To be able to say "Noggle," you first must be able to say "Nah."
Hey, whoa. 3D Realms, the software company that apparently used to be called Apogee, has a page where you can download all those shareware side-scrollers from the late 80s and early 90s.
Just like I used to play on my 286 after spending an hour downloading them from a BBS.
I mean, it’s not like I don’t have a bunch of them on 3.5″ diskette, but I will complete my collection.
Buy My Books!
Kudos to whomever designed the label for the new Gillette Clinical Strength Antiperspirant:
Yeah, let’s go with the hexagons and make it all scientific and stuff. If anyone noticed something amiss or astray with that initiative, that person was overruled. Too bad, too. When you’re going all scientific and whatnot, you’ll find that the hexagon is the chemical representation of benzene:
No, branding experts, benzene is not the cheaply photocopied collection of angst-ridden poetry and inky vampire drawings that Ben publishes. Benzene is:
Benzene exposure has serious health effects. Breathing high levels of benzene can result in death, while low levels can cause drowsiness, dizziness, rapid heart rate, headaches, tremors, confusion, and unconsciousness. Eating or drinking foods containing high levels of benzene can cause vomiting, irritation of the stomach, dizziness, sleepiness, convulsions, and death.
Fortunately, the target audience is probably just as clueless.
Buy My Books!
More stuff means less floorspace to vacuum. It encourages efficiency, baby.
Buy My Books!
From The American Thinker:
What do I accept? That the U.S. is just another European country now. We are all welfare states if not outright socialist ones and our political choices are between center-left and left-left. Time to get used to it. Moving to France won’t make much difference, whether you are Alec Baldwin or Chuck Norris.
Sadly, I agree. Things will probably get worse before they get better. However, two things might come into play to stem the tide:
Because without hope, I got nothing.
Buy My Books!
Virginia Postrel and friend endorse the Amazon Kindle because it takes up less space than books. Postrel:
I love books too, and I wouldn’t want to relinquish all those individual physical volumes for an electronic reader. But, that said, I had to give up hundreds of books when I moved back to L.A., because there just wasn’t room for them all. I buy a lot fewer books than I would if I didn’t have to store them (and live in fear of having them fall on my head in an earthquake). So maybe I need a Kindle after all.
I am inundated in books. I have way too many. I have no place to put them. I often can’t find them when I want them. I often don’t know what I want to read on a trip, so I carry six heavy books with me, which sucks.
Heresy! Heresy! Do you know what I do when I run out of space for books? I buy a bigger house!
Apparently, Tam of the mere sixty boxes understands.
(Link seen elsewhere on Dynamist.com.)
Buy My Books!
Robbers steal $163m in art from Zurich:
Three armed men in ski masks stole four paintings by Cezanne, Degas, van Gogh and Monet worth $163.2 million from a Zurich museum in one of Europe’s largest ever art heists, police said Monday.
What did they get?
A reward of about $90,000 was offered for information leading to the recovery of the paintings – Claude Monet’s “Poppy field at Vetheuil,” Edgar Degas’ “Ludovic Lepic and his Daughter,” Vincent van Gogh’s “Blooming Chestnut Branches,” and Paul Cezanne’s “Boy in the Red Waistcoat.”
What didn’t they get?
The museum also owns Auguste Renoir’s “Little Irene” and Edgar Degas’ “Little Dancer.”
You know, I have a print of “Little Irene” in my house. How they passed up Renoir for Monet and van Gogh, I cannot understand.
The article claims the following regularly scheduled “Don’t try this at home even though the news article has a big dollar amount in its headline” warning:
The FBI estimates the market for stolen art at $6 billion annually, and Interpol has about 30,000 pieces of stolen art in its database. While only a fraction of the stolen art is ever found, the theft of iconic objects, especially by force, is rarer because of the intense police work that follows and because the works are so difficult to sell.
If I were a novelist, or if I were a practicing novelist, this is how I’d plot it out: Russian millionaire who’s a big fan of Monet or wants the Monet to impress his hot young figure skater chickling hires the job out at $2 million a man. It’s costing him $8 million, but far less than he’d have to pay to buy it at auction or on the black market. The other guys snatch and grab a couple extra for their bonus. They wrap the Monet up and ship it to a dead box in Finland, just standard freight, and keep or sell the remainders. After their $2 million payoff.
But I’d save the real plot twist for what comes next.
Buy My Books!
Many parents consider Hannah Montana a role model for children. But a scene in her current blockbuster movie is drawing negative attention from some safety experts.
The scene shows the 15-year-old Disney superstar and her dad, country music star Billy Ray Cyrus, riding in the rear seat of a Range Rover on the way to a rehearsal for their sold-out concert tour. In real life, Hannah is Miley Cyrus.
Neither was wearing a seat belt.
Oh, for Pete’s sake. For starters, it’s not a real dis, it’s a press release by an organization that lives to put out nitpicky press releases about its cause du jour.
But to put dis in your headline. 90s urban slang, for Pete’s sake.
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch is such low-hanging fruit.
Buy My Books!
I know it’s no surprise, but let me point out the obvious. This St. Louis Post-Dispatch headline indicates its lack of objectivity: Ashcroft defends Bush on spying
Spying? Well, I guess that’s one way to put surveillance. If you’re against it.
Don’t you hate how the cops on the side of the road spy on your speed with radar “guns”? Me, too.
How about your municipality spying on you with red light cameras or with cameras downtown or microphones designed to pinpoint gunshots? What, Post-Dispatch, it’s not spying unless you can hang it on Bush?
Buy My Books!
Is America ready for President Barry?
In related news, how did the New York Times photographer Max Whittaker know to go to Hawaii in 1978 to photograph a high schooler in case he ran for president 30 years later?
I smell a conspiracy theory cooking.
Buy My Books!
Ah, finally, that time again, my friends. The birds are singing, the sun is shining, the snows that came on Friday have receded by Monday, and it’s book sale season again! Well, not quite full on book sale season, but Heather found something in the city claiming to be a sale of 1000 books, so off we went.
The sale was in a nice section of the city, St. Louis Hills or thereabouts, and it did indeed feature a number of books. A lot of books. Dollar hardcovers and old hardcovers at that. I never did ask the source of the books–the sale was in a single family home–but I did partake. I would have partooken of more were I building a reference library, gentle readers, but recent bookshelf acquisitions have shown me how space-consuming a reference library really is. So I only bought a couple of books (noted below, of course). The sale also offered old bottles at $3.00, collector sorts of bottles from various liquors around the world. Which leads to the funniest thing I saw today (so far): a rather South City Hoosierish looking fellow followed me in the pay money line, and he carried an esoteric and exotic bottle. Full. He spoke with the woman and they agreed that the vodka would still be good. Also, he had a Shooter’s Handbook gun reference guide that he wanted, but he didn’t want to pay a dollar for it; fifty cents, he offered, even though large reference books were $2.00. The woman offered it to him for the buck, but he wouldn’t pay more than fifty cents for it. I can guess why not; that fifty cents was a whole sixth of a bottle of ancient vodka.
We also made a couple of other stops: one, a garage sale in the tiny municipality of Grantwood Village that had record albums for $3.00. I asked her if she’d take a dollar, and she would. Jeez, you record and cassette sellers, you need to know your price point here. Individual songs are a buck on the Internet. If someone wants to buy your old record or cassette, that person probably wants one song for sure and perhaps the rest as “maybe I’ll like it, too.” So you need to beat that dollar price point. You cannot hope that the stuff you liked back in the day along with millions of other teenagers in your generation will somehow prove to be a “collector’s item.” Keep it under a buck, or you’ll keep it, period.
Our third stop was the local rec center for the community garage sale. People, and not a lot of them, ponied up $18 for a table. Given the selection scattered across the dozen tables, either the rush came right when it opened and cleaned it out, or people were foolish to expect to sell that stuff and make $18 back. Never the less, I bought some baseball cards and cassettes.
Here’s our first noted score for the year:
Here’s what I got:
Additionally, I bought the following musical stylings:
Also, I bought a stack of baseball cards, three packs for like a quarter each. How could I not, with Rollie Fingers, Paul Molitor, and Ozzie Smith looking out at me?
Also, we got a game for the boys, and my wife bought a couple of cookbooks.
A couple weeks ago, I bought a couple new five shelf bookcases to spread out my to read stack. This means that on two bookcases, my books are not double-stacked. This spring and summer will alleviate that, no doubt.
Total purchased:12 books, 3 records, 4 cassettes.
Total spent:$20.90
Buy My Books!
Rachel Lucas is right; anything with a British accent is funnier.
Buy My Books!
AP overstates its poll results when it says Bush, Congress hit bottom in AP poll:
It’s almost as if people can barely stand the thought of President Bush and Congress anymore. Bush reached his lowest approval rating in The Associated Press-Ipsos poll on Friday as only 30 percent said they like the job he is doing, including an all-time low in his support by Republicans. Congress’ approval fell to just 22 percent, equaling its poorest grade in the survey. Both marks dropped by 4 percentage points since early January.
Actually, I would expect the absolute bottom to be armed insurrection or at least some sort of lynching. Disgust with one’s government and party, pithy remarks made amongst the like minded, and/or staying home on election day after filing one’s taxes in a timely fashion but answering negatively to a pollster doesn’t strike me as the bottom.
(Link seen on Instapundit.)
Buy My Books!
Wow, it’s been almost three years since I read N-Space, the collection to which this book is billed the sequel. How do you get a sequel to a collection of short stories, snippets, and novel excerpts? Beats me, I am not a marketing flack for a publisher.
Like that book, I didn’t care for this book too much. For starters, it pads the nearly 500 pages with excerpts and scenes from novels (a disturbing number of which I have already read). It offers a number from his Warlock series, which I haven’t read and might have to look into. Other than that, it dabbles mostly in the Known Space arena.
It did, however, allow me to put my finger on one of Niven’s flaws: his books are best when the science isn’t actually a freaking character within it, particularly the one that speaks most. The later Ringworld novels fell into this trap, as did one of the stories in this book (“The Borderland of Sol”) whose only purpose was for Niven to noodle about the conceit of a quantum blackhole. The narrator is a space adventurer who follows along with Carlos Wu, father of Ringworld‘s Louis Wu, as they uncover a scientist engaged in piracy. The bulk of the story is Wu knowing the science of what’s going on and not spilling it until they’re in the pirate’s lair, where the pirate scientist gives a lecture on quantum black holes.
The nonfiction bits talk about how much Niven likes to deal with the hard sciences and that, in one of the many science fiction convention memories he treats us to, he and a group of artists and writers got a conference room set aside so they could create a world, including the topography, the aliens on it, and their culture. They worked in the room for the whole convention, and that was it: people putting together a world. Niven was surprised that more fans didn’t stop by to see this riveting action as artists created the images, writers wrote up the prose, and everyone brainstormed without a freaking story.
Niven, apparently, lives for this stuff, but readers don’t necessarily. Ergo, this book is okay for real Niven fans, but casual science fiction fans should probably stick to the real novels or the real collections.
Buy My Books!
From the story Fake FedEx Trucks; When the Drugs Absolutely Have to Get There:
A fake U.S. Border Patrol van was found to be carrying 31 illegal aliens in Casa Grande, Ariz.
An alert agent recognized that the “H” in the van’s serial number is a letter used only on U.S. Border Patrol Jeep Wranglers. It should have been a “P.”
One suspects that the story would have been almost as informative without the clarity that’s only useful to smugglers.
Now, how about some Pantone colors for the fake logos, ABC? What, are you holding something back because the Bush administration censored you?
(Link seen on Instapundit.)
Buy My Books!
Southern Residents Asses Tornado Damage
(Link courtesy of William Squire.)
Buy My Books!
MoDOT: Roads safer, more money needed
Do you get the sense that if the roads were less safe, more money would be needed anyway?
Roads remain the same….more money needed!
Flying cars invented, more money needed to convert the roads to bike paths!
Roads? Where we’re going we don’t need roads? More money needed to subsidize production of organic garbage for the Mr. Fusion.
Come on, everybody play “Think Inside The Bureaucratic Box”!
Buy My Books!
Total Missouri vote count for Fred Thompson: 3106.
That might include me, but on further reflection, I somehow was filling out a St. Louis City paper ballot; I know because I voted against its half cent tax increase for practice.
Buy My Books!
I voted this morning, about 9:30, about the 98th person at my polling place to use the scanned paper ballots instead of the touch-screen voting machines. I took the piece of paper because I’d planned to write in the name of my favored candidate, a man who has since left the race, Fred Thompson.
The current front runners of the party, Romney and McCain, are not my first choice. Nor my second choice. Nor, really, men I would choose at all if given any good field. Romney signed MassCare (Google asks, “Did you mean Massacre?”). Romney promised auto workers that he would save the auto industry. I mean, Romney isn’t what I’d call a conservative.
McCain, now, I liked him well enough in 2000, before I knew much about him. I even forgave him for earnestly supporting McCain-Feingold because I thought his heart was in the right place with his intentions, but I didn’t think the law would prove “Constitutional” (the difference between Constitutional and “Constitutional” lies in the difference between my opinion and that of the swing vote of the Supreme Court). However, it did, and ultimately the better I got to know McCain, the less I liked him.
I would have voted for somebody else, anyone else, when I got to the polling place. Instead, I hoped to write in the name of Fred Thompson to indicate my displeasure with the ruling mass of the Republican party that its calculus that weights “electability” (that is, how positively enamored the media coverage of a candidate is) over substance (that is, reason, individualism, and capitalism tempered with individually-motivated charity that make up the American psyche, or what I always hope is ultimately would prove to be the American psyche).
I wanted to let the Party and its new ruling locus back east understand that they weren’t speaking for me, that I would go outside the established paths they chose for me and would actually write in the name of a Federalist, a man laden with gravitas, and someone who I think exuded sincerity and down-to-earth belief in himself and the aforementioned tenets of American society.
Of course, between the two evils vying to be the lesser of the two evils on the ballot in November, the current leader McCain varies from all that I think is good in politics more than the other guy, and a vote for a who has no chance is really a vote for the front runner. That is, any vote for anyone other than the guy in second place is irrelevant. And I didn’t want McCain to win, did I?
Brother, that argument that my opinion is irrelevant doesn’t work if you’re trying to bring me to inflate your relevance. I know that I differ from the bulk of the party, and this primary offers me the opportunity to remind you just how much.
I was going to write in Fred Thompson, but his name was on the ballot. Good, that means that people who feel almost as fervent as I do but are lazy might take the opportunity to send the same message that I did. I filled in the circle and scanned it in, leaving a paper trail in case of voting irregularities or whatnot and a record that I stand apart from the direction this party is going, down the slippery slope into disconnection from me, if not its base.
Buy My Books!
On Friday, I shoveled nine inches of snow off of my walk and driveway.
Today, it was seventy-five degrees and the snow is all gone.
You cannot really explain that to someone who hasn’t lived in St. Louis.
Buy My Books!
Following the “coincidence” yesterday, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch identifies another suspicious bit of serendipity:
I’m beginning to see a sordid pattern in the behavior of our elected officials and their visits to the Midwest.
Buy My Books!