I watched the first season of Flight of the Conchords this week and the verdict is: Sufficiently Funny.
Here’s a clip from a comedy show they did, not from the series. I’ve watched this about a dozen times now, and it’s still my current favorite way to spend three minutes and fifty-eight seconds.
Robots
Mang, whatever even happened to my BlogaDay sprint?
I've had the last week and a half off from the day job, working on freelance, and motivation took its own little holiday. Maybe reposting interesting things isn't as compelling to me as creating original content? I don't know, I just made that up. That might not be true at all.
Here are some links I was going to put in daily posts, but didn't:
Half the Universe's Missing Matter Found
Becoming one with the universe just got 50% easier.
Buffet Says We're in for a Long, Deep Recession
In recovery from a long, deep obsession.
The Phoenix Mars Lander Twitter Feed
Hey, MarsPhoenix, we don't care what you had for breakfast.
Brief Karen Allen story Following the Latest Indiana Jones Premiere
After dessert, 10-year-old Flynn looked up from his chocolate cake and offered Ms. Allen an unsolicited review of the film. “The funny thing about the movie is that you punch him and then you kiss him,” he said.
“Well, that’s love,” Ms. Allen said.
I bought a gallon of milk today at a "natural" chain grocery store. I buy there, because it's the cheapest place we can find milk that isn't doped up with hormones. The FDA assures us that hormones aren't not safe. Which is the manner of reassurance you get from a government regulatory agency run by the organizations it is charged to regulate.
"Natural" chain has instituted a policy in the last couple months, i.e., bring in a bag, get $.05 off your purchase. I have been dissuading stores from giving me plastic bags for years, to cashier consternation and occasional scorn. The number of bags I've left in stores by now must be legion. If there's a Texas-sized mass of plastic bags floating in the Pacific Ocean, I've got to have prevented an El Paso's worth of territory from seceding to it. And I've been doing it for free.
It is a well-known fact that I am recklessly, gleefully pennywise and pound foolish. So it cannot surprise you that I revel in receiving a nickel off my purchase. Why, over a year, this amount could add up to as much as two and a half dollars.
Except that I cannot be bothered to remember to bring a bag to the store with me.
The policy itself is fine, but their enforcement of it is textbook dumb. I am buying one (1) item with a built-in handle, which I carry out in my hand. To thinking humans, who enjoy walking around and engaging in new ideas, this is a simple matter to hand-wave away. No bag is necessary for this transaction. In truth, I am saving two bags, because I don't even have to supply one. I merely seize the gallon jug, and depart to the strains of triumphal brass.
"Natural" chain store employees, however, are no fans of the march. I must present a bag to receive the discount, and neither sweet logic nor huffy indignation sways them from their heartfelt ecological stewardship.
Today I entered the store anew, sans bag, milk, my sole destination. Standing in line, scheming, I removed the long-sleeved shirt I had fixed around my waist. I tied each sleeve to its opposite corner. And when the cashier queried, I said, "Yes, I have a bag." He deducted five cents from my total, and I placed the jug in my makeshift sack. Victory!
The true victory though, lay in noticing that the cashier did not give an entire biodegradable rat's ass about whether I had a bag. In the future, the answer is always, "Yes, I have a bag."
Pretty much whatever Malcolm Gladwell writes is worth reading.
The history of science is full of ideas that several people had at the same time.
Ars Ludi is a blog by a guy who's thinking and thinking smart about role playing games.
Last time we played D&D, there was a trap door that lead to a veritable trove of treasure, including some magic items that the PCs kind of needed.
I've said nice things about Red Hand of Doom before, but here's a place where things went sideways. The trap door was very hard to find. It was supposed to be something hidden enough that the occupying goblins never saw, but easy enough that the PCs could pick it out.
Normally, somebody in the party has a badass Spot check, and they see whatever it is you want them to see.
Except nobody did. So I gave them another chance, another round of rolls, which right away seemed silly. Nobody got it that time either.
So I just told them about it. Dumb dumb dumb. But, we were in the middle of something, and I needed them to have this treasure. Nobody seemed to mind really, 'cause, hey, magic items!
It wasn't until this post at Ars Ludi that I realized exactly how dumb that whole scenario was, since not only did it not have to be that way, there was no need for a roll:
...if it’s not a combat situation or about to become one (aka checking for surprise or attacks at unawares), don’t use Spot checks. At all. None. Zero. Let players describe what they look for or how they are behaving and just arbitrarily decide what they see or don’t see.
Remember Brunching Shuttlecocks? Lore Sjoberg is still around, but doing different things these days, notably for Wired magazine.
On his blog, Slumbering Lungfish, he recently talked about Twitter in relation to his Wired article on the same topic, which is interesting and funny, as Lore usually is.
But what I find interesting about the blog commentary is his discussion of negative-funny versus funny. No deep insights, just another approach to a topic that I've been turning over myself for a few weeks.
I'm making up a meme! I'm participating in Internet!
So what's interesting is to go to Web sites that track you and look at the tag clouds that have to do with you. Here's the tag cloud for what Amazon thinks I might care about:
Action & Adventure Adventure Christian Living Christianity DC Comics Devotionals Dungeons & Dragons Epic Gaming Inspirational Magic & Wizards Marvel Mass Market Military Military Science Mystery Politics Science Fiction & Fantasy Stuffed Animals Tezuka, Osamu Theology United States Urban Video Games Weapons & Warfare
More from the world of previously improbable science:
The new material can be poured over a site and will stop the bleeding almost at once.
George Steinmetz has some wonderful photography. Amazing things are put in front of our eyes so frequently these days, it's becoming more difficult to be amazed by them. Steinmetz is still finding opportunities for amazement, though.
Go to the About > Flying section of his site to see pictures and read a description of his motorized paraglider that allows him to take pictures that you pretty much can't get any other way.
Here is a superfast way to get me irrationally, cursing, door-slamming angry:
Make me deal with a phone tree when I need to solve a problem. I'm not even going to elaborate on this, because I can feel myself getting angry just thinking about it.
Instead, I'm providing a link to Gethuman.com, a large (and growing) list of customer service numbers for various companies -- even the ones that don't publicize their customer service numbers -- and the means of navigating their phone trees to get to a person as quickly as possible.
You may not get satisfaction, but you'll at least get to talk to someone about it.
Short interview with Brad Bird, director of animated movies worth watching (Iron Giant, The Incredibles, Ratatouille) about fostering innovation.
Here's an excerpt I would like to email to every finance department head, whether or not their associated companies are in an explicitly creative business:
In my experience, the thing that has the most significant impact on a movie’s budget—but never shows up in a budget—is morale. If you have low morale, for every $1 you spend, you get about 25 cents of value. If you have high morale, for every $1 you spend, you get about $3 of value. Companies should pay much more attention to morale.
I have a special hate in my heart for the attitude that looks at someone doing something he or she enjoys, and says, "You've got too much time on your hands." First, because it's squarely judgmental and petty to say, but second, because of the blind hypocrisy of the statement.
Because the things YOU do for fun aren't wasted time, right?
Clay Shirky is shilling a book, but he's also got some excellent ideas about the Internet and people spending their time doing stuff on it. Please read his talk, Gin, Television, and Social Surplus, for non-boring ideas about how things are shaking out for us, society-wise, thanks to the Internet.
I have a pull to link to lengthy, thought-provoking articles about human behavior or science-oriented current events stories.
Fortunately, the Internet contains enough differentness to keep me out of a rut.
Om nom nom nom.
Newsweek posts a contrarian article about how things are going in the world, The Rise of the Rest. Despite food riots and terrorism, things are going pretty well, according to Fareed Zakaria:
In 2006 and 2007, 124 countries grew their economies at over 4 percent a year. That includes more than 30 countries in Africa. Over the last two decades, lands outside the industrialized West have been growing at rates that were once unthinkable. While there have been booms and busts, the overall trend has been unambiguously upward.
The post-American world is naturally an unsettling prospect for Americans, but it should not be. This will not be a world defined by the decline of America but rather the rise of everyone else. It is the result of a series of positive trends that have been progressing over the last 20 years, trends that have created an international climate of unprecedented peace and prosperity.
I forgot to mention, I'm doing BlogaDay again this month, trying to post at least once a day for all of May.
I'm changing the rules, because I'm not bothering with all-original content this month. Many Mayposts will be pointers to things I found other places, with little or no commentary.
Posting more, saying less. It's like conservation of energy, only with teleology.
Speaking of energy, here's today's link:
We might be able to get biofuels from a microbe that we don't have to kill in the process, and that can live in seawater.
Go microbes!
Thanks to everyone who contributed potential dog names, or even expressed interest! The winner is: Merit.
I wanted to name her Ranger, because it sounds cool and adventurous, and we both like Lord of the Rings.
Meredith wanted to name her Coconut, because that's kind of her coloration, and it's funny, and we could call her "nut" for short.
Neither of us wanted to budge. Then my clever, lovely wife proposed that we go to our second choice, which we both agreed on, the quasi-aspirational Merit. Now if we can just get her to live up to that name.
When I worked at the newspaper, I once tried to get an interview with Bill Cosby. Up front, I laid out my lack of objectivity, telling his people that our paper agreed with him, and wanted to learn more. His people said they'd call me back.
When they did, you might be surprised to learn that Mr. Cosby was "busy."
I knew I wasn't unique in failing to interview Cos. The writer of this Atlantic article mentions similar difficulties in reporting on The Former Mr. Huxtable, but he still does a good job.
This Is How We Lost to the White Man
I dislike black vs. white talk, but apparently it plays in some Peorias. And despite inflammatory rhetoric, Mr. Cosby makes shrewd observations. A powerful excerpt, about the response following Cosby's famous/infamous Pound Cake speech:
But Cosby’s rhetoric played well in black barbershops, churches, and backyard barbecues, where a unique brand of conservatism still runs strong. Outsiders may have heard haranguing in Cosby’s language and tone. But much of black America heard instead the possibility of changing their communities without having to wait on the consciences and attention spans of policy makers who might not have their interests at heart. Shortly after Cosby took his Pound Cake message on the road, I wrote an article denouncing him as an elitist. When my father, a former Black Panther, read it, he upbraided me for attacking what he saw as a message of black empowerment. Cosby’s argument has resonated with the black mainstream for just that reason.
So say German scientists:
Global warming is taking a break that could last for another 10 years or so.
That's the latest word from a team of climate researchers in Germany. Global average temperatures should remain above normal, the team suggests. But additional warming – already on hold over the first seven years of this decade – is likely to remain that way for another decade. The reason? The team says it expects natural shifts in ocean circulation to affect temperatures in ways that temporarily out-wrestle the effects of rising greenhouse-gas emissions.
