I came across a piece of trivia the other day which claims that "2,500 left-handed people die each year from using stuff that was designed for right-handed people." A Google Search on the phrase "2,500 left handed people" reveals that this bit of blatantly untrue information has been regurgitated some 2,430 times. I mean, come on, really? We're honestly expected to believe this figure? (a fairly thorough search did not reveal any core citations or documents to support the figure) We're expected to believe that more lefties die every year from using stuff designed for righties than the number of 20-24 year olds who commit suicide?
Of course, that figure assumes we're only talking about the US rather than the entire world. Generally you have to assume that, because only a country as industrialized as the US has the time to keep track of figures like people who die from using incorrectly-handed tools. I doubt very much that the countries of Sub-Saharan Africa, who need help from first world agencies to keep track of their AIDS deaths have the time to track their deaths do to handedness incompatibility. The moral, of course, is that there's a lot of crap out there, and you have to be careful not to spread it.
I watched the Oscars last night. I'm not sure why; I guess I got caught up in the hype. I was happy to see Morgan Freeman win an Oscar, and I always enjoy the In Memoriam segment. Did you see Tim Robbins flipped Chris Rock off after he said that Tim was too political? Looking at the picture it looks like it was good-humored, and no one was offended (I'm talking about Robbins and Rock -- I'm sure there is some decency group out there who was). I think we need more of that, if you ask me.
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Ross
On my desk at work I have a pile of "stuff." Basically, anytime I get something new I toss it on the pile. Like all natural deposits, it has strata, which, all things considered, is not that bad of a filing system. I can generally find what I need, so I've let it grow. It has now reached the point where things I toss on the top of the heap have a tendency to slide off on to the floor. In fact, I worry that the entire thing is structurally unsound and that it may collapse at any moment burying me under thousands of free copies of "InformationWeek" (anyone who works in IT will know what I mean).
I finally got around to fixing the two lights that had caused me to fail my safety inspection. As expected, it wasn't too tough (though I did have to use a vice grip at one point). Then I swung by on my way into work and had them finish it up. So overall pretty painless, though each of the marble-sized lights was $2.50. Of course I also have the misfortune of having yet another car that needs to be registered this month. Everything looked good and then the day before yesterday my wife told me that the check engine light had come on. Hopefully it's nothing, but if history is any indication, be afraid, be very afraid.
In any case the weekend beckons, and I have nothing left to say, but I will point you to a story on Koko the gorilla's nipple fetish which I have been saving for several days to fill just this kind of dead space.
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Ross
It was nice to see that my critique of the third Harry Potter movie generated so many comments, even if most of them were negative. Perhaps I've missed my calling as a movie critic. One of the things I really enjoy about movies is the good quotes that are generated, particularly one-liners. I was watching Commando the other day, which for me contains the greatest examples of Schwartzenneger one-liners. My favorite is when he's holding the guy upside down over the edge of a cliff and he asks him, "Do you remember when I said that I would kill you last?" "Yeah, yeah you did." "I lied."
Then when he walks back to the car and the girl she asks him, "What did you do with him?" To which Arnold replies, "I let him go." Classic! Another great movie for quotes is Real Genius. As a sidenote, to my eternal delight the other day when I let my wife pick the movie to watch that's the one she picked. Later she told me that she might not have if she'd know I was going to recite all the dialogue right along with the movie...
On that note I'll end with some memorable dialogue from that movie:
Mitch: Did you know there's a guy living in our closet?
Chris Knight: You've seen him too?
Mitch: Who is he?
Chris Knight: Hollyfeld.
Mitch: Why does he keep going into our closet?
Chris Knight: Why do you keep going into our closet?
Mitch: To get my clothes - but that's not why he goes in there.
Chris Knight: Of course not, he's twice your size - your clothes would never fit him.
Mitch: Yeah...
Chris Knight: Think before you ask these questions, Mitch. Twenty points higher than me? Thinks a big guy like that can wear his clothes?
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Ross
A possible new flu pandemic has been in the news a lot recently. If you're going to worry about something, this might be it. I know I've mentioned the 1918 flu pandemic quite a bit, mostly as something which killed a staggering amount of people and as an event completely unknown by my generation and younger. Of course there were also smaller cases in '68 and '57, which even fewer people are aware of (I only heard about them recently).
The author of the book The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague In History was on NPR recently (at least I think it was him, my wife told me about it) and one of his central points was that the disease was so deadly (in the US) for as much political reasons as biological. That seems to be a common thread throughout most of disasters I've read about; certainly it was a central point in the book on the Rwandan genocide I just read. He, of course, blamed the US as well.
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Ross
I played World of Warcraft until my eyes bled. This was a good thing. Allow me to explain: By playing it so much I actually developed a slight aversion to it. Not enough to keep me from playing if I had nothing better to do, but enough that my embryonic sense of duty can actually assert itself for at least a little while. It's interesting that it should work that way -- I think most people would just be even more addicted, but perhaps that's my super power...
Additionally, over the weekend I rented and watched the third Harry Potter movie and Napoleon Dynamite. I found the former to be substantially better than the first two, though Richard Harris is sorely missed and the sum of the movie's parts was greater than the whole, but not unforgivably so. ND was... interesting. I liked it, but not in any deep and reflective sense, more of a "Man, living in Utah can be bad, but at least I don't live in Idaho!"
Hunter S. Thompson died yesterday. If I had more energy and time I might write up some piece on how Gonzo Journalism is the spiritual ancestor of most styles of blog writing, but I have no energy or time, so I'll end here.
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Ross
Well, it's my birthday today. I'm 34... Without getting into a huge backstory or a lot of specifics, I had a fairly apocalyptic world-view when I was young. It wasn't until I hit my late teens that I ever even entertained the notion that I would live past about 30, and even then for a while I only mentally extended my life span into the early 30's. So as a result, there's still a part of me that looks at 34 as some kind of end point; that looks around in no small amount of amazement at the idea that I've made it this far.
I think as my birthday gift to myself I'm going to play as much World of Warcraft as I feel like over this three-day weekend without feeling guilty. I realize thats a horrible gift, akin to going out and getting drunk on your birthday, but an appalling lack of wisdom has always been one of my defining qualities, and though an important day like my birthday should provide the perfect opportunity to turn over a new leaf, instead I am going to use it as an excuse to further wallow in my vices.
Finally in the "Robots are about to take over the world" category, there was an article recently through MSN about robots that can walk in a fashion similar to humans, though I guess robots that moved like spiders, including the ability to climb walls, with some kind of rail-gun on their back, would be more frightening than these. Overall it's pretty cool.
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Ross
As I thought, "The Dead" did not lend itself to being made into a musical. There were some good songs, but overall the production was somewhat tedious. Also, I had the vague but insistent feeling that I needed to possess a certain amount of Irish racial meloncholy in order to appreciate the play. In the end I was glad that it was short; I couldn't have taken it if it had been any longer. On the other hand after months of patiently waiting I finally got to see Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Now there's a story.
I donate platelets about once or twice a month and while I do, I get to watch a movie. From the moment they put ESotSM on the list I've asked to watch it and each time they told me that it wasn't there, that it was at another location, etc. Finally, the last time they called me up to schedule an appointment I told them that I wasn't coming in unless they found that movie. So they did, from some of the things the technicians were saying I almost get the impression that they bought a new copy just for me and the four or five other people who were demanding to see it.
After waiting so long I had really built the movie up to an enormous degree and though it did not exceed my expectations it did meet them, which given how much I had idealized the movie, is saying a lot. I still think I liked Garden State better of the movies that came out in 2004, but it's close. Of course I haven't seen any of the best picture nominees for 2004, so I should probably see those before I get too attached, but looking at them with the exception of the movie Clint Eastwood directed (I have always enjoyed his directing), Million Dollar Baby, my sense is that there is very little chance I would enjoy them any more.
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Ross
I have a meeting at one today to discuss what to do about the SPAM problem the company is having. I've gotten so used to a flood of spam in my in-box that it's difficult for me to imagine what it might be like to come in in the morning and look at an in-box that only had stuff I wanted... Obviously, one of the reasons that SPAM continues is that people buy things based on it. I would theorize that another reason spam continues is that in a certain co-dependent sense, people like it. Every morning when I wake up I have hundreds of e-mails. And it seems that with that many, one of them would have to be something cool and exciting (from someone I actually know...)
And if by the time I got to the end there was nothing particularly special, there's always tomorrow morning or ten minutes from now, when I'm sure I'll have a few more messages to sort through. Of course, the biggest problem of all with stopping spam is that capitalism will always find a way through, so rather than trying to plug the holes of commerce, they need to open up a large well-defined hole and put it in a central location so that everyone knows where it is. I think my favorite of all the proposed solutions is a sender pays set-up (exactly like how normal mail works). I think of everything I've seen that has the best chance of making the kind of systematic change necessary.
So I'm back from the meeting -- it was part of the Continuous Quality Improvement program we have at the company. What this means is that instead of a normal meeting, this is a "process." We spent the hour doing introductions (there was a game involved where everyone had to tell two true things about themselves and one lie) and getting halfway through a mission statement. The mission statement broke down over what we were going to call the group... Finally, it looks like Armstrong has decided to do the Tour again. I'm actually a little disappointed, and my gut prediction? He won't win again.
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Ross
I was basically done with the blog for today when the browser crashed... There was this great opening paragraph where I said my head was going to explode supernova fashion and I compared the fusing of thoughts to the fusing of elements in a star. Then I moved to talking about the musical adaptation of James Joyce's story The Dead, mentioning how anyone familiar with Joyce has got to be at least a little bit surprised to find one of his works turned into a musical. Finally, I ended with a relatively unimpressive link to a page on the evolution of a programmer.
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Ross
I have this distinct memory from the weekend where I thought, boy I'll have a ton of stuff to blog about on Monday. Now that Monday has arrived, I can't think of a single thing to say. Of course, I could have just dreamed I had something to say; I did sleep a lot over the weekend. On Friday I went out to dinner with the "men-folk" of my family. When I got back home, I intended to stay up and wait for my wife to get home with the other kids at 9:30, but I was so tired that I ended up going to bed at 9:00. On Sunday I ended up taking not one, but two, naps. I do remember having quite a few dreams, though none of them exciting enough to relate.
So since there's no hope of anything even remotely interesting coming from me, it would be worthwhile to put in some links. Unfortunately I'm not in the mood to write about the Iraqi Election results or the new strand of drug-resistant AIDS or Ray Charles' posthumous sweep of the grammys. The New York Times did do a great write-up on World of Warcraft in particular the growing pains they've experienced. It's nice to see video games get some coverage in the main-stream media, even if it is the New York Times.
There is a slightly funny story about that. I was talking to a friend of mine at work and I guess he accidentally sold his main weapon while he was playing World of Warcraft. The incident upset him so much that he sold everything he had, and then deleted his character. I've played with people like that before, people who get so frustrated that they just quit the game in some spectacular fashion. I thought it was pretty funny, though I was a little upset that he didn't mail me all his money before he deleted the character...
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Ross
So, I went to get my car inspected for safety and emissions. It failed safety, which I expected, but not for the reasons I expected. What I expected was that they were going to tell me to get new tires, which I do need. Instead, they failed it because there's a little yellow light on the driver's side of the car about six inches back from the headlights (I guess the technical term would be a running light?) and it doesn't work, so they failed it... Oh, and I guess the license plate lights don't work either... I guess I should be happy because those repairs are a lot cheaper than new tires, but I'll have to get tires eventually and it's just difficult for me to imagine that those two lights are really safety issues and not some mechanic being overly anal.
Since the inspection took up most of my lunch, that's all I have time for. Catch you on Monday.
Illegitimi Non Carborundum
Ross
Big news day today: Driving into work, I heard that North Korea had officially announced that they had nuclear weapons and that Prince Charles is finally going to marry Camilla Parker-Bowles. What's interesting is that I'm not sure that the former news is more important than the latter. For one, there's some possibility that NK is lying; for another there's also a fairly strong possibility that the weapons will never get used. Obviously in both cases, the significance of the story is greatly dimished. And what if they are used? Well, certainly I hate to contemplate such a scenerio, but in terms of upheavel, death and catastrophe, it would barely register next to the goliaths of history like World War 2, or the Napoleanic Wars, and that leads me into my somewhat twisted reasoning for why the significance of Charles and Camilla getting married might outweigh the news that NK admitted to having nukes.
My reasoning would be something like this: Charles marrying Camilla is the beginning of the end of the British Monarchy, a govermental body which stood against the rest of the world or at least the rest of Europe over and over again, from the Spanish Armada, up through World War Two. And yes, I'm sure I'm giving the royals far too much credit, but let me put it his way (and yes, I agree I'm probably reaching): compare the entire existance and history of the British Empire with the news that there's yet another mad-man in the world with the potential to kill hundreds of thousands of people. You see where I'm going?
Speaking of which, my friend from Uganda, whose family is originally from Rwanda and who's a Tutsi gave me the book "We wish to inform you that tomorrow we will be killed with our families," and trust me it doesn't take a nuke for mad-men to kill hundreds of thousands of people. As you can imagine the book is very sad, but there is of course also a very surreal quality as well, because it's so difficult to grasp the reality that was the Rwandan Genocide. The level of violance is frankly unfathonable.
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Ross
I still play Magic about three times a week during lunch. Since we started here at work, the initial group of three has swelled to five. The new additions have added quite a bit of enjoyment -- it's always great to watch as someone gets excited about the game. Of course, one of the people we added may be too excited. He likes to engage in extensive post-game analysis, though generally only after he loses. "Well, if I had gotten out this card..." That happened today after I beat him. I think it was particularly galling for him because he had knocked me from my starting life of 20 down to 4 when I finally beat him. So it was close, but a lot of games are.
Of course the minute you say, I would have won if... then the conversation immediately devolves into meaningless hypotheticals, which I guess is why it ends up being so annoying. We're starting a new draft tomorrow and since we have five people playing now each person could get their own color. This guy has already decided what color he wants and woe to anyone who tries to draft that same color, which of course immediately makes me want to do it just for spite. But you probably could have guessed that.
I apologize that this particularly entry has been so insipid. Part of the problem is that I'm experiencing a certain degree of post-partum depression. It may be a huge stretch to compare mailing off my open call entry with giving birth, but it's the metaphor I'm going with, so suck it (or complain in the comments). As far as links, nothing jumped out at me, but if you want a true glimpse into the mind of a female World of Warcraft player there's this bit of comedy gold.
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Ross
I mailed off my open call packet/entry today. I have to say that although I am mostly relieved, there is also quite a bit of panic in there as well. The packet isn't due until March 1st, and my plan is that by submitting it early it might avoid getting buried in the avalanche of submissions that come in right at the end. But having sent it in early, I wonder if I shouldn't have spent more time on it. That's the most rational of my fears; my other fears revolve around forgetting to include something or overlooking something simple or (and this is my favorite) reversing the addresses on my SASE. Still, like I said, it's a relief to have that done.
In other news, my son has been sick. It all started a week ago when all of my kids were sick, but unlike the rest of them who've recovered, he just keeps showing symptoms, and the interesting thing is that they're always different symptoms. One day he'll be vomiting, the next day he'll be coughing, the day after that he'll have a fever, but nothing else. We're finally going to get him into the doctor tonight and see what the problem is. It is annoying, because I pride myself on having some idea of what's wrong with my kids before we take them in, but this time I'm at a loss.
Finally, we have an interesting/humorous story from the world of role-playing. Mongoose Publishing bought the rights to publish a Conan the Barbarian RPG. They just released another book in that series and it turns out that the map they used was copied from the Wizards of the Coast website by the cartographer. It's more germane than that, because even though as far as I can tell no name has been mentioned, I'm pretty sure I know who did it. One can only imagine how desperate you would have to be to submit someone else's work in that fashion. What's particularly boggling is how they thought they'd get away with it. Amazing...
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Ross
The weekend was relatively productive. I basically finished off everything that needed to be done for the open call submission. I had planned on submitting it today, but some 11th hour feedback is going to delay it until tomorrow. That's still going to be relatively early, and it will be really nice to get that off my mind. Not that I won't still obsess about it, but I have matured to the point where there is a slight but noticable difference between the stress I experience about things I can do something about and the stress I experience about things I can't do anything about.
Speaking of stress over things I can't do anything about, nano-bots would have to fall into that category. Yeah they're cool, yeah they can do interesting things, but there is still something vaguely disconcerting about lots of tiny robots... On that subject here's an article about muscle-tissue powered robots Like I said, interesting and scary at the same time.
Well, that's all for today.
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Ross
I didn't get enough sleep last night for three reasons. The first was that once again, I stayed up too late playing World of Warcraft (though in my defense the only reason I end up staying up late is because I wait to play until I have everything done...). The second reason is a time-honored classic and involves having kids in the bed with me. The final reason is far too disgusting to go into any detail over, but it caused me to wake up earlier than I would have preferred. As a result, I have a headache. For some reason, having a headache really slows down my writing, or perhaps rather, really kills the mood...
That being said, this entry will be short. The most notable thing happening this weekend is the Superbowl. It's unlikely that I'll watch it, but I may have to tape it so that I can watch the commercials. Speaking of which, have you heard about the banned Superbowl ad? It's quite funny (and not offensive at all). That's it for today.
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Ross
Yesterday was Groundhog Day. One of my friends (who occasionally posts a comment under the handle of Smallberries) celebrates GHD in lieu of Christmas, Thanksgiving and the Fourth of July (okay, that may be an exaggeration, but it's close). As for myself, it's not as big as Christmas, but it does have one big thing going for it, the movie Groundhog Day. It's interesting that there has been only one movie about GHD, and hundreds if not thousands about Christmas, and yet there are the same number of true classics ("A Christmas Story" being the Christmas classic, though I confess that Miracle on 34th Street and It's a Wonderful Life are strong contenders, though the latter is more of a Public Domain success story, but that's a topic for another time).
The movie GHD is so good that Charles Murray. author of Human Accomplishement has cited it repeatedly as one of the few cultural achievements of recent times that will be remembered centuries from now. The latter line was shamelessly cribbed from an article in the National Review. The article goes on to say how GHD has been the subject of countless philosophy and ethics lectures, and an equal number of sermons by just about every religion you can think of. Though I think what gets missed as people talk about the genius of the movie is the underlying holiday. An identical movie titled "July 4th" would not have done nearly as well.
My own story with regards to that movie is somewhat interesting. Partially because I saw it at a sneak preview, I hadn't seen any trailers for the movie. All I knew was that it had Bill Murray and Andie McDowell in it, so as the plot revealed itself I was genuinely surprised when it turned out that he was repeating the same day over and over again. Sometimes I think all movies should be seen this way, and other times I think we should just watch the trailer and skip the movie.
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Ross
I was scheduled for a two-hour meeting this morning. I asked the meeting organizer if it was really going to be two hours and she said probably not. I mentioned that that was good, because at about the one hour mark my urge to kill begins to rise. The people standing around waiting to get into the meeting chuckled in that nervous way that indicates that they're not 100% sure you're joking. And they're right to be nervous -- I'm not 100% sure I'm joking either.
The meeting wasn't all bad: it was large enough that I could get away with a certain amount of goofing off (including writing my entry for today, though on a notepad, so I still had to transcribe it). I was also able to read over some of my writing and do a little bit of editing. The writing is going well -- so well that I didn't even feel guilty when I logged on to World of Warcraft for an hour. This, of course, illustrates the genius of WoW, that you can still have an ejoyable time even if you only have an hour.
I spent the time travelling from one side of the world to another. Their system of travel is actually pretty speedy, and mostly involves flying from one place to another. The problem is that in order to fly from spot A to spot B you have to have been to both places. So you run into a situation like the one I did last night:
Me: I'd like to fly to Ironforge.
Gryphon Master Have you ever been to Ironforge.
Me: Well no...
GM: Sorry you'll have to walk there first before I can let you fly there.
Me: Once I've walked there I won't need to fly there, because I'll be there.
GM: Seems silly to mee to, but them's the rules.
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Ross
Well, it was number one son's turn last night. I was just about to go to bed when it happened; of course he had long ago gone to bed, so the... mess... was extensive. In between cleaning up, shuffling other kids around, remaking beds, trying to get the youngest back to sleep and cleaning up another... mess, it was an hour and a half before I got to sleep, and I had already stayed up too late. That's three nights in a row where I've gotten a crappy night's sleep, so needless to say, I'm pretty grumpy, but that shouldn't surprise anyone.
Given the aforementioned grumpiness, I'm not planning on doing much more writing, but I would be remiss if I didn't story about a riot on one of the World of Warcraft servers protesting the plight of the warrior class. On one hand, it's good to see people gathering together to peacefully protest just about anything, on the other hand it's kind of sad to see that most kids probably got more worked up over the perceived weakness of the warrior class then they did over anything involving the presidential election.
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Ross