Category: Random

I first saw this on Fark, but I just couldn’t not post it:

Getting from Chicago to London

Watch out for step 20, it’s a doosy.

I can’t decide whether stupid, funny, tragic, or what that dominates, but it’s clearly something:

Introducing the Book

Maybe this is just me, but I have noticed increasingly over the past few years that the past tense seems to be slowly disappearing from common English usage (at least here in the U.S.). Descriptions of past events now seem regularly to be reported in the present tense. At first I noticed this in casual conversation and Internet forums, then later on sports TV like ESPN, and then lately even in more serious journalism like on NPR. And, frankly, it drives me crazy. If something happened in the past, why not use past tense? Is it really that hard to understand? I know language evolves over time and mostly I don’t try to fight it too much, but this particular pattern is nonsensical to me. Past tense words aren’t all that much longer or more difficult to say than their present-tense counterpart.

Anyone with any insight into this odd and disturbing phenomenon, do please leave a comment…

In a hurry, so quickly…

Saturday
Steelers(7) @ Cleveland
Big Ben

Bills @ Cincy(14)
Too rich, take the points.

Cowboys @ Carolina(5)
Panthers

Giants @ Washington(3)
Tiki’s team

Falcons @ Tampa Bay(3)
Bucs

Niners @ St. Louis(9)
Rams

Lions @ Saints, wherever this is(3)
Saints

Titans @ Miami(5.5)
Fish

Chargers @ Kansas City, pick
Bolts!!

Jags(6.5) @ Houston
Jax

Eagles @ Arizona(1)
Philly

Colts @ Seattle(7.5)
Poor Dungy. Seabags still playing for home field, too.

Raiders @ Denver(13.5)
Broncos

Sunday
Bears(6.5) @ Green Bay
Chicago easily. Favre sacked 6 times, picked 4.

Vikings @ Baltimore(3)
Despite the blip, Brad Johnson

MNF
Patriots(5) @ New Jersey Jest
Brady and the D

I couldn’t resist this silly link on the Top 10 Ways to Destroy the Earth. Yes, some very geeky humor, but some of them are just so terrific…

I travel for work a fair amount—not a huge amount but I generally log around 30K miles/year—and it’s interesting to peoplewatch in airports and on airplanes. I’m not an anthropologist, but I’ve come to identify a particular species of traveler, which I now identify as the “business drone.”

The business drone can usually be identified first by dress. He (and they’re almost always men, for reasons I haven’t yet figured out) is generally attired in slacks, dress shirt and tie, and usually not especially comfortable shoes (which may cause some of the characteristic behaviors). A cell phone is a required accessory, with a Blackberry increasingly part of the ensemble. Laptops are common but not universal. Business drones tend to be middle-aged but there are occasionally younger examples of the species. My suspicion is that the bulk of the species are middle management.

Typical behaviors of the business drone? First, many business drones fly first class, probably mostly on mile-based upgrades. Those that do not clearly expect the flight attendants to treat them as if they were in first class regardless of seating. Drones have certain characteristic boarding behaviors, such as generally trying to board the plane before their row is called. Carryon luggage also generates certain patterns. If the carryon is one of those rolling bags carefully engineered to be exactly the maximum allowable size (which seems reasonable), which can stow front-to-back in an overhead bin on many planes (thus taking up less usable space), no effort is made to orient them front-to-back. A common variant is the garment bag, often of questionable permissibility in terms of size, which, even if other options exist, must be stored horizontally on the bottom of the bin, taking up maximum possible space.

Once baggage has been stowed and a seat taken, the drone will then generally either take out his laptop or, more commonly, initiate a cell phone conversation. Use of this device is somehow privileged and continues after the request is made over the loudspeaker for such usage to stop. A second request made directly by a crewmember, however, is generally effective. Cell phone conversations must be held at a volume sufficiently high that anyone within a few rows is forced to endure the conversation. Common conversation topics include office politics (with obvious sucking up not unusual), attempts to re-jigger travel schedules, and postmortems on meetings. Any levity in such conversations is so obviously forced that surely the drone suffers physical pain. Communications with family are surprisingly rare.

Once the flight is underway, if the drone is lugging a laptop and chooses to use it, activities are typically limited to solitaire, review of PowerPoint presentations, and less frequently, browsing of spreadsheets. Activities which involve significant use of the keyboard/brain complex (e.g., writing, programming) are exceptionally rare; the laptop appears to be more of a status symbol than a functional object. Desktop backgrounds are generally either one of the standard Windows backgrounds or something corporate. Things like photos of family or even vacations are unusual. A recent development is the use of the laptop as a DVD player, but I have not yet noticed trends in film selection.

Non-laptop activity is generally reading. Review of business documents is common but not universal; recreational reading is just as common. Newspapers are the top choice, with the Wall Street Journal leading the way. General news magazines (e.g., Time) are not uncommon. Novels do also appear, with strong preferences for the male-oriented segment of the current bestsellers’ list; Tom Clancy-type novels are particularly favored.

Being a headphone geek, I do notice the cans worn by drones, if any. And if any head-fi types wonder who’s buying all that overpriced but well-marketed Bose product, it’s business drones. Triports and QC2’s are popular choices of this crowd.

At the end of the flight, shutting down of electronics is often done with similar reluctance. When deplaning, willingness to yield to other travelers with tight connections or other extenuating circumstance (mild disability, old age, children) is limited, generally near or at zero.

OK, can you tell I’m traveling today?

My Unitarian Jihad Name is: Brother Venerable Claymore of Kind Reflection. What’s yours?

Read the article–too funny.

So, for anyone out there who’s a fan of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series, I have to recommend this book to you, called The Anthology at the End of the Universe.

It’s a collection of essays about the series. As with most such things, there are some which are terrific and some which are less so. I think the good ones are definitely worth it, though. Of course, this is a shameless plug because I wrote one of the essays. I don’t stand to make any money off this, though, unless they sell like a gazillion copies–I just think it’s a fun read. Well-timed with the movie coming out next week, too.

What, you may wonder, is this? Well, some years ago I started a Web page of “random rants,” which was frequently noted as being the best thing on my site. It wasn’t updated very often, but the idea I had behind it was pretty much the same idea as the modern “blog,” except of course that other people couldn’t post comments.

So, here are the contents of the old page, along with a bunch of other stuff I’ve written to various places along the way. I’m brand new to all this blogging software, but it seems to work. I’m using WordPress to publish the site and I’m writing entries in MacJournal. I will eventually get around to messing with the themes and adding links to the sidebar and all that jazz, but for now I’ve just been working on getting the posts up. Now if only MacJournal backdated the entries so they didn’t all look like they were written today…

(originally posted to fark.com on 2003.06.30)

Certainly the first movie that leaps to mind is The Avengers. I guess maybe Uma Thurman in the body suit gives it one redeeming quality, but man, wow, was the most incoherent pile of crap ever or what?

Others that have been mentioned that I really hate include:
The Island of Dr. Moreau
Rocky IV
Breakin’ 2

Some others I really hated that haven’t been mentioned:
Howard’s End Bunch of stupid, petty English twits do NOTHING on screen for two hours but whine. Oh my god.

Sid and Nancy Starting about ten minutes in, I really wanted both of them to kill themselves, the sooner the better.

Pet Sematary Stupidest, most predictable script EVER.

Mosquito Coast I think it was supposed to be deep, or a political statement, or something. Instead, it just sucked.

Man Trouble> Ellen Barkin and Jack Nicholson mailed in every scene, probably because the script was so farking stupid and the director obviously didn’t care either.

Spies Like Us I was a kid and we snuck in. Even paying nothing, we were STILL ripped off.

Honorable mention in the worst-movie-to-box-office-ratio:
Titanic. Most one-dimensional characters ever, so what was supposed to save this, the plot? Hey, we all knew the ending BEFORE IT STARTED. Ugh.

Honorable mention in the worst-movie-to-critical-acclaim-ratio:
2001: A Space Odyssey Boring and senseless. It wasn’t deep or groundbreaking, it was just pretentious and waaaay too long.

Kudos to pheed for sticking up for Hudson Hawk. You have to be in the right mood, it really is funny. Honest…