Category Archives: Uncategorized

Other than the tuning issues, I like this version of White Knuckles better than the released version:

This Too Shall Pass, was definitely better with a Marching Band.

The Hobbit is really going to happen. Peter Jackson directing, Martin Freeman as Bilbo, the dwarves, Bill Nighy as Smaug, it’s going to be awesome.

Mazda apparently has a 70mpg car coming out next year. I’m sure people with legs won’t be able to fit in it, but geez that’s good gas mileage.

Day 28 – First book obsession

In my “adult” reading life, it was probably Asimov’s robot short stories. I had to read them all, and even went to the public library where the homeless guys would sleep in all the comfy chairs to make sure I wasn’t missing any.  Because The Complete Robot? It’s not complete.

Before that, I would go on Through Golden Windows binges and some green hardback about Animals I Have Known or something like that and the Charlie Brown Super Book of Nature or whatever that title was. I remember reading a bunch of the Judy Blume books and then the E.B. White books in a row too.  Tales of the 4th Grade Nothing and The Trumpet of the Swan were the best, btw.

I hold out no hope that this can possibly be worthy to lick the boots of the real Top Gear.

Yes, the guy is probably a drug dealer, but if someone busted into my house, whatever they are shouting—especially if they bust in shouting things at me—I’m not going to process that, I’m going to go for a weapon and/or my phone and/or the nearest exit or some combination of those. Which is what this guy did. I doubt I’d give any thought to what they are wearing either, I would think the guns pointed at me would tend to draw my attention.

I love this:

while they knocked on the door with a battering ram

So, not so much knocked as just bashed the door in, really.

Day 27 – Favourite non-mainstream writer

Um, define mainstream. I will define it as “is not associated with a major publishing house” and therefore choose Wil Wheaton.

Day 26 – OMG WTF? plot

Whenever I come up against WTF? book questions I fall back on my perennial favorite: The Sound and the Fury

Of course, I would have to debate whether or not it actually has a plot. But let’s not talk about that right now.

Broken bones don’t heal stronger. As anyone that has broken a bone could have told you.

Mandelbrot at TED in February.

[NSFW]

I guess Coulton will have to update the song a bit.

Flexible, implantable LEDs.

Day 25 – A book you plan on reading

As soon as I clear up the backlog of books I’m reading now I’ll pick up: Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader: North Korea and the Kim Dynasty

Day 24 – Best quote

That’s impossible. It would probably be from Mark Twain or  G.K Chesterton.

Here’s a recent favorite. That’s as good as I can do with this one.

Our days are full of nonsense, and yet not, because it is precisely into the nonsense of our days that God speaks to us words of great significance—not words that are written in the stars but words that are written into the raw stuff and nonsense of our days, which are not nonsense just because God speaks into the midst of them.

Frederick Buechner – Secrets in the Dark: A Life in Sermons

Day 23 – Most annoying character

Thomas Covenant. He’s a  self-pitying, whiny rapist. And he’s the protagonist. I read through the first book and thought, surely he can’t remain as bad through another book.  I was wrong.

This is bad news for the internet. It’s good news for the lawyers because the number of potential lawsuits just skyrocketed.

Day 22 – Favorite ending/climax

A Christmas Carol. Walk-er!

To discover that Kyoto didn’t actually cut greenhouse gases, it just outsourced them.

Cell phones cannot cause cancer, because they do not emit enough energy to break the molecular bonds inside cells. …

Where do cell phones fall on this spectrum? According to phys­i­­cist Bernard Leikind in a technical article in Skeptic magazine (Vol. 15, No. 4), known carcinogens such as x-rays, gamma rays and UV rays have energies greater than 480 kilojoules per mole (kJ/mole), which is enough to break chemical bonds. Green-light photons hold 240 kJ/mole of energy, which is enough to bend (but not break) the rhodopsin molecules in our retinas that trigger our photosensitive rod cells to fire. A cell phone generates radiation of less than 0.001 kJ/mole.

Day 21 – Favorite fictional romantic relationship

Cordelia and Aral Vorkosigan. It’s awesome, you should read it. And then the glimpses of them we’re given in the other Miles stories are awesome. I need to learn synonyms for awesome. Rad doesn’t quite work in most cases since it’s not 1989 anymore.

Spoiler alert: Cryoburn

Continue reading →

Interesting interview of the author of The Gun: The AK-47 and the Evolution of War and it’s importance in war for the last 60 years. What I know about the AK-47 I learned from Call of Duty and what I learned is it’s wildly inaccurate at a reasonable distance to be standing from someone shooting at you.  Might have to pick up the book though.

Reason goes to town on the editors that pulled the Non-Sequitur “Where’s Mohammed” cartoon.

You have to admit communist countries always put on a good militaristic show. Kim Jong Un looks like he’ll be a fun-loving and benevolent dictator.

Our national electric grid is so haphazard and unreliable it would be extremely difficult for terrorists to knock it out in one strike.

Day 20 – Favorite kiss or love scene

I particularly like how Campion and Amanda finally decide to get married. Especially after the way things got weird in The Fashion in Shrouds. I don’t know if that counts for this, but let’s go with that.

Of course, Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility and Persuasion would all rate highly on this list. As would Cordeila’s Honor, but I can’t talk about that right now.

I can tell you the biggest relief was when Honor Harrington and Admiral White Haven finally get together after about 1500 or more pages of what the heck are they doing. Admittedly, not all 1500 pages were discussing their relationship, there were a few space battles in there. But still, 4 rather long novels is dragging it out a bit.

How about NASA works on getting my moon apartment and trip to Mars  up and running and let someone else, perhaps with “Environment” in their title worry about the environment?

Letting a computer learn by reading the internet?

There are many jokes about what will happen when it comes across 4chan or LOLcats, for example. But the reality is, those texts are already available to NELL, and it is largely ignoring them because they are so ill-formed and inconsistent.

Maybe it’ll be okay.

Day 19 – Best ensemble of characters in a book

A Christmas Carol. Or any of the good Dickens novels, really. I think especially of Bleak House,  Nicholas Nickleby and the Pickwick Papers. Actually, any of those would objectively probably be a better choice, but I like A Christmas Carol best.

Day 18 – Favorite book cover

Um, okay. I seldom notice book covers. So I’m going with this one:

Since it’s the only one that I have ever consciously noticed as being cool.

Day 17 – Favorite trilogy or tetralogy

For a long time it was Foundation but you must only read the original three (Foundation, Foundation And Empire and Second Foundation). The later abominations are not to be discussed or even contemplated.

Then I read The Lord of the Rings and it is the winner now.

Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy gets an Honorable Mention.

Day 16 – Your guilty pleasure book

I’m going to say most things written by Mercedes Lackey.

Federalist Paper No. 62.

It is a misfortune incident to republican government, though in a less degree than to other governments, that those who administer it may forget their obligations to their constituents, and prove unfaithful to their important trust.

It will be of little avail to the people, that the laws are made by men of their own choice, if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood; if they be repealed or revised before they are promulgated, or undergo such incessant changes that no man, who knows what the law is to-day, can guess what it will be to-morrow. Law is defined to be a rule of action; but how can that be a rule, which is little known, and less fixed?

Another effect of public instability is the unreasonable advantage it gives to the sagacious, the enterprising, and the moneyed few over the industrious and uniformed mass of the people. Every new regulation concerning commerce or revenue, or in any way affecting the value of the different species of property, presents a new harvest to those who watch the change, and can trace its consequences; a harvest, reared not by themselves, but by the toils and cares of the great body of their fellow-citizens. This is a state of things in which it may be said with some truth that laws are made for the few, not for the many.

In another point of view, great injury results from an unstable government. The want of confidence in the public councils damps every useful undertaking, the success and profit of which may depend on a continuance of existing arrangements. What prudent merchant will hazard his fortunes in any new branch of commerce when he knows not but that his plans may be rendered unlawful before they can be executed? What farmer or manufacturer will lay himself out for the encouragement given to any particular cultivation or establishment, when he can have no assurance that his preparatory labors and advances will not render him a victim to an inconstant government? In a word, no great improvement or laudable enterprise can go forward which requires the auspices of a steady system of national policy.

It’s like the Founding Fathers knew what they were on about or something.

via Instapundit.

Scientists and the Army have figured out what’s killing the honeybees. I’m sure that somehow this will be blamed on global warming. Or cooling, whatever we’re going with this year.

Day 15 – Favorite female character

Cordelia Vorkosigan.

Cordelia’s Honor is about her and it’s a great story, but she pops up in quite a few of Miles’s stories and she’s equally awesome in those.

Honor Harrington is a close runner up. As is Elizabeth Bennet.

In my younger days it would have been Menolly from Dragonsong and Dragonsinger.

Day 14 – Favorite male character

Robinton from The Dragonriders of Pern. I don’t know if he really is my favorite, and I can tell you I didn’t really like The Masterharper of Pern (which I blame on being a later McCaffery novel), but loved him in all the other Pern novels. I choose him based on the theory that it must be what I think since no one else pops to mind.

Hitchen’s visit with Hugo Chavez. I will ruin it by quoting the best line:

Chávez, in other words, is very close to the climactic moment when he will announce that he is a poached egg and that he requires a very large piece of buttered toast so that he can lie down and take a soothing nap.

The Boris apology tour books new stops.

Some economists in Brazil tricked the people into a stable economy.

People have to be tricked into thinking money will hold its value.

The four economists wanted to create a new currency that was stable, dependable and trustworthy.  The only catch: This currency would not be real.  No coins, no bills.  It was fake.

….  All prices were listed in URVs.  And URVs were kept stable — what changed was how many cruzeiros each URV was worth.Say, for example, that milk costs 1 URV. On a given day, 1 URV might be worth 10 cruzeiros. A month later, milk would still cost 1 URV. But that 1 URV might be worth 20 cruzeiros.

The idea was that people would start thinking in URVs — and stop expecting prices to always go up.

Not that I ever studied for tests… It’s a civics test that strays heavily into history and economics.

You answered 30 out of 33 correctly — 90.91 %

Making me more civically savvy than the average American or college professor. Woo, go me. I can also outrun the average 5 year old.

Day 13 – Favorite childhood book

Through Golden Windows
or
D’aulaire’s Book of Greek Myths

They were favorites at rather different times in my childhood. I also had a Charlie Brown’s Super Book of Questions and Answers About All Kinds of Animals that I really liked too. Except the picture of the timber rattler that would invariable startle me when I turned the page and it was poised to strike my thumb.

Day 12 – A book you’ve read more than twice.

Good lord, the numbers are in the hundreds. Literally.

I read most fiction books at least twice, and a lot of non-fiction gets read twice too or at least 1.5 times.

Day 11 – A book that disappointed you

Cryptonomicon

Coming off the high of Snow Crash and Diamond Age I was stoked to start Cryptonomicon, but two-thirds of the way through I stopped caring and just didn’t even bother finishing the last 50 pages or so.

Does the phrase “the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated” mean anything in the English language anymore?

M Class planets have large amounts of water and a nitrogen/oxygen atmosphere, and a temperate climate.  In other words, humans can live there with minimal terraforming. Just because the planet is not instantly lethal to all forms of life does not make it M Class.

The planets scientists are finding tend to be in the I, J , S or T gas giant classes. And now that they think they have found rocky planets, until we know what their atmospheres are like we can’t classify them.

Thank you for your attention in this matter.

Day 10 – A book you thought you wouldn’t like but ended up loving

Bleak House

I thought it would be one of Dicken’s depressing ones, like Hard Times, probably because of the title, but I ended up really liking it.

Germany has paid off the last of it’s World War I debt.

Day 09 – Best scene ever

This one was hard, because I know there have been some scenes in books where I  totally stoked on it and grinning like a fool reading them, but I can’t remember them right now.  So I will answer with the one that I remember: the scene (more like a chapter, I guess) where Victor Hugo introduces Bishop Myriel in Les Miserables. It’s an astounding description of a true Christian.

Day 08 – Your favorite work in translation

Around the World in 80 Days.

The proper response to “why don’t you move to Somolia then?”

O’Hare’s subtle conflation of “society” and “the government” makes this sort of absurd reductio possible. Because of course, while it is true that living in America makes one vastly better able to create wealth than living almost anywhere else, much of that wealthy creation comes not from anything the government provides, but from the infrastructure of people, skills, and norms that surround one. It is a common fiction that government can somehow represent the will of “society”, but this is high-test bunkum; government is its own institution, a part of society, not the instrument of its divine will. Anyone who has studied any political science at all knows that to the limited extent that you can even say that “the will of the people” exists, it is at best only partially and somewhat haphazardly represented by their elected government.

Next crisis: Global cooling.  Let’s see if the taxpayer notices we’ve switched rationalizations on them.

Al Gore, George Soros, Bill Gates, Carol Browner, John Holdren, Barack Obama, David Cameron, Ed Miliband, Tim Yeo, Michael Mann, Ted Turner, Robert Redford, Phil Jones, Chris Huhne, John Howard (yes really, he was supposed to be a conservative, but he was the man who kicked off Australia’s ETS), Julia Gillard, Kevin Rudd, Yvo de Boer, Rajendra Pachauri….The list of the guilty goes on and on. Each in his own way – and whether through ignorance, naivety idealism or cynicism, it really doesn’t matter for the result has been the same – has done his bit to push the greatest con-trick in the history of science, forcing on global consumers the biggest bill in the history taxation, using “global warming” as an excuse to extend the reach of government further than it has ever gone before.

While we’re on about it: how the envirnomental movement became just another left-leaning lobby.

Day 07 – A writer you don’t like

Since I have covered my dislike for Faulkner I will move on to F. Scott Fitzgerald. Was there ever a more depressing writer? You could be having a great day, but read one of his books and you’ll be looking around a chair and a noose.

Day 06 – Your favorite writer

If you go by the percentage of their books I own it would probably be Lois McMaster Bujold with Mercedes Lackey, Anne McCaffery, David Weber and Isaac Asimov coming right behind.  But with them all it is about good story-telling with good characters. Their writing in and of itself is not actually spectacular.

Neal Stephenson’s writing fascinates me, but I only like about two-thirds of his books.

G.K. Chesterton and Oscar Wilde have similar writing styles that I love. And Jane Austen can turn a phrase too.

Mark Twain’s journalistic type writings are genius (his novels bore me).

To sum up, I can’t really just answer that question

Day 05 – A book you hate

So is it a book I didn’t like so much I didn’t finish or a book I finished and therefore hate knowing full well it’s terrible?

In the books I didn’t like so much I didn’t finish are two strong contenders: Wuthering Heights and The Eye of the World. I should have liked Eye of the World, but it didn’t work for me.

Contenders for books I finished and hated come mostly from high school lit classes, but the winner has to be  The Sound and the Fury. What a waste of paper that is. Deliberately confusing, disjointed and depressing. Yay, that’s what I want to spend my free time with.

Tilt-shift Van Gogh.

Day 04 – Your favorite book ever

I’m going to say: Pride And Prejudice.

This was a very hard one. I should probably do a bracket playoff of all my books to be sure. I might have been more stoked while reading other books,  but Pride and Prejudice is awesome and so re-readable, I think it would win.

Day 03 – Your favorite recent book

Beneath the Bleeding

I’m torn between that one, The Mermaids Singing and  The Torment of Others. You really need to read at least Mermaid Singing before jumping in to Beneath The Bleeding.

Stephen Colbert to testify before Congress about immigration. This is why Congress can’t have nice things.

You know that joke about the government taking your paycheck and giving you what it feels like after it’s done with it? It’s not so funny anymore in the UK.

Day 02 – A book that you wish more people had read

Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

There’s a lot of awesome quotes in it and people look at me strangely when I bust them out. It’d be nice if more people got them.

From an essay regarding the upcoming book, Mao’s Great Famine:

All have Party secretaries who manage them in conjunction with the CEO. In big questions, such as leadership or overseas acquisitions, Party meetings precede board meetings, which largely give routine approval to Party decisions. The Party’s overarching control was driven home a few years ago when China’s large telecom companies had their CEOs shuffled like a pack of cards because of a decision by the Party’s Organization Department. It would have been like the US Department of Commerce ordering the heads of AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile to play musical chairs. For the Organization Department, which acts as the Party’s personnel department, it was normal; it often shifts senior Party officials every few years to prevent empire building and corruption.

And here’s what frightens me: I could see that happening here after another bailout or two. We could ask GM or the banks for pointers.

I can’t wait for the book to come out in paperback though, it should be an interesting read.

Your favorite series of books (with more than 3 in the series):

I don’t know if it counts, but the Vorkosigan Saga is probably my favorite. If that doesn’t count then Honor Harrington.

Probably. I feel like I’m forgetting something from earlier in my life though.

Isaac Asimov kindled my love of science fiction,  super-computers that run planets and whose names end in -vac, robots, the future, space travel and Galactic Empires, so I must spread the link about what he actually said about the Star Spangled Banner.

Yeah, I don’t care what.

Egypt can desaturate with the best of them but Iran needs help with the clone button.

I kinda like these urns. And not necessarily for the Star Trek theme, the whole square thing appeals to me (though the Star Trek thing is cool too).

Awesome pictures of atomic tests [warning: slideshow].

A video of engineers climbing to the top of a 1760 ft. antenna. It’s frightening just watching it from the comfort of a chair not even 2′ off the ground. Just when you think they’re at the top, they go out on an even sketchier part. Gah.

I’m having a hard time working up sympathy for would-be lawyers that can’t find jobs in the legal profession.

Justice Breyer: Burning a Koran may not be protected speech. I’m pretty sure the lesson here is that threats of violence gets you more rights. Might not be the lesson the government wants to send people.

New Jersey Transit worker fired for burning a Koran. I’d like to see what happens when someone burns a Bible, or Bhagavad Gita for control purposes.

This mini-rant is about education, but I believe it can be applied to a broad selection of government interference.

It is also to illustrate, once again, that when we let government fund something, it is political calculus – not educational benefits, economic effectiveness, or what’s best for taxpayers – that ultimately drives the policies.

The downside 0f being an astronaut (aside from the not insignificant chance of being blown up): losing your fingernails. The thought of which makes me cringe more than the thought of being blown up.

NASA looking at a Wile E. Coyote inspired rail gun to launch stuff.

The poor, sad billionaires. Forced to move their money around into other economies.

A list of great 80s theme songs that misses a lot.

Totally lacking: A-Team, Greatest American Hero, Cheers, Simon & Simon, Fall Guy, Dukes of Hazzard, Macgyver, Airwolf, Scarecrow & Mrs. King, Star Trek: TNG, Perfect Strangers, Golden Girls, Night Court,  Muppet Show, Cosby Show, and we haven’t even touched cartoons and barely looked at sitcoms.

Let’s just say there were a lot of good theme songs in the 80s.

Listen to all those in a row and you definitely sense the trends of 80s TV music.

Poor shows today that don’t have time for awesome theme songs since they have to make room for so many commercials…

Microsoft announced they wouldn’t be the bludgeon for politically motivated computer seizures anymore.

Martin Freeman as Biblo Baggins a distinct possibility. I am not at all adverse to this.

For your amusements/horror:

We need a czar to oversee Asian Carp? I would have thought maybe an undersecretary or possibly that one guy at that desk over there.

I bet those appointed czar earlier are getting upset about the watering down of their title.

I’m all for LED lightbulbs for the home, but they cost 4-5 times as much as the already expensive CFLs (whose only virtue is you don’t have to change them as often) and last only 3 times longer.

There’s a brilliant moment starting at 9:30 [ the rest has NSFW language]:

Battle plans that could have changed everything if we’d gone through with them [Cracked, NSFW]

Seriously, what is it about science fiction shows getting really good in their third seasons? If this is actually a general rule of science fiction, I’m a little scared to imagine how good Firefly would have gotten if it had survived another couple of years. I think we can safely assume it would have won multiple Nobel Prizes for Literature… and Chemistry, just for the hell of it.

From this article on the best way to go about watching iconic science fiction stories. And I don’t disagree with any of their recommendations, btw.

This is awesome.

Mostly because I have previously read this:

In today’s modern Galaxy there is of course very little still held to be unspeakable. Many words and expressions which only a matter of decades ago were considered so distastefully explicit that, were they merely to be breathed in public, the perpetrator would be shunned, barred from polite society, and in extreme cases shot through the lungs, are now thought to be very healthy and proper, and their use in everyday speech and writing is seen as evidence of a well-adjusted, relaxed and totally un****ed-up personality.

So, for instance, when in a recent national speech the Financial Minister of the Royal World Estate of Quarlvista actually dared to say that due to one thing and another and the fact that no one had made any food for a while and the king seemed to have died and most of the population had been on holiday now for over three years, the economy was now in what he called “one whole joojooflop situation,” everyone was so pleased that he felt able to come out and say it that they quite failed to note that their entire five-thousand-year-old civilization had just collapsed overnight.

But even though words like “joojooflop,” “swut,” and “turlingdrome” are now perfectly acceptable in common usage there is one word that is still beyond the pale. The concept it embodies is so revolting that the publication or broadcast of the word is utterly forbidden in all parts of the Galaxy except for use in Serious screenplays.

There is also, or was, one planet where they didn’t know what it meant, the stupid turlingdromes.

“I see,” said Arthur, who didn’t, “so what do you get for using the name of a perfectly innocent if slightly dull European country gratuitously in a Serious Screenplay?”

Gene therapy cream heals wounds 6 times faster than normal. I’m guessing this would also help in our bacterial cold war.

Lately, I’ve been satisfied with how fast we are reaching the future. All we need is virtual reality and better batteries and faster internet connections and I’ll be happy.

As long as I ignore the whole space travel thing.

108 years ago the first science fiction movie was released.

Oh look, the ban on DDT is finally coming home to roost in the US, instead of just killing all those Africans.

Bedbugs, a common household pest for centuries, all but vanished in the 1940s and ’50s with the widespread use of DDT.

Apparently, Obama could end dependence on fossil fuel in 3-5 years if he pushed for nuclear. I’m pretty sure the EPA reports would take longer than that, much less the actual building. I don’t know enough about the abundance of thorium or the cost of switching over to have too  strong of an opinion, but I’m all for nuclear energy in the abstract.

Wait, politicians might actually have to do something to earn votes? Isn’t just not being the other guy good enough?

Must see science fiction TV shows. I could live without Cowboy Bebop and I haven’t watched Fringe, but I have nothing better to replace them with. I can’t think of a show they missed, and since they aren’t ranking them in order of awesomeness, I have no complaints.

This guy had his master’s thesis on one computer hard drive. If he doesn’t get it back, he’s wasted years of his life.  I can’t believe he doesn’t have any backups on other computers. I can’t believe that his hard drive hasn’t crashed.

National Geographic’s original article on the opening of King Tut’s tomb.

9th Circuit Court has ruled that you have no expectation of privacy from government search in your driveway. Also, they can stick a GPS tracker on your car in the driveway while invading your privacy.

It’s only a matter of time before they decide that you have no expectation of privacy from the GPS tracker on your phone too.

The best video of a robot finding a crab prepping an octopus and her young in a rice cooker 4000′ underwater you’ll see today.

The Big Picture has some really cool color pictures of mostly Uzbekistan from the 1900s.

The series started so well. The Golden Compass was a solid adventure with the standard steampunk tropes. It was a good, fun read. He should have stopped there. The Subtle Knife was less adventurous, preachier and introduced characters I had no reason to care about. And The Amber Spyglass took that and ran with it. I still cared mildly about Lyra and Will, but I couldn’t care less about the rest of the characters.The whole Let’s Kill God battle jerked me right out of their world because now I had to analyze what he considered God to be and why does he want God dead and etc… It turned what could have been a great adventure story into a theological slog.

The five nominees for best World Fantasy novel are:  gritty, dark, urban, gritty and mermaids.

I know it’s just a phase, but c’mon, remember elves and dwarves and dragons and magic swords?

Little bitty frogs living in pitcher plants properly classified as adults now. It’s not as catchy as if they were discovered, but c’mon, little bitty frogs.

P.J. O’Rourke recently visited Afghanistan and now I am informed enough to hold vociferous opinions on the topic.

Still, surprisingly good concept art of future space colonies. A lot of Ringworld, Babylon 5 type stuff.

Welcome to the future with one lousy LEO station and now, no way of getting there. Nothing on the moon, a couple of robots on Mars. Woo. And, insult to injury, no jetpacks. 😦

The dry-cleaning short from Rifftrax Live last night.

It was better live.

And you thought the whole floating point processor thing was a problem. I’m just going to copy the alliterative title from Ars: Probabilistic processors possibly pack potent punch.

Some dude reenacting Monty Python’s Holy Grail:

Since it has been discovered Neptune has made one revolution of the sun.

Speaking of planets (skip to the 2 min mark):

Since I watch all my TV shows on DVD, I discover them all too late [danger: slideshow]. Of course Firefly was on the list.

It hurt me to learn that Better Off Ted is canceled.

My Name Is Earl should NOT have been on the list.

I’m tempted to say that Pushing Daisies should be on the list, but it might be better off stopping before it got boring.

Tomorrow is LIVE RiffTrax at a theater near you.  Don’t act like you don’t know what RiffTrax is.

/joel

The Zombie Apocalypse wouldn’t even get off the ground. Zombies suck [Cracked, NSFW]. And I’d like to point out that the writer doesn’t take into account the unregistered, non-hunting, or illegal weapons in the US. Heck, some woman in Post Falls had over 200 guns stolen from her yesterday.

On a related note:  The Obama administration is, probably illegally, blocking the importation of 100,000 M1-Garand and M1-Carbine rifles from South Korea. Which is odd because if Call of Duty 2 taught me anything it’s that the M1 is useful only in a rather limited number of circumstances.  I’ll take a MP40 or even a Sten or Thompson any day. There are also some interesting figures on gun ownership and accidental gun deaths in the article.

Government is the wave of the future!

Wil Wheaton tries to quit w00tstock!

Ray Bradbury is upset about the lack of moon travel and the size and scope of our government. As am I, but the LA Times doesn’t write articles about me for some reason.

Awesome quote:

“We have too many cellphones. We’ve got too many Internets. We have got to get rid of those machines. We have too many machines now.”

There are too many internets! Don’t worry sir, eventually all our little machines will be combined into one and then implanted directly into our bodies.

At least they aren’t blaming it on the terrorists. Oh wait…

That’s what worried the attendants aboard the American Airlines flight to Buenos Aires in June. The passenger, who spent more than 30 minutes in a lavatory and acted suspiciously earlier in the flight, began removing batteries from cellphones and had many batteries, cellphones and charging devices on a tray table.

When I travel I have half a dozen devices with Li-ON batteries and the charging cables myself, without even trying.

We desperately need someone to invent teleporation. Or anything besides air travel to go around the world.

I don’t work harder because I don’t have to.

The Calvin & Hobbes search engine.

Daily Show, John Hodgman, fixing the Con ProStitution .

We’re all racist now.

Daily Show: Maxed Out Race Card.

Cathy comes to an end.

How the new Google-Verizon plan could ruin the interwebs. I can only imagine how much it will cost for a decent connection given that basic broadband service is ~$50/month now.

It’s useless to try to rank Muppet Show moments, but here’s a list of10 great clips. 3,4,5, and 7 are particularly funny.

Missing from the list: