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Above all, trust in the slow work of God.
We are quite naturally impatient in everything to reach the end without delay.
We should like to skip the intermediate stages.
We are impatient of being on the way to something unknown, something new.

And yet it is the law of all progress
that it is made by passing through some stages of instability--
and that it may take a very long time.

And so I think it is with you;
your ideas mature gradually--let them grow,
let them shape themselves, without undue haste.
Don't try to force them on,
as though you could be today what time
(that is to say, grace and circumstances acting on your own good will)
will make of you tomorrow.

Only God could say what this new spirit
gradually forming within you will be.
Give Our Lord the benefit of believing
that his hand is leading you,
and accept the anxiety of feeling yourself
in suspense and incomplete.

Nicole B. led my Science and Spirituality group in a discussion Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, based on this article. An optimistic way of thinking of an ultimate convergence for humanity and everything, Very much in line with that kind of 90s transhumanist vibe

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Notes to my future self: two of the ideas I like from the alternate, more-math-based universe of Neal Stephenson's Anathem is Gardan's Steelyard, where the lighter or least complicated idea rises to the top when balanced against a heavier, more complicated idea and most importantly Diax's Rake: "Never believe a thing simply because you want it to be true"

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I just backed up my computer and my website - kinda the old fashioned way, dumping a single root (or two) - ~/data on my Mac, ~/sites and ~/data for my website - onto an external solid state HD. I guess I prefer that to those more automated systems, just like I don't really trust my photos to iCloud (and anything I consider important I make sure is in ~/data/photos )

Just a friendly reminder to pick a backup plan and run it :-D

Regarding the purported rules of En­glish syntax, we tend to divide into mutually hostile camps. Hip, open-­minded types relish the never-­ending transformations of the way we speak and write. They care about the integrity of our language only insofar as to ensure that we can still roughly understand one another. In the opposite corner glower the curmudgeons. These joyless, uptight authoritarians are forever muttering about clunky concepts such as "the unreal conditional" that nobody's ever heard of.

I've thrown in my lot with the pedants. Yes, language is a living tree, eternally sprouting new shoots as other branches wither . . . blah, blah, blah. But a poorly cultivated plant can readily gnarl from lush foliage to unsightly sticks. The internet has turbo­charged lexical fads (such as "turbo­charge") and grammatical decay. Rather than infuse En­glish with a new vitality, this degeneration spreads the blight of sheer ignorance. So this month we address a set of developments in the prevailing conventions of the En­glish language whose only commonality is that they drive me crazy.

I don't really agree with her stance but I appreciate the way she argues her side. My new original philosophical game for the Atari 2600!

Play online at alienbill.com/2600/sisyphus



The gods have decreed: You, Sisyphus, must roll the the monumental rock to the top of the mountain.

When you fail, the rock is awarded a point. First off: the idea of a separate "Space Force" is not as goofy as it first seems. Assuming it's not so much Star Wars or even Moonraker, satellite battles are going to be a bigger part of any future big wars, and those might be better met with a different chain of command not worried about combat in the atmosphere (like how the Air Force used to be the US Army Air Force...)

And yeah, this logo looks like Star Trek:

But it's not Trumps' fault! This logo is from the 1980s: Of course, they MAY have been influenced by Star Trek... Of course that 80s Air Force Space Command logo is also predated by the Atari game Asteroids.... But looking back at Star Trek, that shirt chevron may have taken a cue from NASA (the "meatball" logo is from the late 50s...)

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SID chips and Pipe Organs "how come a church organ doesn't sound like a chip tune, which is also built up from simple waveforms? Well, actually it will, if you remove the church. And if you connect a Commodore 64 to a loudspeaker in a large hall, it will sound like an organ."

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I did not realize the old Dr Demento staple Star Trekkin' had a video, but listening now it kind of makes sense...

I [suspect] that we are throwing more and more of our resources, including the cream of our youth, into financial activities remote from the production of goods and services, into activities that generate high private rewards disproportionate to their social productivity. I suspect that the immense power of the computer is being harnessed to this 'paper economy', not to do the same transactions more economically but to balloon the quantity and variety of financial exchanges

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For a long while I've had this idea that my preference for a "point of humanity" was the creation of "non-trivial novelty" - or categorical novelty, whole types of stuff that wouldn't be in the universe if it wasn't for us.... this smbc gets pretty close to that idea...

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Awesome Interactive Choir Toy (worked better for me in firefox than chrome) - great use of semi-photo-realistic real time art and sound processing. "A Dad's Advice to His Daughter":

via

Let's talk about hypocrisy.

If you voted for Trump because of Hillary's email "problem" but are not upset that the Trump administration is using a private email server and unsecured phones, you are a hypocrite.

If you believe Jesus was a persecuted refugee fleeing Herod, but support the ban on Syrian refugees, you are a hypocrite.

If you believe life begins at conception, but support defunding the countries number one source of prenatal care, planned parenthood, you are a hypocrite.

If you believe the mainstream media lies but believe Trump when he spouts verifiable lies, you are a hypocrite.

If you dismiss the AP, Reuters or NPR as biased media but accept everything Fox news says, you are a hypocrite.

If you think all life is sacred, but do not support reasonable gun control, you are a hypocrite.

If you think children are the future, but support reducing funds for SNAP, you are a hypocrite.

If you believe in education, but dismiss evolution or climate change as hoaxes, you are a hypocrite.

If you believe in the sovereignty of the United States, but support forced incursions on Native American lands, you are a hypocrite.

If you believe that we need to drain the swamp of Washington but support Trump's cabinet picks, you are a hypocrite.

If you believe in the Constitution, but support indiscriminate detainment and torture, you are a hypocrite.

If you believe our troops lives have worth, but support Trump's claims to foreign countries natural resources, you are a hypocrite.

If you believe that unborn black babies lives matter, but black lives don't matter, you are a hypocrite.

If you believe that we deserve life, liberty and happiness, but support taking away healthcare from millions of Americans, you are a hypocrite.

If you believe that the practice of your religion is more important than the practice of no religion or a different religion, you are a hypocrite.

If you believe in equal rights under the law, but don't support marriage equality and non discrimination for LGBTQ Americans, you are a hypocrite.

If you are glad that California or New York do not decide national policy for you, but insist on forcing your red state policies on others, you are a hypocrite.

If you believe in the first amendment, but call people who peacefully protest the President as hooligans, you are a hypocrite.

If you are an American but think dissent is disrespectful, you are a hypocrite.

If you think that anything that has happened over the last week is normal or acceptable, then you have not been paying attention.

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Learned something about fractals!

when i was around 5 i asked my mom why 'some people were different colors' and she said 'because god wanted lots of flavors' and let me tell you that was the wrong thing to say because for the next 3 years i thought god ate people when they died

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Life is Tetris not Chess. Cute little essay. Snow measured in dogs, excellent.

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Dear Washington Post:

Your usage of "wicked" as an adjective ("Wicked Storm") is incorrect. In the New England vernacular, "Wicked" is generally only used as adverb modifying some other descriptor (e.g. "Wicked bad cold" or more an exclamation such as "That's wicked cool!"). Used directly as an adjective, "wicked" resorts to its more common meaning (e.g. "Your wicked ways")

The expression you were looking for was "Wicked Big Storm".

Thank you for your attention in this matter.

Smooches,
Kirk

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I set out to talk about my Atari 2600 programming weekend on my devblog, but got distracted talking about my 2002-2004 Atari project JoustPong. Reading the game's own development blog, I'm struck by how many challenges I overcame to get the thing produced - and also the poignancy of how those dates (not quite coincidentally) correspond to the bookends of my marriage. Yesterday I finished up Global Game Jam 2014. Working on a tiny team, we made more of a toy than a game:
Seething Sea-Things It's entirely encoded in Unity, which was a first for me... the other programmer on the team (and who originally pitched the general idea in the team formation part) Andrew Grant was an excellent and patient teacher-- his tolerance for being interrupted with questions was superb. Wow, a "Where's George?" dollar travelling from MN 2010 to FL 2011/12 to MA 2013. Kind of a fun game, that site.

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List of words containing "meow": meow, meowed, meowing, meows, homeowner

So, 1990 Star Lake Musicamp... this track made it on the "Highlights" tape. It's Anita Cocker Hunt doing some light hazing of that year's special guests Ron + Janette Smart, the old friendly hazing of "learn the pep song or we'll toss you in the lake..." (I kind of doubt they'd ever carry through with that, actually.)

11_star_lake_pep_song_full.mp3, ~4Mb
I'm on the track too (they call me by my middle name "Logan" because I went by that for a bit in middle school, and it stuck for years after in church) providing tuba beat box. What can I say, it was barely the 90s. (I remember being a little annoyed that the percussionists felt the need to help me out, but hey, all together now.)

Here's just the Pep song, which is the track I'll probably actually add to next season's playlist:


11_star_lake_pep_song_just.mp3, ~1Mb
The Pep Song was pretty fun, with the purposefully offkey "HARMONY", the big brass and syncopated clapping in the bridge section, and the jumping up on the chair for the second half (that's what's going on when everyone starts screaming a bit.)

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If a man understands one woman he should let it go at that.

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How many dead do you have to see in a war before you know it is Death you are fighting for?

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Did you know that before the Civil Rights Act the components of the Oreo were sold separately? Every time I eat one I proclaim that it is change I can believe in.

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Random Plug: really digging our new Philips Sonicare toothbrushes. Breaking the 2 minute runtime into 4 parts makes brushing "long enough" easy. The way they kind of "sing" as they vibrate is odd at first but grows on you.
--Lisbon from the Castle of São Jorge and run through TiltShiftMaker, a nifty little toy to make landscapes look like just-out-of-focus miniatures.

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Wow, water and sewer, the networks that really connect us all. How daunting it must've been to set that up in a frontier America town...

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Wow, Apple Tablet AND State of the Union ON THE SAME DAY??

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AUTO-BEATNIK POEM NO. 41: INSECTS
ALL CHILDREN ARE SMALL AND CRUSTY.
AN IRON CAN SAW ALL DRAGONS,
AND ALL PALE, BLIND, HUMBLE WATERS ARE CLEANING.
AND FLYING WOEFULLY IS LIKE CLOSING SWEETLY,
A INSECT, DUMB AND TORRID, COMES OF THE DADDYO,
HOW IS A INSECT INTO THIS FUR?

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Our safeguard is that, no matter how intelligent we are able to make computers, we can always reach down and pull out the wall plug. Of course, we will have to make sure we don't supply the computer with an arm that could keep us from unplugging it.

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I feel bad for all the furries looking for Avatar movie porn who have to wade through the Avatar: The Last Airbender porn.

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Yesterday, watching through the front window of the MBTA train, I saw emergency exits every few hundred yards. Where do they exit to?

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http://www.boingboing.net/2010/01/27/cuddle-class-couches.html - man, that is the most appealing vision of commercial air travel I've seen

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http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2010/1/22/ - mildly NSFW take on today's Apple Madness. FROTH.

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Following live gdgt feed . Remember when they called it "the Jesusphone"? (PS is this stuff taking down Twitter?)

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iPad:
"so much more intimate than a laptop" -Jobs
"this just proves to me that everybody in the focus group...
...is a dude" -Kj

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Wow, MadTV called it first.... RT @cobiegoesboom
wait wait wait.. ipad? you mean like.. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FTzhXMbOWHE ?

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All this iPad 3Ging makes me wanna go over my iPhone bills, both in terms of MB used and that damn SMS thing. (Hahaha, welcome to AT+T, iPad. Suckers.)

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$500 Price point ain't bad! I was kinda skeptical about "better than netbook" but now I at least need to see if it makes a good doodle pad.

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Heh, and of course, now the iPhone feels slightly less cool- still, Palm bested Newton with "inferior" tech; pocketability is a sweet thing.

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Hmm - does the AppStore let you put iPhone software on iPad or do you have to fork out again?

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I wish Apple and not Microsoft used placenames for project codenames, because I want to think of people working up the iDaho. Or maybe the iOwa.

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It's dumb enough that my XP install pretends the Dell's touchpad is a PS2 mouse; dumber that it's stuck with f'in "tap to click" set to "on". Tap to click is such a terrible idea anyway. Really, any "gesture" that is trivial to replicate on accident is terrible, terrible UI. Same with "drag on side of trackpad to scroll" - unless the trackpad has physically demarcated "scrollzones".

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Can't believe how much I'm tweeting/kisraeling today.

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So, Steve Jobs has done what he tried to do in the 80s: he's created a closed Mac. http://ow.ly/115jc

USUAL DISCLAIMER: I know that NO ONE is as interested in the format of a blog as the blogkeeper. So you might want to skip to the next section, which is a great Blues Brothers quote and a smattering of political commentary.

A few weeks ago I mentioned toying with a new format for this site. Weirdly, it was so much on my mind that I almost wrote the exact same article again, forgetting I had already posted it.

Recently Kate showed me her tumbleblog. The Tumbleblog is an interesting format, Project.ion.st is a decent example, as is trivium. It's not just the content, there's kind of a distinctive look and feel that's emerged for it.

The appeal for me would be to return to a more spontaneous type of flow, to do less piling on to backlogs that just build up and up, and better reflect my online journey through life - kind of what I had on the Palm.

But I still am drawn to the idea of doing one "big" thing a day; one thing that deserves a title, and that has either a strong visual element (a photo or a video) or is a longer form ramble. So maybe I'd call the result a "slantwise tumbleblog", with an anchor piece every day, and then a daily twitter-like sidebar.

I've been using a "one big thing, plus a sidebar" format a bit lately. I worry though about the waxing and waning of feedback on the site, if getting fewer comments mean I'm doing fundamentally less interesting stuff, if fewer people find it worthy of the semi-daily click, or if I'm just not creating an interesting space (content-wise) for dialog. (Loveblender is kind of in the same boat.)

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Movie Dialog of the Moment

Mystery Woman: So for me, for my mother, my grandmother, my father, my uncle, and for the common good, I must now kill you, and your brother.
[Jake falls to his knees]
Jake: Oh, please, don't kill us. Please, please don't kill us. You know I love you baby. I wouldn't leave ya. It wasn't my fault.
Mystery Woman: You miserable slug! You think you can talk your way out of this? You betrayed me.
Jake: No I didn't. Honest... I ran out of gas. I, I had a flat tire. I didn't have enough money for cab fare. My tux didn't come back from the cleaners. An old friend came in from out of town. Someone stole my car. There was an earthquake. A terrible flood. Locusts. IT WASN'T MY FAULT, I SWEAR TO GOD.
[Elwood covers his head in anticipation of more gunfire, Jake removes his sunglasses to make a wordless appeal, and the Mystery Woman visibly softens]
Mystery Woman: Oh, Jake... Jake, honey...
[Jake embraces the Mystery Woman and they kiss]
Jake: [to Elwood, before dropping Mystery Woman] Let's go.

I was trying to pinpoint what Blagojevich in comparing himself to Gandhi, King, Mandela, and a cowboy about to be hanged by a mob, reminded me of - and it was fellow-Illinoisian Belushi begging for his life to Carrie Fischer covered with mud from the tunnel floor in Blues Brothers.

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"plbbt plbbt plbbt"
"what, you pretending to be some kind of poop monster?"
"uh, sure, something like that"
"I wish you had just said sure"

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Blago's crazy defense, comparing himself to Mandela, like Belushi in Blues Bros, begging Fischer "It wasn't my fault!! I swear to God!!"

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for 6 months I didn't see I was confuzilating the front door lock for everyone- myself included- by not turning the key back. Pay attention!

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http://balsamiq.com/ - very nifty web-based app mockup tool. Love the handcrafted look of it.

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http://tinyurl.com/afyb3g - on "candy land" - the original article probably misses the point, but good followup comments.

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http://www.graphviz.org/ - Kate mentioned this, neat language for going from ASCII to graphs... For some reason this doesn't look like a Snow accumulations less than one inch kind of day, it seems pretty menacing.

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Scientific Observation of the Moment

If, in some cataclysm, all of scientific knowledge were to be destroyed, and only one sentence passed on to the next generation of creatures, what statement would contain the most information in the fewest words? I believe it is the atomic hypothesis that

All things are made of atoms-little particles that that move around in perpetual motion, attracting each other when they are a little distance apart, but repelling upon being squeezed into one another.

In that one sentence, you will see, there is an enormous amount of information about the world, if just a little imagination and thinking are applied.

Bill Bryson quoted the core of that and I googled up the rest. I still wish I knew of a really good "kitchen sink science" proof of the atomic hypothesis.

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Not-So-Scientific Observation of the Moment

One thing I've found... avocado burps actually taste good...

Oh boy it's the weekend!

Oh wait, I don't have to care about that yet.

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Star Wars of the Moment

For the next 20 years, as far as 3PO knows, he is the property of Captain Antilles, doing protocol duties on a diplomatic transport. He is vaguely aware of the existence of the princess but doesn't know much about her. Wherever 3PO goes, being as loud and obvious as he always is, his unobtrusive little counterpart goes with him. 3PO is R2's front man. Wherever they land, R2 is passing messages between rebel sympathisers and sizing up governments as potential rebel recruits - both by personal contact and by hacking into their networks. He passes his recommendations on to Organa.

It goes to explain how Obi-Wan's primary goal is making sure Luke doesn't turn into an evil Sith kinda guy himself, and how Chewbacca is the rebellion's chief field and espionage agent, with Han as his frontman.

I dig reframings of the Star Wars story... I posted some before, plus Boingboing linked to The public choice economics of Star Wars.

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More Star Wars of the Moment

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Even More Star Wars of the Moment
Bill Murray covers the Star Wars theme... love the lounge.

Political Funnies of the Moment

A. If the law outranked the president we'd never get anything done! The president would go toss Osama bin Laden through a plate glass window and the law would call him into his office an go "Dammit president, you're outta control!"
Q. And then the president'd be all "You're outta control, chief! The whole freakin system's outta control!"
A. And then the president would totally turn in his badge and quit the force to fight crime!
Q. Fight crime... with mind-powers.

I also liked "You don't go to war with regular laws, which are made outta red tape and bureaucracy and Neville Chamberlain. You go to war with great big strapping War Laws made outta tanks and cold hard steel and the American Fightin Man and WAR, KABOOOOOOM!"

But, and maybe I'm kind of naive, but I'm not all that fired up against the wiretapping as I might've expected myself to be. Maybe it's kind of a sort of dumb trust in the system, or just general anxiety about terrorism, and/or the idea that "well it won't likely bother ME...", but I I'm guess more flexible about the balance between seurity measure and personal freedoms.

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Birthday of the Day
Happy Birthday Mozart! For some reason it's kind of odd to put his birthday up againt Ben Franklin's, 50 years and 10 days earlier. Mozart, and I guess classical music in general, just feels like part of the cultural cosmos, versus my knowledge of the founding of my country, so that the "World Before Mozart" seems like it should be older than the "World Before Benjamin Franklin".

Doing some googling...the two men died within a year of each other, reflecting Ben's longevity and Mozart's young death. Plus, Ben made a new instrument (inspired by the classic "running fingers along the rims of wet glass goblets" trick) called the Armonica for which Mozart wrote some pieces. I found one site with a virtual Armonica... though judging by the movie of "Ben" playing a real one, it sustains the notes a bit too much.

Self-Defence of the Moment
Self-defense-retro-cool, "Self-defence with a Walking-stick: The Different Methods of Defending Oneself with a Walking-Stick or Umbrella when Attacked under Unequal Conditions." Contains sections like "No. 4. -- How to Defend Yourself, without Running any Risk of being Hurt, if you are carrying only a Small Switch in your Hand, and are Threatened by a Man with a very Strong Stick." and "No. 9. -- How to Defend Yourself with a Stick against the most Dangerous Kick of an Expert Kicker." The illustrations are wonderful.

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Jerk of the Moment
So they haven't decided whether or not to seek the death penalty for that guy who caused that horrible train derailment. Of course, it's kind of a weird issue given that he was suicidal in the first place. And as stupid as it sounds, I guess I'm not surprised a guy in that mental state wouldn't think about how an SUV could cause a train to derail...he probably had a simplified image of the train plowing through the vehicle (and its occupants) or pushing the SUV down the tracks for a while without the train being harmed itself.

So I think one of the things that is most frustrating with the situation with Mo is how sudden it seems to me. In particular, at our anniversary last summer, I proposed a "State of our Union" dinner as an annual thing where we could talk openly and frankly about where we saw things, what problems we saw, etc...but no hint of the trouble to come in the Autumn was there.

Now Mo claims that the signs were there to see, that in the occasional spat we'd have (apparently a lot more to her recollection than mine, and I'd say a lot less than most couples) I should gotten an indication that things needed to change. But from my perspective, that way lies a paranoia that can ultimately be very destructive for a relationship...one person always looking for problems that may or may not be there ultimately can become a self-fulfilling prophecy. It's not that I'm blameless in this, that I couldn't have been more responsive, but if a woman can't talk about using words when directly asked, what's a guy supposed to? (I'm reminded of the old Deee-lite line: "I can't read your mind / So you got to let me (know all the time) / How it feels for it to be so real")

Of course, this kind of assumes that the problems in the marriage were fixable by conscious effort, which is a mighty big assumption. It could just be that Mo screwed up when she decided I'd make a good husband for her. But the problems we did have...I mean, compared to the awful fighting and neglect I know many marriages go through, our issues were pretty small potatoes. I think that there's a large number of marriages, my own included, that get killed for over vague and nondescript problems.

(Someone leave me some comments, I'm feeling all neglected, 3 days with none!)

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Quote and Links of the Moment

Buyers are liars.

from this fascinating Edmunds.com article Confessions of a Car Salesman, where they sent a guy "undercover" at a few dealerships for a while. Has an interesting glossary of the lingo at the end. So while car sales is indeed a sleazy profession, potential buyers lie as well, like that whole "I have to go check with my wife" kind of dodge.

The article talks a few time about how using the Internet can really give an edge to a smart buyer, but then again, it IS on an car internet site. Still, I think the 'Net provides a source of information that would be hard for the general population to get otherwise.

Another cool car-related link: Forbes' The Worst Cars Of All Time. The trouble is it's by default a slideshow...which is kind of dumb, considering the descriptions are part of the draw. And while it looks like you can turn off the auto-next feature, it reactivates when the next page loads....DUH! While I know some people think I've gotten arrogant about this, I really do think that some sites know much more about pretty design than they do about basic usability.

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Online Observation of the Moment
Hey, is it just me, or is the Internet kind of sluggish today? I think it might be that e-mail worm that's going around.

It's funny how I can see the distinctive footprint it's making in my crappy homebrew webmail spambox...usually that's full to the brim w/ the usual stupid ads, which all tend to have fairly long subjects. Now it's mostly these short like "Hi" and "test" subject lines, with the traditional SPAM subjects placed farther apart.

They mention that this might be used as part of an "Denial of Service" attack against SCO, who has annoyed many Linux users. It's certainly possible that it's being done by a pro-Linux activist, though you'd kind of hope not. I wouldn't be surprised if the SCO/Linux factor is just a red herring. Not that you'd think that was even a possibility from this CNN.com article, who are willing to take everything at face value. Duhhr. Ignore the fact that they are gathering all kinds of data and might be setting up some kind of second wave, and just play up the SCO angle, dirty Linux users. (Well, I certainly don't, but some of my best friends are Linux users...)

Dang. Verbose updates lately! But thanks to those who answered by pathetic plea for feedback... Possible Irony of the Moment
US buys up Iraqi oil to stave off crisis. Laugh? Cry? I dunno.

Cry, come to think of it...do you know how closely rises in the price of oil map to downturns in our economy?

Man, I hate the whole rally 'round the flag benefit Bush will be getting. I can only hope that he mistimes it and gets his butt handed to him on a platter come election time.

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Snarky Software Gripe of the Moment
Using formal 'Extreme Programming' methodologies, you're supposed to 'Measure Project Velocity' Thanks to a combination of heavyweight tools like Rational Clear Case, BEA Weblogic, and JBuilder 8 and less than state of the art PCs and a dodgey netowrk, it's more like we're out to 'Measure Project Viscosity'. Why Weblogic is the market leader and de facto standard is beyond me...J2EE's EJBs let you cluster, using several physical servers act as one, and Weblogic's performance pretty much makes sure you'll need to.

Fellow Java Software Developers, can I get an Amen?

UPDATE: John Sawers (who has his own good weblog) sent me this O'Reilly editorial rightfully slamming EJBs. I think the author is dead on: everything you want to do with EJBs can be done on its own, and generally with a lot less overhead (overhead in both the "server" and "learning" sense.) He points to EJB as the one bad apple in the J2EE barrel. I just hope that that bad apple, which has gotten a TON of attention and publicity, doesn't make people ignore the whole barrel. It might be just the in Microsoft needs to let its .NET scheme rule the world.

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Doublespeak of the Moment

One day, one way, sooner or later, Saddam Hussein will either disarm so peace can be preserved or a coalition will be sent in to do the job and protect the peace.

"a coalition will be sent in to [...] protect the peace"..."PROTECT THE PEACE"??? He keeps using that phrase. I do not think it means what he thinks it means. Hint: Inspectors might be protecting the peace. Diplomats might be protecting the peace. Sending in bombers and tanks is not protecting the peace.

(Sorry for the lack of fun links today...though yesterday's iSketch link almost makes up for it...) So we moved yesterday. Hopefully everything went well...we will not have had Internet restored by the time this shows up on the website, so I'm writing this in advance. (I have a weird devotion to strict daily updates...unfortunately, it makes the verb tense a bit tricky. And my recent patch of the auto-publish system I made for my honeymoon worked out.)

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Consumer Electronic Product of the Moment
Does this device mark the end of civilization? Or just the beginning?

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Quote of the Moment

I learned courage from Buddha, Jesus, Lincoln, Einstein and Cary Grant.

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Link of the Moment
Kind of cool little promotional teaser for a new Tron movie... I can't believe I bought the DVD of the original right before a new all-bells-and-whistles, behind-the-scenes, director's commentary 20th-Anniversary DVD was released for $30. Mo and I went over to Lena's last night, just a casual time hanging out, eating Thai food, drinking a bit of Mike's Hard Lemonade (which is the best hard lemonade, much better than that pseudo-microbrew Doc Otis crap), playing Monopoly...

Ugh, Monopoly. I don't understand why people like this game. You never actually finish a game, just go around that stupid board again and again. (Though I do like that little race car.) It's depressing too, the luck of the dice the first few go 'rounds sets the course for the rest of the game, which is a little too close to real life for comfort. The Parker Brothers originally rejected it for having "52 Design Errors"... they thought a family game should last 45 minutes, have easy to understand rules, and a CLEAR WINNER. And they were right.

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Update
I asked about yesterday's gram/kilogram issue on Usenet. The best answer included the following quote: (from "National Institute of Standards and Technology Special Publication 330, 1991 edition.")

III.3 The kilogram
Among the base units of the International System, the unit of mass is the only one whose name, for historical reasons, contains a prefix. Names of decimal multiples and submultiples of the unit of mass are formed by attaching prefixes to the word "gram" (CIPM (1967), Recommendation 2)

I think the term "base unit" is ambiguous, making it a bit of a trick question, which is fair enough in Trivial Pursuit. (Though I still think I should've been given the benefit of the doubt.) Anyway, I am glad I know some of the reasons why now, it was worth tracking down.