Octopodial Chrome

Well, the year 2005 is almost over. It’s had its ups and downs, and no doubt 2006 will as well. The years keep on turning and not that much changes. But one never knows: perhaps I’ll get a promotion & a raise, meet a nice girl, see my investments take off and achieve greatness. Also, find a cure for the common cold...

CNN Travel has a great article about bicycling across America. It takes about three months, apparently, and cost the author $4,500. Someday I would really like to do this. Even cycling across Colorado would be awfully cool.

A 16 year old boy from Florida ran off to Iraq for his Christmas vacation, in an attempt to try his hand at immersion journalism. Horribly foolish, and terribly irresponsible, but you know I rather envy him: it’s a great story to dine out on for the rest of his life. Who among us hasn’t wanted to enjoy a bit of an adventure? And what adult is willing to risk it? Heck, when I was 16 I would have thought this a capital idea.

The campaign which successfully fought to make marijuana legal in Denver is now turning its sights on Colorado, due to the fact that Denver police are still enforcing the state law. The campaigners make an excellent point: why not allow individual cities to make their own decisions? They have a very tough road to walk, and I am almost certain that this first attempt will fail, but bit by hard-won bit we will end Second Prohibition just as surely as we ended the first.

Not that I’m all that eager to smoke dope, myself. It’s the principal at stake which interest me. Although it would be interesting to see what character it would add to a nice Virginia/Latakia mixture...

A Pakistani wretch murdered his stepdaughter (25) and three daughters (8, 7 & 4) because the stepdaughter had slept with a boy; his excuse for killing the other three was that he didn’t wish them to do the same. The coward claims he wished he could do the same to the boy, but one will note that he slew a woman and children whilst they slept, rather than taking on a man in the light of day. It being Pakistan, one hopes that he’ll end up at the end of a rope in very short order.

What sort of backward mindset produces such acts? What sort of loathsome semi-culture can even in the slightest way encourage such a louse? I can understand being upset at one’s adult child for his way of life, and can easily see kicking him out of the house; I can even understand a father wanting to avenge himself on a man who has taken advantage of his daughter; but what perverse thoughts lead a man to so indecently destroy his own progeny?

Well, as I noted if there’s any justice in the world we won’t have to share our oxygen with this man for too much longer.

A researcher has found that families with daughters tend to be left wing, and families with sons tend to be right-wing. Even more interestingly, parents of daughters actually become more left-wing over time, and vice-versa for sons. People actually change their political preferences over time!

Somehow I realise that any snide comment I make will probably doom me to an eternity of bachelorhood—but I think any guy can make up his own...

Georgian soldiers came across an infant with spina bifida during a search, and decided to pitch in and help her & her family; they’re working to get her to Georgia, where a doctor has promised to perform the surgery forfree.

Whilst I was over at my folks’ house yesterday for Christmas dinner, my kid brother introduced me to Trespassers William, a truly superb band in the same vein as Splendid and The Sundays—in other words, a band which would have fit in great on a Buffy the Vampire Slayer soundtrack. And in fact, that’s exactly what they did. Say what you will about Buffy the show and it philosophical underpinnings (and there are valid criticisms of both), but it had some excellent music; indeed, some of the best in recent memory.

Anyway, Trespassers William are a great band, and you need to hear their stuff. Also, anyone whose name comes from Milne’s Winnie the Pooh (which is not to be confused with the horrid Disney version) can’t be all bad:-)

And many thanks to Stephen, for bringing them up.

Whilst researching purl, I came upon a list of beer drinks for winter-time, all but one of which are served hot. This is a tradition which needs to be revived. One should note that many of these drinks have reduced alcohol contents due to the heating, and are traditionally served in small cups…

Whilst reading an article about Dickens and the revitalisation of Christmas, I came across a reference to purl, which it calls a hot punch made of beer, ginger, sugar and gin. I immediately grabbed a bottle of Lakefront’s New Grist (incidentally, a sorghum beer brewed for those who avoid gluten—it’s rather sour), tossed it in a pot, added a tablespoon of white sugar & two cloves and shook some ground ginger over it. When it was hot but not quite yet boiling, I took it from the heat, poured in a large mug and tossed in a shot of gin.

I gotta say that those Victorians may have been on to something. There’s a tang which I’d like to avoid, but otherwise this could be the start of something grand. I think my next attempt will leave out the cloves, and possibly toss in some nutmeg.

In December 1914, just a few months into the Great War, British & German soldiers stopped firing and celebrated Christmas together. A relic of a better, nobler time.

Let us all celebrate the birth of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ; God who became Man that we might become like Him; Creator of all Who was born of a virgin. Today is a festival day second only to the feast of His Resurrection; it and the following days should be kept with joy. Decorate your homes; throw parties; ring bells; put on your Sunday best and tell the entire world the good news!

I just found a blog entry alleging that the Germans were willing in 1944 to trade one million Jews in return for 10,000 trucks along with coffee, tea, cocoa and soap. I’ve no idea if this is true or not, but if true then apparently the Allies refused the deal.

A Russian blog has an article on how to consume massive quantities of vodka and stay sober, as the Russians do. It boils down to preparation & pacing. On the preparation side, one eats some boiled potatoes and drinks raw eggs & olive oil (an American book of the ’30s recommends a regimen of olive oil for the same reason); this fills the stomach with pure carbohydrates and then coats it with oils, which moderate the absorption of alcohol.

On the pacing side, he recommends only drinking vodka, no beer, wine, water, juice or carbonation. This is because once one has gone into heavy drinking mode, and water will merely strip the protective oil lining in one’s stomach. He also makes a point of eating sour, salty & oily foods. These replenish the protective lining and give the body plenty of the substances it needs to deal with alcohol properly. The third component is constant intellectual conversation; if one is slow or morose then the alcohol clouds one’s mind. Finally, close the evening with some tea and cakes to cap off the stomach and feed a little bit of stimulants in.

Now, this doesn’t so much keep one from being legally drunk (one would still be over the legal limit for driving) as from actually drunk and sotted. All in all, a highly useful guide.

For beer drinking sessions, I recommend a similar regimen, with plenty of greasy, salty foods, e.g. a Reuben with a sideof deep-fried potatoes.

I just found a link to Courtney love Does the Math, from a speech the musician gave some time ago (a few years, IIRC). In it she points out the absurdity of the recording industry and how artists are underpaid while the industry makes a very great deal of money. She also points out the corruption of our political system: a congressional aide named Mitch Glazier fraudulently inserted an amendment into an unrelated act to redefine music as a work for hire—for this service he was made a lobbyist by the RIAA. I don’t care for Miss Love’s music nor her politics in general, but on this issue in particularshe is spot on.

Paul Graham writes in praise of procrastination. He points out that since one can’t so everything which needs to be done all at once, one must prioritise and do the high-priority tasks first; this means that one is not working on the low-priority tasks. He notes that an absent-minded professor who forgets to shave or iron his coat is working on a problem the solution to which he will be famous for; which is better: to shave this morning or to win undying fame?

An airline reservation agent illustrates the awesome ignorance of our fellow men.

Seeing some pictures taken by Buzz Andersen, I really discovered the Cult of Feuerganzebowle. I really want to do this some year.

My acquaintance John noted that Benedict XVI was seen wearing a mediæval papal hat. I gotta say that in many ways I’m liking the Catholics’ choice for pontiff: he’s apparently a traditionalist theologically, liturgically and in terms of haberdashery. We’ll see how he turns out, of course. But any man who resurrects mediæval fashions can’t be all bad!

Some days ago I wrote against mechanism, that folly which believes we are all but machines, carrying on like robots. There are several philosophies which deny mechanism, but the one I’m interested in today is called vitalism. The basic idea is that there is something which makes living matter different from dead; some vital force or energy, something additional which gives life.

Many believe that vitalism was dealt a death-blow by Wöhler’s synthesis of urea. The argument was that artificially-produced urea is chemically indistinguishable from the natural stuff, and therefor there’s no difference between the natural and the artificial. This is, quite obviously, just so much nonsense. Certainly, the chemically-produced stuff is chemically indistinguishable from the natural stuff, but isn’t that to be expected? A blind man may find an elephant indistinguishable from a tree when all he can perceive are its legs, after all.

What if there were more than the merely chemical? Were that the case (and I believe it is), then a substance which acts identically to another in the chemical sense may in fact act oddly in other senses. Something to consider.

Vitalism bears on medicine in particular. Is the business of a physician to fix what’s broken, or to restore a balance such that the body can (normally) heal itself? Does the concept of balance even compute? I’ll be writing more on this...

I’ve no idea if his ideas are any good, but Ovid’s books on love have been around for quite a long time, so they are probably not wholly incorrect. The man was a poet, after all—and we all know what sort of reputation poets have; on the other hand the very first book of his Art of Love goes on at length about the capture of the Sabine women, so perhaps his ideas are just a touch too old-fashioned…

A young man in high school was refused entrance to a school dance for wearing a kilt. He was wearing the kilt, white shirt and black tie—nothing rude or course, from the sound of it. And yet the insufferable twit who is principal there wouldn’t let him in.

Movie Puppet Theatre is a collection of hand-puppet parodies of well-known films. Quite amusing.

Have you ever read about David Hahn? As a teenager, he built a primitive nuclear reactor and ended up endangering up to 40,000 people. A very cool story about just how easy it is to do such things. And to think that I wasted my time writing encryption programs…

A scientist has engineered tobacco to produce an anthrax vaccine. The current vaccine has severe side effects; the tobacco-derived vaccine does not.

Spotted an article about Jorf, a programming language which came out at about the same time as Perl and Python, and had some neat ideas—unfortunately, nothing came of it.

I just finished watching the Gerard Depardieu version of Cyrano de Bergerac. What a film! To be able to write of love as he did would be a gift indeed. If you’ve not seen it yet, get thee to a rental store or Netflix and check it out.

I’d like to write today about what I believe is a highly erroneous philosophy, albeit one which is hugely popular nowadays: mechanism. What is mechanism? It’s the theory that all phenomena may be explained by physical causes. That is, a billiard ball moves as it dœs because of the force and angle with which it was struck, the gravitational pull of every other object in the universe, the interaction of the ball’s atoms and the felt’s and so on. That’s good enough so far as it gœs.

But mechanism gœs even further: it believes that life can be explained the same way. A plant exists as it dœs simply as the result of various physical processes which have been continuing since life first arose; a dog runs because of other processes; and a man lives, breathes, loves & believes due to the chemical interactions going on in his body.

In short, mechanism denies the existence of the soul; in its view, love, belief, hatred, envy and so forth are merely chemical phenomena. So baldly stated, one would hope that most folks would reject it, but many do not. Indeed, many embrace it; in their view men are merely machines. A criminal is not jailed because what he did is wrong, but because he is broken (thus the focus on fixing him, rather than on punishment).

An interesting—and recent—argument against mechanistic theory derives from Gödel’s proof in the early 20th century that there are statements which we know to be true, but which are mathematically unprovable. A machine can only prove what is mechanically (i.e. mathematically) provable, and therefor cannot prove these sentences. And yet we know they are true, and thus we cannot be machines.

What is the alternative to mechanism? Vitalism, about which I shall write further...

I recently purchased a mate (a gourd cup), a bombilla (metal filter-straw) and a supply of yerba mate. Yerba mate is a South American herb used to make a tea which is both stimulating & healthy, similar to but better than green tea. It’s all the rage in Argentina & Brazil, and is becoming popular here in the US. Me, I figure I can use another hobby which involves herbs and specialised hardware—after all, I can’t be smoking a (tobacco, of course) pipe all the time...

The Taliban killed a man for teaching girls. This is the sort of thing we’re fighting!

Despite the leftists’ claim that Katrina harmed blacks more than whites, the hurricane killed whites in disproportionate numbers. Interestingly, the numbers of men vs. women were proportionate. I wonder why it was that race was a factor. There’s some interesting research to do there. Perhaps more whites (being on average wealthier) are homeowners, and stayed with their homes, while blacks left rented properties to seek shelter elsewhere? That’s just a guess, though.

I saw a cool menu plan to feed a family of 4–6 for $45/week. It dœsn’t appear to be terribly healthy, but when money’s short health can wait.

I’d never heard of this, but back in ’94 a disgruntled Federal Express tried to kill the crew of an æroplane and crash it into the company’s headquarters. Fortunately for all concerned, the crew managed to subdue him, albeitat great personal cost.

A Frog managed to court his own mother online. I just want to say, as a devoted watcher of Brit-com, that I am laughing very, very, very smugly right now.

A motorcyclist named Matt had his ride's sparkplugs sawed off for use as crack pipes, rendering it immobile. Twice. In a row. And thus he has written this finely crafted rant against the folks who did this. Me, I think he should go for Options 2 & 3.

Cal Thomas has an interesting perspective on wanting to hear Merry Christmas; he asks why so many Christians feel a need to hear others acknowledge Christmas. I don’t fully agree with him, although there is some merit to his argument. I would like folks to quit pretending that 25 December is some generic festival day.

Last Thursday I took my final vacation day of 2005; this was my schedule: rise at about 1030; shower; shave; walk down to the local C.B. & Pott’s for a beer; walk over to the theatre to watch Pride & Prejudice; walk back to the Pott’s for some more beers; then walk on home. It was a nice day.

This rendition of Jane Austen’s classic is in some ways more faithful than others, but overall I wasn’t all that impressed. First, the good bit: Mr. Darcy is much more like he is portrayed by Austen herself: aloof and unlikable. The problem is that she dœsn’t really give us much reason for us to root for him in the book, and this film dœsn’t either. As for the rest of the cast, they turn in performances of varying quality. Donald Sutherland was essentially phoning it in, which is a pity as the character of Mr. Bennet is in some ways the most sympathetic of them all. Brenda Blethyn dœs an excellent overwrought job as Mrs. Bennet. Kelly Reilly is a non-entity as Miss Bingley—she should have studied Anna Chancellor in the ’95 BBC/A&E production. Rupert Friend is barely there as Mr. Wickham.

As for Miss Knightly (who plays the part of Miss Elizabeth Bennet, our heroine), I found her more annoying than anything else. For one thing, the director found it necessary for her to giggle at the most inapt times. I’m not certain why this was done, save perhaps to drive home the point that she’s younger than we would expect (in two other places, references to brides of 15 are made, so perhaps this was part of a scheme). Regardless, it’s a damned nuisance. Girlish laughter is wonderful in its place, but silly otherwise—and it’s definitely on the silly side in this instance. Regarding Miss Knightly herself, I don’t find her all that attractive: sure her figure has its appeal, and she has a lovely long neck, but there’s something about her face which is a real turn-off to me. She should be lovely, but somehow…isn’t. Now, Jennifer Ehle isn’t a great beauty herself (and is in fact less of one than Keira Knightly), but she is a fine actress with great talents, and her portrayal of Miss Bennet was excellent; Knightly hasn’t talent to fall back on. I will give her this much: she has poor teeth, and yet is widely accounted a looker. I’m very heartened by this: unlike so many actresses who starve themselves, who suffer surgery and otherwise mold themselves to fit some imagined ideal, Keira Knightly hasn’t bothered to get braces. There’s something quite laudable in that. Now if only she were an actress to boot...

As an aside, I’ve always wanted to think that I’m Mr. Darcy, but I rather fear that I’m actually Mr. Collins.

I have broken into the ranks of the top 10,000 traders on the Hollywood Stock Exchange—9,883 today, to be exact—with a net worth of H$88,362,504.50. I’m unsure when this happened, to tell the truth; it must have been some weeks. Regardless, I’m quite pleased with myself: I have bested 98.53% of the traders out there. Now comes the long hard slog of advancing further yet, until finally the coveted #1 spot is mine. Given that the current top-ranked player has had a 351,090% gain and I’ve only had a 4,242% gain, this should take me awhile…

At this year’s rate, that works out to about 1,500 years if my math is right. So I’ve some work ahead of me:-)

Today I returned to the IBM facility in Boulder for the first time in many months. I used to go up there at least once a month, often twice or thrice, and my old teams were based out of there, but it’s been a long time since either has been the case. This time I & a co-worker were up there to meet with our peers on the Distributed Ops side of the house (IBM have lately realised that perhaps it’s not the best idea to have employees working together who’ve never met; it leads to finger-pointing between teams, whereas a firm social foundation helps solve problems more quickly and builds professional respect—but that’s another blog entry).

The visit felt a lot like my homecoming; both I & my co-worker ran into many folks we’d worked with in the past, and walking around the campus was like walking around AC’s or one’s old neighbourhood: things had changed, whilst others remained the same, some people were still there and others had long gone.

It was a bittersweet visit, but I’m glad that I went.

Sodolak’s Original Country Inn has invented chicken fried bacon. So bad it sounds good...

Happynews.com is a website for good news only. Not my cup o’ tea, but if one’s an optimist perhaps one would find it congenial.

Most nations which contribute aid to foreign countries allow that aid to be used to purchase local goods & food; not so the United States, which mandate that it be used to purchase US goods & food. This of course puts money into the pockets of agribusiness, and harms the local economies of the areas being aided. President Bush tried to liberalise this, but the Congress voted it down. It’s a pity, as it would help our aid be more effective and its positive results longer-lasting.

Warning: the following post contains spoilers if one has not read The Lion, the Witch & the Wardrobe!

One thing which I think the filmmakers did excellently was in their handling of the White Witch. She, of course, represents Satan and sin, and is very attractive and friendly at first; there’re some obvious reasons for Edmund to be attracted to her. Just as is often the case with sin, he was given reasons not to fall in with her—and yet he chose to join her anyway. Of course, once he had cast his lot with her, he suddenly realised how wrong he has been: what had been attractive was revealed as ugly and rotten, but by then it was too late.

Or not quite yet too late, for of course it’s never too late to be extricated from a sinful life. And that’s exactly what Aslan d&œlig;s: rescues and redeems Edmund. Very well done, I thought.

OTOH, for some reason there were some beast-headed humanoids on the good side, which I think g&œlig;s against everything Lewis wrote. IIRC, the good creatures of Narnia are either beasts or fabulous creatures with beasts’ bodies and men’s heads (e.g. centaurs or satyrs), while the evil creatures are sometimes beasts and sometimes creatures with men’s bodies and beasts’ heads (e.g. minotaurs). But perhaps I misremember something…

I went to see The Lion, the Witch & the Wardrobe with my folks and youngest brother last night (one of the worst things about having a dispersed family is not being able to go to big premiers together). Our verdict? Very good. Not the most technically apt film ever (there’s actually one bit with obvious blue-screening…), but it dœs a very good job in most bits. The acting is actually pretty decent, unlike what most reviewers have reported. It’s just great to finally see the Narnian world on the big screen.

R. Preston McAfee has released a free Introduction to Economics. I’m not able to judge its quality, but it looks reasonably good.

Yesterday was Pearl Harbour Day; I don’t believe I saw mention of it in a single source. Today was the anniversary of John Lennon’s murder—and every TV I’ve seen had something about it. How wrong is that?

Peter Drucker sets forth the Five Deadly Business Sins. Something to keep in mind if one’s running one’s own firm.

This week I’m using up the last of my vacation time and am only working two days: today and Friday. You know, it’s been so nice that I’m seriously considering taking a 20% pay cut and working only four days. Heck, a 40% cut and I could only work three days a week, every week. That could be pretty damned nice, really. And I think I could just make it work...

An artist in the late 19-teens slowly went insane due to schizophrenia; a thought-provoking website chronicles this through his work. In each painting one can see the man slowly losing his grip on reality. Quite remarkable, really.

CNN reports that many megachurches will be closed on Christmas Day. Why? Because it’s a family day. No, Christmas is not about family; nor is it about giving; it’s about the birth of Jesus Christ, Son of God and God, our Lord and Savior. It’s not about us. Repeat, for all you megachurch-gœrs: it’s not about you! I may be one of the vainest, most pompous, most egotistical, most self-centred folks out there, but even I haven’t the sheer chutzpah to think that Christmas is about me!

HarperCollins have decided that young children are too delicate to be exposed to a picture of Clement Hurd, illustrator of the beloved children’s book Goodnight Moon, and thus the picture will be censored—digitally altered to remove the cig from Mr. Hurd’s fingers. A Web site, Goodnight Reality, has been created to oppose this revisionism. As it points out, Stalin altered photographs to remove inconvenient facts. Heck, when even the New York Times mocks you, maybe you should reconsider.

Gene Stover has written an amusing account with one of the dumbest mouth-breathers in recorded history; unfortunately the demi-ape in question was managing the project he was working on at the time. Incredible.

Every year since 1977 Diego & Susy Golberg (an Argentinian couple) have taken a picture of each member of their family. The result is an interesting time-lapse view of their family’s growth and ageing. It also provides an unique example of how differently men and women grow old.

Jeff Stout, one of my fellow parishioners, was named a Rhodes Scholar. He’s a sharp young man with a bright future in front of him: not only is he a Rhodes Scholar, but he’s also a subdeacon at St. Mark’s and will be married in January (Antiochian subdeacons are allowed to marry; I don’t know if Russians are or not, but suspect not; the Greeks don’t use subdeacons in this country). From my few conversations with him he ranks among the most intelligent men I’ve ever known. Congratulations to him!

Some years ago Idle Words compared two randomly-selected public school lunch menus, one French & one American. The difference is quite remarkable: each French lunch is structured, with an appetiser (generally a salad, but once a liver paté with a pickled gherkin), a main course, a vegetable, a cheese course and a dessert. The French children are being educated about eating, even while dining at school. Meanwhile, their American peers get a single course consisting of spare pig, chicken or beef parts (i.e. hot dogs, chicken fingers & burgers). The whole analysis is really quite interesting.

David Carkeet delivers some notes on how to survive freefall. Of course, it’s all a joke—if you follow its advice and die, don’t blame me...

Steve Pavlina wrote a quick little guide to getting better sleep and less, then wrote an addendum a short time later. Worth reading.

I saw this on Slashdot of all places!

But though our present account is of this nature we must give what help we can. First, then, let us consider this, that it is the nature of such things to be destroyed by defect and excess, as we see in the case of strength and of health (for to gain light on things imperceptible we must use the evidence of sensible things); both excessive and defective exercise destroys the strength, and similarly drink or food which is above or below a certain amount destroys the health, while that which is proportionate both produces and increases and preserves it. So too is it, then, in the case of temperance and courage and the other virtues. For the man who flies from and fears everything and dœs not stand his ground against anything becomes a coward, and the man who fears nothing at all but gœs to meet every danger becomes rash; and similarly the man who indulges in every pleasure and abstains from none becomes self-indulgent, while the man who shuns every pleasure, as boors do, becomes in a way insensible; temperance and courage, then, are destroyed by excess and defect, and preserved by the mean.

—Aristotle, the Nicomachean Ethics.

In other words, everything in moderation.

On Friday I started playing around with MoinMoin Desktop Edition; it’s a personal wiki. The idea is that it can act like a free-form personal information manager. Playing around, it looks pretty neat; I’ll be using it over the next month or two and will see how it actually works out in practise.

Just discovered Cunnan, a wiki for mediævalists and re-enactors, with a pretty strong SCA focus. I’ve already done some work on mediæval recipes and cookbooks.

My old acquaintance and college roommate John Gipson writes about the absurdity of the term pre-owned; he's right, of course. It's a ludicrous phrase invented by some sad fellow stuck in a little cubicle somewhere. The proper word is, of course, used.

This morning Singapore executed a young Vietnamese with Australian citizenship was executed. His crime? He had carried nearly a pound of heroin into an airport there, while in transit to some other destination. Many across the world are outraged, but for exactly the wrong reasons.

Indeed, most opposition has been based on a misguided hatred of capital punishment rather than a recognition that no legitimate crime was committed. Was the hanging wrong because hanging is somehow barbaric? Hardly—a properly carried out hanging is a fairly humane procedure. Was it wrong because execution is wrong? Hardly—execution is a proper punishment for certain horrendous crimes (e.g. murder, rape, treason, perhaps kidnapping and possibly certain kinds of theft). No, the execution of Nguyen Tuong Van was wrong because there is no more wrong with carrying heroin than with carrying boxes of soap. That, not some theoretical folly regarding the death penalty, is the problem here. Many opponents of the hanging would have been satisfied with life in prison for a man who had done naught wrongat all.

It’s not the things you do that you regret, but the things you don’t do. I’ve done things I wish I’d never even thought of, but I can write them off as learning experiences, or as the acts of a young fool, but the things which I’ve never done I can never do. As an example, several years ago the Righteous Brothers came through town; my mother mentioned it to me, but I didn’t want to spend the $40 on a ticket. Less than a year later (a few months later, IIRC), one of the duo was dead and there will be no more Righteous Brothers concerts ever. $40 could have bought me an unrepeatable experience, and instead I’ve a lifetime of regret.

Likewise, when my brother Tom graduated from the Naval Academy all the midshipmen jumped from the 30 foot diving board in their parade uniforms (the tradition owes itself to the fact that the Navy has no parade uniforms and thus that the men’s parade uniforms are superfluous after graduation). He and his buddies tried to get me to go with him, but I resisted. There were officials trying to keep civilians off the board, and I wasn’t exactly keen on the idea anyway—why, I’d have to walk all the way back to our rental home to change my clothes! Well, that was a mistake: my brother will never again graduate, and I’ll never be able to jump off the 30’ diving board with him.

Another example is pledging Tri-Gam. All of my friends in college were members of Gamma Gamma Gamma; I attended nearly every GTE (their Thursday party); I drank gallon upon gallon of their beer; and yet I never pledged. I dearly wish today that I could; indeed, I would give several thousand dollars in order to be one of their number. But I cannot: even if I gave the money and they called me one of their own I never would be one in truth.

A lesser instance was when several friends drove down to Shreveport to do some gambling (a 10 hour round trip IIRC). I forget now why I didn’t go—but I’ll never again have the chance to drive out to Shreveport with some buddies in college.

Then there was the girl who, in hindsight, was very interested in me—and I never even noticed. And I was interested in her! There’s an error to haunt me for the rest of my days, for even had things not culminated satisfactorily we would both have learnt a bit.

All this is part of why I went to Germany with my brother Stephen last week. Yeah, it may not be the wisest use of my money, but who’s to say that I’ll ever have the opportunity again? Maybe I’ll lose my job next year; maybe I’ll meet a wonderful girl and spend my fortune making her happy; maybe I’ll be hit by a truck and live out the rest of my life in a hospital bed. But this was a chance to go and spend time with one of my brothers (hopefully two, but that didn’t pan out, unfortunately). Had I not taken it, I’d have spent the rest of my life regretting the choice; even had I a rotten time (to the contrary, it was wonderful), I’d have merely regretted it for a year or two. The choice is easy.

The regret I feel for the many things I wish I’dnot done is nothing like that for the things I wish I had done. I have decades to repent what I’ve done, but there’s no second chance to do what I’ve not.

Anthony Bryant has created a beautiful set of SCA postage stamps. They are valid postage, albeit a touch expensive (almost thrice normal postage). If anyone wishes to send me an Outlands set, he’ll be my friend for life.

Johan Norberg writes about the good Nike has done in Vietnam. While it’s true that their wages and working conditions are poor by our standards, they are more than generous in Vietnam; indeed there are more seeking work at Nike than elsewhere, and local shoe factories are trying to learn lessons therefrom. Something you won’t here from anti-globalisation loons. Not that there aren’t some very good arguments against unwise globalisation, and not that there aren’t some excellent arguments in favour of what’s called fair trade (really a silly name, since any free trade is fair, else it wouldn’t be made).

Deroy Murdock tours to New Orleans after the floodwaters have receded and as the city very slowly returns to normal. I’m thinking that it might be nice to visit there in ’06, to see how it’s recovering and to contribute some of my tourist dollars.

Graham Hoyland will be climbing Mount Everest in replicas of 1924 mountaineering gear. It’s pretty cool: they have layers of silk, cotton and wool: the silk provides wind-proofing, and the silk and wool slide very easily against one another to facilitate movement. Their theory is that this clothing is in some ways better than modern clothing—particularly vis-a-vis weight.

Of course, I could have told ’em that: just look at a decent gentleman’s coat vs. a modern winter coat. The one is lightweight and warm; the other is heavy and alternates between too cold and too hot. Natural fibres rock, synthetics suck, period.

OTOH, I can’t say that I like anything which increases the demand for wool or silk. But perhaps increased demand could lead to increased supply due to entrepreneurial possibilities or something. What this world needs is wool at $1/yd.

The Amazing Still is a room-temperature distillation apparatus which produces ½–1 quart of 40–50% spirit per day. Pretty slick!

An inventor in Minnesota has invented coloured soap bubbles, the culmination of 11 years of work. The science behind it is very neat indeed.

Just saw a link to video of a Harrier hovering over a crowded beach—and then failing to hover anymore. Fortunately the pilot was unhurt and the plane crashed far enough from onlookers that no one was injured. Must have been quite exciting, though. Happened in August 2002; Google for Tony Cann to learn more…

My brother & I found German food very agreeable. It’s quite hearty and savoury, with a great emphasis on meat & potatoes—but rather more flavour than one might expect from those ingredients. E.g. there are boiled potatoes—called salzkartoffeln—which I believe must be boiled in broth; they are rather more delicious than just simple boiled potatoes. Or possibly it’s just the use of heavily salted water, as the name suggests. However they’re cooked, they are wonderful.

The sausages, of course, were quite tasty. Even the cheap hot-dog class wursts (such as the famous Berliner currywursts) were a cut above what one might expect. And the good ones were simply superb.

We also had the German versions of Thai, Spanish and Italian food, and were never disappointed therewith. In fact, the Thai and Italian meals were particularly memorable during our stay.

Then there was the Kaufhaus des Westens, an immense department store with two floors devoted to food & drink…

All in all, I can heartily recommend Berlin to anyone with an appetite.

Americans tend to think of Germany as the home of excellent beer; I’m sorry to report that I can’t concur. It’s good, no doubt, and far better than American beer, but it’s just not all that interesting. English beer is far superior: much more complex. German beers are a study in cleanliness of flavour, while I prefer something busier. Still, it was good to have and drink.

An interesting fact is that beer, wine & liquor can be bought nearly anywhere in Germany: bars; restaurants; grocery stores; juice stores; sandwich stalls—anywhere. Apparently they haven’t the licensing laws which we’ve inflicted upon ourselves. The drinking age is 16 for beer and 18 for liquor, but doesn’t really seem to be enforced; it appears that one can drink in a restaurant with a meal with one’s parents. One can even drink beer openly on the street: my brother and I shared a lunch of bread, cheese, sausage, juice and beer directly in front of a police station. The bars can stay open as late as they like, and yet nearly every one is closed by midnight or one. You see, despite their lax drinking laws (or perhaps because of them?) Germans just don’t seem to drink all that much. I don’t believe that I saw anyone drunk while in Germany, to tell the truth.

No doubt Berliners get drunk, but they seem to do it far less than Denverites.

My brother and I both noticed that the girls in Berlin are for the most part much prettier than those over here—more attractive even than Texas girls. They’re not quite as attractive as London girls, but aren’t nearly as stylish. Their features are finer than ours, more distinguished and rather more interesting. I think that gals over there are so good looking because the German gals are German and the English, English. Over here we’re all mutts (I more than many), and IMHO it hurts our looks.

There is now a blog value calculator which is somehow based on the value of the AOL-Weblogs, Inc. deal. Apparently Octopodial Chrome is worth $2,822.70. Given the number of hours I’ve put into it (1,205 articles, assuming 4 minutes per article), that works out to roughly $35/hr. Not too shabby!

Well, my previously reported Berlin trip is now officially over: after a long set of delayed flights my brother Stephen & I have returned to the good ol’ US of A. It was a wonderful trip, and I'll be certain to give a full accounting over the next several days. For now, I’m gonna hit the sack.

Allin Cottrell believes that word processors are stupid & inefficient. While those might not be the exact words I'd choose, they are quite true. For the vast majority of computerised document preparation, word processors are not the correct tool to use.

I just shelled out quite a few shekels in order to have my furnace repaired. Worth it, though, especially as it’s snowing tonight.

Golly, is ownership fun! Were I still in an apartment, it’d be the owner’s responsibility to fix such things (and thus I’d have had air condition this summer); instead, I get to put them off until the very last moment and pay for them with my own hard-earned cash. And in return for the additional headaches, I get a residence which I cannot leave on a month’s notice, but for which I must pay until I can sell it to another. Whoopee!

Most folks don't realise that mandatory direct election of senators is relatively recent. It used to be that each state could choose its senators however it wanted: some chose direct election and some appointed their senators. In fact, early on I believe that senators served almost like ambassadors: they had to vote as their states directed. I don't believe that governors ever regularly appointed senators, although I could be mistaken in that regard.

This is a system to which we ought to return. The populace already have a directly-elected body: the House of Representatives. Moreover, direct election of senators obscures the fact that ours is a federal republic, a union of states rather than a simple national government. Returning to the earlier system would reinforce that fact, and perhaps do some good in forestalling those who think that every law should be passed in Washington rather than in the state legislatures.

Jeffrey Carver has put up Writing Science Fiction & Fantasy, a nice guide to writing that most enjoyable form of fiction. Seen on jackdied.com.

While searching for information about rithmomachia, I discovered The Game Report, which has reviews of various unusual games & such. Naught about rithmomachia, but that’s just my luck.

My buddy Dean recently turned 30; he & his wife threw a great party to celebrate yesterday evening. They brought in a company to do a casino night: craps, roulette, blackjack & poker tables. It was a blast. I played roulette all evening to test out a system. With a large enough bankroll, one should be able to do well at roulette (that is, the odds of losing in any one night would be infinitesimal); the problem is that with that much money the winnings would be hardly worth it. Still, it’s a fun way to spend a thousand dollars!

Today is Armistice Day, popularly called Veterans’ Day, when we mark the sacrifice paid by those who have fought for this republic.

It is the soldier, not the reporter, who has given us freedom of the press. It is the soldier, not the poet, who has given us freedom of speech. It is the soldier, not the campus organiser, who has given us the freedom to demonstrate. It is the soldier, who salutes the flag, who serves beneath the flag, and whose coffin is draped by the flag, who allows the protester to burn the flag.

Chaplain Dennis Edward O’Brian, USMC

Chaplain O’Brian is correct; although certainly these soldiers were sent forth by other men, and those men were encouraged to actions by others still, in the end freedom is often won not by persuasive words or mutual consent, but by forcing those who would withhold it to submit.

May God defend our soldiers in all their battles, and may those battles not be against His will.

Jewish Chaplain Carlos Huerta writes about the death of an Iraqi boy during Ramadan, the day before Yom Kippur. It’s a revealing account of the world of a military chaplain: a Jewish rabbi taught by a Moslem imam to pray Islamic prayers over a dying boy, and comforted by a Catholic priest.

I don’t know that I’m comfortable with the idea of saying the words of another faith’s prayers, though. I’m not certain, but I would be very surprised if the canons of the Church didn’t forbid such a thing. But could one pray with a dying man who will not convert, and then do one’s penance for such an action?

I suppose it comes down to the question of what other religion’s gods are: are they demons, or do they not exist? If they don’t exist, then it doesn’t do that much harm to pray to them—it’s just a bunch of empty words. But if they exist, and are demonic, then to pray to them is evil and to be avoided at all costs.

And of course the martyrs refused to pray to false gods and suffered death for their actions; it seems a much smaller thing to refuse to pray to a false god and be thought unkind by others. OTOH in the world of the martyrs their form of witness (and martyr means witness, after all) was effective in winning others to God; folks saw the Christians dying for their faith and were impressed. In our world such a form of witness would be more likely to drive others away; someone would likely see a Christian refusing to pray with a dying man (even if offering every other form of consolation and comfort) and be turned away from God thereby. In the modern world’s eyes, it’s more admirable to be nice than to be principled. But of course we cannot reject principle simply for convenience.

Perhaps one could prompt the dying man; that is, not pray with him, but merely read aloud the words for him to pray to himself. But even still the idea of helping a man to pray to demons is repugnant, and thus if false gods are demonic then even that action would be evil. But would that evil be worse than the evil of turning others from Christ?

The best thing is to discuss this with one’s spiritual father, and to do as he directs. A relatively ignorant layman such as I (well, I’m a reader and thus in one reckoning minor clergy, but you know what I mean…) doesn’t have the familiarity with all the relevant issues that a more learnéd clergyman has.

Regardless, it’s a moving article—and of course my own concerns are not those of a Jewish rabbi, who is the one involved in this case.

Now you too can construct your own mind control ray deflecting hat. Make one for each member of your family, just to be safe.

Today is the 230th birthday of the Marines; Mackubin Thomas Owens commemorates it in his own way.

Well, recently I’ve become embroiled in a family crisis of sorts. I’ll not name any names, but essentially an elderly couple (Couple A) to whom I’m somehow (won’t say how…) related have apparently become incapable of taking care of themselves. I was first contacted by a distant member of the family (Person B—unrelated by blood) whom I’ve never met, and who thought that my phone number was that of a nearer family member (Person C). I passed the information on to Person C, who consulted with another relative (Person D) took the steps which seemed appropriate at the time—and then continued on a trip out of the country.

Well, while C was out of the country, I was contacted by yet another party (Friend E), a longtime friend of Couple A and who also believed me to be C, with the bad news that A had been taken to a hospital, but that there was no immediate need for C to return, as they were doing well. I gave D a call, and sent C an email, with this information, and thought my part done.

Well, I just got another call from B, with bad news about A and a caution against a Person F. Of course, I have never met either B or F, and cannot judge between them. Mine is not to reason why; mine is but to pass on data. So I called D, who wanted me to try to get ahold of C and find out what course of action to pursue. This I did, dealing with obstreperous Third World porters and such before finally consulting with C, and then called D back with C’s thoughts. And then B called me back with more information. Which I also passed on.

Oh, and did I mention that C & D have been estranged from A for several years now, while B & E are quite fond of A?

What a bloody mess. And somehow I get stuck in the middle of it all, simply because some people got ahold of my number instead of Person C’s. Still, one hopes that things turn out well for Couple A, Persons C & D and Friend E. As for Persons B & F, they may both be dastards or both be heroes; only time will tell.

I did find that when talking with Persons C & D I sounded an awful lot like my old man does when he lays out options for another to consider. Kinda proud of myself, to tell the truth.

Today marks the 16th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, known as Freedom Day (which I’ll admit is a rather silly-sounding name). My entire childhood we all believed that the day would come when we & the Soviets would come to blows, and that the world would be destroyed—and then in a great rush their entire totalitarian edifice crumbled, Germany was reunited, Eastern Europe was freed and Russia cast off Communism. It was a heady time, and even though I was but a kid I knew something very important was going on, something which is probably the most momentous event in my lifetime.

As some of my friends & family know, I’ve recently (back in August, IIRC) started learning the guitar. It’s tough work, but the reward—hearing a song one knows by heart come out of one’s own instrument—is well worth it. Progress is unfortunately slower than I’d like. I’ve hit the first real plateau, and haven’t gotten any better in about a month. Not certain what I need to do—or can do—to resolve this issue.

While at the Denver Museum of Natural History this weekend we saw a very neat collection of gems & minerals. Most of the were retrieved from mines deep below the earth, and it occurred to me how wonderful it must be to be the first man—the first living creature—to set eyes on them. But I was also saddened, because apparently many of these beautiful crystals are ground up and used for industrial and medical purposes. Certainly, it’s important that industry progress, and I’d willingly sacrifice tons of pretty rock to save a single life—but it’s still sad that something which has been forming since the dawn of time should be so abruptly destroyed.

I highly recommend seeing the collection; it’s well worth the time.

On Sunday my friend Shaima & I took a stroll around Confluence Park. What should we find but an eddy in the Platte River which collects garbage? It’s truly disgusting: a pleasant, semi-natural scene spoilt by refuse.

Something should be done.

Girls smell nice; I first noticed this back in college, when I found that Baker Hall where I lived smelt mostly of urine and BO, whilst Clyce Hall (where I & my friends chased the gals resident there) smelt nice. Well, this was brought home to me once again this morning. After my friend had completed her ablutions, I performed my own---and when I entered I discovered that my bathroom smelt nicer than it ever has. It's really quite amazing how they do whatever it is they do. Perhaps they use nice soaps or something?

This complete set of hematite dice (4, 6, 8, 2x10, 12 & 20 sided specimens) is just too cool for words. The same vendor makes obsidian, rose quartz, jade, agate and other semi-precious stone dice, but I want hematite. And amethyst. And carnelian. And (synthetic) opal. And…

A nice side effect of having a friend visit is that it gives one the impetus to clean one’s place, and so my condo is finally rather nicely squared away. I’d really like to have more folks by, actually, so that I can show it off in a good light.

What I’d like to know is why it always takes two days to clean my place. It doesn’t matter if I spend a month cleaning ahead of time, but it’s always a disaster area until two days beforehand, when suddenly my cleaning starts to work, and I end up finishing with 4–6 hours to spare. It’s really quite remarkable.

An old friend of mine was in town this weekend and so we got to spend some time together, which was very nice. It’s funny: we don’t agree about a lot of things (the joke is that each thinks the other completely, horribly, awfully wrong about everything—save for the things we agree on), but nonetheless we’d a very pleasant day (yesterday evening & most of today).

Something I’ve realised with Shaima’s visit, and my own visit to see Phil & Jess in Texas (along with all the others I saw) is that friends—not acquaintances, but real friends—are one of the few key things in life. It’s not so much the frequency that one sees them, but that one sees them at all, that one has a few kindred spirits out there. C.S. Lewis wrote much more eloquently on φιλία than I ever could, and his words are worth reading.

One of the bad things about seeing one’s friends so rarely, though, is that it takes time to fall back into things, although as I’ve noted given a short amount of time it all works out. That’s definitely an issue which more time together rather than apart would help.

So if someone would just break the laws of the universe and invent a teleporter so that I might see my friends every week, no matter where on the globe they are, I’d be much obliged.

The Grey Kangaroo is a charcoal filter designed for alcohol; it is supposed to filter cheap vodka and make it taste like expensive stuff. Somehow I don’t really see it. All I can say is that things have changed since I was in school.

Someone actually produces Menger Sponges for sale. I desperately want one.

My folks left for a tour of Greece following St. Paul’s footsteps yesterday. I drove them to the æroport—from their office. Yes, the day my parents left for another continent they worked a half day! What sort of insanity is involved therein? What sort of man goes to work when he should be on vacation? My parents are really and truly bonkers.

Yes, you really can use a soda can & a chocolate bar to start a fire. The chocolate is an abrasive, which is used to polish the dimple in the bottom of the can; this polished dimple is a parabolic mirror, which focuses the sun’s rays and starts a fire. Sweeet!

A Baptist pastor was electrocuted whilst baptising when his microphone got wet. This raises two issues: first of all, why was he using a microphone in church; and secondly, why use a microphone in a baptism?

Somehow for nearly two millennia we Christians managed to worship our God without the use of microphones. It’s not difficult to get sound to carry; it merely requires some forethought by the architects.

And baptism is—or should be—something which requires no loud noise at all. I don’t require ever seeing my father bellow at a baptism loudly enough for the entire city block to hear him; why would this fellow see the need?

One does feel sorry for his widow and their children, but this was an eminently preventable accident. Rather surprising that a microphone carries enough voltage to kill, though; I’d have thought it would be fairly weak.

The late Douglas Adams once wrote on whisky:

I love whisky in every way. I love the way it looks in the bottle, that rich golden colour. I love the labels arranged on the shelf—the kilts and claymores and slighly out-of-focus sheep. I love the sense that it's a drink that—unlike, for instance, vodka from Warrington—is rich in the culture and history of the place where it is distilled. I love particularly the smoky, peaty aromas of the single malts. In fact the only thing I don't like about whisky is that if I take the merest sip of the stuff it sends a sharp pain from the back of my left eyeball down to the tip of my right elbow, and I begin to walk in a very special way, bumping into people and snarling at the furniture…

He wrote me once, when I had written him to congratulate him on the birth of his daughter, whom I remember was named something absurd like Polly Rocket Adams or somesuch. The man was an atheist, but a smart fellow otherwise. I do hope that when his heart gave out—at far too early an age—he had enough time to repent sufficiently. The thought of heaven without Adams is nearly unbearable.

From Tim Daneliuk on alt.smokers.pipes:

Blends That Never Were - Part III

My Own Jihad

A Blend of 72 Different Virginias. You'll Be in Heaven!

Baathist Blend

Syrian Latakia and Sand Combine for a Taste You Won't Live to Remember.

Chalk and Awe

An English Style Blend Made in America. Noteworthy for Its Casing of Cordite, Gunpowder, and Nitro-Toluene. (Primarily for Export)

Axioms of Evil

Dark Kentucky and Black Twist Are Combined Against the Backdrop of Machine Shop Oil and Chroming Residues. For the Philosophically Minded Dictator.

Sauerbratten Flake

A Muscular Tobacco Cased in Sauerkraut Juice. For Smokers with Dreams of Empire.

Commie Kake

Red Virginias Topped with the Bitter Residue of Failed Ambition.

Montgoobery

A Luxuriant Blend of Virginia Leaf Topped with Peanut Butter.

Lombeard

An Interesting Combination of Virginias, Orientals, and Alaskan Latakia. Gently Dusted with Our Secret Ingredient from Al the Pet Barber. An Entirely New Take on Hair Of The Dog.Our Worst Blend

Sawdust, Floor Sweepings, and Rat Droppings Adorn a Base of Cigar Ash and Used Nasal Snuff. A Gift for Treasured In-Laws.

Crown Revilement

Straight Perique Cased in a Paste of Refried Beans, Prune Juice, And Tabasco. Terrific When You Really Need To Get Going.

This perhaps makes the most sense when one understand pipe tobaccos—trust me, it’s actually quite hilarious.

As some of y’all may know, this blog is powered by Blosxom, a neat little file-based blogging engine. Well, it's written in Perl and is not the fastest program in the world; I decided to practise my Lisp skills and port Blosxom to ANSI Common Lisp. Right now Lisp Blosxom isn’t really usable, but every day it improves just a tad.

Jonah Goldberg offers a short history of American conservatism. One tends to forget when reading his oft-times flippant columns that he’s actually a deeply-intelligent, well-educated man. This particular piece is highly interesting, noting that the American conservative movement is in large part the creation of William F. Buckley. Read & enjoy.

Just came across Does Visual Studio Rot the Mind?, a presentation by Charles Petzold on the process of programming. Very good points about the rhythm of coding and how we can come to over-rely on tools—as well as how that over-reliance can translate into much more complex (and hence brittle) systems. Anyone with an interest in human-computer interactions should take a look.

Well, it’s official: my kid brother & I are heading to Berlin in a few weeks. While there we hope to meet up with the third of us brothers, who has been spending a semester in Rhodes, Greece. The second of our number is off serving his country, and we will be certain to razz him for approximately the rest of our natural lives for not coming along…

It should be a cool trip. Over a decade ago I took a bit of German, but I’ve never been to the land. Stephen has no German, but we’ve gotten a couple of phrasebooks and he is, after all, a Uhl: he should have no problem. It’s an interesting nation, and we’ll have a good time. I can hardly wait!

Rosa Parks died yesterday. While certainly much of her fame was stage-managed (less mediagenic blacks who did the same as she did were ignored), one must admit that the incident in which she was arrested for refusing to give her bus seat to a white man was instrumental in ending the abominable practise of segregation.

We’re all familiar with hypocrisy on the Right: the senator who waves the banner of morality whilst cheating on his wife & so on; indeed, the mainstream media make sure we know all about that. But what about hypocrisy on the Left? Peter Schweizer has written a new book Do As I Say [Not As I Do]: Profiles in Liberal Hypocrisy which points out, among other things, that:

• Nancy Pelosi accepts union awards but won’t hire union members in her vineyard or hotels
• Michael Moore invests in oil, military & HMO stocks
• Barbara Streisand spends $20,000 a year on watering her lawn
• Noam Chomsky castigates the rich for using tax shelters—but uses them himself

A most interesting-sounding tome.

Today is the 200th anniversary of the defeat of the French at the hands of Vice Admiral of the White The Right Honourable Horatio, Viscount Nelson, Knight of the Most Honourable Order of the Bath. Let us all drink a toast to the immortal memory of Nelson and those who fell with him.

The Gender Genie attempts to guess the gender of an author from snippets of his writing. Oddly enough, it found my beer plaque story feminine but my missing Texas bit masculine. I remain…unconvinced.

Max Barry notices what ads really feature. Too true.

A Larry Bird fan demanded that his sentence be increased from 30 to 33 years, in honour of Larry bird, whose jersey was 33. This demonstrates everything I’ve been saying about sports for years. Healthy mind in a healthy body, certainly—but this man’s mind is by no means healthy!

While at Cellarman’s Pub, I’d the chance to take a photo of my plaque. There’s an interesting story behind it: you see, I had been a member of the Mug Club (24 oz. mug filled for the 16 oz. price) for a few years, but had never heard of the around-the-world club. One merely had to drink every beer they offered, and then the owner would erect a plaque in one’s honour above the bar. Unfortunately, there were 99 beers and I had just three weeks left in college. I wanted to show my plaque to my folks, and it would take a week to make; this left me two weeks to drink 99 beers—7 per day. Not really very doable.

So I struck a deal with the owner: he knew I was once of his best customers, and he knew that I’m an honest man; so he let me strike off the names of those beers I’d already had at his fine establishment. That managed to eliminate a great number of them. I forget now how many were left, but almost every day after class (I still had to worry about finishing my senior year!) I’d head on down to Cellarman’s to do my homework and try to strike a few more beers from the list. Finally, after the hardest two weeks in recorded history, I finished my labour in what I hoped might be time enough for the plaque to arrive and be installed. Unfortunately, it didn’t arrive until after graduation, and so my family was never able to see it.

But this year I took a photo, and while blurry it is proof before the entire world of my feat:

Marvel before me, all ye nations.

The week that I spent in Dallas really got me to thinking that there’d be several advantages to moving in that direction. My very best friends from college are there; indeed, I get the feeling that the last five years might have been altogether better had I stayed in the area. And of course the majority of my extended family are there as well, and I should like to spend much more time with them all. And Texans are pleasant, outgoing sorts; it might be easier to meet girls in such an environment.

On the other hand, there are things to dislike about the place. It is miserably, intolerably, abominably, atrociously hot, for one thing. While I was there, everyone commented on how much it had cooled down. If that’s cool, I don’t want to know heat! For another thing, there are way too many laws. There are even little signs everywhere reminding one of what those laws are! And the beer selection is just sad—and the prices angering. Also, I’m not certain about the food culture; it doesn’t seem as well developed down there.

I really don’t know what my preferences are. It’s keeping me up at night.

During the past several days I’ve run into many gals I used to know: some I had chased; some I had never cared for. It was odd to see how my reactions differed in each case: for quite a few it was relief (there but for the grace of God go I); for most, just a profound neutrality; and in one notable case the sneaking suspicion that she was the one that got away. It just goes to show that it’s deucedly impossible to predict the future. The girl who seems so pleasant and lovely today may be quite the opposite in a few years. This is among the advantages of bachelorhood: dealing with known quantities.

Well, I must say that our five-year reunion was more than a little disappointing. Not nearly as many folks showed up as I had expected (or had registered, apparently). I’ve no official figures, but there probably weren’t more than 32 or so. Out of a graduating class of approx. 250, that’s pretty damned disappointing. One factor may have been that the party was held at the house of the fellow who had headed up Student Life during our tenure—in other words, the Gestapo chief. He’s actually a decent enough fellow now, but we spent four long years evading his minions (smuggling girls & drinks into the dorms, mostly). I was fairly certain that someone would drop a fish in one of his hot-air registers, or take a leak in his flowerpots, but so far as I could tell nought like that happened.

But quite a few folks said that they knew of many who had gone elsewhere rather than attend a party at his house. Surely our reunion committee should have arranged for an off-campus venue, a DJ and such. I guess that can go into the Lessons Learnt for our 10 year reunion.

The big problem, of course, is that this was the reunion most likely to be well-attended (heck, one gal flew in with her husband from Baiku, Azerbaijan for that very reason): most of us are still relatively unattached, with no kids or other hindrances; those children which do exist are so young that they are not in school, and so small that they can be taken most anywhere. But given another five years that will no longer be the case; additionally, many of us will have much more demanding schedules, and will have moved on in the world and emotionally: there will be more reasons to stay at home and fewer to return to Austin College. It’s a real shame that this reunion wasn’t better run. Perhaps next time I’ll have to take charge.

I mentioned earlier how much like home AC felt on my arrival; it felt just as much like leaving home to depart. I spent the day on campus, touring the hallowed halls and walking the greens. This past evening in the full moonlight I retraced a path I trod many an evening, from Baker Hall (my dorm of three years) to Clyce Hall (the dorm many of the gals I knew lived in)—only now there was no girl to walk to the door; no Baker room to return to; no future, but only past.

I drove by the house I once lived in—a terrible, run-down place now, but dear to me then. I went through downtown Sherman, that den of land agents and lawyers—the downtown I used to walk to that wondrous summer. I saw professors, now older and greyer; I saw friends and acquaintances, also older and greyer. I saw the empty lot where a once-great hall stood, another empty lot which had been a cafeteria and gathering-place, and yet another lot which was the site of many a fine party. The accumulated memories of the four best years of my life returned in force.

There is a photo in the Tri-Gam 1996–1997 album which shows a young man smiling with his friends. He’s hardly more than a boy (just beginning to grow the traces of a beard), with limitless options and nothing but bright expectations. He’s happy and cheerful; the very world itself lay at his feet. He died five years ago.

I was able to revisit Cellarman's Pub yesterday. It is an absolutely wonderful place; before it was built, Sherman was a sad place for a beer lover, but now it is home to a pub which outshines every bar in Dallas and all but one bar in Denver (the one superior bar is, of course, the Falling Rock Taphouse). I actually have my name on a plaque above the bar, commemorating the fact that I drank at least one of every single beer they offered at the time (the hardest two weeks of my life, getting that done in time for graduation). The bartender/owner still remembered me, which was very nice.

They’ve expanded, again, which is great news. One always worries that a good place will shut down—particularly a place that nice in a town as sad as Sherman. But business seemed to be booming, and I believe that I can anticipate many happy homecoming weekends spent in the warm embrace of that fine pub.

So I’m up at AC’s homecoming carnival getting a cotton candy when the young lady serving them calls me sir. I laughingly tell her, Oh, I’m not a sir and she replies, Sorry, it’s a dad thing. I’m only 27, for Pete’s sake! You know, this dad business is getting really old. As, apparently, am I.

I went to my first Tri-Gam party in four years last night—it was a blast. The guys this year are a wonderful lot. One even invited me to sing their song with them, although I had to refuse (that honour is only for real Tri-Gams, not for mere hangers-on). One of my great regrets in life is never having tried to pledge Gamma Gamma Gamma; it was a great frat and most of my good friends were there. It’s not the things one does that one regrets nearly so much as the things one doesn’t do.

They say that you can never go back home—but they’re wrong. Yesterday I drove on up to Sherman, Tx. for my homecoming (apt name) and five-year reunion, and when I got to Sherman and stood on the Austin College campus, it was as though I’d never left. Yes, the campus has changed; yes, many excellent buildings were torn down by the ravenous administration—but despite all that, it feels as though I’d never left, and as though I could still be living there.

You can go back, and it’s worth it.

Last night I went over to my cousin Craig’s place to hang out for a bit. We walked into his flat and there were some of his friends there—one girl says, quite excitedly, Oh, Craig, is this your dad? I’m barely seven years older than he is, for Pete’s sake!

A US Army veteran was taken out of a hospital and dragged to the border for prosecution because he had grown marijuana to help alleviate the pain resulting from a failed parachute jump. When will this madness end?

Well, I’m down in Texas after a too-long absence. It’s homecoming season, and my five-year reunion is in a few short days, so it seemed meet to make the journey down here and see all my old friends once again. Incidentally, don’t get any bright ideas now that I’m away—my kid brother is house-watching, and has full access to my magazine. Breaking in is not a bright idea, although it’s likely to be one of the last…

I’m staying with my old friends Phil & Jess Forshee. To tell the truth, I was a bit nervous that we’d end up sitting across a table from one another & realise that we really don’t have anything in common any longer; after all, a good amount of friendship is due to close proximity. Despite a few misgivings at lunch, it turns out I needn’t have worried—we’re the same pals we were once upon a time, just quite a bit older than in 1996–2000.

Today should be fun: going to see my grandparents for lunch, then dinner with my aunt, uncle & cousins.

Well, after I fainted I did some reading up on the whole thing. My symptoms match something called postural hypotension—in layman’s terms it means that standing up can cause my blood pressure to drop too low; this fits in with the fact that several nurses have been shocked by how low my blood pressure is: it’s not beyond belief, then, that the differential applied by standing suddenly could be more than desired in my case. Interestingly, it appears that I’ve naturally gravitated towards things which are good remedies to low blood pressure. For example, the suggested remedies are to eat a high salt diet; to exercise the lower extremities; and to wear special socks. Well, I love salt (although I don’t eat as much as I’d like—something I shall change), I ride a bike and I’ve always loved wearing good high & tight woollen socks. Also, I enjoy tobacco, which raises blood pressure by constricting the blood vessels. In short, my body has been telling me to do exactly those things which are good for it. To be honest, I wonder what might have happened had I not been living as I do—I might have died of low blood pressure. Thank God for salt, cycling, socks & smoking.

This fits in perfectly with a theory I’ve held for a long time: if we only listen to what our bodies tell us, our health will be better. There is the example of a pregnant woman: her body suffers a deficiency in something-or-other, and thus she orders up ice cream topped with shrimp and spinach—and a medical examination would reveal that those foods contain exactly what she needed. There is also the fact that we are, among other things, animals, and that our Lord gave even the lowliest beast the ability to discern what it needs to survive. To ignore our better instincts is to ignore what is best for us (of course, there are other instincts and appetites which need to be suppressed).

It’s obvious from my appetite that what my health requires is more grease, more salt, more fried foods and more beer—who am I to deny Nature?

Tonight I had a very curious experience: I fainted. I was in my bathroom when suddenly my vision went grey—which has happened maybe a dozen times in as many years, generally when standing up too fast—and the next thing I knew I heard singing, then was lying in my bathtub with the shower door atop me and a nasty gash on my right ear. I was out for less than a minute (I know ’cause I’d looked at the clock before I’d entered the room). Very strange business. Next time the old vision goes grey I’ll be sure to lie down. Guess I need to get more salt in my diet.

Just finished watching Spies Like Us, which was a very funny film from the 1980s—funny, anyway, until it invented a ridiculous plot by a couple of high-ranking military officers to start a nuclear war between Russia & the US. It’s quite amazing that in the midst of the Cold War (the end-game, even) that such dross would be tossed about. And yet it was. The film industry was obviously well in the pocket of the Communists, as General Ion Pacepa (formerly chief of the Romanian espionage service), who has documented how thoroughly the Warsaw Pact took advantage of Western dupes and fellow-travellers to spread its lies. It came close to ruining the film, but fortunately the presence of Vanessa Angel & Donna Dixon managed to get me by:-)

Some years back the Music Genome Project was started in an attempt to classify as many songs as possible; Pandora is the culmination of that effort. One simply tells it a few musicians or songs one likes, and it uses fairly significant human analysis of the songs in its database (over 300,000, I believe) to predict some more in the same style which you might like. Pretty cool—cool enough to get me to spring $36 for a year’s membership.

Today I went to the mall to find some new clothes, it being a few years since I’ve bought any winter wear. I’m reminded why it’s been so long: there is absolutely nothing good about shopping for clothes. There’s no rhyme or reason to what looks good and what doesn’t; indeed, the only discernible rule is that if one’s a fashion model then one can wear anything, and if one’s not the one might as well give up.

I envy married fellows: a married man can simply say, Darling, when I return I’d like to have some nice-looking new clothes, and when he gets back home the Clothes Gnomes have left him a nice new wardrobe. A man with a girlfriend can go shopping with her; even a guy with a sister has an advantage. But I am completely forlorn, since my parents failed to provide me a sister and I have thus far been and utter failure with the fair sex.

You know, I really loved it back in college when I was wearing coat & tie—yeah, I stuck out like a sore thumb, but I was a happy sore thumb. I understand coat & tie; I can buy shirts and suits and blazers and ties without worry. Maybe I should just write off this experiment in dressing like a normal chap my age, give in and return to my element.

Yesterday morning I went to my car (driving in to work this week rather than cycling) and discovered that the windscreen was covered in ice: the first frost of the season has struck, and soon the cold will be upon us. This morning I wore a sweater for the first time; soon it will be long coats and scarves. Woo-hoo!

NRO gives Serenity high marks. Told ya it was good…

Carrie Lukas of the Independent Women’s Forum takes on the insipid Commander in Chief, pointing out that its world of sexism and such quite simply doesn’t exist.

Apparently more bikes than cars have been bought over the last year. Woo-hoo! Maybe someday motorcar culture will be a bit attenuated. I don’t want it to go away—cars are useful and good—but it’d be nice for it to be less of a factor.

I just found a life of Nikola Tesla’s father Milutin. Tesla, of course, was the inventor of radio amongst many other things, and was the quintessential 19th century mad scientist. His father, though, was a Serbian Orthodox priest who fought for the rights of the Orthodox when they were under Austrian Catholic rule. The postscript to the story is sobering:

There are no surviving sermons of Milutin Tesla. His birth house in Raduc was burnt down in 1941. The Serbian villages in the Medak pocket were burnt down in 1993. The Church of St. George the Martyr in Gospic was demolished in 1992. The house and church in Smiljan, extensively renovated in the years after 1863, were burnt down in 1941; rebuilt in the 1980s; partially burnt down, and vandalized, in 1992; and now stand empty, subject to hatefilled political spinning. 590 Smiljan Serbs were massacred in 1941; and the remainder, said to be only eleven people, were ethnically cleansed in 1995.

Note that the destruction under the Nazis was not so bad as under the Croats.

I’ve recently been using Froogle; it’s a Google service which enables one to search through a huge number of online stores and find the best price on items. Very, very cool—and it’s saved me quite a bit of cash.

After the beer festival, Jethro & I were picked up by my kid brother, who then picked up his girlfriend, and we headed out to a special private midnight premiere of Serenity, the feature film based on the excellent, short-lived 2002 TV series Firefly. My verdict? Well worth seeing.

Firefly was a truly excellent show; I’ve written about it, and written again, but for those new to the series, here’s a brief description: it’s the far future, and mankind has finally colonised the stars. The interior planets are built up and civilised; the frontier planets are rough-and-tumble, mostly rural places where horses are still used for transport. The show had a kind of sci-fi/Western flavour (the creator, Joss Whedon, had previously done the horror/high school mixture known as Buffy the Vampire Slayer), and it got that down dead right. It was great, but Fox aired the shows out of order, pre-empted them for other programming and generally did its best to kill the show, finally succeeding before the season was done.

But the show did manage to pick up a few fans, and it managed to get a DVD release, which release did so unbelievably well that Universal decided that it was worth giving Whedon a shot at the big time: a full-length theatrical film. Thus was Serenity born.

The movie is in many ways excellent, but the dialogue is perhaps its best feature. Whedon’s forte has always been witty, pop-culture-literate dialogue, and Serenity doesn’t disappoint. The look of the film—a mixture of cowboy Western and high-tech—is very successful. I want to live on those worlds!

I’m not certain how successful the film will be among those not already fans; it seems to do a good job of introducing the backstory, but it’s hard to imagine many becoming invested in the characters over the few short minutes (1:59) of the movie.

It’s not perfect, of course. My major criticism is that it feels far too TV-like; in fact immediately after seeing it I said that it was the best TV movie I’ve ever seen. But it was good, and it should be seen, and Firefly needs to get back onto TV so we can see how it plays out.

Last night I went to my sixth consecutive Great American Beer Festival, for the fourth time with my buddy Russell/Jethro (Russel’s his real name; Jethro is his persona’s name in the SCA); I’ve gone once on my own, and once with my buddy Phil. The festival was a complete blast—lots of excellent beer & lots of beautiful girls. They get prettier every year!

This year the food court was greatly reduced in size, which was a real shame; hopefully next year there’ll be more choice than a standard concession stand and over-priced Old Chicago’s pizza ($7 for a four-slice pan pizza).

As always, the beers impressed. We were able to try some wonderful ones which are completely unavailable here in town. It always saddens me that I can’t walk down the street and get the superb New Glarus beers in Colorado.

Bruichladdich allows members of the public to buy casks of single-malt scotch; they’ll even store it for ten years for free. It's about £800 ($1,415), and yields over 300 bottles—that’s less than $5/bottle. The distillery will bottle it up for you with whatever label you wish. The perfect gift for the man who has everything!

Betsy Hart points out that the mainstream media condone fornication, adultery, divorce and under-age partying—but won’t show a photo of a celebrity smoking. Smoking is the One Great Taboo of our era: it’s okay to do drugs, but not smoke; it’s okay to abandon one’s children, but not smoke; it’s okay to lead an empty, shallow, hedonistic and ultimately sad life—but if one durst enjoy the aroma of burning tobacco leaves, then one is considered a moral degenerate, a profligate, a bad role model and a poor example for others.

Well, I’ve now officially gone for more than one month on a single tank of gas. The day I last filled my tank, I drove over 100 miles, and I’ve still more than a quarter-tank left to go; there’s a very real possibility than I could someday make two months without a fill. In fact, if I get a rain suit and start cycling to church, I might go for months without using my car. Wouldn’t that be cool?

I just discovered a wonderful web site: Ruined Endings. It has a plot synopsis and the ending to all sorts of films. Saves one the bother of watching suspense flicks. Rather ad-laden site, though.

David Mery writes in the Guardian about his arrest for the crime of looking down at the stairs as he walked and wearing a raincoat. This is worse than anything I’ve heard of here in the States. From everything I can tell, Britain has become quite an authoritarian nightmare.

It’s fall once again; the leaves will soon turn their multitudinous colours and the air will have a bit of a chill to it. At last the cruel hot reign of summer is ended; too soon the frigid rule of winter will set in. But for now it is autumn, the grandest of the seasons, the time for romance and love; the time for life and joy; the time to drink in each and every moment. Ring the changes: the Season of Seasons is here!

I just received my copy of the Computers & Typesetting Millennium Edition Boxed Set. It’s comprised of five volumes: The TeXbook, describing the operation of the TeX typesetting system; TeX: The Program, the complete, annotated source to TeX (with errata & corrections); The METAFONTbook, describing the operation of the METAFONT font description system; METAFONT: The Program, the complete, annotated source to METAFONT; and Computer Modern Typefaces, which holds the entire source to the Computer Modern family of fonts, including Roman, Bold, Italic, Sans-Serif and Monospaced fonts. I am a happy geek today!

last.fm provides music-tracking and Internet radio. You install a plug-in for your music player, and last.fm can figure out folks who listen to music you like, and check out their tunes. You install their free player, and you can listen to a custom radio station which they believe you’ll like. One’s friends can even listen to a radio station customised to one’s own preferences. It’s pretty sweet.

I’m eadmund there.

Jack Dunphy castigates a New Orleans police officer for staying with his wife rather than coming in to work. I could not possibly disagree more. A man’s first duty is to his wife & children, not to his job or the State. If the flood waters are rising, his job is to protect his family. If there are looters, his job is to protect his family and his property. Only if his family and home are secure is he at liberty to aid others. That’s a simple fact of decency.

Well, after thirty years chasing the deadly shuttle pipe-dream, NASA has gone back to a proven launch technology: rockets. Rockets are cheap; rockets are safe; and rockets are the future, not the flying deathcrate we&rquo;ve spent untold billions of dollars pursuing. It takes a big man to admit he’s wrong, and it’s even more difficult for a bureaucracy to do so, but under this administration they have. Now we’re finally headed back to the moon, with the plan to establish a permanent lunar base, and some day to proceed on to Mars. I have often stated my opposition to excessive space exploration, but if we’re to do it, at least let us do it properly—and it appears we will be doing so, and soon.

Arrr, today be International Talk Like a Pirate Day and I did nearly forget it, shiver me timbers and whatnot. Never again, I do swear, by my little dog’s grave and my peg leg!

My bike passed the 900 mile mark today on the way home from work. I hit 700 on the 14th of July, 68 days ago. Thus I find that I’m averaging 2.9 miles a day. Shoot, I really need to ride more often.

Former President—and current disgrace—Bill Clinton wants to raise taxes to pay for Hurricane Katrina. I’m still not entirely clear on why folks in the other 49 states bear the responsibility for paying the tab for a bunch of folks who built their city in a bathtub between two large bodies of water and didn’t bother to get flood insurance; now Clinton wants us to pay even more in taxes for the privilege? If we must help New Orleans (which is not an unreasonable position to take), then surely we should finance that help by cutting imbecilic programs instead of raising our already horrendous taxes by even a fraction of a percent.

Recently reading a few websites by sceptics like James Randi (no link given, as I don’t wish to promote him), I’m struck by how nasty the confirmed sceptical atheist is. He thinks that love is just an evolutionary adaption: fraternal love helps us survive as a group; erotic love helps us propagate the species. He thinks that altruism is the same thing: something to help our species survive against others.

I don’t want to live in a world in which love is nothing more than a chemical process, in which friendship is just a thymic byproduct, and anger is merely a storm in the soup of my brain. To tell the truth, that seems an almost psychopathic way to go through life—and my experience with true atheists shows that to be the case. Agnostics are rather better.

Now, a certain degree of scepticism is healthy. Our Lord gave us the reasoning faculty for a reason; part of that reason is to discern between truth and falsehood, between good and evil. But the starting point of discernment is not a blank slate—it can’t be, as demonstrated so aptly by Gödel all those years ago. The most embittered sceptic is just as credulous as the most unthinking follower of a charlatan, believe it or not, for everything—even mathematics—must be taken on faith. If faith (i.e. taking unproven assertions as true) is necessary, then it is needful to determine what the starting set of assertions will be.

A good starting set would be the Nicene Creed & Peano’s Axioms. With the one matters of the spirit can be determined; with the other, matters physical.

Stephanie Mencimer reviews Keith Bradsher’s High and Mighty: SUVs. Makes some excellent points: of most note would be the fact that SUVs are more dangerous than proper autos. Also interesting is the market research demonstration that SUV owners are insecure and vain. They are frequently nervous about their marriages and uncomfortable about parenthood. They often lack confidence in their driving skills. Above all, they are apt to be self-centered and self-absorbed, with little interest in their neighbors and communities. They are more restless, more sybaritic, and less social than most Americans are. They tend to like fine restaurants a lot more than off-road driving, seldom go to church and have limited interest in doing volunteer work to help others.

Although by that reckoning perhaps I should own one…

Warren Bell has a hilarious piece lampooning American’s absurd safety-consciousness. It’s hard to believe that we’re the same nation which conquered a continent, subjugated the savages, nixed the Nazis and mastered the moon. Instead we have become a mass of worriers.

The Flash Flag is a truly brilliant idea: a reflective flag mounted horizontally on a spring-jointed arm attached to one’s bike. It sticks out and waves, warning drives to stay well to the side. I’m going to get a whole set and hopefully never have to worry too much about driving maniacs again.

Telemarketers have scripts which enable them to take control of the conversation and keep you off balance. Why not do the same? Enter the Anti-Telemarketing Counter-Script. Absolutely brilliant, and hilarious too.

Back in 1997 Marcus Ranum came up with the concept of Artificial Ignorance. Rather than rely on an intelligent system to report interesting data, he used a stupid system to ignore boring data. By definition, anything left over has to be interesting. A nice way of approaching a difficult problem—in this case, log file analysis.

From Switzerland comes the Zero Emission Machine, or ZEM. It’s a four-seater pedal-powered vehicle (a two-seater is also available). The whole family can hop on and take it for a spin, which is pretty cool. The body can even be used as a billboard, reducing the total cost of ownership for the $9,000 vehicle.

A recent rec.bicycles.misc post led me to Vanilla Bicycles. I’m left speechless; these are some of the most beautiful bikes I have ever seen. One of those tourers will be mine someday.

John Derbyshire reviews Empires of the Word, a fascinating-sounding book about languages and how they increase in popularity and die out. I must get a copy.

I found this site today: a PVC flamethrower. This is truly the most wonderful device ever invented, no?

I just discovered the Leitra, a fully-enclosed recumbent tricycle. It’s a very cool design, and with an electric motor added might make a very decent car replacement.

Shortly after Hurricane Charley, David Brown illustrated how so-called price gouging saves lives. It does this by encouraging vendors to meet needs, and by fairly rationing goods in a manner that state rationing cannot. The innumerate fools in charge in the South are killing people with their ludicrous anti-gouging measures.

I never thought that I would write these words, but George W. Bush is an idiot; he recently spoke out against price gouging. Well, the sad fact of the matter is that there is no such thing as price gouging. Thomas Sowell aptly demonstrated that it’s proper for prices to rise after a disaster. For example, after a storm a chainsaw is more valuable than it had been before—shouldn’t items sell for their value? And in fact they do—if the price is more than an item’s worth, people won’t pay it. It’s impossible to sell something for more than it’s worth. I note that the news has recently reported gas lines—well, if gas prices were allowed to rise quickly enough, there would be no lines: when it’s sufficiently expensive people will only buy it when they need it.

Someone, get our president (and our legislators, and the majority of our public commentators) some lessons in simple economics.

I just discovered the web page of Kris Holm, a mountain unicyclist. This man is insane! But cool. In an insane way.

Just discovered Bookcrossing. The idea is that you label a book and release it into the wild—that is, leave it on a bench, or at a coffeeshop, or give it away. Then you can track its progress as different readers find it, read it and pass it on. Kinda cool little idea.

The Denver Post reports on the resurgence in cocktails. This can only be a good thing: a properly made cocktail inspires one to slow down, to appreciate the taste of one’s drink, and to cogitate on the world at large. While I am in many ways a beer geek, I’ve enjoyed many an excellent cocktail when the time was right.

I think that there must be an airshow going on today (although I can find nothing going on)—several flights of WWII-era aircraft just flew overhead towards the aeroport. Very cool, and very loud. I want one!

Makewavs will take old records and tapes, digitally record & process the sound (removing clicks, pops and so on) and create CDs with the music thereon, all for around $12-24/album (depending on amount of processing, options and so forth). They can also make MP3s, although honestly it’s so easy to do that from a CD that I’d not bother.

It’s with a heavy heart that I must report the closing of Wilkinson Sword after 233 years of service (the company was founded in 1772, before even the American Revolution). Apparently they weren’t able to survive in the limited modern sword market (which is odd, considering how many more excellent swordsmiths are making a profit these days; there’s a market, and with their name they should have been able to survive). Generations of young Englishmen went into battle armed with Wilkinson’s swords, and tens (hundreds?) of thousands of the Empire’s foes fell before them.

When my own brother graduated from the US Naval Academy in ’02, the other three of us boys got together and bought him a Wilkinson US Naval Officer’s sword. It’s a beauty, and much nicer than any other I’ve laid eyes upon.

The closing of Wilkinson is the end of an era, and a damned shame. Sic transit gloria mundi.

A women filed a complaint against her physician because he told her to lose weight, and the New Hampshire Attorney General is investigating. What in God’s name is the world coming to?!?

The Attorney General of Tennessee has asked a country singer to stop glamorising the use of chewing tobacco. Never mind that she’s free to speak her mind, and that it’s entirely inappropriate for the State to ask her to stop.

The song in question tells how she enjoys the taste of chaw on a man’s lips. An odd fetish, to be sure, but hardly one which is a legitimate State concern.

This is quite ludicrous: UT Austin is removing the books from its undergrad library. The space once filled with thousands of volumes of knowledge will instead feature a cafe, computers and comfy chairs. They seem to think that the net can provide enough information.

This is, quite frankly, pure & unadulterated poppycock. There are many more books in libraries than online, and many of them are excellent. I would never have read Esmé Wingfield-Stratford’s King Charles the Martyr online. I’d never have found The Pooh Perplex online. I’d never have been able to write my German history papers in college from online sources. Are von Tirpitz’s memoirs even available online?

Well, Google finally released their Jabber-based chat service. It looks like it could be a beautiful thing. I’m there as eadmund42 at gmail dot com; talk to me.

I recently discovered CAcert, a fine non-profit which issue free SSL certificates. Thawte, VeriSign & the rest charge hundreds of dollars; CAcert charge nothing at all. Now you can get a personal certificate for nothing; you can server certificates for nothing. It’s very cool.

Install CAcert’s root certificate today and then go check out Octopodial Chrome (HTTPS) for an encrypted, secure blogging experience.

Back in 1980, Gregg Easterbrook wrote Beam Me Out of This Death Trap, Scotty, a penetrating look into the idiocy of the shuttle programme. For a mere fraction of the cost of the shuttle, we could have developed better rockets; for that matter, we could have continued using the cheap rockets we already had. Instead, we went on with a programme which has lead to one astronaut dead for every eight flights.

Dr. Dorothy Robinson believes so:

…Dr. Dorothy Robinson’s concern, instead, is bicycle safety. She has just published a study in the Health Promotion Journal of Australia that is likely to send shock waves through Australian cycling communities with its claim that mandatory bicycle helmet laws increase rather than decrease the likelihood of injuries to cyclists.

Food for thought.

Today I rode from my home to my folks’ and back. Hard ride there (not helped by the weight of the change of clothes in my panniers); easy ride back. Now that I’ve done it and know I can, I’ll have to do it more often. Someday I’d like to start riding to church regularly.

Well, after a fair amount of deliberation we decided that there simply wasn’t sufficient evidence to convict the defendant of the charge against her. The case was a fairly simple one, but with some tangled bits.

A 15 year old girl, Jennifer Clayburn, overdosed on some prescription drug in an apparent suicide attempt in September of 2003. While at the hospital for observation, she told a counsellor that her attempt was due to distress over and event which had happened early that summer, when she was raped by her boyfriend Jeremy Gurley, a young man some four years her senior. Her story was that she & Jeremy (19) were at the home of their friend Jamie Davis (16), and that Jamie’s mom, Amber Irene Spaziano, had bought her Jägermeister and/or Rumplemintz, poured her Red Bull & Jäger shots and urged her to drink; later on, Jennifer, Jamie & Jeremy (way too many J-names… in this case) retired to Jamie’s bedroom, where Jamie proceeded to suggest a three-way kiss (a phrase of which we all grew quickly sick), and that Jennifer went along with it for awhile, tried to disengage and was then raped by Jeremy. Four months later, distraught over this incident, she tried to kill herself by taking too much of one of her meds. This, at least, was what she alleged.

Our job was to determine if the defendant, Mrs. Spaziano, had contributed to the delinquency of a minor by providing Jennifer with alcohol, as claimed in this story. The whole rape issue was really a red herring, an appeal to emotion. Our concern wasn’t to determine whether or not Jennifer had been raped, but whether Mrs. Spaziano had given her a drink.

As it turned out, the sole witness to this drink-giving was Miss Clayburn herself, and she wasn’t a very reliable witness. She was very out-of-sorts, as though on severe medication, and her testimony was itself unconvincing, although had it been corroborated may have been believable. The prosecution called four other witnesses: a former sheriff’s deputy, who had investigated the nearly five-month old charges in late October of ’03; Miss Clayburn’s parents, who had no actual evidence to provide (they were not there that night, and hence could not say whether or not Mrs. Spaziano had done anything at all); and Mr. Gurley, who stated under oath that he, Miss Davis and Miss Clayburn had taken some beer from the fridge when Mrs. Spaziano was out on her balcony having a smoke. One would think it unusual for a prosecution witness to undermine the prosecution’s case so directly.

As you can see, the prosecution didn’t have much of a case: one witness alleging a crime; one witness denying it took place; and three witnesses with no knowledge of anything relevant (that’s a slight exaggeration, as they had some information pertaining to the date of a tongue-piercing which helped place the day of the alleged incident). But what about the defence?

They called a Keith something-or-other, essentially a non-entity who had been there that evening, a friend of one of Mrs. Spazziano’s sons, who had nothing very substantive to add, save that he said she had never allowed children to drink in her home, and that he hadn’t seen them drinking. Then Jimmy Aragon, a friend of hers who was there that night, testified essentially the same thing: that he & she had been drinking, but that she never gave the kids anything, and that she never let kids drink anyway. Then her daughter testified the same thing, and finally the defendant herself took the stand and testified essentially the same thing.

When I write the same thing, the reader should know that what I mean is that the gist of the stories was the same; the actual stories differed in mostly non-important details. One person said that the beer had been in cans; another in bottles; another in cans first, but then bottles were purchased. Or one person spoke of Jägermeister and another of a clear bottle, when every elementary school student knows that Jägermeister comes in green bottles. But the fundamental elements were the same.

So as a jury we were faced with one spaced-out witness stating one thing, and five witnesses stating another thing. There were some ancillary matters, such as who had which motives, but that was the basic issue. Could we in good conscience hand down a felony conviction with such scant evidence?

Naturally, we could not. I can’t say that the defendant was innocent, but I don’t know that she was guilty. The State of Colorado failed to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that she had, indeed, knowingly given minors alcohol, and so we had to find her not guilty. I must say that watching her reaction when the judge read the verdict made me feel quite glad for her sake, whether or not she was guilty.

Incidentally, my co-jurors initially asked me to be foreman, but I turned down the honour. I don’t think I should care for all eyes to be on me.

Well, yet more evidence for me being in God’s favour—either that, or obviously stupid. I was just selected for a jury, the second time in two summonses. It could be that I appear such a moron that lawyers want me on a jury ’case they believe that I’m easily persuadable (how little they know!), but I don’t think so. Random chance can’t explain being in the front portion of the line twice in a row; it can’t explain surviving the double-cut (used here in Colorado) twice. So I think that this must be proof that the Author of Creation wishes me to serve. Mostly this is because I really don’t wish to believe that all my life’s luck was rolled up into passing jury selection—I’d have much preferred, say, luck with girls or on the stock market.

Anyway, more on the case when it’s completed. For now, I am enjoined to keep my lips buttoned.

Some time ago I read about the Retirement InCome—for Everyone (RIC-E) Trust, and was intrigued by the idea (albeit chagrined at the ego of its creator, one Ric Edelman). Still, it’s interesting: for a $300 fee and $5,000 or more in cash, one can set up a tax-deferred trust for anyone. In return, the recipient receives an investment vehicle which is invisible for purposes of bankruptcy, divorce, federal student aid &c., and which guarantees that it will be used for retirement: the giver specifies the earliest age at which money may be withdrawn. The services of Edelman’s investment advice company are free, but if one wishes then one can use another firm instead. Moreover, anyone can add money to the trust in $500 increments—this means that the recipient can use it as a supplement to his 401(k) and IRAs. A trustee who is neither the recipient nor the giver (nor either’s spouse) must be named, but the recipient may replace the trustee at any time.

Certain of the advantages above make me wonder if it might not be worthwhile for my brothers & to set funds up for one another. I could create one for Thomas, and name Stephen the trustee; Thomas could create one for John, and name me the trustee; John could create one for Stephen, and name Thomas the trustee; and Stephen could create one for me, and name John the trustee (each giving equal amount, so in the end none would gain or lose). Then we’d each have an investment good for retirement or disability, provided with a highly-qualified investment advice, but otherwise under the radar for all other purposes, which would be quite valuable. We’d be protected, too, since if there were a falling-out between brothers then trustees could be changed.

The sole problem is that even for me $5,300 is a fair chunk of change to part with until I’m 59½. Still, it’s a pretty good idea.

I recently discovered Vintage Velos, a company which offer real wool cycling jerseys, shorts & socks, among other woollen cycling wear. I really want the Vittadello and Cinzano jerseys, and I’d love to be trim enough to get away with one of the Unis Sport after-race shirts. I’ve a feeling that I’ll be spending a very great deal of money with these folks in the future. But it’ll be worth it not to be wearing synthetic fibres.

Saw an interesting article in USA Today about the President and cycling. Apparently he took it up two years ago when he was forced to stop running, and has now gotten good enough that he outpaces many other folks. The man can hit 20 mph on a dirt flat, which is pretty amazing to me.

I recently discovered The Online Pipe Tobacco Cellar. Very cool idea: one enters info about one’s personal collection of tobaccos, and it tracks it.

I just discovered the alt.smokers.pipes Pay It Forward programme. It’s a means for a beginning pipe smoker to get his hands on a pipe and some decent tobacco completely free (although the hope is that he’ll return the favour someday). It’s not the cheapest hobby in the world to get started at (one needs 7x as many pipes as one smokes in a day, and a rack, and tampers, stands, ashtrays, tobacco jars and the like). In my youth I was helped out by several folks (a professor at college gave me a wonderful large Talamona, and the father of a good friend gave me his old rack & jar); maybe I’ll donate some cash to the programme in the hopes of paying my debt.

The Independent reports that roughly 1 out of 25 fathers is unknowingly raising a child not his own. How’s that for a sobering thought?

Apparently back in ’91 there was a fad for eating dishes made with tobacco. Naturally, this highly annoyed certain nattering nabobs of negativism. Interestingly, a Danish restaurant just had a tobacco dinner. I’d always figured that tobacco was too poisonous to eat, but I suppose it’s true that it’s the dose which makes the poison. I’ll have to try a very small pinch of ground baccy as a seasoning in my next soup or something—or maybe add a slight bit to some steak marinade.

According to a BBC article on cycling, there are 42 cycling deaths per billion kilometres. A British billion is 1,000,000,000,000; my daily commute is 4.7 miles; that means my chance of death is 3.1768451e-10 each day—or 1 in 3,147,777,100. I’m willing to take a 1 in 3 (American) billion chance. Granted, that’s 13½ times as likely as were I in a car. But I’m not too worried.

Have you ever had a cyclist claim that a helmet saved his life? Of course, that’s not necessarily the case: yes, he was wearing a helmet, and yes he hit his head—but did the helmet make a difference? Would he have crashed without a helmet (there’s evidence that helmet wearers take more risks)? Would he have hit his head without the helmet (there’s evidence that helmet-wearers are 7 times more likely to hit their heads)? Would he have died if he had hit his head (doubtful, since helmets provide such little protection).

I’ve fallen a few times, and as the link predicts, every one of my falls damaged my arms and hands, but never my head.

It appears that Cadillac are making bicycles now. Are bikes the next SUV?

Unfortunately these are massively over-priced and under-delivering, from what I can tell.

Today we’d a picnic at work—and got the entire rest of the afternoon off! Granted. by the time I got home it was 1600, but that’s still an hour I’d not have had otherwise. Free food is free food, and free time is free time. Woo-hoo!

I saw Sky High last week with my buddy Dean and his wife Chrisanne. My verdict? A surprisingly enjoyable bit of fluff. No, it’s not a classic for the ages, but it’s a decent way to spend an evening—and that’s really all I’m looking for in a film. It had some good clean laughs (if unbelievable: high schoolers don’t take over houses to throw parties with soda), and had some good humour for adults tossed in, as well as the great B-list talents of Bruce Campbell (Army of Darkness, The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr.).

The stars are a bit too young for me to identify with, but they did a good job. The male lead, Michael Angarano, did his job—although as I noted it’s really hard to sympathise with someone playing high school frosh. Danielle Panabaker (playing the cute girl-next-door the hero somehow never notices, a common plot element which I’ve never been able to believe) is one to keep an eye out for in the future; in a few years she should be quite attractive and provided she makes some good career decisions should do well for herself.

The co-stars were great. Alongside the aforementioned Campbell (as the high school coach) were Kurt Russell as the gruff and loving dad and Kelly Preston as the mom. When, pray tell, did Kelly Preston get old enough to believably play the mother of a high schooler? Did I miss the memo?

All in all, lots of fun and worth seeing.

Therion is a really cool bit of free software for making maps of caves. I almost wish that I were a spelunker.

This Saturday I rode in my first cycling event, an extremely short (6 mi.) charity event for IOCC. It was fun enough, although I made two mistakes. One was due to my inexperience with cycling cleats: after a long smooth downhill I came to a very nice stop—the only problem was that I forget to unclip from my pedals, and hence suffered a nasty fall. Thankfully, due to my other mistake no-one saw me. Y’see, the guy leading the ride chose to travel at an infuriatingly slow rate (I was doing 70 rpm or so in my slowest normal gear), and so I chose to ride on ahead, asking first if the trail were marked out properly. Naturally, I was told that it was, and naturally it wasn’t (but I’ll admit of course the fault is mine for being impatient). But due to this little miscalculation the riders were all about a mile in another direction entirely when I’d my spill, so it all works out for the best.

Today is Sysadmin Appreciation Day. I expect my Ferrari by 1500.

So today I finally broke down and purchased bike shorts. Yes, they’s ridiculous spandex (actually, several generations past spandex in the engineered-fabrics line, but anyway…) monstrosities, but they do hold the muscles in a good position, and they’re a lot cooler than trousers.

So I get home and figure that I might as well take a pair for a spin, which I do. And on my route whom should I come across at an intersection other than my pastor and his wife? God has a sense of humour.

PETA operates an animal shelter in Norfolk, Va. What they don’t tell you is that the PETA shelter kills many times more animals than it takes in. They are so insane (one of their beliefs is that beasts are no less valuable than men) that they kill animals rather than let them become pets (another of their beliefs is that keeping a pet is equivalent to owning a slave).

I was speaking to my sister-in-law today and she raised the subject of how cheap it is to cycle. This is something I’ve wanted to blog on for the last week or two, and now I’ve an excuse. So here goes!

My bike has 769 miles on it right now, after over year’s commuting to work (and using it for miscellaneous errands). I’ll be generous and assume that every one of those miles was one that I’d have driven (this is not actually the case, for today and last Saturday I rode for the sake of riding, and last year I spent a fair amount of time in Boulder riding after work). My car gets about 35 miles a gallon, so that works out to almost 22 gallons of gas unused; at today’s gas prices that’s as near $50 as makes no difference.

Pretty good, right? Not really. That bike cost in the vicinity of ten times that, and what with inner tubes, a new tyre, cycling shorts and jerseys, an air pump and so forth much, much more.

My car, OTOH, cost me about $4,800 almost six years ago, and I've put over 60,000 miles on it and spent about $4,000 on it. So that’s $8,800 for the car. Annual insurance is about $500, so let’s say $3,000 in insurance. In my car 60,000 miles would take about 3,850 gallons; at today’s prices that would be $8,675 (although it was much cheaper six years ago—less than half the price, but let’s try to make driving look as expensive as possible). So all told that’s $20,475 to travel 60,000 miles, or about 34¼¢ per mile (a bit less than the IRS-approved 36½¢ per mile).

I’ve spent around $750 on my bike and accessories: let’s just say that it costs $1/mile to ride my bike, much more than than 34¼¢ per mile. Those 769 miles would have cost $265 to drive, much less than I’ve spent on cycling: about a third, in fact. Granted the cost of riding a mile right now is essentially nil, cycling—at least for me—doesn’t seem to be economical. But it has gotten me healthier, and that’s worth something. If I were the sort of person to get a gym membership, then I could count that savings, but I’m not and so I can’t.

Now, if I keep this up for another three years then maybe cycling will break even or start to show a profit.

This picture says it all.

Rebecca Hagelin makes an excellent point: we have programmes which tell teenagers to Just Say No to smoking, to drugs and to alcohol—but when it comes to sex, we say, Sure, whatever, or at most we tell them Don’t have sex, but if you do, use a condom. We don’t tell them to smoke a pipe if they must smoke; we don’t tell them to use uncut cocaine if they must snort the stuff; we don’t tell them to make sure to drink a few glasses of water and take an aspiring before retiring in order to prevent a hangover. Why the inconsistency?

For my part, I’d rather 17 year olds smoke a cigarette or drink a beer, or even smoke a joint, than have sex: none of those vices have lasting effects on one’s psychology and soul.

Will Judge Roberts be a pro-life judge? Edward Whelan demonstrates that he will be a true moderate. The point is that the Constitution of the United States of America simply doesn’t speak to the matter: it neither says that abortion must be legal, nor that it must be illegal—and it’s not the job of the judiciary to create laws but to interpret the law as written. An honest pro-abortion judge would be good for the pro-life movement because he would recognise that, under the Constitution as it’s currently written, the states have the right to regulate the practise.

Now, I support a constitutional amendment to outlaw abortion in every circumstance save the saving of the mother’s life; abortion is in my opinion the single most important political issue of our age (I’ll write more about this later). But the fact of the matter is that currently there is nothing in the Constitution which can be reasonably interpreted either way.

Practical Common Lisp is an excellent introduction to and tutorial for ANSI Common Lisp. The author guides one through the creation of an MP3-streaming server, all the while introducing one to the amazing features of this most powerful of computer languages.

CNN reports that a Californian grocery clerk is next in line to be the Earl of Essex; the current earl is a childless 61-year-old bachelor, so the Californian’s odds are pretty good. This might be a hoax—one never knows—but what a wonderful story if it’s true.

My new account has a locker room, and in this locker room there sits a small couch. It occurred to me that rather than spending my lunch hour eating out at a restaurant or goofing off at my workstation, I could instead hit the sack and catch some Zs.

There’s nothing quite so relaxing as a nice, legitimate catnap in the middle of the day. I don’t know why more folks don’t think of it, but I’m glad they don’t, since there’s only the single rack to go around.

I’ve a page up now with pictures of my German branch sword & its scabbard. Do take a look.

What a day I’ve had, and it’s not even noon yet: I rode 7½ miles on my bike, exercised, went for a dip and showered all before 0800. It feels good to get the heart pumping and the blood flowing, it really does. Why, I might even get some housecleaning done today!

What are the major problems with cars? They waste huge amounts of energy; they pollute the air; they are dangerous; they require roads and highways, which are expensive to build; they are expensive and require a fair amount of capital outlay. But in return they are convenient: one need’t wait around for one’s own car, and one’s car is located near where one is (no having to go to a station); they are private: noöne rides one’s car without permission; they are relatively non-stop (in comparison to buses or trains, which—unless they are express routes—must stop at every single stop); they run 24/7.

Light rail solves some but not all of the problems of cars, but it eliminates some of the advantages as well. It costs approximately as much to move a light rail car full of passengers as it does to move one which is empty (the cars are still fairly heavy); there is a significant amount of capital investment; light rail tracks require a large amount of land. Light rail is only convenient if one lives or works very close to a station, and even when one does, one must wait around for a car; a light rail car is shared, and one cannot escape a nuisance passenger until the next stop; speaking of which, the train must stop at every station; and light rail has operating hours: stay downtown a minute too long, and one gets to take a taxi ride home ($55 for me). Where I used to live there was a light rail stop 30 minutes’ walk away; I loved it, but quite honestly most people would never used such a thing. Where I live now, there’s nothing—a public transportation trip home from downtown would take at least two hours, whereas by car it’s less than 20 minutes. A new line will open near me, but to move from it to the next station on the same latitude will involve going all the way to downtown, transferring, then going all the way back south again.

Well, a new system, called personal rapid transit, solves many of these problems. The idea is to construct a grid network—just like the roads—of narrow (half the size of a road lane) elevated, ground-level or underground lines. Along these travel small cars capable of holding three people apiece, controlled by computer. But here’s the cool bit: each car can go wherever it needs to go, whenever it needs to go (the central computer ensures that cars do not collide).

Here’s the usage scenario: one walks to the nearest PRT stop (and one is never more than ¼ mile away—anyone can walk this without a moment’s thought), goes up to the ticket machine, punches in a destination, pays for the ticket, then goes to a car which is already waiting, climbs in, shuts the door and is quickly (25–40 mph) shuttled to one’s destination. It’s convenient; it’s cheap (estimates I’ve seen are 12¢ + 20¢/mile—cheaper than RTD Light Rail); it’s private; it’s available on-demand.

In my opinion RTD should investigate PRT, perhaps first using it to connect between rail stations, and then slowly expanding it. An advantage is that a PRT network is a fraction of the cost of a light rail network.

It’s a cool idea, but only time will tell if it succeeds.

I just recently passed the 700 mile mark on my bicycle. It’s been a little over a year since I purchased it; 700 miles a year’s not too bad for a fellow who used to drive everywhere. That’s 20 gallons of gas which I’ve saved!

Now this is truly absurd: a French bus company is suing a bunch of cleaning ladies who carpool to work. Why? Because it’s supposedly unfair competition. This is insane.

Today my dear brother shipped out to parts unknown, doing his duty by God & country as our father, his father, his father and his father have done before him. We’re all extremely proud, and pray daily for his safe return.

Ars Technica examines possible reasons for Apple’s move to Intel. You may be surprised. Hint: Think iPod.

As I’d previously mentioned the concert I went to on the 4th of July at Red Rocks. Honestly, it was a bit of a disappointment. The Motet were fun enough, but they were the openers, and local, and no-one much was paying attention to them: they were just having fun playing a big show. The Wallflowers played a tight set, but the audience didn’t really care, and I think that they must have cut it short—at least, they didn’t play all of their hits. Honestly, if I hadn’t had such a great time when last I saw them then I don’t think I’d ever wish to see them again—it was that sad. They deserved a better audience. Blues Traveler played their two hits, but every other song they played sounded exactly the same. The biggest reaction they got from the audience—which loved them—aside from their hits was when they played cover riffs of famous songs.

On the other hand, it was cool having a good time with my buddies. And there were plenty of hippie chicks to ogle;-)

I went to the Colorado Renascence Festival on Saturday. It’d all the historical accuracy of a visit to Busch Gardens, but it was fun anyway. Mostly this was because I got to debut my Elizabethan clothing and wear my new sword & scabbard (about which more later). I may go again in the future, or may not. It was worth the $16, anyway.

I’ve never thought of it before, but souvenirs serve a very valuable purpose: they remind us of the past in a very concrete way. It’s one thing to know that one’s been to Verdun; it’s another to have a spot of mud on one’s coat therefrom. Likewise, the pint glasses I now own from my recently passed beer tour will stand to remind me of the wonderful time I had these past few days. Someday when I’m an old man and my kids surround me using them to drink juice, I’ll see them and think back to these days.

Which makes me feel for both my parents. There was a time that they were 27; there was a time when the world held limitless opportunities, and when every day was a new adventure. It stopped being that for them a long time ago now, and it’s beginning to cease the same for me, these days. It’s awfully hard to think of my father and mother, my age, holding me in their arms—but they did. It’s even more difficult to think of them as human beings who enjoyed having fun with friends—but they did. Someday, hopefully, I’ll have children who will find me as much of a cypher.

I just got home from the 2005 Austin College Memorial Invitational Beer Tour. Which is to say, I just spent three days with my buddy Darren and two of his buddies from work, Trevor & Justin. On Monday, we saw The Motet, The Wallflowers & Blues Traveler at the 4th of July show (a show about which more in another posting). On Tuesday we left Denver in the morning and drove up to the Pumphouse Brewery & Restaurant for an excellent lunch, then continued on to Ft. Collins to visit the Left Hand/Tabernash Brewery for a tasting, then on to New Belgium for the final tasting of the day. We then grabbed some sandwiches and supplies and headed deep into the Cache la Poudre to camp for the evening. As the resident Eagle Scout, I built the fire (rather well, I think) as well as picked out the evening’s beers (Deschutes Brewery’s Mirror Pond and Twilight Ales) and cigars (Punch Royal Coronation).

It was an absolutely beautiful night, without a cloud or moon in the sky. We saw several shooting stars and satellites as well as the Milky Way (difficult to see nowadays), and had some great fire-fuelled conversation. Didn’t get to bed until about 0130! I should note that I used the same tent that I’ve been camping in for more than half my life, one my folks bought me when I was 10, 11 or 12. It may be in rotten shape, but it still does the trick.

Today we broke camp, then—smelling like well-smoked herring from our campfire—headed back into Ft. Collins for breakfast at McDonald’s (a nice one!) and the went on to tour the Odell Brewing Co., then on to the Trail Ridge Winery, and finally to the Estes Park Brewery for lunch. We then walked about downtown Estes Park for awhile and then journeyed down into Boulder to see Pearl Street and have dinner at the Mountain Sun Pub & Brewery with Trevor’s sister, who is at CU. Finally, we headed back to Denver.

Along the way I picked up:

• 2 bottles Left Hand Imperial Stout
• 2 bottles Left Hand Black Jack Porter
• 1 bottle Left Hand Haystack Wheat
• 1 bottle Tabernash Dunkel Weiss
• 1 Tabernash pint glass
• 1 Left Hand bumper sticker
• a handful of Tabernash temporary tattoos
• 2 bottles New Belgium La Folie
• 2 New Belgium schooner glasses
• 1 stick New Belgium Sunshine Wheat lip balm
• a handful of New Belgium bumper stickers
• 1 Odell 90 Shilling cycling jersey
• 1 Odell Bobby (Kölsch) pint glass
• 1 Odell Levity (amber ale) pint glass
• 1 Odell Isolation Ale poster
• 1 Odell 5 Barrel Pale Ale sticker
• 1 bottle Trail Ridge Cabernet Franc
• 1 bottle Trail Ridge Lemberger
• 2 bottles Estes Park Renegade (India pale ale)
• 1 bottle Estes Park Gold (amber ale)
• 1 bottle Estes Park Samson Stout
• 1 bottle Longs Peak Raspberry Wheat
• 1 bottle Estes Park Barleywine
• 1 Estes Park Brewery pint glass

Why, yes the merchandiser’s eyes did light up when they saw us coming. Why do you ask?

It was a wonderful three days—my only regret is that I must go to work tomorrow.

I hope everyone out there is having a great Fourth of July. Our reasons for the Revolutionary War were not really the best (the fault’s equally on both sides IMHO), but it sure is a good thing that we did revolt and that we are independent. The United States are not the best possible place, but they are the best place so far, and I’m proud to be a citizen of one of them. God Bless the USA!

I’ve just added the Kretchma Cocktail to my list of bachelor recipes. It’s a tasty little treat suitable for serving to ladies of delicate tastes, I think.

Last night while downtown I was passed a $10 bill stamped with info for Where’s George?. This cool website has a single idea: tracking the circulation of money. You simply enter the denomination, series and serial number of the bill along with your zip or postal code, and they display a history of where your money’s been and how quickly it’s travelled from place to place. So I just entered in all the bills in my wallet and hopefully they’ll turn up in another user’s listing sometime. I’ll get an email if and when they do.

I want to get a set of stamps. It’d be really cool to see how far my money goes.

Interestingly, there are similar sites for Canadian money, euros and the like.

From 1976 to 2003, the number of pounds of fireworks sold in the US increased nearly tenfold, and yet the number of fireworks-related deaths remained constant. Every year fifteen times as many children under the age of 10 will drown in their bathtubs as men, women and children will die in fireworks accidents. And yet five states completely outlaw fireworks, and 31 regulate them in some fashion. Celebrate independence; celebrate freedom; celebrate liberty; free fireworks!

Victor Davis Hanson points out one very salient fact: While the world debated whether an American guard at Guantanamo really flushed a Koran down a toilet, Robert Mugabe may have bulldozed the homes of 1.5 million Zimbabweans. Few seem to have cared. The current debate is a succession of tempests in teapots while really important stuff is routinely ignored.

Back in 1960 the Royal Canadian Air Force commissioned the 5BX Plan for Physical Fitness. The idea is that with five basic exercises done a few times weekly one could over time get fit. It’s arranged into a series of six charts, each of which is divided into four grades, each subdivided into three sub-grades. One starts at the very beginning and continues up the chart until one’s at the proper level for one’s age.

I’ve used it in the past, but had slacked off. Once again, though, I’m on the horse. Only up to the level of a seven-year-old boy, but I shan’t stop there.

There’s also a similar plan for women, called the XBX Plan; it uses ten basic exercises. I’m not certain why women have such a different scheme than men, but my guess would be that it has to do with the fact that their bodies are much more delicate than ours: a fellow can get away with a brute-force regimen, but a women needs to use a bit more finesse.

My cousin Anna was in town yesterday, and so I took her to downtown Denver to play some pool, which was fun enough. The problem is how to account for the expenditure. It’s not drinking, even though I’d a half bitter, since drinking wasn’t the point. It’s not eating, even though we’d some food, for the same reason. It’s not entertainment, even though I was entertained, since that is limited to my own entertainment and doesn’t include others’. It’s not skirtchasing, even though she’s a girl, since she’s my cousin. It’s not charity, since charity is giving to causes. It’s not a gift, since I was a benefactor. It wasn’t a household expense, since it wasn’t at home (otherwise it’d have been a good fit).

And those are the only expense accounts which come even close to fitting: it was neither academic expense, nor bad debt, nor sales commission, nor computer, nor insurance, nor medical, nor theft, nor transportation, nor anything really.

This is driving me crazy, to tell the truth. The best I can do is drop it into my personal account, but even that’s not very good, since personal accounts are supposed to cover things I do for myself, not for others. It’s a truly unclassifiable expense. Perhaps I should create a new category: Entertaining Family or something. But would it better fit under personal or household expenses?

I just found a link to freeshell.org, which offers free Unix shell accounts. It sounds very neat, like Unix accounts were in the good old days: large numbers of users online all the time; chatting with your friends; playing games. They also offer email and web space.

Well, for the second year in a row I biked to work on Bike to Work Day. I did see thrice as many cyclists on my route as I normally see (which is to say, I saw three rather than one…), so apparently the effort to get folks out of their cars and onto more humane transportation worked. The upshot of participating in BtWD, of course, is that one can hold oneself as morally superior to those who drive 365 rather than 364 days of the year:-)

Seriously, though, if more folks biked to work the world would no doubt be a better and more pleasant place. The cyclist does a steady pace, while the motorist is constantly accelerating and slowing. The cyclist enjoys the scenery and gets to know the very matter of the road; the motorist speeds through to his destination. Cars, of course, have their place—I wouldn’t trade mine for the world (actually, to be quite honest, I would trade mine in return for title to the Earth), but still there’s something about getting to one’s destination by one’s own power.

After way too much sewing, my Elizabethan slops are complete! Yard upon yard of fabric, thread, pleating and stitching—but it’s all done with now. I hate sewing, but I do love having sewn. Now all I need to finish are my netherstocks and a codpiece to cover the join in the front of my slops, and I’m finished. Well, for now; eventually I need to make sleeves. And a ruff & cuffs. But for now, I’m nearly done…

A month or two ago I started a project to construct a set of Elizabethan clothing, most importantly a doublet (kinda like a vest with sleeves), slops (kind like knee-breeches) and netherstocks (imagine woven knee socks). Well, the doublet is essentially finished and the slops wait only to be stuffed. It’s been a long hard slog, but the end approacheth.

There’s a new site out which explains what the SCA is & is about. It’s pretty attractive.

We’ve all been on sites which offer avatars—that is, small images which represent one. It’s possible to tell a lot about a man from his avatar, and The Buttafly Guide to Friendster Photos tells it like it is.

Me? My avatar is either me drinking a Bass (in a Guinness glass…) or me in my 15th century Italian clothes, depending on the circumstances.

Oh sweet glorious joy of living! I love the world and all that is in it!

You see, there is an alternate way home from work, a way which involves a large hill, and which until today I had not yet attempted to cycle. I had figured that I should be able to hit 35 or 36 mph, and was looking forward to racing down it.

I could not have been prepared for what was to come. I hit the downslope, and switched into my downhill gear, then started ratcheting up, keeping an eye on my speedometer. 24-26-28-30-34-36-yes! But there were still gears to go! 36½-37-37½-38-38½39-39½…could I; would I?…I could and I did: 40 miles per hour! I was going the speed limit; I was going as fast as a car; I was going faster than I had ever gone under my own power; I was one with the road and the wind; I was on top of the world!

It was absolutely incredible, like no other feeling in the world. My next goal: to break the speed limit on that hill…

Meet Dr. Mike Adams a professor at the University of North Carolina. He has devised a manner in which to derive pleasure from leftists: every time a PETA member pesters him, he goes hunting; every time a leftist professor is defeated, he smokes a fine cigar. He even donates shotguns to schools with NRA chapters on campus—and names them after an anti-gun activist.

Curiously, he recommends a Rocky Patel Vintage ’90 as the best cigar he’s ever had (smoked in honour of a professor who called religious folks moral retards stepping down from a position of authority), and the first cigar I grabbed from my humidor this evening was a Rocky Patel ’92.

I was just listening to the Eagles tonight. The DVD of Hell Freezes Over is absolutely incredible. I remember back in college an acquaintance had the CD; it’s nothing compared to the DTS surround-sound experience.

It’s odd to think that it was nearly a decade ago that I first heard Hell Freezes Over. I was much younger, and happier, then.

I’ve just added the Jamaican Black Strap to my bachelor recipes. It’s perfect for the summer.

Interesting, miles per gallon equal furlongs per pint. Which isn’t that surprising, since a furlong is 1/8 mile and a pint is 1/8 gallon. But it’s amusing nonetheless.

My car gets about 35 furlongs to the pint…

Seen on Occidentalis, Bishop Basil on the necessity of monasticism. He often gives this same essay as a sermon.

The New York Daily News thinks that women prefer nerds. I wish that they were correct, but I fear what they have demonstrated is that women like fabulously wealthy guys who are slightly geeky. Hardly the good news one might wish for.

From the Netflix blurb for Jeremiah:

Based on the graphic novels by Hermann Huppen, this sci-fi epic stars Luke Perry and Malcolm-Jamal Warner as survivors of a deadly virus that, two decades ago, killed everyone but the young. In a world ruled by anarchy and danger, Jeremiah (Perry) is in search of Valhalla, a place that his father told him held hope for the survivors. As a new leader, Jeremiah faces warring groups of survivors who are hoping for peace, but desperate just to live.

Dear Lord, could it possibly be any worse?

…this sci-fi epic stars Luke Perry and Malcolm-Jamal Warner…

Has-beens…check.

…deadly virus that, two decades ago, killed everyone but the young

Hackneyed post-apocalyptic plot…check. As an aside, if it were two decades ago, then the survivors would hardly be very young now. Which explains, I guess, the casting of Messrs. Perry & Warner.

…Jeremiah…is in search of Valhalla…

Goofiness…check.

As a new leader, Jeremiah faces warring groups of survivors who are hoping for peace, but desperate just to live.

Piss-poor economics and back-story…check. Here’s a hint: very few are ever new leaders; generally it’s a long, hard slog to the top. Also, in situations of limited resources warfare is often the most counter-productive strategy possible. Let me guess—this is one of those post-apocalyptic tales in which everyone has a US Army brigade’s supply of ready-made ammo?

And once again sci-fi fans are left in the lurch. My question is: who thought that this could possibly be good?

del.icio.us (which is a right royal pain to type) is a wonderful little personal-bookmarking/collaborative-tagging application. You create an account and add a few JavaScript scriptlets to your browser toolbar—then use them to bookmark pages you like. Instead of categorising bookmarks in an hierarchical manner, like most bookmark managers, del.icio.us lets you tag them: I can note that my brother’s blog is both a blog and from family.

What is more, you can see other folks’ tagging, and you can manage your own tags; you can even see who else has linked to a page. For example, say I’d like to see all pages categorised as having to do with elephants; I’d merely got to http://del.icio.us/tag/elephant and there they are. Or perhaps I want to see all the folks who’ve tagged this blog: I can go to a list of all entries for my blog.

Oh—and anyone can see my bookmarks by going to http://del.icio.us/eadmund. How cool is that?

What’s best, of course, is that it’s free.

Years ago in school I was introduced to Lisp; my opinion was not very favourable. It appeared to be a goofy theoretical language, useful for exploring functional programming and maybe for AI work, but not for solving real-world problems. I don’t believe that I’m alone in having gotten that impression; for some reason all too many college CS programmes focus on teaching C and Java.

Be that as it may, I had the sneaking suspicion that Lisp might actually be far more practical than it had appeared. Folks like esr wrote that Lisp is worth learning for a different reason—the profound enlightenment experience you will have when you finally get it; Paul Graham wrote many articles detailing, among other things, how Lisp was a competitive for his successful startup; Phil Greenspun expounded the famous Greenspun’s Tenth Rule of Programming: Any sufficiently complicated C or Fortran program contains an ad-hoc, informally-specified, bug-ridden, slow implementation of half of CommonLisp. And so I began to wonder what I’d missed.

Then Slashdot published a review of Practical Common Lisp, which I then bought. It was as though a door had opened in a hitherto-impenetrable wall! Seibel’s superlative work showed how Common Lisp could be used usefully.

So, what is Lisp? Well, it’s a functional language. And an imperative one. And an object-oriented one. It’s interpreted. And compiled. It’s dynamically extendable: the programmer has full access to the entire language when programs are read in, when they’re compiled and when they’re run. He can create new syntax; he can replace standard syntax. He can connect to a running application and modify it, correcting bugs as he goes.

CLOS, the Common Lisp Object System, is amazingly powerful. Rather than having methods tied to a single class, as with most object systems, methods are specialised on one or more classes—and they can be added after the class has been defined. This means that any programmer can easily and seamlessly extend a built-in class. Want to add regexp matching to strings? Then do it—there are no hoops to jump through.

Quite frankly, Common Lisp is an incredible language which has spent far too long in the background. So, of course, I’m rewriting my tasting notes app in it to see how it works. So far, it’s really cool.

Well, the big news today is that Apple Computer have decided to switch from PowerPC to x86 for their CPUs. Quite frankly, this makes no sense to me, for I cannot see an advantage and yet can see many disadvantages.

I used to be a very big Macintosh fan years ago; in fact, nearly all of my college friends now use Macs. Eventually, though, I realised first of all that not all command lines are created equal (see Unix); that freedom trumps other concerns (see GNU/Linux); and that Apple has lost its once-vaunted user interface skills (see OS X). I had, however, been considering the purchase of an iBook in order to get some nifty Linux hardware.

That’s part of why this is so confusing. The x86 is an ugly architecture. Why switch to it? It has much less room for growth than PowerPC.

Don’t Apple realise that no-one will buy a Mac for the next two years? This announcement end-of-lifes all their hardware in one fell swoop.

I predict that this will cause yet another wave of Mac developers to quit the fold; this is one change too many. First 68K->PowerPC, then Classic->OS X, and now this: it’s clear that an investment in apple technology is building on ever-shifting sand.

Lastly, I don’t care what sort of hardware goofiness Apple get up to: within a matter of months after the release of x86 Mac OS X, it will be possible to run it on Windows and/or Linux. If it’s on the same architecture, it’s easy to emulate whatever hardware DRM they care to implement.

So Apple is giving up a technical advantage, drastically cutting revenue, losing developers and losing its platform dominance. Why, again?

This is turning into a recap of the NeXT saga…

Today I participated in my first-ever organised shooting event, the Aurora Gun Club’s D-Day Memorial Shoot, in which the only guns used are those of WWII vintage. What, when did Bob start collecting guns? you might ask yourself. Actually, I’ve not: my good buddy Martin (who’s on the Board of Directors of the club) invited me, lent me an Enfield and gave me the 35 rounds of British .303 I shot.

It was a lot of fun. The course of fire was 5 practise rounds, then 10 rounds prone (that’s lying down, for those of you unfamiliar with the lingo) in 10 minutes, then 10 rounds prone in 80 seconds, then ten rounds either kneeling or sitting in 10 minutes (I opted for sitting). The Enfield is a wonderful weapon to shoot, with a nice bolt action. The rounds do have a slight tendency to get a bit stuck loading, but that's relatively easily fixed. I wonder if the rounds I was using are not the same form factor the originals used—indeed, they almost certainly are, since I’m pretty sure that jacketed hollow point ammunition is illegal to use for warfare.

I didn’t shoot very well, but then I’m no marksman. Still, I didn’t do too badly, all things considered, and of course it’s just a fun shoot.

One of the cool things was that a fellow brought three WWII-era machine guns for a demonstration shoot: two American guns (an M2 and something whose name I forget) and a German (a MG23 or MG43?). I’d never seen a machine gun used, and it’s very cool. They do eat ammunition very quickly: in a matter of seconds he had spent over $100. But man are they cool! I didn’t know this, but each weapon makes quite a distinct sound; IMHO it’d be very easy to distinguish them on a battlefield.

It wasn’t a completely perfect day, for someone had ordered authentic weather: cold and rainy. It was so wet that we were all soaked through-and-through by the end, and so cold (beyond chilly) that when Martin & retired indoors to finish scoring that our hands could barely write. But it was all fun anyway, and of course it really just helped add some atmosphere. I gotta say that the last relay rather hurried through their final set, though: one would swear that it’d been a speed-fire event…

Afterwards we’d a raffle and door prizes: I got a free hour at K2 Firearms Training Centre as well as a beer cosy shaped like a T-shirt. And I got my Civilian Marksmanship Program certificate, so now I’m eligible to purchase old surplus guns at a nominal cost. All in all a very fun day!

My sister-in-law Emily was in town this weekend for Stephen’s Eagle ceremony, lots of pictures for my Mom and (of course) to see her husband, my brother (they’d not seen one another since March). I always enjoy spending time with her, but this time it occurred to me that we’ve not spent three days’ worth of time together: in many ways she’s really a stranger. I like her, of course—but it’s a kind of associative liking through Thomas, in the same manner that one likes one’s buddy’s friends because, even though they are unknown to one, they must be cool if one’s friend likes them.

I have every expectation that if we did know one another well that we’d get along famously, and indeed when our paths have cross such has been the case. But it’d be so great if Tom & Em were here in Denver and we had dinner or drinks at least once a month.

For that matter, I hardly know my own brother; it’s been almost a decade since we’ve spent a great deal of time with one another. We’re family, of course, and that means that I don’t feel like a left-behind childhood friend or anything like that—but we each are that in a small way to each other. We grew up together once, but we no longer do.

Of course, no-one can know what the future might bring. Thomas & Emily might end up in Colorado; for that matter, I might end up in California. And of course there are my other two brothers to consider. All in all, the odds of the four of us living in the same state again are pretty slim.

Johnny Lechner has been in college for 11 years. His grades are good; he just sees no reason to graduate. In response, the regents of his university have doubled his tuition. Why? He’s not hurting anyone; he’s paying his own way; he’s certainly improving his mind. And he’s having the time of his life. I envy the man.

Today was my very last day on the CoBank account. Tomorrow marks five years to the day since I started there, fresh out of college. I’ve spent my entire career there, and now it’s gone.

In retrospect, I shouldn’ve have taken the position there, but should have found a job in the Dallas/Ft. Worth area of Texas. I came to Denver because I had a mentor here and figured that I’d meet new people and make new friends, but in less than a year he was gone, and the expected friendships failed to blossom. So I was left mentorless and friendless. Hindsight is 20/20.

On Saturday my youngest brother was awarded the rank of Eagle Scout, bringing the total in our family to four. We’re all very proud of him. He’s now an assistant Scoutmaster and is currently down at Philmont Scout Ranch, down in Cimmaron, New Mexico.

My folks threw a party, of course, which was a lot of fun. Setting up ahead of time I realised once again how cool it is to have brothers (and how much I pity those without them). There’s something wonderful about being related to such fine young men.

For the ultimate in roughing it, La Petite Maison du Weekend. Those crazy French-Canadians!