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The Pint Lock

Got roomates that filch your ice cream?
Ben and Jerry has the Pint Lock for sale for $5.50

This idea came from one of our fans! He wrote us about how he lives in mental turmoil after buying Ben & Jerry's. He was so afraid that his roommates would eat his pint…he couldn't concentrate at work! He suggested we sell our pints in stainless steel, bulletproof containers with a little padlock. While we couldn't actually do THAT, we came up with the Euphori-Lock!

Prickly City

The comic strip Prickly City has been riffing on the Newsweek scandal.
Today's is wonderful!

Click for full-size Image

Jar Jar Binks had his uses after all...

Jen and I went to see Episode 3 a week ago and we were commenting on the advances in CG — I noticed that Yoda had much better hair and skin and facial expressions.

Turns out that we have Jar Jar Binks to thank for this…

From KTRK-TV in Houston:

Jar Jar to Yoda: I am your father
If you were shocked when Darth Vader revealed he was Luke Skywalker's father, wait 'til you hear this one.

When it comes to technological advances, Jar Jar Binks is, in effect, Yoda's father.

Rob Coleman was in charge of animating both characters. He says he learned so much making Jar Jar realistic, he was able to use what he learned to do the same for Yoda.

Coleman says without Jar Jar, Yoda's light saber battles and emotional expressions in “Revenge of the Sith” would not have been possible.

A downside to biodiesel

Hat tip to Jay Tea at Wizbang for the link to this story from the Boston Globe

Car's alternative fuel said to attract bear
A Winsted man believes the sweet smell of the vegetable oil he uses to fuel his car attracted the bear that damaged the vehicle white trying to get at the biodiesel.

Larry Joy, a 53-year-old electrician, said the bear shattered a window on his 1981 Volkswagen Rabbit, tipped the plastic fuel tank on its side, and gnawed on car hoses about two weeks ago. He said the evidence included muddy paw prints around the broken window and a pool of cooking oil on the rear floorboards.

“I knew what it was after,” Joy told The Sunday Republican of Waterbury. “I think it's cool that bears do whatever they want.”

Joy uses a combination of diesel and vegetable oil left over from restaurant fry vats to power his car. He says it gets 44 miles per gallon.

The car needs to be started using regular diesel, because vegetable oil is too thick for the engine to handle. When a gauge indicates the engine coolant is at 90 degrees, it is warm enough to thin the biodiesel, and Joy can flip a switch to change fuel tanks.

When the coolant hits about 150 degrees, Joy said, there is a sweet smell.

“My neighbor said it smells like cheeseburgers,” he said.

Just wait until the bear goes for desert — maybe something in your kitchen?
We live in a very rural area and taking a short walk in the woods, you can find all kinds of bear scat. There are some very simple precautions to take to prevent them from coming near the house (bird feeder timing and garbage management) so they aren't a problem.

This idiot is practically inviting them into his living room and thinking (or not) that “I think it's cool that bears do whatever they want”.

Career Limiting Move

Not much of a career but he managed to limit it anyway. A 24-hour gas station operator was working the graveyard shift and started scratching off lottery tickets.
The Minneapolis, MN Star Tribune has the story:

An itch the clerk couldn't stop scratching

Bryan W. Lietz says he doesn't know what came over him.

“It's not me to normally be a thief,” the 40-year-old resident of Perham, Minn., said Friday.

But in the wee hours of May 12, as Lietz worked the graveyard shift at the Perham Conoco, he apparently was just that, allegedly scratching off $1,400 worth of lottery tickets without paying for them, according to a criminal complaint.

When he finished, he sat down and penned a letter of apology to his boss.

“I don't know why I bit the hand that fed me or still does,” he wrote. “I truly need this job. I don't have a clue why I did this. I don't know really how it happened. But here it is. I did it.”

Lietz was charged this week in Otter Tail County with state lottery fraud, a felony offense. He was released on his own recognizance and since has repaid some of what he owes.

He was fired, too.

Wow… $1,400 worth — even if these were $5 tickets, that is still 280 tickets and if you were scratching them off at a rate of one every 30 seconds, that would be 2.3 hours. He must have been doing them by the fistful!

Power Point

Nate at Wasted Electrons points to an excellent site for PowerPoint:
Jim Placke's PowerPoint Humor page.

Sung to the tune of “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald
(And with all regrets to Gordon Lightfoot…)

The legend lives on from the Fifth Corps on down,
of the thirty meg PowerPoint briefing.
The software its said never gives up its dead,
when the God of Electrons grows angry.
With officers galore, maybe a hundred or more,
it was said that no one could outbrief them.
The good ACE and crew was a bone to be chewed,
when the God of Electrons came calling.

Lots more at the site including this great quote:

“If your words or images are not on point, making them dance in color won't make them relevant.”
- Edward Tufte
Professor Emeritus, Yale University

President Bush and the Palestinians

I was wondering what to make of the visit from Abbas to the White House and President Bush's pledge of $50M to the Palestinian government.

Jay Tea at Wizbang has a great thought:
The visit and the $50,000,000? It is rope.

From Wizbang:

Last week, when President Bush met with Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas and pledged $50 million dollars in aid, a lot of people whom I respect were outraged. There has been absolutely no sign of a true crackdown on terrorism by the Palestinian Authority, and the “cease-fire” the pundits bring up whenever Israel strikes back is a joke. To these folks, what Bush is doing is rewarding the Palestinian intransigence and encouraging more violence against Israel.

I see it a little differently. I have absolutely nothing to back up this theory, but I think it makes sense.

And the Coda:

(I hope) watching to see just how that money gets spent. If it goes towards humanitarian efforts, and truly benefits the Palestinian people, then that would be a good indicator that there is real progress to be made by working with Abbas. But if it goes towards weapons or to line the pockets of the Palestinian kleptocrats that have been stealing from their own people for decades, that, too, will be an indicator about how Mr. Abbas should be treated.

That $50 million is a huge amount of money, but think of it another way: most people won't play a lottery until it gets up to around $100 million — and at least half of that would go to taxes, anyway. In international circles, it's chump change. It's walking-around money. It's pimp-flash.

But politically, it's a $50,000,000 length of rope. Mr. Abbas could use it as a lifeline, or make a noose and hang himself with it.

I hope that Abbas is sincere in his statements calling for peace, but I'm cynical enough to believe the latter — especially since a good deal of the Palestinian's income dried up with the fall of Saddam. And once Abbas gives in to his baser nature, we can (at the very least) freeze him out the way we did Arafat. Or we can simply let Israel deal with him however they see fit.

Memo to Mr. Abbas — the world is a very large stage and there are many players.
Wake up and smell the cappuccino!

Or as my beloved wife says:

They want a state — Let's give them one:

PLASMA!

Curse Words

I just love Wikipedia. It started as an idea and has morphed into an excellent resource and one that is a fun sandbox to poke around in.

Stumbled into this reference: List of Fictional Curse Words

Add to your vocabulary such words as “felgercarb”, “shpadoinkle” and who cannot forget the ultimate: “Hab SoSlI' Quch!” (your Mother has a smooth forehead — Klingon)

Fat Man Walking

Meet Steve Vaught — very happy, great family but he is fat and was not feeling to good about that. So he decides to get a bit of exercise — a small walk. From California to NYC.

Fat Man Walking is his online journal

From the website:

Hello,

My Name is Steve Vaught, (born Stephen James Liller in Youngstown, Ohio). I am a 39 year old, happily married father of two great kids and I have a pretty good life here in Southern California. You would think that I would be happy because of these things, but I am not. I am not happy because I am fat and being fat makes every day unhappy.

I did not make this website to complain about it however, instead I am doing something about it and this site was made to chronicle my story.

I am going to walk across the United states from San Diego to NYC to lose weight and regain my life!

The rest of the story is that I have not always been fat. I have been many things in my life from a lanky teenager to a muscular Marine and now I am fat. This latest incarnation is without a doubt the worst.

Being fat is physically and emotionally painful. It diminishes the quality of the good things in life and it will ultimately bring about an early demise. So being overweight darkens every good thing that you achieve in your life and even prevents some things from happening at all.

For the last 15 years I have been slowly gaining weight and it seems that whatever I do, it just spirals ever upward. Socially, being fat is hard to deal with because I feel that am looked down upon by people even when they are not doing so maliciously. It may be human nature. You know, “survival of the fittest”. Also, I feel as though I am being taken advantage of by companies and people that want fat people to buy their latest “miracle pill” or prepackaged food that will help me lose the weight.

We, as a society, are growing larger and have become a big market for high dollar fast fixes. We are not getting the fix because it is an illusion. Don't get me wrong, if I were given the option I would trade just about anything to be trim and fit again. I have the same excuses, desires and dreams as many others in my position. I know though, that there is no other option but physical exertion to truly get back into shape.

So, after consulting the family and getting their blessing I have made the decision to stop this merry go round and dedicate myself to losing the extra weight. I have an addiction and there needs to be dedication and sacrifice to cure addictions. If I had a drug or alcohol addiction I would go to rehab. Well, what I have in mind is rehab for the fat guy.

I am going to take six months out of my life and walk across the United States from San Diego to NYC. My main purpose in undertaking this journey is losing weight. More importantly though, I need to change the behaviors that have allowed me to be in this situation in the first place. I know that to permanently lose this weight I must learn to be more responsible to myself.

There is a daily log as well as photos — Kudos to Steve for doing this. This is an awesome odyssey.

Jeepers Peppers

There is a photo of a registered sex offender in Ohio — a Mr. Brian Peppers.
The photo was published on the eSORN website.

People started asking if this was Photoshop or what.

I checked SNOPES and it's Undetermined.

Here is the guy from his high-school yearbook:

Here is his mugshot:

Talk about a face made for radio. SNOPES is suggesting Crouzon's Syndrome. Must be horrible to go through life looking like that but still, it takes a lot to get on the books as an offender so he has some culpability as well.

the French

A great cartoon from Damian at Pave France:

Damian then says:

France makes its little hop to snatch at the lofty virtues esteemed by nations. But not even the ablest hop combined with the utmost flick of the langue française can pull down a prize. Alas, power, comity, prosperity, wisdom, and respect, all remain unreachable, ungrabbable, unglaummable. Because unmerited.

But, of course, you know all that.

We mention all this by way of revisiting our earlier item on the French study, Pourquoi Les Francais Sont Les Moins Frequentables De La Planete (scil., Why The French Are The Worst Company On The Planet), which, posted hastily and uncommented, we think deserving of enlargement.

The authors, Messrs. Olivier Clodong and Jose-Manuel Lamarque, present the rare case of truth imitating stereotypes.

Damian has more on his site. Excellent and fun reading. Especially since today is the day the French people vote on whether to ratify the EU constitution which Chirac has been really really promoting. Polls have it split down the middle…

Also, I reduced the size and resolution of the cartoon — visit Pave France for the full version.

Archer Daniels Midland and Ethanol

Very interesting (and well footnoted) report on Archer Daniels Midland, the staggering amount of government funds they receive and their push for Ethanol during the Carter administration. Carter pushed the subsidies for corn growing and for the production of Ethanol despite advice from people who knew the subject.

I had written about ADM before here talking about their Sugar subsidies and how these affect other businesses.

Back to the report — here is just a brief excerpt explaining the true cost to the consumer for one gallon of Ethanol:

Perhaps the most honest and thorough analysis of the effect of ethanol on farm income and taxpayers and consumers was done by the USDA's Office of Energy in 1986. That study, which included a lower estimate of the inflationary impact of ethanol production on corn prices, concluded,

Corn prices would increase by $0.02-$0.04 per bushel for each 100 million bushel increase in ethanol-induced demand for corn. However, soybean prices would fall by about $0.04 per bushel and soybean prices would fall by $0.12-$0.15 per hundredweight.

Higher corn prices from additional ethanol- induced demand would increase the cost of producing beef, pork, and poultry. Consumer food expenditures would rise by $8.6 billion, or an average of $2.29 for each additional gallon of ethanol produced.

When all the costs and benefits are tallied, the Government, taxpayers and consumers together would lose $6.1-$7.2 billion or $1.61-$1.92 per additional gallon produced during the 1986-94 period if ethanol subsidies were increased enough to prompt the ethanol industry to produce 2 billion gallons in 1995. Conversely, if ethanol production falls to zero, they would save some $6.8-$8.9 billion, or $1.35-$1.76 per gallon not produced.(49)

The study concluded that increased production of ethanol would cost consumers and taxpayers roughly $4 for each $1 of extra farm income.

The report stated,

Increases in consumer food expenditures caused by additional ethanol production far exceed the increases in farm income. Consumers would be much better off if they burned straight gasoline in their automobiles and paid a direct cash subsidy to farmers in the amount that net farm income would be increased by ethanol production.(50)

Since this report is looking at the money, they aren't following the Thermodynamics. A hint — it takes more caloric energy to make a gallon of Ethanol than you can recover from the Ethanol.
Making Ethanol is an Energy Sink not a Source…

Surplus Stuff

A great list of surplus outlets

From the website:

Vendors listed on this page sell miscellaneous and surplus hardware, tools, lab supplies, motors, adhesives, Dremel bits, screws, gizmos, and whatnots. Stuff you might need for successful hardware building and hacking, stuff you’re inclined to packrat until just the right project comes along. These people aren’t your average thick-cataloged every-part-number-under-the-sun guys—they’re the other guys; the random crap purveyors of the world.

Only vendor I would add would be Don Lancaster's eBay site.

Bad Hair Day

A collection of the worst haircuts ever. From Phatt Phree:

It is said that hair makes the man, and certainly women go to amazing lengths to find a style that will at once enhance their looks and set them apart from other women. Sometimes the pressure and lengths traveled lead to styles and cuts that are just plain terrible. From the old standbys of ugliness like, The Mullet and Comb-Over to new additions to the bad hair lexicon like, The Career Terminator and The Gangsta Pimp- they are all here. We hope you enjoy our list of the 50 Worst Hairstyles of All-Time.

They include such luminaries as Moe Howard:

But they forgot to include Phil Spector — shown here in a court appearance:

Suppose they gave a party...

A certain organization is having its 60th B-Day but who will be showing up for the cake?
The NY Times has the story:

U.N. Party Planners Wonder, Will Bush and Friends Attend?

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has indicated she will not attend. So has former President George H. W. Bush. The controversial nominee for United Nations ambassador, John R. Bolton, has not been heard from, nor has President Bush, who was sent an invitation in February.

Getting big-name administration officials to attend events outside Washington is always a long shot because of their busy schedules. But in the case of the 60th anniversary celebration of the founding of the United Nations, which will take place in San Francisco late next month, some organizers are wondering if something beyond scheduling conflicts is at play.

Nancy L. Peterson, president of the United Nations Association of San Francisco, a nonprofit group that has been planning the celebration, said no explanation had been offered by the White House. But she said some members were worried that President Bush's seeming disdain for the world organization might be behind the silence and no-shows.

“We are a month out, and that's cutting it close,” Ms. Peterson said. When asked if San Franciscans felt slighted, she said, “I think the administration is slighting the American people by not stepping forward on behalf of the United Nations at this turning point.”

At the last big anniversary celebration, 10 years ago in San Francisco, where the United Nations charter was signed in 1945, President Clinton played a prominent role. Sherri Ferris, who is organizing the 60th anniversary invitations, said Mr. Clinton's office had indicated that an appearance next month “is still under consideration.” She expects many invitees will fix their June calendars next week.

So, ten years ago, someone in SF hosted a big party and wants to do it again. Sorry Nancy and Sherri — looks like a small din-din with Kofi. Bill may show up but don't count on it, Hillary wants to distance herself from the Moonbats. 2008 'ya know…

And excerpting from the penultimate paragraph:

I think the administration is slighting the American people by not stepping forward on behalf of the United Nations at this turning point.

Exscuse me — the turning point would be if the United Nations DID SOMETHING EFFECTIVVE!

A question to ask over the next month or so.

To assess the strength and relevance of the United Nations, you only need to look at what it does. There is an article in today's New York Times which might prove to be a good benchmark as it contains a specific promise from Kofi Annan to a Darfur Chief.

Annan Hears Refugees Tell of Sudan War

Tens of thousands of chanting refugees lined the muddy streets of Darfur's largest refugee camp on Saturday to greet Secretary General Kofi Annan of the United Nations, who later listened as women told stories of being raped during the conflict.

Men carried signs saying “We are looking for freedom and justice,” and women ululated to welcome Mr. Annan almost 11 months after his first visit to Darfur.

He listened as refugees complained about the police and Arab militias who they said had attacked, killed and raped their families inside the Kalma Camp in Darfur State.

The state has had some of the worst recent violence in a three-year conflict that has killed tens of thousands of people and forced two million from their homes, according to United Nations estimates.

“Since we came to this camp, they have killed 56 people,” said Suleiman Abka Taha, a local tribal chief.

Mr. Taha, who was speaking in front of government officials, asked Mr. Annan for a guarantee that he would not be detained for what he said. Mr. Annan asked ministers for such a reassurance and received it from Muhammad Yousef Abdalla, Sudan's state minister for humanitarian affairs.

I will excerpt and emphasize that last paragraph:

Mr. Taha… …asked Mr. Annan for a guarantee that he would not be detained for what he said. Mr. Annan asked ministers for such a reassurance and received it from Muhammad Yousef Abdalla, Sudan's state minister for humanitarian affairs.

Let us look at Mr. Suleiman Abka Taha, a tribal Chief in Darfur and ask where he is once every week. See if he is still living in one month. They will not get him tomorrow, they are medieval and psychotic but they have a feral cleverness.
But I bet he will disappear.

To look at the history of the UN's actions in this part of the world, read this dispatch from GenocideWatch from August 6, 2004:

WILL THE UN ASSESSMENT OF SECURITY IN DARFUR BE A CHARADE?

One week after the UN Security Council belatedly passed a weak and dilatory resolution in response to the massive human catastrophe unfolding in Darfur, there is good reason to believe that even this exceedingly modest effort is doomed by Security Council politics. Evidently anticipating that he may find it impossible to move the Security Council (particularly veto-wielding China) beyond the essentially hortatory effort of July 30, and that even the largely meaningless “further measures” threatened in the resolution will not be pursued, Secretary General Kofi Annan appears to be preparing to forestall any humanitarian intervention in Darfur that might take place without UN authorization.

No doubt this is justified in Annan's own mind by what he feels is the need to preserve the authority of the UN, even as nothing could more rapidly squander whatever remains of UN moral authority than a failure to intervene in Darfur. Indeed, humanitarian intervention is so clearly long overdue that whatever can be lost in this arena is already very much diminished. Present humanitarian capacity, on the part of UN and nongovernmental humanitarian organizations, is conspicuously and woefully inadequate to present humanitarian need; and even if Khartoum permits deployment of an augmented force of 2,000 African Union troops (an unlikely event), the security needs of the more than 1.3 million internally displaced persons cannot possibly be guaranteed by such a force. Many camps and concentrations of African tribal populations, numbering in the hundreds of thousands, remain utterly at the mercy of the Janjaweed and other armed elements in Darfur.

“President” Bashir also weighs in on this — remove all fragile objects within your reach before continuing to read:

Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir said Monday international pressure and military intervention would not solve the problem in the western region of Darfur where Amnesty International has charged that Arab militias, the Janjaweed, committed systematic, mass rapes.

Al-Bashir called for enough time to implement a joint plan with the United Nations to achieve security and stability in the troubled province.

He was speaking during an interview with United Press International at the Presidential Palace in Khartoum.

The Sudanese president appeared calm and refuted accusations that his government failed to solve the deteriorating situation in Darfur. He spoke as the ruling National Congress Party warned against an international military intervention and urged general mobilization for resistance.

Al-Bashir denied any government link with Arab militias, known as Janjaweed, who have been accused of committing atrocities and human rights violations against the African inhabitants of Darfur.

Christ on a Corn Dog! When are people going to wake up and stop enabling these thugs and stop trying to give them equal voices under the misguided idea of multi-culturalism.

Ahhh Rats...

Casio has a cool new phone for outdoors people but it doesn't seem to be available in the USA.

Gizmodo has the link and this to say:

Water- and shock-proof, the G’zOne is a hiker’s dream. This phone includes an electronic compass, clock, stop watch, and an external screen. Available in three delightful colors, the G’zOne isn’t available here and never will be. Cry, Mr. Flannel-Shirt-EMS-Cargo-Pants-Man, cry and kayak your way down to that cool little rock climbing spot. Cry.

Casio's site is Japanese but it has some nice photos:

Now if it had GPS like our Nextel Motorola phones, that would be cool.

Red faces at the Melbourne, AU police department

From the BBC News comes this story of training for the wrong thing:

Powder mix-up fools sniffer dogs
A team of Australian drug sniffer dogs has been sent back for retraining, after it was found they could only track talcum powder, not cocaine.

Melbourne police found that the white powder used to hone the dogs' nostrils was not in fact an illegal substance.

A probe is now under way to see whether any illicit drugs have gone missing.

“They're very good at detecting talcum powder,” joked Assistant Commissioner Paul Evans. “If there's any missing kids, we'll find them fairly quickly.”

And the bag of powder used for training?

Police in Victoria have launched an inquiry to see whether any cocaine has gone missing.

But Assistant Commissioner Evans said that drugs were sometimes cut with other substances.

It was also possible that the training bag was mislabelled.

“It's embarrassing,” Mr Evans told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

Hat tip to Mostly Cajun for finding this.

Rumors and lies

Original post May 27th 10:00pm Pacific Daylight

Interesting…

I am applying the 48-hour but here are two sets of data that contradict:

Some bloggers are reporting that:

King Fahd of Saudi Arabia has been dead since Wednesday

And we have Friday's release from Reuters:

Saudi King Fahd doing well in hospital-agency

A good Litmus Test, mais non?

UPDATE: May 28th 8:00pm Pacific Daylight

Reuters is still running the story. Searching Google News with “King Fahd” gets lots of hits on how he is stable, improving, tired, etc…

Searching Google News for “King Fahd dead” pulls up 92 entries, a lot of which aren't relevant (one page talking about the King and also mentioning the passing of someone else). Still, UPI has him as dead since last Wednesday, so does Italian source ADNKI (they say he is clinically dead).

Shades of Arafat being stable in the French hospital. Anyone is stable when their body temperature is in the 30's in the morgue refrigerator…

A bunch of friends

Velociman recounts a time in his life when he worked for a Cabinet Shop on Wilmington Island, GA. He worked with some interesting characters. Velociman:

Back when I was a youngster, between gigs as they say, I was a cabinet maker. On Wilmington Island, where I lived. Very nice custom stuff, and I was proud of my handicraft, but I worked with some bizarro fuckers: Fat Jack, Red, Randy Jack, Li'l Chris, Nigger Boy, Biggun. Good guys, but sordid bastards, if that makes sense. They were known, collectively by everyone, as Back Island Trash. I was one for a while.

He then starts to flesh out the characters — Randy Jack:

Randy Jack looked like the bass player from ZZ Top, only with lice.

It gets better — read the whole thing.

How not to snatch a purse...

A thief finds out that his choice of target was not a good one.
This is a silent security camera tape from a Japanese elevator and it has been posted on a Russian website.

DayNews.RU - Elevator Thief

I can't read Russian but it doesn't look good for the thief.

Skunk Baxter

For those into pop music, this name is probably very familiar. He was a member of Steely Dan and the Doobie Brothers.

It turns out that he is pursuing a very different career these days — that of defense and counter-terrorism consultant.

Charles at LGF links to a fascinating article in the Wall Street Journal. The article starts off with a bit of history:

Jeff Baxter played psychedelic music with Ultimate Spinach, jazz-rock with Steely Dan and funky pop with the Doobie Brothers. But in the last few years he has made an even bigger transition: Mr. Baxter, who goes by the nickname “Skunk,” has become one of the national-security world's well-known counterterrorism experts.

A wiry man who wears a beret to many of his meetings, Mr. Baxter, who is now 56 years old, has gone from a rock career that brought him eight platinum records to a spot in the small constellation of consultants paid to help both policy makers and defense contractors better understand the way terrorists think and plan attacks.

His first foray into consultation began with an observation and an idea:

His defense work began in the 1980s, when it occurred to him that much of the hardware and software being developed for military use, like data-compression algorithms and large-capacity storage devices, could also be used for recording music. Mr. Baxter's next-door neighbor, a retired engineer who worked on the Pentagon's Sidewinder missile program, bought him a subscription to an aviation magazine, and he was soon reading a range of military-related publications.

Mr. Baxter began wondering whether existing military systems could be adapted to meet future threats they weren't designed to address, a heretical concept for most defense thinkers. In his spare time, he wrote a five-page paper on a primitive Tandy computer that proposed converting the military's Aegis program, a ship-based antiplane system, into a rudimentary missile-defense system.

Missile Defense:

Mr. Rohrabacher passed the report to another influential Republican lawmaker, Rep. Curt Weldon of Pennsylvania. Mr. Weldon says he immediately realized that Mr. Baxter could be a useful public advocate for missile defense because his rock-star pedigree would attract attention to the issue.

“Most of Hollywood is from the liberal, 'let's hug the tree and be warm and fuzzy and sing Kumbaya,' bent,” Mr. Weldon says. “You put Jeff Baxter up against them, and he cleans their clocks because he actually knows the facts and details.” He has appeared in public debates and given numerous press and TV interviews on CNN and Fox News advocating missile defense. He also served as a national spokesman for Americans for Missile Defense, a coalition of conservative organizations devoted to the issue.

Getting his security Clearance:

Mr. Baxter, backed by several lawmakers, got a series of classified security clearances. During one background interview, Mr. Baxter says, he was asked whether he could be bribed with money or drugs. He recalls telling the investigators not to worry because he had already “been there, done that, and given away the T-shirt” during his rock career.

Heh…

He would be a fun person to have over for dinner sometime.
Probably a lot of great stories…

Farm Blogging

Jen and I went to a Welding Rodeo last weekend.

Text and pictures are up at our other site: Brown Snout

Fun stuff and excellent work from the teams.

Artificial Intelligence

Fascinating article at Kuro5hin — I have goosebumps as I am typing this…

AI Breakthrough or the Mismeasure of Machine?

If a computer program took the SAT verbal analogy test and scored as well as the average college bound human, it would raise some serious questions about the nature and measurement of intelligence.

Guess what?

The article links to this paper (PDF) published by Peter D. Turney's Interactive Information Group, Institute for Information Technology of the National Research Council Canada, achieved this milestone.

The average human score on this test is 57%
Their program gets 56%
Holy crap!

This is a very fun time to be alive! Granted, this is only one small backwater of AI and there are a lot of serious issues that need to be worked on but parsing the relationships between words is not a trivial question and to develop a program that can do this at a human level is awesome work.

A fine little scandal

Things are not what they seem in Orange County, CA and the OC Weekly has the skivvy:

Internal Affairs
Orange County’s sheriff and his top deputy planned a dynasty but sex and money got in the way

This is a story about a famous LA porn star, a suspicious detective and a frustrated Orange County sheriff. It’s also a story about ex-Assistant Sheriff George Jaramillo, who is—by his own reckoning—a devoted family man, a hard-working immigrant, and a Mormon who doesn’t drink alcohol or smoke. He is, he says, a “genuinely nice guy who has never done anything wrong.” And sure enough, if you hang around Jaramillo, you’ll see an often polite, always confident man who appears benevolent.

Jaramillo’s self-proclaimed innocence prompts laughter among cops who worked with him before he was fired, arrested and indicted on six felony corruption charges last year. These officers say the former second in command at the $500-million-a-year sheriff’s department is driven by greed and lust, and is all the more dangerous because he can be disarmingly charming.

But if Jaramillo had severe character flaws, it was a minor one—tightfistedness—that may have begun his undoing.

The article then goes on to cover in some detail Jaramillo's Peccadilloes:

According to grand jury records reviewed by the Weekly, Jaramillo frequently gave Hood film to develop. The film contained nude pictures of dozens of women, including the assistant sheriff’s wife, sister-in-law, several secretaries and at least one county employee. Most of the shots were soft-porn, topless poses. Some were taken at police conventions or in Las Vegas. Hood and other sheriff’s department employees told investigators Jaramillo put the pictures in a thick photo album, shared his sex encyclopedia at the office and identified the women as his conquests.

The grand jury also heard that the assistant sheriff, whose salary topped $135,000 annually, was a legendary cheapskate. Not only was Jaramillo bold enough to openly celebrate his adultery, he allegedly stuck Hood with the costs of developing the film from his escapades. In 2001, several deputies refused Jaramillo’s request that they rent a San Diego hotel room so that he could have a three-way sex romp. The deputies were sure they’d never be repaid.

What bothered Hood most wasn’t the film costs, the adultery or the porn. He witnessed Jaramillo badmouth Carona behind his back, steal credit for the sheriff’s successes and brag about taking over the department. Hood, a 27-year-veteran cop, thought the assistant sheriff was destined to sabotage Carona.

And collecting evidence:

During conversations with Jaramillo, it’s easy to see his mind race from subject to subject. He’s funny and opinionated and loves challenges. He talks as if he’s invincible. But for four years he made a terrible error. He mistook Hood as either a fan or an imbecile.

Jaramillo was clueless that the man in whom he’d confided kept mental notes; that the man he’d asked to fix his home computer for free had installed a program to save all deleted files in case there was ever an investigation; and that the man he’d asked to establish a secret cell phone account had kept detailed records of calls and would someday give that log to inquiring FBI agents.

“You can’t trust anybody,” says Jaramillo.

Hood likely agrees. He got stuck paying the assistant sheriff’s film costs. And then, he says, Jaramillo stiffed him on more than $800 in cell phone bills.

And the story gets better and better involving a Porn Star, questionable finances, threats of violence and an ego that keeps going like the Energizer Bunny. Fascinating story — there is no end to what people will do. The sad part is that if this guy had kept his nose clean, he would have been Chief of Police in a few years but he back-stabbed his Kingmaker. Very very stupid…

Orson Scott Card opens a can of whoop-ass on the Main Stream Media

Noted author Orson Scott Card delivers a serious cluebat to the Media regarding the Quran and Toilet fiasco.

The Riots of the Faithful
So Newsweek prints an uncorroborated allegation about American interrogators flushing Qurans down the toilet in order to get fanatical Muslim prisoners to talk, and there's rioting and death all over the Muslim world.

There are several lessons to be learned from this incident, some trivial, some quite important.

1. The courts have given the news media carte blanche, in the name of the First Amendment — but the media are no better than government at exercising unchecked power. When it's known that no one can punish you, a certain kind of person stops caring whether he hurts anybody. And such people tend to rise within any organization that doesn't work hard to have a conscience.

He riffs on this for a while and then goes to item two:

2. Too many people in the “American” media have lost any concept of loyalty to their country — if they even consider it their country, rather than just their residence.

Yeah, that's right, I'm playing the “patriotism” card. But not the way you think.

Our country is at war. And it's a war in which victory absolutely depends on the Muslim world perceiving it as a war between the U.S and its allies on one side, and fanatical murderous terrorists on the other.

If it is ever perceived as a war against Islam, then we have lost. The world has lost.

Point number three:

3. Muslims in Muslim countries can dish it out, but they can't take it. They had no problem expelling all the Jews from their countries in an ethnic cleansing every bit as vicious as anything the Spaniards did in 1492. They desecrated Torahs left and right. Nowadays they blow up babies and call it a heroic act, because they were Jewish babies.

But let somebody start a rumor that somebody dunked a Quran in the toilet, and they go insane and riot and kill people.

What planet do these people live on?

It's Earth.

What you see in those riots is the result of centuries of being in an almost complete majority — and having nothing to show for it. Not freedom, not prosperity, not even respect.

Practically everybody they know is Muslim and yet they are still powerless and ashamed and angry.

Go to Orson's page and read the whole thing. I am making very brief excerpts — the rest of the article is well worth reading. Very clear and to the point…

Salesman of the year award and a small rant...

From MS/NBC comes this story of stunning salesmanship.
Stunningly poor and unethical…

Music store sells 11 organs to sick woman
Manager charged with exploiting Alzheimer’s patient

A music store manager was charged Thursday with exploiting a woman with Alzheimer’s disease who authorities say bought 11 organs from him over 18 months — including four on a single day.

Scott L. Heyder, 36, sold the 79-year-old a progressively more expensive string of the instruments beginning in 2003 — even after her family pleaded with him to stop, Pasco County sheriff’s detectives said Thursday.

Heyder was charged with felony exploitation of the elderly and was held on $10,000 bail at the Pasco County Jail.

The woman spent about $25,000 on organs and ended up with one worth only about half that, said sheriff’s spokesman Kevin Doll. He said she has not received any money back from the music store, Fletcher Music Center at Gulfview Square Mall.

“I think it’s unconscionable, especially after the family confronted this salesperson and said, 'Our mother has mental failings due to Alzheimer’s, she doesn’t know what she’s doing,'” Doll said.

A special place in hell for that one… I am of the firm opinion that the retail piano and organ stores are worse, far far worse than used car dealerships.

I play keyboards and have been in some of these places and the high-pressure salesmanship for something that is basically a nice bit of furniture with minimal electronics is amazing. They are charging several thousand dollars for junk and the person wanting a good piano or organ need only go to a Professional Musicians store and find something of a lot higher quality for thousand's less. It wouldn't have the nice cabinetry but the overall workmanship and sound quality would be much higher. If the cabinet was all that important, they could use the extra money they saved and have a professional cabinetmaker build something custom.

The Piano and Organ store organs are commonly known as Granny Organs and something that cost several thousand new has to be given away or sold (if they are lucky) for a hundred or two. They are of no value.

The mechanical pianos aren't much better — on the cheaper units, the tuning pin blocks are not thick enough to hold a tune over time, the action is generally cheap and gets sloppy in about a year and this cannot be adjusted out, you have to replace the action for those keys.

If you want a keyboard and are OK with digital, check out a professional music store, not a piano and organ store. Most music stores will have a rental department and will credit the rental fee against future purchases if you want to try it at home.

Taking a look at Fletcher Music Center's website, you can see that they are firmly in the Granny Organ camp. Lowery Organs only — no Yamaha, Kurzweil (my personal favorite), Roland — none of the big pro-music names, just Lowery. And of course, the dead give-away, no prices listed anywhere. Compare this with Musician's Friend.

The THX "Deep Note"

You have heard it in movie theaters — the big swelling sound that advertises that the cinema has an authorized THX Sound System.

Music Thing has a short writeup on the guy who wrote that and how it came into being:

“I like to say that the THX sound is the most widely-recognized piece of computer-generated music in the world,” says Andy Moorer. “This may or may not be true, but it sounds cool!”

You can hear the sound here. It's called 'Deep Note'.

It was made by Dr James 'Andy' Moorer in 1982, who has had a very cool career: Four patents, one Oscar. In the '60s he was working in Artificial Intelligence at Stanford. In the '70s he was at IRCAM in Paris, working on speech synthesis and ballet. In the '80s he worked at the LucasFilm DroidWorks, before joining Steve Jobs at NeXT. Today, he consults, repairs old tube radios and plays banjo.

At one point, the THX sound was being played 4,000 times a day at cinemas around the world (that's once every 20 seconds).

The request?

He said he wanted “something that comes out of nowhere and gets really, really big!” I allowed as to how I figured I could do something like that.

And the synthesis technique?

“The score consists of a C program of about 20,000 lines of code. The output of this program is not the sound itself, but is the sequence of parameters that drives the oscillators on the ASP. That 20,000 lines of code produce about 250,000 lines of statements of the form “set frequency of oscillator X to Y Hertz”.

“The oscillators were not simple - they had 1-pole smoothers on both amplitude and frequency. At the beginning, they form a cluster from 200 to 400 Hz. I randomly assigned and poked the frequencies so they drifted up and down in that range. At a certain time (where the producer assured me that the THX logo would start to come into view), I jammed the frequencies of the final chord into the smoothers and set the smoothing time for the time that I was told it would take for the logo to completely materialize on the screen. At the time the logo was supposed to be in full view, I set the smoothing times down to very low values so the frequencies would converge to the frequencies of the big chord (which had been typed in by hand - based on a 150-Hz root), but not converge so precisely that I would lose all the beats between oscillators. All followed by the fade-out. It took about 4 days to program and debug the thing. The sound was produced entirely in real-time on the ASP.

The ASP in question was a proprietary Audio Signal Processor that was eventually sold for scrap.

Fascinating history for such a cultural icon.

Bullshit Bingo

Mostly Cajun links to a great office game to play while in meetings:

Bullshit Bingo
Jenn Martinez has this article on this new game. As a frequent attendee at meetings, this new game holds promise. Here’s a teaser:

3. Check off the appropriate block when you hear one of those words/phrases.

4. When you get five blocks horizontally, vertically, or diagonally, stand up and shout “BULLSHIT!”

Oh, yeah! Talk about enhancing your reputation. This will do it. You might want to polish up the ol’ resume’, though…

My first “real” job was for a public aquarium working at maintaining all of the non-living exhibits (CALM DOWN — I am talking about movie projectors, PA Systems and stuff here, not dead fish). The head of the department I was in was a crashing bore — very nice but very much into procedure and micro-management. His short meetings usually took four hours and it was almost impossible to not nod off. I was not alone with this assessment.

Fortunately, the public exhibits always had priority and I was usually able to have someone at the front desk page me after the meeting had been under way for 30 minutes or so. Got a ten minute re-cap from someone who had to sit through the whole damn thing.

I was able to think outside the box, establish my new paradigm and work out a game plan to enable a strategic fit. At the end of the day, I was able to call bullshit!

Worked there for three years — a lot of it was really fun and some great people. A lot of it was mindless bureaucratic stuff…

Lebanon

from Portland writer Michael J. Totten who spent a month there recently.
At Tech Central Station

Resolving the Clash of Civilizations
I recently returned home from Beirut, Lebanon, where I spent a month covering the democratic Cedar Revolution and Syria's withdrawal from the country after a 30 year-long occupation. Few places in the world beat Beirut as a foreign assignment. The city is packed from one end to the other with the classiest hotels, the hippest night clubs, the most stylish bars, the fanciest restaurants, the coziest cafés, and the best shopping districts this side of New York and Paris. But Lebanon's sophisticated and freewheeling culture isn't the only thing that makes a trip to that country both attractive and memorable. Nor is the nascent democracy movement the only encouraging news. One of the best stories out of Lebanon is the one that receives almost no coverage at all — the end of the long-simmering sectarian hatefest and a genuine yearning for friendship between Christians and Muslims.

Lebanon is approximately 40 percent Christian and 60 percent Muslim. And from 1975 to 1990 a localized clash of civilizations ripped the country to pieces. Beirut was carved into eastern and western halves — Christians on one side and Muslims on the other. Christians fought Muslims. Christians fought Christians. Muslims fought Christians, Israelis, Americans, and also each other. It was an apocalyptic war of all sects against all, a Yugoslavia of the Levant.

Since the war's end the Lebanese decided to tolerate each other — except, at times, for Hezbollah who has been known to burn Lebanese flags along with Israeli and American flags at their rallies. Today many Lebanese are moving beyond mere tolerance and forging ties that bind across sectarian lines.

I hopped in a car with Charles, a Maronite Christian who recently returned home from exile in Australia, and Alaa, a member of the Druze community from the Chouf mountains. I tagged along with them while they campaigned in various villages for free elections in May.

“I'm a Christian at heart when I'm in my house,” Charles said. “But when I'm outside I am first Lebanese. During the war we Christians and Druze fought each other. But looks at us now.” He gestured at Alaa.

Alaa continued for Charles. “Now we're driving around in the same car to build a new Lebanon.”

Later I met two Christians downtown — Jean and Emile — and they asked me to join them for drinks.

“We used to fight each other,” Jean said as he looked askance at Emile. “I was with Samir Geagea.”

“And I was with Michel Aoun,” Emile said. “But now we are at the same table.”

“What, exactly,” I said, “were you fighting about?”

Emile shrugged and shook his head, looking slightly embarrassed.

“Look,” he said. “If you have a hard time figuring what the civil war was about, don't feel bad. No one in Lebanon really understands either.”

The civil war did have its causes and its idiot logic. But it's no wonder most people want to move on. Every sect in Lebanon lost. Syria was the victor. The only good thing that came out of the war is a more mature political culture. There is no ethnic or religious majority. (Muslims make up more or less 60 percent of the population, but they are divided themselves among Shia, Sunni, and Druze.) Everyone is a minority. And everyone knows from experience that they can't take over the country.

Excellent and sweet story — democracy is what people want when they have the chance. It is starting to take hold in even the most staunchly theocratic cultures.

Plastination

There must be an Elmer von Hagens out there — a distant cousin to renowned old-school anatomist Gunter von Hagens.

I have long been a fan of von Hagens work — he takes donated human and animal bodies and has developed a way to “Plastinate” them — removing all the tissue that can rot and replacing it with silicone resins. His dissection technique is downright artistry if controversial. He has several traveling shows, some touring in the USA now and these shows are making money — a lot of money.

From KGO/TV in San Francisco talking about the Bodyworks show:

The shows have been immensely popular around the world, raking in hundreds of millions of dollars. With that kind of money at stake, copy cat shows not produced by von Hagens were inevitable, including the one at San Francisco's Masonic Center.

Bob Henry, Int'l Society for Plastination: “This is what we feared would happen sooner or later, and it's upon us, I believe.”

Well, the city of San Francisco is playing host to one such copy-cat show and there is a slight problem. The corpses are oozing fluid.

From the same KGO/TV article:

Leaking Bodies Uncovered At Popular 'Body' Show
An exhibit of real human corpses is the most popular show ever at San Francisco's Masonic Center. But problems uncovered by the ABC7 I-Team threaten to shut down the exhibit.

The most obvious problem is the corpses are leaking. To understand how we got to the point of dead, dripping bodies for public view there on Nob Hill, it's important to see how this type of show began and how immensely profitable it can be.

A follow-up article from KGO/TV checks into the origin of the bodies and as they say, follows the money:

Dan: “Where did the bodies come from?”

Allan Casalou, Masonic Exec. Dir.: “They came from the university in Beijing.”

The Masonic's executive director and the show's promoter claim they were able to bring the bodies from China with the help of Peking University and Professor EnHua Yu. The promoter, Gerhard Perner, says he pays rent to the Masonic, keeps 15-percent of the show's profits for himself, and sends the rest back to China.

ABC7's Dan Noyes: “Do the profits go to Dr. Yu personally or to the university?”

Gerhard Perner: “To the university.”

But university officials say all that's not true. They had no role in acquiring the bodies, they're receiving no money. In fact, they never heard of this body show until contacted by the I-Team. We've learned that Perner was able to get bodies meant for medical research and teaching from a factory in Nanjing, China. It worries San Francisco supervisors that these bodies are now on display on Nob Hill.

Here is a picture of Dr. von Hagens with a friend:

Hat tip to BoingBoing for the link.

Courtroom Dialog

An oldie and a goodie. Ran into this earlier this evening at a Lawyer Joke website and it deserves repeating. This is supposed to be a true courtroom dialog:

Lawyer: Doctor, before you performed the autopsy, did you check for a pulse?
Witness: No.
Lawyer: Did you check for blood pressure?
Witness: No.
Lawyer: Did you check for breathing?
Witness: No.
Lawyer: So, then it is possible that the patient was alive when you began the autopsy?
Witness: No.
Lawyer: How can you be so sure, Doctor?
Witness: Because his brain was sitting on my desk in a jar.
Lawyer: But could the patient have still been alive never the less?
Witness: Yes, it is possible that he could have been alive and practicing law somewhere.

Heh…

Rednecks

Great rant by Fred Reed at Fred on Everything

Rednecks: The Virtues Thereof
Cornell As Evolutionary Miscalculation

There is a lot of snot and malice about rednecks on the internet. Most of it comes from such cornflowers and honeysuckles as college professors, other witless suburban nonentities, and assorted twits in cities. By “redneck,” these bundles of intellectual lingerie seem to mean anyone without a college degree who can hang a door or lube his car.

One of them, some sort of biochemical rascal, figured that rednecks were examples of poor evolutionary fitness—compared, I guess, to him. Now, that’s a stretch.

Tell you about rednecks. They’re probably the only people in the whole country that ain’t unfit. What used to be Davy Crockett’s country today is full mostly of folk who can’t do anything for themselves. They call someone else to fix the plumbing, shoot the burglar, gap their plugs, build their houses, get their kids off drugs. If the cat dies they need a pet-loss grief-management counselor. From a redneck’s point of view, the United States is turning fast into people like those nasty white grubs that nekkid savages in New Guinea eat, only with legs.

I know the breed—rednecks, not grubs. I grew up with them, in King George County, Virginia, and in Athens, Alabama in 1957. Back then I thought I was Huck Finn. I may have been right. Certainly the evidence favored the proposition. I’d run through the woods like a Southern Mowgli with a slingshot and later got drunk with the country boys in high school and drove like three dam fools, buy one and get two free. We hunted, and crabbed in the Potomac, and such like. We called people from Massachusetts “Damyanks,” or “targets.”

Now, the people in KG were either farmers or fishermen. They could build a crab boat from scratch. Try it. What they were, really, was versatile. They’d snatch an old engine from a junkyard Chevy and rebuild it, convert it to marine, and mount it in the boat. They changed their own transmissions, replaced clutch plates, wired the barns they built. They could run a farm, keep old tractors going, blast a stump, raise hogs and slaughter them. They knew guns, and had them. They could hunt, shoot, and fish. They were tough, cut cordwood and split logs and dug foundations. If they wanted a wall, they laid the brick. If something broke, they fixed it.

Maybe they came up a little short on iambic pentameter. Didn’t seem to hurt’em none.

And he goes on… These sentiments make me think of the great line by Robert A. Heinlein in his 1973 Book Time Enough for Love

A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.

Van Gogh murder suspect coming to trial

Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh was brutally murdered and police captured a suspect shortly after. He is now coming to trial. The BBC has the story:

Van Gogh murder suspect in court
The alleged killer of Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh has made his first appearance in court.

Mohammed Bouyeri, 27, faces charges of murder, terrorism, possession of an illegal firearm and impeding democracy.

Mr Van Gogh was killed after his film about the treatment of women in Islamic society was shown on television.

Mr Bouyeri was seized by the police shortly after the killing. He could be sentenced to life if found guilty.

Described by prosecutors as an Islamic extremist, Mr Bouyeri demanded “a more nuanced and professional” attitude from his accusers.

But he would not say anything else about his case despite prompting from judges.

His lawyer has previously said his client took full responsibility for his actions.

And a bit more:

A prosecutor alleged that Mohammed Bouyeri had calmly shot Mr Van Gogh as he cycled to work and then cut his throat.

The killer then pinned a letter to Mr Van Gogh's chest with a knife. The letter threatened the film's scriptwriter, Somali-born Dutch MP Ayaan Hirsi Ali.

Prosecutors say Mr Bouyeri intended to terrify Dutch society.

“In a letter to his family he said he had chosen to do his duty to Allah and to give his soul for paradise,” prosecutor Frits van Straelen said. “[He] wanted to become a martyr.”

Emphasis mine — this is not martyrdom, this is an act of someone who practices a failed culture. Someone who could not engage in intelligent dialog. I have seen the film (it is available for download on the net — use Google) and it isn't any more damning to the Islamofascist culture than what you read in the news or what is translated from Arabic to English.

The Amazon Basin

A sad story about the Amazon river basin from the BBC written by someone who visited it 30 years ago and who recently returned.

Appetite for Amazon destruction
Earlier this month, the Brazilian government announced that almost one-fifth of the entire Amazon has now been cleared by deforestation.

It is a strange sensation returning to a place you have not visited for 30 years.

And it is even stranger if everything has changed out of all recognition.

I first went to the Amazon basin in 1974.

At that time it was a real Wild West.

The generals then ruling Brazil had decided, in what later proved to be a dangerous simplification, that the Amazon basin was empty.

It was time, they said, to occupy it. So they set about building a network of roads and encouraging loggers and cattle companies to move in.

The article continues with her description of a small hamlet which is now a city of 80,000. Brazil is using these lands to grow soybeans and to produce beef for export. 20% of one of the most unique ecosystems on this planet has been carved up and cleared.

New wine techniques

An interesting article in the NY Times abotu some Italian winemakers who are pushing the envelope.

New Wine in Really Old Bottles
JOSKO GRAVNER has thrown it all away, more than once. When he started making wine 30 years ago outside this small town in the Friuli-Venezia Giulia region of northeastern Italy, he produced crisp, aromatic white wines in a popular style, using the latest technology.

But he was not satisfied making wines like everybody else. He replaced his temperature-controlled steel tanks with small barrels of French oak, and he won acclaim for white wines of uncommon richness. But not even that was sufficient, and Mr. Gravner began to experiment with techniques considered radical by the winemaking establishment. The hazy, ciderish hue of the resulting white wines, so different from the usual clear yellow-gold, persuaded some that the wines were spoiled. But one taste showed they were fresh and alive, with a sheer, lip-smacking texture.

Was he happy? Please.

Rejecting the modern trappings of the cellar, Mr. Gravner has reached back 5,000 years. He now ferments his wines in huge terra-cotta amphorae that he lines with beeswax and buries in the earth up to their great, gaping lips. Ancient Greeks and Romans would be right at home with him, yet his 2001 wines, his first vintage from the amphorae, which he is planning to release in September, are more vivacious and idiosyncratic than ever.

“With every change, I had clients who lost faith in me,” Mr. Gravner said. “The cantina was in a crisis. Now I'm out of crisis, but the rest of the world is in crisis.”

Perhaps it's something in the air, or in the wine, but few places on earth have such a concentration of determined, individualistic winemakers as Friuli-Venezia Giulia, particularly in the low rolling hills that stretch across the border with Slovenia. To their fans they make deeply personal, almost artistic wines. To detractors they are fanatical eccentrics.

I wouldn't mind spending a few weeks in that area travelling around, eating the local food and sampling some of these wines. Mmmmm…

High Flight

A new barrier in aviation has been shattered. From DefenceTalk:

Eurocopter Single-Engine Serial Ecureuil/Astar AS350 B3 Lands on Mt. Everest
On May 14th, 2005 at 7h08 (local time), a serial Ecureuil/AStar AS 350 B3 piloted by the Eurocopter X-test pilot Didier Delsalle, landed at 8,850 meters (29,035ft) on the top of the Mount Everest (Kingdom of Nepal).

This tremendous achievement breaks the World Record for the highest altitude landing and take-off ever, which sets an ultimate milestone in the History of Aviation. Fabrice Brégier, President and CEO of the Eurocopter Group, world leading helicopter manufacturer, immediately congratulated the pilot and his team for this extraordinary feat. After taking off from its base camp Lukla on May 14th, 2005 at 2,866 meters (9,403ft) Didier Delsalle onboard his Ecureuil AS350B3 reached the top of Mount Everest.

As required by the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (FAI - International Aeronautical Federation), the aircraft remained landed on ground more than 2 minutes on the top of the world before flying back to Lukla.

This feat was renewed the day after.

Stepping out of his helicopter, Didier Delsalle commented: “To reach this mythical summit definitively seemed to be a dream; despite the obvious difficulties of the target to be reached, the aircraft demonstrated its capability to cope with the situation (…), sublimated by the magic of the place”.