you checked all the toys for rattlesnakes?"
------
A wife that supports me as an accountant so I can write inconsistant gibberish irregularly on a wide variety of topics at my leisure, finishing the texts in either a flash of brilliance or mid-sentence where they hang for eternity barring a revitalized interest requiring the full re-writing from start to finish.
------
A new generation, born of machines with more value and worth in abstract intangibles like microcode and data than quilts and money. A generation where the homeless carry laptops and have social networks, tracking down free wifi and open power outlets. Where every moment of every day is broadcasted to a million possible users, to anyone that is interested in using it, where lifecasting isn't unusual, only the degrees of lifecasting are of importance.
------
Police beatings are nothing like they were in the sixties and before that. The prevalance of television cameras catching riots quickly quelled the police force's undue rage while today every person has a camera in three or more of their personal devices they carry with them. A single beating is quickly broadcasted, reproduced without written consent, and funnelled to the necessary sources so that the officer is properly punished and god help him if his department doesn't do it. Because if you aren't punished correctly, the internet will punish you, and god have mercy on your poor soul if that happens.
------
only there can you hear the phrase "key plot point on Muppet Babies."
------
of mismatched libidoes and failed sexual encounters
------
rocking fortress
------
"Have you checked all the toys for rattlesnakes?"
------
A wife that supports me as an accountant so I can write inconsistant gibberish irregularly on a wide variety of topics at my leisure, finishing the texts in either a flash of brilliance or mid-sentence where they hang for eternity barring a revitalized interest requiring the full re-writing from start to finish.
------
A new generation, born of machines with more value and worth in abstract intangibles like microcode and data than quilts and money. A generation where the homeless carry laptops and have social networks, tracking down free wifi and open power outlets. Where every moment of every day is broadcasted to a million possible users, to anyone that is interested in using it, where lifecasting isn't unusual, only the degrees of lifecasting are of importance.
------
Police beatings are nothing like they were in the sixties and before that. The prevalance of television cameras catching riots quickly quelled the police force's undue rage while today every person has a camera in three or more of their personal devices they carry with them. A single beating is quickly broadcasted, reproduced without written consent, and funnelled to the necessary sources so that the officer is properly punished and god help him if his department doesn't do it. Because if you aren't punished correctly, the internet will punish you, and god have mercy on your poor soul if that happens.
Sign of the way it is
If I ever need batteries, I know that there will be some unused ones in my wife's XBox controller.
Thought Blob
It's unyet formed, but in Gulliver Travel's "Yahoo" style, a race of Politicians with long thin intestines, capable of digesting food efficiently, going to the bathroom only a few times a year and leaving a mess when they do, "full of shit", unable to breath regularly without mumbling or talking so it's constant.
Goliath's David vs David's Goliath
While Google has been trampling down its competitors with dirty tricks like "quality" and "innovation," Microsoft's Live Search team has been slowly plotting and planning to over throw the Mountain View, California-based search giant. Their entry into the online realm is Bing.com, what they claim is not a "search engine," but the first "decision engine."
Thank God for Microsoft. I thought my decisions would have to be made by myself.
Bing's homepage could be mistaken for Google's if not for the gorgeous image and hotspots, which change daily. Missing an opportunity to coin a new term that could be used in the future for interactive image based homepage themes, Bing's "homepage and hotspots" ("hotspots" being the new term MS invented for imagemapping, yes, that code from the 1990s) display a different generic background picture everyday, coupled with a few relevant links on the picture and in text below it. Thankfully, if this tickles your fancy, you can review a whole archive of their past homepages. Simply install another Microsoft program called Silverlight, which ignores open software standards.
Of course the true test of a search engine is its ability to grasp what us fleshy flawed mortals are trying to get it to find. Blind Search (http://blindsearch.fejus.com) provides the best, most neutral opportunity to see if you like Bing over Google or Yahoo. Searching blindly will lead to three anonymous columns of results from the Big Three, letting you surprise yourself with which engine finds what you want. The results can be surprising. I wanted "breakfast" and Google started listing B&Bs in the Napa Valley. Yahoo and Bing were strictly about the meal. Searching for my usual username of "adamsimon" revealed only Yahoo knew I was looking for it as a user name.
Relevancy is only half of the results equation. What about neutrality? If I search "Adolf Hitler" and get only Neo-Nazi sites, I'm going to turn in a very odd report in history class. Try searching "Linux" on Microsoft's engine and you'll be suggested to search for Windows and Vista. Search on Google and you'll get no such thing. Other fun phrases are "antitrust microsoft," "ballmer throws chair," and "bill gates steals." (link)
A big congratulations to Microsoft for continuing to design software with the porn addict in mind. IE's porn mode was so successful that Microsoft thought a lot about porn when they wrote Bing's image engine. All NSFW content actually gets pushed through explicit.bing.com, though that reroute is hidden from the end user. This allows for schools and offices to block explicit content without inconveincing home hobbyists.
The ads have hit the airwaves and datastreams in the form of "We have search overload! We need someone to tell us what we need!" Did that message seriously not resonate as insulting when they thought of it? I have noticed a shift away from the commercials that show the entire world participating in search overload and only a handful of frustrated Bing users to mentally handicapped to join in. Now the commercials focus on ostracizing a single person in the company of confused Bing users.
The ad campaign is meant to beat us into submission with a budget of $100 million dollar. Ironically a large portion of that budget is going to Google for ad space on their search engine. There must be wiser ways to use money than to give it to competition. For instance, for $100 million dollars, you could buy two thousand years of innovation and entrepreneurship by paying $50,000 annually to a thousand entrepreneurs to work for two years and share IP rights. (link)
Bing seems to be following in the footsteps of other Microsoft "innovations" by using half of the ideas others have proven effectively, then packaging it in outrageously expensive clothes, hoping to impress the teeming masses. While it is a valid entry into the industry, once you get passed the pomp and circumstance, it becomes quite clear that the emperor is buck ass naked.
Thank God for Microsoft. I thought my decisions would have to be made by myself.
Bing's homepage could be mistaken for Google's if not for the gorgeous image and hotspots, which change daily. Missing an opportunity to coin a new term that could be used in the future for interactive image based homepage themes, Bing's "homepage and hotspots" ("hotspots" being the new term MS invented for imagemapping, yes, that code from the 1990s) display a different generic background picture everyday, coupled with a few relevant links on the picture and in text below it. Thankfully, if this tickles your fancy, you can review a whole archive of their past homepages. Simply install another Microsoft program called Silverlight, which ignores open software standards.
Of course the true test of a search engine is its ability to grasp what us fleshy flawed mortals are trying to get it to find. Blind Search (http://blindsearch.fejus.com) provides the best, most neutral opportunity to see if you like Bing over Google or Yahoo. Searching blindly will lead to three anonymous columns of results from the Big Three, letting you surprise yourself with which engine finds what you want. The results can be surprising. I wanted "breakfast" and Google started listing B&Bs in the Napa Valley. Yahoo and Bing were strictly about the meal. Searching for my usual username of "adamsimon" revealed only Yahoo knew I was looking for it as a user name.
Relevancy is only half of the results equation. What about neutrality? If I search "Adolf Hitler" and get only Neo-Nazi sites, I'm going to turn in a very odd report in history class. Try searching "Linux" on Microsoft's engine and you'll be suggested to search for Windows and Vista. Search on Google and you'll get no such thing. Other fun phrases are "antitrust microsoft," "ballmer throws chair," and "bill gates steals." (link)
A big congratulations to Microsoft for continuing to design software with the porn addict in mind. IE's porn mode was so successful that Microsoft thought a lot about porn when they wrote Bing's image engine. All NSFW content actually gets pushed through explicit.bing.com, though that reroute is hidden from the end user. This allows for schools and offices to block explicit content without inconveincing home hobbyists.
The ads have hit the airwaves and datastreams in the form of "We have search overload! We need someone to tell us what we need!" Did that message seriously not resonate as insulting when they thought of it? I have noticed a shift away from the commercials that show the entire world participating in search overload and only a handful of frustrated Bing users to mentally handicapped to join in. Now the commercials focus on ostracizing a single person in the company of confused Bing users.
The ad campaign is meant to beat us into submission with a budget of $100 million dollar. Ironically a large portion of that budget is going to Google for ad space on their search engine. There must be wiser ways to use money than to give it to competition. For instance, for $100 million dollars, you could buy two thousand years of innovation and entrepreneurship by paying $50,000 annually to a thousand entrepreneurs to work for two years and share IP rights. (link)
Bing seems to be following in the footsteps of other Microsoft "innovations" by using half of the ideas others have proven effectively, then packaging it in outrageously expensive clothes, hoping to impress the teeming masses. While it is a valid entry into the industry, once you get passed the pomp and circumstance, it becomes quite clear that the emperor is buck ass naked.
Mr Kennedy released, my plan develops
http://www.wwe.com/inside/news/kennedyreleased
This is wonderful, because ever since I first saw Eric Young, I was wishing and hoping for this day. Now Kennedy can be brought to TNA as Eric Young's older brother and they can tag team. :) That would be sweet.
This is wonderful, because ever since I first saw Eric Young, I was wishing and hoping for this day. Now Kennedy can be brought to TNA as Eric Young's older brother and they can tag team. :) That would be sweet.
VHS Tea and other Brazilian homemade highs
Click
I like the chloroform mix. Seems like if you need to loosen someone's tongue, it'd be what to use.
8 fl oz. ether
15 fl oz. chloroform
2 fl oz. grain alcohol or nail-polish remover
2 fl oz. perfume essence
I like the chloroform mix. Seems like if you need to loosen someone's tongue, it'd be what to use.
8 fl oz. ether
15 fl oz. chloroform
2 fl oz. grain alcohol or nail-polish remover
2 fl oz. perfume essence
"Proud non-reader" Kanye West turns author
Good article on Kanye West saying he hates books and yet he would like you to buy his, which has a sentence per two pages for 52 pages, saying things like "Life is 5% what happens and 95% how you react."
He's a gay fish, you know.
I think one part of the article was interesting. His mother was a retired university English professor. He dedicates his ass-book to her, which is SO insulting, but the interesting thing is that she died in 2007 due to complications following cosmetic surgery.
Hmm... why would a retried English professor suddenly decide to get cosmetic surgery invasive enough to kill her? I'm betting it was a present from her newly rich rapper son. I think Kanye West is responsible for his mom's death.
He's a gay fish, you know.
I think one part of the article was interesting. His mother was a retired university English professor. He dedicates his ass-book to her, which is SO insulting, but the interesting thing is that she died in 2007 due to complications following cosmetic surgery.
Hmm... why would a retried English professor suddenly decide to get cosmetic surgery invasive enough to kill her? I'm betting it was a present from her newly rich rapper son. I think Kanye West is responsible for his mom's death.
On the future of books
Got to reading Transmetropolian by chance and it gave me an itch to write.
Transmet is the story of Spider Jerusalem, a pissed off journalist in the near future. Transmet is co-created by Darick Robertson, who also co-created The Boys, one of the few comics worthy of the term "good" that's still being run. Spider Jerusalem is a rip-off of Raoul Duke, the main character of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, which in itself is a fictionalized autobiography of Hunter S. Thompson. But Transmet predates the movie by a year and while parallel production is possible, I'm calling Transmet the first of the two. Hunter S. Thompson got the honor of being on of Cracked.com's 6 Writers Who Accidentally Crapped Out Masterpieces:
Thompson, never one for deadlines, responsibilities or coherence,
started sending his bosses pages ripped out of his personal journal. Go
ahead, try that at your job, see how it goes. Especially if your
journal includes paragraphs like this:"The sporting editors had also given me $300 in cash, most of
which was already spent on extremely dangerous drugs. The trunk of the
car looked like a mobile police narcotics lab. We had two bags of
grass, 75 pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter
acid, a saltshaker half-full of cocaine, and a whole galaxy of
multi-colored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers . . . and also a
quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of Budweiser, a pint of raw
ether and two dozen amyls."But, if you're Hunter S. Thompson, your editor sends it off for immediate publication and you become the voice of your generation.
The lesson? Contrary to what your parents told you, drugs and motorcycle racing go together beautifully.
I can't say Fear and Loathing without saying: "We can't stop here. This is bat country."
I'd like to write and the first thought is write a book, an endeavor I've started on three separate occasions with failure each time. Do we even need books anymore? Books in the traditional sense, I mean. Heresy for an English teacher, but then again, I am a former English teacher, aren't I? Removed from my position of trust because nobody trusted me.
Books on the other hand aren't the same as they were, if they ever were how we romanticized them as being. Non-fiction dominates with self-help leading the charge at that brigade. Behind that are observational humor of comedians and finally fiction. We get things like Twilight and Harry Potter and book sets instead of books. Serial novels. Like how we perfected digital cellphone technology and said, "You know what? I want my 21st century communications device to behave like a Vietnam walkie-talkie" we've been slipping backwards into the realm of the serial from the early days of cinema. This sort of thing is blamed on the internet and television for giving us the attention span of a gnat, but fuck that thinking. We're a generation raised on Nintendo with the answer to every question just a few keystrokes away, whether we're on the bus or getting coffee or at the office or at home.
Amazing coincidence that despite having an "inferior attention span" we run intellectual circles around the slow and old. There's no more old and wise as people only a few years out of the loop need the help of the young to manage any amount of information.
"Read a newspaper."
"We have feeds of information coming to us constantly. We know more about current events than you do and we know about the day's events before the newspaper prints what they feel is fit to print. Anyone wishing for a sepia toned heyday of newspaper is in denial."
You know the best selling books of the last ten years? Da Vinci Code, The Purpose Driven Life, Harry Potter, and two Chinese books. I don't know the Chinese books, but their General Tso makes some great chicken. Da Vinci Code was preceded by Angels and Demons and followed by The Lost Symbol. Harry Potter is a 7 book series. The Purpose Driven Life is 40 stand-alone mini-chapters. I know we can attribute Potter and Da Vinci to the Trilogy Rule which states that anything worth a buck in media will get at least two sequels, but who says that we want a single story anymore?
If books are out, then where do you turn? I know that some of the best writing I've read in the last five years has come out of comic books. It makes sense that a serial story succeeds in a serial story society. Maybe that's why were balls-deep in a superhero culture right now. Twenty years ago, there wasn't a rapper with a Superman shield tattooed on them and Spider-Man was for little kids' underroos. "Batman" was considered a risky venture at the time, but happened at just the right time. 1988-89 was the start of a superhero culturial beatdown which continues to this day.
You saw an explosion like this with arcades when in the late 70s they started popping up, but by the late 80s they were everywhere. I played Robocop in my orthidontist's waiting room and there were two more cabinets to choose from. Try to find an arcade today and you'd better be in Japan, cause that's the only place left that it thrives. Of course, Japan has always been about 30 years behind the US culturally, so that's expected. Video games were able to survive the implosion and oversaturation because they reshaped and reformed and found their way into homes as a new fixture. We're going to have to see that with comics if they want to survive and with the freeway laid out by that restructure, we'll have a new avenue for books in serialized form.
Right now we have the Kindle doing well, but now we have several other companies with their own version of an electronic book. That flat over priced type of monochromatic computer that lets you read with your hands, and carry a whole library with you. Of course, netbooks do the same thing for cheaper and they do a lot more because they're real computers. Give it a few years to see stylized netbooks combine the easy of e-readers with their price points. Give it a few more years to get a thousand competing models with a heavy market share of a single software making them compatible and you'll get your new library. You'll pick up this book and open it up and see a list of all the new news that you subscribed to or picked news based on your interests. You'll see every book outside of a copyright and the option to buy anything in a copyright. You'll have Stephen King continuing his chapter-at-a-time e-publishing and the other authors that follow suite. The future of books, of news, of anything written, is in chunks that are available immediately after composition sent electronically everyday to a portable electronic device.
And when you start thinking about that type of publishing and you think about the serial nature of it all, you'll see that we're going back to Flash Gordon's and the Three Stooge's 15 minute adventures before the feature presentation, the syndicated cartoon strip of superheroes in the daily newspaper, and the shorter, self-contained chapters of Around the World in 80 Days and Gulliver's Travels. If you don't believe me, you have look no further than the popularity of YouTube, the popularity of webcomics, and the popularity of serial story-writing in literature today.
Star Trek review
You know my movie reviews are actually popular? I have people bring them up out of nowhere, usually saying they refuse to read them until they've seen the movie. With that in mind, yes, there are spoiler warnings.
So I saw Star Trek at the bidding of Kiri. I would've waited for a ripped version at Pirate Bay but she wanted to see it for her birthday. Yeah, I'm lucky like that.
First of all, you should know that Star Trek was a big part of my upbringing. My dad thought that Star Trek and Flash Gordon fulfilled his requirement to bring "culture" into my life. I have a firm stance that the original series was the best and no movie or spinoff since can top it. I would rather watch the original appearance of Khan than the Wrath of Khan. I don't even look at Enterprise/Deep Space Nine/Voyager. Next Generation is worth some time, but Kirk is still King. I prefer my starship captains to out-talk Roman gods, fight Nazis in time travel, and seek out new life and new civilizations, then have sex with their women. On Futurama, Zap Branigan is Captain Kirk with only the lightest hint of satire. It was like watching Austin Powers if it was an action movie.
Now, on that note, I would like to point out two things missing from my rebooted Kirk. Specifically two fighting moves that knocked out aliens across the universe. The Kirk Kick, the Human Bowling Ball and the mighty Kirk Punch.
To perform the Kirk Kick, you initiate a dropkick, but you pretend you are an 90 year old woman. This usually means using the scenery to pull yourself up, jumping off something higher and flailing in the air, or attaining the fetal position in mid-air. I understand why this was not in the movie.
The Human Bowling Ball consists of something that you would expect a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle to execute, but instead you are the figurehead captain of an interstellar police force. Kind of like if the Green Lantern stomped on someone's toes. It consists of throwing yourself somewhere near the victim's feet so that it is somewhat possibly maybe conceivable that you may have tripped them. The victim then does a somersault onto a visible mat. I understand why this was not in the movie.
The Kirk Punch however, is the most devastating move in the known universe, unrivalled in its badassness and awesomeness. To describe it as a double axe handle to the back is like calling the sun a ball of fire. In all the years of Star Trek, only one man ever shrugged off the Kirk Punch. KHAAAAAAAN!!!
People like this fight because it's the only instance of the HurraKirkrana, but I like it because Khan actually shrugs off THREE Kirk Punches! Unbelievable. Why wasn't the might of the Kirk Punch featured in the reboot?!
Ok, enough fanboyism. On to the movie. I loved it, five stars. Can't say enough about it. I told everyone it felt like Star Wars meets Firefly. For less geeky friends I said, it was more like Star Wars than Star Trek. Then I saw this and realized how right I was.
Hmm... hadn't made all those connections before. Wonder what JJ Abrams thinks.
(Speaking of Wars/Trek, R2D2 cameos in Trek)
JJ Abrams is our new favorite guy. His other works, Fringe, Lost, and Cloverfield give you an idea of what Trek is like.
So we start by seeing Papa Kirk get killed as Baby Kirk is born. Since Papa Kirk is in the Original Series, things start out weird. This is later explained through Back to the Future II logic. Spock and the villain "Nero" travel back in time, creating an alternate time line. So Kirk could die as an infant and be in keeping with the time line. I actually thought Scotty was going to die in the movie once they explained it.
We then get treated to baby badasses Spock and Kirk. Kirk steals a car, outruns a cop, drives it into a canyon and tells off a cop. Spock acts all Vulcan til someone picks on his mom, then he beats the green shit out of the kid that called her a whore. Fast forward to teenage badasses Spock and Kirk. Kirk is drinking and fighting and fighting and drinking. Spock delivers the line "Live Long and Prosper" but it sounds like "Go Fuck Yourselves, I'm Outtie. CHILL!" to the Vulcan High Council.
Kirk meets Bones on the flight to Starfleet Academy. See, Commander Pike convinced him to join. "Pike? Why does that name seem so familiar?"
Yeah, I don't see good things in his future. Sure enough, he's in a wheelchair by the end of the movie, though he's not speaking with a binary bulb in his heart and cruising around in the Stephen Hawking 6000 ProAm.
Bones has the best introduction of the film, even better than the baby badasses. He's hiding in the bathroom of the ship because there's no windows and of course, Dr McCoy has aviophobia; "You know what that is? That's a fear of dying in a flying vehicle." He then introduces himself to Kirk with "I might throw up on you" and lists all the possible ways that they could die in this short trip like a cross between Forest Gump's shrimp-obsessed Benjamin 'Bubba' Blue and Pooh Bears clinically depressed friend Eeyore.
Eventually Kirk and Spock are at Starfleet Academy together and some more difference start to emerge. Spock is the programmer on the Kobayashi Maru. Yes. This will go well.
Kirk pimps the Kobayashi (it's a real fanboy moment as we never actually have seen this, only heard tales of him beating the unbeatable no-win scenario), which pisses off Spock, who was tasked with making it unbeatable.
Explanation: Kirk entered Starfleet later than in the original series, resulting in the coincidence.
Oh noes! EMERGENCY! And our regular starfleet is out to lunch... or something. They don't really explain WHY all the cadets are suddenly promoted to five-star generals and sent to war, but it does really remind me of Starship Troopers. ("We're going to WAR!")
Bones and Kirk have one of the best comedy scenes of the movie to get Kirk on board the Enterprise and you get the first hints that Spock is the one tapping Uhura's bodacious black booty.
Explanation: Kirk entered Starfleet later, so no fling with her, so she was open to Spock.
Kirk gets to save the ship from a trap by putting 2 and 2 together. The first 2 is that he was born during this same trap and the second 2 is that while he was giving a green chick the sexual stuffing of her life, he overheard some news from Uhura as she stripped to her undies. (Can't blame Kirk, the green chick is an Orion who exhudes phermones, they do make a small slut joke about this)
It's like a $100 million budget movie. Could they have spent more than $5 on Spock's wig? On the subject of Spock, I couldn't get Zachary Quinto's role of Sylar out of my mind for the first 10 minutes he was on screen. I kept expecting him to slice open a skull and eat a brain. Quinto DID look just like old Spock so when he stood next to Nemoy, you got an amazing effect without needing effects.
Anyway, cool stuff continues to happen. Nemoy somehow manages to be the worst actor of the film (but still good). Nemoy's role was fantastic. I had heard that original Kirk, that Priceline Guy, turned down a chance to cameo and it was a good choice. He didn't look like his replacement and it didn't make sense to the story, nor could it have without major rewrites the script and Star Trek history.
A few things to watch...
Pepsi Throwback and Strawberried Peanut Butter M&Ms
There. That's better. Myspace is just so clumsy. Anyway.
Pepsi Throwback = Good
Strawberried Peanut Butter M&Ms = Bad
Pepsi Throwback is liquid Nirvana. It doesn't taste like Pepsi, but with sugar instead of high-fructose corn syrup. No instead its magical wonder must be tried for itself, no words can describe it. It's like the Matrix. No one can be told what the Throwback is.
Nebraska must burn.
On the other hand Strawberried Peanut Butter M&Ms can be described with words. Words like "ass" and "shit" and "assshit" and "shitass." When I saw it I thought I was getting myself into something akin to Goober:
Even John Pinette would say nay nay to these "candies"
First of all, it is not, as I thought, a peanut butter and strawberry jelly flavor. I even had hopes that perhaps some of the M&Ms were regular peanut butter with experimental strawberry or strawberry-chocolate candies mixed in. Oh no. You should read the package carefully, for it tells the truth. "Strawberried Peanut Butter" You taste one and go "What the hell is this? This is disgusting."
Then the junk food analysis begins once the initial shock wears off and you start to reason it. It doesn't taste like peanut butter or strawberry. What does it taste like? Someone, in a fit of sleep apnea, dreamt up a wild product: Strawberry-Flavored Peanut Butter! This person thought it was genius, but alas, they worked at Mars candy company, not Smucker's. "I shall make a candy to taste like my imaginary product!" he yells to no one in particular, disturbing the migrant Mexican workers with hairnets on their moustaches.
That's what it tastes like. Like if strawberry-flavored peanut butter was real and someone made a candy with the licensing rights to it.
Are these songs by Jonathon Coulton or Michael Bolton?
BBspot - Jonathan Coulton or Michael Bolton
I got 10/12, but I actually only recognized 2 Coulton songs.
I got 10/12, but I actually only recognized 2 Coulton songs.
Link Love #2
CatGenie Self-Flushing Self-Washing Cat Box Review — The Gadgeteer -This is a new way to get out of cleaning cat boxes.
"Reviews For The Next Six Indiana Jones Movies" by Owen and Ben on CollegeHumor -Humor
Kotaku - The Millionth Word In The English Language Could Be... - noob - "A million words and all we have to show for it is 'noob'" I'm just jazzed there's a million English words.
9 favorite Google Android apps | Crave - CNET - I don't have a Gphone. But I like to pretend.
Identify: Google People With Two Keystrokes - ReadWriteWeb - I'm trying to build my online presence.Lifehacker - DIY Bicycle-Powered USB Device Charger - MintyBoost - The expensive motor makes me want to hunt down a replacement in the junkyard.
173 Radical Retrofuturistic Designs & Technologies | WebUrbanist - Retro-future
Picasa Web Albums - Ebenezer - Mad Science
6 Cent LED Throwie - Instructibles
Stupid KFC
KFC's around the country are backing up from their initial Oprah-fueled coupon catastrophe. Initially you could get a free 2 piece grilled meal with two sides and a biscuit for free by going to KFC's very careful, restrictive coupon printer... which quickly broke under the influx of Oprah-lovers, chicken-lovers, and freebie-lovers. So KFC linked to Oprah's website where it had the coupon in much less restrictive format, allowing you to print out thousands and thousands of free meals.
The unthinkfc.com coupon had a unique sixteen digit serial code. The Oprah site had a single coupon with the serial code 1234.
The dining room lines were out the door and the drive-thru line threatened traffic flow on major highways. The first victim to fall from this (at my location) was a sign at the drive-thru stating that the coupon was only valid for dining room. It could've been for the sake of the traffic or that people were passing off the Oprah coupon.
The next victim was the dining room line. I know. You cancel out the drive-thru line and the dining room line, I assume that delivery of coupon through parcel post is the only way to go, and I'm half right. Now you can get a raincheck at KFC to mail KFC's coupon to KFC and in return you'll get a KFC coupon.
Send them the raincheck and the coupon and they'll send you the same coupon back.
Two possible reasons:
1) They weren't equipped for the demand created and want to use the snail mail and "processing time" to slow things down.
2) They want to weed out the Oprah coupons.
Myself, I have 8 more Oprah coupons and 10 KFC coupons.
The unthinkfc.com coupon had a unique sixteen digit serial code. The Oprah site had a single coupon with the serial code 1234.
The dining room lines were out the door and the drive-thru line threatened traffic flow on major highways. The first victim to fall from this (at my location) was a sign at the drive-thru stating that the coupon was only valid for dining room. It could've been for the sake of the traffic or that people were passing off the Oprah coupon.
The next victim was the dining room line. I know. You cancel out the drive-thru line and the dining room line, I assume that delivery of coupon through parcel post is the only way to go, and I'm half right. Now you can get a raincheck at KFC to mail KFC's coupon to KFC and in return you'll get a KFC coupon.
Send them the raincheck and the coupon and they'll send you the same coupon back.
Two possible reasons:
1) They weren't equipped for the demand created and want to use the snail mail and "processing time" to slow things down.
2) They want to weed out the Oprah coupons.
Myself, I have 8 more Oprah coupons and 10 KFC coupons.
Par-tay time
My wife is indecisive.
It's her only flaw. It makes her very interesting. So we've been planning her birthday party for a week. It starts in 2.5 hours. We still haven't decided anything about it. Through careful process of elimination we've narrowed it down to two plans.
Plan A: We go out with the guests to have sushi, ice cream, and watch 12 Rounds at the dollar theater.
Plan B: We have guests come to our house, have dinner, cake, and play games and watch movies.
Completely opposite plans.
It's her only flaw. It makes her very interesting. So we've been planning her birthday party for a week. It starts in 2.5 hours. We still haven't decided anything about it. Through careful process of elimination we've narrowed it down to two plans.
Plan A: We go out with the guests to have sushi, ice cream, and watch 12 Rounds at the dollar theater.
Plan B: We have guests come to our house, have dinner, cake, and play games and watch movies.
Completely opposite plans.
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