“The universe is a big place, perhaps the biggest.” — Kilgore Trout

Once upon a time, before Douglas Adams did Hitchhiker’s Guide in 1979, there was Kilgore Trout‘s Venus on the Half-Shell “for the first time without lurid covers!” (see cover photo) in 1975. The book is a great combination of humor and absurd science fiction.

Kurt Vonnegut created the fictional character Kilgore Trout, who made his first appearance in God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater. He was featured in Slaughterhouse-Five before becoming the central character in Breakfast of Champions and Timequake. He was mentioned in Jailbird and his son Leon narrated Galapagos. Everyone assumed that Vonnegut wrote Venus, although there was a lot of discussion about who really did it.

It’s old news now, but I just found out that it was written really by Philip Jose Farmer, not Vonnegut. I read his Image of the Beast many years ago, also the Riverworld series (made into a bad movie) and a few others. It’s time for a re-read.

From a letter, Tuesday, July 13, 2004
“With exactly two months and fewer than 14 legislative days before the federal assault weapons ban expires,…” The related news story is here.

Fewer than 14 work days in two months. That’s a schedule I could probably live with.

“Did you invite all of these people? I thought it was just going to be the two of us.” That’s one sample from The Most Complete and Most Useless Collection of Pick-Up Lines. You’ll probably see a lot of your old, really stupid favorite lines. And then there’s this:

“Okay, so I came over here to ask you to dance, but I’m kind of concerned. I mean, we could hit it off really well, end up having a few drinks, next thing you know you’re giving me your number because I’m too shy to ask for it, I finally get up the nerve to call and we take in a movie, have some dinner, I relax, you relax, we go out a few more times, get to know each other’s friends, spend a lot of time together, then finally have get past this sexual tension and really develop this intense sex life that is truly incredible, decide our relationship is solid and stable, so we move in together for a while, then a few months later get married, I get a promotion, you get a promotion, we buy a bigger house. You really want kids, but I really want freedom, but we have a kid anyway, only to find that I am resentful, the sparks start to fade and to rekindle them we have two more lovely kids, but now I work too much to keep up with the bills, have no time for you, you’re stressed and stop taking really good care of yourself, so to get past our slow sex life and my declining self-confidence I turn to an outside affair for sexual gratification. You find out because I’m careless and a lousy liar, you throw me out (justifiably so) and we have to explain to the kids why mommy and daddy are splitting up. That’s just too sad. Think about the children. For God’s sake, if you dance with me and we hit it off, let’s just keep it sexual, because we both know where it’s going.”

There’s something that’s just so wrong and yet so right about that one.

Ever wondered about what’s really in hair coloring, Silly Putty, Cheese Wiz, artificial snow, or self-tanners? Chemical & Engineering News presents a collection of articles that gives you a look at the chemistry behind a wide variety of everyday products.

Most don’t seem very technical — don’t be afraid.

I hoped to get pictures this morning of a grand event when the the Reagan motorcade passed en route to Point Mugu. But it was surprisingly small: Only about a half dozen black vehicles in a group, not really decorated at all. (That’s not including over a dozen motorcycles, mostly CHP, that were scattered ahead of the main vehicles and clearly having fun zipping around an empty freeway at about 90 mph.)

I took a couple of pictures, but they’re not worth putting up here. If it wasn’t for the people standing around and the traffic going the other direction being at a dead stop, you wouldn’t know it was anything special.

Due to its immense scale and unique shape, The Palm, Jumeirah and The Palm, Jebel Ali are visible from space with the naked eye. If all the fill materials used to build one Palm island were placed end to end, a wall two meters high and half a metre thick could circle the world three times. PalmSales probably gives the nicest overview of this monster.

• Dubbed the “Eighth Wonder of the World,” about 350 million cubic feet of rock, sand, and earth is being placed in the Persian Gulf in the shape of two palm trees off the coast of Dubai. – link
• The Palm-Jumeirah extends approximately 3.5 miles out into the ocean and provides for 35 miles of new beachfront — a 75% increase to Dubai’s existing beachfront. On the fronds of The Palm, 1,800 luxury villas have been sold. On the trunk of The Palm there will be 2,200 condominiums (all sold out), five hotels, two marinas and a major retail centre. – link
• The Golden Mile apartments, to be housed in two waterfront buildings, went on sale this week at Arabian Travel Market 2004, the Middle East’s premier travel and tourism show at prices ranging from US $250,000 for a one-bedroom, garden-view unit to $550,000 for the high-end waterfront three-bedroomed properties. 780 freehold apartments on their joint venture Golden Mile, on the Palm, Jumeirah were sold within 48 hours of them being placed on the market. – link

This location just seems a bit risky to me for vacation property. – map

It’s a combination of votes and one person’s opinion about a great riff or lyric or whatever, but not the whole song. I didn’t agree with some selections, and given a year or so to think about it I could probably do better. None the less, there’s a lot of really cool stuff listed at The 50 Coolest Song Parts.

I looked at all 50 and listened to about half to make sure I knew exactly which part they were referring to. And because I wanted to hear them again.

The makers of Pringles introduced Pringles Prints, featuring a “unique, fun design printed on every crisp”. The revolutionary technology allows P&G to customize the crisps by printing words and images in a variety of colors directly on the chip. P&G is partnering with Hasbro to use Trivial Pursuit Junior trivia content. Pringles Prints will feature 2,400 fun trivia questions and answers from six different Trivial Pursuit Junior categories randomly printed on the potato crisps.

I wonder what the first movie tie-in will be?

Pykrete is sawdust reinforced ice that you can make at home. It takes a lot longer than regular ice or Blue Ice to melt. It doesn’t shatter like regular ice when shot with a .243 bullet, but that doesn’t help keep my food cold.

Why do I care about this stuff? If you go on 3, sometimes 4 day camping trips, you know that ice is a big problem. Dry ice keeps everything cold, but it also freezes stuff. Who want’s to have a frozen beer? This may be the solution.

Here’s an interesting history about its possible use as a boat in World War II.

Can you recognize an ordinary penny? It may be tougher than you think. Try it at Common Cents. It’s one of the Exploratorium’s Online exhibits. There are a bunch more there worth checking out. Some require Flash.

Thanks, Ron.

My friend Andy sent a song to me a week or so ago which was so big it caused my email provider to warn me that my account had passed the “high water mark”. Knowing that some of my friends still use dial-up, I didn’t send it on to anyone.

It turns out that it’s a song by Eric Idle of Monty Python fame. You can get it at Pythonline.com. Eric says:

“Here’s a little song I wrote the other day while I was out duck hunting with a judge. It’s a new song, it’s dedicated to the FCC and if they broadcast it, it will cost a quarter of a million dollars.”

It should probably be called “Fuck You, Very Much”, but then nobody would be able to talk about it on the air.

I avoid Blockbuster Video for a few reasons, but the main ones are their preference for the pan-and-scan, edited for TV versions of movies. There has been a lot of discussion and denial about them supplying edited versions, but my suspicion is that it really came down to use their using the TV version. They won’t carry an “unrated” version, and some DVDs come out with the Director’s Cut, which makes them unrated.

Because of Blockbuster’s clout, I didn’t want to support something that might move movie makers to eliminate the widescreen version. But according to a Slate article, “Blockbuster Video, the country’s dominant rental chain, announced that from that point on it officially preferred widescreen DVDs to pan-and-scan (also known as “full screen”).”

The small video stores in my area have already been put out of business, so it’s probably okay for me to rent G, PG and mild R movies there now.

I just signed this petition to count every vote this November. There are already articles posted here about this (Part 1, Part 2), so there’s no point in repeating it. What follows is the letter they suggest sending after you sign the petition.

We must act now to ensure that our voting systems produce accurate and verifiable results.

Some states are planning to use machines that will not allow voters to verify their choices. This means that any flaws in the machine or software will never be caught — and no recount will be possible.

And the head of the largest e-voting machine company — who is a major contributor to George Bush and has promised to deliver Ohio to him — asks that we just trust him.

Please join me by signing this call for accountability:

http://petition.democracyforamerica.com/page/p/verify/113648

The FCC was swamped with indecency complaints over a recent Oprah show about teen sexuality.  But a lot of it was instigated by Howard Stern and Jimmy Kimmel, in an attempt to show that a double standard exists about what the FCC considers obscene.

link

I recently finished rereading Arthur C. Clarke’s Childhood’s End.  Classic sci-fi from 1953.  It was a bit moralistic and philosophical but one rant showed how much things have changed.  At this point in the story it is 100 years in the future, around 2050:

“Do you realize that every day something like five hundred hours of radio and TV pour out over the various channels?  … Did you know that the average viewing time per person is now three hours per day?  Soon people won’t be living their own lives anymore.  It will be a full time job keeping up with the various family serials on TV!”

Well, there’s about 100 channels typically available now, that’s 2,400 hours per day.  It’s almost funny that he gave as low a number as he did when you consider that radio isn’t included in my number.  I’m not sure how old the statistic is, but according to the A.C. Nielsen Co., the average American watches more than 4 hours of TV each day.  That’s 30% more than what outraged Clarke.

As far as people living other’s lives, there’s the current addiction to reality TV.  And we’re only half way to the year he was talking about.

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory is working on a breakthrough way of digitizing and archiving old recordings, such as wax cylinders and traditional flat records, that are too far gone for a standard stylus.

link

About half of what’s quoted here was removed for brevity, but there still had to be enough left that it would make sense so it’s longer than I would like.

It’s worth going over the work the Butcher of Baghdad did for his Texas patrons when he was their butcher:

• 1979: Seizes power with U.S. approval; moves allegiance from Soviets to U.S. in Cold War.
• 1982: Bush-Reagan regime removes Saddam’s regime from official U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism.
• 1984: U.S. Commerce Department issues license for export of aflatoxin to Iraq useable in biological weapons.
• 1987-88: U.S. warships destroy Iranian oil platforms in Gulf and break Iranian blockade of Iraq shipping lanes, tipping war advantage back to Saddam.
• 1990: Invades Kuwait with U.S. permission.

U.S. permission? On July 25, 1990, the dashing dictator met in Baghdad with U.S. Ambassador April Glaspie. When Saddam asked Glaspie if the U.S. would object to an attack on Kuwait over the small emirate’s theft of Iraqi oil, the ambassador told him, “We have no opinion…. Secretary [of State James] Baker has directed me to emphasize the instruction … that Kuwait is not associated with America.” Saddam taped her.

Glaspie, in her 1991 Congressional testimony, did not deny the authenticity of the recording, which diplomats worldwide took as a Bush Sr’s okay to an Iraqi invasion.

So where is Secretary Baker today? … Mr. Baker is a successful lawyer, founder of Baker Botts of Houston, Riyadh, Kazakhstan. Among his glittering client roster is Exxon-Mobil oil and the defense minister of Saudi Arabia. Baker’s firm is protecting the Saudi royal from a lawsuit by the families of the victims of September 11 over evidence suggesting that Saudi money ended up in the pockets of the terrorists.

And Baker has just opened a new office … at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. This is a White House first: the first time a lobbyist for the oil industry will have a desk right next to the President’s. Baker’s job, to “restructure” Iraq’s debt. How lucky for his clients in Saudi Arabia. The Kingdom claims $30.7 billion due from Iraq.

Should be newsworthy that the U.S. essentially gave permission for Iraq to attack, and then used its doing so as an excuse to attack Iraq, don’t you think?

The full article is an excerpt from the new edition of The Best Democracy Money Can Buy.

The United States ranks 10th in the industrialized world in broadband capability and “10 is 10 spots too low,” Bush said at the annual convention of the American Association of Community Colleges in Minnesota.

I guess that means we should be zero instead of number one.  Or is that Bushspeak for: we should have none?

Aye!  A tricky bastard he is!

Why is it so annoying to watch someone else make a mistake?  Researches say it may be because it affects the same areas of the brain as when a person makes his or her own mistake.

Perhaps this is why I get frustrated trying to explain to someone else how to do something on the computer.  I could never figure out why I would get so frustrated.

A California assemblyman has introduced legislation banning anyone under 18 from using a tanning machine with ultraviolet rays, except under doctor’s orders. – link

A Louisiana lawmaker has filed a bill that would ban people from wearing low-slung pants below the waist, thus “exposing skin or intimate clothing.” – link

Don’t they have anything better to do?