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.