Just make us be brave and make us play nice

Warren Zevon died yesterday, of lung cancer. He was 56. Don't let us get stupid, and don't let us smoke.

It had to happen.

A friend sent me a link to this: Primate Programming Inc: The Evolution of Java and .NET Training, saying that he wasn't certain they were kidding, or that they would be less cost-effective than Bangalore. Well, I'm sure they're kidding, anyway.

Oh, give me a break

Alcoholics set to sue drink firms, writes Matthew Knowles in the Sunday Times (London): "Twleve alcoholics are trying to sue drink manufacturers for failing to warn them of the dangers of alcohol. The group, aged between 18 and 60, will claim that their lives have been ruined by addiction and that no warnings were given."

Yeah. Nobody ever warned them that you could get addicted to alcohol. They never saw a bum, never heard of a Skid Row, never heard a preacher speak against strong drink, never heard of alcoholism. That's because they were raised in a cave by wolves.

Can I sue morons like these for failing to take personal responsibility for their own actions? Please? Because they're doing my blood pressure no good, I can tell you.

Science!

The Institute For the Study of the Neurologically Typical is doing brilliant work in researching a sadly common mental disorder. (via Electrolite)

Game like a Gangster

So, gamers.com decided to show mobster-turned-informant Henry Hill some of the recent gangster shoot-em-up games. And, for laughs, they threw in a ringer, a cute-animals game.

You can probably guess what's coming.

Yup. He stole their copy of _Animal Crossing_.

Second Amendment, baby!

Build your own cruise missile, and a lotof other fun crafts projects.

It can't happen here

Prison camps where a governments enemies are executed after secret trials--with no jury, no appeal, and with the judge, prosecutor, and "defence" all from the same organization--are typical of vicious tyrannies. Fortunately, such things could never happen in the United States, where we have a long tradition of the rule of law, open trials, and fair courts. In the wake of the second Gulf War, we can expect the American people to support the overthrow any government that runs such "death camps".

A fine example of the genre

I saw this at The Sideshow.

Henceforth to be known as "Mojo Jojo"

You'ev probably seen this story about the close genetic relationship between chimps and humans. What interests me is that everyone seems to think that this means we should move the chimpanzees to genus Homo. I think it should be the other way around. I have no joke here, I just like saying, "Pongo sapiens".

Breathtaking!

The Hubble Telescope has taken the deepest pictures ever of the night sky. And they are just beautiful. (Via The Sideshow)

Not the old "what if computer manufacturers made cars" joke

Yahoo news reports that Thailand's Finance Minister was trapped in his new BMW when the car's computer crashed, locking all the doors and shutting down the air-conditioning.

The story doesn't mention what OS the car was running, but you can guess, can't you? Of course you can.

Where do you want to get stuck today?

Today is a good day to translate

It looks like Oregon won't be hiring Klingon interpreters for it's mental health system after all.

I'm afraid to think about their jingle

Here's a story that won't get much play on American TV, no siree. The BBC story is a TV listing, so it will probably go away soon, but the company's own website has more permanent information.

Not a space drive after all

So if I'm reading these stories correctly, Scientists predicted a supernova by noting an earlier gamma-ray burst from the same direction, which seems to confirm that these bursts are all caused by supernovae.

That's amazing stuff. It kills a SF idea I had in the back of my head, that the bursts were what happens when something breaks lightspeed. Very very expensive space drive, that would be.

Chicken Soup, anyone?

The BBC News front page right now says:

"Scientists hail Sars discovery
The World Health Organization confirms the deadly new virus is a strain of the common cold, raising hopes of a cure."

Right. We've been so very successful curing the common cold.

I love British understatement

BBC: "Mr Blair and Mr ElBaradei's stress on external verification of suspect weaponry found is being seen as tacit acknowledgement that some observers believe coalition forces could be tempted to fabricate such 'evidence', if finding banned weapons proves elusive." No, really?

The lurking hordes begin their takeover

Not content to wait for a nuclear war to make them the dominant species on Earth, the cockroaches have started biological warfare.

To Tell a Saint

At Making Light, Teresa Nielsen Hayden gives a list of signs that a saint is dubious.

So, I think you could base a drinking game on this. Have someone read a selection from a book of lives of the saints and drink when one of the dubious characteristics comes up.

Lurking... Lurking... The Squid!

Scientists have found a huge new squid. They're calling it Mesonychoteuthis hamiltoni, or familiarly, "the Colossal Squid". I especially like the BBC's graphic comparing a Sperm Whale, a Giant Squid, and the Colossal Squid to a London bus. Hint--the squid is faster, too.

Good God, y'all!

Edwin Starr, 60s soul icon, is dead. Starr was a producer for Motown, as well as a singer, probably best known for the song "War".

Mikhail Umansky

I've been too down to write lately, so I'm going to start by writing about something cheerful.

The International Correspondence Chess Federation (ICCF), as part of the celebration of its 50th anniversary last year, organized a tournament to which they invited all the living Correspondence Chess World Champions. And they all played.

There isn't any parallel I can think of in other competitive activities (I'm sure someone will be unhappy if I call CC a "sport"). Chess players often remain quite strong in their old age, even in over-the-board chess, where the strain of constant concentration for hours on end, day after day favors the young. Still, Vassily Smyslov was a Candidate for the World Championship at the age of 61, for example.

In correspondence chess, the advantages to youth are less, and top players sometimes remain cometitive into their 80s and 90s. So this tournament is soemthing like having a golf tournament with Hogan, Palmer, Nicklaus and Tiger Woods, but all at or near their peak form, their skills undiminished by age.

The tournament isn't over, but Mikhail Umansky has clinched first place, with six wins, no losses, and only two draws. This is a mind boggling result. It would be like someone winning that golf tournament by twenty strokes.

Hans Berliner and perfect opening play
Another notable feature of the tournament is the return of Hans Berliner. Dr. Berliner, a professor of computer science at Carnegie-Mellon, retired from competitive chess thirty years ago, after winning the World Championship in crushing style.

Berliner is one of the key figures in the development of computer chess; his program Hitech was one of the first programs to consistently beat masters, and the Carnegie Mellon Computer Science Department is where the Deep Blue team learned their chops.

In 1999, Berliner wrote a book, _The System_, in which he claims that 1 d4 (1. P-Q4) is the best opening move for White, and in fact a winning move. He presents some very controvesial opening analysis in the book. These opening analyses, which Berliner claims demolish several standard defences to the queen's pawn opening, were developed using his System for finding the best moves in the opening. Part of his reason for coming out of chess-retirement was to test his theories in high-level competition. However, his opponents mostly avoided his most critical lines, except in his game against Oim, which did in fact work out well for White.

Maybe a hoax, but...

Making Light offers excerpts from reports on The Daily Kos by an "Officer X", an anonymous "fairly well known military officer and commentator". I can't connect to The Daily Kos at the moment, but the excerpts on Making Light are strong stuff. Go read them.

Interview with a Chessplayer

Tim Harding's The Kibitzer this month features an interview with Vlad Dracul, inventor of the famous Frankenstein-Dracula Variation of the Vienna Game and witness to a lot of chess history--at least the parts that occured at night. (After March, the interview will still be available here.)

Oh yes, very obvious thematic and stylistic similarities.

A friend of mine, noted fabulist Adam-Troy Castro, is attending an SF convention, Icon this weekend. He tells me that the programming includes a panel on the fincion of J.G. Ballard...

...moderated by John Norman.

If you don't know why this is funny, I'm not sure I can explain. I'm also not sure you'd want to know; you may just be lucky.

Good Old American Know-How

AP reports that an American F-16 fired on a US Patriot missle battery when the battery locked on to the plane, apparently believing it was hostile.

The UPI story says the plane "mistakenly bombed" the battery. I don't know--that doesn't sound like a mistake by the F-16 to me, not when a Patriot battery has already shot down a coalition plane.

Considering the Patriot's performance so far, I'm tempted to draw an anology with the Patriot Act--state-of-the-art technology for damaging our side.

PAINT YOUR TONGUE BLUE!

BBC News reports that "A simple tongue test can tell people if they are 'super-tasters'". If you've been wondering why you hate cilantro, check it out.

The Name is Bender! Please insert liquor!

Science marches on! New Scientist reports that a team at St. Louis University has developed a fuel cell catalysed by ethanol.

Toshiba has a battery that uses methanol, but St. Louis' Shelly Minteer says: "The main advantage of ethanol over methanol is that it is simply more readily available. We have actually run our cells off vodka and gin." Apparently, the ethanol-based batteries are also less toxic and may turn out to be more efficient.

I think that adds up to: "Hey, Toshiba! Kiss my shiny metal ass!"

More on the use of chemical weapons

While reading The Agonist, I followed a link to this interesting discussion of potential chemical weapons use by Iraq. There are also other posts in that part of the archive with links to other interesting stuff.

The blog that post is from is Casus Belli, and it looks very good indeed.

PETA

A post at The Sideshow pointed me to Ted Barlow's rant about the PETA "Holocaust One Your Plate" campaign. I just don't get the reaction. Look, I hate PETA. I think they're dangerous lunatics. But I'm not surprised or especially shocked about that ad campaign. Equating human and animal suffering, stating that animal slaughter is exactly the same as genocide--that's what PETA is about. That's their entire point! Didn't Mr. Barlow (and the many others who went ballistic about this) know that? If not, how did they miss it?

Technical difficulties in using WMD

While arguing on rec.arts.sf.fandom about whether non-use of WMD by Iraq in this war will prove that they didn't have any in the first place (imagine my suprise to learn that extreme right-wingers think not), someone claimed that there had been a report earlier in the week that Iraqi local commanders had been given authority to use WMD. He seemed to think this was a decisive argument; why such a claim from a US source (I'm assuming that's where it came from) would prove anything I've no idea.

In any case, I haven't been able to find any such news item. While looking for it, I did find an interesting article by Joe Katzman which touches on the problems of actually using such weapons under the conditions in the war.

GPS Turned Off?

Does anyone have a Global Positioning System device? Could you tell me if it's working correctly right now?

A colleague just straggled in from a flight hours late. They were unable to land at JFK because of fog and were diverted to Philly. He says that this was because GPS has been set to spew random data as a war measure and so landings depend on visibility.

I'd have thought someone would have mentioned this in the news before now, so I'm wondering if he's just bullshitting.

So far, I've only been able to find one story about this, and I've no idea of its reliability.

With Optimus Prime on our side, how can we lose?

A friend pointed me to this story. I feel safer now.

News from Baghdad

If you're reading this, stop and go read Where is Raed? instead.

French Defence

Someone on rec.arts.sf.fandom wondered whether anyone had suggested renaming the chess opening called the French Defence yet. (1. e4 e6, or 1. P-K4 P-K3 for those of you who remember the old English Descriptive notation.)

I did a little digging through my library and found out that the name "French Defence" is probably due to George Walker noting in his 1846 _Treatise on Chess_ that, "With French players, the King's-Pawn-One opening [as it was called then] is especially in vogue."

Walker also wrote of it: "I have allowed that this form of beginning is safe for the second player; so is fighting from behind a tree, and the one is exactly the type of the other; cowardly and mean in spirit, aiming to lie in wait, rather than do battle in a 'fair stricken field.'" So it would be amusingly ironic if some jingo decided to rename it now.

It occurs to me that accusing the French of cowardice over Iraq is more than normally stupid. If they were cowards who believed Saddam was dangerous but were afraid to fight him themselves, they'd be delighted to let the US do it. "Let's you and him fight" is the essence of cowardice. But instead, they did everything they could think of to stop the US from starting the war.

Man in the Street

I've noticed that when a TV News crew doing man-in-the-street interviews talks to someone who's against the war, the next question is, "but you support our troops, right?" They never ask that of someone who says he's pro-war.

I think that's backwards. If the war is justified, it's because Iraq has ABC weapons. If Saddam has them he will use them on our troops. So if you think the war is a justified, you must be expecting US troops to take hideous losses. Funny way to support our troops, I'd say.

But if the war is unjustified, Saddam has no atomic, chemical, or biological weapons; then the US's huge advantage in men and materiel means that victory will be quick and relatively bloodless. Bloodless for us, at any rate. Still, that's better than the alternative, and I hope that's how it goes.

But just remember: if Saddam Hussein has "weapons of mass destruction", he'll use them. If he doesn't use such weapons, we may be sure than any that are found after the war were planted by the US.

"You Stupid Darkness!"

One of my favorite "Peanuts" strips featured Linus carrying a candle in the night. Charlie Brown asks him what he's doing, and Linus replies, "I have heard it is better to light a single candle than to curse the darkness." In the final panel, Lucy shakes her fist at the night sky, screaming, "You stupid darkness!"

No points for figuring out why I mention this.