Lost in a Hot Air Balloon

A man in a hot air balloon realized he was lost. He reduced altitude and spotted a man below. He descended a bit more and shouted, "Excuse me, can you help me? I promised a friend I would meet him half an hour ago, but I don't know where I am."

The man below replied, "You are in a hot air balloon hovering approximately 30 feet above the ground. You are between 40 and 42 degrees north latitude and between 58 and 60 degrees west longitude."

"You must be an engineer," said the balloonist.

"I am," replied the man, "but how did you know?"

"Well," answered the balloonist, "everything you told me is technically correct, but I have no idea what to make of your information, and the fact is I am still lost."

The man below responded, "You must be a manager."

"I am," replied the balloonist, "how did you know?"

"Well," said the man, "you don't know where you are or where you are going. You made a promise which you have no idea how to keep, and you expect me to solve your problem. The fact is you are exactly in the same position you were in before we met, but now, somehow, it's my fault."

How the US became France

Sadly, although I'm not quite sure I go all the way with this article, there is some truth to it.

How the US became France

More Bacon! Bacon cheeseburger!

I don't know why this never occurred to me before. It's obvious, when you think about it.

Bacon Cheeseburger

Warning: Call the cardiologist before consumption.

Eastwood's Gran Torino: Go See It.

Tonight, I went to Clint Eastwood's movie "Gran Torino", about an aged Korea veteran (Eastwood) who is living in the same neighbourhood as always, who has just lost his wife, who is semi-estranged from his modern and self-absorbed family, and whose neighborhood is being overrun by minorities and particularly by the Hmong people.

Some descriptions by critics said he builds a tough guy image and deconstructs it. I'm not sure that's how I'd have called it. He starts out fairly crusty and sort of warms to the locals due to circumstances in the film. We gradually get to see a bit more fo what goes on inside the character (at no point do we see all of the inside, which is actually a very s shrewd, mature choice).

We find out a bit about the Hmong, about the issues of opportunities and role models in minority groups (or lack thereof), about crusty old men, and about how the memory of the horrors of war can stick with you for a lifetime. We also see that even an old dog can learn a new trick (at least a bit of one). And we see the immigrant population depicted neither as stupid, particularly lazy, nor inclined to crime - though there are examples of those sorts within the community, but most are not and don't condone them.

The movie has a few bits of violence and a lot of language. I'd guess it is a good film for adults. The subject matter is taken seriously and Eastwood handles the character with subtlety at times, with tremendous power at others. Eastwood has marked himself, over the last two decades, as not only a truly formidable actor, but a talented director and producer with a good eye for engaging stories and characters with substance. Nowhere is his craft more aparent than in Gran Torino.

To me, this movie is about 'the other' and discovering a bit about that other. Finding out that the other is often just the same as you are in many regards and noting the key differences. And finding out that sometimes the other can be closer to your values than some from your own group.

The movie doesn't hit you over the head with unbelievable repentance or great gushing attempts to make up for everything that went before. That's part of its intelligence. It just tells a story of a man whose world has changed around him and who can find some of the things he thinks important in unforseen places if he'll just look.

This movie is less disturbing than No Country For Old Men by a long piece, but will go down in American Cinema as a true classic. If the Academy paid it no heed, they're a bunch of navel gazers. This is a movie about the realties of multicultural societies, getting old, and changes that inevitably occur. And it is excellent.

I think this is the best movie I've seen this year. See it.

Origins of 20 Muppets

For those who fondly remember Jim Henson and his puppets...

Origins Of A Score Of Muppets

The top 10 things science fiction gets wrong

For the 'Top 10' fan club....

10 sci fi wrongs

Escape For City 17 Live Action Movie! (HL-2)

If you've ever played half-life, check this out. It's pretty well done.

Note there is some gore and language.

Escape From City 17

A video of the Australian Wildfires progressing

If you haven't seen this, you need to. This was shot from a guy's front porch as the wildfires approached. At one point, it looks like the entire horizon is on fire. The speed of approach (if you take a moment to consider it) is horrifyingly fast.

Wild Fire Video

My heart goes out to all those who lost loved ones in Australia or lost their homes and for all the wrecked towns. That's something nobody should have to experience.

Whiskey? Whisky? A decision of sorts....

There are two spellings for uisge beatha (and no, I wasn't talking about aqua vitae) in English. The Scots traditionally use whisky if they aren't using uisge beatha or uisge baugh. Others have used the form with an e in it.

It seems the New York Times has made up its mind

If you're a Scotch or a Canadian product, you're whisky. If you're from elsewhere, you're Whiskey. I wonder where that leaves Suntory?

Genetically Modified Beer!

Scientists have mapped the genome of 70 strains of yeast. Improvements in beer, wine, and bread are expected, perhaps in flavour, perhaps in longevity.

There's also a theory these simpler maps will provide models to build the software to help further map human genes. That has all sorts of possible long term benefits (possible I say, as we're still some distance from having genetic therapy or treatment for various diseases).

Still, even if all it gets is better beer....

GOOD WORK, SCIENTISTS!

Captain Avatar, its the Yamato!

Save us from the Gamelons!

Space Battleship Yamato

Awesome project.

A friend of mine is off to Portugal

My dear friend Susie is off to Portugal, to celebrate her Birthday (yesterday) and to take some photos.

I have to say, I'm moderately jealous. Another friend just came back from Jamaica. I would probably enjoy another week in the tropics sometime.

But I am headed off shortly for a geek-out weekend with the gaming crew at the Ground Zero Games East Coast Convention, between going out of town for a 40th Birthday party and attending a wedding of a friend of many years (hmmmm.... time to figure out if my purchased suits still fit or if that has to be factored in....).

Anyway, I am thinking I would love to be in another country seeing the sights - Scotland, Ireland, Australia (well, except the fire zone - that's pretty darn sad) and New Zealand, or maybe just the good old USA South of the snow. Maybe sometime when the revenue taps are once again running in the black.

A380 Cockpit Tour

The best use of Flash I've seen yet. A tour of the new Airbus 380 cockpit.

Cockpit

You can pan up, down, move around with your mouse, zoom in and out with the mousewheel, etc.

56 Year Old American Lady Swims Atlantic

Now there is an amazing woman. I don't care how far she swims or how many days it ends up taking by the time all is said and done, that's a formidable achievement. I know people who tried 3 times in a 40' sailboat before they could get from Florida to the Carribean. I can't image the Atlantic Swim....

Amazing

Verified by Visa and MasterCard SecureCode

In an attempt to make you more safe for your Internet shopping, MC and Visa have come out with an additional security measure called either Verified by Visa or MasterCard SecureCode.

This new security technology for the major cards is implemented (so it appears) through a company called securesuite.net. Doing a WhoIs lookup on this, we discover it is a company in Tel Aviv. Turns out it is a small security firm bought by RSA. Both banks are using it.

Here's a link that discusses it, but scan down to the comments at the end and there are some pretty informative bits of information. Nowhere on my bank sites did I find any mention of securesuite.net directly, but their registrations take me there.

Link

This is positively retarded on behalf of the banks. Merchants can force you to register and the process looks *a lot* like phishing, which they've trained us (justly) to worry about. You'd think they'd provide more transparent information about who they are using and why you'll be redirected to a previously unheard of domain in Israel, but they don't.

But it does appear to be legitemate. Only, if you phone your bank, pretty much expect that the Customer Service rep may well never have heard of it and may tell you it is a phishing site trying to steal your information. Apparently even internal dissemination of information has been problematic.

Anyway, it looks legit and Tiger Direct actually requires it now.

I give the banks a plus for putting in an additional identification factor, but a big minus for doing a crappy job of explaining it and making the implementation look like a phishing scam.

Aside:

Why controlled purchase numbers (basically a one-time pad for credit cards so that you can give someone an auth number that is verifiable for a transaction but is NOT your credit card number and becomes invalid after that) haven't yet made a fuller appearance at Visa or MC (or the banks) is a bit of a mystery. These would make internet transactions a lot safer.

Landform Art

From the Egyptian Desert... this landform art is worth checking out.

Also check out some crazy manmade island pictures from Dubai.

Best SF Computers/Robots of All Time

Okay, here's my list:

1. Skynet of Terminator fame
2. Blue Max and Bollux (Brian Daley's Han Solo books)
3. C-3P0 and R2-D2 (I shouldn't need to answer this one)
4. Bob, Vincent, and Maximillian (Disney's Black Hole)
5. Marvin, the paranoid android (Hitch Hiker's Guide To The Galaxy, old school version)
6. T1000, T800, and the liquidmetal Terminators
7. Cylons (old, new and in their sexy variations)
8. HAL 9000 ("It was a good idea to put me on this list, Dave.")
9. Rommie from Andromeda
10. The SGC Dialing Computer (Stargate)
11. Emergency Medical Hologram (Trek) and the whole Holodeck (includes Moriarty)
12. K-9 (Doctor Who's second best side-kick ever, after the leather skirted knife thrower)
13. The computer on B5 (when it had the AI turned on that so annoyed Garibaldi)
14. Johnny Five (Disney's Short Circuit)
15. The computer that calculated the Nine Billion Names of God

That's my list. Can you name some other good candidates?

Getting It Right

The FAA has released some audio (Flash player, part way down the first page) and the news have put together a longer video clip (embedded player, further down the page, worth it just to see the video caps of the A320 water landing - beginning of the clip).

Some people say the pilot was just doing his job, which he was. But he also showed a very high degree of calm given the circumstances and a high degree of focus. And some good judgment. If he'd turned towards Teterboro, he might well have put the big plane down into the city and I hate to think what that would have meant - certainly everyone on the plane would have died but so would a lot of other folks.

But he did the right thing, put it down on the water, and did it in a way sufficient to keep the fuselage intact. Within a few minutes, the rafts were being deployed and emergency services started to converge.

Well done to the pilot and all the crew of the flight. Well done to the controllers who tried to do what they could, as fast as they could, even though in the end it wasn't much use.

Newly Released Audio and Video

One of the themes of this blog is hope and optimism. This is an example of what happens when someone gets it right (and gets a bit lucky).

Irrate Cylons

This was pretty funny...

Cylon who has had enough