Debunk This

You know you're king of the novel world when books are published 6 months in advance of your upcoming book, already debunking it/guessing at the plot/leeching off your literary coattails. (I refer to the upcoming Dan Brown novel, The Solomon Key.)

One Salad From Many

Apparently E Pluribus Unum originally came from a salad recipe in a poem written by Virgil. Why weren't we taught these things in school?

Assertion of the Day

The Restaurant was the most dramatic, realistic reality show ever. I caught a rerun of it last night, and was reminded how tense it made me feel, and I've never even worked in a restaurant. You can't script that kind of conflict and tension between Rocco DiSpirito and Jeffrey Chodorow (who, despite being a convicted felon himself, came across as the voice of reason and made Rocco look like a dumb, egomaniacal jerk, among other things... maybe in fact they both were, but it didn't come across that way in the show).

Disturbing Photo of the Day

Ow.

Burning Man, indeed!

Rarer Than a Gay Marriage

All that freaking out a few years ago about gay marriage being made legal in Massachusetts, and a grand total of 148 same sex couples wed the first two months of 2005 according to this article. That's in a state with almost 6.5 million people.

As I had foreseen back when radio pundits in the area where predicting some fabulous new cottage industry about to spring up around gay weddings, such weddings have in fact barely even registered a blip on the state's marriage radar screen (or any other radar screen), and yet had half the country all riled up. A lot of pundits and regular folk even cited it as a major reason Bush got enough votes to win the last election.

Ironic, and probably also a rather sad reflection on gay relationships (at least in MA). I know, not everyone in the GLBT community 'buys into' the notion of marriage, but still, it's a ridiculously low percentage of the population.

I guess it's completely consistent with our country's frequent expenditure of hugely disproportionate amounts of energy on a wide variety of issues, like celebrity trials, or missing persons cases that are televised ad infinitum.

Vision of the Day

Just had a vision for the next workout revolution fad (apropos of Rob's prodding me to get a workout going):

The Bryce Canyon Workout - high altitude exercise combined with scenic vistas enrich the soul and push the body further in the same amount of time due to limited oxygen.

Behold the grandeur.

Big Gay Ad

5 phone calls and this big gay ad is taken down early by Clear Channel. Geez, if the people of MA can't even tolerate this kind of ad in Cambridge, the gay rights movement still has a long way to go. And gay marriage will be rolled back in a year or two, no doubt.

Aru-bore

Another umpteen hours of speculation last night about the disappearance of Natalee Holloway along with truly compelling footage of a pond being drained on Fox News (among other networks). In the dark.

Greta, aren't you bored out of your mind covering this?

I say again to these networks, if you actually care about missing persons cases so much, cover more than just one for 6 months straight.

Is It Just Me...

or has global warming finally arrived? Boston is melting.

Here's hoping it's just a solar flare or El Nino II or something.

Car Payment Without the Car

I just realized my monthly Starbucks spending is probably close to that of a low-end car loan payment.

Yes, I know it's obscene and yet another reason to hate yuppies like myself.

Car Pool

Ok, it's actually a
truck pool. This is not the type of imagery that's at all helpful for redneck stereotypes.

(You may have to cycle through a few images to find it on that CNN page.)

Freaky

Check out Freakonomics if you're at all interested in some fascinating, truly original explanations for various forces at work in this world.

In particular, the chapter relating the Roe v. Wade decision in the early 70's (and subsequent abortion boom) to the significant drops in violent crimes in urban areas in the mid 90's was very intriguing. It's even more so when one realizes that neither the political right or left would be particularly happy to have this kind of theory, if true, become widely accepted.

Don't Let The Bed Bugs Bite...

Let's hope new guests do in fact get new sheets.

Fly Me To The Moon

So now NASA may just fly the shuttle anyway, sensor problems be damned? Ok... whatever. Now we're throwing caution to the wind. Why didn't they just do it a few weeks ago then?

Anyway, can we just get private space exploration going for real (finally), so we can make some progress in space that actually means something to the average person? Especially after the X Prize was won last year by Branson/Rutan with that spaceship which was so small, cute and cheap. (It sort of resembled those toy water-powered rockets you'd send up in the backyard as a kid... unlike NASA's shuttle, which just looks like it should be as expensive and problematic as it actually is.) Ok, so you can't actually do much when you actually (barely) reach space with the Branson/Rutan ship. But the fact that they successfully reused the same craft in the span of two weeks seems like a bigger accomplishment than NASA's made in awhile.

Let's hope this is for real.

I can't even watch 2001: A Space Odyssey anymore, because the difference between the grand space expectations from 40 years ago and the sad reality of our current space program makes me weepy.

Help Is On The Way!

... as Senator Robert Byrd would say. Ricky Martin has decided to use his considerable political influence and gravitas to end Arab stereotypes.

How about first working to put a stop to radical Islamic groups and the problems they cause for Arab people? Or maybe speak out against the recent despicable treatment of gays (hanging) in Iran. Oh, but that might involve coming partially out of the closet, and of course we couldn't expect you to be that courageous.

Please, do us all a favor and just stick to the soccer game anthems.

Spamalittle

Blue Security's anti-spam system is one of those wacky ideas to blow away spammers you wish could somehow work, but you know deep down in your techie heart it's just too good to be true.

The reasons are citied in this article about Blue Frog's unusual counter spam technology, which, deliciously, finds links in spam, goes to the linked sites, and tries to enter some sort of complaint automatically on whatever forms are available. Ideally overwhelming any sites that have sent out a large amount of spam... like I said, too good to be true.

Top 50 Movies Ever?

This list looks reasonable and sorta scientific, until you scroll down to Star Wars and see that it came in two places worse than some movie called Ugetsu Monogatari. Somehow, we sense there has to be something a bit off in their methods...

And where's Anna Nicole Smith's seminal work, Hudsucker Proxy?