I hate stealing

Well, not enough to stop myself from posting these pictures without linking to the site I found them on. When I do find it again, I'll put a link in. Word is bond.

However, these are all the good ones.

I'll see your Mach V and raise you Elvis from the Future

I've been going mano a mano with my Brother in Law over dream cars, and I'd like to make my latest salvo public.

Young Americans

Pat Dollard's video from Iraq. Bloody, horrific, profane, amazing. [Via Gutfield]

Someone, someday, is going to make a great movie about Iraq. Probably when the boomers are dead.

Afghan restaurant in Washington DC

Excellent :-)

Ask Mike for directions :-)

[Cough - MRB]

Flying one winged F-15

Well, that's not something you see every day. Or ever. If that had happened in a movie, I would have called bullshit, but then I would have been wrong.

Awkward Foreign Exhange Conversations

Yesterday I said to Pavel, "How much for the laptop?"
"Um, 200... not dollars."
"It's stolen, isn't it?"

Do you live longer because you exercise

Or do you exercise if you are long-lived? Nature versus nuture, round one billion. Round one billion and one: Is genius made or born? Consider the Expert Mind.

Baseball canary?

Requiem for a rookie card. By Dave Jamieson.

Last month, when my parents sold the house I grew up in, my mom forced me to come home and clear out my childhood bedroom. I opened the closet and found a box the size of a Jetta. It was so heavy that at first I thought it held my Weider dumbbells from middle school. Nope, this was my old stash. Thousands, if not tens of thousands, of baseball cards from the 1980s. Puckett, Henderson, Sandberg, Gwynn, and McGwire stared back at me with fresh faces. So long, old friends, I thought. It's time for me to cash in on these long-held investments. I started calling the lucky card dealers who would soon be bidding on my trove.

First, I got a couple of disconnected numbers for now-defunct card shops. Not a good sign. Then I finally reached a human. "Those cards aren't worth anything," he told me, declining to look at them.

Down on the Waterfont

Researchers using waves to write on water:

...Their second attempt, however -- developed with Professor Shigeru Naito of Osaka University -- addresses both major flaws by using formulas known as Bessel functions to cut the processing time down to between 15 and 30 seconds and form characters with straight lines. The 30-centimeter deep, kiddie pool-sized device employs 50 generators operating in unison to produce cylindrical waves that behave like pixels, giving it the ability to display the entire roman alphabet as well as a number of kanji characters.

Well, that's nifty.

Eat like a pro

Eat like a pro:

But there are simple steps you can take that can make any dining experience a little better--that is, a little more attuned to your personal tastes.

And so, after consulting with some of my other dining colleagues, I assembled the following tips, consisting of insider information, professional tips and assertiveness training. It's theoretically possible to employ all 10 tips in a single restaurant visit, but that isn't necessary. If there's one common theme to these suggestions, it's that flexibility is a good thing.

Dine on Wednesday nights. Why are some customers greeted by name at the door, while the rest of us settle for obscurity? The fawned-over ones generally are famous, very rich and/or regular customers. Fame and riches being beyond the grasp of most of us, the best strategy is to become a regular, and the most cost-effective way of doing that is to visit on a quiet night, when you're one of the few paying customers and more likely to be noticed. To be sure you'll be remembered, chat up the manager or the owner, rave about the food or service or decor. On your way out, make a reservation for another Wednesday night. Do that a couple-three times and you too can be welcomed like family, treated to the occasional extra dessert or quickly seated on a packed-to-the-rafters weekend night.

Turns out, there's more to it than chewing with your mouth closed. Baby steps.

If only I could get the intended consequences to work as well

Seems you didn't need that Slim Jim or National Enquirer after all:

The law of unintended consequences is taking a chomp out of grocery chain profits as more stores transition from human clerks to self-service checkout technology, thus reducing the time shoppers spend in line and under the temptation of impulse items.

Unintended consequences - they're pretty the only thing that work, huh? So far, my plan of not intending what I intend hasn't worked out either. St. Paul wins again.

NY Times Top 10

Top Ten Signs There's Trouble At The New York Times

10. Extensive coverage of recent fighting between the Israelis and the lesbians.

9. Pages 2 through 20 are corrections of previous edition.

8. Every sentence begins "So, like..."

7. TV listings only for Zorro.

6. Weather forecast reads "Look outside dumbass."

5. Multiple references to "President Gore."

4. Obituary includes list of people they wish were dead.

3. Headlines fold over to create surprise mad magazine-type hidden message.

2. Restaurant critic recently gave IHOP four stars.

1. Reporting that Oprah isn't gay, but Letterman is...

SNL Ephemrea

I watched SNL last week, and it was actually not bad. Which reminds me, Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey

I'd like to see a nature film where an eagle swoops down and pulls a fish out of a lake, and then maybe he's flying along, low to the ground, and the fish pulls a worm out of the ground. Now that's a documentary.

Related, the Bill Brasky Quote Archive [R] ("He hated Mexicans! And he was half Mexican! .......And he hated irony!")

Like a web page version of Blue in the Face but without Rosanne Barr

The Brooklynites captures a slice of life in Brooklyn, including a lot of things I like (immigrants, cute girls, and pizzaria owners) and a few things I don't like (some movie stars, hipsters, and overly-provincial East Coasters). I can't speak to its completeness, but I suspect that Brooklyn isn't 50% artists*. How would anything useful get done? But that aside, what a good use of the internet.

*nor British orphans attempting to escape pirates.

Afghan Poet Society

Afghan poetry groups in D.C. fight a war of words on their art, By Masood Favirar.

"There aren't many places in the United States that can count poetry societies run by Afghan cab drivers. Washington has two. And they don't like each other."

Which reminds me of an Emo Phillip's joke

I was walking across a bridge one day, and I saw a man standing on the edge, about to jump off. So I ran over and said "Stop! Don't do it!"
"Why shouldn't I?" he said.
"Well, there's so much to live for!"
"Like what?"
"Well... are you religious?"
He said yes.
I said, "Me too! Are you Christian or Buddhist?"
"Christian."
"Me too! Are you Catholic or Protestant?"
"Protestant." "Me too! Are you Episcopalian or Baptist?"
"Baptist."
"Wow! Me too! Are you Baptist Church of God or Baptist Church of the Lord?"
"Baptist Church of God!"
"Me too! Are you original Baptist Church of God, or are you reformed Baptist Church of God?"
"Reformed Baptist Church of God!"
"Me too! Are you Reformed Baptist Church of God, reformation of 1879, or Reformed Baptist Church of God, reformation of 1915?"
He said, "Reformed Baptist Church of God, reformation of 1915!"
I said, "Die, heretic scum", and pushed him off.

FYI, Reformation of 1879, West side!

True that

From the Weird Fortune Cookie Collection.

Banana Perfection

Dear Mike,

Meet the perfect juicebox.

Sincerely,

Erik.

"And then I realized... like I was shot... like I was shot with a diamond... a diamond bullet right through my forehead. And I thought: My God... the genius of that. The genius. The will to do that. Perfect, genuine, complete, crystalline, pure."

Okay, this is totally your call

On the first hand, you have the Pilot for Mike Mignolia's The Amazing Screw-On Head.

On the other hand, "This is how you spend a lazy day. Stacking your stuff. So it’ll knock your other stuff over. In a line. On TV. In Japan."

Over time, I've come to accept that I don't contribute anything to the internet

Actually, I think that's my strong point. You know, know thyself, etc. And by "etc" I mean, here are some YouTube videos:

Chad Vader - Dayshift Manager.
The F'in Big Lebowski, cough [R!]

Only Josh Can Prevent Wildfires

It would seem Josh has some 'splaining to do.

The 10 Dumbest Yet Successful Online Business Ideas

Ten Dumb Ideas - Ten Rich People*. I know what you're thinking: Mike, if you're so dumb, why aren't you a millionare? Beats me, Claude.

*Link fixed.

That's... batshit insane

Dinner in the sky... "Extrodinary... Perplexing..."

Perplexing indeed. Although there's a long and storied history of high-rise dining (what city doesn't have a white elephant, 200' foot high spinning restaurant from the 70's?), I'm curious about the exact Eureka moment that brought this amusement park ride slash hibatchi bar to life. Wow.

8 1/2 Mile

Emiem vs Fellini - the latest youtube goofiness.

"whorepresents"

Top ten unintentionally funny url's.

Sandwich

Open fire on the DC sandwich shop/deli debate - see the comments. Locally, I'd suggest the Father's Defeat at Roy's.

So long and thanks for all the fish

And the computer too. An old Mac IIfx pops up on ebay. Guess who once owned it?

FMI

M=my.

Also, NBC posted Lazy Sunday, so you can go watch that again. Come to think of it, the distinction between YouTube serving this clip and NBC serving it is, practically speaking, lost on me.

Related: Magnolia Cupcakes Doesn't Deliever.

What the Dutch?

Seriously, you'd think five hundred years of heritage would offer some sort of clue, but I have no idea who these guys are. Plus, I think "What the Dutch" is going to be my new swear. Via Positve Ape Index.

The ElectriClerk

Well, that's pretty cool.

First it was for the solar system

Now I need a 6.5 billion pixel display to visualize ever person on the planet.

Woot's contest

#80

McSundial

Smrt.

Soduko algorithm

Here's a pretty systematic way to play Soduko. Now you can have your computer play a computer generated Soduko game. Which is like setting up an humidifier and dehumidifier right next to each other and seeing who wins* (The instructable's website is getting hammered, so patience).

*The electic company.

Graceland

via The New Yorker...

Jesus and the King of Beers

Heh.

Tootpick Engineering

Old-school Modern Machanix magazine blog posting of an article on toothpick engineering.

The Lost Mac Ads

Mike's iHatin', episode 11-billion: Best Week Ever. [via]

LA Dish

LA on a plate: ATaste for $48. Too rich for me, but perhaps the wealthy, erudite readers of this blog might be interested. For the rest of you lowlifes, this seems like something that could be DIY no problem. Now, excuse me while run off to my Mom's old kiln with some Google Map printouts and a bottle of Boone's.

Freakonmics author raises self, then folds.

heh.

Wow

Nice obituary.

Headlights for your feet

Headlights? More like feetlights.

Giant dam fails

Doh! So, do you blame Force 10 from Navarone or Lex Luthor?

The thin grey line between hobby and insanity

Ian's Shoelace Site.

Nocebo

The Nocebo Effect: Placebos's Evil Twin, by Brian Reid

Ten years ago, researchers stumbled onto a striking finding: Women who believed that they were prone to heart disease were nearly four times as likely to die as women with similar risk factors who didn't hold such fatalistic views.

The higher risk of death, in other words, had nothing to with the usual heart disease culprits -- age, blood pressure, cholesterol, weight. Instead, it tracked closely with belief. Think sick, be sick.

I can never figure out if you are what you think you are, or if you are what other people think you are. Truth inhers in subjectivity, which might sound a little funny coming from a physicist.

10 Things

The Top 10 Things They Never Taught Me in Design School, by Michael McDonough.

9. It all comes down to output.
No matter how cool your computer rendering is, no matter how brilliant your essay is, no matter how fabulous your whatever is, if you can’t output it, distribute it, and make it known, it basically doesn’t exist. Orient yourself to output. Schedule output. Output, output, output. Show Me The Output.

This translates very well to science, and probably to most creative work.

1.21 Gigawatts

Why the EV1 was cancelled. It seems the lease payments didn't even cover GM's maintenance costs, let alone the manufacturing costs and R&D. Bleeding edge innovation is way overrated. Just ask the guys who built the De Havilland Comet.

Some times I wish I had UV eyes

UV emission from our sun. Well, it would be a little Geordi La Forge at first, but whatever. Most glass is not transparent below 370 nm, so everything you looked through a window, it would tint everything "visible."

Chavish nature versus nurture

Here's how to handle a drunken chav - Ian Marchant, The Sunday Times

Really, I can’t buy into relativistic accounts of behaviour at all, despite a lifetime of Guardian reading. Plenty of people live in poverty, bad housing, are the victims of an education system which serves only to prepare people for life in a call centre. Plenty of people get pissed. My own mother was brutalised at home by her father in conditions of unthinkable squalor, and she didn’t take it out on anybody else.

What I really think is this: there is evil at work in the world. Some people are evil. That kid was evil. Not naughty, not misguided, or led astray. Evil.

Lebowski Fest 2006

It's not too late for Lebowksi Fest.

There are seventeen different things a guy can do when he lies to give himself away.

17? I'm not Sicilian, so here are seven signs their pants are on fire.

Dang!

The Napoleon Dynamite* Festival just wrapped up. I know, no fair annoucing this stuff after it happened, but next time. Props to the organizers - their events look great. Seriously. [via**]

-
*A lot of people bag on ND because it's too popular. Part of the appeal of Napoleon was that if he liked something, he wasn't going to worry about what other people thought. If you feel like the bloom is lost because you saw a Vote for Pedro shirt yesterday, well, cracker please, go back to bragging about your obscure record collection.

**"Probably the funniest part about this festival is that, as far as I can tell, at no point do they screen the actual film they're celebrating. You'd think that would be a pre-requisite to the whole thing, right?"

Everything new is old again

Movie posters remixed as medieval Russian texts.

Oil Plug

Hey, this $23 oil drain valve is a good idea.

My Dumb Links

• My shoulders hurt, like, all the time.
• Step 1 to putting important things away in a safety deposit box - Get a safety deposit box.
• Richard Feynman worked at Thinking Machines for a summer.
• Beausage.
• Interview with a Headhunter.
  
• Pirate Tie.
• Etchasketch meets Rain Man.
• Massive Attack - Special Cases.

Bill Fenton

Is a pain in the ass.

Sideways economics

Add parking tickets to the Big Mac Index... Tyler Cowen rewrote the abstract:

During a period of diplomatic parking immunity, the average Kuwaiti diplomat to the United Nations racked up 246 parking violations. No Swedish diplomat had any parking violations. This paper explores how that might possibly be the case.

I do like his version better, but good writing is like an open parking space in NYC - occasionally hard to find. Excuse me while my blog goes and circles the block again, so to speak.

PS, I wonder how the two lists overlap.

Toasted

My new desktop came from here.

Independence Day

Happy 4th of July. BTW, since anything with a fuse is illegal here*, please blow something up for me if you can. Or, you can just go watch these guys shoot off 15,000 bottlerockets.

-
*including fuse boxes. It makes using electricity a little "exciting."

Speaking of pleasurable things

Hey, don't get me wrong - maybe a little lotus eating is okay once in awhile...


Plus, when the price on the first and second seasons of The Wire seems to have dropped considerably - currently, buying the two separately costs far less than the combo pack, how can I say no?

I have this trigger effect when it comes to buying things. Above a certain point, it's no way. Below that point, it's automatic. Anyway, in case you haven't seen them, they are very good, albeit with typical pay-cable language and sex. There's a scene in season one that consists solely of the verb, noun, adverb and exclamative forms of the anglo-saxon to plough. It's super-affected, but that's a rarity for these writers. Forgive them the occasional lapse, and you get some of the best characters and developing story-lines around, all laced with a pretty good sense of humor, too.

Lotus-eating isn't all it's cracked up to be

Re Happiness: "I can think of nothing less pleasurable than a life devoted to pleasure."

John D. Rockefeller

SuperEh and Whatever-Men 3

Superman Returns is okay. It isn't bad. It's technically well made, although derivative in look and style - Spider Man with The Matrix bullettime. The casting is okay, although like Katie - uh, Kate - Holmes in Batman Begins, her doppleganger Kate Bosworth feels too young for the part. The film feels like there's not a lot of there there. The Christ Pose near the end is Platoon level subtle.

So, with it's brilliant first half, Superman: The Movie is still the best.

The X-men series needs to sort out its subtexts a little better - their superposition is a little incoherent. As my brother pointed out, it would be kinda funny if the angel guy who flew in from Barbarella confronted his dad to tell him he's gay, only to have the dad sigh with relief: "Duh - you walk around dressed like a naked angel in San Francisco. I was afraid you were going to tell me you were a mutant." More disappointingly, the script IQ plummeted in the name of symbolic spectacle:

1. Dear Magneto, Suspension bridges operate in tension, not compression. And why do you need a bridge? Did you walk to SF?
2. If a metal controlling mutant has been around for decades, the army should have suited up with plastic guns years ago.
3. Don't have the Act Up! mutants try to kill the aforementioned scientist guy by throwing him off a roof when his son is a mutant that can fly in to save him.

I'm not trying to pick apart too many details, but like the golden gate bridge, there's only so far that belief can be cantilevered before I lose it. I did laugh for "I'm the Juggernaut, Bitch." though, so kudos for that. No one else in the audience did.

So neither's bad, but they're eminently forgettable.

Hoisted by their own petards

Cliche = touche. Personally, I'd go for a 50% pay cut if my cost of living was cut 75%.

Take That, Leprechauns

Via APOD.

Old Cartoons and TV Shows That I Can't Watch Again Without Destroying My Memories of Them

• Scooby Doo
• He-Man
• G.I. Joe
• M.A.S.K.
• Galaxy Rangers
• Smurfs
• Happy Days
• Perry Mason
• Family Ties

Cough, Transfomers.